Hi, I'm Darcy. I'm currently active the Harry Potter, Firefly and Lois & Clark fandoms, but I've either written and/or read fanfiction from a few more. There are other things I'm avid fans of, but I don't read or write fanfiction for them--a couple of them aren't allowed actually. For instance, Orson Scott Card is my favorite author, and he doesn't allow fanfiction of his works. Also, Anne McCaffrey is my second favorite, and she used to only allow fanfiction as long as it was not posted to the internet.
I wrote one Star Trek fanfiction, but I took it off of here for some reason. It's now back up and posted somewhere in that jumble of stories below. It's called Eternity . . . It's a Long Story. I have never read any fanfiction for Star Trek, since the novels are fanfic-like enough for me, and even then I haven't read one in years.
I used to have a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer and/or Angel fanfics up here, but long ago lost interest in that fandom entirely. I even gave my DVD sets for seasons 1-5 to my sister. Maybe I'll post all the BtVS/Angel fic I can find on my hard drive that wasn't co-written (I don't feel like asking for permission from people I haven't chatted with in ages, and they might have those stories up in their profiles anyway). Although I NEVER write slash, I did read quite a bit of BtVS slash back in the day--but it always squicked me, even if it was well-written.
As you can probably see below, I'm a Harry Potter fan, but have since lost interest in writing any fanfiction in that fandom. So, for those of you waiting for the next chapter of Slytherin Promise, sorry, but it's not coming. I can barely remember what it was about, and even with my notes, can't really remember where I was going with it. I'm a staunch Harry/Ginny and Hermione/Ron 'shipper, but I've been known to read Harry/Hermione fics, as long as they were well-written and I was in the right mood. All the characters in Harry Potter seem either too young or too straight for me to be at all interested in slashfic in this genre--though I have read some good ones.
I am a huge fan of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, and have been since it first aired when I was ten years old. I re-discovered it at Christmas of 2005 when my dad got me the season one DVD set. I now have all four seasons, and am loving the FoLC-dom! I especially like the Lois and Clark Fanfic Archive (http://www.lcfanfic.com) and the Lois and Clark Fanfic Message Boards (http://www.lcficmbs.com). If you like, you can go to the archive, and hear my fics--I read them myself for the archive's audiofic project. :) I also like Zoomway's boards and http://www.supershirtlessclark.com, a new place inspired by the Motivational Posters at the fanfic message boards. The only 'ship I REALLY support is L/C (although I have read some great other 'ship fics which explored literary possibilities quite well), so there really isn't a potential for slashfic here to me. And even if there was, I wouldn't write it. Though I HAVE read one or two "Clark and Superman get split into two people, and they get it on" fics--those were well-written, but weird.
Even though the series finale aired for the first time about four months before I was born, I still LOVE MASH. I was recently able to watch the whole series from the Pilot to "Goodbye, Farewell and Amen," and I was surprised at how many episodes I'd seen four or five times, while there were also quite a few that I had never seen at all! My favorite pairing is Hawkeye/Margaret. I haven't written any MASH fanfic and have no plans to do so yet, but I'm still getting my feet wet in the fandom itself. I've only found two sites so far: http://www.BestCareAnywhere.net and http://www.MASH4077.co.uk. As a fellow LnC/MASH fan once said to me, the characters of MASH all seem profoundly straight--slashfic would just ruin the fandom.
I've just finished catching up on all of the MalInara (favorite canon pairing) and Rayne (favorite unconventional pairing) fanfic I could find here at FFN, and as you can see below, I've written two MalInara vignettes. They're just interludes for the episodes "Shindig" and "Our Mrs. Reynolds," really, and I have no idea on how to continue the second one, were I to do so with a shuttle scene. So don't ask.
Maybe sometime later (I've got to finish PPKM, and I have one other chapter fic I've been planning for LnC which might not get written now--actually, it was supposed to be the first one I wrote, but I've only got the challenge, first part of the outline, and vague ideas for the rest so far) after I feel I've really got the characters down, I might write some MASH fanfic, but it's nowhere near definite yet. I'd hate to write them in some way that makes other fans of the show go, "That's not _! He/she wouldn't do/say/think that, not even in these circumstances!"
'Cause I have to say, a lot of the MASH fanfic I've read so far is not much more than syrup, and all the characters' dialogue sounds generic. I mean, really! Can you think of any circumstance in which Charles Emmerson Winchester III (or even Hawkeye) might say something like, "I'm gonna?" It's ridiculous!
And generic characters with the names of my favorite fictional people is the fanfiction pet peeve that tops my list. Some of the other things on that list are:
bad grammar, or grammar in dialogue that's worse than the actual characters' bad grammar tendencies (a lot of Firefly fanfic has this, and it's extremely irksome)
not even bothering to check the spelling of the characters' (or established settings) names
mary sues/gary stus
author's notes smack dab in the middle of the story or chapter--if you're going to comment about something do it before or after the actual story or chapter! Putting the notes in the middle like that just jars readers out of the story!
ignorance of canon--if it's not deliberate, that's fine with me, but if it is deliberate and the author has no intention of getting up-to-date on the book/movie/show/etc, then that particular author has no business writing fanfiction for that fandom!
authors who insist they don't need beta readers--I used to just post my stories as soon as I'd written and polished them as much as I could, but I know the value of a beta reader--they're not just grammar, spelling and punctuation editors; they help you make sense of the story, if you ask them to! PPKM would totally suck if I didn't have my two beta readers for it! (I'll admit, my two Firefly fics are unbeta'd, but that doesn't mean I don't know that they couldn't have been better with a beta!)
deliberately ignoring canon without either
a. saying so and giving the specifics (in author's notes) of which parts the author is ignoring or
b. beginning the story at an earlier point in time to help establish the canon changes better, and
holding new chapters for ransom (i.e. "I'll only update if I get five/ten/twenty reviews on this chapter!") whether they're already written or not. Begging, pleading, and/or encouraging reviews is fine by me though--the muses need feeding, after all. It just shouldn't be forced. If the feedback is forced, the muses are forced, and that just makes for a lame, contrived story.
And that list goes for ALL fanfiction!
FanFiction.Net - unleash your imagination
