shadowscast | Entries tagged with once a thief

So, as I posted yesterday, Yahoo will soon be shutting down much of the functionality of its groups. I found out yesterday afternoon and have been scrambling to figure out what's going on and what to do about it ever since (apart from the time spent working, commuting, parenting, and going to the dentist to get a filling replaced!).

I'm going to do a links roundup here (mostly for my own benefit so that I can close some tabs in my browser!—but if anybody else finds this useful, that's great), and then I'm going to report on what I've personally done, what I'm planning to do, and what I'm still trying to figure out.( Read more... )

I have just finished, and posted to AO3, the novel-length Once A Thief fanfic that I've been working on since the start of the summer. It's the fifth instalment in the series that I've been working on since February, when I leapt back into writing after a half-decade hiatus.

So, since February: I have written five stories, totalling 300K words, all in a tiny, obscure, dead fandom. I did it because my muse grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go until I was done.

And now? I think I'm done. At the end of the fifth story, I'm pretty happy with the places where I'm leaving the characters. The kernel of the idea for the fifth story had been with me since 2006, so I feel really good about finally making it happen. But with that out of the way, I don't think I have any more stories I need to tell about them.

I had a lot of fun writing these stories, and letting these characters live in my head again. Sometimes I stop and contemplate the fact that I've just spent most of my spare time for the past five months writing two novels and three novellas that almost nobody is going to read. But then I remind myself that if I hadn't been doing that, I probably would've been building a giant melon farm in Minecraft. Or something else equally fun and pointless. The point is that it was fun. And I'm really pleased with how the stories turned out.

And now I have to figure out what to do next!

Right now I have no idea what to write next. And I'm not going to push myself to come up with something right away. I think it would be good to take a little break from writing. Not a five year break, for sure, but maybe a month? Enough to get caught up on my reading at least; I'm backlogged, with a pile of to-read novels sitting on a shelf in my bedroom.

I might also write some more posts about writing, in order to examine some of my thoughts about what was fun about the experience I just had, what's appealing to me about writing fanfic in general, what kinds of fanfic I might want to write next, or maybe a contemplation of the siren song of original fiction.

I just ... wow. I really don't have any idea what I want to write next!

PS: I suppose I should link the completed fic, just for the record.

Having A Baby Changes Everything
Fandom: Once A Thief
Rating: Mature
Length: 100K words
Summary: The agents must guard and care for a toddler, while dealing with the fallout from a particularly brutal mission.
(The fifth and probably last-ever instalment in my Enough Time series. More detailed tags and warnings are available over at AO3 if you click the link.)

PPS: Thanks again,

yourlibrarian, for going on this journey with me, and being the beta reader of my dreams!

I was thinking about the quality of "slashiness," today. Not for the first time! But in particular, I was musing about how I might explain the slashiness of the Once A Thief pilot to someone who was not familiar with the concept. (This was some advance-planning musing rather than entirely-hypothetical musing; an acquaintance has expressed interest in maybe watching some of the series so that she can read my fanfic, because she's curious about fanfic, never having read any before!)

( So then I started thinking about framing it in terms of the 'meet cute'. )

Here's a happy thing that's happening in my life right now: I'm doing two parallel Once a Thief rewatches, with two local friends who are also fannish. Yesterday, for the first time, scheduling and our places in the respective rewatches allowed all three of us to get together in my living room to watch episodes 14 - 16. It was delightful!

I am so very happy and fortunate that when my brain decided it was time to get re-obsessed by a two-decades-old TV show (with no active fandom), two of my friends were up for coming along for the ride.

Anyway, during the rewatch I have (naturally) been having various thoughts about the show. I think I'll post some! Perhaps another day, I will post some more. Who knows? Whatever seems like fun at the time.

( Cut for spoilers or for general lack of interest in Once A Thief, whichever applies! Also cut for discussion of sexual harassment, abuse of power, and problematic consent. )

So, having come out as asexual in my previous post, I want to talk about the experience of putting an explicitly asexual character in my fic for the first time.

