Three dollars and some change

I have had a very interesting few days, writing-wise. I had been noodling on an idea for a while when, maybe three days ago, I started wondering if I might be able to do use the premise of the Hour of the Wolf (my Teen Wolf/MCU timetravel long-lost family story feat. Allison Argent) on something related to Anita Blake.

Note: It took me a whole day to remember had already done that in 2005 with Switchback, a story I didn't import over to AO3 as it's incomplete. (You can find it here; cw: rape)

Sometimes people say they only tell one story… and I just re-read Switchback and realized that I didn't create something new with Hour of the Wolf; I'd taken my one story and applied it to Teen Wolf.

Anyway.

A few days ago, when the idea occurred to me to apply the HotW premise to Anita Blake, I went all in, I was writing, I was plotting, and I had over 6,000 words together by the time I managed to think my way through to the end of the story…. And then I stopped. I realized that I absolutely do not want to write this story as it's set because there's no chance of a hopeful ending. The story starts with irreparable loss, and there's no way to fix that.

So I stopped.

In the interests of transparency (and because I like throwing dark-haired girls and their preternatural sidekicks back in time), I've posted what I have written below the cut:

( Read more... )

For the Ask Me Anything December meme - Day #2

The question today comes from schneefink: What are your favorite kinds of AU and why?

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Crossovers, obviously, but we’ll come back to that.

In a move that will come as no surprise to anyone who has read my collected works, domestic AU and found family AUs top out my list. I also love messing with details in any universe just a little bit, so for Yuri on Ice, it would be a ballet AU where Yuuri stuck with dance instead of skating.

For the former, it has to do with building relationships (which is what fanfic is all about and I will fight a body on this) and exploring more about the characters themselves. Also found family is wonderful and the best part of crossovers is saying “well of course these characters are already connected it makes perfect sense the set-up is all there in canon so let’s just go with it shall we).

The little detail swap AUs have to do with minor tweaks to how a character’s life and path turned out, and looking at how they will still make these deep relationships with others even though some parts of their life turned out differently.

But going into the way-back machine, I cut my teeth writing crossover fanfic, and it has a lot to do with my love of remix culture – taking the really cool elements of two (or more) things and smooshing them together and making it work. Because when you can figure out how to make it work? (Like how to put together Anita Blake and Harry Potter and make it work?) that is an amazing feeling.