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allbingoIn less than a week, I'm hosting an event here, so I'm trying to work out the mechanics here. It said to introduce myself to this community, so here I am!
(I'm... not sure how lengthy this is supposed to be. I'm going off the list from the What You Can Do page. I've just spent my productive time for two days trying to condense this, and it's still long, so I'm hoping it's okay.)
Here and on AO3, I'm Zaniida; I have a variety of pseudonyms, but my penchant for tackling dark, disturbing, and controversial topics makes me want to keep my Zaniida ident chiefly in fan-friendly spaces.
Nicknames are an awesome gift from those who get to know you well. Online, pronouns don't matter to me.
By Scott McCloud's schools of artistic thought, I'm a Classicist-Animist, using art to tell stories and preferring fully developed, complete and satisfying and often archetypal constructions. Not to say that I don't delve into the opposite corners, and I do appreciate their value in pushing the boundaries of artistic expression and expressing some jagged parts of reality that don't fit neatly into boxes. But I love archetypes and I've self-identified as a storyteller since my earliest memories.
(It's easier for me to conceive of a version of myself with completely different religious and political/social beliefs than to conceive of myself as a non-storyteller.)
My niche is intensely dramatic emotional roller coasters. I have a decided preference for deeply intimate Platonic male/male relationships; I can enjoy almost any pairing, but I don't tend to write Ships myself.
While I've never quite pinned down my MBTI type, I'm decidedly an Intuitive with a Perceptive style, meaning I'm invested in the world of ideas and I have a reputation for dreaming up all manner of concepts and connections (see my reputation in this fan comic basic on the AO3 comments section). I'm also a Spade (aka Explorer), meaning I like to dig into the nuts and bolts and see how things work and where the patterns break down.
My weak points? I'm not great at picking up on social cues (unwritten expectations, or hints that I should be acting differently); I flit around from project to project; and it's like pulling teeth for me to try to cut down the options and finalize the details.
This has led to a lifetime filled with bursts of enthusiasm and interesting and exciting projects that often don't go anywhere near completion. I'm bad at predicting my creative future ("I'm starting a series that I'm super excited about" often leads to a one- or two-installment thing), but throw out enough lines and eventually a few things will catch. Plus, just because I haven't worked on something for a while (a few months, a couple of years) doesn't necessarily mean that I've forgotten it, and I might have it on a mental list like "things to complete once I have the time." (I may have forgotten it; I do have memory issues.)
My two key fandoms are Person of Interest and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the various fics I've started in those fandoms that aren't yet finished are in my Open Chapterfics series. Ideally, as time goes by, I'll complete them and shift the completely pieces out of those series. Just, y'know, not in any timely manner. I do still intend to complete as many as I possibly can; I hate seeing fics left abandoned.
That's also why I shy from taking on new projects (and new fandoms; the MCU hijacked my Muse so that all my Person of Interest fics got put on hold for ages, and I knew it was going to do that, which is why I had put off watching the MCU films).
Off and on, over the past twenty-odd years, I've poured time and effort into bringing a couple key projects to completion. They've changed form so many times, and I've put them on the shelf like bread that needs a while to let the yeast work, and then taken them down to knead them again.
They feel like projects that I will eventually actually finish, in that they've stuck with me this long and always feel like something I want to do. And they feel like projects that are uniquely mine, mine to bring into the world (in the right time). Just... not there yet, and no idea when they'll actually come to fruition.
A sampling, at least:
Also the cast of Person of Interest recreated in The Sims 3 (I'm about halfway through the list, which is organized by actors' birth months; that link also has preview images for at least a couple characters).
I've beaten NaNoWriMo a few times (roughly half the times I've entered).
A couple years ago, I managed to complete two fic exchanges back to back; it nearly killed me, but it's some of the best writing I've ever done, and (get this) both fics are complete! They're both in the Person of Interest fandom:
Numb Too Long centers on Harold Finch getting kidnapped, and Shaw and Fusco trying to track him down before Reese finds out about it. You can read it in full, or read just the odd chapters for the race to find him, or just the even chapters for his experience getting taken and tortured (nothing permanent).
Readers have called it a "tight casefic," enthused over a rare multi-chapter Fusco & Shaw piece, marveled over how quickly I put together a piece that detailed (I even surprised myself!), and complimented my OC kidnappers as better written (more fleshed out) than some of the characters in POI canon. I also worked in an odd form: Multiple points of view written in the Second Person (you), which turned out better than expected and also got compliments.
Obedience Is Bliss (Don't Fight It) is a Dom/sub verse rehash of the episode where Reese got shot; I changed it from an attempt to kill him to a drug that ramps up his sub nature (rendering him docile to any form of command), and Finch tries to get him safely away and hidden while having to deal with the way that drug is affecting the both of them. Note: The Dom/sub relationship in this worldbuild is explicitly nonsexual, distinguished from the normal gendered sexual relationships.
The biggest and most successful group project that I've ever spearheaded is Unseen Things (the title shifts over time, but always contains that phrase), which drew in around a dozen participants from around the world to create a shared worldbuild based on a combination of Person of Interest and the SCP Foundation.
In case you're unfamiliar with SCP, imagine a world where a wide variety of supernatural phenomena exist, but powerful groups take drastic steps to keep the public from finding out about it, and spend their resources finding ways to contain/control the objects, creatures, people, and nonphysical phenomena that they encounter. I created a fusion worldbuild based on that concept, and plopped the POI cast right in, switching up their backstories to suit the concept. It was awesome.
Originally, I'd planned to finish the entire story within that single October, because there was a key meta element to the idea (which I intend to talk about in a different post, so that those who don't want spoilers can avoid it). But it worked out super well until I ran into writer's block, and so here we are two years later, and I hope to make significant progress during October but, again, I'm bad at predicting my creative output.
I've posted just over half a million words across over 100 items. About 10% of my fics explore consent issues regarding sex (usually between characters with no sexual interest in each other), but it's almost never the path to a positive, ongoing sexual relationship, just an ordeal that they have to get through before they go back to their normal nonsexual relationship.
I post a lot of prompts/challenges; the first year, I did so monthly, but I've settled into a pattern of January, July, my birthday (August 31st), and a general invitation to join me in writing "Creepyfest" content during October. My July Prompt is always the same: Try a project in a creative medium that you're unfamiliar with or not yet skilled in. Thanks in part to that prompt, I've posted fan art, podfics, fanvids, and random one-off projects like bead art and the aforementioned POI Sims, while inspiring knitting, filk songs, food art, and even a giant rag doll of one of my characters (which currently resides in my room).
My birthday prompt is generally some idea that I'd like to see a lot of iterations of:
It's neat to wake up on my birthday to see that multiple fills have been posted during the night.
I've posted roughly 800 videos (why is the exact video count so hard to locate? you'd think that should be one of the easiest pieces of data to find) and attracted some 64 subscribers so far, even though I'm currently mostly on hiatus while I focus on my writing (before reaching burnout, I managed two years of posting six (generally short and random) videos per week). Latest posts were for my July Prompt: This year, I got my nephews together and recorded scenes from Person of Interest, Harry Potter, and the MCU (we had a blast).
