TB Live Journal

I usually do this in December, but I missed it in 2008 and I kept meaning to do it. So why not.

Year In Review
With the year now being January 2008 to December 2008.

Fics alpha by title.

Gundam Wing
Age Inappropriate: 13,141 words
Asylum: 22,849 words (WIP)
Brand New Day: 6,564 words (WIP)
Chiasma: 35,825 words (WIP)
Code of Conduct: 42,866 words (WIP)
History Play: 1,835 words
Properties of ZERO: 13,023 (WIP)
Six Seconds To Gone: 14,260 words (WIP)
Stay, Stupid: 12,794 words
The Year Without Trowa: 31,871
2.7 Kelvin: 13,768 (WIP)

9 drabbles: 11,013 words

Total for Gundam Wing: 219,809 words

At an average of 250 words a page, that's about 880 pages.


Harry Potter
1 drabble: 874 words

At 250 words a page, that's about 3 pages.


Lionness Rampant
We: 6,270 words (complete)


House
1 drabble: 1,284

At 250 words a page, that's about 4 pages.


Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
1 drabble: 1,289 words

At 250 words a page, that's about 5 pages.


Torchwood
1 drabble: 223 words

At 250 words a page, that is not a page.



Total words written for 2008: 229,749 or 918 pages


The Breakdown:

Fandoms: 6
Stories: 12
Drabbles: 13

Completed Stories: 5
Works In Progress: 7


From My Past Year Of Writing, My Favourite Was...

Favourite Story:: ????
...I absolutely cannot choose, because I worked on such wonderful stuff this year. I loved working on the final chapter of The Year Without Trowa because it really did take a year to write it, and living with something that long is so worth it. For the same reason I love Chiasma, and it's dark and intriguing and I am enjoying the challenge format. I loved We because Lionness Rampant was my childhood favourite series. I will always love Properties of Zero, because my attitude toward it has evolved and still evolves the longer it lingers, because it's a summertime fic, because it has Treize and that's always awesome for me.

Best Story: Chiasma
...because, challenge format aside, I think it's one of my most creative and possibly one of the most mature fics I've done. It's a narrative challenge and a character piece and I have some fun OCs as well, and it's my best attempt at delving into L2 culture and history.

Most Underappreciated By The Universe: the Torchwood drabble
...which is not an entirely fair thing to say, as it's from a show that is confined to BBC America for all but two or three of my lj readers. But you gotta give love to John Barrowman.

Most Fun: Age Inappropriate
...because despite the seriousness of the subject matter, it's really a comedy piece. It had wit and slapstick and silly-hot sex scenes, and Quatre married to Noin. And a gay bar on L4.

Most Disappointing: that Star Trek drabble
...I mean, read the thing. Well, don't, but if you had, you would understand.

Most Sexy: Brand New Day
...because it's about two young people who are experiencing first love together and it's vast and frightening and extremely immediate, but it's still ultimately tender.

Hardest to Write: 2.7 Kelvin
...because once we stopped working on it as frequently as in the beginning, it's always been the one that's hardest for me to get back into and to sustain long enough to write a chapter.

Most Unintentionally Telling: Chiasma

Best Written: Chiasma

Worst Written: I'm going to say Six Seconds to Gone, because I can never manage to replicate what I did stylistically in the prologue. I love the prologue. But I think it gets messier after that.


And finally, as before, you may choose any of my stories and ask me what happens after the end of it, and I shall be happy to answer.

Tally-ho, 2009!

I noticed that in my last updates I accidentally changed the name of my fic from Chiasma to Chiasmus... so we're back to Chiasma. Also, I need to get around to archiving it.

Anyway, update. New bits in bold. Thanks to Marsh for reading it over for me, even if that did spoil the surprise.


And for the finale, some writerly type notes. First I'll raise the issue of character names. I have a tendency to reuse character names or even characters from fic to fic. Making an appearance in this fic after having been invented for another fic, Launch, is Maquinna Cloudwalker, previously named Maquinna Nootka. Don't get too excited, as you won't see all that much more of him here than you did in Launch. Basically I liked the name and the idea of the guy and it was easier than inventing someone else. Did any of you ever see that Star Trek: Next Generation episode where the Enterprise has to intervene with resettling a group of Native Americans who had settled on some moon somewhere and someone, I want to say the Cardassians, were getting the moon in a treaty and so the tribe had to go? Long story short, imagine something like this on L2-- a tribe leaving or having been forced out of their native region on Earth and heading into Space instead. I imagine L2 to be a pretty heterogenous place anyway, so a tribe wouldn't be too out of place there. Maquinna is the name of a real Chief of the Nuu-cha-nulth from Nootka Sound, who helped negotiate a resettlement of his people in the 1700s, so it's an appropriate name for the character I had in mind.

I'm also carving my way toward a point I've been slowly exploring in some recent (well, I say recent, but I've been writing these things for five years) fics of my own, such as Asylum and Launch, in which Preventers is seen in a context of other intelligence-gathering and paramilitary organisations. The show obviously didn't dwell too much on the question of what sovereign states exist in the future, and that's not a question I'm really intent on answering here either, particularly in view of what the show did give us: the idea of a federation of states, or at least a coalition with the title Earth Sphere. The political boundaries of the Earth Sphere have become more interesting to me as I age. Again, not something that's necessarily central to the plot of this fic, as opposed to Asylum, but it's in the background for me as I write it. More on all that in subsequent updates.

I haven't done what I usually do in trying to establish the ages of the characters, and that's perhaps an oversight I would have corrected if I were editing before posting a whole chapter. They're in their thirties. I'll get more specific with details soon enough, I'm sure, but I feel badly for not nailing some of those things to the floor yet.

Duo's criminal history will also be more clear soon. This is another thing I would probably have put a lot of revision into. A little mystery isn't a bad thing, but I'm slipping into some worry about not providing enough background. But that's why we experiment, I guess. Realistically I've written about forty pages of material, without yet saying why one character was in jail for a prolonged period, so I'm bothered by that. I'll try to clear it up soon.

To sum up: the format is definitely challenging me, and someday when I've finished this it may get a big old edit anyway, but for now I'm really trying to stick with the idea and live up to it as best I can.

What’s Your Writing Style?

1) Are you a “pantser” or a “plotter?”

I struggled to learn how to do very careful plotting ahead for the novel-length stuff, because I hate outlines, but in general I found it was a skill I sorely needed. So I would say that yes, I plot, sometimes extensively, sometimes loosely, always in an concerted effort, but I am also open to being swayed. Particularly in the middle.

2) Detailed character sketches or “their character will be revealed to me as a I write”?

I don't do character sketches before hand, though that was how I was taught. I even used to fill out a little form (here is how deep my dorkdom goes-- the form was cadged from the AD&D characters handbook). I find it helps to work from archetypes. The archetype is a good stand-in to develop the plot, and can be individualised once there's enough to start writing.

3) Do you know your characters’ goals, motivations, and conflicts before you start writing or is that something else you discover only after you start writing?

