#lockea writes

[lockea]

Fic Writers Showcase Game

Copied from @skalidra

Rules: Go to your published works on AO3 and list the first fic you ever published there, the last fic you published, any fic that you wrote for a fandom/ship only once, your favorite fic you wrote in the fandom/ship that has the most works, the fic you wish more people read, the fic you agonized over the most, the fic that sprang fully formed from your mind without any effort, and a work you are proud of—for whatever reason.

My works page: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lockea/works

First Fic Published: "Chrystallis Memoria" (Dissidia: Final Fantasy) back in 2011. It's a 1k drabble about the different warriors in Dissidia realizing they have a lot in common with each other, and was mostly an excuse to say "hey, Final Fantasy has a lot of recurring character motifs."

Last Fic Published: "Wake the Dawn" (Final Fantasy XVI) updated yesterday/is currently being updated. This fic imagines the protagonist of FFXVI, Clive, being born a Bearer (who are kept as slaves in the world of the game). Rather than having a noble upbringing and then becoming a slave later in life, how does being born as slave and raised that way affect Clive and his choices?

Fandom/Ship I Only Wrote Once: "Sundered Country" (Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn). A re-imagining of the whole plot of Path of Radiance had Soren been raised in Goldoa by his mother's family instead of being orphaned. I do want to write more FE fics in the future, and I may once I finish my current PoF play-through with my spouse.

Favorite Fic in Popular Fandom/Ship: Similar to Skalidra, I have works in large multifaceted fandoms (DCU and Star Wars) so I'm going to discard them as parent fandoms. Once you narrow down to specific fandoms, the most popular fandom I've written in becomes Voltron Legendary Defender. "A Broken Place" is probably my favorite of the three I've written. It's a very plot focused AU taking place on Mars that's based on a webnovel called "Northern Corporate Dominion" by remiheart that I read YEARS ago. It focuses on Shiro, who is a noble trapped in a loveless marriage as his degenerative illness steals his freedom, and Keith, a slave with a complicated past who is tasked with taking care of Shiro.

Fic I Wish More People Would Read: All of them? I think I wish more people read "Family (is more than blood)" (Guild Wars 2) because it's such a fun story. It was fun to take all the world building about the Legions in the game and tell a story about Rox and Rytlock.

Fic I Agonized Over the Most: Tough choice! Most recently, "A Single Grain" (Star Wars) has filled that role. I have a whole folder of just starts and stops and rewrites where I've tried to tell the story several different ways and I just canNOT get it going. I think I've got it figured out as a mosaic series where each story just weaves a much larger picture.

Fic That Sprang Fully Formed: A few have. Mostly oneshots. "Shelter" (DCU JayDick wingfic) and "An Unwilling Sacrifice" (Star Wars JangObi Fighter/Sacrifice AU) are the two that come to mind.

Fic I'm Most Proud Of: Still "The Sound of a Heart Breaking" (Kingdom Hearts). I have joked several times that it's my magnum opus for the amount of world building I did for it. How the heck did I even have the energy for all that fic? Funny enough, I recently wrote a oneshot in the verse that I haven't posted, so even though it's from 2009, it's still on my mind on occasion.

Not tagging, but please feel free to @ me if you decide to do this meme having seen me do it!

[script-a-world]

Clearly there are some settings which make no sense scientifically. But how do I decide when to intentionally ignore reality, can't bother to do research, don't understand research, and thus create scientifically impossible places? When are such things considered be offensive or overused cliche or have a reader point out the impossibility and can't get into the story? I'm guessing some of this might be structural issues instead of world building?

Tex: One of the perils of attempting to write about highly technical subjects is that you run into the issue of not understanding your writing. I do raise a nominal objection as your first sentence, because sensibility is a sliding scale based on one’s familiarity with a given subject. I don’t know crap about, say, textile art (however much I might have bluffed readers in the past - no, no, this is just good googling skills on my end), but that doesn’t mean the textile arts are an inherently incomprehensible subject.

Scientifically, automobiles were once thought to be insensible. Scientifically, phones were thought to be a flight of fancy. Scientifically, 3D printing was improbable. Scientifically, quantum computing was the stuff of sci-fi nerds who just wanted to slap the “quantum” label on everything.

And yet we are now on the verge of robotic vehicles, mostly functional smartwatches, laser printing cells (PDF), and quantum computers (VentureBeat, IBM).

So I would argue that the insensibility of a setting would be due mostly to, yes, a structural issue - on the part of the author. No matter what you put into your world, internal consistency is key; nothing, no matter how ostensibly outlandish, will make sense if you contradict yourself.

I’ll volley a few questions back to you:

“[...] when to intentionally ignore reality” - Are you ignoring reality entirely, or just parts of it? Why? How does that decision benefit your world? How does it detract from your world?

