Elizabeth Culmer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
edenfalling) wrote2015-08-14 01:29 pm
edenfalling) wrote2015-08-14 01:29 pm
[Meme] AO3 fics at random
Oh hey, looks like this one is going around again. :-)
I currently have 387 works archived on AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 387 (the first thing I posted*), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it!
*Technically this is not true, because backdating, but it is the oldest work which is the relevant point.
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#187: "Blueprints" [Inception]
#259 and #144: "What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)" [Naruto] and "Narutostuck: The Mother of Necessity" [Homestuck/Naruto fusion]
#227 and #27: "Bluebell" [fairy-tale retelling] and "Mycophilia" [Homestuck]
#167: "Dreams From My Mother" [Black Jewels]
#184: "Lives by Mending" [Darkangel Trilogy]
#66: "Small Favors" [Naruto, specifically the 'Apartment Manager' AU]
#221: "Everything Ends" [Doctor Who with elements from Ender's Game]
#198: "Sparkly Rainbow Blood" [Homestuck]
I currently have 387 works archived on AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 387 (the first thing I posted*), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it!
*Technically this is not true, because backdating, but it is the oldest work which is the relevant point.
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#187: "Blueprints" [Inception]
#259 and #144: "What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)" [Naruto] and "Narutostuck: The Mother of Necessity" [Homestuck/Naruto fusion]
#227 and #27: "Bluebell" [fairy-tale retelling] and "Mycophilia" [Homestuck]
#167: "Dreams From My Mother" [Black Jewels]
#184: "Lives by Mending" [Darkangel Trilogy]
#66: "Small Favors" [Naruto, specifically the 'Apartment Manager' AU]
#221: "Everything Ends" [Doctor Who with elements from Ender's Game]
#198: "Sparkly Rainbow Blood" [Homestuck]
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a Tumblr response, crossposted for archiving purposes
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That would be Blueprints, aka my eight-months-belated fic for Femgenficathon 2011. It's speculative backstory for Ariadne from Inception.
1. I like that I did manage to finish the blasted thing, because it was an idea I very much wanted to see in words and at times I despaired over how hard that was to make happen (particularly considering how short the fic is).
2. I think the central metaphor works pretty well. :-)
3. The first Inception fic I ever wrote was a remix of Sour_Idealist's With Thanks to Apollo, in which Ariadne grew up with her mother, step-father, and younger half-sister. I found that headcanon immensely pleasing (though I couldn't tell you exactly why), but it would have been weird to just steal those particular characters wholesale, so I had to come up with my own variation on that basic scenario. "Blueprints" is where I finally fulfilled that goal. (I also worked in a nod to Ellen Page being Canadian, plus a move to NYC that sets up Ariadne to attend Cornell later on. That ties in to another backstory fic that is still languishing, unfinished, on my computer, in which Ariadne participates in Dragon Day. Someday I really ought to get back to that...)
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1. I still secretly think of this story as the one where the people of Konoha redeem Sasuke through the power of Stockholm syndrome. I am aware that this is inappropriate. It makes me laugh anyway. (Occasionally I regret not calling the story "It Takes a Village" because I cannot think of a more on-the-nose title and the cheesiness would have been terrible and glorious.) More seriously, the story is all about emotional bonds and the reconstruction thereof, and I think I pulled that aspect off very well.
2. I loved getting to play around with world-building and chakra techniques and stuff. I am still very proud of the chakra-infused ink that the Academy teachers use to make sure their students can't mess with their grade books, and how it doubles as a method to let Sasuke read his students' homework. (And then the way he uses it later on to mark where to hit the mountain in order to drop a couple tons of rock on some invaders.) I also very much enjoyed all the stuff about Sasuke's blindness-compensation jutsu, and Sakura's eye exam.
3. ...I'm only allowed three things? Eesh, this is hard! But I guess for today, I will say that my third thing is Sasuke as a teacher, which is not an idea I would ever have though of on my own, but which I loved getting to play with while remixing megyal's work. I think the incongruity was good for Sasuke -- pushing him out of his comfort zone meant he was forced to reevaluate both himself and his surroundings -- and also it ties in very nicely with both the emotional bonds and the new hope/new start aspects of the story.
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144 is Narutostuck: The Mother of Necessity, which is backstory for the 'present day' of my other Narutostuck fics. Basically it's the story of how Rose and Dave came to be born, and a window into what life was like under the old regime before the start of the revolution. (Narutostuck is a Homestuck/Naruto fusion AU, btw.)
