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Da self-love meme of doom:
Sometimes, it's okay to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five favorite fics you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most.
Not going to tag five other people, because most of my fic-writing friends seem to be doing it anyways; not going to cut-tage or link, either, because I’m lazy (and it’s all at my website anyways, just go to mouse up the side of this entry, clicky-clicky). But here are the five, for me:
1. My Wife and My Dead Wife, OZ. Yes, still. It was the first multi-chaptered thing I’d done—probably the longest thing I’ve done yet, in any medium—and it also came at the beginning of my whole fanfiction flirtation, kicking off as a three-page snippet of interior Vern (to see if I dared each a peach/wear a swastika, basically), then metastasizing from there. I also wrote it on a crazy deadline, ie between the end of S.2 and the beginning of S.3, which promptly Jossed my every plot-point. Other good points: A fair amount of porn, not always amongst the people fans were rooting for; a fair attempt to rope in almost every other character, at one time or another; an OC who hopefully doesn’t seem like too much of Mary Sue; plus, het! (icky and non-icky, respectively). I’ll never stop being proud of this, not even when my students trip across it while Googling and look at me oddly.
4. Only Children, Gangs of New York. I’m stupidly happy with most of my Gangs stuff, not least because there’s so damn little of it out there which isn’t either wildly OOC or drabble-sized. And also, while I was in it, I really felt like I was in it to "win" it—produce the best stuff possible, explore this supposedly closed-off world to its fullest extent. Only Children is an attempt to show how William Cutting, Hellgate orphan, becomes Bill the Butcher, meat-pounding local warlord—it traces him from around age 10 to around age 17, so very few of the other cast-members make an appearance at all. There are also a lot of (I like to think) well-developed OCs, including a first "girlfriend" who derives from the crazy fact that Daniel Day-Lewis has now co-starred in two movies with Winona Ryder, one Scorsese, one not. When I finally write the novel I’ve been trying to shoehorn all my Gangs impulses into, you’ll see how closely this story fits with the tone I’m trying to go for.
3. The Hot Country series, Gangs of New York. Again, this started as a bit of a goof, before becoming full-on porn/combattive post-mortem Pottery Barning between Bill and Priest Vallon. As I’ve often said, after all, this is the film’s most important relationship, hands down—and the purpose of fanfic, if it has one, is to be able to indulge ourselves by doing stuff like this. Is it an interstitial? An A/U? A very weird reinterpretation of the Valhalla myth? Or do I just like snark, non-con, hurt/comfort and boy-parts? Probably yes, all of the above.
4. Samaritan, OZ. Of my unfinished works, I’m probably going to get some flack for not choosing Unbound, but I truly did enjoy writing this more. I got to boil Vern and Beecher down for parts once more, but discovered as well that removing them from OZ had the odd effect of making things somehow worse in their hateful, symbiotic dynamic of willful self-damage vs. redemptive yearning. Originally, I wanted this to be a ghost story with OZ serial numbers, but my file broke halfway through. And though it’s far too late for me to wrap it all up now, I’ve never yet deleted my notes on Part the Last.
5. Having dealt with my two big fandoms, I suppose I should restrict myself to one fandom for the final shot. But I can’t choose; should I go for What the Fire Said, because it’s the only Lord of Illusions I’ve found anywhere? Explorations (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen GN), because it’s just plain wrong to slash an MPD hulk and a psychotic pantom, especially knowing how that "relationship" eventually culminates, canonically? Though I’m proud of my L.A. Confidential and X-Men: The Movie work, I know others have done far better. So I suppose I’ll have to go with In a Dark Wood (Dogma), which has the distinction of being the most swear-heavy thing I’ve done so far, per capita (‘til I break into The Departed, probably)—and strangely sweet, too, considering it takes place in Hell. Just something about those Bostonians!
So: A bath, then back to "Strange Weight", along with…something else that I’m not going to get into, just yet. Maybe later. My month is already filling up, and it’s only been a week.