Most of my content, though, is random gaming clips, and most (though not all) are random Minecraft clips (like my niephlings failing to disarm known traps in the Super Hostile maps). Other content includes Let's Plays (chiefly A Fugitive in Stardew Valley), tutorials (like a short series on the patterns in Pam's HarvestCraft (a Minecraft mod)), fanvids, compilations (some from my nephews), charity videos, skits, random animal videos, and me singing random cover songs (and also in six languages; the next 7-8 languages ought to get recorded soon-ish). Also contact juggling, though I've yet to make a decent video showcasing that skill (the song I initially recorded to turned out to be not YouTube-friendly).
I post short update notifications on Twitter, and longer thoughts on Pillowfort; my Twitter is filled mostly with random reactions, weird tangents, and unwise rants about whatever has gotten under my skin, while my Pillowfort has more coherent fare because I tend to think twice about what I'm posting and go over it a few times, which isn't the case with Twitter.
With far less content: My Fanfiction.net account is a family-friendly subset of my AO3 account, sporadically updated and with virtually no curating; I just throw the fics up there and run, and don't check it much. My DeviantArt account includes random pics and poetry and a small collection of original short stories, some of them horror stories; I don't post there much, and even less now that I can post my shareable pics on both Google Drive and Pillowfort as the need arises.
I tried to set up a front end for my various content using NeoCities, but ended up getting distracted from it, as I bit off more than I could chew and it's nowhere in a state to show the public but it apparently shows up on Google anyway, and I'm kinda pissed at that. It's like letting the public peek in my underwear drawer. I know that later on I'll likely be glad to have Google able to find the things hidden on (most of) my pages, but I want/need that sandbox mode to be private in the meantime.
There are likely other accounts that I'm forgetting.
I created the holiday Tiny Box Tim Day, "a holiday for helping others" that takes place on June 28th, and I mostly use that day to help the homeless (though the holiday itself is for any sort of charitable effort; that's just the one that I've been drawn to for the last four years). We (my niephlings and I) also participate in the Extra Life Charity Fundraiser, and since 2016 we've raised an average of $90 per year for Seattle Children's Hospital (highest year: $180.29; lowest year: $4.78).
Oh, and in 2016 I did the Project for Awesome, but it was difficult to tell if my video led to any actual donations, so, although I think that's a really cool event and I loved seeing all the videos, I decided to stick with events where I could more directly observe my impact.
I have a Ko-fi account, in case you appreciate my creative efforts enough to give me a tip.
I also have a Zazzle store, although my art/photography has only sold a couple pieces so far. The main store is ZeyovianPathways ("Zeyovian" is another way to indicate me, in the adjective form), which is largely jigsaw puzzles but also contains some bandanas, blankets, a couple of clocks, and wrapping paper, including my Unforgotten Birthday wrapping paper that I'd hoped to develop into a full set for those who have birthdays close to the major holidays.
I have a section for Creative Commons art, ZeyovianCommons, which uses CC0 resources that I grabbed before Unsplash apparently changed their terms of service, so if you'd like a few pieces of really neat photography on jigsaws, those are available. I think I've sold two of the CC0 jigsaws and one jigsaw with my photograph of a bunch of keys.
One of the BINGO Boards for the upcoming event is based on my preferences, so there's a stack of prompts in case you'd like to make me something. My birthday is the end of August (which is why I chose August for this event).
One of my absolute favorite scenarios to mentally experience is the slow forced surrender to capture. I don't want "Something hit him on the head and then he woke up in a cage"; I want something more like this:
There's a variety of ways to do it, but the main things is being forced to give in, being overpowered by physical force or by drugs or magic or a concussion or being strangled or whatever you can come up with. Not wanting to give in, but having no ability to resist anymore; running out of strength. Even succumbing to brainwashing. That's my "bread and butter" scenario ^_^
I'm not easily triggered, offended, or troubled by fiction. Most of my "do not want" list would be more in the range of "I can put up with this, but I wish it were less common or less focused on" (like crude language / swearing, or how fans turn every relationship into something sexual).
(Also: There are characters where any level of swearing from them breaks my suspension of disbelief, as it seems out of character for that character to be throwing F-bombs around. Professor Snape (Harry Potter) and Xellos (Slayers) are two characters where I've never seen them swear in a believable way. Not to say that they can't use a certain level of crude language, or that they're nice characters, but it feels off when I see it in fics.)
I've found that I don't do well with unrelenting dystopias. I once hit a downward spiral for a week over one of those, before getting rescued by an equally disturbing fic that wasn't unrelenting and had finally reached a point of energy and hope.
My brain does not do well with Cringe Comedy or Cringe Drama. There are episodes of Leverage (a show I love) that I've had to make it through 20 seconds at a time (watch a tiny bit, get too keyed up, pause it and do other things for 20 minutes, rinse repeat recycle).
I don't care for a focus on gross or gory stuff (aside from blood; any amount of blood is fine, and I love vampires). And while I enjoy the concept of scars and I don't mind a certain amount of long-lasting or permanent damage (physical, mental, magical, whatever), I prefer it to be mild, like a trophy of survival, or an acknowledgement that such an ordeal causes some level of permanent changes; I want the characters to survive and win free and be largely capable of moving forward with their lives, not forever shackled by the aftereffects of that ordeal.
I can enjoy darkfic in small doses, and I don't have a problem with very dark sections as part of larger fics. I enjoy torture scenes, and I also read a lot of DubCon and Non-Con.
I'm after intense scenarios that drive my favorite characters to their limit, but let them emerge out the other side intact and free and relatively happy/relieved, with support from allies and a sense that justice has been achieved. The good guys get good endings, the bad guys get bad endings (or redemption arcs), and nobody gets away with being nasty to innocent people.
I'm okay with occasional heroic sacrifices (heroes dying to save others is one sort of positive ending, I just don't want to see it very often). Note: I don't find "we should both die, because neither would be happy without the other" to be particularly romantic, logical, or believable; better one should live and move on.
My preference is for drama over dramedy over comedy, and "modern comedy" really doesn't do it for me (we've had thousands of years to develop comedy as an art form, and we came up with bathroom jokes and Adam Sandler? srsly??). Buffy-level dramedy is great. Sylvester Stallone's Oscar is one of my favorite comedy films, and Megamind was also quite enjoyable.
I love snarky banter, witty comebacks, creative insults (flyting is awesome, as are Epic Rap Battles), and equivocation (one word, multiple meanings -- even better if it's one conversation, multiple interpretations, and neither side realizing that the other's saying a completely different thing).
My favorite characters tend to be dark horse characters, oddities, fish out of water, those shunned or ostracized, and villains on a redemption path. It's no surprise that I gravitated straight to MCU Loki (I knew in advance that I was gonna love that character). I also love it when authors delve into Nebula, Pietro, Mantis, Wanda, Hela, Yondu, and of course Peter and Bucky. (Also Frigga and Coulson, because they're awesome.)
