fic commentary: To Soothe a Savage Breast
Oct. 28th, 2017 11:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darkrosaleenI haven't done one of these in a while, so here are some rambling notes and thoughts on my Big Bang fic. It had a difficult birth, but I think I wrote the best story I could under the circumstances.
I had a ton of personal shit going on during the writing of this (family issues, job changes, personal life changes) and by the time posting came around, I was just ready to be done. When I originally conceived of this, the first half was the prologue of a multi-chapter epic that went up to 2005 (I'm a little sad that the witch Waybros didn't make it in). Most of my revising and drafting was to salvage that overambitious idea into the functional second half of a 20k fic.
This wasn't even going to be my big bang--I'd written 4000 words of an au fic that I scrapped for various reasons. The only idea I had was that I liked werewolves, kink, poly fic, and baby Fall Out Boy. The central plot of a magic spell gone wrong came from searching Wikipedia for underutilized werewolf mythology, and reading about the association between werewolves and witches (which makes a hell of a lot more sense than associating them with vampires).
Once I had the witch angle, I had a defined antagonist and an excuse to torture Pete with metaphorical jailbait guilt. I had an easy time writing part one until I got to the bike path scene. It originally had no human werewolves--Pete found Joe being picked on by O'Connor wolves, and they parted with more of an uneasy truce, with Pete trying to accept that this was Joe's pack now and he had to get along with them.
This was when I got super blocked and decided to unofficially drop out. I came back to it three weeks before the draft deadline, knowing exactly what my problem was: Mrs. O'Connor was morally grey but not evil, and Pete's uneasy truce with the O'Connor wolves wasn't providing enough conflict. That's when I watched Youngblood Chronicles for the first time, and sexy evil femdom wolf Shannon O'Connor was born. With an actually nasty antagonist, I had a reason for Pete to go ahead and kidnap Joe from his pack. Now the conflict was open war between the powerful, cruel O'Connors and the misfit human Fall Out Boy pack.
This fic was always going to be an excuse for kinks, mainly puppy play and possessive loyalty kink d/s. And the O'Connors were always going to be predators who creeped on cute baby Joe, because he'd make a hot damsel in distress. Turning that angle up to eleven made it more satisfying for me to write, but I wonder if it limited my audience. This fandom seems to like its femdom in the form of real life WAGs joining slash ships for gentle, SSC kink scenes. I have more trouble finding F/m fic that scratches the itch than any other d/s combination, and I think it's because it's a power fantasy in addition to a sexual fantasy. The fantasy of "I'm the alpha and I get whatever I want because I don't care about consent" is powerful in its way, although it was satisfying to see her defeated at the end.
I'm not going to lie, the lack of response to this fic was a little devastating. I was assigned the first posting day, and I didn't get a comment for two weeks. I talked about the fic a lot in big bang community posts, and lots of participants commented and said they were looking forward to it, but only two seem to have read it and liked it, and one of them made my companion art. This fandom seems to have a bad comment ratio for rare pairs, and by the time people were going back through the archive to read everything, mine was buried all the way in the back. I'm grateful for the feedback I did get, and my companion art is better than I dared to hope for, but it was disheartening after the difficult writing process. I'm not sure if the tags/summary/warnings turned people off reading it, or if there was some content in the fic itself that made people uncomfortable giving kudos. It has been hovering at a 50% guest kudos ratio.
On a random note, the dream that Patrick has at the end of part one is a real dream I had shortly after I started writing. That's where I got the idea for the white wolf spirit, which in turn gave the fic a more spiritual vibe and inspired a lot of Pete's furry angst. So someone on the metaphysical dream plane liked the fic.
I had a ton of personal shit going on during the writing of this (family issues, job changes, personal life changes) and by the time posting came around, I was just ready to be done. When I originally conceived of this, the first half was the prologue of a multi-chapter epic that went up to 2005 (I'm a little sad that the witch Waybros didn't make it in). Most of my revising and drafting was to salvage that overambitious idea into the functional second half of a 20k fic.
