Fic and words

[icepixie]

Apparently it's Beta-Reader Appreciation Day today. Er, was yesterday. I'm bad with this posting-before-midnight thing.

I must thank elflore and tarzanic especially for all their help in the past couple of years. I think almost everything fannish, and some things non-fannish, I've written since the middle of 2003 has been run by one or the other of them.

And of course, I can't forget everyone else who's betaed for me in the past (including the recent past)...spockette, especially (hi, twinnie!), comedownstairs, nickless, fourteenlines, and probably other people I'm forgetting. Plus Pez people, who did the same thing for my fiction seminar stuff. Y'all rock.

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In keeping vaguely with that topic, here's a fic meme I stole from loneraven. Yay for opportunities to be narcissistic!

1) Right now, what do you feel are the 1, 2 or 3 best stories you've written since becoming/admitting you're a fanfic writer? What was it about that/those stories that really made you proud, or thrilled you about them?

Flowers in Summer [DW, Eight/Charley (barely), mostly-OC]
I'm proud of this because I'm a sucker for an outside perspective on characters I like, but I can never seem to do them right, except for here. And I unabashedly love the version of Sissy I created, more than any other original (or quasi-original) character I've ever come up with, and I got her narrative voice just the way I wanted it. I also think the nostalgic, on-the-brink-of-adulthood tone I was going for worked, and it fit in nicely with the setting of the early 1930s. Everything just came together here better than it ever has before.

Pumpkins and Glass [Firefly, gen, Kaylee]
I like this one because I totally got Kaylee in "Shindig," and I think it shows here. I know all about being not-girly on the outside--and taking a certain amount of pride in that--but on the inside, desperately wanting to wear a pretty dress and be the belle of the ball for a night or two. I think I also did a good job with the dialogue, minimal though it is, especially Mal's. And I like how the present tense works here; it's the longest thing I'd ever written in that tense up until a piece for my fiction seminar last semester. Finally, I like the use of the Cinderella story, because I managed not to overwhelm the fic with the parallels.

Thy Glory Like a Shooting Star [SG-1, Sam/Jack, drabble] and It Never Hurts to Ask [SG-1, Daniel/Janet, triple drabble]
I used two because they're so short, and because for me, they encapsulate how a drabble or other extremely short piece can paint a tiny, self-contained moment that can be as vivid and memorable as a longer work. My favorite thing about SG-1 was always that these are basically normal people--very goofy and geeky normal people--caught up in a sci-fi plot. While I liked the sci-fi on the show, I always gravitate towards fic that concentrates on the characters interacting and being awkward or goofy or sarcastic, and, oftentimes, quite sweet. I think I did a pretty good job with both goofy and sweet in "Star," and in "It Never Hurts," I think I captured Daniel's brand of awkwardness mixed with bravery in just a few lines of dialogue and a short internal monologue.

2) What professional writer (that is, paid author) would you love to see write a fanfiction story? What ship or fandom? Tell me a little about it.

I want Terry Pratchett to write me Whofic. Fourth Doctor-era would be perfect, I think, preferably with either Romana or Sarah Jane. More likely Romana, though. Can't you just see them being so very alien and clueless in some pedestrian Earth situation while the narrator comments drolly in the background? Or hell, stick 'em in Ankh-Morpork, and let's see what trouble they could get in.

3) What show/cartoon/kid's book from your childhood would you be amused to see in fanfiction? Would you consider writing one for this early love?

I'd like to see a fic focusing on that really grumpy pony on My Little Pony...was her name Gusty or something? I can't remember. But I loved that cynical pony. (And I know there's MLP fanfic out there. I've seen it. It's horrifying. There is a crossover with PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, wherein Jack Sparrow & co. get turned into talking ponies, in existance at the Pit of Voles. Ack.)

4) Is there a fanfic of yours you'd like to see made into a Broadway show? Tell me about it! ( "_____________: the Musical!")

Farskate, without a doubt. It's campy enough, that's for sure. And it has the added benefit that it could be "Farskate: The Musical ON ICE!" Oh, the cheese would never end. (In case you haven't figured it out by now, Farskate is about figure skating...and Farscape...it's actually a parody of the 2002 Winter Olympics judging scandal using Farscape characters. I quite enjoyed writing that one.)

