FanFic Ask Me Anything ~*~ Version 3.0 Daily Questions (See list on pg 164 or 1)

*Skids into the thread, out of breath, to squeeze in her last answers before we get started on Space_Wolf *

It's a little bit of both and it all happens a bit haphazardly, to be honest. The phonetics and musicality of a name are important to me (e.g. in Greek I'd never pick "Eusebia" as a name for a character, because it's pronounced "Efseveea" and I find it just sounds awful) but I also often choose names that have a meaning and that "answer" each other. For instance when making up names for Ayesha's adoptive parents, I wanted something that would refer to Arabic because I wanted it to evoke her birth parents' name and therefore be something familiar and reassuring for her. I first picked Yakooboo because there was going to be a sub-plot about how he deceived his elder brother. Then I dropped that sub-plot, but I had already chosen Messiri for the adoptive mother because 1. "maseer" means "predestination" in Arabic, 2. the number of syllables and the main stress on the second syllable match Yakooboo; so I ended up keeping Yakooboo anyway. Does it make sense?

I never used the backwards-name trick, but everything I had written until two months ago was original fiction taking place in Greece, so there was no need. I'm still making up starwarsy names, so I might use it in the future if the phonetics are right.

I'm terribly ignorant about that All I know about that mythos is through works that were influenced by it, like Tolkien's universe or a Belgian fantasy comics series called Thorgal, but I can't tell apart what comes from Norse mythology from what is Celtic or Germanic, so I'll shut up before I make a fool of myself.

I do! I started watching the original series as soon as we had a TV in the house, and I thought and still think that it's a great SF universe. I also really liked Spock The thing is that I'm 20 years late on Star Trek. The last bit of that franchise I watched was Generations in 1994. I have a whole pile of DVDs waiting for me, but every time I'm about to launch into a Star Trek marathon something happens and I end up doing something else. I think the universe or the Klingons or the Sith or Murphy's law in general are conspiring against me

I was invited on a radio station a few years back to talk about a collection of short stories for children I had contributed to. I was excited like a five-year-old in the studio with all the microphones and the fancy equipment, but I didn't ask too many questions either. I don't want to demystify the magic of sound travelling on the waves

Okay, I got that wrong. By "first movie" I meant the 2010 abomination, as opposed to the sequel which is actually called Wrath of the Titans. I'll watch the 1981 film and will tell you about it in the social thread



Thanks for the questions, everyone. Space_Wolf good luck! I'll be back with questions for you soon

 

What process do you go through in developing OCs and plot-outlining?

 

If you were to be stranded on a jungle planet in the GFFA, what are the three items you would like to have with you?

 

I've never heard of the program, unfortunately. I've always lived in the UK and I can't recall ever seeing it on and we don't get everything over here.

What fandom(s) are you most involved with as a reader/writer?

Currently, I am only doing Tolkien.

I did used to be very active with Star Wars fan fiction before I went to uni, and I would like to get back into it one day. I mainly wrote original characters and at one point had a fan site for stories. It is not up properly at the moment, though because while I was at uni, I had lots of problems with my host changing packages and I've had to move it around several times. I don't have the time to recode it at the moment, but I do hope to get it up again one day. I like doing the web design aspects of it.

As a teenager, I did write animal stories based off Watership Down and Animals of Farthing Wood. I did quite enjoy writing those and did art work for them, but as they were of bad quality, I would never have let people read them. However, if I hadn't worked on those, I don't think that I would be writing stories now.

I've always written stories of some kind or another.I've even tried working on some original work based on fantasy but I lost most of it when my first computer's hard drive was wiped (by accident) by me. Somehow I'd ended up overwriting Windows. It's a shame because I loved writing those stories.

As for other fandoms, I've never really tried it. I loved Star Wars enough to want to write in it and most of my inspiration came from the stories which Micheal A. Stackpole wrote, and the short story anthologies which were published when Bantam did them. I think the material from those days is the best in the EU. I am currently reading Kenobi and I am impressed by the quality of the writing in it because it has suffered in some of the more recent works.

To be honest, I've never really paid much attention to what the characters wear. I'm not interested in fashion as a rule. I think Padme's dresses, espeaically in Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith would qualify as being the best outfits, though. I liked the one she wears in the Meadow scene with Anakin best. As for the men, I couldn't really say.

[I'll get round to the others tomorrow.]

 

What comics do you read?

