Three fic commentaries

[cruiscin_lan]

Here are some of those fic commentaries for the meme a while back. I figured I'd post several smaller ones at once so I don't end up spamming or spacing out posts in such a way that I forget all about them later.

ever_obsessed asked me to do a DVD-style commentary for Defying Metaphor.

So here's the dealio. candlewaxdreams requested a Veronica Mars featuring Logan/Veronica (I'm currently working on it). But there were two things I needed to work on first: I'd never written for this fandom before (crossovers nonwithstanding), so I wanted to stretch my legs a little bit; and I didn't really like Logan Echolls.

*ducks*

Well, I don't really think we'd get along in person. (Actually, I don't think I'd get along with many southern Californians or people in the higher tax brackets, so he's right in the creamy center of that particular Venn diagram). He's a wonderful character, really. Just not the type of guy I'd fall in love with, like Wallace or Weevil or Piz. Anyway, I thought I'd try to get a little bit into Logan's head with this ficlet.

Falling in love with Veronica Mars was like being strangled with a garrote. There'd be times he'd feel unable to breathe, times when he'd struggle just to function - eat, sleep, be overwhelmed by thoughts of Veronica, rinse, repeat. Just when he felt like finally dying, the feeling would finally relent. A weekend spent in Mexico, an evening getting shit-faced with friends, and he'd forget about her existence completely for a few brief hours. But then she'd enter his mind again when he'd least expect it: she'd be there in his dreams, gazing up at him with lips pursed and her eyes hard and hateful; with her ragged dyke haircut and steel-toed boots poised to kick his ass; or sometimes in her middle-school soccer uniform, cleats covered with mud and knees green with grass stains. When he remembered her like this, he thought for sure that love for her would kill him.

Isn't garrote a wonderful word? I think I had just re-watched Double Indemnity when I thought of that metaphor.

Bonus fact! I started writing this while substitute teaching. The first few paragraphs are all written down in a notebook I bring with me everywhere, and they're pretty much the same. When I write things out by hand, I think I'm more deliberate about my writing, whereas it's easier to edit on a computer screen so I revise and re-revise endlessly when typing.

Don't worry, I didn't write anything smutty until I got home.



Being in love with Veronica Mars was like walking across shattered glass. When the sun caught them just right they were the golden couple, glittering and sparkling in the light, but there was hardship all around them. If he watched carefully enough where he was going, Logan could avoid the larger problems, navigate his way around them. In doing so, however, he almost always stepped on a shard he did not see, one small and unassuming and unnoticeable until it was already under his foot, pressed into the the sole of his foot. If he was slow and even enough, he could stand on these pieces, these tiny, unexpected problems, and they wouldn't break the skin; they'd merely push and push and push against the surface, a dull throbbing ache until he tried moving on. Balance was never Logan's forte, and more often than not he'd step squarely onto the sharp side of the shard and it would rip right into him.

So at this point I was like "Wow, it always really sucks to be Veronica's boyfriend." She's got a pretty sensitive trigger, and she has a hard time reigning in her paranoid-snooper tendencies. Really, the only ones apparently safe from her wrath have been Wallace and Mac and Backup. And now I kind of just ship Veronica by herself, even though she even drives herself crazy sometimes.


Making love to Veronica Mars was like wrestling a wild animal. She was untamed and fierce, whether it happened in the bedroom, various other places in his suite, or the back of his Xterra. Only then, stripped of her clothes and her inhibitions, did she seem free of whatever concerns she might have otherwise dwelled on. It was just the two of them roughing each other up, and Logan had the scratch marks to prove it. It was just one of the reasons he liked to call her "Bobcat." But, as always with a wild animal, Logan had the niggling feeling that she was more afraid of him than he was of her.

At this point I emailed it to dragynflies to see what she thought about it. It didn't have an actual storyline to it (it still pretty much doesn't) but I didn't know where else to go with it, so when she returned it, it kinda just sat in my email inbox untouched for, like, weeks, which isn't something I typically do. I'm usually on some kind of deadline so I usually try to write, get it beta'ed, review and revise pretty quickly.


