mistressofmuses (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mistressofmuses) wrote2021-09-30 08:36 pm
mistressofmuses) wrote2021-09-30 08:36 pm
Entry tags:
Fic Writer Questions - Tumblr Meme
I was tagged by scarlipswolfwife (teadrinkingwolfgirl on tumblr)... somewhere between probably a month and three ago, heh.
I love getting tagged in question meme things (thank youscarlipswolfwife for being the one who does so!), but I am absolute crap at doing them! Especially on tumblr, where I only ever use mobile, since I don't have a computer that can handle it. So I save the posts to drafts, with great intentions of going back and answering them eventually even though it takes forever to type things out on my phone, and then generally I... Don't.
BUT. I remembered this one was there! So I'll answer it here, where it's far easier for me to type, ha.
1) How many works do you have on AO3?
38. Most of those are oneshots, which is weird, because I don't generally feel like oneshots are my best fic writing or what I enjoy most. Though 31 of those were for that AUgust thing, so that skews it, lol.
2) What’s your total AO3 word count?
167,563
3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
On AO3, all I have posted are Kingdom Hearts fics, because that's all I've written for recently. My first forays into terrible, embarrassing fic writing (oh, the angsty songfics...) was for YuYuHakusho back in high school. As a teen I also wrote for InuYasha, Fruits Basket, Final Fantasy: Advent Children, Wolfs Rain, Everworld, and Mercedes Lackey. (A lot of those only ever had one fic, and that's not counting fandoms that I worked on something for that was never completed/posted.)
Slightly more recently, but still pre-AO3, I wrote a Tin Man/Alice in Wonderland crossover.
And I've written, but not shared, some Silent Hill fic.
4) What are your Top 5 fics by kudos?
Scales - 56
Potentials - 55
The Fated Thought of You - 54
Third Wheel - 43
Trick or Treat - 36
(Lol,scarlipswolfwife, and you said that your fics having 280+ - 375+ kudos weren't that popular...)
5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
I try to respond to all my comments, but I know I miss some of them. Sometimes I feel bad replying to a comment if I don't have anything new to post, so I'll put it off and then I forget. Or I'll go on a replying spree when I do come back to post something, and wind up replying to stuff that's months old.
6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
None of my fics really have angsty endings. I tend to only like angst that ends happily, ha.
"To Keep Us All From Dying" has a vaguely hopeful ending, but is a post-apocalypse.
"Potentials" has a happy ending for the characters, but with a sense that there's a lot in the world that will still need to get fixed.
"A Broken Chain Can Be Repaired" ends with a "and now it's time to fuck this shit up" vibe.
7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?
In a reverse from the previous question: all of them, lol.
Maybe "The Fated Thought of You" or "Third Wheel".
8) Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?
Back in college I wrote a Tin Man (the SyFy show)/Alice in Wonderland (the book) crossover for an LJ community contest. I actually still really like a few bits of it, though I haven't been able to quite decide if I want to port it over to AO3 or not.
9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?
I vividly remember my first "flame" on an ff.net story, calling me all sorts of names and telling me I was a bad person, because how dare I make their "husband" (Kurama, from YuYuHakusho, apparently) gay in my story??
10) Do you write smut?
Do I write it? Absolutely. Have I ever shared or posted any of it? Nope.
(Subject to change! It's possible I will. Maybe under a different account, ha.)
11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not to my knowledge.
12) Have you ever had a fic translated?
Not that I've been told.
13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?
My ex and I were in the process of co-writing two different fics when we broke up. They'd been posted to a shared ff.net account, which I ceded to her after the breakup. I honestly have no idea if she ever did anything with them (finished them, deleted them, rewrote them, etc.) They were probably abandoned.
14) What’s your all time favorite ship?
Sora/Riku/Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. Not sure why THAT is the ship that seized my brain and hasn't ever let go, but it is. Crowley/Aziraphale from Good Omens (back in book fandom, carried on to the show fandom, too) is up there, though it's not a fandom I write; I just read a lot. I have favorite ships for basically every fandom I'm in. (My oldest OTP was probably Hiei/Kurama from YuYuHakusho or Haruka/Michiru from Sailor Moon.)
15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
I have a fic that I've redrafted a good five times or so over 15 years, and written more than 100k on in various incarnations. It's also Kingdom Hearts, worldhopping between non-disney fairy tales. Having worked on it for that damn long I want desperately to finish it, but it will be SUCH a project to do, I'm not sure I'll ever really commit to it.
16) What are your writing strengths?
I have no idea, ha. I discovered I was better at writing action scenes than I thought I'd be. And I think I've done a pretty good job of working subplots into some of my ongoing things. Sometimes dialogue.
17) What are your writing weaknesses?
