bironic

I still think this could use improvement, but here it is anyway.

Title: Sestina: John
Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis
Characters: John/team/gen
Rating: PG
Word Count: 500
Summary: John finds a home.
Spoilers: "Rising."
Disclaimer: Neither the canon nor the fanon that inspired this are mine.
A/N: I'm glad to have this finished, finally. Big thanks to beta-readers, especially roga and jadesfire2808, for encouraging me not to give up a few months ago and for pointing out the clunky parts.


(  When John first steps through the gate into Atlantis...  )


Feedback and concrit are very welcome.
 
 

Others:
- Sestina #1: House post-infarction
- Sestina #2: "A Typical Day in Diagnostics"
- Sestina #3: "Breaking the Cycle"



Title: The Truth in Dreams
Character: Gregory House, with House/Wilson undertones
Rating: PG
Word Count: 362
Prompts: truth (from daasgrrl), Vicodin, Wilson, dreams, leg, puzzles
Spoilers: Vague for "Meaning" and "Cane and Able"
A/N: This ended up veering far away from what I intended. I'm a little sorry I substituted "dreams" for a previous prompt; it...cheapens the rest of the words. ETA: Have been overruled on that point. Thanks, guys. *love*

( Most nights, his leg allows him a few hours of solid sleep. And he dreams. )


x-posting to housefic and house_wilson.

Thoughts very welcome.

Others:
- Sestina #1: House post-infarction
- Sestina #2: "A Typical Day in Diagnostics"


Title: Breaking the Cycle
Character: James Wilson
Rating: R
Word Count: 400
Prompts: whispers (from daasgrrl), pound (from thewlisian_afer), part, wife, friend, lies
A/N: With thanks to synn for looking over draft after draft and saying each was fine, even if I didn't believe her. :)

( After two divorces, it's happening again. )

So those sets of six prompts I requested back in September? The big secret is that I've been playing around with some sestinas. (Yes, I am that much of a geek.) For those of you who aren't familiar with the term, it's a type of poem consisting of seven stanzas where the same six words appear at the ends of the lines in a different order in each of the first six stanzas, and then two of the words appear in each line of the final three-line stanza. There are more rules -- Poets.org explains in detail -- but that's the gist of it. That may sound confusing, but once you read one you'll get it.

Irony of ironies, of the five poems I've got going for the first round (four House, one Harry Potter), I ended up using only one full prompt set from what everyone supplied, plus a few words scattered here and there. Since I'd never written poetry!fic nor a "normal" sestina before, it was easiest to write with simple prompts closely related to the characters. If you gave me prompts, don't be disappointed -- at least one set from everyone will be turned into a poem or ficlet.

ETA: For the poetry-phobic among you: It's non-rhyming, and it reads like a story. There are just line breaks in odd places and a lot of repeated words.


Okay! First one up:


Character: Gregory House
Rating: R for language
Word Count: 450
Prompts: painkiller, Stacy, fuck, nerves, dead, laugh
Spoilers: "Three Stories"
A/N: To quote Eddie Izzard, the infrastructure's fucked. In other words, screwed up the order on this one. But I liked the stanzas enough to leave it alone.
A/N 2: A University of Northern Iowa webpage mentions the obsession that underlies the sestina because of its constant return to the same words. I think that's what makes this form so fitting for House.

( Being crippled against one's will is in fact worse than being dead, he concludes. )


Feedback is love. That includes concrit. Considering there will be more of these, advice on what works and what doesn't would be appreciated.