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It's bad to say that I've never really liked his writing, isn't it? :( But I haven't.

I think this genre is actually more common in fantasy/scifi than realistic fiction. Being able to explore the progression of your ideas beyond one lifetime is a big deal - heck, even Tolkien did it, if you think of The Hobbit and LotR as a series. (And of course 40K has taken it to the ultimate extreme, with 'here's two series set ten millennia apart'.)

Sadly, it's specifically the ability to learn about real history that I'm interested in with this.

hS

Wikipedia's list looks incredibly drab, though - it's items 'of literary note', which is usually shorthand for 'borderline unreadable'. ^~ I quite like the idea of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PalaiologanDynasty(novelseries)">The Palaeologian Dynasty. The Rise and Fall of Byzantium, but I don't think they've been translated from the Greek; they're certainly not in my library.

And that's going to be a problem: most of these stories are written by people from the relevant culture, and they're not going to be translated. FROWNYFACE.

hS

The 'fiction' part of 'historical fiction' was the more disposable part. ;) It sounds interesting, I'll have to look it up; the artistic nature of the heirloom ties in with some of my previous interests, so.

Thank you!

hS

Though I'd also say that it can be a springboard for interrogating the broader themes of the original work. For instance, if anyone can point me in the direction of Ender's Game slash or a slow-burn romantic flower shop AU of anything by Heinlein, those'd be interesting to read. I just think there's so much potential for fanfiction to be used as criticism in the manner of old musical criticism - rather than a Baroque criticism of Monteverdi or whatever, we can have a slashfic or AUfic critique of modern popular media. It's the democratization of literary theory, of really thinking about what we consume rather than unquestioning canon-minutia memorization.

... that shipfic is a good way to explore characters?

Yeah, that makes sense, and I'm inclined to agree that that's an important thing to do. (Since fanfiction is basically generally about extending/exploring a universe, IMO)

- Tomash

I devour it because I'm way more interested in how the characters interact than in the fic's inherent minutiae-friendliness. Fanfic of any kind asks questions about the media from which it derives, and shipfic in particular can ask some really fascinating ones about the characters they're shipping, and also about the ones they're not. Not all of them do, obviously - we wouldn't have DBS agents if they did - but it's still not something that should be discarded out of hand. At least, that's my view. =]

The style works surprisingly well--or perhaps unsurprisingly, since it's an epic storyline. Anyway, it's...really thrilling to read. :D I like it a lot.

~Z

Non-fiction, though--a sort of creative autobiography mixed with family history, IIRC. It's called The Hare With Amber Eyes (I've forgotten the author's name). It uses a particular type of Japanese figurine (the name of which I have also unfortunately forgotten) as a thread in a family story that stretches from Europe to Japan and I think America too? It does include Western Europe, IIRC, but it's really not the typical story, and it's not following a white family. It stretches across several centuries, at any rate, including both the author and his ancestors.

I don't remember being *that* caught by it--among other things, the print in my copy was really small--so I didn't finish it, but the story itself was interesting and I know my mom (who's much more into non-fiction and autobiographies than I am) read it and liked it. I think she said it picked up a bit after the beginning, though.

Anyway. Not straight historical fiction, but certainly interesting, and it does otherwise fit that subgenre you're talking about. At any rate, it was the first thing I thought of.

~Z

I got OTPS, NOTPS, crackships and some very curious ones.

If they aren't canonically interested in that gender or lack thereof, I don't ship it.

If it isn't canonically stated outright their sexuality, well... Who doesn't swing even just a little bi?

If they are canonically in a relationship then I do not ship them with anyone else. If they already have a love interest I SHIP IT

>Liliana/Chandra from Magic the Gathering (which is entirely based on the art of a single card from Kaladesh block)

I don't totally remember, but IIRC, there was a short story Wizards published for the Amonkhet block that substantiated that.

So I am basically the opposite of Thoth. I ship largely based on hypotheticals (which I guess could be called crackshipping?) and unless explicitly stated otherwise, I generally assume every character to be at the very least open to exploration, if not outright bi/pan.

My current favorite ships are CD-RW, Ultra Magnus/Megatron and Nautica/Brainstorm from IDW's Transformers comics, and Liliana/Chandra from Magic the Gathering (which is entirely based on the art of a single card from Kaladesh block)

Original text was found here on Quora, but I'll copy it here as well.

Great machines crawled across the snow; and in the midst was a huge walker, great as a forest-tree a hundred feet in length, striding on mighty legs. Long had it been forging in the dark smithies of Kuat, and its hideous head, founded of dura-steel, was adorned with deadly blasters. AT-AT they named it, in memory of the AT-TEs of old. General Veers piloted it, and a legion of storm troopers followed in its train.

But about the base’s blast door resistance still was stout, and there the hardiest of the Rebels stood at bay. Blaster and laser fire fell thick; AT-STs crashed or blazed suddenly like torches. All before the base on either side of the blast door the ground was choked with wreck and with bodies of the slain; yet still driven as by a madness more and more came up.

The AT-AT crawled on. Its steel hide no blaster could pierce. Over the hills of slain a hideous shape appeared: a cyborg, tall, cloaked in black. Slowly, trampling the fallen, he strode forth, heeding no longer any blast. He halted and held up a crimson lightsaber. And as he did so a great fear fell on all, defender and foe alike; and the hands of men drooped to their sides, and no blaster sang. For a moment all was still.

With a lurch the AT-AT sighted on the blast door. It fired. A deep boom rumbled through the base like thunder running in the clouds.

Then the Cyborg raised his hand and cried aloud in a dreadful voice, speaking in some forgotten tongue words of power and terror to rend both heart and steel.

Thrice he cried. Thrice the great machine fired. And suddenly upon the last blast the door broke. As if stricken by some blasting spell it burst asunder: there was a flash of searing lightning, and the doors tumbled in riven fragments to the ground. In strode the Lord of the Sith. A great black shape against the snow beyond he loomed up, grown to a vast menace of despair. In strode the Lord of the Sith, and all fled before his face.

Characters

I really don't care what you do in terms of a lot of things. But if you mess with the characters that I know and love...

Well, THAT is what gets me angry.

Existing relationships and the personality that makes them start and continue are things you can't quite just toss out the window because it breaks characters. Unless you're taking the position that the author is Wrong about who some character would/wouldn't get into a relationship with, which I seem to remember being a fairly common claim among Harry/Hermione shippers back in the day.

Your example of James/Sirius as adults would need a good deal of explaining before I'd buy it.

- Tomash

As usual, I've stated my position poorly. I'll see if I can do better the second time around.

Many popular ships are for characters with pre-existing canon relationships. Which can imply orientation, or at least something about that character. People are bi, and people experiment, so it's often not so much orientation that's the problem as it is personality in many cases. There are many fics that just outright ignore canon relations, which... breaks things. James would not be getting it on with Sirius as an adult, because James is absolutely in love with Lilly, and would never do that to her.

Rockall, Malin, Hebrides. Southwest gale 8 to storm 10, veering west. ~The Shipping Forecast

I am not, by and large, much of a shipper (except in my PPC characters, who I ship so much with each other that I ended up with family trees), but I do on occasion. I go for things that are compatible with canon, even if they're not canon themselves - I have a Susan Pevensie/Maglor story out there, which exemplifies this.

More recently, I've had my eye on femslash, for philosophical reasons: there isn't much out there, and that lack of representation bugs me. Turns out the reason is that it's hard to find two women who can be shipped in a canon-friendly manner - there's nothing viable in the Star Wars films, for instance (Leia/Mothma? But Leia is pretty straight, and this would just smack of 'they don't actively hate each other, so they must be in luuurve'). (Jyn/Rey could work if you could get around them being 30 years apart. But th'ain't no time travel in Star Wars.)

I have an in-process Luthien/Galadriel story, which does justify its existence alongside their canonical romances, but in general Tolkien's lack of women - especially unmarried women - and their lack of character development when they do exist throws things off. I could write steamy Diamond of Long Cleeve/Estella Bolger erotica, but I'd have to make their personalities up from whole cloth, so it wouldn't really count.

(Dropping back to the other kinds of ships, I tend to stick with canon in Middle-earth, and I've never seen a slash pairing that convinced me, though I have written both a gay elf and a lesbian dwarf.)

Other canons are more viable, mostly because when you have a large enough cast you can write anything. Sticking with the big-name canons, I can't pass up this opportunity to unveil my new fic: a femslash (as mentioned) tale from the USS Voyager, starring one of those minor characters who nevertheless is developed enough to write:

The Ill-Fated Love Life of Tal Celes, a romance in 11 chapters (rolling out over the next couple of weeks).

In summary? I will generally respect the canon (except when the canon is WRONG [/Team Jacob]), am not particularly attached to any specific ships, and will mostly write femslash if anything for philosophical reasons.

hS

... I'm pretty sure you would have a moral objection to the story. Thanks, though. :)

hS

You should already have my email address, but just in case, the link is available.

Now, to give various slash authors some justification, most characters aren't explicitly specified to be straight, and bi people are a thing.

(Now, I don't think I'd use this because I'm not super-interested in writing that sort of thing, but it could be used to support a slashfic without adding another extra point of divergence to the implied AU or maybe without breaking canon at all.)

I really go against canon. And I will *only* ship if there is canon support. Period.

That also means no arbitrary orientation-changing: If canon says the characters are straight, then they are straight, unless you can give me a VERY compelling reason for them not to be. Which means I will very rarely write slash... at least for common pairings.

Well, okay, I never write slash (shut up, that doesn't count), but if I DID...

OTOH, if you write a really good slashfic or shipfic that DOESN'T follow these rules, it doesn't necessarily mean I'll hate it. It just has to be very well written. I think The Shoebox Project might be an example of that, but I haven't gotten to the slash part yet, so I dunno.

There is at least one exception, which is that I might ship something - in an AU, obviously. Shipfics are kind of implied AU to an extent - if it is A) adorable, and B) fits canon reasonably well. Namely, I am a strong proponent of shipping Primarch Vulkan and A relatively (emphasis on relatively) normal Nocturnian girl who has, somehow, caught his attention. I dunno. Maybe she's really good at blacksmithing. Not as good as he is, obviously, but... good for a mortal.

I don't trust myself to write this, so I haven't worked out the details, but... trust me, it would be adorable!

AAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWWW!

I love this!

Thank you for writing, and continuing this project. ^^

Containerization — best idea ever or best idea ever?

Wait, no, wrong type of shipping.

So, do you ship?

In what circumstances? (Only certain fandoms, for example.)

Who?

and so on and so on.

I personally don't ship much, in the sense that I almost never look at characters who aren't in a romantic/sexual/... relationship and go "Hey, these guys should be a relationship!"

I will certainly root for characters who are/were in a relationship to have that keep going/start back up again, though. (For example, the nicely developing interspecies romance that was Hilfy/Tully before the author cut that off.)

- Tomash

so 72 in a week is probably not all that unlikely, but it means that no big excuse for people to post has come up.

Also, the Discord is rather active.