Thirty Days - Day Sixteen

Day 16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

I love summaries when it comes to finding and reading fic. Unless it's by an author I already know and like, I won't waste my time reading stories that don't have promising-sounding summaries, because my time for reading is limited and I don't want to waste it. I skip over fics that have no summary, or "My summary sucks but read anyway," or are summarized by, "This is my first fic."

When it comes to writing summaries, it's more of a love-hate relationship. I believe a good summary is necessary if you want to attract readers, but because that's your primary way of advertising your story, the pressure is on to make sure the summary is good. I wouldn't say I enjoy writing summaries, but I do it and try to do my best at it, because I want people to read my stuff.

As for how I come up with them? Well, at the risk of sounding like Captain Obvious, I try to summarize what the story is about. If it's a long or multi-arc story, I try to make the summary like a teaser and focus on the primary theme, or what's going on at the beginning, so that the reader knows what they're getting into, and will hopefully get hooked from there once they start reading.

Thirty Days - Day Fifteen

Day 15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what’s the strangest thing you’ve warned for in a story?

As far as warnings go, I think it's a good idea to warn for triggery content in general. One of my own personal gripes is when people don't warn for rape, or misrepresent rape as romantic in stories. It icks me out and it ruins a story for me to see it labeled as romance, only to read it and discover it's actually a rape scene. (Such as the typical "he forced her into it, but she really wanted it deep down despite screaming for him to stop" trope.) While I know that's a kink for some people, it's courteous to warn for stuff like that because not everyone finds it sexy, and some people really find it traumatizing to read about.

On a personal level, I prefer warnings for major character death, because I hate being unpleasantly surprised by seeing a favorite character die. I mean, if a fic is labeled as dark or violent, it's probably a given that character death will happen, so that's fine, but I hate it when a fic summary or description or genre gives no indication that something like that will happen, and it catches me by surprise. Killing off a favorite character of mine, most of the time, is an instant back-button out of a fic for me.

I had to pause and think about what the weirdest thing I've warned for was. I suppose it would be the warning I put on Mutants on the Prowl: "Adult, M/M/F threesome including both het and slash and utilization of their mutant powers in the fun. Completely, totally, and absolutely not work safe." Mutant-power sex kinks of an anthro plant-duck, water dog, and a shape-changing chameleon duck all getting it on is pretty weird. (And as far as I know, only five or so people have admitted to actually reading this fic.)

Thirty Day - Day Fourteen

Day 14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you’re comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you’re writing is G-rated instead?

If you're familiar with my stories in any given fandom, you know that NC-17 is no biggie for me. I've written a number of them in each of the fandoms I've participated in.

Writing G-rated isn't that big a deal for me, though. Well, maybe G is a bit of a challenge, because it's rare that I can write a story that doesn't have at least one colorful word or a part alluding to an adult or violent situation. PG is probably more like it, in that case. A lot of my stories end up being T-rated because of language or alluding to a sexual situation or concept, and I err on the side of rating higher so I don't upset readers.

Thirty Days - Day Thirteen

Day 13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I prefer canon, unless it's my own personal fanon. Yes, that's as arrogant as it sounds, but I'm being honest. I base my fanon on how I interpret things in canon. I prefer not to use fanon concepts that others have come up with. Sometimes it turns out that what I think is in line with what other fans think because it's a common interpretation of the source material, but that's coincidence.

The main exception to that I can think of was when I wrote Weird Stories in the Thundercats fandom back in the day. They were kind of like a shared universe where authors used each others' ideas with abandon. But I haven't done that in well over a decade, so I don't count that anymore. The majority of those stories were removed from my archive years ago anyway.

To answer the second question, no, I don't think writing fanfic has changed how I view a given canon as a whole. Writing certain characters has made appreciate them more, but that's the extent of it. I write for a fandom because I want to do more in it. It doesn't change how I feel about the original stuff.

Thirty Days - Day Twelve

Day 12 – Have you ever attempted an “adaptation” story of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?

Not exactly. The closest I ever did to something like this was back when Coldwin (who was then known in the Thundercats fandom as Kith) and I wrote Oh My Gods!, which was a humor storyline in which the Thundercats cast were thrust into the roles of prominent Greek mythology figures. The villains were mostly in the god roles, while the Thundercats were put in or planned for the hero/human type roles. The story never got that far, but we did get to start the Hercules myth, where WilyKat was Hercules. (Silly casting was also a running gag in this, where the characters complained about it.)

Thirty Days - Day Eleven

Day 11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you’re writing? What kind do you tend to write most?

I'm not sure what one would classify my style as. Dramatic with a healthy swirl of romance and comedy is the best way I would describe it. Even my most serious stories have some humor in them. It's also unusual for me to write pure gen with no romantic overtones whatsoever, unless it's a short story. On the other hand, I don't think romance dominates my stories, unless they're short pairing-specific ones, like the series of Bushroot/Liquidator fics that I wrote. The longer arc stories, though, have a bit of everything. This is pretty consistent across all of the fandoms I've written in.

Thirty Days - Day Ten

Day 10 – Pairings – Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and written a pairing you liked, but found you couldn’t write, or a pairing you didn’t like, and found you could?

One day late, because I took Christmas off. A belated Merry Christmas to my readers!

I like a wide variety of pairings, so my comfort zone is pretty big when it comes to that. There are pairings that I like that I haven't been able to write, however. Two that immediately spring to mind are Alluro/Cheetara (Thundercats) and Bushroot/Darkwing (Darkwing Duck). The attempts I made at these, to see if I could do it and make it work, just didn't work. It's been a long time since I even thought about trying to write Alluro/Cheetara, but I could never get past the clash of the egos combined with the morality clash of villain and hero. It's a crack pairing anyhow, so I doubt I ever will see it done by another author, but I can always hope.

Bushroot/Darkwing is a tad more common in the Darkwing Duck fandom, although it's still a rare pairing. Mostly I've seen it in art. The concept intrigues me, but I personally can not make this work. Even with an AU where there's no Morgana (I don't care for fics that break up Darkwing/Morgana just to make a new pairing, especially since there's a tendency to bash the odd one out), it's still hard for me to make these two mesh romantically. The one time I tried to write this, what I got was an angsty gen fic leaning more toward friendship than anything else. So while I'd like to see a good Bushroot/Darkwing fic, it's not something I can do myself.

Thirty Days - Day Nine

Day 9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?

In the Thundercats fandom, my favorite pairing has always been Alluro/Chilla. It's not exactly a romantic and fluffy relationship, being between two of the Lunatacs, but I like the dynamic, and it's fun. Second would be Bengali/Pumyra. They just seem like a natural fit to me and a good balance to each other's personalities. Third, I'd have to say is a pairing that involves an OC: Panthro/Snoelle. I think Panthro doesn't get enough love in the fandom in general, and I enjoy exploring that other side to him. I pair him with an OC because I don't really see any chemistry with him and any of the other canon characters.

For Voltron, I write a lot of Lotor/Allura. I like that pairing and the dynamic of it. I have a thing for bad guy/good girl pairings, but not with the usual cliche of happily ever after where the bad guy reforms and becomes a romantic hero. No, I enjoy exploring how those two would actually work after the initial get-together and manage to stay together despite their massively differing outlooks on life. (And the drama it causes as it happens.) Another favorite pairing of mine involves an OC and Yurak, but I can't really talk about it because it hasn't appeared in the storyline yet as far as what's been posted. For the third slot, I think it would be Lotor/Cossack. It's cracky, but it's a guilty pleasure. You can thank my These Boots are Made for Knockin' fic for that.

For Darkwing Duck, two out of the three are easy. Bushroot/Liquidator and Bushroot/Rhoda. In case it's not evident, yes, I'm a multi-shipper. I can't think of a third pairing that I like writing anywhere near as much as I do Bushroot/Liquidator or Bushroot/Rhoda. While I've enjoyed writing other pairings, none stand out like those two.

Thirty Days - Day Eight

Day 8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they’re not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.

Yes. I have OCs in almost all of the longer storylines in the fandoms I've written in. I also can't stand Mary Sues, so I try very hard to avoid that kind of cliched and annoying writing.