This wasn't even going to be my big bang--I'd written 4000 words of an au fic that I scrapped for various reasons. The only idea I had was that I liked werewolves, kink, poly fic, and baby Fall Out Boy. The central plot of a magic spell gone wrong came from searching Wikipedia for underutilized werewolf mythology, and reading about the association between werewolves and witches (which makes a hell of a lot more sense than associating them with vampires).
Once I had the witch angle, I had a defined antagonist and an excuse to torture Pete with metaphorical jailbait guilt. I had an easy time writing part one until I got to the bike path scene. It originally had no human werewolves--Pete found Joe being picked on by O'Connor wolves, and they parted with more of an uneasy truce, with Pete trying to accept that this was Joe's pack now and he had to get along with them.
This was when I got super blocked and decided to unofficially drop out. I came back to it three weeks before the draft deadline, knowing exactly what my problem was: Mrs. O'Connor was morally grey but not evil, and Pete's uneasy truce with the O'Connor wolves wasn't providing enough conflict. That's when I watched Youngblood Chronicles for the first time, and sexy evil femdom wolf Shannon O'Connor was born. With an actually nasty antagonist, I had a reason for Pete to go ahead and kidnap Joe from his pack. Now the conflict was open war between the powerful, cruel O'Connors and the misfit human Fall Out Boy pack.
This fic was always going to be an excuse for kinks, mainly puppy play and possessive loyalty kink d/s. And the O'Connors were always going to be predators who creeped on cute baby Joe, because he'd make a hot damsel in distress. Turning that angle up to eleven made it more satisfying for me to write, but I wonder if it limited my audience. This fandom seems to like its femdom in the form of real life WAGs joining slash ships for gentle, SSC kink scenes. I have more trouble finding F/m fic that scratches the itch than any other d/s combination, and I think it's because it's a power fantasy in addition to a sexual fantasy. The fantasy of "I'm the alpha and I get whatever I want because I don't care about consent" is powerful in its way, although it was satisfying to see her defeated at the end.
I'm not going to lie, the lack of response to this fic was a little devastating. I was assigned the first posting day, and I didn't get a comment for two weeks. I talked about the fic a lot in big bang community posts, and lots of participants commented and said they were looking forward to it, but only two seem to have read it and liked it, and one of them made my companion art. This fandom seems to have a bad comment ratio for rare pairs, and by the time people were going back through the archive to read everything, mine was buried all the way in the back. I'm grateful for the feedback I did get, and my companion art is better than I dared to hope for, but it was disheartening after the difficult writing process. I'm not sure if the tags/summary/warnings turned people off reading it, or if there was some content in the fic itself that made people uncomfortable giving kudos. It has been hovering at a 50% guest kudos ratio.
On a random note, the dream that Patrick has at the end of part one is a real dream I had shortly after I started writing. That's where I got the idea for the white wolf spirit, which in turn gave the fic a more spiritual vibe and inspired a lot of Pete's furry angst. So someone on the metaphysical dream plane liked the fic.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-04 04:43 am (UTC)I feel for you as a writer - I know there can be a time after posting fic where it's fresh and you're hoping for responses, and then at some point enough time has passed that the iron has cooled, so to speak, and even if comments come in they may not feel as gratifying as they would have right at first. As a reader, for my own part I have to be in a certain mood to read bandom fic anymore and I just didn't manage it till today. So I think the story is great, but I'm sorry I missed the window where telling you so would have done the most good. I guess what it comes to is that the lack of response may well be more about the readers than about the fic. Cold comfort! But it is a great piece.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 04:53 am (UTC)I didn't get very far with the Waybros, but I wanted to have them be closer to the chaotic nature forces, maybe in a pack-of-two setup. Mikey was going to pick up on Patrick's pack alpha tendencies before Patrick did.