sophinisba | A poll!

My answers are full of contradictions, but that is all right, yes? Because sometimes that happens! One more thing I like about writing het fic, because I do like writing it - is that it helps me explore hobbits more and their society as well! Or at least what I like to picture as hobbit society. My Shire would be a very nice place to live.

*kiss* I am glad you posted this.

I am glad I posted it it too! I have thought about it lots and my answers have been all over the map, but I just checked the ones I'm feeling today when I filled it out.

I like what you say about hobbit society too. I think in general your fics about the minor characters are a great way of thinking about how a society could be organized differently (and better omg) than ours, and that is a big part of what is fun about fanfic.

*hugs*

I strongly agree with the statement, "I like to read about characters and relationships, don't care what gender those characters are." When I get interested in a pairing, it's because I find something about that relationship honest and magnetic. Statistically, I tend to prefer het and femslash to traditional slash, but that's mostly because the potential/popular gay male couples in a lot of my preferred fandoms don't make much sense to me and I don't enjoy fic when I feel as though the author just made up the pairing out of thin air without anything to back it up but their own desires. IMHO, people who get all "omg teh icky girls!!1" about het are being just as foolish and immature as people who get all "omg teh icky gayz0rz!!1" about slash.

P.S. - If I'm not mistaken, in this journal you once mentioned an interest/kink for stories in which everyone thinks the main character is going crazy even if he's really the only sane one, though he may begin to doubt that too. If that is the case, go watch Farscape right this very instant, because that is essentially ALL that the main character ever does.

Please tell me more about this Farscape. Is it a movie, TV show? Is the main character goodlooking omg?

It is so much to do with the characters. When I've dabbled in Joss Whedon fandoms I've been more interested in femslash and het because those are the characters and relationships I care about the most. On the other hand, if I'm looking for porn it pretty much has to be slash, just because, and that makes LotR a good fandom for me. So many goodlooking males who are also interesting characters and love each other!

It is a sadly cancelled sci-fi TV show/general mindfuck from Australia, with muppets. Here is a picture of John Crichton, the main character of Farscape, so that you may judge his hotness for yourself:

(http://photobucket.com/)

I have most of the series in various formats if you'd like me to hook you up.

That last question was hard. I have written some het fic where it was appropriate to the story and characters involved, but I haven't posted much of it. Mostly because I lost the muse and the story died incomplete, sometimes because either my premise or OCs were utterly crap.

I like het just as much as slash usually. So long as someone's gettin' a little nookie and its reasonably well written, I'm usually happy. Oh heck, I'm happy if there's nookie, no nookie, fluff, angst, agony, despair, giddy pointless happines, adventure, heroics, boredom, domesticity, cannon, AU, total crack fic, romance, drama, bonkers humor, heart-breaking character death...yeah, I'm easy to please.

See, I am not like that at all. I am a creature of moods and there are times when I need fluff but other times when I need to go very dark, and I much more often crave slash than het. It's a frustration I have with LJ sometimes too. Like, when I was lurking I would spend almost all my time reading fics and I would follow links based on the mood I was in, read a lot of old stuff. I'm much happier now of course because I like interacting with my friends, but it is kind of weird for me, the pressure to keep up with the *latest* thing my friend's put up even though there's some older fic of hers that I've never read that would better suit my needs.

I don't mean to complain! I mean, obviously it's all up to me and I can go read the other thing if I want to. It's just... LJ is weird, that's all.

Oh, I mood surf too! Can't be reading wee!hobbit fluff when I'm in the mood for filthy C/Z smut *eg*. And I'll pic a slash over a het 99% of the time. But the het I have read has been very good, so I try not to discount it just on that basis. I agree with you though, LJ does tend to drive my choices at times.

I woke up in the middle of the night one time with this overwhelming urge to read hardcore Snape/Hermione smut, and I didn't even know where to look, I'm so out of the loop as far as het goes. The craving only comes on me every once in a while but when it does it can be *strong*.