I don't really like the phrase 'the characters speak to me', because I feel that implies a lack of understanding of your own mind and your own will in bringing something to paper. I am not a believer in divine inspiration. I feel, and this is of course just my personal opinion, that writing is a matter of discipline, and telling the world that a character wouldn't let you set him up with the cute neighbour girl and made you write him a dirty scene with the cabana boy instead indicates two things: you're off your rocker, and you aren't properly disciplining your writing to care for all the elements that make a story if all you concentrate on is fulfiling the character. I have written a lot of things for characters that I end out throwing out because, as I've got used to them, I decide it doesn't suit them anymore, and something else better will eventually occur to me, but in general I think it's more important that the character fit in with the plot and that the plot challenge a character to grow.

4) Books on plotting - useful or harmful?

Useful. You wouldn't get into a car and start driving without having ever taken a lesson or advice from someone who already knows the process. I absolutely do not believe that it is enough to have just read a few books, particularly in light of the fact that no-one trains writers how to read anymore, either. Everyone should read books about the craft, and everyone should read literature in light of what you've learnt about the craft, and you should continue to read books and attend seminars and writing clubs and get feedback about the craft even after you're a successful writer, because we get lazy and set in our ways. What you should not do is slavishly follow every piece of advice you read, especially since some of what you read will be grossly contradictory (I'm looking at you, John Gardner). But there is always someone who has more experience at driving the car than you, and their notions are probably better than yours, so don't assume you know better.

5) Are you a procrastinator or does the itch to write keep at you until you sit down and work?

I wouldn't say I'm a procrastinator so much as I don't always want to sit down and do it right away when five minutes clears up. I usually regret it if I don't immediately write down what I'm thinking, but since I spend most of my day at work, in the car, or taking care of other important life and money stuff, I'm okay with that. TS Eliot had a day job AND he volunteered as a bomb watcher during the war, and he still managed to turn out brilliant verbage in a discipline much more stringent than short story writing or novelling, so I figure my brilliance is either meant to be or I can live with the missed opportunities.

6) Do you write in short bursts of creative energy, or can you sit down and write for hours at a time?

Yes.

7) Are you a morning or afternoon writer?

Night. If I didn't work, maybe morning, but I've never not had something to do in the morning, so I couldn't tell you.

8) Do you write with music/the noise of children/in a cafe or other public setting, or do you need complete silence to concentrate?

I like lots of noise. Music, television, people coming through, the internet news, a game or solitare or something open, a meal cooking on the stove, and hopefully all of these simultaneously.

9) Computer or longhand? (or typewriter?)

Computer. I can write by hand if I have to, but frankly I don't enjoy handcramp, and I edit constantly as I'm writing, which is a hell of a lot easier with the computer.

10) Do you know the ending before you type Chapter One?

Yes, though not immutably. I've been known to change endings because I wanted to finish faster so I could go eat.

11) Does what’s selling in the market influence how and what you write?

HA. Oh, you don't mean influence what I'm trying to sell?

I subscribe to Publisher’s Marketplace, which puts out lists of deals weekly. There are definite marketplace trends. We're in an era of fast publishing right now, rushing things to print in order to keep the topics relevant with what's on the news or on TMZ. I get depressed by that, though not as depressed as I would be if I was an editor like I'd wanted to be. That said, there's always going to be a market for books that can be assigned in high school or some obscure lit elective in university, and I like to think that's where I'd fall. The good news as well is that trends do change. Look at all the gay/lesbian material that's available in the mainstream now. African literature gets more than one shelf, although I'm still waiting on the distinction between non-African black and African literature. The diversity push has been going strong since the seventies, and it's been the impetus for bringing back to publication a lot of books written by people like Harriet Jacobs, whose slave narrative was pretty much lost to obscurity before black history caught on in the market in the post-civil-rights era. History is also doing very well right now, helped along by Hollywood's supply of based-on-the-research-of films, like the recent Tom Hanks-produced Adams film. That author, by the way, David McCullough, is a dirty old man who hits on every woman in the room and yet now enjoys insane popularity amongst crowds who want to make movies out of his books. So the market is also wide open to gross old men who never would have landed a picture on the back of a book before. Where was I going with this?

12) Editing - love it or hate it?

Absolutely fucking necessary. Don't leave home without a vicious red pen in hand. Be brutul. I had a professor who once advised we cut all our favourite lines first, and cut a swath from there. I was, of course, appalled then, but now I think he's really not wrong. The harder you have to fight to justify a pretty line staying in your text, the more it needs to go. I also think it is worthwhile to get a friend to read your work and exercise some strict discipline on it. I say friend because, let's face it, you're not going to listen to a stranger, and even if your friend errs on the side of being too nice to you, you'll still find out what reads the way it's supposed to and what misses the mark. For example: I submitted a story to class once and one fellow student returned me a list of every name in the entire fifty pages, because, she said, she needed a list to keep track of all the characters. There were four characters. I thought she was an idiot and I ignored what was probably a good indicator that my audience would not necessarily be the audience I would prefer and I should bear that in mind when making editorial choices. I did not sell that story. It took me years to go back to it, and when I did, I finally eliminated an entire character, as well as all the scenes he was in, and it was a better story for it.


Fun stuff. Now other people do it, so I can read your answers.

In the three years of having this livejournal, and the however long it's been since my yahoo site was viciously deleted, I've had an empty 'Harry Potter' archive sitting here waiting to be filled. It was sheer laziness that kept me from committing the time and effort of posting twenty or thirty odd pieces of fic. But it's done. I even edited them a little. Yaaaay.

I will say that, having now read in particular my fic '1971' again, I think it may well be one of my top best-written fics. I was definitely trying to go for a certain style, which is perhaps more effective in the first third of the fic than anywhere else. As the scope of the fic is about thirty years, I started in the style of a children's book. As they aged, I loosened the style to be less dramatically narrative, and by the end allowed it to be simply character-driven. I had done a lot of ground-work and plotting for the fic, and I tried to match plot to style in that there's more 'episodic' events in the first third, and more arcs coming together in the second and third parts. Structure aside, I had also made a decision to keep the rating low, partly out of a desire not to alienate readers with an unusual central pairing (RL/LM), but also because it felt inappropriate to the tone of the piece, and to the books on which they were based.

I noted in my introduction of the fic that only three of the books had been published when I wrote 1971. I loved the adult characters and their apparently rich but woefully unmined back story. A huge amount of RL/SS and RL/SB fic hit the web in a giant slashy explosion, and that was consequently the first fic I read in the fandom, as that was the first time I felt compelled to read fanfic for Harry Potter. A lot of it was gratuitous sex, which is fine for some things, but it also stirred me to want to write something better. By the time I'd started on the sequel we had the fourth book and rumours about the fifth were swirling, and I lost interest in the series and the fandom, and I've never really got back into it, but I'm very glad that I at least got to go back to my own fic for it.

