Progress on my '23 fanfic goals

[brightknightie]

Posted so far this year. I've managed to complete and post 2 "just because" fanfic stories so far this year. I'd hoped to complete a third this month and post about them together -- "3 things make a post?" -- but it doesn't look like I'll make it, so the unmatched pair can be this installment.

My deep and wide thanks to Skieswideopen and Sharpest_asp for beta-reading and sharing questions and recommendations for improvement, and to Malinaldarose for reading and commenting. ♥ Speaking only for my own, stories are so very much better after they've been mirrored back through a reader's/editor's eyes and encouragement to hopefully find and fix the wrong angles. And a great thing about "just because" stories, as opposed to fest stories, is the time available to make those fixes.

• Pokémon GO: "No Wish For Such Triumphs"
  (G, gen, 1.2K words). When Candela defeats Giovanni in a pokémon battle, he rewards her. But his gift is bait in a snare.
• Battlestar Galactica (1978): "Allow Me To Demonstrate"
  (G, gen, 2.5K words). On one of her first missions with Blue Squadron, Sheba feels she has something to prove.

Of course these are short, few, and trivial when compared to what many people -- including many of you all! -- regularly share. I'm not trying to suggest otherwise. I'm only saying, I wrote these; they're more than I've accomplished on this front in many years; and I felt okay about both of them having something different and worthy to offer anyone in their respective fandoms who chooses to read them.

WIP sentences. Various WIP memes always seem to be running around. Here's a mild crack at one of those memes: The currently drafted earliest and latest sentences of all my seriously-in-progress works-in-progress:

D&DC: "The Map in Adarbrent Manor"
- “I told you so,” Sheila sighed.
- She felt almost like she’d just gotten a hug.

BSG78: "All Machinery Now"
- “Boxey!” Adama exclaimed heartily as Troy approached.
- Still, he turned on the ancient tools and stared out at the stars.

HL/MCU xover: "Legacies"
- Joe Dawson stepped off the jet bridge into the Buffalo-Niagara airport.
- Returned, looking for their respective Highlanders, they’d found each other.

I'm also longing to plunge into Journey to the West fanfic, but I feel I must in good conscience finish reading the actual entire hundred-chapter Ming Dynasty novel in translation first, and... let's just say that as much as I truly enjoy it -- and have read and listened to abridgements and summaries and enjoyed them -- I cannot speed-run it any more than I can anything else late-medieval/early-modern (long-nineteenth-century, yes, sure! early modern, not a chance). But! In preparation, just in case, my list of possible JotW fanfic ideas currently runs 21 bullets from:
- Why was there a mansion behind the waterfall?
- What if a monster decided to just eat Tripitaka before Monkey took the monster down, instead of planning a banquet and inviting the monster's parents to come visit to dine on the holy monk?


In other fanfic news, we have a fkficfest '23 schedule now. Check it out. Nominations open on March 31. You don't have to intend to write to nominate. Come play?

Comments

[senmut]

I am celebrating alongside you! You take time and you polish your fics ... difference between my dime-store novel approach and your NYT bestsellers one!

[brightknightie]

Thank you!

And what a generous metaphor! I'm confident that your stories bring a lot of joy to a lot of people when they need it... perhaps not unlike dime-store novels, in that way, after all!

[celli]

I'm so excited that you've posted your two "just because" fics, I know how much you've really wanted to do that. Your work isn't trivial at all! It's exactly what you need to do, just like everyone else's, and it deserves to be celebrated.

I love that you have 21 bullet points for JotW, and you'll have to report back on how many you have after you're done reading the novel!

[brightknightie]

Thank you very much!

My JotW bullets are currently accumulating at about one per chapter. Sometimes questions do get answered later in the novel and scrub one from the list, but... no artificial shortages! ;-) Also, I'm listening to 2 very different podcasts that are discussing one chapter per episode, and it's a tiny bit like belonging to 2 wildly different book groups -- one that aspires to be a graduate seminar on Ming Dynsty literature and one that refers affectionately to the protagonist as "our hyper murder monkey" and to the boddhisatva Guanyin as "our omnicompetent trans queen."

[greerwatson]

Congratulations on posting your stories!

[brightknightie]

Thank you!

[malinaldarose]

Ooo, all three of those WIPs look intriguing, especially that last one.

[brightknightie]

Thank you very much!

The third one is the story I began for the December '22 HL fest, then realized I couldn't finish it in time. I meant to go back to it immediately after, but... the momentum drifted away, things happened. Maybe I should rewatch highlights of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to get back into it... it's not a crossover with TFatWS directly (it's a Spidey cross), but includes references to some "normal people" stuff that only that series dug into.

[malinaldarose]

That seems like a reasonable place to start.