Baa, Baa (Check My Wool, People)

[jheti]

So, like, nyohah did this, and I wanna play, too! ^_^



Penny Dreadfuls: I hit on this after some help from nyohah. At the time, other fandoms were rife with drabble-dump fics and I wanted to try my hand at one. I was looking for, and going for, a variation on/combination of "yellow novel" and "poison pen letter".

Abattoir: "slaughterhouse". Aren't I fancy. The ending needs fixing and less incest, but I'm lazy.

Off The Cuff: these stories are, and Greed especially is a slapdash kind of guy, so it pretty much titled itself. (Yes, I know, that middle word should be tiny. Stuff scans a little differently on a screen. That is my rationale, my preference, and my excuse in one convenient package. XD)

A Sorta Fairytale With You: I can't tell if this is a line from a Tori Amos song, or the name of the song. I've never heard it. I saw the words on an icon of Kiera Whatserface in a Cinderella-ish gown, and it fit, so I used it. The theft is nearly seamless. I'm not sure I'm proud of that, but it fits.

Lose Myself: the song is "Lose Yourself", and for the most part, she's talking in first-person, and the whole thing is about her sacrifice, so the alteration was both minimal and necessary.

The Shadows And The Shards: I was having trouble sleeping one night, and this title popped into my head--just this phrase, but I knew it was a title, and I wrote it down immediately. I put it aside for about three months, and then knew what story it needed to go with. There were, once, other tales from the Outworld, which were a sarcastic-yet-fond poke at these. But, um, I'm glad the others are gone; they were awful, and this cumbersome mistake of titling (remove your brains from the gutter THIS INSTANT) will be erased at the same near-mythological time that I update. Whee, reformatting. XD

Disturbed: I wanted a word for "damaged, disrupted" that had also the connotations of fear and a hint of madness and disgust. I had the porn written for two days before I had the title.

The Real Smith Matrix: here again, the original title was--oh, god, I don't remember, I think The Real Slim Shady? All I had to do was come up with "It's a Smith Matrix song!" in a way that fit the original title.

Broken: written well before "Disturbed", this one plays on both the total erasure of Smith and the fact that, as a machine with feelings, he is technically no longer functional--that is, broken.

First Man on the Sun: is the title of a Babybird song, the same song that is the reason I wrote the fic, and the only song ever that produced instant Spike!headspace for me.

The Chance: I altered the chorus of Dido's "Thank You", and that's the most meaningful part of the result, so it was a given.

Rhapsody In Red: I'm not happy with this title. It's too generically "vampire", and doesn't capture the sheer Queen-y mayhem going on within. One of my favorite things I've ever done, this was composed over several months by Tenchi and me as we took walks every other afternoon. The portion, "Giles, ooh, if I'm not back again this time tomorrow" was the first bit we came up with. He did the most incredible Spike impressions.

Shaken: If I remember correctly, I wrote this about the same time I wrote "Disturbed", and I wanted a "her delicately heaving bosom" sort of word for the same thrill of fear--one that wasn't too dreadfully Harlequin novel-y. It took four hours, or about six if you count the break for dinner and dishes.

Torn Apart: again, this is named after the song that suggested it to me. The phrasings and such within are awkward, but it's the only Vana fic on THE ENTIRE INTERNET and almost the only Fathom fic on the 'Net, so I reserve the right to smug self-satisfaction, regardless. I deliberately went for a sort of inversion or riff on The Little Mermaid. I also tend to have dreams like this about an ocean people who are not mermaids.

Mirrorworld: The Mirror Of Y'tilaer: a Mortal Kombat cheese-whiz adventure in the same basic UR A WIZARD, HARRY; EVERY LITTLE THING U DOES, IT'S MAGIC attitude as the first ever Harry Potter and the Alliterative Adventure Nouns book. Seriously, I love the series, but the titles are very, very much Harry's Name and the Major Plot Happenings. And yes, it is the Mirror of Erised, or it was originally supposed to be. Now it's pretty much just an evil plotting convenience, errm...generic, uh...thingy. I'm not ashamed enough to apologize. If I'd inflicted this on any other fandom? Yes, I would be sorry. I would be deeply sorry. XD

What Lies Beneath (The Toybox, Anyway): fanfiction.net destroyed my reference to this. Trailers for it were in heavy rotation at the time, and they were hilarious. The stone-cold sincerity with which the stupid, stupid premise was delivered always gave me the giggles. Freakishly overhyped "serious" horror movie + awkward childhood nostalgia? I think we have a winner.

I like my wordplay. Songs and music also feature prominently.

I try to ask "Can the audience get the feel of the story without clicking the title"? If yes, it works. If it works, I try not to sweat it too much--gilded lilies, sows' ears, most titles are somewhere in-between by default. One-word titles tend to be easier for me. My longer titles are typically, er, thieved borrowed. In the case of a parody or reinterpretation, I try to make the title match the original property as close as possible; it kinda helps people find it in the sea of "LOL RANDOM PARODY" titles.

Honestly? If I can't sorta tell what's inside based on the title bar, half the time I don't pay attention to the summary. When I do, I'm usually looking for the all-important content tags, though that depends on the fandom.

And, dude, pls warn for stuff. I promise to reciprocate.



I mean, I'm not personally a "MUST HAVE ALL POTENTIAL SQUICKS LISTED LIKE THIS" warning-requester, but if you have something really obvious, like necrophilia or something, it might be a good idea to put that in an author's note.

And no, I'm sorry, "dark content" does not cut it.

To me, "dark" content is psychological in nature; it's the difference between this (which I consider dark), and, oh, this, or something just like it, which I would like to click past as fast as possible.

Seriously. If I have to warn for rug munching, you should warn for that chop shop shit. Calling it "dark" doesn't make it awesome.

Also? Warn for mpreg. It's a good idea. Really.