A few things worthy of note are the research I did for the faerie rings plot and the evolution of the wolfsbane subplot. The faerie ring idea came from two of my own childhood influences: I had read Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain and The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope, both of which dealt with the underworld and the people who live under the hill. I don't know why I conflated that with Harry Potter, but I did. I did actual extensive research particularly on the Welsh traditions like tylwyth teg, and the character of Arawn in the Mabinogion. Why are they Welsh faries when Hogwarts is set in Scotland? There is no sound good reason except that I like to cram Wales down people's throats. Regarding the wolfsbane causing Remus' bad health as opposed to the werewolf condition causing Remus' bad health, I suppose that was an attempt at some realism in the story. Some of my beef with the books was that I don't think Rowling ever adequately indicated how we as readers were supposed to feel about various abuses-- are the Dursley's really hurting Harry or are they just inconveniencing him? Harry witnesses quite a lot of death and destruction, but it's not til the fourth book, the fifth book really, that he begins to really react to it in a psychologically revelatory way. Part of that, of course, is that the first three books were children's novels and the hurts inflicted in children's novels are not general so traumatising that the child hero fails to recover, but my personal preference would have led to a steadier development. Additionally, as a reader I enjoy the interjections of realism into fantasy, and seeing the 'real' consequences of things like chronic medical treatments on a young body even in a world where magic can fix almost anything satisfied some of that desire. I thought it was interesting in the books that Lupin, alone of all the characters we meet, is almost unable to survive in the magical world-- the business of him not being able to get jobs, of being poor in a world where no-one else is similarly deprived, and of being chronically ill when broken arms and petrification and so on generally don't keep people down for more than a day. Obviously Rowling wasn't taking the plot in a direction where she could explore that, but I think she left open the hints that the world Harry is living in might have been quite different outside the school, and even more different in the generation before.

Lastly, the decision to place Remus in Slytherin rather than keep him grouped with the other Marauders in Gryffindor came from a little blip in someone else's fic, in which Remus wished Draco good luck in the upcoming Quidditch game and Draco said why wish me luck, not Gryffindor? And Lupin answered, 'What makes you think I was in Gryffindor?' or some such, and that made sense to me. Again, Rowling obviously didn't go there, and given that the books focussed on Harry and not on the adults I think the lack of confusion there is perfectly reasonable, but it was still fun to think about. It also provided the opportunity to build a plot around the rise of Voldemort in a way I couldn't have done if they were all just fighting an evil monster. It also enabled me to bring in Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape as main characters, keeping the rivalry between the Gryffindor and Slytherin factions but also making them real people with reasons for being so snotty all the time. In terms of characterisation, obviously at the publication of the third book we readers didn't know yet that James Potter would turn out to be a prat in later books, that Severus would be quite so much a favourite victim of the Marauders, etc. I think I managed to capture the general drift of Rowling's characterisations, however.

That's all I can think of for now. Fun stuff.

Some jumbled crap about writing, or, like, yeah.

Code

So I've been doing a lot of thinking about Code, the universe. Because it's being planned as a trilogy, there are issues of construction that are fairly broad-reaching and need to be planned before jumping in. One of those issues is protagonist.

Trowa is the protagonist of Code of Silence. He's the character who has a growth arc, who actually changes with and is changed by the events of the story. Duo is the protagonist of Code of Conduct. (For the curious, Wufei will be the protagonist of the prequel.) I struggle a little with the change from Trowa to Duo because, you'll note, we very carefully had POV sections from every character BUT Duo, in Code of Silence. In Code of Conduct, Duo is going to be the narrator for a good majority of the narrative. I'm still finding his voice in some ways. Unlike Trowa, and also Wufei, who are both capable of existing inside lies and contradictions in their own heads and just not thinking about it, Duo is very much the straight-man of the group, in some senses even more strictly than Heero. In addition, the plot requires Duo to be re-living his own past, at a point where his character is defined as living by impulse and moment-to-moment decision. That's a lot to convey between the lines; and it's a lot to contend with when what you want to show is growth.

In terms of construction I'm also personally dealing with a personal aversion to the flashback. Those of you who've ever read anything on this lj know I use the flashback like I use my fry pan, which is to say every weekend. But we haven't used them in Code, and I really liked that. However, we left an 'in' by doing these dream sequences for Trowa, so I guess the flashback has room to sneak in. I really wanted to avoid that in Six, too. Trowa's stream-of-consciousness intro to Chapter 2 covered my feelings on the flashback. It's a narrative invention, not a true-to-life reconstruction of how the human brain works. But that's too chaotic to read, and exposition is boring, so flashback it is. You can look forward to one in Code of Conduct. It'll give 6x2 fans a point of interest, anyway.

As I said, it's planned as a trilogy, with Code of Silence being the 'first' even though it's the 'middle' story. That being said, Code of Conduct is the 'second' story, and so we're starting to sneak in bits and pieces that will be fleshed out in the 'third', the prequel. See how we do that? Try to prime your interest? Will it work? Who knows.

That's about all I have that's in any way coherent. Writers, I encourage you to comment back. I love talking writing.

Fandom: GW
Pairing: 6x4
Rating: M15ish
Notes: I know you thought I'd stopped writing this. Don't lie. This was a hump chapter and I just got stuck on it for a ridiculously long time. But it's over with now, and we can move on.


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Some author's notes, if anyone's interested:
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Another year! Totally awesome, dude. Shazam.

Fics alpha by title.

Gundam Wing
Asylum: 20,324 words (WIP)
Code of Conduct: 8,171 words (WIP)
Code of Silence: 26,136
Properties of ZERO: 40,580 (WIP)
Stay, Stupid: 17,920 words (WIP)
Sweet Mother Of God: 4135 words
The Year Without Trowa: 45,309 (WIP)
Too Many Angels: 36,714 words
2.7 Kelvin: 49,017 words (WIP)

15 drabbles/unfinished teasers: 12,709 words

Total for Gundam Wing: 261,015 words

At an average of 250 words a page, that's about 1044 pages. Not bad!


House MD
Call Me In: 2652 words
Might Be Part of Something Larger: 4860 words

14 drabbles: 8510 words

Total for House: 16,022 words

At an average of 250 words a page, that's about 64 pages.


Harry Potter

3 drabbles: 991 words

At 250 words a page, that's about... 3 pages.


Total words written for 2007: 278028



The Breakdown:

Fandoms: 3
Stories: 11
Drabbles: 32

Completed Stories: 5
Works In Progress: 6

From My Past Year Of Writing, My Favourite Was...

Favourite Story:: Call Me In
... because it was experimental, because I think I nailed the characterisations, and because it was tightly crafted

Best Story: The Year Without Trowa
...because of all the Gundam fics I worked on this year, it's the one that is closest to non-genre literature in terms of the plot, and I am pleased that we managed to strike that emotional balance within a genre fanfic

Most Underappreciated By The Universe: Properties of ZERO
...which is not an entirely fair thing to say, as it was well-received when we were posting it, but I think (hope) it's a unique subject and a unique pairing and I wish more people had read it

Most Fun: Sweet Mother Of God
...because Quatre often comes out more straight-laced than Wufei, and it's fun to let him out of his box, as it were

Most Disappointing: All the HP stuff
...because I've largely left that fandom behind, and because I was so disappointed in what happened to my favourite characters in the books that I've really lost interest in HP, and it rather shows in my writing of it

Most Sexy: Code of Silence
...because the sex in the other stories was meant to be unerotic, generally. In Code we made a good case for a central pairing who genuinely revel in each other, even if it was more discussed than shown

Hardest to Write: Asylum
...because I'm pretty far from where I started with it and I give it less attention than I ought

Most Unintentionally Telling: Might Be Part of Something Larger

Best Written: Call Me In

Worst Written: I'm going to take a leap on this and say actually Code of Silence. It was a hugely educational thing to write, but I cringe at a lot of it now. I love that story deeply, but it needs some revision, especially the last chapter.