The best way I've found to avoid the Mary Sue trap is to make sure your character really belongs in the story you're trying to tell, and doesn't make the other characters in it act out of character. OOC writing is my number one peeve in fanfiction, and it's the reason I dislike Mary Sues as much as I do. I don't mind OCs with Sue-like traits as long as the story itself doesn't warp itself into something that seems to exist just to glorify the Sue, or insult the canon characters by making them take second place or act unlike themselves.

I strive very hard to keep the characters I write in character, and to keep the general feel of the universe intact. Even if it's more mature, it should still feel like the same canon at heart, and the characters should sound like themselves, even if they're in situations they might not have been in canon. I also think it's important for an OC's personality to add something new to the story and for their role to bring something to it other than the author just wanting to be part of the universe in some way.

This is not to say I've never written a Mary Sue. Oh, I have. Before I was aware of the concept, I knew I did not like certain types of stories or characters, even though that didn't really stop me from doing it myself. Naively and arrogantly, I thought my characters were just cooler than those annoying ones I didn't like. When I learned what a Mary Sue was, I was embarrassed.

The first incarnations of my Thundercats fanfiction (the versions of Revival and Path Into the Darkness that I posted back in 1999) had some pretty awful examples of Mary Sue/Gary Stu in them. In subsequent rewrites, I've refined and toned it down a lot, and now I'm happy with Selene, Psiarik, and Snoelle as they are. They still have some core traits that make them borderline, but I no longer over-emphasize their importance and I've balanced their personalities and given them some flaws that weren't as evident in the narration back then.

By the time I started writing Voltron and Darkwing Duck, I'd been aware of the pitfalls of Mary Sue writing for years, so it's been easier to avoid that trap.

Thirty Days - Day Seven

Day 7 – Have you ever had a story change your opinion of a character?

I can't say I've had that happen with a story. I have had it happen with roleplaying, though, which is an ongoing form of storytelling. For a long time, when I was in the Thundercats fandom, I disliked the character of Snarfer. He was too over-the-top cutesy to the point of being annoying, and since I was also a fan of the villains on that show, it really annoyed me whenever Snarf or Snarfer would defeat the bad guy.

Then, when I was modding a Thundercats play-by-email RPG, we had trouble finding someone to fill Snarfer's role. We needed him for some stories that were ongoing, so I took him over. To my surprise, the more I played him, the more he grew on me. I became fond of the little fuzzball. I still wouldn't say he's one of my favorite characters, but I do like him now.

As far as reading stories goes, there have been times that I looked at a character in a new light after reading a good fanfiction about them. The best example of this I can think of is in Purrsia's Vehicle Voltron fanfiction. While I prefer Lion Voltron to Vehicle Voltron, the Drule culture in VV does intrigue me. When I read how she wove it into her universe, I began to really like some of the Drule characters. Twila, Nerok, and Throk, especially.

Thirty Days - Day Six

Day 6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

Short answer: I don't have a preference. I've been writing long enough that it's not difficult for me to slip into the mind of a character of either gender to write them.

Longer answer: In the past, I tended towards roleplaying male characters, despite being female myself. In my stories, genders have always been pretty well balanced. Sometimes it feels more challenging to keep a female character from veering toward Mary Sue cliches, though, and I think in the past, when I was less confident about myself, I drifted toward the male characters so no one would think I was projecting myself or playing out a fantasy. This was especially the case back when I was active in Thundercats fandom about ten years ago, and ran into too-many-for-my-comfort-zone people who assumed that fiction/roleplay = real life, and my willingness to RP or write explicit sex meant that I was writing my sex life or fantasies on the internet.

As time passed, I got over that, and now I'm just as comfortable writing from either point of view. (It also helps that I don't give creepy people the opportunity to talk to me and squick me out anymore. I only chat in real time with people I've gotten to know in online communities I frequent.)

At first glance, it seems that males dominate the top slots of favorite characters of mine, but it's not really a gender thing. I like a lot of female characters as well. Cheetara, Merla, Haggar, Romelle, and Larmina are all canon female characters I enjoy writing. In the DWD fandom, I roleplayed Sarah Bellum and Loopy McQuack for some time and had a blast, and I also enjoy writing Rhoda Dendron as well. Sometimes I worry that people may think I project through Rhoda or Sarah, being that they're both scientists and I worked as one for many years, but then I tell my paranoia to shut up and say I just find them easier to identify with, much like I do Bushroot, because of that common background.

When it comes to OCs I've put a lot of time and energy into, I've got a good balance of both male and female, so I don't think there's a bias there, either.

Thirty Days - Day Five

Day 5 – If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a story, whether your “muse” or not, what did you do about it?

Oh, yes. That just happened recently, when I was writing my NaNoWriMo 2011 Voltron story. Most of the action on this story took place on Arus, so the Doomites didn't get as much screen time as usual. The voice of Cossack in my mind was quite put off by this. He only quieted down when he got a scene later in the story. It worked for the plot of the story arc as a whole, so it's all good, but boy, was he annoying and insistent before that.

There have been times in all the fandoms I've written in when it seemed like certain characters really wanted a role in a given story. However, as a rule I try not to cave into writing it unless it makes sense to do so.

Thirty Days - Day Four

Day 4 – Do you have a “muse” character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the story isn’t about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?

Not really. This is one thing common among fanfiction writers that I've never experienced, at least not in the way I think most people mean. There are characters that inspire me more than others, but none who really tell me what to write.

That said, certain characters have a very strong voice in my mind (no, it's really not as crazy as it sounds!) and won't be shy about "voicing" their opinions to me as I'm writing. When I write Voltron, Cossack sounds off like a mini MST-er in my head about stuff. With DWD, Bushroot is there, but he's quieter. Mostly I find myself thinking things like, "Sorry, Bushy, I know you're not going to like this!" or "Oh, he's going to love this!" when I write things I know the character would feel strongly about.

Also, while I wouldn't call any character my muse, certain characters do inspire me a lot more than others. Those would be my favorites: Bushroot, Cossack, Yurak, the Lunatacs, etc. It may seem odd that for someone who has a number of OCs in her fanfiction that I haven't mentioned them. Occasionally an OC will speak up or try to grab some spotlight, but not as often as the aforementioned characters. Of these, Eddie Flood is the worst offender, and my royal Lunatacs from my Thundercats storyline, and Cassri and Tadran from my Voltron stories have also done it a time or two.

As for why those characters influence me, it's because I like them so much. I give them a lot of mental energy, so they give it back... whether I like it or not.

Thirty Days - Day Three

Day 3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

For Thundercats, it's the Lunatacs. They're my favorite characters on the show, and I enjoy writing all of them, and the interplay between them. If I had to pick an absolute favorite, it would be Alluro, but Chilla and Luna would make close seconds.

For Voltron, Cossack and Yurak are my favorite characters to write. Zarkon and Haggar are up there, too, because their wit lends them to a lot of fun dialogue. I have the most fun with Cossack, though, and Yurak interacting with Cossack. They never interacted in the show (Yurak was killed off before Cossack was introduced), but in my head canon, they have, and I love making them play off of each other.

When it comes to the Darkwing Duck fandom, Bushroot is my favorite character to write. That's no surprise if you've read my stories, or noticed who my default choice for roleplaying in that fandom is. I find it easy to slip into his head, so to speak, and feel like I understand him pretty well, flaws and all.

Of the crossover fandoms I mentioned, the only one I think is worthy of an answer here is Forever Knight, since the other fics that I did crossovers for are old, short, and in the case of the Ghostbusters and Jem ones, never got very far. Strangers in the Knight and its sequel The Cure (which really needs a rewrite like Strangers in the Knight got a few years back!) had a much richer storyline than the others. My favorite FK character to write of the three that were in the crossover was LaCroix. He's got the whole distinguished sarcasm thing going on that Zarkon does, and I loved writing the sniping between LaCroix and Mumm-Ra.

Thirty Days - Day Two

Day 2 – Name the fandoms you’ve written in, and how much you’ve written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.

