I will keep saying you deserve the praise! My fanfic DREAM is to make a little book just for me and my Tolkien shelf that has my fave fic in it and you’re heavily represented in my wish anthology.
flashing back to the days where I printed out pages and pages of Faramir/Eowyn fic on the tiniest print I could still read as to have something to reward myself after finishing the ACTs
Aw I’ve told you again and again your praise makes me blush! I like my details too. And such a lovely description- yes it does feel like I’m walking through the servants’ corridors and into the unused rooms, through the doors that don’t get as often used. Those always lead to the good rooms, the ones with the cool artifacts. And then I drag back my treasures for show-and-tell. Hey, highest praise is to have my headcanon adopted in as other people’s canon too. 😀
AUs are my favorite thing to write (and heck, mentally I think I need to label the canon compliant stuff semi-AU). Half the planned (or perpetually unwritten) Andreth/Aegnor, the Ingwë and Elwë swap places, The Best AU EVAR (aka Miriel refuses to marry Finwë) … yeah that’s not even touching the fusions. Hurt/comfort is I think what Release from Bondage could also accurately be labeled, along with Slow Burn. It’s not a fanfic category I conscientiously write, but my love of bittersweet and fluff means I end up halfway there, and I’m a sucker for reunited in death/afterlife stories, of which Mandos and Elven Reincarnations is tailor-made for me (with the ambiguity of mortal fates aligning with my agnostic leaning towards atheist personal feelings, so to have that reflected so perfectly in a text that also has the confirmed afterlife and mythological beings, this strange and perfectly written have my cake and eat it too – that’s another reason why I love The Silm).
Body swap. Okay, honestly never thought this before. I like narrative role swap AUs (see above) or things like Luke and Leia switched who got raised where (why this works for me and not gender-swaps, idk). But actual consciousnesses swapped around probably only good for a crack fic. And I’m not sure I could write that. Switching a mortal and elf around would be maximum fun, and I have a feeling Finrod would be delighted in an anthropologist’s fever dream way, and as for mortal, let’s face it, there’s no better candidate for humor than Túrin- and now I’m wondering if we switched him out with one of the terrible seven, for competing curses. of course then it’s Túrin convincing his ‘brothers’ to actually try a foolhardy attack on Morgoth that dooms them all, but still causes less collateral damage and fewer intentional genocides. Depending on which son of Fëanor, Nargothrond is more doomed, Finduilas suffers a worse fate, poor Gwindor, poor Brandir, poor Beleg, Thingol welcoming his foster-son with open arms only to be shanked until Melian realizes what happened. It’s all Glaurung’s fault somehow.
@squirrelwrangler ugh yes sexual violence euuugh. I actually dislike them both for…similar reasons, though. Graphic violence just seems so….intimate in a way. I feel like a creepy spectator on someone else’s misfortune. And then, additionally, I am personally very bad at separating out fiction from reality when it comes to violence and so I start thinking of every news story or historical account I’ve ever read about violence (or natural disasters or whatever) of the type I’m currently reading about and then I get very sad and end up having this reaction that’s essentially “real people have suffered in this particular way and I cannot derive any sort of entertainment from it, even when the entertainment is driving home that this is horrible”
Finn being force sensitive would be AMAZING but I expect that we will mostly focus on Rey and Kylo. Honest to god if they are paired together at the end I will just have to ignore everything about the sequels. Except Finn, Finn can stay. I might have to actually learn enough Star Wars lore to write fanfic that is solely about how great Finn is if the movies mess up too badly.
I say as if my desires are important to anyone who works on Star Wars
Didn’t Viz put out an edition of Rurouni Kenshin where multiple volumes were in one? I haven’t bought any manga in a few years so it is HIGH TIME I added to my collection again
The only Throne fantasy series I care about is Throne of the Crescent Moon. I really REALLY can’t wait for book two. The first book gave me the same Feels as being in middle school and reading WoT and The Belgariad for the first time.
Yep- I own the VIZ Big volumes – the line of Black, White and Red modelling Kenshins on the spines sit on my bookshelf to the right of my two volumes of the Belgariad, actually!
