#jaelijn answers

[jaelijn]

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who reblogged something from you!

I'm going to be honest, when this message arrived I was having a hard time coming up with something, which is why I have let it sit, unanswered, in my inbox since, even though coming up with something to make you happy even when you're not feeling it is precisely the point. Anyway. Have a not entirely facetious but also not entirely serious response:

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[quordleona03]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

I was tagged by @marley-manson and @ofmdmash - so I will tag:

@topshelf2112-blog @remyfire @allcanonisrelative @jaelijn @amrv-5 @mycenaae @muirmarie @thebreakfastgenie @uncomfyfriendly @rescue-ram @blistersonmefingehs @fieryphrazes

(but don't feel obliged unless you want to play, and if you'd like to play, consider yourself tagged!)

How many works do you have on Ao3?

253.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

1,393,465.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily (and in more or less chronological order): Blake's 7, Star Trek: TOS, The Professionals, Highlander, Star Trek: tng. MASH, House, and The Fugitive (the film with Harrison Ford and Tommy Lee Jones). I have also written fanfic for MacGyver (the 1985 TV series), the West Wing, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Quantum Leap, , and various literary fandoms as an exercise in pastiche.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The top three are MASHfics: Tuttle, All We Know, Go, tell them in Sparta - and four and five are both Star Trek fics (both Spock/McCoy): A Man of Integrity, and Through A Glass, Darkly.

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes!

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oh, that's a difficult question. Possibly it's ""I would not be you for a kingdom" " - my Villette slash story: though in that case I was just using the angst Charlotte Bronte handed me in the novel. Likewise with the Blake's 7 story Cruelty Has A Human Heart, and the Good Omens story Let this cup pass from me, and the Highlander story Day and Night But, even what with stories where the angst is built into the source material, I think the angstiest ending is that of the long series The Games. (I considered MASH in Drabbles and concluded that as I wrote the 80 or so drabbles in the sequence individually and out of order, it doesn't really count.)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That is an extremely difficult question to answer. I like writing in universes full of angst. Many of my stories have hopeful endings, which make me happy, but I think the unequivocably happy ending is the MASH story Responsible Indefinitely For Each Other’s Welfare. Because there they are, together, at the end of a long life: and Hawkeye is still the same delightfully annoying trickster as ever.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Sometimes. Usually for ridiculous reasons. "I hate that pairing!" Well, don't read it then. "So-and-so isn't gay, he's too masculine!" - Oh, honey, let me introduce you to some big strong bears, you'll love them.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I would say mostly no, but occasionally yes. I believe sex scenes should be essential to the plot and full of character development, so I rarely write just pure smut. But I did write a Stargate Atlantis story, What I Tell You Three Times Is True, which was purely written as a sex scene, after a giggled conversation with a friend who was into Stargate Atlantis.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I love crossovers, both the reading and the writing of them, and have written dozens. I would say the weirdest one I ever wrote was a West Wing / Star Trek:tng / Drop The Dead Donkey crossover, No More Overtime.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not as far as I know.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, sometimes. It's a fun thing to do with friends. I co-wrote the More Deadly MacGyver/Highlander crossover with Jakrar, sparked out of a paragraph she sent me in an email.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

"All time" - I don't think I have one. I've loved and still love Avon/Vila, Spock/McCoy, Bodie/Cowley, House/Wilson, Holmes/Watson - but right now my favourite ship is definitely Hawkeye/Mulcahy.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

The Buffy/MASH crossover. I just don't see where I'd find the time.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue, perseverance, imagination, angst.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Heterosexuality. Certain words which I always misspell unless I look them up, each time. Not understanding what is going on in people's minds, see 'heterosexuality' - also racism, sexism, and classism.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

Mais c'est impossible. I prefer to write in English but signal that this is a different language being spoken. Bene, plerumque. I had to think about this a lot when writing ASL dialogue for All We Know.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Blake's 7.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Usually the one I am writing at the moment, which is to say All We Know - and the one I want to finish: A Hawk Through the Mirror. But I think technically one of my best is Friend and Stranger - a story set three years after the events of the 1993 movie The Fugitive, written in form as much like the movie as I could make it, full of sudden POV changes between Gerard and Kimble and attempting to get the emotional intensity and chemistry between the two of them that we saw on screen, down to a satisfying conclusion.

[jaelijn]

Yup, that one’s a Whumptober prompt.

