there's this thing and this other thing...
Overnight, just_katarin finally posted walk backward toward you, the companion piece to my oh, perilous place and I'm kind of unreasonably excited about it.
IDK, our DCU/Smallville/Batman Begins/SPN Hogwarts AU isn't like everything else I write in fandom. deep_wonder is my personal happy place. It's like kind of like...mix-ins. You know, Coldstone Creamery or Marble Slab where you can put chocolate chips, chocolate sprinkles, cinnamon flakes, and graham crackers in your coffee ice cream if you want? (Idk if you actually can; I'm violently allergic to ice cream for the last four years.) That's what it's like for me. Everything I like best about Potterverse, DCU Comicsverse, SPNverse, all rolled up into an epic (and porny) romance. It's guaranteed to make me happy when nothing else in the world can. And, Katarin's Oliver, well... let's just say he makes my inner Bruce very nearly content, and if you know Bruce Wayne, you'll know why that's extraordinary.
Anyway, I'm thinking about DWverse this morning, not only because K posted it, but because I'm thinking about writing. About why sometimes it takes me 25 minutes to write 500 words that y'all love like pie and kittens, and other times it takes me 25 days (or more, sigh) to write something that *I* love like pie and kittens but y'all don't like near as much as the stuff I can turn out faster. Or why I can write 15,000 words of J2 porn in three to five days, and it's taken me since mid-July to write almost 17,000 words of Mohinder/Peter(/Nathan).
Because, see, I can write 1500 words of DW in 60 minutes without breathing hard most days. (Randomly, I also seem to write about 10 times as fast in the present tense.) It's not only because I love it more. I think it's because... I know it better? Ditto the J2. DW is my place, my characters, my story. The details I choose are the ones that are and no one can say "oh, you got that wrong." And when I'm writing AU J2, it's not like I can get that wrong either. Even when I'm writing J2 that's only AU in the sense that they're actually fucking (oh, don't look at me like that; my tinhattery doesn't extend to believing they are fucking, only that if they're not, they should be, and there should be video camers, yis?), I don't worry and fret and tinker and poke and rethink and rescene and...y'hear?
Some of it, with the M/P obviously is that it's mammoth and plotty, so it just does take longer. And some of it is that I'm making up the world as I go along, and making up the relationship because it's not canon, and I'm making up how the characters interact with each other when the world's not ending because we don't really know, and I'm trying to make it real...not just in the sense of realistic writing, but real in Heroesverse and real in our world. So, it takes longer, because I'm checking everything against my mental projections of the characters, looking up details of the places they're going, thinking about "would someone do that? should I write it even if they did?" and keep it true while not bogging the story down with it.
And some of it is, well, this silly fandom thing. It'd be easier if it were J2 or Wincest because those are the dominant ships in those fandoms and I'd not feel like I was blazing new territory or cutting against the grain. Which isn't to say there aren't already people writing Mohinder/Peter or even Mohinder/Peter/Nathan, because there are and some of them are quite good. But Heroes fandom is mostly about Nathan/Peter, Peter/Claire, or Mohinder/Sylar right now. ~slight digression~
I'm a Petrellicester of both variants, but I don't ship either, which is to say, I write both, and I believe Nathan/Peter and can believe Peter/Claire under the right circumstances, but I don't OTP either. And while I see the slashiness of Mohinder/Sylar and think the dynamic is fascinating, I don't really want to write it much...because I identify strongly with Mohinder, and that relationship really is no fun from his side of the equation. See above about epic romances and pretty boys falling in love? That's me. I like my romances deep and angsty but with a happy ending that I can believe in here and now. Mohinder and Peter sparked for me in the pilot, I saw it in July and waited months for the show, and fell in love with them - even started writing them - before the show ever aired. ~/slight digression~
So I'm writing this big sprawling thing in a pairing that's off-mainstream; and there's not this "feeling" of Mohinder/Peterness in the fandom for me to draw from. And there's even less "feeling" of Mohinder/Peter/Nathan-ness, which is the only way I can write them. (My inner Peter fucks his brother, period. He needs his brother. My inner Nathan fucks his brother, period. He needs his brother. They're necessary to each other, but unlike Sam and Dean in my head, they're not sufficient for each other. And Mohinder's good for both of them.) I'm flying without a net but I'm doing it in a place where I'm flying against the wind.
