Lucy Talks

Titles: Are they the bane of your existence, or the easiest part of the fic? Also, if you do chaptered fic, do you give each chapter a title, or not?

Titles are my least favorite part of writing. I can come up with awesome titles, as long as I'm helping someone else, but when it comes to my own work, titles are hard. And no, unless there's a reason each chapter needs its own title, I don't title them. Numbers work just fine for me, in both reading and writing.

Warnings: What do you feel it most important to warn for, and what's the strangest thing you've warned for in a fic?

I might have a tendency to overtag or warn for too many things rather than too few.

Getting hit by a trigger when reading a fic is not a fun experience, and I'd feel more than a bit like leaving someone after a scene with no aftercare, and that's just not right.

The person reading has the best idea what triggers he or she has, and I warn for them. If I'm not sure, I post a link to AO3 and tag the frak out of it there, and let the reader decide.

As far as the strangest thing? I don't know. I don't freewrite tags, so if it's something weird, I'd probably put it in the summary or opening notes.

Do you prefer canon or fanon when you write? Has writing fanfic for a fandom changed the way you see some or even all of the original source material?

I have my pet headcanons, and some fanon has probably sunk into my fic-writing-psyche.

I use the source material as a way to gauge my voices, make sure I'm giving an authentic Kara or Lee or Karl or whoever, as far as possible.

Genre: do you prefer certain genres of fic when you're writing? What genre do you tend to write most?

Why yes. Yes, I do. And to no one's surprise at all, it is smut. Yes. I prefer to write porn. Why? Because it's fun. And I get all the pretty pictures in my head.

Pairings: For each of the fandoms from day two, what are your three favorite pairings to write?

Since most of those fandoms were BSG....

Kara/Lee is my OTP. I will never get tired of either reading or writing Kara/Lee.

Kara/Karl is my equivalent of a writing fuzzy blanket. They're friends. They're frakbuddies. They love each other. There's almost never any angst.

Aside from Lee and Helo, I'm not all that picky. I've paired Kara with a LOT of people. lol I do kinda like throwing Sam in there, but only if Lee's a part of it, too. It seems like it would have worked best that way, instead of the way they did it.

I like exploring Kara as Kacey's mom, but that's not exactly a pairing.

As for reading...
BSG
Kara/Lee - Anything. Everything. If I can find it, I will read it. And then I will save it in my GDocs just in case AO3 ever topples.
Kara/Karl - All of it. There's very little Kara/Helo on AO3 which I didn't write, and I think I've pretty much read all of it, at least twice. When I need feelgood fic, Kara/Karl is my GoTo.
Kara/Sam - I'll read it now. I wouldn't at first, so my verse has shifted a bit. It's still not my favorite, but there are some writers out there who get the Kara/Sam dynamic in a way I can appreciate.

BSG RPF
Jamie/Katee - This was the pairing which convinced me RPF was okay. I could not get enough of it, and I'll still devour it if I find it. Pretty sure I haven't found something new in that pairing in well over a year, though. And the more a fan of Katee I become, the hinkier I feel liking RPF about her.

Longmire
Walt/Vic - The books make me like the show better, and the show makes me likes the books better, and I wouldn't have watched or read either if Katee hadn't been in it. There's an interesting dynamic at work here. Walt admires Vic professionally, pines over her even as he's mourning his dead wife, and mentors her with high hopes of her succeeding him as Sheriff. Vic is smart and sassy and clearly has a thing for Walt, but she doesn't push it. She's waiting for him to make the move, but she supports him in any number of ways, and shoves against his comfort zone in every way that doesn't involve a romantic relationship between the two of them.

Walt/Vic/Henry Standing Bear - The three of them together in a ship works in a way it seems like they shouldn't. I haven't read any threesome smut, and thinking about that makes me squint, but the rest of their relationship seems to groove along a lot easier with Henry in the middle. He gets things about other people, particularly Walt, in a quiet, unobtrusive way I really dig.

As for the rest, I'll read just about anything if it's recced to me and not incest. I'll read just about anything my friends write. I read across a huge swath of fandoms, many for shows or games or movies I've never seen.

Have you ever had a fic change your opinion of a character?

I'm sure I've read fics which made me see characters in a different light, but I can't think of any right off the top of my head. I know plaid_slytherin's love of Bill/Saul has affected my appreciation of the ship, and several writers have written good Leoben fics - rirenec, embolalia, deborah_judge, which helped expand him into a multi-dimensional character.

Oh, wait! I went to my old fic rec doc, and there was one for fic that convinced you of a pairing that you totally hated - Shuffle and Deal by lizardbeth_j. So, not exactly an answer to the question, but sort of. I'm still hoping she finishes that one.

Now, if we're talking about something I wrote changing my mind about a character, yeah. I've written fics featuring Sam Anders, Saul Tigh, Zak Adama, and others, in which the characters in my head are obviously not the barely two-dimensional depictions I took away at the end of the show. Each of those three has changed my mind about him in different ways. And in the process of writing New Normal, I got into Athena!Sharon's head a few times, and though she'll never be a favorite, I saw her with new eyes afterward.

And Kara changes my mind every single time I write her.

If you have ever had a character try to push their way into a fic, whether your "muse" or not, what did you do about it?

If someone in my head wants to talk, I let them. Trying to shut them up always ends badly - like everybody shuts up badly.

I do try to ask them questions so I can figure out who they are and why they've decided now is a nifty time to bulldoze their way into a fic. The answers are usually pretty interesting. And sometimes, it turns out that character belongs in that particular universe, but in a different story, so they're just sort of poking their head in for fun, and to let me know there's more to this universe than I thought there was.

For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Kara Thrace. :D

No, really. Whatever fandom I'm writing in, Kara is my girl. She was in the Firefly crossover and the two Buffy crossovers.  The three-sentence fics don't count, because...well, they just don't. Even when I'm writing original fiction, Kara's influencing it somehow.

How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

It's not much of a secret that I never wrote not-school-related fiction in my life before I watched BSG2003. Hmm. Well, that's not entirely true. Somewhere I have a story about Heather Dawn Kensington who loved horses and loved to play the piano. It's about five pages long, and I don't even have to find it to wince about it.

I don't really know what it was about BSG which pulled me in. I only know that when I finished watching it, there were moving pictures and talking characters in my head, and my life hasn't been the same since.

Many fanfic writers use the services of the same beta reader for years. I have been wondering if it would be better to switch betas more often and be exposed to a wider variety of comments.

What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of switching? Of staying with the same beta always? I ask this theoretically, because this is a question about the system of long beta relations, not about individual people. If you want, you can answer from a writer´s perspective, but also from a beta-reader's perspective, or both.

I answered from a writer's perspective. And, by the way, this was a very good topic to pursue.
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I'm not gonna go wild (Um, FRAK no) and say sayonara to newnumbertwo and laura_mayfair anytime soon (or like, ever), but I'm easier now with the changes happening within BSG fandom in general and within my BSG writing world in particular. If and when (please make it no time soon, pleasepleaseplease) I have to let them go, I will let them go with love.

Things change. I don't have to like it. I do have to Roll With the Changes. TM REO Speedwagon.