It is also, obscurely enough, a canon divergent spin-off from that torture scene in “Moloch”. There isn’t much to it yet except the beginning, because I got far too distracted by medical accuracy (I did mention that this is a problem for me, yes?), which is also the reason it’s not done - it barely has 1k, in fact, but have a snippet below anyway. (Warning for intense medical situations, as if the prompt didn’t give that away.)

Lmao, the “lonely”-s are so widely different it really shows my lack of creativity in naming documents. :P

The intensive care section of the surgical unit was cast in dim light, probably to promote sleep in its occupant. The more Avon slept, the less he would be in distress, but he looked plenty distressed to Vila either way. The Liberator’s medical equipment was generally sleek and unobtrusive, but even it couldn’t pretty up the sight of tubes running down Avon’s throat or the rhythmic pumping of the artificial ventilation that was keeping him alive while his lungs mended. There were other things, too, of course – IVs and a heart monitor and waste disposal, all barely concealed under a thin blanket that also hid Avon’s state of undress.

Vila hadn’t wanted to come, but he owed Avon his life many times over. He’d thought about leaving the Liberator, down on that planet – but with Avon like this, he couldn’t. Cally shouldn’t be left to cope with Avon’s illness and Tarrant, all on her own.

He let himself be showered in cleanser at the entrance to intensive care, so he wouldn’t drag any diseases into the room, and gingerly stepped inside. The sound of the ventilation was obnoxiously loud, far louder than Avon’s breathing would have been, and almost scared Vila away.

That was Avon’s lifeline.

So asks weren’t working for some reason (or they were and you just got 5 asks sorry) so I’m just gonna make it a text thing:

@jaelijn WIP prompts

ah damn it still feels like I’m sitting at a smorgasbord and I have no idea what to pick next! There’s at least 3 titles in there with “lonely” that I’m SO curious about….. but let me pick what I assume is a Whumptober prompt? “"Intubation”“ please :D

[rebelsandfools]

Hi, just checking for fic recs do I use the submit on this blog? Just because only the askbox is linked on the main page, but obviously there's not enough room per ask to fully recommend a fic. So just use the /submit instead?

Yup, just use the submit. It should be open. Or, if you’d rather email, message me again and I’ll let you have the editorial email address to send it to in a private response. (Yeah, ficrecs! :D)

Edit: Here is the submit box for anyone who might be wondering the same thing: https://rebelsandfools.tumblr.com/submit

[jaelijn]

Hello. Sorry to ask a silly question and I hope not too many people have asked you this endlessly, but why is it the final edition of Rebels and Fools? I mean why is it stopping? I'm not on Tumblr so I'm pretty clueless (generally, haha)

No worries at all, nor a silly question - I don't think I've explained this at length anywhere, as yet. So @rebelsandfools....

The short of it is that *if* I were to pick to stop anywhere, Issue #7 is where it would be - because Blake's 7, naturally. It feels both appropriate and a place to stop while on a high, because the last thing I want is for the zine to die a sad death for some reason or another. As in, I don't ever want to promise an issue that then never happens.

The long answer is that I never expected this zine to have anywhere near this many issues - when I had the idea, I frankly barely expected there to be *one* issue, haha! But when I realised that it could happen, reaching the appropriate 7 issues became a dream and something that seemed possible even when I was at my lowest: The zine is a massive commitment of time and effort on my part, one that I can't muster if I'm not fully committed to the project, and I don't want it to die because I fail to deliver. The seven issues also represent 7 years of my life, which is a decently long time to be in a fandom in the first place, and also a time in which - as you can probably imagine - a lot of things can change in real life (IRL) as well as in fandom. I'm still here, clearly, but when I was looking at editing issue #5 (which is when this decision was made), I thought that if I fell out of love with the fandom in any of the next two years, I could probably manage to push myself for *just one more issue* and finish it up neatly, regardless of what was happening IRL. As of yet, I haven't fallen out of love with the show/fandom, and I honestly hope that I won't, ever, but it's not always easy, and I want to conclude the project while I still feel that I want to do it. (The fact that R&F is ending doesn't necessarily mean there won't be future B7 zine projects from Rebels and Fools Press aka yours truly, by the by, if I feel like it, but the continued yearly commitment is getting A Lot, because after issue #7, there is no place that seems like a natural stopping point anymore.)

