Fest Entries Roundup part 2

[argentum_ls]

I step away for a minute and a whole week passes. Why does that keep happening?

Anyway, the last of the fests for 2014 were hlh_shortcuts, yuletide, and fandom_stocking. Unfortunately, I was not able to produce anything for f_s as RL got in the way of that. The other ones, though, I think made up for it.


hlh_shortcuts

For this year's Highlander fest, I was matched with unovis, who really wanted a Duncan/Methos story. This, alas, is not a pairing I feel comfortable writing, so I opted to follow through on her alternate details and try for an Amanda story. I'm playing a lot with supernatural characters getting their secrets forcibly revealed, so that's the path I wanted to send Amanda down. This is the story I kicked off NaNoWriMo with, and it seemed to be a good choice--for the first two days. Then the story went skittering off the tracks and I couldn't figure out how to bring it back on. Amanda gets shot in public, dies, revives and walks away? No, that's not right, though the scene with Duncan yelling at her on the phone was funny Amanda dies, revives, and escapes down to the basement to wait out the seige, after which she'll slip away and start a new life? No, also not right. I couldn't figure this one out, so I shelved the story and moved on to the other projects. Eventually, as they will, deadlines caught up with me. Now I no longer had time to even contemplate the obvious direction of the setup, which really begged a serious chapter fic to support it. That's when brightknightie stepped in and saved the day. A few PMs back and forth in which I chatted about what I wanted to do and she asked me some important questions about what that would all mean considering Amanda-as-a-character and the Highlander mythos in general, and suddenly I had a new direction: rather than letting Amanda slip away, let's force her to face the consequences. I also didn't have time to write the actual facing of consequences, but at least I could get all the pieces in play.

In the end, there's only one Immortal revealed to the world in An Audience of Everyone - 4600 words - PG-13.

The title is one of those simple statements of truth.



Yuletide - assignment

Which brings us to the last fest of the year and the one that turned out to hold all kinds of surprises. For starters, I was matched again to tptigger. I swear I had nothing to do with this, especially since I'd already written her two other TP stories in 2014. The match gave me four possible fandoms to play with that I'd already written in, so I decided to take the path of least-obviousness and write a Tower Prep story (the other TP fandom that we share). This plan was all well and good until I started canon review and re-discovered why I don't routinely write in this fandom: the canon is so layered and so dense, with so many questions and little in the way of reasonable answers, that there's not a lot of room for someone on the outside to jump in.

It didn't help that all of her Tomorrow People prompts needed filling. I seriously debated doing short fills for every single fandom on her list. Damn those fannish eyes. But then I decided to start with her prompt for TP '13, which asked for an Irene story centering on Irene being a biologist and getting her powers back, and wouldn't aliens be a good thing to bring into this universe? I already had ideas I was playing with about adapting the TP '73 serial "The Blue and the Green" for the '13 universe, which this prompt was practically begging for.

The other prompts had no chance after that.

I managed to get a complete rough draft (barring a couple scenes that didn't go together and a fairly large gap toward the end that I couldn't figure out how to close) before the month ended, and then I had to let the story rest for a couple weeks. When I finally got back to it, I was surprised by how little work most of it needed to become readable--except, of course, for the two huge gaps which required some major rewrites, though a lot of what ended up in them had already been written and only needed to be moved around and reworked. The bulk of the final chapter 6, for example, was originally written as chapter 2. Edits went right up until the day before reveals, then resumed after as I started to notice rough spots and errant typos.

The end result is: ninety-nine decision street - 27K, PG

The title comes from the song "99 Red Balloons." While searching for a title, I wanted something that hinted at the role of balloons in the story without giving it away. htbthomas suggested the song (in its English version), and on reading over the lyrics, I realized that the whole thing fit rather well. Many of the lines were tried on, and "decision street" was chosen for how it fit the theme of the story.



Yuletide - treat

I started a lot of treats. So many. And some got substantially developed before I had to back off and focus on finalizing the assignment story. The only one I was able to finish was for htbthomas, and only because I really wanted to thank her for all the help she gave with my assignment. From suggesting events in the story, to helping me piece everything together, to editing, and even to generating the title, the story needed her.

I'd started this story for her as a crossovering treat, and ran out of time to finish it then. She'd offered a prompt then for a story about The Listener investigating a case where the culprit could teleport. I decided to use this prompt as a vehicle to explore a background character--all the advantages of an OC with the added benefit of having a canon name and presence. Plus, it was a good chance to play the two sets of characters' powers off each other.

The final story was: Locked Out - 3600 words - G

The title is a play on the story being a locked-room mystery and on how the story ends.