#lettered's fic

[letteredlettered]

The Sky Begins to Roar - 1/10 (The Walking Dead)

If for some reason you're a fan of my fanfic, I don't even know what's happening here. It's typical in that it's not quite typical--Daryl has uncodified kinks and relationships; there's kind of a lot of talking; the reader can figure things out the viewpoint character can't; the genre and plot don't quite follow norms. But there's even more whump than usual--and if you know me that's a lot of whump--and there's way less effort to make real things happen in the real world. Also it's an alternate universe and there are sex scenes with OCs? Who am I?

I think I just wanted to write something that made me happy; I just don't know why this is what did it. Michonne and Daryl are my favorite characters, but I guess I ship them with Rick (who is . . . not one of my favorite characters) and I'm bummed about the fact that I wrote Daryl/Rick instead of Rick/Michonne. (Buuuuuuuuut I do hope I'll one day write arranged marriage!Rick/Michonne so there's hope?)

The other thing that's confusing to me is that if I wanted to write something happy it's understandable I'd remove the zombie apocalypse, but you'd think I'd go really tropey. Instead I wrote this story that's mostly about friendship and self-worth against a background of pretty extreme domestic abuse. Which sounds like it could be good, right? Like maybe I just prefer gritty realism. But that's not what it is either, because everything is handled suuuuuper unrealistically in some kinda of la la land where everyone but Ed Peletier (and a dick OC) means well. There's not even any porn in it between characters that I want to have porn. There's just porn with a random OC. Like, what? It's to illustrate character. Or something.

So. You know. Read it if any of that is appealing to you.

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Title: The Sky Begins To Roar Fandom: The Walking Dead (TV) Pairings: Daryl Dixon/Rick Grimes, Daryl Dixon/OMC Characters: Daryl Dixon, Rick Grimes, Carol Peletier, Sophia Peletier Length: 10 chapters, ~46,000 words Tags: alternate universe, friendship, found family, trust-building, pining, whump, Carol and Daryl friendship, Daryl/Rick pre-slash, praise kink, internalized homophobia, homophobic slurs, domestic abuse, OMC/Daryl dubious consent, OMC/Daryl humiliation, non-graphic drug-use, references to infidelity, contemplation of self-harm, unrealistic handling of issues, minor appearance of other TWD characters Summary: The apocalypse didn’t happen, and so Carol remains in an abusive relationship. When Daryl meets her, he finds himself in a position to help her. Wanting to help Carol also, Rick enlists Daryl’s aid. Sophia just wants to be a normal twelve-year-old.

Daryl’s never had this many people counting on him before. It changes him, though he’ll never be what Rick seems to think he is.

The Sky Begins To Roar

[letteredlettered]

The Walking Dead fic

Idk why I did this guys; it’s @snickfic‘s fault.  But here is some Walking Dead fic:

Title: Tie A Knot In It And Hang On Pairings: Gen Characters: Daryl, Merle, Rick, Carol, Glenn, Andrea, Lori, Shane Warnings: Racism, Canon-Typical Racism, Slurs, Homophobia, Homophobic Language, homophobic slur, Classism, Sexism, Canon-Typical Sexism, Canon-Typical Violence, Past Child Abuse, mentions of abuse, mentions of suicidal ideation, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Racist Language, Sexist Language, fat shaming language Summary: Season 1 from Daryl's point of view. Includes a bit before the series, some of how the group ends up together, impressions of different people with a focus on Rick, Carol, Glenn, some Shane and Andrea's relationship with Amy. Daryl doesn't deal well with losing Merle, etc. Honestly I really wanted to write a long gen fic with slices of life that had everyone interacting with everyone but this was what came out. Author's Notes: I'm just posting because snick told me to. After I wrote this I realized I wanted to do all 6 seasons from Daryl, Rick, Carol, Glenn, Maggie, and Michonne's POV but I know I'm never going to. I was actually fairly happy with just this one so here you go? Idk fandom I just don't know. Tie A Knot In It And Hang On

[letteredlettered]

for the fic-specific questions meme: Another Mask Behind You (because I'm all about that fic)

What was my inspiration for this fic? How did it come to me? Well, I have this thing about secret identities; I don’t know if that’s apparent … I honestly don’t know where I got the idea, but yes, some of it was definitely me trying to write some of the stuff I wanted to play with in Boy Who Only Lived Twice but didn’t get around to.

