Andraste

3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

I don't think anyone is interested in me listing my favourite characters for all forty of those fandoms, are they? So let's just stick with my top ten.

X-Men: Almost every X-Men story I've written (the exceptions are some drabbles, a 'common people' comicverse story and a remix) has Charles Xavier in it. He's not just my favourite X-Men character to write, but my favourite fictional person full stop. I've also written a lot of Magneto.

Farscape: This is an unusual one for me, in that instead of just sticking with my favourites I've written most of the characters at some point. The Farscape Friday drabble community encouraged me to stretch myself during the time I was most actively writing it. My clear favourites to write are Crais, Scorpius and Zhaan, but I had a lot of fun writing Harvey and Braca, not to mention Talyn and Sikozu. I have more favourite characters in Farscape than any other fandom.

Babylon 5: I am all about the Centauri and the Narn in this fandom, and Londo and G'Kar talking to each other is one of my favourite things to write in the whole world. (They may or may not be having tentacle sex at the same time.) I've also written lots of Vir, and I think I've doubled the number of Na'Toth stories on the web single-handedly. I enjoyed writing Bester, although I've only done so once thus far. Some day I must write something about Kosh, but Vorlons are difficult.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: I am all about Giles and Ethan and also the Trio, especially Andrew Wells. Some day I will write a story that has Giles and Andrew interacting, even.

Doctor Who: I think this is the only fandom where I don't really have a set of favourite characters. Or, rather, I have so many of them it's a meaningless list. I mean, I love all of the Doctor, and I have more than a dozen favourite companions and also the Master. What I enjoy most is having all of that available to play with, so I love writing stories that cross eras and have characters who never met in canon interacting.

due South: I am a Vecchio girl all the way in this fandom. Not that I don't love Fraser and intead Kowalski, I just can't see myself writing anything longer than a ficlet that doesn't have RayV in it.

Alias: First Generation Spies 4 Eva! Jack, Sloane and Irina are my equal favourites.

The Authority: I love the Doctor, and by the Doctor I mean Jeroen, not whoever they replaced him with. *sadface*

Transformers: I am a predictable Starscream fangirl, and almost everything I've ever written or planned to write in this fandom has him in it. I'm very attached to Megatron, too, though, and one of these days I need to write more about Soundwave and Galvatron and Cyclonus.

Blake's 7: Blake and Avon are my characters of choice here. I may love Blake slightly more, I think, but they're both fun to write. The reason I've never written more in this fandom is that there's so much fic about those two already, it seems unnecessary for me to add any.

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Well, hey, why not? (Not that I've posted anything in ages. I am writing First Class fanfic, but it keeps developing a plot. And inconsiderate customers keep ringing me up in the middle of sentences.)

1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

My first fanfic was X-Men comicverse, posted back in 2000. I discovered fanfiction within weeks of getting online in 1997. I don't actually remember whether I found X-Files or X-Men fanfic first. Somewhere in between looking through episode guides and newsgroups, I discovered that some people wrote down their stories about TV and comic book characters instead of just telling them to themselves in their heads. This was obviously the BEST IDEA EVA.

One way another, X-Files fandom failed to hold my interest, but X-Men comics drew me in more and more. Soon I was lurking on OTL and CFAN's message boards and trying to write stories of my own. I spent three years doing that before I actually posted something, which puts the more recent droughts into perspective. The reason for why that fandom and not any of the others probably boils down to the guy in the icon *g*. It was also a lot easier in those days for me to catch up on comics than it was to catch up on television - I'd barely heard of DVDs and I didn't have easy access to a VCR at university. (Avoiding the common room was my other hobby.) On the other hand, I could go to Minotaur and Comics 'R Us and buy piles and piles of X-Men back issues for relatively little money.

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Day 24 – Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

I really should be in bed (somehow I have once again messed up my sleep patterns and turned myself nocturnal) so let's have something lazy: my top twenty-five Doctor Who stories of all time, any any medium.

