The World's Most Self-Involved Meme
Jul. 3rd, 2011 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
netgirl_y2kThere's a thirty days of fanfiction meme doing the rounds which I quite fancied the look of, but I figured we'd all be happier if I didn't spend the better part of a month whittering on about writing, so instead I thought I'd do it all in one go. And, anyway, talking about writing might inspire me to actually do some, I'm not at the moment, my current fandom projects are a podfic, a vid and a recs list. All of which are a lot harder and more time consuming than you might think.
All answers written while recovering from the effects of my mate's home brewed cider and with one eye on the tennis, so you know...
1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
I've always made up stories in my head, I do to this day. I was actually saying not that long ago that I don't know what people who don't do this think about all day. Like, what's life like if your first thought upon entering a new building is not "How would my characters get out of here in the event of the zombie apocalypse?" or whatever. And I've made up fics for almost as long. I remember being on holiday as a wee thing, and I was in a swimming pool in Spain or Portugal or wherever it was, only in my head it wasn't a swimming pool, it was an ocean planet that the Starship Enterprise had crashed on. I know, I was a sad case from a very young age.
But the first fandom I ever wrote in was Buffy: the Vampire Slayer when Yahoo Groups were the going fandom thing. I'm dating myself here, aren't I? And despite the fact that most of my BtVS/Angel fic makes me cringe in embarrassment now it was a great first fandom. It had het, femslash, boyslash and gen, and because it was such a massive fandom it had plenty of all of them. And for someone who was going to end up defining themself in fandom as primarily a fan of female characters it had no shortage of them. It was massively formative for wee fannish me.
2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Well, according to the AO3 my stats are:
Doctor Who (50 fics) I imagine that for as long as I'm in fandom I'll write Doctor Who fic. Okay, Moffat 'n' Smith Who doesn't inspire the same sort of fic writing fannishness as RTD 'n' Tennant (which was as much "wrong, wrong, wrong, I must fix this with fic immediately" as anything else) but that's the joy of Doctor Who, that there's so much of it. And someday there will be a new Doctor, or showrunner, or companions and that might set me off on a fic writing spree again.
Merlin (49 fics) To be honest, probably not. Which is sad, because I miss the fandom so much and I still have occasional plot bunnies for it, and from time to time I think about writing a long Morgana S2/S3 fic just to make sense of her charcaterisation to my own satisfaction. But there are so many aspects of canon that still make me angry and upset that I don't think I could ever go back to it.
Legend of the Seeker (7 fics) Yep, really just waiting for the opportunity/plot bunnies to write more Cara/Kahlan.
Torchwood (7 fics) Yes, if only because it's still really closely connected to DW in my mind. Also, there needs to be more Gwen fic.
The Sarah Jane Advetures (4 fics) Probably not, Lis Sladen's death kind of defines that fandom for me now.
Discworld (2 fics) Maybe? Both fics I wrote were for challenges, so I'd write it if I got it for yuletide or whatnot but I probably wouldn't sit down and write it without a prompt.
Queen's Thief (1 fic) Another Yuletide one, in a fandom I didn't offer the next year, so... no.
The West Wing (1 fic) No. The West Wing is a good example of a show that I love but don't want to read/write fic in.
So, that's AO3. Both there and my fic masterlist start about a year into my involvement with Doctor Who fandom. I haven't uploaded any of my earlier fic partly out of laziness and partly because I don't want to look and see how bad they really are, but I also wrote in Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Harry Potter, all of which it's safe to say that I'm pretty decisively done with.
3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?
Doctor Who - Donna Noble. Talk about massively over identifying with a character.
Merlin - Morgana. Partly because she was my favourite, and partly because she was an interesting meta-ish point of view. She was screwed twice over, once by the showrunners and once by destiny, Arthur and Merlin are blessed by destiny, Morgana is doomed by it. So that was interesting.
Legend of the Seeker - Kahlan is actually the more interesting pov to me, but Cara is more fun to write. It's her "I'm surrounded by idiots" mindset. And face. It's brilliant.
Torchwood - Rhys Williams. I'm not actually sure how much I wrote from Rhys's pov but, at least in the first two series, Torchwood is such a lolariously incompetent organisation that the best way to write about it was using an outside pov.
SJA - Clyde Langer. I don't know what it was about Clyde, I think it's best explained in his line from the last series. "There are robots? This didn't make any sense before there were robots." Something about the way he thinks his life is brilliant yet ridiculous makes his pov a joy.
Discworld - Sybil Ramkin. I glee'd when I got a Yuletide request involving her.
Being Human - Annie Sawyer. Which was weird because when I was watching the show Nina was easily my favourite, but as soon as I started thinking about it in a more fannish way everything was about Annie. I think it's the same sort of thing that endeared me to Donna, the way that Annie's so obviously brilliant but that it would never occur to her to describe or even think of herself that way.
Queen's Thief - I wrote my Yuletide fic for someone who wanted fic about Sophos, but left to my own devices I would write entirely about Helen and Irene. Possibly taking over the world.