Breaking up with Veronica Mars was like picking the scab off a festering wound. It stung to rip her out of his life like that, but he couldn't go on in such debilitating pain all the time. She needed him - his protection, his support, his embrace - but she denied it constantly, and her rejection cut him to the core. It was never intentionally hateful, but it felt like a continual pick-pick-pick that hurt a little more each time. When he decided to rip her out of his life all at once, he felt for the first time in a long time that he was free to relax, but once a scab is gone there's nothing to keep you from bleeding to death.

As you can tell, I have a lot of real-life experience in picking off scabs.

gross tmi shut up

Reading back through this, it bothers me that I was a little flippantly incorporating second-person into this fic. I don't know how I'd have corrected that, though. Also, I think this is where I started struggling for metaphors that weren't terribly cliche, so I stopped using them. Hence the name of the fic.



Logan found that living without Veronica Mars defied metaphor - it was, rather, an oxymoron. He didn't know why, but he stopped eating, he stopped sleeping, and he was sure that breathing would follow suit in time. Another blonde replaced her for a while, someone just as pretty and just as skinny and just as fucked up in a lot of ways. She could set his pulse racing, especially below the belt, but as far as sustaining a heartbeat... well, his heart was already too broken.

I always feel bad for the third-season characters, because they don't seem to get a whole lot of love from many VM fans. I wanted to include at least a little bit of Parker, because really she got shit on in a lot of ways by what happened on the show. I love that she had the cajones at the end to break up with Logan, but I hate that we don't ever get to know what happened after that.

(Speaking of shit-on third season characters, I pretty much love Piz to death, not gonna lie. Like, I love him so much that I'd write a self-insert Mary Sue epic in which we meet at a concert and he loses my phone number and then a comedy of errors reunites us in romantic ways. Also, it would be a musical.

A Bollywood-style musical. With dance numbers and Aishwarya Rai.

What? As long as I'm fantasizing here, I'm going to fantasize right.)

Anyway there's my first shot at trying to write some VM characters that wasn't for a Heroes kink meme... well, I guess that's a little ironic.

---

weirdofromafar asked me to do Sexy Company.

This one was written as a response to a kink meme prompt: "Noah/anyone, daddy kink." And maaaybe it caused a liiiiittle wank. Whoopsies. Anyway, this is a fic commentary, not a wank commentary, so here we go.

I like that this prompt was open-ended in a way that I could choose who to pair with Noah. I almost went with Sandra, but I don't remember why I didn't. It probably would work with her, too, if the setting was a little different, but I started it at work, and Sandra wouldn't ever be at Primatech as far as I could tell.

See, here's what's what about Noah Bennet - he's a family man, so when he's with his family, they always come first. The only time I can imagine him getting away with cheating on Sandra is at work. And who does he work with? Well, out of the two females who we've seen him work with at Primatech, I decided to go with the less obvious/more lulzy choice.

Noah waited in his office, shuffling through papers on his desk. It was getting late, and he knew he shouldn't have to stay, but he was anticipating company. Sexy company - which was why he waited in the nude.

See, when you want your whole fic to fit into one comment, there's not a whole lot of room for exposition. I just wanted to establish that Noah is naked.



When the door creaked open, casting a sliver of yellow light into the room, he looked up and narrowed his eyes at the visitor. Her long-legged figure was silhoutted, and even though he couldn't make out her features, he recognized her. She wore nothing but a short dress, something childish in fashion; Noah knew from experience there was nothing underneath.

I don't know why, but I imagine this to be a very film-noirish kind of pairing; she's a perfect femme fatale (she's got the sexy, sexy gams for it!) and then he's the marble-mouthed PI and this little detour in thought has very little to do with the fic here at this point except that in this paragraph I was trying to imitate the visual impact of film noir in prose.



"I heard you were a bad girl today," he said, coloring his voice with paternal disappointment.



"I'm sorry, Daddy. I just- I don't know what - "



"There's no excuse. You know what happens to bad girls."



"But Daddy, I-"



"Don't 'but Daddy' me," Noah scolded. "Now come here."



