I had a chat with another author in the broader Star Trek fandom after reading their OC/OC fic & based on how that got received, I’m not getting my hopes up. I’ll still write it though (& probably post it regardless). And it will have some canon characters as secondary characters (& it’ll be set on the Enterprise) so it won’t be completely unknown to fans.

Love that your 99% OC story got so big! 😁 There’s hope for OC-centric stories yet. Pity about the unfriendly community atmosphere though - like, you don’t like the premise, don’t read it. No need to give grief to the authors about it. 🤷‍♀️

Ohhh… You had me at fixit of PR:U. That was a mess.

Also the JW one. Loved the vibe of the first film & then it just became churn (now with added dinosaurs!). 😢

Yeah, I can kinda balance it out if it’s a one-shot or short multi-chapter story competing with a long-fic. But 2 long-fics (& in the same series)? Lord, give me strength!

I have a series (2 stories at the mo) that’s very fluffy slice of life romantic. Early this year, shortly after starting the 2nd story, I came up with a bonkers idea for the 3rd story. AU/multiverse, paranormal weirdness from the fandom that I just ignore in my series up til now, dragging bits from the original 2 stories & reusing the characters (& angsting the crap out of one of them).

And it has been killlling me that I had to finish the 2nd story before I could start on the 3rd. At one point I had to comfort-write a couple of chapters just to break writer’s block on story 2. I reckon I’ve got less than half a dozen chapters of story 2 to go & then I am launching myself bodily at story 3. 😅

😂 I was starting to think the lack of responses was the answer in itself to my question (i.e. no-one likes OC-centric or OC/OC pairings).

I totally get the love for OC-centric stories so long as there’s a core character in the mix, as I tend to be there myself, but I do think I’d have to stretch myself to take a chance on OC/OC with no canon characters in the main pairing or group. That said, the fandom I want to write it in (Star Trek TNG-adjacent) has no characters that work for my idea & really has none I’m interested in writing as core characters. So I guess I might just be writing this one for myself if other people aren’t willing to take a chance (& I can’t blame them because I know exactly where they’re coming from). 🤷‍♀️

I like a well rounded, realistic character, as I do with my protagonists to be fair. No 2-dimensional mustache-twirling “I’m just evil 'cos I’m evil” unless there’s a real good reason behind it or it’s hella fun (think Andrew Scott’s Moriarty). I don’t need them to think they’re doing good by being in opposition to the protagonist but I want them to at least be a sufficiently well written character that I could believe that they’d have an opinion on the matter & ideally feel some little bit of conflict over it like a real person would.

It’s weird the things you randomly can’t find info on & it’s like “Welp, I guess I’m just winging it!”

Not a clue how people managed to write fanfiction before the internet tbh.

I need to get back into happy rabbit-hole mode. The last one I went on was trying to figure out the length of time a side character would go to jail for a specific crime in a specific US state in the 1970s/80s. And then I didn’t even bother mentioning it in my story.

I find trying to maintain a posting schedule has kind of killed my ability to deep-dive on research as my buffer of chapters has fallen away. Yet another reason I’m never going to start posting a multi-chapter fic before I finish it again!

I’m starting to understand the affectionate hellsite attitude. Although I feel like I’m in the honeymoon phase with Tumblr right now & this comment is going to bite me in the ass in a month’s time when it turns out it’s an actual hellsite.

Thanks! To be fair, it’s not an awful worry to have in the grand scheme of things 😅 but now that I’ve found something I really like, I want to stick with it (at least that’s the way I feel at the moment). And yeah, maybe if I do bounce, it’ll only be as far as another fandom (which is a pleasant thought!).

I view Simple Misunderstandings, especially for stupid reasons amongst characters who are smart enough to know better, to be in the Idiot Ball realm of bad writing. Although, funnily enough I think I find them more often in non-fanfic writing, e.g. TV shows. Such a lazy trope.

