anghraine

So I'm sorting through my many, many notes for the K/S femslash AU jotted down in email drafts and elaborate notes on chronological outlines and grumpy additions to passages where I'm like "actually it needs to happen differently, more like blahblah, especially if I want my version to correspond with this conceptual detail from TOS I really like..."

Between moving across the city, asthma problems, a death in the family, looking for work, etc etc, some notes are hyper-organized and others are all jumbled together with no rhyme or reason. So it can be silly and fun in its own way to impose some kind of order when it's like:

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Current Music: SOS (Rihanna)

…

Okay, look, I swear I’m doing other things than this fic. I also wrote original fiction yesterday, and spent time with friends, and I’m going to re-certify my repayment plan today, and you know, anyway, here’s a prequel snippet to the one about femslash Spirk emotions after “Conscience of the King.” This is set earlier, as S'paak hunts down the clues about Kirk’s motives during the plot of the episode.

S’paak had been puzzled in her youth at the tales of her barbaric ancestors—the Vulcan ones, not the human ones. They had been a people of unrestrained passions of all kinds, prone to anger, violence, war, irrational attachments, even to hunting animals that presented no danger to them. They had been willing to incinerate their planet before forgetting a wrong to themselves or their clans. Only later had Vulcans found another path, the path of peace and reason to which she had long committed herself. It felt so natural to her that she often found this history of her people difficult to believe, difficult to even imagine, and yet it was so.

It took her until the first year of the Enterprise’s deep-space expedition to understand.

The inexorable activity of her mind had linked the captain’s uncharacteristic abruptness to the murder of Dr. Leighton. S’paak had not forgotten Kirk’s private inquiries about his professional reputation, and this left her all the more intrigued by the captain’s sudden demotion of a blameless Lieutenant Riley, as well as suspicious of their new guests. It was an easy enough task to order the nearest ship computer to correlate all known data on the individuals she thought concerned—Thomas Leighton, Jessica Kirk, Kevin Riley, Anton Karidian—but less easy to hear the results.

S’paak had not known the details of the starvation of the Tarsus IV colony twenty years earlier, nor of the eugenicist policies of its governor in determining who would receive the remaining rations, nor of the scale of slaughter that had taken place as thousands were marched into converted anti-matter chambers. She had certainly not known that Dr. Leighton, Kevin Riley, and Jessica Kirk—Jess, her friend—were among the witnesses and survivors. In addition, these three were on record as having seen the notoriously reclusive governor with their own eyes.

Nine survivors of the massacre had received that dubious honor. After Leighton’s murder, only two of the nine remained alive, Kirk and Riley. Leighton, older than both, might well have recalled Kodos’s face clearly, and now he lay dead. Riley had been a small boy. Jess, though, had been thirteen. Still a child, but old enough to remember. Old enough to be dangerous to the guilty.

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I wrote more femslash K/S, and spent hours more than I had anticipated on it because this section grew in the telling (i.e. it came to encompass multiple episodes’ worth of S'paak restraining both gay longing and seething hatred of certain individuals). So this is just an excerpt from a considerably longer section.

Also, the context of the episode this section draws from merits a massive warning for sexual coercion that is highly relevant to what happens here.

The Scalosians would have trapped the captain for the rest of her life if not for her own ingenuity in conveying information across time, and McCoy’s rapid development of a cure. Of course, he hadn’t known how to get it to Kirk, and had stared when S’paak promptly drank the Scalosian water.

“S’paak, you don’t know what that will do to you!” he exclaimed.

She did not betray herself with an indifferent shrug, but felt the temptation. He knew his field, even if she was loath to depend upon his judgment in many other matters. And they had no other way to reach Kirk. For S’paak, it was an easy risk to take, and within minutes, proved worth it. She quickly found the captain, and was only too willing to formulate a quick plan of attack with her. She would have done more if Jess had asked. Instead, they forced the Scalosians back through the transporter to their own planet, and S’paak handed McCoy’s cure over to Jess. It worked, thankfully; she vanished back into the ordinary flow of time while S’paak repaired the damage to the ship with her usual efficiency.

The silence and emptiness as she repaired consoles were pleasant in some respects; she could not deny that. But her skin crawled enough that when she was done, she hurried to the bridge in a less dignified manner than she would ever have done before others. Without hesitation, she drank down the rest of the antidote.

The other crew members frozen on the bridge began to move, slowly at first, and then at their usual bustling pace, several starting as they noticed her. For once, S’paak could welcome being stared at. She turned to see Captain Kirk smiling slightly at her.

“Commander S’paak,” she said, “my compliments to your repair work and yourself.”