Okay, you read my fics, so you know the violence level I’m comfortable writing. 🙂 And that I can disassociate from it. Also it comes from the fact that what I read is SF/Fantasy and of that I’d say at least half of that has a military bent. Baen-published series and the ilk. So I read stuff that will have battles and can sometimes heavily focus on those battles, and as I tease, one of the authors I read and adore despite his flaws is David Weber, who purposefully kills off a lot of characters, enough to make GRRM look weak, but does so because Weber feels that if he doesn’t include deaths, especially deaths that feel senseless, then the military fiction becomes military porn. GRRM I feel tips on the wrong side of the scale, or he goes into too much detail. I don’t want but maybe a few details, or the details given only once. More than that, and it looses the effect it should have. Because I read about it, if I feel the story allows it, I want the battles and violence to be acknowledged and written, but not always. The Silm, when it includes the details in the Lay of Leithian, hits right for me. Wheel of Time is more influential than I thought, I think, what with the battles but little page time spent on every tactic, where the sexual violence is rare but there are amputations, wounds, and even psychological horror but not on every chapter, and the Belgariad when it goes into the backstories for Hettar and Taiba that horrible things have happened to our heroes (and that our heroes can do gruesome things) but stays that pulpy fantasy.
TFA:
I thought going in it would be our two force sensitives finding each other and then deciding they must hunt and find training from Luke. One out of the two is…nah I want two.
Finn fic sounds good- and really the only thing that interests me aside from that one fic about Han and Leia expecting the baby and wondering what to name him.
adding another book to the buy list
@squirrelwrangler haha, finding Rand and many of the main characters horrible after a couple of books was one of the reasons my husband told me I wouldn’t like AsoIaF. I kept complaining that I loved the setting but hated the main characters and he was like “if you want likable characters don’t read this.” that and I’m a wuss about graphic violence most of the time and I have been assured the violence is described in loving detail. (well, it might be an exaggeration to say I *hated* the characters, but they did grow in the opposite direction that I wanted and am interested in. I know this is because I am extremely boring and my weakness is for Nice People Trying to be Good. Nice people becoming cynical and jaded and hurting people is the opposite of what I want to read about.)
okay, so….this one-shot has characters who fall into Finn tropes? because he is also basically all my favorite tropes, too, so I NEED TO READ THIS. (also omg that is a good reminder that I need to actually finish Kenshin. I started it back in high school so like fifteen years ago but I am SO LAZY when it comes to watching things. I don’t know why, sitting down to watch a show feels like…so….much…..effort….compared to sitting and reading.)
Rey and Poe were nice and I like their existence, and I like a lot of the Poe/Rey/Finn friendshipping some of fandom has done because I love fluffy friendships. They are not in and of themselves the sorts of characters I love, but I liked their interactions with Finn and so. I mean honestly Finn is a GIFT, I was pretty sure he was written specifically with me and my favorite tropes in mind.
I am sure Kylo will be redeemed and I will find that very unsatisfactory emotionally. (He reminds me too much of like…every guy who couldn’t take no for an answer which is the real source of my desire that he be stabbed in the face.)
The one plot point I do care about is Rey’s parents, mostly because I desperately don’t want Luke to be her dad. PLEASE Disney.
I stopped after the second book exactly because I didn’t like or like to read about any of those characters except Sansa and Catelyn. Jon Snow put me to sleep, Dany I hated her plot-line disconnect and the Othering and also the dragons. Arya I was irritated from her first chapter at the classic ‘i’m a tomboy and my older sister wants to be responsible and respectfully and follow the feminine roles women are encouraged to that the author is going to disrespect via this sad worn-out tropes, and look at how enlightened/modern I am for hanging out with commoners and then her arc into traumatized child soldier but with too much underlying ‘little miss baddass awesome’. Which, there are tropes I love, but it depends on the context and how even-handed they characters are treated and much i can pretend the characters are.
Violence in detail I can handle. Sexual violence …euh. Where the violence is ratcheted up to comically extreme levels without admitting it a parody and solely to make this statement of war/the past is hell, but with a Hollywood-extreme view of the past where it’s used to say ‘look how awfully violent things are/were’, like the juvenile 90s comics thinking they were being more adult – that turns me off.
