Fest Entries Roundup - My Stories
Sep. 12th, 2015 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
argentum_lsFor the first time this year, I find myself without an active exchange. It's a bit of an empty feeling. So, that means it's time for a round-up.
Remixes
Last year, I decided to explore the remix format more, so I've been throwing myself into the ones I can find in hopes of trying to figure out what a remix is even supposed to be. I've tried a prequel, a POV shift, and two different attempts to write the story the way I would have written it (as the directions for remixing say to do). It's been very hit-or-miss. The resulting stories are:
Teen Wolf Remix
Teen Wolf - Scott, Stiles, & Lydia - Symbolic (A Sunday Afternoon Remix) for venis_envy - 1040 words - Some school assignments turn out to have unanticipated real life applicability.
Remix Redux
Arrow - Felicity/Harley - Staying in (A Girls Night Remix) for crookedspoon - 2435 words - Felicity tried to make plans to do nothing. Somehow, even those plans got canceled.
The Tomorrow People '92 - Ami & Adam - Natural Patterns (An Artful Remix) forestirose - 843 words - The Tomorrow Peoples' connection is deeper than most, yet no bonds can hold forever.
FemmeRemix
Teen Wolf - Allison & Kate - where you belong (the bedtime story remix) for verity - 1475 words - Sometimes her parents pack her off to bed with rushed goodnight kisses. Her father makes sure the nightlight is plugged in, her favorite stuffed dog tucked in her arms, then stands in the doorway and stares at her for a long, long time before wishing her one last goodnight and stepping away. Those nights always feel different to Allison, unsettled, and she finds her body curling into a tight ball under the covers while she waits for sleep to find her. Those nights, she dreams about monsters.
Rarelywritten
Like a lot of other people, I chose to ignore the name change and continue to treat this as the rarewomen exchange. My offers included my current active fandoms and the '92 TP because there're very few times that I don't throw in with the TP. Surprisingly, I matched withmalinaldarose for the second year in a row. Last year was on the '73 TP, this year the '92 version. Her requests included a prompt for a story about Lisa, but, since I've already written that one, I decided to try the prompt for Jade.
Jade's an interesting challenge because she appears briefly in one serial and stars in another, but is only a TP for about the last ten minutes of the show, so we never really get to see her in the TP role. The show was, naturally, canceled after Jade's serial.
I don't remember what my original plan was, but there was an actual plot to it. I think I wanted to play with Jade having to figure out how to deal with being the famous person at her school, on account of being the only one there from her village and therefore the only one who had the gossip first-hand on what had happened. Like most of my ideas, this idea wouldn't gel. What I ended up writing was an epilogue that ends where the original plan was supposed to start. I always feel disappointed when my entries in exchanges are barely over word count and/or when they don't do much, but I think this one turned out OK.
Adventure formalinaldarose - 1829 words - After breaking out, Jade has a lot of questions. The answers aren't what she's expecting.
Fkficfest
Continuing the trend of getting matched to people I've written for before, this exchange sawpj1228's turn. Her prompts are always excellent, and yet I find FK to be an incredibly difficult fandom to write in. The story premise was easy enough to generate, once I selected a prompt, but the writing refused to cooperate. The original plan started with Nick and Schanke in the Caddy. Or it started with Nick and Natalie in the morgue, with Natalie breaking the news of the vampire murders to Nick. Or it started with Nick listening to a micro-recorder that he finds in his jacket and learning that the way he remembered the night did not match the recording. There was also a version where Natalie gives Nick the micro-recorder because they both think there's something hincky going on. And there was a version where the Enforcers attack Natalie right in front of Nick, which is his impetus for going to LaCroix. The key was finding the sentence that's now the opening line and structuring the story from there. It was also necessary to allow LaCroix's radio show to exist outside the events of the story. I threw the first mostly-completed draft at bethskink, then did my best to figure out how to incorporate her feedback without rewriting the entire story, since we were already past deadline. The result, with bethskink weighing in on the title as well, is:
Mortal Mistakes - 4175 words - After Nick is cured, his vampire problems only get worse and he is lead to the one choice he never wanted to make.