The West Wing - Donna Moss plays to my whole thing about women being strong in different ways, yes.
In my older fandoms, Buffy (Tara) Angel (Cordelia) Firefly (Kaylee) Harry Potter (Luna)
4 – Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the fic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
I don't know, muse makes it sounds like I've got voices in my head and the only voice I've got is that of my crippling self doubt, and she and I are well used to each other's company.
That said, the closest I get is possibly Morgana, just because the version that I had in my head and in my fic was only tangentially related to the version on the show. As to pushing her way into into fics that weren't about her, well, there was a point where I'd have been as well conisdering her an honourary Whoverse character she featured in so many of my Doctor Who fics. And as to why I came to love her so much, most of it was a lizard brain thing, most of the essays I could write about her were composed after my hindbrain had already gone "YES. YES, HER. SHE'S MY FAVOURITE." But, more logically, she was a fascinating character to use to critique the mythos of Merlin. Destiny will make Arthur a great king and Merlin his strong right hand, who cares how many people are thrown under the wheels in the process, right? Well, they probably do.
That said, if my crippling self doubt sounded like Katie McGrath I could probably live with it.
5 –If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a fic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
Not really? I mean, I think we've all gotten requests in 'thons and the like that were less than ideal. But if someone specifically requested a fic about, George and Mitchell say, I wouldn't write one all about Nina, that's just rude. But I would probably write the Nina fic on my own time.
I think the closest I've ever gotten to what's described is when I was writing "The Idiots's Guide to Foiling Alien Invasions" which was meant to be all about Jackie and Mickey, with a dose of Nine and Rose, and while I was writing it DW S4 was airing and I was falling in love with Donna Noble and I found myself thinking, Donna should be in this, in a pub with Mickey, mocking people. So bits of it were hastily rewritten to include her and Sarah Jane. But that was for a Big Bang and I wasn't written to a prompt so it mattered less.
6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?
Female characters, to the surprise of, well, no one. Really, just because boyslash does nothing for me and my favourite characters overwhelmingly tend to be female.
Actually, if I have any new thoughts on writing female characters at all it's that I tend to call bullshit on that thing I've seen recently where people say that they don't write female characters because they'll get cristisised if they write them as too perfect and critisised if they make them too flawed. A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't thing. And I have never ever seen this happen with fanfic, with profic, yes, but never with fanfic. I have only ever seen it brought up as a reason for not writing female characters.
And-- The thing is, I have never come across someone in fandom who only writes male characters and thought oh, that's sexist. What I do sometimes think is sexist is when people list all the reasons why they won't/can't write women. It's all very the lady doth protest too much. No one should have to justify their tastes, you know?
And that's your "Why Can't We All Just get Along" announcement for the day.
7 – Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?
Not one I've written, no. I don't write meta, so all my character/verse thoughts tend to end up being folded into the first halfway relevant fic. Really, it's just me being bossy and going "See things my way! Why won't you just see things my way!"
Other people's fic, all the time. That's half the fun of reading fic, isn't it? The ones that stick in my mind are a couple of really good DW fics pointing out what a scary scary bastard Ten was becoming before the show had really gone there.
8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.
I don't, really. Although I would agree with anyone who said that "mary sue" is a label that's lost all meaning and is now applied to all original characters indiscriminately and many canon characters that people don't like. But, for myself, I don't write OCs because it's too much like hard work. It's easier, and to me, more fun to flesh out what's in front of you than to come up with a new character from scratch.
9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?
Doctor Who (Ten & Donna Noble) Not as a ship, or at least only in the lolarious friends-with-benefits way, but their exchanges are brilliant fun to write, the jokes kind of write themselves with these two, (Nyssa/Tegan) appeals to my old school adorable femslashing heart, plus Tegan has the same sort of "I'm surrounded by idiots" outlook that so endeared Donna to me, (Amy/Rory) I've never actually written a fic just about them, but they keep creeping into fics about entirely different things. It's weird actually, because I never warmed to either character individually, but I love them together as The ponds.
Merlin (Gwen/Morgana) is the ship I've written more fic for than any other, but in retrospect I don't know how much I actually shipped them and how much I was just delighted to find myself in a fandom with a fairly active femslash community, and of course part of it was my desire to ship Morgana with everything that moved, hence (Morgana/Morgause) was a relationship that I found weirdly compelling, I probably would have written a lot more about them if I hadn't crashed and burned out of fandom, I also liked the sibling relationship between (Morgana & Arthur) which, oddly, I liked more before they revealed they really were brother and sister, it played into my whole found family kink.
And I think those are the only two fandoms where I can come up with three pairings. The rest are like Legend of the Seeker where I'm only really interested in Cara/Kahlan, or Torchwood where I don't ship anyone, or Being Human where I just want to write all the gen fic about Annie and her feelings and her face. Seriously, as soon as I can stretch that out to a couple of thousand words that will be a fic.
10 – Pairings – Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and written a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't write, or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?
