For many years, one of the most recommended FK sites was one of the—if not the—very first fan sites devoted to the show. It was started by Jasmine when she was at Michigan Tech, and variously hosted on their servers until she left, at which point Dorothy Elggren gave it space on her website at http://www.loftworks.com.

Sadly, this recently disappeared. Along with the First Unofficial Forever Knight Page (which is a lot bigger than a mere page), we also lost Dorothy's archive for her own fanfic as well as some pages about her art, not all of which was FK.

Fortunately, Desiree had saved the whole site back at the beginning of the century (along with quite a few others, several of which have been in the Forever Knight Website Archive for a number of years). So I am very pleased to be able to put the Loftworks site back on the web.

You can find Dorothy's "Writing About the Knight" here.
The First Unofficial FK Page is here.
And (taken off the Wayback Machine, since neither of us had it saved), the OK Reviews are here, off a new index page so you can access them directly.

Now you may be wondering what those "OK Reviews" are. They were written by Lee Record for Season Three, and seem to have been posted shortly after each episode aired.

The First Unofficial FK Page has an "Episodes" section where each episode has its own page with basic info about it; and, for the Season Three eps, these pages have links to the OK Reviews, which were archived on the Loftworks site. All the episode pages also link to Marc Wallace's Forever Knight Critiques.

Like the First Unofficial, Marc Wallace's site has pages for each episode; and those pages link back to the First Unofficial FK Page. In fact the two sites are cross-linked all over the place. The FK Website Archive already has Marc's site. So I've gone in and changed every bloody one of those links so that the original effect is preserved. You can find the Forever Knight Critiques site here.

Enjoy!

Let me thank you right up front for whatever you are going to write. Although you've seen the tags on my sign-up, I know that most people like more than that to go on, so I hope this letter will prove helpful. I like all these fandoms equally; so I've put the TV shows in alphabetical order, with Original Works at the end.

If you're just looking for my general likes and dislikes, you'll find them at the end.

( Read more... )

In the later Forever Knight mailing-list Wars—at least, up till the "six-year gap" between Wars 12 and 13—a lot of factions put up their own war pages.

Some are just lists of participants, often with their permission statements (for every participant had to e-mail the the listowner, McLisa, explicitly giving permission to be written into the War). These often include short descriptions of players' war personae to aid the warscribes, especially those from other factions who might be writing crossovers. The bigger sites also archive the faction's war posts.

They vary a lot in size! Short ones are often found within the faction's own site; but sometimes (especially if the person who'd made it had gafiated), the war site would have to be a page in a member's personal site. Alternatively, they might make a tiny site just for purposes of war—something that was relatively easy back in the day of free sites like GeoCities.

A few still exist in the wild, so to speak. Others have been lost in the mists of time, which come up perilously fast on the internet. It was not uncommon for the old page to be simply taken down and replaced with the one for the latest war—at least while there were "latest wars".

These links lead to the faction war sites in the archive:

WAR 8:  Unnamed Faction

WAR 10:  NatPack, Ravenettes

WAR 11:  Cousins, Die-Hards, FoDs, Knighties, NatPack, Nick & NatPack, Ravenettes, UF

WAR 12:  Cousins, Nunkies Anonymous, UF, Vaqueras

"Factions" were (are?) a big thing in the Forever Knight mailing list fandom. The first were associated with major characters, and motivated the big round-robin RPGs known as "wars". These—and the others that followed—initially were by way of being teams playing in the wars; but, with the advent of easy mailing lists, became groups of friends with similar interests. From there, Yahoo!Groups of other kinds also became "factions", if only by courtesy (though some of them did play in a few of the largest wars).

For some factions, a website was basically a single page that advertised their existence. For others, it became an archive for fan fiction, jokes, top ten lists, screen- and sound-capture archives, and trivia/FAQ pages. Back at the beginning of the century, i.e. in the fandom's heyday, there were a lot of them. Some were formally associated with the faction's e-group; others were produced by a single member, with love and care. Some were elaborate, large, and regularly updated; others can only be called embryonic—barely started and left incomplete, with myriad "under construction" notices.

Most were uploaded to free sites—free to users, that is, because the webhost sold ad space above (or, in the case of GeoCities, to the side) of each page of the site.