Other faves include Spike (Buffy), Zuko (AtLA), Xellos (Slayers), Q (Star Trek), and Ben Linus (Lost, though I haven't yet watched much of that series). My favorite Star Trek characters are practically a given: Spock, Data, Odo (and Bashir and Garak), the Doctor (and Kes and 7/9) -- and Q.
I'm not a Shipper, so I can enjoy just about any pairing. I prefer Platonic male/male relationships over anything sexual, but I can enjoy all manner of sexual relationships (including incest -- I just wish more people would appreciate that the sibling bond can be deep and intense without any sexual attraction). When it comes to sexual or romantic relationships, my preference is slash, threesomes (or more), het, nonbinary, and femmeslash, roughly in that order.
(I'm... not sure how lengthy this is supposed to be. I'm going off the list from the What You Can Do page. I've just spent my productive time for two days trying to condense this, and it's still long, so I'm hoping it's okay.)
Here and on AO3, I'm Zaniida; I have a variety of pseudonyms, but my penchant for tackling dark, disturbing, and controversial topics makes me want to keep my Zaniida ident chiefly in fan-friendly spaces.
Nicknames are an awesome gift from those who get to know you well. Online, pronouns don't matter to me.
A Storyteller, First and Foremost
By Scott McCloud's schools of artistic thought, I'm a Classicist-Animist, using art to tell stories and preferring fully developed, complete and satisfying and often archetypal constructions. Not to say that I don't delve into the opposite corners, and I do appreciate their value in pushing the boundaries of artistic expression and expressing some jagged parts of reality that don't fit neatly into boxes. But I love archetypes and I've self-identified as a storyteller since my earliest memories.
(It's easier for me to conceive of a version of myself with completely different religious and political/social beliefs than to conceive of myself as a non-storyteller.)
My niche is intensely dramatic emotional roller coasters. I have a decided preference for deeply intimate Platonic male/male relationships; I can enjoy almost any pairing, but I don't tend to write Ships myself.
Scatterbrained Spade
While I've never quite pinned down my MBTI type, I'm decidedly an Intuitive with a Perceptive style, meaning I'm invested in the world of ideas and I have a reputation for dreaming up all manner of concepts and connections (see my reputation in this fan comic basic on the AO3 comments section). I'm also a Spade (aka Explorer), meaning I like to dig into the nuts and bolts and see how things work and where the patterns break down.
My weak points? I'm not great at picking up on social cues (unwritten expectations, or hints that I should be acting differently); I flit around from project to project; and it's like pulling teeth for me to try to cut down the options and finalize the details.
This has led to a lifetime filled with bursts of enthusiasm and interesting and exciting projects that often don't go anywhere near completion. I'm bad at predicting my creative future ("I'm starting a series that I'm super excited about" often leads to a one- or two-installment thing), but throw out enough lines and eventually a few things will catch. Plus, just because I haven't worked on something for a while (a few months, a couple of years) doesn't necessarily mean that I've forgotten it, and I might have it on a mental list like "things to complete once I have the time." (I may have forgotten it; I do have memory issues.)
My two key fandoms are Person of Interest and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and the various fics I've started in those fandoms that aren't yet finished are in my Open Chapterfics series. Ideally, as time goes by, I'll complete them and shift the completely pieces out of those series. Just, y'know, not in any timely manner. I do still intend to complete as many as I possibly can; I hate seeing fics left abandoned.
That's also why I shy from taking on new projects (and new fandoms; the MCU hijacked my Muse so that all my Person of Interest fics got put on hold for ages, and I knew it was going to do that, which is why I had put off watching the MCU films).
The Mysterious Twenty-Year Projects
Off and on, over the past twenty-odd years, I've poured time and effort into bringing a couple key projects to completion. They've changed form so many times, and I've put them on the shelf like bread that needs a while to let the yeast work, and then taken them down to knead them again.
They feel like projects that I will eventually actually finish, in that they've stuck with me this long and always feel like something I want to do. And they feel like projects that are uniquely mine, mine to bring into the world (in the right time). Just... not there yet, and no idea when they'll actually come to fruition.
Series That Actually Went Somewhere
A sampling, at least:
- My FMI fic form (which is the core of the upcoming event during August)
- Journey Thru the MCU (my impressions of the Marvel Cinematic Universe)
- A Fugitive in Stardew Valley (a Let's Play in the classical style, creating a new story from the game footage)
Also the cast of Person of Interest recreated in The Sims 3 (I'm about halfway through the list, which is organized by actors' birth months; that link also has preview images for at least a couple characters).
Challenges I've Participated In
I've beaten NaNoWriMo a few times (roughly half the times I've entered).
A couple years ago, I managed to complete two fic exchanges back to back; it nearly killed me, but it's some of the best writing I've ever done, and (get this) both fics are complete! They're both in the Person of Interest fandom:
Numb Too Long centers on Harold Finch getting kidnapped, and Shaw and Fusco trying to track him down before Reese finds out about it. You can read it in full, or read just the odd chapters for the race to find him, or just the even chapters for his experience getting taken and tortured (nothing permanent).
Readers have called it a "tight casefic," enthused over a rare multi-chapter Fusco & Shaw piece, marveled over how quickly I put together a piece that detailed (I even surprised myself!), and complimented my OC kidnappers as better written (more fleshed out) than some of the characters in POI canon. I also worked in an odd form: Multiple points of view written in the Second Person (you), which turned out better than expected and also got compliments.
Obedience Is Bliss (Don't Fight It) is a Dom/sub verse rehash of the episode where Reese got shot; I changed it from an attempt to kill him to a drug that ramps up his sub nature (rendering him docile to any form of command), and Finch tries to get him safely away and hidden while having to deal with the way that drug is affecting the both of them. Note: The Dom/sub relationship in this worldbuild is explicitly nonsexual, distinguished from the normal gendered sexual relationships.
Unseen Things
The biggest and most successful group project that I've ever spearheaded is Unseen Things (the title shifts over time, but always contains that phrase), which drew in around a dozen participants from around the world to create a shared worldbuild based on a combination of Person of Interest and the SCP Foundation.
In case you're unfamiliar with SCP, imagine a world where a wide variety of supernatural phenomena exist, but powerful groups take drastic steps to keep the public from finding out about it, and spend their resources finding ways to contain/control the objects, creatures, people, and nonphysical phenomena that they encounter. I created a fusion worldbuild based on that concept, and plopped the POI cast right in, switching up their backstories to suit the concept. It was awesome.
Originally, I'd planned to finish the entire story within that single October, because there was a key meta element to the idea (which I intend to talk about in a different post, so that those who don't want spoilers can avoid it). But it worked out super well until I ran into writer's block, and so here we are two years later, and I hope to make significant progress during October but, again, I'm bad at predicting my creative output.
Major Accounts
Archive of Our Own
I've posted just over half a million words across over 100 items. About 10% of my fics explore consent issues regarding sex (usually between characters with no sexual interest in each other), but it's almost never the path to a positive, ongoing sexual relationship, just an ordeal that they have to get through before they go back to their normal nonsexual relationship.
I post a lot of prompts/challenges; the first year, I did so monthly, but I've settled into a pattern of January, July, my birthday (August 31st), and a general invitation to join me in writing "Creepyfest" content during October. My July Prompt is always the same: Try a project in a creative medium that you're unfamiliar with or not yet skilled in. Thanks in part to that prompt, I've posted fan art, podfics, fanvids, and random one-off projects like bead art and the aforementioned POI Sims, while inspiring knitting, filk songs, food art, and even a giant rag doll of one of my characters (which currently resides in my room).
My birthday prompt is generally some idea that I'd like to see a lot of iterations of:
- Year One: Finch is about to get kidnapped; Reese can't do anything but talk to him, so what do they discuss?
- Year Two: Reese says he's not the type to play games -- well, let's fix that. Make him play any type of game.
- Year Three: Lokiwhump. Just... Lokiwhump.
It's neat to wake up on my birthday to see that multiple fills have been posted during the night.
My YouTube Channel
I've posted roughly 800 videos (why is the exact video count so hard to locate? you'd think that should be one of the easiest pieces of data to find) and attracted some 64 subscribers so far, even though I'm currently mostly on hiatus while I focus on my writing (before reaching burnout, I managed two years of posting six (generally short and random) videos per week). Latest posts were for my July Prompt: This year, I got my nephews together and recorded scenes from Person of Interest, Harry Potter, and the MCU (we had a blast).
Most of my content, though, is random gaming clips, and most (though not all) are random Minecraft clips (like my niephlings failing to disarm known traps in the Super Hostile maps). Other content includes Let's Plays (chiefly A Fugitive in Stardew Valley), tutorials (like a short series on the patterns in Pam's HarvestCraft (a Minecraft mod)), fanvids, compilations (some from my nephews), charity videos, skits, random animal videos, and me singing random cover songs (and also in six languages; the next 7-8 languages ought to get recorded soon-ish). Also contact juggling, though I've yet to make a decent video showcasing that skill (the song I initially recorded to turned out to be not YouTube-friendly).
I post short update notifications on Twitter, and longer thoughts on Pillowfort; my Twitter is filled mostly with random reactions, weird tangents, and unwise rants about whatever has gotten under my skin, while my Pillowfort has more coherent fare because I tend to think twice about what I'm posting and go over it a few times, which isn't the case with Twitter.
Minor Accounts
With far less content: My Fanfiction.net account is a family-friendly subset of my AO3 account, sporadically updated and with virtually no curating; I just throw the fics up there and run, and don't check it much. My DeviantArt account includes random pics and poetry and a small collection of original short stories, some of them horror stories; I don't post there much, and even less now that I can post my shareable pics on both Google Drive and Pillowfort as the need arises.
I tried to set up a front end for my various content using NeoCities, but ended up getting distracted from it, as I bit off more than I could chew and it's nowhere in a state to show the public but it apparently shows up on Google anyway, and I'm kinda pissed at that. It's like letting the public peek in my underwear drawer. I know that later on I'll likely be glad to have Google able to find the things hidden on (most of) my pages, but I want/need that sandbox mode to be private in the meantime.
There are likely other accounts that I'm forgetting.
Charity
I created the holiday Tiny Box Tim Day, "a holiday for helping others" that takes place on June 28th, and I mostly use that day to help the homeless (though the holiday itself is for any sort of charitable effort; that's just the one that I've been drawn to for the last four years). We (my niephlings and I) also participate in the Extra Life Charity Fundraiser, and since 2016 we've raised an average of $90 per year for Seattle Children's Hospital (highest year: $180.29; lowest year: $4.78).
Oh, and in 2016 I did the Project for Awesome, but it was difficult to tell if my video led to any actual donations, so, although I think that's a really cool event and I loved seeing all the videos, I decided to stick with events where I could more directly observe my impact.
Commerce and Donations
I have a Ko-fi account, in case you appreciate my creative efforts enough to give me a tip.
I also have a Zazzle store, although my art/photography has only sold a couple pieces so far. The main store is ZeyovianPathways ("Zeyovian" is another way to indicate me, in the adjective form), which is largely jigsaw puzzles but also contains some bandanas, blankets, a couple of clocks, and wrapping paper, including my Unforgotten Birthday wrapping paper that I'd hoped to develop into a full set for those who have birthdays close to the major holidays.
I have a section for Creative Commons art, ZeyovianCommons, which uses CC0 resources that I grabbed before Unsplash apparently changed their terms of service, so if you'd like a few pieces of really neat photography on jigsaws, those are available. I think I've sold two of the CC0 jigsaws and one jigsaw with my photograph of a bunch of keys.
Fandom Preferences
One of the BINGO Boards for the upcoming event is based on my preferences, so there's a stack of prompts in case you'd like to make me something. My birthday is the end of August (which is why I chose August for this event).
One of my absolute favorite scenarios to mentally experience is the slow forced surrender to capture. I don't want "Something hit him on the head and then he woke up in a cage"; I want something more like this:
They were closing in. Heart pounding, he dodged into an alley, only to find the far end blocked; he whirled, but it was too late, and they were upon him, ducking around his frantic punches and grabbing his arms, his legs. Despite all his struggles, they forced him to the ground, and then, once he was too confined to do more than squirm, he felt a sharp jab in the back of his neck. Slowly, against his will, he felt his body relaxing, all the fight draining out of him, and when they picked him up to walk him over to the car, he didn't have it in him to resist anymore.
There's a variety of ways to do it, but the main things is being forced to give in, being overpowered by physical force or by drugs or magic or a concussion or being strangled or whatever you can come up with. Not wanting to give in, but having no ability to resist anymore; running out of strength. Even succumbing to brainwashing. That's my "bread and butter" scenario ^_^
Squicks and Triggers
I'm not easily triggered, offended, or troubled by fiction. Most of my "do not want" list would be more in the range of "I can put up with this, but I wish it were less common or less focused on" (like crude language / swearing, or how fans turn every relationship into something sexual).
(Also: There are characters where any level of swearing from them breaks my suspension of disbelief, as it seems out of character for that character to be throwing F-bombs around. Professor Snape (Harry Potter) and Xellos (Slayers) are two characters where I've never seen them swear in a believable way. Not to say that they can't use a certain level of crude language, or that they're nice characters, but it feels off when I see it in fics.)
I've found that I don't do well with unrelenting dystopias. I once hit a downward spiral for a week over one of those, before getting rescued by an equally disturbing fic that wasn't unrelenting and had finally reached a point of energy and hope.
My brain does not do well with Cringe Comedy or Cringe Drama. There are episodes of Leverage (a show I love) that I've had to make it through 20 seconds at a time (watch a tiny bit, get too keyed up, pause it and do other things for 20 minutes, rinse repeat recycle).
I don't care for a focus on gross or gory stuff (aside from blood; any amount of blood is fine, and I love vampires). And while I enjoy the concept of scars and I don't mind a certain amount of long-lasting or permanent damage (physical, mental, magical, whatever), I prefer it to be mild, like a trophy of survival, or an acknowledgement that such an ordeal causes some level of permanent changes; I want the characters to survive and win free and be largely capable of moving forward with their lives, not forever shackled by the aftereffects of that ordeal.