Sometimes, it's okay to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five favorite fics you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most.
Not going to tag five other people, because most of my fic-writing friends seem to be doing it anyways; not going to cut-tage or link, either, because I’m lazy (and it’s all at my website anyways, just go to mouse up the side of this entry, clicky-clicky). But here are the five, for me:
1. My Wife and My Dead Wife, OZ. Yes, still. It was the first multi-chaptered thing I’d done—probably the longest thing I’ve done yet, in any medium—and it also came at the beginning of my whole fanfiction flirtation, kicking off as a three-page snippet of interior Vern (to see if I dared each a peach/wear a swastika, basically), then metastasizing from there. I also wrote it on a crazy deadline, ie between the end of S.2 and the beginning of S.3, which promptly Jossed my every plot-point. Other good points: A fair amount of porn, not always amongst the people fans were rooting for; a fair attempt to rope in almost every other character, at one time or another; an OC who hopefully doesn’t seem like too much of Mary Sue; plus, het! (icky and non-icky, respectively). I’ll never stop being proud of this, not even when my students trip across it while Googling and look at me oddly.
4. Only Children, Gangs of New York. I’m stupidly happy with most of my Gangs stuff, not least because there’s so damn little of it out there which isn’t either wildly OOC or drabble-sized. And also, while I was in it, I really felt like I was in it to "win" it—produce the best stuff possible, explore this supposedly closed-off world to its fullest extent. Only Children is an attempt to show how William Cutting, Hellgate orphan, becomes Bill the Butcher, meat-pounding local warlord—it traces him from around age 10 to around age 17, so very few of the other cast-members make an appearance at all. There are also a lot of (I like to think) well-developed OCs, including a first "girlfriend" who derives from the crazy fact that Daniel Day-Lewis has now co-starred in two movies with Winona Ryder, one Scorsese, one not. When I finally write the novel I’ve been trying to shoehorn all my Gangs impulses into, you’ll see how closely this story fits with the tone I’m trying to go for.
3. The Hot Country series, Gangs of New York. Again, this started as a bit of a goof, before becoming full-on porn/combattive post-mortem Pottery Barning between Bill and Priest Vallon. As I’ve often said, after all, this is the film’s most important relationship, hands down—and the purpose of fanfic, if it has one, is to be able to indulge ourselves by doing stuff like this. Is it an interstitial? An A/U? A very weird reinterpretation of the Valhalla myth? Or do I just like snark, non-con, hurt/comfort and boy-parts? Probably yes, all of the above.
4. Samaritan, OZ. Of my unfinished works, I’m probably going to get some flack for not choosing Unbound, but I truly did enjoy writing this more. I got to boil Vern and Beecher down for parts once more, but discovered as well that removing them from OZ had the odd effect of making things somehow worse in their hateful, symbiotic dynamic of willful self-damage vs. redemptive yearning. Originally, I wanted this to be a ghost story with OZ serial numbers, but my file broke halfway through. And though it’s far too late for me to wrap it all up now, I’ve never yet deleted my notes on Part the Last.
5. Having dealt with my two big fandoms, I suppose I should restrict myself to one fandom for the final shot. But I can’t choose; should I go for What the Fire Said, because it’s the only Lord of Illusions I’ve found anywhere? Explorations (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen GN), because it’s just plain wrong to slash an MPD hulk and a psychotic pantom, especially knowing how that "relationship" eventually culminates, canonically? Though I’m proud of my L.A. Confidential and X-Men: The Movie work, I know others have done far better. So I suppose I’ll have to go with In a Dark Wood (Dogma), which has the distinction of being the most swear-heavy thing I’ve done so far, per capita (‘til I break into The Departed, probably)—and strangely sweet, too, considering it takes place in Hell. Just something about those Bostonians!
So: A bath, then back to "Strange Weight", along with…something else that I’m not going to get into, just yet. Maybe later. My month is already filling up, and it’s only been a week.