It's not like DW or J2 or my ofic where I can't get it wrong. I'm starting out knowing it's wrong for a lot of people. It's not that I care in the sense of whether lots of people read it or not. I don't. Obviously I hope lots of people will because we all know "write for yourself" is a load of crap (I mean, it's not, except for how it totally is), but it's mostly just...no training wheels. It's like...ordering mix-ins for someone else. Or...wearing an orange dress for cocktails when you're usually a little black dress queen. It's not that I don't think the orange dress looks good on me or that I don't adore it or even that I particularly care what anyone else thinks of the dress. It's just...what if I spill my cranberry juice and vodka on it? Black (the dominant pairings in a fandom, since my metaphors are flying thicker than mosquitos on a woodlands fourth of July) will hide the spill. Orange? is not so forgiving.
All that jazz to come to the conclusion that I'm scared that maybe I'm not actually all that good and that the pairings I've been writing are generous... *sighs* A life less ordinary, please?
Anyway, after all that, an update...
Current wordcount: 16465
EWTEOS (estimated word count to end of story): 18535
Character I most want to slap right now: the author.
Character I least want to slap right now: Peter, because he makes it so easy.
Question of the moment: whether they will actually make it to the planned plotpoint before kissing.
Current darling: Peter tipped his head, still grinning, but too bright, too brittle--temple brass pounded too thin. His lips itched with the imagined feel of Peter's forehead, the taste of sandalwood and saffron painted there hours earlier.
Pee Ess - If you want to talk about Heroes shipping or writing or really anything in the comments, bring it. I'm writing for a little while, but then I have to work all day. I might even do a meme (I know, I still have first kisses to write. They're burning here in my brain, waiting for me to finish this sucker) later.
IDK, our DCU/Smallville/Batman Begins/SPN Hogwarts AU isn't like everything else I write in fandom. deep_wonder is my personal happy place. It's like kind of like...mix-ins. You know, Coldstone Creamery or Marble Slab where you can put chocolate chips, chocolate sprinkles, cinnamon flakes, and graham crackers in your coffee ice cream if you want? (Idk if you actually can; I'm violently allergic to ice cream for the last four years.) That's what it's like for me. Everything I like best about Potterverse, DCU Comicsverse, SPNverse, all rolled up into an epic (and porny) romance. It's guaranteed to make me happy when nothing else in the world can. And, Katarin's Oliver, well... let's just say he makes my inner Bruce very nearly content, and if you know Bruce Wayne, you'll know why that's extraordinary.
Anyway, I'm thinking about DWverse this morning, not only because K posted it, but because I'm thinking about writing. About why sometimes it takes me 25 minutes to write 500 words that y'all love like pie and kittens, and other times it takes me 25 days (or more, sigh) to write something that *I* love like pie and kittens but y'all don't like near as much as the stuff I can turn out faster. Or why I can write 15,000 words of J2 porn in three to five days, and it's taken me since mid-July to write almost 17,000 words of Mohinder/Peter(/Nathan).
Because, see, I can write 1500 words of DW in 60 minutes without breathing hard most days. (Randomly, I also seem to write about 10 times as fast in the present tense.) It's not only because I love it more. I think it's because... I know it better? Ditto the J2. DW is my place, my characters, my story. The details I choose are the ones that are and no one can say "oh, you got that wrong." And when I'm writing AU J2, it's not like I can get that wrong either. Even when I'm writing J2 that's only AU in the sense that they're actually fucking (oh, don't look at me like that; my tinhattery doesn't extend to believing they are fucking, only that if they're not, they should be, and there should be video camers, yis?), I don't worry and fret and tinker and poke and rethink and rescene and...y'hear?
