Snowflake Challenge Day 3: O Chrismukkah tree, O Chrismukkah tree, how lovely are your spaceships
Doing this latest entry in the snowflake challenge later this evening after a long day at work, but dammit, I'm doing it.
Day 3 - Self-recs
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.
Well, I picked these three fics because they are three Christmas themed stories, and they seemed seasonally appropriate, but upon reflection, they really do say something about me as a writer. Spending time with family, found families, sharing food, people taking time to listen to one another, people who not great at articulating themselves trying to articulate complicated emotions…
A working writer I know told our group once that one way or another, who we are will emerge in what we write. Looking back at these stories and their common thematic elements, and seeing those themes still present in my work twelve years later, he is quite right. And so to the stories:
i) Simple Gifts (also known as T’was the Night Before Chrismukkah), The O.C.
Missing scene, from The Best Chrismukkah Ever, also for the first OCMSC. Ryan opens his Chrismukkah gifts from Dawn and Trey.
This was one of my first stories for The O.C. fandom, written in 2004 for the Missing Scene Fic Challenge (just one of many great challenges in this lovely fandom). I can tell that I’m still finding my feet in prose, but I think I managed to capture something truthful.
ii) The Worst Chrismukkah Ever, The O.C.
Ryan's homesick, Seth's just sick and Sandy and Kirsten are determined to look after them both. Multi-chapter, set around the second Cohen Chrismukkah, but not canon.
This story was written for the Chrismukkah Fic challenge / community later that same year. I loved writing this fic, even though it was hard to get going initially. Certain scenes or sequences were quite clearly defined in my head; for instance, I knew that Seth and Sandy would be home together, while Kirsten took Ryan for a late night drive. It was joining all those sequences together that took the work. I still write best like this to be honest; writing a beginning with blood sweat and tears, to justify skipping on to the big juicy scenes scattered throughout the narrative, then knitting up the seams.
It was also around this time that The O.C fandom was opening up outside the confines of the Internet. We were starting to go and meet each other in person, which in turn opened up London to me, and later even took me to America to meet flisters I’m still friends with now. Fandom really is amazing.
iii) More Things In Heaven And Earth, Supernatural / Doctor Who
Crossover set after The Christmas Invasion (Doctor Who, Ten and Rose) and 1.16 Shadow (Supernatural). A long one shot, originally intended to be funny that somehow became the most angstastic story I've ever written. All the best protagonists have daddy issues.
This story was written in 2007, and for written for me. I can’t recall precisely why now, but I remember finding writing this story very cathartic. Perhaps it was because I’d moved from away from London, perhaps it was because The O.C. had finished that spring and the fandom was scattered on the wing, not knowing yet where to land. Some of us landed in Supernatural, I definitely landed, a least for a while, in Doctor Who, where the notion of being swept off on adventure from a life gone unexpectedly awry was certainly an appealing one. Whatever the reason, for my writing this story, I’m certainly glad I did. And oh look! It’s Christmas time again!
I enjoyed writing all three of these stories; the ideas formed easily and unlike most things I write these days, it wasn’t a struggle to get the words down on paper. Perhaps that says something about what I write these days, or perhaps I just need to work harder.
On that note, tomorrow is supposed to be "create a fanwork" but I simply don't have the time to complete any of many, many WiPs by then, so I think I shall have to have a bit of a re-shuffle. And so to bed.