“Can’t bother to do research” - Is it because you are discouraged by the breadth of your comprehension of a subject, compared to the subject’s depth? Or is it because of something else?

“Don’t understand research” - Is this because you don’t understand the academic papers that turn up in your search results, or because you have a fundamental lack of or misunderstanding of the given subject? Or is it because of something else?

“When are such things considered to be offensive or overused cliche” - As someone who intentionally arranges their studying around the plausibilities of the future, I would quite frankly be delighted to see more conceptual stretches of the imagination in this regard, as do many others on this blog, and beyond it. Why have you already passed judgement on the offensiveness or clichéd-ness of incorporating scientific things? Is this related to your other comments?

“[...] or have a reader point out the impossibility and can’t get into the story?” - If you are writing to please a specific individual or demographic, you are inevitably always going to fall short, because it’s genuinely impossible to meet every single item on a group’s wishlist without devoting your life to it (not an entirely worthy pursuit, in my opinion, but alas). What made you decide to be so concerned over the potential reaction to your stories that you worry about it before the story is even written?

I think I will put the majority of my curiosity’s weight on the last bullet point, as I’m seeing similar themes with the other portions of your question. It’s a fruitless endeavour to tie yourself into knots over a possible (not necessarily probable!) reaction - and quite likely from a stranger, to boot. Education is a relatively easy situation to fix, so long as you’re patient with yourself; dealing with anxieties over readers is… not so easy.

I can really only recommend that you take a close look at the goals of your worldbuilding, and see where you contradict yourself - once you have that in hand, it’s a relatively simple yes/no process of what concepts you want to keep. If the issue of decision comes from a lack of understanding, then make a note to yourself to seek out either the million wikis we Pylons utilize ourselves like any other worldbuilder, or to chalk it up as a genuine lack of context.

Please understand that even someone who’s dedicated their life to a certain aspect of science won’t know everything about it - that’s the point of research! We’re constantly asking ourselves questions, and pushing the envelope of known boundaries. Star Wars has lightsabers, but we don’t need to know how they work; likewise with holodecks in Star Trek. So long as an audience is reasonably entertained with the least amount of head-scratching, you can get away with handwaving quite a lot.

Lockea: On a scale between Star Trek and Star Wars, how “hard” is your science fiction?

I mention that mostly to illustrate that science fiction exists on a continuum, wherein science fiction with more “science” than “fiction” drives a story towards the harder end rather than the softer end. Also, a story’s place on the continuum will change based on what we know and understand about science.

I feel like everyone always beats me to saying all the important stuff about questions, so I’ll just give a few thoughts from my personal experience as a science fiction fan with two engineering degrees and a thesis about robots on the moon (yes really, I wrote my thesis on AI for moon robots). I really, really, love the creativity of science fiction writers. I think so often in defending the genre, we can get caught up in saying things like “science fiction predicted XYZ!” Well, sure, I may have studied Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics in my introduction to engineering ethics course, but I was also greedily reading my way through “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins at the same time. The fact that I sincerely doubt Panem will ever happen didn’t dampen my enjoyment of Katniss’s story. It was a fun read and it gave my friends and I something to talk about that wasn’t “feasibility of Battlestar Galactica” during our daily lunches.

The thing about writing science fiction is that, without a doubt, there will be someone who knows more than you about a topic who reads your story. Most of the time, I end up being that someone since everyone likes to talk about Skynet and robots taking over the world to a roboticist who sincerely refers to artificial intelligence as artificial stupidity. Y'all are seriously overestimating the field, my friends. Nonetheless, I still enjoyed “Captain America: The Winter Soldier” even as I thought how impossible Project Insight would be. Honestly, something every READER of science fiction needs to make peace with is the fact that writers will get something wrong. Writers, despite their best efforts, are not always going to understand that a facial recognition algorithm will fail if you introduce tiny amounts of random noise and are thus going to treat The Algorithm™ as infallible in your crime drama novel.

It’s not the writer’s fault, though.

That deserves to be on its own line. It is not YOUR fault if you get something wrong. Would it be nice if science literacy was just better all around? Of course! But it’s not your fault if your science literacy isn’t up to snuff enough to parse the article I cited above. It’s also not your job. Your job as the writer is to tell the most interesting story you can and to maintain your own internal rules and logic such that the reader never breaks the willing suspension of disbelief.

I watch Star Wars and get really into the light saber fight scenes and forget that light sabers are basically impossible to make. Star Wars has the Force, which is basically magic, and that’s okay. Really. I KNOW it’s not possible, but I still have a lot of fun watching it!

So yeah, write that story about how the robots are going to take over the world. I’ll probably enjoy reading it even as I laugh off my friends telling me that I will be the first to die in the robot apocalypse (of course I will -- I have five robots in my living room alone).