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venndaai responded to this post:

LOOOOVE THIIIIS. You did my wife T’Pring justice 😍 and I’m obsessed with this dynamic between her and S’paak!!!

I replied:

Thank you!!! I was nervous about writing her POV out of nowhere, but I adored her in "Amok Time" and wanted to do right by her personality and voice in that episode in the AU context. When I thought about what her role would be in the AU, I thought it would be really interesting to focus on how the tense respect between her and Spock manifests when they have more common experience.

zingsthings said (on 31 Jan):

a) OBSESSED with this concept b) THE LAST PARAGRAPH is very rude and very perfect. but ouch

I replied:

Thank you very much! I love that line in TOS and thought that it'd be really interesting to see how Spock's mixture of composure and devastation would look from outside.

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Current Music: I Want to Break Free (Queen)

It’s well past midnight, but I felt like doing another piece of the femslash Spirk AU for WIP Wednesday (surprising no one) and what came out was … T'Pring POV? This is, of course, set in the direct aftermath of S'paak’s pon farr (as sketched out here), but in an AU version of “Amok Time”:

As a girl, T’Pring had harbored an irrational, and thus regrettable, envy of t’sai S’paak. She had resented S’paak’s status as the daughter of Sarek, and her superior performance on certain mathematical examinations given in childhood, especially as S’paak was but half a Vulcan. In a little time, of course, T’Pring overcame such childish emotions, and thirty years later, she regarded S’paak only as the obstacle to her own desires.

The death of the Starfleet captain sufficed well enough for her plans; indeed, she had considered this the most likely eventuality. The body of the captain and the doctor were transported to their ship, and S’paak, clearly rational once more, walked over to speak to T’Pau and Stonn—mainly T’Pau. T’Pring could not hear them from where she stood, but Stonn did not communicate any failures of their plan to her.

Before she could think further on any of it, S’paak strode directly over to T’Pring herself, perhaps due to information received from Stonn or T’Pau, or perhaps no more than her own deductions. It would not take great acuity of observation to recognize T’Pring’s hand in the proceedings, after all: certainly less than S’paak had always possessed.

T’Pring was not afraid. She lifted her head and met S’paak’s eyes, both of them smooth-faced and unflinching. Whatever human qualities S’paak might have inherited from her mother were nowhere in evidence.

“T’Pring,” said S’paak, “I am wondering why you sought my death, or that of my captain.”

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I finished TOS today :’(

From J’s loathing of the series finale, I thought it would be worse tbh. It is not good, to be clear! Obviously the whole conceit of the episode is intensely misogynistic (and transphobic, though I think that was less intentional). And Janice is so completely identified with Gender Rage while also being so mediocre as a person that her characterization is somewhere between insulting and comically stupid, but with a bit of generosity there are some things I still find intriguing about it.

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astarreborn responded to this post:

You should flip some of the women toolike city on the edge of forever, and the ingenue from conscience of the king,

I replied:

I've been thinking about this, because I tend to prefer AUs that take a relatively restricted premise and see where the specific consequences of that premise go rather than adopting a whole bevy of changes, but also I can't really see a way around the implicit homophobia without more changes... hmm. I would probably not switch Edith (that romance is more interesting to me as f/f in that cultural context) but Kodos's child being a son makes a LOT of sense, Charlie X would go really differently with f!Kirk unless Charlie is also a girl...etc. 🤔

astarreborn responded:

You could flip yoeman rand just for the fun changes to the enemy within. On further thought i agree with you on edith.

Is it ok if I come back in a few hours with more thoughts? I don't want to annoy you too much, but I really like this idea

I replied:

No problem! I'm delighted anyone at all is interested :)

( The final decision (with spoilers) )

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Current Music: King (Florence + The Machine)

In response to this post about my particular femslash Kirk/Spock concept, smallblueandloud reblogged with my tags attached and then added (on Jan 23rd):

#goddddddddd i am loving this #LOVE the thought you put into kirk’s name #i can see why deborah was your first choice but i’m excited to see where jessica goes! #the idea of kirk as an odysseus archetype is something i’m really fascinated by and i want to think about that more so

I replied:

Thank you on all fronts!

I actually put even more elaborate thought into Kirk’s name and cut most of the explanation out lol, so I’m glad it works and that you’re enjoying this deeply Anghraine™ dive into ST feelings.

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Femslash Spirk scrap for today (at a point around the end of “The Conscience of the King”):

“I will admit,” said S’paak, “that I do not find the governor’s presumed fate a particularly grievous one, captain. I see no reason that skill at performance should exempt anyone from justice, much less someone guilty of Kodos’s crimes.”