Tone/Mood
I can enjoy darkfic in small doses, and I don't have a problem with very dark sections as part of larger fics. I enjoy torture scenes, and I also read a lot of DubCon and Non-Con.
I'm after intense scenarios that drive my favorite characters to their limit, but let them emerge out the other side intact and free and relatively happy/relieved, with support from allies and a sense that justice has been achieved. The good guys get good endings, the bad guys get bad endings (or redemption arcs), and nobody gets away with being nasty to innocent people.
I'm okay with occasional heroic sacrifices (heroes dying to save others is one sort of positive ending, I just don't want to see it very often). Note: I don't find "we should both die, because neither would be happy without the other" to be particularly romantic, logical, or believable; better one should live and move on.
My preference is for drama over dramedy over comedy, and "modern comedy" really doesn't do it for me (we've had thousands of years to develop comedy as an art form, and we came up with bathroom jokes and Adam Sandler? srsly??). Buffy-level dramedy is great. Sylvester Stallone's Oscar is one of my favorite comedy films, and Megamind was also quite enjoyable.
I love snarky banter, witty comebacks, creative insults (flyting is awesome, as are Epic Rap Battles), and equivocation (one word, multiple meanings -- even better if it's one conversation, multiple interpretations, and neither side realizing that the other's saying a completely different thing).
Characters and Ships
My favorite characters tend to be dark horse characters, oddities, fish out of water, those shunned or ostracized, and villains on a redemption path. It's no surprise that I gravitated straight to MCU Loki (I knew in advance that I was gonna love that character). I also love it when authors delve into Nebula, Pietro, Mantis, Wanda, Hela, Yondu, and of course Peter and Bucky. (Also Frigga and Coulson, because they're awesome.)
Other faves include Spike (Buffy), Zuko (AtLA), Xellos (Slayers), Q (Star Trek), and Ben Linus (Lost, though I haven't yet watched much of that series). My favorite Star Trek characters are practically a given: Spock, Data, Odo (and Bashir and Garak), the Doctor (and Kes and 7/9) -- and Q.
I'm not a Shipper, so I can enjoy just about any pairing. I prefer Platonic male/male relationships over anything sexual, but I can enjoy all manner of sexual relationships (including incest -- I just wish more people would appreciate that the sibling bond can be deep and intense without any sexual attraction). When it comes to sexual or romantic relationships, my preference is slash, threesomes (or more), het, nonbinary, and femmeslash, roughly in that order.
Thoughts
Date: 2020-07-28 08:41 am (UTC)As long or short as you want.
>>I have a decided preference for deeply intimate Platonic male/male relationships<<
I write a lot of those. I'm particularly fascinated by Pips and his boss-orientation, because he's riiiiight at the point where settling down starts to look good after some years of playing the field with truly extreme vigor.
>>I've beaten NaNoWriMo a few times (roughly half the times I've entered).<<
Impressive.
>>I created the holiday Tiny Box Tim Day, "a holiday for helping others" that takes place on June 28th,<<
We had so much fun with that.
>> We (my niephlings and I) <<
I haven't seen that version before, but have seen niblings.
>> (Also: There are characters where any level of swearing from them breaks my suspension of disbelief, as it seems out of character for that character to be throwing F-bombs around. <<
I love using word choice for characterization. Consequently I think my Steve Rogers has F-bombed once -- when he discovered the Winter Soldier was Bucky in HYDRA control. See, Steve was in the army. He has heard All The Words. He doesn't like to use them because he thinks they're nasty. But everyone has a limit, and that was his, and he ripped one out.
>>My brain does not do well with Cringe Comedy or Cringe Drama. <<
Yeah, emotional squick is a major turnoff. It makes me wonder if that stuff is written for a bully audience -- people who enjoy seeing others humiliated.
>>I prefer it to be mild, like a trophy of survival, or an acknowledgement that such an ordeal causes some level of permanent changes; I want the characters to survive and win free and be largely capable of moving forward with their lives, not forever shackled by the aftereffects of that ordeal.<<
I don't enjoy wallowing in misery, but I do love hurt/comfort and especially recovery stories. Conversely, I hate when major trauma happens and the author just handwaves it away. I like -- and my readers also like -- stories that show how to cope with actual challenges, whether the character uses good coping skills or bad ones.
>>I can enjoy darkfic in small doses <<
I have to be in a very particular mood, or else want something particular from the story, to enjoy darkfic. Like I watched Dark Matter just for the ball-busting honesty of someone showing what really happens when you dump a handful of random strangers together and pretend they're a team. KERPLOWIE. O_O
I do have a couple of darkfic series, but they are the least popular with my audience, who generally prefer more positive stuff. Not necessarily fluff (which I also write) but hopeful and in a world that does not simply suck donkey balls.
>> My preference is for drama over dramedy over comedy, and "modern comedy" really doesn't do it for me (we've had thousands of years to develop comedy as an art form, and we came up with bathroom jokes and Adam Sandler? srsly??). <<
Yeah, most modern entertainment is boring or actively off-putting for me. >_< I want to see actual teamwork. Healthy relationships. Stories about something other than fucking. Remember when characters used to explore alien planets? I like T&A as much as the next guy, but not when it's all that's left. Ironically, I find bookstores with less and less worth buying, while crowdfunding and fanfic have truly groundbreaking literature.
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2020-07-29 10:16 pm (UTC)Compared to various movies and shows where the writers got the memo that "good drama involves conflict" but never actually moved on to the lesson about how to write conflict without creating a team that hates each other's guts, where each character wants to succeed at the cost of the others or whatever. (I vaguely recall Armageddon being the film I most strongly noticed this quality in.) Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.
It's nice when writers figure out how to have characters conflict with each other while both being good, reasonable characters, just with incompatible goals. What immediately comes to mind is Tevye's daughter in Fiddler on the Roof, when she sings "Far from the Home I Love": She knows where her heart and mind are telling her to go, she knows that it's going to be hard but that she's willing to take that step, and she knows that it is harming her family in a way that cannot be avoided unless she steps down and lets her future and the good she could do leave without her. The culture of sticking with your community is so strong that her family finds it very hard to let her go, especially knowing the hardship she will face and that without the kind of support she could get if she lived near the people she grew up with.
That's conflict with nobody being in the wrong. That's people wanting to do the right thing by themselves and their loved ones, and finding that something must be sacrificed to accomplish the better thing.
And yes, I absolutely agree that I find fanfiction to be far more interesting and groundbreaking than most of the books I've read. Though I will also note that, some decades ago, I found Young Adult Fiction to be better than pretty much any adult-aimed books I could find, and there are several YA novels that I borrowed so often from the library that I eventually bought them and am glad to own them and even borrow ideas from them now and again. Some of them I'd like to make into film scripts and see if I could see them hit the silver screen (I tried that a lot during college, but never finished a script; adaptation is more difficult than one might think).
