Question Time (the good one)
Dec. 6th, 2024 06:13 pm→ Comment with "Questions, please!"
→ I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
→ Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
→ Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
Questions from the lovely![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
summerstorm
1. What's been your best experience of a fandom as a f/f writer?
Okay, hear me out, because this is going to sound mad, because pre-show at least the book fandom was famously, viscerally misogynistic, but it's ASOIAF/Game of Thrones.
I think that there's a couple of different reasons for this - one is that it was a big and disparate enough fandom that we were all relatively silo'd from each other. Like, there were a significant number of people whose fandom experience revolved around Stannis Baratheon, and I'm happy for those people, and even happier that they were having their good time far, far away from me and I didn't have to know about it.
I think another reason is the sheer number of female characters. Like, were they all super well developed or treated well by the narrative? No, but raw numbers wise it was pretty impressive, especially for someone whose previous fandom experiences had been trying to find a thimble of f/f in a veritable sea of dudes. It also helped, I think, that there wasn't a designated One True Pairing in the way that a lot of big femslash fandoms have - think Kara/Lena in Supergirl. Like, I wrote a bunch of Sansa/Margaery, which was the closest thing the fandom had, and people seemed into it, but they also seemed to be into it when I wrote Lyanna/Ashara (two characters who died years before canon.)
And, honestly, I think that's what made this fandom so good for me, that it was the one where there was the biggest overlap between what I wanted to write and what other people seemed to want to read. And, like, I'm not saying you should write for head pats. Obviously I'm not saying that, see my Everything Else. I'm just saying, when the stars aligned, and the head pats came, they were nice.
So, yeah, I had a ton of fun in that fandom, and remember it fondly. Sometimes I wish I could get onboard with House of the Dragon, but there are so many dudes in it, and I can't tell them apart, and I hate them/him. I do, however, enjoy the version of it I experience by osmosis, which is largely about how divorced Alicent and Rhaenerya are.
2. If you had creative control over the next instalment of the Horizon series, what would you make sure happened in it? Mechanically or story-wise.
Recently I read - and I have no idea if this is true, although I hope it's not - that due to Playstation's pivot to live service games they haven't even started work on Horizon 3. And, if true, it is not too late for the developer to put a random Scottish nurse in charge of their flagship video game franchise. I stand ready. Just saying.
So, mechanically, I would get rid of the Ubisoft icon vomit that blighted the map in Forbidden West. Like, especially as a lot of the sidequests in the second game were substantial and meaningful and well-written, and unless you were going out of your way to be a completionist they could easily get lost in the sea of low effort, button mashy, zero skill nonsense. Pare it back. Main story. Meaty side quests. Maybe a couple of collectibles and optional enemies.
Story wise, I have but one request: do not, under any circumstances, have Aloy end up with Avad. Like, I enjoyed Sekya fine in the Burning Shores dlc, but I don't expect to see her again, and honestly, as an Aloy/Talanah shipper my main takeaway there was 'oh neat, Aloy has a type.' And Guerrilla Games responding to astroturfed Gamer outrage about them including very background queer characters in the first game by going 'did we fucking stutter' in the second was very cool.
But the fact that the Avad thing has carried over across two games, that it's part of the main story, and you get dialogue options to respond to his advances, even the harshest of which isn't a hard no, makes me think this is going to be a thing, and nope, no, it's weird and gross and uncomfortable. Please don't.
3. Favorite videogame of all time?
This question has so many answers, like, do you mean my favourite video game as a child? Sonic the Hedgehog; the game that got me back into gaming as an adult? Spider-Man; the game I have wasted the most hours of my one brief and wondrous human life playing? Elden Ring; the game I wish I was playing at this exact moment, and indeed at all other moments? Baldur's Gate 3; the game I will defend unto the death in stupid internet arguments? The Last of Us 2; the game that got me through lockdown? Borderlands 2/3; the game that is the reason I have a real relationship with my godson and am not just another grownup that sends him a birthday card with a five pound note in it? Rocket League.
Because, yes, that one.
4. Is there a videogame you utterly hated and if so, what made it so bad?
Here's the thing, gaming is an expensive hobby, and I am not made of money so I tend to give them a more generous shot than I would a form of entertainment that hadn't just cost me a fortnight's disposable income. And sometimes it's not the game, it actually is me. Like, I bounced off God of War, a famously good game, three times before getting out of the opening area and ending up loving it.
Sometimes the game actually is bad, but I don't care. Like, I have one hundred hours and the platinum trophy in Days Gone, a mashup of Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead that came out years after either of those had been a timely cultural reference.
