Fic: A Triangle (is the strongest shape)
I have finished that Once A Thief threesome story I was working on!
It turned out to be 70,000 words long, and plotty and angsty and complicated. Which is par for the course for my fics, I guess. It was a whole lot of fun to write, especially with
yourlibrarian along for the ride as my beta reader. She caught my awkward wordings and typos, helped me bounce around ideas about tricky plot developments, and made me totally re-write the ending when my first draft sucked. Plus, it was encouraging to know that at least one person other than myself would read the thing. Thanks,
yourlibrarian!
I've posted it on AO3. You'll find more detailed tagging and content notes there. Here's the link:
A Triangle (is the strongest shape)
And, if you'd like a fantastic fanvid to get you in the mood, check out The Frug by
some_stars, and remind yourself that Mac, Li Ann and Vic are awesome (individually but most especially together).
I have a couple of other notes, but I'll put them behind a cut.
Writing a threesome is hard. I realized part-way through the story that rather than trying to manage the development of one relationship, I was really trying to handle seven. Each of the pairs in the threesome needed to come together in its own organic way, and because these are complicated people with a lot of history together, each pair had to work through its own baggage. So that makes three relationships, right there. And then, each individual had a relationship with the other pair. For instance, Mac had to figure out how to relate to Vic and Li Ann as a couple-which is a whole different thing than his individual relationship with each one of them. So that makes another three, which brings us to six. And then there is the actual, proper threesome, all three of them at once, which is a thing unto itself.
At which point I realized I was doing combinatorics. Heh.
My whole story is essentially contained in the first three and a half minutes of episode 5. At one point while writing, I wanted to know Mac's street address. I went looking for it in the episode Mac Daddy, where I remembered Mac's biological father getting the address from a waitress. I have an episode transcript, but it's not in the transcript because she didn't say it out loud, she just handed it to him on a napkin. So I went to the episode and freeze-framed it (I am dedicated like that!) and discovered that it's 997 Queen's Quay. You're welcome.
Anyway, the point is, that scene with the waitress and the napkin is the second scene in the episode. The first scene consists of Mac, Vic and Li Ann hiding behind some oil drums, chatting. Well, okay, Mac is chatting and the other two are half humouring him, half trying to get him to shut up, because they're on a stakeout. Then their targets show up, three guys stepping out of a van. The agents are just supposed to follow the van, not to make contact, but Mac decides to go fight the guys instead. By himself. Because he's bored. So Mac heads out there, and he's cute and overconfident and pretends to be in a badly-dubbed kung fu movie, and he gets his ass handed to him. Vic and Li Ann watch from cover, letting him do his thing, wincing occasionally-until they determine that he really, definitely needs help, at which point they step in and save him. And then Li Ann grins at Mac and tweaks his nose.
It's adorable.
And that's pretty much the dynamic of my whole story, in a nutshell.
Comments at Dreamwidth:
It turned out to be 70,000 words long, and plotty and angsty and complicated. Which is par for the course for my fics, I guess. It was a whole lot of fun to write, especially with
yourlibrarian along for the ride as my beta reader. She caught my awkward wordings and typos, helped me bounce around ideas about tricky plot developments, and made me totally re-write the ending when my first draft sucked. Plus, it was encouraging to know that at least one person other than myself would read the thing. Thanks,
yourlibrarian!
I've posted it on AO3. You'll find more detailed tagging and content notes there. Here's the link:
A Triangle (is the strongest shape)
And, if you'd like a fantastic fanvid to get you in the mood, check out The Frug by
some_stars, and remind yourself that Mac, Li Ann and Vic are awesome (individually but most especially together).
I have a couple of other notes, but I'll put them behind a cut.
Writing a threesome is hard. I realized part-way through the story that rather than trying to manage the development of one relationship, I was really trying to handle seven. Each of the pairs in the threesome needed to come together in its own organic way, and because these are complicated people with a lot of history together, each pair had to work through its own baggage. So that makes three relationships, right there. And then, each individual had a relationship with the other pair. For instance, Mac had to figure out how to relate to Vic and Li Ann as a couple-which is a whole different thing than his individual relationship with each one of them. So that makes another three, which brings us to six. And then there is the actual, proper threesome, all three of them at once, which is a thing unto itself.
At which point I realized I was doing combinatorics. Heh.
My whole story is essentially contained in the first three and a half minutes of episode 5. At one point while writing, I wanted to know Mac's street address. I went looking for it in the episode Mac Daddy, where I remembered Mac's biological father getting the address from a waitress. I have an episode transcript, but it's not in the transcript because she didn't say it out loud, she just handed it to him on a napkin. So I went to the episode and freeze-framed it (I am dedicated like that!) and discovered that it's 997 Queen's Quay. You're welcome.
Anyway, the point is, that scene with the waitress and the napkin is the second scene in the episode. The first scene consists of Mac, Vic and Li Ann hiding behind some oil drums, chatting. Well, okay, Mac is chatting and the other two are half humouring him, half trying to get him to shut up, because they're on a stakeout. Then their targets show up, three guys stepping out of a van. The agents are just supposed to follow the van, not to make contact, but Mac decides to go fight the guys instead. By himself. Because he's bored. So Mac heads out there, and he's cute and overconfident and pretends to be in a badly-dubbed kung fu movie, and he gets his ass handed to him. Vic and Li Ann watch from cover, letting him do his thing, wincing occasionally-until they determine that he really, definitely needs help, at which point they step in and save him. And then Li Ann grins at Mac and tweaks his nose.
It's adorable.
And that's pretty much the dynamic of my whole story, in a nutshell.
Comments at Dreamwidth: