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.)