Some of the faction sites do still exist out on the Web—either on the surviving free sites, Tripod and Angelfire, or paid for by someone still active in the fandom. Most, though, have long since vanished. Indeed, some disappeared so many years ago that even the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine has, at best, a handful of shadowy pages missing most of their graphics and stories. A few of these, though, were preserved years ago by fans who supplied Steph and me with them when we started the Forever Knight Website Archive. Current faction leaders and/or other members helped us restore others. Fortunately, GeoCities and FortuneCity did provide a little warning that they intended to quit hosting free sites; so many I was able to collect just before their disappearance.

I think I've now uploaded to the new site all of the faction sites that we held. ( Here's the list of what is currently in the archive. )

The new rules for the Yuletide fanfic gift exchange, i.e. dropping FF.net when calculating eligibility, means that Forever Knight should once more be eligible.

Forever Knight fans take note!

There are well under 1000 FK stories in AO3 that are in English, complete, and under 1K words.

When nominations start, do please consider including FK among the fandoms.

Once upon a time, the Forever Knight mailing list fandom had a small zine, Crusader, associated with the Kickstart the Knight campaign. This was a print edition, scans of which were archived on the Kickstart the Knight site.

Crusader was later resurrected as an on-line zine on LittleBlackaPony's website. However, being on-line meant that each old issue was wiped whenever a new one was posted. The Wayback Machine has various back issues, but these are in quite imperfect condition, with a lot of missing pictures, buttons, headers etc.

Fortunately, as it turned out, although LittleBlackaPony didn't have the pages themselves anymore, she located a folder with most of the graphics. There are still a few things gone (esp. for the issue of Spring 2006). Still, I've been able to reassemble most of the on-line editions.

You can find them indexed here.

Once it was announced that FK was going to be cancelled, which happened in late 1995, there were repeated attempts by the mailing-list fandom to save the show.

The first—the Save Forever Knight campaign—began before the final episode aired. It was eventually designated "War 6", though that's really just a courtesy title. A prominent part of the campaign involved seven fans going to the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE) in order to lobby in person. When (as we all know!) the show was cancelled anyway, a new effort—dubbed Kickstart the Knight—tried to persuade TPTB to bring the show back. This eventually segued into a campaign to have it released on videotape, and eventually on DVD.

Some of this appeared on the web. I figured I should prioritize getting these sites up, since they're a big part of our history.

The old Save Forever Knight campaign site was eventually moved to Mel's fanfic archive: https://www.foreverknight.ca/www.fkfanfic.com/sosfk/index.htm

Various versions of the Kickstart the Knight site can be found here:
https://www.foreverknight.ca/KtK/

As for the NATPE Seven: at the time, they reported their the exploits in posts to FORKNI-L. Eventually Diane Echelbarger put an expanded version on her website, The Pewter Gryphon's Lair. You can find the NATPE Seven report here:
https://www.foreverknight.ca/PewterGryphon/NATPE7/index.html

And finally, here's an on-line petition to put FK out on video:
https://www.foreverknight.ca/FKVideoPetition/index.html

Now that the three main archives are up in the Forever Knight Website Archive, I've started adding the War sites—and, if you weren't on list back in those days of yore, you can read about the wars here. In brief, call them a sort of RPG, with posts made to the FKFIC-L mailing list.

In the heyday of the mailing list fandom, a few hundred people might play. Not all were warscribes; but the old wars could be BIG. The Wars were, at one time, a big thing for the fandom. Quite a lot of people didn't play, of course; but those who did took war quite seriously. Hilariously so. A good time was had by all (etcetera, etcetera). I played in the last three wars, as scribe for the Die-Hard faction; and I made the website for War 15.

The first four wars are available on the main archive, indexed here; and War 8 is also there, but indexed separately.

Amparo Bertram archives War 5 on her own site.

And Jarvinia archives War 7 on her site.

(For those wondering what happened to War 6, it's a courtesy number given to the campaign back in 1996 when FK fans tried to persuade TPTB not to cancel the show.)

Here are the ones now in the Website Archive:

• War 9 site
  
• War 9 posts
  
• War 10 site
  
• War 10 posts
  
• War 11 site
  
• War 11 posts
  
• War 12 site (incl. posts)
  
• War 14 posts
  
• War 15 site (incl. posts)
  

Webspace was at a premium twenty-odd years ago; and early sites tended either to zip up the e-mailed story posts or leave them out altogether. So, for those wars, I've unzipped the stories and linked them to an index page for easy (or, at least, easier) reading.