Not counting crossovers, I've written in three fandoms: Thundercats, Voltron, and Darkwing Duck. Counting crossovers, you can add in Forever Knight, Jem, Ghostbusters, and X-Files. All of those were crossovers I wrote in my days in the Thundercats fandom. Of those, though, the only one I'd say was comprehensive was Forever Knight, as my Strangers in the Knight story was pretty long.

Of the three main fandoms I've written in, I've got a lot of fic for all three. I can't give you a word count off of the top of my head, but it's several novels' worth in each. With Thundercats, my largest unfinished story, Path Into the Darkness is close to 200k words, and I wrote a number of stories leading up to that, as well as stand-alone stories in different continuities.

As for whether I still write in it, I hate saying I've abandoned any storyline I put that much of myself into, so I say it's on hiatus. I'll get back to it someday when the inspiration is there. Right now, my inspiration is elsewhere.

I'd guess I've written just as much for Voltron. My Chronicles of a Dark Planet series is pretty long. I also did a lot of one-shots and side stories for this fandom, like the side series of Doom Fleet: The Boot Camp Years, my not-so-serious stories of Cossack's misadventures in boot camp, and the various naughty humor fics like These Boots are Made for Knockin', Doggy Style, and The Masked Marauder of Castle Doom.

I can say that I still write for Voltron because I just finished the first draft of another story for it in NaNoWriMo 2011. Before that, I hadn't posted anything for the fandom since early 2009.

The most recent fandom I've been an active author in is Darkwing Duck. Because I only joined that fandom in 2009, I don't have the same number of stories in it compared to the others, where I spent more years writing stories, but I have a good chunk of prose for DWD, too. The largest finished story I have is Tension Convention, but I have a number of shorter stories centered around Bushroot/Liquidator, and I also have a Bushroot/Rhoda storyline going in Forget Me Not. There are also the Citrus Taste fics, which were for a challenge to write sexy fic. It sounds pretty hilarious to have "sexy fic" and "Darkwing Duck" in the same concept, but my version of sexy fic is usually with a twist of humor anyway, and Darkwing Duck's universe lends itself to that quite well.

I haven't posted any stories for this fandom since early this year, but I have tinkered with some. I have a good chunk of Going Loopy, my sequel to Tension Convention, written, and other things that are works in progress that I just haven't posted. I hope to post new stuff for it sooner rather than later, though.

Thirty Days - Day One

Day 1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

Technically, I was into writing fanfic before I even knew what fanfic was. Back when I was in seventh grade, a couple of friends and I claimed characters from various shows and wrote stories back and forth with them. The primary fandoms were Real Ghostbusters, DuckTales, and Thundercats. This was long before mainstream internet (1988 or so) and it was loads of fun. We kept this up throughout high school, although we never admitted this to anyone else, because back then, this would have been considered super geeky. It was awkward enough to be in your teens and admit to watching something like DuckTales or Ghostbusters, much less write stories about them.

However, as far as real "fic" goes, that didn't come for me until the late '90s, after college. My stories in the '80s were laughable. Not only were they out of character, but because it was just for fun, I didn't bother with punctuation or prose or anything important to make it readable. Rather than deal with dialogue tags, I just assigned each character his or her own pen or marker color, and what was written in that was what they said. Necessary narrative or action description was done in pencil, in parentheses. Talk about bad fic writing! Oh, I'm so glad the internet did not exist back then.

The first fandom I wrote and posted stories online for was Thundercats. When I discovered online fandom in 1997, I searched a number of my favorite shows, new and old. Ghostbusters, Darkwing Duck, Thundercats, Voltron, Jem, Forever Knight, and X-Files. Thundercats was what stuck with me, though, because the websites and fandom at the time were so much fun. The Ghostbusters fandom came off as too pretentious and serious, X-Files and Forever Knight were too big and intimidating, and while I dabbled in Jem, there were individuals that took things as way too serious business, and it turned me off to writing or participating. I lurked on some Darkwing Duck and Voltron websites for a while, but eventually, the fun of Thundercats pulled me in to that full time.

The Thundercats fandom of the late '90s was awesome. People posted funny stuff, there were tons of creative and awesome websites. Yeah, they were ugly HTML with no features by today's standards, but nobody was snobby about it back then, aside from a few, who were pretty much laughed off by the majority of the fandom as being too high on themselves. I don't know how many of you reading this still remember things like WileyKitt's Funkyass Homepage, JackalMann's Castle Plundarr, BlindLynxo's Page, Cassio2X's page, Lefty's Thundercat House, and various AOL and Geocities homepages people put up, but they were awesomesauce. I joined in the fun with my own site, and now it and Mumm-Ra's Pyramid are pretty much the only remaining pages of that type still on the internet from back in that day.

Most of you reading this probably don't know that I wrote a series of Thundercats fanfics before I braved submitting any to archives. That's because I never posted those, and I'm very glad of that. They had a Sue in them that burned. (A child of Alluro and Cheetara born from a one night stand where he hypnotized her for kicks. This character had all sorts of powers, and the OOC in general in them just was... bad, to put it mildly. Trust me.) The first fic I was proud of enough to post was Running Amok, my Thundercats/X-Files humor crossover in which an experimental device created a dimensional gap that brought the Lunatacs into the real world to cause mayhem, the Thundercats came out to stop them, and Mulder and Scully had to deal with the total WTF-ery of a cartoon coming alive. I had a blast writing it, and it was well-received. I first posted that story on Lady Silver's long-gone archive in the fall of 1997, and in 2000 I revised it to fix and expand some scenes. That's the version online today.

Not long after that I posted some "Weird Stories," a genre of anything-goes, OOC just-for-the-lulz type stories that was quite popular in the fandom at the time, and the first few fics of what became my main continuity for the Thundercats fandom. And the rest, as the saying goes, is history.

Thirty Days - The Beginning of a Post Series

Since it seems I need a good kick in the pants to update this with any sort of regularity, I thought I'd start with a post series that my friend JayLee did and posted during the month of November.

I didn't pick a specific month to start. I just decided to start now. These are the questions I'm going to tackle a day at a time for the next thirty days. As I complete them, I'll link them up to the corresponding entry.

Day 1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

Day 2 – Name the fandoms you’ve written in, and how much you’ve written in that fandom, and if you still write in it.

Day 3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Day 4 – Do you have a “muse” character, that speaks to you more than others, or that tries to push their way in, even when the story isn’t about them? Who are they, and why did that character became your muse?

Day 5 – If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a story, whether your “muse” or not, what did you do about it?

Day 6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

Day 7 – Have you ever had a story change your opinion of a character?

Day 8 – Do you write OCs? And if so, what do you do to make certain they’re not Mary Sues, and if not, explain your thoughts on OCs.

Day 9 – Pairings – For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?

Day 10 – Pairings – Have you ever gone outside your comfort zone and written a pairing you liked, but found you couldn’t write, or a pairing you didn’t like, and found you could?

Day 11 – Genre – do you prefer certain genres of fic when you’re writing? What kind do you tend to write most?

Day 12 – Have you ever attempted an “adaptation” story of a favorite book or movie but set in a different fandom?

Day 13 – Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

Day 14 – Ratings – how high are you comfortable with going? Have you ever written higher? If you’re comfortable with NC-17, have you ever been shocked by finding that the story you’re writing is G-rated instead?

Day 15 – Warnings – What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what’s the strangest thing you’ve warned for in a story?

Day 16 – Summaries – Do you like them or hate them? How do you come up with them, if you use them?

Day 17 – Titles – Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the story? Also, if you do chaptered story, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

Day 18 – Where do you get the most inspiration for your stories (aka “bunnies”) from?

Day 19 – When you have bunnies ideas, do you sit down and start writing right away, or do you write down the idea for further use?

Day 20 – Do you ever get bunnied inspired from other people’s stories or art in the same fandom?

Day 21 – Sequels – Have you ever written a sequel to a story you wrote, and if so, why, and if not, how do you feel about sequels?

Day 22 – Have you ever participated in a fest or a Big Bang? If so, write about your favorite experience in relation to one. If not, are there any you’ve thought about doing? And if not, why not?