Constablewrites: Tone and consistency are the biggest pieces of this for me. If it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is usually a detailed and plausible explanation, then getting an answer later that is implausible or slapdash will stand out more. But if it’s the kind of story where the answer to “How does this work?” is “You push that button and it goes whoosh” from the start, my expectations adjust accordingly. (It’s possible to have the latter version in a story that is mostly the former, frequently when it’s played for last. Again, tone is key.)

So yeah, a lot of this is execution and the way the story sticks to the rules it sets for itself, and also how central the implausibility is to the story. A realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic for a background bit might be a little jarring, but not nearly as much as a realistic thriller that relies on cartoon logic to set up its main showdown. The more central it is to the story, the more consistency and accuracy matters. Learning how to balance this can take some practice and some insight from beta readers.

[ao3datafan]

About DataFan

Hi everyone! My name’s Lockea and you’ve found my blog. Congrats! I’m a data scientist and acafan (academic fan, a member of the fandom who also studies fandom). My main acafan project right now is comprehensive data analytical analysis of what people read and write on AO3. 

So what is DataFan? DataFan is a project where I answer questions about fanfiction using data analytic techniques. I answer everything from the easy (want to know what story rating gets the most hits?) to the not so easy (Is there a relationship between the average length of a chapter and how many comments the chapter gets?). If you’ve got a question about AO3, I’ll do my best to answer it.

What about Fandom Stats? Fandom Stats is a great project and I looked at their source code when I was first starting out with DataFan (both projects are written in the same programming language!) but Fandom Stats can only answer simple questions about fandom and can’t perform any analytical analysis. This isn’t a bash on Fandom Stats! It’s a great tool but DataFan was written with the goal of eventually performing complex artificial intelligence and predictive analytics on fandom trends. 

Can I ask DataFan a question? Yes! Absolutely! Simply send me an ask or submit a post for questions that exceed ask lengths.

Is DataFan Open Source? Yep! It’s written in python using all open source tools. Send me an ask or DM and I’ll send you a link to the github repo.

Can I use DataFan for myself? You can use the code I use to pull the data from AO3 for your own use. You can use the Jupyter Notebooks written for DataFan analysis to construct your own queries. You CANNOT use my research directly without citations. If you want to use my research, please contact me so we can get the right citations and licenses figured out (don’t worry, it doesn’t cost money). All that said, unless you’re planning to study or practice data science yourself, you’re better off just asking me a question and I’ll do the querying.

Wait, can you clarify that? If you ask DataFan a question, then I perform the analysis and write up a short article discussing the results of the analysis. This resulting article and data can be cited. For example, if you’re writing a paper for school on fandom and want to know something DataFan can answer. 

The only time you may want to perform your own analysis and NOT ask me a question is if you are studying data science or practice data science yourself. In that case, you may use the AO3 scraper and write your own queries. Please do not directly copy and paste any work I’ve done (including copying my Jupyter Notebooks) and call it your own, however, as that’s just plain not cool. The exception is if you wish to rewrite a Notebook as a learning experience.

(Basically, don’t be a dick and give credit where credit is due) 

What else does DataFan do? Currently, I have a panel at various conventions called “How to Write the Perfect Fanfiction” which is half about my 20+ years experience as a fanfiction writer and half data evidence backed silliness about fandom using DataFan’s backend. Want me to come to a convention near you? Let me know! I’m based out of CA but I travel all over the USA. I’m also in the process of writing several peer reviewed articles on data science and fandom studies. 

[ao3feed-sephcloud]

Yet Unwritten

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2Gve569

by Lockea

Riku is a Chaos Soldier – a warrior marked with a chaos Aptitude whose only existence is on the front lines of Caelum’s war against the encroaching monsters of the darkness and conflicts with Caelum’s adversaries. When a mission goes south and Riku barely survives, he’s sent back to his childhood home on Destiny Islands to recover. Yet Riku is a dark mark on his home island – his family would rather he was dead than admit his shameful existence and Riku barely remembers what life without war is like.

By the age of sixteen, most people have twelve to twenty Aptitudes. Sora has three. As such everyone around him has written him off as worthless, hopeless. Only Sora’s animals, rescued and recovering, don’t judge Sora for what he can’t control. When a young man new to the island rescues an injured duck and brings it to Sora for care, the two form an unlikely friendship with one another.

Riku just wanted to get better as fast as possible so he could go back to the familiar world of the front lines, but as he and Sora grow closer, Riku finds his priorities changing. There is no future for either of them on Destiny Islands, but maybe together they can write their own path forward.

