switchbladeeyes

I had lots of fun reading all the fkficfest stories this year. Great to see so many new stories! What imagination! What variety! As someone who enjoys many genres, vibes, and interpretations of the FK universe and its characters, I was very well-satisfied. We had serious and introspective, action-packed and harrowing, and delightful absurdity. Wonderful!

I hope we play again next year!

Until then, I shall get back to:

Recapping/reviewing/writing too many words about season 2 episodes. Next on deck is "Amateur Night," an episode I missed when Mr. SwitchbladeEyes and I watched the series a couple years ago. It's an episode that I kiiiiiiinda remember, but not in much detail.

Throwing out the occasional "general discussion" post, as the fannish spirit moves me.

Working on my WIPs that have been sitting around neglected and gathering dust for 2+ months.

( Now I'm going to chat about my WIPs just 'cause I feel like it... )

Seen floating around DW, and because I've yet to see a fic meme that I said no to:

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

30 on AO3.

(Another 14 or so are still floating around out there NOT on AO3, but in older archives or print zines. I keep meaning to import some of them.)

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

171,170

3. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. More Than One Prison - Oz - 45 kudos
2. TIE: Two Truths and a Lie - Oz - 41 kudos, and Expecting the Unexpected - Star Trek: Enterprise - 41 kudos
3. Zero-Sum - Oz - 26 kudos
4. Poison in Their Blood - Forever Knight - 21 kudos
5. Dust to Dust - Forever Knight - 19 kudos

4. What fandoms do you write for?

Since I got back into fandom two years ago, pretty much entirely Forever Knight. I dabbled with Oz in a couple fics, but all my current projects are Forever Knight.

Before my 15-ish year fandom hiatus, I wrote for a bunch of fandoms, but mainly Oz.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Usually. It’s nice to acknowledge someone taking the time to leave a comment. Also sometimes chat in the comments about the story. Occasionally though, I forget and then realize later, but, idk, it feels weird to leave a response “late.”

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Talking only of the fic on AO3, ummmm… not sure. Several have angsty endings. Not sure what makes one the “angstiest" though. I can't answer this one.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I don’t really seem to do fics where everyone is happy by the end. I favor “hopeful and bittersweet” endings more than ones that are “happy.”

I guess I’d have to go with Squid Pro Quo, an absurdist Forever Knight story in which Nick befriends a giant tentacle monster lol.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, thankfully.

9. Do you write smut?

No, but I have one in the works 😏.

10. Do you write crossovers?

No. I did a stealth crossover many, many years ago (the crossover reveal was basically the punchline of a short story).

The challenge with crossovers is you have to find people willing to read two different fandoms. And since I already write in such a teeny fandom, I’m not sure there’d be much appeal. (Though I still have it sitting in the back of my find to do an FK/What We Do in the Shadows crossover lol.)

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Only Forever Knight fans will get what this means, but yes, because I was an active writer in a Forever Knight faction war back in the 90s.

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

In my Oz fandom days of yore (like 20 years ago omg), the toxic canonical pairing of Beecher/Keller was definitely my jam.

15. What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

None. I do not doubt that I will finish the WIPs that I want to finish.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. This comes the easiest for me, and I think I’m pretty good at it. Most scenes I write start with the dialogue.

I think I also can construct interesting endings.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Describing action. Unlike dialogue, this does not come to me easily. My brain is not great at “spatial” things. So it takes a lot of effort for me to describe scenes that have intensive action. I can picture the action in my mind, but I struggle with articulating what I’m visualizing. Because of this, I spend a lot of time drafting and fine-tuning this kind of thing when writing.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

When reading, I don’t like it if the meaning is not made immediately apparent by a translation or context unless it’s a commonly known word or phrase, e.g., no one needs to translate "bon jour", or unless even the characters aren't supposed to know what the words mean like as a plot device to keep information from the characters. I never go to endnotes to look for translations. I just forge ahead and assume it wasn't that important.

Given my own personal preferences, when I put dialogue in another language, which isn't often, I provide an immediate translation in italics. Like so:

“Janette,” I whisper against her ear. “Qu'est-ce que tu fais ici?” What are you doing here?

“La meilleure revanche,” she replies, breathless, reminding me of our first night together a thousand years ago. The best revenge.