You read Thorgal?! I should have asked you what comics you read.
For your information so is Thorgal not the best source of information when it comes to nordic mythology, for example so have they confused Freya and Frigg at least once. What I would recommend is the Danish comic Valhalla if you could get your hands on it.

 

Oooh, a Tolkien lover! Did you read all of Tolkien's works, up to and including the 12 volumes of "Middle Earth"? Which is your favourite Tolkien book other than LOTR? Which is your favourite LOTR novel?

 

Woot! Of all the Races of Middle-Earth & beyond, which draws your interest the most and why? !!

 

What's your favorite scene from the LotR/Hobbit books or movies?

 

What do you want to see in episode VII?

 

Does music inspire or otherwise impact your writing? What music style(s) do you favor?

 

Favourite non-human species and why?

Favourite SW culture and why?

 

I've not been around the boards much recently and I've only posted in my own story thread. (A bit bad of me, I know.) I share the computer with my partner and he needs it for his research into World War II history. When he's not using it, I'm on twitter rping on Middle-earth stuff there. That came about because I wanted to do some fantasy rping again from when I was at uni and I would have liked to have done that on here, but I couldn't get my head around a lot of the plots, character sheets, etc. I almost started my own but as I'd never hosted one before, I didn't think it was a good idea.

Now on to the genre question:

I don't stick to any particular genre at all. I've tried to do everything at least once, or would like to. Sometimes I blend genres together in one story as I think it makes it more interesting for different people to read when you do that. When you read one of the later Harry Potter books for example, there are lots of sub-genres with in it, espeaically romance and some readers will keep on reading the book just to see if a certain a pair of characters get together or not! That happened to me a lot while reading the X-wing novels, particularly the ones which Michael Stackpole wrote. One of the best things about science fiction and fantasy is that the story you write can be almost anything that you want it to be with regards to genre. The only difference between sci-fi and fantasy and mainstream fiction is the back drop that it is set in. Most literature critics seem to have a dim view of science fiction and fantasy and down grade it, which they shouldn't do at all. You can explore themes and issues which occur in society and explore it without (hopefully) being biased for or discriminatory against any race or group of people and you can explore difficulties they encounter without (hopefully) offending people. Because of this, I consider it to be the highest form of literature that there is, when it is done well enough.

In Star Wars, I love the aliens and when I write Star Wars fan fic, my main characters almost always tend to be non-human. I used to read books were animals were the central characters when I was younger - I don't these days because they aren't that many around any more - and I am a zoologist so I love linking actual animal behaviour and biology with alien species. I like to try and understand the way animals may think and view the world and get it as accurately as I can make it, but it probably isn't any where near close to reality.

It is quite random! I make up ocs as I go along, usually, and I don't have any idea what I am going to come up with when I begin a story. I'm not sure if it is the best way of doing it, or if I should plan it. I usually have a good idea of the main players of a story before I start it, but not with those characters which come and go as the story progresses. Sometimes I come up with an oc which should have been a one off for a scene and end up developing him or her.

As for the plot-outlining, I sometimes have an idea of what I want to happen in a story when I first start writing it and so I loosely outline those when it comes to the main plot. When it comes to minor side plots, those are random and unplanned and I make them up as I go. The story I am currently working on really has no plot to it at all, other than being based on the timeline that Tolkien came up with. I think it's more fun sometimes if I surprise myself with what I come up with and diaries are meant to be quite random. If I was doing a normal story, the plot of it would be more certain from the beginning.

 

What is your zoology focus?

 

I'm going to answer these on the basis of what I find is easiest for me to answer first! Some of my responses might be a bit long-winded, but I guess that is the nature of being a fan of epic fantasy. (It's probably a good thing that people aren't allowed to write Game of Thrones fan fic...)

Whoa... If I talk too much about that, I might give the plot of the story away and spoil it!

I had this thought of Fili and Kili saving a hobbit lass from some trouble while she was out looking after her animals. Perhaps they were hunting with some hounds, and came across the trouble. That is how it all started. I also came up with this idea long before I knew about the romance between Kili and Tauriel developing in Desolation of Smaug. One of them was going to fall for her, of course and then the idea was that they had to be parted from each other when the brothers went to reclaim Erebor. It was a sad tale, because we know the ending of that and I was then going to have Bilbo or Ori visit her to tell her what had happened to them. Initially, I wasn't even going to have any of the other characters involved and that it was going to be a secret kept from their Uncle and the other dwarves, apart from that they told Ori and Bilbo about it - Bilbo because he was an outsider and they spend a lot of time together in the early part of the first film. Because Ori is very close to their age, I think they would have spent quite a bit of time with each other and became friends. I was inspired partly because of the old fan girl curse... and because I wondered what dwarves would do if they longed for a lady but couldn't find one among their own kind because there aren't that many of them. I didn't think elf and human women were suitable because of the height, and as there are many hobbit women, I thought that would be a good place to start.