What’s my favorite part of the fic?  Well gosh.  I can’t decide whether it’s how mad Harry gets when he finds out–especially the part where he visits Draco in Draco’s apartment, tries to storm out, then comes back in and slams him against the wall.  It’s either that OR it’s Draco trying to get Harry to have lunch with him; Draco is just so determined and so CLUELESS.  He’s so in love and is so utterly blind to it.  That was fun to write.

What’s the part of the fic I’m most proud of?  I actually wrote a dickly Harry that I kind of believe.  I mean, canonically, Harry often eventually had sympathy for his enemies but it was not instantaneous.  Hermione was always the one arguing about having compassion and empathy and trying to see where people were coming from; Harry was always the one saying BUT SNAPE IS EVIL and DRACO IS UP TO NO GOOD.  Of course, Harry was also always kind of right, but I think he can be close-minded.  That said, I just can’t get over the idea that by the end of the war he would want to give Draco a chance, or at the very least just be so DONE with Purebloods and Death Eaters and the war and everything that he doesn’t CARE enough to wish ill upon Draco. 

What made Harry work for me in this fic is that he DOESN’T actively wish ill upon Draco; Harry is just passive about everything that happened to the Death Eaters because he was tired and just stopped paying attention.  And when he finds out the bad stuff that happened to Draco, he for once does not blame himself or feel guilty because Draco has hurt him so so so incredibly badly that Harry just kind of loses his shit.  Later he hates himself, which I never really get to in this fic, because it’s much, much MUCH later.

What part of the fic was the hardest for me to write?  I had a really hard time with the month Draco stays with Harry, not because I didn’t know what to say but because I had too much to say.  It’s so weird because I am not a fan of cheating and lying usually, but something about the layers of Draco’s deceit really revved my engine.  Like, he’s lying to himself through most of it; he’s telling Harry the truth and lying to himself by telling himself it’s a lie.  I think it’s because Draco doesn’t know the truth (even though he thinks he’s lying on purpose) that I get really into it.  And also, once again, the reader figures things out long before Draco realizes he loves Harry at all.

What part of the fic am I still dissatisfied with? The end still isn’t adequate.  I mean, for once I spent a long time after the big reveal, showing the two characters dealing with the consequences of true identity, and yet I still didn’t get them to a place in which Harry can forgive Draco but also pay for the way he treated him; Draco still doesn’t get to be loved for who he really is.  In particular the sex bothers me; I want them to be able to be together the way they were able when Draco was Tristan, but honestly that really would be a whole other fic.  There is just too much for them to deal with.

Who’s my favorite character in the fic?  They’re both sort of dicks.  Idk my bff Hermione?  Or Pansy.  Like I love both Draco and Harry in this but I don’t LIKE them.  Probably Harry.

Were there any major decisions I made about the fic that could have made it go a whole different direction? Idk about a whole different direction but there was a scene in which Harry still didn’t know about who Draco really was, but sees Draco-as-Draco on the street.  Draco, being Draco, forces a conversation and Harry is a dick to him, because ew Malfoy.  Harry comes home to Tristan and doesn’t mention it, but Tristan wheedles and manipulates the conversation until he gets Harry to mention it.  Then Tristan starts asking things like, “Do you think he’s hot?” “Do you think he could have changed?”  “But do you ever think there was more to him?”  And Harry is just like “No no no he’s scum.  Also why do you ask, I could never be attracted to anyone like Malfoy.”  And then Tristan has desperate unhappy sex with him.  It was a really sad thing, but I didn’t have time to write it adequately so it didn’t come across nearly as emotionally powerful as I wanted it to, so I cut it.  Sadly, that was one of the scenes that made me initially want to write the fic.

Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc)  No motifs or anything but man after I finished I realized this was like basically the iddiest thing I’d ever written and that I could write reams and reams more, but it was just coming across as me babbling forever about identity and honesty and self-acceptance and that it would be really easy to lose any coherent story in the midst of it.

Did anyone in the fic surprise me by doing anything? If so, what?  Omg Harry was REALLY mad at Draco.  And took out his rage in a kinkier way than I was expecting.

If I had to sum up this fic in a sentence, what would it be?  Draco tricks Harry into falling in love with him, but falls in love himself.

If I were to rewrite this fic, what would I change?  I’d trim some of it up (though my beta helped with that) and I’d do more with the ending to demonstrate that the relationship could become healthy, eventually, with Draco being treated as an equal.

Did any thing about this fic’s reception surprise me?  People were nice about it.  This awesome person named @ghostcat3000 made me a playlist for it!

