![]() Author has written 11 stories for Swallows and Amazons series, Highlander, Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, Good Omens, Avengers, and Letters from Father Christmas. I like stories that give hope. "Hope is not a prognostication — it's an orientation of the spirit. ... It's not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." - Václav Havel "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." - Hebrews 11.1, English Standard Version Pick your own. :-) I now have a sporadically updated dreamwidth journal that may contain thoughts on fanfiction and canon and occasional updates on my behind-the-scenes progress. And sometimes unrelated personal musings I feel I can share. marmota-b .dreamwidth .org I also like stories that treat all their characters (and people) with some respect. You can do even humour with respect. You can even do sarcasm with respect - there's a difference between mocking behaviours and mocking people. If you want to ask me for advice about a story idea, and your idea as presented involves a character replacing another character without any consideration given to the fact that the replaced character's life matters... don't bother. "The replaced character's life matters" is the only advice I can give you at that point. (I've already been presented with two such ideas over the years, and it weirds me out enough that I'd prefer to forestall it before it becomes a pattern rather than coincidence.) This personal view on that type of story is directly connected to the above bolded opinion. Random other fanfiction-related thoughts: I do not, and never will, copy-and-paste things here in my profile. Even if I may sometimes agree with them. A) I will not allow myself to be essentially blackmailed into doing it just because I share your opinion on something. B) It makes profiles incredibly long, and hard to get through to the stories which are what we're here for. So while I'm putting things here, I'll try to keep them at manageable length, and in my own words. It is important to get things right, in terms of canon, in terms of real-life reality, in terms of spelling and grammar. Deviations are distracting, and readers are usually able to tell if those deviations were intentional or not. Think twice before you publish something. In fact, think seventy and seven times. Think about it in terms of actually printing it, with ink on paper. Is it what you would want to see in print? Is it thoroughly proof-read? Is it not too long, too cumbersome, too expensive? Does it say something important or beautiful to justify the publishing? Summaries are stories in 385 characters (as of writing this). If you are not good at summaries, try and do not tell us; you are wasting characters you could have used to tell a story instead. I am also allergic to the word "destiny" used in summaries. If you used it in your summary, I am not very likely to read the story. Sorry. More often than not, those stories involve non-canon pairings and non-canon events, and I somehow fail to see the destiny in that. In fact, I'm allergic to "destiny" or "fate", period. In lesser cases, it's shorthand for an authorial "because I want it to be so". And even if it is not, I'm all for free will. That all somehow works towards something good in the end. It's complicated and very paradoxical and I don't really understand it myself, but I do believe there is a difference between things happening because they have to and things happening because it's ultimately better that way. |