I'm weirdly contrary about pairings. I have a really hard time writing the more obvious ones. Like Cara/Kahlan is a ship that I adore and that makes so much sense to me but my one proper attempt at writing for them "Walk Softly and Carry a Magic Sword" was one of the hardest things I've ever written and there's a reason why I haven't written much else in that fandom. River/Liz X is another pairing where the fic should really write itself but "Our Backwards Walk" had to be padded out ridiculously just to get it up to the 750 word minimum for the fest I was writing it for.
But give me a pairing like, I dunno, Morgana/Vivian or Rose/Donna, one that doesn't make sense unless you are actually in my head and I will cheerfully write until the cows come home. I think with the odder pairings there's less of a sense of, not doing it wrong, but that anything I could possibly say has already been said better by someone else.
11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you're writing? What kind do you tend to write most?
Humour. In fic, as in all manner of other things, I have discovered that people will forgive a lot if you can make them laugh. Also, I think if you're trying to make any kind of point about canon or fandom it's good to get it in with a joke if you can. Someone once commented about the spiteful humour in my Merlin fics, which yeah, I suppose is true, more humour than spite though, I would hope.
Also, I figure if I can make myself laugh writing something then it was worth writing.
12 – Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" fic of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?
Fusions, you mean? I suppose my Morgana is a Time Lord inna Fobwatch fic counts, and also contributes to the growing and excellent genre of fics about Characters Who Could Secretly Be Time Lords. I also wrote a Merlin/Legend of the Seeker fusion once where Gwen was a Mord'Sith and Morgana a Confessor. I developed a brief but worrying fixation last year with writing Morgana into less hostile canons.
13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
I think everyone picks up the odd bit of fanon from their involvement in fandom. It's hard not to. Especially in fandoms like Doctor Who where it's nearly impossible to consume all the canon. Like, it took me absolutely ages to realise that Looms were a real canon thing and not some fanboy creation, and that the Doctor could totally regenerate as a woman he just hasn't yet was definitely something I picked up from fandom before Gaiman came along and thoughtfully resolved that argument for us.
Then again, I frequently get confused between things which are canon, fanon and things which only exist in my tiny confused little mind.
14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?
The vast majority of my fics hover around the PG area and that's probably where I'm most comfortable. When I was a wee fandom newbie I went through a phase of rating things higher if they contained slash but quickly stopped that because even wee me could see that that was ridiculous.
Even the ones that are rated higher tend not to be because of sex. For whatever weird psycho-social reason I'm not interested in sex in fic and tend to scroll past those scenes when I'm reading, so when I'm writing it's easier to just fade to black after the kissing and introductory groping, which are the bits that I like. Occasionally I think I should try to write higher writings because of the lack of explicit femslash, but everytime I try I think it's really obvious that I'm not comfortable. Even "Protect Me From What I Want" which is probably the most explicit thing I've written is a higher rating more because of the incest than the sex which is largely implied or offscreen. My Being Human fic is mostly gen, but warrants a higher rating because everyone on that show swears like a sailor, it's brilliant.
15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
My absolute must always warn for thing is "non-con" I hold grudges against people for years for springing unwarned for rape on me in the middle of a fic. For years. And it's not even that I won't read it, one of my all time favourite fics has consent issues up the wazoo, but it's warned so I know to brace myself.
Most of my own fic on the AO3 is no archive warnings apply, although I do have half-sibling incest content notes on my Morgana/Morgause fics, I don't know why that half is so important to me, but it is. Although "The Boy Who Killed Time" is a choose not to warn, because i couldn't decide what warning really covered the death of every living thing in the whole of space and time.
16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
I love summaries. I'm known to have the summary before I've written the fic. Actually, someone once said they could identify a fic I'd written in an anon fest just by the summary. Which probably isn't as hard as it sounds. My summaries tend to have the same basic template: In which a thing happens, and another thing, then a third thing which is only tangentially related to the first two things but which I thought was funny.
17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?
Titles are the bane of my life. Were it acceptable I would number all my fics. Or just pick a random word out of the dictionary. This fic is called "Aardvark" for no conceivable reason that I can think of.
I think it's because titles are the last thing I think of, so I've written a fic, I've got it beta'd and edited and I'm champing at the bit to post it so I sort of collapse in a fit of, Call it something! Call it anything and hit post! Which is why I'm so fond of Five Things titles, because that's almost like writing a summary, it's hardly like titling at all. I'm also weirdly attached to brackets in titles "The Care and Feeding of Tiny Humans (and slightly larger Time lords)" or "The Vampire Lestat Lied to Me (so did Edward Cullen)" I should probably stop that, I'm sure it's wrong in some way.
18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your fics (aka "bunnies") from?
You lot! No, really, this is why I'm always begging for prompts. I don't know if it's because when I was first writing fic exchanges were all the rage and it was literally years before I wrote something without a prompt or a pairing or something to set me off, or if I'm just chronically short of imagination, but I still find it really hard to sit down and write without someone saying something to spark me off.
There's also a sense of blame sharing with prompts. You can go, It's not just me who wanted a fic where Ten and Donna kidnap Morgana, this other person is weird too!
