art & prose by afteriwake

How long have you been in fandom in general? Twenty-eight years this July, technically, but in 1994 I sent a story idea to the producers of seaQuest DSV and got a lovely rejection letter from them.

What was the first fandom you participated in as an author/artist? The Buffyverse, specifically Buffy the Vampire Slayer since Angel: the Series didn't debut until after I had started in the fandom

How many fandoms do you write for currently? OMG, so many. Generally I focus on my core three (BBC Sherlock, Star Trek AOS and the MCU) but I dabble in a ton of others, plus I write crossovers. If I got back to updating my fic series that have come out of roleplay games I've been in on Insanejournal, this will also include a bunch of fandoms I don't actively participate and am writing versions of these characters as RPed by my main enabler in those games, Lena (not to be confused by my daughter who has the same name).

Approximately how long have you been writing fanfic? How long have you been making graphics? I started writing fic in July 1998, and then started making graphics around some point in mid-2000.

How many stories have you written (your best estimate is fine)? In the ballpark of 5K to 7K?

Where do you post your work? For fanfic, I primarily post to AO3 first, then make a post to this blog with a link to the AO3 post as well as the full text of the fic in the post, putting anything over around 600 words beneath a cut (unless the work as a whole is 900 words or less, then i just post it all without putting it behind a cut). For my art, if it was created for a fic already on AO3 or for a challenge/big bang, I post it to AO3 and then post it here with a link; otherwise, I just post it straight to this blog.

What types of fanfiction do you write (het, slash/femmeslash and gen as well as angst, kidfic, smut, fluff, etc.)? I tend to write mostly het, though I do have a fair sampling of slash and femmeslash when it come to pairings, and I also write gen on occasion as well. I write a lot of fluff and all of those various subgeneres like parentfic/kidfic and the like, and I write smut as well. I tend not to write much angst these days, but when I do write it I try and be as devastating as possible. I also love writing alternate universe stuff (especially fantasy/magical AUs) and canon divergence.

What inspired you to start writing fanfiction? I was in a roleplay game eons back on YahooGroups where I had an OC named Alexandra Giles, who was Rupert Giles's niece (I think) and a Watcher in her own right who got entangled with Spike. I found there were more stories I wanted to tell than the game allowed, so I started a series that became known as The Giles Saga, and it just snowballed from there.

Do your offline friends/family know you write fanfiction? Why or why not? My mom and daughter are aware of what I write, and are usually my captive audience for going over story plots and stuff (they also get to sit there while I ramble about my current crop of RP characters, most of whom I probably won't make fic series for unless Lena asks). I have a few RP friends outside of Lena who know I'm a fic writer outside of my RP-inspired series, and a few old offline friends who were aware of it (most of whom I don't have much contact with these days). I wrote my sister a Buffyverse fic back in the day, but I don't talk to her much anymore so I'm sure she's forgotten about me and my fandom stuff.

Do you write under a pseudonym? Why or why not? Not really? I use the same name here and on AO3 to make it easier for people to find me, but pretty much since 2001 I've attached my first name to my fics (for the first few I was in the Buffyverse fandom I was known as Obsessive Compulsive Spike in that group...cringey, I know, and when I realized I didn't actually have OCD but was bipolar instead I stopped using it). I don't really care if RL people find me because I'm not working nor am I planning to reenter the workforce, so I don't need to worry about employers finding out I've written smut, and fandom (and fic writing specifically) is more accepted these days so if people have an issue with me being in fandom, fuck 'em.

What would cause you to stop posting fan creations? While I haven't stopped often in the past, mostly it was because I was feeling discouraged by both RL and fandom. I haven't written much of anything since October 2025 mostly because the spam bot problem at AO3 was getting out of control, and I finally set it so only registered users could comment in January (though guests can still read my fic and leave kudos...everything got scraped by that AI user last year that breached the locked down fics so I figured what's the point of locking them down, you know?) and I haven't gotten a spam comment since. Unfortunately in January I had an inspection of my apartment and failed, so I've spent the last two and a half months getting things sorted for my re-evaluation while dealing with chronic illness/chronic fatigue/chronic pain, which has taken its toll.

How important is feedback to you? Not gonna lie, I love comments/Tumblr replies, but it's not the end all be all for me. I get a kudos email every day even though I haven't written anything in almost five months, and I get tons of likes and a handful of reblogs here, so I'm happy.

