1. Tom Hardy photo & quote of the day: ”The fearsomeness of intent and intelligence Hardy conveys just through his eyes is dazzling. But we’ve taken one of the most distinctive mouths in the movie business and covered it up for the entire film!” - Nolan

(click to see the full high res image)

2.

Drive-by poll on Gangstermoll!

1. I signed up to participate in Script Frenzy this year, which seems like good fun. I such a dialogue-heavy writer and it's been a while since I last wrote a screenplay (the last one having been more than ten years ago), it sounds like it could be good fun. For those wondering what Script Frenzy is:

Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April. As part of a donation-funded nonprofit, Script Frenzy charges no fee to participate; there are also no valuable prizes awarded or "best" scripts singled out. Every writer who completes the goal of 100 pages is victorious and awe-inspiring and will receive a handsome Script Frenzy Winner's Certificate and web icon proclaiming this fact.

I... have no idea what I'm going to write about. Ideas, anyone?

2. I was also reading over the interviews I did over in rec_hymenated with various fan authors and artists, and remembering how much fun they were. I got to talk to a lot of interesting people in Supernatural fandom about their thoughts on characters, canon, and their writing/art-making process. I've been thinking about doing something like that with Inception fan authors/artists. Then I wondered: would anybody read them? To answer that question, a poll!

(To see an example of the type of questions I ask, here's a link to an interview I did with architeuthis.)

1. Question to the flist: What is your favorite novel of all time? If you could leave a comment with the title & author, that'd be great. You don't even need to say why (unless you want to, of course).

2. If you haven't voted in my poll here, you really should.

3. i_reversebang sign-ups for authors and artists are open! Join and be amazed!




Come and join i_reversebang.
A challenge where artists create and submit art. Writers claim a piece and write a story based on it.


* * * * * *

Explanation and Rules
Sign Up: Artist | Author | Beta

About a week ago, I posted a poll here inquiring about people's expectations and likes/dislikes when participating in fandom. 35 people participated, so insert a mandatory disclaimer about sample size being too small, not being representative in reading tastes given that most/many people on my flist read at least some of my stories and may have tastes differing from the rest of fandom as a whole, etc. All that aside, interesting results emerged.

Nearly everyone has at least one OTP in fandom (not surprising), and nearly all voters identify with one or more characters they ship in fandom. This second fact was surprising to me, though. I suppose it's not really a conversation topic that comes up that often, so at least my surprise is justified. I, personally, do not identify with any of the characters I write about--I sympathize with parts of them and can relate to aspects of background or personality, but that's about it. It was very interesting to find out I am in the minority about this, and it makes certain patterns in fandom and fanfic make much more sense to me in light of that fact.

People were pretty split on the subject of Hurt/Comfort fic. 18 read and enjoyed it, while 7 didn't and 11 had more complicated feelings on the matter.

The things that people like or want to see the most in fanfic are, from most popular to least popular: interesting ideas, good characterization, plot, humor, happy ending, angst, and sex.

The things that people expect to see: good characterization, interesting ideas, sex, happy endings, and humor.

Things people hate to see in fic, excluding technical issues like SPAG or wild OOCness: the results were so all over the place it's a bit hard to summarize the results. But popular ones include: unhappy endings, stories with no direction or poor pacing, heternormativity and, weirdly enough, mpreg. LOL.

Dealbreakers AKA things that will stop the reader from reading a fic completely: poor SPAG, extreme OOC, bad style/purple prose, and unwarned for squicks.

Most people do look to fanfic to make them feel a certain way, though it can vary by mood. About half the participants have varying things that they are looking for depending on mood: soemtimes sad fic, sometimes happy, sometimes porny. The other half of the participants seek something happy to improve their mood, generally (I'd say this is a result that really demonstrates how skewed my sample is in terms of openness to reading various things; I think that amongst mainstream fandom there is a far larger contingent of people who are only looking for feel good things in fic). A few voters, interestingly enough, don't turn to fanfic to generate a particular emotion at all but rather, read for the writing or the writers.

Thoughts on the results, anyone? Surprised/not surprised/sleepy?

