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

[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.