And sometimes I believe you that a game is good, I believe you, I do, please stop talking at me. Like, I believe NieR: Automata is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, I believe that there's a good reason that the player character is a combat android dressed as a kinky French maid, I believe that there's a good story reason that the open world feels so bland and devoid of life; I believe that it's good that this open world action adventure game is sometimes a bullet hell shooter with no save points. I believe that if I got to my second playthrough it would all make sense and I would love the game as much as other people do, but I am never going to get there because actually playing this game makes me want to fucking die.
5. What's the netgirl_y2k story? Like, how did you get into fandom? How long have you had this username? etc.
Okay, wow.
The year was 1999, y2k was a timely reference, and fifteen year old me was trying to sign up for a Buffy; the Vampire Slayer forum in order to argue that Buffy/Willow was a better pairing than Buffy/Faith - yes, I know - and I came up with the dumbest username in the world, which didn't matter because I was only going to use it for this one forum, and was going to discard it immediately afterwards, and it certainly wasn't going to become, for all intents and purposes, my name for the next, jeepers, twenty-five years.
I have had this username since I was fifteen. I am now forty one. I am approximately three hundred and sixty years old. I hate this for me.
I have, by the way, on a few different occasions, considered deleting everything and staring again with a less obnoxiously stupid username, and the main reason I don't is that I am an Odd Duck and I don't really know how to make friends or connect with people. Honestly, I don't know how any of you people got here, and frankly, I'm worried about scaring you off.
So, dumb name or not, I spent some time in Buffy fandom where I was mostly mad that one of the first mainstream lesbian couples on telly had all the romantic chemistry of two barbie dolls being smooshed together. I was in Doctor Who fandom, where by the 'hundred monkeys at a hundred typewriters' method I wrote one freakishly popular fic. I was the biggest killjoy in Merlin fandom for a while; man, that show sucked, and they did Morgana so dirty. Wrote a metric fuckton of Game of Thrones femslash, bounced around assorted other smaller fandoms (Person of Interest, Agent Carter, latterly Bridgerton.)
Over the years fic writing is a skill that has increasingly deserted me, but I'm still here, my inner 90s baby gay is still delighted every time two women kiss on screen because she's still somehow convinced that it is both the first and last time it will ever happen.
→ I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can get to know you better.
→ Update your journal with the answers to the questions.
→ Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
Questions from the lovely
summerstorm1. What's been your best experience of a fandom as a f/f writer?
Okay, hear me out, because this is going to sound mad, because pre-show at least the book fandom was famously, viscerally misogynistic, but it's ASOIAF/Game of Thrones.
I think that there's a couple of different reasons for this - one is that it was a big and disparate enough fandom that we were all relatively silo'd from each other. Like, there were a significant number of people whose fandom experience revolved around Stannis Baratheon, and I'm happy for those people, and even happier that they were having their good time far, far away from me and I didn't have to know about it.
I think another reason is the sheer number of female characters. Like, were they all super well developed or treated well by the narrative? No, but raw numbers wise it was pretty impressive, especially for someone whose previous fandom experiences had been trying to find a thimble of f/f in a veritable sea of dudes. It also helped, I think, that there wasn't a designated One True Pairing in the way that a lot of big femslash fandoms have - think Kara/Lena in Supergirl. Like, I wrote a bunch of Sansa/Margaery, which was the closest thing the fandom had, and people seemed into it, but they also seemed to be into it when I wrote Lyanna/Ashara (two characters who died years before canon.)
And, honestly, I think that's what made this fandom so good for me, that it was the one where there was the biggest overlap between what I wanted to write and what other people seemed to want to read. And, like, I'm not saying you should write for head pats. Obviously I'm not saying that, see my Everything Else. I'm just saying, when the stars aligned, and the head pats came, they were nice.
So, yeah, I had a ton of fun in that fandom, and remember it fondly. Sometimes I wish I could get onboard with House of the Dragon, but there are so many dudes in it, and I can't tell them apart, and I hate them/him. I do, however, enjoy the version of it I experience by osmosis, which is largely about how divorced Alicent and Rhaenerya are.
2. If you had creative control over the next instalment of the Horizon series, what would you make sure happened in it? Mechanically or story-wise.
Recently I read - and I have no idea if this is true, although I hope it's not - that due to Playstation's pivot to live service games they haven't even started work on Horizon 3. And, if true, it is not too late for the developer to put a random Scottish nurse in charge of their flagship video game franchise. I stand ready. Just saying.