Some of it, with the M/P obviously is that it's mammoth and plotty, so it just does take longer. And some of it is that I'm making up the world as I go along, and making up the relationship because it's not canon, and I'm making up how the characters interact with each other when the world's not ending because we don't really know, and I'm trying to make it real...not just in the sense of realistic writing, but real in Heroesverse and real in our world. So, it takes longer, because I'm checking everything against my mental projections of the characters, looking up details of the places they're going, thinking about "would someone do that? should I write it even if they did?" and keep it true while not bogging the story down with it.
And some of it is, well, this silly fandom thing. It'd be easier if it were J2 or Wincest because those are the dominant ships in those fandoms and I'd not feel like I was blazing new territory or cutting against the grain. Which isn't to say there aren't already people writing Mohinder/Peter or even Mohinder/Peter/Nathan, because there are and some of them are quite good. But Heroes fandom is mostly about Nathan/Peter, Peter/Claire, or Mohinder/Sylar right now. ~slight digression~
I'm a Petrellicester of both variants, but I don't ship either, which is to say, I write both, and I believe Nathan/Peter and can believe Peter/Claire under the right circumstances, but I don't OTP either. And while I see the slashiness of Mohinder/Sylar and think the dynamic is fascinating, I don't really want to write it much...because I identify strongly with Mohinder, and that relationship really is no fun from his side of the equation. See above about epic romances and pretty boys falling in love? That's me. I like my romances deep and angsty but with a happy ending that I can believe in here and now. Mohinder and Peter sparked for me in the pilot, I saw it in July and waited months for the show, and fell in love with them - even started writing them - before the show ever aired. ~/slight digression~
So I'm writing this big sprawling thing in a pairing that's off-mainstream; and there's not this "feeling" of Mohinder/Peterness in the fandom for me to draw from. And there's even less "feeling" of Mohinder/Peter/Nathan-ness, which is the only way I can write them. (My inner Peter fucks his brother, period. He needs his brother. My inner Nathan fucks his brother, period. He needs his brother. They're necessary to each other, but unlike Sam and Dean in my head, they're not sufficient for each other. And Mohinder's good for both of them.) I'm flying without a net but I'm doing it in a place where I'm flying against the wind.
It's not like DW or J2 or my ofic where I can't get it wrong. I'm starting out knowing it's wrong for a lot of people. It's not that I care in the sense of whether lots of people read it or not. I don't. Obviously I hope lots of people will because we all know "write for yourself" is a load of crap (I mean, it's not, except for how it totally is), but it's mostly just...no training wheels. It's like...ordering mix-ins for someone else. Or...wearing an orange dress for cocktails when you're usually a little black dress queen. It's not that I don't think the orange dress looks good on me or that I don't adore it or even that I particularly care what anyone else thinks of the dress. It's just...what if I spill my cranberry juice and vodka on it? Black (the dominant pairings in a fandom, since my metaphors are flying thicker than mosquitos on a woodlands fourth of July) will hide the spill. Orange? is not so forgiving.
All that jazz to come to the conclusion that I'm scared that maybe I'm not actually all that good and that the pairings I've been writing are generous... *sighs* A life less ordinary, please?
Anyway, after all that, an update...
Current wordcount: 16465
EWTEOS (estimated word count to end of story): 18535
Character I most want to slap right now: the author.
Character I least want to slap right now: Peter, because he makes it so easy.
Question of the moment: whether they will actually make it to the planned plotpoint before kissing.
Current darling: Peter tipped his head, still grinning, but too bright, too brittle--temple brass pounded too thin. His lips itched with the imagined feel of Peter's forehead, the taste of sandalwood and saffron painted there hours earlier.
Pee Ess - If you want to talk about Heroes shipping or writing or really anything in the comments, bring it. I'm writing for a little while, but then I have to work all day. I might even do a meme (I know, I still have first kisses to write. They're burning here in my brain, waiting for me to finish this sucker) later.