I don't know if people have noticed this or not in my writing, but I am a fan of the James Herriot books and I have this notion that hobbits are very much like the generation of country folk who lived in the 1930's - 1950's in places like Yorkshire and Derbyshire. There are even some aspects of the village which I grew up in and in which many of my older relatives (sadly deceased now) have in common with The Shire and Hobbiton. Tolkien lived at the southern end of the Peak District at sometime in his life and he and C.S. Lewis went on many walking holidays together, and may have done so in the Peak District. People often comment that when they visit the Peak District how much it resembles Middle-earth! This is probably because it most likely is! There is a scene in one of the All Creatures Great and Small episodes just around before or at the outbreak of World War II where a farmer's sons are going off to fight in it - it reminds me very much of Frodo, Sam, Merry and Pippin departing with the Ring that I think hobbits represent the country folk of that era. There is a lot of talk about Lord of the Rings being about World War II and I do think in some ways that is the case, at least when it comes to the fear, worry and loss that people of that generation must have suffered, and we mustn't forget that Tolkien saw World War I as well, and the failure of Isilidor to destroy the Ring in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men, which leads up to the War of the Ring could be represented in LOTR. I am not a literature expert at all, but this is my insight into it. Lord of the Rings may not be directly about the World Wars, but it must have influenced Tolkien’s mind-set and we do know about C.S Lewis being influenced by them with Narnia.

The dialect I use is based on Derbyshire and Yorkshire dialect and I thought it would be fun to write it considering that it is dying out now, was used a lot by people of Tolkien's generation (at least around the area where I live), is based on Old Norse and Old Danish and because Tolkien loved language and liked playing around with it.

 

What fictional culture would you like to see used as an inspiration in SW and how?

What real life culture would you like to see used as an inspiration in SW and how?

 

I will get round to all questions but I need to be given the time to answer the ones properly. Could we slow down a bit? Thanks.

I sometimes read X-Men, Spider-man and Thor comics. I also read Harry Dresden graphic novels when I can get them, and Mercy Thompson (an urban fantasy series about a coyote shifter.) I did once read Werewolf By Night, which I liked when I was going through a phase of reading stuff about werewolves and similar supernatral creatures. I don't really read that many though. There is a vast number of them. I can't keep up with what is out there and I find it difficult to get hold of them anyway. I don't like it when you're missing a part of a series because you miss important parts of the story that way. I have some Star Trek comics, too which I was lucky enough to find once. I tend to keep hold of books and comics and I don't have a lot of space to keep things these days because our flat is way too small for us, so I have to be careful about what I buy and how much I buy when it concerns things like comics.

I find it difficult to read Histories of Middle Earth, Unfinished Tales and the Silmarillion. I've only read Children Of Hurin from cover to cover when it comes to books which aren't the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. I treat them more as reference when I need to look something up more than anything else. Part of it is because much of the material in the appears to be unfinished and not fleshed out enough. I find it quite difficult to concentrate on reading them. They aren't badly written, though, far from it, but I think they could have been made more readable than they are and I wish that Tolkien had been able to make proper stories out of them. There are parts of the Children Of Hurin that are quite patchy and needed to have been expanded on.

I think The Hobbit has to be my favourite non-LOTR book, but there's not a lot of choice though if you look at all the other Middle-Earth books as being mainly for reference. I do have a copy of the Adventures of Tom Bombadil, which I came across in a charity bookshop. It's out of print, now, unfortunately.

In the Lord of the Rings, there are too many scenes to choose from which are superb, and I think even that doesn't describe it well enough! I like the interaction between the hobbits best, and anything where Gandalf is giving out his wisdom. In the Hobbit, I like anything involving the dwarves which is funny, so the party at Bag End, the Trolls and the scenes in Rivendell are my favorites. I find Kili mistaking an elf man for a woman, and the scene involving the fountain to be the funniest though, and there's Ori complaining about not liking salad... Of the dwarves, I think Fili, Kili, Ori, Thorin and Bofur are the ones I like the most.

