Oh. My. God.

( cut for carnage )

That fanfic meme, pt 1

sperrywink asked for 26, 39, 41 (first), and 49.

26. How do you come up with your fanfic titles?

I must admit, I don't usually struggle for titles, which makes me feel quite smug as I know a lot of people have real trouble figuring out what to call stories.

The best titles… hmm, these usually show up quite early on. The Little Dustbuster That Could was a title that came to me long before I'd finished writing the story, and refused to leave. Initially I loved it, then I didn't, but couldn't think of a better one, and now I rather love it again. The Christmas Tree Conspiracy also showed up very early in the process, and I think it sounds great. In porco, veritas turned up well before I knew what I was going to write, I just knew that would be the title (I even asked for help on getting the right translation from someone on a very different forum), and I had to write a story involving a porcetta (which I also already knew) and a piglet. Bouquet was another early one, as I wanted to use the language of flowers to give the story form.

Occasionally, a song lyric is just too good a fit not to use: If You Want To Fly is the perfect title for that story, although amazingly it only popped into my head as I was about to post the story; clear my eyes and take a second just to breathe just seemed like excellent use of song lyrics, and Show You The Shape Of My What? is probably my best title ever. Ahaha. For this world to be unbroken, Fallen Down I'm Still Alive, As You Like I Love You, etc. It's useful, writing stories about people who do music for a living. Similarly, both A Matter of Timing and A Few Datas More were riffs on original ST:TNG episode titles. (The popslash Mirror, Mirror is of course stolen from ST:TOS.)

Sometimes, I just find something that says what the story is (and quite often, that's the point where I actually realise what the story is about), like Perceptions of Reality. Other times there's a common phrase that fits, or maybe needs a little twist to fit just right, eg Who's Your Daddy? or All Things Nice or Free Range. A Night at the Palace is just right for a Cinderella story.

When I'm really stuck for an idea for the title I usually get a word or phrase out of the story and use that—there are quite a few of those. So there are quite a lot of places to get a title from, and whether it shows up early or late, or whether it's easy to find or a struggle that results in something that isn't quite right (eg A Tale of Dreams and Asses), is completely random.



39. What is you greatest strength as a writer?

I honestly don't know.

Facility with the English language?



41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:

Hmm, this looks like the sort of question that would mean I am following WIPs or else enmeshed in a mighty epic of some kind. No. I very rarely read WIPs, and generally speaking a word count of more than 50,000 makes me think, no, I don't have time. I have a few tabs open, of course, but I have no idea whether those are stories I'm actually going to get to reading and enjoying or not...


49. How did you get into reading and/or writing fanfiction?

I've always had stories in my head, quite often riffs on, say Arthurian tales (I loved Sir Gareth very much) or films or TV shows, but I never wrote any of them down until the early 1990s when I discovered the existence of fanfic via a really excellent newsletter-style fanzine for Trek fandom, after I got into TNG. I had a bunch of stories in my head about Data, so after reading my very first zine (and, to my delight and good luck, the very first story was a jolly good Data story which set a piece of personal headcanon for me) I wrote one down and sent it to them. And more, and to an American zine after that.

Of course, the Internet became a big deal shortly after that, and I actually did get online so that I could find more Star Trek stuff—this of course included newsgroups, which came with actual feedback on stories, which was very nice indeed.

My Trek fannishness withered away eventually (fannish shenanigans plus the disappointments of canon, ie the TNG films) and was most splendidly revived when nopseud got me into popslash, and also LiveJournal. LiveJournal, particularly with a person who is Connected to get you started, was such a perfect place to Do Fandom. I had a huge creativity boost, about 35 stories in my first nine months, and increasing numbers of words for years thereafter. I loved the encouragement of the fandom: LJ comments were delightful, and there were so many sources of inspiration—challenges, conversations, and the community at fic_requests. At least 90% of my popslash stories were written specifically because of other fans, one way or another.

If you'd like to participate, the list of questions is here

That fanfic meme, pt 2

frausorge asked for 34.

34. What’s the word count on your longest fic?

Dragon Country 36,485
and has a sequel, Perceptions of Reality which is 24,039 so 60,524 words (according to the Archive).

The Bouquet Stories add up to almost 65,000, but include can't see the wood for the 42Ds, which isn't, strictly speaking, a part of that storyline.

I thought the Chronicles of Lancyn and Ser Chrisfer would be longer, but it turns out the series as it stands is only 35,761.

I don't write loooooong epics!

That fanfic meme, pt 3

morgana_st asked for 22.

22 Is there anything you regret writing?

On the whole, no. I mean, some of my stories aren't very good, and I regret that I didn't write them better, but they're all part of the path.

I do sometimes look back at Prize, my first DWNOGA story, which goes down a path I cringe at just a little bit, but, it was a SeSa story and written for a specific recipient, and I was pretty sure from reading my recipient's stories that she would be very happy with it—which she was. So though I wouldn't particularly recommend it these days, I don't regret writing it the way I did.

There are, of course, occasional oeuvres that some readers might regard as regrettable examples, like the Legolas/Winnie the Pooh fisting (with honey), or the blank verse version of the Lava Lamp Story. But I am a popslasher and I have no shame*.

As for regretting writing, say, RPS, certainly not!

* Possibly I should?

(no subject)

Not that I had ever previously given the matter any thought, but it seems that Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka* is the unholy, vampiric spawn of a union between Agent Peggy Carter and Freddie Mercury.

This will probably provide enough to make it clear.


* An abomination, but anyway.