Filename meme

[resonant]

from thingswithwings: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

Funny how I can know quite well that a story idea is dead, dead, dead, and yet not be willing to delete the file!



benderhair
better
cross country
cytherea comus
dead ray
devices
experience2
flaregun
foam
fraser escort
helpless
identify
inconsiderate
intermittent fascination
john's room
katin/mouse
keeps the key
kellen
lenitas
lockedroom
mavericks
misrule
naked
o canada
onlytime
phatic
pride_heyer
prowess
restraint
rononsbrownliberalguilt
rules
secondtime
sign language
slickback
softer
teamporn
three times
tuna sherlock
wolf



Upon request, I will post a random line from any of these you choose. Assuming that the file adds up to a full line, that is.

Comments

[lobelia321]

Request!

[resonant]

Which one? Or shall I post a random line from a random file?

[resonant]

OK, then. You have a proper enjoyment of the obscure, so here's a bit of "foam."

²Previous Patricians had often failed because they ruled the city with an iron fist but did not rule themselves at all. Lord Vetinari did not intend to permit anarchy in any part of his city, including the parts contained within his own skull.

[aerye]

Oh, "tuna sherlock" is a must! Please!

[resonant]

A bit longer than a line, and halfway between written and sketched:

When he's NOT on a case: Nobody sleeps like Sherlock. In the evening he changes into night things and begins to hum a little in anticipation. He stretches with theatrical enjoyment and creaky noises. He almost flings himself on the bed; if you go looking for him, he's spread out from end to end of the bed in a riot of covers, rubbing his face on the pillow.

[thingswithwings]

thank goodness someone has already requested "tuna sherlock," because I need to know what that is. Hmmmm. What the heck is "benderhair"? IS IT THE BREAKFAST CLUB HAIR SALON AU I HAVE ALWAYS DREAMED OF?

I'm also curious about rononsbrownliberalguilt, I have to say!

[resonant]

IS IT THE BREAKFAST CLUB HAIR SALON AU I HAVE ALWAYS DREAMED OF?

Today, alas, your dreams are shattered.

Bender had a lot of things like that, actually. Brian had been watching him, and he noticed these things. When Bender wasn't doing anything with his hands, they tended to rest middle finger out. The shorts he brought for gym class were just pants hacked off raggedly below the knee, which he got away with by giving Coach a hangdog look and talking about what his parents could afford in a loud, doleful voice. He did not own a single pair of shoes that didn't make noise.

Bender did nothing by accident. Everything he did was a calculated and intentional outrage.

[anatsuno]

phatic! keeps the key! experience2. Oh my god, SO MANY.

[resonant]

Should have known I wouldn't be able to post one line and lose an opportunity to let people see what it's all about.

On Xia they kiss on the mouth. They do it for every possible occasion: to greet, to part, to seal an agreement. They do it at dinners, where sane cultures would have toasts. They do it spontaneously, like a pat on the shoulder.

Rodney stays with them for days, learning about power systems and teaching them about everything else, and when he comes back, he's doing it too.

"Oh, spare me your wounded American masculinity, colonel; it's entirely phatic," he says, and at John's baffled look he rolls his eyes, as if he weren't thrilled to have the chance to explain something to somebody, and clarifies: "Phatic. No meaning in the content, only in the social ritual. Like a handshake, or a pretty woman saying, 'Call me the next time you're in town.' "

[jain]

Fraser escort, please. (Since someone's already requested a tuna Sherlock line.)

[resonant]

Oh, dear. Here is "fraser escort," in its entirety:

Ray Kowalski, newly divorced, calls for an escort.

Maybe a

[mergatrude]

dead ray (because you are one of the few people I would trust with that idea)

(and/)or

pride_heyer!

[resonant]

I've handed "dead ray" off to cesperanza, so it might actually get finished!

Fraser loses them (thus doesn't have to arrest anyone and bring them in) but he or Dief end up grabbing some crucial bit of evidence -- scrap of paper or fabric -- it's late; he doesn't go back to the 27, but to the Consulate. Has to unlock; place is empty. Dief is scratching at closet. Takes off hat, opens door - there's Ray.

"Fraser! Didn't think you were coming back till tomorrow. They told you everything, right?"

"Well, in a sense. I arrived just in time to be swept away to your funeral."

"Aw, Fraser. That was the first you heard? That sucks. But you got it all figured out now, and -- hey, is that Manny Whosit's handwiritng? Oh, man, you're the best partner a stiff could ask for. Now, here's what I need you to do."

pride_heyer is from The Unknown Ajax, and may not make any sense if you haven't read it:

Vincent sighed. "I would offer you my apology, if I thought it would be worth any more than Richmond's honor."

