Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 1

[aadler]

 
I picked this up from leni_ba, and traced it to here. I didn’t see it till a couple of hours ago, so I’ll be posting twice today, then following the challenge as it continues.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge, Day 1

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

I’ve noted that, over the last few years, a LOT of my stories have been remixes. It works for me, I enjoy drawing inspiration from other people’s works and then seeing where I can take them, and I like the results. Over time, however, it begins to skew things: in the past five and a half years — since my return from Afghanistan — I’ve done eight Buffy remixes, and only six non-remix Buffyfics. (Plus two Buffy collaborations with sroni, and two non-Buffy fics.) That begins to raise the question of whether my own originality might be dwindling; since I’m not going to stop doing remixes, that means I need to do more original work to shift the ratios. As part of my new focus, I won’t be including remixes in this list. (Which is a shame, because one of those is just about the best thing I’ve ever done. Ah, well.)

Also, following akamine_chan’s prompt, I’ll use exactly those three categories.

Favorite fic
“Point of Focus”. My first-ever Buffy story, the first fanfic I ever did after learning the term itself, and the first fic I ever posted on the ’Net. I’ve learned much since then and branched off in many directions, but this one started it all and still works.

Least-recognized fic
“Tip of My Tongue”. A Buffyfic that didn’t feature Buffy (like so much of my stuff), it occupies a significant place in the personal mythos I’ve developed in the Backstage Series, but it never garnered much notice. Part of that was because it was done before I came into LiveJournal (and, for that matter, while I was in Iraq for the initial invasion, meaning it was months before I had a chance to post it even on my own personal fic site), but I think mostly it was a matter of not being mainline Buffy. In some ways — and I’m speaking here of general category, not quality — my work can be compared to that of Madeleine L’Engle or Meatloaf: they, too, had a bit of trouble at the beginning because their works didn’t match any recognized genre. And, of course, anything done more than two years ago is ancient history to most of today’s Internet enthusiasts.

Most representative fic
“Whisper of a Moment”. It contains many or even most of the things that, in combination, point toward this being an aadlerfic: show-not-tell (the clues are there, but I never actually say 1] who the mysterious protagonist is or 2] where she’s from), focus on a formidable female, operation under a false identity, a surprise twist, and (this one is less frequent, but it does crop up) an OC who skirts the edges of MarySue-ism without quite — in my opinion — quite crossing that boundary.

Comments

[velvetwhip.livejournal.com]

I always find it interesting to see which of their own stories an author prefers.


Gabrielle

[aadler]

It can be seen as revealing, yes.