Crossovering
And the repeat assignees continued here withteaotter, my recipient in this exchange last year, too. With all the fandoms that I was offering and all the fandoms that she was, we matched on exactly two: The Tomorrow People (2013) and Arrow. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen any of her other requests or I would have picked some other combination.
This assignment is the one that should have been the hardest because I've already written over 40K of words between two TP/Arrow crossovers, one of which is still ongoing and probably has another 40K left in it. Figuring out an idea for a crossover between these two fandoms that didn't overlap with my existing ones was an issue...for all of about an hour. Since last year, I've had a little more time to learn what teaotter likes in stories, and one of those is the women characters, so I decided to write a story about them.
The original plan was for Thea to get framed (as she does in the final version) and for Laurel to lawyer up for her. Cara was going to be brought in posing as the interpreter for the one of the OC bad guys after he's caught and being held in police custody. The only thing I couldn't quite figure out was how to end the story. But then I started to write it, and ran into another problem: the story refused to happen in past tense. I almost always write in past tense, though there are a couple major exceptions to that that I've done either for experimental purposes or because the story wrote itself that way. So, I gave in and let the present tense happen.
The story went through its usual changes, then bogged down on the end when I hit a point of characters moving from place to place for no real reason except to say something clever and, ultimately, get to the police station. A bit of whinging at htbthomas helped me figure out how to simplify the story and wrap it up. Which is how I ended up with:
Imposter Syndrome - 5866 words - When a person who looks just like her goes on a spree robbing jewelry stores, Thea comes comes under suspicion as the thief. To clear her name, she needs the help of someone who can see past the disguises that people wear. Fortunately, Cara Coburn is in town, searching for a new Tomorrow Person--one she has reason to believe is Thea.
And...I wasn't able to completely divorce this crossover from my others. I left in two points of connection. I'd like to think they're oblique. I guess I'll find out.
Remixes
Last year, I decided to explore the remix format more, so I've been throwing myself into the ones I can find in hopes of trying to figure out what a remix is even supposed to be. I've tried a prequel, a POV shift, and two different attempts to write the story the way I would have written it (as the directions for remixing say to do). It's been very hit-or-miss. The resulting stories are:
Teen Wolf Remix
Teen Wolf - Scott, Stiles, & Lydia - Symbolic (A Sunday Afternoon Remix) for venis_envy - 1040 words - Some school assignments turn out to have unanticipated real life applicability.
Remix Redux
Arrow - Felicity/Harley - Staying in (A Girls Night Remix) for crookedspoon - 2435 words - Felicity tried to make plans to do nothing. Somehow, even those plans got canceled.
The Tomorrow People '92 - Ami & Adam - Natural Patterns (An Artful Remix) for
estirose - 843 words - The Tomorrow Peoples' connection is deeper than most, yet no bonds can hold forever.FemmeRemix
Teen Wolf - Allison & Kate - where you belong (the bedtime story remix) for verity - 1475 words - Sometimes her parents pack her off to bed with rushed goodnight kisses. Her father makes sure the nightlight is plugged in, her favorite stuffed dog tucked in her arms, then stands in the doorway and stares at her for a long, long time before wishing her one last goodnight and stepping away. Those nights always feel different to Allison, unsettled, and she finds her body curling into a tight ball under the covers while she waits for sleep to find her. Those nights, she dreams about monsters.
Rarelywritten
Like a lot of other people, I chose to ignore the name change and continue to treat this as the rarewomen exchange. My offers included my current active fandoms and the '92 TP because there're very few times that I don't throw in with the TP. Surprisingly, I matched with
malinaldarose for the second year in a row. Last year was on the '73 TP, this year the '92 version. Her requests included a prompt for a story about Lisa, but, since I've already written that one, I decided to try the prompt for Jade.Jade's an interesting challenge because she appears briefly in one serial and stars in another, but is only a TP for about the last ten minutes of the show, so we never really get to see her in the TP role. The show was, naturally, canceled after Jade's serial.
