Amal Nahurriyeh

For the Brits/near-Brits I know:

Say you were a British person not in the uk, with at least a little national pride, an overgenerous allotment of pyromania, and access to a lot of open space and chemicals. What would you do to celebrate Guy Fawkes Day? In particular, if you could compare/contrast to USian 4th of July traditions, that would be lovely.

Yes, this is for a fic. Anybody who guesses what the fic is going to be wins the right to suggest a scene, because everybody should get to play with something this cracky.

You are writing in limited third.  You want to establish the race of the perspective character.  How do you do it?  

*this post brought to you by omg original fic how do you work*

My absolute favorite thing about writing fanfiction is the ability to start in media res. Like, no warm up, no need to set the scene, just, boom, go.

My least favorite thing about fanfiction is that it is an alternative to grading, which means that I want to be writing about Mulder and Scully taking a nice walk to a cafe, and also vampirism.

Seen around: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous.

And I'm going to alter this, because I can. First, my WIPs are all in various folders based on what they are: Caseyverse is kept separate from regular XF fic is kept separate from superlong things (MoF, etc). Second, I'm unclear if this is meant to be file titles or story titles (and the two are not necessarily the same for me), so I'll put both. Third, I'm fairly sure I've seen a version of this that includes quotes from what's written, so I'm doing that, because I feel like it.

( blah blah blah )

Moral of the story: there is a lot of unfinished angst on my hard drive.

I want to talk, in a rambling fashion, about the writing of AUs. In particular, the type of AU where you pick up characters--fictional or historical or whatever--who were never actually in the same room, and put them in a scenario together, which neither ever experienced, or would have experienced.

One of the funniest comments I got on my Fringe/Caseyverse crossover was that I'd messed up the timelines of the two universes--during Season 1 of Fringe, Sadie wouldn't be born yet. Given that I was trying to write crack, well, OK, I did not particularly care. But it did somehow disturb my order of the universe; I had broken the laws of time. (That's a regular feature of the Caseyverse, though.)

Which brings me to this thing I'm writing now, for a, um, unnamed late-December fannish event. (Whose culture of secrecy I have yet to properly understand.) The story I'm writing contains two individuals who were never in the same country at the same time, as far as I can tell. They're pretty perfectly matched as a pairing for the story, and the prompt I'm using is, well, literally the best prompt I have ever written for, and I wrote this, so I'm clearly happy.

But I'm not clear on the mechanics of how I'm supposed to get these characters into the necessary scenario. More to the point, I'm not clear on whether this is something I'm supposed to give a shit about. I mean, the important point is that they're in [place] on [means of conveyance] using [mechanical object] to [verb] [noun]. As long as I write that--and the conversation after they [verb] [noun] from [mechanical conveyance] wherein they talk about [thing they have in common] and possibly [verb]--I'm pretty much golden.

But I want to know. What were they both doing in [origin point] before the whole [noun] situation began? In what way did they end up together during the journey towards [destination]? Why [destination], apart from the fact that one of them lived there at one point? Given that they are not of the same generation in their respective canons, what age are they both? And does this take place in person A's timeframe, person B's timeframe, or in [timeframe I prefer, during which neither of them are actually alive]? If I go with [preferred timeframe], how are they different? More important, how is the world different for them not having existed and [verbed], given that their [verbing] seems to me a very important thing? Granted, not necessarily from the point of view of [verbing] [noun], given that [noun] don't really [verb]. But from my point of view, who loves them for what they actually did? I don't know what a world without them doing it, when they did it, would even look like.

Maybe I should let go. [Verbing] [nouns] with [mechanical object] is not a thing that requires a whole lot of good backstory. It's just what it is. And I don't necessarily have to write a great deal; just enough to tell this story adequately. If the story is about [verbing] [nouns] with [mechanical object], and the comedy comes from the fact that it's these people doing it, well then, just have them [verb] the damn [nouns]. Easy-peasy.

But Scully should have been pregnant in The Old X Designation, and these two people never met. They probably never even heard of each other. (Wait, *runs to wikipedia*--yes, the dates fail to align nearly perfectly.)

So, dear audience: how much should I care about this? Some? None? Entirely? Do you think this sort of worldbuilding shows through in a snippet universe like this?

Also, is it considered within [exchange] rules to recruit someone to illustrate your fic? Because, I gotta say, X and Y on [means of conveyance] using [mechanical object] to [verb] [noun] is the default icon I have always wanted.