Otter's Rock

Title: They Say
Word Count: 200
Fandom: Babylon 5/Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Challenge: #83: Virtue and Vice

( They say )





Title: On our own terms
Word Count: 100
Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles/Angel: The Series
Challenge: #83: Virtue and Vice

( On our own terms )





Title: White Knights
Word Count: 100
Fandom: Batman: the Dark Knight/Angel: The Series
Challenge: #83: Virtue and Vice

( White Knights )

You know, the one I keep saying I've started work on again? (The one that's not from the Biopsych prompt? ;) ) It's now at fifty-four pages, double spaced. 16k words. And I've been debating about whether it's long enough to need a b-plot, and I keep thinking of other emotional threads that need to get woven through, and that's what keeps stalling me. I don't outline and I write linearly (can't write piecemeal, have tried it and it does not work). When I realize an emotional resonance/theme whatever needs to get brought out, I can't just tell myself I'll put it in later and continue writing; it won't fit into the story from there on out properly if I do, and I'll end up having to tweak the whole thing instead of a few pieces here and there. (Believe me, I've tried.) I have to go back and edit it in, which then gets me out of writing mode and into editing mode, and I get bogged down. Then a while later (weeks, months, whatever--this thing's been my main WIP since January 20, 2007) I get the itch to write more and I add a few pages until I realize that my hindbrain has spun up something else in the meantime that needs to get put in. Most of it is just adding a line here and there, tweaking paragraphs--nothing major, but it takes time and mental energy and gets me out of writing mode and into editing mode. Through it all, I've had this feeling that it really is long enough to need some kind of B plot, and I've been trying to ignore that because since the main plot is an emotional plot the B plot should probably be an action plot, and I suck at action. (This is why I don't tend to write long stuff--I suck at writing action, and the longer a story is the greater the probability that the logic of the plot will demand action to be written.) I have just realized I am an idiot.

Yes, the story requires more action than the angsting it currently has. No, it does not need Lois and Clark to go out on a limb reporting and have Lex Luthor/Mr. Mxy/evil whatevers try to kidnap/kill them. It doesn't even need to have Lois and Clark working on investigating something relatively ordinary. The story isn't about Lois and Clark. It's about Richard. What it needs are flashbacks to earlier events that set up the stuff Richard is angsting about in the main emotional plot. That will be much easier to write, yay. (But I've still thrown myself out of writing mode and into editing mode again on this story, so it's not going to get started tonight.)

Anyway, to whet your appetite and finally get some of this out where people can see it, ( here's the first scene as it stands now. )

And now I get to talk about my story some. Woo-hoo.

First off, if you've never seen the movie Big Fish, you need to get it on Netflix or something. It's a great movie about--well, about a lot of things actually. Mostly about storytelling and reality, and about the relationship between fathers and sons, and the problem of the unreliable narrator. It was directed by Tim Burton, stars Ewan McGregor, Albert Finney, Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter, and Danny Devito. It's an awesome movie, well made.

Big Fish is about a man named Edward Bloom, who tells incredible and fantastic stories about his life, and his son Will who believes that all the stories are lies and just wants to get to the truth while his father is dying of cancer. The movie is a series of Edward's stories interwoven with bits of Will talking to and about his father. Will eventually accepts the stories for what they are as a part of his father whether or not they're strictly factually accurate. And through the movie (especially at the end) you find out that while the stories are certainly exaggerated, the fantastic people Edward claims to have known throughout his life are all real people who show up at his funeral. Despite his acceptance of his father's storytelling, and the appearance of people he thought his father only made up, Will still believes him to be the ultimate unreliable narrator.

Anyway, at one point Will goes to visit a woman (Jenny) he believes his father had an affair with (he finds the deed to her house in some of his father's papers). He asks her, she says no she didn't, and tells a story of her relationship with Eddie. Despite logical inconsistencies and fantasy aspects (which Jenny tell him come from Eddie's storytelling, when Will questions her), Will accepts her story at face value. Because he does, the viewer is supposed to, as well, because the movie is set up to contrast Edward-the-unreliable-narrator and Will-the-reliable-narrator. But the irony is, Will is almost as unreliable a narrator as his father is, if in different ways. Will's absolute belief in his father's unreliability blinds him to the truth behind it, and his desire to learn the truth leads him to believe Jenny despite the fact that her story is just as fantastic and logically inconsistent as some of the ones his father tells. And because of the way the movie is told from his point of view, I never noticed his unreliability as a narrator (which introduces the probability of Jenny's unreliability as a narrator) until my yuletide assignment made me go back and watch the movie with Jenny's point of view in mind. It was amazing the difference that made.