But actually before that, I think I need to talk a little bit about the experience of writing fics about sexual characters, as an asexual writer. ( Read more... )

Perhaps it's about time that I mention: after a 4.5-year break from fandom, I have started writing again. In the past three months, I've completed (and posted to AO3), three fics, totalling about 170,000 words (all set in one ongoing series). It's been pretty intense!

All three fics have been based on Once A Thief, a show that aired for one season over 20 years ago, and that hardly anybody's heard of. But it was my first fandom; I imprinted on it like a fannish baby bird. And right now, for whatever reason, it's where my joy is.

Just ... wow, does it ever feel good to be writing again!

In case anyone wants a link to the series: it's called Enough Time.

I have finished that Once A Thief threesome story I was working on!

It turned out to be 70,000 words long, and plotty and angsty and complicated. Which is par for the course for my fics, I guess. It was a whole lot of fun to write, especially with

yourlibrarian along for the ride as my beta reader. She caught my awkward wordings and typos, helped me bounce around ideas about tricky plot developments, and made me totally re-write the ending when my first draft sucked. Plus, it was encouraging to know that at least one person other than myself would read the thing. Thanks,

yourlibrarian!

I've posted it on AO3. You'll find more detailed tagging and content notes there. Here's the link:

A Triangle (is the strongest shape)

And, if you'd like a fantastic fanvid to get you in the mood, check out The Frug by

some_stars, and remind yourself that Mac, Li Ann and Vic are awesome (individually but most especially together).

I have a couple of other notes, but I'll put them behind a cut.

( Writing a threesome is hard. )

( My whole story is essentially contained in the first three and a half minutes of episode 5. )

ETA: I wrote this story because I wanted to, fully understanding that it's a story for a dead fandom and I might not get a single bit of feedback, other than from my aforementioned wonderful beta reader. That said, if anyone out there reads it I'd really, really love to hear from you!

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had started writing a new Once A Thief fic. So, I thought I'd post an update on that: I have been working on it obsessively ever since, and the thing is now 35,000 words long (and not finished yet).

I'm having so much fun!

I expect I'll return to the Buffyverse sometime soon, but right now I am just having a blast immersing myself in the wacky world of this strange Canadian action/drama that aired for only one season in the late 1990's, and which propelled me personally into the universe of fanfic.

Speaking of which: it is so weird to be writing a story set in 1999 and realizing that it's a historical period and that I have to be careful to avoid anachronisms. I remember 1999 like it was yesterday, you guys! And yet the characters live in a world without smartphones. They are secret agents working for a Shadowy Government Agency, and when they need to drive somewhere in rural Ontario they pull out a big paper road map.

Anyway ... I'm not going to be posting this story as a work in progress, but I decided I'd like to post a teaser for the handful of you out there who expressed interest in this project.

Notes: This story is a love letter to OaT's OT3: it will be a Mac/Vic/Li Ann story. It's just going to take me a while to get them there.

There are no content warnings for this chapter, though there will eventually be some for the story as a whole.

( Teaser! Chapter 1 )

Today, gloriously, I had much of an afternoon and evening free, and I decided to spend it writing fic.

I wrote 2700 words of a Once A Thief fic. (Mac/Vic/Li Ann threesome, if you're wondering. Shaping up to be long and plotty and angsty, in the way my fics tend to.)

It was very satisfying. Once A Thief was my first fandom, the one I imprinted on. (See this post for details.) As a fandom, though, it is utterly, totally dead. Rigor mortis set in many years ago. So, supposing I finish this fic, it's not entirely clear that anyone but me will want to read it.

The way I'm feeling now, though, is that I'll finish it anyway. (We'll see how it goes, as my time and energy wax and wane!)

