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

[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?

[ordinarygirl]

Um. Hi!

I think my ego and superego just collapsed at the idea that my id might actually connect to other people's.

:)

(Also, LOVE the icon. A2A love!)

[thatyourefuse]

*squeaks*

The icon... has something to do with it. A lot to do with it. Um. I don't know why I decided someone ought to do the alternate S3 that ended the other way, or why that someone had to be me when I haven't finished anything since the Kerry campaign -- except I do know, and it goes like "Gene/Alex owns my soul, but Mr Keats makes me forget I've got one."

[ordinarygirl]

Ohmygod seriously? Oh my god I want to read this. I really do. Keats is the creepiest mofo around in television (in my opinion) but OH GOD WANT. If you finish it, pleasepleaseplease let me see it.

I really... have a deep love of "and then it all went to hell :D" AU endings. >.>

[thatyourefuse]

I think the decision tree was something like "Well, fuck, no one else is damn well going to."

And there is no other fictional character who makes my skin stand on end the way he does, honestly. It's just.

He decided he wanted Alex to be happy...

[ordinarygirl]

*shiver*

Also, MASSIVE love for the River icon. Not enough people like her. ^_^

[thatyourefuse]

Yeah. About like that.

And I do not know why that is, because she's AWESOME.

[ordinarygirl]

inorite? I should link you to whatever snippets of fic my girlfriend has put up - she writes River SO WELL.

[thatyourefuse]

Oooooooooo. Say on?

[ordinarygirl]

She's over at find_rightbrain, her fic that is, and she's got a very nice index. ^^

[thatyourefuse]

Oooo shiny!