(At some point, I'd concluded that YA books were better with characters and plots because they didn't have the crutches of sex, extreme violence, and swearing. Of course, that clearly isn't the case with fanfiction.)
Re: Thoughts
Date: 2020-07-29 11:27 pm (UTC)I find both of these plausible.
Have you seen "Days of Future Past" in Marvelverse? I was greatly impressed with the superpower teamwork in the opening sequence. They moved like the fingers of one hand.
>>Compared to various movies and shows where the writers got the memo that "good drama involves conflict" but never actually moved on to the lesson about how to write conflict without creating a team that hates each other's guts, where each character wants to succeed at the cost of the others or whatever. (I vaguely recall Armageddon being the film I most strongly noticed this quality in.) Teeth-Clenched Teamwork.<<
I think the problem is that most people simply have no idea what teamwork IS. They've rarely if ever seen it. They weren't taught it in school. Group projects in school typically involve forcing several students to work together with no actual instruction, followed by the nerd doing all the work (if the grade is needed) or it not getting done (if the grade is not essential). I've also heard of the popular kids getting together and excluding others. Move along to employment, and often similar things happen, because again, nobody has had any opportunity to learn real teamwork and companies often refuse to fire bullies. Farther back, people used to learn this stuff from friends and family, but society is so broken apart that this tends not to happen now. So the older shows have much better teamwork and less asshattery.
>>That's conflict with nobody being in the wrong. That's people wanting to do the right thing by themselves and their loved ones, and finding that something must be sacrificed to accomplish the better thing.<<
Or preferably, figure out some other option that everyone can at least live with. There's very little effort toward that now. Most idiots are perfectly happy as long as they get what they want, never mind if other people are miserable.
>>And yes, I absolutely agree that I find fanfiction to be far more interesting and groundbreaking than most of the books I've read. Though I will also note that, some decades ago, I found Young Adult Fiction to be better than pretty much any adult-aimed books I could find, and there are several YA novels that I borrowed so often from the library that I eventually bought them and am glad to own them and even borrow ideas from them now and again.<<
I agree on both points.
>>(At some point, I'd concluded that YA books were better with characters and plots because they didn't have the crutches of sex, extreme violence, and swearing. Of course, that clearly isn't the case with fanfiction.)<<
That likely is a factor in YA lit. I think fanfic does it because there are no obligations. You can writer whateverthehell you want, and people do. I honestly credit fanfic with changing homosexuality from "the love that dare not speak its name" to "da kyoot!"
no subject
Date: 2020-07-28 07:07 pm (UTC)And clearly, to mention this on your post.
I don't want to be That Person, being I'm not a mod, but as a trans person who gets misgendered every. single. day, I scroll through my reading page and seeing this pop up is, well, not exactly happy-making, because it's yet another inescapable reminder of the crap I put up with every day (and how being able to laugh at being misgendered is apparently a thing other people can do, which reinforces all kinds of yucky feelings for me). I really, really don't want to have to unsub to this community for a bit to not see this post.
Was it necessary to include this line? Would "pronouns don't really matter to me." period, end of sentence, have sufficed? Note that I'm not trying to tell you how to feel about your own gender identity and that you can't find being misgendered funny, but for those of us who *do* find being misgendered not funny, it would have been really nice to not have to have this sprung on us suddenly in a public community.
Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 07:11 pm (UTC)Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 07:14 pm (UTC)(I know sometimes people just don't know, and people with good intent can make mistakes, it happens. <3)
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 08:06 pm (UTC)All stances are valid. It's attacking people that's wrong. And that's generally getting lost in most discussions about sex/gender identity and language.
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 08:09 pm (UTC)EDIT: Never mind, I think I misread because I'm feeling sensitive today. SORRY
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 08:15 pm (UTC)Besides which, I'm trying to write characters who have this kind of perspective as well, so knowing how people react to certain concepts -- or, rather, the way in which those concepts get portrayed -- is valuable to me.
Your comment does make me feel good about one key issue: A reader on my fic about homelessness chastised me over some issues that I think they were right to bring to my attention (in particular, the fic kinda felt like it was using the homeless characters as an experience that the regular characters could go through and then move on), and I debated about deleting the fic but ultimately decided that leaving mistakes up (if indeed it was a mistake), with a disclaimer, is more useful than getting rid of potentially troublesome content. Your reaction here backs me up on that idea, and I'm glad.
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 08:38 pm (UTC)I don't think your tone was off. I think the fact that you find misgendering funny instead of hurtful is what caused the friction. Since that's where I'd like to get -- that it's a silly goof instead of a day-wrecking injury -- I want people to feel free to talk about it and, especially, avoid the chilling effect.
Suppose somebody drops a chocolate cupcake on their white blouse. If other people make fun of them, it's humiliating and will stay so until they can change clothes. But if everyone laughs it off, it's just a "wacky thing that happened today" story. The latter is a much better situation than the former. In order to get there, it requires not picking on each other, and being able to laugh at unexpected and awkward things. Some anthropologists posit that the reason for humor is precisely to defuse tension, which is why we often laugh at things that are objectively kind of awful. I think that's valuable, and if the hypothesis of purpose is correct, then this is a viable patch for what is currently a sizable and growing problem that I'd like to see fixed.
>> Especially as a newcomer to this community, I'd like to at least be aware of that, and find ways to express myself that don't feel like face-slaps to those going through issues that I'm an outsider to.<<
That's exactly why I stepped in. Asking someone to delete what they said is NOT customary in this community. I want people to be free to express themselves. I'm pleased that the discussion hasn't turned snappish. I'm not pleased about the deletion, but you're the author of your post and entitled to make your own decision on that.
>>Besides which, I'm trying to write characters who have this kind of perspective as well, so knowing how people react to certain concepts -- or, rather, the way in which those concepts get portrayed -- is valuable to me.<<
Sure, but watch out for data cropping. There is a very unfortunate tendency for the dominant opinions to shout down everything else, which is especially bad in the QUILTBAG community where folks might not have much if any other support. What about the small but almost certainly not zero number of people who agree with you and me? Do they not deserve representation too? The same respect for their stance that the dominant voices demand?
This is why I say "Tell ALL the stories." It's how I avoid problems like tokenism, one-true-wayism, and everything else that stems from having only one example of something. I've probably gone through dozens of character pronouns and political stances on sex/gender. I have at least one case with three nonstandard uses of pronouns (in a constructed language with different boundaries than English) and explanations about why someone would make each of those choices. I think it's important to show different perspectives. Of course, it also sparks discussions that can get fricative. YMMV.
>>Your comment does make me feel good about one key issue: A reader on my fic about homelessness chastised me over some issues that I think they were right to bring to my attention <<
I have, on very rare occasions, actually changed something. Usually this happens when I've used a bit from official sources that trait-having people can't abide. The first word I used in Damask's storyline was "alter," the standard word for members of a multiple personality. I have several such readers in my audience. One of them explained, after we'd been debating it a while, that it reminded them of counselors trying to murder their selves. Since I agree that trying to make all but one of multiple personalities be not is murder, that was the sticking point for me, and I changed to "headmates." Screw the establishment, I don't want my readers to think that I agree with murdering them. O_O
But I am stubborn and opinionated, so it takes more to budge me than for most people.