Hm. I guess I'm just posting to say: I think I have now clearly established that I write for an audience of me. When there turn out to be other people who want to read my work too, that's a super extra ice cream bonus!

PS: If by some weird chance anybody sees this post who would be interested in the story, do let me know! It would be encouraging.

PPS: People following my story Gently Down the Stream, do not fear. The last chapters are complete, and will be posted on schedule next Friday.

So I never post anymore (you may have noticed). But this, this was worth breaking radio silence for:

fan_eunice has posted a Once A Thief vid! It's fun and it's bouncy and it's fun!

Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Once A Thief, if you don't know, is a Canadian TV show that aired for one season back in 1997. It was based on a John Woo movie of the same name, and in fact the show pilot was a remake of the movie (with somewhat different characters and plot). The main characters are secret agents working for a Shadowy Government Agency. They fight evil with martial arts. The show is campy, uneven, delightfully slashy, and does not take itself very seriously at all except for when it does.

The full series aired in Canada and Australia but never, I think, in the United States. One of the agents was played by Nicholas Lea, who also played Krycek in the X-Files, and most of the fannish interest arrived via X-Files fandom. In fact I think I may be the only person in the entire world who got into fandom via Once A Thief as opposed to vice versa.

I saw bits and pieces of the series during its original run on broadcast. I liked the show very much, but had no way to catch the episodes I'd missed. These were ye olden days; I didn't even own a VCR. Watching the show, I was convinced that before every single scene, the director told all of the actors "and by the way, you secretly want to have sex with each other." It was THAT SLASHY. Except I didn't know what slash was yet. But when searching the still-relatively-young internet for episode summaries (I mean, I was probably searching with Alta Vista, folks), I stumbled across a fic about the two male leads having sex while hiding in a closet.

I was like ... OH. WOW. So I'm not the only one who thought they were totally hot for each other!

And thus I discovered fanfic. And slash. Which I didn't even realize weren't synonymous until years later when I jumped into That '70s Show fandom (a weird and brief blip between my Once A Thief and my Buffyverse stages).

Sadly, it was a very hard fandom to pimp, since barely anyone had seen the show and it wasn't out on DVD. I had a set of episodes on VHS tapes via the old-fashioned fannish copy-and-snailmail network; I also in fannish desperation paid $40 at one point for a set of DVDs that had been *ahem* pirated off of TV by some guy.

But now things have changed! The DVDs have finally been released! (They came out in June of this year; I only heard about it a couple of weeks ago and I now have my box set sitting on my desk, yippeee!)

And ... a vid! Have you watched it yet? You should go and watch it and comment, too! :-D

Remember back when I said that I was working on finishing a seven-year-old WIP in an obscure fandom? I'm done!

I'm still dubious whether anybody's going to read it (the fandom is tiny!) but I sure had fun writing it, anyway.

yourlibrarian is so awesome that she actually watched the entire series so that she could beta read for me! She's always a joy to work with, and I'm really grateful for her insightful input, her encouragement, and her close reading!

So hey, how about I give you some details?

Title: Family
Author: Shadowscast
Fandom: Once A Thief
Pairing: Mac/Michael, Mac/Li Ann, Mac/Vic
Rating: Mature
Summary: Family is a complicated thing for Mac Ramsey.
Warnings: Please note that chapters 1 and 2 contain some potentially disturbing sexual scenes due to abuse and control issues. There are sexual situations involving dubious consent.
Length: Long! 172,986 words.
Status: Complete, woohoo!

Notes: It took me seven years to complete this story. I started posting it as a WIP to a Once A Thief mailing list back in 2003. Then I left it hanging for a really, really long time ... but I started working on it again in March of 2010, and I finished it last night. Yay!

I hope there are still some interested readers out there, after all this time. If you do read it, I'd love to hear from you.

Link: Family

If you don't know the fandom but might want to give the story a try anyway, here's what you really need to know: The characters are secret agents. And they're hot. :-)