Ohai Fanficshuns

The devilishly clever has a blog! Aside from being just a cool place to read about awesome Star Wars news from an articulate and savvy writer, also on this blog, she has interviewed me and a couple other longtime fan fiction writers about our experiences in fandom, the impact of fanfiction on writers and community, as well as miscellaneous sorts of  gobbly gook related to being just an awesomely awesome person. Just the fact that I wrote something for this should be all the reason you need to read. Check it out!

Fanfiction Roundtable, Part 1
Fanfiction Roundtable, Part 2

Also 'cuz this is a good opportunity to do a bit of rare bragging about stuff, these days I spend most of me writing time writing about the here:
A Recipe for Cake, Step 1
The world was still dark outside the towered walls of Kinloch Hold when the baking started. But inside the darkness of the tower, the ancient home of the Circle Mages of Ferelden, it was hard to ever tell day from night. Even further down, in the depths of the lower kitchens, a young elf with whitened hair worked around the rosy fire of a tiny oven.
Kylla wiped her cheek with the back of her hand, oblivious to how the gesture left a white streak of rice flour across her pale skin. Cobbled together from loose brick and broken slabs, the makeshift oven burned evenly above a brick nest. Below it, the little fire elemental Kylla had summoned gnawed with vigor on a log of coal. She squinted with one eye to look through the heat, checking that the batter in the oven was rising properly. It was slow labor, baking in the Tower, but she was determined that today, of all days, she would make it work. She's been preparing all month to get it right.
Satisfied that the fire salamander had all it ne A Recipe for Cake, Step 2
Ereb dreamt that he was home. The smell of mother's baking was in the air, mixed with the acrid scent of sawdust from the workroom, the crisp taste of cut green grass from the fields, and the comforting smell of lavender flowers. Mother always tucked lavender into their bed sheets to help them sleep. The bright sun and soft breeze told him it was late spring on the Amell property, and the birds were trilling a cheery tune outside the window. Ereb breathed in deeply and stretched, his long legs dangling over the too-small bed.
"Wake up, sleepy head," called a voice from the other room. Ereb yawned expansively and smiled. "I'm up," he called back, "It smells delicious."
"Made your favorites for your homecoming! Now get over here before your brother and sister come in so we can surprise them. They don't know you're back yet."
Ereb buried his face in the sheets one last time before giving up the pretense of sleep. He clambered out of the small bed frame, unfolding like a stork taking fligh A Recipe for Cake: Step 3
Kylla gazed upon her own handiwork and blushed. The frosted tower blossomed rosy red before the oven fire, like a living, pulsing thing that rose upwards from the cream; a beacon in the shadows. The paralysis spell was holding the cake tower erect, and she had planted a bouquet of paper strips which she thought were a nice touch. The white streams burst forth from the tip and gushed down the sides in much the same way as she thought a waterfall might. The smaller cakes representing the island's area lay like two snowballs at the base. All in all, she thought, it was rather fetching
"What do you think, little Ashes?" She asked the fire salamander in the oven. It bobbed its head as if it understood and walked from side to side as if to get a better look. 'Ashes' was not the fire elemental's name, per say, but Kylla wanted to call it something other than, 'hey you,' when she was addressing the creature.
"Brrrrrrup?" it said to her, tilting its head quizzically.
"Do you think Ereb will lik A Recipe for Cake: Step 4Oto was having a dastardly time finding Jowan.
He wasn't in the apprentice quarters and he was rarely ever at class. She accosted a few of the younger apprentices and demanded if they saw him. But everywhere Oto turned, it was a blank look and a shrug. She was starting to wonder if Jowan had mind-blasted them all, so thoroughly had he disappeared.
A familiar long-haired blond crossed her path as she stormed for the fifth time down the main hall. "Anders!" Oto yelled, and nearly had to freeze herself in order to avoid running into him. The older apprentice turned around, both eyebrows arched. He grinned and raised his arms as Oto came skidding right into his embrace.
"Loooovely to see you too, Oto," Anders grinned. "And what can I do for you, today?"
"No way, not anymore, Anders," said Oto, and made a face as she pulled herself away. "Have you seen Jowan?"
Anders put a hand to his chest in mock tragedy. "Oh, you wound me, dear lady. To you, I gave my heart, my light! And now… this! A Recipe for Cake: Step 5
Jowan snickered to himself as he visualized the templar named Cullen stalking the Circle Tower in search of him. The fool would be fighting a beastly case of lyrium shakes by now, and Jowan could only imagine the expression. Given the templar's fairly junior standing within the order, Jowan doubted he would be facing the more lethal withdrawal symptoms. But still, the thought of him shuddering on the floor was enough to bring a wide smile to Jowan's day.
He casually flipped through the cabinetry in the kitchen to take stock of what was available. Now that the knife-eared wench was out of his way, he had free rein, and where there was Jowan, there was always some kind of mischief to be conceived. Their short conversation had been more unnerving than he was willing to admit, but she was gone, and he could put those blue, penetrating eyes out of his mind. What would she really know about Lily, anyway? Or love? Everyone in the tower had been watching those... those two dance around each ot
Sturm und DrangTitle: Sturm und Drang
Author: Inverse
Game: Dragon Age Origins
Characters/pairing: Jowan
Disclaimer: Not mine!
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The approaching storm drained the light from the world; the gray-cast clouds absorbing the color of even the few flickering lanterns. Cold wind blew through the darkness, an icy knife slaughtering the day's heat.
Jowan shivered in his thin prisoners' garb. The coarse burlap he wore was more for decency than protection against the weather, but what choice did he have? He had nothing else left to his name, and every moment of every breath he cursed the Maker for it.