I think the dwarves have to be my favourites at the moment. When I first read the Hobbit, I wasn't really that interested in them, but since the film came out, I have grown to like them immensely, probably more than any other race in Tolkein's work. People may criticize Peter Jackson a lot because of the changes he made to the Hobbit in his films, but for the most part, I don't mind them because he's given the characters a depth which they didn't have before. I think that the Hobbit films are a good tribute to Tolkien's world. I like them because I find that out of all the races of Middle-earth (apart from Hobbits, of course, they are a close second, but it is really difficult for me to choose between the two of them, really.) to be the ones which I can most relate to, espeaically because there is a lot of Viking history where I live, and as they are miners, I have an affection for them because mining was once a common industry in the area where I live. It is sadly now a non-existent industry because they were all closed in the 1980's thanks to Margret Thatcher. I like dwarves because no matter what has been done to them, they are not beaten, they fight back and they look after each other. He's done to dwarves what Joss Wheedon and Anne Rice did for vampires, and Kelley Armstrong, Patricia Briggs and Carrie Vaughn have done for werewolves and shifters.

I have also developed an interest in the Ainur, which when I first started work on this I knew nothing about at all. I don't relate well to elves, so although I know that they are favourites of many people on here, they don't do a lot for me. I think it's because they are portrayed as "being too perfect" and the way Legolas and Tauriel leap around the place in DOS really annoys me. I might have a different opinion of them if I knew more about the Silmarillion but I can only go on by what I know.

I also like the fact that they were created in rebellion so to speak by Mahal. (I don't usually use Aule for him.) In regards to Mahal, I love the fact that all of the Ainur which are related to the Earth and life are all somehow connected to him. I also think that it is genius of Tolkein to make Mahal's children be in conflict with the "children" of his wife. In the twitter rp, I find interesting to play a dwarf who is a bit of a maverick in that she loves Yavanna's gifts more than those of Mahal, but she still loves his creations. I think of Mahal as the scientist of the Ainur, creating all the molecules that exist and having the nerve to want to create life as well, even though he shouldn't. I think the point in putting Mahal and Yavanna together is to show that science and nature, though sometimes in conflict each other, need each other to exist. It is unfortunate that the two Maia that work for Mahal go bad, but I think the point in that is to show that science can sometimes be corrupted and abused if applied wrongly. Of all the wizards, though, Radagast is my favourite, and he is in the service of Yavanna.

This final bit is my head cannon now, not anything found in the books, but I have this notion that dwarf women are more fierce and aggressive than the men are and that many of them were killed when Smaug attacked Erebor and during the traveling and the War with the Orcs. They aren't mentioned in the history of dwarves often because the men are ashamed and saddened by their loss and because they were unable to protect them. I came up with this idea on the basis that dwarf women are almost the same as the men. (Some writers, both in fan fic and rping I've noticed try to over-femininise them and try to take away their independence, which I think is wrong. I also don't subscribe to the view that dwarves represent Jews - given their culture, I think they have more in common with Celts and Vikings than Jews and this may be supported by the fact that Tolkein used Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature as a source for Middle-Earth, though the suffering that dwarves endure through the loss of their homelands give them a connection in that sense. I think he drew alot of inspiration from Celtic Mythology when it comes to the Ainur, but I have found that most of the male Ainur all seem to represent some aspect of Odin in some way.) I also only subscribe to dwarf women only behaving like the men do - I do not think of them as ugly and unattractive which a lot of artists who draw them seem to think. I also have this notion that dwarf women (and men, to some extent) get rid of their beards when they have suffered great loss and that they won't grow it again until they are happy again.

However, I've found that the more I learn about Tolkien, the more I've come to the conclusion that he tried to put some bit of everything that he studied in regards to literature and history into his works, so that there is something for everyone in it, no matter what fans personally believe themselves. He professed to HATE allegory after all...

One other thing about dwarf women, before I forget to mention this, I did try to look for names for dwarf women in the Poetic Edda so that I could use them. I have noticed that no one, as far as I know, have even bothered to do this, not even hardcore Tolkien scholars. I think the fact that there aren't many dwarf women and that they often get mistaken for men is a joke to reflect this because it IS difficult to find them in there, and I can't be sure if I got them all as I am not a native speaker of Scandinavian languages, other than the bits which has survived hidden in local dialect and mainstream English. I also think it may be a reference for women having to go out and do the work of men during World War II and the struggle western women have gone through to get the right to work and vote. Dwarves are natural feminists..

