Fic Meme making the rounds
Aug. 11th, 2013 11:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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ginger_veela at Self-Made Meme.Okay, to keep this under control so I don't have to sort through lines from 40 stories, I'm going to stick to HP fic only for this meme. :)
1) Shortest fic you've ever written. Unforgivable, a 500-word prompt fill for
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melusinahp's One Prompt, Many Writers challenge. The prompt was: “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” ―Federico García Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma.2) Longest fic you've ever written. In HP, I believe my longest is also my most recent, Kiss the Joy (Until the Sun Rise), which is only ~38k. I also just realized isn't yet on my fic Master List! *scurries off to rectify*
3) Your best fic. Kiss the Joy is up there, but I don't have enough distance from it yet to truly decide where it would fit in this sort of ranking. As such, I'll go with The Shoemaker and the Elves. I think I achieved the fairy tale feel that I set out to write and I loved how I was able to use language in it, at least through the first half of the story. Time constraints compromised my ability to play with language in the second half as much as I would have liked, but, overall, this one would probably be my choice.
4) Your worst fic. I'm going to go with Redwood. Heh. I wrote it on a cross-country flight from Maine to San Diego. It's a short, cracky comedy. It has its fun moments, and it was a blast to write, but it was never intended to be anything more than it is. It's was also one of my earlier stories.
5) Your most underrated fic. Perhaps my first fest fic, Everything Forgotten (To Memory). I'm think it may have gotten a bit lost in the shuffle and the original summary made it seem a bit angstier than it actually was, which I'm sure didn't help.
6) Your most popular fic. Twitter poll suggests my most popular HP fic is Kiss the Joy. (My actual most popular fic is from another fandom.)
7) Your favorite fic. Oh, gosh. Well, my favorite to write was Tooth Fairy Fights and Wisdom Teeth Wars: Draco and Harry's Great Big Dental Adventure, so I'll go with that one here. I'm not sure I've ever had more fun writing. :)
8) Your fic that makes people laugh. Ha. I write lots of comedy so this is particularly difficult. I would find it hard to choose between Tooth Fairy Fights and The Ugly Duckling.
9) Your fic that makes people cry. I think probably Kiss the Joy once again. I don't write a lot of hard angst so there aren't many to choose from.
10) Pairing you've written the most. Harry/Draco
11) Pairing you've written the least (but at least once). Let's go with the solo Harry gen ficlet He Walked.
12) Fic that was most OOC for you as a writer. Perhaps Very Important Meeting. It was my attempt to write PWP, though it turned into a bit of a comedy. Oops?
13) Fic that best encapsulates you as a writer. I'm going to go with The Shoemaker and the Elves. It has got touches of my trademark humor (because I can never quite resist) wrapped up in a good bit of flangst.
14) Fic you wish could have been better. I wish that I could have made Kiss the Joy perfect. It was an important story to me personally, the closest I've ever come to writing my head canon--but looking back a month or two after I finished writing, I wish I could take another stab at the last third of it. There were parts of the story that ended up just as I envisioned in my head...I'd like the rest to live up to that as well!
15) Your hottest fic. Oh, I am a terrible writer when it comes to the sexy bits. I'm not even sure how to begin to choose one. I guess Very Important Meeting, since it was originally supposed to be PWP. Though, thinking back, I think a number of people said they enjoyed that aspect of Everything Forgotten.
16) Your tamest fic. Well, the gen He Walked ficlet.
17) Your kinkiest fic. Honestly, nothing I've written for the HP fandom is particularly kinky. If I had to choose, Very Important Meeting because it's sort of public sex. Sort of.
18) Funniest
(Let's make these next few moments instead of lines, shall we? *recklessly alters meme* ) Here I'll go with a bit of a scene that went over particularly well. :) (From Tooth Fairy Fights)
“The Tooth Fairy's pretty, isn't he?” a very groggy Harry asked when he next opened his eyes a few hours later.
Ron thought carefully about his next words. Hermione had run to the apothecary for guidance on what Harry could or could not take in his present state, so Ron was left alone with his woozy friend. And the last thing Ron wanted was for Harry to start petting the air again.
“Eh, Tooth Fairy?” Well, it wasn't Ron's best moment, but he suspected Harry would never remember anyway.
“Yeah,” Harry said, still looking a bit dazed as he turned to stare at Ron. His hair was sticking up, his eyes glassy, and his cheeks reddened from sleep. “D'you believe in the Tooth Fairy? I don't. But I liked his loincloth rather a lot.”