I think it should not come as a surprise to anyone that I find fandom endlessly fascinating. Like most things I love in life, I engage both directly with said thing and indirectly with it on a meta level. Another thing that I've learned is that the way I engage with fandom, personally, is quite different than the way many other fans do. These differences are reflected in the approach I take to writing fanfiction, the stories I read and enjoy, and the things I post to this journal. So, to satisfy my curiosity, please vote in my poll, flist!



If you have any other thoughts, please leave them in the comments!

I spent all of yesterday basically mainlining delicious Arthur/Eames fic and loving every second of this. I have also been friending people in Inception fandom with reckless abandon over the past few months, so a quick rundown of my friending policies if you've found your way over here: this lj has an open friending policy where I automatically friend back everyone who friends me, provided the lj in question doesn't seem to be completely devoid of activity. I tend to stick mostly to posting fic, entries relating to my writing, and fannish stuff; you won't find too much of my personal life here. When I proactively add someone to my flist, it's because I think they are an awesome writer and would like to track them more easily :D I don't take friendings and de-friendings personally, so feel free to come and go as you please.

If you would like to keep track of my writing, I do generally post to communities, but in some cases I won't. Feel free to friend this lj if you would like to keep abreast of updates. If you don't want to friend this lj, you may also track my entries; all of my story posts will be tagged with the tag 'fic' if you only want to track those. All of my stories will be indexed in my master post by fandom and primary pairing, but I do not include warnings or header information in my story posts other than wordcount.

If you'd like to learn a little more random trivia about me, here is a cut to a meme stolen from epistolic ( behind the cut.Collapse )

In other news, based on preliminary results from my poll yesterday (which you should go vote in, if you haven't), for SPN people are more interested in seeing my Dean/Castiel Noir AU, which is not terribly surprising to me. Yay for noir! Inception features a bigger spread amongst the ideas, but the most popular one is Arthur only having sex with projections and refusing to do casual sex with real people, with the Eames as a dream!hooker AU coming in at a close second. In ST, I'm surrpised to see a tie between my Kirk/Sulu ship manifesto and my Chekov/Sulu slave!AU for first, with my boyband AU geting no love from anyone but me. Alas. Many thanks to all who voted! Once I am done with my Inception Blade Runner AU I think I will do my best to focus on either my D/C noir or the Chulu slave!AU, all three of which should be posted as WIP's.

Also, I've looked at a lot of the art drafts that are coming in for spn_reversebang and they are seriously awesome. I will be hanging around as a pinch hitter to pick up unclaimed art (and therefore won't be abusing my modly powers by shotgunning claims) but there's a lot of good stuff for everyone so far.

Other than my Blade Runner Arthur/Eames AU, I am having difficulty deciding on which writing project I should focus on next. Hence, a poll! To help me determine what stories people actually want to read from my WIP list in each fandom. Please select the story ideas that you would be most interested in reading. I include expanded summaries behind the cut BELOW the poll, if you wish for more information about the story idea. Also, thoughts and suggestions appreciated!



Summaries of the stories behind ( the cutCollapse )

Many months back, I posted an entry detailing my reasoning for implementing feedback polls at the end of my stories. Since it has been over a six months since that post and I am now active in several fandoms besides SPN (and have made many new f-list friends over that period) I thought I'd give a quick rehash of why I choose to use feedback polls. This post will be linked in my sticky master list of stories in the Fic Policies section.

( My reasons behind the cut.Collapse )

It's been a while since I've done a meme. So have two!

the ❝that's my favorite!❞ meme
A FANFICTION PRAISE MEME

❝WRITE MY PROFILE!❞

In other news, here is a terrific picspam on the many outfits of JGL and Tom Hardy as Arthur and Eames in the movie and on set. Also, many of you have already seen this, but here is a post on menswear and, in particular, suits.

Also, have you guys voted in the actor sexy-off poll? Tom Hardy is currently in th lead, but not by that much!

Finally: I continue to be delighted by the massive amounts of wonderful Arthur/Eames fic that is being generated every. single. day. I feel vaguely as though I'll never catch up with all the output and that is a wonderful feeling.

