Shows up two weeks late with Starbucks to the AO3 meme

[breathedout]

I think the person I actually copy-pasted this from was starshipfox, but LBR, everyone has done it. However: I had some commentary, so here I am. (CW for brief, high-level discussion of consent issues/rape.)

I have 44 works currently posted.

What’re your first and second most common work ratings?

Explicit (18)
Teen (13)

What’s your most common archive warning?

No Archive Warnings Apply (28)

Least common?

Rape/Non-Con (1) - though, see the most common alternate tags for a mitigating view of this; I use "Consent Issues" more frequently because a lot of the stuff I write explores areas where consent is problematic (e.g. hatesex scenarios, or ones where sex itself is enthusiastic on all sides but one or both/all parties are lying to one another about other things that might cause one or both/all of them to revoke their consent if they knew the truth).

Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?

I think it's interesting that this question comes after the breakdown of ratings and archive warnings. I consider myself both an adventurous writer and a writer of porn and potentially triggering situations, but I don't necessarily think that one implies the other (though certainly they don't preclude each other either). One can be an adventurous writer and never write any sex at all, or a conservative writer with a 100% Explicit catalog. Some stuff I've done that I've considered adventurous:

• Wrote a 9,000-word threeway where all the characters have the same name, rendered in first-person 1980s slang
• Wrote a noir fic in the form of a screenplay
• Wrote a story where each of the seven sections has a different POV character
• Wrote a story about characters I found almost impossible to understand or empathize with (this story is also told reverse-chronologically)
• Wrote a novel in which different POV characters experience nonverbal states that have to read as distinct from one another (Chapter 15 versus Chapter 20)
• (Also the fracturing of the timeline and POV structure in Part 2 of that novel, where one character's sections were told in flashback and the other character's sections were told in the present, and they gradually caught up to one another; making that work was definitely an adventure)
• Wrote a story using outsider-POV, which was also outside my comfort zone because the canon is more fantasy/magical than I usually write

How many stories have you made in each pairing category?

F/F (28)
M/M (7)
F/M (6)
Gen (2)
Multi (2)
Other (2)

Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?
I think it's pretty clear that I have a preference for F/F, and I expect that discrepancy to continue to widen with time. That said, these numbers are a little bit misleading because they're per-story rather than weighted for word count. Two of my three novel-length projects are, at least in large part, M/M. They both also earn their ratings in the F/F category, but The Violet Hour especially, and to a lesser extent A hundred hours, still spend the majority of their narrative effort on the M/M pairing(s). For sure I've written WAY more M/M than F/M, which you wouldn't necessarily know from looking at this breakdown.

It's definitely fair to say I have a strong preference for writing queer sex, though. The Explicit-rated stories involving F/M pairings tend to be in some way queer (e.g. one or more of the characters is bisexual, one of the characters IDs at various times as both male and female; one of the characters is a lesbian working out her confused baby-domme feelings on a male sub, etc.)

What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers?

1. Original Work (8)
2. Sherlock (8)
3. Historical RPF (5)
4. Marvel 616/Black Widow Comics (3) tied with Bloomsbury RPF (3)

Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?

I will always be active in Historical RPF, which is so broad as to be only questionably a single "fandom," but it's definitely where I feel most at home, and I have multiple planned projects that fit into that category (at least one of which is Bloomsbury RPF). My current major project is an original fiction one. I don't have current in-progress Holmesiana or Black Widow fics, but I certainly wouldn't rule them out.

Because I am kind of a cold fish, "acting fannishly" tends to be an activity that I can apply to lots of different media sources, either enthusiastically or critically or both, without really being "in" a given fandom per se. (I often have trouble defining what constitutes being "in" a fandom, and whether I qualify.) You can see this if you look at my total number of stories (44) as compared to the number that fit into my top five fandoms (27). The remaining 17 are mostly fandoms for which I only wrote a single fic. So yeah, you could say I migrate a lot or that I'm a perpetual wanderer.

What are your top 4 relationship tags?

1. Original Characters/Original Characters (10)
2. Sherlock Holmes/John Watson (6)
3. Yelena Belova/Natasha Romanova (3)
4. Louise Macdonald/Hazel Cameron (3)

Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?

No surprises here. Though again, a little bit of a misrepresentation: eight of the ten OC/OC stories are 1000-word Passchendaele ficlets, whereas one of the Sherlock/John stories is the 200,000-word A hundred hours.

What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2?

Top Two:
Consent Issues (8)
World War I (5) tied with Jealousy (5)

Bottom two (that are displayed)
Voyeurism (3)
Coming of age (3)

What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?

Literally the scene in Chez les betes where 16-year-old Irene accidentally spies on Colette and Missy having sex, but moved forward from 1908 to 1914.

How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?

Having finally finished A hundred hours, none! Although, I suppose you could think of the Passchendaele ficlets project as an overarching WIP. In which case, one, which I plan on finishing.

