DVD Commentary Meme

[elrhiarhodan]

I like playing with the memes - particularly the ones that get me to talk about by writing - whether it's a particular story, fandom or process. Actually, that's not quite correct - I love these types of memes.

And my favorite one is the DVD Commentary Meme.

You get to toddle on over to my Master List, scroll through my fic and then ask me questions about a story, or a genre, or a series.

Pick a passage from my stories, up to 500 words, and comment to this post with that selection (including a link to the story being excerpted). 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 story, awful puns [perhaps], and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

You can ask me anything - character motivation, writing process, or if you disagree with the direction I took in a story, ask me to defend it.

And what's great about a meme is that you should take this post and replicate it on your own journal, so we become one great big circle-jerk of commentary (of course, substituting the link for your master list).

Comments

[rabidchild67.livejournal.com]

I want to ask you about
Evocative (http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/80547.html).

It is one of my favorites, because it breaks my heart every time. And I don't mean it just affects me - I have to physically contain SOBS. (OK, so, Neal and I have lost mothers at a young age in common, so that explains that)

So: where did that come from? What were you thinking at the time; was it just a prompt? Cuz, that story is MAGIC.

[elrhiarhodan]

It was initially a prompt - as I had noted, given to me by gyzym, but that really doesn't quite explain everything.

The early fall is always a difficult time of year for me. My mother died in late October and I have always gotten very melancholy by the last weeks in September - usually around the Jewish Holidays. I think, at the time, I had been dreaming about my own mother quite frequently - particularly since I had begun to notice a rather severe decline in my father's health and well-being. One worry feeding another.

I remember sitting in Starbucks (probably at the very same table I'm at right now) and thinking for a minute or two about the scent of cinnamon - how my mother would make me cinnamon toast in the mornings when I was a little girl, and sometimes we'd have cinnamon raisin bagels as a treat. Cinnamon was always the scent of love and safety, and now it's the scent of loss (and goddamnit, I'm making myself cry).

I don't cook with it, and I try to avoid it as much as I possibly can.

This is a fic that I rarely allow myself to re-read - because it affects me so physically. Almost more now than when I wrote it.

It is also one of the stories that I am most proud of - I rank it in my personal top ten.

[coffeethyme4me.livejournal.com]

{{{{{{{Elr}}}}}}}}}}}} I hope one day in the future you can begin to use cinnamon again and, instead of feeling the loss, feel the love of your mother all around you still. I'm sad that cinnamon is temporarily gone for you. :-(

Love, love, love.....

[ladygray99]

I don't think I really have a question by Yom Tov makes me smile. I'm a Numb3rs girl mainly which has Jewish family at it's core and a main character going strongly back to his faith in later seasons. The fic writers who bother spend too much time with their noses in Wikipedia and English to Hebrew dictionaries and still manage to get things wrong so it makes me smile to see a story from someone who actually knows what the heck they're talking about.

[elrhiarhodan]

Yom Tov is an interesting fic, especially now that Jeff has Neal keeping the Nazi treasure without a second thought as to the origin and the cost to his soul.

Quite ironically, the follow up story that I had planned, but never ended up writing involved a character I had created for one of my PWPs - Sonia - a survivor. She and Neal knew each other because Neal had forged a painting that had been stolen from her family by the Nazis, and gave her back the original. The follow-up to Yom Tov was that Sonia had wanted Neal to do the same thing for her friend, but Neal wanted Peter to help, using the resource of the FBI.

I am glad that I hadn't written that - it would have made my distress over JE's use of Nazi atrocities as a casual plot device even more painful.

[misura.livejournal.com]

He stuffed himself full of all the learning he could, and not just legitimate stuff like math and history and science, but how to recreate things, and even how to make things that seemed real, but weren’t.

At eleven, the first thing Moz faked was his birth certificate. It was surprisingly easy to get a new name, birth date (which made him a year and a half older) and social security number, all legitimate documents. His real name – the one his mother gave him before she dumped him on the sidewalk in front of a church – existed only in the records for Child Services and the decaying elementary school he was supposed to attend.

from: First Jobs (http://elrhiarhodan.livejournal.com/146902.html)

[elrhiarhodan]

I'm not sure what you want to know about this fic, so I'll speak generally.

One of the biggest attractions for White Collar for me is the level of intelligence and education - even if the character is an autodidact (like Neal). I am a brain snob, I admit - so when Mozzie displays all this awesome intellectual prowess, I fall a little more in love each time.

