Two writing memes

[ratherastory]

1- From embroiderama: a passage less than 500 words (paragraph/excerpt/very short fic/whatever) from any story I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

2- From sinnerforhire: First line of last 25 fics you wrote and try to find a pattern.

This one made me laugh, because I have exactly 27 fics written/in the works. A few weeks ago I wouldn't even have been able to do the meme in its entirety.



1- Lisa feels as though she's failing some subtle test which she never signed up to take.

2- A barista's work is never done, but sometimes there are slow days, and that's the day he comes in, complete with laptop and kicked-puppy expression.

3- This never happened...

4- A certain degree of separation was to be expected when it came to the Winchesters.

5- They stop in Toledo a couple of hours before sunset, and Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, fingerless gloves useless against the cold.

6- There are only a handful of people who have Bobby Singer's cell phone number.

7- Dean finds Sam sitting cross-legged on the floor of their motel room, clad in jeans and a soft, faded grey t-shirt, bare feet tucked under his knees.

8- Getting jumped by regular humans is bad enough, even if those humans are seasoned hunters.

9- After twenty years of dealing with it on and off, it's not a big deal anymore.

10- In her everyday life, Lindsey isn't much of a hand-wringer.

11- Dean's not exactly sure how he and Sam have ended up here, but he's learned to roll with the punches after fifteen or so years of being on the job.

12- “You going to eat that or keep turning it into a valuable work of abstract art?” Dean waggles his fork in the general direction of Sam's plate.

13- Sam is getting really tired of waking up in pain, alone and in the dark.

14- He's blind.

15- Sam hasn't screamed in days.

16- There is water dripping slowly onto the Devil's Trap, and Dean doesn't care.

17- Sam is sick to death of angels.

18- The first thing that Dean ever steals is a sandwich.

19- “I got it,” Sam is pulling their duffel bags out of the trunk of the Impala, not waiting for Dean to help or even come close.

20- Castiel is a bad angel.

21- Sam peered through the window of the dingy motel room, staring as roiling clouds slowly obscured the moon, plunging the parking lot into shadows, flickering orange in the light from the vacancy sign.

22- There's nothing on television except for Christmas specials.

23- “Cas! Castiel! We need some help over here!”

24- Sam is sulking.

25- “Sam, any day now!”


Patterns? I apparently like short, declarative sentences. Sometimes I change it up by starting with dialogue, and occasionally I add in some description about the weather or the time of day. I write primarily in the present tense, which is something I never did before writing fanfic.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

You busted your HTML somewhere around 19 or 20.

[pkwench.livejournal.com]

Because it still breaks my heart into a thousand itty, bitty pieces ... from Why Your Joyous Strains Prolong



Castiel finds him there the next morning, still cradling Dean in his arms. He looks up, thinks maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to scream until he's hoarse, stays silent.

“He's gone, Cas.”

Wordlessly Castiel pulls Dean away, draws the blanket gently over Dean's face. Dean stands by the cot, looking down at the motionless figure under the blanket, hands shoved in his pockets. He doesn't realize he's shivering until Cas puts an arm around his shoulders, across his back really, because he's always been shorter than Dean.

“I don't know why I'm still here.”

Castiel can hear the unspoken words. I even left myself behind. He looks up at Dean, feels his eyes fill with tears, pulls Dean close. “Not everyone leaves you,” he pulls Dean's head down, presses his forehead to Dean's, throws all the fierceness and passion left in him into his voice.

“I'm still here.”

*wipes eyes* God, when you kill people ...

I must now do these memes.

[chiiyo86.livejournal.com]

Fun memes! I think I'll do the second one because I must be close to 25 fics in English and it's interesting to go back on your writing and see what are your habits. Present tense seems very specific to fanfic. Interestingly, a teacher once told me that it was used a lot more in French than in English, so that's probably why it never looked weird to me. I don't know the reason behind it, though.

I want a DVD commentary for the beginning of A Wild Night and a New Road:


"They stop in Toledo a couple of hours before sunset, and Dean shoves his hands in his pockets, fingerless gloves useless against the cold. Sam purses his lips, doesn't say anything, but rummages through one of the duffel bags and tosses him a woolen sweater. Dean shrugs out of his leather jacket, pulls on the sweater, zips the jacket back up over it, keeps shivering. Wonders if his lips are blue yet. Fucking cold.