19 – When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?
Neither. Usually I think, No, that's silly, you don't really want to write fic where Morgana is secretly a Time Lord, be sensible, and then several weeks later when random bits of dialogue are still popping up in my brain I accept that actually I really do want to write that fic. Or I'll think, No, Eleven travelling with wee!Amelia is too obvious an idea, half of fandom will be writing that fic, and then when months later no one has I'll go, Oh go on, I'll do it.
And for everything that I end up writing there's usually a half dozen other ideas that really are too silly or too obvious and never cross my mind again.
20 – Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?
Bunnied? See now I'm envisioning me being attacked by vicious battle bunnies like in Monty Python. But, as a rule, no. Although "Strange Bedfellows" did get written because someone on the Merlin kink meme posted art of Confessor!Morgana and Mord'Sith!Gwen and my mind immediately went, "Fic!"
21 – Sequels – Have you ever written a sequel to a fic you wrote, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?
I've never written a sequel. I originally meant the Time Lord!Morgana fic to be the beginning of a series, but I got distracted by something shiny and never got round to doing anything with it, and I think that's the only time I was really tempted by the idea. That said, I do know what happens after a lot of my fics, like I know what Gwen and Morgana's housewarming party is like when they move in together after "First Up Against the Wall (the grease and diesel oil remix)" and I know how Nimueh reacts to finding out about Morgana and Morgause in "Like a Hole in the Head" and what sorts of adventures Donna and Romana have after "Six Impossible Things" (hint: there are pirates) but I know it just to, you know, know it, I've never been tempted to write it down.
22 – Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?
My success rate with Big Bangs is, uh, less than brilliant. I did tardis_bigbang the first year it ran when the writing period was about ten months, and still only just managed to finish, I signed up the next two years and didn't get close. I did thelittlebang the first year it ran, but that was a special case because "Pastimes & Lifestyles" was a reworking of Merlin S1 so I had the structure of that series to follow so that helped.
The list of Big Bangs that I've dropped out of is as long as your arm.
Really, I think I'm not suited to writing long fic, I get bored or distracted, and my style tends towards stringing a series of snippets together into a vaguely coherent narrative, and after a couple of thousand words it quickly becomes obvious that I don't know what I'm doing or where the story is going. Even my DW Big Bang "The Idiot's Guide to Foiling Alien Invasions" meanders about dreadfully for about 10k and hangs together on the jokes and the fact that it's about two characters, Jackie and Mickey, that no one else was really writing.
Short answer, I think Big Bangs are great for some people but probably not for me.
23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
LJ/DW, Teaspoon for Doctor Who fic and the AO3, I have come to love the AO3, I could write poetry about the kudos feature. I used to post to ff.net as well, but I stopped a couple of years ago when it became too much trouble to upload stuff, figure out what punctuation marks they were disallowing that week, edit and upload again.
Occasionally, I think about putting the older fic that's only on ff.net up on AO3 and then orphaning it, but I can't bring myself to look at it, oh the shame.
24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
I am so inconsistent in my use of betas. I tell myself that I have rules, that anything up to about 2000 words probably doesn't need to be beta'd because I can catch most mistakes myself (even though that demonstrably is not the case), anything up to 5k should have a beta, and anything over that should probably have two.
That's the theory, the practice is more along the lines of me going, "Hey, anyone want to beta this thing?" and sending it to however many people say yes. But I've been very lucky with betas, I've never had one who's been less than helpful.
25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
I used to have this thing where if I was writing DW fic I liked to be watching Doctor Who to make sure I had the voices, same with Merlin. But that stopped what with the whole not owning a television thing. So now I just write same as I do everything else in life, to the soothing tones of whatever happens to be on Radio 4 at that moment.
26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?
The mating habits of meerkats. Although that may possibly have been procrastination and not actually fic related. I did google UK laws regarding incest for "Protect Me From What I Want" although that turned out not to be relevant.
27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?
On my bed, surrounded by a mountain of cushions and pillows with my macbook on my lap. On computer, always, even I can't read my own handwriting.
28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your fic?
I've never collaborated, and I can't imagine it not being a bit... weird. I did get some lovely art for "The Idiot's Guide to Foiling Alien Invasions" as part of tardis_bigbang.
29 – What is your current project or projects?
As I was saying, most of my current projects are non-fic, Oh vidding, why so hard? But lurking at the back of my mind in a slightly sinister fashion are a post series Azula/Ty Lee fic where Zuko lets Azula leave as long as she stays with Ty Lee so Ty Lee can keep her out of trouble, which will in no way turn out to be a terrible mistake and go horribly horribly wrong, an AU where Arya does go to the wall with Yoren and Gendry and has to stay disguised as a boy, and another AU where the Doctor regenerates as a woman and has a lot of problems with it. The last two could probably be subtitled: My gender issues, let me show you them.
30 – Do you have a favorite fic you've written? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
For all the twitchy feelings Merlin left me with I am still ridiculously fond of Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle Otherwise known as the gay Morgana fic.
