extemporally

I always used to be kind of shy about doing this meme -- I wrote? really?? -- but I figure my recent fic output justifies this thing, so hey! Why not!

Pick a paragraph ~~(or any passage less than 500 words)~~ -- it can be more than 500, if you wish! -- from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic can be found under the fic tag, bbs!

(It was either post this or talk about all the ridic stories that a Regina Spektor song makes me want, okay. Humour me!)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

the-spin.livejournal.com

UM BASICALLY I want DVD commentary for all of Aptly Laced but whatever, I will c&p. There is just so much I love about that fic, that on the surface it's lingerie porn but really it's about this lovely, trusting relationship between people who know each other so well that they can read between the lines of what the other person is and isn't saying, and things like that are LITERALLY MY FAVORITE EVER, LITERALLY LITERALLY LITERALLY. It's probably my favorite Johnny/Stephane dynamic of anything I've read in the fandom so far because they actually seem like real people. It's so warm and funny and affectionate.

“What’s this?” Stéphane pauses at the bathroom counter.

“Oh, hey, underwear's still there,” Johnny says. He forgot to put the lingerie away. The other sets are still nestled in the white box on the bathroom counter.

Stéphane looks excited. “You bought more than one set?” he asks.

Johnny rolls his eyes. “Obviously,” he says. Johnny Weir doesn't do anything by halves.

"I want to see," Stéphane says. His voice is cheery; enthusiastic, but there's still something shy in the downsweep of his lashes and the way his hands are moving.

“You could,” Johnny says. Maybe it's just instinct that makes him say, “Or you could wear.”

“Me?” Stéphane asks.

Johnny nods. “I think these might fit you, too.”

Stéphane tips his head back and looks at the ceiling. With the crappy fluorescent bathroom lighting shining on him, Johnny can see the way Stéphane's throat moves when he swallows.

“You choose,” he says.

“All right,” Johnny says, and picks out a corset for Stéphane to wear under his t-shirt with one hand, as the other rests on the small of Stéphane's back.

Please write me an essay!

From:

the-spin.livejournal.com

And lol I just read the comments and you've already talked about it some. WHATEVER, if you have anything else to say please do!!

From:

extemporally.livejournal.com

OH MY GOD YOU. ♥♥♥ I just want to draw hearts around this comment because a) I was hoping someone would choose this, actually and b) what a coincidence, you write my favourite Johnny/Stephane!! Wot the hell, wot the hell. Just trust that I am doing this right at my computer screen okay.

So, general stuff about this fic: um, I'm very pleased with the summary?
It's not by any means the last great performance of Johnny Weir's life, but it still ranks pretty high. <-- if there ever was a topic sentence for this fic, that would be it. This fic is about a lot of things: performance, retirement, the way they Johnny & Stephane are to each other, and lingerie. A few things off the top of my head:

1. Thinking about Johnny in lingerie is the most fascinating thing on earth. It's not as intuitive as it seems! I mean, yes, he's got the fragile bone structure and the fine red lip, and is an androgynous gossamer etc (all these descriptions always make me giggle stupidly) but when it comes down to it, he's an athlete. There are a couple of pictures which really reinforce that, he's got abs and biceps and thighs and ass and EVERYTHING, so wearing lingerie is a contrast. It's disconcerting how girly Johnny Weir is until he takes off his shirt and you're like, oh right. ATHLETE. I don't think I managed to translate the visual impact of that well enough, although there were some obvious sentences about that when Johnny looked at himself in the mirror.

2. Johnny's athletic body also made me think about how long that might last after retirement. This fic was also a little bit about how he might be coping with retirement. Not so much about career angst and how Johnny Weir might fill his days -- although I think there is a fic to be written about that! -- but also, what you do when no one's actually looking at you. Johnny Weir likes being looked at.

2a. Also, to belabour the point once more: if you don't train, your nice muscles go away. Johnny is vain enough that this would probably be something he actually thinks about.

3. Lingerie is also about performance & dressing up. Johnny Weir LOVES dressing up and performing. But by its very nature? Wearing lingerie during sex is inherently different from hamming it up for the camera. Performing for the camera seems like a very... bolshy thing to do, whereas sex (at least sex in the context of this fic and this relationship) is pretty intimate. The kind of playacting that Johnny does to the camera is basically something he shouldn't be doing during sex. And if he did, Stephane would see right through him, I think. They've known each other for a really long time.

3a. I'm still not really sure about how I handled the sex scene, uh. On one hand I didn't want it be, "sex is special when there are lacy things involved!" although my beta pointed out that I seemed to have forgotten the existence of the lingerie completely when they were having sex. So I added in a couple of lines.

From:

extemporally.livejournal.com

4. I think the Viacheslav-interviews-Lambiel scene was possibly the most :D and /o\ scene to write. It's hard to get Viacheslav down! I'm not convinced by a fair number of his lines, although I do like “We regret to inform that Mr. Lambiel is passed out from drugs again,” he says into the air. “No more transmission.” It's also about performance, once again, and how feasible it is to do that when no one (or only one person) is looking at you. I also wanted to make it clear that Stephane was kind of performing there, giving the diplomatic face Johnny’s seen him give to reporters who ask stupid questions before even if it isn't immediately obvious.

I like thinking about Viacheslav as Johnny's alter-ego a lot, and sometimes he voices out Johnny's anxieties. "That is not sexy," Johnny says. Pronoun usage totally intentional, there.

5. I enjoy the Johnny/Evan relationship for a number of reasons: that combativeness, the (one-sided) banter, the fact that they're pushing each others' buttons all the time. But I also think it's very easy to stereotype ships in a way that seems very limiting and reductive -- so if that's Johnny/Evan, what's left for Johnny/Stephane? Cuddles and long time friendship? I mean, I like cuddles and long-time friendship a lot! But I wanted to show that they're equally capable of pushing each others' buttons, perhaps in healthier ways than the Johnny/Evan dynamic. Like, Stephane tells Johnny he thinks it's hot, he rescues Johnny when he's feeling weirdly embarrassed, etc. They call each other out on their hang-ups and bullshit nicely.

5a. Therefore the ending! A lot of the fic was about Johnny's hang-ups, and I wanted to reverse that. (Or oh, who am I lying, I came up with the image first and sort of worked with it.) I don't know why Johnny & Stephane are so reluctant to say they like wearing lingerie in this fic, exactly, they don't seem like self-conscious dudes in real life. Except that I'd be wary of going, "If Johnny Weir liked lingerie in real life, he'd wear it all the time. LOUDLY." I think my only answer would be that sex is private. For all Johnny's hyper-sexualised image, there are some things he keeps sacred. (Like what brand of moisturiser he uses, Johnny, ilu. ♥)

Mostly I just like the image of Johnny calling Stephane out on what he desires, too, and going, yeah, we can work with that, and telling him "wear this", while touching him.