“Cemetery?” Sam asks, and Dean nods.

There's a mass grave, but on closer examination they find someone's been there already. The air smells faintly of gasoline and burnt flesh, the ground is scorched. Not everyone knows to burn the bodies, but the knowledge is spreading quickly among the survivors: the infected don't always stay dead.

A voice startles him, coming from behind. “They're taken care of.”

He whirls, has his gun trained before he even has time to register the owner of the voice. A girl steps out from behind one of the graves, dark hair pulled back in a serviceable but untidy braid. She's wearing fatigues that are too big on her frame, supplemented by layers of cotton and wool that only serve to emphasize how thin she is. Her skin has the sallow complexion of someone who doesn't go out much in the sunlight. She squints in the fading evening light, and Dean's reminded of an alley cat, all claws and teeth and protruding ribs and fading memories of sitting on someone's lap and eating tuna out of a can.

“I know you.”

He keeps the gun trained on her, glances at Sam, who turned when he saw Dean react. It's rare that people recognize them, but when they do, it's rarely good. Sam is tense, but studying the girl's face, trying to read her. For a guy who's gone mostly deaf (fucking angels and their fucking super-sonic whateverthefuck, and if Dean had to go back he'd definitely come up with a better plan than the one they went with), he's surprisingly not that jumpy. Especially considering how twitchy he'd become just prior to the world nearly ending. To Dean's surprise, he relaxes after a moment, and smiles.

“You're Lily Shoemaker,” he says, a little too loudly, and she starts, narrows her eyes more before she places them."

[alexseanchai]

Sam decides arbitrarily that he's been locked in the room for five days. He figures it's been that long because he's started to hallucinate, and that's about how long it takes for that particular symptom of sleep deprivation to kick in. Sometimes it's less, but he's managed to catch an hour or so here and there, or it might be fifteen minutes or three hours for all he knows, and that means that it would take longer for the hallucinations to kick in. Lucifer is there from the start, of course, but Sam doesn't count him as a hallucination: he's more of a permanent nightmare, some sort of weird supernatural construct that lives constantly in his mind. He hasn't told Dean about the fact that he dreams of Lucifer every single night, and he wonders if Dean dreams of Michael the same way. No matter how he thinks about it, he decides it's a conversation he never wants to have with his brother. Of course, now he's not likely to have a conversation with him ever again, and that's probably for the best. At least now he's done with causing his brother pain.

Predictably, the first hallucination is one of his fourteen-year-old self, talking to him about setting a field on fire with his brother, and how it was the most awesome Fourth of July ever. Then the kid's eyes turn yellow and he grins at Sam, sitting cross-legged on the floor with a roman candle clutched in his fist, sending sparks up toward the low ceiling.

“Just like old times, isn't it?”

Sam tries to ignore them. Tries to ignore the small things that creep around in the shadows, the sound of chitinous carapaces clicking against the cement. Shuts his eyes and pretends he doesn't see his mother using his own Zippo lighter to set fire to her nightgown.

“I should have done this when I knew I was pregnant,” she says calmly, as her hair is set alight with flame.

He almost welcomes the moments when Walt comes in to work him over some more. Neither he nor Roy have so much as brought him a cup of water. Maybe they're really testing to see if he can't die, and so far the test seems pretty conclusive. Sam thinks it's not really fair that getting fatally shot is easier to take than this, but then, life is never fair. Life sucks and then you don't die, he thinks, and laughs so hard he almost chokes, and Walt takes the opportunity to break two of the fingers on his left hand.

After a while the parade of this-is-your-life-Sam-Winchester stops, and there's only Dean, squatting on his haunches in a corner of the room, watching him with eyes filled with reproach.

“I'm sorry,” he whispers into the floor.

“You're always sorry,” comes the dry answer.

“Doesn't mean it's not true.”

“Doesn't change anything, either.”

“I guess not.”

[callistosh65.livejournal.com]

Great memes there - it's fascinating to see patterns emerge in the first lines one.

[de-nugis.livejournal.com]

Because I just love everything they are not saying here as well as everything they are saying.

Sam looks past him at Castiel. “You agreed,” he says simply. “There's no other way, so let's not make this harder than it is, all right?” He slides the blade out with a quiet snick, flips it deftly in his hand, and holds the handle toward the angel.

