Multi-chaptered fics, crossover central and SpecOps-27.

So. Nothing happened today - I have not started revising and have spent a pleasant day reading, writing and lurking on the internet - so all I have to say will be fannish. Feel free to skip.

Firstly, a gripe about FictionAlley, of all things. I just submitted a fic to TDA, entitled Hunter's Moon. I was rather doubtful about the fic, but it got a good reception and both thunderemerald and language_idling pimped it, which made me very happy (thank you!). So far, so hoopy. But in the reviews, some people asked when I was going to write the next bit. Um. Well. Apart from an unpublished fic called "Paragons" and the untitled crossover epic amchau and I are writing at the moment, I've never, ever written a chaptered fic. When you reach the end of the page, my fics are over. Now, I do like FA. It's like Heliopolis used to be. It has its share of bad fic, but so does everywhere. It's a nice place and I like it and what's more, I'm a Niffler. I like it there! However, like the Pit of Voles, it caters for multi-chaptered fics. I am not saying that is a bad thing. But it means people are incapable of realising that there is such a thing as a one-shot!

Maybe it's me. Maybe I don't provide enough resolution to my fics. I don't know. It's part of my inability to write plot; I could feasibly end at any point. Choosing when to end is the difficult part. I have eight fics archived at FA (argh - when did that happen?) with a couple more forthcoming, and they are all one-shots. I don't do fics that aren't. I suppose I could email/owl the people who want to know when the next chapter is coming up, and tell them it isn't, but that would be curiously... lame. This sort of thing didn't used to happen in my other fandoms. Good Omens is inclined to short fics, as is M*A*S*H, and when I was in Stargate fandom, people did write epics, but because Heliopolis didn't allow multiple chapters, they had to write everything and then upload it all at once. I never used to read them. More than 50kb and I avoided it.

In other news, amchau and I are progressing nicely. We're having lots of fun, in fact. Harry and Neville are the parents of Ponder Stibbons, Remus went turtleback-riding in his younger days and had a torrid affair with Angua, and Draco shows unexpected affinity with granite. It's all good. We don't have a title yet, but this fic doesn't get a Fic From Hell number because it's so much fun. I shall have to write more tonight.

And lastly: would anyone be interested in Thursday Next fanfiction? I have read the first two books and will have to wait for school to start before I can get the third one out of the library, so I went hunting for fic. There is no ff.net category, and typing "Thursday Next fanfiction" into Google doesn't get me anywhere. Neither did "Eyre Affair fanfiction." I suppose part of the problem is that the three books are in themselves fanfiction. They may be published, but they follow the time-honoured traditions of metafic. I like that, actually; I also like the way they never, never take themselves seriously, but you do end feeling a real liking for the characters. I particularly like the names of the three sets of SO-5 operatives - Kannon and Phodder, Dedmen and Walken, and Lamb and Slaughter.

The other problem is that if there were a fandom - there doesn't seem to be one - it doesn't have a name. I noticed this when trying to find a relevant category on ff.net. You could call it "Thursday Next fandom" or "Eyre Affair fandom" or some combination of the two, but it's made difficult by the fact the trilogy doesn't have a title. Like His Dark Materials has a separate title for all three books taken together.

So, as always, if you want something done you have to do it yourself.

[Poll #223109]

For the record, Thursday Next is a person. She is a literary detective and registered dodo owner.