Are you a fanfic reader as well? Why or why not? And if so, do you leave feedback to other writers? I am! Mostly I read the fic my enabler @dreaminonao3 writes (since I, in turn, enable her, so a lot of stuff is written for me), but I actually have a text file full of fics I've made a note to read just from the last three months, and most of my 3K plus AO3 bookmarks are fics I plan to read (I think maybe 1% of my bookmarks is stuff I've actually read already). I also subscribe to a ton of different AO3 authors. And I always leave at least a kudos (mostly only if I finished a fic but it wasn't my cup of tea in the end...generally I leave a comment on everything I read). I also reblog fic here on Tumblr to my main blog, as there are more people following that blog than this one.

For the last fanfic you wrote, what was the plot? LOL, I actually had to go look. It was a Swan Queen fic with a Regina POV where Regina was looking at a sleeping Emma in her bed and reflecting on their relationship. It was actually the second fic I wrote for the 2026 Femslash Gift exchange because I had signed up for it as a pinch hitter and then completely misread my prompt and written a fluffier fic, so I put both of them into a fic series I plan to update wen I get more time.

Do you write real person fanfic? Why or why not? Nope. Not because I have anything against it in theory, but mostly because it just doesn't interest me. I'm usually more interested in the characters that are being portrayed than the actors portraying them, you know?

Do you write crossover fanfiction? Why or why not? I do! I live for my crossover ships. In fact, I am pretty much the sole author of all the McMolly (Leonard McCoy from the Star Trek AOS movies & Molly Hooper from BBC Sherlock) fic on AO3, and if I didn't write it myself chances are it was written for me.

If you could explain what fanfiction is in your own words, how would you describe it? Taking characters from established media and playing with them in my own sandbox.

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and ‘The" do not count for 'a’ and ‘t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

I was tagged by @strangedreamings for this.

A - An Eventful Day B - Bad News C - Changed D - Dyuarizumu E - End Of The Game F - Five Ways Zane Tells Jo He Loves Her G - Getting To The Point H - Home Cooking I - In The Right Place At The Right Time J - Just An Old Fool K - Knight L - Love Follows M - Mycroft Versus Blackbeard And Ching Shih N - Need To Tell You O - Over Time P - Plotting & Planning Q - Quitting R - Readjustment S - Surprising Turn Of Events T - Ten People He Left Behind (And One He Came Back For) U - Unique Bedtime Stories For First Years V - Visualizations W - Welcome To Storybrooke X - None Y - You Try Too Hard Z - None

So the whole premise for this fic came from a title prompt ask meme and I totally lost who gave me this one! I'm so sorry. I was going to write it as a treat for the current round of Holmestice, but I was so happy to finish it that I wanted to post it immediately. So please, enjoy an Elementary/Castle/The Mentalist fic!

(Also, I am tagging this with Jisbon because this is a series focusing on the Jane & Lisbon wedding, even though this fic doesn't focus on the ship as much...there will be a ton more Jisbon as well as Caskett and platonic!Joanlock in the future!)

Three Consultants Walk Into A Bar... - Three consultants walk into a bar and talk about something of the Utmost Importance.

READ @ AO3 | SERIES PAGE

It was a mistake. The address was surely a mistake. A bar? Shouldn't they have known better, as he had battled with his sobriety? But this was a meeting of the Utmost Importance, Sherlock was told, and therefore he had to attend. But at least it was O'Hara's Bar and Restaurant. There would be cops there he was friendly with, he was sure. He wouldn’t be surprised if Gregson would have Bell somewhere on the dining floor, just watching. Not for him to break his sobriety, but just to...be there, for silent support.

Joan had offered to come as well, but he had declined. He did not need her at this point, though he might later. He recognized the names of those who had asked him to come; after all, the world of police consultants was a small one, to be honest. There were many who tried, but to gain the trust of a captain, or even a detective? Rare. He knew Kitty had used her partnership with him and his reputation at New Scotland Yard to start on the road she was on now, but even she had tried before meeting him and it had been a long and hard road until someone listened. He was thankful it was he who had mentored her, because others could have ill intentions.

And the two men meeting with him tonight? Well, they were as remarkable in what they did as he was.

In fact, the two men were currently approaching him from the inside of O’Hara’s as he got to the door. A blonde man in a snazzy three piece suit. A dark haired man in expensive yet casual clothing. They all nodded to each other.

Patrick Jane.

Richard Castle.