"Nay, lad, 'tis none so bad as that," said Hugo, very near, and Hugo's hand was on Vincent's face, hard and warm and big as a dinner plate. Vincent swallowed. It was difficult not to turn his cheek into the touch, not to bury his face in Hugo's severely plain waistcoat as he must have done with someone as a child, though he had no memory of it.

[ellen_fremedon]

Rononsbrownliberalguilt?

[resonant]

may not be as funny as it was in my head when I first thought of it, but it occurred to me that it was possible that on Sateda privilege aligned with darker skin rather than lighter, making Ronon something of a rebel when he took a light-skinned man as a mentor and married a light-skinned woman:

He can't help it, though. They're so alien, so exotic. So delicate, blushes or sunburn showing up vivid as a stain. And -- well, he wouldn't have admitted this at home, but he can tell *you*: The fact that they're a little bit dangerous? That just makes them that much hotter.

And who can blame them, really? He can pass reasonably well, though of course he's pale, but even at that, he's experienced what it's like to have everyone hold him in suspicion, watch him as if any second he's going to lose his grip on santiy and knock somebody in the head, or put his hand on their chest and suck the life out of them, and if they did, what would they have to lose? If you're pink, you can walk the fenceline all your life, never once step over, be the very model of a law-abiding citizen, and *still* everyone will suspect you.

[ecaterin]

'Wolf' plz :D

[resonant]

"Wait!" But by the time Sherlock had made it up the stairs, John had shut the door. "I'm quite serious," Sherlock told it.

"Yes," John's muffled voice said, "and you were quite seriously dying of anthrax when you needed to catch that fellow who infected his nephew, and you were quite seriously having a seizure when you wanted to stop Donovan from telling that boy about the bit of the letter you'd fouynd, and you were quite seriously down with food poisoning when you needed to get into the toilet at the racehorse breeder's house, and -- honestly, Sherlock, I've got to be up early, so this is going to have to wait until tomorrow -- oh." The door came open a crack, and most of John's insanely endearing crinkled face came into view. "Unless this case requires us to share a bed? Because yours is bigger, but I'm not sleeping on those sheets; I saw what you did to them."

[sunspot67]

I remember when you were asking if the meaning of the word "phatic" was general knowledge (how I learned the word!). Was it for "phatic"?

This list made me wonder--how often do your working titles end up as the actual title? In my case it's almost always, although the file name is sometimes different (working title tends to pop up within a few lines of beginning to write).

And, since rononsbrownliberalguilt and tuna sherlock are already taken,

sign language, please

and o canada, if I may be greedy.

[resonant]

how often do your working titles end up as the actual title? In my case it's almost always, although the file name is sometimes different (working title tends to pop up within a few lines of beginning to write).

Yes, it's like that for me, too! julad likes to say, "If you don't know the title, you don't know what the story's about," and it's true that if the title isn't there when I start writing the story, this presages a lot of excess writing while I feel around to find out where the story is.

Hm. "sign language" turns out to be a quote from a story by garryowen that inspired me; I was thinking it might be possible to take his metaphor and write a story in which they literally did that:

Their fingers hooked on one another for a moment. John moved his against Sherlock's, like they were speaking a kind of sign language, only with gestures. The way Helen Keller had talked to her teacher. It would be just like Sherlock to devise a similar system of communication for use in emergencies. Or simply because he was bored. -- from Garryowen's "Hush"

"o canada" is the deadest of the dead; the file hasn't even been opened since 2002. It was going to be a sequel to "American Way."

resonant: Wonder if Fraser could teach Ray a word or two of French?
resonant: In Canada even the URLs are bilingual.
Livia: Dirty French?
resonant: I think Ray could make any French sound dirty.
Livia: Oh, yes. That would be his talent.
Livia: "Excuse me, ma'am-- what? what'd I say?"
Livia: "Ray, please try not to make everything sound so-- indecent."
resonant: "Say 'Bienvenue a Canada,' Ray. Ahhhh. Say it again."
resonant: Ooh. They could, like, name some body parts. Even relatively innocent ones.
resonant: "Bouche," Fraser says.
resonant: "Boooooooooouche," Ray says.
Livia: *howls*
Livia: what part of the body is *that?*
resonant: Mouth.
Livia: Well, for Ray, that is *not* a relatively innocent body part.

[reginagiraffe]

Yay! "Intermittent fascination" is on it!

Can I hear about "sign language"?

[resonant]

See the comment above; "sign language" turns out to be nothing but a quote from someone else's story!

Want another one?

[in_interval]

Could I have a line from pride_heyer?

[resonant]

I posted one line up there, but I'll give you another one. (The characters from from The Unknown Ajax.)

