Since this blog has changed significantly in the past year, I have decided to clean house a bit. This involved relocating my fanfiction to a sideblog so that the traffic on my main blog is directed primarily to Unrooted, my other original work, and my book blogging.
You can still read it over there any time you please, and it may in fact be easier because I reblogged it in an order that’s simpler to navigate. If you try to search for my fics on the main blog, you will no longer find them. If you click the “Projects” links on the sidebar of my blog, it will redirect you to the sideblog.
I also have kept everything I want to preserve on Ao3, so you can read and download my fics there. I have changed my username. You can now find it under sv_you_know_who_i_am.
I want to be clear–I didn’t do this because I’m embarrassed of my fics or anything of the kind. It’s just better business practice to keep the two kinds of writing separate. I am immensely grateful to all of you who followed me for the fanfiction and have continued to stick around. I’m very excited to share Unrooted with all of you, and I will continue to be very active on this blog. If you want to send me asks about the fics, it’s better to send them to my main, because I don’t plan to check messages sent to the sideblog.
Once again, thank you so much to all of you who made my time writing fanfiction such a joy. I’m just moving on to different things now. Here’s to a bright future!
Oh, gosh, congratulations! That is amazing and so good, and I am so happy for you! I know this sounds a little patronizing, and I honestly don’t mean it that way, but: you only get one debut, and the human brain is really bad at holding on to novelty. The rush of endorphins, the way everything is exciting and amazing and new? Savor that. It’s never going to be this hot and sweet and all-consuming again. Roll in it like a coyote in a moose carcass, get it all over you and sit in your own stink and be ecstatic, because this is the best it ever gets, and you are so lucky to be starting on this journey.
So your process might be a hell of a lot harder than mine, because when I was heavily fanfic-ing, Twitter wasn’t a thing, and so I mostly posted on LiveJournal and archives. When I started getting those shitty “why are you wasting time your books are better” reviews, I just locked those LJ posts and changed my archive user names.
In a weird way, though, I have found that disconnecting my professional and personal work makes me prouder of my personal work, because when people find it, read it, and praise it, they’re not doing it because Seanan McGuire Bestselling Author wrote it, they’re doing it because This Person Really Gets The Halloweentown Franchise. And that’s amazing. Anonymity has done a lot to keep fanfic positive for me, and I hope you can find the balance that keeps it positive for you.
Last week, I attended the National Pop Culture/American Culture Association Conference in Indianapolis! This continues a series of posts summarizing the post interesting things that happened and the things I learned. I attended a lot of panels on YA Literature, Fandoms, and Feminism, which is very topical for this blog, so I thought it would be fun to put together a summary of events! Enjoy!
Featuring Sarah Ellen Ford, Tania de Sostoa-McCue (Michigan State University), and Alexandra Harlig (The Ohio State University)
“Wait, is that Ed Sheeran?”: When Insider/Outsider Knowledge Ruins Fandom Experience
I didn’t get to see much of this paper, unfortunately, but Sarah Ellen Ford discussed how our participation as fans can sometimes be affected by our participation in other media. She used the appearance of Ed Sheeran in the most recent season of Game of Thrones as her primary example. One of the best things to come out of this paper was the quote during discussion of “My entire life needs a trigger warning for Ed Sheeran.”
Remediation in Fanfiction Tagging Practice: understanding tagging practices on an Archive of Our Own as concurrently ephemeral and archival spaces and products
A.K.A. “The paper with too long a title” according to its writer, Tania de Sostoa-McCue (“Apparently I’m bad at naming papers”). She discussed tagging practices on Archive of Our Own as paratextual component to the larger work, often communicating and supporting the unspoken contracts within fandom communities. She also noted the differences in tagging practices between fandoms, such as The Hunger Games vs. Captain America (“In the Captain America fandom, if someone breathes, you tag it!”) It was a really interesting look at the unique technological components of fanfiction that add to its dimension as text.
Replicating Scenes, Accusing Performers, and Beyoncé in a Snuggie: Side-by-Side Videos as Social Paratext
Alexandra Harlig approaches her studies from a dance studies background, and her presentation was on how split-screen dance videos operate as communicative tools in either a marketing or an accusatory way within the popular dance community.
Literary Fandoms
Featuring Johnathan H. Pope (Memorial University), Danielle Hart (Miami University), Zoe Weinstein, and Holly Luetkenhaus (Oklahoma State University)
The Fan’s the Thing: Shakespeare Fandom and the Limits of Adaptation
Johnathan Pope presented on how fans of Shakespeare are not generally considered “fans” because Shakespeare is such an old and esteemed body of work. However, he argues that there is a segment of Shakespeare readers who are fans. He used the fictional examples of Mandella and Mr. Morgan from 10 Things I Hate About You to illustrate how fans of Shakespeare behave compared to those who use a more well-rounded, critical approach. He argues that there is benefit in a more nuanced look at how readers of Shakespeare approach the text, which is something his audience of “aca-fans” appreciated.
