Labor Day Meme: Stories That Never Were

[browngirl]

From petronelle, who filled this in glorious manner. Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

Feel free to try any fandom you have reason to think I know, but if I don't at all know the fandom I'll have to say so.

Comments

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

I LOVED your fic 'Twice in a Blue Moon'. I don't usually expect to see gen from you but I always love the gen tidbits in your non-gen fic. Loved the ST fake science bits - those always made me so happy about TNG, not that that's here or there, and the action writing could have come out of - no, scratch that. It was way better than the sort of action writing we usually see. More "Moria bridge scene of Fellowship of the Ring" than "shootout of the week". Fantastic.

Sequel?

! I have an actual story idea this corresponds to.

[rubynye.livejournal.com]

The first sentence: Sinaht has been mourning her world for a lifetime, and her mate for fifteen cycles, when she finally finds the way.
The last sentence: Jim laughs and slings his unbroken arm around his First Officer's shoulders, which Spock endures with remarkable ease as they look out at their familiar stars.
The thing that made me want to write it: From watching Nova [an American science show] I learned that Mars once had a rotating molten core, liquid water, a thick atmosphere (maintained by the magnetic field produced by the rotating core's dynamo), and a large satellite, all just like Earth, but when its satellite crashed into it Nars lost the internal dynamo, the atmosphere and the water and thus any chance of sustaining life-as-we-know-it. And then I thought, what if that collision weren't an accident? What if Earth had been saved from the same fate? And when you need time-travelers to save the Earth... (well, one could also call on The Doctor, but he doesn't have photon torpedoes.)
The biggest problem I had while writing it: I've never seen Enterprise, so basing my villains on a race from it was a bit... dodgy, probably.
Why it almost never got posted: Being as that the plot of Star Trek XI (and umpteen other instances of Star Trek) hinged on time travel, it felt redundant to write yet another time travel story. But the plot was so compelling...
The scene that hit the cutting room floor: I was going to put in explicit Kirk/McCoy, even if just a smooch, to make it slightly-slash-flavored gen in analogy with all the het flavoring gen usually gets (both in fanfic and in professional works) but that ended up not fitting in anywhere.
Anything else: I might write this one day, and if I do, the Kirk/McCoy smooch will be in there.

Re: ! I have an actual story idea this corresponds to.

[ilthit.livejournal.com]

There's been a lot of discussion over at Queerly Gen about what constitutes gen; the consensus seems to be that if the focus is not romance/sex, it's gen. For me, it's not gen if it has non-canonical romances, queer or otherwise, but that definition got shouted down as too restrictive. I'd call it slash/gen, het/gen or femslash/gen if it has a non-canonical background relationship. It's partially because it's so easy to write an apparently gen story that's actually all about a pairing - not that your story sounds at all like it would be.

:D I think you should write it. Time-travel, however redundant, happens all the time in all the Star Treks. The first time it happened it wasn't even discussed, it's like "So, we were monitoring 20th century Earth when..."