silveradept | A few questions about fanfic writing.

This thing, it is potentially interesting, is it not?

Why did you start writing fanfic?

The very earliest of my works, as best as I can tell, were borne out of the desire to emulate what I had seen on the screen, to write things of a similar nature. Since I don't have that notebook with me, I have no idea whether they're also self-inserts, but I do remember that I was trying to keep them to the page they were on, a self-imposed limitation to get an entire episode's worth of action on the single page. Being somewhere in the early phases of a double-digit age, I probably left out a lot that I might otherwise elaborate on, but I suspect some amount of that was formulaic material that the source could have also written in one or two sentences if they so desired.

The first thing I remember writing as fic (or at least as pastiche of pastiche) that I then subsequently read aloud, I wrote because I wanted to write a story in that particular style, and I thought it was a good fit for the length and prompts that I had in mind. This was still while I was in the early phases of a two-digit age, and might be one of the subconscious reasons that when I think about performance (or writing in general, fic or otherwise), my operating principles seem to be on the order of "more courage than brains" or "more courage than skill", even though the hit, comment, and kudo count on those works that I've shared with others, including y'all, suggests there might be some amount of brains and skill that goes into the practice of writing, in addition to the large amount of practice that goes into writing.

Why do you write fanfic?

Now? Since I still do a lot of writing on prompts and fests and exchanges, I like to try and bring other people's ideas into existence. It's the kind of writing where having some structure already built into place makes the writing process easier, because most people, when they write prompts, they help you understand what angle they're coming from, and then it's an exercise to write a work that work with that angle and is still recognizably in the fandom. I stall a lot harder on my own ideas, unless it's one that I can also sink into a concrete something and produce with a clear picture.

Or, in at least one case, because the behavior of the canon aggravated me enough to say "That's nonsensical! This is how it could have happened, and it would have been much more in character for this person." So I tend to be a person who bases their ideas on the hooks that I can either find or think up and see what I can build from there.

How do you choose fandoms and why do you choose them?

I get introduced to new things through friends, for the most part, or through blog posts, or through interesting clips, and then I watch some of it, or I read it, and I decide whether or not there's enough interest in the material to keep going with it. One of the things that helps determine whether any given piece of media gets the fanfom nod is whether the story is good, the side characters are deep, and neither narrative nor characters make decisions that are flagrantly offensive nor out of their established characterization without explanation. Even then, sometimes it doesn't work for me, but the more times a narrative gets close or violates those principles, the more likely I'm going to bounce off of that piece of media.

Do you have themes or plot devices you return to?

Probably? I don't consciously know what they are, though, because I haven't gone back and analyzed my own works for themes and plot devices. Someone else who wanted to look at my corpus could probably come up with something, though. I generally try to have competence as the thing that keeps everybody going, as I find it a better narrative when someone gets outfoxed, outprepared, or otherwise outdone through skill, cunning, or being able to bring overwhelming force to bear on a situation, rather than by someone acting out of their character so that the plot can advance. If you've read enough of my works to make suggestions, then feel free to suggset some themes or plot devices I tend to use.

Do you have any pet peeves?

The biggest one is consistency of characterization across the narrative (or narratives). I can accept a lot of situations, plots, and character types, but I want things to be consistent across the narrative, or at the very least, that if something is going to be inconsistent, it will be explained in time, or, even better, it ends up being explained before the inconsistency happens. There are some other ones that are generally more related to "why is this person being a jerk unnecessarily?" and other such things where a characterization or plot, even though it is consistent, is not something I'm interested in at that time. I may end up being interested in it later, or I might decide, as I have with the Giving of Grief, to lay out my objections and aggravations with it because it's something that I really would like to have been better than it actually is.

Which story/stories are you the most proud over and why?

That's a good question, and if you end up pressing me, I'll probably go wave at my statistics page and say "Pick a metric". That may not actually answer the question, because the biggest-in-stats work that I have is one that I made on a lark and subsequently struck a chord with a megafandom.

(There are a lot of works I've made on a lark that have accumulated a fair number of kudos from a megafandom. I mostly blame other people on AO3 and DW, and a fair amount of Tumblr, even though I'm not on it, for recommending my work when it appears.)

So, the one I'm most proud of? As a technical achievement, wrangling AO3 properly to display what I wanted, with lots of help and consulation and eventually creating a proper work skin for it, it's The Royal Test. Which is still currently my only lyrics-entwined songfic so far. And perhaps one of the more raw takes I've done on Adrien and Marinette and the relationship they have with Nathalie and Gabriel.

I don't know what of those works to be proudest of otherwise, though, mostly because the concept of being proud of a work is nebulous enough that I haven't a clue what to use as criterion for pride. I enjoy working on all of them, and I had a particularly good time working with more than a few of them, and most of them got some nice comments from their intended recipients to indicate that things went well at fulfilling the brief. I mean, the things that I've put out are generally things that I'm proud of, so that's good, right?

I mean, if there are ones that the rest of you think are ones I should be proud of, I'm all ears as to which ones and why, but I can't really give an answer about which one or ones I'm most proud of unless "most proud of" has a more definite criterion.