30 days of fanfic meme, day 3
3 - For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?
Okay, considering there were 51 fandoms (and there are now 52, as in the interval I have been inspired, nay virtually compelled, to write Strunk/White slash), I'm only going to talk about fandoms where I wrote multiple stories. Or that I particularly want to talk about.
Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault (1)
I'm one of those rare people who likes both Hephaistion and Bagoas; in fact Bagoas is slightly my favorite. But this story is from Hephaistion's POV, and thus Bagoas doesn't come off well. Naturally I got a few comments from other people telling me how much they hate Bagoas too, which made me sad.
Angel - the Series (6)
Wesley and Gunn were my guys. I shipped them hard and loved writing them together or separately. Gunn was also a special challenge, as the first character of color I ever wrote (I'm white), and in my early stories with him it's pretty obvious that I was timidly tiptoeing around how to write about racism. The timidity makes me a cringe a bit, but I hope I didn't do too bad a job.
Blake's 7 (22)
Avon fascinated me, as he fascinates almost everyone in the fandom, but I found most of the characters interesting--Blake, notably, is more complex than he seems. And I wish I'd written more Gan, if only because the poor guy was so neglected by the fandom. The world's only Vila/Gan shipper, I am he.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (40)
Giles, Giles, Giles, Giles. And also Giles. Smart, scholarly Englishman who underneath his tweed is secretly sexass awesomesauce = my ego ideal. I was always very aware of Giles's flaws, so I don't think I Stu-ed him up too much, but Giles is probably the closest I've come to "identifying with" a character.
Also Ethan, who is Giles's opposite and match, and Oz, who is very much like Giles in unexpected ways and is half of my other Giles OTP, and Wesley, who starts out as what the Council would've liked Giles to be and then turns more dangerous than Giles ever was, and Xander, whose daddy-issues crush on Giles damn near broke my heart (and who's wonderful in lots of non-Giles-related ways). I also really enjoyed writing Buffy, Spike, and (most unexpectedly) Dawn, but I found them all more fun from another character's POV. Willow I just never liked all that much, I'm afraid.
Did I mention Giles?
CSI (3)
I loved Warrick (alas, poor Warrick!) and was half sad and half really freaking angry that so few other people in the fandom did. Warrick and Nick had a ton of chemistry together, and at times the love was closer to text than subtext, but nevertheless more people shipped Nick/Greg. I'm sure that had nothing whatsoever to do with Warrick being black and Greg being a pretty white boy. Totally, totally sure.
Also? Warrick is 1000 times hotter than Greg. At least. /ship war
Dalziel and Pascoe - Reginald Hill (4)
I adore Wield but his POV is damn hard to write. Pascoe is easier for me to get my head round (he's bookish, and I can write bookish), but on the other hand I like to see Pascoe from Wield's POV because Wield's view of Pascoe (respect and deep friendship mixed with a certain fatherliness mixed with a high degree of attraction/romantic interest) is incredibly interesting to me.
Discworld - Terry Pratchett (12)
Drumknott will always be my special darling, since I spent two months writing 16,000 words of his POV and giving him a personality and desires and a history and stuff. *cuddles him* Vetinari is an awesome character but hard to write, or at least hard to write from his own POV. Vimes isn't hard to write from his own POV, but his POV is quite limited sometimes by his own prejudices, which makes him frustrating.
Doctor Who (all versions)
Doctor POV is always a bit scary, but fun to attempt; the Second Doctor is the one I find most accessible. Jamie McCrimmon is another character who is fun but challenging because of the limitations of his education and worldview. Fitz (from the Eight Doctor Adventures novels) is probably the easiest character for me to write, but caution is necessary because it's easy to turn Fitz into a caricature of himself.
due South (7)
This fandom is one reason why I'm skeptical about "identifying with" characters as the main reason to like or write them. Everyone who knew me thought I should get into dS because I'd love Fraser. And I did love him, but I loved Ray K. far, far more. I'm nothing like him, but his high-strung, strongly emotional personality and unique speech patterns made him a joy to write.
