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X-Men Movieverse Ficathon

  • Posted on December 3, 2009 at 2:28 pm

Well, the Xmmficathon is over, and it was fun. I have to admit to being a little disappointed that my assigned recipient still hasn’t had anything to say after 5 days, but she hasn’t posted a story yet either and there are about 3 outstanding. So I’m hopeful to hear from her eventually.

The story is an Erik/Charles slash story without anything explicit, really, and because I love them both separately and together, I was thrilled to write it. The story is Stalemate, and I had such a great time writing I think I’ll probably write them some more.

I wrote a Logan and Scott story that’s slash if you squint sideways really, really hard. But it didn’t seem called for to do more than barely hint. It was a pinch hit that I had less than a week to do. I ended up pretty happy with this experience, too. The story is Letting Go. It’s actually set in X3, which was one of my “won’t write” conditions in the ficathon. But since the request asked for a fix of something I hated (well, ONE thing I hated) about X3, it worked out all right for me.

I also helped with a story by contributing a beginning, end and some inner stuff with Charles/Erik and Erik interacting with Mystique. I enjoyed writing those parts, and find I think I’d like to write more Mystique. The story is here.

And the story that was written for me, oh! It’s by ion_bond, who is actually the person responsible for me starting to read Charles/Erik fic in the first place.

It’s a nice fix-it fic from X3. I hated that Magneto turned his back on Mystique in that film, and in fact that was the first sign that it was going to be wrong, wrong, wrong. He wouldn’t have done that, I don’t believe.

It’s wonderful in so many ways far beyond just fixing that injustice. Did you really think that just because Mystique was depowered, she’d become a wallflower? I don’t think so. Yet the only other thing she did in the movie was roll over on Erik. Again, I don’t think so. It has an AU ending to the movie, in which the characters act like . . .themselves! Imagine that. Read this story to see how it should have happened.

Fighting Fair

So that one’s in the can now. Very much fun!  Onward to Yuletide.

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Embrace Your Inner Otaku!

  • Posted on November 25, 2009 at 2:26 pm

Have you heard the Real Men of Genius commercials on the radio (maybe they’re on TV too, I don’t know)? They almost always make me laugh. Well, here are Real Fans of Genius.  Ha!

My daughter pointed them out to me. Apparently the narrator, Vic Mignogna, is the voice of a character in one of her favorite animes ever, Ouran High School Host Club. He’s the voice of Tamaki in that anime and She is a Fan.

If you haven’t heard these and you think the Bud commercials are funny, you’ll like them. I think the first and the last in my list here are my favorites, but they’re all amusing. 

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Yuletide Assignment Ahoy!

  • Posted on November 17, 2009 at 2:22 pm

Scrooge YuletideWell, I narrowed my list down to about 11 fandoms to offer, and made my selection about which 3 to request. I almost added a 4th, but then opted not to. My requests and letter to my Yuletide Santa/Goat is in my LiveJournal: Fan Fiction Requests for My Dear Yuletide Santa!

Two of my requested fandoms were the same as last year (Lawrence of Arabia and SeaChange) but I couldn’t reproduce my requests from last year completely since two fandoms weren’t eligible this year. American Gothic fandom is a new request for me, but I’ve loved the show for years. I’ll be excited no matter which request I’m matched on.

Can’t list the fandom or the assignment I got as that flies in the face of the spirit of the Secret Santa thing. But it’s not one I really expected to get (because that’s pretty much how it works, just like last year) but one that’s going to be fun. Got the assignment on the 15th I believe, and so far I have almost 300 words written. I actually wrote 150 words right after I got the assignment because I had immediate ideas. I’ve been adding to that in spurts. This one is a lot of fun, and my recipient wants fluff rather than angst, so it’s just going to be a good time had by pretty much all.

A complete draft for the X-Men movieverse ficathon is due Thursday, which isn’t a problem, I’m just aggravated that someone has misplace my X-Men DVDs which is making it difficult for me to fact check. And that someone, for the record, is not me.  Fortunately the completed and ready to roll story isn’t due Thursday–that’s Saturday the 28th. Which makes the whole thing a bit easier, as I’m sure I can find the DVDs over the weekend.

I also have a story to complete by Thanksgiving for the Child. We did an impromptu fic exchange about a month, maybe 6 weeks ago, just between us. That’s a fun one, too. Of course, I have a feeling she hasn’t done much with it, so it may get extended. And I’m also trying to put the final edit on a 27,000 word story that’s been languishing for EONS.

So it goes to figure that during a week when I want to do TONS of fan writing, the RL writing that pays the bills has just exploded and I have more this week to do than I have in a while. Still, all good, all fun.

Regarding Yuletide, here are the two wonderful stories I got last year. I hesitate to ask for Lawrence of Arabia again this year becuase the story I got last year was so fantastic:

The Vices of Old Men

It’s a remarkable piece of writing, and so perfectly captures their relationship and the essence of the film.

And I got a Yuletide Treat, too! These are stories that don’t have to make the 1,000 word limit that can be posted after the deadline for assigned stories up until the evening of the 24th, I believe. This story was based on one of my other requests, from the film 300. This one comes with an adult material warning–if you’re underage or squicked by sex between men, give it a miss.