Good People Trying to Be Good is a good trope, and I think ASOIAF is trying to have that, with characters trying to do the right thing – but most aren’t. And the character that is most like the stock hero-tying-to-do-right is the “so-awfully-boring why do people like him” Jon Snow. Or I guess Dany “I still wish your dragons had never hatched I can’t wait for them to die and also the sexualization of your character is still creepy and I hate the Beautiful Superior (Colonizing) Noble Family of your family and trope and the author does a bad job with Orientalism in your story-line and the tv show is worse”.
There underlying lynchpin of ASOIAF, while I think it isn’t supposed to be as cynical, comes across as ugly and nihilistic. So yeah, you aren’t missing anything. I’m sure GRRM will write his eucastrophe, but I’m not sitting around waiting for it.
RE: RuroKen: As far as the anime- you can stop after the Kyoto Arc, skip filler. If you can find the manga i do rec it strongly- plus it’s short for a shonen classic. The live action movies are good too, as an AU.
Moon Over Warring States– okay, gonna gush. It’s only a one-shot, so I can. (You follow me long enough, you realize that the core of heget is not a Tolkien fan, it’s a RuroKen fan). The first Hiko Sejirou is fighting against an army that has overtaken his kingdom and inspired the princess he was sworn to protect, trying to go out in a suicidal fight. (Looks at this trope, looks over at Beren). In the middle of fighting he rescues a peasant conscripted fighter who is running away in terror, our coward Isshinta. Questioning Isshinta on why he’s fleeing in tears instead of doing the manly honorable thing -isshinta admits he’s a coward but he wants to return home to his village and Natsu. Hiko startles at this, because the princess has the same name. Isshinta doesn’t want to make Natsu sad by dying; he has to live for her. (Flashback to Natsu scolding Isshinta to stop crying, be strong and brave, here’s her mother’s charm for strength – said charm actually being for strength during childbirth and I love that acknowledgement). Then the reveal that a) Hiko had a forbidden secret love for Princess Natsu, b) she begged him to take her and flee when their country had to surrender, and c) Hiko didn’t and blames himself for abandoning her. Isshinta points out that surrender terms doesn’t guarantee Natsu’s continued safety, stop guilt-tripping yourself, and the real villain is the dude invading; Hiko’s strong enough to stop him. Come dawn, ambush, Hiko fighting for his life, surrounded by the army and evil general. Hiko yells at Isshinta to run, save himself, go back to his Natsu. Isshinta in tears worried for Hiko, running away – at first. Hiko fighting the whole army, the general hiding behind his troops mocking Hiko, planning to present his corpse to Princess Natsu. At the last second, but who appears but our coward isshinta, tears in his eyes, sword raised like a crescent moon – “You are going to live, Hiko. we are both going to live and go back to our Natsu. Princess Natsu is crying because she’s worried about you, not feeling betrayed by you.” Hiko defeats the general, happy reunions all around with a dash of comedy.
So yeah, it’s cliche after cliche but it’s some of my favorite cliches. Add that Finn has the conscientious objector and ‘my side is evil so I’m switching sides’ that I adore from Gara/Lara/Kirney of the Rogue Squadron books and Zuko of AtLA. Finn is my space prince. I want him to be Force-Sensitive and have a major arc with nemesis Plasma. I only like the ST characters because Finn likes them.
I am sure Kylo will be redeemed and I will find that very unsatisfactory emotionally
YES. Just like Rey being a Skywalker, it’s something I expect to happen not because I want it to happen or it’ll emotionally or narratively satisfy me in any shape or form, but because I expect it to happen, because of outside considerations. Because the main movies are centered around Skywalkers and Rey is the main character of the ST, so she has to be a Skywalker. And that’s the only reason that argues for it in my mind. The teeth-gritting acceptance of what larger myth we are structured in.
Reylo is that ship were I understand why it’s there (hi Jacen ships and Kyp/Jaina and all the pure villain/hero ships that never interest me), and i don’t mind its existence or get annoyed fans ship it- but would be screaming furious if anything close to it happens in canon. I would applaud the daring if Kylo stays unredeemed. I feel I should have more sympathy for him if the blame for his behavior is successfully placed on Snoke’s brainwashing, but frankly I found that very unwritten, the rest of Kylo is exactly those attitudes and characters we are supposed to hate. When i didn’t find Darth maul at all cool even as a bad guy, and you expect me to think Kylo Ren is good for anything but failure memes?
omg total agreement on Kylo/Hux haaa. and Perrin/Faile o n o now I want to re-read WOT and nobody has time for that.
