Consonants and vowels all together, equally

( previous days )

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?

Hot button topic! I take a cue from AO3 because they've found a good middle ground, and I warn for character death, graphic violence, non or dub con, and underage sex. I've only ever written underage sex and some minor character death. I very much want warnings for character death and non/dub con, and I think there should be warnings for the other two.

After that, I just think people should actually write summaries instead of giving me a touching quote or a line from a Muse song. Books have blurbs on the back, movies have trailers, and you could find all kinds of info about books/movies/tv shows in reviews that were in newspapers long before they were on the internet. But for fic I'm going in completely blind, especially as so many write fic that is very much not in the tone of the canon (which is totally fine!). I'm reading for pleasure here--I don't know why I have an obligation to let your fic upset me because you couldn't be bothered to give me a proper summary or any kind of warnings. Don't like, don't read, absolutely--but jeez, give me enough information to make that decision.

I once wrote for a big bang that wanted writers to warn for fluff, which I found odd. So that's the strangest thing I've ever warned for in a fic.

SO not on line yesterday.

( previous days )

11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you're writing? What kind do you tend to write most?

I tend to write comedic romances. I have written two mysteries, one on purpose and one completely by accident (I needed my beta to say, "this is a mystery") but both of them were also very much romances.

I like to write people finding their way out of trouble, rather than sinking down into it, so I don't think of my stories as darkfic or angst. I definitely deal with real issues and the characters have struggles, but they succeed in the end, at least in getting to a better place in their lives. I like to write about people finding love, rather than losing it. I guess, I want to take someone who's at a pretty low point and figure out how to get them out of it in a realistic way. That means that my fics are pretty light, because they're always moving in a positive direction.


12 – Have you ever attempted an "adaptation" fic of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?

Yes and I'm not sure it worked. I think Takes One to Know One is a cute little story, and has some very good ideas, but the execution--in the end the Cary Grant character and Simon Cowell are too similar in my head and I couldn't make that person clearly Simon. I think I followed the story of the film too rigidly, even though I changed the setting to 1920s rather than 1950s. I needed to be a lot looser and honestly that story just needed a lot more thought. That said, a lot of people liked it and to them I'm intensely grateful, because like I said, it did have some stuff in it that was really fun to write. But it also probably suffered from having a lot of things going on in it that no one really understood, being in the fandom. It just had a lot of strikes against it in terms of being anything that your average 16-year-old fangirl would want to read.

(That said, I probably also still feel badly about the story because the only comment I got on it on the actual reel_idol comm other than a sweet one from my beta was someone correcting me on a fact of Cary Grant's life that I'd intentionally changed for the purposes of the story. Once American Idol fandom became Adam Lambert fandom it was no longer a fun or welcoming place.)

It also is why I didn't end up writing that AI9 story. I was going to do an AI9 femslash in the 70s, a whole "ladies of the canyon" sort of thing. But in writing it I realized that there would be a ton of jokes and references in it to 70s variety show television that about five people would even understand—much like what Merv Griffin was doing in Takes One to Know One, or the references to Eva Gabor.

( previous days )

9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?

Harry Potter: Seamus/Dean, Harry/Hermione, Pansy/Parvati and Draco/Ginny

American Idol: Ryan/Simon, Anwar/Kimberley and Chris/Blake

Star Trek: Kirk/McCoy and Chapel/Rand

John Hughes: Duckie/Cameron

Two, two, two memes in one!

First, from mahoni, top 10 fics (of mine) on AO3, by hit count:

( only mildly surprising )

( previous days )

7 – Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?

Writing Ron definitely made me like him more. I think that if I met him he'd be someone I liked but would never seek out or be close to, and coming off GoF I really wasn't sure that he'd been a good friend for Harry. (I know that others see that situation as being the reverse and that's fine! I'm not interested in debating my feelings about Harry Potter canon; that subject is closed.) But writing him in EWFS made me figure out what I did like about him and gave me an affection for him and his situation that I brought with me back to canon.

I think I'm still trying to work my way around Spock. Not that I dislike him, but it's hard for me to find a way into him or in some ways Nyota.

As for reading other people's fics, probably? But I suck at remembering specific examples. I don't know that I have super fixed ideas about characters coming out of canon--they're more like electron clouds, where they have a general area but could be anyplace within that area. I think that's just what people are like. If a story is well written I'll go with it, most of the time. This is why I make such a bad canon-whore. I'm far too flexible.

( previous days )

6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

Both, definitely. I was amazed that I spent most of 2010 writing men, because I'm rather comfortable writing women (though not Nyota, which might be why that happened). I love writing Parvati and Pansy, and I've always liked being in Hermione's head, or Ginny's.

I don't really find a huge difference, but then, I don't really dig the whole gender essentialism thing that gets played out so often in the culture at large, where if you write a man who's emotional he codes feminine. I don't think Leonard McCoy comes across as especially girly, and yet he is very specifically the emotional center of Star Trek. I don't think John Watson does, either, and yet he's always the heart while Sherlock is the head. (Maybe you need a specifically non-emotional character, like Spock or Sherlock, to make it okay for another male character to be more emotional in response?)

A while back someone was asking another one of those "why are all the men in slash really women" questions which always kind of piss me off. They were talking in this instance about Arthur/Merlin fic and Merlin being more "girly" and someone in the comments rightly pointed out that we live in a gender binary culture, and that all personality traits are coded as male or female, with nothing in between, so if you have a relationship between two people, one of them will always be more emotional than the other. That doesn't make them girly. (The thread also said a lot of interesting things about Arthur being a warrior where Merlin is a healer, and that this shouldn't mean that Merlin is girly--or that writers have to make him more "macho" in his off hours to "make up" for it.)