1. I think I translated Roxy and Dirk into the Naruto setting pretty well. (Note that these versions are kind of halfway between their alpha kid and beta guardian selves, though in Dirk's case he is much closer to his kid self since he's not being balefully influenced by a possessed juju.)
2. I like that the story is absolutely about love, and equally absolutely NOT about romance.
3. I am very proud of Roxy's practicality and competence -- the way she picks this option to get Dirk out of a tight spot because she already tried the others and they only worked for a little while -- and the way she's determined to make a better world for the children she wants so badly.
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Ooo, that reminds me that I should comment & tell mothlight how much I liked the podfic they did of 'What Isn't Broken (Can Still Be Fixed)'.
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Here's some stuff I like about it:
1. This was one of my early attempts to mimic Patricia Wrede's narrative voice. I didn't hit the mark, but it was a useful exercise and I think the narrative voice I wound up with is kind of charming in its own right (excessive parentheses and all).
2. This is not Prince Ivan's story. It's Princess Bluebell's story, and she never loses her agency.
3. I like the ambiguity of how Bluebell and Ivan deal with the fox's request, respectively; they both have reasons for their choices, and I'm not sure what I would have done in either of their situations. I also like the ambiguity surrounding destinies in general -- things worked out for Bluebell and Ivan in the end, but was it really worth the price? And then of course there's the final ambiguity of whether or not they actually managed to undo the particular narrative pattern of which they were merely the latest iteration. You can tell that my interest in ethics (and my love for open-ended conclusions) goes back a long way.
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#27 is Mycophilia, which is a reaction ficlet to a Paradox Space comic -- specifically "Summerteen Romance." The original version of one page had Tavros reacting to sexual arousal by turning into... kind of a weird banana-chandelier-fountain thing? This later got first censored and then replaced by a patented Dave monologue because people objected to the untagged body horror.
I found the whole thing frankly ridiculous, because Homestuck itself is the epitome of terrible things happening with no warning so why anyone expected a sanctioned spinoff to be any different is beyond me. But the internet is a weird place.
Anyway, what I like about the ficlet:
1. I hadn't written pure reaction fic before, so this was a new experience for me. :-)
2. I love Rose and Kanaya, and it was great fun using them and their voices to discuss that particular bit of over-the-top xeno hilarity.
3. The aside about Alternian zombies and vampires being caused by fungal infections or something similar is a neat bit of headcanon that I picked up from somewhere I do not exactly remember (perhaps lantadyme?) and had always wanted to use.
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I also don't think the ficlets spoil Homestuck itself, since the situations are so wildly different. Obviously there are thematic similarities, and I kept as many elements of the characters' backstories as seemed plausible, but if you try to reconstruct Homestuck from Narutostuck, I don't think you'll get very far. *wry*
I am glad to hear that the podfic is good! (I have never listened to it myself, partly because I have trouble with podfics in general but mostly because listening to my own words read aloud makes me combust in embarrassment.)
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(I love podfics, and I still have trouble listening to someone else's podfic of my work.
(I dunno, it's kind of like getting surprise!cake based on a recipe you made up off the top of your head and posted online? There's the reaction to omg, someone made me a cake, I am not worthy, and then you can't not have lots of opinions about the cake, because you made up the recipe, and you have to let go of the self-conscious desire to want to fiddle with the wording and just enjoy the cake as is. It's like a practice of humility that also makes you float several feet off the ground: logistically challenging, intensely rewarding.)
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1. I have loved the concept of Speakers for the Dead ever since I first encountered it in Card's work, and enjoyed getting to play with it a little.
2. I think Zora (the dead companion) comes across fairly well for someone sketched so briefly and only in absentia. Hopefully she seems like the kind of person one would enjoy watching for a full television season.
3. The last paragraph says exactly what I wanted it to say. It's very rare to catch an idea in words without losing some vital sliver of nuance, but now and then everything just clicks. :D
a Tumblr response, crossposted for archiving purposes
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#198 is Sparkly Rainbow Blood, aka a Homestuck kinkmeme prompt fic where going God Tier made all the human players' bodily fluids the same color as their eyes.