Harry Potter - J K Rowling (6)
Remus was my fave here. Another middle-aged, scholarly Englishman with depressive tendencies and secret awesome--is anybody surprised?
Maurice - E M Forster (1)
For the one story I wrote in this fandom, I decided to take the more difficult path and not write from the POV of the more educated character. The resulting story was a lot better for it, I think, and since in the book Scudder never really is more than an object of desire, I enjoyed giving him a voice.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (2)
There were a ton of DS9 characters I loved, or at least found hugely interesting, and yet I've hardly written anything in the fandom. I don't know why.
Top Gear (UK) RPF (8)
I've mostly written in James's POV; again he's the most bookish character and thus the easiest for me to work with. But I also find James's obsession with "proper" masculinity compelling (and sad) and I keep wanting to come back and explore it. Richard I find easier to write from James's POV, because James is analytical enough (despite what I see as a devastating lack of self-knowledge) to understand him pretty well, but fond enough to find him intriguing anyway. I've never tried Jeremy's POV, because I don't think Jeremy Clarkson's mind is a place I want to (fictionally) be in.
It might be worthwhile exploring James from someone else's POV, but the obvious choice (if you're me) is Oz Clarke, and I think he may be too smart and too self-aware to be a good narrator for that purpose.
X-Men (all versions)
Weirdly, as obsessed as I've intermittently been with Erik and Charles, I haven't written much about them. They are daunting in their complexity and history and Big Damn Tragedy. For X1-3 I found Logan a surprisingly congenial POV character, in part because he's a bit of an outsider, and in part because his relationship with Jean and Scott is, to put it mildly, complicated.
[And, yes, I'm aware that there are virtually no women in my list of favorite characters to write. Sometime maybe I'll talk some more about what writing male characters means to me as a trans man, and already meant to me long before I'd accepted that I was trans. But not now, because this post is long enough.]
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.
Okay, considering there were 51 fandoms (and there are now 52, as in the interval I have been inspired, nay virtually compelled, to write Strunk/White slash), I'm only going to talk about fandoms where I wrote multiple stories. Or that I particularly want to talk about.
Alexander Trilogy - Mary Renault (1)
I'm one of those rare people who likes both Hephaistion and Bagoas; in fact Bagoas is slightly my favorite. But this story is from Hephaistion's POV, and thus Bagoas doesn't come off well. Naturally I got a few comments from other people telling me how much they hate Bagoas too, which made me sad.
Angel - the Series (6)
Wesley and Gunn were my guys. I shipped them hard and loved writing them together or separately. Gunn was also a special challenge, as the first character of color I ever wrote (I'm white), and in my early stories with him it's pretty obvious that I was timidly tiptoeing around how to write about racism. The timidity makes me a cringe a bit, but I hope I didn't do too bad a job.
Blake's 7 (22)
Avon fascinated me, as he fascinates almost everyone in the fandom, but I found most of the characters interesting--Blake, notably, is more complex than he seems. And I wish I'd written more Gan, if only because the poor guy was so neglected by the fandom. The world's only Vila/Gan shipper, I am he.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer (40)
Giles, Giles, Giles, Giles. And also Giles. Smart, scholarly Englishman who underneath his tweed is secretly sexass awesomesauce = my ego ideal. I was always very aware of Giles's flaws, so I don't think I Stu-ed him up too much, but Giles is probably the closest I've come to "identifying with" a character.
Also Ethan, who is Giles's opposite and match, and Oz, who is very much like Giles in unexpected ways and is half of my other Giles OTP, and Wesley, who starts out as what the Council would've liked Giles to be and then turns more dangerous than Giles ever was, and Xander, whose daddy-issues crush on Giles damn near broke my heart (and who's wonderful in lots of non-Giles-related ways). I also really enjoyed writing Buffy, Spike, and (most unexpectedly) Dawn, but I found them all more fun from another character's POV. Willow I just never liked all that much, I'm afraid.
