#copperplatebeech

[copperplatebeech]

20 questions for fic writers 2023

Thanks to @totallysilvergirl and @calaisreno for tagging me!.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

195, currently in a holding pattern as yet another PWP one-shot turns into an actual narrative.

2. What’s your total A03 word count?

918,179. A lot of those nearly 200 fics are short.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Primarily Good Omens, with a decent excursion into light Johnlock stories (crossover and straight-up), Star Trek (DS9 and TNG), and Doctor Who (also all crossovers with GO), and a smattering more of GO crossovers ranging from Hellblazer to the Desert Peach.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Looking Good, Mr. Fell, which took off after what must have been a rec on some very active GO social media group (no idea where, I got nothin’); Funny Old World, surprisingly – it’s the Hellblazer crossover, in which Aziraphale walks out of John Constantine’s summoning circle and reads him the riot act; The Rake, a festival of Victorian smut (Aziraphale took up a hobby in the 1800s) written to offset the misery post-s2; Binary Stars, my first, brief Sherlock/GO mashup (thanks to Silvergirl for the encouragement); and Never Letting You Go, an early and cautious venture into AzCrow dom/sub experiments.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

As quickly as I can. I love comments. Comments make me write. Comments make me think. Comments make me a better, more responsible and sensitive writer. Comments lift me up and I want to respond with thanks. Sometimes I only can think of a clever series of emojis, especially if the comment is brief, but I cherish each one.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably The Infinite Which Was Hid, which drew anguished cries for an ultimate resolution, something for which I’m a pushover.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I lean to happy endings, but I’m thinking one of my AUs – I’d guess A Business Arrangement, if only because the narrative arc in that one was so fraught.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Only if you count the perplexing people who bookmark a fic only to leave a derogatory note on the bookmark, something I’ve come across a few times. (Just assume authors will look at their bookmarks; when I started on AO3, checking the other bookmarks in the profiles of readers who'd bookmarked me was my first way to hunt up other fic I’d probably like.) I mean, unless you consider yourself a widely consulted resource with a duty to warn a horde of followers away from a fic that you judge bad enough to precipitate anaphylaxis, why would you keep a bookmark on a fic you didn't like? I don’t care now, but the first time it happened, I was pretty new on AO3 and it really screwed my day in the caboose. Don’t do this.

9. Do you write smut?

Does a hobby horse have a wooden hiney? Genre-wise, I’m all over the place – I write crack, comedy, angst, fluff, romance, drama, and yes, whole-hogging smut (sometimes blended with one or more of these). Post-Good Omens Season 2, I've been consciously consoling myself with a rash of extremely smutty fic. It’s not always necessary to depict explicit sex in the story you want to tell -- I've written fic in which the pairing could be read as ace -- but it’s incredibly freeing to write stories in which the sex says a lot about the people who are having it and the way they connect. And, you know, a little heat is good for the blood.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Love them (see question #4). Get a bang out of making the connections – the parallels of pairings, the overlap of character traits – things like juxtaposing Crowley’s and Julian Bashir’s James Bond fanboying in Our Man Crowley, and TV Crowley’s eerie resemblance to the vampire Cassidy (Preacher comics) in Until The End Of The World. I’ve also done crossovers of GO with Star Trek Next Gen, Hellblazer and The Desert Peach as mentioned above, Sandman (comic), Doctor Who, and Torchwood, and for a bravura turn, Richard Wagner’s Meistersinger.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

One into Russian, and now I can’t remember which, and my eyes, with six distinct ocular ailments, are too much of a wreck to go looking.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A few with my beta bestie @twilightcitysky – we have a little dump of short, dirty, dialogue-heavy GO one-shots under the series title Naughty Bits.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Aziraphale/Crowley, no contest.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Let’s not go there. It would either hex the work(s) or result in my spending three or four weeks in the near future suddenly seized with the drive to complete it to the detriment of all other responsibilities.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Voice and tone most of all. I found somewhat to my surprise that I had a knack for making the Good Omens characters sound plausibly like their screen selves, so that readers comment they don’t need to be told who’s speaking, and also for giving an OC narrator a unique voice, like Roger the Demon in Immigrant Blues or Major Tom, Crowley’s Rat Commander. I love tracking the cadence and vocabulary choices that make up a person’s characteristic patterns of speech, and using paragraph construction and word choice to set a mood.

