my id speaks in tongues and it worries me that i can't stop listening

Every so often when I get blocked, I realize that the actual problem is that I'm hitting the invisible wall between "if I squint, this is plausible" and "welcome to my id, it's goddamn creepy". Believe it or not, sociopathic AUs are not my purest id, and when people talk about my fic that disturbed them, they're not it either; that's the shit I water down so no one avoids me with frantic smiles in the hallways (virtual or real).

Id is where I stop pretending I'm like, a mature, sane writer, and pull out all my kinks, my interests, my thoughts on yaoi, strip out my filter and kick it to the curb, and hit drive hard enough I break my foot (metaphorically) because if you're going there, you should get there fast and going one twenty on the highway is still too slow. I want speed of light.

It actually happens less than one might think; my id and I have a working relationship where I write out whatever I really want in a scene, then I go back, remove the stuff that may or may not make bodice-ripper romances and certain torture-porn horror movies look healthy and sane, and rewrite the scene into sanity. Then I post and hope it passes as fangirl normal and not, um, disturbing.

RPS fucks with my id, and I don't know why. I have a folder that I've posted less than twenty percent of the completed contents, and that doesn't include the snippets I stopped when I had a moment of clarity and sanity. I came out of Smallville for God's sake; that was the fandom in which we made apocalyptic love stories a genre. Sexual obsession combined with destroying worlds; we were upping the ante with adding new planets to conquer and branding people so you know, this has never been like, a problem. I'm used to working within some fairly flexible lines. They were deeply awesome lines. Apparently, I just didn't know they were on a slow but meaningful shift.

I have no clue what is going on here, but I am All Id All the Time, and it's not like I have a problem with that except hey, I'm trying to write fic that I'd like other people to read without feeling really uncomfortable. After erasing--for the thousandth time--a completely wrong scene from a fic that really should not have anything like that--I think at VVC I ranted about my fluffy fic where Kris is all whee, sex with guys, yay, adorable shenigans that turned into What the Fuck Bondage Just Went So Very Wrong (I'm so serious) and every time I rewrite it and take it down a notch, it just jumps back up to Holy Shit Bears Run Away by the next paragraph. The saddest fics are the ones I finished and every so often I open them up and go back ready to edit them down into acceptability and end up like, upping the ante and then running away, as one does, because I'm terrified I might stay in there long enough to be like, this isn't so bad and post it.

(My personal waterloo is one I made no less than eight people read, and initial reaction to the gentler version made me nervously aware I liked these people and didn't want them to avoid me forever. When winterlive is giving you wary virtual looks, it's time to drawer that sucker and pretend you don't remember it.)

(winterlive - the double amnesia one. I sent you like, eight copies or something, each more id than the last.)

So I am trying a new approach; I am just writing my id out with glorious freedom and not a little shock at what I'll do when I know no one is watching. It's also surprising, I think, in what I actually focus on when I stop thinking and just write it out, because relationship dynamics in themselves are my favorites, but I didn't realize what precisely about them fascinated me so much, and seeing this is kind of mapping territory that I've glanced at before but never spent time staring at quite so long.

I had several really interesting conversations this weekend with chipunk7, lovelokest and geekturnedvamp that I'm pretty sure set off this train of thought.

I am so behind on everything, but I totally have time for advanced navel gazing. So cough it up; tell me of your id fic and what you do with it and how you feel about it. I'm actually tempted to gather up people who are both brave and maybe willing to get drunk enough to agree, lock a post, and make everyone post theirs so maybe I'll like, feel better about myself or something? Then we can all not look each other in the eye until it's over and pretend it didn't happen.

Tell me. Id. Go. (Seriously. I want to know I am not alone on the cliff of wtf, when did I become this person.)

References:

The Id Vortex on Fanlore.
Via torachan: 'Clichés and the id: a map to fictional seduction' by cupidsbow
What Is the Id Anyway by torachan
zvi, if I remember correctly, had one or more really good posts, which hey, zvi if you see this, link me? I can't even remember when they were, but I think you were the first person on my flist that talked about it.

Okay, someone did two very good ones, at some time before 2009, and they may or may not have been on my flist. That narrows it down tremendously. *facepalm*

Comments

[zvi]

I don't recall writing anything that addresses the Id, sorry.