Description. Some of it is me falling victim to bad advice, but for a while I took some criticism of descriptive writing FAR too much to heart... the kind of advice that said ANY descriptive writing whatsoever was purple prose, and that anything beyond the most bare-bones, plain-language, minimum-required-for-clarity description is a waste of space. I know that's not true, even if only because I've read so much amazing descriptive writing from other writers. But I still struggle with it in my own stuff.
And not chickening out on a plotline. This one is more unfortunately pragmatic, as I watch antis tearing some of my fandoms apart with harassment and threats, and I want to avoid that. But sometimes I start with an interesting idea, and then start filing bits of it down to try and remove potentially-problematic elements until I'm left with a horribly bland, conflictless mass of nothing.
18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
Eh. I remember the worst of the terrible attempts at flinging random Japanese words into fic. I HAVE seen it done well, just like it can be done well in pro-writing, when it's suitable for the character and the story. (And when the writer knows what they're saying beyond a google translated line.) I appreciate when either the meaning is made clear by context, or if the author includes a translation.
19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?
The first one I ever wrote anything down for was probably YuYuHakusho. But the first one that I ever was making up stories for in my head, or playacting scenes out of... maybe Sailor Moon?
20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?
I'm not sure. Maybe Potentials, just because it's the longest, and represents the most work in terms of planning and actual writing. I'm very fond of the yet-unposted Howl's Moving Castle x Kingdom Hearts fusion thing that I plan to post once I feel caught up on the rest of everything.
As much as I enjoy being tagged in things, I feel weird tagging other people to do them, so do it if you want to! Even though it's a tumblr thing and not a DW thing!
scarlipswolfwife (teadrinkingwolfgirl on tumblr)... somewhere between probably a month and three ago, heh.I love getting tagged in question meme things (thank you
scarlipswolfwife for being the one who does so!), but I am absolute crap at doing them! Especially on tumblr, where I only ever use mobile, since I don't have a computer that can handle it. So I save the posts to drafts, with great intentions of going back and answering them eventually even though it takes forever to type things out on my phone, and then generally I... Don't.BUT. I remembered this one was there! So I'll answer it here, where it's far easier for me to type, ha.
1) How many works do you have on AO3?
38. Most of those are oneshots, which is weird, because I don't generally feel like oneshots are my best fic writing or what I enjoy most. Though 31 of those were for that AUgust thing, so that skews it, lol.
2) What’s your total AO3 word count?
167,563
3) How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?
On AO3, all I have posted are Kingdom Hearts fics, because that's all I've written for recently. My first forays into terrible, embarrassing fic writing (oh, the angsty songfics...) was for YuYuHakusho back in high school. As a teen I also wrote for InuYasha, Fruits Basket, Final Fantasy: Advent Children, Wolfs Rain, Everworld, and Mercedes Lackey. (A lot of those only ever had one fic, and that's not counting fandoms that I worked on something for that was never completed/posted.)
Slightly more recently, but still pre-AO3, I wrote a Tin Man/Alice in Wonderland crossover.
And I've written, but not shared, some Silent Hill fic.
4) What are your Top 5 fics by kudos?
Scales - 56
Potentials - 55
The Fated Thought of You - 54
Third Wheel - 43
Trick or Treat - 36
(Lol,
scarlipswolfwife, and you said that your fics having 280+ - 375+ kudos weren't that popular...)5) Do you respond to comments, why or why not?
I try to respond to all my comments, but I know I miss some of them. Sometimes I feel bad replying to a comment if I don't have anything new to post, so I'll put it off and then I forget. Or I'll go on a replying spree when I do come back to post something, and wind up replying to stuff that's months old.
6) What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?
None of my fics really have angsty endings. I tend to only like angst that ends happily, ha.
"To Keep Us All From Dying" has a vaguely hopeful ending, but is a post-apocalypse.
"Potentials" has a happy ending for the characters, but with a sense that there's a lot in the world that will still need to get fixed.
"A Broken Chain Can Be Repaired" ends with a "and now it's time to fuck this shit up" vibe.
7) What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?
In a reverse from the previous question: all of them, lol.
Maybe "The Fated Thought of You" or "Third Wheel".
8) Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the craziest one you’ve written?
Back in college I wrote a Tin Man (the SyFy show)/Alice in Wonderland (the book) crossover for an LJ community contest. I actually still really like a few bits of it, though I haven't been able to quite decide if I want to port it over to AO3 or not.
9) Have you ever received hate on a fic?
I vividly remember my first "flame" on an ff.net story, calling me all sorts of names and telling me I was a bad person, because how dare I make their "husband" (Kurama, from YuYuHakusho, apparently) gay in my story??
10) Do you write smut?
Do I write it? Absolutely. Have I ever shared or posted any of it? Nope.
(Subject to change! It's possible I will. Maybe under a different account, ha.)
11) Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Not to my knowledge.
12) Have you ever had a fic translated?
Not that I've been told.
13) Have you ever co-written a fic before?