Wars 12 and 15 have more familiar-looking websites, with a lot of ancillary material as well as the posts.

Alas, the site for War 13—quite a nice one—disappeared from the web before I'd tucked it away in its entirety. I have the ancillary pages, as well as the posts to FKFIC-L; but I must have quit for the day before collecting the webpages that were made for the stories. The Wayback Machine has hardly anything of the site; so I have quite a bit of editing to do to turn the e-mail into the site style. I should be able to recreate the War 13 site; but it's not up yet.

Also not up are the various faction war sites. Yet.

The main FK fic archive (Mel's archive) has now been uploaded to the Forever Knight Website Archive. You can find it here:

https://www.foreverknight.ca/www.fkfanfic.com/

This also means that V4S (the virtual season that was group-written after FK was cancelled) is back up. And the Forever Knight Bookcover Contest, FK font, 1999 FK fanfic awards, and episode transcripts.

Including five wars. One to Four are accessed from the "wars" link, and War Eight can be found here.

More to come!

Now that my own website is back up on the web (and I've checked through it and made edits where necessary so it reads properly), I've started uploading some of the archived sites that Steph and I had in the Forever Knight Website Archive.

The first to be uploaded was the site with the List Gardener's Tips, since it seemed important to get that back on the web. I know there aren't a lot of new people joining the list; but we do sometimes have fans-of-yore return to the fold.

You can find it here: https://www.foreverknight.ca/ListGardener/fk-lists.html

I've also got two of our fanfic archives up. Not Mel's yet: I've got some edits to make to it. However, both JADFE and the FTP site are now back on line.

You can find JADFE here: https://www.foreverknight.ca/JADFE/index.htm

And the FTP site is here: https://www.foreverknight.ca/FTP/index.htm

My focus next is going to be on War and faction sites.

Finally, finally ... I've bought webspace and a domain name and uploaded my website. You can find it at:


http://www.foreverknight.ca/FK4/


And, if that looks kind of familiar, it's because its almost the same as before. I couldn't use the same domain name that Steph had because it's paid up for another three years. However, the .ca version was available—and eminently reasonable for a Canadian TV show. (Being Canadian, I'm allowed to end my website with .ca if I want.)

No, this doesn't mean that the whole Forever Knight Website Archive is up. Yet. (Give me time!)

About a month ago, my website mysteriously disappeared. Along with all the rest of the Forever Knight Website Archive, including three main FK fic archives, most War archives and faction sites, sundry personal sites saved from GeoCities and Fortune City, and so on and so forth.

My first reaction was to e-mail Stephanie Kellerman, who had been hosting the Website Archive on her site, www.foreverknight.org. The e-mail bounced. I posted to the FORKNI-L mailing list (on which Steph had been active last fall). No response—well, except for concern and sympathy from other FK fans. I then googled and found an obituary.

Whether the Stephanie Kellerman who died is our Steph Kellerman from FK fandom is something I have no way of knowing. That's one of the difficulties with fannish friendships. You may not actually know the person's RL name; and, even if you do, you probably don't have a street address for them. However, the obituary included the usual little bio, which said the deceased knew computers and had four grandchildren—and, although my correspondence with Steph had been mainly about the Website Archive, things did occasionally get mentioned round the edges (so to speak); and it fits.

Anyway, I do plan to put my website up somewhere in the near future on some webhosting service yet to be decided. At the moment, I'm doing some revisions here and there; so it will probably be a few weeks.

When I do, I want to get a large enough site to be able to rehost the other things that have gone. As I did a lot of the collecting and editing of the old GeoCities sites, I have back-ups. I even, in a fit of concern, went page by page through the big fanfic archive copying absolutely everything (I hope!); so that's not lost either.

It'll take time to put everything back up; and, when I do, there'll be a new domain name since Steph's "www.foreverknight.org" has apparently been paid for until 2026, and I'm certainly not going to wait until then! It will all mean an appalling lot of editing in various wikis; but c'est la vie, I suppose, if one finds oneself called to be an archivist.