I only inject non-English dialogue very occasionally and briefly (not for the entirety of a scene, like the above was the only French in that scene). I only do it in Forever Knight fics because, canonically, it's just something a few of the characters sometimes do with each other. They'll slip between English and (typically) French, so I'll pop in a bit of French every now and then.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Forever Knight. Back in the 90s. I've come full circle lol.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

Of my old stuff, Two Truths and a Lie (Oz). Two characters trapped together, who have strong feelings for one another. They play a game that turns into a total mind fuck/power play because one is a psychopath. The other ends up just kind of having to accept it if he's going to carry on. A fave because I think I just really "got" these characters.

And of my new stuff, The Strangest Inklings (Forever Knight). Speaking of mind games and power plays, I had so much fun writing this one last year. I turned the tables on a character who, TBH, had it coming. I did not want the readers to see the twist in this story coming, just as the POV character didn't see it coming. Gotta say, the payoff was good in terms of feedback on that. A fave because it was just so dang fun to write.

I saw a funny picture in which someone summed up the story of "The Lord of the Rings" as "Fallen angel with a jewelry obsession hunts 4 ft. tall man across a continent." That literally made me laugh out loud.

I thought it would be funny if people applied this idea to their own fics. So take some of your fics and, in one sentence, summarize them poorly but accurately.

Hours into Days, Days into Years (Forever Knight): Vampire cop takes horse pills, and it turns out that wasn’t a great idea.

Salt (Forever Knight): Vampire who wouldn’t shut up about moving on doesn't move on.

Retribution (one of five ways "Last Knight" didn't end) (Forever Knight): The series finale, only worse.

The Trilling Wire (Forever Knight): Man finally takes women's advice.

Now is the Winter (Dresden Files, TV-verse): A story about a wizard named Harry, but it’s not THAT wizard named Harry.

Zero-Sum (Oz): Man annoyed his actions have consequences.

Here's the picture that inspired this:

From snowflake_challenge: In your own space, create a fanwork.

This was a fun one last year!

I saw so many interesting creations last year, including someone who was building a diorama/miniature of a room related to their fandom. So creative!

I myself stuck with writing fic. It's what I like. So I'm doing that again this year.

For the new visitors to this journal, I write in the "Forever Knight" fandom. I think all you need to know is that these characters are vampires who have lived many, many centuries and irritate one another. They're pictured in the icon on this post.

I keep docs with random scenes, fragments of scenes, ideas, notes, quotes, and questions that perhaps will someday inspire something or make it into a story. It is quite a hodgepodge. One such part of the collection is the following:

Nick and tent revivalist church. Early 20th. Great Depression? American south. It’s summer. Hot. Dusty. Humid. LaCroix being LaCroix. Would LaCroix wear a boater hat? Seersucker? “Priests and preachers, shamans and saints. You’ve always been drawn to them.” Conversation between Nick and LC.

I worked a bit last night to flesh it out. Then some more this morning. There's no real story here, just a little scene that I plunk you in the middle of without much context. Could fit well within a character flashback someday if I ever figure out what the story is. Here we go...

( Nick and LaCroix in a familiar pattern. )

Happy Holidays, friends!

I hope it has been a pleasant holiday season. Life's been busy, but I have today totally off. No work, family, or social obligations! Glorious. I also have a couple similar such days off next week. Excited about it.

Mayhaps I shall work on writing fic. Or reading fic. Or finally get around to scanning the rest of the old FK con photos. Or finish typing up one of my long-winded FK episode posts ("Partners of the Month" is on deck!). Or might just totally fritter my time vegging out and play a video game (it's been a minute since I had a marathon sesh of "Civilization VI").

Anyway, I got a couple thousand words into A Very FK Christmas, which was Nick and Nat fluff, but got sidelined by life obligations. Ah well, there's always next Christmas. Or maybe I'll post something Christmasy in July because why not? We'll see :-D

In other news, I'm looking forward to the fandom snowflake_challenge in January. That was fun last year. Gave me a chance to branch out a bit more and learn about other fandoms.

Meanwhile, I had meant to post some navel gazing chit chat about the last story I posted ("Dust to Dust"), which I realize is probably only of interest to me. This is fine because, well, exploring my fannish interests is the raison d'être of this journal. So here we go...

( I know the Major Character Death AO3 tag limited the appeal of the story. Maybe the length did as well. But I liked it nonetheless. If you want to know who died, come on in because SPOILERS. )

What if the police hadn’t dropped the investigation in "Ashes to Ashes"? What if "Last Knight" never happened?