Captain Kirk’s lips curved into an unconvincing approximation of her typical expression. “His skill at performance wasn’t the difficulty, unfortunately.”

S'paak could not help but wonder what Kirk would have done if events had not taken the matter out of her hands. Dr. McCoy could talk with Karidian’s own theatricality about blood and severed heads and vengeance, but Kirk had been cautious to the point of near folly. True, the Jessica Kirk of Tarsus IV had been a girl of thirteen, and the uncertainty of human memory made caution understandable. But the weight of evidence was so clear.

Even so, Kirk—a woman more prone to leveraging emotion than hiding its existence—had not fully succeeded in concealing her true thoughts. At least, not from S’paak. Kirk had gone from uncertain and reluctant to grim, fearless, admirably unfaltering. S’paak guessed that, in the end, Kirk would not have hesitated to personally consign Kodos to the fate he deserved had circumstances allowed for it. That was not an irrational vendetta, however bitter, but deserved and necessary.

“Those difficulties are past,” said S’paak, “thanks to you, with respect to both him and his daughter.”

“Not me alone. But thank you, I think,” said Kirk. She turned slightly away, though not before S’paak observed the uneven inhalation of her next breath, the quick, repeated flicker of her lashes. “Riley deserves more of your sympathy, though. He’s younger than me, lost more, and I ... I’ve always needed challenges to struggle against. Something to overcome.”

“I see no logical reason for starvation to be among those challenges,” said S’paak flatly, “nor the massacre of civilians, least of all when they are sent to death on no pretext except baseless pseudoscience.”

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Femslash Spirk update: I’ve been brainstorming how “Amok Time” would even work and am really entertained by one solution I came up with:

The child marriage of Spock and T'Pring becomes one between S'paak and Stonn, who is still infatuated with T'Pring in this universe.
T'Pring remains the architect of the homoerotic duel and it still happens; I think she has already dealt with her own husband in some fashion or another and S'paak is now the only obstacle between her and Stonn.
I’d feel weird about the incredible “Kirk gets slashed across the chest in just such a way as to reveal his nipples” scene happening exactly that way with Jessica; I think the result here is instead very AOTC Padmé.
I think S'paak is surprised and unwillingly impressed by Stonn being capable of such calculating reason as this scheme required, not expecting it of him, and is rather relieved to discover that the real mastermind was T'Pring and her judgment of him was not mistaken.
Spock’s icy line to Stonn about how he may not find T'Pring as enjoyable to live with as to pine after becomes a warning from S'paak to T'Pring about Stonn’s mediocrity.

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Speaking of femslash Spirk genderbending name considerations:

I was really torn between how Spock is such a masculine-coded name by Vulcan norms that it feels weird to do nothing at all with it. But also, it’s so extremely iconic as THE name for THE character that an equally feminine-coded name like T'Pel or whatever would be super jarring (and distancing from the original character, I think—the potential in-world rationales for a character’s name are one consideration when I think about this stuff, but only one).

Also, Spock’s name predates the development of Vulcan as a language, and iirc, it’s also slightly odd as a Vulcan name these days (if I understand correctly, inconsistent orthographical representations and erratically silent letters are not at all usual). This does not even slightly bother me in terms of canon, but I thought a transliteration that looks more like “modern Vulcan” might preserve the basic sounds of the name while shifting pronunciation and appearance just enough to seem less specifically masculine.

Still, I was really tempted to try and make T’[whatever] work somehow with this. I feel like Sarek is the kind of person who might well insist upon a daughter having the prestige of the t'sai in her name, even if Amanda thought otherwise. But I couldn’t figure it out aesthetically, so instead I settled on S'paak. (I’m not 100% decided, but it’s the smoothest result thus far of my attempts to compromise between norms of Vulcan names and their components as more fully developed later, and the ultra-recognizable consonants of the original name.)

I’m also deciding how other crew members even address her, because “Miss S'paak” feels like a really weird and inappropriate way to refer to someone of her position and responsibilities, and yet this could at least be partly said of the canonical “Mr” as well. Maybe it’s just this era of Starfleet being relatively slack about this kind of thing, at least below the commanding officer’s rank? IDK, it’s not my impression, at least with regard to women.

Hmm, I checked, and Uhura is occasionally addressed as “Miss Uhura” but far more often as “Lieutenant Uhura” or just “Uhura.” Mira Romaine in “The Lights of Zetar” (which I watched not long ago) seemed to also be addressed by name as “Lieutenant Romaine” rather than “Miss Romaine.” OTOH Scotty is “Mr. Scott” quite often rather than addressed by rank, same for Sulu, etc, so maybe it’s more of a relic of the ultra-gendered dynamics and evolving world building of TOS… I’m still undecided tbh!