“Good Night, Sweet Prince”: The Persistence of Tragedy in Hamlet/Horatio Slash Fanfiction
Unfortunately, I didn’t catch much of this presentation because I needed a bathroom/coffee break (sleep deprivation, yo what up), but the gist of the paper was on the particular adaptation of Hamlet/Horatio pairings in fanfiction and how they tend to be pretty consistent with the mood of the source text.
Not Safe for Jane (NSFJ): The Language of Sex in Jane Austen Fanfiction
This fantastic paper by Luetkenhaus and Weinstein was a look at the difficulties of writing smutty fanfiction for works in the Austenverse. They noticed that because Austen’s style is so simple and ironic, it can be extremely difficult to capture that style in erotic fanfiction without coming across as ridiculous. We got to see sample of truly terrible fanfiction and sigh aloud at Colin Firth in a wet shirt, and there was an excellent discussion about the work of canon and film in influencing fanworks.
I wound up leaving for the day after this panel due to a low phone battery and a low person battery, but there was such fantastic research presented that I felt honored to have heard. I’m so interested in fan studies and it was great to see how these things all played out in an interdisciplinary way. I’m excited to see more of the research of these scholars down the line.
One day left to cover, so tune in tomorrow for the last of my posts on NPCA!
i’ve put together fun fic prompt generator with thousands of possible combinations! each prompt combines different settings, genres, tropes, and a prompt idea to get you started in a direction. you can use one or more of the ideas or the entire combination if it works out, or just refresh until you’re inspired.
two versions! the safe for work version includes all pg-13 prompts, and the nsfw version includes a kink category as well as many more sexytime prompts.
Hi! Thank you, this is so sweet of you to say! I’m sorry the link is a little sneaky. On my main page (desktop) it’s on the left sidebar and says “Projects.” Here it is! Do enjoy!
I haven’t really been on Ao3 much in the past few months since leaving the fandom. I’ll still pop in now and then but I don’t have any recent recs. However, I do have a fic recs tag that’ll give you titles and links to a few of my favorites!
Hi! Well … I don’t know! No one has told me to stop writing fanfiction yet, though it would probably make sense to stop once my novel comes out. I suppose if you really wanted to avoid overlap you could use two different names, but it’s generally best to be open with your publisher about your writing habits.
I guess I’ll know better when I get to that point myself!
Hello, everybody, and welcome to “Ask the Fic Writer” – Part 1!
To celebrate writing 500,000 words of fanfiction, I had followers submit questions for me to answer in video format. You all sent in such awesome questions–and so many!–that I had to split this into two parts! Part 2 will go live Labor Day Weekend, so stay tuned!
This video covers general writing questions and questions about character development. It was a lot of fun to record and edit, and I hope you all enjoy it!
(I also apologize for the occasionally awkward editing. I’m kind of new to the whole thing. I hope it’s not too distracting! I plan to write up a transcript and/or captions one day, but I lack the time to do so right now.)
I also realized after I’d recorded and edited most of the video that I forgot to record an answer to a question about villains, so I’m adding it on in text form here!
Desiree: [What is the] trickiest part about writing a villain? and how do you overcome it personally?
For me, the hardest part of writing a villain is two-fold: making them just as well-rounded as the protagonist and making sure the reader sees them as a threat. My villain in Unrooted is a sly, behind-the-scenes figure, but I needed to make the reader feel the threat he posed earlier than the protagonists did. It took lots of trial and error to figure out the best way to do this, and it got really frustrating at times. It actually came down to making sure I’d developed his personality–what is a somewhat innocuous trait on its own (he hates messiness) actually became quite terrifying when combined with his ruthlessness. This allowed for a scene to develop that I really think helps cement his wickedness to the reader even as he remains an almost abstract, distant threat to the protagonists. So, my advice when writing a villain is to make sure that they’re not solely defined by their goals, but that they do have a personality and are fleshed-out, because this will give you a lot more to work with when you have to establish your stakes.
My apologies for neglecting this answer in the video, Desiree, but I hope this satisfies!
Enjoy Part 1, and I’m excited to share Part 2 with you in a couple of weeks!
That’s it, everybody! I’ve officially written 500,000 words of fanfiction, all since May 2016! It’s been an absolutely wild year of being part of fandom and getting to know so many of you. I’m so beyond thrilled to have been privileged to be a part of this community and to have a chance to get writing so much again!
As promised, I’m celebrating the milestone with a 2-part vlog (you all sent so many questions I had to split it)! Tune in tomorrow for the first part of “Ask the Fic Writer,” in which I answer user-submitted questions. The second part will be released around Labor Day! I had such fun recording and editing this video, and I hope you enjoy watching it!
My ability to write fanfiction moving forward will be limited. I have a very difficult semester ahead of me. I will still be reading and writing book reviews, sharing things about Unrooted, and hanging out in my free time, but I just won’t have the time to write fanfiction. 😦 This makes me very sad, but I’m so thankful for the time I’ve had so far.
This blog will still definitely be up and running, so stick around and keep being awesome! You all are the best, and thank you once again for your support.
Sarah Viehmann 