ratherastory | Well, shit

:::Authorial wibbling about a challenge below. Not BigBang.:::

I'm re-reading the fic I started in November (or maybe early December) for the

hoodie_time challenge, and it really, really shows that I didn't know the Show that well at the time. Ack. Holy shit.

I have come to the conclusion that it's not salvageable in its current state. Having looked at it with a fresh eye, I can see what I was aiming for, and I totally missed. By a country mile. Which pisses me off, because there are 13,000 words there that I'm essentially flushing down the toilet. But the fic is meandering, doesn't have a clear structure, and while I love the OCs I introduced, it's all... really freaking disjointed and not workable.

It's not the end of the world. I will go back, look at the prompt, come up with something more useful to do with it.

On the plus side, the challenge is for a minimum of 2,500 words. I can totally do that. I think I might try to make this an exercise in concision for me (I have trouble keeping anything I write under 3,000 words: it's a curse).

I'm considering an AU in which Sam doesn't kill Alistair, because that scene pissed me off from a narrative perspective: WHERE IS DEAN'S CLOSURE? WHERE?!? Maybe a series of short(ish) stories about Alistair stalking Dean until things come to a head. In the meantime, I'll write the one prompt, and see where it takes me.

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So wait, when did you actually start watching the show?

October. I kinda blitzed through all the episodes until I was caught up in just under four weeks.

*cough*

WOW!!!! Welcome to the show and all the craziness that goes with it!!

Thank you!

I take it you didn't know I was all shiny and new in the fandom? :)

The RL craziness is kind of mind-blowing, actually, and I'm only seeing the periphery. Yikes!

You definitely had me fooled :)

Oh, well it wasn't my intent. ;)

I fell hard for this show back in October. I've never done that with a show before, let alone participate in fandom. I don't regret it for a moment, though.

I started on the fandom after the end of season 3. Dean went to hell, and I COULD NOT deal with waiting until the fall for more episodes. I hadn't ever THOUGHT about reading fanfiction before then. I never thought I would end up writing it, or meeting such wonderful people because of it.

Guh. My sympathies. I think that between the writers' strike and the whole deal-thing, I would have gone nuts waiting for the summer to be over.

Aw, I'm sorry to hear that! Old!fic can really suck that way sometimes - but hey, isn't it nice to look back and realize how far you've come?

Also, an AU where Dean gets to kill Alistair would be AWESOME. Because it's kind of creepy but I'd LOVE to see him sort of... playing the part, showing off some of the "skills" he got in hell, swinging the kind of weight he must've started getting in terms of Demon-politics. Um, if that makes sense.

On the aspect of Dean's lack of closure, there, I'd like to point out that even though it was JESS who was also killed by the YED, and the YED infected Sam with demon blood, Dean got to kill him. So it kind of balances out?

Edited 2010-02-02 00:40 (UTC)

The YED killed Dean's mother. I never felt that moment took anything away from Sam.

Alistair was Dean's personal demon. Literally.

The same way I will feel gypped if Sam doesn't get to kill Lucifer. :P

The worst part is that it's not even that old. The fic, I mean. I wrote it two months ago. But in the meantime I've re-watched the show three more times (yes, I'm obsessed, I know), and I have a much better handle on what's going on. Looking at the story I came up with then, before I'd seen Season 5 and before I'd given much thought to Season 4 (which I watched in one day the first time), is making me *cringe* now.

*eep!* That's an awful lot of writing to flush. Is there anything you can salvage? Even if it's just one scene or a character or setup. At least then it won't be a total bust.

I'd love an AU with Alistair! IMO he was the best big bad after the YED and they killed him off way too fast.

I'm probably going to salvage the OCs for another casefic, somewhere in the future. There are a couple of scenes that I think I can use elsewhere as well.

Overall, though, I'm cutting my losses and calling it a bust.

Meh.

Oh noes!
You know they say in scrapbooking to never go back and look at your early stuff. So I guess the same holds for writing?

I would love to see Dean vs Alistair. on show or in fic. I love the actor who played him in On the Head of a Pin, Christopher Heyerdahl [I think is how you spell it]. I just think he's the best thing since oreos. So him vs. Dean winchester... where do I sign up?

Yeah, I guess. Who knew that "two months ago" counts as early stuff for me, eh? ;)

Scrapbooking. Now there's something I kept away from. I already knit and have waaay too many craft supplies. Scrapbooking would do me in. :P

I don't think we'll ever get Dean vs Alistair on the show, but I desperately want to write a fic about it. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

A great big YES!! to the Alastair stalking Dean idea. You're right, there just wasn't enough of that in the show. Dean should have been afraid of Alastair showing up around every corner. My other hoodie time story is kind of a wreck too, but I think it's salvageable. I set it in season four and I just can't get a handle on S4 Sam that makes him anything less than an total jerk and I want him to be there for Dean at least a little before he's actually forced to be. Good luck redoing your fic. It really is depressing when you get so far and it just doesn't work. But there's always another idea and I know you'll come up with a good one!

Season 4 Sam *is* kind of a jerk, poor bunny. He's so wrapped up in Ruby's mind-games that he can't see straight.

On the whole, Season 4 makes me hurt a LOT.

The one good thing about the now-trashed fic was having Dean freaking out and thinking he saw Alistair everywhere. I really liked that, and I plan on using it again. :)

Oh FFF, that sucks!!! Admiring your resolve in admitting that to yourself and deciding to dismiss the original off-character draft! On a brighter side, am also excitedly hopping at the thought of a story involving the conflict between Dean and Alistair :)

It does suck, but at least I figured it out well before the deadline, right? :P

The premise isn't wrong, it's just that my execution sucked. Not the end of the world.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who's interested in a Dean and Alistair fic.

Well, shit

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