I don't remember what my original plan was, but there was an actual plot to it. I think I wanted to play with Jade having to figure out how to deal with being the famous person at her school, on account of being the only one there from her village and therefore the only one who had the gossip first-hand on what had happened. Like most of my ideas, this idea wouldn't gel. What I ended up writing was an epilogue that ends where the original plan was supposed to start. I always feel disappointed when my entries in exchanges are barely over word count and/or when they don't do much, but I think this one turned out OK.
Adventure for
malinaldarose - 1829 words - After breaking out, Jade has a lot of questions. The answers aren't what she's expecting.Fkficfest
Continuing the trend of getting matched to people I've written for before, this exchange saw
pj1228's turn. Her prompts are always excellent, and yet I find FK to be an incredibly difficult fandom to write in. The story premise was easy enough to generate, once I selected a prompt, but the writing refused to cooperate. The original plan started with Nick and Schanke in the Caddy. Or it started with Nick and Natalie in the morgue, with Natalie breaking the news of the vampire murders to Nick. Or it started with Nick listening to a micro-recorder that he finds in his jacket and learning that the way he remembered the night did not match the recording. There was also a version where Natalie gives Nick the micro-recorder because they both think there's something hincky going on. And there was a version where the Enforcers attack Natalie right in front of Nick, which is his impetus for going to LaCroix. The key was finding the sentence that's now the opening line and structuring the story from there. It was also necessary to allow LaCroix's radio show to exist outside the events of the story. I threw the first mostly-completed draft at bethskink, then did my best to figure out how to incorporate her feedback without rewriting the entire story, since we were already past deadline. The result, with bethskink weighing in on the title as well, is:Mortal Mistakes - 4175 words - After Nick is cured, his vampire problems only get worse and he is lead to the one choice he never wanted to make.
Crossovering
And the repeat assignees continued here with
teaotter, my recipient in this exchange last year, too. With all the fandoms that I was offering and all the fandoms that she was, we matched on exactly two: The Tomorrow People (2013) and Arrow. Unfortunately, I hadn't seen any of her other requests or I would have picked some other combination. This assignment is the one that should have been the hardest because I've already written over 40K of words between two TP/Arrow crossovers, one of which is still ongoing and probably has another 40K left in it. Figuring out an idea for a crossover between these two fandoms that didn't overlap with my existing ones was an issue...for all of about an hour. Since last year, I've had a little more time to learn what teaotter likes in stories, and one of those is the women characters, so I decided to write a story about them.
The original plan was for Thea to get framed (as she does in the final version) and for Laurel to lawyer up for her. Cara was going to be brought in posing as the interpreter for the one of the OC bad guys after he's caught and being held in police custody. The only thing I couldn't quite figure out was how to end the story. But then I started to write it, and ran into another problem: the story refused to happen in past tense. I almost always write in past tense, though there are a couple major exceptions to that that I've done either for experimental purposes or because the story wrote itself that way. So, I gave in and let the present tense happen.
The story went through its usual changes, then bogged down on the end when I hit a point of characters moving from place to place for no real reason except to say something clever and, ultimately, get to the police station. A bit of whinging at htbthomas helped me figure out how to simplify the story and wrap it up. Which is how I ended up with:
Imposter Syndrome - 5866 words - When a person who looks just like her goes on a spree robbing jewelry stores, Thea comes comes under suspicion as the thief. To clear her name, she needs the help of someone who can see past the disguises that people wear. Fortunately, Cara Coburn is in town, searching for a new Tomorrow Person--one she has reason to believe is Thea.
And...I wasn't able to completely divorce this crossover from my others. I left in two points of connection. I'd like to think they're oblique. I guess I'll find out.
