#house md fanfiction writing resources

[dragonagitator]

Questions for House MD fanfic authors, other House MD lore enthusiasts, and anyone familiar with Princeton, New Jersey geography:

Have you found or created any good references or headcanons for the locations that exist in the show, but not in real life?

If you live(d) in this part of New Jersey, do you have any opinions on where it would make sense to place things?

I ask because the House MD time travel / isekai author self-insert fanfic I'm writing is going to delve pretty deeply into the logistical, legal, and financial challenges of building a new life from literally nothing, 20 years in the past. Unlike @acrownforaking 's protagonist in "Intervention," my OC is not a teenage girl who can be passed off as House's long-lost daughter (which is for the best, given how much my middle-aged self-insert wants to fuck that age-appropriate man), and she is going to get off on the wrong foot with the characters who might have normally been the most able/inclined to help her.

So, getting around the Princeton area in 2004 as a broke semi-homeless person is a problem to be solved as part of the story, and thus I need to nail down the precise location of key settings in the Houseverse so I can figure out what they're within walking distance of, transit options, etc.

The Hospital

Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital doesn't exist IRL, and it's not simply a fictionalization of Princeton Hospital because that IRL hospital also exists in the Houseverse and is referenced a few times in the show.

I used to assume that the fictional PPTH was somewhere on the IRL Princeton Plainsboro Road, located here:

But the wiki reminded me that in "After Hours," it says Prospect Street on Chase's GPS. The nearest Prospect Street is in the town of South Brunswick Township and appears to be a residential neighborhood from "driving" down it in Google Street View, but there's a Prospect Avenue in Princeton that terminates on Princeton's campus:

Meanwhile, the building in the aerial exterior shots of PPTH on the show is actually the Frist Campus Center of Princeton University IRL:

And Frist Campus Center is located near the western end of Prospect Avenue, where it terminates at Washington Rd:

Meanwhile, while the show never explicitly identifies which medical school their teaching hospital is affiliated with, I'm comfortable headcanoning that Princeton University has a medical school in the Houseverse (it doesn't have one IRL). We can deduce from "Three Stories" and the early season 4 episodes that the hospital and medical school must be adjacent or perhaps even share some buildings because the characters seem to go back and forth between the classrooms and the hospital without putting on their coats or getting in their cars.

So I'm thinking of headcanoning that Princeton University has a much larger campus in the Houseverse than in IRL, with the medical school buildings and hospital complex clustered around the corner of Washington Road & Prospect Avenue (which is Prospect Street in the Houseverse). I'll keep the exterior of the buildings pretty close to IRL, but what's inside them will be different.

However, there's a couple of problems with this location:

1) Why would a hospital in that location be named Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital? Where does the "Plainsboro" part come in if it's not in that town or on that road?

The IRL Princeton Hospital is on Plainsboro Road, but again, PPTH isn't just a fictionalized version of the IRL Princeton Hospital because the latter exists in the Houseverse and is occasionally referenced on the show. We can also infer from some of Cuddy's remarks about Princeton Hospital that it is a completely separate organization with different management, specialties, accepted health insurance plans, etc.

And here is the location of the IRL Princeton Hospital in relation to Frist Campus Center (the building depicted at PPTH on the show):

Unless someone has a better explanation or idea, I think I'm just going to headcanon that there is/was a second hospital in the same area as the IRL Princeton Hospital that is/was named Princeton Plainsboro Hospital and that the PPTH from the show was originally a satellite campus of that hospital but is now independent. The "Plainsboro" part of the name is simply a legacy from when it was a satellite campus, and Cuddy is too financially sensible to waste a ton of money on a rebranding campaign.

I live at the bottom of "Pill Hill" in Seattle (First Hill) and can attest that having a bunch of different hospitals all clustered together is definitely a thing that happens IRL despite how counter-intuitive it is to have multiple emergency rooms within a few blocks of each other instead of spread throughout the city.

2) Where should I put all the university departments and functions that are displaced by turning Frist Campus Center and the surrounding buildings into a hospital complex and medical school?

This problem is an easier solve, because what's this I spy in satellite view:

Fuck that golf course.

So unless anyone has a better idea, I'm going to expand Princeton University's campus to the southwest, replacing the golf course that's there IRL. Maybe include a nice arboretum so that we still have some green space, but make it a park that anyone can use instead of a private golf club with a $6,000 (!!!) initiation fee.