And finally, as before, you may choose any of my stories and ask me what happens after the end of it, and I shall be happy to answer.

Tally-ho, 2008!

For the one or two of you likely to be interested, I have finally got round to posting all of 'Quid Pro Quo', though not its prequel '1971', and all of 'For Where We Are Is Hell'.

I haven't disappeared from the face of Planet Writing Stuff, I've just been hiding out in a deep cave whilst working on producing a finished product. The good news is that there's a few on the way for Gundam fans.

I've been working this past week very intensively on the second story in 'The Year Without Trowa' trilogy, which will be called 'Man In The Middle'. It's a 1x4, which I do not find to be the easiest pairing, especially in that Heero is the narrator this time, and I don't find him particularly easy to write, despite having role-played (verbiage?) him for three years on Gundam Wing Dropouts. Aside from wanting to show some stylistic difference between Quatre's head and Heero's head, I find myself in difficulty because Quatre is the kind of narrator who makes it easy to maintain the reader's interest in his thoughts; he's a reflecter, a thinker. Heero is an observer. He doesn't spend a lot of time mired in his own thought process, and yet the story here is about him, and it's not easy to convey internal struggle for Heero when I genuinely feel that to be true to the character I can't have him dwelling on his emotions and his confusion.

There's a second difficulty going on with this chapter, as well, and one that is perhaps even more prohibitive. When we were writing the story I decided to feature Quatre's children more than we did in the first installment. I think it makes sense for the overall arc of the trilogy, because a fundamental element of the story is that Quatre chose to have a family. That choice doesn't mean beans if we don't show its outcome. On the other hand, I believe it is a cardinal sin to create children in fanfic. It's hard enough for most readers, especially younger readers, to imagine their beloved characters much older than they are in the show. (On a side note to that, my eyes were much opened this summer by the other interns in the archival programme, who routinely let slip that they thought I was, like, incredibly older than them, and that if they were my age and unmarried or at least without a boyfriend, they would want to just, like, die; so I have a new understanding of how genuinely hard it is for some readers to imagine a Gundam Pilot at 27, much less 37 and with kids.) I don't like reading stories about the pilots having kids, or Harry Potter, or whoever, and a large part of why is that, in my experience, it is impossible to write good stories about young children. They're either so young all they can do is drool and adults spend too much dialogue in babyspeak and cooing, or the kids are old enough to be annoying, or featured after a young child the writers knows, or they have names like Chris and Jack which have NO place in Gundam. I've tried to find a thin line to balance on with these issues. I gave the children names that were a little unusual without resorting to weird elven names from the internet and my (I admit it) extensive experience with Dungeons and Dragons. I made them old enough to be real people, not babies. And I've tried to give them enough real time in the story to be characters, not plot devices. I've also tried to give them as little screen time as possible in order to accomplish that, because I don't want to read a story about the fictional children of someone else's fictional character. I'm torn between wanting to apologise and saying, screw it, a writer never apologises, but the reality is that I feel kind of sorry about it. So I'm sorry.

It's also a freakishly long chapter, for whatever reason, clocking in so far at around 70 pages unedited. The first was about 45, if I recall. I'm not sure why this one is so much longer, or if I need to do some serious editing. It meanders a bit, a reflection of the fact that Heero as narrator is floundering to find a path. (I love the word 'floundering'.) So it's just taking a fantastic amount of time to work through. I've got about thirty four pages I'm considering finished. You can see my problem.



Before I diverted to Man In The Middle, I was working on the next chapter of 'Stay, Stupid' as well. I was not particularly thrilled with the opening section of the next chapter, and I'm afraid I made poor Marsh rework it with me several times before I hit a level I thought was sharp enough and in keeping with the general tone of the piece. I wanted to avoid a saccharine love scene between Duo and Wufei, for the very good reason that these are not saccharine people, and yet I wanted to have a demonstrable bond come up between them, bolstered with real affection. It is a love story, after all. It just has to be prickly enough.

There will be other familiar faces coming in, though I admit Marsh and I are in a trend of finding ways to shake up the characters. You can expect we'll do the same here. I'm aiming to have 'Stay' come in at seven parts, I think, seven or eight at the most, to give you an idea how long it's likely to be. We're starting to step on the toes of our own ideas in a few places, so I think we might need to slow down production to be sure we don't start repeating ourselves. We've got plenty in the oven right now to finish baking, and I feel a yearning to get back to 'Zero' in particular, though I think the queue is a bit full up for that just at this moment.



In other news, I am wearing black dress shoes with a blazer that has far more blue in it than it seemed it did this morning in my closet. However, I have never in the universe seen a pair of dark blue dress shoes. (Now don't go commenting to me that you own a pair; I want the comfort of my illusions.) Additionally, I managed to splash tea on my pink shirt. I am the very definition of grace.

Today I was all 'Why aren't I getting feedback??' and then I was all, 'Oh, cause I haven't posted it yet.'

Fandom: GW
Pairing: 5x2
Rating: M15ish? I don't know. M15-Rish.

Chapter Three: In Which Plot Develops.

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Notes:
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Why do people write House fluff? It's the unfluffiest show I know of. How can that even be emotionally satisfying?

That's really all the complaining I feel the need to do, actually.

Oh, except this one.

Why, God, why does pear cider give me migraines? Regular cider doesn't. Pears don't. Just pear cider. And it's so good!

Really done now.

As I was deleting old logs I realised a lot of what I was deleting would make great 'author's notes' posts, so I'm going to try to remember that and post them. Like now.

Kelvin

Having been writing Duo intensively for at least a full year now with Marsh, there are starting to be some similarities between my various interpretations of him, or at least some fairly demarcated categories of characteristics. There are really two phases in our writing: the first is improv or role play, and the second is what amounts to a thorough editing, a 'writing' of the story with the outline and dialogue we've already done. We don't always do the prep we ought to do during the first phase, but I will run some exercises during the writing to clarify issues of character and plot.

The exercises I refer to are things like character mapping or webbing. I start with a few basic character clues and build outward with action verbs to serve as hubs for further development. The web I built for both Duo and Zechs in Kelvin localises 'sex' for both of them, as it's obviously a very large part of the fic. Comparing Kelvin-Duo to a 'finished' character, such as Code-of-Silence-Duo, I would say Code-Duo had more personal pride than Kelvin-Duo, and more balanced sense of personal esteem. Kelvin-Duo is fairly detached from sex as an emotional obligation; it's an exchange of pleasure between equals, and if he could do it without any emotional entanglement he'd be a lot happier. Where he intersects with Zechs is perhaps unfortunate, because I think on some level he's quite shocked that having sex with someone would make them respect him somehow, make them clue into him as a person. Zechs, on the other hand, felt as though intimacy with Duo in bed was somehow synonymous with mental and emotional intimacy, that sleeping with Duo does mean he 'knows' Duo now.

