LogicGunn

melagan posted about "inspiration", and now I can't get it out of my head. For the most part, my fandom inspiration is "What would happen if John and Rodney were here?". I like to take the boys and throw them into a situation and see what happens (I'm very much a character driven writer, though I do like to have a plot or chapter guide written out).

Two of the fics I enjoyed writing the most were Subnautica and The Long Dark, both of which are based on indie video games of the same names. I took the world spaces and dropped John and Rodney into them and let them do their thing. In the case of Subnautica, John spent a lot of time looking for survival resources underwater on an alien ocean planet and because of that he got sick and died. I didn't set out writing a Major Character Death fic, it just turned out that way. In The Long Dark they both got stranded on an island of of Northern Canada with no hope of rescue and had to survive. Naturally they fell in love because that's just what those two do no matter where I put them. I have vague plans for two more game/McShep crossovers (Firewatch and Alien:Isolation), but they are a while away. I really like writing fics that way, they seem to come together easily for me. It's very much about being inspired by the location and environment rather than the plot.

Then there's O Holy Night which is 100% inspired by the song. I wrote it because it's my favourite Christmas song of all time and I was listening to all the different versions and thought "Hmm, which version would the people on Atlantis like best?!" and the answer turned out to be so complicated that Rodney had to go and make a brand new one.

I also love tropes. Love them. I know some people find them dull and uninspiring, but I love how we can all take one single idea and write such vastly different fics from them. Sometimes when I read a fic I get a random idea popping into my head that I have to write down for later. By the time I wrote And All The Rest, I had read something like ten gender swap fics over two years and they all had something that made them unique. Part of the inspiration there was actually what I didn't want to have in my fic rather than what I did, the obvious one being that I didn't want J&R to get together while R was in a female body, feeling that my Rodney would have some fears that no amount of wheedling by John could push away.

And on the topic of tropes, I wrote Milk and Honey (my hypothermia fic) because I was really, really cold.

I guess inspiration just comes from interacting with the world, be it playing a game, feeling cold, listening to a song, reading a fic or a book, or commenting on someone's Dreamwidth post. :)

Wade x