Open Thread: Oracle Hotline

[mithen]

--How many fics have you written in each relationship category?

M/M (289)
Gen (96)
F/M (36)
Multi (10)
F/F (9)
Other (3)

Oh, more multi even than F/F? T_T I've posted two F/F stories in the last month, but before then it had been a four-year drought. This intersected with last week's response makes clear that what I tend to write is "gen slash"--romantic non-explicit M/M, basically.

I'm at one of those places this week where I'm working on three different stories and all of them are basically at the same point of development, which means I feel equally far from finished with all of them and it's kind of discouraging! By next week I should have two or three completed stories all at once, though, which is potentially nice. I hope things are moving along well for you!

Comments

[prince0froses]

I wouldn't know how to count this since I'm not on Ao3 given that it's all part of an ongoing work. If by romantic or sexual scene count, it's definitely M/M, M/F or Multi, and then F/F in that order to my chagrin, and only one instance of romantic nonbinary representation (which, given me, is astounding). It might make more sense to count by established (or soon to be established) pairings? In which case it's mostly similar numbers. But I guess the caveat that I'd make is my 'het' representation almost always includes a transgender character and is thus still queer, and that I feel makes a difference. The very, very few cisheterosexual relationships I can list from my canon are either Dead Parents or unhappy trysts (not counting Windflower/David because technically they're polyamorous with her doing her own thing with others while he's in his millenial sleep).

The reason I didn't answer last week's either is that I have a very hard time rating my own writing. Is the rating just for sexual content or for violence (or language) as well? How many axises cultural prudery does one cave to in assigning this value to a work? I know there are sexy bits, but I could easily leave those out of the end product (they'd still be implied so the overall thing would have at least an M rating if judging on sex alone). But I don't know how to rate my 'gen' stuff on the other two basises. Do Dorian and Heerah's foul mouth automatically slide me up to teen and up? How graphic have my descriptions of violence been? I can't objectively tell.

Sorry for basically answering two prompts at once, I sort of fell behind on this community! I've been doing well lately with the work though - I'm not always writing substantial things, but I'm writing regularly, and that's such a big improvement from the last year that I'm not going to complain at all

[mithen]

Yeah, this set of questions is difficult to work around if you're analyzing your own original work, I think!

and only one instance of romantic nonbinary representation (which, given me, is astounding).

(Clearly one answer is lots of Iona/Mekh smut. Yes.)

[me_ya_ri]

Man, that's a hard one. I always write queer relationships, or change them somehow (on my one matriarchal world it's mostly het but the relationships work very differently because of the dynamics of the world itself). In novels I tend towards M/M for some reason. In short fiction I tend to go for F/F most of the time. Not sure why. But I have a fair amount of nonbinary romances, a Trans romance and an aromantic romance which is not, actually, a contradiction in terms. One of my favorites, that one.

My writing has slowed WAY down. Work got very busy to the point that I feel overwhelmed. I'm teaching an auditing class next week and the week after (3.5 hours per day) and it's eaten my brain and my time. Everything else, work and writing, has slid because of it.

Which sucks because I really want to finish the current romance novel. And publish that fantasy novel I wrote a while back with the nonbinary characters and time travel of old souls back into their young lives. I won't get either finished this week but hopefully I can plow through some real progress on both this weekend so that next week is a success.

Good luck on your three stories! Lately I've been focusing on just one story at a time and finding it easier to cope with so you feel very brave with three at once. Have a good week!

[mithen]

I don't even WANT to write three stories at once, to be honest! But I want to make sure to keep my Clark/Bruce hand in, and at the same time I can't bear not to write my wrestling OTP, and then I want to make sure to write some other pairings because--well, I was okay with being a mono shipper with Clark/Bruce, but somehow I don't want to be known as "only writes this one pairing" in wrestling, so I'm trying to make sure I write other things regularly fairly often. Thus...three stories.

I think that's really interesting about how novels attract M/M and shorter stories tend to be F/F! No idea why either, but it's fascinating. Maybe something about short stories being more compressed and intense?

I'm really hoping work chills out a bit for you and you can get some satisfying writing in!