magibrain

So, I'm not sure exactly why I decided that a story covering Neal Caffrey's entire adult life through the the resolution of Most Wanted was a good idea, but I did, and that, I feel, was a mistake. It's currently unfinished at 8,000 words, in four parts. None of these things were my intention.

In fairness, it totally fits one of the prompts, if you squint and tilt your head and take certain things very thematically. ...one of the prompts that isn't anywhere near the bingo I'm working on. But it fits into a series with two other prompts! ...one of which is on the bingo I'm working on.

Hush.

I feel like I could have had at least one of these fics finished by today, if I hadn't taken a weird left turn somewhere and found myself writing out 15,000 words of fiction where the US correctional system is a modern version of convict leasing, but on the plus side, I have 15,000 words of fiction where the US correctional system is a modern version of convict leasing!

Look, I never claimed to be good at this.


(I also feel a bit guilty about all those words, because I've totally been using fanfic as a way to hide from the stress of unemployment when I should probably be spending more of that time doing productive things. Hey, if anyone knows of a San Francisco Bay Area company that wants to hire a PHP/MySQL developer with a bunch of experience and an active interest in picking up new languages but no CS degree, point me their way, aight?)


( Stats )

My editor-brain has gone to bed without taking my writer-brain with it, which is why I find myself contemplating a White Collar/Briarpatch crossover. (It'd be great. Neal has access to the Briarpatch, and the Light is in some way tied up with Kate, and Peter has no affinity for the Briarpatch at all but manages to find his way in there while searching for Neal and completely refuses to back down for a little thing like being inconceivably in over his head, and hijinks ensue. And Diana somehow ends up completely intimidating all the bears.)

I think this is symptomatic of some kind of weird reaction to writing in a fandom which isn't speculative fiction of any kind. I mean, the great bastions of my fandom work to date have been Final Fantasy VIII, Stargate SG-1, Torchwood/Doctor Who/Life On Mars as one giant amalgam, and a recurring theme of Silent Hill getting into everything. You know, the kind of fandoms where I can go all wacky with time loops and mind control and giant monsters and split threads of causality and stuff, without deviating that far from actual bounds of canon-established reality.

I think my brain just flat-out refuses to accept the real world as a template, and this is why my White Collar WIPs folder consists of a handful of short character studies, a complete re-write of half of Season 2 and all of Season 3, a fic in which Peter is a really atypical guardian angel, a fic that's three AUs that got in a car crash*, and a crossover with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, of all things. (Neal wanders into a Witch's Labyrinth. Hijinks... ensue? None of the main characters get to be magical girls. It's for the best, really.) And it's probably for the best that all the snippets with the White Collar guys having to deal with damaged_people!Jack Harkness are remaining in the braintic purgatory of my Gmail where they belong.

*Back when I was learning about these things in highschool physics, a perfectly inelastic collision was described as one in which two objects collide, combine their momentum, and continue onward with a shared velocity. When the teacher asked for examples from the class, someone offered up "A guy getting impaled by a charging rhino?" I'm not sure why this popped into my head, other than the fact that the three-AU-pileup in that fic is pretty damn inelastic.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm writing this out to Dreamwidth, other than it being late and me not having gotten much sleep and everything seeming like a good idea right now. (But really, Neal-and-the-Briarpatch would just be fun to play with, even if it's not Tim Pratt's Briarpatch. And even if Neal as Br'er Rabbit kinda bucks the whole Neal-as-fox metaphor I have way too much fun poking at.)

Someone please tell me to quit the browser and go to sleep.



Current sleep-deprived typo correction count: 18

Title: Exhaustion
Requestor: azertynin
Request Link: http://collarcorner.livejournal.com/24743.html?thread=686759#t686759
Prompt Details: ( Missing scene for 2x04 (By The Book) )
Rating: ...inoffensive? K/T-ish.
Wordcount: ~1700

( Neal hasn't slept since this whole thing started. )