Anyway, I had so much fun writing this story. Like the movie, it's also about the ways in which stories impact reality and vice versa. It's also about growing up, and learning to control your own life, and about life in a small southern town, and the relationships between men and women.

The Storyteller (or the LJ version)

What I should be working on, fic-wise:

*this year's sg_rarepairings entry (1400 words done, no idea how long it will turn out to be, probably at least two times as long as it is now)

*the four prompts from this round that don't have stories written for them yet. One of the ones yet to be written really interests me, two are so-so, one doesn't inspire me at all and may just be quietly dropped.

What I am working on: the post-Superman Returns story that's been sitting on my hard drive since January of 2007. (No, ljs_lj, not the Biopsych plot bunny, the other one that's six months older than that one.) Have finally figured out what I hope is the last elephant between me and finishing it, then will send it off to beta to see what someone else thinks of it. (It's been sitting in my head and been re-thought so many times I'm not quite sure about it.)

I get people all the time who ask me to write sequels to things I'm probably never going to write sequels to. My response has always been "if you want a sequel, feel free to write one." It has come to my attention that I should probably make this clear in a more general, public forum, so the following is now posted to my user profile. The formal stuff was taken from the official Creative Commons site, with appropriate donation; the last paragraph was taken from synecdochic.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

You may alter, adapt, remix, re-vision, perform, reproduce, or transform any of my work in any way, shape, or form, as long as you include a reference to beatrice_otter (and/or http://beatrice_otter.livejournal.com) and let me know so that I can enjoy it, too.

Once something's done and posted, any kind of discussion, commentary, critique, dissection, etc is welcome, whether it be here, elsewhere, what-have-you. Need an example for the meta point you're making? Feel free to pick something I wrote to little pieces, and I mean that in both the literary-dissection sense or in the more typically-used send of the word "critique", namely, the pointing-out of what didn't work for you in the story.

gateverse_remix is open, you should all go read the great SG-1 and Atlantis remixes. butterflykiki wrote The Weight of Non-Existent Years (The Gravity Remix) for me. I wrote an almost 13k-word Sam fic.

Title: Thine Own Self (the Lady, be Good Remix)
Author: </a></b></a>beatrice_otter
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Rating: PG-13
Characters: Samantha Carter
Word Count: 12,962
Written for: Christi (</a></b></a>daisycm83) for </a></b></a>gateverse_remix.
Betaed by: the awesome </a></b></a>redbyrd_sgfic
Original story: On Your Mind
Summary: Sam’s always a good girl. Except when she isn’t.

Part One
Part Two

Title: Survivors
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Doctor Who/Stargate: Atlantis
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: some violence
Spoilers: early season 4 SGA, season 3 New Who
Word Count: 7,402
Written For: Tali (aworldinside) for the Multiverse 5000 (multiverse2004)
Betad by: lilbakht
Summary: The Doctor doesn’t know why he’s here, but he knows it’s not an ordinary stop.

( “This is all just a misunderstanding,” the Doctor protested )

Title: What I'm Afraid Of
Author: beatrice_otter
Summary: An hour in the life of Owen Lars
Rating: G
Fandom: Star Wars
Characters: Uncle Owen, Luke
Word Count: 1,183
Betaed by: redbyrd_sgfic

( What I'm Afraid Of )

Is there anyone who would be able to beta an Atlantis/Doctor Who crossover, and get it back to me tomorrow if I sent it to them today? It mostly needs help with plot and characterization, and a double check to see if I'm being too wordy.

It's for the Multiverse 5000, and it's due the 30th. I can get the first draft done, but it doesn't feel like it's "clicked," to me. I don't know if it just needs some polishing or if there's something that needs to be fixed. Or if I'm being a nervous writer panicking over a deadline.