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Current Music: Coloratura (Coldplay)

Further contemplated the femslash Spirk concept while I was going to sleep, inevitably, and concluded:

I am perfectly aware this has been done before in the last, you know, nearly 60 years of this ship’s towering fandom influence; I’ve definitely seen art and cosplay. However, I’m deliberately insulating myself from reading any other versions until the finer details are more nailed down in my own head.
McCoy is definitely still a man (specifically DeForest Kelley c. TOS) because it only later occurred to me that 1) thematically, I definitely prefer this trio as a mixed gender group and 2) the advocate for emotion and instinct and human warmth being a male doctor and the voice of logic and discipline being a woman and technically his superior pleases me greatly. I also like the McCoy-Kirk brotp as a male-female friendship that is intense, complex, and 100% platonic.
I’m still figuring out how Kirk being repeatedly menaced by the woman of the week would pan out with f!Kirk. With m!Kirk, it feels like the show pushes him having an irresistible appeal to women in general (regardless of the woman’s morality) that is in part where this ultimately comes from, but a) the show is also very concerned with matters of autonomy/violation mainly mediated through him as protagonist, and b) he’s got a lot of Odysseus tropes to him (among others) as a character that make his femme fatale allure and willingness to use it as a tool more interesting than as the inevitable fate of a female space captain. Also, even in a femslash context, it feels homophobic for it to always be women sexually harassing f!Kirk, especially considering just how far it goes in S3 (I think his first basically consensual kiss, in terms of both consent and all his faculties being online, is 16 episodes into the season, and that one is a result of deliberate deception; 18 episodes in, he has an actual if underwritten romance, but he's also being dangled by a third party before his love interest as a sort of glorified sex toy, though both he and the woman in question are allegedly truly in love, and at that point he's been raped at least once and I would argue twice, and had a purely non-con kiss and another that's dubcon at best).
Kirk’s going to be Jessica instead of my original idea of Deborah. I was thinking of what would be a sturdy, ordinary name in the Midwest comparable to James that would also abbreviate conveniently to a common short form (Jim / Deb / Jess). I wanted the shortened version to be something that could carry the emotional weight of Spock’s very occasional “Jim” without feeling that the nickname itself is more significant (gender-wise) than Jim is for a dude from Iowa. I also wanted to avoid the -y/-ie endings of so many English nicknames (sorry, Francophones). Deb seemed to work well, except I’d forgotten that I have a considerably older family friend who not only uses Deb (and is named Deborah) but happens to have very similar coloring and background to young Shatner. As I was plotting the femslash, the association with her felt increasingly weird and uncomfortable, so I switched to Jessica (chosen for reasons largely unrelated to it also beginning with J, but that helps!).
Does Jessica Kirk wear the miniskirt and go-go boots while issuing non-negotiable orders from her captain’s chair? Definitely.

Tagged: #i feel like jessica unironically loves the uniform and s'paak finds it deeply impractical for both of their positions #also the aesthetic is vaguely romulan and she doesn't care for that at all. except on kirk specifically for mysterious reasons #a mystery requiring further study obviously. lots of further study.

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Current Music: King (Florence + The Machine)

Technicallyyyyy it’s Thursday (12:28 AM!), but

brynnmclean tagged me in WIP Wednesday (thank you!!!) and I dutifully worked on some other projects before giving up and following my heart.

And what my heart wanted was … well. Okay. Look, I know, I know, but nobody can be that surprised:

S’paak had no way of knowing which Starfleet officer would receive command of the Enterprise after Captain Pike’s promotion, if promotion it could be called. It must be called that, of course, by the wish of Captain Pike himself, and by what all evidence suggested was a collective agreement from the highest ranks of the service. Therefore, the captain was promoted, and soon she would answer to a different man.

She had no data to aid speculation as to the nature, character, or identity of the person who would replace Captain Pike, since nobody in the crew, including S’paak, was privy to their superiors’ deliberations. Accordingly, she did not join the other crew members in guesswork about their new captain, even in the privacy of her own quarters—or her own mind. After all, to a disciplined intellect, there was little difference between the two, and she did not know who was even under consideration. Contemplating the matter would not produce greater knowledge.

Even with no particular expectations or thoughts about the forthcoming captain of the Enterprise, she felt an unfamiliar trace of surprise when she received the actual notification about it. She, S’paak, would be first officer on the ship, and as such, had been granted priority status with regard to personnel changes. No one else on the crew yet knew the name of the chosen captain.