[seperis]

This is why I wish I'd used delicious more before now; I only started bookmarking meta in the last year.

*crosses off list*

[cesare]

I wrote and posted something that was pretty much idfic in Vampire Chronicles... it's basically like 23,000 words of swoony-prose dubcon bloodsucking.

I think the only thing I cut from that because it was too much id was an episode of the aggressor character basically locking the other guy in a box for a week, keeping him weakened and only opening the lid for blooddrinking-read-sex. Everything else made it in, even stuff I knew was over the top at the time. But I thought, if you can't write this kind of stuff in fandom, where can you?

[seperis]

...so I need to read that soon. *marks down* *eyes wide*

[sage]

Te and other DC folk have written several posts on Idfic, but it's been, like, an epoch, in internet-time.

I...deeply suspect you're onto something with the whole blockage issue vs. just letting the id flow. My urge to write has been so low for so long, and yet the stories that unfold on their own and basically demand to be written whether I'm on board with them or not tend to be my most, uh, revelatory. Which I try not to think too hard about. *g*

And the mention of post-Smallville apocalypse-porn makes me SO nostalgic. *wistful sigh*

[seperis]

My urge to write has been so low for so long, and yet the stories that unfold on their own and basically demand to be written whether I'm on board with them or not tend to be my most, uh, revelatory. Which I try not to think too hard about. *g*

Yes, this. I keep thinking "I'm blocked!" and then, id fic just strolls in and yeah. It's not even my kinks being set free to roam; it's how I'm structuring the story around them, without the, y'know, justification thing. I keep stopping to stare at it and then remind myself not to think and boom.

It's definitely revelatory.

[beachlass]

So.... I don't know if this qualifies, and it's a weird AU born out of a crack RP premise in a fandom far away. But when you say id fic, this is the one that comes to mind for me; partly because I played this character (Kakashi) in the RP, and she had a penchant for solving problems with murderous violence, and that took me by surprise, sometimes. As if it was letting that part of my reptile brain out to play.

Story In Girly, Violent, Mango Sort of Way</a.

[seperis]

*fascinated* No, that definitely qualifies. Adding to my bookmarks to read soon, as I'm curious what you did there.

[ladyvyola]

It's a tremendous catharsis, somehow, identifying with and rolling around at the farthest reaches of empathy and responsibility, yet still tethered to and consumed by one other being. How far can you go from the best of humanity and still feel something recognizable as love?

It's in my id, too, but I can't dress it up in coherency and plot. So, as a reader, I must say, bring on the "world well lost burned to the ground for love" stories!

[seperis]

It's a tremendous catharsis, somehow, identifying with and rolling around at the farthest reaches of empathy and responsibility, yet still tethered to and consumed by one other being. How far can you go from the best of humanity and still feel something recognizable as love?

I may have fallen in love with this line. Oh yes, this.

[musesfool]

My id-fic features AU hetcest babies. I'm kind of okay with that.

[seperis]

*glee* I love your id!

[cathexys]

I doubt this is what you were referencing, but I wrote on id vortex here....

but really, the term...all ellen fremedon with her two entries :)

[seperis]

Am bookmarking. I remember hers but it was referenced at Id Vortex entry so I didn't link separately.

[ineptshieldmaid]

I am fascinated by people whose Id produces completely cracked-out and/or slightly disturbing end products. *My* Id is the kind of Id which takes my intent to write a bitter-sweet makeout scene and adds stupidly complex medieval references and mountains of Religious Angst and long meta-threads on adolescence and adulthood while I'm sitting here going "BUH WHUH I JUST WANTED TO WRITE KISSING".

[seperis]

I've been seriously overthinking my id recently with all the fics I have that keep going id-wards. Even writing it, I don't know why I want to write it, or why it's what it is. My kinks aren't rare in fandom, like, at all, so it's not like this is my sekrit kink shame fic that I can't write or read.

I think the closest posted fic that matches where my id goes would be in SGA, Crimes Against Humanity, and not for the violence and sex, but the way I wrote the people themselves and what they were doing. It's very--I guess the closest I can think of is extremism, but I'm not sure that's quite right either.

