XVI - When the muse has terrible timing

I am supposed to be working on Glass Like Memories.

No, sorry, I am working on Glass Like Memories. It’s plotted, front to back. I know where it’s going and everything is flowing nicely. Other than not having the time to work on it (because moving, amirite?), I’m not having trouble like I was before.

Of course, the problem with having a story that’s plotted from front to back means I don’t need to think about it when I’m not working on it. Which is often, right now. (Fucking moving.) And when my main project is not one I have to actively focus on when I’m packing boxes…while listening to Sleep Token…

…the plot bunnies move into the empty brain space.

You know, when you get that one plot bunny that’s so compelling, your brain wants to immediately jettison all other projects and responsibilities and just Do That.

“I could give the lads Grimm powers…and make Sleep a faery…”

And suddenly I have a fucking fanfiction idea that I absolutely cannot work on right now…and somehow also have an entire page of notes for…

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I’ve been reading fanfiction since I was a teenager. I cut my teeth on Gundam Wing, and let me tell you, as a sheltered Christian teen, some of those Heero/Duo and Trowa/Quatre X-rated fics were, ehem, eye-opening. (In a good way, overall, but some of them were just terrible, terrible smut). I read a few Hanson fics (one of which was a time travel AU that was so well written, I still think about it from time to time today). I read exactly one Nightwish fic that put me completely off the notion of writing real people into fantasies.

I never had the urge to write fanfiction myself. Once I got serious about writing, I couldn’t justify spending the time creating something that wasn’t really mine and that I could never properly publish. Every time I’d read a devastatingly good fic, I’d lament that its author was wasting their time doing this when they could be getting their original stuff out there instead.

I may have been a bit of a snob about it for a while, in my head at least.

At some point, I got obsessed with Doctor Who, which pulled adult me back into reading fanfiction. As expected, many of the stories are mere excuses to write terrible sex. However, some of them are brilliant, doing things and exploring themes the show never thought of. I…considered writing a Doctor Who fic. Had a few plot bunnies hopping around, but again, I had other stuff I was writing. The timey wimey notion I had in mind would have taken some massive outlining to pull off. I didn’t want to spend the time.

I discovered Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Boys series have spawned a truckload of slash fics, which I still read from time to time.

Then I got into Sanders Sides and that whole universe of fics, and again, I got inspired enough to seriously consider writing one. I actually plotted out a whole contemporary, slice-of-life kind of love story, but the first few scenes fizzled when I tried to write them. I just couldn’t put the words down without getting bored out of my mind; I need that little hit of fantasy to keep me invested. So, I grafted that love story onto the tweaked-to-hell and back version of changeling mythology I’d developed for my Grimms idea.

That turned into Mahogany and Teakwood, which spawned Rose and Patchouli, and will eventually spawn two more.

Why was that YouTube series the spark that finally got me writing fanfiction? I don’t know. But I’m glad I did, because I discovered that you can do so many things in fanfiction that you can’t do in “proper” publishing. You can plot scenes around song lyrics. You can include entire chapters full of nothing but tooth-rotting fluff. You can combine fandoms and write cool crossovers that would never happen otherwise. You can drop references and quotes only people in your fandom will understand, little winks and nudges. You can push a character further than you ever thought possible, simply because you don’t have to spend the time introducing that character to your audience. The initial heavy lifting is already done.

Fanfiction for me has become where I practice techniques and just play, in a way I can’t do in my publishable work.

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The “lore” fueling Sleep Token’s mystery begs for fanfiction. 99% of the existing lore was created by fans anyway, as the band themselves seem content to drop hints, speak in riddles, and keep quiet. Their stage personas would be so easy to fold into the Grimmverse, and their lyrics might as well be guideposts for plot events. What would I be doing except putting my own little twist on the lore that’s mostly made up, anyway?

Also, as a group, they occupy that same odd liminal space that Sanders Sides does: based on real people, played by real people…but just removed enough, fictionalized enough, that fanfiction about them doesn’t (necessarily!) feel creepy. I know how to walk the line between borrowing a character to play with and being respectful of the person behind that character’s mask, figurative or literal.