The whole question just makes me deeply uncomfortable, this idea that we have to make sure that the men are the men and the women are grateful, or something. I hated it when people talked about Remus/Sirius being "really lesbians"--like, talk about how specific stories or specific fannish tropes look OOC to you, but saying that writing men in certain ways is writing them like women and then implying that this is insulting to the characters and happens because they are women writing the men--how can a group of people who call themselves feminists actually say any of this with a straight face? Just call it a bad story and have done with it.

Write the damn character. That's all you really have to do.

( previous days )

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?

Probably Seamus. He gets pouty when I don't pay enough attention to him and had a lot of jealousy issues about Ryan and Simon. He's the character that first inspired me to write, and so he's spent the most time in my head. The most emotionally raw stories I've written from his perspective because there aren't a lot of filters there. He's also the one who tends to speak to me, rather literally, in that I can hear his voice in my head. But he doesn't often push his way into other stories, as long as he's appeased.

When I'm in the middle of writing a story, those are the characters speaking to me. Then also there are others in stories yet to be written who are saying "pick me! pick me!" At this moment it's Janice and Christine, though they were frustratingly vague about what the hell they wanted until a week ago.

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2 – Name the fandoms you've written in, and how much you've written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.

Nearly all of these word counts are from AO3. The HP word count includes some things that haven't been posted yet or haven't finished posting; the ST word count includes the STBB that is really only a draft right now.

Harry Potter: 46 stories and almost 225,000 words, including TITKB. I am finishing up my writing in this fandom—that is, there is an end date, and I won't be writing anything further than what's already planned in my head.

American Idol: 46 stories, 315,530 words. I don't actively write in this fandom but the door isn't entirely closed.

Star Trek: 25 stories, almost 150,000 words, including the upcoming STBB. I also have one co-written story. I am still actively writing in this fandom.

John Hughes: 5 stories, 7902 words. No reason why I wouldn't write about Duckie and Cameron again, though I have no plans to and nothing in mind.

Star Trek Actor RPF: 2 stories, 1056 words. No reason why I wouldn't write about Karl and Chris again, though I have no plans to and nothing in mind. And both of these stories were written in a fit of pique, so there's that.

Fandoms I'm not really in but have written for: 17 stories, 34,081 words. This includes

• Avatar: the Last Airbender: 2 stories, both for exchanges
  
• How I Met Your Mother: 2 stories, one for Yuletide and one a request
  
• Reality rpf: The Voice, Top Chef, Top Design, Project Runway
  
• Yuletide: Broken Hearts Club, The Philadelphia Story, Community (and HIMYM)
  
• One-offs: White Collar, Rent, Castle
  
• Requests: Beatles RPF, Fruits Basket, Hawaii Five-0 (and HIMYM)

No real plans to write in any of these fandoms again, though I have definite plans to continue participating in Yuletide.

This weekend sangueuk asked me about being multi-fannish and I didn't really have a chance to answer her fully so this is all for you, baby!

( on being multi-fannish )

I did two memes this week, the character one and the kiss one, and here are the results! On the kiss meme stuff, I'm probably going to slightly expand a few of them and repost for schmoop bingo purposes, so if you have any thoughts (or title suggestions) please share! Also, they mostly ended up being kidfic for some reason.

• Hawaii Five-0, Steve makes waffles for Grace and Danno, requested by imaginarycircus
  
• Star Trek, David is teething, Jim isn't sleeping, and Bones shows up just in time (Hollywood AU), requested by weepingnaiad
  
• RPF, Ryan worries about their daughter running a fever and Simon humors him, requested by rosiedlotrfan and prompted by jenncho
  
• Harry Potter, Percy and Oliver decorate the nursery, requested by aome
  
• Harry Potter, Seamus and Dean welcome their daughters into the world, requested by honestyseasy
  
• RPF, Blake discovers Chris's secret (in two parts, from the WWII AU), requested by lillijulianne

On the character meme, I was asked for Rachel Brooks (Justified), Shirley Bennett (Community), Susan Bones (Harry Potter), Diana Barrigan (White Collar), Nyota Uhura (Star Trek), Jun (A:tLA), Marshall Ericksen (HIMYM), Angelina Johnson (Harry Potter), Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), Robin Scherbatsky (HIMYM), Javier Esposito (Castle) and Winona Hawkins (Justified). Thanks for the requests for both memes!

Just a note on the diversity thing: I by no means meant to shame anyone, for asking for white boy slash, and I'm really sorry if anyone felt that way. I wrote almost nothing but white boy slash last year, myself. I just realized after the kiss meme that if I wanted to get diverse requests I had to ask for them, so I did!

I'm in a reasonably good place today, not only because I went to bhanesidhe's place last night and got BFQOTY'10, Glee, and fish cakes with rice and beans, but also because I was working on a scene for the EWFS sequel that was not working and then I realized how to fix it and now it's moving forward swimmingly. But you know, I'm still really uncomfortable, sometimes, with writing in this journal as though you all actually care about what I'm talking about, if that makes any sense. It makes me feel sort of embarrassed, to be honest, but I'm trying!

because I've been feeling a little silent and disconnected lately, for no real reason.

Comment with a fandom and two characters, and any prompt you'd like to give. I'll tell you about a time when they kissed. You know, my fandoms and my ships, or even just a show we have in common and characters I'm amenable to.





Color War Final Four has been very exciting! Fern and Sunglow have been going back and forth for a while now.

Hey it's that bag meme all the kids are doing! I'm doing it in celebration of it being almost a year to the day since the mugging, and I've managed to replace everything that was stolen! (well, the physical stuff)

( bag! )