(no subject)

[pensnest]

Well, I suppose I should have prepared in advance some kind of awesome display post to start a frivolous February, but I didn't, I went to the gym and went for lunch with an old schoolmate (and actually enjoyed it) and bought a little yarn (which I needed, truly, truly I did) and walked home and watched some more Agents of SHIELD with Beast and then knitted and watched a Lewis episode and then knitted and watched SYttD Ireland and stroked the cat.

But I came upon this fandom meme, and though I am sure anyone who's been reading my journal for any length of time knows all they care to know about my fic output (also mostly available on AO3), I thought, what the heck, why not, so here it is.

Comment below with up to 3 of the following (and a fic, if the question requires it) and I will answer.

A: How did you come up with the title to [insert fic]?
B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?
C: What member do you identify with most from [insert fic[?
D: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [insert fic]?
E: If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it be about?
F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.
G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?
H: How would you describe your style?
I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?
J: Write or describe an alternative ending to [insert fic].
K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?
L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?
M: Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?
N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?
O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?
P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)
Q: How do you feel about collaborations?
R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?
S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?
T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?
U: Share three of your favorite fic writers and why you like them so much.
V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?
W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?
X: A character you enjoy making suffer.
Y: A character you want to protect.
Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate?

Comments

[dine]

being Not A Writer, I can't really do this meme, but I'm sure having fun asking others for their answers

L: How many times do you usually revise your fic/chapter before posting?
T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?
W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?

[pensnest]

Excellent - thank you for playing!

L. Hmm. I don't think there's a formal count… I try and get stories into good shape before sending them off to beta, but that probably means lots of little edits rather than anything major. Major stuff, if there is major stuff, comes after beta. I think in general, stories get revised during the process of writing rather than when they are complete, because some days it's easier to edit than to beta, and quite often I need to re-read (and, therefore, adjust) what I have before I can continue. So there's a continuous editing process as I write rather than formal-ish revision.

T. A/b/O is not something I will ever write and not something I want to read.
I'm not very good at kink, and don't try it very often, but I enjoy reading kink when the headspace is explained to me. Not sure if that counts as a trope, exactly, but I suspect we play fast and loose with our definitions so I should be able to get away with it.
I also very strongly dislike the tendency by some fan writers to dispose of the women in our heroes' lives. Not too worried about it in FPF, but it seems horribly disrespectful to dispose of a RL wife in a fiery car crash (etc) so that Our Pure Boys can enjoy their Pure BoyLove. Hah. There are more mature ways to handle it, is all.


W: I've been musing this very question in an MTYG context and the answer is, yes.
See, when I look back at the stories I've written, the vast majority have come from other fans in some way, rather than being directly inspired by canon. That seems odd, but it works for me. I must have done 40-50 stories as a result of prompts on fic_requests, some of which were delightfully specific (eg this request for married JC with pregnant wife and this one with snark, coffee and underwear). Something like that can really spark an idea so that a ficlet practically writes itself. OTOH, I was traumatised by a highly specific SeSa request one year ("post-apocalyptic vampires with romance"). But I'm very pleased with the story that resulted, so. Specific requests are probably good, though it may be that they're only good when they are optional!

Then again, vague requests are also good, so in conclusion, yes.

[dine]

in conclusion, yes is a perfectly valid preference :)

thanks for the answers - it's always keen to get a glimpse into someone's process

[frausorge]

G, K, S?

[pensnest]

Thanks for playing!

G I usually, mostly, write from start to finish, because I know the terrible siren call of That Scene, the one that so often spawned the whole idea of the story, and I know that if I write That Scene without having got to it honestly, I'll probably never write the rest. Even when there isn't That Scene anywhere, I generally need to write from beginning to end because the later scenes would change, probably, if I wrote them early and got to them subsequently, and I am far too lazy to want to rewrite for that reason.

K Probably this one: Lance gets a second chance to go up into space, and he does, but when he comes down the returning capsule is a fireball and is lost. After the memorial service the others discover he has made some recordings, and get together to make a memorial album for him. That's pretty angsty, right?