I can’t put up with like 75% of ASoIaF, especially when fans try to debate and sleuth the prophecies, because I was there for WoT and the caliber of prophecy and prophecy twists and wild mass guessing and keeping track of characters was so much better. But damn if I didn’t hate how much WoT fandom hated on the female characters, especially my favorites of Nynaeve and Faile. I have almost all the books- haven’t got around to buying the last two, and it’s on the eventual re-read list. But yeah, when I have time.
Kylux. Like, I should have seen it coming, but that it’s that popular, no. And TFA in general is like one of those bad EU Legends novels, so I’m glad I have very little interest in the fandom nowadays so I’m not annoyed by it.
I never read any of ASoIaF entirely because my husband was a HUGE fan when we met (like..12 years ago) and he told me he thought I would hate it.
I haven’t read the last two WoT books either! It’s been such a long time I’d have to re-read all the first ones just to remember what was going on. Part of the appeal was all the cool women doing cool things, although I did feel like a lot of times they reacted too similarly when interacting with Love Interests. It’s been such a long time since I read the books, though, that I could revise that opinion if I re-read them.
As for Kylux….
I was only taken aback because I didn’t even realize Hux had a name so I was like “WHO IS….oh THAT character” and then on reflection it was obvious. Well, maybe that and the fact that I hated Kylo with such intensity that I almost forgot he was fandom bait. Every scene he was in I hoped someone would stab him with a lightsaber.
Otherwise my TFA feelings are that Finn is objectively the best (he is one of my favorite characters in anything, I would watch ten movies just about Finn), and then my 6yo daughter loved Rey and so obviously I like TFA for giving her a character she wants to dress up as (she LOVES the original trilogy but wasn’t too into Leia mostly because of the bikini. unfortunately this also means she’s already had to deal with boys calling her a fake geek girl. Her younger sister only likes Darth Vader, and was disappointed in Kylo.)
I re-read the first nine because I owned them, and was relieved when Knife of Dreams picked up the pacing. My big problem is that Rand became highly unlikable around the fourth book and then I spent most of the rest of the series hating the main character. Luckily the lady trio was having awesome adventures at that time and Matt and Perrin picked up the entertainment slack. Also i don’t know how Faile annoyed people in the third book; she was a breathe of life and plot.
There’s posts in my tags, but short version is I read the first two ASoIaF books and dropped the series, watched some of the show to see if that would work better for me, found out I hated the same issues as with the books plus new ones,so aside from the one pairing, passively rooting for a handful of female characters, and making a fusion with the Silm, I can’t call myself a fan of ASoIaF.
TFA – Finn is the only new character I love, as he’s the only one from any of the new films I really find interesting, plus he hits my favorite tropes. (One day I have to post about Moon over Warring States, the one-shot from the mangaka who wrote Rurouni Kenshin, and how that is my everything). Rey is…yeah I like that she’s here as a role model and character for this younger generation to latch onto, but herself she doesn’t excite me. Anakin Skywalker is what got me interested in Star Wars. Kylo … sigh. Okay, I know Jacen and Kyp from those awful EU books had tons of fans and once Kylo has more than one movie perhaps he’ll be interesting enough, but he’s still in the mental character trash bin with those two and Kevin Anderson villains and plots. I’m resigning myself to a probable redemption for him, because heck if Kyp didn’t have one too. (I really didn’t see the appeal of Kyp but he was the fan favorite to ship with Leia’s daughter, Jaina, so i know fandom) But I only care about the new Star Wars movies to see Finn, see if they remember Lando, and do something with Luke and Leia that no longer make me side-eye the producers and writers. The mystery of Rey’s parents? No fucks given. Kylo Ren? Sigh, we’re stuck with him. Also, I’m trying to forget that Emilia Clarke is the lead for the young Han Solo film when I’d rather had another actress.
omg total agreement on Kylo/Hux haaa. and Perrin/Faile o n o now I want to re-read WOT and nobody has time for that.