And given what we've been told about Moz - he's an orphan and he's from Detroit, I wanted to build up something that would tell how this guy who had everything stacked against him, got to be so brilliant, so knowledgable.

Is this what you wanted to know?

[misura.livejournal.com]

Ack, sorry, I guess I didn't quite understand the meme.

Pick a passage from my stories, up to 500 words, and comment to this post with that selection (including a link to the story being excerpted). I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet seemed to imply that the idea was to uh just pick a passage?

I felt some interesting choices were made in this passage, both language-wise (two uses of stuff in one line with different meanings, 'legitimate' learning as opposed to ... , 'recreate', 'faked', 'legitimate' again, but with a different meaning, 'decaying') and plotwise (the jump from age eight to age eleven, the telling about learning as opposed to the showing of it, the 'dumped in front of a church' thing that still left Mozzie with a name, the implication that Mozzie did not get his learning at school but rather - well, somewhere else). Given the age of the ficlet, I hardly expect you to recall all that, but, well, I figured you might recall enough for a general commentary on the passage.

[coffeethyme4me.livejournal.com]

I want to ask you what it's like to write femslash. What made you decide to write it in the first place? Does it feel awkward? Is it as hot to you as writing two men or a man with a woman? Are there any stumbling blocks or is it smooth sailing? What's hot about it? Is it hard to write it knowing you'll probably get less feedback for it? What kind of femslash -- pairings, dynamics, positions, etc. -- do you most like to read or write?

[coffeethyme4me.livejournal.com]

Then again, you've gotten more feedback for your latest than I think I've ever seen anybody get for femslash in the history of the world! So, go you!!!! :-D (It *was* almost unbearably hot. ;-) )

[elrhiarhodan]

What a thought-provoking question.

Writing the femslash that I just published didn't feel awkward or uncomfortable - I was writing something that made me hot - actually a lot hotter than some of the m/m that I've written in the past few months. I was worried, however, that it would feel/come across as exploitative - in a way that I never worry about when I'm writing m/m.

The story originated from a prompt I was given a few weeks ago during a Slashchat session - I think it may have been Neal/DIana/Christie - or Neal watches Diana/Christie. I accepted the challenge and just let my mind take me to something that I thought was hot - but still respectful. Basically - that Neal would not be allowed to participate and that he couldn't be a hidden observer either. Does that make sense?

I didn't really think about f/b - not that it doesn't matter - but right now, f/b seems to be at an all time low for everyone. Maybe it's the heat or the anticipation of the new season. If I were ambitious - I'd keep a graph of my feedback and see where this one stands. I'll take your word that it's a high number for femslash.

I'll probably write more - if just because there is a canon relationship to explore - I don't know if I'll ship a femslash non-canon relationship just yet. If I do, it'd probably be Sara/Diana or Sara/Alex.

On a more technical/intimate note - I don't think I have any boundaries when it comes to the porn - except that I'd never write something I don't like - i.e., genital piercings, watersports or humiliation play. That goes for any pairing - slash/het/femslash.

There are somethings - like fisting - that I find more enjoyable to write for a particular type of couple - e.g., fisting and femslash. I have a difficult time with the physical anatomy of m/m fisting.

This is probably WAY more than you ever wanted to know - so thank you for giving me the platform to discuss.

[jrosemary.livejournal.com]

Elrhiarhodan wrote:

The story originated from a prompt I was given a few weeks ago during a Slashchat session - I think it may have been Neal/DIana/Christie - or Neal watches Diana/Christie. I accepted the challenge and just let my mind take me to something that I thought was hot - but still respectful. Basically - that Neal would not be allowed to participate and that he couldn't be a hidden observer either. Does that make sense?

Ah! Thank you for clarifying that, Elr, even though I didn't think to ask the question in the first place. I loved the scene between Diana and Christie, but . . . well, you know how I feel about guy cooties! (Even Neal's.) But I think you handled that prompt in a thoroughly respectful way.

I just love the way you write femslash, so here's hoping for much more--especially minus any guys, lol!

[coffeethyme4me.livejournal.com]

Why I think the Diana/Christie/(Neal) worked in this story is that I can see Christie maybe being bi and maybe having Neal watch is a fantasy that she and Diana have discussed in depth, and Diana is most DEFINITELY in control of the whole thing. (Not that it couldn't work otherwise; I just like that you left that ambiguous enough to encompass several different alternate realities). And none of it is expressly FOR Neal, either, and I love that. I love that (and how) you drew boundaries.

Thanks so much for the awesome answer here and the awesome femslash, too. ;-)