I get to toot my own horn because of a meme

[derien]

Sometimes it's okay to pimp yourself out. Post a list of your top five fic-favorites you've written, regardless of fandom or the reason you love them. This isn't about the BEST things you've written, but what you LOVE most.

I haven't written a lot since Swept Away became the fic that ate my brain, but I love ALL my darlings (which means I should kill them all, I know).

Forgive me if this is stretching the terms of the meme a little, but I always think of my Mike/Psmith series as all part of the same story. I love this story because I felt as though I did channel Mike's personality fairly well - I identified with him as the incoherent, loyal, quiet, deeply feeling born-to-be-a-sidekick person. And I think it was just awful that Wodehouse created such a real character and then abandoned him. It was like he forgot that Mike gave Psmith his connection with the rest of humanity. Psmith got more interesting to Wodehouse, because he's the more flamboyant character, but after he shuffled Mike away Psmith got boring, because flamboyance is nothing without it's connection to pragmatism.
The Book, The Book II, The Book III, and Two Minutes After (the only R rated part of the story).

Ennui - Mal pines for Polly. Should really not be read without having read "Monsterous Regiment" (Terry Pratchett) first. Probably I'm just fond of it because it may have been the first fanfic I ever finished writing and showed to the world, but I think it has... something.

I'll cheat a little again with this series, written all within about a week, short, and closely connected. These are fanfic of daegaer's story Remembering Monsters, which is a bizarre AU sort of sequel to Pratchett and Gaimen's "Good Omens." If that's complicated enough? Um, yeah. I love it because, even though it's fanfic of fanfic, in it's way it's also probably my first original fic, because I could do anything I wanted with Akinari and Chojiro continuing their lives after Crowley and Aziraphale left. Will they ever figure out what happened? Will they ever understand it? Probably the answer is 'no' to both questions.
On Waking, Meeting Again For The First Time, and Everything Old Is New Again.

Solvent - because it's Gilligan/Professor, and just how much wronger can you get? I have a passion for wrong. :) Although more importantly because I wrote it as a prequel to mizzmarvel's Gilligan Moves Out. :)

Absence of Madeline I think I did a pretty competent job with it, and I keep getting reminded of it because I get new compliments on it about every month. Oddly, those people never offer it when someone asks for recommendations on indeedsir, so I don't know how much good it really is.



And looking at how quickly I was turning out little fics makes me wonder what the hell happened when I began writing Swept Away. It's as if all the energy that was working for me suddenly left when there was one project that I 'should' be working on. I think I'll take a walk right now, get away from the house, and go write a bit.

Comments

[mizzmarvel.livejournal.com]

Solvent is such an awesome story. It's crack that turned into not-crack in an amazing way.

[derien.livejournal.com]

You were mightily inspirational! :)

[laurenthemself]

I was always fond of Poet and Lauren's Trip to Oz, but possibly I am biased.

[derien.livejournal.com]

Hee!! :D That WAS fun to write! It's here (http://derien.rulesthe.net/wrote/index.html#rd), filed under Red Dwarf fics. :)

[qian.livejournal.com]

Yay, horn-tooting! \o/ Yay, fic!

And I think it was just awful that Wodehouse created such a real character and then abandoned him. It was like he forgot that Mike gave Psmith his connection with the rest of humanity. Psmith got more interesting to Wodehouse, because he's the more flamboyant character, but after he shuffled Mike away Psmith got boring, because flamboyance is nothing without it's connection to pragmatism.

I agree with all of this! Well, except the first sentence, 'cos I do wish that Wodehouse hadn't basically forgotten about Mike, but you can tell that as a writer, Wodehouse wasn't really interested in characters -- or plot, for that matter. The main thing he was into was fantastic similes. Psmith allowed him to range joyously across the vasty sweep of the English language, grazing where he would and issuing delightful aphorisms out the side of his mouth, and that's why he liked him. Mike just couldn't compare!

If Wodehouse were more interested in the emotion that lies behind writing then he would've kept Mike, and maybe he would've been a better writer. I sometimes wonder, though, whether he realised that he would've been only an average serious writer, but he was sublime at comedy, and that was why he stuck to comedy.

[derien.livejournal.com]

I sometimes wonder, though, whether he realised that he would've been only an average serious writer, but he was sublime at comedy, and that was why he stuck to comedy.

I think he thought (and perhaps was right) that he was only average at serious writing, because really "Mike" - before he added the "and Psmith" part - was a normal book about an average kid, and an offshoot/outgrowth of his other boarding school stories. I tend to feel as though comedy and normalcy can be blended... but maybe he really wasn't good at it, because "Psmith, Journalist" really had a bit of an odd feel, with a comedy character taking on a very uncomedic situation (slum lords). Hm. I'll have to think on this. My impulse is to say that he didn't try to work at it for long enough. I mean, not all his comedy stories were really all that sublime - I've read a few that were really not so good. He wrote a LOT of stories, and we remember and honor the good ones, but they weren't all so good.