All answers written while recovering from the effects of my mate's home brewed cider and with one eye on the tennis, so you know...
1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
I've always made up stories in my head, I do to this day. I was actually saying not that long ago that I don't know what people who don't do this think about all day. Like, what's life like if your first thought upon entering a new building is not "How would my characters get out of here in the event of the zombie apocalypse?" or whatever. And I've made up fics for almost as long. I remember being on holiday as a wee thing, and I was in a swimming pool in Spain or Portugal or wherever it was, only in my head it wasn't a swimming pool, it was an ocean planet that the Starship Enterprise had crashed on. I know, I was a sad case from a very young age.
But the first fandom I ever wrote in was Buffy: the Vampire Slayer when Yahoo Groups were the going fandom thing. I'm dating myself here, aren't I? And despite the fact that most of my BtVS/Angel fic makes me cringe in embarrassment now it was a great first fandom. It had het, femslash, boyslash and gen, and because it was such a massive fandom it had plenty of all of them. And for someone who was going to end up defining themself in fandom as primarily a fan of female characters it had no shortage of them. It was massively formative for wee fannish me.
2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.
Well, according to the AO3 my stats are:
Doctor Who (50 fics) I imagine that for as long as I'm in fandom I'll write Doctor Who fic. Okay, Moffat 'n' Smith Who doesn't inspire the same sort of fic writing fannishness as RTD 'n' Tennant (which was as much "wrong, wrong, wrong, I must fix this with fic immediately" as anything else) but that's the joy of Doctor Who, that there's so much of it. And someday there will be a new Doctor, or showrunner, or companions and that might set me off on a fic writing spree again.
Merlin (49 fics) To be honest, probably not. Which is sad, because I miss the fandom so much and I still have occasional plot bunnies for it, and from time to time I think about writing a long Morgana S2/S3 fic just to make sense of her charcaterisation to my own satisfaction. But there are so many aspects of canon that still make me angry and upset that I don't think I could ever go back to it.
Legend of the Seeker (7 fics) Yep, really just waiting for the opportunity/plot bunnies to write more Cara/Kahlan.
Torchwood (7 fics) Yes, if only because it's still really closely connected to DW in my mind. Also, there needs to be more Gwen fic.
The Sarah Jane Advetures (4 fics) Probably not, Lis Sladen's death kind of defines that fandom for me now.
Discworld (2 fics) Maybe? Both fics I wrote were for challenges, so I'd write it if I got it for yuletide or whatnot but I probably wouldn't sit down and write it without a prompt.
Queen's Thief (1 fic) Another Yuletide one, in a fandom I didn't offer the next year, so... no.
The West Wing (1 fic) No. The West Wing is a good example of a show that I love but don't want to read/write fic in.
So, that's AO3. Both there and my fic masterlist start about a year into my involvement with Doctor Who fandom. I haven't uploaded any of my earlier fic partly out of laziness and partly because I don't want to look and see how bad they really are, but I also wrote in Buffy, Angel, Firefly and Harry Potter, all of which it's safe to say that I'm pretty decisively done with.
3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?
Doctor Who - Donna Noble. Talk about massively over identifying with a character.
Merlin - Morgana. Partly because she was my favourite, and partly because she was an interesting meta-ish point of view. She was screwed twice over, once by the showrunners and once by destiny, Arthur and Merlin are blessed by destiny, Morgana is doomed by it. So that was interesting.
Legend of the Seeker - Kahlan is actually the more interesting pov to me, but Cara is more fun to write. It's her "I'm surrounded by idiots" mindset. And face. It's brilliant.
Torchwood - Rhys Williams. I'm not actually sure how much I wrote from Rhys's pov but, at least in the first two series, Torchwood is such a lolariously incompetent organisation that the best way to write about it was using an outside pov.
SJA - Clyde Langer. I don't know what it was about Clyde, I think it's best explained in his line from the last series. "There are robots? This didn't make any sense before there were robots." Something about the way he thinks his life is brilliant yet ridiculous makes his pov a joy.
Discworld - Sybil Ramkin. I glee'd when I got a Yuletide request involving her.
Being Human - Annie Sawyer. Which was weird because when I was watching the show Nina was easily my favourite, but as soon as I started thinking about it in a more fannish way everything was about Annie. I think it's the same sort of thing that endeared me to Donna, the way that Annie's so obviously brilliant but that it would never occur to her to describe or even think of herself that way.
Queen's Thief - I wrote my Yuletide fic for someone who wanted fic about Sophos, but left to my own devices I would write entirely about Helen and Irene. Possibly taking over the world.
The West Wing - Donna Moss plays to my whole thing about women being strong in different ways, yes.
In my older fandoms, Buffy (Tara) Angel (Cordelia) Firefly (Kaylee) Harry Potter (Luna)
4 – Do you have a "muse" character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the fic isn't about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?
I don't know, muse makes it sounds like I've got voices in my head and the only voice I've got is that of my crippling self doubt, and she and I are well used to each other's company.