>> (in particular, the fic kinda felt like it was using the homeless characters as an experience that the regular characters could go through and then move on),<<
Ideally, homelessness shouldn't happen, and if it does should be a brief misstep, not a life condition. (Being homefree is different.) The issues of homelessness are different for the temporary and long-term homeless.
>> and I debated about deleting the fic but ultimately decided that leaving mistakes up (if indeed it was a mistake), with a disclaimer, is more useful than getting rid of potentially troublesome content. Your reaction here backs me up on that idea, and I'm glad.<<
That's a good thing.
If I'd had that situation, I would've simply written something focusing on a long-term homeless person and/or the community of same. I have characters who are homeless, homefree, and settled -- the whole range. Because it isn't one experience, it's very diverse.
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-29 10:26 pm (UTC)I understand that homelessness is something some people go through for a short time, and others have to deal with long-term, and that it's not the same as choosing to eschew the social expectation of a steady residence. That didn't seem to come across well in my fic.
The fic itself was basically trying for the FMI format as it might apply to strangers, and I decided on the theme of homelessness because it's an issue that I have several reasons to care about and want to do something about -- and also because it's woven into canon, so it wouldn't feel like an issue imposed from outside. Of the two main characters, one was homeless for a time and the other was forced to flee his home as a teenager. There's a recurring character who's long-term homeless, and an episode or two that bring the homeless community into focus.
So I went with five moments wherein the early-season POI characters interact with people who are homeless, during a fair in the park that's offering various services to those who need them. I'd hoped to call attention to some of the issues that you might not think of when it comes to homelessness (like how lack of transportation makes it much harder to get services that the rest of us take for granted as "nearby"), and also to help portray them as normal people instead of outsider oddities. Apparently didn't do too well with that, but it was a useful experiment, I think.
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-30 01:09 am (UTC)True. On the other hoof, you showed the perspective most of your readers would actually have: meeting homeless people, rather than becoming homeless.
>>and that it's not the same as choosing to eschew the social expectation of a steady residence. <<
That's homefree.
>>Apparently didn't do too well with that, but it was a useful experiment, I think.<<
Never let the fear of failure hold you back. Write badly with pride!
The question is whether you can learn from past mistakes and write the same topic better in the future.
Re: Fixed!
Date: 2020-07-28 08:00 pm (UTC)Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 07:57 pm (UTC)The reason I'm not picky about pronouns is because I've yet to find a set that fits well enough to be worth all the extra work of using something that isn't the standard. Most of the time, people say "she" and it doesn't bother me, even though I'm not actually a girl. I'm lazy, it's easy, it saves time and energy. "He" is fine because my personality is more masculine than feminine. "They" is doable although the grammar is often awkward. I quite like "ey" and I hope that one becomes a standard option; it's among the more likely candidates to survive after English settles out of high-change mode. I'd be happiest with a language that had a pronoun for persons that didn't mark gender, but English isn't really there yet.
Aside from laziness and the vagaries of English, there's another reason I don't really care much about what pronouns people use for me, and that's because I'm metasexual and a shapeshifter. Have you seen "My gender is cactus" ...? Sometimes the offered options are just laughably off-base. I don't really think about sex/gender the way most people seem to, and that makes my reactions different. Sure it's annoying to be morphlocked a body that doesn't fit my sex preferences, but it's also not my preferred size, color, species, and other traits. If I had to pick the one that annoys me most often, it is height. I can't reach past the middle of the kitchen storage and it drives me bats.
These are not experiences that seem to have a community. While I know that, statistically, it's unlikely for anything to be truly unique, many things are unique in practice due to being so rare that such people don't tend to encounter each other. So I was excited to see someone else mention that they weren't concerned about pronouns, because I can't recall seeing that before. It made me smile. Sure, we've come at it from different angles, but that's interesting too.
And as a gender scholar, it makes me wonder -- if I had enough samples, could I map the difference between misgendering as something to laugh off as a silly mistake vs. misgendering as an injury or an attack? Not the external differences in delivery, but the subjective reaction. What is going on inside the head of that outlier cluster that protects us from going "ouch" ...? I think it's related to the equally hot topic of deadnaming, which most genderqueer folks hate, but some use their old name as a temporal marker, only to get attacked by their own community for liking that as a tool. Yet they too seem immune to a particular type of pain that hurts others. Something is different in their thought pattern. I think that's related to how when newlyweds change their name, which leads to lots of goofs in the first few months. I can tell that if both people think it's no big deal, nobody gets hurt. But that doesn't get me where I'd really like to go with this: sets of steps for genderqueer and for cisfolk covering mental, linguistic, and social processes to avoid upset or injury in situations where name/gender mistakes are likely to happen.
Just reading about someone else's perspective is useful in this pursuit, whether or not it's something they care to talk about in more detail or have the academic background for it and a desire for social engineering.
Conversely, lots of people get upset about misgendering because it's used to abuse them or it hits an already sore spot. That's totally understandable. It's just that a non-zero number of people have different feelings about that, and ours are just as valid. It's very different when someone talks about their own feelings or experiences about gender, compared to what other people do to them.
The thing about sex/gender is that it's diverse. What delights one person often annoys another and is indifferent to some others. I thought this was a great introductory post, and the personal overlap was charming for me, and I'd like to keep it. I'd like people to feel free to express themselves here, including uncommon or unpopular ones, and they should also be free to disagree.
You're totally free to choose not to read a post, or not to interact with a person, if the content makes you uncomfortable. Nobody has to like everything! Nobody has to do everything either. People pick and choose all the time, and while some members do every fest, I doubt that's a majority. It's fine to take a break and come back later.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:09 pm (UTC)Unfortunately that means unsubbing from the community when it's there inescapably when I scroll down my reading page, and I'd really prefer to not do that.
My issue was not that the OP mentioned lack of concern with pronouns. That in and of itself would not have bothered me. I believe I addressed that in the comment. It doesn't bother me, nor should it, if someone's gender identity is such that whatever pronouns aren't a big deal to them. My issue was with the "I find it funny when someone misgenders me". I'm not even saying OP can't find it funny, I'm not trying to tell OP how to feel about their gender identity.
But now I feel like I'm being lectured for saying that on a bad day when I'm already feeling icky about misgendering, I didn't need to have that shoved in my face when just "pronouns don't matter to me, period" would have been acceptable.
I get it that we feel differently on this subject. And I really don't want to have a big long discourse about Gender 101. As a transgender person, I live gender identity studies every day of my life whether I want to or not. I am well aware that gender and sexuality are diverse. My intent was not to cause offense when I brought up my own discomfort with seeing OP's original statement of "I find it funny when I'm misgendered".