What were my beta’s major comments about the first draft of this fic? My beta was @icmezzo and she is the most glorious person on Earth.  Like she was super positive about the fic, but when I freaked out about how long it was with 3 days to go she took out HUGE swathes of nothing but BABBLING with her great excising highlighter.  Like I have Things To Say but I just go on and on and ON and she was so great about taking out the chunks and chunks of things that were just repetition and meandering.  It was so great.  

If I were to write a sequel to this fic, what would it be about?  I did start writing a sequel, which I don’t think I’ll ever finish.  It was about Harry continuing to be a right dick about Draco getting a job.  Like he has a relationship with Draco and tells Draco he cares about him, but continues to expect Draco to figure out how to deal.  Mainly because Harry doesn’t know how hard it is to do things like get a mobile when you don’t have a Muggle identity, but I’m not making excuses for Harry.  He doesn’t even try to learn how difficult it is for Draco to get a mobile, and Draco is too guilty and proud to ask. 

And Harry starts to take Draco out in public and things because he knows it’s wrong to keep Draco like a dirty secret (fun fact: Another Mask was originally called Dirty Little Secret, which I’m glad I didn’t name it because there was another fic with that title for the same fest!  Crazy).  But Harry doesn’t care about going to parties etc and he doesn’t take Draco to parties so Draco can enjoy them; he takes Draco to them so he can convince himself he’s not behaving like a dick toward Draco.  Then Draco has such a good time at the parties and makes so many friends that Harry can barely control how turned on he is and he takes Draco home early to fuck almost every time, and those are the best times.

So this goes on for a while and Draco is just giving giving giving because he is so guilty guilty guilty, but honestly he’s getting what he wants out of the situation because he’s still trying to be what Harry likes.  Which means being who he really is, including designing the broom polishes and making the house nice and charming people at parties.  But yeah, he realizes Harry’s never really forgiven him and they still don’t have sex the way they used to; Harry never surrenders to him like they used to.  But Draco just accepts.

And then gradually–probably because other people around him (not just Hermione) start realizing how wonderful Draco is, and some of them even want him too–Harry starts realizing what he has, and how he’s acted, what Draco’s become and what he’s done, what really happened to the Death Eaters and what a part he played in it.  And Harry realizes Draco isn’t happy, not happy the way Tristan got to be happy anyway, and gradually Harry realizes that’s all he wants.  It’s all he ever wanted.

So little by little, without making any big declarations, Harry tries to show Draco that he’s exactly what Harry wants and that all is forgiven.  And Harry tries to spoil him, the way he spoiled Tristan, and at first Draco is suspicious but they are just little things a little at a time so he takes what he can get.  And then there are bigger things and Draco takes those too–the breakfast in bed or the fly to France or the beach vacation, etc, and little by little Draco opens up again, and teases Harry, and demands things from Harry, and is wicked and fond and delightful and bosses Harry about in a high-handed way and hopes against hope that Harry likes it, that Harry will obey.

Harry does.

[letteredlettered]

The Hollow Men. You developed such a interesting relationship between Bruce and Steve.

What was my inspiration for this fic? How did it come to me?  After The Avengers I wanted to write Bruce fic.  I had a lot of feelings about how Tony related to Bruce and vice versa, but also a lot about Natasha, and a few about how Natasha related to Bruce.  I didn’t have that many about Steve, but I thought the fact that Bruce had tried to be Steve was interesting.  Basically, I wanted to address Bruce’s relationships with each of the characters I thought he paralleled. 

I also wanted to address another huge character thing that I just didn’t see other fics addressing, namely Bruce going to other countries and helping out underprivileged peoples there.  Why does he do it, is it to redeem himself, make up for the Hulk in some way, how does it compare to the “good” he does with the Hulk at the end of the Avengers, has he compared these things before?

Once I started writing the fic I realized I was suddenly dealing with a MUCH bigger issue than I had realized, because not only was there Bruce who is a white man and a superhero, but it was about CAPTAIN AMERICA.  In Uganda.  But in some ways I felt like that opened up the discussion–like if it was just two white guy superheroes maybe you could leave the fic with the idea that the white guys were right and everything was justified.  But when one of them is Captain America, and the situation of how America interacts with other powers is already so fraught, I felt like you could not help but acknowledge the problems, which would force you to think about them.

