MTYG: authors revealed

[pensnest]

So I can now thank Ocelot summer for writing my splendid story, The Kirkpatrick Guide to Aging Gracefully, which I may possibly have squee'd about once or twice already. Ahem. Great stuff.

I wrote Wings Would Be Cool for a recipient who seems to have taken no further part in the challenge after signing up for it. Ah well. I was charmed by the requested pairings, one my OTP and the other a pairing I'd never written (and therefore an interesting challenge) and then thrown by the request for a HS AU. As I've never been to high school, I was *extremely grateful* to nopseud, who suggested guardian angels. (And thanks to both nopseud and snarkyllama for the betas.)

fleurrochard guessed correctly, and therefore gets a ficlet, uh, soon. It's funny—I always think I give myself away in my writing, because my stories seem so *me*, but I can seldom identify anyone else's, so it shouldn't be any surprise that most people don't guess at all, or get it wrong.

Comments

[zebraljb.livejournal.com]

First of all, I loved that story. I'm not a big Howie fan, but when he IS slashed, I really love him best with Nick. And I can SO see reallife!Howie taking care of Nick in just this way.

I cannot even allow myself to get started on Devil!Chris. It's so blatantly obvious, I mean, of COURSE he is. And he and Lance are so damn cute I cannot stand it.

Having Howie show up @ college w/Nick was like the best thing ever. I actually squeed and clapped my hands. :)

Since I've been out of the fandom for so long, you are all new friends to me, so I couldn't identify ANYONE'S writing. Here I was over the last few weeks, chatting with Llama and getting to know her...and it ends up SHE wrote MY story. *headdesk*

[pensnest]

Ahaha, Snarkyllama was obviously employing Fiendish Cunning in figuring out what you would like!

I'm very glad you've got back into the fandom—I see you wrote *three* stories for MTYG, and Bone's Bar & Grill is one of my favourites this year. There has been quite a lot of turnover in popslashers, but the funny thing is, I think the quality of SeSa stories stays constantly high whoever is participating. It seems to bring out the best in us.

I did have a bit of trouble figuring out how to use my two pairings in a HS AU—not least because their age differences are such that they'd never at any point have been in HS together! The angel/demon thing was a great idea which wasn't even my own inspiration—nopseud and ephemera and I get together for a weekend well before writing time and whinge over our assignments, and it's always handy for kick-starting the inspirations. Anyway, I'm so pleased you liked it. :-)

[zebraljb.livejournal.com]

I'm so jealous that you got together with fanfic people in real life...it's been YEARS since I had the chance to do that...

Love that icon. Motley!Howie. RAWR.

I could have kept going and going with Bone's Bar & Grill but was afraid of making it too long. I'd love to rework it and fill in where Nick meets Kevin and AJ lives with JC, but that would pretty much eliminate a lot of the story exposition in the original.

I love Tutor!Lance, so that made me hug your story even more. :)

[pensnest]

We're having Camp Sparkle again this year... see sparklyukfans for info. We regularly get at least one 'token' American over!

[zebraljb.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Don't I wish...if it was only monetarily possible. Not only because, hello, sparkle, but because it has been my dream to visit GB...

I hope you all have an INSANE amount of fun.

[pensnest]

Ah well, perhaps another time. If you do get over here, you'll be able to visit various sparkly people, anyway!

[brandywine28.livejournal.com]

See, here's the sad thing: I actually DID attend an ordinary American high school and still my grasp of my own material was pretty tenuous at times. There were parts of the writing process that felt like pulling teeth. Though that may just be because I'm wildly out of practice, not because I'm so old I can't understand teenagers anymore, right? Anyone?

I was thrilled when I saw that mine wasn't the only high school AU! (It was the last thing I expected to find myself writing, but my recipient was very specific.)
And I LOVED your story! Angel Howie and Devil Chris and poor, forlorn Nick!!!

[pensnest]

I must admit, I don't think I caught the teenage angst as well as I might have done. I'm too old for that stuff! And my high school was very Generic High, USAville, rather than placed somewhere specific. But I figured the experience is supposed to be fairly much universal... (And anyway, I've already written my Boarding School AU as a representative of my own school days, mixed with a healthy dose of School stories a la Elinor M Brent-Dyer.)

I was amused by snarkyllama's 'by category' listings, as so many stories seemed to go in groups, eg High School AU, *lots* of stories involving someone teaching someone else—and in *pairs*, like, cooking lessons, knitting, Spanish lessons, etc.

Your cooking-in-HS was one of the ones I enjoyed particularly, by the way.

[brandywine28.livejournal.com]

I thought you did a great job of communicating how unhappy Nick is - trying so, so hard to act like an average, unexceptional straight boy, hating his parents and trying not to feel contempt for his girlfriend - without getting too heavy-handed about it, which is a trap I almost always fall into.

I tried to give my fictional high school a little bit of a Catholic flair, but I don't think I got the point across too clearly. Not to mention that Lance and Justin are Southern boys and are therefore about as unlikely to be Catholic as the Queen of England. (I didn't catch that little slip-up until it was much too late.)

Thanks for the kind words about my story, by the way. I really appreciated what you said about it the other day, in your rec-post-that-wasn't-really-a-rec-post! :)

[pensnest]

Interesting how a Catholic school is so much more liberal, in your fic, than the school Lance had attended in Clinton. Hah. I didn't particularly pick up on its being Catholic, but that's not something that tends to get on my radar.

[brandywine28.livejournal.com]

You'd be surprised at what goes on in some of those Catholic high schools. :) The one I went to was basically a free-for-all.

[fleurrochard]

No rush with the ficlet! :)