I can’t put up with like 75% of ASoIaF, especially when fans try to debate and sleuth the prophecies, because I was there for WoT and the caliber of prophecy and prophecy twists and wild mass guessing and keeping track of characters was so much better. But damn if I didn’t hate how much WoT fandom hated on the female characters, especially my favorites of Nynaeve and Faile. I have almost all the books- haven’t got around to buying the last two, and it’s on the eventual re-read list. But yeah, when I have time.
Kylux. Like, I should have seen it coming, but that it’s that popular, no. And TFA in general is like one of those bad EU Legends novels, so I’m glad I have very little interest in the fandom nowadays so I’m not annoyed by it.
25) there a ship you wish you didn’t know existed?
Curufin/Finrod. Kylo/Hux just because wow, it’s predictable, but Kylo isn’t a great or interesting character and Hux was flatter than Tarkin and worse as a two-bit villain, so here’s the shipping juggernaut and I’m not surprised but I wish I was. As a fandom oldster, the existence of RPF still skeeves me out.
13) Name a ship that deserved more content.
For the main ‘ship of the Silmarillion, the ultimate Tolkien OTP, there is a comparative lack of good Beren/Lúthien fic. But for something that I can’t understand why with fandom tendencies to have almost none- Turgon/Finrod. Also as much as I’m no fan of Finwë, jfc the Finwë/Elwë writes itself, complete with Finwë’s angsty pining for his long-lost friend and accepting the Teleri solely out of intense longing memory of said friend, and the dramatic irony of Finwë’s sons murdering Elwë’s family and friends and then lying about it to Elwë’s face.
My tiny or old book fandoms deserve more. Perrin/Faile.
we have a lot of similar turnoffs, which I kind of expected and which is why I asked haha
I’m glad I didn’t disappoint! 😀
In general while I have exceptions because of nostalgia or they’re very well-written or it’s for a rare-pair or something that soothes that fannish equivalent of ‘I want to eat a bag of cheetos and the greasiest burger you have’… the things I avoid in fanfic, off the top of my head:
Crossover pairings – where the main pairing is the leads of two different canons/shows. Then again this is also my aversion to most pure crossovers where characters from one world interact with another world. I LOVE fusions but hate straight crossovers of world-hoping like the Kingdom Hearts series. Next-gen fics – where the focus is predominantly the cast of OC children of everyone (who tend to fall into cliche roles and retreads of the original)
my NOTPS, obviously. I also tend to avoid stuff labeled Hurt/Comfort (though I think if I examined my tastes, it’s not that I dislike it per-say, in fact the opposite?). There’s only a set amount of angst and dark!fic I can consume- have to be in the right mood and the right character. Fics that ship a teacher-student or parental figure hit my back-button. (This is also one of the reasons why the second Tortall series is my least favorite)
I only have a few slash ships and yep, I’m another person to complain about the overabundance and overwhelming monotonous slash fics about two (predominantly white) dudes and the erasure of female characters (which can tie into a lack of female characters in original canon but doesn’t excuse it). I love minor characters; I can cast no stones – but the phenomenon behind Figwit and such characters I groan. Also, fics that focus on the slashing of the hero and his rival/enemy are in general a big turn-off. Mpreg and most A/B/O I can’t stand, won’t touch RPF with a fifty-foot pole. Harem fic is another do-not-touch. ASoIaF wore away some of the squick from incest ships, but only so that I can admit to no guilt about Túrin/Nienor.
The high school and coffee shop AUs … there needs to be something special about it; I won’t discount all.
I remember the style of crack fic from the early noughties on fanfiction.net. yeah, no longer no thank-you. Song-fic with the lyrics directly inserted between paragraphs has always been a turn-off (that’s a formatting complaint tbh more than anything)
And of course a general standard for grammar, writing style, written in third person…
Now Silmarilion fic? Well if the main characters are any of the Fëanorians or it’s focused solely on a bunch of male Noldor (especially pre-Exile Tirion), if it negatively paints the Valar or Sindar/Elu/Lúthien or villainizes Elwing or infers that Indis was a shallow gold-digger, if the setting is Himring or is yet another Fingon/Maedhros angst love epic, if Maglor is addressed as a positive father-figure to Elros and Elrond, anything Angbang… yeah I have things I don’t touch. I’ve gotten very picky over the ten years. I don’t read LotR/Third Age fic anymore, but I used to.
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