I sometimes feel bad when I see a notice from an author asking people to get rid of fics they've written, either because they're trying to go pro or being a fic writer "isn't who they want to be anymore" or whatever, and I don't dump the fic. I wouldn't pass the fic on to someone else, but I wouldn't expect anyone to get rid of a saved fic of mine if I suddenly wanted to try and remove my fic writing identity from the web. I know it can't be done, for one thing, and also once something is out there it's left my control.

I feel about it the same way I feel about Amazon erasing ebooks from people's Kindles. Fine if you don't want to provide current access to your work, but you should't get to change history.

Did nanoochka ever finish that fic where Dean was dating some perfect guy and on the outs with Cas?

It seems she did, though I wasn't aware of it. I think I lost interest (or just patience with Mr. Right) and stopped reading before it was done.

Huh. I had alerts set up on her LJ, but it drifted right off my radar. And I'm monitoring AO3 pretty obsessively, and I didn't see it there.

I do get bored enough, and I'm sure curious if D/C was her original (or eventual) endgame.

How do people, in general, feel about quoting canon? Right now, I feel that I'm okay with lines of dialogue being put in the mouths of the person that said them, but blocks of dialogues (including exchanges) not so much. And putting them into narration whether it's thoughts or description...I'm probably reacting to accumulated uses over different stories, but it feels somewhere between twee and heavy handed--when it's not lazy. You can't jump from a casual paragraph to "she's like the sister I never wanted" just because we have episodes fresh in our memory--that's what gives fic a bad name, the idea you don't have to write a "proper" story because we show up knowing so much.

Unrelatedly, anyone know of a browser script that can just delete the words "sex hair! from any fic featuring Castiel? Ta, ever so. Switching the description of his hair from black to any variant of dark brown is gravy.

It tends to throw me out of the story and make me think of the writer as being cutesy unless it's a short quote that's clearly something the characters have said with repetition (i.e. the "bitch!"/"jerk!" exchange) rather than something a character just said on one specific occasion. I realize fanfic writers are working with a limited amount of source material (though lots more than most in the case of SPN), but I'd rather they try to nail the character's general method of speaking rather than parrot his or her exact words at me.

I'd only use the exact quote if I was doing that exact scene, and I figure I'd have gotten to that scene by a completely different route, so different words would be more likely.

I can think of one or two Mentalist fanfic writers who make an art form of weaving show dialogue together with poetic descriptions of internal landscapes to give beautiful insight. I can't do it. And bunches of people try and fail miserably.

I've used quotes before, just as a jumping-off place.(I sometimes do have to explain a bit more to make a crossover work, or to write about someone's thoughts about something they heard in canon.) But I would agree, not more than a sentence or two.

I really like D/C AU stories that metaphorically follow the canon events that mark their relationship. But making the literal statements apply metaphorically often ranges from heavy-handed to cutesy. Saying that this new guy got you out of a hellish situation is one thing--gripping and perdition? Srsly?