In this web, 'sex' is connected to the adjective 'proprietary'. There is a proprietary sense of personal space that both characters arrive with, and, like a Venn diagram, they begin to overlap as they become intimate. Duo's proprietariness about his self and his body never admits Zechs in past a certain guardedness. He offers no secrets about himself, and generally doesn't want to learn any of Zechs'; he feels a proprietary interest in keeping them separate and individual. Zechs, on the other hand, begins to feel proprietary about Duo after they sleep together. Duo wants to keep them separate, and Zechs wants to meld them together. It is, I hope, an interesting conflict between them. For Zechs, it's created a sense of growing mystery and of urgency. He feels like he's standing on the rim of a canyon and his choice is to jump off or walk away; unfortunately, neither prospect feels right. Duo doesn't return his feelings and he's wary of making a fool of himself, and he's carrying a lot of baggage from his relationship with Treize. But he has made an emotionally proprietary connection with Duo, and he doesn't have it in him to give that up, when he parcels out his emotions so parsimoniously. I also think he imagines that he'll win Duo over eventually.

Duo, on the other hand, thinks they're managing fairly well. Barring his illness, in a way he's even cheerful about it. He is willing to, even desirous of, ignoring their problems. Zechs might find that attitude irresponsible, but to Duo's mind, they're on a ship and there's very little to be irresponsible about that affects anything in the world outside. Until he hears back from Trowa, life is good. Does Duo have some hidden damage? It's us, so yes, of course. He's very wary of emotional attachment. Doesn't want it, except enough to not feel lonely. It sadly leaves Zechs in an uncomfortable place. He hid so much of his heart when he was with Treize. He promised himself he would never be with someone who compelled him to do that again. In some key ways, Duo is not different from Zechs, but he's protected himself harder and better than Zechs.

So far we've followed the same pattern in each chapter. They're in a confined space. They start off separate, move together, end up separate; quiet, emotional uprising, quiet again. Stylistically it's a very cyclical story. There are increasing disruptions to that cycle as Duo grows ill, exchanging emotional instability for physical instability.

That was long, but I'm finally out of things to say for it. :)

As promised...

Asylum

Continuing to update while the inspiration for it lasts. I've finally had a revelation about the very basic and rather obvious fact of who the protagonist is: Zechs. Duh. But it was helpful in terms of figuring out how best to manage the narration, and where to keep the focus. I'm so used to writing fics with a pairing requiring a delicate balance of narrative sharing, having been working so intensively in partnership with Marsh, and the direction of this fic has changed a bit since I started working on it two years ago. If I were as intensely dedicated to it as I ought to be, that would be helpful, too.

There will be no more long public speech sections in the story, but I like playing with the motivations. I'm at a point where I'm personally concerned with the role of the media in crafting public perception. Particularly of controversial issues. Like terrorist-versus-freedom-fighter, etc, which is certainly something relevant to Gundam.

As for the lemon, I swear to god, it does exist. The romance is not the most central element of the fic, but it is important. I've introduced an important concept to the story-- that Zechs and Quatre both are men who live a double life, and that's not their political identity talking. They're both private people in public positions. Quatre in a way has been given new license to express his sexuality, because for the first-- or, as I'll get into soon, second-- time in his life, his personal life is no longer in conflict with his family name. Zechs has not been given the same freedom, and in fact has a new layer of restriction, in that Quatre is his case subject, and Zechs is ethically barred from sexual relations with him. He's at least telling himself that he hopes Quatre moves on from this almost-relationship that they have, but he's not entirely willing to relinquish their connection.

Speaking of connection, Zechs connects, however tenuously, with Quatre's nephew. Aside from the personal similarities of orphanage, he sees some of Quatre in the kid, and that's palliative to the separation. The nephew will be an important part of the story, so please don't feel I'm off on a distracting tangent with all these OCs.


Death Is A Four-Letter Word

Oh, where to start.

I pissed Marsh off one night, making her choose what we were going to do, and she hit me with a deathfic idea in revenge. To be pissy myself, I made her go through with it. But I think it turned out very well. I'm a big fan of the continuous-experience writing-- where you get into a really intense zone and complete an entire story. It can be difficult, but I think it's worthwhile. I've done it exactly three times for Gundam and I feel that the efforts all stand up to time. That said, we did add one scene at a much later date; everything taking place at the funeral with the crowd is much more recent.

What I like about the fic is that we revisit the idea that the pilots aren't able to uniformly maintain that sense of closeness they briefly have during the war. Obligations tear them apart. Quatre, in particular, has to make a choice between obligations to his family and obligations to his lover, and he makes the only choice he feels he can live with when he's twenty years old. By the time he's old enough to know that what you owe your family shouldn't rule your life, it's become a classic story of too little, too late.

I don't want to reveal too much, because the second part of the trilogy will reveal much more about Quatre's life, but I want to touch on what I fear is one of the cardinal sins of fanfic: we've, or rather I, have not only aged a canon character, I've married him, divorced him, and created children for him. I hate reading fics that have kids in them. I inevitably think the kids suck. But I've done it here. And it is important to Quatre's life experience, and I think the show suggests it's in Quatre's future as much as it is in his past. He broke away from a heritage of tradition, but it's obviously still a central factor of his life. His own father was a real patriarch, a family head, and inasmuch as his father represents the expectations of the Winner family, I think Quatre will in any scenario have to face off between his own desires and ambitions and the obligations, the traditions, that he will have as the sole male heir. It did give us a chance to touch on some really meaty and deep issues.

Amongst them, religion. It's not something we see much of in the show, so strictly speaking it's not canon that Quatre is Muslim, but I think it can be extrapolated. What is canon is that we don't ever see Quatre practising his religion. Where that led us was that Quatre, succumbing in a rush to the constant pushing by his family, eventually finds some relief and solace in his faith. It becomes more and more important to him as an outlet, and an answer, for his doubts and his regrets. But it also gives him the strength to rebel again, this time much later in life, when he finally accepts that his family is not and should not be the final word on his personal happiness. He divorces the wife he doesn't love and runs away to be with Trowa at the end of Trowa's life.

Obviously it was a deathfic, so the 'why' of Trowa dying is pretty well explained by the genre. We chose not to specify what exactly he was dying of, other than calling it cancer, because the fact of his death was really more important than the why of it. And in a way, I would like to leave this section for Marsh to fill in, hopefully with a reply; Trowa was her's, and I'd like to see what she has to say about him. But my feeling is that while Trowa is central to this trilogy, he, like his sickness, is more about the fact of having existed than the particulars. I have a theory about any fic about the adult life of the Gundam pilots, and it holds that their singularity, their five-ness, their irreplacability in that five-ness must become paramount in some corner of their psychology. They're a group, and that becomes more important to them the farther away they come from the war. Trowa's death will profoundly affect all of them.

The next part of the trilogy will be a 1x4 and will bring in Quatre's children, so be prepared to either violently reject the kiddies or try to enjoy what we were going for ;)


Stay, Stupid

'Stay' is something we started back in January, I think. Mostly because we like writing 5x2s. Speaking of trilogies, it's part of a thematically linked trilogy of 5x2s, starting with 'Taking Tibet' and now this, the third to be announced when we've actually finished something in our queue.

