Fannish Friday: Unfinished Business

[lirazel]

Do you have any creative endeavor (fic, art, meta, vids, whatever) that you've been nominally working on for at least a year or two but you've never been able to actually finish?

I'm especially interested if it's something from an older fandom that you've mostly moved on from now...something that feels like Unfinished Business and that you truly want to finish and hope that you will sometime.

Or maybe there's a particular aspect of an old fandom's canon that you really wanted to explore (a character, a theme, whatever), that you haven't ever really dug into, but it lives in your mind, and you know you still want to.



For me, it's Life with Derek (do not laugh! Okay, you can laugh, but only if it's in a fond way!). I need to hash out Derek/Casey in fic. I need to do it. I have at least two fics sitting on my harddrive that I started but never finished. I want to finish them! But I just never have! And yet, I feel that someday I will.

Comments

[seekingferret]

There's lots, but one glaring one is an Infinite Jest fic I started writing ages ago in the form of a wikipedia article, which I pull out every year or two and try to continue, but every time I pull it out I've forgotten half of what I was trying to do the last time, and I've particularly forgotten what all the jokes meant. Unfortunately I probably need to reread Infinite Jest to finish it, and the book is over a thousand pages long. :P

It was about an event alluded to in a footnote in the book called the MIT Language Riots of 1996, which was itself a reference to a conversation in Don DeLillo's Ratner's Star, and I think using a Wikipedia article to talk about something so complicatedly intertextual was a really great idea, but it's unsurprisingly been tricky to pull off. But maybe someday!

[lirazel]

I am absolutely delighted by this answer! I will probably never read Infnite Jest so I can probably never enjoy this fic when you finish it, but I will be happy knowing you're working on it!

and I think using a Wikipedia article to talk about something so complicatedly intertextual was a really great idea

AGREED.

Maybe you'll figure it out someday! I wish you luck in working on it!

[ceciliaj]

I would like to read this fic!!

[chestnut_pod]

I have a podfic like this, alas. The third out of three in a series, what's worse! It really just has to be rerecorded in its entirety, but the thought of that has kept me from doing so for years.

[lirazel]

Oh no! It's so much worse when it's part of a series!

It really just has to be rerecorded in its entirety, but the thought of that has kept me from doing so for years.

I get that. I truly do.

[dollsome]

I have this fic about Tom and Ann from Parks & Rec getting back together post-series (well, post-most-of-the-series, since the finale did so many time jumps!) that I have been adding little bits to every time I complete a Parks & Rec rewatch, and this has been going on for several years. One day -- nay, one distant year -- I might actually finish it and finally exorcise all my inconvenient Tom and Ann feelings. TO THE RETURN OF TANN!!!!!!!

[seekingferret]

Oh, I have a years-old Parks and Rec WIP too! It's Ben Wyatt taking a break from campaigning for Congress to go to Gen Con, and his advisors struggling to figure out whether him being The Architect is a campaign asset or detriment.

[lirazel]

I love this answer so much! I'm so glad I asked this question!

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Do you have any creative endeavor (fic, art, meta, vids, whatever) that you've been nominally working on for at least a year or two but you've never been able to actually finish?

*So* many, and I actually consider my 1 and 2 year old WIPs the "younger" ones, because I have stuff that's been in my drafts folder for 15-20 years! XD And I hope to finish most of them one day! bethefirst and other eventcentral challenges have been great to help me do that. This year I managed to finish one of those 20-ish year old WIPs, so I have faith in you and your own stories! *\o/*

[lirazel]

I actually consider my 1 and 2 year old WIPs the "younger" ones, because I have stuff that's been in my drafts folder for 15-20 years!

Amazing! I lovelovelove that you still intend to finish them. That is the right attitude to have!

[narie]

I am about 1000 words away from finishing a chapter of a Captive Prince fic that would be able to stand on its own, and I have been there for.... five or six years. I tell myself every now and then that I will absolutely finish it soon, but I haven't actually touched it in years. I *want* to, I'm just... lazy. And I have forgotten most of the canon.

[lirazel]

Relatable!

And I have forgotten most of the canon.

Oof, yeah, that's a big factor!

[elisi]

Now this is a timely post, because I am actually near finishing a fic I have worked on for... I don't even know how long. So long that I can't remember. And it has been a pain every. single. step. The best way to describe it is that I had to write it to work out what it was about?

I am very almost done (although I will need to go through & edit it all, now I actually have an idea of the overall arc), but it feels almost miraculous.

[lirazel]

That is so exciting!!! Good for you!!!

[sunshine304]

Well, I've still got two CQL fics that I've been working on for.. two years? But then other fics kinda took over a bit and I wrote them first, and so these two are still laying around, waiting to be finished. I'll get to it eventually. XD

[lirazel]

I'll get to it eventually. XD

Haha, exactly!

[sophia_sol]

I started a podfic for Aral Vorkosigan's Dog (a novel length Vorkosigan Saga fic) just SO many years ago at this point. I got through nearly a third of the fic, then realised I'd been pronouncing Vorkosigan and all the other Vor names incorrectly the whole time (a Germanic v instead of a Slavic one) and I couldn't decide between leaving it be and maintaining a consistent pronunciation throughout, fixing the pronunciation for the remainder of the podfic, or starting again from scratch. At this point it's extraordinarily unlikely I'll go back to it but some part of me still insists that I haven't given up on it yet!

[lirazel]

Oh my gosh, that must have been SO deflating when you figured out that you'd done it wrong! My heart hurts for you!