Team Angst is Ready to Ruuuuuuumble! (And cry manly tears of woe!)

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

Hullo everyone, and welcome aboard the Team Angst Train! I'm your evil overlordfriendly neighbourhood captain nos4a2no9, and I'm here to provide leadership, encouragement and gentle mocking of Team Romance.

china_shop and sageness will assign prompts soon since this is a fast-and-dirty challenge: we'll have four weeks once the dialogue prompts are handed out to write the angstiest fic we can possibly generate. Then our stories will be posted anonymously and matched up against a Romance competitor’s fic, folks will vote on which one they like better, and our team will take our well-earned victory lap and hand those Romance suckers our spare hankies. Easy as Ray Kowalski!

What I'd like to do before we get started on the stories is to spend some time discussing what "angst" actually means and how we can write those heartbreaking gems that are sure to garner us the votes we need to put Team Angst in the winner's circle. Most of you are old pros at the angst game (I think katallison may have written something with angst content once, for example) but there are a few new faces on our team list and I thought it might be helpful to provide a few definitions and examples of angsty goodness.



"Angst" is a German word which means "anxiety" or "anguish"; it's most often applied to the Existentialist dread that comes from the realization that "the future is an unknown chasm [and] therefore, the choices that a person...makes are the determining factor in the outcome of one's future" (from apologetics.org). "Angst" as a genre term is used to describe a particular brand of fanfiction that includes elements of emotional distress or physical pain; while the ending of the story might be happy, the characters should go through some form of trial by fire and suffer physically or mentally (or both) over the course of the story. In sageness's sign-up post she suggests that angsty fanfic can include: "...ships passing in the night, deathfic, grief-fic, and fic about cases gone bad and stories fraught with desperate standoffs and gut-wrenching tension." As you can see there are a lot of ways to make our characters suffer.

The ds_team_angst stories should strike a balance between so-dark-they-hurt fics and lighter fare that puts Fraser and his Rays through the wringer but lets them emerge safely on the other side. Ideally our team should offer a range of stories that run from the crushing depression of deathfic to the slightly more optimistic h/c genre, bittersweet gen stories, or those post-CotW fics where Fraser and Ray live apart and are finally reunited after much trial and anguish. (What? I have a bias. Sue me.) Stories with a high angst quotient can include romance (unrequited love, intense longing, separation, misunderstandings, lust, alienation and reconciliation, etc) but the focus should be on the more emotionally turbulent aspects of the romantic relationship shared by your pairing(s) of choice, rather than fluffy snuggling and kittens and sunshine and puppies. That dreck is left up to Team Romance. :-)

Finding a good balance between romantic resolution and desperate longing might be a bit tricky, particularly for those of you who haven't written a great deal of dS fanfiction, but I'm going to run a few prewriting exercise that will get us warmed up and thinking angsty thoughts. I'd like to give everyone a chance to introduce themselves, too, and mention that while we'll keep the introductions and writing exercises public we'll hold beta and strategy sessions behind f-locked posts. We don't want the ds_team_romance agents to steal any of our secrets! So make sure you lock your posts to this community once we move into the writing stage of the matchup challenge.

Once we get rolling I'd love to host brainstorming sessions and invite workshopping within the comm: we're a team and part of the fun of this challenge is offering one another support, help and encouragement. Remember, the better the individual stories are the better our chance of winning the competition! Whinging about how tough this subject matter is to tackle is welcome, and don't be shy about posting your rough ideas to the comm or putting up requests for a beta. We like our fic dark and our characters slightly bitter but we're a friendly group at the end of the day, and I hope this place will come to feel like a community as the weeks pass by.

*Whew* Okay, I think that covers most of the basic information you need to know as newly inaugurated members of ds_team_angst. I thought it might be fun to hold a "getting to know you" session over the weekend, so drop by at your leisure and comment to this post with answers to the following questions:

1. What made you decide to sign up for ds_team_angst?

2. What are your top five favorite angsty due South stories?

3. Who's a bigger woobie: Fraser, RayK or RayV?

4. True or false: Ray's unnamed box turtle is a much better choice for our team's Mascot than a blood-smeared polar bear.

5. Team Romance is going to go down. In flames. Right?

Comments

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

1. What made you decide to sign up for ds_team_angst?
Well, I'm a fairly new writer. I just started writing about 2 years ago, 1 year ago in the due South fandom. This'll be my first time trying anything more collaborative than tossing a rough draft to a beta and fielding it when they pitch it back.