Or, I suppose you could think of the Unreal Cities series that way too, but that's more of a perpetually open-ended universe with no set end point. I have a couple more planned stories in it, but I don't know if I'll be "finished" after that or not.

Comments

[lazaefair]

Wrote a 9,000-word threeway where all the characters have the same name, rendered in first-person 1980s slang

See just on the strength of that alone, I'd consider you an adventurous writer. Jesus wept.

[breathedout]

Haha, yes, that was a fun story!

[donut_donut]

Just a guess: Heathers verse?

[breathedout]

:-D Yes indeed.

[donut_donut]

Haha I had a hunch.

[thatyourefuse]

And it is spectacular.

[breathedout]

<3 <3 <3

[achray]

more Bloomsbury RPF? *looks hopeful* (though - also here for original WWI era fiction)

[breathedout]

Yes! Two things, both already at least somewhat outlined: "Station After Station," which is wall-to-wall Strachey/Keynes(ish, with others) sad sex scenes about betrayal relating to both Duncan Grant and the 1916 Military Service Act (how much more on-brand could I possibly get??); and "The hour should be the evening and the season winter," in which Unreal Cities 'verse Irene Adler mediates the sex(... -adjacent) life of Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West while Vita is in Persia with Harold Nicolson. Just looked back on my Tumblr and at one point I wrote that this second story "is set in 1926-1927, when Irene will be 35 and I will hopefully not be older than that" and welp, guess that didn't work out, ahahahahaha OH WELL, MAYBE BEFORE I'M 40.

[achray]

Yes, good, to all of these!

[starshipfox]

I really like reading this posts about people writing habits and their interests in fic. Your interest in historical rpf is fascinating -- the only time I've ever written about historical people is when someone requested Christopher Isherwood / Auden for Yuletide, but I always feel like there is so much to explore with fic about people from the past, and it's something you've clearly looked at in a lot of depth.

[breathedout]

Oh thank you, glad you enjoyed. Historical research is definitely one of the things that's most artistically generative for me; story ideas Happen and also Deepen and Come Together while researching in a way that tends to involve a lot more forced effort when I'm writing in non-historical canons. (I'm realizing this is EXTRA true when writing in a magical setting; for the Magicians femslash one-off I'm tossing off right now I'm basically relying on greywash to come up with 100% of the fiddly tangential McGuffin type stuff that makes the plot go, whereas with a historical canon coming up with that stuff would be not only a joy but would often happen almost without conscious effort on my part.) So yeah, when in doubt, research, tends to be my MO.

(Incidentally I keep meaning to read more about both Isherwood and Auden; biographically I've only encountered either of them on the margins of other biographies I was reading, but they both seem fascinating. And A Single Man was one of my top reads a few years ago.)

[starshipfox]

I'm not particularly interested in or good at creating "plot": I had a conversation recently with pennypaperbrain about how fic writers tend to struggle the most with writing plot, because it's not a major part of what we do. I find that when I do need to hinge what I'm working on around some kind of plot, I like to steal from the past or take a pre-existing plot. Which is to say that I greatly feel the appeal of researching historical canon too, and that using that in my writing feels really natural. I don't do this a tonne in fic, but I've done a lot of "original writing" around the history of women in science. Research FTW.

I haven't read a lot about Isherwood and Auden, but from the biographies or memoir I have read, Isherwood comes off as a hugely sexist jerk and Auden is a mess but also kind of a delight, but they are both definitely interesting. Pretty much all of Isherwood's novels are thinly disguised memoir, he appears as a character in almost all his work, which I find... fascinating as a narrative decision. I mean, Auden's in a lot of his own work too, but as a poet that's expected of you.

[oulfis]

"World War I (5) tied with Jealousy (5)" made me chuckle with fond recognition. What a cool glimpse into your oeuvre!

[breathedout]

Ahahahaha yessssss I chuckled too, when I saw that tie. #funnycuzitstrue

[anarfea]

I really like it when writers do this kind of breakdown. It's really neat to see other writers examine their own work.

[breathedout]

Thank you! Yeah I've enjoyed reading other people's takes on this meme, too, so I figured I would give it a go.

[chestnut_pod]

Such an interesting window! Thank you :)

I still love "The Obvious and Proper Sense" to a truly astonishing degree, so glad to see there are a few stories still planned in that general direction.

[breathedout]

Awwwww, Lytton! :-D :-D That makes my day, thank you! "The Obvious and Proper Sense" is one of the only things I've written that I regularly re-read to cheer myself up. The upcoming Lytton/Maynard(ish) story will be a bit less frothy and more sad, but hopefully still enjoyable.

[chestnut_pod]

Aww, Lytton indeed! I'm sure the next one will be equally enjoyable, sadness and all :)

[sylvaine]

Omg, first example of adventurous writing? With three characters of the same name? I'm fucking delighted and impressed!

[breathedout]

Ha, thank you! It was a fun challenge.

[doctornerdington]

This is super interesting! Thank you for sharing. And somehow I haven't seen it before? I'm going to try it too -- I haven't posted for a while.