Let me thank you right up front for whatever you are going to write. Although you've seen the tags on my sign-up, I know that most people like more than that to go on, so I hope this letter will prove helpful. I like all these fandoms equally; so I've just put them in alphabetical order.

If you're just looking for my general likes and dislikes, you'll find them at the end.

( Read more... )

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them.


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon / relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• I love casefic; and, more generally, I like stories that are canon-compliant. The general exception to this is ignoring canonical character death if you want. Canon-divergent AUs are also okay. (There may be other specific exceptions.)


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second person fic, please. First person is okay, especially for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

REQUESTS: ( Read more... )

In some ways, this has been another frustrating year; but it ended well. From spring to summer, RL was hair-tearingly slow as various house repairs were pending ... pending ... pending. However, come October, the contractor got his act together and all have now been done. Fannishly speaking, some exchanges that I've done in the past were either ended, or ending, or had no prompts that interested me. On the other hand, I completed two more installments in the M*A*S*H series I've been writing about Hawkeye's first year home after the end of the Korean War; completed an unfinished Sime~Gen story that's been lingering for more than ten years (and the first part of another that's waited just as long); and wrote my first Original Work, which came in at a mere 38K.

Of course, I also got only partly through the story I'd been writing for FK Fic Fest, and had to quickly substitute something much shorter, and didn't get any more written on the Arrowverse series about Leonard Snart's childhood. Also, the Original Work decided, even before the anon period was up, that it wanted a sequel; and then, over Christmas, informed me that there had to be a third part as well. (It clearly has ambitions.) Some of this may augur well for 2023, of course.

This year, in some of the gift exchanges I did, I asked for Original Works with a variety of superhero related prompts; and, of the nine stories I got this year, no fewer than five fit that description! I may have my favourites; but I'm not saying. I can assure you, quite truthfully, that there were no duds.

Anyway, here's what I wrote in 2022. Since I've been spending Christmas with Flo, I haven't made any webpages for my Yulefic; so those links will have to come later, when I get home.

( Read more... )

Back at the end of October, brightknightie shared a a 33-question "AO3/fic" meme that was shortly thereafter done by pj1228 as well. I said at the time that I'd do it once my ficinabox story was written and the collection opened.

Well, I got the full two-week extension and used the week's delay needed for late pinch hits, and still only got the final revisions done just as the collection opened at midnight last Saturday. In fact, I've tweaked since then (though mostly just typos and SPaG, of course). At this point, though, I've read my own gifts and commented on them, replied to comments on the two stories that I wrote, and started looking at the collection. All of which means that, finally, I have time to do the meme.


1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?
It's just my name, glommed together with no space between.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback?
Apparently there are 17 comment threads on each of the following:
- "Exit Stage Left, a Wounded Warrior: The Lost Chapters of The Charioteer", which is a two-chapter postscript to Mary Renault's The Charioteer
- "In Which Pooh Hunts for the Meaning of Christmas" - the first in a two-part Winnie-the-Pooh series
- "In Which Pooh and His Friends Celebrate Christmas" - the second part of that series

3. What is your ao3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?
I don't have an AO3 icon. My LJ/DW icon is the cover of the 1973 reprint of the 1953 edition of Mary Renault's The Charioteer. The design is the same as the first edition, except for the text on the back, which isn't part of my icon.

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?
I'm always impressed by brightknightie's comments as moderator of fkficfest. On the whole, I think FK fandom has a good comment tradition. In my (limited) experience, I'd say rarelit fans tend to leave good comments, too.

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?
I keep going back to reread merriman's "Donation". It's a bit sentimental, I suppose; but I find it nice to snuggle with.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?
I'm currently subscribed to 106 stories. A couple of years ago I pruned the list, taking out WIPs that had been completed; and I probably need to do it again. Quite a few of the stories I'm subscribed to have (almost certainly) been abandoned; but hope springs eternal.

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?
For FK, I often just ignore LK. In Arrowverse, I'm slowly working towards an AU/futurefic in which Leonard Snart is rescued from the Oculus explosion. I guess there's a theme there: I do think killing off characters is a pretty fake way for authors to contrive "deep significance", especially on TV shows. And especially when I like the character!

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total?
Nineteen subscriptions and 349 bookmarks.

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it?
Not that I can think of.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.
I'd like to be better at writing/finishing stories outside gift exchanges. Nowadays, I do seem to need those deadlines to keep me writing.

