seriousfic | Entries tagged with my so-called writing process

So, looking through the reception Not A Fairy Tale Romance is getting (and say what you will about the ol' Pit of Voles, but they are good about commenting. None of this "kudos" BS... just sayin'), I note a recurring criticism. And far be it for me to not take critique well, but I believe there's been some interrogation of the text from the wrong perspective--would you believe I've always wanted to say that?

So, the common theme being the idea that Regina/Emma has moved too fast, let me retort that this is the canon where Grumpy (then known as Dreamy) and a fairy Amy Acker made serious plans to run away together and sail around the world, Consecutive Time In Each Others' Company: Five minutes. Not that canonical bad writing excuses transformative-work bad writing, but this isn't exactly the land of slow burn storytelling here.

Also, maybe this wasn't clear enough, but there was a time-jump from Regina and Emma deciding to go out and them having kinky role-played cop/hooker sex. I mean, I kinda assumed that was obvious, the other possibility being that the hooker sex was literally their first date. But anyway, it being a Regina/Emma fic, the premise is that there's an underlying attraction to their interactions they just have to act on.

So I didn't see a problem with skipping over some dates that would've had the sole narrative purpose of "they like each other, no really, they like each other" when that kind of build-up was better suited to the decision to enter into a relationship in the first place. The understanding being that once they start dating, it's pretty much smooth sailing, so we can "happy times montage" ahead (or, in this case, "kinky hooker sex montage" ahead) to the reintroduction of conflict, which is the point of the story. After all, you don't want to read about Regina and Emma not dealing with their issues, which are many and varied.

Plus, I thought we were all on the same page of wanting to get to the kinky girl-on-girl action as soon as possible. I mean, what, some of us aren't perverts? What are you doing in fandom? Are you a spy?

In conclusion, I seriously wrote like twenty thousand words between "Emma and Regina start to get along" to "Emma and Regina are in love." That is a novella. Do you know how much money I'd make for that if I could sell it to Analog? What do you want, War & Peace? Talk to the Tron people, I kept them waiting years for Sam and Quorra to have sex.

So I hit 200 friends a while ago, but there's this weird LJ thing where I have myself friended so it's more like 199, and I dislike the metaphysical implications of defriending myself. Plus, who knows, some of you might be Russians who only appreciate me on a Germany-David-Hasselhoff kinda level… not that there's anything wrong with that, the guy was Knight Rider. And there are probably a few of you who only friended me because I wrote Ten/Dalek hatesex and you live in hope of seeing a sequel, only for your hopes to be cruelly dashed every time another fic header shows up with that Mord'Sith trollop instead of Dalek Caan.

Anyway, now I'm at some ridiculous number like 205 and that is not bad for someone who writes pervy fics about Agiel-fucking rather than Snape slash (Snash). I'd like to do something to commemorate the occasion like offer you all a request ficlet, but… there are fucking two hundred of you!

Instead, I offer to help me make my manuscript more lesbigay. I know, I know, I thought it was as gay as it could get too, considering at one point a character wears a tanktop, cargo pants, and calf boots, but then Rizzoli & Isles had that line about being cute… for a guy and, well, there's no way I'm letting Angie Harmon out-gay me. She's a Republican!

Here's the set-up. K. and L. are best friends (well, K. is a best friend, L. is K.'s only friend). They're roommates, they're co-workers, they fight the forces of chaos together. K. is a badass honor-bound warrior who wears the hell out of those cargo pants. L. is… more like Kristin Chenoweth if she took up crime-fighting and nymphomania (crime-fighting nymphomaniac Cheno is the new ninja pirate robot zombie). She tries to help out, although her value of helping out is writing messages like "you are lovely" on the bathroom mirror so they'll show up when K. takes a shower. It's all very Xena/Gabby, Wendy/Lacey, Azula/Ty Lee.

Naturally, K.'s ice queenness gets put in the microwave, but instead of following for the slacker charms of Matthew McConaughey, she comes to appreciate the support and friendship of her admittedly doofy gal pal. But that doesn't exactly get the folks at AfterEllen screaming for Rhona Mitra to play K. in a big gay movie event, let alone anyone writing a porny crossover about Lisbeth Salander. So I ask you, dear reader: how, HOW, can these crazy kids get more gay? Poster of Scully on the wall? Tandem motorcycle riding on the weekends? Knowing who Lisbeth Salander is?

ETA: Okay, how many of you checked the tags for a Doctor Who fic about Dalek anger-sex? I was just making a point!

