Beta call!

[letterblade]

[Cross-posted to roselinedcoffin.]

In search of a beta for a medium-length intensely disturbing yaoiferous Utena one-shot.

(At least I think it's intensely disturbing. It's scaring me; that's generally a sign that it will scare other people.)

Title of "The Unreality of Blue." Some things I post without beta (see the long paragraph under question 4 here for my logic, such as it is, on betaing), but this is not one of them; I desperately want a beta for this one. Usually I have a specific person in mind and I ask them, but I don't know any of the Utena-enlightened people around here well enough to have a victim candidate in mind.

This fic started out as a brief and darkly lascivious indulgence in a pairing that has long made me shiver--Touga/Miki, and then Touga decides to share him with Akio. From there, it grew into an exercise (horribly intense in the writing) in analyzing and torturing poor Miki. And from there it turned into an expose of some of Akio's subtler and nastier plots during this time (third season; the story itself takes place entirely the day after Miki's second duel). It also became a hesitant exploration of themes of abuse and molestation, which has since morphed into something I'm both fascinated with and terrified of, and deeply involved with either way, for reasons which a few of you know and the rest don't need to; at the same time, I've barely confronted some of this stuff yet, as that will come with post-beta editing.

So obviously the fic will contain a lot of things a lot of people won't want to touch with a ten-foot pole. There are your warnings.

What I'm looking for in a beta--besides the basic stuff (familiarity with canon [all of it!], grammar and stylistic graces, consistency and interest of characterization, that sort of thing)--is somebody who can help me focus all those elements and make sure I'm not going too far in one direction or another. And, and this is perhaps the biggest reason I so badly want a beta, somebody who has at least some understanding of the workings of Touga's mind during this point in the story. Because, frankly, I don't. I'm grasping in the dark when it comes to writing this Touga, even after watching the last two story arcs several times, and while he's not as central as either Miki or Akio, he needs to be there and he needs to be properly IC.

[Medium-length, I said. About 6000 words.]

If you wish to beta, drop me a comment here, or email me at wired_lizard[at]livejournal.com. In return, I will...er...love you forever? It must seem such a thankless job.

I suppose if I never get a response I'll post it in roselinedcoffin and hope I get enough constructive feedback to bang it into completion.

There's a short scene I need to rewrite, or try to, before I send it off, but I decided to post now.

Sorry to be so long and stuffy about this. I'm just desperately hoping that I get the right person to bring this fic to a close, because it's wound up a lot closer to me than most of my fanfic. It's possible that whoever betas this won't even have to do that much; I suspect simply having somebody to bounce it off of will focus it immensely.

Comments

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