She hesitated, taking baby-steps across the carpet until she reached him. He spread his knees apart, patting them and peaking his eyebrows. Obediently she draped himself across her lap.

I think the baby-steps were a nice touch. Okay, so here starts the porn... not a lot to comment on, but please enjoy teh secks.



"Now tell me what your punishment is."



"A spanking. A good, hard spanking."



"Very good," Noah said, and he held his hand high above before bringing it against her naked backside with a resounding smack. Again, he raised his hand and brought it down upon her, stinging it so hard that her skin glowed red with the force of it.

"Oh, Daddy!" she exclaimed, her wetness dripping from between her legs onto the top of his thigh. "Hit me harder!"



Noah obliged, raising his hand to her once more. He didn't know why being hit was so arousing to her, but he certainly enjoyed doling out the punishment. "Now what do you say to Daddy?"



She slid off his lap and then straddled him, wrapping her legs around his waist as he remained seating in the chair. "Thank you, Daddy," she said, lowering herself onto his erection. She bounced on his lap several times, and he bit his lip to keep from sighing with pleasure - it would be a shame to break the illusion this far into the fantasy. "Thank you, Daddy!" she exclaimed again, louder. When he came, she came, and he pulled her close to him, letting her head settle onto his shoulder. "Thank you, Daddy! Thank you!"



"You're welcome, sweetheart," he said to her. He wrapped his arms around her, patting her gently on the back. She nuzzled her nose in his neck. After a few minutes of fatherly cuddling, she stepped off his lap and stood up, smoothing the fabric of her dress as she strode towards the door.

I've never written a daddy kink before. Actually, it's a kink I know very little about, and researching for writing porn fic is like... well, you google "daddy kink" and tell me if you like what you see. So basically what I'm saying is that I was totally making shit up. I don't know how this goes. But I don't think it matters much, since I was going for something a little porny and a little lulzy, and I got those done pretty well. Again, I really like the small things that happen, like the cuddling and the dress-smoothing and stuff. Here comes the big reveal...



As she reached the threshold, she turned towards him, once again silhouetted in the yellow light. "Thank you again, Noah," she whispered.



Noah smiled, watching as she shut the door behind her. "Anytime, Angela."

INORITE.

---

aurilly requested Lab Work.

So let me just start by saying that Mohinder/Elle is probably one of my favorite pairings to write, because there's just so much humor inherent in the two of them. Heroes is more conducive to angsty, dark fic a lot of the time, so it's fun to just have some fun instead.

This was also written for a kink meme prompt - "Clumsiness and frustration are really manifestations of sexual tension" or something similar. It was such a good prompt that I took it and ran.

He didn't want to let her stay, but her pitiful pout opened some long-dormant section of his heart, and against his better judgment he told her she could stay in the lab so long as she stayed out of his way.

But that wasn't how Elle Bishop operated.

Wow, do you like how I have absolutely no reasoning as to why Elle even needs a place to stay? I guess one can assume this takes place after she got fired from Primatech and before Mohinder turned into a bug. 



No matter what he did, she seemed to always hover his shoulder, intently observing what he was doing and incessantly asking questions. On top of that, she was clumsy, like always - spilling her Slush-O all over his cultured petri dishes, starting electrical fires that burned through all his research reports.

Can't have Elle without Slush-O.



One morning, only a few days after her arrival, Dr. Suresh had finally had it. She'd been standing just behind him, as she'd been accustomed to doing, and Mohinder turned around and ran right into her, managing to clutch a few test tubes but dropping everything else in his arms. Beakers shattered on the cement floor and papers flew left and right.

"That's it, Elle!" Mohinder shouted, his temper flaring out of control. "I have had it up to here with this. I can't afford to lose any more equipment or research."

Clumsiness: check. Frustration: check. Sexual tension: we're getting to it.



"I - but wait, Mohinder..." Elle started, biting her lip to keep it from quivering. She shoved her hands into her pockets like a scolded child, looking down towards the floor so he couldn't see the tears in her eyes.

Elle can be a very childish character; she acts immature and she looks like a teenager, so add some little-kid mannerisms and boom - instant sympathy.