Sensory imagery is another thing I get comments about – scents, tactile sensations and so on.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

A tendency to write incredibly long sentences full of dependent clauses. Sometimes I get to the end of one of these monsters and realize it’s covered half a page. This is why I edit repeatedly and obsessively, in hopes that this is the only time you’ll ever find out about it. As a corollary, occasionally I realize I have written a phrase like “precipitate anaphylaxis” and had probably better use more transparent wording (see #8, above).

I also wish I were better at writing “case fic,” because I’ve thoroughly enjoyed playing in the Johnlock sandbox, but I’ve never been good at writing a whodunit-type plot.

I’m sure there are others but I’m too close to see them.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I have done it, with all the unwarranted assurance and bravado of someone who learned her German and Italian from opera and art song, and am infinitely grateful to readers whose native language it is for pulling me aside to correct a solecism. I’ve asked at least one of these good people for help in the future.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The Man From UNCLE. While it was still airing – I am Old. I shared the fics – we called them “compos” – with other devotees of the show; we passed our ballpoint-cursive productions around the school cafeteria, and had no idea anyone else anywhere ever did the same kind of thing.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I swear, I can’t really pick but Lift Me Up, O Lord comes close. I put so much of my experience as a gym rat into it.

Tagging @twilightcitysky, @ngkiscool, @hasturswig, @ukcalico, @feraltuxedo (with, of course, no pressure).

[totallysilvergirl]

Perfect Good Omens snow fic: Midwinter Spring by CopperBeech

https://archiveofourown.org/works/28243977 

In a hard and disorienting year, fic has been a salvation. Today brought many beauties, and much balm to the heart.

Midwinter Spring (2839 words) is a perfect fic. It’s snowed on London, and Crowley comes to the bookshop to challenge Aziraphale to a snowball fight. It becomes a rowdy epic snow battle, the only way they could ever fight each other, and both of them cheat and both of them win but Crowley claims a prize that changes everything.

Aziraphale calls Crowley “utter menace,” “sirrah,” “varlet,” “absolute marauder” and “you ridiculous thing,” and I am here for that.

Joy, laughter (so much laughter), play, banter, beauty, love, hope, confession, teasing, romance, second chances, and "the frolic architecture of the snow." Thank you, Copper. Happy Christmas.

samples:

"Crowley’s grin was huge, Crowley’s hair was a flying cloud of red sulphur in the squint-bright sunlight, Crowley’s cheeks were wind-chapped pink under his glinting sunglasses. His hands were stuffed in the pockets of his woollen pea coat, but his collar was open." <strong>I want to see this filmed. SO vivid.</strong>

and

“Yield. I have the advantage.” Crowley, pink and panting, looked positively boyish, eyes glinting like Baltic amber over his half-dislodged sunglasses. Snow-spangled, soaked hair stuck to his forehead.

“We are tied, shot for shot. And I see no reason why this contest should devolve into an inelegant grapple. Let me rise peaceably and I will forbear to retaliate. You know an angel cannot lie.”

“Nah, just fib a little – “

“I do not fib – “

“’I must’ve mislaid it’ – “ Of course he'd been listening, the scapegrace.

Do please reblog, because this fic does better than clear up your skin and water your crops--it heats up your cocoa and puts a smile in your heart

@podfixx @charlottemadison42 @otter-von-bismarck @hubblegleeflower @rainydaydecaf @goodomenssource @goodomensblog @goodomensfanfic @a-liddle-bit-of-tenda @thewhippedcreamhand @saki101 @sgam76 @macgyvershe @indieninja92​  @meetinginsamarra​ @sw70sw70​ @copperplatebeech​

[uniasus]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

fic rec! Ineffable Husbands. 3K

Summary: It was Crowley who was meant to be bad -- well, Aziraphale supposed he was, but in the way the Artful Dodger or Scaramouche was bad: a little swagger, a little deviousness. He glued coins to pavements, for Heaven’s sake. (Or not.) He brought down the networks of those annoying MyPhones that made everyone isolated in crowds and jangled in the theatre at critical moments. If Crowley was evil, Aziraphale wasn’t sure he wanted to be good any more.