S I keep trying to remind myself what tropes are. Recurrent themes or ideas, says the dictionary, and on that score I think probably what I love most is long term pining, ideally long term pining by people who don't let it stop them living their lives. In my first few years of popslash, I'd find that even when I started out to write a gen story, it turned into Trickyfish because at least one of them couldn't help but be pining for the other. Is that a reasonable trope?

I have a list here of a bunch of Stuff Fanwriters Do, from Historical AUs to Bodyswap to Elves to Lava Lamps. Possibly Lava Lamps is not a thing that fanwriters in general do. But I've written practically everything on that list - I've had a very jolly time going through these fanfic staples and, sometimes, managing to do something a bit different—I am reminded of my bodyswap fic, which was a lot less simple than A and B swap bodies, what next?

[frausorge]

It is very true that backfilling to wind up at exactly the point of an already written scene is v. difficult to do. There is certainly something to be said for letting things unfold in order. And that is very angsty indeed! Oh no, now I'm picturing cover art with that "I have loved the stars too fondly" quote. oh noes.

Anyway. Pining! Pining as a long-term state of being, that is lovely.

[turps]

That's an interesting meme.

Okay, I and Z.

[pensnest]

It's quite fun figuring out the answers, I must say!

I: Guilty pleasure… not sure about that. I feel somewhat guilty about my addiction to Say Yes to the Dress and its variants, and nothing in fanfic compares to that! At one point I might have said it was sir_kate's writing, because she wrote a *lot* of stories in which the two boys just could not understand one another, could not help but misinterpret one another, and most of the time that is something that irritates me. I mean, a little misunderstanding, yay! but not to the point of stupidity. But I did love them, all the same. Don't think I can cite anything else that compares.

Z Major character death… well, hmm. I did a long write-out of the essential plot of the epic Star Trek:TNG story that I'll never write, which includes the death of Jean-Luc Picard (at Data's hands, even), and there's that angsty story mentioned in my reply to frausorge which I haven't actually written (yet… maybe…. one day…) I mean, I don't object on principle to death in stories. I mean, it's like whether or not character A bottoms—what happens in one story doesn't mean nothing else can happen in a different story, our character can die in one story but be perfectly alive again in another.

However, as I've been writing RPF for a long while now, I don't think I'd be able to deal with actual, real-world death and pretend it didn't happen. I was on the brink of being an Oscar Pistorius fic writer when he shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp, and that is very much not something I could write away. I used a real-world death (Howie's sister) in a story a while ago, and did quite a bit of soul-searching before I did so, but in the end decided it would have been absurd to make up a character for the purpose of killing them off when there was a known bereavement that was exactly the right shape.

[wenchpixie]

ooh B please :)

[pensnest]

I don't think this is a question I've been asked before! Cool.

Well, now.

There's my one original fic, Healing Hands which was definitely inspired by my weeks of attendance at a clinic where I had PUVA, ultraviolet treatment for psoriasis on my hands.

The punting trip here, or at least, the evening part going along the Backs while there were May Balls in progress, was one I had myself, and it was lovely!

The family in this little storylet is actually my sister's family, and I wrote this one while I was at the theatre watching a performance of the thing in question. In the interval, I mean, not while the show was on.

I used to work advertising-adjacent, which came in handy when I set a fic in an advertising agency AU. Oh, and ConStirNation is basically set at Nine Worlds. I went to (most of) the mentioned panels. Though I did not encounter any handsome strangers with cheekbones who were knitting willy warmers. Or socks. But that was a *very* last minute pinch-hit and I just grabbed what I could remember and threw it in there.

And, in a reversal of the question: I wrote a story about someone getting a tattoo and actually got a tattoo afterwards, mostly because I wanted to know how it felt. And Home Cooking was based on a little Christmas present I'd sent to Ephemera, and it led to the necessity of creating Death Cake for many years for Camp Sparkle. So, life following art instead of being based on it!

[pensnest]

It occurs to me that mere facts/experience isn't all of me that is in my stories.