Love had made him soft. He didn't like to admit it, but it did. Love had given him more to lose, and the more he lost, the more desperate he became. And the more desperate he became, the fiercer the desire to use, to dominate. The beating heat of blood called out to him and when he called back, summoned the power of life to do his bidding, he made himself a target. He had blood on his hands n You Get What You GiveThey made camp by a clear underground lake where the still waters spilled into a large cavern further than the eye could see. The cavern was lit by some kind of ubiquitous phosphorescent mold, which seemed odd to Jowan to find everywhere, but he guessed that the dwarves must have cultivated the growth when they still owned the Deep Roads to guide their travelers on their way. And in the cold, unfamiliar earthiness, the smooth dome above the crystalline lake was a welcome proxy for the sun and sky; small comfort for a party lost without a sense of time or day. Only Gary, the darkspawn, seemed unaffected by the hundreds of thousands of pounds of earth poised above them, but even he was ill at ease traveling the Deep Roads, his eyes darting back and forth and jumping at every distant echo or shifting shadow.
No one cared to admit it out loud for fear that saying the words would finally make the reality irrevocably true, but the party was lost and running low on food. There was no guidance   Full Circle
Ereb finally found her in the library amidst a collection of books, each stacked neatly one on top of the other in a web that blossomed around her. Even after all that they had been through, he had a feeling it was where she would be. As children this had been their favorite place to study; sanctuary from the suspicious looks of other children, respite from the demands of teachers, or, in Ereb's case, shelter from Jowan's bullying.
He picked up a large volume and carefully examined it. He recognized it as one of the folio summoning texts; a book he himself had used as an Enchanter's aide in demonstrating basic theory to the apprentice classes. Many of the old books were already falling apart even before the attack, and the fighting in the Tower had only accelerated what time and neglect started. Ereb tentatively turned a page, and the brittle rustling seemed to echo to very the end of the dismantled room. Kylla looked up, surprised, and despite everything -- the misunderstandings, the :
misadventurers.deviantart.com/…
Some other pieces here:
Dragon's Eye View
Title: Prologue
Author: InverseReality (Freesourceful on FF.net)
Game: Dragon Age 2
Characters: Flemeth
Disclaimer: Fan writing is not for profit! Characters and scenario (c) BioWare/EA. Writing is just me having fun.
Longevity had its drawbacks.
The wrinkles were only the beginning. Teeth, for example, didn't wear as well after the first six decades, and hair was an absolute pain to maintain after seventy. There was also the sagging of flesh, the aching of bones, and the failing of various body parts as each sense began to fade.
Though not all her bodies fell to waste that way. Some quite simply stopped working after an enterprising Warden put a sword clean through her heart, or still others had been gutted by zealous templars whose misplaced sense of justice demanded a service to their order in the form of a decapitated head.
Regardless of the little setbacks, she always found a way back. She underst EchoesTitle: Echoes
Author: InverseReality-2
Game: Dragon Age Origins
characters/pairing: Tabris/Alistair
Disclaimer: Not for the faint of heart, or the tragically challenged!
It was, she decided, the echoes that were worst of all.
Sounds in the Deep Roads never faded. They simply fled like stricken refugees, stumbling blindly through the dark into empty earth. In their mad flight, the sounds caught upon the tatters of older echoes, abandoned voices circling frozen stone, and merged into an exiled cacophony of noises. Perhaps, even, it was the Stone itself that cried, remembering long-departed voices and parroting their sound: a never-ending chorus of life no longer lived. But the faint murmurs hovered about her, and she had to keep moving, moving forward, because if she ever stopped to listen...
"The smell," said Zevran, "it is the smell that is most bad, no?"
Callian shook her head, having no breath for a response and no time to banter. The air — she could no longer smell any ScarsTitle: Scars
Author: InverseReality (Freesourceful on FF.net)
Game: Jade Empire
Characters: Black Whirlwind, Raging Ox
Disclaimer: Characters (c) BioWare. I'm just having fun!
He could remember the origin of every mark, of every scar.
His body was a map of all the places he had ever been, and been made to bleed. Ridges of skin like mountain ranges roaming freely from left elbow to his wrist, dark tan and brittle peaks which linked his arms and fists in patterned stitching across a fault-lined landscape of skin. Brown skin so dark and rich like dirt; smelling of buried, moist, and decomposing earth—the earth of his fathers and their fathers before that, the earth of his grave and the dead beneath his feet. On the back of his right hand a pale crescent sickle cut from the knuckle to the wrist. A river of white flowing from palm to back, where a blade had gone clean through; fire in his palms tha
For those not familiar with me as a writer, I tend to lean towards short pieces with a high level of stylistic flourishes. Fanfiction writing for me is mostly a way to explore writing techniques, and I get distracted easily, so I usually have to focus on a very vivid central metaphor in order to get all the way through a story idea.

You can find me ranting about writer's issues here:
Fiction Writing BlacklistUPDATE: I thought up a new one!
Point of View. Hate it when writers switch around point of view without conscious effort. If you're writing a third person subjective pov from your injured/wounded character trying to get to safety, why the frack am I getting a description about the long, luxurious curve of her red hair in the dim light?! Who the hell is looking at her, and why would anyone bother with this sort of detail at a moment when getting out alive is the most important action in the scene?  (Note: this scene is not based on any particular story, but illustrates my point.) Perspective needs to be consistent - you can play with the perspective if you know what you're doing to deliberately manipulate the reader, but too often this is an ignorant mistake by even seasoned writers. I also don't care how good you are at description: your scene's description should follow the tension and action of the story, not clutter it up with needless details. Related i

I also used to hang out on this site: www.fanfiction.net/s/2646388/1… (Epic Jade Empire fanfic FTW)