Comments: This is a great character study of Aziraphale, with a bit of his analysis of Crowley thrown in. First confessions, Crowley learning to accept being called ‘nice’, this is just a lovely, lovely piece.

[ineffablefool]

copperplatebeech replied to your post “oh, okay, it was in my master draft still, it just... wasn’t in the...”

I hate it when that happens. WP programs be like "you wanted to remove that one redundant word but I take you whole graf now ha ha ha"

“I know you wanted to turn this text into a bullet, but have you considered changing the font size of every single paragraph instead?”

We all mocked Clippy one too many times.  Now his angry ghost will haunt our documents forever.

[copperplatebeech]

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, where I showcase older fic (primarily, but not always, from the Good Omens show fandom) -- because in active fandoms, thousands of fics a year drift behind our little gondola like blossoms on the water, and even a well-received one can elude a newcomer. (And yes, every so often I’ll toss out something I wrote before I had traction, ‘cause I can.)

This week features a special kind of older fic – the fic that, for whatever reason, despite enthusiastic reader engagement, remains unfinished. There’s an evergreen Tumblr post which occasionally rotates through my timeline, which celebrates reading and commenting on fics which could be incomplete for all sorts of reasons: the plot arc ran aground, life got in the way (work, personal difficulties, health problems), other projects beckoned – essentially it’s none of our business why a fic wasn’t finished. Nor is the point to badger the writer into updating. Simply, every fic is a labor of love, and even a long-unfinished fic can bring joy and deserve a comment of thanks.

It was hard to pick just a few of the fics I’ve loved that haven’t updated in a few years, but here’s today’s shortlist. There’ll likely be more installments, reflecting all my favorite fandoms.

NaroMoreau ( @naromoreau ) has a long ficliography and a wide readership, notably for some emotionally opulent priest AUs. But the work I never got over is the Roman Britain AU and safe, for aye, may my darling be, conceived in collaboration with @gayforgoodomens. Aziraphale is a centurion whose heart isn’t in fighting; Crowley is a native Briton whose people suffer under Roman occupation; you know what kind of thing is going to happen. It’s got all the emotional intensity of the priest fics, with a sense of what it means to live in occupied territory and the moral debt of being an occupier. The last posted chapter (fourth of a projected ten) closed in October of 2021 at a moment of love and danger:

"I thought I had lost you," Aziraphale grates out, leaden and tight. "I thought–"

But Crowley cuts him off with a kiss, holding him while Aziraphale falls into the warmth of his neck. "You didn't, you didn't, I’m here, everything 's fine, see? We're fine, we're fine."

Outside, the clamor doesn't fade, but in the hemmed-in space of the room, with Aziraphale's hands tightly wrapped around his waist, Crowley hopes the oncoming storm won't be strong enough to drown them.

Gorgeous illustrations by @gayforgoodomens.

–

In my very first days on AO3, when my plan was to write ACD Holmes fic (you noticed my name, yes?) – I encountered Stavia Scott Grayson’s monumental work Since First I Saw Your Face, which, after building through nearly 400K words over five years, last updated in April 2021. The slowest of slow Holmes-Watson burns, it captured me with its period voice and emotional immediacy. Holmes, queer and deeply closeted, struggles with his growing attraction to Watson and his fear of being despised as an ‘invert;’ the length of the narrative is leavened by alternating time periods and shifts between third person and Holmes’ voice. There’s deep knowledge of Victoriana, and virtuoso stitching to the best guessed timeline of the canonical Doyle stories.

For those who aren’t prepared to take on a work of this size, the author’s profile includes a handful of other, briefer Holmesian works written with the same erudition and grace.

–

Lest They Be Flatmates in Disguise, by The Old Aquarian  [@darkpurpledawn on Tumblr] embodies a trope I’ve grown fond of – the fanfic that is neither AU as such nor straight-up crack, but rings some changes on the canonical premises of Good Omens. 

    Aziraphale and Crowley, a recently demoted angel and a demon taking a pay cut, have never met. In their scrambles to get an affordable place to live, each of them looks online for a human flatmate. Crowley responds to an insomniac bon vivant and finds himself living with a stuffy, bossy homebody. Aziraphale writes back to a tidy minimalist and ends up with an obnoxious houseplant hoarder and his six pet snakes.