Good acquaintances. Possibly friends, now that he’d realized he needs more of them in his life, according to Joan, Kitty, Bell, Alfredo, Gregson...even Ms. Hudson was putting in her two cents between her stints as a muse to various men, when they would sit and chat in Greek because he enjoyed the language and the company. But as this was a matter of the Utmost Importance, he wasn’t sure striking up an actual friendship would be on the table.

Yet.

So while I am now nearly $300 overdrawn due to overdraft fees, I should be getting my laptop back on Wednesday of this week! It's nearly a week and a half later than I was told when given my estimate, but it has been fully repaired and the third-party repair center said they were sending it out and it should arrive at my home repair center Wednesday. Any help covering the overdraft would be much appreciated if you can.

Also. I have a few things I'm planning on working on! Here's a list:

The longer fic I originally planned on doing for my Holmestice recipient (can't go into details yet but it's a BBC Sherlock fic)

A BBC Sherlock fic based on an idea from @lokijiro where Mycroft became Sherlock's legal guardian when Sherlock was fourteen (Eventual Mystrade but mostly focusing on pre-series stuff and an altered series 1 and 2...I'm also toying with Sherlock being somewhere on the aroace spectrum for this one)

More fic in my two panfandom RP based series ("Stuff Of Improbable Legends" and it's prequel series "The Start Of Improbable Legends") co-written with my RP partner from the games (so more McMolly and Kirkrose from the Lawrence, KS and New Orleans based games, plus other ships and friendships)

As a treat to my fic enabler @dreaminonao3 I'm going to do some fanmix covers based off various playlists she has created for her fic/character/ship playlists (I'm aiming to do her Crimson from Helluva Boss playlist first, but as she's still working on it I may see what she'd rather have me do instaed)

Potentially for WIPBB I will be doing my Wholock fic "When In University..." both for my own personal pleasure as well as for spite, because I was told Sherlock was OOC for not being a frigid sociopath when I was writing it around 2013/2014 so I was planning on making it an original novel but then S3 and S4 happened AND NOW LOOK AT HIM IN CANON!

I also want to specifically work on my Bridgerton S1 rewrite "Truth Be Told" since @dreaminonao3 is working on another fic in that series, the second fic in my Star Trek AOS trilogy where Spock adopts a teenager like him ("Connections & Reconnections") for @greenskyoverme as she has been wanting updates on it, both "To Throw Away The Map" and "Children Of Light, Children Of Dark" because they were BBC Sherlock commissions that should have been done long ago, and both "Playing The Game: Act II – Knights & Knowledge, Romance & Regret" (part of my massive MCU/BBC Sherlock series and second part of a trilogy) and "Every English Village Has Its Secrets" (part of what will be a series of BBC Sherlock crossing over with a ton of my favorite British crime series including Midsomer Murders, Lewis, Rosemary & Thyme, Murder In Suburbia and possibly other shows plus two singular stories I plan on doing soon: one with Pie in the Sky and another with Mr. and Mrs. Murder with a tie in to Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries in that one that will take place in Australia) because I have plans for the series those fics are in and I want to move on to other stories, especially in the case of the latter series.

Y'all really seemed to like the icons and assorted graphics I transferred over from LiveJournal so I will be making more graphics as well! If you have suggestions for what you want graphics for, let me know.

Hopefully I did not lose my list of old WIPBB art projects I planned to do, but I'm going to tackle as many as I can find in my files at least.

My laptop finally died last week and I put it in for repairs on Saturday, but unfortunately I had to overdraw my account and got hit with (and am continuing to get hit with) overdraft fees, so if anyone can help cover that i will write you a 500ish word fic with fandoms or pairings I am familiar with for every $25 you send as a gift (so if you send $25 you get on fic, $50 you get two fics, etc.) and every $5 will get you a 100 word drabble as a gift (so if you send $5 you get one drabble, $10 you get two, etc.) You can also combine them (so $30 for example would get you one 500 word fic and one 100 word drabble). I'm ideally trying to raise about $350 just because I'm still getting hit with overdraft fees and this would cover it all, I think.

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

who’s the professor and who’s the TA

who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

who’s the writer and who’s the editor

I need to see your take on merman/fisherwoman for them. :) With those eyes, Kirk would make a heck of a siren.