Words: 3208, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Kingdom Hearts

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Auron (Kingdom Hearts), Isa (Kingdom Hearts), Lea (Kingdom Hearts), Leon (Kingdom Hearts), Cloud (Kingdom Hearts), Sephiroth (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé (Kingdom Hearts), Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Tidus (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)

Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Rinoa Heartilly/Leon (Kingdom Hearts), Sephiroth/Cloud Strife, Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Team as Family, Fate & Destiny, Screw Destiny, Child Soldiers, Harm to Children, Animals, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2Gve569

[ao3jaydickfeed]

by Lockea

It hadn’t happened, not in all of the millennia vampires had existed, that a turned human, a thrall, had shifted from a sterile beta to either a siring alpha or bearing omega. Never. Until, rumor has it, a young thrall belonging to a minor vampire lord in Gotham presents as an omega. Now the vampire world is thrown into an uproar when one of the Midnight Princes himself, Lord Richard Grayson, takes the thrall, Jason, for himself.

Words: 3710, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: DCU, Batman - All Media Types

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Roman Sionis

Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Bruce Wayne

Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Slavery, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Why Did I Write This?, Blood Drinking

[ao3feed-jaydick]

The Midnight Prince

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2BTeLO7

by Lockea

It hadn’t happened, not in all of the millennia vampires had existed, that a turned human, a thrall, had shifted from a sterile beta to either a siring alpha or bearing omega. Never. Until, rumor has it, a young thrall belonging to a minor vampire lord in Gotham presents as an omega. Now the vampire world is thrown into an uproar when one of the Midnight Princes himself, Lord Richard Grayson, takes the thrall, Jason, for himself.

Words: 3710, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: DCU, Batman - All Media Types

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Roman Sionis

Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Bruce Wayne

Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Slavery, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Why Did I Write This?, Blood Drinking

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2BTeLO7

[ao3feed-soriku]

Yet Unwritten

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2Gve569

by Lockea

Riku is a Chaos Soldier – a warrior marked with a chaos Aptitude whose only existence is on the front lines of Caelum’s war against the encroaching monsters of the darkness and conflicts with Caelum’s adversaries. When a mission goes south and Riku barely survives, he’s sent back to his childhood home on Destiny Islands to recover. Yet Riku is a dark mark on his home island – his family would rather he was dead than admit his shameful existence and Riku barely remembers what life without war is like.

By the age of sixteen, most people have twelve to twenty Aptitudes. Sora has three. As such everyone around him has written him off as worthless, hopeless. Only Sora’s animals, rescued and recovering, don’t judge Sora for what he can’t control. When a young man new to the island rescues an injured duck and brings it to Sora for care, the two form an unlikely friendship with one another.

Riku just wanted to get better as fast as possible so he could go back to the familiar world of the front lines, but as he and Sora grow closer, Riku finds his priorities changing. There is no future for either of them on Destiny Islands, but maybe together they can write their own path forward.

Words: 3208, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: Kingdom Hearts

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M

Characters: Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Auron (Kingdom Hearts), Isa (Kingdom Hearts), Lea (Kingdom Hearts), Leon (Kingdom Hearts), Cloud (Kingdom Hearts), Sephiroth (Kingdom Hearts), Naminé (Kingdom Hearts), Roxas (Kingdom Hearts), Tidus (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi (Kingdom Hearts)

Relationships: Riku/Sora (Kingdom Hearts), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Rinoa Heartilly/Leon (Kingdom Hearts), Sephiroth/Cloud Strife, Isa/Lea (Kingdom Hearts)

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Team as Family, Fate & Destiny, Screw Destiny, Child Soldiers, Harm to Children, Animals, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2Gve569

[ao3feed-timdrake]

The Midnight Prince

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2BTeLO7

by Lockea

It hadn’t happened, not in all of the millennia vampires had existed, that a turned human, a thrall, had shifted from a sterile beta to either a siring alpha or bearing omega. Never. Until, rumor has it, a young thrall belonging to a minor vampire lord in Gotham presents as an omega. Now the vampire world is thrown into an uproar when one of the Midnight Princes himself, Lord Richard Grayson, takes the thrall, Jason, for himself.

Words: 3710, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: DCU, Batman - All Media Types

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Roman Sionis

Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Bruce Wayne

Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Slavery, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Why Did I Write This?, Blood Drinking

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2BTeLO7

[fanfiction-tips-and-tricks]

AnimeUSA: How to Write the Perfect Fanfiction

I’m pleased to say that we are doing a panel this year! We are NOT doing Fanfiction Tips and Tricks (and probably won’t for a few years) but are instead doing a tongue in cheek presentation of Lockea’s analysis of reader habits on Archive of Our Own. Lockea has been working on scraping data from AO3 in a far more thorough and comprehensive way than other websites like fandom stats in order to answer YOUR questions about what gets people to click the kudos button on a fanfiction.

