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.