30 Days of Fan Fiction Meme, Day 25

25 – Music – Do you listen to music while you write? Do you make playlists to get into a certain "mood" to write your fic? Do you need noise in general? Or do you need it completely quiet?

I rarely listen to music as background for any other activity. I find it distracting, and if I tune it out enough to work, I usually feel like I'm missing it, so it's pointless to have it on. I do have playlists (mental playlists) for characters, though, and I do sometimes go through my character-typed songs as part of the same creative process that leads to fic. Most recently, I've been finding songs for Raven (X-Men), which has been inspiring me to fix my Raven fic.

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30 Days of Fan Fiction Meme, Day 26

26 – What is the oddest (or funnest) thing you've had to research for a fic?

I don't like research in general. This is part of why my original fic is science fantasy set in a universe I don't have to reality check with current or historical facts, also part of why I didn't want to become a tenure track professor. But I have found recently that writing in X-Men fandom requires a heck of a lot of research on topics as diverse as paraplegic sex, the Holocaust, when the word "nerd" came into common usage, and almost 50 years of X-Men comics canon. It actually has made for quite an educational experience. The oddest thing I've researched for a fic (though not fun) is probably the Holocaust--odd because fan fiction seems a trivial window into it. But it is where it is. (The funnest thing I research is probably etymologies of names.)

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