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter: Carol is the werewolf, though not your typical type of werewolf; her father is a mad scientist who did gene-splicing on his daughter without anyone's knowledge as an infant, after he told her mother she had died and he was leaving her. He then took Carol away and used her to create a new line of monster/human hybrids. Carol's mother never believed her daughter had died, but Marcus had hidden himself and his daughter well so she hired Kirk and his crew to try and find her daughter, warning Kirk that her father had been an unstable and unethical scientist. When they got a lead they went in fully prepared to fight their way out and to deliver bad news to Carol's mother, but to their surprise Carol had had enough of the abuse and killed her father a few years prior in self-defense and had preferred to be left alone for her safety and the safety of those in her care; she had eliminated the more dangerous of her father's experiments and worked on modifying the others so they were more human and less animalistic, which they were grateful for. While Carol did have a tendency to turn into a human/wolf hybrid, she kept her humanity, her intelligence and her human voice. She was surprised to find out not only that her mother was alive but that she had been actively looking for her for years, and their reunion brought Kirk and his crew to tears. Kirk offered to take Carol and those under her care onto his team to put their abilities to good use and she accepted, realizing Kirk was a good man and perhaps there could be some sort of future between them.

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman: James is a siren and Carol is the only female fisherman in her village, having inherited her stepfathers boat when he passed due to seasickness so she could keep her family in food and shelter. She knew a secret to getting past the sirens that were out on the far reaches of the rocks out to the part of the sea where the good fishing was: she talked to them. It turns out that the sirens were starved for good conversation (and especially village gossip), her stepfather had told her, and when she was young he had introduced Carol to them if there was ever a reason for her to take over the business. One siren in particular, James, took an interest in Carol, an interest that was surprisingly mutual. Then for the span of a few weeks Carol didn't come to the rocks where the sirens resided, so James made a deal with the elder siren, an old sea hag who also cared for Carol, to get human legs and find out what was going on. The sea hag warned him there was no reversing it, but James didn't care. He loved Carol and wanted to find out why she'd stopped fishing in the waters where the sirens lived. He arrived in the village at the dead of night and stole some human clothing, and found out Carol's birth father had come back into her life and was forcing her to get married against her will to an asshole named John Harrison or he would have her mother, an academic woman who was more or less a recluse, put into an insane asylum. He got in touch with Carol immediately, and she recognized him as the siren she had fallen in love with, and embraced him tightly, kissing him as well. She and Jim then took her mother and all her mother's research and they boarded her ship, leaving the village hours before the sun rose. The remaining sirens use their magic to guide Carol's ship well past the rocks they resided on in the darkness, and Carol and those she loved sailed to a new village with the last of James's siren magic, far from the reach of her father. They made a home for themselves in this new village, taking care of her mother until she passed and then having children of their own who somehow possessed many of the otherworldly physical qualities of a siren and a love of the water and could swim like it was second nature to them. James told her often he never regretted his decision to become human, and she told him she was happier than she had ever been and was glad he had done so. When Carol died as an old woman nearly sixty years after their escape, James died later that same evening, not being able to bear being without the woman he loved for more than just a few hours.

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar: Kirk is a technomage with an affinity for older technology, and Carol is his ferret familiar he inherited from his father, who was murdered by a mysterious magic user the day he was born. Kirk's mother is one of the few of their universe who was never magically inclined and once she realized Kirk had powers she made him swear never to use them so whatever it was that had killed his father wouldn't kill him as well, just like she had asked his brother to do. But Carol taught him the basics in secret, and she was the one who realized he had a skill with technological magic. After his brother left home because he was tired of not using his burgeoning magical powers, Kirk got even better hiding his, even as he continued to practice in secret. Flash forward to Kirk's twenty-fifth birthday, which he was celebrating with friends who worked at the same repair shop he worked at, where he specialized in getting antique electronics and the like back to nearly new conditions. His brother sent him a magicked letter, saying he needed Kirk's help. Kirk took a leave of absence, got Carol from his apartment in case he needed magical back-up, and got on his motorcycle to go save his brother. Over the course of things he had many encounters with a variety of magical creatures, magic users both good and bad, and things that go bump in the night, but he managed to find his brother and the two of them (along with a variety of new friends and allies Kirk had made in his travels) took down the magical menace that had killed their father, which had turned out to be a corrupt organization of magic users. In the process, Carol was restored to her human form and her immortality was taken away, so Kirk suggested she spend whatever time she had left in her life with him and the people they had befriended in the course of their travels, and she accepted, as she had become quite smitten with Kirk over the last few years.

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar

who’s the barista and who’s the coffee addict

who’s the professor and who’s the TA

who’s the knight and who’s the prince(ss)

who’s the teacher and who’s the single parent

who’s the writer and who’s the editor

He's already a writer, so her as his editor could be fun!