I like the idea of playing with the pilots at an older age. We didn't originally write it to take place so long after canon, but when we got around to writing it up, it just seemed a more mature pair of characters. I might even have preferred them to be a little older, mid-40s, but in discussing it, it seemed like that might be too far beyond the experience of our youngest readers. Judging by the mentality of some of the girls I work with, 37 is practically Jurassic, but it seemed like a good upper limit of what would be conceivable to a teenager while still meeting the needs of the story.

Having Wufei in particular be physicall damaged, if not crippled, has to do with pushing more boundaries. I don't think physical beauty matters in particular to any of the boys, but Wufei in particular seemed likeliest to react to a severe wound by internalising it. Likewise, Duo is the most likely to see a wound as something entirely external, to the point of utterly disregarding it. Head to head, it would be a point of real contention between them, particularly given how personal Wufei finds his wounds, and how personally alone he's been with them.

Last mention in this goes to the notion that Wufei would spend time in jail for his role in the Barton rebellion. That's something I've thought about a lot-- that any of them might suffer in the aftermath if legal action ever came into the equation. Wufei seems the likeliest victim, precisely because he wasn't a victim. Nor was he a spy, like Trowa. We'll get into how that all worked out in parts 3 und 4, but I wanted to toss out our reasoning for that.

I think that's all that really warrants author's notes at this point. I didn't in the least touch on stylistic choices, for which I apologise; I'll try to keep up on that end of it as I post, in the future. Hope you all enjoyed.

I've made a new tag for author's notes, for anyone interested in just that. Speaking of author's notes, I intend to update them for our recent fics.

Fandom: Gundam Wing
Pairing: 5x2
Rating: M15
Notes: EW is canon excepting some significant details about the aftermath.

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Further Notes:

Marsh and I conceive this as the second in a trilogy, or possibly a series, of unrelated 5x2x5 fics united by theme and style. The first was Taking Tibet published around this time last year. Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in the teaser. Also, keep an eye out for downjune, who has mentioned an upcoming 2x5 also set after EW. There can never be enough Duo and Wufei, in my studied opinion.

I realise I've been remiss in refusing to post any writerly chatter about the fics I/we have been authoring lately. The reasons are numerous, high on the list being laziness. Another reason is that, particularly with Angels, the writing has been so easy, so free of deliberation or the necessity of decision or even revision, that there's been hardly anything to post. Still, I'm going to try to rectify that.

Post-Code:

Code of Silence, that is. As many will know, Marsh and I have now completed three stories together: Object Permanence, Taking Tibet, and Code. Code was the lengthiest and most challenging, first because of the sheer size and complexity of the plot, and second because we became so wildly enthused with the project that we kept playing with new directions and ideas and it was hard to reign ourselves in. But it also ironed out many of the difficulties of co-authoring, including finding a balance of style between two relatively different voices. When we moved on to the two new projects we're currently working on, 2.7 Kelvin and Too Many Angels, we were able to take a lot of experience with us and the ride has been much smoother. The most difficult thing now is finding time mutually available, and mutually creative. I get particularly dull during the work-week-- sitting at a computer all day is in some obscure way emotionally draining for me. But, to the point...

2.7 Kelvin

I want to say that we started working on this story first in our post-Code time, as an offshoot of my new obsession with 6x2. We started with the premise of two people who weren't naturally drawn together being forced into close confinement. According to my notes we actually tossed around the idea of Cairo as the mission setting before realising we had a perfectly canon setting before us: Mars. We went with the idea of the shuttle ride as the right vehicle for the story we wanted to tell, though I admit we had very little idea what that story was, because, of course, we were going to write only, oh, two, three chapters at most, it was going to be practically a PWP... except we have no impulse control.

I'll pause for a moment to explain how I arrived at the figure of nine months for the journey to Mars. When I was writing Launch I did some research on how long it currently took NASA probes to travel to the Red Planet and came up with a figure; then I sci-fied it up to factor in the otherwise inexplicable image we were given at the end of Endless Waltz of Zechs and Noin travelling to Mars in a glorified mobile suit, and arrived at the composite sum (ooh, redundancy) of nine months average travelling time, one-way. And as this has no doubt been a thrilling revelation, I just wanted to prove there was a logic behind that choice.

Next we happened on the idea of the book Arkhipelag GULag. That book really became the backbone theme of the story; I think it's also a theme of the show, where the question of destiny versus free will runs so rampant through each character's arc. Zechs particularly embodies 'imprisonment', both figurative and self-inflicted, and so the book seemed an appropriate choice for him-- a sort of masochistic reminder of his life-long feelings of entrapment in a destiny he both had and had not chosen for himself.

I also liked the idea of Duo reacting to this book. It's not going to have the same emotional pitch for him as it does for Zechs, because I at least don't find Duo to be so deliberately metaphorical; I could go as far as 'fanciful' in describing how Zechs clings to certain imaginings of himself and his life. Duo has a streak of realism that prevents him from embracing a tenuous connection with prisoners who are centuries dead when he's known plenty in his own lifetime, yet it's still an appropriate book for him because Duo, uniquely of the other pilots, spent an explicitly painful amount of time as a prisoner of war. He's shown beaten at least twice, interrogated, publicly displayed as a traitor, nearly executed by his own compatriot, and nearly suffocated to death by his captors. His experience is far more literal than Zechs', yet he apparently bears no psychological scars. It is, of course, the 'apparently' that makes him so interesting.

Where I think this particular pairing will prove most interesting in the situation we've created with the long trip and the book is the point where they begin to mutually influence one another. Duo's pragmatism will have a grounding effect on Zechs, who lives so very internally, and likewise Zechs will draw out the hidden part of Duo that is not only capable of deep and grand thoughts but relishes in the activity. Between that and the sex, huzzah, I think it's a fun story.


Too Many Angels

I truly did just wake up one day with this idea, inspiration being eleven tenths of writing some days. Of course my original idea was ten pages long and didn't involve a relationship of any kind, but that's where I find Marsh so wonderfully invigorating as a storyteller. She leapt intuitively to what would make a story about Duo confronting an old demon the most absolutely personal experience it could be, and I think she was right in her instincts not only because of the fandom we're writing in (where it's sacrilegious to post a story without a central pairing), but because any story in an abstract is going to be weaker than a story with that deeply personal hook. I immediately threatened her life and limb if she didn't help me write it.

I'd also like to give her credit for another creative decision: as we discussed the extent of Will's involvement in what happened to Duo at the Lunar Base, she maintained that the integrity of Will's character depended on a certain level of passivity matched by a moral sensibility that knew where the line was, per se. The difference in maturity between Duo and Will is that Duo's grasp on this line is more theoretical, more intellectual, in that he believes his anger with Will and with the trauma Will represents is justified, and if his anger is justified, so are his own questionable actions when they grow from that anger. The story is essentially about choices; Will's choice to be passive, and Duo's choice to be active. Where it gets fun is that Will's choice to be passive took Duo's freedom of choice away, and likewise Duo's choice to be active essentially robbed Will of the choice to say 'no'.