But he did see them, and he realized he was being a total jerk. "Elle, I - I didn't mean it."

Okay, so this is where I noticed that I have a little bit of a pattern when writing Mohelle, so here's a Mohelle fic recipe for you:

1. Step One - Put Mohinder and Elle in a confined space together (i.e. a motel room or Pinehearst cell, although laboratories work best).
   
2. Step Two - Make Elle piss Mohinder off.
   
3. Step Three - Make Mohinder be a jerk to Elle.
   
4. Step Four - Then they have sex.

I think there probably should be a step between three and four, but yeah. There never is.



"Yes, you did," Elle whimpered in reply. "You meant every word." Her voice wavered with emotion. "I don't mean to cry, I just - I've just been having a hard time lately. What, with my dad, and getting fired, and Sylar, and... everything."

It took me long enough to get that exposition in there, didn't it?



"I just was frustrated, that's all," he insisted, setting a hand on her shoulder sincerely. "I'm sorry, Elle. I'm really sorry."

That's right, self, incorporate that prompt really obviously into the fic. They work best when you incorporate it right into the character's dialogue. Line on the cutting room floor: "I guess my frustration is just a manifestation of my attraction to you... sexually."



Elle sniffled for a moment, a shy smile coming slowly to her face. "Frustrated, huh?" she asked, still managing to be flirty through all her crying. "Guess it's been awhile since you got laid."

Way to spell it out for us, Elle.


Mohinder smiled, wrapping his arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. "I suppose you wouldn't be willing to remedy that?" he asked facetiously. 

To his suprise, she looked up at him, resting her chin on his chest and batting her glistening eyes at him. "Perhaps that's what I've been trying to do all along," she said.

SEE? THIS ALWAYS HAPPENS.

 Okay, porn time.

Mohinder's jaw fell slack - it was a window of opportunity for Elle. She quickly reached up and kissed him, holding his bristly chin in her palms. To her delight, his tongue found its way into her mouth, and she playfully caught it between her teeth. He dropped the test tubes he'd been holding in order to free his hands; they fell to the floor with a tinkling crash as his hands wandered down her back, around her waist, and into the back of her pants.



He pinned her against the slate table, the broken pieces of glass crunching beneath their shoes, and then hoisted her up onto the tabletop. They kissed passionately, letting their hands have free reign over one another's bodies, before they began peeling off their clothes one piece at a time. Mohinder swept his arm across the table, pushing away all that expensive equipment and data he'd just been giving Elle a hard time about, and she leaned back onto the smooth surface as Mohinder climbed up to join her.

I don't know if you can tell by reading all my Mohelle fics, but I don't really know my way around a lab. All I can remember about them is that the tabletops are all slate because in high school I wasn't any good at chemistry or physics or science really, but I was diligent about keeping my area clean. But the problem with that is that slate bleeds - meaning that you can wipe away surface grime completely, but no matter how much you wipe it, there's always going to be streaks on the rag or paper towel that comes from the stone itself and not the surface.

Needless to say it took me a whole semester for me to figure that out, and I wasted a lot of paper towels because I thought the tabletop was so frickin' dirty all the time.

Anyway, that's why slate tables are pretty much the only detail I know to include.



He ran his hands through her hair for a while, enjoying the electric sensation of her skin against his. She played with the soft curls first on his head, and then those between his legs, biting her lower lip again to keep it from quivering - this time in anticipation. Finally he acceded, and slid into her crevice with a shudder and a sigh; she gasped, not realizing how large he was, or how hard.

Hee hee... crevice. Words for lady-parts are always so awkward.



As he thrust into her, she guided his hand to her clit, showing him what to do. He circled it with his thumb at various speeds, with various degrees of pressure, gauging her pleasure with her satisfied moans and groans. She gripped his buttocks, forcing him into her harder and harder, until they could take it no more. Together they came, Elle shrieking and Mohinder calling out her name.



"Do you accept my apology?" Mohinder asked as he struggled to catch his breath.

Elle bit her lip.

"I don't know. How about you apologize again?"

Oh yeah, Step Five in the Mohelle fic recipe: End with something pithy.