some rambling about "overflow" and katy and betaing and "my" canon and other shit
First off, today is Mighty Kate's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATY!
In honor of that, I re-posted the two stories I wrote for her CD release scrapbook.
Better Days is original fiction in which Maddie learns that sometimes, things being at their worst just makes it easier to bounce back up.
Overflow is a post-"Exit Wounds" Torchwood story that I am going to talk about a little bit under the cut.
(My friend Jen also posted one of the stories she wrote for the scrapbook. It's called Underneath and you should go read that, too :D)
So, I came up with the idea for the scrapbook (or, rather, I came up with the idea of doing ~*something*~ and I think either Nicole or Christine supplied "scrapbook") about four days before Katy's CD release party. Maybe a little bit longer, but not much. We quickly contacted what I like to think of as the "Twitter Posse" to see if people would be interested in the idea so we could divvy up songs from the CD. "Overflow" was the first one I chose.
I had this idea in my head from the moment I heard the song on the CD. It was for a Torchwood vid. I am not a vidder. Um, at all. But the way the song is set up seemed perfect for Ianto post-Cyberwoman and Gwen post-Adrift and the whole team (with a focus on Jack) post-Exit Wounds. When I elected to do "Overflow" for the scrapbook, I figured "how hard can it be to turn my idea for a vid into a fic?"
The answer is "very hard."
I made the entire story post-"Exit Wounds" but the problem was that I was writing for the song and the song didn't tell "my" post-Exit Wounds story. I know that there are a million intrepretations of the characters of any given media. Unless we see them reacting on screen, we can only guess what goes on behind the scenes, and any number of things can be backed up with canon. For example, I've always held it in my head that Ianto started sleeping with Jack after "Countrycide." There's nothing to explicitly back that up in canon. All we know for sure is that Ianto sexually propositions Jack at the end of "We Keep Killing Susie" and they make plans for later that night. We don't know if it's their first time ever or if they've been doing this for months or if this is the first time since Lisa was killed or what, but, in my head, there's a subtle shift in the dynamics between them after "Countrycide" and I attribute it to the fact that they are now fucking.
That being said, when I interpret events, I am always hesitant to stray from my interpretation. Um. I don't know if that makes sense. Essentially, if I think that Ianto and Jack started sleeping together after "Countrycide," that is the backstory in my head for every fic I write, unless I make a concious effort to change it. It doesn't bother me if I'm reading fic other people wrote--like I said, there are a million ways to interpret a given situation and I have no issues with other people's versions of characters' backstory, as long as they can back it up. But in my own head it's hard for me to stray from my personal canon.
"Overflow" is nothing like my personal canon.
My tardis_bigbang is my personal post-"Exit Wounds" canon. It won't be out for a couple of weeks, but the way that Jack, Ianto, and Gwen interact with each other and the rest of the world in that story is the way that I imagine things going down in my head. And it was very, very hard to push past that to write "Overflow." I knew the story I wanted to tell, I knew it was supported by canon, I knew it was the type of story that had been told before, but I kept second-guessing myself. It didn't help that I was literally racing the clock while working on this story--I finished it, spell-checked it, printed it, and ran out the door to catch a bus to go to the party.
After the immediate stress of the party was past, I re-read the story and couldn't help but wince basically... at everything in the first and last sections. I didn't mind Gwen's part--that felt very really and very "Gwen" to me--but Ianto's and Jack's just... didn't click. I asked solsticezero for help and, unfortunately for her, that started four months of on-and-off agonizing over what was "wrong" with the story. Every few weeks I'd IM her and ask her to look at it again and every few weeks I'd try to make the corrections to fill in what I thought was "missing" and end up discouraged.
Today, I re-read and wasn't half as disgusted as usual and realized that sometimes, you just have to throw something out there, even if you know it's not your best. This is a perfectly adequate story, and if I wait forever to come up with this mysterious component that I seem to think is missing but can't actually articulate, then... what the hell am I doing? I write because I enjoy it, but killing myself over this fucking thing wasn't enjoyable. Washing my hands of it made me feel a lot better. And I'm sure Solstice appreciates that she will no longer get crazy IMs begging her to tell me what's wrong with it.
(At least, she won't get those wrt THIS story. I will still do it for every other thing ever.)
(And, can I just take a moment to say how incredibly awesome and patient Solstice was through this whole process? SO PATIENT. SO AWESOME. Best beta reader ever, dudes, for REAL.)
The one kind of awesome thing that came out of all of it was a realization of how much I fucking love Katy and this song. When I started writing this story, I put "Overflow" on repeat on my iPod. I listened to it whenever I was awake and able to listen to music for about three days straight. Every time I pulled the story out of my archives to edit it, I put the song on again. I've probably listened to this song more times than any other this year, but I still love every second of it. I still listen to it every time it comes up on shuffle. I feel like I know this song. I feel, oddly, like it's "my" song, even more than "200 Stories" or "Better Days," my initial favorites off the album.
I'm going to miss Katy when I move to Boston, guys. SO MUCH. :(
ANYWAY. That is the epic backstory of this fic. What even, guys. What even.