House's Apartment:

Per his driver's license, House lives at 221B Baker Street (just like every other Sherlock).

His apartment (technically condo, since he owns it) is "a few miles" from the hospital per the episode "Whatever It Takes" and it's an 8-mile run via an unknown route (likely not a straight line) per the episode "Meaning."

His mother indicates that he specifically lives in the city of Princeton, not a neighboring city or suburb, because she's been following the Princeton police blotter ever since House moved there, per the episode "Love is Blind."

Unfortunately, neither of the local Baker Streets are even in Princeton:

So it seems that I need to just pick an existing street in Princeton and rename it as Baker Street in the Houseverse.

Ideas for some Princeton streets that are an appropriate distance from the hospital where a building that looks like this and the street name "Baker" would fit in?

I can't find anything about there being an IRL location that corresponds to the exterior of House's apartment building, so I suspect it's a fake building on a sound stage. But please correct me if I'm wrong.

Thanks in advance for your thoughts & help!

[dragonagitator]

Thank you!!!

Questions:

What would a "psych consult" entail back in 2004?

Particularly if the patient was brought into the ER unconscious with nothing (no clothes, ID, jewelry, etc.), woke up and immediately freaked out over the hospital staff not wearing any PPE, gave wrong answers to the questions about today's date and who's the President, started mumbling about time travel, and then begged to be moved to an isolation room because she might be infected with a deadly virus from the future?

In general, what would a hospital do about a patient who makes a "crazy" claim about being from the year 2024 but otherwise seems lucid and rational? Would the patient still be allowed to make her own medical decisions, be discharged once physically stabilized, etc.?

(I'm thinking about writing an author-self-insert isekai fanfic based on this scenario.)

i say this with love. house fanfic writers, if you ever want me to beta something for medical accuracy, i'll fucking do it no questions asked

[househrt]

Resource for whumpy hurt/comfort fic writers!!

Welcome to the St John of God Clinical Resources. It's from Western Australia and it includes a ton of info for medical professionals, meant to be a guide for paramedics ('To provide a written outline of systematic patient assessment and management in the pre-hospital situation').

The website is here, and it also exists as a 312-page PDF here.

It includes:

Clinical Practice Guidelines/Management aka "what does this injury/condition look like and how should it be managed/treated?" Conditions are sorted into broad categories of Neurological, Respiratory, Circulation, Trauma, Obstetric, Metabolic, Environmental, Anaphylaxis, Sepsis, and Toxicology. In each category, there's more specifics (i.e. within Trauma, there's all of these: Abdominal trauma, burn trauma, crush injury, eye injuries, haemorrhage, limb trauma, pelvic trauma, pneumothorax, spinal trauma, thoracic trauma, and traumatic brain injury). Then, within each condition, it tells you the presentation, risk assessment, and how it should be managed by paramedics (screenshots under the cut).

Skills aka "how do I do this and what do I need?" Again, it's sorted into categories: Assessment, Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Medications, Trauma, and Obstetrics, with specifics within each category. You wanna know how EpiPens work? Here. You wanna know suturing works? Here.

Medications aka: "what does this medication do, how does it work, and (for some meds) what's a standard dose for an adult of X weight?" (the website has a weight-based calculator for some meds) It's not a comprehensive list, but it's still so, so useful as a summary and starting point. It includes how quick the onset is, contraindications (times when the med shouldn't be used because it might be too harmful to the patient), etc.

It's got some other stuff too, but this post is already longer than I wanted it to be. Basically, it's useful, colour-coded and a great tool for writers if you want to get medical things accurate. Some of the language is obviously geared to medical professionals, but it's fairly accessible for the most part.

Some screenshots under the cut:

Screenshots from the website:

screenshots from the PDF:

[cupcraft]

Welcome to the Cup Blog here since circa 2013 with incidents at a semi-regular pace.

Previously cupsmp

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I write fic and poetry and post about anime, supernatural, bg3, minecraft, CoVT, other games, post sims builds, variety interests, and sometimes the occasional technoblade art or post :). Currently super hyperfixated on house md and hilson. Sometimes my chronic inniter disease flares up, don't mind the posts.

This has been my main since 2013 so I will always at heart be a variety blogger.

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I also have auditory processing issues so sometimes I can mishear certain words or misunderstand a sentence -> If i do this with quoting a video/stream/etc let me know!

