My heart bleeded, girl

Because I'm procrastinating on about a million things, a meme!

If you had to delete all but five of your stories, which five would you keep and why? (Or ten if you're more prolific.)

I've written a total of 81 stories, not counting drabbles and ficlets done here and there, for four different fandoms in the past eleven years. Fortyone of those are popslash. I could rank them all, these are good, these suck, these are okay, these are awesome, whatever. I could certainly pick ten that I like more than the rest. There's the first story I ever wrote, that's a special one. But there really are five that are extra-special, and not surprisingly, four of them are popslash, which will forever be the fandom of my heart.

Kaleidoscope This was written in 2005 for a challenge using Matchbox 20 lyrics. (♥ without_me) My lyrics were "Everyone here knows everyone here is thinking 'bout somebody else." This is the first story I wrote where I thought, hey, this is really good. Like, extra-good. I'm a stickler for canon, and it's full of canon details and timelines and I don't know how much of it I'd even get anymore, but I love the structure. The first part is from JC's pov, when Lance first joins NSYNC. He's immediately smitten, and they hook up. Lance, being 16, isn't quite ready to settle down yet. JC starts noticing that Lance is looking at Joey, and that parts ends when Lance kisses JC and JC "kisses Lance back and lets him go."

And then the next part is from Lance's pov and he and Joey are happy - Euro!Sync - but eventually he notices Joey looking at Justin. Well, who wouldn't? So Lance kisses Joey and lets him go. Then it's Joey's pov, he and Justin hook up, then Joey notices Justin looking at Chris. And then there's a kiss, and Justin and Chris hook up, Justin notices Chris looking at JC. Chris and JC hook up, Chris sees JC looking at Lance, and finally, Lance is ready. I just really like the symmetry, and how they all loved each other no matter what.

The Epic of the Lambs, 2006. Ahahaha, 82,000 words, posted unbeta'd, one chapter at a time, the very second I was done with each one. I started in April, finished in July. The most fun I ever had writing a story. I used the prompts from slashfic25, in order, each prompt a chapter. It has another structural gimmick I quite like, the story going from present day to flashbacks and back, in a big circle that meets at the end. Most fun ever, and it took a while to recover from that, because nothing was quite that good for a very long time and I lost a bit of interest in writing after that, although I didn't stop doing it.

Green Scales Fell Like Rain I wrote this one after Lance came out, for pensnest's Dragon Challenge in 2007. I starting thinking, what would it have been like if Lance had come out at the height of NSYNC's popularity, instead of waiting like he did. I also needed to deal with my (well-documented if you've been around here for a while) Diane Bass issues. I almost made it gen, but ended up including a bit of Trickyfish. I didn't want my poor Lance to be alone.


No Exit, 2008. I include this one because it took me five years to write it. It didn't end up anything like it started, and I poked at it and thought about it forever. synecdochic had a challenge in 2003 using Alan Ginsburg quotes, and the quote I picked was "Looking for a bus to ride us back home to Eternity, where the heart was left and farewell tears began." I started two different stories, because I really loved the quote. My mom was pretty sick that year and I didn't have a lot of time to write. I ended up submitting one story, the aptly named "A Bus to Ride" about ten months late, and then played with what became known, at least to Ashley, silveryscrape and myself as "the other bus story" for five years, until I finally finished it in 2008 for turps33's Awesome April challenge.


Hangman is Coming Down From the Gallows, written for spn_j2_bigbang, 2008. Pretty much my first SPN, except for some flashfics. Writing this story is the closest I've come to duplicating the feeling I had writing the Epic, and I would put it as the best story I've ever written, too. I felt like I was flying with every word. I remember thinking, I know! Dean's last day before Hell, make it like Groundhog Day, make him say goodbye to Sam over and over again. That was shortly before Mystery Spot aired for the first time, and so then I thought, well crap. But I wrote it anyway, and as I was writing it I told Ash it was kind of boring and she said, make it Hell. And I just flew after that. So much fun.

As was this look back on the stories I love. Yikes, there are lots of other stories for which this would not be such a fun exercise. :)

But just because other stories didn't fly like these did, well except for No Exit, doesn't mean they're not important to me or that I think they're all total crap or that I hated writing them. Some stories every word is a struggle, some every word is a pleasure.