Day 23 – When you post, where do you post to? Just your journal? Just an archive? Your own personal site?

Day 24 – Betaing – How many betas do you like to use to make sure there aren’t any major flaws in your story? Do you have a Beta horror story or dream story?

Day 25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain “mood” to write your story? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

Day 26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you’ve had to research for a story?

Day 27 – Where is your favorite place to write, and do you write by hand or on the computer?

Day 28 – Have you ever collaborated with anyone else, whether writing together, or having an artist work on a piece about your story?

Day 29 – What is your current project or projects?

Day 30 – Do you have a favorite story you’ve written? What makes it your favorite?

What's new in fic-land?

You may be thinking, "not much," if you've been watching my fic accounts and my site. That's not entirely accurate, though. Thanks to the revival of Thundercats on Cartoon Network (if you haven't watched the new series, you should check it out!) I've been back in Thundercats fandom mode lately. I've reviewed all of what I've written of Path Into the Darkness, and am determined to dust it off and spruce it up once more. I still feel very strongly about that story and the plotline, and I think once I can bring the last-touched-in-2003 writing up to my current standard, it'll be something I'm happy with and possibly finish! (But oh, the adverbs and epithets. I used to love them way too much. Forgive me, oh muse of writing, for I have sinned!)

As if to reinforce my resolve on this, my old notes resurfaced out of the blue (well, out of an old box, anyway) recently as well. I even found the fic-verse astrology-like system I devised for this universe back in the day. While some of it was outlined in the story, I had more detailed notes, specifying what birth hour most of the main characters were born on. Most of those were never mentioned in the fic because it wasn't relevant, but it was important to me as I write to keep it in the back of my head while doing so.

On a different note, my friend Snark showed me that my Darkwing Duck story Origins of the Friendly Four was recommended on TV Tropes. I'm so flattered when I find out stuff like this, and it makes me happy to know that people enjoy my work enough to recommend it. They do have a point about it looking like dead fic at this point, though. It has been some time since I updated it. I need to get back to that. It just wouldn't be fair to leave readers wondering what happened at Negaverse Elmo's version of "Clash Reunion" when Negaduck makes his first appearance!

What's this? An update? (Contains some spoilers.)

Hello, readers of my poor, neglected fic blog! I haven't updated this much lately because I haven't made much progress on my writing projects. I've been distracted with other things.

But, with new shows for two of my fandoms out or coming out, my urge to write has come back hard. My husband is a big fan of audio books, and he convinced me to start encoding my stories as mp3s with Text Aloud. It's a nice program. I've had to create a massive pronunciation dictionary to fix some of it's quirky pronunciation of fandom names, but the more I use it, the more I like it. Not only does it save time reading at the computer, but hearing your stuff narrated is a great way of proofreading. Typos and repetitious wording become very obvious when you're listening to it.

As far as specific fic projects go, my husband has been urging me to pick up my Thundercats stories again. He and I are both pretty excited about the new series coming out (June 29 on Cartoon Network!) and it's made me take a look at the stories I last tinkered with circa 2008, before I got drawn into the Darkwing Duck fandom. He's rallying for me to finish my epic-length, started-in-1998-and-still-unfinished Path Into the Darkness. It's tempting.

Alternately, reading the A Song of Ice and Fire books keeps inspiring me for Voltron and my Chronicles of a Dark Planet series. The new Voltron Force show doesn't have much for the Doom fan, but it does have a few elements that get me thinking about the Voltron universe and what fun could be done with it in fanfic. I love their take on Hunk's character. They've made him a lot more like I picture him outside of the shallower, more stereotyped way he was portrayed in the original. So far "The Hunkyard" is my favorite episode. I'd also like to write in a believable backstory for Larmina to explain why only-child, unmarried Allura suddenly has a niece. It might also be fun to try to write Larmina without having her be as over the top canon Sue-ish as she is in the Voltron Force show.

But then there are also my Darkwing Duck projects! I have so much I'd like to do in the fic-verse that Tension Convention kicks off. I want to write out romantic drama coming up in Drake and Morgana's relationship, and get to their eventual wedding. (Yeah, if you don't like that pairing, you probably won't like my fics. I won't be breaking them up or blipping Morgana off to oblivion. Bad comics! Bad!) I want to write out the storyline I have planned where Camille is a main villain, because she's too awesome to just be a one-shot character. I want to see Brooke Flood become a Muddlefoot, and play around more with Liquidator's estranged children and his ex. I want to continue on where the Fearsome Four left off. I want to write Loopy as Darkwing's temporary sidekick driving him up a wall while Launchpad is off duty healing up (and getting to know Heather better), and I really can't wait to write out some of the fallout from that. Neither Darkwing nor Bushroot will like their relationship one bit.

So, yes, my mind is reeling with too much that I want to write and instead of actually doing it, I'm just babbling about it in my blog. And on that note, I ought to end this entry and go open a word file now and see if I can get anywhere.

Tangentially related to my fic...

After several days of working on it, I finally finished doing a makeover of Cheezey's Thundercats Zone. The whole site now has a uniform look, and I fixed and spruced up several sections in the process.

Content-wise, not much has changed, but I think it looks a lot nicer. I found and fixed some broken image links and 404s, mostly in old sections like The Third Earth Inquirer that I'm pretty sure got borked back when I had to do a last minute domain move in 2005. I'm just glad that I'm as much of a pack rat with my data as I am with my stuff, because if it wasn't for a few ancient full copies of my site in old backup folders, I'd have never found a few of those lost old images. It's funny; back in 1998 and earlier, before I had a capture card, I actually used an old digital camera, and before that, a film camera on the TV to get images, and they look so bad and cheesy now, as does the intentionally rough photo editing. I think it actually works for the Inquirer, though, because it really adds to that campy bad tabloid feel, which is what I wanted it to have.

I did add a few new captions and update the links page, though. No updates to the fanfic archive except for some updates to my rating system and to change the look. I swear, the old background graphic did not used to be blinding! I'd like to blame HD and its better contrast and resolution in monitors than think it's just that I'm getting old and my eyes are getting bad. Then again, I did start wearing reading glasses in 2007, so perhaps that's just wishful thinking!

I also did some updating to Cossack the Terrible's Tour of Planet Doom. That didn't need nearly as much work as the Thundercats site, but it took me the better part of an afternoon. TheLast Greenhouse on the Left also got a tiny update, which was basically to fix up the links page and toss up a link to my forums.

My site's forums The Lair of Cheeze now have sections for all three fan sites (despite the URL, which is for the old Thundercat Zone board, which can't be changed without deleting the board and all the old posts on it), though, and each fandom has its own fan fiction and fan art sub-forum, so feel free to head there and start posting. I'd love for it to become active again!

All of this webmastering and looking at old pages on my site has made me enthused about all three fandoms' plotlines I have or had at one point in the works. Ah, time, there just isn't enough of it...

Fic Status

Looks like that "vacation" into playing Sims 3 and Sims Medieval was pretty long. It's been a while since I updated this blog, and even longer since I posted any new fic updates.

Contrary to what it might seem, I haven't forgotten about my stories! Lately I've been pretty inspired, although with all the catch-up I've been doing in various corners of the fandom, I haven't had any time to actually write.

Most of you who read this also follow me on DA, so you've probably already seen my poll there asking what fic of mine you'd like to see more of. If not, here's a link: Take my poll, please! I have a rule that I only work on what I'm feeling inspired by anyway (I feel that my uninspired writing always reads as forced and not very good), but I am curious as to what my readers are most interested in seeing.

I've also cut back on the roleplay stuff I've been doing in the Darkwing Duck fandom to free up the time and creative energy. Formspring has left me feeling "meh" for quite some time, and now I only bother to even check it once a day, if that. I even gave one of my characters to someone else a while back.

To get the creative juices flowing I'm going to be doing some re-reading and maybe editing. Hopefully some music will help, too.