However, as it would feel weird to contribute to a fan space I’ve not yet explored, I finally girded my loins and delved into the ST AO3 list.

It has been a journey XD.

You can glean some interesting things about a fandom from studying its fanfiction. How do the fans treat the characters? Are they interested in expanding the canon, ignoring it, changing it, retconning it? What themes get explored the most?

In particular, I’ve been fascinated by the differences between Sanders Sides and Sleep Token.

• What’s the common rating? Sanders Sides runs the gamut from G to X. For the most part, Sleep Token fics seem to live in the M-X territory. Given that ST’s average fandom age range skews a little older, the band’s lyrical content being what it is, and frankly, what the lads get up to onstage, this didn’t surprise me.

• What character attributes emerge that aren’t canon to the source material but are shared across fics? The fandom Sides have developed some pretty distinct characteristics…for example, Patton generally has blue eyes, round glasses, and freckles. Few of these details are in the original show, but they’re so pervasive that any time a new episode of Sanders Sides comes out, I have to spend a few minutes reacquainting myself with what the Sides actually look like. Sleep Token fics are more varied in that sense, likely because fans don’t know** what the lads look like. Made-up names run the gamut, as they should. II is usually given blond hair for some reason. Vessel’s actual face has six eyes in a lot more fics than I expected. Any IV other than proper IV is usually called Four or Fore (I was surprised to see that across several fics). Sleep is usually female, sometimes genderless, and occasionally male. (Which…baffles me, frankly. Canon Sleep is only ever referred to using he/him pronouns. Why has the fandom collectively decided to handwave that away when we have so little canon to work from in the first place? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

  **aren’t supposed to know (me side-eyeing all the people trying to dox them in YouTube comments)

• What are the common genres? Sanders Sides fics are a mix of AUs, where the Sides are people, and canon-adjacent stories, where the Sides are what they are in the show: aspects of Character Thomas’s personality. The AUs skew contemporary and urban fantasy, with some high fantasy thrown in (unsurprising when you have a canon Prince character). Various soul mate tropes appear a LOT. More Omegaverse trope stories than I’d expect. Sleep Token, as a band that wears masks and worships a deity, exists pretty solidly in the urban fantasy space, and most of the fics I’ve seen live here.

• What are the common pairings/ships? (Yes, shipping, the bane of fandoms and one reason fanfiction gets so little respect.) In Sanders Sides, pick your slash, you’ll find a fic with that pairing (including the unsavory, incestuous one, ifkyk, or the ones that involve Character Thomas, which IMO skirts awfully close to that “don’t write real people into fanfiction” line I’d rather not cross). Polyamory is common. Giving the Sides varying LGBT+ identities and exploring those identities is common. Interestingly, I’ve never happened across Sides fanfic authors attempting to make the characters straight, which I think says a lot about the respect we have for Thomas. The common Sleep Token pairings seem to be all the lads together in a polycule, and/or one of them (usually Vessel) in a relationship with a female OC. Wish fulfillment, the famous sexy rock star falls in love with an ordinary girl, I get it. (I read Hanson fanfics back in the day; trust me, I get it). Lots of IV-centric fics, usually involving folding him into the cult/polycule.

I’m properly surprised…and a little worried…that the fics with the most hits aren’t ones with Sleep/Vessel as a pairing, because that’s basically the Lore. That’s where I want to play. I thought that’s where a lot of people would want to play, which really makes me wonder. Would I be breaking some unspoken fandom rule by writing the story I want to write? I am still quite new here, after all. Or maybe it’s simply a matter of nobody wanting to compete with the cryptic, tragic story Vessel told across three albums.

Which…I get that.

Good thing that’s not what I’m planning to do…when I finally get the chance to tackle this properly. After I finish Glass Like Memories, and my next anthology story, and the next two Grimmverse stories…and, you know, we finishing packing up the house and moving.