1. I love stories that take a completely ridiculous premise and then treat it seriously. Well, seriously in the sense of thinking about how the characters might actually react to an event or circumstance, not seriously in the sense of no humor at all. "Sparkly Rainbow Blood" is a pretty silly story, in some ways because of my attempts at maintaining emotional verisimilitude. (Example: the first two sections, wherein the kids attempt to discuss the sudden changes to their bodies. *evil grin*)
2. I am still very fond of Dave/Terezi/Karkat, both in general and in this fic. Also the part where everyone assumed somebody else had already told Karkat about the humans' new blood thing and therefore nobody got around to telling him.
3. Gamzee's artistic musings and handful of paintbrushes. :D
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Things I like about this story:
1. I love Wilhelmina. I love her so much. She gets sidelined in canon, which both is and isn't fair -- she's not the main character, and she's not remotely in the right emotional place for a love story during the main trilogy, but I think Bishop could easily have written a short story about her adventures post-Queen of the Darkness and am still disappointed that she didn't. So I was very pleased to write a fic that is all about Wilhelmina and why she's amazing.
2. In canon, Daemon has a weird attitude where he almost seems to blame Wilhelmina for some of Jaenelle's childhood abuse, on the pretext that if Jaenelle hadn't been trying to protect her big sister, she might have escaped sooner and without nearly as much damage. This is understandable -- he feels terrible about Jaenelle's situation and wants to put the blame and anger somewhere -- but also stupid, cruel, and wrong. He also seems to blame Wilhelmina for not protecting Jaenelle in turn, but you know, she did protect her little sister, as much as that was possible. It's not her fault she didn't have phenomenal cosmic powers.
There's also a scene where we learn that Wilhelmina firmly and absolutely does not want Jaenelle to magically touch her mind, even for good purposes like teaching her how to air-walk. Daemon sees how this hurt Jaenelle and interprets it as straight-up rejection... but you know, Wilhelmina is also a victim of terrible childhood abuse. Hers is not the same as Jaenelle's -- it's much less physical, and the emotional abuse takes different flavors, so to speak -- but it's unquestionably there. And I think it makes perfect sense for her to guard the few boundaries she was able to create with irrational fierceness, even against one of the few people she does actually love and trust.
In summary, getting to reinterpret those bits of canon to show Wilhelmina's side of the story -- without ever contradicting Jaenelle's experiences -- is and was important to me.
3. Inventing Adria Delacour and her horrific backstory with Robert Benedict. In particular, I was so pleased when her fatal fever, which I'd thrown in just because fevers are ~dramatic~ and I didn't want to bother thinking of a specific illness, came back and turned out to be dreadfully significant. And then I got to kill Bobby. God that was cathartic. :D
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This is actually slightly weird, because that fic shouldn't be at that position. I edited the file a year or two ago to backdate it to 2010, but while the backdating shows up correctly when you open the fic itself, all lists still act as though it's dated 2012, which is when I posted it to AO3. Apparently AO3 does not cope well with retroactive backdating. *sigh*
Anyway!
1. I like the idea of Aeriel being proactive about Oceanus and its mysteries, instead of just ignoring the planet as a hopeless loss the way Ravenna did.
2. Aeriel and Erin holding hands! <3
3. I am not much use at descriptive imagery, generally speaking, but Darkangel fanfiction gives me an excuse to try. Here, that manifests in the focus on Oceanus's clouds (its abundant water being something the moon notably lacks), and on the warmth of Erin's body (which is a contrast, I suppose, to Aeriel's view of herself as a construct).
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1. I love writing Yukiko and Kakashi interacting. Their teasing and bickering is very relaxing to write, even when it takes the form of pseudo-flirting, because I know that they are never going to have any actual romantic tension. (Readers are of course free to see any subtext they want, but none of it is deliberate on my end.) I also like that they are both competent professionals and respect each other on that level.
2. Yukiko goofs by offering Naruto as a potential co-conspirator in whatever mayhem Kakashi is planning, without realizing that this would play into the villagers' generalized dislike/distrust of him. I think I am sometimes guilty of making her avoid too many potential missteps as Naruto's guardian, so I like this moment where she's distracted and doesn't think of the repercussions.
3. I threw in the line about Tea Country's daimyo and his habit of setting potential heirs against each other solely to provide verisimilitude to Yukiko's upcoming mission, but upon reflection I really like that idea and want to do something more with it someday.
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The Angelline/Benedict household was a gigantic clusterfuck of wrongness on so many different levels, it is amazing anyone got out alive, to say nothing of getting out relatively functional.
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