Lessons

I’m looking so forward to the 25th to see my story and to see how well my recipient likes the story I wrote for her! I’m just as excited about the reveal for the X-Men fication on the 28th, too. It’s my first foray into writing anything but drabbles in this fandom, and I hope I please my giftee.

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Yuletide Treasure Project 2009

  • Posted on November 11, 2009 at 2:18 pm

Tomorrow at 8pm my time is the cut-off to sign up for this year’s Yuletide Treasure project, the holiday exchange for obscure and underwritten fandom fiction.

I so enjoyed it last year. I’ve been looking forward to it all year. I thought about skipping it because I may end up really pressed for time right before Christmas, but I’d be too disappointed if I skipped it and then had time.

The hardest part is trying to figure out exactly what to request. I got a wonderful Lawrence of Arabia story last year (and a treat, a 300 story, too!). I think I may request Lawrence again, because there’s not nearly enough written in it. 300 is gone this year–I missed the nominations somehow, and it maybe have been disqualified for not being obscure enough, anyway. Stranger things have happened.

All I know is that between now and 8pm tomorrow night–and it’s not wise to wait until the last minute in case the database keeps breaking down–I need to sign up if I’m going to do it. I actually started making a list of fandoms I could write something in, and got tired after this many:

Allo Allo
Are You Being Served?
American Gothic
Appaloosa
Arrested Development
Constantine
John Dies at the End
Seachange
Someone Like You
District 9
Dexter
Galaxy Quest
Equilibrium
Forever Knight
Futurama
Ghost Town
Glee
Modern Famiy
Zombieland
Hot FUzz
Shawn of the Dead
The Road to El Dorado
Doctor Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog
True Blood
In Treatment
Tropic Thunder
King of the Hill
Kolchak
Life on Mars US
Blades of Glory
Public Enemies
Bolt (which I just saw last night)

There are more, but I got tired of looking at the list.  I could offer them all (I just checked my email–I offered 17 last year) but I’d rather choose a handful that I’d be most excited about if I got it as my yuletide assignment. If I see a request in one of the others that really inspires, there are always treats or NYR stories. I love the challenge of writing something I’ve not done before.

The problem I have is that while I’m thinking about the characters I’d be willing to write, I end up with bunnies and scenarios, and then I just want to write the story. And when I think about the stories I’d like to get, I end up thinking about them and wanting to just go ahead and write them.

Now to figure out 3 requests! I think I’ll use at least 2 of my requests from last year. The other 2 fandoms aren’t on the list this year so I have to come up a one new one. So exciting!

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Why I Write Fan Fiction

  • Posted on September 11, 2009 at 7:03 am

The simple answer is because it’s fun. But it’s more complicated than that. I write about the characters who seemed to me to need to live beyond whatever media they first inhabited.

I started out writing Star Trek fan fiction when I was around 9, I guess. I wish I still had those furiously penned things so I could laugh and reminisce. I only remember that they focused on my favorites: Spock, Kirk and McCoy. And boy oh boy were they dramatic. I was the Queen of Dramatic Openings and Dire Circumstances for All if Kirk could Not Once Again Pull the SUPER Dramatic Solution out of His Ass.

I remember one that I particularly liked involved Kirk and Spock on the bridge. The turbolift whooshed open (and I’m pretty sure I used the word whooshed), Doctor McCoy stepped out and opened his mouth to no doubt make a smart-ass remark about something, when he immediately collapsed in agonizing pain. He was going to die, and everyone knew it. They didn’t know why, because of course I had no clue. But they had to save him and time was running out–Dundundun DUUUUNNNNNNN.

I wrote those stories because I’d watched every episode of Star Trek long before reaching that age (apparently Dad indoctrinated me very early by holding me on his lap while he watched them semi-obsessively) and it just wasn’t enough. Those characters were too big for that short-lived series. I wanted them to live again. Then the Star Trek novels appeared under the Timescape label, and I clutched The Entropy Effect from the small grocery store next door to my not-yet-developed chest and thought, OH MY GOD YAY OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS, TOO.

Well, modern’ net lingo has crept in. This was almost 30 years ago–I probably actually thought something like GEE WHILLICKERS OTHER PEOPLE ARE DOING THIS, DANG THAT’S SUPER SWELL!

Once I got online in the late 1990s, while still a die-hard Star Trek fan, I was at the time quite taken with a show called Forever Knight. The Internet not only introduced me to Star Trek fanfic of every stripe, but a pretty active FK community of writers and readers and general appreciation of the actors and the show. I again thought excited thoughts in capital letters and devoured what I found, and soon began writing fan fiction again. I paused now and then, but have written fairly steadily since then, mostly in Forever Knight, and then about 6 years later I discovered Van Helsing and found Carl and Gabriel didn’t really fit into a small little movie. Just Carl’s weapons alone needed more room than that.

I’ve only dabbled in a few other fandoms, but when an idea strikes or a character seems like he wants to break free, at least in my head, I let him go.  He might not do or say things that everybody likes, and in fact might be playing for an audience of one, but since the whole reason I write fan fiction is to get the characters to act out the stories I think they belong in, that’s all right with me.

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