Is asking people to think about the position of America on the world stage–what America could do vs what they should do, and in some sense what privileged people can do vs what they should–good enough reason to write a story that in some ways is appropriative and othering and potentially offensive?  I don’t know.  However, in some senses the whole fic is about Bruce being too afraid to try, and in the end all you can do is try your best and accept that sometimes you’ll be wrong, learn things from that, then try again.  I’m not trying to say I was a hero in writing this fic, but I’m saying it was an attempt to grapple and understand these issues–just as much as Steve grapples to understand them, and my goal was that hopefully some people might read it and question some things they had taken for granted.

What’s my favorite part of the fic? I like when Steve comes to take Bruce on a roadtrip and Bruce thinks that Steve is taking him back to SHIELD.

What’s the part of the fic I’m most proud of? The conversation Solomon has with Bruce.

What part of the fic was the hardest for me to write?  My beta said some stuff about making it feel like the characters were really there.  It wasn’t until I got a lot of distance from the story that I understood they meant that the story felt like characters talking against a backdrop.  I mean, I kind of understood that, but when I asked how to fix it they said a lot of stuff about concrete details and actually touching the lives of people instead of just talking about it, and I didn’t understand how to fix this because the whole point is supposed to be talking about it.  I don’t mean that talking about it is the right answer; what I mean is that Bruce worries and frets while Steve just does things and accepts the consequences, and the whole fic is meant to juxtapose those things (vs what Tony does, which would be to manipulate the situation from behind the scenes) and none of those things are meant to be the right answer.  The whole story is about the difficulty of action.

Not until even later did I realize that beta meant that you have to make the world a character in the story–whether Bruce can actually deal with that world or not, the reader has to deal with it.  The setting needs to feel real and the people there need to feel real and you do that by spending more time with them, allowing the narrator to show what’s really there even if Bruce doesn’t think there’s much that can be done about it.  You can’t just sweep your hand across and say, “We all know Africa!” because we don’t, any more than we all know North America, or even one small town in Kansas; you can’t just take it as a given; you have to show it and make its details real.  And I had a hard time with that and did poorly with that.

What part of the fic am I still dissatisfied with?  See above.  I should have spent a lot more time with Solomon and Faridha, just for instance.

Who’s my favorite character in the fic? Probably a tie between Steve and Solomon.

Were there any major decisions I made about the fic that could have made it go a whole different direction? Well, like I said, once I started writing it it became a whole lot more about America and social activism and philanthropy and terrorism and interference and isolationism than I initially intended.

Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc) I can’t think of any symbols in it that I did not intend.

Did anyone in the fic surprise me by doing anything? If so, what? When I started writing this fic, I didn’t care about Steve.  He was kind of a prop to juxtapose against Bruce; Steve is a guy who is willing to act while Bruce isn’t (though Bruce is more than he’s willing to admit).  Initially, I thought of this as Steve thinking he has the answers while Bruce knows that neither of them do, but as I wrote the fic I realized Steve knows he doesn’t have the answers, but it doesn’t stop him from trying.  Nothing will ever stop Steve from trying, and it made me fall for him so, so hard.  I was shocked by how in love with him I was by the end, and I felt like I invented this Steve in my head who was not the cliche of America but rather what I wanted out of America, what people dreamed of when they talked about America, which really has nothing to do with America and everything to do with an ideal and a dream.  And then The Winter Soldier came out and I realized I didn’t make him up; this is what they were actually trying to do with this character and I still can’t believe it.  Then Age of Ultron came out and I tried to forget it happened.

If I had to sum up this fic in a sentence, what would it be?  Steve and Bruce talk about social justice in Uganda.

If I were to rewrite this fic, what would I change?  I would definitely make the people in the town much more central, particularly Solomon, Irene, Faridah, and the school teacher.

Did any thing about this fic’s reception surprise me? Honestly, I thought I would get run out on a rail for writing about something like this, mostly because I knew when I finished that I hadn’t really done justice to the subject matter. 

