Thinking my thinks

[valarltd]

jacquez asked "So what do your fandoms say about you?"

Oh my.

My website lists 9 fandoms in which I have written one or more stories, plus original.
Such a pity I can't find the Watership Down piece.

"Brimstone" is the first of the list. only one tale, but several others percolating. The show was so slashy, I was never sure how it made it onto TV. Here the taste is dark and bitter, like the show itself. I want to write more, but don't feel I'm up to the task.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is the second. This was my first real fandom, aside from some doodlings in HS. I was on the Unconventional Shipper's List, UCSL, archived HERE, which encouraged an anti-canon or subtextual worldview. I'm still a Giles/Willow shipper, and think Will is too smart to be sticking herself into the narrow sexuality of "gay." 27 Stories. I doubt there will be more. I still watch, but no longer write, and the infighting on the list got me. Buffy got me into slash. My work is obviously immature, with no regard for canon, characterization or anything. Some of it is very good. "Sunday Visit" still makes me teary. "Exorcism" otoh is embarassingly bad.

"Hercules/Xena" is a fandom where I wish I had more than one story. But, i only get 37 hours in a day, just like everyone else.

Indiana Jones is an uncommon fandom. This is, I think, some of my best work. Nothing you can posses was almost a year in the writing. So bitter, so hateful, and such a twisted Belloq. The lighter Benefits of a Classical Education is a story i am very proud of. It shows i am willing to research, and listen to the characters, their speech patterns and their tastes.

I have one lonesome LotR fic. I wrote it for a fantasy lit class. I've been told it's wonderful, that i sound like Tolkien. I've been told it's mediocre. But "The Minas Tirith Evening Star" (later Journal of the American Tolkien Society) published it. I'm pleased with it. It was my first foray back into fanfiction before I knew what it was called.

The "Simon & Simon" stuff is pretty standard fare in that fandom. Nothing makes it stand out head and shoulder above the rest, except the fact I write it dark. Rape imagery, abuse, prostitution. And that's on top of the brotherly incest. I have half a dozen unfinished stories on my hard-drive, and need to finish at least one sometime soon. One of these is a series of AU's that ends with both boys dying, every time. I promise, cute, fluffy food bunnies sometime soon.

"Star Trek" was my first fandom. I started writing here when I was 15 and it was just "Star Trek." No bloody TNG, DS9, VOY or ENT, to borrow a phrase. I've come back to it now. in my teens, Trek provided something missing from my stuck-in-the-50's-upbringing: a liberal worldview. It was morality plays for my era, and I tried on the morals it espoused when I wrote. I segued into writing my original fiction from there. OK, so it was bad. I was 15. I did all the tropes: Saavik-sue, lots of OC's. I learned a lot abvout writing, and my English teachers loved me.

But my first love is and always has been Star Wars. I was 9 and looking for something bigger than me in the summer of 1977. I'd been through confirmation class and been baptized, I was reading a lot of myths, loved the Norse. And I did NOT want to see this movie. My dad practically had to spank me to make me go. I sulked until the crawl started. Words will always suck me in. Then the ships... I was lost. I came up for air around 1983, when I moved into Trek. I drifted out, hanging on to my stuff, but paying no attention to it. When TPM arrived in 1999, I was already back into fandom by way of Buffy. I didn't see the movie until it came out on vid, and I'd already started reading the slash. I edged into Tril slash slowly, unwilling to think of my childhood crushes as more interested in each other. Then i saw the movies again. Oh my. That's why I never liked the Hoth good-bye, or the end scene. That's why the Han/Leia stuff never rang quite right, like faulty crystal. Subtexted abounded, and I pounced.

The work here is copiuous (not counting zine stories) 38 stories. Zines account for 6 more. Most is slash. There are some het, some gen. I enjoy the gen-fic because I am relieved of the need for creating sexual tension.

There is a definite progression as a writer that shows in the two years I've been working in this fandom. I've ventured back into het, here and there, and some of it is better than other parts of it. At least 5 of the pieces count as dark, and there is death fic as well.
This is unusual in the fandom. I've been told I need the title of Rabble Rouser. I push the envelope, merely by writing things that are almost routine in other fandoms.

The Vader/Luke stuff at Elizabeth Stuart's place works for me in a big way. I'm not sure why. I do have one in the works.

TPM is the last of the fandoms. Here it's a mix of slash and gen, or will be. I have a story I need to post and more to finish. I read more than I write here. I favor Ani/Obi noncon, here. Of course, Ani/Ami/Obi fluff is nice too. But in the end, it's always Q/O.


What does it say?
I like the dark fic. I always have.
Slash floats my boat. When i write het, it feels Mary Sue, and when i write femslash it feels narcissistic.
My metaphors have changed over the years, but they come back to the starting point

Comments

darkness

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

I think it does come early.

One of my early childhood memories (and I can't be more than 5-6) is getting a funny tingle of excitement in my tummy at church when we recited "the Apostles' Creed." The line "Crucified, dead and buried" got me every time. Still does.

I was reading explicit slavery narratives by 10, and I never chose a romance with a doctor or other pedestrian type when I could have highwaymen, rogues, harems and kink.

I loved westerns because people were always getting tied up. Ditto Nancy Drew. I started rooting for the villains by age 12.

It does start early. And I'm raising my own little Slytherin into the bargain.