straightforwardly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
straightforwardly) wrote2024-10-06 06:30 pm
straightforwardly) wrote2024-10-06 06:30 pm
288 | iddy iddy bang bang 2024 reflections
I meant to write this entry nearly a month ago, but I’m only getting around to it now, oops.
This year, I successfully completed![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
iddyiddybangbang for the first time. This was fairly special to me for multiple reasons! First of all, I’ve been signing up to bang challenges since like 2010, but have never actually completed one. (Saying “bang” instead of “big bang” because Iddy Iddy Bang Bang’s minimum is only 5K, which… not big!) But it’s something I’ve always really wanted to do, so I’m pleased on that front!
Second of all, I’ve actually signed up for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang in particular many times (including the very first year the challenge ran!)—I just never actually ever finished any of the fics I intended to write for it. So to finally succeed at something I failed at so many times was quite meaningful to me.
This year, I originally signed up with the intention of writing Scum Villain fic. I had some vague thoughts of tackling that “monster rancher” AU that I’d intended to write for previous rounds of Iddy Iddy Bang Bang (but never actually started), or maybe something time travel-related, or— [insert long list of SVSSS concepts I still want to write or finish here].
But while I was still musing it over, reveals for the Battleship 2024 collection happened. Included in that collection was an Original Works fic which I gushed over heavily in my Battleship recs post—six foot hole inside my chest bytavina, which is 11K of cdrama-inspired take on the Crown Princess/Her Bastard Half-Brother relationship tag. I love this story. It hit me hard in the id, and I just kept thinking about it. And—this is the part which is most important for the purposes of this post—it also made my thoughts turn to my own fucked up OW siblings, languishing in (what I thought would be) an eternal WIP.
Now, let’s rewind. Back in January 2021, I started work on an Original Works fic that I rapidly became incredibly obsessed with. It was originally inspired by a tag I’d seen in the previous year’s round ofrelationshipping: Sis Who Writes Passionate Letters to Soldier Bro/Eldritch With Bro's Body Who Assumes They're Lovers*. I don’t remember anymore why it took me until January 2021 to do anything with it (though I suspect that my December 2020 obsession with Frederique/Iolanthe from Rose of Segunda probably played some role in it), but in any case, I remember spending about two weeks in a haze of obsession over my own OCs.
* Which isn’t precisely the dynamic/relationship that I wrote in the end, but again, original source of the inspiration.
This story had me in a death grip. I loved the characters, particularly Marguerite, deeply, and I put so many of my favorite things into it: eldritch horror, gothic elements, complicated sibling dynamics, WWI settings, dreams & nightmares.
And then… I stopped working on it. Not because I loved it any less, but—I’m not actually sure why. Maybe I got stuck, or maybe I just got too busy to write for a little while and then was intimidated by the prospect of continuing when I finally did have time again. I suspect the latter reason is closer to the truth, but, again, I’m not entirely sure.
What I do know is that I reread my own WIP many times in the years since, always really enjoying what I had, wishing I’d finished it—and never adding anything new. I was fairly intimidated, I think. What I had written was all out of order—I had the opening sequence, the “reunion”, part of the scene with the telegram, and most of the final dream sequence, plus some scattered lines in-between that gave me a bit of a guideline for where I was going with it, but ultimately, I couldn’t remember everything of what I intended, and that paralyzed me, because I knew how much I loved that intended storyline.
(I was also a little afraid that I couldn’t get into Marguerite’s head again. She’s one my favorite OCs I’ve ever made; I loved what I did with her, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to capture her spirit in the way I originally intended—that I’d make her OOC in any new scenes I added. While working on finishing this, I read and reread what I’d written in 2021 so many times in an effort to remember every detail I’d ever created for her.)
So it languished. And then I read Leaf’s OW fic, and started thinking about Marguerite and Philippe again at the same time as I was trying to figure out what to write for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang—and then I thought, hey. This is a story which is very iddy to me. And—as someone who struggles with weird hang-ups about posting OW to AO3—posting it as a part of an event might be the only way I ever would be able to bring myself to share it. Iddy Iddy Bang Bang explicitly allows for finishing old drawer fic in its rules, as long as the contents hadn’t been posted anywhere before, so there was no objections there. And it could give me the push I needed to finally finish this otherwise eternal WIP.
So, I started working on it, and finished it. The end result isn’t the same story I would have written had I finished it back in 2021. It couldn’t be. I’m not the same person nor the same writer I was then. I knew more or less how my past self intended to end the story (since she kindly wrote a good chunk of it already), but I didn’t know precisely how she meant to connect those scenes, or the precise arc that the characters were meant to follow. I know that what I came up with in the end was different, but that’s all.
If I’m fully honest with myself, I do feel a little bittersweetness in that regard. I would have loved to see the complete story I wanted to write in 2021; I suspect it might have been better than what I managed now, in 2024. And I’ll admit nearly all of my personal favorite moments and lines, save one, were from what I wrote in 2021. But at the same time, I am very glad that I finally finished this story. There are weaknesses, it’s not perfect, but it’s complete, and I’m able to share it with the worldor at least registered AO3 users, lol. It’s not an eternal WIP anymore, and even if it’s not precisely the story I originally set out to tell, it’s close enough that I don’t think anyone other than myself would ever notice the difference.
In short, I have a lot of feelings about this: some positive, others a little bittersweet, but ultimately, simple very very glad that I’ve finally finished Marguerite’s story.
