Ooh, a meme!

[mizzy]

C'mon, guys, I've been pretty good, no memes for a while, and this one can't be much work (I don't think I'll have anything much people would be interested in), so let's goooo for it.

Ganked from lightgetsin.

Pick any passage of 500 words or less from any fanfic I’ve written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you the equivalent of a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what’s going on in the character’s heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you’d expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

My fic is here or here.

Comments

[ultra_fic]

I confess, I haven't read a great deal of your fic - we seem to have different tastes in pairings and all, but this? This I want explanation for, because of its awesomeness ;)


"Don't you want to see?" Mr. Gold reaches into his pocket, and Sarah tenses, unconsciously reaching for her fork just in case, but Mr. Gold doesn't pull out a gun. Sarah needs to sort out her overactive imagination. It's not a weapon at all. It's... three crystal balls. Mr. Gold holds out his palm towards her, the three spheres spinning on his palm easily. "Maybe you can learn some tricks. Dazzle the kids."

Sarah's halfway through holding her hand out for them, almost entranced by the way the light catches them. And then a memory takes hold of her, reminding her what she's running from - the rest of the memories. Staying in that house which her father and stepmom grudgingly sold her was too much. Seeing Toby regularly was too much. It was all a reminder of what she had to fear in life.

Jareth never left her alone. Not for long.

And maybe this Mr. Gold isn't Jareth. Maybe he doesn't even know the Goblin King. Maybe this is a genuine offer of a trinket, something innocent.

But Sarah's learned never to take deals at face value.

No one wants nothing for something.

She pulls her hand back. "No. No thank you." She swallows. Mr. Gold's face freezes, like he's not expecting it. There's something familiar about his face. Something which reminds her painfully of Jareth. "I don't deal with people like you. You always want more than anyone should ever give."

"Merely a trifle," Mr. Gold protests, but his voice is thinner now, and they can both hear the lie in it. He pauses. Then settles back in the chair with a laugh. "You've had dealings with my kind before."

Sarah doesn't say anything, but her silence is as much of an answer as anything. "I guess so," she says, because she's not sure what Mr. Gold's type is.

"I could keep him off your back," Mr. Gold says, perceptively. "The way you run," he explains, "small town to small town? No one escapes an army like that. No, you're escaping a singular someone. And I can keep him off your back permanently." He smiles, showing his teeth. "What do you say?"

"Same thing I told him." Sarah pushes back from the table, and looks down at him coolly. "You have no power over me."

He shrinks back from the words, and Sarah smiles, coldly. "Good night, Mr. Gold."

She grabs her newspaper and stalks out of the cafe, leaving it far behind. She'll leave Storybrooke. She doesn't belong, after all. But maybe she'll settle down in the next place. Her words and will are apparently weapon enough for all the evil characters out there.

[mizzy2k.livejournal.com]

This is one of the fics that I didn't quite know what I wanted from it, apart from this final exchange with Sarah and Mr. Gold. Mr. Gold is such a delightful character, and he has that same compelling charisma that makes him oddly attractive in the same way as Jareth, so it's easy to believe they're the same sort of creature. Rumpelstiltzkin in particular seems bound by consent - it doesn't do to just take Snow's hair, she has to give it willingly - so Sarah repeating her Labyrinth words was the inevitable conclusion of this. She needed to be in a situation where she had maybe forgotten her own power. I love confident, strong female characters - and Sarah in Labyrinth became that - so I guess I was rolling with the idea that sometimes as we grow up we can become jaded and lose some of our imagination and confidence in ourselves. Sarah just had to find it again, and Gold - unfortunately - prompted her to remind herself of her own strength.

I love Labyrinth fanfic, Sarah/Jareth is a great ship, and Return to Labyrinth (the manga) was kind of a disappointment (why focus on Toby? when all the great fanfic have so many better plots??), so this is my way of redeeming those sequels a little. It should have all been about Sarah. We so rarely get strong, female characters - why the manga tried to take that away, I don't know. It's sad.

One day I'll write a long Sarah/Jareth fic. Because it's a fandom that keeps on giving great fics. ♥

[ultra_fic]

I love that so many people see a similarity between Jareth's and Rumpelstiltskin's characters. It makes total sense to me, and the way you wrote this fic? Awesome!

Never read Return to the Labyrinth but I did hear it was all Toby focused. I want a Sarah/Jareth sequel my ownself, so if you write one? You be sure to send me a link, honey, 'cause I'm gonna wanna read that for sure!! ;)

Thanx for the fab 'commentary' :)