1. City of Death
2. The Caves of Androzani
3. The Empty Child
4. Inferno
5. Spare Parts
6. The War Games
7. The One Doctor
8. The Robots of Death
9. Loups-Garoux
10. Ghost Light
11. The Talons of Weng-Chiang
12. Marco Polo
13. The Holy Terror
14. The Power of the Daleks
15. Alien Bodies
16. The Curse of Fenric
17. Genesis of the Daleks
18. Punchline
19. Midnight
20. Davros
21. The Deadly Assassin
22. Deadline
23. Kinda
24. Continuity Errors
25. Gridlock

Subject to change without notice. (No Eleven yet, but look how long it took Ten to get in. This is a very short list.)

( The rest of the days. )

Day 22 – A Who-Related Fan-Site

My regular hang-out is Gallifrey Base, successor to the now defunct Outpost Gallifrey. It does not have the best reputation, but I find it quite pleasant as I usually stick to the book, audio and toy forums and stay out of arguments.

The information source I visit most often is The Doctor Who Reference Guide, an astonishing chronological list of just about every story produced in any medium, with summaries for a high percentage of them. Incredibly useful if you're trying to figure out when any adventure occurs in relation to any other! The Wiki is also developing nicely. (No thanks to me; I only ever edit the page about tea and how much sugar the Doctor puts in it.)

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Day 20 – The Character Who Is Most Like You

I don't know that I'm really brave enough to be a companion, but I do aspire to be Evelyn Smythe when I grow up. I'm sort of on track, and have twenty-five years to get the rest of that PhD by the time I'm her age. (My field of history is Italian rather than English, but never mind.) And I do love the Sixth Doctor and want to feed him cake.

(Since this is a short response, I'm just going to diverge from the subject for a moment and say that, while Mel doesn't annoy me as much as she does some people, her determination to make the Doctor drink carrot juice and ride an exercise bike is stupid. Even assuming there are health risks for Time Lords carrying the odd extra kilo - that's a slightly dubious contention for humans - it's not as though he's going to have time to get diabetes or clogged arteries anyway. In a few years he's going to turn into Sylvester McCoy. Chocolate is not a serious risk for someone who spends his life running away from Daleks, for Rassilon's sake.)

( The rest of the days. )

Day 18 – Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

Let's continue the theme of fan creations. Here, here have a couple of my favourite vids:

Handlebars by Seah and Margie

What About Everything? by calapine

Yes, I know those are everyone's favourite Doctor Who vids. There is a reason why this is so.

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Day 16 – Your Favourite Who-Related Fanfic

That is not a question I could possibly answer, even with a list. However, instead, let me link you to the first story in the fandom that I remember reading. In hindsight, this short, silly fic was one of the things that got me interested in the show and convinced me that it might be for me:

Doctor Who and the Board Game of Death by nostalgia

In which the Eighth Doctor and his companions play Monopoly, and it turns out about how you'd expect. It is book!fic but you don't need to know Anji or Fitz in order to appreciate it.

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Day 14 – The Villain Who Scared You the Most

Easiest question to answer to far - the Krynoid. The Seeds of Doom episode four is the first Doctor Who I remember seeing as a child. Not only did I flee half way through, I was put off the show for my entire childhood. Even into my teens I would leave the room whenever I heard the theme song. (Yes, there is a certain irony there.)

It's not the fifty-foot tall monster towering over the mansion that scared me, but the seed pod and what it did to its human victims. To this day, it's one of the most frightening concepts in series history. It's the same thing that's scary about the Cybermen or the gasmask zombies, only in some ways its even worse because of the way the Kryoid co-opts the local plants and wants nothing more than to destroy all animal life, everywhere.

Because of my early exposure, not even the Weeping Angels will ever match Keeler's transformation for sheer horror as far as I'm concerned.

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Day 12 – Whatever Tickles Your Fancy

Luckily, I have something new and Doctor Who related to post photos of:



Amy!!!

She even has green eyes and her necklace. Alas, I don't have an Eleven (waiting for the Eleven Doctors box to be released here) or a Rory (waiting for Character Options to make one) as yet. Still, Ms. Pond need not want for company as she waits for her boys to arrive ...

( Pictures below the cut. )

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Um. Since it is quite late, and a photo of my DVD/book collection would not actually be that interesting, and most of my action figures are currently in a box on a high shelf, have this terrible photo of the nearest thing I could find:



That is a photo of my collect-and-connect K1 Robot.

Quite often I look at it, or at my two Sea Devils or my Zygon or my robots OF DEATH and am astonished that I get to be a Doctor Who fan at a time when such things exist.

( The rest of the days. )