There was never any doubt that I'd go for the Angst Side. All of my favorites among my own work are the angsty ones.

2. What are your top five favorite angsty due South stories?
Oh, tough to narrow it down to five. Here's my choice of the moment.
End of the Road (http://www.katallison.com/eotr_main.htm), by Kat Allison, because it ripped me apart and I still bear the scars.
Little Ray (http://community.livejournal.com/ds_flashfiction/410279.htm), by Giuletta, for what it showed me about Vecchio.
Dysmas (http://troyswann.livejournal.com/452051.html), by Troyswann, because of the still despair of it.
Long Way Home (http://www.morgandawn.com/longway1.htm) by Morgan Dawn and Justine Bennet, because they didn't just destroy the world; they made the new world, and the new Fraser, something that Ray couldn't live with.
Ordinary Days (http://busaikko.livejournal.com/74044.html) by busaikko because this is a dark, dark scenario, and yet I find it strangely uplifting.

3. Who's a bigger woobie: Fraser, RayK or RayV?
Oh, man, all three of them. Fraser is pretty seriously fucked in the head, and there is some major canonical angst going on with Victoria. RayK has these deep insecurities, and (in my head, at least) is deeply damaged by his undercover work. As for Vecchio, besides his father and the Vegas issues, I know in my heart that Vecchio is straight, and yet he loves Fraser. ANGST!

4. True or false: Ray's unnamed box turtle is a much better choice for our team's Mascot than a blood-smeared polar bear.
The turtle evokes isolation and a quiet despondency, but the blood-smeared polar bear is more inspiring to me, personally. Because of Sisabet's Ice Bound Stream (http://sisabet.livejournal.com/320165.html). Which, seriously, everyone the team should watch for inspiration.

5. Team Romance is going to go down. In flames. Right?
They don't have a chance!

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

1. I had no idea you hadn't been writing for long! I thought you were a seasoned pro out of one of the older fandoms, not a relative newbie! Man, if this is what you can do at only the two-year mark, I cannot WAIT to see what you're producing in five or ten years. (Also? Hi, a little envious at your mad skillz). And \o/ for collaboration! I'm so excited about the community-building aspects of this thing. Because I love workshopping! And beta'ing! And using exclamation points! !!! I hope everyone will find it useful.

2. Good list. And I am completely failing as an angst reader, clearly, because I'd missed both that busaikko story AND "Long Way Home." *sigh*

3. SO much angst! These three guys are seriously messed up. (And I love your damaged RayK. So very much. "Con Job" would crack my top five easily).

4. Okay, yes, we'll make the vid a viewing requirement. And the polar bear is edging toward victory.

5. RIGHT!

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

1. 2 years ago I was sticking all my dialogue in one big paragraph and writing sentences like, "He looked sad.", until my betas kicked me into shape.

I have no idea why it hadn't occurred to me to write anything for my own pleasure since about, oh, the age of 6. I suppose I just spent too much time on things I HAD to write, for school, for my job, for it to seem like anything other than a chore.

I haven't got a clue how you folks manage to write collaboratively, and I'm very excited to find out.

2. Ordinary Days is short. Read it right now! "Long Way Home" is a looooong post-apocolyptic fic. When you hit The Scene, the one that feels like an explosive just went off in your chest cavity, the one that makes you go for a long walk while babbling insanely to yourself, send me an email.

3. Thanks! I'm still really proud of "Con Job". And it's thanks to you that I doubled the length and pushed it all the way.

5. No one expects the Candian Angstqisition!

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

OK now I have to ask:

""Long Way Home" is a looooong post-apocolyptic fic. When you hit The Scene, the one that feels like an explosive just went off in your chest cavity, the one that makes you go for a long walk while babbling insanely to yourself, send me an email."

which scene was it for you (I've heard several different ones)

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

The council decides that Alain must be killed. Fraser agrees to do it. Ray runs after, to stop him. Hits Fraser. Fraser beats the crap out of him, in front of the town, until Ray begs him to stop. Then Fraser goes and shoots Alain.

God, just writing it out like that, my stomach is pulling tight and hot in my body.

[morgandawn.livejournal.com]

yeah....that scene would do it.

for me the hardest/most emotional scene to write was when Ray asked Fraser to leave him behind and he lays there slowly dying.

[keerawa.livejournal.com]

From Fraser's POV that would be a terrible, terrible scene. But I was in Ray's head, and I seem to recall it being .. not too bad. Almost a relief.