Things I learned from writing fanfiction

Although this blog is primarily about my fanfiction, I'm going to use this entry as the first of several that will talk about the writing process. I don't mean things like characterization or plot-building here, but rather the mechanics and flow of prose. Over the years I've learned and improved quite a bit in that area, so I thought I'd share some of what I feel I've gotten better at. I'd be curious as to what experiences my readers have in this vein as well, so feel free to comment with your thoughts!

First off, before I continue: I am not pointing fingers at any author in particular. What I talk about in these kinds of entries are things I've been guilty of myself, mistakes I've learned from, and that I'm in the habit of trying to break. If something I say here hits home or makes you feel like, "Is she talking about me?" please don't take it that way. Nobody's perfect, after all!

Today's topic: Epithets. They can be a useful tool in writing, but as many of us who read a lot of fanfiction know, they also make for clunky, awkward, and purple prose when overused. While sometimes they do help with description, when I'm in the middle of reading a scene between Darkwing and Launchpad, more likely than not I'm going to cringe when I read, "The purple-clad mallard said to the taller duck, 'Let's get dangerous, LP!'"

Unless there are specific plot points in the sentences around something like that focusing on why we need to be reminded that Darkwing is wearing purple and is a mallard, or that Launchpad is taller than him, this is unnecessary description that bogs down your prose. The reader already knows these things about the characters. Most of the time in a case like this, using pronouns or the characters' names would be better.

I think a lot of writers overuse epithets because someone emphasized to them that they shouldn't be repetitive or that just using pronouns and/or names is boring. Well, I'll throw out this opinion. I'd rather see a ton of pronouns than a bunch of epithets used in the name of creativity. If you want to call Bushroot "the plant-duck" while he's in the middle of growing a vine to smack Darkwing upside the head, okay, fine. That's one of those times where the epithet matches the action and the scene. But if you want to call Liquidator "the water dog" while he's just chit-chatting to his dancing girls and not even using his powers or dripping on their feet, odds are, it's not necessary to remind the reader or them that he's a dog turned into an animated pool of water. They know it and he knows it. Just use his name or "he," please.

Another peeve. This one is personal taste, and I'll admit, it's not one I've been guilty of with Quackerjack myself. I'm going to mention it anyway, though. "The jester." I have an irrationally intense dislike of this epithet for him. Unless it's in a fic about when Quackerjack went back in time to serve in King Herbeth's (Was that his name? I forget. :P) court, please don't call Quackerjack a jester. Not only is it a distracting epithet, but it's inaccurate. Say his clothes are jester-styled or jester-like. Say he did something in jest. If you must use an epithet, call him "the toymaker," "the former toymaker," "the Whiffle Boy-hating villain," or even "the duck in the jester outfit" but please, please, don't call him the jester. I know, I know. It's in Darkwing Duck fanfiction everywhere, including fic by some very popular and otherwise awesome authors. Everyone does it. It's not enough to make me stop reading or dislike an otherwise good fic, but it will make me gnash my teeth.

While we're at it, Darkwing Duck fic could also do with fewer "electric rat" Megavolts (which inevitably bring to mind the association of the "Electric Slide") and "botanist" Bushroots as well. Granted, both are technically correct, but as I said above, there's a time and a place for those epithets. Unless Megavolt's shocking someone who doesn't know his name or Bushroot is in the midst of giving a lecture on plant biology, it's probably not necessary to refer to them that way most of the time.

So with all of that said, I'm not saying to never use epithets. My own writing has them in it. You should see (or rather, you probably shouldn't, hah!) the amount of epithets that make it into my first drafts. They seem like they flow well or are necessary for the description at the time I type them out. In the editing process, though, I stop and think at every one I've written, "Is it really necessary, or would a pronoun or the character's name flow just as well?" More often than not, it does, and the epithet gets the delete and replace.

Progress!

I finally dusted off the file and edited that drafted third chapter of Forget Me Not today. It needs to go through another proofread tomorrow and then, ideally, it'll be good to go for posting!

I also cracked open the files for a couple of other works in progress I have going.  I didn't add to them, but I did re-read some of them to get back into the groove.  Listening to my playlists also helps.

Speaking of which... this particular song makes me think so much of my Forget Me Not storyline.  "Stay" by Oingo Boingo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlOPHPj4vc0 (Yes, I know that this is not the first Oingo Boingo song I have associated with Bushroot. I'm sure some of you have seen my Weird Science video featuring Bushroot.)

Reading, Reviewing, and Lurking

I was thinking about this the other day and thought that this blog might be a good place to talk about it, since it's directly fanfic-related.  More than once, especially in the Darkwing Duck fandom, I've been surprised to find that my fics are being read and enjoyed by as many people as they are.  I had a bit of that in the Voltron fandom, too, actually.

In the latter, I would hardly get any reviews. I know that was in part because of the subject matter (I wrote for a less popular pairing and even more unpopular fringe bad guy characters, and didn't write the pairing that appealed to 90% of the fandom) and in part because I would wait until a fic was complete and then post all of it at once.  Apparently people don't want to gamble on a 30,000 word fic that's brand new and read it all at once.  And here I'd adopted that policy for that fandom because I remember getting heat for not completing WIPs back in the Thundercats fandom!  You can't please everyone is the lesson there, I guess.

Anyway, when I got into the Darkwing Duck fandom, I went back with posting WIPs.  Not only did I get way more reviews and readers, I also had the benefit of not having to wait so long for feedback.  Feedback along the way really does help motivate me.

So since Darkwing Duck is the fandom where I've gotten the most reviews and active amount of feedback (aside from way back in the early days of the Thundercats fandom, but I don't count that because all of fandom culture was so different back then, with no fanfiction.net and all fics on fan sites and mailing lists) I'm not complaining about a lack of reviews.  The feedback I'm getting here is the most I've gotten in any fandom, and for that I'm quite grateful!

That said, I still never thought all that many people read my fanfic and every time someone who's never left me a single review makes a reference to me as a good writer or something from my stories that they liked, either on a message board post, comment on DA, or PM or something, and it floors me, because they never left me a single review.

I'm one of those people that never assumes that a given fandom population has read my stuff.  Perhaps it comes from writing fringe or less popular characters in other fandoms for so long. (In Thundercats as well as Voltron, my favorite subjects to write about were not the most popular characters.)  Do most authors tend to assume that people have read their stuff and just not commented?  Me, I tend to think if they didn't comment they either A) Didn't read it or B) Had nothing particularly nice to say about it so they didn't bother to review.  And let's face it, my ego would rather believe it's A anyway. ;)

I suppose that's because when I read stories, I try to leave a review if I liked it in any way.  Reviews are like little gold nuggets to authors.  I've yet to meet any that don't like getting them, aside from those whackadoo entitled folks you see posting on places like fanficrants where they bitch about how the reviews of "I liked it" or with netspeak are insulting to them and they'd rather not have them. Or reviews that are just spam or something, of course.

However, I generally don't leave bad reviews.  I've left a couple of critical ones in my time, but they were when something was just so terrible that I had to speak up.  On the rare occasion that I do leave something negative, I try to be polite and constructive about it.  More often than not, though, I'd rather not bother, because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or get a knee-jerk "you suck" flame response back.

So with this in mind, it always comes as a surprise to me when someone mentions how much they liked my story/stories if they've never left me a review.  Do any of you get feelings like this?  Or if you are one of those people who tends not to review stories, even ones you enjoy, what are your reasons for it?  I'm curious.

Yikes! So much for frequent updates!

My writing projects kind of fell into limbo as of late.  I blame Sims 3. See, I get into these phases where I play that game nonstop until I accomplish whatever goal I have in mind for it and pretty much let most of my other projects fall by the wayside until I get it out of my system.  Twice it's thwarted me during NaNoWriMo, and last year it even prevented me from winning it.  My goal for NaNo last November was to write Going Loopy, my sequel to Tension Convention.

Instead I got about 5k words done and gave up in favor of partying with my Sims on the Late Night expansion.

I miss that storyline, though.  Coldwin and I were talking about fic and our stories while we were out yesterday for Valentine's Day, and I felt a bit sad for how long it's been since I've worked on that storyline.  Not to mention in a totally different fic storyline, I have a third chapter of Forget Me Not sitting on my hard drive waiting to be edited, polished, and posted.

