in three days I will probably stop talking about secret mutant
Okay, first off, Secret Mutant Madness is live! Twenty-four stories! Go read them! I wrote three, all of which should be SUPER OBVIOUS to those of you who have been reading this journal for a while XD
But! Secret Mutant proper!
I have been a shit mod this year in that I have only commented on like...six things. I haven't had two seconds to myself to go through the archive yet. It sucks and I feel like a jerk, but whatever. A REC LIST IS COMING EVENTUALLY, I SWEAR.
In the mean time, I wrote three fics! The only person to successfully guess all three of them was kaydeefalls, so she gets... a shiny nickel because I'm brain dead from writing 35,000 words in two weeks. I AM SUPER CURIOUS, HOW DID YOU GUESS? I'm always super curious about what people think my "tells" are because they're frequently different from what I think they are.
Anyway, my three stories:
irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows)
PG13, 10k, Charles/Erik, for listerinezero
So, this was my original assignment. I lucked out in getting something I was super excited about writing and I actually liked three of listerinezero's prompts a lot, but this was the one that stuck with me. Mutant worldbuilding has become one of my favorite things to do in this fandom, because I really feel like the comics don't give us as much as I'd like due to their nature. It's a very static environment. Fifty years have passed, but mutant rights have barely inched forward, both because only like, ten actual years have passed and also because the point of the X-Men is the metaphor they represent, so social change would kind of make them much less exciting.
That being said, I can't help but feel that in the real world, fifty years would have gotten them at least a little slack. Writing modern, still-powered AUs is an exciting chance to delve into that and see how society would reorganize itself to fit this special population. There are a lot of mutant politics buzzword issues that I pull out when I need to structure a story about politics, and integration is one of them. I made it an important part of Erik's manifesto, one of his key issues, and worked from there in figuring out where this society was on the mutant debate. Obviously they're civilized enough to invite Charles and Erik on television for a debate, but there's a long way to go. Once I figured out where they stood politically and placed Charles and Erik accordingly, the hard part was actually writing them flirting?
The debate was easy and everything after they escaped to the green room was annoyingly easy (in that they WOUDLN'T STOP TALKING), but those bits of flirtation were GRUESOME. Each line felt like pulling teeth. The recipient and the readers seemed to like them, so I guess I did all right, but oh god.
Fun side note: Of the three stories I have in the archive, this was the least popular, which was tragic because I definitely loved it best. The most popular, Work/Life Balance, was my least favorite and the hardest to write. I would never have guessed it would have been the most favored out of my stories.
*
Mistletoe, Latkes, and Long-term Revenge Strategies
PG13, 6.5k, Charles/Erik, for jeeps
This was the second pinch hit that I picked up. I had only written the first 2k of my first pinch hit, but an idea for it popped into my head and I found myself scribbling down what I wanted the scenes to be like. I outlined and wrote this mostly in a day, save for the last scene. As you may have noticed from my earlier entries, I feel like prompts that involve both Erik and Christmas need to be handled deftly and my first thought was, "Leave it to Shaw to be douchey enough to put a Jew in charge of Christmas sales." Between that and a very timely conversation with one of my Jewish friends about her work "holiday" party that was basically a Christmas party without the word "Christmas," my brain quickly formed a scenario where Erik was frustrated and put-upon and Christmas-obsessed Charles found himself extra sensitive to the deluge of red and green.
I talked about this briefly on Twitter as I was writing, but there are certain things that I can't change when I'm writing an AU. I'm sure everyone has those touchstones, but for me, Charles HAS to be privileged. I mean, it could be a situation where he's lost that privilege and has to deal with the consequences, but so much of what makes him up is being a well-meaning but sanctimonious asshole that I can't imagine him without that. So the major stumbling block of this was figuring out WHY Charles was working at a department store. Once I worked out the family rules, the rest was easy. (And I have hella backstory about this in my head.) Like I said, I sat down and wrote the rest pretty quickly. Bits of Erik's woes come from my own experience working retail at the holidays and some recent complaints from Jewish friends being side-eyed at this time of the year.
*
Work/Life Balance
PG13, 11k, Charles/Erik, Alex/Darwin, for paperstains
This ended up being the hardest story to write. Jesus.
I really intended it to be a short little piece about Alex, Sean, and Darwin meeting Erik's famous husband and being star struck. I had kind of an outline in my head, very quickly wrote the first bit (from the beginning to when Erik got sick) and then...had to deal with the rest.
There were a couple false starts. I have a scene in my head that I want to use for a future daycare story where Erik is training new staff and says to one, "My kid could do this better!" and the guy is like, "....you have a kid?" and Erik is thrown because while he doesn't talk about his family a lot, most people know them and he's not used to answering questions and is just awkwardly like, "Yeah, I have two." And the new people are all discussing what they imagine Erik's family is like, etc. And while that would have worked for this story, I feel like it would work BEST as a daycare story, so I'll continue to sit on it. So I took out the kids and instead just had the revelation be about Erik's marriage.