Ron blinked. “Loincl—maybe you better rest, Harry. We can talk about the Tooth Fairy later.”
Harry grumbled and flopped over on the couch. “Muggle children think the Tooth Fairy exists. S'not so crazy.”
Ron chuckled. Harry was hilarious when he was all delusional on potions. “Well of course it's not crazy. Who else would collect their teeth? Their parents?” Ron grinned.
“Wait. So there's really a Tooth Fairy?” Harry asked from where his face was mashed into the couch cushion.
“Well of course there's a Tooth Fairy! More than one, of course. Gotta keep up with all the children. Tooth Fairy Industries handles the scheduling and geographic ranges of the different fairies. They all have to meet their quotas, after all, or how would wizarding cats wee?”
Certain he hadn't heard Ron correctly, Harry twisted until he was half sitting up. “Cats. Wee?”
“Well, not when there aren't enough teeth, they don't. Obviously.” Ron laughed.
“I don't understand. I was just gonna throw mine away,” Harry said.
Ron looked incredulous. “But what about the cats? Let me guess; you don't donate your spare eyelashes to the UK Children's Lightbulb Filament Fund either!”
“I, er, the what?”
Ron buried his head in his hands. “Cat litter, Harry. Bloody hell! There's a national shortage of cat litter and here you are, just throwing away your teeth!”
“There are teeth in wizarding cat litter?” Harry grimaced. He couldn't remember where Mrs. Figg's many cats had gone to the bathroom; he'd never paid much attention. “Why not just use clay or wood chips, like Muggles?”
“Well not just teeth, mate. There are other ingredients too, I think, but the teeth make it extra absorbent. Especially the extra fluoride varieties. Those are the best for when you have multiple cats,” Ron explained. “And how in Merlin's name is clay going to make everything disappear? Gods, and Muggles can't even vanish the nasty bits.” Ron shuddered. “Clay...that's bonkers! I can't wait to tell 'Mione! She's gonna freak, what with the poor working conditions for troll clay diggers!”
Harry scratched his head. “So, you're saying, the Tooth Fairy—no, multiple Tooth Fairies—exist in the wizarding world, primarily to gather enough children's teeth to make litter for wizarding cats.”
“And animagi. Some of them use it too. And they don't take kindly to second class litters, know what I mean?”
“Right. Of course. The animagi would want only the best litter.” Which contained teeth, apparently. Slipping back down so he was horizontal on the couch, Harry pulled a blanket over his head. He was clearly not ready to deal with such a world just yet.
They lapsed into a comfortable enough silence while Harry thought everything over and fought to stay awake despite the various medicines and potions he'd consumed. Eventually, he peeked out from the edge of the blanket to spot Ron chewing on his fingernail. “So, what do Tooth Fairies look like?”
“No one's actually seen one, of course. But mum always told us they were mischievous little imps who stole her extra buttons and made her children grow up too quickly.” Ron scratched his head. “I'm not sure that's reliable though.”
19) Most poignant
“They can’t be delivered, can they?” Harry asked.
“I think they can,” Draco said. “We just need owls who can go…on.”
Harry watched as Draco took a stack of parchment and tapped his wand to the top sheet, and then the next and the next after that. Within minutes, nearly two dozen origami owls were swooping around the room.
Draco called to one and it fluttered down to perch on his wrist. Draco tucked a letter into its clutch. “Can you deliver that to…Can you give this to…to Dumbledore for me?” he asked quietly and the bird cooed in response.
“How will it get out?” Harry asked suddenly, panic tightening his chest. “We can’t open the door. I’m not ready.”
“No need,” Draco replied. “Watch.” The owl took off from Draco’s hand and Harry watched as it flew around the room and right out through the glass window as though it were wide open.
“Oh,” Harry breathed.
Draco nodded and called another owl to him. “To Professor Burbage,” he murmured to the owl before it took off for the window.
Harry gestured for an owl. “Hedwig,” he whispered to the little paper bird. Harry swore it winked at him before it flew off, hooting as it swooped around and out the window into the sun.