The privileges of seniority did not startle her. The identity of her captain did, a little.

S’paak considered the notification a second time.

Commanding officer of the USS Enterprise: Kirk, Jessica T. (Cpt).

She knew virtually nothing of Captain Kirk, though the name sounded faintly familiar, enough that she thought it likely that she had heard it in some context in the past that had not struck her as worth committing to memory. A regrettable lapse, if easy enough to rectify with the many tools available to her. But S'paak had not expected that Starfleet would appoint a woman to Captain Pike’s position. Certainly not a young woman, as the (small and poor-quality) picture accompanying the name suggested Kirk was.

S’paak herself was not so illogical as to suppose that gender impeded a Starfleet officer’s capabilities in itself. But she had better reason than most to know that the practices of the Federation did not always resemble their ideals as closely as might be wished. Captain Kirk must have some unusual qualities, experiences, or connections—or some combination thereof—to rise so far at such an age.

“Fascinating,” S’paak murmured.

Tagged: #i would tag people but it's. uh. thursday #ALSO there is a method to the various choices made here i swear #also i am not AS hostile to post-tos sources as i am to the sweu etc but it's been years since i saw any of them #and i'm not concerned with accommodating long after the fact 'canon' material. this sparks joy (for me personally) and that is enough

[ETA 4/18/2025: After watching all the original ST movies, I feel more strongly than ever that ST is really many canons in a trenchcoat—engaging with each other but not actually compatible. This is especially the case with regard to Spock and Kirk, who take the biggest character arc hits via pop culture-ification and the soft reboot in even the original films, and only more over time (cf. the famous "Kirk Drift" article). I think movie Spock's arc is basically completely reset while defining him MUCH more by Vulcan culture throughout the films, but also swapping his and Kirk's TOS priorities pretty substantially. Kirk was often defined by The Good of the Many in TOS—few things infuriated him more than threats or harm to his crew, esp en masse—and I don't think it was TOS Spock's philosophy for a single moment. I also don't think that TOS Spock was truly all that normative as far as Vulcans are concerned; he often went out of his way to emphasize that he's half-human, his navigation of Vulcan identity was extremely fraught, and the function of that aspect of his arc was an attempt, however flawed, to engage with biracial problems specifically. So yeah, I super don't feel any need to bow to the movies or TNG or whatever, they're their own things—sometimes great, certainly engaging with TOS at times, but in an Aeneid to TOS's Iliad sort of way for me. And I do appreciate that ST historically has seemed less obsessed with welding a bunch of wildly disparate and not especially compatible projects into a single "canon."]

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Speaking of my TOS watch, I’ve noticed that the writing for Kirk in particular has gotten sharply worse overall in S3 (also for other characters, but less obtrusively), yet when it’s good, it’s really satisfying.

I loved both Kirk and Spock in “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,” for instance. It’s a good episode in general (maybe one of the least awful about women in TOS) and a really nice McCoy episode as well, but I enjoy how Kirk and Spock are kind of confused about McCoy’s marriage but ultimately willing to support their friend. And it ends not only with McCoy’s cool wife surviving and becoming even more of a leader of her people than she was before (and this framed as unambiguously Good), but iirc Kirk and Spock prepared to make the occasional detour to her colony so McCoy can visit her without leaving his career behind. And while Spock was something of a flanderized dick in “That Which Survives” (if in a way that can easily be read in K/S terms), it’s got some very solid Kirk characterization:

MCCOY: Could it be the Enterprise hit the planet?
SULU: Once in Siberia, there was a meteor so great that it flattened whole forests and was felt as far away as—
KIRK: Mr. Sulu, if I'd wanted a Russian history lesson, I'd have brought along Mr. Chekov. This is a matter of survival, gentlemen. Without the Enterprise, we need food, and we need water, and we need them fast. I want a detailed analysis made of this planet, and I want it now.

Kirk [to Sulu]: Your report covers all vegetation?
Sulu: Yes, captain. All vegetation is inedible. Poison to us.
McCoy [to Kirk]: If the Enterprise has been destroyed, you know how long we can survive??
Kirk [grimly]: Yes. [pause] I don’t see any water, but there must be some to grow the vegetation. A source of water would stretch our survival. Did you see any evidence of rainfall?

Shatner doesn’t overplay the moment IMO, but there’s a quiet weight to Kirk being The Starvation Expert of the team given uhhhhh his personal history—and also the fact that this episode is one of few that (in a completely different scene) explicitly acknowledges other TOS episodes.

