December Daily: favorite stories

wychwood asks: What is your favourite of your own stories? Which fic-writing achievements are you proudest of?

I'm rather proud of my Losers story, Impersonation, because I was playing a game with POV, and several readers told me they got it. (I suppose it's a romance-specific variation on the unreliable narrator. I wanted to write a story where, if you reeled it back in your mind and walked through it from the other character's point of view, the emotional landscape of the story was very different. In this case, the story Jensen is experiencing is, "Wow, I have the hots for my pal; didn't expect that ... Why's he acting so weird? ... Oh, OK, he's got the hots for me, too. We're golden." But the story Cougar is experiencing is more like, "Nobody could be this clueless; he must be mocking me ... This is cruel. I thought we were friends ... It's kind of humiliating to be desperate enough to accept a pass this wrapped up in mockery ... Wait a minute. Looks like he could be this clueless. Wow, OK, this is what a happy ending feels like.")

Tolleranza, the Commandos-era story where there's a lot of very explicit sex being had by people who are not Steve Rogers, is one that I feel really good about, because it only works if you care at least a little about those original characters, and by the time I was done, I did.

It's harder to pick a favorite, but if you were going to wipe out my whole catalog and leave me only one story to say, "I am the author of _____ and nothing else," I would have to say Transfigurations. I can point to ways I've grown as a writer since then, but in some ways I've still never equalled it.