Does sex really sell? If so, why is Marvel’s most famous and popular fanfic just the same three words repeating over and over? Why is a historical drama about the Vietnam War Supernatural’s most popular AU? So if it’s not sex, what really does sell?

What’s a better indicator of a fic’s quality? The number of hits, the number of kudos, or the number of comments? 

Is there an optimum number of words to aim for in a fic to make it enjoyable and readable for the audience?

The answer to these questions and more is coming to Washington DC in December and (hopefully) a con near you in 2018. The results will also be posted either on a tumblr or other blog depending on formatting. 

So, here’s what we need from you, FTAT followers -- send us your questions! What would you like to see Lockea analyze? Below are some example questions:

Which fandom is the most popular -- Supernatural, Dr. Who, or Sherlock?

I only write in fandoms A, B, and C, but I’m dying to be a big name. What tags do I need to cater to in which fandoms to get hits and kudos on my fics?

Is it really true that older fics have more hits? What other factors affect hit count?

Do shipping fics do better than gen fics? If so, how much better do shipping fics do compared to gen?

[deegeeak]

Writing meme thing?

I was tagged by @lockea and I've never done one of these so here goes.  Sadly this was 18 days ago ( oops) and I hope they forgive me!

Rules: post the first line of a WIP and tag as many people as there are words in the quote.

Ok so this from the Sentinel/FF15 fusion chapter I'm slowly working on, and thank you for giving me a shove to keep writing.

“Your Majesty, the council asks for a response.”

OK.  Sooo that's uh, 8 including the word A (Brought to you by Apple, Awesome and Achoo!).

@lockea (GOT YOU BACK), @modeoheim, @achryathesecond, @lhugbereth, @scarletjedi, @boomchickfanfiction (for realsies, check her out, it's amazing), @cloudvelundr, @scifigrl47

[lockea]

One thing I love about fanfiction and fandom is the way that fans take what is implied by canon but otherwise ignored and stretch it out to become explicitly part of the narrative.

I've seen this across multiple fandoms, but the one that I was reflecting on recently was the Mandalorians in Star Wars. No, not just the show The Mandalorian, but the whole cultural group.

In Star Wars, there are a few canon sources for Mandalorian culture. In Legends, the big one is the Republic Commando novels by Karen Traviss, and in the new Disney canon, that's whatever we got from Clone Wars and The Mandalorian. For the most part, these two sources seem to agree with each other*.

*(we'll ignore whatever the hell is going on with the Kryze clan in Disney canon that I just straight up don't understand)

In RC, we get our first Mando'a glossary and our first explicit explanation of the Mandalorian culture and creed. The Gai bal Manda (adoption oath) comes from the RC novels. In fact, here is what we are canonically told about Mandalorians in the RC novels:

Mandalorians are a collection of different species and races, a cultural group that thrives by adoption and love of children. They take raising children very seriously, whether it's their own or adopted.

Mandalorians do not ascribe to gender roles and do not see same-sex partnerships as any different from hetero-sex ones.

DESPITE what is stated in 1 and 2, Mandalorian women are often the first teachers of their children, and male children are still more preferred than female children. A Mandalorian mother will try to have a male child first. if she succeeds, she will wait until the boy begins training before having another child. If she does not (has a girl instead), she will keep trying for a boy right away.

If you're an avid reader of Star Wars fics about Mandalorians, that third bullet probably came as a surprise to you if you haven't read Karen Traviss's notes on Mandalorian culture or the RC novels (congrats, I envy you). That's because fandom in large saw points one and two and decided that point three was absolute bullshit that did not match points one and two and so disregarded it.

The other part of Mandalorian culture I want to point out, is that canonically, there are only TWO explicitly non-human/near-human Mandalorians across both Legends and Disney canon. This is despite the fact that modern Mandalorians with long clan lineages like the Fetts, Mereels, Vizlas, and Kryzes can trace their ancestry back to the decidedly non-human Taung.

I'm seriously not kidding about this either -- I dug through Wookiepedia to try and find as many EXPLICITLY non-human Mandalorians as I could (they had to have names or a visual appearance) and I found TWO.

One is a Twi'lek bartender from Coruscant who marries into the Skirata clan during the clone wars (she has a name but Wookiepedia is failing me right now and you can't pay me enough to reread the RC novels).

The other is Grogu. As in Din Djarin's ward. Baby Yoda. That one.

Again, if you read a lot of fanfiction about Mandalorians (like I do), this will probably be a surprise. After all, in fanfiction, the Mandalorians are an extremely diverse group of different species and genders.

Canon told us that Mandalorians are diverse, that they hold to no species, that they adopt to fill out their clans and value the act of being a parent and a member of the community. Canon told us that Mandalorians don't ascribe weight to a person's gender or sexual orientation. Yet when canon failed to deliver on what it told us, fanfiction stepped up.