I was pretty disappointed to read on an anon meme that some people felt that my Steve was a hate-monger and a mindless bigot for the things he says about homosexuality in this fic.  If I had the understanding of Steve that I do now when I wrote that story, I would have written it differently.  However, Steve’s homophobia in the story was was meant to be a portrayal of someone who is generally thoughtful and understanding and wishes ill upon no one, but was surrounded by a certain culture and certain types of people which blinded him to the idea that people can be different.  Like, I can be a bigot about some things to; I think we all can, and it’s not because we’re hateful and terrible; it’s because we haven’t been exposed to certain things in certain lights or hadn’t thought about something in a certain way before.  I really wanted to show that homophobia is terrible and wrong, but at the same time it can happen in someone who is trying their best to give people the benefit of the doubt.  There have since been many arguments that Steve would have been exposed to gay culture and would not have been raised in such a repressive way at all, to which I say good; I’m glad there were so many people who were so open-minded at a time when the USA was so close-minded (and still is in many ways).  …But I still don’t get where the nonnies reading my fic got the impression that Steve was saying that gay people deserve to die, because that’s exactly the opposite of the kind of character I would like to portray Steve to be.

What were my beta’s major comments about the first draft of this fic? I already mentioned above what my beta thought, but another thing about their reading that surprised me was they thought I agreed with Tony in this fic.  Which was shocking to me, because the whole point of the fic is that the three central philosophies presented–Steve’s, Bruce’s, and Tony’s–are neither wrong nor right; all are difficult and have pros and cons, and each might be a right answer in different situations, but in the end they are different ways of approaching the world, and if I thought one of them was right I think I’d probably be doing something different with my life.  I also think none of them are wrong, so that doesn’t help much either.

If I were to write a sequel to this fic, what would it be about?  Well I think I’d write one about Bruce defusing a bomb in Central Park …

[letteredlettered]

FALL OF VEILS please :)

What was my inspiration for this fic? How did it come to me? Well @icmezzo was practically THERE for this so she knows all the crazy things that went into it, but there are two big ones: 1) A lot of people read the fic No Other Superstar with the idea that Draco was asexual.  That was not my intention, but that’s not a great excuse, because honestly I didn’t really think that much about Draco’s sexuality before writing that fic.  I just imagined someone who was not interested and then was when he thought about other people touching this person he loved in a sexual way.  Is that a kind of sexuality?  I don’t know, and honestly I really don’t care if it has a name.  I think people feel a wide spectrum of things sexually, just like they feel every other kind of instinct and emotion, and that it’s totally plausible that someone out there could feel that way.  However, the fic was not written carefully, with that argument in mind; it was written haphazardly, with Draco’s sexuality adjusting to the needs of the plot.  I have always regretted it, and wanted to write a H/D fic with a more solid representation of asexuality.  (eta: huh, Tumblr deleted the rest of my answer to this question.  Not sure what to do about that..)

(I had to renumber; Tumblr doesn’t seem to let you do multi-paragraph answers.)  Okay, the second thing was I always wanted to do a story with magical empathy, ever since I read Arrows of the Queen, by Mercedes Lackey. 

Okay, I said only two things, but a third thing was I really wanted to see what would happen if the magical and Muggle world intersected.  I got the idea initially from a very small part of one of Maya’s fics (I think it was the all-dialogue one?) in which she said the wizarding world war had to stop momentarily so they could fight Muggles.

Last, and perhaps most importantly, this fic was a remix for Kedavranox’s Ellhorn.  That is a very short fic in which Draco is being tortured, and I wanted a strong, solid plot to get him there.  For some reason in my head that meant throwing all these ideas into a pot and mixing them up.

What’s my favorite part of the fic?  Probably the flashback bits wherein Harry falls in love with Malfoy.

What’s the part of the fic I’m most proud of? The history parts about the Muggle war with with wizarding world.  

What part of the fic was the hardest for me to write?  All of it.  Writing this fic was like pulling teeth for me.

What part of the fic am I still dissatisfied with?  There’s not a specific part, but I think the high emotion of empath-as-super-power and the emotional landscape of Draco’s asexuality ended up not fitting great with how plotty this was and how dense the backstory was.  A part of me wish I’d written the backstory as its own story and left the empathy and asexuality for another story.  The who-done-it murder plot ended up being pretty blah to me.

Who’s my favorite character in the fic?  I equally love Draco and Harry in this.

Were there any major decisions I made about the fic that could have made it go a whole different direction?  Well, yes, in the beginning, if I had chosen to go with a different premise.  There were other things that changed a lot during the course of it, but mostly because I was having trouble writing it.

Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc)  I don’t know.  Honestly, I haven’t been able to go back and reread it; writing it was such torture.

Did anyone in the fic surprise me by doing anything? If so, what?  Nope.  Every character had to be coerced every other sentence to do what I wanted.

If I had to sum up this fic in a sentence, what would it be?  Ace!Draco and Harry fight crime in a world wherein Muggles know about wizards and have significantly reduced their power. 