I suppose you can also deduce from my stories, which are at least 98% happy-ending-in-a-nice-world stories, that I have a comfortable and contented life. You can probably also deduce that I don't have any desire for fast cars, any experience of recreational drugs, or indeed a wide range of cheerfully promiscuous sexual experience, simply because it isn't in my stories (this latter may be there in passing, I daresay). Middle-class cosiness, that's me.

[wenchpixie]

This is fascinating (and resonates tbh) - I love that you have Cake following fiction, that's really special!

[pensnest]

It was a neat little chain of events, starting from a Christmas card exchange 'as from' one of the boys. I decided mine should include their favourite recipes, and the cake was one of them. Then I wrote a birthday story for the recipient a few months later, featuring three of the recipes (there was a threesome involved) and people generally decided in comments that the cake sounded extremely tempting.

It's *really* good cake.

[turlough]

I obviously can't do it myself but I absolutely love reading the answers to this kind of meme! So, F, R, and U, please!

[pensnest]

Okay! *cracks knuckles*

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Hmm. Dialogue isn't something I generally feel I've done spectacularly well—I mean, I don't think I do it badly, but I'd love to be able to produce the witty, snappy interchanges I see in other people's fics.

I'm going to go with one of the stories from the 2017 MTYG collection, Mirror Mirror. Quite a lot of the dialogue in this one is Lance talking to OtherLance (from the Mirror universe), so the dialogue is doing quite a lot of heavy lifting in showing the differences between the two Lances and, more importantly, explaining the differences between the two universes. I rather like Lance's internal reactions to everything his mirror self says, and the hackles-raised hostility he feels. I imagine I wouldn't entirely like a more successful version of myself, either.

"Oh, fuck you," Lance said, irritated. "You try being woken in the middle of the night by your doppelganger and see how you like it." Was he being punk'd? Because, seriously...

The other guy snorted. "Okay, then. So you know who I am."

"Except I don't believe it."

There was an exasperated noise from the darkness. "Well, I'm definitely not a figment of your feeble imagination. I'm right here." A hand grabbed his shin through the bedclothes, and shook briefly. "Think it through. How is that possible?"

"Parallel universe," Lance said, promptly. If he was being punk'd, he was going to come out of it looking like somebody who could take being woken up in the middle of the night by a duplicate of himself in his stride, damn it. Cool. Suave. He hoped.

"Give that man a prize."

"Not that I'm saying I believe you're even real. This is most likely a totally weird nightmare."

"Oh, for—oh, whatever. I can be a nightmare if you prefer it that way. Doesn't bother me. It's not like I went to an incredible amount of trouble to get here, or anything."

"So how did you? No, wait, I don't care. You probably have some pseudo-sciency explanation that won't make any sense. I don't care how you got here. What I want to know is why. Why are you here? And what do you want?" Lance figured he was doing well here. Having a conversation with someone who claimed to be himself (Lance was most definitely withholding judgment until he at least got to see the guy) was disorienting at best. But it was a bit galling to have his alternate-universe self claiming to be cleverer than he was. Lance was going to have to step it up a bit. "You said you need my help. What kind of help?"

There was a pause. "I need your Justin," said the intruder.

"Justin? Justin?" Jesus fucking Christ, even in a whole different universe Justin fucking Timberlake was the most important person around. Justin would probably be really happy about that. Or he'd think it was totally reasonable. "Why the fuck do you need Justin?"

"Because I need to save Joey. And our Justin can't cut it."

Lance subsided slowly back onto his pillow. "I—okay. Tell me more."

"It's a long story."

"I'm not actually busy right now," Lance said, "since it's—" he squinted at the bedside clock, "not quite four in the morning."

[turlough]

That's a lovely bit of dialogue! And I love Lance's internal reactions - particularly the one about Justin :-D

[pensnest]

R Georgette Heyer! I caught polysyllables from her at an impressionable age and have never been able to (or wanted to, really) shake the habit. I'd like to think Jane Austen, too, simply because I love her work so much. And I'll claim a bit of Bujold, in that I like the way she writes and there are sometimes things that come through in my work that I recognise as being basically stolen from Bujold.

I don't think I've consciously used any writers, fan or pro, as a model, but I'm sure I have been influenced by a lot of them. Which, though, probably depends on the story and my mood on any given day.


