15, 23, 26 for the writing ask!
15. Whatâs your favourite plotless fic you have written?
HA! I love the assumptions baked into this question and that you chose it for me. I feel seen.
I scanned through my ao3 and which a bunch of my fics are truly just fueled by vibes, they do have plots--quiet ones--and I don't necessarily wanna discount the quiet or domestic or private as not counting as plot?
But I also have some true zero plot stuff FOR SURE. I think my favorite might be "I'm going, all along" about agnosticism and various religions and how they intersect with Ted Lasso characters, or "neon," in which Ted is worried Beard is going to get bored sleeping with him and Rebecca but doesn't articulate it very well, and Beard books them time in a sensory deprivation tank.
23. Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?
When people talk about being fully comfortable with one and struggling with the other, I'll admit that I'm actually not sure how that feels?! They are both hard, except for the rare times they are both easy! I think I do generally have an easier time writing dialogue with some light descriptions interspersed, and it's harder for me to write longer descriptive prose passages conveying action or the passage of time or whatever. The stuff I imagine most vividly as I start to write are the busy moments where people are interacting and speaking but also sensing/perceiving/noticing/feeling, so zooming out past that to write pure description is a bit more of a slog.
(I want to know how you feel about this too)
26. What would you describe as OOC?
Answered here, but I actually have a slightly expanded answer if you'll indulge me, so I'll paste the original answer (in italics) + add to it.
Itâs a bit hard to put my finger on it. I guess it boils down to the âHe would not fucking say thatâ thing?
But as I think about it, in terms of fanfic, something reads as OOC most often when I just get this strong and very distracting sense that the author is more interested in serving their own motivations or wish-fulfillment fantasies than the characters themselves. Which is a legit thing to do when writing fic, even if I have reader preferences! I have 100% put characters into situations specifically because I just really wanted to spend time with those characters in that situation, and Iâm sure there have been people who read it and think itâs OOC even if I try to stay true to character. (Like Iâve definitely had people say they donât typically think of a certain character as having a specific sexual identity that I might ascribe to them. And I might ascribe it to them both because I personally see it as true to character but also might just wanna explore it for my own queer reasons. To each their own!)
With TL fic, I'm pretty picky about reading about Rebecca's explorations of motherhood, because while her desire for motherhood is an intrinsically important facet of her character, she doesn't strike me as someone who would find it at all satisfying to dive fully into super traditional gender roles (and gender roles that are possibly portrayed as more idyllic or even mythical than they actually feel in real life)...like a situation where she needs her man caring for her and doting on her and defers to the care/wisdom he offers her while pursuing a type of motherhood that wasn't available to her in canon. Canon Rebecca has lived through--and observed--the fallibility of those types of structures and nothing about the ways her desires (sexual, maternal, familial, professional, otherwise) are portrayed onscreen make me want to imagine her launching back into a belief that a super-traditional/conservative gendered structure would work for her, even with her next partner being someone who isn't abusive the way Rupert was.
(And I won't even go down the rabbit hole of trying to articulate why this structure also doesn't seem like something that would be fulfilling for Ted [who tried it and failed and spent 3 years of TV reprioritizing] or Roy [who has deep trust issues] or Matthijs [whom we lack historical information on but perhaps tried it and failed and now lives on a very cool boat] or any other potential dude who could be her partner on the show. But I think those structures often do a disservice to men, too, and will leave it at that.)
And again, like with any other scenario that appeals to a writer, I genuinely understand why this type of nuclear family dream scenario is something a writer might want to explore from within the safety of their own complete control over the story and the characters, and that is a cool thing to be able to do! But when it comes to Ted Lasso characters it's probably the type of thing that I personally am most likely to view as OOC.
That being said, I've read and loved portrayals of Rebecca as someone who "mothers" Henry, Jelka, Nora, Phoebe, biological kids, adopted kids, etc., as well as stories that wrestle very explicitly with her NOT being a mother whatsoever. I just balk at this idea that marriage and pregnancy are what allows Rebecca to get what she """""deserves and that canon was too cowardly to give us""""" (read: what we as viewers "deserve"); it feels very ironic for motherhood to subsume and soften Rebecca after she spent three seasons of a television show clawing her way out of the Rupert Effect and becoming a self-actualized human capable of many types of love on her own terms.
