Fanfic meme, pt 4

For brandywine28

28. If someone were to draw a piece of fanart for your story, which story would it be and what would the picture be of?

Aha! Well, this has already happened—I actually have the *perfect* piece of fanart, because Bouquet was written for the RPF Big Bang challenge, and I was lucky enough to have samibee as my artist. She produced the most wonderful image. You've probably read the story on AO3 or on my journal, so let me invite you to look at it here on my website instead. SEE THE PERFECT HEADER!

In fact, I actually have *two* perfect pieces of fanart, because Show You The Shape Of My What? was written for the popslash bittybang challenge, and bubbleforest made a trailer. A Trailer!!! Which is a thing of utter joy and splendour and is here. Here we see the benefit of making canon references in AU fic.

I've also done a couple of headers for my own stories, specifically Dragon Country and Perceptions of Reality, both on my website, which actually do just what I wanted them to do (this is rare!).


43. What ship do you feel needs more attention?

Well, I really don't understand why the fanfic world was not awash with Adam Lambert/Lance Bass, at least back when people were writing a good bit of Glambert fic—some of those fans must have been popslashers back in the day! I mean. There they are, being all… gorgeous, and stuff, what could be more obvious? And yet the only Lambass (?) fics seem to be written either by me or for me. It is a puzzle.

44. What is your all-time favorite fanfic?
Ah, this is one of those trick questions like What's your favourite song or What's your favourite book? So, so many options. So many wonderful stories.

But I think the answer would have to be The Earl of Rothinghamtonfordshire by Jae. I love it so much, I made a podfic, and had to pause every so often during the recording to inform my cat that this story was the Best Thing Ever. It is brilliant. If by some misfortune you have never read it, you should go there at once.

Fanfic meme pt 5

For solariana

23. Name a fic you’ve written that you’re especially fond of & explain why you like it.

My babies! Oh, gosh. *ponders* I could answer this question about so many of my stories.

I think I will choose No Man's Fort. This was one of my SeSa fics last December, actually a pinch-hit I picked up because I liked the idea of writing a popslash pairing I had not written before (amazingly, there are a handful of these left).

I thought I would make my life easier by stealing a plot, and as it's always a good idea to steal from the best, I went with Shakespeare, and set up Joey and Kevin as Benedick and Beatrice (not sure which way round, but it doesn't matter). Then I bethought me of an awesome venue, a wartime fort which has been converted into a luxury hotel but which was at some point a kind of holiday cottage of the most spectacular kind, and set it there. And then I had the fun of ferreting out lots of recipes and some information on kitchens—I've read Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential" and other info on being a chef, and there was plenty to be found on the wonderful internet.

In the end I was very pleased with the story. Everything seemed to work together so happily, and getting two people from festering resentment and thwarted affection back into happyland just seemed to go so easily. Also, having Chris and Brian plotting together was a fun thing to do. I didn't write it, but I know what happens to Joey and Kevin after the story, too—they set up two restaurants, possibly in Brighton, possibly somewhere else; Joey has the best Italian kitchen in town, and Kevin has a dessert restaurant, and they recommend each other all the time, and Kevin sends a 'guest dessert' of some splendour to Joey's place at weekends, and of course they live together and are very happy and well fed.


45. If someone was to read one of your fanfics, which fic would you recommend to them and why?

Well. It'd depend…

For an actual Trekkie, TNG vintage, I think it would be The Things That Juliana Didn't Say, which is the first story I ever had a proper beta for (zine editors, in my experience, didn't), and was my serious effort at reconciling some bits of canon that TPTB had not bothered to make consistent. It's also my "Data's origins" story, and I'm still proud of it.

For a True Popslasher, it'd probably have to be Merchandising, because it remains the funniest thing I've ever written (although if there are any True Popslashers around who haven't read it, I'd be very much surprised). On reflection, this would probably work pretty well for non-popslashers too, because it's still funny if you don't know who these people are. I think. I'm pretty sure.

For a slash reader who doesn't know popslash, I think maybe The First Step. It's not really canon-dependent, and the real-life events it refers to are mentioned in the story. Also, I love it dearly. Or Dragon Country, which being AU doesn't really depend on canon stuff either. Although it carries a rape warning.

50. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

I love the way the fanfic community in general, and specific fandom communities in particular, make so much effort to encourage members to write—prompts, challenges, feedback, comments, it all feeds our creativity so brilliantly. These days many fandoms seem to have migrated to Tumblr, which I cannot understand, and AO3 is not such a good community as LiveJournal was for presenting and reccing new stories, but there are still prompts and challenges around.

I hate the way language is being misused these days. It's not just in fanfic, of course—when I come across the word 'reign' being used correctly, I usually double-take because it is so rare. But one of the downsides of a supportive and encouraging community does seem to be that it is not considered reasonable to point out mistakes—so how are people going to learn? I've ranted before on the uses and misuses of words, but it will continue to annoy me. Not least because (a) useful words become useless when nobody understands what they mean—see 'disinterested', and (b) if you don't understand the rules you can't break them to good effect, and if you do understand the rules you can't break them to good effect because nobody will realise that is what you are doing. Grrrr.


The list of questions is in this post.

Fanfic Meme, pt 6

These are for turlough.

30. What inspires you to write?

These days, mostly deadlines… and there aren't enough of them, so I don't write. Hmm.

I think my best answer would have to be, Other Fans. Not quite all of my stories were inspired by other fans, but the vast, vast majority were, in one way or another.

The biggest category: Challenges. DWNOGA and MTYG, various big bang comms, song challenges, one-offs like the Reunion Challenge and Sparklyglee; sky_pie writing challenges (Backstage is my favourite to come out of that one); my own Dragon Challenge—oh, so very many. Remix. Trickyfish Day (and Lambs Day, etc). I think all my long (ie 30,000+ words) Adam Lambert/Lance Bass stories were done for a big bang challenge of one kind or another. I haven't completed the fanfic_100 challenge, though I know what the last three will be (assuming I actually write them). So many.

I am so glad of the challenges, most particularly the SeSa ones, which have pushed me to write so many things I would not have contemplated writing without those particular requests. I'd classify both for this world to be unbroken and Thriller as 'wouldn't have been written without the challenge' stories, as I'm not generally interested in post-apocalyptic scenarios (or vampires), or in zombies. And I'm really happy with both stories. I even wrote JuC (still traumatised)!

Inspired by a request at fic_requests: so, so many. In my first year as a popslasher, nine; ten the next year, then eight… plus the entirety of the Chronicles, because the very first one was inspired at this comm.

Things other fans ask for, or mention, or that I know they'd like. A Hogwarts Christmas was done because I knew you wouldn't be participating in DWNOGA and I thought you deserved a story! Or the occasional meme, like the one that spawned Free Range.

Things I've seen other fans do, and wanted to try myself—Fettered, for example, and Round Dance, my bodyswap story. Shade, written backwards.

Other people's stories—Merchandising, for instance, was inspired… actually, I think it was inspired by a discussion in the comments to nopseud's Pornutopia. An Empty Cardboard Box was the bastard child of Calvin and Hobbes and a sweet little popslash story I found on angelfire.com.

Things I've read about in fannish discussions, which I've sometimes taken as a challenge (eg Shade). Or semi-fannish discussions… I think Dragon Country was actually sparked off by a discussion in the comments on a pro author's journal, somebody said "How do you rape a telepath?" and I thought, hmm, and thence the story grew. The White Room and The Tale of the Wealthy Young Man and the Slave who Gained his Freedom both came out of fannish discussions of consent issues.

Lava Lamps

I mean, yes, once in a while I've just had an idea for a story, and presented it—The Swan (after I went to see Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake again, actually I think I wrote it in the theatre during the interval); most of my versifications (because really, The Song of Hiawatha *deserves* to be a popslash epic poem); The First Step practically wrote itself. But essentially, I get my inspiration from other fans.


36. What’s your favorite genre to write?

Er. Hmm. I guess… plot with romance? Fairly underplayed, down-to-earth romance? I'm honestly not sure how to answer this, but I think what I do mostly write is something with some actual plot to it, and I try to keep things feeling fairly 'real' - essentially I'm writing romances, so there is a limit to the 'real', but I think that probably covers it.


The list of questions is in this post.