Laura Jacquez Valentine

Fan
Name:	Laura Jacquez Valentine
Alias(es):	laura jacquez, laurajv, jacquez, gporcupine, Jacquez H. Valentine, Laura J. Valentine, Laura JV, elljayvee, elljayvalentine
Type:	fanwriter, meta, reccer
Fandoms:	due South, Harry Potter, Highlander, Lord of the Rings, The Sentinel, Smallville, Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files, Sherlock (BBC), The Goblin Emperor Series
Communities:	rapparee (founder) sorcerers_app (founder) backupproject (admin) vulcanreforged (member) No Warning mailing list,
Other:	devilmonkey press
URL:	laurajv at AO3 laurajv at Dreamwidth jacquez at LiveJournal laurajv at LiveJournal jacquez at Ravelry elljayvee at Tumblr elljayvalentine at Twitter
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Laura Jacquez Valentine is a slash fan fiction writer. She began in her teens in the mid-1990s, writing in both Star Trek and Beauty and the Beast fandoms. The first Star Trek story she posted was a Spock/female piece called "Lonely Words" in the summer of 1996.

Laura and Mary Ellen Curtin were co-admins of the Highlander mailing list, CriticalEdge. Some her fanworks were published on their own websites:

• The Sorcerer's Apprentice, HP-focused
• listen to me! listen to me! essays, meta

Notable Fanworks

• Dog Tags series, a The Sentinel fic that assumes Blair did not lie when he said he flew helicopters in Desert Storm, and sort of anti-fanon at the time it was written, but was then followed by others with the same premise from other authors
• Zombie Hand of Rob Lowe, a fanfic critique
• The Wrong Tree, a Sherlock fic, "He didn't see why John wouldn't be interested, but John was peculiarly picky about some things (such as firing guns in the flat and going on dates with people who were not Sherlock), and he did not have enough data to know for certain whether John was, perhaps, only interested in burly men, or blond men, or non-sociopathic men. (On the other hand, John found shooting people pleasant and steadying, so he didn't have any room at all to object.)"
• Death Experienced
• Death Song of a Woods Colt
• Exsuscitatus
• Un-American (due South-fic; m/m)
• Squickfic and Satire (fanfiction meta, 2001)
• Valse a Deux Temps

Some Author Comments

1999

In 1999, she participated in an interview series on the COCO CHANNEL; also see An Interview with Laura Jacquez Valentine.

[My stories] have a very dreamlike quality, which is deliberate. Sometimes it slips into the surreal. I like to write psychological pieces, and the vast majority of my work is first-person. The insides of heads are peculiar places to be, but that's where most of my stories are set--inside someone's head. And the people aren't always reliable, or sane.

2000

In 2000, Valentine participated in a fandom project called Writers and Writing in which fans submitted their answers to a series of questions.

Question: "How does your very first fanfic differ from your latest work? How do you feel about that first attempt?" --

My very first fanfic was in script form, and was for "Beauty & the Beast". I was twelve. I sometimes read it now when I want to laugh my pants off. Some of the plot points are good, though, and I've cribbed them for other fiction.

My fanfic now tends to be short, nasty, and brutish—and it tends to be misunderstood. Usually, the point is something that is only apparent if you're ready extremely carefully indeed, and happen to have the happy talent of attaching the tiniest clues together. For example, "Joy" is, for me, a profoundly disturbing story—both to write, and to read. Most people, however, don't seem to find it so. Many of them—used to my writing, perhaps—know to read multiple levels into it, but very few get all the way down.

Question: "Which pairing do you care so much about. State why - especially if it's not a canon pairing - you feel your characters should be in a relationship. Do you feel that TPTB failed/succeeded in developing that relationship satisfactorily?" --

TOS: Spock/Chekov

Yes, I admit, I write more K/S than I do S/C. K/S is easier to see and correspondingly easier to write.

Still.

There's something about a challenge. And there's something about Pavel Chekov. Pavel knows what he wants. He may not always know how to get it, but he knows what it is. And beneath the respect--and the disrespect--he shows to Spock, there's a spark.

I cannot forecast to you the action of Pavel Chekov--and neither can Spock. Both of them are riddles, wrapped in mysteries, inside enigmas--and their mysteries play off of each other, enhancing each other--giving each other access to a world of mysteries and riddles, a world no one else knows or cares to know.

Spock, perhaps, would say that Chekov is the only logical choice; but I say that Chekov is the most interesting, and affords the most possibilities--if you care to dig for them.

2002

In 2002, she wrote on Yahoo Groups topic conversation:

I really enjoy complicated emotion and a great deal of intensity in my fictional relationships, and I find that it can be harder to get that in gen fanfiction. So when I find it, I tend to be all over it like a pack of wolves. :D

I think, at some point, a lot of people (probably me included) start to find it difficult not to see certain kinds of intensity as sexual, whether it actually is or not. I'm not talking about subtext here, not really--

I think a lot of slash is more than justified by subtext--just that people can become so narrowly focused on sex that that's what they see, rather than seeing other possibilities. Which is why I like to write stories that hover in the grey area between slash and gen. :)

Fans Comment

1999

Laura has totally blown me away with her Vulcans in "De Re Vulcania". She's obviously done a lot of thinking about what Vulcan culture would have to be, extrapolating from the clues in TOS and building an integrated and believable vision of a *very* alien and scary race of people. When I read the installments in this saga, I can almost feel the sting of windblown sand and the heat of an unrelenting sun. It's a masterpiece in the making and, no matter what series makes your heart pound, you should go read it if you haven't done so yet. And, as if that story wasn't enough, she's given us a lyrical glimpse of Uhura in "Angel of the Morning", a sensuous K/S PWP in "Winning and Losing", a submissive McCoy in "The Sound of His Voice", and a lovely Sarek/Amanda vignette in "Cranberry Wine". She's definitely on my scan-the-group list of authors.

– Fizzbin at alt.startrek.creative

2005

She's a pull-no-punches writer, with a sharp, edgy, and occasionally hilarious take on whatever fandom she's gracing at the moment. I love her characterization; this is a woman who recognizes the existence of a y-chromosome, and depicts its effects accurately in her men.

– Katya Baturinsky