And I think that's beautiful.

(Which means Disney really should consider canonizing several other members of the Children of the Watch as non-human while they're at it)

[script-a-world]

I'm creating a story set in the far future, with space travel, aliens, etc. Problem is the diversity, wealth, and, technology, and health disparities. In the modern world, you can see the disparity growing, the worst things haven't disappeared. It's not something I can really do away with in the future can I? But with a future world, this disparity will grow much larger right? How does a future like this work?

Feral: It is absolutely your choice how these kinds of disparities exist in your world and play into your story. Science fiction writers have been all over the spectrum since futuristic sci-fi became a thing.

Star Trek is probably the best known example of futuristic utopianism; the Federation exists in a post-scarcity society where everyone is equal. And it’s far from the only work to promote a kind of technological utopian ideal. You don’t have to be cynical about the future to create a compelling world or write a compelling story.

Here's a booklist that claims to only contain utopian fiction, but you’ll see a number of the books are actually about failed utopias, dystopias disguised as utopias, and utopias that are no longer considered utopias due to values dissonance. This is why there are those who think “utopia” is not really what we should be aiming for; after all, isn’t a "perfect world" what eugenicists are aiming for? Instead, "protopia” is becoming more of a preferred term for a world that is better tomorrow than it is today.

If you prefer to create a world with extreme disparity, there are plenty of examples of dystopian fiction out there. One nuanced example that I strongly recommend reading is James S.A. Corey’s The Expanse series, which starts with Leviathan Wakes, and the SyFy Original of the same name that is based on it.

Lockea: For the Western world, the last two decades haven’t exactly been great, so I can see where the thought might be that things will continue sliding downhill. That’s absolutely not true at all, however, because the future is always in flux. That’s what makes science fiction so much fun! Like Feral said, you don’t need to be cynical to create a compelling narrative. You can write whatever you want because human history has lots of ups and downs.

Take Star Trek for example. The Federation exists in a universe where humans have recovered from an apocalyptic-like catastrophe, where disparities were overwhelmingly large to the point that society was non-functional. Yet Star Trek is a story about hope, and the Federation rose to be a utopian ideal. Star Trek imagines a future where the worst happens, yet humans come together and survive and thrive in spite of it.

I think there’s great power in science fiction that imbues a spirit of hope rather than a spirit of despair. It might be super popular now in our grimdark collective consciousness to have every science fiction story be about a dystopia or the failings of human beings. It’s kind of boring, honestly, and I personally wouldn’t mind a more nuanced or even a more optimistic take on the course of human destiny.

When I think about stories that show humans in their best light, I think about the “Humans Wanted” anthology of stories. It’s easy to get sucked into the belief that humans are THE WORST and society is THE WORST and that things are THE WORST that we forget to look at what makes us really wonderful. We as humans can mess up and make a mess, but we can also recover. It’s okay to make the disparity gap close a little, a lot, or all the way. It’s not unbelievable. I promise.

Constablewrites: History has been filled with unexpected correctives that disrupted what seemed like inevitable trends. Disasters, technological breakthroughs, revolutions, unexpected cultural encounters, all of it can create a world that would have been unthinkable a century, a year, hell even a day earlier. Whatever future you want to imagine, there’s probably a way to get there.

[ao3feed-brucewayne]

The Midnight Prince

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2BTeLO7

by Lockea

It hadn’t happened, not in all of the millennia vampires had existed, that a turned human, a thrall, had shifted from a sterile beta to either a siring alpha or bearing omega. Never. Until, rumor has it, a young thrall belonging to a minor vampire lord in Gotham presents as an omega. Now the vampire world is thrown into an uproar when one of the Midnight Princes himself, Lord Richard Grayson, takes the thrall, Jason, for himself.

Words: 3710, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Fandoms: DCU, Batman - All Media Types

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Categories: M/M

Characters: Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Bruce Wayne, Damian Wayne, Roman Sionis

Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Tim Drake/Bruce Wayne

Additional Tags: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Slavery, I Can't Believe I Wrote This, Why Did I Write This?, Blood Drinking

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2BTeLO7

[lockea]

I bought my husband a handheld emulator (an Anbernic RG353M if anyone wants the details) and it came with Final Fantasy VI on it.

So my husband is playing FF6 today while we’re running errands and I made some off hand comment about some obscure part of FF6 lore* and he just looks at me:

“How many times have you played this game?”

A lot. I played it like three times just to write my fanfic “Ashes.”

He also didn’t realize Locke was a guy. He knew my username came from FF6 but hadn’t connected that Lockea == Locke + a

* I think I made mention of how Shadow only sticks around until he gets a certain amount of gil and then he dips and so you get a ghost in your party on the Phantom Train if Shadow dips early.

