Yuletide reveal!
Jan. 1st, 2014 08:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arduinnaI wrote Haven for Yuletide! I was a little hesitant to offer it, partly because I'd also requested it, and partly because I'm always nervous writing for the first time in a non-tiny fandom for some reason. But I love the show, and this season in particular I was over the moon about Duke and Nathan, so it was too tempting to resist.
That's not the best summary ever, but I was stymied. My title and summary always wind up being last, and this time I had a punch-drunk version in my head I couldn't get rid of, and that I couldn't use because they were:
Title: Hey la, hey la
Summary: His boyfriend's back, and there's gonna be a Trouble
... yeah. No. *g* But it meant I was scrambling and wound up with the most basic thing imaginable. Oh well. I'm pretty pleased with the title, at least.
I was extra-happy to be asked about Haven and the Duke/Nathan fanservice coming out of it this season in the December meme, because it let me wallow around in fourth season and do some more thinking about these two and how they fit together, even if I then had to be very careful not to go into anything that might give away what I was writing. Thanks,justhuman - that couldn't have been better timing! <3
And now to ramble a bit about the story process...
This is the first year I've been matched up with someone whose tastes are different enough from mine that I had a real struggle with my assignment on that level. I've had to stretch my boundaries in other years and pulled it off -- that's one of my favorite things about Yuletide, in fact -- but this year my favorite-things list overlapped pretty significantly with my recip's DNW list, and vice versa. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out something I could write for her, making false starts and feeling just totally blocked, until I finally hit on something that I thought might make a decent compromise; one of her prompts was for "how things went sour between them", and I'd been narrowing in on the window of Duke coming back to town before Nathan's Trouble returned.
It was tighter to the wire than I think any YT story I've ever written, and the best compromise I could manage was to (hopefully) keep it non-fluffy and non-schmoopy, and to stay focused on the slashy, sexy stuff. Any time I tried for darker/sharper edges, I ran into a wall.
She seems to have liked it, which I'm relieved about, but I'm even more relieved that she got several treats this year, at least some of which seem to have given her the bright sharp edge she really wanted. Phew.
It was an interesting process overall, though. I've only had one year when the request I got looked like something I absolutely couldn't write, and after one bad moment I went straight to "well, optional details are optional" and moved right along to writing something in my own wheelhouse without a qualm. But clearly when things are more borderline I want to at least try to hit the notes my recip wants as closely as I can, and it was hard for me to admit I just wasn't going to be able to get there, and to focus instead on my strengths in the smaller areas where we did overlap.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Yuletide, I didn't get nearly enough read this year before reveals, and my recs count is woefully down from previous years. I blame the Wednesday holidays; I didn't have any time off from work, and just never had time to settle in to a few days of nonstop reading like I prefer. Next year, I am determined to do more!
In the meantime, though, here's the handful of recs for this year so far, and I should be adding to this for a while.
Bank Shot (5522 words) by Arduinna
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Haven
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Duke Crocker/Nathan Wuornos
Characters: Duke Crocker, Nathan Wuornos
Additional Tags: Pre-Canon, Reunions, Reunion Sex
Summary:Nathan's got the weekend off, and Duke Crocker's back in town.
That's not the best summary ever, but I was stymied. My title and summary always wind up being last, and this time I had a punch-drunk version in my head I couldn't get rid of, and that I couldn't use because they were:
Title: Hey la, hey la
Summary: His boyfriend's back, and there's gonna be a Trouble
... yeah. No. *g* But it meant I was scrambling and wound up with the most basic thing imaginable. Oh well. I'm pretty pleased with the title, at least.
I was extra-happy to be asked about Haven and the Duke/Nathan fanservice coming out of it this season in the December meme, because it let me wallow around in fourth season and do some more thinking about these two and how they fit together, even if I then had to be very careful not to go into anything that might give away what I was writing. Thanks,
justhuman - that couldn't have been better timing! <3And now to ramble a bit about the story process...
This is the first year I've been matched up with someone whose tastes are different enough from mine that I had a real struggle with my assignment on that level. I've had to stretch my boundaries in other years and pulled it off -- that's one of my favorite things about Yuletide, in fact -- but this year my favorite-things list overlapped pretty significantly with my recip's DNW list, and vice versa. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out something I could write for her, making false starts and feeling just totally blocked, until I finally hit on something that I thought might make a decent compromise; one of her prompts was for "how things went sour between them", and I'd been narrowing in on the window of Duke coming back to town before Nathan's Trouble returned.
It was tighter to the wire than I think any YT story I've ever written, and the best compromise I could manage was to (hopefully) keep it non-fluffy and non-schmoopy, and to stay focused on the slashy, sexy stuff. Any time I tried for darker/sharper edges, I ran into a wall.
She seems to have liked it, which I'm relieved about, but I'm even more relieved that she got several treats this year, at least some of which seem to have given her the bright sharp edge she really wanted. Phew.
It was an interesting process overall, though. I've only had one year when the request I got looked like something I absolutely couldn't write, and after one bad moment I went straight to "well, optional details are optional" and moved right along to writing something in my own wheelhouse without a qualm. But clearly when things are more borderline I want to at least try to hit the notes my recip wants as closely as I can, and it was hard for me to admit I just wasn't going to be able to get there, and to focus instead on my strengths in the smaller areas where we did overlap.
Meanwhile, in the rest of Yuletide, I didn't get nearly enough read this year before reveals, and my recs count is woefully down from previous years. I blame the Wednesday holidays; I didn't have any time off from work, and just never had time to settle in to a few days of nonstop reading like I prefer. Next year, I am determined to do more!
In the meantime, though, here's the handful of recs for this year so far, and I should be adding to this for a while.
