#like i don't hang out in fandom tags fortunately (for many good reasons)

[astriiformes]

.

[hermitknut]

20 Questions for Fic Writers Tag Game

@birdylion tagged me :D

1. how many works do you have on AO3?

56.

2. what’s your total AO3 word count?

440,219

3. what fandoms do you write for?

There've been quite a few over the years. Currently Goblin Emperor (slightly on the back burner while I unkink my writer's block) and Hands of the Emperor (just started dabbling, nothing posted yet). Before that Merlin, Green Rider, Realm of the Elderlings, Doctor Who, and Harry Potter predominantly, with little dips into Discworld, Sherlock, Sweep, Supernatural, Percy Jackson, Lady Trent, Life on Mars, Old Kingdom, Life on Mars, and MASH. I have some Narnia stuff kicking about in my drafts somewhere, and while I've never posted it I've been writing Animorphs fanfic for years.

4. what are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Stairs Beneath the Heart: Goblin Emperor, a series of vignettes that runs parallel to the canon that I posted through the start of the pandemic and really enjoyed. It was the first time in ages I'd had a regular posting schedule, and the first time ever I'd had that much fandom attention on something I was writing - everyone was so lovely <3.

Take These Tower Stones: Goblin Emperor, the sequel to the above, a much more coherent and consistent story which everyone was again really supportive of <3

What Friends Are For: Discworld; Angua gives Vetinari the shovel talk. There's a big disparity in the stats between the previous two fics and the rest, so these last three were a surprise to me! I'm glad people liked them though :)

Fire in the Night: Merlin, somewhat angsty nightmare/comfort oneshot. Again, surprised to see this one so near the top, but pleasantly so.

The Michen Emperor: Goblin Emperor again, currently the bane of my existence because I can't seem to finish it (I will eventually, just need to unstick my brain). Really appreciate all the love people have shown it. Basically, what if canon but with smol!Maia.

7. what’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Probably either Take These Towers Stones, or Red Sky (which is a tiny little snippet of fluff).

8. do you get hate on fics?

I've had a few shitty comments, and mostly I've just deleted them. I've never had any extended hate campaigns or anything, just people who mistakenly thought their dislike was worth expressing.

9. do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Occasionally; usually though not always queer, normally pretty tame. I read smut usually without worrying about the warnings, but I'm a bit too shy to comment on it, and I think that extends to my writing, haha. Maybe I'll get the hang of it some day :)

10. do you write crossovers?

Nah, for some reason they don't work for me at all - almost a squick, I don't read them either. The closest I got was considering a fic where the characters from Green Rider had diplomatic contact with the characters from the Chronicles of Ixia series, but I never ended up getting there.

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I don't think so - I should probably put in my Ao3 that people are welcome to if they like, I keep forgetting. I'd be honoured if anyone wanted to.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope; I'm very picky and not good at compromise, though it's something I'd like to work on one day. It'd have to be very low stakes and with someone very patient!

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you will?

Lines of Silver and Gold (Realm of the Elderlings) is probably my oldest fic that is both posted and unfinished, and I have no current plans to work on it. I'm hoping that one day I'll be able to come back to it, but that book series was my thesis topic and unfortunately I rather burnt myself out on it, so it might be a long while.

The Queen Rider series was originally going to have two more fics, but those have been scrapped; fortunately it resolves quite nicely as is. Maybe I will put up a little misc fic with what I do have of the rest some day.

And on a more positive note, my Animorphs fic - it was originaly going to be a full written-through story spanning a considerable post-canon period, but unfortunately I lost the original in a harddrive failure and while I rewrote some of it I rather lost my enthusiasm for it. However, I have been reconsidering lately and might post what exists as a series of loosely connected vignettes; we'll see.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue is what I find easy and what I've received the most compliments on; I think this is because a lot of my fic is drafted "out loud" before I get anywhere near setting it to page, so the first iteration is often predominantly speech. I'm also often told I'm good at mimicking the tone of the canon, if I'm writing for a book fandom.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Research (I'll do it if it's something that will otherwise potentially hurt people, but other than that I have neither the effort nor the inclination), and making things messy - that is, I tend to tidy things up a lot and I'm not good at letting my characters get things wrong/communicate badly/etc. Good for fix-its, less good for creating challenges in the story.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I am depressingly monolingual so I don't do it in my fics; as to what everyone else does I think they should have fun and do whatever they like, I suppose. Not enough knowledge to have more of an opinion than that.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter was my gateway fandom.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Ohhhh tough one. I'm immensely proud of the Keystone series (The Stairs Beneath the Heart and Take These Tower Stones), so they're solid candidates, but I also really like The Shadow of the Mountains (Lady Trent) and Miracles (Realm of the Elderlings), the latter of which contains possibly my favourite line of prose I've written.