If I were to rewrite this fic, what would I change?  Oh God don’t ask me to rewrite it!  I’d overhaul the whole premise.  I still might do another H/D fic about asexuality, but I probably won’t ever write another empathy one, or another one where Muggles know.

Did any thing about this fic’s reception surprise me?  Nah.  It’s way less popular than most of my other H/D, and I think it is much better written, but there are probably two big reasons.  a) Asexuality–there’s not straight up porn in the general sense of the word, and I get the impression that’s what people tend to like about my H/D fic. b)  I worked on this so hard and wrote it so carefully that I think some of the usual passion with which I write bled out of it, and the plot is far more work to understand.  As a result my bet is it’s just harder to read.  I can understand people not being as into it.  The people I cared about reading it liked it :o)

What were my beta’s major comments about the first draft of this fic?  My beta was the inimitable @icmezzo and she was the most helpful human being on the planet.  She said she liked it, which was important, and helped me fix all the things, and cheered me along when writing it.

If I were to write a sequel to this fic, what would it be about? I would not write a sequel; I got across all the story I wanted to tell with this one.

[letteredlettered]

Sex, Lies, & Veritaserum for the fic questions thing! :)

What was my inspiration for this fic? How did it come to me? This was in fact one of the first H/D fics I ever tried to write, and I played around with it for ages and ages and ages.  That was why it was so confusing to me when I was accused of using the drabble I had written for a drabble-contest as the basis for this fic, because that drabble was just one facet of an idea I had been messing with for ages.  But how I got the original idea?  I think it had to do with my essential characterization of Draco, which has shame deeply rooted at its core.  He is ashamed of what he has done (obviously, my characterization of Draco is post-canon–what I want him to be, not what we were given); he wants to be punished for it, but he can’t stand facing it, and he also wants to be loved and praised and told he’s good for realizing he was once wrong.  All of this is paradoxical, and is a working characterization both in and out of sexual situations.

What’s my favorite part of the fic?  Wow this is mortifying, but the part where Draco says he wants Harry to eat dinner off of him.

What’s the part of the fic I’m most proud of?  There’s not a specific part, but I’m pretty happy with the premise.  Especially the part where Harry realizes he has to take the Veritaserum too, because no matter how much he thinks he is being truthful and trying to be honest, sometimes saying truthful things is harder than you think.

What part of the fic was the hardest for me to write?  The last part, with the actual porn.  I was not that interested in writing it, but thought it would be cheap of me to write that much stuff about sex and not actually deliver.

What part of the fic am I still dissatisfied with?  The last part with the porn.

Who’s my favorite character in the fic?  Harry.

Were there any major decisions I made about the fic that could have made it go a whole different direction?  Not really.

Was there anything I only learned about the fic after I had finished it? (themes, motifs, symbolism, etc)  Not really.

Did anyone in the fic surprise me by doing anything? If so, what?  Some of the things Draco said he wanted were pretty shocking, because I was letting my id run free.  What’s hardest about those things is that I don’t actually want them; I don’t want them at all in any way, shape, or form.  But I totally want to read about them with fictional people.  Wtf brain really?  The dinner thing, though.

If I had to sum up this fic in a sentence, what would it be? It’s one long conversation about sex.  (People should be noticing a theme here, with me and summaries.)

If I were to rewrite this fic, what would I change?  I’m not sure.  It’s meant to be iddy.

Did any thing about this fic’s reception surprise me?  Yes.  I’d tried really hard to write a lot of great H/D fic, and this was the first one that I felt really got a whole lot of attention.  Also, there was the whole kerfuffle with the mods of the drabble competition claiming I was breaking the rules.  I’d already lost the competition and was no longer participating in it, and as I said this fic wasn’t really based on a drabble I wrote–but I tried to respect their wishes anyway.  Still, it left me feeling awful for weeks.  And I still get upset about it, apparently. 

What were my beta’s major comments about the first draft of this fic?  I had no beta.

If I were to write a sequel to this fic, what would it be about?  I’ve tried to write a sequel!  But will probably never finish.  It was about Harry and Draco actually trying the things that Draco asked for in the first fic, but  it was really hard to write.  Basically, Harry has trouble doing the things because they feel so unkind and disrespectful, and he loves Draco a lot.  And Draco still has trouble asking, so there’s a lot of stalling and failure.  It actually just ended up being sad and difficult when what I really wanted was so iddy fantasy fulfillment, so I never finished.