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!

Also, omg.

Anyway, meme:
Write something that's neither canon nor fanon, but it still has to be plausible.

I only thought of this because I reread the third book this week.

Fandom: HP
Rating: G
Characters: Hermion, Lupin
Set during: PoA


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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.

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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'.

From tanuki02:

HP: Lupin buys his first wand, and meets Sirius and Regulus.

Note: this is worse than the first drabble. Sorry. Also, contains things that are perilously close to fangirlisms. Doubly sorry.


It was Regulus who smiled, when two eleven year old boys reached for the same dusty wand in Ollivander's shop; a very nice, very unremarkable smile, whilst his elder brother stood scowling impatiently behind him.

It was Sirius who pulled the wings from dragonflies in Potions; Sirius who thought of running outside the Shack during the full moon. Sirius who bartered with other people's secrets. Sirius who promised it wouldn't hurt if he'd just relax, and Sirius who panicked at the blood and fled to James. It was Sirius everyone believed was guilty, and it was Sirius who went to Azkaban. It was Sirius that Remus grieved for, in his glory and anger and brash arrogant grins that always caught Remus' breath away.

But it was Regulus who'd taken his secrets to the grave, who'd always paled when asked to hold the scalpel, who chose the form of a barn owl to fly ahead and scout for trouble as they played naively on the ground below. It was Regulus who taught him, in blushing hushed whispers, to find the pleasure under the humiliation, and Regulus who lay talking the night away, hidden beneath the ancient oak table in the Restricted Section, when Remus couldn't bring himself to speak to any of the others. It was Regulus who shocked them all, and Regulus who never asked for help, and Regulus whose name went unspoken for a dozen years after his death.

'You take it,' Regulus said, and handed the box to Remus as if bestowing a treasured relic on a loyal vassal. His tawny eyes were grave and kind when Remus protested the gesture. 'It feels like you,' he explained, explaining nothing.

It had a black walnut sheen, a hair from a Thestral's black mane, its only decoration an oval inset of yew for the thumb. When Remus gripped it, a shiver of wind tingled about him. Old Ollivander nodded once in approval.

'Don't forget me,' Regulus called after him as he left. 'Remus! Don't forget me.'

It was the last time he asked that of anyone.

Series: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Notes: Marauder Era
Further notes: This is the kind of crap I come up with when I 'write just to keep the juices flowing.' I really don't think there's any observations of worth in here, or even any elegant phrasing or interesting stylistic choices. Probably I should just label this 'dribble'. But here, have at.

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Series: Harry Potter
Rating: G
Notes: post-HBPish
**
‘How come none of the professors at Hogwarts are married?’
**
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Series: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Pairing: Remus/Regulus, Remus+Sirius implied
Notes: part of a foodpoetry challenge
**
He isn't his brother.
**
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Series: Harry Potter
Rating: PG13
Warnings: supernatural
Notes: You might have looked at that warning and thought-- guh, it's HP. By supernatural I mean that this is kind of a death fic and kind of not because it deals with resurrection and other weirdness hitherto only accomplished by gloopy wand messes and unicorn blood.
Notes le second: This is a sequel to my own fics '1971' and 'Quid Pro Quo'. You can find those on my website, http://www.geocities.com/brother_maxwell/hplinkspage.html. These fics have been TWT since the fifth book came out.

**
Remus stood to collect their cups. At the door, he looked back. ‘What year is it?’ he asked.

James raised his eyebrows. ‘1983, mate,’ he replied, and took off his glasses. ‘How much did you forget?’

Remus turned quickly. ‘1983? But it’s not 1983. It’s–‘ But he didn’t finish.

**

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Got a reply on Chapter 8 of "For Where We Are Is Hell" (http://www.geocities.com/brother_maxwell/for.html). This is still my favourite, by which I mean I consider it to be the most well-written, of my HP fics. MithLuin has comprised the bulk of feedback on my HP stuff posted at Wolfsbane, rendering me ever-grateful. I am a huge fan of Remus/Bill, for absolutely no reasonable reasons. They are minor characters in obviously heterosexual relationships, but it still works for me. So does Remus/Regulus. Go fig. I think I might be a crazy fangrl. Gasp; shock; horror; surprise.