 

Hey, no one said this was going to be easy I feel you though, I think I didn't do anything last week but answer the questions here, and your answers are quite detailed and very, very interesting


I'm squeezing in a follow-up question before you move on to SW stuff.

This is the sort of linguistic detail I luuuuv. I also experimented with writing in dialects of Greek, my mother tongue, but they're also disappearing very fast, and I find it difficult to rely on written sources when I try to use them because I feel that I'm missing the musicality that may be associated with the specific accent (does that make sense?). Are those dialects of English alive enough that you can find people who use them, and what linguistic background work do you do before writing?

 

This is the sort of linguistic detail I luuuuv. I also experimented with writing in dialects of Greek, my mother tongue, but they're also disappearing very fast, and I find it difficult to rely on written sources when I try to use them because I feel that I'm missing the musicality that may be associated with the specific accent (does that make sense?). Are those dialects of English alive enough that you can find people who use them, and what linguistic background work do you do before writing?[/quote]

I will answer both of these questions at once, since they are related and I don't have to repeat the same thing twice. If you're interested in hearing what the dialects sound like, the best place to find them would be to watch All Creatures Great and Small, Last of the Summer Wine, Open all Hours and the film Kes (based on the book, Kestrel for a Knave). You may even find references to it in some Monty Python sketches. Most of these, however, are mainly based on the Yorkshire dialect. There's not a lot out there as far as I know that has recorded the Derbyshire one, and even the dialect in the Peak District is different to the one that is common where I live. I did used to do some conservation work there and we met a farmer whose family had worked there for generations - I couldn't understand a word he was saying, sadly. The more isolated people are, the more unique the dialect is and it is a common problem preserving them when not a lot of people speak them. If it wasn't for people like Alf Wight and Barry Hines, much of the old dialects would have been lost forever and there are even some expressions when my great aunts and uncles used which are no longer in use these days and even I have forgotten some of it. There are fortunately university projects around which are attempting to preserve them, so perhaps they won't be lost completely. I have to moderate dialect when I am not speaking to local people, otherwise they won't understand what you are saying to them, but I do still use some phrases with people who aren't local when they have got to know me a bit.

 

What's the most vivid dream you've ever had?

Have you ever watched The Holiday Special?

 

Now this is a big question, espeaically as no matter how I answer it, it will be a long and detailed one. I am mainly interested in mammals, particularly carnivores like wolves and foxes. Of that, I am interested in evolution, be it within the genetics based side of things and fossil evidence - bringing them both together instead of keeping them apart will greatly improve our understanding of the subject. I can't go into it too much, however because the subject is so vast. You would have to do a degree to even know a small proportion of it. I have an interest in animal behaviour and it is important to understand how animals think and behave because the more we understand about it, the better their welfare will be. The final thing that I am interested in are wildlife diseases which pose a big threat to the survival of endangered species. I became interested in it because rabies is a big problem for endangered species of dogs - particularly the Ethiopian Wolf, which is more critically endangered than the giant panda and African hunting dogs because their social structure means that infectious disease too easily wipes out a pack of them. Amphibians currently face two problems with disease, one is a fungal disease which is wiping out many species and a new viral disease. It is highly likely that the entire group will die out, espeaically when you factor in pollution, loss of habitat and climate change (this may be a factor in helping the spread of disease.) The recent Ebola outbreak is a huge threat to endangered species of primate like Gorillas and Chimpanzees and it should not have been allowed to become a crisis like it has. Bats are facing a simialr problem to Amphibians with a fungal disease that is going through them. It is important to combat these diseases because they pose a serious threat to people as well as wildlife and they need to be kept in check.

Phylogenetics is a main interest as well because it has the positive effect of discovering new species. My uni lecturer discovered a new species of petrel that lives on islands in the Pacific that way, but sadly it is endangered. It is also important because it may actually be used to restore a species that has gone extinct, or it could create a new species that is very similar to one which is no longer with us, as well as having a better understanding of how species are related to one another.