Beyond my personal stuff, the other factor is, of course, that I can't do the zine alone. I do *a lot*, but if there's no content, there's no zine, and across these 7 years, I have seen a lot of shifting in the fandom. While I have definitely also seen new people and creators join across the years, a significant number of people alongside whom I originally started this project have had less time or have moved on to other things. The tumblr community that was the original start of it doesn't really exist in this way anymore, even though a lot of the people are still around; the more active areas of the fandom seem to have moved to different shores or towards aspects that I have no personal interest and/or involvement in. As such, maintaining a connection to a community for finding submissions after the initial year has never felt easy and has, in fact, become increasingly difficult, as evidenced also by the delay to issue #6. I don't want to be at a point where I could do a zine but know nobody else who wants to and/or wants to do it with me, and after committing 7 years to this, I also don't want to just pass the zine over to someone else who might be more in touch with other parts of the fandom. But I also don't want R&F to become a one-person-project that will eventually just not happen anymore because I can't be bothered. I want to give it a grand finale as the community project that it always was - and to do that, it needs to have a fixed, predetermined end point that people can work towards, and there seemed to be no more appropriate place than the seventh issue. I do hope that people will want to join me again for a this final issue to achieve a grand finale worthy of the zine and the show/fandom. And if you're new to the zine - don't let the fact that it's the finale deter you! We may have a long history, but just because you are coming in at the final issue doesn't mean we won't love to have you (and hope that you will continue to stick around, after!)!

As for what comes after Issue #7 - who knows. I have been toying with the idea of single-issue topic and/or character/pairing specific zines, but first I want to give R&F the grand finale that a seven year project deserves. Hopefully, I'll see you as part of it!

[jaelijn]

Thanks for your lovely detailed answer and I totally understand. 7 is a great number of Rebels and Fools to stop at :)

You're welcome! And again, whoever you are, anon - hope to see you as a contributor!

[jaelijn]

Hahah, it totally is a pun! I’m very keen on key/lock metaphors when it comes to Avon/Vila.

One of my favourite A/V fanmixes (really, the only two that are in existence, afaik) is titled after the song “Unsafe Safe” by The Hush Sound, which has the refrain:

No, you won't disarm my heart No, you won't disarm my heart And the last gift you'll ever get from me Is the combination or the key No, you won't disarm my heart

and which was a major inspiration for that/my OTP tag, and has the same “safe” pun as in both the adjective to safety and the lockable box for valuables / strongbox.

(It was also created at around the same time that I came up with “Rebels and Fools”.)

Am I being oblivious or I read too much into the context and finally realised your @jaelijn tag "thief and safe" is actually a pun? Like a safe that means a box with a lock?

[jaelijn]

Just to say, Paul Darrow was not in Robin of Sherwood of the 1980s, where the Sheriff was played by Nickolas Grace. He was in The Legend of Robin Hood of the 1970s.

cont.: Just because I LOVED Robin of Sherwood, it was fantastic and a beloved show of mine, I'm not just correcting you for the sake of it. Please watch RoS, the first 2 series are great but they have a tragic ending. After 2 series, the main character left. That sounds a bit familiar doesn't it, haha. Apologies, messed up that tag because I had the wrong thing still in my search history. Didn't mean to make you think I'd done something for RoS, I see the tag's not particularly busy. Fixed it now. (Anyone who might have reblogged the art with the wrong show tag, please fix for proper reference.)

[jaelijn]

I'm terrible at leaving comments on ao3 bit I've read all of your Avon/Vila fics and I adore them all!

Thank you, anon! <3

It's always good to hear that there are people out there who appreciate the pairing, too - which really is what kudos from new people mean to me, these days. I'm also always thrilled that I now have a big enough archive that people can go on an A/V binge on AO3 in the first place! Naturally all of that wasn't there when I started out! ;)

Mostly I'm currently wondering whether my lack of creative energy is because I'm missing the fandom bustle (like, generally, not in terms of AO3 comments specifically) or whether it's solely a me-thing. But every kudos helps, honestly! <3

(Also obligatory plug: If you happen to make B7 stuff yourself, consider @rebelsandfools ! We always need more submissions!)

[jaelijn]

Just figured I would say thanks for all your persistent posting of SPN because it got me to the point of watching the episodes and getting into the fandom (under a different pseud to this) and I am having such fun. :-)

Hahaha, oh, I feel like I should apologise! ;)

SPN is deeply flawed in so many ways, but it can definitely also be a lot of fun - so as long as you're enjoying it, that's all it really needs!