Oh, conversations about what people want from relationships, be they friendship, romantic, family, are great! I think they tend to come up more in non-traditional relationships IRL, whereas the run of the mill “heteronormative romance equalling marriage plus kids” dynamic tends to have very little introspection/interrogation of assumptions (this is totally my opinion). It’s great to see when writers/creators bring those often ignored conversations into more traditional relationships on the page imo because they’re inextricably linked to consent.

So, I’m one of those people who tends to hop from hobby to hobby. Tbh writing fanfiction is probably the one I’ve been most consistent with since I started a year ago, & I’m kind of terrified I’ll end up dropping it because I really enjoy it! It definitely feels like a hyperfixation for me & I worry one day I’ll wake up & that focus will be gone. It’s also the one that’s most freeform creative so I think that may be linked to my worry (I’m usually much more of a consumer than a creative).

I guess if someone is at peace with hopping between hobbies & concluding a project & then they’re done with the whole hobby, then that’s not sad. But where I am at the moment, I feel I’d mourn it a bit. But then I guess I’d forget about it because I have terribly poor autobiographical memory… 🤷‍♀️

Massive OOC turns for established characters, or sudden tone shifts that don’t make sense in the context of the story. I don’t often mind OOC in the context of the source material but if it’s OOC in relation to the rest of the story, that’s a hard nope from me.
A sudden disappearance of any & all smut in an M- or E-rated story once a relationship is established. Gah!
Likewise, when pregnancy/children are portrayed as the pinnacle of a romantic relationship. I’m fine with babies/kids being part of the story but when they’re suddenly pushed as the focus, my tokophobia & childfreedom start showing.
Apart from those, it’s mostly ongoing obvious SPAG issues.
And sometimes poor tagging, although this is usually the case when I’m already finding that I don’t like the story. If I’ve already been happily engaged with it, I don’t really care so much about the tags by that point.

😂 So long as it’s a better Hellsite than Twitter, I’d be happy. The only thing I’m wondering about it is whether it will suit me as I don’t do original or fan art - all my creative stuff is writing. I guess I’ll see how it goes.

Odd re not being able to see a bunch of accounts. Sounds like a weird glitch!

Yeah, I think it’s easier to compartmentalise a short-fic vs a long one. It feels like there’s less bleed through between them for me.

Hmmm… I could see working on multiple long-fics in different fandoms being an option alright, although I think if I were to go down that route I’d have to make them very OC-light. My fics so far tend to have a central OC where most of my energy goes, which is mainly just down to writing romance/smut & focusing on one character who has no actual canon romantic experiences in the fandom. That said, I don’t really get interested in ships between existing characters so maybe I’m doomed to writing long-fics featuring OCs forever. 😁 How terrible that would be…

Oh, I like your 80% approach. I’ve been posting my current long-fic as I write it & have steadily eaten into my buffer over time (stessful!) so I’m not doing that again even when I only have one story on the go. 😅

Interesting about the “one project” people. I don’t think I’ve come across it but I definitely have seen it in film making (I’m a big film nerd). I sometimes see a film-maker with produce an excellent film & then either nothig or everything that follows is garbage. Like “Dude, you had one good film in you. Maybe leave it at that.” Great if the person knows that about themselves up front, although it must be a bit sad when they get to the end of the project & have nothing else to move on to.

I’ve been chatting with another writer in comments on their fic & they mentioned Tumblr a few times & I’m half contemplating joining it to see what the fandom is like there. Don’t know if I want to get that deep into discussion of it though or just use it to advertise that my fics exist further afield than AO3.

Branching out of my core fandoms this weekend & reading a Knives Out fic called Pardon The Disruption on AO3. Absolutely loving it & because I’ve watched the film repeatedly, all the characters do the accents in my head. 🤣

I got 3 chapters on my longfic written last weekend & I actually like them enough not to scrap & rewrite, so I’ll be reviewing & editing this weekend. It’s nice to have a buffer again! No writing of new chapters - this month is usually a heavy one socially for me & with that, I have no energy left for writing new stuff until the end of August.