I'm tagging @the-tao-of-fandom, @pipuhattar, @alittlefellowinawideworld, @nonasuch, and anyone else who'd like to answer!

[bereft-of-frogs]

Hi, hope you don't mind me asking this, but I saw a post about your two fandoms, and I just wanted to ask, do you think there is the same arguments across both fandoms just in a slightly different context, or do you think a lot of discourse is specific to the fandom itself? Do you think it's inevitable that in large fandoms, discourse occurs? I'm only in one so I genuinely don't know. Thanks.

Hi! This is a really interesting question.

I think the base elements of discourse will always be present in a fandom that grows sufficiently large. allow me to postulate a few categories of universal discourse:

- the various iterations of purity culture, whether it’s ‘how dare you find the villain character compelling!’, or ‘this content is too violent/sexual won’t you think about the hypothetical children’! No amount of tagging your work 18+ will save you from the crime of hypothetically traumatizing imaginary children. the P word will probably be thrown around (you know what I mean)

- there will be the ship wars, with the added recent development of desperately looking for ways the other person you don’t ship your fav with is morally bad, overusing terms like gaslight/abuse/manipulation/etc, so as to paint your rival ship and all its shippers as ‘problematic’ and morally in the wrong, character bashing, etc

- the people who seem to actually hate about 90% of the canon but stick around for the fanworks and just constantly rag on canon as it’s released and think anyone (also with an added ‘...and this is why it’s morally wrong!’ for the same reasons as above ship wars)

- the people who aren’t in the fandom at all but sort of flit around the edges just to flaunt how much smarter they are than the people who actually like it. these people just want to pride themselves on not liking something that is popular, and are incredibly annoying about it.

But I feel like each big fandom I’ve participated in has had at least one unique discourse element. Les Misérables has the war against the untagged Modern AUs. Star Wars has the, sigh, ‘the Jedi were secretly the actual bad guys all along and you’re a bad person for liking them’ discourse I refuse to ever participate in again. I don’t think any fandom has achieved the levels of cult recruitment that Harry Potter has. (What is it, 5 cults now?) I’m sure there’s some mess going on in Lord of the Rings somewhere, but I’ve been fortunate enough to avoid it.

Marvel I think is interesting because it’s so large that there are multiple factions, all with unique points that people argue about. Even in compared to Star Wars, which is also large and with many factions. But I think also the difference might have to do with time scale: MCU discourse has really only had 10 years to cram it all it, while SW has developed over the last 40. There’s been a higher concentration of course, with the recent Disney acquisition and all the problems that entailed (lol yes understatement of the decade), but I think because it’s all been so stretched out we only see one significant cycle of discourse at a time, whereas in the MCU they’re all happening at once. Constantly. Which can get exhausting.

I think my personal position in the two fandoms discourse is interesting. I have the general Star Wars discourse ban that dates from when the sequel trilogy anti stuff was getting really bad, and I found myself stuck in a sort of weird position on it...but since then I think I’ve found myself a niche where the discourse is more minimal and easier to avoid, excepting that one big sticking point that I refuse to discuss because the sides are so entrenched it’s useless and also frequently gets to a point that’s just fundamentally upsetting to me, so I just don’t do it. I have had some issues trying to avoid character bashing of some of my favs, because it’s gotten sort of bad lately and spilled over into the AO3 summaries/tags which I really hate...but then I just go back to doing whatever I want and not really caring about what anyone else thinks lol.

I don’t know why I feel more comfortable publicly commenting on MCU discourse. I think maybe I’ve just been more consistently participating in it over the last few years. I don’t know. I also just find it really interesting to break down sometimes, like when I made that post about the fandom and conspiratorial thinking, and if we were headed towards something like TJLC. It is an utter mess right now (like seriously especially the Loki side of the fandom, good god what a dumpster on fire we’re all hanging out in) - which also means it’s a lot harder to avoid, so I think maybe my coping mechanism here is to set an emotional distance by commentating and unpacking it, whereas with SW it’s just utter avoidance.

So yeah, the tldr: yes, I think once any fandom or piece of media gets sufficiently large and popular there will be certain points of discourse that inevitably crop up, and it’s interesting because one can be in multiple fandoms and have completely different responses to and ways of dealing with discourse.

Thanks for the ask! It was thought-provoking. (and apologies for the delay in answering!)