20) Favorite
I have a few favorite moments the best to be honest. One is from the beginning of Kiss the Joy:
Harry trudged towards Gryffindor Tower, his Invisibility Cloak draped over his head, his blistered and swollen feet making each step more painful than the last. The Tower, at least, seemed otherwise deserted, and along the way he had noticed subtle signs that the castle was already beginning to heal itself. It had been all of an hour, but beneath his feet a stairway, its marble cracked and crumbling, began to put itself back together, the pieces of cold polished stone merging before his eyes until it was no longer possible to tell there had ever been a crack at all. Likewise, the glass from a shattered window melted back together on the ground, the slivers gravitating towards each other until they became a single translucent whole. He passed a portrait of a young maiden in rich blue robes; she was methodically stitching her own canvas back together where it had been torn.
Another is from The Hidden Tails of Harry and Draco, my very first HP fic. I love the rhythm of the exchange, though I admit that it is more than a little confusing without context.
"I've been called to go to Paraguay to procure a rare herb..."
"Charlie needs help with a dragon..."
"Zabini requires my presence next month..."
"I've got to..."
"Need to..."
"Will be away..."
"Gone through Sunday..."
"Indonesia..."
"Madagascar..."
"Southwestern East Dakota..."
"Love you."
"Love you."
And finally, I loved this bit of language from The Shoemaker and the Elves:
Draco stared across the room at his workbench, brows furrowed as he recognized the extent of his own madness. For what else could it be?
"Draco Malfoy, you've officially gone 'round the bend," he told himself.
Because really. He'd gone to bed with the leather lying just there on the bench, as he always did, but never before had he risen to a pair of completed shoes in its place.
Perhaps it was amnesia and he'd forgotten the length of an entire day. Yes, some mysterious day settled firmly between Tuesday and Wednesday, when he fashioned the pair of men's shoes sitting before him.
Or, had he actually made them in his sleep? He'd certainly told himself often enough that such a thing was possible as his fingers toiled through his more tedious tasks.
Maybe he'd finished them the night before and simply forgotten in his exhaustion. Yes, that had to be the case, he assured himself, though in truth, he remembered no such thing.
"But then," he said into the cool morning air, "why, exactly, would I have stitched them thusly?" He sipped his tea at that, ignoring the familiar scald on his tongue in favour of examining more closely the Oxfords before him.
At first the work had seemed appropriately his own—cap toed, sleek, and refined. Classic. The quality, too, was not to be missed, easily up to his highest of standards. In picking one up, though, the difference became clear. Quarter, not semi-brogue adorned that end cap, and that was not Draco's custom at all.
He set the shoe down, staring at the reunited pair, foreign footwear intent on intruding into his careful routine. He was not sure what to make of them at all. Indeed, he seemed unable to wrest his eyes away from the dark leather, shaped, evidently, by careful fingers that were not his own.
Well, fine then. His own hands were tired, so let the mystery shoes allow them rest, if they were so determined. Picking up the pair, he carried them to the shopfront, placing them in the window in view of various passersby. Perhaps someone was foolish enough to prefer quarter-brogue, he smirked. Philistines, after all, the lot of them.
Once he had placed them artfully, he stood back to admire the display before shaking his head at his inexplicable morning. "Tea," he thought to himself. "I need more tea."
21) Fic for which you'd like to be remembered. I hope that my best work is still ahead of me, and as such, I hope I am most remembered for one I haven't written yet. :)
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Date: 2013-08-12 03:42 am (UTC)Kiss the Joy...amazes me. So much raw emotion and beauty.
Thank you for posting the meme!
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Date: 2013-08-13 12:11 am (UTC)Again, so glad you loved KtJ. It's a special one to me. xoxo
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Date: 2013-08-12 04:39 am (UTC)Southwestern East Dakota, eh?
yes, the cat wee moment is a classic.
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Date: 2013-08-13 12:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-12 06:42 am (UTC)I agree Everything Forgotten (to Memory) is underrated, that's also a favourite of mine.
And I would say Kiss the Joy is your best (and I am right behind the idea of it only being your best SO FAR).
Nice meme :D
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Date: 2013-08-13 12:16 am (UTC)Choosing favorites and bests and most poignants and such--it's harder than I expected it to be. But there's probably something to be learned from it as an author.
You and me, both. Much, much, much more to write. I can feel it. xoxo
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Date: 2013-08-12 11:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-08-13 12:18 am (UTC)PS Um, can I pest you to help me update my LJ bookshelf image sometime soon? Or to show me how you did it so I don't have to pest you going forward? I'd love to just exchange a few titles and correct a typo on one of the books. LOL #authorfail
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Date: 2013-08-13 12:02 pm (UTC)No problem! I'll check the code and mail you right away. :)
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Date: 2013-08-12 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
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