In honor of that, I re-posted the two stories I wrote for her CD release scrapbook.
Better Days is original fiction in which Maddie learns that sometimes, things being at their worst just makes it easier to bounce back up.
Overflow is a post-"Exit Wounds" Torchwood story that I am going to talk about a little bit under the cut.
(My friend Jen also posted one of the stories she wrote for the scrapbook. It's called Underneath and you should go read that, too :D)
So, I came up with the idea for the scrapbook (or, rather, I came up with the idea of doing ~*something*~ and I think either Nicole or Christine supplied "scrapbook") about four days before Katy's CD release party. Maybe a little bit longer, but not much. We quickly contacted what I like to think of as the "Twitter Posse" to see if people would be interested in the idea so we could divvy up songs from the CD. "Overflow" was the first one I chose.
I had this idea in my head from the moment I heard the song on the CD. It was for a Torchwood vid. I am not a vidder. Um, at all. But the way the song is set up seemed perfect for Ianto post-Cyberwoman and Gwen post-Adrift and the whole team (with a focus on Jack) post-Exit Wounds. When I elected to do "Overflow" for the scrapbook, I figured "how hard can it be to turn my idea for a vid into a fic?"
The answer is "very hard."
I made the entire story post-"Exit Wounds" but the problem was that I was writing for the song and the song didn't tell "my" post-Exit Wounds story. I know that there are a million intrepretations of the characters of any given media. Unless we see them reacting on screen, we can only guess what goes on behind the scenes, and any number of things can be backed up with canon. For example, I've always held it in my head that Ianto started sleeping with Jack after "Countrycide." There's nothing to explicitly back that up in canon. All we know for sure is that Ianto sexually propositions Jack at the end of "We Keep Killing Susie" and they make plans for later that night. We don't know if it's their first time ever or if they've been doing this for months or if this is the first time since Lisa was killed or what, but, in my head, there's a subtle shift in the dynamics between them after "Countrycide" and I attribute it to the fact that they are now fucking.
That being said, when I interpret events, I am always hesitant to stray from my interpretation. Um. I don't know if that makes sense. Essentially, if I think that Ianto and Jack started sleeping together after "Countrycide," that is the backstory in my head for every fic I write, unless I make a concious effort to change it. It doesn't bother me if I'm reading fic other people wrote--like I said, there are a million ways to interpret a given situation and I have no issues with other people's versions of characters' backstory, as long as they can back it up. But in my own head it's hard for me to stray from my personal canon.
"Overflow" is nothing like my personal canon.
My tardis_bigbang is my personal post-"Exit Wounds" canon. It won't be out for a couple of weeks, but the way that Jack, Ianto, and Gwen interact with each other and the rest of the world in that story is the way that I imagine things going down in my head. And it was very, very hard to push past that to write "Overflow." I knew the story I wanted to tell, I knew it was supported by canon, I knew it was the type of story that had been told before, but I kept second-guessing myself. It didn't help that I was literally racing the clock while working on this story--I finished it, spell-checked it, printed it, and ran out the door to catch a bus to go to the party.
After the immediate stress of the party was past, I re-read the story and couldn't help but wince basically... at everything in the first and last sections. I didn't mind Gwen's part--that felt very really and very "Gwen" to me--but Ianto's and Jack's just... didn't click. I asked solsticezero for help and, unfortunately for her, that started four months of on-and-off agonizing over what was "wrong" with the story. Every few weeks I'd IM her and ask her to look at it again and every few weeks I'd try to make the corrections to fill in what I thought was "missing" and end up discouraged.
Today, I re-read and wasn't half as disgusted as usual and realized that sometimes, you just have to throw something out there, even if you know it's not your best. This is a perfectly adequate story, and if I wait forever to come up with this mysterious component that I seem to think is missing but can't actually articulate, then... what the hell am I doing? I write because I enjoy it, but killing myself over this fucking thing wasn't enjoyable. Washing my hands of it made me feel a lot better. And I'm sure Solstice appreciates that she will no longer get crazy IMs begging her to tell me what's wrong with it.
(At least, she won't get those wrt THIS story. I will still do it for every other thing ever.)
(And, can I just take a moment to say how incredibly awesome and patient Solstice was through this whole process? SO PATIENT. SO AWESOME. Best beta reader ever, dudes, for REAL.)
The one kind of awesome thing that came out of all of it was a realization of how much I fucking love Katy and this song. When I started writing this story, I put "Overflow" on repeat on my iPod. I listened to it whenever I was awake and able to listen to music for about three days straight. Every time I pulled the story out of my archives to edit it, I put the song on again. I've probably listened to this song more times than any other this year, but I still love every second of it. I still listen to it every time it comes up on shuffle. I feel like I know this song. I feel, oddly, like it's "my" song, even more than "200 Stories" or "Better Days," my initial favorites off the album.
I'm going to miss Katy when I move to Boston, guys. SO MUCH. :(
ANYWAY. That is the epic backstory of this fic. What even, guys. What even.