I think I need to listen to a few of my playlists and get the creative juices flowing again.  I really want to work on my stuff.

As promised, the OC of the day!

I said I'd start this up again, and so far, I'm keeping my word.

Since I had the fewest of Thundercats characters, I decided to feature one of them this time.

Kalin
Project Name: Thundercats OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 23
Inspiration: She was a character I came up with while plotting out my Thundercats story Path into the Darkness.  I created a fan-race of Lunatacs called hunters, who are native to the Third Moon jungles and have the pale whitish skin like the brute types (Amok), but have lean and toned bodies with the speed and agility of a predator.  Almost all of them have forest green hair, mostly because their racial culture is extremely exclusionary and thus, inbred.  Kalin herself was created as Grune’s love interest who helps to tempt him to the darker side of life at the prompting of her employer, Luna, who she worked for as an assassin at the time.
Fun Facts: Kalin chose to live amongst the general urban Lunatac society because of a natural curiosity rather than a desire to turn her back on the hunters’ more primitive lifestyle.  She considers living amongst the city-dwellers a personal challenge and a way to hone her skills.  She doesn’t exactly like Luna, but she does respect her, and prefers her company over that of the other Lunatacs in the group.
Picture: This is a picture of Kalin that Mittens/Fluffy drew of her and Grune back in 2000.  Just to warn you, it has non-erotic frontal female nudity. Link

OC a day meme

Back in April of 2010 I was doing an "Original Character a Day" meme on LiveJournal in which you were supposed to post a short bio of one of your original or fancharacters every day until you ran out (or ran out of steam).  Having written fics in three different fandoms for years, I had plenty of fodder for this.  Granted, these are not all "star of the story" type OCs.  That's not to say I didn't have my Mary Sue moments in my early writing days... I cringe when I think about the very first writings in which I featured Snoelle before the rewrites!  I do, however, add in a lot of supporting or background characters to flesh things out in my stories.  There isn't always a named canon character available to fill a role that's needed, you know?

Well, I got exactly 13 profiles posted before I stopped updating it.  Today it occurred to me that this blog would probably be a good place to post those, and maybe start it up again.  Perhaps not every day, but from time to time it might be nice to introduce my readers to some of my characters, especially ones who don't get a lot of text-time because the plot just doesn't call for it.

However, my LiveJournal has since been made friends-only, so I can't link you to those posts. Therefore, I decided to post the 13 profiles I did back then, and starting tomorrow, post a new one.  Don't worry, they're not that long, otherwise only the most dedicated would get more than a few done on schedule!

So without further ado... here we go!  This spans all three of my writing fandoms: Darkwing Duck, Voltron, and Thundercats.  I'll post the OCs in that order.

Darkwing Duck Fancharacters:

Heather Bushroot

Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfic.
Age of Conception: I was 33 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Since I became intrigued with Bushroot's character I imagined what his family must be like and think of his mutation and criminal lifestyle since he was portrayed as this shy and introverted scientist who didn't seem like the type who would hurt anyone. I thought of him coming from a typical suburbia middle-class family with a fairly normal dynamic. Heather is the sibling I came up with for him. She is a bit like Reginald in some ways, although quite different in others.
Fun Facts: When they were younger, Reggie and Heather's parents often held Reggie up as the "good example" that she should follow because he always got better grades and was a very good student, and never got into trouble. Heather was not a bad kid, but she was more extroverted and tended to get in trouble for talking to friends or passing notes in class or putting off homework until the last minute so her grades weren't quite as good. Eventually she became a nurse because she genuinely likes to help others. She is also not into plants like Reggie or their mother, and doesn't keep any plants around except an aloe plant in her kitchen. Oh, and she's also rather clumsy. When I made a sim of her, that was one of the traits I assigned her, actually.
Picture: Here is a sketch-dump of Heather in a few different poses, and here is a lovely picture of her and Launchpad drawn by Darkwingpsycho.

Eddie Flood
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfiction. First appeared in Tension Convention.
Age of Conception: I was 33 when I first came up with this character.
Inspiration: I liked the idea of Liquidator having once had a family as Bud Flood and having had a couple of kids with his ex: one the typical clean-cut, good-grades kid type, and the other a rambunctious troublemaker. Eddie is the latter.
Fun Facts: After getting over his initial anger at his father for faking his death to assume the identity of Liquidator, Eddie thinks the idea that his dad is a super-villain is rather cool and exciting. Eddie thinks of himself as a tough badass and thinks it'd be awesome to have super-powers like his father. He's also an ace Whiffle Boy player, and not a bad shot with a laser weapon as a result of it.
Picture: This is my most recent finished attempt at drawing Eddie. 

Rill Flood
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: I wanted one of Liquidator's two sons to be a good and upstanding kid despite the personality flaws in his parents, and to be markedly different from his younger trouble-making brother.
Fun Facts: Rill has the good qualities of his father, such as his ambition and drive to succeed in life, but he would never intentionally cheat or take unfair advantage of anyone to get there. He does very well in school and loves to debate, and intends to join a pre-law program when he graduates high school and goes to college.
Picture: A picture I drew of Rill in 2009 is here.

Brooke Flood
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: I liked the idea of Liquidator having once had a family as Bud Flood, and an ex-wife that's just as bitchy and vindictive as Liqui is greedy and sleazy.
Fun Facts: Brooke and Bud had a pretty good relationship in the early years of their marriage, but over time they drifted apart, especially once the kids were born and Brooke stayed at home with them while Bud built up his business. Brooke is a snob and loves the finer things in life, which Bud's earnings from the Flood Water Company could well afford.  Small resentments and bickering built up between them over the years, utterly destroying their relationship, especially once he started cheating on her and she began acting in spiteful ways to hurt him back, like buying very expensive things without discussing it with him. When they divorced, she went for his jugular financially and secured a hefty portion of his assets as well as fat alimony and child support checks so she could continue to live in style and not have to work.
Picture: This is a drawing I made of her in 2009.

Brant Strongbill
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, originally created for the story Tension Convention.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: He was inspired by various actors of action and comic-based movies. He's built like Arnold Schwarzenegger but has more of the looks and charismatic appeal of someone like Robert Downey Jr. in his Iron Man role or Hugh Jackman as Wolverine.
Fun Facts: Brant really isn't a bad actor, although some of the movies he's been in are extremely cheesy with corny dialogue so he's been kind of typecast. Quackerjack believes he actually is Whiffle Boy, and nothing including the facts will change that.
Picture:  I haven’t drawn Brant yet.

Luna Darkfeather
Project Name: Darkwing Duck fandom OC, originally created for the story Tension Convention.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: Since celebrities often have famous girlfriends/boyfriends, I made Brant's girlfriend a supermodel.
Fun Facts: Luna's actually a very sweet individual, not arrogant or conceited like some are because of celebrity status. She is, however, wrapped up in the lifestyle and the attention she gets from the paparazzi, so it does make her rather self-oriented and oblivious.
Picture:  I drew this picture of Luna last year.  I’m not happy with a lot of it (due to improvements in my drawing ability) so I may try her again sometime, but that’s a general idea of how she looks.

Ally Quackland
Project Name: Darkwing Duck OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 34 - She came about while I was plotting my nano fic for November of 2009.
Inspiration: In order to work out plot for Nega-Quackerjack's origin, I had to work out the details of my take on normal-verse Quackerjack's origin, including individuals from his past. Ally is one such character, as his longest-term employee and head of advertising of Quackerjack Toys at the time the company went belly up.
Fun Facts: Quackerjack and Ally were fast friends in both 'verses, with a bit of one-sided attraction on Ally's side. One version of Ally betrays his trust while the other is a voice of reason that Quackerjack almost, but not quite, listens to. You'll have to read Nega-Quackerjack's part of my Origins fic, when I get to posting that part, to find out which is which.
Picture: No pictures of Ally, I'm afraid. She's a fairly plain-looking white-feathered duck with strawberry blonde hair and is a few years younger than Quackerjack. In the Negaverse she dresses in bright, attention-getting colors with lots of makeup that's bold and sparkly, and her hair is worn down in two long curls down like the girl on the far right in this picture. (Yes, it's a link to a hairstyle from Sims 3, lol). Her regular-verse self, who will eventually show up in a story that takes place sometime after Tension Convention, dresses in more classic colors and designs in a business casual kind of style. She wears her hair pulled back in a hairband.