Tagged: #this single moment just feels so weighty and the way everyone defers to kirk not only as captain but as knowledgeable about survival #and how it's not overblown the way so much of s3 kirk is...whew. nice to see some good character choices here and there too #it /is/ wild to me that the jj abrams star trek gives kirk the most generic Troubled Youth backstory possible #when his canon backstory is infinitely worse. canon kirk survived starvation and the massacre of 4000 people in his colony at age 13 #and afterwards became a bullied nerd (established on multiple occasions!) until he found his true calling of commanding a starship #i get wanting to split into a different timeline etc etc but damn chris pine could have done something great with a more nuanced kirk #OH also. kirk seems to get more obligatory ''''romance'''' scenes than ever before in this season #but these relationships also seem much more often dubiously consensual at best on his side also #he's either a prisoner or an amnesiac or enthralled by a drug or whatever in them until literally episode 21. #in which he falls for rayna the robot #the relationship is terribly written but at least they're both allegedly choosing it (and even there flint is dangling kirk in front of her #like a sexy lure or something. batshit concept but they're definitely being manipulated - and still i think it's the most purely consensual #relationship that kirk has in the whole season thus far) #ngl him stranding deela to die without sharing the antidote and flying away was probably the most cathartic kirk dubcon plot conclusion #i'm predictably very tempted by femslash kirk/spock sometimes but it does feel that this would be more expected for f!kirk #anyway. weird trend in a weird season but it's nice when his backstory is remembered at all

[ETA from 4/6/2025 re: "tempted by femslash kirk/spock sometimes but" hahahahahahahahaha]

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: King (Florence + The Machine)

I'm sure it's happened before, but I noticed a deleted AO3 comment on one of my fics that (to go by past!Elizabeth's response) had been entirely pleasant. I am guessing the commenter deleted to avoid association with the fic itself (we get dark, only to shine—so it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that someone could be harassed or worried about harassment for commenting favorably on it, given that it revolves around adulterous sibling incest between murderous teenagers, or that they themself came to disapprove of the fic's existence). Or maybe they ended up getting disaffected with me personally and didn't want to leave a compliment, or maybe they deleted all their comments to everyone, I don't know.

But :(

(I don't at all disapprove of the power to delete stuff like comments, but my archival sensibilities are troubled by things just going away.)

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Current Music: Young and Beautiful (Lana del Rey)

This isn't really discourse (at least, I hope not!). I really wanted to keep backing up my Tumblr posts and keeping a lot of my content over here and linking or something, but a few months ago, I ran into a single terrible problem with Dreamwidth that I never before thought about.

Even the paid premium accounts max out at 2000 tags :(

"But Elizabeth," you might say, "you don't even use tags for commentary over here, just for organization. You shouldn't need more than two thousand, surely."

And to this I would say: "shut up."

I was already deleting less essential tags to get them below 1999—for instance, extremely minor Guild Wars 2 characters I had dutifully tagged even though I suspect vanishingly few of you have the slightest interest in even major GW2 characters/ships like Marjory/Kasmeer (my beloved MMORPG f/f ship canonized in 2013; if ArenaNet doesn't animate their wedding I will revolt harder than Separatists in Ascalon), much less a barely-named character who shows up in one chapter of a 70k stylistically odd and niche GW2 fanfic. I used to tack more generally, but I don't want to give up things like my Gondor-specific tag ... or my aasimar tag ... but after so long the tags have definitely accumulated. And I don't think you can even pay for a higher number of tags than the 2000 from the premium account (which I would do! take my money, Dreamwidth!).

Anyway, at this point, any post that uses a new tag involves combing through my old tags and making decisions about what tags are really essential and it pains my soul. :( :(

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Current Music: Under Pressure (Queen & David Bowie)

I don't even recall who posted this, but apparently at Worldcon, Seanan McGuire presented this simple flowchart to explain what is and is not fanfic:

I have no grievance with McGuire in general, but this is both elegant and quite wrong, IMO. Sorry, my Austen fanfic is very much fanfic (and there's no need to give the P&P "variations" industry any more delusions of grandeur than it already has, lol—those are very much fanfic, too). Some of my fics could also be considered re-imaginings or retellings—First Impressions is the obvious example as a deliberate retelling of P&P with genderswapped leads, rather than a true what-if AU—but they are absolutely fanfic. They're fiction written as a form of fan expression.

Sometimes there is a real sense of difference between fiction of this kind, especially when written in a fandom context that is clearly informed by or in dialogue with other fanworks, wider trends in the fandom or in online fandom in general, etc vs some literary re-imaginings that interrogate the source material but are not really fannish (not even in a fan hatred way). So it's not that I think all fiction of this kind should be defined as fanfic. I think that has to do with the conditions of creation rather than the novelty of the cast, setting, and/or plot. But the defining artistic criteria of fanfic as a form or genre are not determined by externally imposed legal codes or the opinion of the source material's author.