Did I mention Giles?
CSI (3)
I loved Warrick (alas, poor Warrick!) and was half sad and half really freaking angry that so few other people in the fandom did. Warrick and Nick had a ton of chemistry together, and at times the love was closer to text than subtext, but nevertheless more people shipped Nick/Greg. I'm sure that had nothing whatsoever to do with Warrick being black and Greg being a pretty white boy. Totally, totally sure.
Also? Warrick is 1000 times hotter than Greg. At least. /ship war
Dalziel and Pascoe - Reginald Hill (4)
I adore Wield but his POV is damn hard to write. Pascoe is easier for me to get my head round (he's bookish, and I can write bookish), but on the other hand I like to see Pascoe from Wield's POV because Wield's view of Pascoe (respect and deep friendship mixed with a certain fatherliness mixed with a high degree of attraction/romantic interest) is incredibly interesting to me.
Discworld - Terry Pratchett (12)
Drumknott will always be my special darling, since I spent two months writing 16,000 words of his POV and giving him a personality and desires and a history and stuff. *cuddles him* Vetinari is an awesome character but hard to write, or at least hard to write from his own POV. Vimes isn't hard to write from his own POV, but his POV is quite limited sometimes by his own prejudices, which makes him frustrating.
Doctor Who (all versions)
Doctor POV is always a bit scary, but fun to attempt; the Second Doctor is the one I find most accessible. Jamie McCrimmon is another character who is fun but challenging because of the limitations of his education and worldview. Fitz (from the Eight Doctor Adventures novels) is probably the easiest character for me to write, but caution is necessary because it's easy to turn Fitz into a caricature of himself.
due South (7)
This fandom is one reason why I'm skeptical about "identifying with" characters as the main reason to like or write them. Everyone who knew me thought I should get into dS because I'd love Fraser. And I did love him, but I loved Ray K. far, far more. I'm nothing like him, but his high-strung, strongly emotional personality and unique speech patterns made him a joy to write.
Harry Potter - J K Rowling (6)
Remus was my fave here. Another middle-aged, scholarly Englishman with depressive tendencies and secret awesome--is anybody surprised?
Maurice - E M Forster (1)
For the one story I wrote in this fandom, I decided to take the more difficult path and not write from the POV of the more educated character. The resulting story was a lot better for it, I think, and since in the book Scudder never really is more than an object of desire, I enjoyed giving him a voice.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (2)
There were a ton of DS9 characters I loved, or at least found hugely interesting, and yet I've hardly written anything in the fandom. I don't know why.
Top Gear (UK) RPF (8)
I've mostly written in James's POV; again he's the most bookish character and thus the easiest for me to work with. But I also find James's obsession with "proper" masculinity compelling (and sad) and I keep wanting to come back and explore it. Richard I find easier to write from James's POV, because James is analytical enough (despite what I see as a devastating lack of self-knowledge) to understand him pretty well, but fond enough to find him intriguing anyway. I've never tried Jeremy's POV, because I don't think Jeremy Clarkson's mind is a place I want to (fictionally) be in.
It might be worthwhile exploring James from someone else's POV, but the obvious choice (if you're me) is Oz Clarke, and I think he may be too smart and too self-aware to be a good narrator for that purpose.
X-Men (all versions)
Weirdly, as obsessed as I've intermittently been with Erik and Charles, I haven't written much about them. They are daunting in their complexity and history and Big Damn Tragedy. For X1-3 I found Logan a surprisingly congenial POV character, in part because he's a bit of an outsider, and in part because his relationship with Jean and Scott is, to put it mildly, complicated.
[And, yes, I'm aware that there are virtually no women in my list of favorite characters to write. Sometime maybe I'll talk some more about what writing male characters means to me as a trans man, and already meant to me long before I'd accepted that I was trans. But not now, because this post is long enough.]
Crossposted at Dreamwidth (
comments); you can comment here or there.