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MTYG memorial, post the second
Jan. 5th, 2019 11:41 amThe questions are up on ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
mtyg_discuss.
Of all the stories you wrote for MTYG:
(a) Which did you most enjoy writing?
It has to be Thriller, which funnily enough might have been a candidate for (b) or (d) because ZOMBIES. But Nopseud introduced me to Shaun of the Dead, I took pages of notes, and by the time I came back home from that SeSa weekend, I was raring to go. And it turned out to be such fun writing all the weirdnesses that Chris didn't-exactly-notice, or did notice, or, etc. It was hard to write the ending properly simply because it filled me with such glee!
(b) Which caused you the most anguish/SeSa angst/wailing and gnashing of teeth or just plain struggling to produce?
2016, writing Brian, whom I darkly (and correctly) suspected of being a Trump supporter. I was also asked for H/C with Nick comforting Brian—my immediate instinct was that Brian would comfort Nick, but I suppose it is more of a challenge the other way round, and therefore was more interesting to write. In the end I was quite pleased with my theme park stunt guys AU, and my recipient was obviously really happy, which is the most important thing anyway, but it was definitely a struggle.
Collaboration, written for Trumpeterofdoom in 2008, gets an honourable mention here because I had to write a Letterboys story without the help of the Queen of Letterboys. I listened to so many dodgy live recordings of AJ's new song to get the lyrics right—but at least I knew my recipient would pick them up.
(c) What was the best request/prompt you got?
Hmmmmmm. Hmm. In my experience, actual prompts have fallen more into the terrifying/startling/difficult category than 'best'. When I've been asked for something specific, I've generally been a bit alarmed… like the one where the recipient wanted a High School AU and both her pairings were too age-disparate to have been able to fit into High School as contemporaries. Which is something to ponder - I've sometimes wondered whether my own tendency not to ask for something specific is a flaw, but if my Santa writes like me, maybe not.
What I have enjoyed, a lot of the time, is the chance to write pairings I haven't done before, which is always fun and probably a bit easier than figuring out a different way of doing Trickyfish again… So It Pays to Advertise was Timbertrick (and I've only written two of these, ever); The Pussycat and the Porcupine had Chris/Howie, a pairing of unlikely joy; in porco, veritas had Brian/Lance (eek!), and No Man's Fort had Joey/Kevin, which, it turns out, is also a pairing of joy, and was probably quite a bit influenced by my recent addiction to The Great British Bake-Off.
(d) what was the most terrifying/startling/difficult prompt you got, and how did you cope with the story?
Post-apocalyptic vampires with romance. As a person who would not choose to write either post-apocalyptyic or vampiric fic, I was filled with dismay at the sight, but in the end this prompt actually inspired two stories that year! (Not both mine.)
In the end, I got very much into it. I worked out my idea of what the apocalyptic event was and what the vampires were like, aided in no small part by reading an article about how people doing medieval-style fantasy were forgetting all the bad stuff, like, no vaccinations against common childhood diseases. A couple of people commented that I must have been inspired by "I Am Legend", but no, I've neither seen nor read it. Nopseud provided her usual poke to the deficient logic, which as usual improved things no end, and I was quite proud of the result (for this world to be unbroken ). But I've never been able to work out for sure whether the recipient liked it… I don't think it's what she had in mind.
(e) more generally, do you have any funny or sad stories about the writing process?
Probably, but I think I've told them all in my personal MTYG posts.
mtyg_discuss.Of all the stories you wrote for MTYG:
(a) Which did you most enjoy writing?
It has to be Thriller, which funnily enough might have been a candidate for (b) or (d) because ZOMBIES. But Nopseud introduced me to Shaun of the Dead, I took pages of notes, and by the time I came back home from that SeSa weekend, I was raring to go. And it turned out to be such fun writing all the weirdnesses that Chris didn't-exactly-notice, or did notice, or, etc. It was hard to write the ending properly simply because it filled me with such glee!
(b) Which caused you the most anguish/SeSa angst/wailing and gnashing of teeth or just plain struggling to produce?
2016, writing Brian, whom I darkly (and correctly) suspected of being a Trump supporter. I was also asked for H/C with Nick comforting Brian—my immediate instinct was that Brian would comfort Nick, but I suppose it is more of a challenge the other way round, and therefore was more interesting to write. In the end I was quite pleased with my theme park stunt guys AU, and my recipient was obviously really happy, which is the most important thing anyway, but it was definitely a struggle.
Collaboration, written for Trumpeterofdoom in 2008, gets an honourable mention here because I had to write a Letterboys story without the help of the Queen of Letterboys. I listened to so many dodgy live recordings of AJ's new song to get the lyrics right—but at least I knew my recipient would pick them up.
(c) What was the best request/prompt you got?
Hmmmmmm. Hmm. In my experience, actual prompts have fallen more into the terrifying/startling/difficult category than 'best'. When I've been asked for something specific, I've generally been a bit alarmed… like the one where the recipient wanted a High School AU and both her pairings were too age-disparate to have been able to fit into High School as contemporaries. Which is something to ponder - I've sometimes wondered whether my own tendency not to ask for something specific is a flaw, but if my Santa writes like me, maybe not.
What I have enjoyed, a lot of the time, is the chance to write pairings I haven't done before, which is always fun and probably a bit easier than figuring out a different way of doing Trickyfish again… So It Pays to Advertise was Timbertrick (and I've only written two of these, ever); The Pussycat and the Porcupine had Chris/Howie, a pairing of unlikely joy; in porco, veritas had Brian/Lance (eek!), and No Man's Fort had Joey/Kevin, which, it turns out, is also a pairing of joy, and was probably quite a bit influenced by my recent addiction to The Great British Bake-Off.
(d) what was the most terrifying/startling/difficult prompt you got, and how did you cope with the story?
Post-apocalyptic vampires with romance. As a person who would not choose to write either post-apocalyptyic or vampiric fic, I was filled with dismay at the sight, but in the end this prompt actually inspired two stories that year! (Not both mine.)
In the end, I got very much into it. I worked out my idea of what the apocalyptic event was and what the vampires were like, aided in no small part by reading an article about how people doing medieval-style fantasy were forgetting all the bad stuff, like, no vaccinations against common childhood diseases. A couple of people commented that I must have been inspired by "I Am Legend", but no, I've neither seen nor read it. Nopseud provided her usual poke to the deficient logic, which as usual improved things no end, and I was quite proud of the result (for this world to be unbroken ). But I've never been able to work out for sure whether the recipient liked it… I don't think it's what she had in mind.
(e) more generally, do you have any funny or sad stories about the writing process?
Probably, but I think I've told them all in my personal MTYG posts.