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:16 pm (UTC)I hope to see you here again later. Try early September, that'll probably be enough to scroll this post off the page after folks have posted their bingo claims.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:20 pm (UTC)Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:27 pm (UTC)Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:47 pm (UTC)I hope this hasn't soured you on the event or the community! Please consider joining in on August's event, "Five Moments of (Nonsexual) Intimacy." The BINGO Boards are up, covering everything from fluff to trauma, fantasy, dark inversions, and even nonsexual-intimacy prompts for a romantic or sexual Ship. Event starts August 1st. (Also, I'm up for more suggestions for themes that could fit under the core FMI theme. Still got a couple days to make more BINGO Boards!)
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:53 pm (UTC)(Me: I am drowning in WIPs help no more pls AAAAAAAAAAAA?
Also Me: You know what you need? MORE WIPs.)
I feel you on the social minefield. I don't always get it right, and I prefer to know if I'm (unintentionally) stepping on toes, myself.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-29 10:35 pm (UTC)Another version I've done a lot of is Drabble Sections (100 words per section, or other multiples of 100); a Half-Drabble Section version would be 50 words per section, so 250 words total.
The easiest challenge form I know of is the Pagefic, which is fitting a scene into a single page; if you write more than a page, go find things to delete or condense, and if you write less than a page, go find things to expand. So the Pagefic FMI would be five pages, one per scene.
So while it's certainly possible to end up with a work-in-progress, as with my Five Moments of Loki trilogy, there's ways to make quick one-shots that still fit the form.
P.S. I showed your parenthetical to my friend, whose reactions are commonly like that. Her response: "It meeeee" ^_^
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-28 08:38 pm (UTC)Man, I should have gifted my latest alt-fandom fic to you. It delves into at least two things you've just mentioned. (I only learned about Spivak pronouns, like, a few weeks ago or less... possibly from you, come to think of it.) I'd considered gifting it to you, but then figured I'd already just gifted you something, so I ended up not.
Also, I like the word "morphlocked." Wonder if I can use that somewhere.
The thing that has amused me about being misgendered -- and I recognize that it is a privilege to be free to enjoy this without icky feelings -- is that it leaves me trying to figure out which parts of my speech do or do not convey gender markers that others can pick up on. And then, when I'm in a community where I'm used to being perceived as male (possibly due to the male-is-default assumption), I get a jolt of surprised pleasure when someone refers to me as female, and I start trying to figure out which details in my posts have led to the conclusion that I'm female (which is true, but I don't think comes across in my text all that much).
(The jolt of pleasure is not from having someone refer to me in a way consistent with my self; I actually rather like being considered male online, if only because there's less of a chance that people discount my perspective on account of my genitals. The jolt of pleasure is from the way it opens up a mystery: How did they figure me out? What clues did I leave behind? Did they just guess? Is there a way they know me from elsewhere? Are they the kind of person who uses female as default instead of male, where gender is not known? It hits the mystery-solving and linguistics-loving parts of my brain.)
My online identity, Kilyle, is from a male character but doesn't seem to have much of a gender marker (unless you map it to Kyle or Lyle, but I've seen more people map it (misread it!) to Kylie, which is part of what led to my pseudonym Arkylie). I tend to use a pixel-art male PoC face for that identity, when I use a face at all; a lot of people try to make their online pics look like them in some way, but for me it feels like a chance to be something I'm not, so why not enjoy that?
(Same reason I've never tried to make a character look like me in any video game I can think of. There's way cooler things to look like, and I love variety.)
(Also seriously, why was "Kilyle" so often misread as "Kylie"? Do people just glance at a name and guess based on the first letter and one or two internal letters? (I know they do this, because of the misnames I've collected from my real-life name. "My brain knows a name that starts with that letter and has those two letters in it, I don't need to look any closer.") I'd be more upset at the misreading if it hadn't led me to coin a name that fits perfectly with my online persona and a specific project I'm working on.)
Back in college, I figured out that getting to know someone online gives you a chance to connect with them on a level of ideas and personality and politeness, before you find out anything that might give you pause if you met them in real life. Race and gender are part of those, but the one that struck me at the time was learning that one of my best friends was a guy with long hair (a thing I had issues with, at the time). If I'd met him in person to begin with, I'd've discounted him because of that, but because I'd gotten to know him first, it was a small and unimportant detail compared to our friendship.
The deadnaming thing, I've long wondered about. I realize that some people, perhaps many people, have that uncomfortable dysphoria when reminded that they used to present themselves as a gender that they currently feel deeply disconnected from. But surely there are some who are like "Hey, I was part of the Smith Brothers back then, and that's back then, and we did cool things; now I'm Jessica Smith, and that's me, but that doesn't erase what I was going through back then." (Related: Willow of Buffy becoming so gay that she can't have a boyfriend and when magically compelled to like a guy she tries to turn him into a girl.)
I wouldn't mind continuing this conversation, but there are enough distractions in the house that I'm unable to devote enough of my brain to it right now.
Re: Well ...
Date: 2020-07-30 11:11 am (UTC):D I do love that story. You handled Death especially well, which few people do.
>> Also, I like the word "morphlocked." Wonder if I can use that somewhere.<<
It's very useful for shapeshifters who are currently stuck in one form. Well, more or less. There's only so much containment a human body can manage, so I've bent it more than a bit.
>> is that it leaves me trying to figure out which parts of my speech do or do not convey gender markers that others can pick up on. <<
That is entertaining, and sometimes useful.
One thing we'll need, if society is not to maintain constant awkwardness forever, are ways of encoding other genders besides masculine and feminine. Right now it's all just a jumble, which does not make for graceful interactions.
>> (The jolt of pleasure is not from having someone refer to me in a way consistent with my self; <<
For me it's closer to that -- someone noticed that the package doesn't match the contents. Somehow. And it's interesting to compare the different perspectives we have. A sample of one is not a study!
>>(Also seriously, why was "Kilyle" so often misread as "Kylie"?<<
Because "Kylie" is much more common and the brain tends to edit around things it thinks are glitches to produce a "correct" reading. Try it with foreign names some time -- if they're close to an English word or name, they'll often 'jump' to it.
>> Back in college, I figured out that getting to know someone online gives you a chance to connect with them on a level of ideas and personality and politeness, before you find out anything that might give you pause if you met them in real life. <<
Well, that's one way it can happen, which I value.
The problem is there's a bad and growing issue where people stalk each other online as soon as they meet someone. This overwhelmingly tends to reveal a lot of crap, because humans are messy creatures -- which can kill incipient relationships before they start. There is a lot of that going around, and it contributes to loneliness, which is also growing and is unhealthier than smoking or obesity. :/
>> But surely there are some who are like "Hey, I was part of the Smith Brothers back then, and that's back then, and we did cool things; now I'm Jessica Smith, and that's me, but that doesn't erase what I was going through back then." <<
Exactly.
>> (Related: Willow of Buffy becoming so gay that she can't have a boyfriend and when magically compelled to like a guy she tries to turn him into a girl.) <<
*sigh* The mess that is sex/gender in Buffy. Willow isn't gay. Willow is bisexual. For quite a while she was chasing boys. That she later also had a girlfriend does not erase the boys, nevermind what idiot Joss tried to write on the topic.
no subject
Date: 2020-07-29 09:08 am (UTC)