That said, the closest I get is possibly Morgana, just because the version that I had in my head and in my fic was only tangentially related to the version on the show. As to pushing her way into into fics that weren't about her, well, there was a point where I'd have been as well conisdering her an honourary Whoverse character she featured in so many of my Doctor Who fics. And as to why I came to love her so much, most of it was a lizard brain thing, most of the essays I could write about her were composed after my hindbrain had already gone "YES. YES, HER. SHE'S MY FAVOURITE." But, more logically, she was a fascinating character to use to critique the mythos of Merlin. Destiny will make Arthur a great king and Merlin his strong right hand, who cares how many people are thrown under the wheels in the process, right? Well, they probably do.
That said, if my crippling self doubt sounded like Katie McGrath I could probably live with it.
5 –If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a fic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?
Not really? I mean, I think we've all gotten requests in 'thons and the like that were less than ideal. But if someone specifically requested a fic about, George and Mitchell say, I wouldn't write one all about Nina, that's just rude. But I would probably write the Nina fic on my own time.
I think the closest I've ever gotten to what's described is when I was writing "The Idiots's Guide to Foiling Alien Invasions" which was meant to be all about Jackie and Mickey, with a dose of Nine and Rose, and while I was writing it DW S4 was airing and I was falling in love with Donna Noble and I found myself thinking, Donna should be in this, in a pub with Mickey, mocking people. So bits of it were hastily rewritten to include her and Sarah Jane. But that was for a Big Bang and I wasn't written to a prompt so it mattered less.
6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?
Female characters, to the surprise of, well, no one. Really, just because boyslash does nothing for me and my favourite characters overwhelmingly tend to be female.
Actually, if I have any new thoughts on writing female characters at all it's that I tend to call bullshit on that thing I've seen recently where people say that they don't write female characters because they'll get cristisised if they write them as too perfect and critisised if they make them too flawed. A sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't thing. And I have never ever seen this happen with fanfic, with profic, yes, but never with fanfic. I have only ever seen it brought up as a reason for not writing female characters.
And-- The thing is, I have never come across someone in fandom who only writes male characters and thought oh, that's sexist. What I do sometimes think is sexist is when people list all the reasons why they won't/can't write women. It's all very the lady doth protest too much. No one should have to justify their tastes, you know?
And that's your "Why Can't We All Just get Along" announcement for the day.
7 – Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?
Not one I've written, no. I don't write meta, so all my character/verse thoughts tend to end up being folded into the first halfway relevant fic. Really, it's just me being bossy and going "See things my way! Why won't you just see things my way!"
Other people's fic, all the time. That's half the fun of reading fic, isn't it? The ones that stick in my mind are a couple of really good DW fics pointing out what a scary scary bastard Ten was becoming before the show had really gone there.
8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they're not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.
I don't, really. Although I would agree with anyone who said that "mary sue" is a label that's lost all meaning and is now applied to all original characters indiscriminately and many canon characters that people don't like. But, for myself, I don't write OCs because it's too much like hard work. It's easier, and to me, more fun to flesh out what's in front of you than to come up with a new character from scratch.
9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?
Doctor Who (Ten & Donna Noble) Not as a ship, or at least only in the lolarious friends-with-benefits way, but their exchanges are brilliant fun to write, the jokes kind of write themselves with these two, (Nyssa/Tegan) appeals to my old school adorable femslashing heart, plus Tegan has the same sort of "I'm surrounded by idiots" outlook that so endeared Donna to me, (Amy/Rory) I've never actually written a fic just about them, but they keep creeping into fics about entirely different things. It's weird actually, because I never warmed to either character individually, but I love them together as The ponds.
Merlin (Gwen/Morgana) is the ship I've written more fic for than any other, but in retrospect I don't know how much I actually shipped them and how much I was just delighted to find myself in a fandom with a fairly active femslash community, and of course part of it was my desire to ship Morgana with everything that moved, hence (Morgana/Morgause) was a relationship that I found weirdly compelling, I probably would have written a lot more about them if I hadn't crashed and burned out of fandom, I also liked the sibling relationship between (Morgana & Arthur) which, oddly, I liked more before they revealed they really were brother and sister, it played into my whole found family kink.
And I think those are the only two fandoms where I can come up with three pairings. The rest are like Legend of the Seeker where I'm only really interested in Cara/Kahlan, or Torchwood where I don't ship anyone, or Being Human where I just want to write all the gen fic about Annie and her feelings and her face. Seriously, as soon as I can stretch that out to a couple of thousand words that will be a fic.
10 – Pairings – Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and written a pairing you liked, but found you couldn't write, or a pairing you didn't like, and found you could?
I'm weirdly contrary about pairings. I have a really hard time writing the more obvious ones. Like Cara/Kahlan is a ship that I adore and that makes so much sense to me but my one proper attempt at writing for them "Walk Softly and Carry a Magic Sword" was one of the hardest things I've ever written and there's a reason why I haven't written much else in that fandom. River/Liz X is another pairing where the fic should really write itself but "Our Backwards Walk" had to be padded out ridiculously just to get it up to the 750 word minimum for the fest I was writing it for.