    As they each try to conceal their supernatural abilities, flat-sharing turns to fighting, fighting turns to flirting, and flirting turns to...

    Well, what Aziraphale and Crowley don’t know won’t hurt them, right?

 Last updated December 2020.

What’s a fic that you remember and cherish, or rejoice to have newly discovered, even though it was never finished? Drop a link in the replies or in a reblog!

I write mainly Good Omens, along with occasional ventures into Sherlock Holmes (BBC and ACD), Doctor Who, Sandman and other DC Vertigo titles, and my first love, Star Trek. Find my fic here on AO3  

@stellasapiente @mossyorchid @tybalttrouble @kanna-ophelia @twilightcitysky @hasturswig @bowser14456 @siriosa @totallysilvergirl @brokenanddancing @scrapbramble @mirkwood-spider-express @echosilverwolf @ngkiscool @amberly333 @sgam76 @thundercrackfic @ao3cassandraic @ashfae @princess-spock @has-the-moon-lost-her-memory @chubsthehamster @sarahthecoat @mother-entropy @cumaeansibyl @valquainton @joyandotherstories @karl-loves-olivia @cassandralie @kookaburra-laugh @naefelldaurk @feraltuxedo @calaisreno @maggiehoneybite @laurashapiro-noreally  @lady-sam1345 @juliette-tango @tyrograph  @it-aint-my-darkest-day @pyracantha14 @dragonnan @flantasticclaude @noodlefrog-omens @thistaletasty

[copperplatebeech]

I have a feeling picking 5 might be an impossible challenge for you, but I'd love to know whether you have favourites.

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, consider replying with your favorite five fics that you've written. Then pass on to at least five other writers if you feel moved to! spread the self-love ❤

@somewhere-in-wales thanks! I've done a few of these five fic lists, so today I'm going by category (categories picked slightly at random):

AUs: I have a handful of these and my favorite varies by the day, but today it's Lift Me Up, O Lord, in which Crowley's a fading marathon runner and Aziraphale an Masters' Olympic lifter, both with difficult families and abortive romantic histories. Strong!Aziraphale moments in plenty.

Fics that I wish got more love: That Bonny Road, a Sandman crossover in which the ladies get to shine. Missing Warlock, missing Aziraphale, girls' road trip in the Bentley.

Johnlock fics: I sometimes day-trip in that beautiful, welcoming fandom, but since most of my work's in Good Omens, I'm going with my first full length fic there, another crossover: The Adventure Of The Apocalypse. Two odd customers consult Sherlock about a missing boy, and we get the events of Good Omens from John's POV.

Outsider POV: The Cupbearer, the perspective of the maitre d' at the Ritz -- a dignified Iranian ex-pat who's had walk-ons in several of my fics -- on the events surrounding No-mageddon and the two regulars who fascinate him.

Fluff: Guys and Dolls, in which Aziraphale acquires a red-haired doll during his long estrangement from Crowley. Lots of pining, too, but a very very fluffy ending.

Thanks for the ask! Tagging @hasturswig (HolRose on AO3), who's currently posting a gorgeous music through-the-centuries fic, @twilightcitysky my loyal beta who will return to the surface one day (we're all waiting for the end of the post-s2 fic Lucid -- it's a treat), @feraltuxedo whose AUs are always a delight.

[copperplatebeech]

ART by @clytemenestras for my Halloween fic Ordinary Mischief, latest in the Domestic Relations series (Good Omens - Sherlock crossover), in which it is once again demonstrated that John Watson and “Uncle Anthony” cannot be left unsupervised. Thanks to Constant Reader @siriosa, who wanted to see the boys in their “sexy Archangel” costumes!

“Here, you wrap the muffler like that – lavender en’t a bad colour on you – ”

“What am I doing with a toy trumpet?”

“ – walk like you’ve got a stick up your arse, and you’ve got it. C’mon, showtime.”  

[copperplatebeech]

Click here to hear PODFIC OF MY FIC ! @semperfiona reads my short fic “An Die Musik” (you can find the text version here), beautifully voiced and edited with soundtrack. Eleven minutes long. What a wonderful surprise!