I'm seriously crushing on your id. *G*

[forestgreen]

Right, this, here, is why I haven't written anything in a while. I've kind of discovered mirrorverse!Startrek and damn, the things I want to do to those characters have left me wondering if I'm not becoming kind of sociopath myself.

... and then I started metaing inside my head and becoming philosophical about it, and some how it went from there to religion and then I started wondering that if God was a writer (what with "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God", biggest hint ever) and the world was his creation (aka id kind of book), suddenly all wars in the world, famine, rapes, hunger, floods, tsunamis, you name it, made a twisted kind of sense, because, obviously I wasn't doing any better... and then I realized I was starting to take all the issues to seriously and decided not to write any more in that venue.

Who knows? I don't want to be responsible for a McCoy or a Spock out there wondering what they did to deserve such fates and why God hated them so... The worse part is that I don't hate them at all... I kind love them to pieces and it doesn't change anything in the outcome, I still want to have circumstances push them and push them until I find their breaking point... and yes, that explains so much about religion, too. So you see, this is why I needed to stop and I'm now vicariously enjoying my writer's block.

No more id-writing for me... or mirrorverse!stories... damn. Except for the part where I still kind of love them.

[seperis]

Nooooo. You must post it! That makes it better!

[petra]

I have different sections of my id, I think. There's the part with the exceedingly dirty I Can't Believe It's Not Incest and terrifying power dynamics underscored by love, which was happily satisfied via Batman et al. I can't reread the stories that I wrote for my id in that fandom, not the ones that got to the core of that piece. They're too naked for me now, or the zeitgeist has shifted.

Currently I seem to have tapped into the part that goes, "Okay, so this isn't how canon went at all, but if these people had all met they could've all lived happily ever after. No, that's not how canon goes, but if they'd had each other, it might have been different, right? Right! SMOOSH HANDS."

The only similarities I can see between these two labyrinths of id are that there are excessive amounts of affection going on in both of them. And that they embarrass me.

[minim_calibre]

My idfic is either HI! I AM VIOLENT AND HAVE SKEEVY CONSENT ISSUES! WHEE! or OOO! LET US MAKE SEEKRIT BABIES, BLENDED FAMILIES, AND POSSIBLY THREESOMES! FUNTIMES! YAYZ!

As either extreme is kind of embarrassing and I'm stuck in my id mode completely (and no longer have the time or the people for IMing it into something less id-addled), I haven't posted anything publicly outside of a challenge in, err. A really, really long time. Months. Possibly at all this year.

My iPhone, on the otherhand, is FULL of stuff.

[d_generate_girl]

Over here from petra and musesfool.

I definitely need to write up a proper Id post, but mine tends to come out as extremely imbalanced power dynamics, mindfuckery both literal and figurative, and a startling propensity for writing D/s into just about every fandom I like. There are parts of things I wrote recently that I went "EEEEEK" at and resolved to edit it thoroughly.

Another aspect of my id is actually half thatyourefuse, but it's an entire universe of RPF in which an astonishing amount of people are having astonishingly kinky sex. I seriously doubt that it'll ever see the light of day.

[goodbyebird]

I think my Id would mostly be socially inept characters that are somewhat emotionally repressed/blank, and also self-sacrifice and dysfunctional relationships push my buttons like whoa.

People who get physically close, but they never actually start to have sex. If it's aggressive, or if one person is the one that initiates the contact and doesn't really acknowledge personal boundaries and the other one just tolerates it like it's no big deal. Both work :D

[laurajv]

Hasn't John Ringo admitted that his weird stuff is pure idfic that he originally shoved in a drawer because he was all "ew, ok, Id, I wrote it, now SHUT UP"? I seem to recall that is the case.

I don't even know what my Id is interested in.

[ordinarygirl]

I don't write my idfic. I honestly am too... I don't know, terrified that somehow I'll post it somewhere where people can SEE when I'm drunk or something to write it.