Castiel steps forward to take it, but Dean intervenes, puts a hand on the angel's wrist, stopping him. “No.”

“Dean, please.”

He shakes his head, stares Castiel in the eyes. “I can't let you hurt my brother like that. Not anyone, not even you.”

A beat, then Castiel nods, understanding written in every new line in his face. “Very well,” he replies, and steps back.

“Dean, come on. You—” Sam stops abruptly, his face draining of colour, as Dean turns and holds out his hand, palm up.

“If we're going to do this, it has to be me. I can't...” he forces his voice not to break. “I can't watch while someone does that to you, Sammy. Give it here.”

“Are you sure?” it comes out quiet as a breath. “I didn't want to ask you. Not after—”

“I know, and yeah, I'm sure.”

“Will you be okay?”

“No, probably not,” he swallows as his throat threatens to close up. “But there's no one else to do it.”

[embroiderama]

The first thing that Dean ever steals is a sandwich. It's one of those pre-made things that you usually find in vending machines, encased in hard white plastic and wrapped in a second layer of saran wrap. He shoves it in the front pocket of the over-large brown hoodie sweater that Dad got him at goodwill —this is the only time he's grateful that it doesn't fit him right— saunters up to the cash as though he owns the place, and buys a quarter's worth of candy. A handful of jujubes. He gives the cashier his best winning grin, the one that makes women coo over him as though he's the most precious thing ever (Dean is adorable, he's learned), and saunters out, casual. Totally frosty.

Sammy is waiting on the step outside the shop, right where Dean left him. There's a hole in the toe of his left sneaker, and he's whiling away the time by wriggling his big toe through it, in and out. With a sigh Dean realizes he's going to have to do more laundry: Sam's socks are filthy. He grabs Sam by one grubby hand.

[tifaching.livejournal.com]

Because this fic was awesomely disturbing I really had a hard time deciding which snippet to use because they were all so dark.

He's forgotten how to sleep.

Sam tries to get him to at least lie down. He's been up for nearly three days, and his skin is crawling and the shadows have turned red. Every time he closes his eyes all he sees is red, pulsing and swirling. Sometimes it matches his heartbeat, sometimes it oozes past him until he's sure blood must be dripping past his eyelids.

He paces in circles in their motel room, caged, wishing he were chained down. At least he'd be secure.

“Dean, come on.”

He jerks away as Sam's fingers brush against his elbow. “Don't fucking touch me!”

A silent withdrawal, and he wants to scream, lash out, make Sam hit him as hard as he can. He doesn't remember how to sleep, only remembers how to lose consciousness for precious fleeting seconds. He presses his back against the door, slides down it until he's on the floor, head buried in his folded arms. He spends the night there, standing watch and keeping his escape route open. The first rays of dawn find him drifting half-awake, and wishing for the familiar feeling of being ripped apart, rather than the terrifying discomfort of merely existing.

*

Alastair traces beautiful patterns in his skin with his straight razor. They resemble tribal tattoos, all intricate whorls and knots, parallel cuts and slashes. He draws the same pattern every day for fifteen years, starts in the same spot and moves the finely-honed blade with exactly the same precise motions. The process lasts all day, and the cuts burns and sting and the blood trickles beautifully crimson against the white of his skin. So beautiful it takes his breath away.

Alastair likes to run his tongue over the newest ones, to taste the blood on the razor blade. Sometimes he even lets Dean keep his eyelids so that he can choose whether or not to watch.

In the end, he always watches.

[werty30.livejournal.com]

Practical Application is one of my favorite stories, so.

Sam flinches, doesn't answer. Dean can hear the unspoken “I'm sorry.” Apologizing for apologizing about something he shouldn't be apologizing for. Christ. He buries his face in his hands, still perched on the edge of Sam's bed, looking at his brother's back. More scars. He doesn't want to know how many times Sam “tested” his theory. His hand hovers over Sam's shoulder, wants to pull him into his arms like when Sammy was a little kid and a hug could make everything better. He pulls back, settles for dropping a blanket over him so he won't get cold.

“Get some sleep, Sammy.”

Also, I love the disclaimers to that story. You have truly out-disclaimed yourself, there. :)