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[alienheartattack]

Hii! I am also a rivamika shipper and omG I love all of your fanfictions! They are so well written and I smile whenever i read one of them. From ur fics, Im guessing rivamika is ur OTP? But- I have been so inspired by ur fics that I want to write my own Rivamika fanfictions, but my writing is nowhere near as good as urs. Do you have any tips on how I can improve?

Thank you so much for your message! It makes me so happy to know that other people enjoy my fics. There's really nothing better when you're reading a story and the feels hit and you've just got this big grin on your face, so that's the feeling I try to go for when I write.

I would say strictly based on the sheer volume of fic I've written, Rivamika is definitely my OTP. I've had other OTPs in the past but I'd never published much fanfiction for them because I tended to join fandoms well past their peak, but there's a definite theme in all of my shipping adventures: a talented but difficult man and the equally talented woman who sees through his bullshit. (I was really into House/Cuddy from House MD back before the show made them canon and then sunk the ship into the Mariana fucking Trench in like 8 episodes. Everyone, please count your blessings that Rivamika isn't canon.)

As for improving your writing... I'm going to try not to write a novel about this because I have Many Feelings About Writing. First off I would caution you not to compare yourself to other writers, but rather look at them as sources of inspiration and emulation. (Mainly I just feel weird when younger fic writers compare themselves to me, since I have an extensive background in writing and editing, I've read a ton, I studied writing in college, and during my last fandom hiatus I got into live comedy and wrote multiple sketch and variety shows as well as a whole-ass play. One of the reasons why I'm as good as I am is because I've been doing this for so long.)

The very unsexy but true answer is that good writing is born from discipline and developing your own practice. Every creative writing teacher I've had has said something along the lines of, "I cannot teach you how to write. I can give you tools and the opportunity to workshop your writing, but you have to figure out the writing process that works best for you." Some people are more productive in the morning or at night; you might write longhand, on your phone, or on a computer; you might start writing with only inspiration to guide you or you might outline extensively before you start. You have to figure out which of these methods work best for you and figure out how to schedule time to write. (Personally, I write mostly at night, I outline extensively, and I take notes on my phone whenever inspiration strikes me because I know I'm going to lose the idea unless I write it down immediately. It's taken years of trial and error to get to this point. My process is still pretty haphazard but it's what works for me.)

To write well, you have to write a whole lot of shit first. It's just a fact; my first drafts are absolute trash and I hate them a lot of the time, but I try not to get discouraged because it's just a skeleton of the final product. You're probably not going to like what you write at first, but all that means is that your skill level doesn't match your taste level yet. If you let that piece of writing sit for a while and come back to it after you've done more reading and more writing days or weeks later, you'll be able to better identify what you don't like and be able to fix it. Ideally you want to do some kind of writing every day or close to it, whether that's writing down an idea in your notes app, scribbling in a notebook on your lunch break, dedicating yourself to a practice of morning pages, or something similar. Even spacing out and thinking about your story can be productive, but only if you write down what you come up with.

Aside from discipline, being a well-rounded writer boils down to developing several core skills:

Reading: You want to read everything you can get your hands on — and I mean everything. The goal is to train yourself to identify writing that you like and to be able to explain why you like it, then employ those devices and concepts in your own writing. Even if you're only planning on writing fiction, there's still amazing writing to be found in nonfiction. (Food writing and travel writing in particular tend to be very evocative in their descriptions.) I also take inspiration from poetry for its impactful use of language. The more you read, the more ideas and stories and references you'll be aware of, and you'll be able to pull inspiration from a wider breadth of resources. If you're still in school, learning critical reading in your literature classes applies here: being able to identify themes, character traits, tropes, rhetorical and literary devices, etc. will help you develop your own preferences and taste.

Researching: I use a dictionary and thesaurus whenever I write. I have a whole folder on my computer of writing resources I've compiled over the years. I google things all the time, even really dumb stuff or basic facts just so I'm certain that I got it right. I think the old adage of "write what you know" doesn't mean that you can only write based on your life experience; rather, you can teach yourself about all kinds of subjects and write about them with a degree of certainty without having directly experienced them yourself. For example, when I write fanfiction with a Rivamika baby, I figure out what I need the kid to do (walk, say cute things, etc.) and then research infant development to see how old the child needs to be in order for these things to be realistic. I once got some feedback on Inexorable that Hana was written like a real child, which made me feel amazing because at the time I was literally never around babies. However, I was able to draw on my limited past experiences with other people's kids and my own research to portray a young toddler somewhat accurately.