There have been many attempts to develop an authoritative definition for fanfic that ultimately comes down to "can you legally make money off it?" But that is not what fanfic is, and I'm deeply skeptical of conceptualizing genre, any genre, based on whether or when it can be sold. A lot of licensed IP writers seem very invested in distinguishing their work from fanfic—sometimes claiming it's not about superiority (sure, Jan), but it's just very important to them that they not be perceived as fanfic writers. But I'd argue that what makes licensed work fanfic or not isn't actually the license, or it being a professional job for money, but the approach of the work in question. Some IP writers are very much fans and clearly approached the licensed work as a chance to write fanfic about some part of canon they're super into with authorization from a parent company or something (various Star Trek writers seem to be very much of this type, say). Others don't really seem to be approaching their work as a form of fan expression, which is not morally wrong in any way, but definitely different. Going back to P&P, there are some takes that I wouldn't really consider fanfic (unlike the variation industry), just because the authors don't seem to be writing as fans but for some other goal. So you sometimes get P&P sequels that are really different from the fanfic—more literary in some ways, but often less engaged with Pride and Prejudice or its adaptations than the fanfic tends to be and prone to little canon errors that fans don't usually make. It's a little hard to describe but you can usually tell.

In any case: some licensed IP work is fanfic and acknowledged as such by the authors, while some isn't; some fanfic is based on source material that is long out of copyright (and some other things based on the same or similar sources isn't fanfic), and the time since publication does not merit a specific respectable distinction from, idk, normie fanfic by Marvel slash superfans or whoever is the fannish target du jour.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Barcelona (Freddie Mercury & Montserrat Caballé)

I am pretty sure I stole this from

meridian_rose! I do love me a fic meme :D

Rules: go to your AO3 account and find the following:

1. What rating do you write most of your fics under?

Overwhelmingly general, at 165 out of 222 fics. This isn't that surprising—maybe a bit more than I expected, but I can be a bit skittish about romance for someone who likes it a lot.

2. What are your top three fandoms?

In a totally shocking twist: Star Wars, Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen, and Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien. The gap between the first two (tied at 67 fics each) and LOTR (27) is pretty vast, and the "real" #3 was the fandom tag for the SW original trilogy specifically. I know I often feel uncomfortable writing Tolkien fic, much more than Austen or SW, despite writing so much meta about Middle-earth, so again, this isn't a big surprise.

3. What is the top character you write about?

I am extremely sure this one is going to be Darcy!

Yup, it was! He's tagged in 53 fics to Elizabeth's 43, with Luke and Leia following closely at 39 and 34.

4. What are the top three pairings you write about?

The first is, of course, Darcy/Elizabeth, the unbeatable victor of all such contests when it comes to me. It has twenty more fics than the runner-up, which of course is Jyn/Cassian (a big gap, though Darcy/Elizabeth has the advantage of very considerable seniority; I wrote my first D/E fic in 2005, while Jyn and Cassian didn't even exist until 2016). The third most-common romantic pairing in my fics is ... honestly, I think it's got to be Cesare/Lucrezia from The Borgias. I know, I know! And yup, it's got 11 fics, trailing behind platonic Luke and Leia fics (12), Jyn/Cassian (19), and Darcy/Elizabeth (39).

5. What are the top three additional tags?

I wondered if the "always a different sex" tag would hit the top three, but let's see ... actually, no! It's only at #4, following from three rather boring winners. My most common additional tag is "Canon Compliant" (71), "One Shot" (66), and "Drabble" (39). I'm guessing there is quite a lot of overlap between these. The only specific premises or subjects to appear in any of the top ten are the genderbending tags (these days I typically use "Always A Different Sex" but I used to use the vaguer "Gender Changes" tag) and the "Brother-Sister Relationships" tag. If there isn't overlap between the two genderbending tags, together they would actually beat out "Drabble" (the usual tag has 37 fics and the old one 14).

6. Did any of this surprise you?

LOL, not really. I am what I am.