A man's body was by no means a novelty to Vincent, in whose set everything was permitted but dullness. But it would be difficult to say which was more alien to his experience, his cousin's size or his great, slow, patient gentleness -- which it was that left him closed-eyed and gasping and hot-faced, that made him clutch and cling, long after it was over, in a way that ran quite counter to his usual attitude of bored aloofness.

[somniesperus]

Can't believe nobody's asked for "naked" yet. :D

[resonant]

That one's also long-dead, not touched since 2002. I've learned that some stories can't be shared until they're finished, finished, as close to finished as I can manage by myself, because some stories are delicate bubbles and the slightest constructive criticism or even questioning makes my confidence in them disappear. Sad but true.

It's almost entirely dark. The room is small and silent. He smells something undefinable but somehow comforting; beneath that he can get the faint whiff of stale cigarettes, his own laundry detergent, cleaning compound, bleach, gunpowder, lighter fluid .... raw beef?

He's lying on his side in a soft and unfamiliar bed, so heavily covered as to be stiflingly hot. He realizes with a flush of embarrassment that he's naked, and not alone.

[basingstoke]

I know. I keep opening files, seeing all the possibility in them, and then not writing any of it. Sigh. It's hard to let go!

[resonant]

all the possibility

That's just it! And often, even if I've come to think that the premise is totally wrongheaded, or have disconnected with the characters to the point that I couldn't get into their heads again, I can still see an idea or a phrase that just strikes me as so right that I can't bear to lose it.

[out_there]

tuna sherlock. I have to request that. It sounds like the sort of working title I use to think of stories.

[resonant]

I put part of it up here. Here's pretty much all the rest:

Now. Eating. We may have canon contradiction here, but if not:

So mostly he eats little or nothing to keep himself sharp. But when he doesn't feel the need to be sharp -- well, an orange can get his full attention for an hour. The smell, the juice and flavor -- smacking his lips in gourmandizing enjoyment and licking his fingers afterwards. It's almost obscene. And, again, great mayhem can be happening in the background and he just doesn't notice, he's so wrapped up in his food.

You can see why I eat so little when I'm on a case.

So, now, in bed ...

[greyeyes]

Hmmm, how about teamporn?

[resonant]

"Fine." He threw open the door. "Fine, you win, I'll --"

Inside, Ronon was peacefully mending the ragged edge of a sweater while Teyla and Rodney played cards.

-----

Of course stepping through that door was a great act of courage and whatnot, but honestly it was hard not to laugh when Sheppard stuck his head in with his face all braced like he expected twenty kinds of illicit hijinks to hit him in the face.

"*Finally,*" Ronon rumbled, dropping his work, and Teyla laid her cards in a neat stack (as if after the nice orgy she might want to finish out the game) and stood. But Rodney wasn't betting on anything at this point. Even now he wouldn't put it past Sheppard to back out.

[liviapenn]

Hee! I want something from a Sherlock story someone hasn't requested yet. That or "secondtime," because I do love second times. *G*

[resonant]

I only have three Sherlock WIPs, so you get "secondtime."

Last night was -- he didn't know what the hell last night was. Fraser'd been mumbling something, but he really hadn't been in any position to articulate, and the best Ray could figure, it was a sort of combined glad-you-didn't-drown, glad-you-didn't-transfer, sorry-I-slugged-you-even-though-you-asked-for-it thing. Though even in Canada he thought a six-pack was probably a more traditional way to express those sentiments than a blowjob.

[laurenmitchell]

As evinced by the fact that one of my filenames includes '2004' in it, I am also very bad at deleting dead fics.

[resonant]

[nodding sadly]

One of the shockers of this meme is being reminded of how long I've been doing this. In the time since some of these files were opened, I've changed jobs three times!

[elizabeth_rice]

My one rule is to never delete or throw away any of my creative works including unfinished projects. Trust me, there is nothing wrong with saving them.

[resonant]

I don't have a rule, I just have a sentimental attachment!

[mesmiranda]

Am I too late to request a line from 'cytherea comus'?

[resonant]

Course not! It was going to be a sequel to Bed and Board called "Cytherea Comus' Magical Solutions to Personal Problems."

"Ow," said Hermione.

Ron blew out a breath through his lips. "Hermione --"

"All right, that does it." Hermione sat up. "I know just how to fix this."

"*Now?*" Harry said in dismay.

"Won't take a moment. You two carry on without me." She plucked out two long hairs and padded naked out of the room.

-----

"You don't think this is a little narcissistic?" Harry looked dubiously at the steaming goblet. "Going to bed with yourself? With *two* of yourself?"

"I prefer to think of it as evidence of healthy self-esteem." Hermione handed the second goblet to Ron. "Anyhow, it's no good turning you into some other girl -- I want you to understand my body in particular."