5) Think about it--what could possibly be the WORST crossover out there? A story that Should Never Be Written? Hamtaro/V? Lost/Gilligan's Island? Come up with your most terrible pairing!

The crossover I mentioned in number three is pretty terrifying, honestly. Actually, I think a deliciously bad crossover would be Harry Potter and Bewitched. Can you just imagine a face-off between McGonagall and Endora? And Darrin totally seeing eye to eye with Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon? And Dumbledore terrorizing Gladys Kravitz just for kicks? Heh.

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To continue the wordy bent I'm on, here's a small selection of quotes from things I've read since summer started. I have a Word document I use for these, as well as for interesting entries from bibliographies, but I admit that I'm rather lax in adding to it. I don't want to stop to write something down, and so it stays on the page and I keep on going.

"Maud Berkely was sure that it was the making rather than the purchasing, or even the object itself, that was important: 'Decided to mke my Christmas presents this year, rather than to buy them.' She had no doubt that 'while bought baubles are more immediatley attractive, our hearts warm more to the home-made offering. Never shall I forget Aunt Bertha's quince jam. I had a stomach-ache for a week after sampling it.'" - Judith Flanders, Inside the Victorian Home, pp. 196-7

"'To him who waits, all things come!...Ever since I have been ill, I have longed and longed for some palpable disease.'...It was, she told William, 'the most supremely interesting moment in life.' As a person beyond hope of recovery one becomes, she noted, 'suddenly picturesque to oneself, and one's wavering little individuality stands out with cameo effect.'" - Flanders, 365

"How times and I have changed!" - Beatrix Potter, The Journal of Beatrix Potter, 1881-1897, p. 87

"I am an alien saboteur from a far distant star, and I'm beginning my conquest of Earth by establishing an online presence." - Somewhere online. Wish I knew where.

"And when the barn roof sagged after an icy bout,
It's like how you shrugged when you knew
the truth was the only way out" - Dar Williams, "If I Wrote You"

"My friend says that the human soul
is about the weight of a snipe,
yet the soul at anchor there,
the string that sags and ascends,
weigh like a furrow assumed into the heavens." - Seamus Heaney, "A Kite for Michael and Christopher" (read the whole thing here)

"Sometimes when I listen to my four-year-old daughter playing, I am reminded of the vivid, muddled contours of a fantasy landscape that you learn to distance yourself from as an older reader. I hear her chattering to herself and her dolls, taking Wendy and Peter Pan to visit Lucy and Mr Tumnus, before they dash off for tea with Cinderella. Later in life you work out how to become an onlooker of art, but in childhood you are free to live inside the stories you love. The writers of fan fiction recapture that childish bravado, those easy movements from one narrative to another and in and out of real life. As they reweave these stories they remind us that the boundary of the published book, and the control exerted by the individual author over a tale, is a relatively recent phenomenon for art, both in history and in our individual lives." -- Natasha Walter, The Guardian, Wed. Oct. 27, 2004

"Now--April 1975--most of the Vietnam towns I passed through by rail have been blown up, all hae been captured, and many of their people killed. For the survivors the future is melancholy, and the little train no longer runs between Hue and Danang." - Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar, p. 267

"I went back to Number VII, and just before Iswitched off the table lamp I looked out the window. There was snow on the ground, and in the distance, under a cold moon, those leafless sticklike trees." - Theroux, 313

"But maps are misleading--this corner of China was no different from the Soviet Union: it lay frozen under deep snow and in the rbight sunlight there were crooked forests of silver birch." - Theroux, 313-14

Theroux's book is excellent; if you get a chance, definitely pick it up. He went from London to Tokyo and back on trains (and planes or ferries over water), taking the southern route through the Middle East and India and southeast Asia to get there, and going on the Trans-Siberian Express on the way back. It's a very nifty book.

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Finally, with no relation to the rest of the post, a note to various mosquitos and chiggers: IT'S TIME TO DIE. By the middle of October, you need to be gone for the winter. Got it?

Comments

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

I do the exact same thing--collect quotes in Word files and then dump them all into posts when I remember. I love having that cross-section of good things I've read, and I love seeing other people's.

I've been meaning to read Theroux for ages (and recently have been reminded because I'm doing this travel-writing seminar). Have you read anything else of his? Where's the best place to start?

[icepixie]

Yay for quoting. :)

I've never read anything else by Theroux, although now I want to check him out further. This one was excellent, anyway.