Also, today I learned that my mom HATED the opera scene in FF6 and didn’t like it at all, even though I still think its the best scene in the whole damn game. I mean, listen to this.

https://youtu.be/enprAgkvvxM

[script-a-world]

Pylon Bios (An Update, with New Pylons)

Hello, lovely followers of script-a-world!

Please allow us to introduce ourselves! We haven’t had any sort of about-the-bloggers page available before, and now that we’ve added more to the team, we’re seeking to remedy that!

First of all, we call ourselves Pylons. What the heck is a pylon? Well, outside of this blog, it’s an upright structure for holding up something, usually a cable or conduit. When this blog was started more than a year ago (whoa), the group chose the word Pylon to describe ourselves collectively, as a fun little nickname. Whee!

Without further ado, meet the Pylons (and Mods)! (in alphabetical order)

Brainstormed: Hey there, call me Brainstormed, and you can find me at @thunderin-brainstorm. Any pronouns will do. I'm a student, illustrator, and world traveler. My home is in America, but I'm rarely there for more than a month at a time, so feel free to ask where in the world I happen to be! Worldbuilding has been my hobby for quite a long time and I'd love to give you some tips and tricks that I've learned, or take your idea and turn it on its head to perhaps show you a new perspective. The many projects I've developed have been lifesavers for me, as they allowed me to harness my Maladaptive Daydreaming Disorder and use it as a positive tool for creativity. Aside from drawing and daydreaming, I spend a lot of time biking, hunting for cool rocks and bones, binge reading any scholarly article that catches my eye, and memorising completely useless random facts that I spout at any given moment in lieu of remembering actual important information.

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Constablewrites: My name is Brittany, and I'm a California girl living in the Midwest. I use she/her pronouns. I've always loved stories with rich and detailed worlds, whether in movies, books, games, or something else entirely. I'm the kind of writer who will spend hours researching to confirm a minor detail. Naturally, I not only write SFF, but my recent projects have all required worldbuilding on more than one axis (like multiple types of magic, or time travel on top of historical) because i am apparently something of a masochist. I'm a walking TV Tropes index and a whiz at digging up random useful knowledge, both of which come in handy as a Pylon. Other random facts: I'm a trained actress and singer, I used to work at Disneyland on the Jungle Cruise (among other attractions), and a laptop held together with duct tape is responsible for my day job in tech support. I blog about writing as @constablewrites and about random things that amuse me as @operahousebookworm.

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Delta: Hi! I’m Delta and I can be found @dreaming-in-circles or @thedeclineofapollo (writeblr), and I love sci-fi. Like, a lot lol. I work in NEPA compliance for a civil engineering firm in the USA, and have a lot of experience with infrastructure, bureaucracies, biology, and space (for unrelated reasons). I spend a lot of time haunting the astrophysics wikipedia pages, and my current all-consuming project is a novel that is angling to be about 150,000 words (at current projections). Can’t wait to hear your questions!

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Ebonwing: Hi, I’m Ebonwing. I’m currently studying IT in university. I’m a writer and worldbuilder, and sometimes a worldbuilding writer or a writing worldbuilder. I gravitate towards fantasy, though I’m not going to say no to the occasional stint in scifi, and as I’m also a giant language nerd, I enjoy making conlangs for my creations. Other than that, I’m also an artist and indulge in any number of other crafting hobbies, and if I’m not doing any of those things, I can probably be found playing video games.

___

Feral: Hi! I'm Feral, and you can find me @theferalcollection (if you enjoy feminism, socialism, or over-analyzed fiction) or on my writing blog theferalcollection.wordpress.com. I'm a Southern girl who likes fancy dresses, mint juleps, big hats, and using being-underestimated to my advantage. I work in the interior design industry and am currently in school for industrial design. I have previously earned degrees in comparative literature and theatre & drama. I'm a big nerd who really likes school. I've been world-building since before I knew it was a thing and writing almost as long. I’ve written mostly fantasy but the past couple projects have been science fiction. I'm ridiculously in love with the idea of being an astrophysicist but don't feel like learning calculus, so I just read about science a lot. My hobbies include martial arts, drinking too much coffee, and tabletop games.

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Lockea: Hello! I’m Lockea. You can find me all over the internet as @lockea or LockeaStone. I’m a leaf on the wind who currently enjoys the SoCal sunshine in Los Angeles where I work as an engineer and data scientist. I love street fashion (especially Lolita) and making jewelry. I have two kitties, Theodore and Cecelia, and I volunteer at the local animal shelter as a cat handler and adoption counselor. I know way too much about cat behavior, honestly, and will yap your ear off if you let me.

