Friends of the Visitors

Challenge #9

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works. (Feel free to substitute in theme/motif/cliche if "trope" doesn't resonate with you.)

Honestly, trope doesn't entirely resonate. I can remember years ago, seeing something about tropes and just not relating to any of all that forced to share a bed/enemies to lovers/coffee shop AU stuff. But I do have a theme, which is alternate timelines. What if So and so never died? What if the villain made the obvious choice that the original writers seem to have somehow totally missed? What if Character X was the one to move from his cancelled spinoff to the main show? I have done them all.

The first series I ever saw to completion was Once Upon a Time, where Jafar was the one to move across from the Wonderland spinoff to the main show (imagine his lamp ending up in Gold's shop and Zelena accidentally letting him out). Another one was The Flash, where Eobard manipulated Nora into giving Barry the metahuman cure and the finale showed a dystopian 2049 that resulted from this (at the time I started that, I was convinced that was the route canon was going to take; to this day, I still don't get why the writers wasted time on Cicada rather than pursuing this route and just letting Eobard be the bad guy). I've saved Sun, Jin and Sayid on Lost several times over (and after a prompt in last year's three sentence ficathon, I was even tempted to expand on my attempt at Smokey McSmokeFace going back to the classical Roman era to get off the island while he was still human).

And yes, I have a few ongoing such works which I'm determined to finish. The School Spirits one where Mr Martin chooses to possess Emilio instead and the impact this has on Charley and Yuri is barely started (the upcoming new season may help with that), and I am determined I will push past my mental block on a) the Lost series where Sun joined the others in 1977 (I lost heart after the decision in canon to kill her off, which I still strongly disagree with 15 years on) and b) the Dark series where Ulrich successfully rescues Mikkel from 1986 (at this rate, I think I'm actually going to end up going down the Choose Your Own Adventure route, one where Ulrich and Mikkel get their happy ending and the minimum of characters are erased from existence, and one where Claudia gets hers.)

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.


This is actually something that I've been wondering if I need to improve on, especially when it comes to writing series. Specifically, how much of a series I should have planned out before I start posting it, although admittedly there have been a few times where I've intended something as a one-shot and then realised that actually I can't really leave the story where it is.

Also, this is a process specifically to Dark more than any of my other fandoms, but I realised I should probably make sure I have a full understanding of the original timeline before I try to change it. A moment of sheer frustration at Ulrich getting stuck in 1953 and being unable to rescue Mikkel from 1986 led me to write a scene where Ulrich did get to 1986, and it became clear I couldn't just leave it there. But at that point in season 1, I didn't have the whole context of how that whole family tree/timeline worked, or the reasons why the character Claudia just would not let the timeline deviate that way. So I now find myself with an ending I know has to happen, but that I was trying to avoid and that's just blocking me finishing the final chapter. Anyone remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books as kids? I'm seriously thinking about those now as I'm tempted to write the one ending where Claudia fixes the timeline her way or trying to work out if there's any way of incorporating the alternate universe characters into the timeline so the minimum of people actually get erased from existence and Ulrich and Mikkel get their happy ending.

Something I have often done is been determined to get a fic finished before the next episode of a show aired and canon could contradict it. This tends to be easier with one shots than series, although I've only ever had one dickhead trying to "correct" me over not incorporating context that hadn't aired at the time that chapter was posted. But since that was a known troll, they could shove their corrections where the sun didn't shine. If that does come up, I don't rewrite.

Sometimes it involves going back and watching old episodes, or even just checking facts on fandom wikis, to make sure I have my details correct. (Even if I sometimes wonder why I bother - for example, I was trying to find out whether Fringe's Peter Bishop's specific date of birth was ever confirmed, to see if it was feasible for a time travelling Daniel from Lost to have met Walter before Peter was born to give him the name. In the process, I managed to establish that Walter's father's date of death in 1944 doesn't make sense for Walter's birth in 1946, so decided that if the writers weren't going to worry about that, I'd roll with my idea whatever!)

As far as requests go, if I'm not doing it as part of an exchange, I'll only consider if we've interacted. Just my way of making sure I don't end up granting a request for aforementioned known troll, whose MO was to ask for requests then spam anyone who didn't take their (very specific) requests with insults.

But anyway, what I'm wondering if I need to do is try and do more planning in advance of any story likely to become a series before I start posting it. I have one now I'm trying to work out (School Spirits, a rewrite of season 2 where Mr Martin possesses someone other than who he actually does possess in canon) so I'm going to start with that.

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

The fact that I can usually manage to see the humour in situations and don't get moody and sulky about minor stuff.

The fact that I'll try creating for any character once and give them all some attention rather than sticking to the same old favourites.

The fact that you always know where you are with me, I can't be doing with fake bullshit/not saying what I mean/expecting people to be psychic/not using my words type crap.

On many of the fannish websites we use, our history is easily compileable into "pages". When we look back through those pages, sometimes we stumble upon things that we think are rather cool.

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

Rather than actual last pages, since I feel like I've spent a lot of time the last couple of days tracking Storm Goretti (which oddly passed more or less right over me with very little impact in terms of snow), I'll just ramble that I've spent most time recently on my DW reading page, on Dark's fandom wiki to remind myself of Gretchen the dog's history for Challenge #2 as she was my chosen pet, and AO3.