Editing: It is a massively helpful skill to be able to read your own writing and approach it with a distant, critical eye. I worked on my high school and college newspapers and learned how to edit other people's writing that way. (Beta reading is a good way to practice this skill.) Being edited at the paper also taught me to stop being possessive over my own writing, even when I thought it was brilliant. Writing is about conveying ideas to another person, usually a total stranger, which means clarity is ultimately more important than adding artistic flourishes. I've also recently started using the Grammarly plugin for basic grammar stuff that I tend to forget. This also ties in with reading; the more you read, the more you'll be able to identify and replicate more effective writing, and the easier time you'll have identifying deficiencies in your own writing.

I've written enough already (I wasn't kidding about the novel) so I'll close with one last tip that is universally helpful: read your writing out loud. Most of the time, you can figure out what you want to say simply by verbalizing it or you'll realize, "Oh, no one talks like this, I would have said X in this situation" and that'll help you write more clearly and realistically.

I love talking about writing (obviously), so feel free to inbox me if you have more questions!

[dragonagitator]

lots of good tips in the comments

Does anyone have any tips for writing from House’s POV?

I tend to write from Wilson’s POV because I find him a more personally relatable character, so I find it easier to write his voice/internal monologue.

While I headcanon a lot of stuff for House because I love character analysis and can extrapolate on canon, I have such a hard time writing his POV.

So anyone who writes House POV have any tips? I’m challenging myself to write a House POV fic.

(When I say POV, I mean like, deep third person. I don’t write first person.)

[mdwatchestv]

The Magicians 3x08: One Very Long Blog About Magicians

The day has finally come when The Magicians has begun formatting itself for maximum ease of blogging. Thank you writers of the Magicians for making this possible. You never cease to surprise and delight me with your innovation, and thoughtfulness for my blogging plight. My wedding vows to the Magicians aside, what a fantastic episode this was. The Magicians has essentially established that the standard rules of television and narrative don't apply, and that allows them to do things like have an episode of vignettes, or a musical episode, without disrupting the arc of the show. In fact, it would be more noticeable if the show didn't take these kind of risks now and again.

But let's talk about these Six Short Stories About Magic, and the larger story they came together to tell. The overriding action of this episode was the Library Heist Plan, as hatched last week. We begin with Penny, who travels via Little Book Dragon (that we never get to see! What a rip off!) to the Underworld Branch of The Library. Penny journeys out into the larger world of the undead into a spillover area which looks like it could have been ripped from Fyre Fest's Instagram.  There he bribes guards with the ending of Game of Thrones, which honestly sounded pretty exciting despite the clear liberties. Penny finds Benedict hoping he is still in position of the key which drove him to taking his own life (grim), but Benedict claims The Library took it, and please can he and Penny be best friends forever? It's a little thirsty tbh. 

So Penny heads back to The Library where he runs into Sylvia, his sassy Librarian supervisor from last season! As a Librarian she's still serving out her billion years even after death (as Penny is technically supposed to be doing), and she takes Penny to the one person who she thinks could help. That person is Cassandra, who looks like, and sounds like, and who probably is, a very ancient Alice. Cassandra is the author of the destiny books in The Library, blessed/cursed with Future Sight, she spends her days scrawling out the stories of everyone ever. Sylvia denies Cassandra is really Alice, but she totally, definitely is. Cassandra greets Penny by giving him her fanfiction about Quentin, which I'm sorry, is pure Alice. The subsequent stories she writes and gives to/throws at Penny make up the framework for the rest of the episode. 

