(my) Secret Slasha 2007
Dec. 31st, 2007 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolinSecret Slasha 2007 authors are revealed. I feel like the fics this year were particularly mediocre (YMMV, of course), which is kind of sad. I really hope one of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
callmesandy's friends wrote her something nice to make up for the Not Good fic she got written for her (not as bad as the one written for Gloss in 2004, but still).
This is the 4th time I've done Secret Slasha since 2003 (I didn't do it 2005) [del.icio.us] and the first time I recall being really excited about my assignment from the get-go, so I feel extra-bad about the fact that I wrote such a shoddy fic. However, since basically no one was gonna read it (and my recipient was a Dropout) I don't feel that guilty.
I wrote "After All," which was Buffy/Dawn, and Ari (the one person besides the recipient I knew would read it) said nice things about it -- and not just because she knew I was the one who wrote it.
I find myself wanting to talk about this fic a lot (even though I still don't think it's all that good), so here goes.
The request I received was: "Buffy/Dawn or Dawn/Willow or Dawn/any"
I immediately e-mailed Ari to be like: "Someone who wasn't you requested Buffy/Dawn."
While I have yet to recover from my S6 Willow Issues and thus have no desire to write her with anyone, "Dawn/any" is pretty much ideal for me (hi, I love Dawn a lot), but I opted for Buffy/Dawn because hello, when else is anyone gonna write that for this girl?
I had the scene of Dawn fisting Buffy, stretching her out, with a glimpse of Buffy in a shiny blue shirt/dress of some sort, basically from the time I got the assignment, tho i r 4 the fael and didn't actually start trying to put it in writing until like a week before deadline.
I'm bad with plot anyway, and trying to figure out anything do with this pairing is a particular challenge.
I had the first scene and the coda written but was under the mistaken impression that there was a word minimum, so I tried to write a morning-after-scene. I actually had snippets of bits where Dawn is the one pushing that they need to talk about it, but the way I ended the first section I realized that it was gonna have to be Buffy who brought it up, which is in and of itself a somewhat out of character push. Partway through writing the second section, _I_ was no longer sold on the pairing, which was problematic.
I was proud of myself for the organic-feeling bit about Buffy not liking any of the guys her sister brought home, with the jealousy and possessiveness laying groundwork for more shippy stuff. I actually went back and inserted some bits into the first sex scene to deal more with the reality since as much as Buffy can be good at staunch denial, getting fucked by her sister is still gonna be weird. I've read and enjoyed this pairing before [del.icio.us], but I think it takes either a lot of plotting work or a serious suspension of disbelief, and I don't really have a problem with the latter in this case but I'm not really good enough to do the former.
I was listening to Dar Williams, hence the title, and restrained myself from including epigraph section headers (which would have been: "loneliness suspended to our own like grappling hooks," "we will push on into that mystery," " it's stupid and it's obvious").
callmesandy's friends wrote her something nice to make up for the Not Good fic she got written for her (not as bad as the one written for Gloss in 2004, but still).This is the 4th time I've done Secret Slasha since 2003 (I didn't do it 2005) [del.icio.us] and the first time I recall being really excited about my assignment from the get-go, so I feel extra-bad about the fact that I wrote such a shoddy fic. However, since basically no one was gonna read it (and my recipient was a Dropout) I don't feel that guilty.
I wrote "After All," which was Buffy/Dawn, and Ari (the one person besides the recipient I knew would read it) said nice things about it -- and not just because she knew I was the one who wrote it.
I find myself wanting to talk about this fic a lot (even though I still don't think it's all that good), so here goes.
The request I received was: "Buffy/Dawn or Dawn/Willow or Dawn/any"
I immediately e-mailed Ari to be like: "Someone who wasn't you requested Buffy/Dawn."
While I have yet to recover from my S6 Willow Issues and thus have no desire to write her with anyone, "Dawn/any" is pretty much ideal for me (hi, I love Dawn a lot), but I opted for Buffy/Dawn because hello, when else is anyone gonna write that for this girl?
I had the scene of Dawn fisting Buffy, stretching her out, with a glimpse of Buffy in a shiny blue shirt/dress of some sort, basically from the time I got the assignment, tho i r 4 the fael and didn't actually start trying to put it in writing until like a week before deadline.
I'm bad with plot anyway, and trying to figure out anything do with this pairing is a particular challenge.
I had the first scene and the coda written but was under the mistaken impression that there was a word minimum, so I tried to write a morning-after-scene. I actually had snippets of bits where Dawn is the one pushing that they need to talk about it, but the way I ended the first section I realized that it was gonna have to be Buffy who brought it up, which is in and of itself a somewhat out of character push. Partway through writing the second section, _I_ was no longer sold on the pairing, which was problematic.
I was proud of myself for the organic-feeling bit about Buffy not liking any of the guys her sister brought home, with the jealousy and possessiveness laying groundwork for more shippy stuff. I actually went back and inserted some bits into the first sex scene to deal more with the reality since as much as Buffy can be good at staunch denial, getting fucked by her sister is still gonna be weird. I've read and enjoyed this pairing before [del.icio.us], but I think it takes either a lot of plotting work or a serious suspension of disbelief, and I don't really have a problem with the latter in this case but I'm not really good enough to do the former.
I was listening to Dar Williams, hence the title, and restrained myself from including epigraph section headers (which would have been: "loneliness suspended to our own like grappling hooks," "we will push on into that mystery," " it's stupid and it's obvious").
no subject
Date: 2008-01-01 07:24 am (UTC)(If this seems overly snarky, please forgive me and blame the third straight day over 100F.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-01 04:24 pm (UTC)Pre-reveal, Ari and I discussed the dynamics of publicly talking about fics received as gifts and I purposely waited until post-reveal to say anything, in part because as something of a self-defense I could say, "I'm unimpressed by this round of stories, and I totally recognize that mine is not very good either."
However, while there are plenty of Your Mileage May Vary fics, I really feel safe in saying that the Secret Slasha fic written for k this year was just Bad. There is almost no characterization and what there is bears basically no resemblance to anything in canon. Just . . . trust me, this is in a totally different league than any mediocre fic you may have written.
(I thought it was like Against The Rules [not officially necessarily, but traditionally] to say less than nice things about Yuletide fics.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-01 11:43 pm (UTC)I read between the lines.
But I did get recc'd once, and by someone whose opinion I respect, so that's enough to make me not unhappy.