This Sunday-Sunday-Sunday, I'm rewriting a bit of my manuscript. See, way way back in the initial plot outline, there was a scene where J. needed to distract K. and did so by bluffing that there was a law requiring her to dance with him. K., realizing the deception, got back at him in a wave of hits involving shotguns for his friends and her disguising herself to pick him up at a bar. This was back when K. had just arrived on Earth, showing up naked in the woods, then killing a deer to clothe herself. That might've been just a tad too fierce.

Then the distraction element fell out and it became K. picking J. up at a bar as an opening salvo against him. (If I keep this up, I will sound like Gossip Girl.) What I liked most was the central image of the female lead starting off as the typical oh-woe-is-me-I-have-no-boobs waif of urban fantasy, then dropping the mask and Hulking out into Sarah Connor.

But time passed and that too fell out of favor. K. just isn't a sexual enough character to pick someone up at a bar. It'd be like Azula giving a blowjob to get what she wants, or the third season of Gossip Girl. So now she just barges in and starts asking questions.

There may be ululating involved.

But that still isn't in-character enough. What's J. doing during all this? Well, he's cooking dinner, so he just looks her over and asks if they can't do this interrogation over hors d'oeuvres. From there, it basically turns into the scene from Heat as acted out by Cara Mason and Vala mal Doran, if one of them had a penis.

(I just know that as soon as I post this, someone is going to comment asking for a fic of Cara with a penis. No. Just no. She has an Agiel.)

Plus, it gives me a chance to spoof the traditional I-sex-you-up-with-the-sexy-because-I-am-the-sexy scenes from urban fantasy. You know, like how in every Hollows novel, Rachel has to mentally hump someone's leg. Only here, ~~Cara~~ K. is more "alright, I'm seduced, can we get on with it?" With lots of eye-rolling and Cara-face for all the "eroticism". Because seriously, I think the only way you could not die laughing during an Anita Blake sex scene would be producing more snark than an MST3K/House crossover.

"But how could anyone not take me seriously?"

The suspect: Crackfic in which Dick is a man-whore.

The charge: Not funny enough.

The judgment: ( 900 words and the proof that polygamy should stay in Big Love. )

And if that’s what I don’t finish, what I post must be pure gold!

The suspect: A Lex/Diana fic in Smallville continuity.

The charge: Lex Luthor has been dead for years in SV canon, AND this is a fic where he’s not having sex with Clark. The potential audience is about two people, both of whom are really spam-bots. Plus, the idea of Wondy redeeming Lex is a bit too Mary-Sueish to be workable.

The judgment: ( 300 words. Even I got bored with the thought of Wonder Woman working her redeemo-magic on Lex, and I was writing it. )

The suspect: Kon finds out that Tim and Cassie are dating, so he gets into a weird sort of relationship with Knockout, mostly involving tactile telekinesis.

The charge: Gail Simone changed Knockout from a boring innuendoing femme fatale to a boring honorbound warrior (who's also gay). Also, I kinda used to suck at writing.

The judgment: ( 2,207 words and I never even get to the porn. )

The Suspect: A fic in ‘The Private Life of Wonder Woman’ series, in which the Cheetah is fucking around and Rucka-era Wondy recruits a team to hunt her down and stop her.

The Charge: No one gives a crap about Wonder Woman fanfic. Plus, about half the cast is dead now.

The Judgment: A thousand words of team-gathering and foreshadowing that never even got to Scott Free. ( How I spent my summer vacation. )

The suspect: A crackfic in which Brainiac gives Chloe dating advice, which makes the fic only slightly more stupid than the direction canon actually took with that storyline.

The charge: Davis/Chloe is too hot to be funny.

The judgment: ( 500 words for Brainiac to get Chloe laid, and the fic is already done. )

The suspect: The obligatory Journey’s End fix-it fic.

The charge: I just wrote a fic where Donna’s head exploded a lot. Six of one…

The judgment: I still kinda like the idea of 10.5 becoming fully human so that Donna can become a full Time Lord. But oh well…

( Out of Time. )

The suspect: A Hollows noir fic as told by Ivy, in which Our Vamp Tamwood angsts, goes out for revenge, and finally gets the girl.

The charge: Once upon a time, all we knew about Skimmer was that she was Ivy's girlfriend and she was Piscary's lawyer. Then it turned out that she was much more Ivy's gf than Piscary's lawyer, so what kind of writer would I be if I took a character introduced as someone who deeply loves Ivy and then turned her into an evil bitch for no reason?

The judgment: ( A little over a thousand words of the not-good-stuff. )