I spent quite a bit of time hunting down pictures to assist all y'all in your sexy-off polling decisions (ahahaha my life is SO DIFFICULT) and eventually settled on including three photos for every actor: one face shot, one body shot (all shirtless except for Cillian Murphy who I could not find shirtless ANYWHERE, so I subbed in a suit photo instead) and one wildcard photo. Cho's wildcard is actually four photos in one (you will understand why when you see it) and Tom Hardy's are so NSFW (full frontal nudity along with shots from the behind) that I included the links to the photos instead. Aside from Tom Hardy, everything should be safe for work, provided, of course, that your work approves of you drooling over men in various stages of undress.

Oh, and I chose not to include Anton Yelchin because he looks SO YOUNG and it makes me feel like a creeper to even hunt for shirtless pictures even though I am only a few years older than him. Sorry, Anton-lovers.

( Visual aids ahoy!Collapse )

A motley assortment of things.

First: at the Inception official website, there is a delightful comic written by Chris Nolan that details The Cobol Job, aka what happened immediately before the movie that lead to Saito. There's a lot of Arthur being badass, Nash being shifty, and Cobb being Cobb, so check it out here. There's also a playlist for each character, so here are the songs listed for the characters most relevant to my interests:

Arthur:
Sleepers Awake
Bach Cello Suite No. 1 In G Gigue
Minuet in G
Piano Sonata Opus 53 No 21 1s

Eames:
Crayon
If You Could Read Your Mind
Folsom Prison Blues
Two Silver Trees
Lost Someone
Bewitched Bothered Bewildered
Confirmation
Deserter (Four Tet Remix)
Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy) (hehehehe)

Second: Here is the link to what is probably my favorite Arthur/Eames fic that I have read so far: Towards Zero. It's about 15,000 words, and details how Arthur met Eames first as a projection before they met in person. It's wonderfully written and has a satisfying arc to their relationship.

Third: deancasbigbang Author/Artist Reveals are up if you are interested in seeing who is doing who ;)

Fourth: I am part of spn_las, which stands for Last Author Standing, and basically there are a bunch of rounds of challenges where the mod provides a prompt, writers write a 100-1000 word ficlet, and then people vote on the best and the worst fic out of the bunch. The one with the most 'worst fic' votes is voted out. I joined the community mostly because I recently read some ficlets in A/E that were under 1000 words and packed quite the punch, and that's piqued my interest in trying my hand at writing ficlets too. I'm usually a long fic writer, which is fine by me, but I thought this would be an interesting exercise. So, if you were curious about my the little cracky ficlet I posted a couple of days ago, this is an explanation as to what that is about.

Fifth: Based on my poll here it seems that most of my flist reads SPN, but a sizable contingent also read Inception as well. I'm also pleased to note that there are four other people who would read my new and fabulously fussy rarepair Arthur/Fischer, and that all of my other pairings get at least a little love :) The winner of the sexy-off is Eames, with Sulu coming in at a close second, and then Dean and Castiel tying for third. Eames is indeed a sexy beast so I am not in the least surprised that he was the winner, but I am very happy to see Sulu make such a strong showing in spite of the fact that my flist is mostly made up of D/C readers :D I will be posting a follow up poll tomorrow featuring a sexy-off of the actors who play all these roles, along with dazzling visual aids. Stay tuned.

Since I have an open friending policy on this lj and I am now multi-fandom, it can be hard for me to keep up with where everyone is in terms of their fandoms. This poll is to help give me an idea of the composition of my flist :)



PS - feel free to comment with WHY you chose your sexy-off winner. I chose Sulu mostly because I didn't know who to choose based on raw sex appeal (everyone on the list is so hot!), so I chose the one that I'd actually want to cook me breakfast in the morning, and who I'd want to see again. It seems like most of the other people on the list have--um, assorted problems that maybe would not make them the best candidates for boyfriends? (See: Daddy issues EVERYWHERE!)

