Wtf: The Perils of Pauline

[black_sluggard]

Or, why not to post chapters before you know where the fuck your story is even about...

Circa winter last year, I posted a single chapter of a story called "Sui Generis". I only really had this chapter, but I wanted to post it before Kevin's wedding happened on the show. I called it a "teaser", and figured I wouldn't do much else with it...

But, because it was an incredibly bizarre story, of course my head tried to take off with it, and I started doing the sort of by-chapter posting I didn't really even want to be doing with "Black Edelweiss" let alone two (now three, because I failed to finish "Of Mice and Men" on time) stories at once. But it was weird. To weird not to play with, and weird enough that people saw it and were at the very least intrigued to see where I was going with it.

But while I thought I knew where I was going with it, I really didn't.

In parts, it's some of my favorite writing that I've done, but strung together the mood goes all over the place. Especially that first chapter. See, that first chapter originally grew out of an idea that was (like the "werewolf in an elevator" example I love to talk about) actually supposed to be funny. But I couldn't just write Javier as an alien. I don't like aliens that don't feel alien. So my brain seized on starfish aliens and on Lovecraft, and whispered things like "Hey, remember John Carpenter's The Thing? That was an awesome movie. Only...hey, what if it was a love story?")

Which isn't to say I don't still like that chapter on its own, but it really doesn't fit with the rest of the story once it turns into angst and body horror in the wake of Javier basically getting drunk and raping Kevin's genome.

(And Jesus on a fucking jet ski, but sometimes I look back at the things I've written and wonder about my own sanity. I really, really do.)

But in the wake of my aforementioned scatteredness about what to write next, my mind has apparently decided chapter five of "Sui Generis" is where it's at (giving it precedence over trivial things like my lack-of-a-life's work "Black Edelweiss", or, you know, homework). What I've seen rereading the chapters to pick up the thread of it's plot again, I realized it needs a lot of work to marry it all together into something that isn't fragmented. I won't go back and rewrite it from the beginning, I don't want to be that author. But once I do finish it, I'm probably going to heavily rework it before posting it on AO3 (where I've noticed, despite the relative quiet of Castle fandom there, in general weird shit is more than welcome).

I don't even know if I'll bother with FF.net. I might tell Jameson Rook where to find it, but other than that one user I'm not really feeling the love there anymore. :(

Comments

[black_sluggard]

Yeah. Sometime after I had a fair amount of this story written, it occurred to me that I could've used the first-chapter opening and done a Men In Black crossover. It would have been a lot easier to go with the original feel that way, but by then I was kind of committed to shoggoth!Javi's creepy assimilation thing. :/