Dr. Warbrin Aveshine
Project Name: Darkwing Duck OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: 33
Inspiration: I first came up with Warbrin when I started writing Forget Me Not. He's a scientist that works with and shares office space with Rhoda in present, post-Bushroot-going-postal-on-his-co-workers time. Certain aspects of his character were inspired by some individuals I worked with in my time as a lab slave.
Fun Facts: Warbrin's fashion sense is worse than most, and he thinks things like day-glo shorts are just fine to wear under his lab coat. He also shoots his mouth off without thinking, but he's not a bad or mean guy, just tactless and blunt. He fails at office politics almost as badly as he does at fashion, and falls asleep in meetings, but Rhoda and him get along fairly well. The students generally like him because he has a great sense of humor. He knew Bushroot on an acquaintance level as a fellow researcher, but never worked with him directly before his dramatic exit from his career.
Picture: No pic for Warbrin, either. He's a duck, taller than average, on the thin side with skinny-stick legs even for a duck. His bill is on the large side, which many say fit him, and he has light brown hair prone to a helmet-head look even though he rarely wears a hat.


Voltron Fancharacters:

Lady Kuryaki

Project Name: Voltron fandom OC, used in fanfiction. First appeared in Happy Ever After.
Age of Conception: I was 29 when I first came up with this character.
Inspiration: She is one of the many Doomite nobles I came up with to flesh out the planet Doom side of the Voltron universe in my fics. She's Yurak's mother, and very bitter about his death at the hands of Voltron.
Fun Facts: Kuryaki has the unique position of being the only woman on Doom to have two fleet commanders in her immediate family: her deceased son Yurak, and Cossack, who she married through a mutual agreement contract with his parents, my OCs Lord Tadack and Lady Visycka.
Picture: This picture of her sitting by Yurak's grave marker was done for me by Moira several years ago. I also made this avatar of her on Second Life a few years ago. 

Lord Tadack
Project Name: Voltron fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: I was 29 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Since the series is a blank slate in regards to Cossack's background and history, I decided to make him come from a noble family on Doom, since I imagine that fleet commanders are generally chosen from the higher echelons of society in a setting like theirs. Cossack is kind of laid back though, and I decided that his family, while noble, was not terribly military like I wrote Yurak's. House Aldar'ach (my name for them) made their fortune in the small niche of agriculture on a cloudy desolate planet like Doom... they grow "grapes of Doom" (referred to in one of the eps) owning much of the farmable land on Doom, and own the largest winery business. With how Lotor goes through the stuff, you know that's profitable. Tadack himself is a lot like Cossack in demeanor, and dear old Dad is who Cossack inherited his sense of humor from.
Fun Facts: The Aldar'ach family has a secret recipe for a peach wine with potent aphrodisiac qualities, but they don't market it and only the head of the house knows the recipe at any given time, because it's such a valuable thing to use for bribes and other purposes, basically being a lust potion. All of the Aldar'ach clan knows of it, but only Tadack knows how to make it, and he will pass down the recipe to the heir (Cossack's sister Sulestri, since Cossack married into a different house) when he gets old and near death.
Picture: I made an avatar of him on Second Life a while back. The pic was taken in a tiki bar I had on the property I owned, which is kind of fitting for him.

Lady Visycka
Project Name: Voltron fandom OC, used in fanfiction.
Age of Conception: I was 29 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Lady Visycka is Cossack's mother and Tadack's wife. I wanted her to have a bit more social smoothness than Cossack or her husband, but still be a bit of a personality. She's a first class schmoozer and rather shrewd despite being a heavy drinker.
Fun Facts: While Tadack is good with running the winery and overseeing operations, Visycka is the socialite and the deal-maker. She's got a very good mind for numbers and a knack for brokering good deals, from everything to the winery business to her children's marriage contracts. When she and Tadack were first arranged to be married, she couldn't stand him. She still finds him annoying at times, but because she can tolerate his crude sense of humor with a buzz, she just drinks a lot, even for a Doomite. After over thirty years of marriage she loves Tadack, but he does drive her nuts. Oh, and Cossack's unruly hair was inherited from her side.
Picture: Here is an avatar I made of her on Second Life several years ago.

Thundercats Fancharacters:

Torlei

Project Name: Thundercats fandom OC, primarily used in fanfic. She was first seen in my story Evil's Bride.
Age of Conception: Let's see, I have to do math for this. The first draft of that was written in the fall of 1997, so I guess that means I was 22. Holy crap, I've been posting fanfic online for a long time!
Inspiration: I love pairing up characters in dysfunctional or crazy relationships, so I wanted to pair Mumm-Ra the Ever-Living off to an equally vicious bitch. Since I also was really into the Lunatacs and had the notion of Alluro once having had a sister who could do telekinetics, it connected in my brain that it'd make for some wacky drama to make it be Alluro's sister who was the undead nightmare.
Fun Facts: When I was writing Path Into the Darkness I had a lot of sub-arcs that didn't focus on WilyKit or Grune, the main characters. Mumm-Ra and Torlei, the unhappy undead couple, were also stirring the pot, and bits of Torlei's past were revealed in the midst of it. I decided to make one of the things that made her such a cold and spiteful individual be that as a teenager she was caught by a deranged hunter Lunatac (a Lunatac race I created for my universe), raped, and forced to bear his child, which she then abandoned to the hunter clan. I didn't write this to make her seem sympathetic (because really, there's nothing that could excuse the horrible things she did and tried), but to show why she was such a bitter and twisted bitch to begin with, and why her brother Alluro was the only individual she was at all vulnerable toward. The hate and weakness she felt was what led her to seek the knowledge of black magic and sell her soul to the service of the Ancient Spirits of Evil. She wanted to be so powerful that she could crush and destroy anything at will, because the thing she fears most is anything being able to do that to her.

A good artistic rendition of her can be found here on my site. This was drawn by request for me years ago by an artist in the fandom who went by the name of Mittens/Fluffy.

Snoelle
Project Name: Thundercats fandom OC, used in fanfiction. She first appeared in Revival.
Age of Conception: I was 22 when I came up with this character.
Inspiration: Snow leopards were one of the cat types not represented among the canon characters, so I thought a snow leopard character made a good choice to add to the crew. I also thought Panthro needed a love interest, but none of the canon characters seemed a good fit for it, so I created one for him.
Fun Facts: Snoelle isn't the first snow leopard character I came up with. Way back when I was a kid and wrote stories about the cartoons I liked, long before the internet or ever hearing the term "fanfiction,” my friend Jenny and I made up two twin snow leopard kids to be the friends and eventual boyfriend/girlfriend to the Thunderkittens. The boy was Sno-Lee and the girl was Snolei. When I got around to planning and writing Revival many years later, I remembered those characters but even though I didn't know what a Mary Sue was, I knew that they were way too silly and contrived to use in a serious fic. Plus "Snolei" was too close in name to another OC of mine, Torlei, so I didn't want to recycle the name. I named my snow leopard Thundercat Snoelle because it sounded more regal and fitting with her background as a snow leopard Thundercat noble from the generation she was born in, the ruler that preceded Lord Claudus.
Picture: I tried to draw Snoelle back in the day, but it's really embarrassing to me now, so I'm not going to link to it. Instead I'll link you to the picture Lady Bast drew for me of Snoelle and Panthro back in 1998.

Citrus Taste Progress

I mentioned in my last post that I should think about my progress on the Citrus Taste challenge.  It has fifty prompts and I've only done a handful.  Here's a reference list, including the ones that are completed.  The struck out ones are ones that I've finished with the title of the finished fic and the pairing(s) involved next to them.