For anyone who doesn't know, as it's been a while since I've written this pairing, it's a ship between the Pride & Prejudice 2005 version of Mary Bennet and @dreaminonao3's original character Leland Arnold (all her fic with Leland and Mary is up here if you want to give it a shot). I've been allowed permission to write stuff not just for Leland and Mary but her other P&P canon/OC ships as well, so I asked for those ships for this meme to come up with more ideas!

who’s the werewolf and who’s the hunter: Mary is the werewolf, kept at Longbourn for her own safety and the safety of others after running into a werewolf and being scratched (not bitten) as a young child. Leland is a family friend of Darcy's, who helped train him to be a hunter of "things that go bump in the night" who are especially violent, but Leland also studies supernatural creatures and is working on a compendium of all the knowledge he has gathered over the years. When the Bennet sisters let slip about Mary's "condition" Leland is sure she's a werewolf and confronts Mr. Bennet about it, who concedes Mary is, in fact, afflicted with lycanthropy. Leland has her father tell him that it is very important to know whether Mary was bitten or scratched, and when Mr. Bennet confirms she was scratched, Leland (who has become smitten with Mary during his time with Darcy getting to know the Bennets) assures him that there is hope in curing her, and if he is successful he would like her hand in marriage, something Mary agrees to as she and her sisters were crouched at the door. Once Leland and Darcy hunt and kill what they think is the werewolf that infected Mary, Leland waits for the next full moon with baited breath. When Mary doesn't turn the family rejoices, and there's a triple wedding (along with Jane and Bingley) and afterward Mary takes over the compendium while Leland and Darcy continue to hunt (with Lizzie accompanying them).

who’s the mermaid and who’s the fisherman: Leland is the merman and Lizzie is the daughter of a local fisherman who has five daughters and has fallen on hard times. Mary often accompanies her father on the ship, as she is fascinated by the sea, but on one occasion the waters get rough and she falls overboard. Leland, king of the merfolk in the area, rescues her as the seas instantly calm down and returns her to her father. Once she's safe and warm back on the boat Leland joins her, growing legs and fussing over her, much to her father's amusement (though not amazement...he had the feeling there were merfolk thereabouts). As the three of them chat, Leland admits he had fallen in love with Mary from afar, much to her shock, and would she like to join him as his queen? She eagerly agrees, and in exchange Leland tells her father to say she fell overboard and drowned, and once Mr. Bennet goes out to sea again Leland will make sure the nets of his (and other fishermen, so as not to arouse suspicions) ships are always full, and every once in a while he and other fishermen who Mr. Bennet recommends will find trinkets worth a little money in their catch as well. When Mary and Leland swim off together, Mary having been turned into a mermaid by Leland's magic, he knows they will be happy and that matters more to him than anything else.

who’s the witch and who’s the familiar: Mary is a witch in a family or witches and warlocks who struggles with casting nonverbal spells. Her sister Lizzie gets her husband, who specializes in nonverbal spell casting, to help her, and her first spell brings her a sleek black cat almost unbidden. The cat says his name is Leland, and he wasn't always a cat; when Darcy and Darcy's friend Wickham were children a spell went awry and Wickham turned him into a cat. Not only that, Wickham refused to even try and turn him back, being cast away from Darcy's family into the militia after Darcy's father no longer needed to care for him. Darcy had tried to communicate with his old friend for years but no matter what they couldn't communicate. Leland promised to help Mary in her studies if she would look for the counter-spell, and she agreed. As she spent more of her time with Leland she grew quite fond of him, even thinking she had fallen in love with him. She began to spend quite a bit of time at Pemberley with Leland, Darcy, Lizzie and Darcy's sister Georgiana, and became as close to Georgiana as Lizzie was. One afternoon Georgiana confides to Mary that she thinks something is happening to her as she's sleeping. Mary uses a cloaking spell to hide herself and Leland in Georgiana's bedroom chamber that evening and she discovers Wickham has broken into Pemberley using dark magic and is casting spells on Georgiana as she sleeps to break down the protective bonds her brother put on her to keep Wickham from using her to enact revenge. Mary uses her own magic to freeze him in the process, with Leland keeping an eye on him while she gets her sister and Darcy. Darcy forces Wickham to use his powers to change Leland back into a human before taking him up on charges, and realizing he has no other choice, Wickham transforms Leland back into a human before he's taken before the magical magistrate. Afterward, Leland and Mary get married, as Leland had fallen in love with her too, and they leave to go to Leland's manor, which Darcy had kept in good shape once his father had passed, just in case the spell on Leland could be reversed.