Fic - repost from sv_undercover

Tidying up various entries, and it occurred to me I never posted this here. It was written for sv_undercover last year. The challenge was to write something to do with a proposition. I wanted to avoid all the obvious marriage, sexual and business connations and come up with something else.

( Met U Blues )

And all was revealed - fic titles explained

I rarely do memes, but I really like this one. Titles can be so hard to think of, but the right one offsets a good story so well.

Name your ten favourite titles from stories you've written:

The Long White Cloud

The Maori name for New Zealand (and intriguingly it's on the lj location list, go lj) is Aotearoa, which means "Land of the Long White Cloud".

I was in a very bad mood and had just posted a big diatribe about how New Zealand was Smallville (and not in the good way) and I was Whitney Fordman, stuck here forever when I longed for the bright lights, big city of Metropolis (read America). And then nerodi issued the HistAU challenge and I was struck by lightning inspiration and I exiled Lex to C19th New Zealand, and by the time I'd finished I remembered how much I love home. I didn't really have a title to begin with, but the cloud wound up so important in Lex's spiritual awakening that it became obvious. It also jibed with the tikanga maori course I was doing at the time, and gave *me* a bit of a spiritual awakening too. Can't say that about much fanfic.

Philalexandreia

My ClasAU where I wrote Lex and Clark as Alexander and Hephaistion. Back when that sort of thing was original. Because it was a drabble-on I wanted a punchy one word title, but it needed to work in both genres – classics and clex. I sat there for ages staring at the blinking cursor, and then it occurred to me that really in either/both worlds, the whole point of the story was loving Alexander. And that that was a state of being, in and of itself. Hence an abstract noun.

Parallel

When I first conceived this story, oh so very long ago, the strongest image I had in my head was that it was a parallel, not an alternate, universe. By which I mean there was no "this one detail was different and so everything was different" gimmick, unlike a lot of my other pieces. This one was meant to be our Lex and Clark, just in a universe where they managed to stay together. That was the only change. Of course it then became the WIP that wouldn't die, and as time went on it did become more and more AU off the canon we have now. I'm resigned to that.

I changed the title at one point, to Parallel Lives instead, riffing off Plutarch. He wrote a series of matched biographies, pairing a famous classical Greek with a Roman. And I thought, it's Lex and Clark and their parallel development... Perfect. And then someone wrote a story using that title, and it was awful. I don't know if she'd ever read Plutarch or if it was pure coincidence (I don't think the title had much to do with the subject matter) so I had to dump that idea. I'm glad now I did. This is the title this story was meant to have. For several other reasons too, which might make it into the author's notes when I do actually finish. Which will be soon, I swear.

To the Victor go the Spoils

I just love this line. And it seemed very much the sort of thing Lex would say. Or think. I'll confess a little secret now. One of my rare Mary-Sueish foibles is that when I imagine Lex as a precocious kid at prep school, I tend to look back on my own Latin classes. And one of my most vivid memories is the day we were translating the first sack of Rome at the hands of the Gauls. And the Gauls consented to be bought off, for a fixed weight in gold. And they cheated somehow, the old finger on the scales thing I guess, and one of the Romans pointed it out. At which point Brennus, the barbarian captain, tossed his heavy bronze sword on the scales too and shouted, "Vae victis!" - "Woe to the Conquered!". And the Romans had to pay. That's just the way it goes. I've never forgotten it. My Latin teacher was a very genteel old lady, but she had the most phenomenal passion, and she told these stories so well. I owe much of my academic career to her.

Anyway, it's not actually a Latin quote, it's C19th American Democratic politics, but the spirit goes all the way back!

When Worlds Collide

Pretty much self-explanatory, I think. This was my OTP² fic, Lex and Clark and Alexander and Hephaistion. The title is actually that of a sci-fi flick from the 50s, immortalised in the theme song to the Rocky Horror Picture Show – "'When worlds collide,' said George Pal to his bride, 'I'll show you some terrible thrills!'". Which I can sort of imagine Lex crooning to Clark in the bedroom. When atrociously drunk. I'll stop now.

Cleaning Up is Hard to Do

My clexoisAU (which is the shorthand I use on my desktop so I don't have to keep typing "Lois & Clark rewritten for Lex and Clark"). L&C episode titles were always riffs on old songs or movies – this particular story was based on Flyhard, which used the "hostages in a high rise" motif from Die Hard.

I gave the – eek! I just looked it up and it really is! – Neil Sedaka song "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" the treatment, based on Clark's drawer of doom and Perry's office clean-out party. And of course the pining. Let's not forget the pining.

World Enough and Time

Also clexois, for this one I really felt I couldn't top the original title, which was Tempus Fugitive – time flies, and so do super villains. The whole time I was writing it, though, I had the Andrew Marvell poem "To His Coy Mistress" going through my head – "Had we but world enough, and time, this coyness, Lady, were no crime." which seemed just right for poor Lex and Clark's mating dance in this universe.

Telling

A step off the beaten track for me, I decided to tell Achilles and Patroklos' story from a lesser known vantage – that of Antilochos. And unlike many of my stories, this one had its title right from the start. It's really me being a grammar show-off, I suppose: 'telling' the present participle in the sense of telling a story or telling news; 'telling' the adjective in the sense of revealing (a facet of someone's personality); 'telling' the archaic noun in the sense of point of view (deliberately unusual here); and then of course, within the story, 'telling' as Antilochos' identifying attribute as Nestor's son, and the irony that his story is lost. Unlike many that I've laboured over, this story told itself.

By a Thread

This title took as long as the whole damn story to reveal itself! The image I wanted was crystal clear, but the words wouldn't come. I was already playing on the difference/similarity between wounds and medicine in the story, and in the title I wanted to go further and bring in the Fates as well, who were so present, though invisible. It seemed the perfect nexus – Clotho weaving the thread of Patroklos' life, and Achilles with his choice of two. I tried every sewing metaphor I could think of, before finally settling on a modern cliche for life held in the balance. It seemed so obvious, *after* the fact.

Return to Night

This one is *not* a favourite, but I'm throwing it in to round out the ten. This is the one that got away, the exception that proves the rule. I just could not think of a title for this piece. I blame the fact that it's not my fandom, not my period... I still don't know how or why I wrote it, other than that it was one of those zen things. But the zen ran out before I got to naming it. I stole this title from an obscure Mary Renault novel from her life prior to historical fiction – generally romances set in hospitals. I tracked down and read most of them in the full first flush of my adoration, but never found this one. It seemed vaguely appropriate, and I wanted to be done!

The also rans:

One Gift to Bind Them

It was RotK premiere day! I had LotRitis, like every other Wellingtonian. And possibly heatstroke. I make no apology.

Sons and Lovers

Stolen from the DH Lawrence novel. I was amazed that noone had ever written Jonathan realising what a hypocrite he was in his treatment of Lex, given his own relationship with William Clark. This title said it all for me – Jonathan and Martha, Lex and Clark; Hiram and Jonathan, William and Martha (ok that's a daughter, but same point), Lionel and Lex, Jonathan and Clark. Recognising love when you see it, and being a good father.

Met U Blues

Oxbridge Blues, Varsity Blues... So many books and films use this title form. Presumably it's from the blue ribbon you used to get if you represented your university in sport. Do you even have that in the States? You just get a Letter, right? Either way, it seemed perfect for poor undercoverasastudent!Lex. And that reminds me, I should rescue this story from oblivion over at sv_undercover.

Well that took longer than I thought, I'll have to do the teaser lines question tomorrow.