1. One Wild Night Mutants on the Prowl (Liquidator/Bushroot/Camille)
2. I'm the King/Queen of the Sheets
3. Vampire Loving
4. All About the Games You Play Tag (Megavolt/Quackerjack)
5. Blanket Hog
6. Reenacting My Favorite Fantasy
7. Romantic Night
8. A Little Quickie Behind the Doors Door Number One (Bushroot/Liquidator)
9. No More Teasing, Baby
10. Come to Me
11. Jezebel
12. To Live Without, is Death
13. Nice and Rough, Or Gentle and Tender
14. Play House
15. Switching Roles
16. Can't Stop Watching You
17. When the Lights Go Out, the Lovers Play
18. Shake That Thing
19. Impatient Nympho
20. No Humor In My Tone
21. Phone Fun
22. Intoxicated With Your Taste
23. Dreams Do Come True When I Think Of You
24. My Fairytale
25. One More Time Sanctuary (Negaduck/Malicia)
26. There's wicked thoughts behind your eyes
27. Under the Roses
28. Memories of Love Your Wildest Dreams (Bushroot/Rhoda)
29. The sound of your breath on my cheek
30. Until There's Nothing Left of Us
31. Last Chance
32. You won't be turned away
33. To Touch the Devil
34. Virtue was not convenient
35. The Back of Your Hand
36. Graceful ends
37. Do you ever think you'd rather be with me instead?
38. You Got Lucky
39. He always smiles
40. Only to deceive your senses
41. Because it is my name.
42. It's a way of expressing our humanity
43. I'm the whore of Babylon
44. The Chase is On
45. Silken Threads of Fate
46. A whisper, sacred & profound
47. So I could find God between your legs tonight.
48. Meet Me in the Back
49. Think of all the things your hands could make
50. Wildcard!

The last finished fic I posted for this challenge was in the fall of 2009, so I'm really behind.  It probably seems like an abandoned project, but there really are more I'd like to do.  I have some others started, but I either didn't like how they were progressing, or ran out of steam with the idea.

For instance, I have about 670 words written for prompt #33, "To Touch the Devil," as a Lotor/Allura Voltron fic.  The premise was that Allura was captured by Lotor, and he's trying to seduce her.  She's not having it, of course, being that he's an evil bastard, even if he is a handsome one.  (Yeah, DWD fans, Bushroot/Rhoda isn't my only bad-boy/good-girl pairing of choice.  Except Lotor and Allura are even more on opposite ends of the spectrum since Lotor is anything but misunderstood.)

I also have well over 3000 words inspired by prompt #31, "Last Chance," but I was hoping to write an angsty Bushroot/Darkwing fic (mostly to see if I could write that pairing at all with all of its inherent challenges) and instead it came out as angsty gen.  There's no sexual vibe at all; at best it's working toward an uneasy friendship.  Sadly, I like what I have of this fic, but I can't rightly call it a Citrus Taste story because even if the prompt did inspire it, the whole point of Citrus Taste is sexy fic.  Not gen.

For prompt #13, "Nice and Rough, Or Gentle and Tender," I have the start of a Bushroot/Liquidator scene taking place in the sewers.  It got kind of funny on me when I decided to inject humor into the PWP by deciding to have Darkwing tracking them (it takes place after a crime) and walk in on them at the absolute wrong moment. I have about 2000 words of that done.

Prompt #12 ("To Live Without, is Death") was also started as another Bushroot/Liquidator fic to fit in with the Like Earth and Water stories.  It takes place in the aftermath of Tension Convention and deals with Bushroot trying to cope with crushing loneliness and missing him while Liquidator is in jail. I have just under 1000 words of that done so far.

The last two I have started are prompt #10 ("Come to Me") and prompt #38 ("You Got Lucky").  #10 is an exploration of pairing the Negaverse versions of Bushroot and Liquidator and how they might wind up together, and #38 was an attempt at seeing if I could write decent femmeslash of Rhoda Dendron and Sarah Bellum.  It opened with them meeting in the aftermath of "Beauty and the Beet" where Darkwing took Rhoda to S.H.U.S.H. to have their researchers and medical staff make sure she wasn't going to suffer any lasting effects from Bushroot's machinery after he tried to transform her.  Sarah was one of the ones assigned to her case.  It didn't get very far, though.

So as you can see, I haven't totally ignored these fics.  I just haven't made a whole heap of progress on them.  I have a few other vague ideas on what to do with the remaining prompts.  "Intoxicated With Your Taste," for instance, just screams Bushroot/Liquidator to me, and for "Under the Roses" I have a vague idea for another Bushroot/Rhoda one-shot (possibly a follow-up to Your Wildest Dreams, which is not in the same continuity as Forget Me Not).

There are other pairings I've thought I'd like to try on a one-shot basis.  I need to ponder some of the prompts more and see if any new inspiration comes to me.

A fic blog?

So, I've been inspired to create a blog to discuss my fanfic projects by Zebeckras (of The Weblog Chronicles fame) and now Fies (with her Blooming Perennials blog for her works).

As a short introduction, I've written extensively in three fandoms: first Thundercats, then Voltron, and most recently, Darkwing Duck.  At the moment I'm only really active in the Darkwing Duck fandom.  It's where the lion's share (duck's share?) of my inspiration has been the last couple of years.  I don't consider my primary projects from the other fandoms abandoned, exactly, but they are on hiatus.

Still, I might discuss them here from time to time, as I do sometimes get the urge to tinker with them.  That's one of the reasons I don't call them abandoned.  Inspiration can come back at any time.  I've left my oldest epic-length fic, Path into the Darkness, untouched once from 2001 to 2003 (and this fic was originally started in 1998), and then left the storyline alone from 2003 to 2008. (I was primarily writing Voltron fanfiction at this time, most prominently my Chronicles of a Dark Planet series.) I never did get back to Path, but in 2008 I went back into the Thundercats fandom long enough to rewrite and revamp the works that take place before it (Evil's Bride, Spellbound, and Revival) as well as write its prequel, Dawn of Peace, for that year's NaNoWriMo. 

I've been wanting to put the 300 or so pages done of Path itself up on Archive of Our Own, but since that writing is 2003-era compared to the 2008-era, there's a noticeable quality difference, so I'd have to do some revamping of it first.  It'll be a huge project, so it's been sitting on the back burner, especially since I'm more motivated to work on Darkwing Duck stuff now.

My attention in that has been somewhat splintered.  I have a primary story-verse that progresses from Thankless Season to Tension Convention, to eventually include more fics.  The Like Earth and Water series is a subset of that, only it's exclusively Bushroot/Liquidator shippy stuff.  I prefer to keep the main continuity stuff as having more of a gen feel, at least in that while pairings are mentioned, they aren't the primary focus.  At least not yet.  As things progress, that will change, since the DW/Morgana relationship will become more prominent, I have plans to pair Launchpad up with an OC, and Bushroot/Liquidator will become a stronger theme as well.  Still, I don't intend to ever take my main continuity fics beyond a T rating, so any mature stuff for any pairing will be written in separate fics.  I figure that keeps everyone happy, since 'ships are something that are such personal taste for many readers.

In a completely different universe (well, except that it also counts the events and backstory for Bushroot in Thankless Season) I'm writing Bushroot/Rhoda.  I like both Bushroot/Liquidator and Bushroot/Rhoda too much to choose between them, so I'm just writing two different universes.  I have a lot of ideas I'd like to implement beyond Forget Me Not once I get it finished, so I'm hoping to turn this into a full alternate story arc.

Then there's the Origins of the Friendly Four story.  Because it's based in the Negaverse it doesn't really get classified as falling into either of the above, except that I also use my backstory of Bushroot in it.  Nega-Reggie certainly won't ever make up with Nega-Rhoda given what's played out so far, but I don't really see anything happening like a parallel to my other fics, either.  Therefore I consider it its own little continuity.

Last but not least are the Citrus Taste fics.  Most of these were written as one-shots to fill a prompt, so they don't fall into any continuity, aside from Door Number One, which is a Like Earth and Water story. I still have a load of prompts left for this, but haven't filled any lately.  Hmm.  I should probably rectify that one of these days. ;)