But give me a pairing like, I dunno, Morgana/Vivian or Rose/Donna, one that doesn't make sense unless you are actually in my head and I will cheerfully write until the cows come home. I think with the odder pairings there's less of a sense of, not doing it wrong, but that anything I could possibly say has already been said better by someone else.
11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you're writing? What kind do you tend to write most?
Humour. In fic, as in all manner of other things, I have discovered that people will forgive a lot if you can make them laugh. Also, I think if you're trying to make any kind of point about canon or fandom it's good to get it in with a joke if you can. Someone once commented about the spiteful humour in my Merlin fics, which yeah, I suppose is true, more humour than spite though, I would hope.
Also, I figure if I can make myself laugh writing something then it was worth writing.
12 – Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" fic of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?
Fusions, you mean? I suppose my Morgana is a Time Lord inna Fobwatch fic counts, and also contributes to the growing and excellent genre of fics about Characters Who Could Secretly Be Time Lords. I also wrote a Merlin/Legend of the Seeker fusion once where Gwen was a Mord'Sith and Morgana a Confessor. I developed a brief but worrying fixation last year with writing Morgana into less hostile canons.
13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?
I think everyone picks up the odd bit of fanon from their involvement in fandom. It's hard not to. Especially in fandoms like Doctor Who where it's nearly impossible to consume all the canon. Like, it took me absolutely ages to realise that Looms were a real canon thing and not some fanboy creation, and that the Doctor could totally regenerate as a woman he just hasn't yet was definitely something I picked up from fandom before Gaiman came along and thoughtfully resolved that argument for us.
Then again, I frequently get confused between things which are canon, fanon and things which only exist in my tiny confused little mind.
14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you're comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you're writing is G-rated instead?
The vast majority of my fics hover around the PG area and that's probably where I'm most comfortable. When I was a wee fandom newbie I went through a phase of rating things higher if they contained slash but quickly stopped that because even wee me could see that that was ridiculous.
Even the ones that are rated higher tend not to be because of sex. For whatever weird psycho-social reason I'm not interested in sex in fic and tend to scroll past those scenes when I'm reading, so when I'm writing it's easier to just fade to black after the kissing and introductory groping, which are the bits that I like. Occasionally I think I should try to write higher writings because of the lack of explicit femslash, but everytime I try I think it's really obvious that I'm not comfortable. Even "Protect Me From What I Want" which is probably the most explicit thing I've written is a higher rating more because of the incest than the sex which is largely implied or offscreen. My Being Human fic is mostly gen, but warrants a higher rating because everyone on that show swears like a sailor, it's brilliant.
15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?
My absolute must always warn for thing is "non-con" I hold grudges against people for years for springing unwarned for rape on me in the middle of a fic. For years. And it's not even that I won't read it, one of my all time favourite fics has consent issues up the wazoo, but it's warned so I know to brace myself.
Most of my own fic on the AO3 is no archive warnings apply, although I do have half-sibling incest content notes on my Morgana/Morgause fics, I don't know why that half is so important to me, but it is. Although "The Boy Who Killed Time" is a choose not to warn, because i couldn't decide what warning really covered the death of every living thing in the whole of space and time.
16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?
I love summaries. I'm known to have the summary before I've written the fic. Actually, someone once said they could identify a fic I'd written in an anon fest just by the summary. Which probably isn't as hard as it sounds. My summaries tend to have the same basic template: In which a thing happens, and another thing, then a third thing which is only tangentially related to the first two things but which I thought was funny.
17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?
Titles are the bane of my life. Were it acceptable I would number all my fics. Or just pick a random word out of the dictionary. This fic is called "Aardvark" for no conceivable reason that I can think of.
I think it's because titles are the last thing I think of, so I've written a fic, I've got it beta'd and edited and I'm champing at the bit to post it so I sort of collapse in a fit of, Call it something! Call it anything and hit post! Which is why I'm so fond of Five Things titles, because that's almost like writing a summary, it's hardly like titling at all. I'm also weirdly attached to brackets in titles "The Care and Feeding of Tiny Humans (and slightly larger Time lords)" or "The Vampire Lestat Lied to Me (so did Edward Cullen)" I should probably stop that, I'm sure it's wrong in some way.
18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your fics (aka "bunnies") from?
You lot! No, really, this is why I'm always begging for prompts. I don't know if it's because when I was first writing fic exchanges were all the rage and it was literally years before I wrote something without a prompt or a pairing or something to set me off, or if I'm just chronically short of imagination, but I still find it really hard to sit down and write without someone saying something to spark me off.
There's also a sense of blame sharing with prompts. You can go, It's not just me who wanted a fic where Ten and Donna kidnap Morgana, this other person is weird too!
19 – When you have bunnies, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?