Many moons ago, I wrote this meta post explaining why I was installing feedback polls at the end of my fic posts, and wrote up an analysis of the results for the first three stories with the feedback polls here. Here is the second installment of my results and my analysis of the most recent pieces I posted with polls: Hallelujah & No Termination Date. I did also write an Oz outtake, but alas, totally forgot to put in a poll. Anyway, the results ( behind the cut.Collapse )

My APBB is proceeding at a fairly brisk clip--I finally I seem to have built up some sense of momentum. I keep finding random moments to sit down and write it, so I've got nearly all of the last Act written--I just need to type it and edit it. And, of course, write the end scene.

Even though this story doesn't fill me with anger and resentment anymore, I'll still be extremely glad to be done with it. I'm sure my f-list will be equally glad not to read about its snail-like progression as well.

And a poll, because I am curious.

A poll, as inspired by this poll and the meta over yonder.

I re-posted my one and only substantial piece of Harry Potter fic, a Sirius/Remus story called Parallax. I wrote it in the summer of 2007, and unbeknownst to me at the time, it has a wordcount of 32,000. Which, man. I love ze words, apparently. Anyway, it was originally posted a website that I've since taken down, and while I did a cursory review while posting to make sure it looked mostly right and was in order, some of the formatting may still be wonky or whatnot. I haven't had the chance to go through the whole thing and make all the edits I'd like yet either. I do have to work on Hallelujah today, the fourth, and the fifth to get a draft of at least 10k in, so who knows when I'll get to the edits, though.

If you are reading this entry right now, it is likely you also participated in the polls I posted up here and here. I love polls and try to make use of them whenever I can, which is part of the reason I posted them. The other reason is genuine curiosity about how other people select what to read in a community and pairing as prolific as D/C. There can be literally hundreds of fics posted to deancastiel in a month, so it's clear that most people need a way to filter those many entries down to the fics they have time to read (although some people who voted apparently have much more time to read than others--5 people said they read upwards of 16 fics a week!).

I know that my methods for deciding what to read are rather idiosyncratic in that I don't actually look at any of the header information except for the Author field, and occasionally the Summary. I have literally no time to read in between writing and RL, so I have a stable of writers that I'll read basically anything from (a tiny stable). Then I have authors who I will sometimes read depending on whether the summary sounds remotely interesting or not (a slightly larger group). And then there are all the other authors who I don't know and whose work, sadly, I will not read. The only exception to that is during challenge season; I will read at least the beginning of each and every single fic posted in a challenge and in order to harvest new writers to follow.

I like challenges because they indicate that the writer, at the very least, has the discipline to complete (mostly) a story and adhere to a deadline, which has a positive correlation with quality. Obviously, it's not a perfect relationship, as the overwhelming majority of challenge fics--depending on the challenge--are ones I don't particularly enjoy reading. But the quality does tend to scale up alongside the difficulty of the challenge--ie, the Big Bang fics. Writing 10K or more words is definitely a challenge, and it speaks to a certain point in a writer's skill and development if they can sustain a story and plot (however weak it is) for 10,000 words, or 20,000 words, or etc. I will also occasionally read based on recs from a few trusted advisors.

I know most people probably have less Draconian methods of deciding what to read--which is a good thing, for I would probably have no readers at all if everyone were like me--and so I was curious to find out what those methods were. I should preface my results by saying that this is an informal poll made up of mostly D/C readers, with a tiny sample size (approximately 20 participants) who are probably skewed in several ways due to the fact that they are reading my lj, and etc. So this is hardly a comprehensive cross-section of SPN fandom at large or, even the D/C corner of SPN fandom. Nevertheless, the results are interesting.

Results ( behind the cut.Collapse )

Sample Header for Dean/Castiel story X:

Title: Sexytimes abound
Author: bauble
Pairing: Dean/Castiel
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 5000
Warnings: Graphic sex. Rimming, blowjobbery business.
Spoilers: all of S5
Summary: Dean and Cas have lots of sex!

This is a story that begins with Dean on top. It ends with Dean on the bottom. Click the link to read the rest. (pretend there's a link or lj cut here)



If you have any thoughts or wish to explain your choices, please explain in the comments!