Spoilers ahead if you haven't read to part 7

I will also admit here that Will was always going to die, from our very first discussion of the fic, before he even had a name. Writing a doomed character is hard, because you know that the audience absolutely has to connect to the character in order to be impacted by his sudden loss. In this fandom-- in any fandom, which is by definition a glorification of the canon characters-- any OC is viewed with intense suspicion and often instaneous dislike. Certainly by myself. I might start to read a fic that lists ?xOC, but most often I won't finish it-- and I've written two stories now pairing Duo with an OMC. We wanted Will to be likeable, but still pathetic and pitiable, and still on some level uncomfortably guilty of wrongdoing. Duo is the hero of the story because the show invited us to sympathise with the Gundam Pilots. Individual members of OZ were sympathetic, but only when they left OZ because of a crisis between their integrity and their duty to the organisation, and that was a point underlying our plot here. Will could never entirely be a protagonist because he never entirely made the choice to individuate himself the way the Gundam Pilots did when they decided to carry on the war because it was the right thing to do, even if their own colonies turned against them.

Choosing Will's name was moderately difficult, and we chose it by some moderately silly standards. 'Sweet William' is a joke going back to our RP days, when our friend Dave invented 'Sweet William' as an anecdotal figure-- a sort of doomed Adonis who always died in every incarnation. Given that we already knew this OZ character we'd created was going to die, 'Sweet William' seemed an obvious choice. I like the pun of the name-- 'Will' or 'choice'-- I also like the euphonic combination of the sounds, which are unthreatening and a little boyish. 'Stanley' came because it's kind of a geeky name, also unthreatening, and I can imagine the way Duo sounds grating it out all the time the way he does, a little nasal and mocking. It's also a completely Anglo-American name, which I do regret a little; there aren't enough characters of colour in Gundam Wing or in Gundam fic, but oh well; next time. Code might meet our quota for characters who aren't WASPs. (I love that acronym.)

The decision to play Duo so angry and hot-headed was a departure from canon, but I felt it was needful in order to explore the issue. It's timely to think about the long-term effects of war on the soldier's psyche, certainly. I think the anger is a necessary part of this issue. In terms of where it meets canon, my view of the series is that all the pilots display some rage at one point or another, and that given the traumas they variously suffer, it's inevitable that during the quiet after the conflict they were bound to develop some habit of coping that would eventually show the cracks and wear. We wanted to give an impression that Duo had indeed been saving face for a very long time, until he was confronted with something that simply broke the facade after years of dealing with little blows. And the decision to write him as essentially incapable of forgiveness also seems to me a natural extension of canon. Duo is perfectly willingly to move on from any personal grievance, but I see no sign that he forgives when he forgets-- it's just that streak of pragmatism that is so essential to his character, and a form of selflessness that constantly puts the needs of others before his own indulgence. His reactions to Will started as almost nothing more than self-harm, doing damage only to himself in the form of his suspension, but involving only himself, and barely even Will, who wasn't punished because of Duo. That it grew out of control was evidence that Duo wasn't able to hold on to his own coping strategies any longer.

I won't say that Duo loves Will, because I don't think he does. I do think he feels very strongly about Will, but even if Will had lived, I imagine the best Duo could have done would have been agreeing to move on and try to salvage something individually, not together. Certainly Will would have been a life-changing event in this stage of Duo's life, but the impact of his death will be meteoric. I hope everyone feels it's vindicating.


Other Fics

Asylum-- it's in my back pocket. I swear.

Properties of Zero-- In discussion. We're feeling our way forward on a change of direction and a new addition to the plot. Expect some developments soon.


Thanks for reading and thanks as well to everyone who's been commenting so readily on the fics. We love the feedback.

Got this from babel and totally had to do it immediately.

Notes:

1) The questionaire still didn't, in my opinion, reach very wide, so I added in a few things at the bottom.

2) I only counted fics archived on this lj.

3) For the first two sections, fics are only counted for one category of the available. For the second two sections, fics are counted multiple times for every category they fit.

4) Fandom-specific things to note:

Gundam Wing-- I count Quatre as Berber and Islamic IF it was something I was specifically bearing in mind whilst writing. I haven't decided how I feel about colonials versus Earth-borns, so I didn't count that toward this questionaire. I also consider Heero to be of primarily Japanese descent, unless he's acting particularly white. I consider Duo and most of L2 to be representative of the working class, again, unless it was not a question of great importance in the fic. After all, part of diversity involves, I believe, how noticeable it is-- if everyone acts the same even if they're different, they're not very diverse.

Harry Potter-- I universally write Remus Lupin as Welsh. Being Welsh, I consider this to be significant. However, with some reluctance, I have included the 'Celtic' fringes in the broad umbrella of 'European' and 'white', except for the question at the bottom, 'ethnicitiy as a part of identity', where, IF it was important to the character or to the fic as a whole, I considered Welshness a separate ethnicity. While speaking of Remus Lupin, I also consider his werewolfness to be a disability, as I think it's pretty clearly portrayed as one in canon. However, if his werewolfness was not known in the limited POV of the POV character, or was not important to the fic, I did not note it as a disability for the sake of an honest count. Same with working class and gay, both of which I consider him to be.

Deep Space Nine-- Diversity is of central importance on all Star Trek series. I believe that goes without saying, even though I've just said it. Julian Bashir is of mixed European and non-European descent, and in certain of my stories, the non is more important. Aliens count as other races unless they are obviously patterned on white European races.

Let the meme begin.

Stories in which the POV character is male: 41
Stories in which the POV character is female: 6
Stories in which the POV characters are both male and female or cannot be defined: 4
Stories with no central pairing: 11
Stories that feature multiple pairings or threesomes: 11
Stories that feature an m/m pairing: 20
Stories that feature an m/f pairing: 7
Stories in which the POV character is white: 34
Stories in which the POV character is non-white: 14
Stories with at least one white POV character and at least one non-white POV character: 3

Stories in which the central pairing is white/white: 24
Stories in which the central pairing is non-white/non-white: 5
Stories in which the central pairing includes at least one non-white character: 14

Stories in which at least one main character is gay: 30
Stories in which at least one main character is over forty: 17
Stories in which at least one main character is disabled: 19
Stories in which at least one main character is from the working/lower classes: 18


Categories which I’ve added to encompass a broader theme of diversity:

Stories in which at least one main character is ethnically non-European/American: 25
Stories in which ethnicity/race/sexuality play a central theme: 22
Stories in which ethnicity/race/sexuality are important to the identity of a main character: 23
Stories in which religion plays a central theme or is important to the identity of a main character: 8

As I've been ridiculously lax...

Code of Silence
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Asylum
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I'll get around to posting the final chapters of Code here, and the new Asylum bit, as well. Thanks for your patience.

Because I've been really remiss in updating this no-doubt engrossing insight to my mind and daily exercise, I'm spamming my own journal.

**

I got food poisoning on Monday when I ate chicken salad with avacado at the pub where I work. I then proceded to re-enact the Exorcist vomit scene, to the delight of all. Not surprisingly, they sent me home before my profuse puking could scatter all the customers.

**

My brother was made Day Chief of Operations. It sounds like a desk job. I hope it's a desk job, because he gave me the impression he was out doing recon, and that doesn't end well. On the very down side, one of his friends was killed this weekend by an IUD. The last time one of his friends was killed, I practically had a nervous breakdown; I don't know if I'm growing up or just growing resigned, but I've managed to not fall completely apart this time. He, of course, just represses, and can look forward to inadequate health care upon his return. This is me being an optimist.