Title: Blood Will Tell
Word Count: 100
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Challenge: sg_rarepairings fic battle.
Spoilers: Episode 10x19 "Dominion"

Adria had little time to spare as the only Ori—a galaxy-wide war took much attention, even for an ascended being—but when she had time, she watched Vala. Her mother.

Not current events; others in the SGC were better for spying on. No, Adria watched her mother’s past. It amused her. Vala had been worshipped, had deceived her worshippers. If Vala had not chosen to become a goddess, no Goa’uld remained entirely free of the host’s influence. Once freed, Vala had used that worship on more than one occasion to her own profit.

Adria was just better at it.

Title: The Weight of Non-Existent Years
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Stargate: SG-1
Rating: G
Characters: Teal’c, Sam Carter
Warnings: none
Spoilers: Unending
Word Count: 683
Written For: choc_fic Round II, February 27
Prompt: Teal'c/Sam (gen or ship): sparring - weight of non-existent years
Betaed by: redbyrd_sgfic


( The day before Lieutenant Colonel Samantha Carter leaves for her new post in the Pegasus galaxy, Teal'c comes to her and asks if she will spar with him. )

So I'm trying to get my 500 words/day in on the fic I'm mostly working on now, a post-Superman Returns fic with Kara Zor-El (Supergirl), and I've realized that my seminary classwork has seriously affected this. Among other things we're doing in Systematic Theology is studying "theologies of liberation," which include perspectives from just about every oppressed group you can imagine. I was writing Kara's perspective and all of a sudden there was all this stuff about voicelessness and the way language shapes thoughts/identity and cultural imperialism in there that I had no clue about until I started writing ten minutes ago but seriously makes sense from what we know of Krypton. (Not that she can really articulate it, atm.) This is not the first such revelation I've had with this fic. However, I think it will require serious betaing when I'm done with it because I'm too close to it, and can't tell if I'm being too heavy with it or too oblique. Also because I'm a white middle-class American female young enough to have encountered no serious gender discrimination in her life, either practically or theoretically, so I would kind of like someone who has experienced such things check out the whole perspective of the oppressed thing Kara's sort of sprouted (not that she counts herself as oppressed, mind). But that'll be a while. 6,000 words in and they haven't even left the Fortress, yet.

Title: In Another Life
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Rating: G
Characters: Kendra, Giles
Warnings: none
Spoilers: What’s My Line? Part II
Word Count: 100
Written For: choc_fic Round II, February 14
Prompt: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Kendra/Giles: nerd love - she could have been a scholar in another life


( In Another Life )

Title: Primum Non Nocere
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Babylon 5
Rating: PG
Character: Doctor Stephen Franklin
Warnings: none
Spoilers: Season 4 Civil War arc
Word Count: 716
Written for: choc_fic Round II, February 12
Prompt: Babylon 5, Doctor Stephen Franklin: fighting the Shadows.  First, do no harm.

Title: Congratulations, Counselor, it's a Boy
Word Count: 100
Fandom: BtVS/Star Trek: The Next Generation
Challenge: #72: Forgotten and Remembered
Notes: ends during the TNG episode The Child, in which an alien energy being impregnates Counselor Troi.



All mortals, including Dawn Summers, die eventually. The Key is not mortal.

When its shell dies, the Key wanders the universe, reconnecting with others of its own kind. The Key remembers the joys of life spent dancing among stars, galaxies, universes, the fabric of existence laid out before it.

The Key forgets demons and hellgods, vampires and slayers, faces of loved ones. Flesh does not matter to energy.

But at last, it stumbles across a metal container full of air called Enterprise, full of mortals. It remembers a thing called “home” and thinks, perhaps I’ll be a boy, this time.

Title: Lost Tales: Earth
Word Count: 100
Fandom: Babylon 5/Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Challenge: #72: Forgotten and Remembered
Spoilers: Babylon 5: The Lost Tales: Voices in the Dark

(  The Pope wishes to meet us.  )

Title: Absolution
Author: beatrice_otter
Fandom: Battlestar Galactica
Rating: PG
Characters: Boomer, Bill Adama
Warnings: None
Spoilers: Crossroads II.  This will be jossed as soon as the new season starts, I know.
Word Count: 2500
Written For: princessofg

( A year after they settle on Earth, Sharon asks to see Admiral Bill Adama. )