So, mechanically, I would get rid of the Ubisoft icon vomit that blighted the map in Forbidden West. Like, especially as a lot of the sidequests in the second game were substantial and meaningful and well-written, and unless you were going out of your way to be a completionist they could easily get lost in the sea of low effort, button mashy, zero skill nonsense. Pare it back. Main story. Meaty side quests. Maybe a couple of collectibles and optional enemies.
Story wise, I have but one request: do not, under any circumstances, have Aloy end up with Avad. Like, I enjoyed Sekya fine in the Burning Shores dlc, but I don't expect to see her again, and honestly, as an Aloy/Talanah shipper my main takeaway there was 'oh neat, Aloy has a type.' And Guerrilla Games responding to astroturfed Gamer outrage about them including very background queer characters in the first game by going 'did we fucking stutter' in the second was very cool.
But the fact that the Avad thing has carried over across two games, that it's part of the main story, and you get dialogue options to respond to his advances, even the harshest of which isn't a hard no, makes me think this is going to be a thing, and nope, no, it's weird and gross and uncomfortable. Please don't.
3. Favorite videogame of all time?
This question has so many answers, like, do you mean my favourite video game as a child? Sonic the Hedgehog; the game that got me back into gaming as an adult? Spider-Man; the game I have wasted the most hours of my one brief and wondrous human life playing? Elden Ring; the game I wish I was playing at this exact moment, and indeed at all other moments? Baldur's Gate 3; the game I will defend unto the death in stupid internet arguments? The Last of Us 2; the game that got me through lockdown? Borderlands 2/3; the game that is the reason I have a real relationship with my godson and am not just another grownup that sends him a birthday card with a five pound note in it? Rocket League.
Because, yes, that one.
4. Is there a videogame you utterly hated and if so, what made it so bad?
Here's the thing, gaming is an expensive hobby, and I am not made of money so I tend to give them a more generous shot than I would a form of entertainment that hadn't just cost me a fortnight's disposable income. And sometimes it's not the game, it actually is me. Like, I bounced off God of War, a famously good game, three times before getting out of the opening area and ending up loving it.
Sometimes the game actually is bad, but I don't care. Like, I have one hundred hours and the platinum trophy in Days Gone, a mashup of Sons of Anarchy and The Walking Dead that came out years after either of those had been a timely cultural reference.
And sometimes I believe you that a game is good, I believe you, I do, please stop talking at me. Like, I believe NieR: Automata is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, I believe that there's a good reason that the player character is a combat android dressed as a kinky French maid, I believe that there's a good story reason that the open world feels so bland and devoid of life; I believe that it's good that this open world action adventure game is sometimes a bullet hell shooter with no save points. I believe that if I got to my second playthrough it would all make sense and I would love the game as much as other people do, but I am never going to get there because actually playing this game makes me want to fucking die.
5. What's the netgirl_y2k story? Like, how did you get into fandom? How long have you had this username? etc.
Okay, wow.
The year was 1999, y2k was a timely reference, and fifteen year old me was trying to sign up for a Buffy; the Vampire Slayer forum in order to argue that Buffy/Willow was a better pairing than Buffy/Faith - yes, I know - and I came up with the dumbest username in the world, which didn't matter because I was only going to use it for this one forum, and was going to discard it immediately afterwards, and it certainly wasn't going to become, for all intents and purposes, my name for the next, jeepers, twenty-five years.
I have had this username since I was fifteen. I am now forty one. I am approximately three hundred and sixty years old. I hate this for me.
I have, by the way, on a few different occasions, considered deleting everything and staring again with a less obnoxiously stupid username, and the main reason I don't is that I am an Odd Duck and I don't really know how to make friends or connect with people. Honestly, I don't know how any of you people got here, and frankly, I'm worried about scaring you off.
So, dumb name or not, I spent some time in Buffy fandom where I was mostly mad that one of the first mainstream lesbian couples on telly had all the romantic chemistry of two barbie dolls being smooshed together. I was in Doctor Who fandom, where by the 'hundred monkeys at a hundred typewriters' method I wrote one freakishly popular fic. I was the biggest killjoy in Merlin fandom for a while; man, that show sucked, and they did Morgana so dirty. Wrote a metric fuckton of Game of Thrones femslash, bounced around assorted other smaller fandoms (Person of Interest, Agent Carter, latterly Bridgerton.)
Over the years fic writing is a skill that has increasingly deserted me, but I'm still here, my inner 90s baby gay is still delighted every time two women kiss on screen because she's still somehow convinced that it is both the first and last time it will ever happen.