But my deepest darkest fics (and the RP I'd love to do but have never found the right person to really... ask to do it with me) would be... the innocent being torn apart. There's the headstrong, stubborn girl; Rose Tyler or Amy Pond from Doctor Who come to mind, Daine from Tamora Pierce's Immortals quartet, Elspeth from before or early on in the Mage Winds trilogy by Mercedes Lackey - these are all girls who fit into my mental "archetype" for this, though I don't write all of them. ...Okay, I do in theory, but I haven't done fics with Daine or Elspeth yet. So you take this girl and giver her to a psychopath/sociopath/scary-fucking-crazy guy, and you let him... break her. Utterly, completely, with gratuitous descriptions and really freaking horrible stuff that would trigger pretty much ANYONE who has triggers for these things and some people who don't. And then you let her pull herself together a little bit. She escapes (actually or as a ruse to make it more fun for the guy breaking her), or the guy leaves, or she just gets a respite from it all... and then you break her again. And you break her until she is a completely different person... and then you put her back together, and she's never the same.

This is horrible, terrifying stuff that I would NEVER EVER EVER release to the public at large. This is not stuff that I think is "good", and I don't think that there is a market for this sort of fic that doesn't involve scary-crazy-psychopaths... and people like me, maybe. Part of what weirds me out is that it's ALWAYS a guy breaking a girl. It's fun to break certain male characters, as well, but it's actually a very different sort of story, there - that's breaking the already broken (and I do it with girls, too), and them coming out of it stronger, and involves much less... horrifying sexual torture and psychological dismantlement.

And the thing is, I don't want to read stuff like this. I might go back and re-read stuff I've done (I was first introduced to this part of me in a MUCH TAMER THAN I WISHED RP session back in the day), but I'd never really... track down fic like this and read it. Because that's... not what I want. I can think of literally two people who, if they wrote this, I would WANT to read it, and they are both my significant others. Also, I think they would probably be able to do it well, if you can do such a terrifying sort of story well.


...I don't know, this is me rambling because... it's hard.

Outside of anything sexually-involved (because I actually don't like writing or reading sex-fic that much), my id likes me to write HORRIBLY SUE-ISH FANTASY WITH MAGIC AND SPARKLY PONIES AND UNICORNS AND SHIT, a la... Valdemar is really the only fantasy I've read that fits the description. XD I WANTS TO WRITE SPARKLEPONIES. Also horrible modern-girl-or-guy falls into fantasy universe of choice stories.

So... my id is stuck in the 8-year-old fairy princess stage with a heaping of physical, psychological, and sexual torture on the side?


...and now I'm worried I might've said too much and made people look at me like I might eat their babies. D:

[thatyourefuse]

... hi.

We've never actually met, and I'm coming to this post disturbingly late, and I'm trying not to sound like too much of a crazy person, but: your id just made my id sit up and go "... Actually."

And explicated a few things to me about something I've actually been working on, which I knew but had sort of forgotten in the struggle to make at least some of the sentences readable.

Um.

Hi?

meta on Id fic

[eileenlufkin]

I doubt this is what you're thinking of, since I don't don't think your circles overlap much, but maculategiraffe posted some interesting meta about her id fic here:

http://maculategiraffe.dreamwidth.org/82903.html?#cutid1

[celli]

My id rarely wants to produce scary stuff, although it occasionally wants to read it until I'm clutching a pillow at 4 in the morning. (hi, therapy.)

What my id wants to produce is the smarmy smoochy treacly fic where everyone is happy, everyone's babies have babies, and every possible loose end is tied up with misty eyes and Eskimo kisses. If I tried to read that fic, I would hit backspace so hard I'd sprain something. I don't even.

[annaalamode.livejournal.com]

Oh, apocalyptic love stories, how I miss you! No other fandom can do them quite as well as SV did.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

SV totes went there. God. I miss it.

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

Haha, *I* remember that fic!

This is hilarious stacked on my flist with my last post.

Someone should write my id-fic. It would probably be kind of... the sort of thing I expect to be defriended for, but in the breakfast in bed + kittens and flowers direction. Except when it involved people being tied up and... you know, stopping that sentence there.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*grins* Oh, I bet you do.

Someone should write my id-fic. It would probably be kind of... the sort of thing I expect to be defriended for, but in the breakfast in bed + kittens and flowers direction. Except when it involved people being tied up and... you know, stopping that sentence there.

You are such a tease! I want to know more!