U Favourite fic writers.

Chalcopyrite—there's a liveliness and cheerful enthusiasm in her writing which I really enjoy. I mean, The Turkipede Story is such a fantastic romp! And she wrote two of my favourite SeSa-for-Me stories. I'm shoehorning in a couple of other popslash writers here, because I'd put Nopseud and Brandywine into this category as well: I generally love Nopseud's stories for the sense of humour, the dialogue, the overall *fun*. Although I do enjoy her writing when she does Very Dark and produces something grim (which continues to have a sense of humour, albeit black humour). And again, Brandywine's sense of humour and delightful dialogue. Overall, the kind of stories that these three write are probably the kind I most enjoy.

I've really enjoyed Arsenic's stories. Change My Everyday, a long, adorable Howie/Lance story, and various others from her popslash days. The crossover Eight Times where JC and Gerard Way get together. 42, which probably made Bob and Spencer my favourite characters. She does lovely emotional stories without getting sappy, and her characters don't go stupid For Plot or For Angst. I get so much pleasure from the way she writes these people.

I think I have to nominate lightgetsin and sahiya for my third choice, for their epic, epic Vorkosigan Saga AU A Deeper Season, which is like an alternate canon for me, and just wonderful. It seems to work in all the same ways the Vorkosigan canon works, and feels just as 'real' as the original. Fantastic piece of work.

[brandywine28]

Oohhh, my God, yes, please, feel absolutely free to shoehorn me in with Nopseud -- anytime the mood strikes you. It is soooo not a problem.

<3333333

[brandywine28]

Oof. I'm glad I'm not the first one here, so I don't have to be the jerk who asks you to answer ALL of these. E for your Lance/Adam dragon series, please (just replace the word 'sequel' with 'threequel')! Also M and N!

[pensnest]

E: If you ever wrote a sequel to Dragon Country/Perceptions of Reality, what would it be about?

I can't help but feel the fact that Adam can lay eggs is going to have to turn into a brood at some point. Not quite sure how dragons reproduce (I guess I'll find out), but I think possibly they'll have twins or triplets.

Meanwhile, Chris is going to have to get used to JC being dragonblood, and JC is going to keep on doing bizarre and wonderful sculptures, I guess.

There's a complication with Justin and Britney, who show up one day wearing matching outfits of dragonhide that Adam recognises as being made from one of his shed skins, and he doesn't like it. He wants to get Lance a jacket, and their outfits tie in emotionally into the suspicion between Adam and Justin.

The trouble with all of these ideas is that there doesn't seem to be an actual *story* in any of it, just 'things that happen in their hypothetical future lives'. I can't figure out, for instance, how the jackets fold into the idea of Justin and Adam learning to respect one another's talent, which I'm sure it ought to. I can't figure out how that theme (if it even is one) folds in to the rest, either. Lots of things are in their future, but there isn't a *story*. If I find a story, I'll get on it, truly I will!


M : Got any premises on the back burner that you’d care to share?

Well. I guess the two stories to finish The Chronicles. I know what happens, but I don't know how. In 'The Dragon in the Woods', Lans and Chrisfer are called in to help rescue a kidnapped maiden (called Britenne, or something like that), and Lans has to fight a bunch of ferals and ends up becoming a knight, and consequently has to go off questing on his own. In the sequel, Chris is out there alone and discovers that Lans has not been seen for a long while. Then he gets involved with someone who is dealing in slaves, and there are fireworks.
(And if you ever get to read it, you can come back and admire the beauty of that little summary.)

N: Is there a fic you wish someone else would write (or finish) for you?

Hmmmm. I don't think so… I seem to be devoid of fresh ideas for popslash, which remains the fandom of my heart, but the stories that I do have in my head or somewhere on my computer in little bits are stories that I would very much like to have written. Not 'to write', exactly, because oh, the effort, but 'to have written'. There are the last two chapters of The Chronicles of Lancyn and Ser Crisfer, and I know what happens in both but am a bit stuck on the how. But, dear me, those are overdue, and I really do want them done. There's The Wallow (see my answer to K above). I'd also really like to polish off my fanfic100 oeuvre, of which there remain I think three prompts unwritten. The Wallow and the Chronicles story will cover at least two of them.