After Penny we get Poppy. In Poppy's story she finishes knockin' boots with Q, and gets on to the business of Library heistin'. The plan is the other traveller, Victoria, is going to form a "mirror bridge" using, what else, her own blood. Our merry band of thieves will use it to travel to the Underworld Library, retrieve the key, and then return to good old planet Earth. In addition to the key, we learn Harriet is after the supposed Giant Magic Battery the Librarians have that is powering their abiltiies. Alice points out some obviousproblems in their plan, then refuses to help. I'm really into her black dresses and tops recently though, may we never see a Peter Pan collar again! Poppy is not thwarted Alice’s obstinance, and responds by stealing Alice's Niffin Notes (tm) in order to get the proper spell for the plan. Kady, Harriet, Poppy, and Quentin travel through mirrors to the Library and split up. Despite her happy-go-lucky demeanor and "can-do" attitude, there is something not quite right about Poppy. She claims she is going along with the quest in the self-interest of getting magic back, but this is also the chick who tricked Quentin into taking what was in essence a suicide key. The fact that her storyline acted more as exposition, and less as a deep dive into her character (as we see later with Harriet), suggests to me that there is something else afoot. Also she did try and convince Victoria to cut and run early, thereby trapping everyone else in the Library. It’s red flags like that that have me a skosh dubious of her moral fiber. 

Next we go to Alice. After refusing to help the Library robbers, Alice has a good ole sit and sulk. That is until Fen stumbles out of the Fillory transport clock, bringing with her a serious reality check. Fen has had about enough of her Fillory life, and has peaced out to find better company and better alcohol. However what she finds instead is Alice, moping about her lost knowledge, when Fen has lost actual children. It was nice to see another character give Alice a kick in the butt and get her out of her self-pity. I don't remember half the things people tell me any given day and you don't see me complaining! Alice takes the advice to heart and goes to The Library to apply for a card aaaannndd maybe/maybe not get in on that giant magic battery goodness. The Librarian says she will give Alice access IF she agrees to help the Library first. This has to lead to her becoming Cassandra in some time loop or something, but I can't quite see how....yet!

Meanwhile, Eliot and Margo seem to be in a spot of marsupial trouble.

Fen, still passed out in the Physical Kid's Cottage, oversees Jaime Ray Newman asking Julia for help. Jaime (too late to learn her character name) has developed some oozing sores from overuse of the mysterious white powder she has been snorting to gain magic. Don't do drugs kids. Unseen by Julia, but of course by Fen, is that Jaime is being waited on by a fairy. Fen convinces Julia this needs to be investigated as fairies are capital b Bad news. However Fen makes an unexpected connection with Skye, the shy young fairy in service to Jaime. Skye seems to be serving Jaime in exchange for protection, and surprisingly has no idea other fairies exist. Things take an even more shocking turn when Julia and Fen later discover Skye in Jaime's house with an amputated leg! Nearby Julia finds vials of the white powder Jaime had been dosing with. Ergo, the white magic powder is MADE OF fairies. Considering what we know about fairies (evil, tricksy, luminescent, mildly fabulous), this is a maj twist. Also I love the idea of pairing Julia and Fen together, both are resourceful problem-solvers and clever thinkers, and both have struggled with extreme trauma and abandonment. Honestly, I just want Fen to have a friend. 

The final short story belongs to Harriet. In a series of flashbacks, we see Harriet growing up in the Library as (another twist) the daughter of the Librarian! Unlike her mother, Harriet longs to see the world, gain experience, and share the knowledge of the Library with others. This eventually drives a rift between them, causing Harriet to leave the Library for good. Of course because this is Harriet's story, the entire sequence is in ASL, in almost complete silence. With a few exceptions, a scene like this featuring three deaf actresses that is not explicitly ABOUT their deafness, is all too rare. Moving on to present day, the adult Harriet and Kady split off to look for the giant battery the Librarians have supposedly created. Instead of an enchanted energizer bunny, they find a suitcase filled with (bigger twist) hundred of vials of the white powder made from fairies! Of course only we, the audience, know this because we have been hopping around in the narrative structure. What this reveals though is that The Library is much worse than we thought if they are slaughtering fairies and grinding them up for magic powder. If the fairies of Fillory are privy to this knowledge, it gives their quest to take over a whole new light. Instead of malicious conquerors, perhaps they are merely trying to save, and if not save then righteously avenge, their murdered people. In the end, everyone escapes back through the mirror bridge except Victoria and Harriet who are trapped between worlds if not dead. 

Finally we come back to Penny, who rereading Alice's fanfic realizes Benedict had the key all along. Big duh Penny. Penny is able to feed the key to the dragon, where it is retrieved successfully by Quentin and Kady. However, the seemingly helpful Sylvia betrays Penny himself, handing him over to the Librarians to presumably resume serving his billion year sentence. Ice cold.

With our presumptions about the fairies up-ended, next episode is anyone's guess. At the very least we know it will be a musical. That feels right.

XO MD