**

How much do I love Code of Silence? I love thinking about it, I love working on it, and I love that we've been able to substantially update it recently, however slow I've been in recording thoughts and posting the chapters here. Here are things I love about it:

a) I love that we've reached a point in the story where the antimetabole between Duo and Trowa is visible. (Antimetabole, for those who are unaware, is when two figures are repeated in transverse order. When applied to character arcs, envision this as a graph. Duo starts high on the graph. Trowa starts low. Duo's line is degenerating, so it's moving down as the story progresses. Trowa's line is growing. They cross at a midpoint, which I would say was chapter 8 or 9ish, and are now at opposite points to where they began. It's shaped like an 'x'.) (I know that was a long explanation for what could probably be stated much more easily by someone who didn't major in literature. Sorry. I wrote my senior Shakespeare thesis on antimetabolic arcs. There's no escaping my dorkdom.) Anyway. The Saint Duo we had at the beginning is showing some cracks; he's angry, he's violent, and he's at least thinking about breaking up with Trowa. He's also coming to realise he was not only stupid to cover up for Wufei, but negligent and morally compromised. Meanwhile, Trowa's bad-ass outlaw ego is starting to slip, and it turns out he's actually a good guy underneath the layers of dirt. I think that's exciting.

b) We got a little insight on why San Francisco. I think it came at the right time in the story, late as it was to describe and really visit the setting for the entire universe of the fic. The idea of that is owed to Taj, who always impresses me with her attention to atmosphere and the exotic. The mood is owed to Marsh, who has a real love for SF and has visited many times. The reason I like it being set in SF was because pictures of it really did remind me of the colonies, of what I imagine they look like. I've done a couple pieces where I've set the Preventers HQ in London, because I am that UK-centric, but I like the idea of setting this particular story someplace still a little new, still vibrant and impermanent in a way that London isn't, but the colonies would be. The 'new world' flavour, plus the chance to engage things like the Latino population and the gang activity in California, all make SF a good setting.

c) We got to show some pieces of the backstory. The characters of Johnny and Roque are really part of the pre-Code universe. I'm a little worried they read as abrupt late-entries without any real personality, but they'll be filled in when we start on the prequel. I like them. I hope everyone reading will also. What I like about Johnny in particular is that he's an outsider. He's not a pilot, he's not even like Noin or Relena, who were at least in on the action. And he doesn't easily engage the intense inward-looking group that's been circling the wagons around Duo and Wufei. I like that Duo would go for someone like that, though, that he's capable of wanting to step outside, while at the same time being so unquestioningly loyal to The Gundam Pilots. Roque is Marsh's original character from an RPG, but I think he's a great fit for this universe. He's another piece of what's really Duo's second life, his undercover world, indigenous to that San Francisco reality I mentioned above. There's this great sense for me of all the socio-economic dynamic that gives great flavour to a story, so I hope that he really is bringing that for the readers as well.

d) Chapter 12's main action has actually been written for probably almost a year, or at least a goodly bit of a year. I've been DYING to get to it. I can't describe how excited I am. It's also going to really jump deep into Wufei's motivations, so the resolution to that is, at least for me, intense and important. Considering this story has been one gigantic mood swing, back and forth and up and down, I'm loving the plunge to the bottom.


**

It's got really really hot all of the sudden, and I hate being hot. Also, I got rid of a lot of my summer clothes last year because they were old and ugly, but I never replaced them, because I was both poor and attempting to end my addiction to charity shopping. I really miss living with a lot of girls. Oh, the clothes.

**

A few weeks ago I demonstrated remarkably poor impulse control and cut my hair in the bathroom. Considering I was trying to grow it out, this was rather a reverse-gear. To make it worse, it's really freaking curly suddenly. I was ironing it all the time when it was longer, and I guess it weighed itself down then. No such luck now. It's too short to straighten, and no amount of product is putting a dent in all the little curlies and waves. Bleh. I'm pretending I think it's short and sassy, but really I don't.

**

I don't read anymore. I used to read all the time. I don't think I've actually read a book since December, when I ran through the whole series of CJ Cherryh novels, and I only read those because I was getting on a plane and I've already read them a million times. Well, no, I read that stupid PD James novel, but I think gratifying it with terms like 'narrative' and 'structure' would be false flattery. When did she start to suck quite so much? I'm going to make an effort to read something. Soon. Eventually.

**

When does the next Harry Potter movie come out? Now that I, and the world, have seen pretty much all of Dan Radcliffe, will I really be able to look at him without thinking of horse parts? If not, I'll distract myself with the glory that is Alan Rickman.

**

On the Alan Rickman note, it should surprise no-one that I have the capacity to be a crazed fan. When I was in my Leslie Cheung phase two years ago, I purchased approximately thirty of his films, several CDs, and a few signed memorabilia, all of which now reside in my closet. I very nearly went that route with Alan Rickman. I have to say I'm glad I didn't. While I do adore him, he's not as pretty as Leslie, and a lot of his films are simply less fun. 'Rasputin'? 'Mesmer'? Most days, I'll take 'He's the Woman, She's the Man.' Oh, Leslie.

Woohoo! In which Part 8 is posted.

I have not yet re-conquered the metaphor, but thanks to an insane amount of hand-holding by Marsh, it got done. All credit for this chapter goes to Marsh, who deserves a medal for flogging me along and providing every single instance of poetry and punch.

In terms of what happens in this part:

My creative writing teacher in uni had many good reasons for avoiding narrative frames which rely on the 'flashback that isn't' idea. He was right. But I thought it was important to open with that glimpse of the future in order to plant an explanation for Duo's actions in the reader's mind pages before he even does anything. And to plant the idea that Trowa isn't going to carry this around indefinitely, that there's a future going to happen.

I mentioned to Marsh that I thought it was interesting in terms of character that Duo was focussed on the emotional adultery, whereas Trowa was concerned with the physical act. Her answer (which demonstrates again why she was the saving grace of this chapter) was simple and poignant. She said, 'Trowa knows that Duo doesn't love Heero like that.'

Which pretty much makes me feel badly for Heero. Here's a line I cut, though, which perhaps gives some insight into him:

'Thirteen years he'd loved this man, and now that it was finally said, all he felt was a miserable relief that nothing would change.'

Still, kind of bites for him.

Also? Learned a new word for oranges.

More lawyerly stuff. Though I'm sure this is not the biggest draw of the story, I really enjoy thinking about it. It's not the most accurate stuff, but I like trying to keep the logic on track.

Tune in next time for plot progression.

New part of Asylum posted on GWA board. Actual sexual tension moments between Z und Q. No lemon yet, sorry. I seem to think people will want to read fanfiction that doesn't have sex in it.

The first two scenes were really easy to write, and the last was really freaking hard, for reasons unknown. I knew what I wanted to happen and it was only, what, two pages at most, but damn if it just wouldn't be written. Anyway. Quatre has to admit he's fallen a little farther than previously revealed and doesn't like himself very much. The mystery of where the other Gundam lads are remains a mystery. And Zechs inches closer to getting some action without realising yet why he even wants it, which is always healthy.

The end.