Bring Back that Loving Feeling

[lunabee34]

So, I've been thinking about something lately. It's an amalgamation of reading SPN Big Bang and looking back through the first recs I made in the SPN fandom.

I want to write a season one or two SPN fic. You know what I'm talking about. Something gritty and uncertain, saving people hunting things the family business, two boys in a car, some goddamn hope on the horizon. Something causeways or traveller or mikhale (who else wants it to be Joel? LOL) might have written in the wayback. And I don't think I can do it.

I've been trying to pin down why and I think it's because I know what happens next. That's never been a problem for me before. I had no problem writing Basement Fic in BtVS even though I'd seen the whole series and ariadne83 and I are rocking Our Own Private Bang even though SG-1 and SGA are both over and there's no surprises left there. But for some reason, I cannot get out of the emotional headspace of season four--or really, to be more accurate, the moment that Dean made the deal with the crossroads demon. That seems the irrevocable moment for me, the invisible line I'm having trouble crossing.

I want to write this thing that is bereft of the apocalypse, where Dean's soul is stuck in his chest safe and sound, and the worst things we've got to worry about are: Where's Dad and what does the YED want? But I feel like I can't shed the unremitting loss and sorrow of the subsequent three seasons, like it's going to bleed over somehow into anything I try to write. Does that make sense? (It's like how I won't get the subtext in a show at all (*cough* McShep *cough*) for three seasons and then suddenly when I do see it, I can't help but see it from episode one on, even if it wasn't there in the least for me on the first go round.)

Does anybody else have this problem? What do you do? How do you fix it? Are there any concrete writing strategies you use?

Comments

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I just started working on a story where, after War Stories, Mal and Zoe really *do* sleep together, and Wash is so upset that he packs his bags and leaves, so it's the new pilot (or, as River insists on calling him, "Fred Shirt") who dies.

I was going to say that post-Serenity, it's really hard to write happy, fluffy, W/Z except that, and my actual answer to your question, is that, when you think of it, everybody is going to die sooner or later, and we all KNOW that, so it's just icing on the cake that Dean is going to be in Hell temporarily a little sooner than he expected to get there permanently.

[ariadne83]

This is completely unrelated to your post (LOL typical) but the more I think about it, the more Lucy (de Vigne's wife, from your paper) kinda reminds me of Euripides' Medea. She's reliant on her husband for social status, which makes her a sympathetic figure at the beginning of the play when she finds out her husband is ditching her (albeit for a woman of higher status). And Jason, the "hero" of mythology, comes across as a complete douchebag because he tries to convince Medea that being dumped is beneficial to her and her children.

None of which prepares the audience for the *horrible* things she does to punish him later on. She kills new wife to prevent her children from being replaced, and then she kills her own children - partly to protect them from retribution, partly to spite Jason so that he dies childless. And Medea gets away scot-free.

[kaleecat]

To an extent I have that problem with my Stargate SG-1 muse. I've never been able to write an early season story, not even a drabble, because of how the characters (O'Neill) and friendships (jack & daniel) were butchered from around mid-season 4 onward. Seasons 8-10 are mostly like a weird show that vaguely resembles what I fell in love with which has made it difficult to write/finish what I do have. So totally different reason, but a similar outcome--inability to write.

With SPN I've barely broken the plastic seal on season 1, but I know from, well everywhere, what happens & I think that is why I haven't been gobbling the episodes. Because I know the angst that is to come. Maybe it's about spending time with the boys when it was just the brothers hunting, wondering if Dad is going to bother calling back.

I find sometimes, if I can just sit down and watch a concentration of 'early' SG1 episodes and think only of what I love in them I can tease out a moment & try to just get a drabble. (i need to do this with ncis b/c late seasons are so frustrating). Re-capture the breathless feel of Jack's "spacemonkey" hug with a moment of my own--be it friendship or burgeoning love or established relationship. It's the not thinking too much that does it. Does this work for me? Sort of, but then my muse is notoriously absent and the only writing worth anything I did for 2 years was thanks to the prompt call you inspired, and one personal SG1 inspiration.

But it might work for you, focus on only watching & reading 1st or 2nd season--concentrate on that early semi-innocence. Think of it as an AU and negate the deal or what precipitated the deal. Say, "It was bad writing, I'm gonna fix it" and turn the dime on it's head by changing one little thing.