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?
I mostly write gen. However, that's not to say I've never written about people who are in relationships: it's part of life; and a lot of characters are canonically coupled up. My focus in such stories is going to be characterization, though: I don't write smut.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?
I think it's 246. I did two stories for ficinabox; but the anon period is still going on, and I think that means they don't appear in my stats yet.

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing programme?
I'm not sure what this means. Are you asking me how many unfinished stories I have that aren't posted yet? If so, then I'm not sure: maybe a half a dozen or so. Mostly, nowadays, I don't start stories unless it's for a gift exchange—in which case they get finished, since they have to be posted. As a result, I have a warren of plot bunnies that have never been started.

Oh, there are also a few things that were finished many years ago; but they were typed (on a real typewriter, I mean) and hence have never been posted anywhere.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?
Keep them in my head.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?
In a manner of speaking. In 2019, my sister (fawatson) wrote "Secrets and Lies" and asked me to beta it. For lack of time, she wound up sort of scrambling the thing together and, instead of using the post-posting week to polish it, added a humongously long final chapter. The joke is that, had she posted that as a separate treat, I wouldn't have been inspired to ask her if I could rewrite her fic. She agreed; and, to cut a long story short, I hashed the bits apart, reorganized them, tweaked a bit, and doubled the length with new material. The result, "A Winchester Always", is fannishly counted as "mine" since I wrote it in the context of remixrevival. However, on my website, I credit it as co-authored.

16. How did you discover AO3?
I'm not sure. I joined in July 2011. Probably someone in the old maryrenaultfics community said they were crossposting their fic there.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?
I think, in the tiny world that FK fandom is today, my stories are fairly popular. They seem to be well regarded in Charioteer fandom, too. Sadly, my association with maryrenaultfics (which died in flames) has led to a degree of notoriety in places like fail_fandomanon where, for years, they mistakenly thought my sister and I were the moderators.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?
No.

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?
No. Not if you mean a fan writer.

My fannish leanings began many years ago. I'd say it was my love of Andre Norton's books that led to a lot of long-running self-insert stories when I was in junior high. However, these were never written. They were the sort of thing you use to wile away time when walking down the street or lying in bed. I never had the patience to actually write anything at that age.

The first fanfic I wrote was based on the original Star Trek series; and I was in my thirties by then. In so far as I was "inspired to write", it was by the knowledge that there were other people out there who wrote fanfic. However, I'd never read any except in published collections. I didn't get in fandom per se until 2004, when I went on line.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?
Read a lot. And not just fanfic.
Write a lot. And reread what you write: everything needs to be polished.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?
A bit of both. For short fic, I generally have the whole thing in mind before I start. For longer stories, I know the ending; but some of the plotting may be done on the fly. Nowadays, I usually start at the beginning and forge on to the end. For really long stories, bits may be written out of order simply because they're so vivid they're getting between me and the things that haven't been worked out yet. Mostly such bits get inserted along the way.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?
What do you mean by a bad comment? Someone being rude? Not usually. And I think it's idiotic to feed the trolls.

I have, once or twice, had someone point out a canon error or Britpick me. In that case, I check to see if they're right; and, if so, I figure out how to fix the problem. Usually, all it takes is a lightning band-aid. And I thank them: those aren't bad comments; they're bloody helpful! I try to research things; but, if I've missed something that's obvious, I certainly want to put it right.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc.)
Detailing action scenes is difficult. Fight scenes particularly: the last time I got in a fight was when I was about ten or eleven. (My parents had guests over; and the son, who was about my age, was picking on my little sister, who's five years younger.) Certainly, in elementary school, kids sometimes got in fights; and there'd be a general pile-on, and I'd get involved. I mean, I'd dither round the edges, since I'm not keen on fighting; but there comes a point when you have to pitch in, since all your friends are in there. In my very limited experience, it's like jumping into a swimming pool: okay once you're in.

But that sort of thing didn't continue beyond Grade Five; and I was nine then. I've never taken self-defence classes, or anything like that. So I find fight scenes pretty hard to choreograph.

24. What story(s) are you working on now?
I'm signed up for Yuletide; but I haven't started yet. I just did two stories for ficinabox; and, as the exchange has a 10K minimum (which can be broken up over multiple stories) and only opened last weekend, there's a lot to read.