My ex and I were in the process of co-writing two different fics when we broke up. They'd been posted to a shared ff.net account, which I ceded to her after the breakup. I honestly have no idea if she ever did anything with them (finished them, deleted them, rewrote them, etc.) They were probably abandoned.
14) What’s your all time favorite ship?
Sora/Riku/Kairi from Kingdom Hearts. Not sure why THAT is the ship that seized my brain and hasn't ever let go, but it is. Crowley/Aziraphale from Good Omens (back in book fandom, carried on to the show fandom, too) is up there, though it's not a fandom I write; I just read a lot. I have favorite ships for basically every fandom I'm in. (My oldest OTP was probably Hiei/Kurama from YuYuHakusho or Haruka/Michiru from Sailor Moon.)
15) What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?
I have a fic that I've redrafted a good five times or so over 15 years, and written more than 100k on in various incarnations. It's also Kingdom Hearts, worldhopping between non-disney fairy tales. Having worked on it for that damn long I want desperately to finish it, but it will be SUCH a project to do, I'm not sure I'll ever really commit to it.
16) What are your writing strengths?
I have no idea, ha. I discovered I was better at writing action scenes than I thought I'd be. And I think I've done a pretty good job of working subplots into some of my ongoing things. Sometimes dialogue.
17) What are your writing weaknesses?
Description. Some of it is me falling victim to bad advice, but for a while I took some criticism of descriptive writing FAR too much to heart... the kind of advice that said ANY descriptive writing whatsoever was purple prose, and that anything beyond the most bare-bones, plain-language, minimum-required-for-clarity description is a waste of space. I know that's not true, even if only because I've read so much amazing descriptive writing from other writers. But I still struggle with it in my own stuff.
And not chickening out on a plotline. This one is more unfortunately pragmatic, as I watch antis tearing some of my fandoms apart with harassment and threats, and I want to avoid that. But sometimes I start with an interesting idea, and then start filing bits of it down to try and remove potentially-problematic elements until I'm left with a horribly bland, conflictless mass of nothing.
18) What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?
Eh. I remember the worst of the terrible attempts at flinging random Japanese words into fic. I HAVE seen it done well, just like it can be done well in pro-writing, when it's suitable for the character and the story. (And when the writer knows what they're saying beyond a google translated line.) I appreciate when either the meaning is made clear by context, or if the author includes a translation.
19) What was the first fandom you wrote for?
The first one I ever wrote anything down for was probably YuYuHakusho. But the first one that I ever was making up stories for in my head, or playacting scenes out of... maybe Sailor Moon?
20) What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?
I'm not sure. Maybe Potentials, just because it's the longest, and represents the most work in terms of planning and actual writing. I'm very fond of the yet-unposted Howl's Moving Castle x Kingdom Hearts fusion thing that I plan to post once I feel caught up on the rest of everything.
As much as I enjoy being tagged in things, I feel weird tagging other people to do them, so do it if you want to! Even though it's a tumblr thing and not a DW thing!
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no subject
I kind of want to revisit Wolf's Rain as a series, though. I loved it, and while I can't imagine there's any remaining fandom for it, it had such fascinating worldbuilding that I feel like I'd love to play around with.
no subject
I can't imagine much of a fandom's left for WR either, and with the current incarnation of the whole alpha/omega/beta thing out there, I'm not sure I'd want to see much of it. LOL That whole trope is not normally my thing. I've made an exception for certain writers because they don't squick me out with it. But it would be lovely to see WR out again, and it would certainly be up a lot of people's alleys since it's all angst all the time, even the ending.
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It's a shame when a fandom or your participation in it sours. I'm glad that my feelings toward my old fandoms are at least mostly positive, even if I'm not really interested in them anymore. (Though as I've grown up, I have a more critical view of some of them, but luckily none that I truly dislike now.) Though my feelings toward my old work is absolutely tinged with embarrassment, lol.
Yeah, other than the occasional pretty bit of fanart, I don't see much out there for Wolf's Rain, but I definitely want to watch it again! Not sure it'd prompt me to revisit any of my old ideas, or anything new, but...
Lol, if it had an active fandom, or the fandom just began now, I could see it winding up with an A/B/O contingent, heh.
I actually don't mind the A/B/O trope as such, and have read a couple specific authors' takes on it that I actually quite enjoyed. (Ones that invert what would be "expected" for the characters can be an interesting take. And tbh I always found "sex pollen" type imperatives to be kind of a guilty pleasure, lol, which isn't SO different.) However, a lot of A/B/O often comes with side tropes that do squick me out, so I wind up avoiding most of it.
Wolf's Rain really is all-angst all-the-time, heh. Which isn't usually my thing, yet I loved it. Though guarantee, I'd wind up writing fix-it fic or AUs, lmao.
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no subject
Yeah, fic exchange stuff is definitely stressful. I would hate to write something that someone wound up not liking, but some of the "want/do not want" lists I've seen get SO SPECIFIC, ha.