It is very difficult to choose a favourite book as they are all wonderful, so I don't really have a favourite one among them as I like all of them pretty much the same. It is very hard for an author to be so consistent in his or her work like that and that shows how much care and talent Alf Wight had as a writer. If you ever get the chance, I would suggest visiting The World of James Herriot in Thirsk, which is a museum set up in the village where he worked as a vet for most of his life. It is the only museum dedicated to the history of veterinary medicine that I know of and as well as his contribution to literature and language, we also owe him a lot for recording a time that is now lost to us, espeaically considering that so many break throughs in science and medicine occurred during his life time and that of the people who knew him. I have a great respect for what he did and along with David Attenbourgh, he was indirectly responsible for my interest in animals and the natural world. I also like the fact that even though he is no longer with us, his legacy is still helping animals in some way. The only other person I can think of who has had the same impact on veterinary medicine that he has is Les Stocker who founded St Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital and made it possible to bring medical care to wildlife that need it. There is one problem I find with veterinary medicine which should need to be addressed and that is the cost and availability of it. Too many animals suffer needlessly because people can't afford to pay for it but I can't see it as a problem that will go away.

Eh...this sounds like an Ask.fm question to me! I think I would like a field guide so I know what to expect, a blaster rifle

and a med kit.

I have been keeping spoiler free and I've not paid a lot of attention to what is going on with it. I only hope that the new films respect what has already been written in the EU. I think writers like Timothy Zahn, Stackpole, Allston and others deserve some recognition for the contributions they have made and I think the characters and some of their background should be incorporated into it, even if the stories aren't quite the same. They put a lot of effort into the work they have done and it should be included as much as it is possible. If it is not, then I would consider the Disney made stuff to be invalid as canon because the EU, if we like it or not, has become an intrical part of the Star Wars universe and it should be respected. We must remember that the majority of the EU material was produced when Lucas Books and the various other companies owned by George Lucas were independent of Disney and it should mean something.

Music does sometimes inspire me. When my fan fic website was up properly (for my own stuff) I had a list of songs on it which have inspired my writing. It can be anything, really, just as long as the song fits what a character is going through. I know this isn't as detailed as my other answers, but I can't think of what to write at moment regarding it.

I like Wookiees and I suppose that it can be used to answer both questions. (It would have been easy to say Shistavanens, but they don't crop up often enough...) I like Wookiees because they blend technology with a respect for nature, they are couragous and loyal and do not allow people to walk all over them. I think I have great sympathy for them not just because I love Chewbacca, but because of the awful things the Empire put them through, but they manage to over come it with their sense of honour and integrity intact. They are like dwarves in that way. I also have a liking for Noghiri, Gungans, (they are cool, once you get rid of Jar-Jar... and I wish I could have a Warhammer style army of them - they remind me of the Lizard men, which I like.) I also like the feline species which A. C. Crispin created, and I love Runt from the X-Wing novels. I also have a soft spot for Trandoshans and Barabels. I think Borsk spoiled Bothans for me, because I can't get over his unfriendliness and arrogance. I also like Mon Calamari, Ihtorians and Quinlan Vos' people. I think non-humans should be given a wider role in Star Wars than they do because in most cases, I find them more interesting than the human ones and it has been sadly lacking in recent books.

I think Klingons and Ferengi would be interesting, as well as Vulcans, Cardassians, Trills and Bajorans. But that would make it too much like Star Trek, though! I like them both and I hate it when fans think that you should hate one of them if you like one and can't be a fan of the other. It's daft. I think it might be better if they expanded more on what already exists and if done properly, there are still many interesting stories to tell. It is why Star Wars fan fiction is good to write in because we can tell stories which the commercial side would never do because they either think that it is not worth the money or because they don't have time to develop it when there are other projects to do. I wish fan fiction was respected more if people take that into account instead of criticizing it. Role-playing games aren't and it the same thing, apart from that you usually write it alone instead of with other people.

As for real life cultures, I've always been fascinated by Aboriginal peoples of the Americas and Australia, but if you are going to incorporate something like that, it needs to be respectful of the culture is is based on and well researched. If it isn't then, it isn't worth doing.

I have a recurring dream involving breeding hamsters. I used to breed them at college and it has stuck with me. It's bizarre...Once the dream was the same, but instead of hamsters it involved wallabies for some strange unknown reason. I've always wanted to watch the Holiday Special, but I've never come across a copy of it. I'm unsure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I may have seen it as a child, but as I wasn't born when A New Hope first came out, I am uncertain if I've actually seen it or not. I have seen the Ewoks films, the Ewoks cartoons and Droids but it was such a long time ago I can't remember what happened in them.

 

Stuff-type of content in fanfiction that you love to read or make sure to include as an author? Any ff pet peeves?