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?
This year, I did knock off a little trickortreatex story while working. I'd wondered if I'd have to default since the ficinabox story I was doing was proving a bit ambitious. However, I woke up one morning with a teeny tiny idea writing itself in my head; and, for Trick or Treat, a teeny tiny idea is really all that's needed. I went downstairs and wrote it before breakfast.

In general, though, it depends on whether the next gift exchange I want to do overlaps with the one I'm currently doing. And that normally would just involve taking time out for nominations, signing up, and maybe minor brainstorming (as I did with Yuletide this year). I don't usually write multiple stories at the same time.

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?
No.

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?
I hope so. Certainly, if you compare my writing now with the stories I told myself as a kid, then the answer has to be yes!

28. What is your favourite story that you’ve written?
I'm particularly likely to go back and reread the stories that required a lot of research or worldbuilding or got deeply into character exploration.

29. What is your least favourite story that you’ve written?
Some years back, an FK fan posted to the fic list a story that I gather she hoped would inspire another War. In it, she wrote an attack on the Vaqueras' headquarters—the sort of thing that did actually prompt some of the early Wars. Not realizing that she hadn't cleared it with the Vaqueras, I responded with another ficlet. The Vaqs were not amused. Of course, I apologized; but I've never put that story up anywhere.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?
I really hope I'll have finished a few of the plot bunnies I have. Some have lingered in the warren for years.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?
Dialogue.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?
Putting pen to paper. Or nowadays, fingertips to keyboard.

33. Why do you write?
The stories bug me till I do. Some of them are very insistent. One of the fic I just did for ficinabox definitely had its own ideas on how much time I should devote to it. All I could do was go along for the ride.

Meme from lightbird:

Comment on this post and I'll ask you five questions. Answer them in your own journal, offer to give the first five commenters their own sets of questions, and let the cycle continue! (or if you prefer you can answer in the comments).

lightbird asked me:

1. I know you create your own graphics and wallpapers, and you shared many of your color scheme experiments during the last sunshine_challenge. Do you do handcrafts or painting on canvas or other types of art like that?

Not recently. When I moved in with my mother at the end of 2013, everything had to be put away; and I'd been dealing with renovations for quite a while before that, which made it hard. I do want to get the room that used to be her bedroom fixed up as a library-cum-workroom, and the shelves were installed about three years ago; but the place is full of boxes, and I don't have enough money to put in the additional shelves I need to unpack everything.

However, I used to make dolls' house things. I've done some polymer clay food, sewn miniature clothes, made furniture, and painted/assembled garden plants, all in the one-inch scale.

I've done a little painting (and then photographed the pictures, since I don't have a scanner) for picture book fanfic and fan art; and I've also done some manips. You know my FK icons, probably; but I've also done fannish bookcovers for a couple of Mary Renault's books.

If you're curious, the two picture book fanfics are "The Church Mice and the Choristers" and "Hairy Maclary - Big Game Hunter". I guess you could call them pastiche: I tried hard to copy the authors' own styles when doing the paintings.


2. What was the best book you read this year? What made it special?

Oh, this is hard! It reminds me of Grade Eight, when we had Library period once a week, basically as a part of English. We were supposed to rate the books we'd taken out the previous week—the usual sort of five-part scale, you know. It ran from "Didn't Like" up to "Best Book I Ever Read". I never gave anything that top rating. I simply read too much!

I think, though, if I had to pick just one, it would be Naomi Novik's first Scholomance book. I got it for myself at Christmas; and, since I never read my presents until after the day, I read it sometime either the following week or the beginning of January. It flat out clobbered me. I've read it three times this year! Bought myself the sequel for my birthday, and plan to get the third one for this Christmas. She's a good writer, of course; but the worldbuilding in the Scholomance series is stunning.

3. What's your favorite season? What about it makes it your favorite?

I guess I like autumn best. The heat of summer is past; we're not chilled by winter. Spring always seems to go by so fast; and, as I hate heat, summer looms threateningly in a way that winter doesn't. Even with the a/c on, summer is harder to take than winter. I can always put on a sweater.

So I prefer autumn. Also, the leaves look so gorgeous.

4. I've really enjoyed your FK fics and one of the things I admire about them is how much research goes into them. How much time do you spend researching a story before you even start writing?