It's a completely sendentary chapter, which makes me think I've rather lost the drive on this fic, and I opted to include almost as a side-note what I had meant to devote an entire chapter to-- the revelation that Remus helped Regulus escape England after Voldemort's death. Still not convinced this artistic choice was wisely done. I did edit it post-submission to make the revelation of Regulus's death more climactic, but I don't think I conveyed what I wanted to convey with that, so perhaps further editing is in order. I was trying to paint Remus as someone who, as a hurting young man with a very strong ethical and moral backbone in a period of chaos and betrayal, made what he thought was the right choice in helping Regulus fake his death. However, he didn't actually save Reg, and over time, what seemed to be a daring and righteous thing has faded into just a petty failure. Bill understands this, probably more than Sirius ever could have, which is why the confession was given to him, and not Sirius or Snape or Dumbledore or Harry.

Yeah, really don't think that came across in the fic at all. How much will they love me at Wolfsbane if I re-resubmit? I just need one more do-over.

On the Bill/Remus relationship. Bill's insecurity in this chapter seems to reflect his belief that Remus will move on or even die, but I think it also serves to illustrate that he's looking for problems that aren't really there, in a sort of justification of the break-up he thinks will happen. If they did try to make their relationship a permanent fixture, I think Bill would have to abandon a lot of the ideas he's been raised with that separate affairs from partnership. He sees himself in a rather submissive role to Remus as the authority-figure, with only dim moments of realisation that Remus doesn't see that at all. The word "love" is expressed all over the place in this chapter, but never as a spoken tangible. The hand-holding is its physical substitute, a symbol I quite liked. I walked away from this chapter feeling hopeful for them.

At present I only plane one more chapter of "For Where We Are Is Hell," featuring Harry for certain and possibly someone else. Maybe Tonks, in a nod to Rowling. I have a strong belief that Tonks was modeled after Scarlet in "Four Weddings And A Funeral." I love Scarlet. Maybe Hagrid, because I meant to give him a chapter and never did.

con't from previous

Chapter Two: Sirius Black

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Fandom: HP
Rating: Gen to R
Notes: The following are eight short stories centring on Remus Lupin over the course of his life to about Order of the Phoenix in canon time. If there is a pairing, I'll list it at the start. Otherwise, each chapter will begin with the characters most involved. The idea was to write from several different perspectives about Remus, and so each chapter has only a few characters in it.
Further notes: Chapter One is based on the fic "Swimming Lessons" by Kimagure, who kindly granted permission for me to rewrite it.


For Where We Are Is Hell
Chapter One: James Potter

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Fandom: HP
Pairing: some vague Sirius/Remus
Rating: PG

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Fandom: HP
Pairing: some vague Sirius/Remus
Rating: PG

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Fandom: HP
Pairing: some Sirius/Remus
Rating: PG

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Fandom: HP
Rating: PG
Notes: Watch me continually try to force-feed my readers with Wales.

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Fandom: HP
Rating: PG
Notes: Readers of '1971' may remember that I showed Lupin using wandless and even faerie magic as a kind of extension of a subplot that was supposed to be a major factor of this fic, but which I decided not to continue after the publication of Book 5. The incident in this chapter was supposed to be foreshadowing. If anyone is ever interested, I would be happy to share several unposted chapters which dealt more directly with this plotline, although I warn you I never finished writing it. Still, I thought it was a grand idea at the time, and I do still think of it wistfully.

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Fandom: HP
Pairing: Gen
Rating: PG
Notes: I started writing this well before Book 5 was published, and decided not to continue working on it once it had. I wanted to write about the mentor relationship Remus had with Harry, and it became evident to me that that was never going to be a focus in the books, that the Sirius-father relationship was going to be dominant. I was interested in the way Lupin, unlike Sirius, never really tried to be a father.

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