But I don't think I'd ever want someone else to finish one of my stories (you know those people who, apparently, inform authors that they have a Great Story and are prepared to share it if the author would kindly go to the trouble of actually writing it? I think they're mad). I get rather possessive about my fic—I want it to be *mine*. There are times when I procrastinate about sending a story to beta, because although I know it will be improved thereby, I want it to be *mine*. You know?

And the SeSa stories I've received have so often been the stories I didn't know I wanted and couldn't have asked for—see, especially, Pulp Friction, which I didn't realise I wanted so fervently!

[brandywine28]

Okay, but even without a definite theme, can I just say that I think the 'Justin and Britney in matching dragonhide' thing is flawless? I love it when canon-inspired bits pop up in AUs! Awesome.

You've mentioned your Wallow before, just kind of in passing, but I had no idea it involved KILLING LANCE. (I have a ridiculously wallow-y WIP myself. I may never actually finish it, but...well. I might? Soulmate AU. No one dies, but it's wall-to-wall misery. :)

[pensnest]

I love 'reflecting' canon in stories. It Pays To Advertise is probably my best example, but, yes. Matching dragonhide outfits. Heee.

I think the Wallow came into nebulous being because I thought I ought to be able to write Angst (I'm no longer so certain that it is the mark of a good writer). If I could only write it, I think it would be a good story.

[pensnest]

zillahseye asked for these:

O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters?

I think I mostly begin with The Thing That Happens, not plot, exactly, but where the plot ends up. I have to figure out the actual plot by writing the story. Or The Idea, the 'what if….' I don't think I can really separate characters and plot. The Idea might be… what if Lance and Adam are antagonistic when they meet, how do I get them together? Or, what about a tiny time machine that can send messages back to specific times and places? or What about a bodyswap where the swaps were in a circle rather than a direct exchange?

Sometimes, the plot dictates which characters will be involved. With 'Shade' (it's a rape story, told backwards) the idea told me which characters I had to use, and that one definitely came from the idea (which came from a comment on rape in fic which I decided to take as a challenge).

With 'The White Room', I was definitely following the characters' reactions to what happened to them, and although there was a specific scene which had generated the whole story in the first place, I found that when I came to the place where the scene happened, I didn't actually write it. The story ended up being more about Joey than about the other two, simply because I needed it to be in his POV. It was exciting to write that one, because I literally found out what happened by writing it.

One of my TNG stories, 'A Matter of Timing', had to be worked out fairly carefully, because it involved time travel within a brief period. That was more about the plot than the characters, and I kept the characters firmly under control in order to make sure the plot worked.

So, yeah. It's the idea that generates the story, really, and the characters have to go with the idea and the plot has to work out how the idea comes out.

P: Are you what George R. R. Martin would call an “architect” or a “gardener”? (How much do you plan in advance, versus letting the story unfold as you go?)

Oh, definitely a gardener. For me, working out exactly what would happen and when and how would end up destroying my desire to write the story. I know where it's going, generally speaking, and that's usually enough for me to find that I've put ideas in at the beginning, quite casually, which turn out to be handy to resolve things. A lot of what looks like plotting in my stories is the result of thinking, help, what now, reading through it again and picking up something I hadn't intended or expected to use which I'd just thrown in there. A theme, if there is one, comes about without my involvement. And I like it when my characters surprise me - which they do - because it usually makes things more interesting.

Q: How do you feel about collaborations?

Awed and bewildered! I don't really understand how people can write together - I can see that it ought to work, but I get very possessive over my own stories, I want them mine and told my way. I think the most I want to have in the way of collaboration is the input of a good beta (Nopseud is my favourite). I remain impressed by authors who work together, but I don't want to do likewise… even though I can see that it might be good for the story!


V: If you could write the sequel (or prequel) to any fic out there not written by yourself, which would you choose?
Funnily enough, I'm actually working on a sequel now, to this story. It's not a big, earthshaking story or one that has had its hooks in me for ever, but I had a bit of input into the dance side of things, and I like the idea of finishing it off.