Then, of course, I had to figure out WHY Alex and the others would know Charles and that's where the trouble came in. I came up with the idea of a teevee show, something almost like Saved by the Bell, not necessarily in content but in pervasiveness. Then I had to figure out what the show was about. Then, in my quest to give Erik and Charles motivation, I came up with their backstory. And then I was fucking done for.
The original draft of this story was pushing 15k. I had...jesus, like half a dozen people read it to try and help me figure out where I was going wrong. It just kept going and going and it was all just Charles TALKING. I'm still super self-conscious about that fact that I'm afraid it reads like I was avoiding writing a 60k story about Charles-the-teen-actor and Erik-his-boyfriend by having Charles just summarize the events to Alex. littledust once told me she was amazed at my ability to write five thousand words of Charles and Erik not talking to each other in Orphans of Forgetting. Well, I'm MORE amazed that I was able to turn six thousand words of Charles just TALKING into something readable.
There was a TON of backstory that I cut out or that didn't make it to the story, as well as things I had to rework in order to not make this 30k long and beyond my ability to finish it within the timeframe. I have all these details in my head about Alex and Scott's life in the past and TONS of things about Charles and Erik growing up. This is a verse I might revisit one day entirely because I have Charles and Erik's life stories written in my head already. The problem became I had all this backstory and no actual character arc. I needed Alex to do something or learn something, and luckily all the loose ends seemed to be related. (I kept tweeting, "I just need to figure out this last bit of character work so I can take these loose ends and tie them in a bow!") Why did Alex love the show? Because it was about a found family, the likes of which he longed for. How did all the issues with Shaw start? Because Charles invited him into their family. Alex wants Darwin to be a part of his life in a larger capacity than he currently is. Darwin wants to meet Alex's family. Etc. Etc. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that was how I could draw it all back together and when I did notice it, I could have wept.
A huge, huge thank you goes to greeneyes73180 for helping me cull probably four thousands words after everyone else just read the draft and said, "Oh, it's good." And to littledust who gave me some suggestions and would have given me more if she hadn't spent most of the day in the car while I was writing XD
*
So those are my secret_mutant stories! I promise I'm going to go to the archive proper and read and comment and rec soon! I have three stories in Secret Mutant Madness, but they are SUPER OBVIOUSLY MINE, so no game this time :)
If you DID guess my stories from the exchange correctly, I'm serious about that request. I'm really curious as to what people see in stories that make them obviously mine. LET ME KNOW? :D? :D? :D?
*
And now BED. harmonyangel will be here tomorrow for SWEET HANGS. ♥
But! Secret Mutant proper!
I have been a shit mod this year in that I have only commented on like...six things. I haven't had two seconds to myself to go through the archive yet. It sucks and I feel like a jerk, but whatever. A REC LIST IS COMING EVENTUALLY, I SWEAR.
In the mean time, I wrote three fics! The only person to successfully guess all three of them was kaydeefalls, so she gets... a shiny nickel because I'm brain dead from writing 35,000 words in two weeks. I AM SUPER CURIOUS, HOW DID YOU GUESS? I'm always super curious about what people think my "tells" are because they're frequently different from what I think they are.
Anyway, my three stories:
irreconcilable differences (make for surprisingly good bedfellows)
PG13, 10k, Charles/Erik, for listerinezero
So, this was my original assignment. I lucked out in getting something I was super excited about writing and I actually liked three of listerinezero's prompts a lot, but this was the one that stuck with me. Mutant worldbuilding has become one of my favorite things to do in this fandom, because I really feel like the comics don't give us as much as I'd like due to their nature. It's a very static environment. Fifty years have passed, but mutant rights have barely inched forward, both because only like, ten actual years have passed and also because the point of the X-Men is the metaphor they represent, so social change would kind of make them much less exciting.
That being said, I can't help but feel that in the real world, fifty years would have gotten them at least a little slack. Writing modern, still-powered AUs is an exciting chance to delve into that and see how society would reorganize itself to fit this special population. There are a lot of mutant politics buzzword issues that I pull out when I need to structure a story about politics, and integration is one of them. I made it an important part of Erik's manifesto, one of his key issues, and worked from there in figuring out where this society was on the mutant debate. Obviously they're civilized enough to invite Charles and Erik on television for a debate, but there's a long way to go. Once I figured out where they stood politically and placed Charles and Erik accordingly, the hard part was actually writing them flirting?
The debate was easy and everything after they escaped to the green room was annoyingly easy (in that they WOUDLN'T STOP TALKING), but those bits of flirtation were GRUESOME. Each line felt like pulling teeth. The recipient and the readers seemed to like them, so I guess I did all right, but oh god.
Fun side note: Of the three stories I have in the archive, this was the least popular, which was tragic because I definitely loved it best. The most popular, Work/Life Balance, was my least favorite and the hardest to write. I would never have guessed it would have been the most favored out of my stories.