But honestly, you are probably best prepared. After all, B7 is no stranger to low-expectation-episodes as well as plotlines that fans have liberally rewritten.

I honestly wished I could have experiences SPN as the closed canon it is now (mostly). I binged the first bunch of seasons when I started out, and it makes things so much smoother in so many ways - and then SPN has taught me once and for all that I don't deal well with fandoms with a developing/active canon. But now that the show as such is concluded, you definitely won't run into that problem.

So - you're welcome! Enjoy it on your own terms, and have all the fun!

[jaelijn]

Your Vila tags warmed my heart! And thank you for your stories B7! The stories of October and others. They are tender and for the soul.(I’m sorry for my mistakes. I’m writing through an interpreter).

Ah, sorry for the late reply! Tumblr isn't showing me new asks lately.

You're welcome; your art is amazing! I'm always thrilled to see new artists in the fandom. (If you'd like to contribute to a fanzine / digital fan publication that I run, check out @rebelsandfools! )

I'm glad you enjoyed my fics too!

(Don't worry, the translator seems to be doing a good job!)

[jaelijn]

I have always been so envious of your pristine, organised Tumblr and I LOVEEEEE the new mobile header image (hello bg detail!). The blue/green and now brownish themes? :mwah: You have inspired me to clean up my gif-laden mess... some day... (On that note, would it be okay for me to pop a link to the RnF main blog page on my Tumblr page links?)

Hehe, thanks.

Honestly, without the base theme template, I wouldn't get half as far - I usually start off by looking through https://theme-hunter.tumblr.com/ , pick a template and then heavily customise.

A couple of things came with me across various templates, like the pop-up thing in the bottom right, but lately most of the changes I have made is setting it up so it's easier to change the images without having to go into the html, basically so I don't need picture links every time. The meta tags or whatever they're called are very useful.

It still takes me a day to make all the images, but I'm also finding that increasing amounts of art experience also make my theme images/gifs better - or at least I can do more in less time. Even just comparing my corner Avons... But I have definitely got more experimental with the mobile headers since I figured out I could have a gif.

As for linking to R&F, sure. Advertising is good; fellow/future contributors may find it there. I wouldn't appreciate a "look at my awesome zine that I have done all by myself and am totally the creator of" type of link, but I don't assume you'd do that. Actually that reminds me - am *I* even linking to R&F? It may be in the bottom right...

[jaelijn]

Hello! Are you still running a discord server for Blake's 7? I just got into the show and it would be neat to chat with some other fans.

Hi! Yes, I very much am!

You can find a permanent joining link in the issues of Rebels and Fools (which I think you've found already), but if you catch this within 24 hours, you can also use the temporary link below the cut.

[jaelijn]

Good day could you relink your discord server for rebels and fools?

your server link has expired?

——

Not sure why this was sent as a submit, but anyway -

@susanforemanbackstrom

I don’t know which link you were looking at that expired, but you can find a joining link in each issue but the first issue of @rebelsandfools - which you can download for free through our tumblr page.

I just checked for potential discord hiccoughs and nothing should be wrong with that link.

[jaelijn]

What is your favourite Blake's 7 AU (fic or art, not just headcanon (but also headcanon because why not!))?

Hands down, the coffee shop AU by still_lycoris: https://archiveofourown.org/series/116380

At the very least if we are talking AU in the sense of really alternate universe rather than just canon divergent.

In terms of headcanons, I am *very* fond of the Yuri on Ice!AU that I'm working on turning into a fic. I'd call it an ice skating AU, but since I know nothing about ice skating and am only writing this because of YOI, that doesn't feel fair.

[jaelijn]

I'm doing to because I'm greedy mwahaha

What is your favourite Raffles episode? (Provided you have watched them all and aren't still going. Ignore this otherwise :D )

I have seen them! I'm still making my way through the stories, but I'm over the big spoiler hurdles now, I think ("On the Knees of the Gods", *cough*). Haven't really given the audios a go yet.

It's probably "An Old Flame", if only because I feel that the characterisation is sometimes a bit flat in the TV show (aka I miss the less light-hearted side of Raffles, which seems more prominent in the stories), whereas "An Old Flame" brought in some emotional depth. I would have loved to see them do more than one season, because it's often the case that the characterisation only develops at that kind of length, but also the TV show if more entertain-y bordering on humour than trying to bring in everything from the stories...

But anyway. "An Old Flame."

I also enjoy "The Last Laugh" for the whump. XD (Though with the story background that is a million times better.)