Worldbuilding wise, I have a deep affection for science fiction and I’ve consulted professional science fiction writers on developing technology and worlds through the explanation of science and engineering. My engineering specialization is extra-terrestrial  robotics, so if it has to do with space, planetary science, or robotics -- I got you. I’m also a fan of politics and really like developing political and socio-economic systems in fantasy and sci-fi worlds.

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Miri: Miri here, with my main tumblr @asylos and my writing tumblr @mirintala. I am a Canadian Pharmacy Technician by day and a small time ePublisher and gamer of many types by night. Mostly wandering around the Internet helping to organize events in the FFVII tumblr fandom (modding at @ff7central and @ffviifandomcalendar), and stumbling around within the Borderlands of Pandora. I use she/her pronouns.

—-

Symphony: Hey, I’m Symphony! Use whatever pronouns you feel like, any work. I’m currently living in Michigan with my fiance, and in-between jobs but I want to go to nursing school ASAP.  My favorite genres in fiction are horror, sci-fi, and really anything that holds my interest. In my own worldbuilding I've always felt myself most interested in developing societies on the macro level (politics, diet, customs, stuff like that), and the more esoteric, strange parts of my world. I like to make a place feel lived in, with secrets that may never be found and people who seek them out.

——

Synth: I’m @chameleonsynthesis on Tumblr, but that’s a mouthful, so just call me Synth. Any pronouns work. Born and raised in Canada, but living in Norway as of autumn 2007. Looking back, I’ve been worldbuilding since at least the age of four (in my early thirties now, so yeah), with a predominantly science-fantasy bent. I’m of the artsy creative type, with way too many projects on the go at any given time, and enjoy long walks through Wikipedia and getting caught in TV Tropes. The best thing is when I stumble across some strange factoid that can justify aspects of my many weird alien species. Stupid Synth facts: I have dual Canadian and Norwegian citizenship. My legal name contains a letter that does not exist in the English alphabet. I can curl my tongue into a cloverleaf shape, and wiggle my ears. My day job is musical instrument repair. I play French horn in a concert band, trombone in a jazz band, and don’t practice my flute or piccolo near as much as I should. Outside of band rehearsals and my job, I volunteer at the local cat shelter, work out at a gym, and attend events at my city’s newly established makerspace.

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Tex: I'm Tex, and you can find me on tumblr @texasdreamer01. Most of my hobbies are centered around fandom and worldbuilding for it, though I also like cooking and reading up on fiction and non-fiction whenever I have the time. I'm currently studying biochemical engineering, with a slant in nanotechnology and its medical applications, so I need to know a bunch about the different types of sciences, as well as projecting for the development of future fields.

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Utuabzu: Hi, I’m Utuabzu, I previously was part of ScriptMyth (RIP) where I tended to take the lead on Mesopotamia and Egypt related asks. I’m most of the way through a Bachelor of Linguistics, e parlo italiano und ein bisschen Deutsch. I have a deep and enduring interest in the history of the ancient world, particularly the ancient Near East, and I’m also a bit of a nerd for politics, which is helpful when it comes to worldbuilding. My random 2am research binges have resulted in my knowing a lot of odd things. I enjoy travelling and experiencing other cultures, however as I am Australian this unfortunately requires flying, which I hate a great deal. I expect to one day be crushed beneath a pile of my books. It is a demise I am ok with.

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Wootzel: Hi, I’m Wootzel, or @wootzel-dragon! I use she/her pronouns. I’m a recent college grad trying to figure life out. My favorite thing about worldbuilding is making things as realistic or pseudo-realistic as possible, and finding a justification for everything. Sometimes, this is also my least favorite thing about myself, because it can make things very hard! But, it can also be really rewarding when I get things to work out in a way that I enjoy.

My other hobbies include reading lots of fanfic while neglecting physical books, starting ambitious sewing projects on a whim, and wondering where all my time goes on a daily basis. I have changed major a few times, and I am still unsure about what I want to do with my life, except that it’ll always have writing in it somewhere.

[lockea]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Original Work, Meta - Fandom Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Additional Tags: Analysis, Meta, Podfic & Podficced Works, Podfic Length: 0-10 Minutes, Transcript Available Summary:

While introductions to tropes and fanfictions abound, very few articles, videos, and podcasts exist that analyze fanfictions themselves -- what these tropes and stories mean about the hopes, fears, anxieties, and beliefs of the people who create and consume them. In this series, a fanfiction author with 20 years of experience writing fanfics and exactly zero years as a media critic attempts to shed some light on what fanfiction tropes mean. Rather than focus on the fans themselves, Fanfiction Investigations focuses on the works these fans produce and what their popularity may say about the people that read and write them. From Omegaverse and the monster of misogyny to Coffee Shop AUs and the need for a new type of sitcom, fanfiction is used as the lens through which the overwhelmingly female, overwhelmingly queer transformative culture is analyzed.