Neither. Usually I think, No, that's silly, you don't really want to write fic where Morgana is secretly a Time Lord, be sensible, and then several weeks later when random bits of dialogue are still popping up in my brain I accept that actually I really do want to write that fic. Or I'll think, No, Eleven travelling with wee!Amelia is too obvious an idea, half of fandom will be writing that fic, and then when months later no one has I'll go, Oh go on, I'll do it.
And for everything that I end up writing there's usually a half dozen other ideas that really are too silly or too obvious and never cross my mind again.
20 – Do you ever get bunnied from other people's stories or art in the same fandom?
Bunnied? See now I'm envisioning me being attacked by vicious battle bunnies like in Monty Python. But, as a rule, no. Although "Strange Bedfellows" did get written because someone on the Merlin kink meme posted art of Confessor!Morgana and Mord'Sith!Gwen and my mind immediately went, "Fic!"
21 – Sequels – Have you ever written a sequel to a fic you wrote, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?
I've never written a sequel. I originally meant the Time Lord!Morgana fic to be the beginning of a series, but I got distracted by something shiny and never got round to doing anything with it, and I think that's the only time I was really tempted by the idea. That said, I do know what happens after a lot of my fics, like I know what Gwen and Morgana's housewarming party is like when they move in together after "First Up Against the Wall (the grease and diesel oil remix)" and I know how Nimueh reacts to finding out about Morgana and Morgause in "Like a Hole in the Head" and what sorts of adventures Donna and Romana have after "Six Impossible Things" (hint: there are pirates) but I know it just to, you know, know it, I've never been tempted to write it down.
22 – Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you've thought about doing? And if not, why not?
My success rate with Big Bangs is, uh, less than brilliant. I did tardis_bigbang the first year it ran when the writing period was about ten months, and still only just managed to finish, I signed up the next two years and didn't get close. I did thelittlebang the first year it ran, but that was a special case because "Pastimes & Lifestyles" was a reworking of Merlin S1 so I had the structure of that series to follow so that helped.
The list of Big Bangs that I've dropped out of is as long as your arm.
Really, I think I'm not suited to writing long fic, I get bored or distracted, and my style tends towards stringing a series of snippets together into a vaguely coherent narrative, and after a couple of thousand words it quickly becomes obvious that I don't know what I'm doing or where the story is going. Even my DW Big Bang "The Idiot's Guide to Foiling Alien Invasions" meanders about dreadfully for about 10k and hangs together on the jokes and the fact that it's about two characters, Jackie and Mickey, that no one else was really writing.
Short answer, I think Big Bangs are great for some people but probably not for me.
23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?
LJ/DW, Teaspoon for Doctor Who fic and the AO3, I have come to love the AO3, I could write poetry about the kudos feature. I used to post to ff.net as well, but I stopped a couple of years ago when it became too much trouble to upload stuff, figure out what punctuation marks they were disallowing that week, edit and upload again.
Occasionally, I think about putting the older fic that's only on ff.net up on AO3 and then orphaning it, but I can't bring myself to look at it, oh the shame.
24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren't any major flaws in your fic? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?
I am so inconsistent in my use of betas. I tell myself that I have rules, that anything up to about 2000 words probably doesn't need to be beta'd because I can catch most mistakes myself (even though that demonstrably is not the case), anything up to 5k should have a beta, and anything over that should probably have two.
That's the theory, the practice is more along the lines of me going, "Hey, anyone want to beta this thing?" and sending it to however many people say yes. But I've been very lucky with betas, I've never had one who's been less than helpful.
25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?
I used to have this thing where if I was writing DW fic I liked to be watching Doctor Who to make sure I had the voices, same with Merlin. But that stopped what with the whole not owning a television thing. So now I just write same as I do everything else in life, to the soothing tones of whatever happens to be on Radio 4 at that moment.
26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?
The mating habits of meerkats. Although that may possibly have been procrastination and not actually fic related. I did google UK laws regarding incest for "Protect Me From What I Want" although that turned out not to be relevant.
27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?
On my bed, surrounded by a mountain of cushions and pillows with my macbook on my lap. On computer, always, even I can't read my own handwriting.
28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your fic?
I've never collaborated, and I can't imagine it not being a bit... weird. I did get some lovely art for "The Idiot's Guide to Foiling Alien Invasions" as part of tardis_bigbang.
29 – What is your current project or projects?
As I was saying, most of my current projects are non-fic, Oh vidding, why so hard? But lurking at the back of my mind in a slightly sinister fashion are a post series Azula/Ty Lee fic where Zuko lets Azula leave as long as she stays with Ty Lee so Ty Lee can keep her out of trouble, which will in no way turn out to be a terrible mistake and go horribly horribly wrong, an AU where Arya does go to the wall with Yoren and Gendry and has to stay disguised as a boy, and another AU where the Doctor regenerates as a woman and has a lot of problems with it. The last two could probably be subtitled: My gender issues, let me show you them.
30 – Do you have a favorite fic you've written? What makes it your favorite? And don't forget to give us a link!
For all the twitchy feelings Merlin left me with I am still ridiculously fond of Like a Fish Needs a Bicycle Otherwise known as the gay Morgana fic.