It depends on the story. A lot of shorter stories, especially little ficlets, I can just knock off with no research at all. I'm pretty familiar with the characters by now! Longer stories that are canon based will be researched by rewatching the appropriate episodes. For major stories with an historical setting, though, I will spend a long time (usually on line) checking every detail that occurs to me. For such stories as "The Siege of Hastings", "Couched Work", or "Phases of the Moon", I might spend as much as six weeks in research—to the point where I actually start to wonder if I'll have enough time to write the story!

For non-FK fic, if I'm utterly familiar with canon, the same is true. I will at least re-read/re-watch as far as possible to make sure I get canon details right. If I intend to write pastiche, i.e. in the author's style, then usually I'll reread twice. (When the story starts writing itself in my head in style, then I know I'm ready to put fingertips to keyboard.) I always do quite a lot of research for historical fic, though. I like to get details right.

5. What's your favorite hot drink?

Mocha! For years, I used to buy General Foods' Suisse Mocha; but it's no longer available round here. So I worked out a recipe that tastes very similar: a blend of Fry's Cocoa, instant coffee, Splenda, and powdered skim milk, mixed with real skim milk, and heated in the microwave. A year or two later, I found I'd left a tin of the commercial stuff at my sister's, and found very little difference in flavour. However, it is true that, when I next had a full physical, my doctor said my cholesterol count had gone down. So clearly the homemade version is actually better for you!

Failing that, at home, I'll make hot cocoa using skim milk and a lot of Fry's cocoa powder, but NO sugar. Or instant café au lait, with hot milk, a little instant coffee, and some Splenda. However, the mocha is my go-to hot drink.

As a complete change, I also like hot mulled cider.

greerwatson on AO3.

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them. They're listed in alphabetical order, so as not to play favourites. (Treats are welcome!)


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen. DNW non-canon relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• I love casefic; and, more generally, I like stories that are canon-compliant. The general exception to this is ignoring canonical character death if you want. Canon-divergent AUs are also okay. (There may be other specific exceptions.)


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story—or a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second-person fic, please. First person is definitely okay for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

( Read more... )

First, let me thank you for writing me a story in one of the fandoms we share. I'm excited about all of them. They're listed in alphabetical order, so as not to play favourites.

I'm also greerwatson on AO3. Treats are enabled. Holiday fic is fine.


GENERAL POINTS:

• I love stories that explore canon more deeply, whether through backstory, or elaborating the setting/history/culture, or exploring people's motivations and personal interactions.


• I prefer gen (unless requesting a / relationship). DNW non-canon relationships unless requested. I'm not asking you to ignore canon relationships; but please don't make them the focus of the story. I don't care for anything more than PG-13: explicit sexual detail is definitely a DNW for me.


• I love casefic; and, more generally, I like stories that are canon-compliant. The general exception to this is ignoring canonical character death if you want. Canon-divergent AUs are also okay. (There may be other specific exceptions.)


• I'm okay with violence if necessary to the story; but not gore for the sake of gore. On the whole, I prefer not to have characters die in the story; but references to canonical deaths are okay. (I'm fine with having original characters murdered in casefic, and that sort of thing.)


• I enjoy comedy—being able to recognize the ridiculous when it pops up; also wit and wordplay. Having said that, I totally leave it up to you whether you write a serious or comic story or, for that matter, a serious story with comic interludes.


• No second-person fic, please. First person is definitely okay for book canons that were written that way by the author. However, I don't generally care for it with TV fandoms. Epistolary fic is fine.
  

( Read more... )

Prompt #7: Opal

It was in the middle of January 2021 when I decided to see what would happen when I greyed and then tinted the “feathers”, and after that pushed the contrast.  Which exact variant I started with is not quite clear; but, at each stage, I ran the result around the colour wheel using GRSites.com’s doohickey.  At any rate, this is more or less how it went:





It’s fair to say that the result is unpromisingly lurid.

On the other hand, the “feathers” unexpectedly POP! into an illusion of three-dimensionality.  This comes from the fact that two different areas of the original graphic—dark and coloured—have coalesced into a broad area of variably dark blue, running through which is a narrow strip in much lighter version of the same hue.  It is this sequence of dark, mid, and pale zones that “lifts” it into 3D.

What I now needed to do was tame it.
( Read more... )