Tagging:

croclock,

alias_sqbr,

sixbeforelunch,

elperian,

brynnmclean,

heckofabecca,

incognitajones, and

lizbee, if any of you want to do it!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Temporary One (Fleetwood Mac)

So my best friend J and I were talking about creative writing, and how sapped I've been through the later part of graduate school and also am just a slow writer, and about what writing for joy would look like, etc. I thought about for a little bit, then:

me: I think I know what kind of writing would bring me joy once my brain reconstitutes.
J: Yeah?
me: ...I could never, ever try publishing it professionally and wouldn't want to.
J: *pause* Oh, so fanfiction?
me: Yes. I wouldn't want to risk the wrath of Disney.
J: That has to mean Star Wars.
me: Yeah. I—there's one—I mentioned a few years ago that I wrote a Rogue One fanfic that I'm fond of ...
J: The one where they escape but get stuck on the Death Star?
me: Yes! It's pretty long and I stopped seriously working on it a long time ago, but it's very close to being finished and ... pretty long ... and it's always nice when someone recommends it as technically unfinished but satisfyingly resolved, but lol I tagged it as slow burn in 2017 and they, they never kiss or declare their feelings to avoid complicating such a dangerous situation, so it's just uhhh yearning and camaraderie for thousands and thousands of words. But also there's some plot.
J: That honestly sounds really cool. I should read it some time, but anyway, I think you should do it! I bet that would make you happy.
me: :)

He's not into fanfic at all—he tried a couple of times and it always just morphs into original fiction—and I've rarely talked to him about it at all, so I was touched that he both remembered the premise and was supportive in his creative writing friend capacity! Also, he's a big SW fan (bigger of ST, but even so) and Rogue One is his favorite SW film, so I was touched! He even ended up asking if they get blown up with the Death Star, how they're involved with the "rescue" of Leia, if they're involved with releasing the tractor beam, etc.

I told him about how I really wanted to get the scale of the Death Star across with the long elevator trips and such, and a bit about how I wanted our heroes to be competent but also not to face no serious challenges or stakes, even though a lot of Imperials are pretty silly. I specifically wanted Cassian to face a situation where he had to set aside the big picture for the sake of some extremely flawed individuals and where Jyn, who sees the personhood in random strangers but can lose sight of the big picture, to face a situation where she has to sacrifice an individual for the greater good. The guy isn't meant to be likable but he is meant to be very decidedly a person with his own feelings and relationships, his friend worries about him even when the other Imperials just assume he fell into a bottomless chasm or whatever, and then she and Cassian are left with a very suspicious dead body in the detention center where they're working.

J: lol they should throw it into the garbage compactor!
me: Oh, they do.
J: WHAT
me: :)
J: Really?
me: Yes. So when Leia and everyone jump in, there's—
J: *bursts out laughing*

We'd been trying to figure out how exactly to entertain ourselves last night, since my mind was so melted from Dissertation Day that I wasn't really up to much, and then J had a brainwave.

J: You could do research!
me: ............I'm not sure I really have that in me right now.
J: No, not that kind! Let's watch A New Hope. It's not as heavy or complex as the others, but it's really good and fun, and it'll be research for your story :)
me: :)

So we did! It was great, as ever.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Bad Moon Rising (Creedence Clearwater Festival)

In this age of remakes and adaptations (though pretty much all ages are ages of remakes and adaptations tbh), I sometimes imagine adaptations of my childhood/adolescent faves. Off the top of my head and in no particular order:

Jane Yolen’s Wizard’s Hall (super formative, could make a pretty cool, sometimes creepy, film)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (just … great, probably fits a mini-series better)
Sweet Valley Twins (maybe this already exists? it would be terrible, but I inhaled them as a kid)
Agatha Christie in general (definitely exists, though the quality is variable … I really disliked the version I saw of Cards on the Table)
She-Ra (exists, is great)
The Belgariad and the Elenium (I would prefer the latter, with Liberties taken to deal with some of the Eddingsisms, but the former might be more cinematic. I once had an AU where as a fairly minor background detail, the Elenium was made in place of GOT, but with the same cast, like Lena Headey as Sephrenia, etc …)
LOTR, esp Gondor (of course there are the movies, but a) their treatment of Gondor is terrible on a lot of fronts, and b) I think LOTR is better suited to TV anyway, and in my dreams, really high-quality animation)
Wheel of Time (in the works, I’m lowkey terrified)
Daughter of the Empire (no idea how this would be done)
Incarnations of Immortality (I don’t really want money going to Piers Anthony, so no, even though it’s conceptually one of my fave takes on Death)
Pern (??? I would mostly watch this for Lessa. Probably super expensive to make as a series, which it would have to be)
Valdemar (I DON’T EVEN KNOW)
Tamora Pierce (I love Emelan best, but Tortall would be cool, too!)
So You Want to Be a Wizard (it seems like it would be very cinematic in some ways and not at all in others, so I’m not sure, but if someone could make it work, awesome)

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Over The Love (Florence + The Machine)

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The pettiest of complaints

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AO3 meme!

:)

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