[traveller.livejournal.com]

if I ever wrote it, it would be original, not fanfic, and it'd have to be a graphic novel -- I'd need an artist willing to plug into my twistedness. it's a thing, I don't know, I originally envisioned it in that way and that's how it's always stayed in my head.

maybe because it's semi-acceptable to Go That Far in a comic and not in a Regular Novel?

idk, I'm loath to talk about it because I'm looking over my shoulder right now, metaphorically speaking, like, who's watching and waiting to call me horrible names and use this confession against me? on the other hand, I'd really love to talk about it. I once kind of poked at getting a discussion started re: the idea, in my lj, and didn't get much response, probably because I framed it wrong or because most of my friends just pretended they never saw me confess to having created this fucked up world in my head.

gah.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Want.

[jackycomelately.livejournal.com]

I posted mine (RPF Figure Skating); however, it's the only thing I never got beta'd. I kept thinking I'd tone it down before I sent it to her, and than ran out of time, and had to post it or default on the challenge. My id likes unequal power relationships. Particularly if the one with the power is madly obsessed with someone who is a little "eh" about them in return. Lex Luther for the win. Basically I like fucked-up obsessed guy slash dude backing away slowly.

My id is pretty tame really. I expect I'll discover better and bigger kinks as I continue to write. I would love to hear more about those drawer stories. I have faith that your id is much more advanced!

[seperis.livejournal.com]

My id likes unequal power relationships. Particularly if the one with the power is madly obsessed with someone who is a little "eh" about them in return. Lex Luther for the win. Basically I like fucked-up obsessed guy slash dude backing away slowly.

*raises hand and sighs* I am so there. So there.

My id is like, IDEK. Having some kind of dissonance moment or something.

[sienamystic.livejournal.com]

Heh. I am an infrequent writer (although recently my production has upped) and I finally poked at what became a really dark Mentalist fic. And I go back and read it and realize, "This could have been darker and more twisted but I held back because I didn't want to scare people." It got one comment, praising me from running headfirst into the wall of wrong, and I figure that's just about what that fic deserves.

Uh, in short, my id scares me too.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Love the id. Embrace the id. (Get your shots up to date first, though.)

Yeah, me and my id fic are staring at each other challengingly. I have a bad feeling I'm not winning.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Dubcon alien transformation with power dynamics. Uh. A few comic pages may exist in a notebook, but I'm leery of showing them to anyone because, well. Yeah.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

...that is the most gorgeous sentence ever. *blinks* How many pages?

[aivilo-18.livejournal.com]

Adam is a fucking cat, dude. It's 5000 words and he's *still* a cat. And I don't know. Apparently I maybe have a yarn kink now?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

...I don't even know what I'm writing anymore, I just know I am unsettled. Cats? Are awesome. Awesome, I say.

..wait, there's more? I totally put out.

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

My id either wants hurt/comfort gone extra hurty in a non-abusive way paired with lots of crying and petting in the comfort part, or D/s power dynamics in sexual relationships even if it makes no sense for those particular characters. I don't care. I wants it.

The first one is longstanding -- there is a reason that my favorite novels as a child were The Little Princess, then onward to Mercedes Lackey (Vanyel! Everyone hates him!) et al. The sad thing is how hard is it is to find competently written fanfic in that genre. I mean, all I'm asking for is decent grammar and syntax, and a bit of insight into the characters. *sigh*

I've been thinking about Smallville after the Bad Romance video made me remember how much I loved Clark/Lex. That fandom went everywhere in the first six months of my fanfiction experience. I've never been able to take the arguments against RPS/incest/darkfic all that seriously, because that was my introduction to fanfic. SV went there, and reveled in it.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

My id either wants hurt/comfort gone extra hurty in a non-abusive way paired with lots of crying and petting in the comfort part, or D/s power dynamics in sexual relationships even if it makes no sense for those particular characters. I don't care. I wants it.

Oh, mine just jumped up and down in glee reading that.

That fandom went everywhere in the first six months of my fanfiction experience. I've never been able to take the arguments against RPS/incest/darkfic all that seriously, because that was my introduction to fanfic. SV went there, and reveled in it.

Yes, this. This.