I take it that this poll is about fanfics? Because I do read het fics. A lot. But in novels. The het fanfics that I've read so far are the ones written by you only, so far.

As for writing it, I'd love to write Aragorn/Arwen one of these days but I neither have the talent nor the time to do so!

Aragorn/Arwen is a beautiful story in the books but I've never had that much desire to read that pairing, I guess 'cause I'm just not that attracted to her as played by Liv. Faramir/Eowyn would be more my kind of thing. I did read this really beautiful Merry/Eowyn fic a few months ago: The Last Night in the World by

mollyringwraith

In the first part, I would say "only" canon couples, but I would say "especially" canon couples. Or OCs. I don't particularly like to see a canon character in a relationship that is non-canon. And it would be "Mostly, I prefer gen fic", because I will occasionally read het or slash if it isn't too explicit, and if I can trust the author to treat the characters with respect.

As to my reasons--I just prefer gen, mostly. Aside from it being closer to canon, I find that I prefer to examine relationships outside of sexual dynamics. While I have a big soft spot for canon couples, I don't need to know what they do in bed. And really, I like seeing friendships and family relationships more than sexual ones.

And while I've written a bit of romance, I don't think I've ever written anything that qualifies as het. (In my opinion, het is more about sex than romance.)

And the het or slash I do like to read is more about love than sex.

I meant I would NOT say "only" canon couples, LOL! *facepalm*

Hee, none of the options will be quite right for as complicated a thing as this, but it I am glad you filled out the poll. :)

I think the love between the characters is what will make this always the best fandom for me, even though I'm not as much of a Tolkien fanatic as a lot of my friends. The hobbits and the members of the Fellowship really do care for each other, and that comes through in gen, het, and slash fics and also, I think, when we're at our best, in the way we relate to each other as fans.

I've never written hobbit het fic and have no intention of even trying -I just don't see the vibe between any but male hobbits! As for RP het fic haven't done that either. Original fiction yes.

Yeah, there are just not a lot of female hobbits who appear in the story, so it makes sense that most people don't choose to read or write about them. I'm doing a little bit with it now (though not so much with the sex) and I'm having a good time, but there's so much fun to be had with our main characters that most of the time I do stick with them.

These are a little hard to answer though in your second question, you actually had the *perfect* answer and I don't think I've ever seen that before :-)

I think for myself slash has been a phase and I find myself less and less interested in both reading it and writing it. As for writing, I think it's more far-reaching in that at least at for now I'm not interested in writing fanfic at all. And any of the writing I have done lately (last several months), while OF, has been het. So I see a movement away from slash to het.

Though I've never been terribly interested in het in LOTR fic. That's why the answer you provided for the second question seemed so right to me.

The answer about there not being enough female characters in canon is one that I came up for myself pretty much as soon as I found LotR slash, which was my first experience with any fandom at all. I've been writing a little bit of Diamond and a *lot* of Rosie (and some Marigold) fic lately and I have a great time writing it, but it's not much like doing slash or even gen with the main characters at all. It feels more like a cross between doing fanfic and original fic. Then it's a little hard putting the stuff out in the world because, even though I know rationally that very few people are going to go around looking for Diamond fics or Rosie fics or Stokely fics, *I've* put my heart into them and fallen in love with the characters, and I want other people to care...

Ah well, same old story, you know how it is. Good luck tomorrow, dear.

To answer the last question about Het fics. When I first started writing I wrote many Gen stories (in another fandom) but in the end I found them to be to defining and once you write one it is all the same. I have written some het relationships. As my Return series (other than Frodo/Sam, the rest of the characters are het...and I stuck to canon with Aragorn and Arwen). But to be honest, the Het scene is not really interesting to me. and only now have started to delve a little deeper into it as I write the Immortal series. I don't think I shall ever leave the main stream of slash but, I suppose it is always good to branch out and try other things. Hope that helps. A little.

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