*
Mistletoe, Latkes, and Long-term Revenge Strategies
PG13, 6.5k, Charles/Erik, for jeeps
This was the second pinch hit that I picked up. I had only written the first 2k of my first pinch hit, but an idea for it popped into my head and I found myself scribbling down what I wanted the scenes to be like. I outlined and wrote this mostly in a day, save for the last scene. As you may have noticed from my earlier entries, I feel like prompts that involve both Erik and Christmas need to be handled deftly and my first thought was, "Leave it to Shaw to be douchey enough to put a Jew in charge of Christmas sales." Between that and a very timely conversation with one of my Jewish friends about her work "holiday" party that was basically a Christmas party without the word "Christmas," my brain quickly formed a scenario where Erik was frustrated and put-upon and Christmas-obsessed Charles found himself extra sensitive to the deluge of red and green.
I talked about this briefly on Twitter as I was writing, but there are certain things that I can't change when I'm writing an AU. I'm sure everyone has those touchstones, but for me, Charles HAS to be privileged. I mean, it could be a situation where he's lost that privilege and has to deal with the consequences, but so much of what makes him up is being a well-meaning but sanctimonious asshole that I can't imagine him without that. So the major stumbling block of this was figuring out WHY Charles was working at a department store. Once I worked out the family rules, the rest was easy. (And I have hella backstory about this in my head.) Like I said, I sat down and wrote the rest pretty quickly. Bits of Erik's woes come from my own experience working retail at the holidays and some recent complaints from Jewish friends being side-eyed at this time of the year.
*
Work/Life Balance
PG13, 11k, Charles/Erik, Alex/Darwin, for paperstains
This ended up being the hardest story to write. Jesus.
I really intended it to be a short little piece about Alex, Sean, and Darwin meeting Erik's famous husband and being star struck. I had kind of an outline in my head, very quickly wrote the first bit (from the beginning to when Erik got sick) and then...had to deal with the rest.
There were a couple false starts. I have a scene in my head that I want to use for a future daycare story where Erik is training new staff and says to one, "My kid could do this better!" and the guy is like, "....you have a kid?" and Erik is thrown because while he doesn't talk about his family a lot, most people know them and he's not used to answering questions and is just awkwardly like, "Yeah, I have two." And the new people are all discussing what they imagine Erik's family is like, etc. And while that would have worked for this story, I feel like it would work BEST as a daycare story, so I'll continue to sit on it. So I took out the kids and instead just had the revelation be about Erik's marriage.
Then, of course, I had to figure out WHY Alex and the others would know Charles and that's where the trouble came in. I came up with the idea of a teevee show, something almost like Saved by the Bell, not necessarily in content but in pervasiveness. Then I had to figure out what the show was about. Then, in my quest to give Erik and Charles motivation, I came up with their backstory. And then I was fucking done for.
The original draft of this story was pushing 15k. I had...jesus, like half a dozen people read it to try and help me figure out where I was going wrong. It just kept going and going and it was all just Charles TALKING. I'm still super self-conscious about that fact that I'm afraid it reads like I was avoiding writing a 60k story about Charles-the-teen-actor and Erik-his-boyfriend by having Charles just summarize the events to Alex. littledust once told me she was amazed at my ability to write five thousand words of Charles and Erik not talking to each other in Orphans of Forgetting. Well, I'm MORE amazed that I was able to turn six thousand words of Charles just TALKING into something readable.
There was a TON of backstory that I cut out or that didn't make it to the story, as well as things I had to rework in order to not make this 30k long and beyond my ability to finish it within the timeframe. I have all these details in my head about Alex and Scott's life in the past and TONS of things about Charles and Erik growing up. This is a verse I might revisit one day entirely because I have Charles and Erik's life stories written in my head already. The problem became I had all this backstory and no actual character arc. I needed Alex to do something or learn something, and luckily all the loose ends seemed to be related. (I kept tweeting, "I just need to figure out this last bit of character work so I can take these loose ends and tie them in a bow!") Why did Alex love the show? Because it was about a found family, the likes of which he longed for. How did all the issues with Shaw start? Because Charles invited him into their family. Alex wants Darwin to be a part of his life in a larger capacity than he currently is. Darwin wants to meet Alex's family. Etc. Etc. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that was how I could draw it all back together and when I did notice it, I could have wept.
A huge, huge thank you goes to greeneyes73180 for helping me cull probably four thousands words after everyone else just read the draft and said, "Oh, it's good." And to littledust who gave me some suggestions and would have given me more if she hadn't spent most of the day in the car while I was writing XD
*
So those are my secret_mutant stories! I promise I'm going to go to the archive proper and read and comment and rec soon! I have three stories in Secret Mutant Madness, but they are SUPER OBVIOUSLY MINE, so no game this time :)
If you DID guess my stories from the exchange correctly, I'm serious about that request. I'm really curious as to what people see in stories that make them obviously mine. LET ME KNOW? :D? :D? :D?
*
And now BED. harmonyangel will be here tomorrow for SWEET HANGS. ♥