on snipers and squid (1/3)

So, yesterday ended up draining me a bit more than I expected - estate stuff in the morning and extended wrangling with technology in the afternoon - so I treated myself to a margarita with dinner (brisket-avocado-spinach quesadillas at the Alley Cat), which was tasty but also made me too sleepy to socialize afterwards, so I headed up to bed soon after we got home.

Since I'm currently obsessed with sussing out the springkink-fic is heading, I picked up Peter Brookesmith's Sniper: Training, Techniques and Weapons (St. Martin's, 2000) for a bit of reading, which turned out to be the perfect choice. You know that happy moment when a character comes into sharper focus at multiple levels -- that is, not just the version you're writing for a fic, but the one within the confines of canon? I went to sleep happy, because I've had several clicks of that kind during the course of drafting parts 1 and 2 of this fic (including one last week where I wrote a sentence, reread it, and only then realized, "Holy shit, so that's part of their dynamic too").

[The daft thing is that all of this excitement is extraneous to the actual story -- it's about how writing the story intensifies my pleasure in being a fan, and wholly irrelevant in terms of whether other people will find the fic sufficiently engaging or entertaining. On the down side, I feel more than a bit foolish expending this much time and mental energy on a fic that maybe seven people will read and two might actually like (the fandom is small). On the up side, it's exhilarating when a story insists on shoving me out of my ordinary groove and into a new-to-me landscape (which would be why you patient ones end up with all these teal deers about process galloping atcha).]

Anyhow, last night's unexpected revelations came when I was reading Brookesmith's discussions about how snipers are regarded by their fellow soldiers:
( the loneliness of the long-distance sharpshooter )

[continued in the next entry...]

on snipers and squid (2/3)

[continued from this entry]

So what does this mean in terms of my fascination with Ryo Maclean and Dee Laytner?

( spoilers for FAKE beneath the cut )

(And, on yet another tangent, it's probably no accident that I'm attracted to Ryo and Dee because of how they stand out apart from the herd: when you get right down to it, my basic Snape/Lupin dynamic could be summarized as "two guys who never truly had a prayer of fitting in with the rest of society eventually realize that their soulmate is someone likewise deeply damaged and similarly ruthless when circumstances and/or love compels him to be."

*rereads last tangent* And I wonder why my PWPs invariably spiral out of control? Jeez, Ribbons, talk about self-honesty...)

(And all of this said, I'm not sure I'll be doing any justice to the theme within the current fic -- it's not where the plot sprang from, and it's not the kind of story I've previously spent much time trying to write -- but it is giving some shape to part 3 that hadn't materialized before last night, which is good, because I really do want to finish this sucker sometime before Valentine's Day...)

[still with me? the squid'll be up in a minute, in the next post]

on snipers and squid (3/3)

...and, here we are. This is what arrived in the mail from the one and only amazingness that is busaikko-san:

( photos beneath the cut )

(And oh, there is indeed much mayhem planned. *manic grin* But first I need to reheat my tea and do some of the dances-with-PowerPoint that will help underwrite said mayhem, and to deter the dog from sticking her snout into a certain bag of mini-Reese's-cups I've set aside (smiles at aunty_marion), and to figure out how I'm actually going to end part 2 of the fic I've just meta-rambled about to y'all over the past three-odd posts. Onwards!)