I can empathize with you when you talk about getting amped up by reading your own work. I'd have to say that reading mine has the same effect on me. I'm not sure there's a piece of my work that calms me down to read, unfortunately. I usually can't read my own work like I would others. My mind is always so busy thinking about how I could have improved it. I hope one day to write something that calms me. Seems like it'd be a pleasant experience.
As for the prompt . . . I wish I could say that I had this great big reasoning behind picking it and thinking that it was part of River's character. To be honest, it was just part of me brainstorming. I remember when I first offered you the prompt, you were slightly concerned about the characterization of River with the idea of being superstitious. That's actually how I came up with it. When I give prompts, I tend to try to pick things that on first glance or first thought might not seem to work, because that's my favorite thing in the world! When someone takes some concept that would seem in-congruent to reason, then they flip the reader's perception and remake your understanding of everything around it. I love that. For example, some of my favorite fanfics of all time seem just completely absurd on first thought . . . such as Adult!Luna/Voldemort (that turned into an amazing allegory about good and evil in a Wizarding world equivalent of World War II). Another would be a story about a castrato Vulcan in a love affair with a straight human man (and that was just an amazingly insightful piece about the nature of love, gender, sexuality, family, mental-health, and culture). So, I suppose the easy answer to your question is that I was coming up with potent concepts that seemed to not quite fit with the River we'd expect. I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to have you expand my concept of who River was. And you did that, which is just fabulous. So, I consider the prompt a success. You certainly owned it.
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Date: 25 Nov 2010 07:40 am (UTC)As for the prompt . . . I wish I could say that I had this great big reasoning behind picking it and thinking that it was part of River's character. To be honest, it was just part of me brainstorming. I remember when I first offered you the prompt, you were slightly concerned about the characterization of River with the idea of being superstitious. That's actually how I came up with it. When I give prompts, I tend to try to pick things that on first glance or first thought might not seem to work, because that's my favorite thing in the world! When someone takes some concept that would seem in-congruent to reason, then they flip the reader's perception and remake your understanding of everything around it. I love that. For example, some of my favorite fanfics of all time seem just completely absurd on first thought . . . such as Adult!Luna/Voldemort (that turned into an amazing allegory about good and evil in a Wizarding world equivalent of World War II). Another would be a story about a castrato Vulcan in a love affair with a straight human man (and that was just an amazingly insightful piece about the nature of love, gender, sexuality, family, mental-health, and culture). So, I suppose the easy answer to your question is that I was coming up with potent concepts that seemed to not quite fit with the River we'd expect. I wanted to be surprised. I wanted to have you expand my concept of who River was. And you did that, which is just fabulous. So, I consider the prompt a success. You certainly owned it.