Those were my starting places for this story, which serves as an alternative ending for the show.

Told from the points of view of Nick, Natalie, and Tracy, the story picks up a couple nights after the events of "Ashes to Ashes." The investigation into the corpse at the Raven continues, drawing unwanted attention. Nick's choices begin to catch up with him and those around him as the situation starts spiraling out of his control.

The story is episode-like, including flashbacks. And the whole gang's here! Well, what's left of the gang at this point in the series.

Season 3 had its moments, but it kept sinking Nick into darker places, never pulling him out. We’re all keenly aware how that turned out. Picking up where it does at the end of season 3, the story has dark and sad moments, but for me at least, its conclusion is a hopeful one.

While I've completed the story, given its length (about 32k words), I'm serializing it. I will post several chapters each week over the next few weeks. I figure that should make the story more digestible.

If an ending that replaces "Last Knight" sounds like your jam, head on over to AO3 for:

Dust to Dust

*dusts this thing off*

Hello friends, it's been a minute. How are you?

While I haven't been too active here on DW, I've been active with fic writing. trillingstar has a Discord server hosting nightly writing sprints, and I participate often. I’ve made a lot of progress on my “what the hell ever happened to Daniel?” FK fic. That sucker’s going to be a long one.

But I’m soon to slow my roll on that one so I can work on a story for spook_me, a low pressure multi-fandom fic challenge. (Change the fandom? No problem. Story submitted late? No problem. Didn’t finish the challenge? No problem. My kind of fic event.)

For the challenge, you choose a fandom and select a creature from a list of spooky creatures. You will also receive two spooky picture prompts for further inspiration. You only need to work in one prompt though: your chosen creature or one of the pictures.

I signed up for FK and selected... bear with me... “tentacle monster.” Is this plausible in the FK universe? No, not really. But does it sound super fun? Of course. It's a tentacle monster!

Perhaps some of you will participate. Sign-ups are through September 15.

🐙

Last night, I was complaining on Discord about how tedious it is to post things on AO3 because of weird formatting issues that I have to fix when I copy and paste from my fic's Google Doc to the AO3 rich text editor. I don't use the HTML editor because I don't add in HTML tags as I write.

The fic will look fine when I paste it into the AO3 rich text editor, but when I save it, I get screwy line breaks and extra spaces (this seems to be relate specifically to italics next to punctuation).

Last night, I'd spent almost 30 minutes manually fixing formatting in a fic I want to post on AO3. I still wasn't done. This is a great irritation I have with AO3 as it is a total time suck.

trillingstar pointed me to this resource. It's a Google Doc with a script you can run that will automatically add HTML tags to the Google Doc so you can copy an paste into AO3's HTML editor. The tool has instructions for exactly how to use it. I tried it and ended up with exactly what I wanted with no screwy formatting when I saved it in AO3. Posting this story was probably going to take an hour total of fixing the formatting in the rich text editor, but this tool did everything in 5 seconds. Amazing. It is going to save me soooooooo much time in the future.

Not sure if anyone else has these issues with posting on AO3, but if so, I wanted to share this resource.

The fkficfest story released yesterday is one that I wrote in response to the prompt "early days."

Told from LaCroix's point-of-view, the story moves him through a few points in his early vampire life. Though Divia admonished him to "let go your mortal bonds," it turns out, throwing out everything of who you used to be isn't necessarily easy.

Teen rating. Gen. Drama. Historical. Graphic violence warning applies to chapter 1 (very brief, but grim nonetheless).

Mortal Bonds

( As I've been wont to do, time for some meta about this story. I managed to sneak in some Roman poetry, but, alas, no sacred chickens of Rome lol. Cut because of spoilers and navel-gazing. )

Woohoo! fkficfest stories have started releasing! I am looking forward to reading all the new stories from the creative minds in this fandom.

The story released today is one that I wrote in response to the prompt "an unexpected event leads to chaos." Told from Janette's point-of-view, the story focuses on her navigating a rather lonely existence 1920s Los Angeles. The story picks up some months after the final flashback in "Father's Day."

Teen rating. Gen. Drama. Featuring Janette, LaCroix, and Nick.

Homecoming

( And how about some meta about this story? Sure, why not. Cut because this is a fair amount of fic navel-gazing. )