This year, I successfully completed
iddyiddybangbang for the first time. This was fairly special to me for multiple reasons! First of all, I’ve been signing up to bang challenges since like 2010, but have never actually completed one. (Saying “bang” instead of “big bang” because Iddy Iddy Bang Bang’s minimum is only 5K, which… not big!) But it’s something I’ve always really wanted to do, so I’m pleased on that front! Second of all, I’ve actually signed up for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang in particular many times (including the very first year the challenge ran!)—I just never actually ever finished any of the fics I intended to write for it. So to finally succeed at something I failed at so many times was quite meaningful to me.
This year, I originally signed up with the intention of writing Scum Villain fic. I had some vague thoughts of tackling that “monster rancher” AU that I’d intended to write for previous rounds of Iddy Iddy Bang Bang (but never actually started), or maybe something time travel-related, or— [insert long list of SVSSS concepts I still want to write or finish here].
But while I was still musing it over, reveals for the Battleship 2024 collection happened. Included in that collection was an Original Works fic which I gushed over heavily in my Battleship recs post—six foot hole inside my chest by
tavina, which is 11K of cdrama-inspired take on the Crown Princess/Her Bastard Half-Brother relationship tag. I love this story. It hit me hard in the id, and I just kept thinking about it. And—this is the part which is most important for the purposes of this post—it also made my thoughts turn to my own fucked up OW siblings, languishing in (what I thought would be) an eternal WIP.Now, let’s rewind. Back in January 2021, I started work on an Original Works fic that I rapidly became incredibly obsessed with. It was originally inspired by a tag I’d seen in the previous year’s round of
relationshipping: Sis Who Writes Passionate Letters to Soldier Bro/Eldritch With Bro's Body Who Assumes They're Lovers*. I don’t remember anymore why it took me until January 2021 to do anything with it (though I suspect that my December 2020 obsession with Frederique/Iolanthe from Rose of Segunda probably played some role in it), but in any case, I remember spending about two weeks in a haze of obsession over my own OCs. * Which isn’t precisely the dynamic/relationship that I wrote in the end, but again, original source of the inspiration.
This story had me in a death grip. I loved the characters, particularly Marguerite, deeply, and I put so many of my favorite things into it: eldritch horror, gothic elements, complicated sibling dynamics, WWI settings, dreams & nightmares.
And then… I stopped working on it. Not because I loved it any less, but—I’m not actually sure why. Maybe I got stuck, or maybe I just got too busy to write for a little while and then was intimidated by the prospect of continuing when I finally did have time again. I suspect the latter reason is closer to the truth, but, again, I’m not entirely sure.
What I do know is that I reread my own WIP many times in the years since, always really enjoying what I had, wishing I’d finished it—and never adding anything new. I was fairly intimidated, I think. What I had written was all out of order—I had the opening sequence, the “reunion”, part of the scene with the telegram, and most of the final dream sequence, plus some scattered lines in-between that gave me a bit of a guideline for where I was going with it, but ultimately, I couldn’t remember everything of what I intended, and that paralyzed me, because I knew how much I loved that intended storyline.
(I was also a little afraid that I couldn’t get into Marguerite’s head again. She’s one my favorite OCs I’ve ever made; I loved what I did with her, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to capture her spirit in the way I originally intended—that I’d make her OOC in any new scenes I added. While working on finishing this, I read and reread what I’d written in 2021 so many times in an effort to remember every detail I’d ever created for her.)
So it languished. And then I read Leaf’s OW fic, and started thinking about Marguerite and Philippe again at the same time as I was trying to figure out what to write for Iddy Iddy Bang Bang—and then I thought, hey. This is a story which is very iddy to me. And—as someone who struggles with weird hang-ups about posting OW to AO3—posting it as a part of an event might be the only way I ever would be able to bring myself to share it. Iddy Iddy Bang Bang explicitly allows for finishing old drawer fic in its rules, as long as the contents hadn’t been posted anywhere before, so there was no objections there. And it could give me the push I needed to finally finish this otherwise eternal WIP.
So, I started working on it, and finished it. The end result isn’t the same story I would have written had I finished it back in 2021. It couldn’t be. I’m not the same person nor the same writer I was then. I knew more or less how my past self intended to end the story (since she kindly wrote a good chunk of it already), but I didn’t know precisely how she meant to connect those scenes, or the precise arc that the characters were meant to follow. I know that what I came up with in the end was different, but that’s all.
If I’m fully honest with myself, I do feel a little bittersweetness in that regard. I would have loved to see the complete story I wanted to write in 2021; I suspect it might have been better than what I managed now, in 2024. And I’ll admit nearly all of my personal favorite moments and lines, save one, were from what I wrote in 2021. But at the same time, I am very glad that I finally finished this story. There are weaknesses, it’s not perfect, but it’s complete, and I’m able to share it with the world
In short, I have a lot of feelings about this: some positive, others a little bittersweet, but ultimately, simple very very glad that I’ve finally finished Marguerite’s story.
What Doesn’t Grow In Shadow (9230 words) by straightforwardly
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sister Who Writes Passionate Letters to Soldier Brother/Brother/Eldritch Being Inside Brother's Body
Additional Tags: World War I, Sibling Incest, Eldritch beings, Came Back Wrong, Symbiotic Relationship, Faustian Bargain, Isolation, Gothic Undertones, Historical Inaccuracies, Implied Past Child Abuse, Dreams and Nightmares, tfw you expect shell shock & get an eldritch being possessing your brother’s body instead
Summary: In the wake of the Great War, Marguerite’s beloved brother finally comes home.
Or does he?