I don't expect to update this page much; expect it to be out of date.
I am invested in my AO3 account, and that's the site that gets the bulk of my work and my attention. I do have an FFN account, but I update it only rarely, and don't have a strong connection to my FFN readers.
So if you want fics and updates as soon as I post them, it's only ever AO3. And none of my Event pieces are written with FFN in mind.
My niche is intense drama, and I cover a wide range of topics, some quite dark, some controversial. Mind the Warnings, Tags, and Author's Notes, especially if you're a sensitive reader. If you think something should be tagged that isn't, please let me know in the comments.
I'll read just about anything, but I'm not a Shipper; the relationships I most enjoy are deeply intimate male/male relationships with no sexual interest in each other. Only about 10% of my fics even go near sex or Ships, and most of those are responses to other fics.
I figure the fandom is saturated with sexual content; I provide alternatives.
I also coined the Five Moments of (Nonsexual) Intimacy (FMI, FMNI, or 5MI) fic form, mostly as a counter to this "intimacy means sex" idea that so pervades fandom (and society at large). So I've written a lot of FMI fics, not just in my main fandoms but across a variety of other fandoms as well. Most of my lower-intensity fics are of this form, although the FMI form doesn't preclude intensity!
By "Family-Friendly" I mean that if my wider circle of family and friends ran across it, I wouldn't have to run damage control. So it can have a dark creepy tale like Bespoke, but it will never get the fics that deal with sexual content, torture, or controversial issues.
My fics start on AO3, and a small portion of them eventually migrate to FFN. Nothing ever starts on FFN, so if you follow my AO3 account, you can be assured that you won't miss any of my fics.
However, a few fics have been altered from their original (AO3) version. This can be to maintain the family-friendly rating, but it's also a way for me to explore how the fic would feel if written in a slightly different way (e.g. changing the POI from "you" to "he"), or to see if a mechanic would work better another way (e.g. Numb Too Long got split into two fics, the Finch-kidnap-experience side and the Shaw-and-Fusco-casefic side).
Now that I have a front end for my content, I hope to be able to showcase any variations I've created.
The majority of my fics are written from Finch's point of view. But since these series tend to switch that up a bit, let's pull a few of these off the top:
My intial intention was to contemplate the year's events with a fic uploaded on New Year's Eve. I'd write a short piece that pulled double duty, describing both (a) the circumstances that Finch finds himself in, and (b) the real-life circumstances that the author has dealt with during the year.
The fics themselves turned out pretty well. The timing... well. On the one hand, I was pretty annoyed that I didn't complete Retrospective: Fire anywhere near the end of 2019. On the other hand, delaying that fic by most of a year actually improved it, given that 2020 was the year that thoroughly set everything on fire (sometimes literally). I feel like, if I had written and posted the fic back around New Year's, it would have quickly felt woefully naive ("You call that a crisis? Girl, you ain't seen nothin' yet").
At any rate, the fics did turn out well, so here they are: Water (2017), Air (2018), and Fire (2019-2020) (a crossover with Tony Stark of the Marvel Cinematic Universe)
I love seeing my favorite characters get kidnapped, captured, forced into uncomfortable situations. It's my bread and butter. In fact, my first Birthday Request story prompt, Three Minutes (379 words), was specifically about Harold Finch knowing that he's about to get kidnapped while John can do nothing but comfort him a bit over the phone.
Early on, before I'd come down with a case of the plot bunnies, I decided to write a Once Per Episode series in which Finch gets kidnapped in every possible way. (It's not strictly "kidnapping" per se; it's sufficient that Finch is in the total control of someone else. Where Finch is only momentarily captured in canon, I expand those moments enough to be enjoyed.)
Anyway, this idea has spawned three series:
Any episode in which Finch does not get kidnapped/captured, I find a way to make that happen. I'm hoping to do this in order; I've got notes for later episodes, but have been putting off writing them. These all are from the POV of Finch himself:
Special mention to December Acts Selflessly (FFN Version: For Grace) (700 words), a short piece set during Episode 3-22 (A House Divided). Since the episode contains an actual kidnapping, it will eventually get an AU variant, but anyone interested in Finch's POV during a kidnapping would likely enjoy that piece as well, so.
If Finch actually does get kidnapped in canon (never seen a male character play Damsel in Distress so much! I love it), I craft an AU version to play around with the potential drama. A different AU each time.
I've written a ton of other fics where Harold gets kidnapped or captured, so... might as well stick 'em in a related series.
Let's start with a group project, though: Everybody Wants Finch (7445 words, 5 chapters) is an over-the-top Valentine's Day project I spearheaded where three writers (including myself) and two artists put together a tale of Finch getting targeted by three different people for three different reasons. The first chapter is a typical kidnapping, the second and third combine to make a... not-so-typical kidnapping, the fourth is not a kidnapping at all, and the last chapter is a piece of art that sums up the whole exhausting day.
As to the rest...
As I recall, this Fic Exchange had a 1000-word minimum. I, um, kinda overshot, in the best way. I was a bit nervious about my choice of style, but this fic garnered some of the best praise I've ever received:
The original version lets you read the fic in one of three ways; the FFN versions make this easier:
My most popular POI fic (by subscriptions and, until recently, by hits), this takes a scenario created by astolat and flips it on its head: Harold's POV instead of John's, no Ship and no fluffy sexy escape from the scenario, and a focus on the aftermath and recovery.
I hope to start updating this piece again early in 2021. It'd be nice to have my beta reader back, but if that's not gonna work, I shall soldier on solo!
The first POI fic I ever wrote, but nowhere near the first I posted; I got derailed by astolat's One-Way Glass, started Mirror, and then didn't want to have two open rapefics at the same time. (That resolution lasted a couple years.) Notable because I wrote this before actually seeing the series; I'd been reading POI fics obsessively for a while, and got to know Finch enough to portray him pretty well.
Three are story prompts from my 2018 Monthly Prompt series; one's a response fic. POV on the multi-chapter pieces is mixed.
This piece was great fun to write, and I'd love to update it a little, but I knew from the start that I would never complete it; the idea is just too big. I'd still like to maybe add a little bit; I've got some half-written bits and ideas, but I'm just too busy to delve into that right now.
If anyone would like to build off this piece, I fully encourage it! I'm never stingy with my ideas.
As one person put it, Welcome to the "stories for 1K-minimum exchanges that balloon into giant epics" club! :) Though this one's impressively long even by that standard. Doing two exchanges back-to-back nearly undid me, but they also produced some of the work I'm most proud of (and completed! can you imagine?).
There's something delightful about taking a traditionally sexual worldbuild, playing it distinctly nonsexual, and having readers connect with the implications of the AU outside of its normal context. This was a fun scenario to play with, and I quite enjoy the Dom/sub worldbuild.
One of the neat things about not being a Shipper is that I can explore various unusual Ships without feeling disloyal to my "main." Marconi/Finch is hardly going to be a common or popular one, but I seem to have made it work:
I have most of the third chapter written, but trying to wrestle the pieces into place has been repeatedly frustrating, so for now it's on the shelf. I do know exactly where I want to take this piece, it's just a matter of getting there.
Based on an AU by Maculategiraffe, where John and Harold are captives/slaves to an otherworldly being who calls herself "Daisy," who feeds on John's willingness to do anything at all to spare Harold.
This isn't the only piece I'm planning within that AU, but it'll be a while before I have the free time to even draft one of the other pieces I have planned.
In both of these pieces, the "captor" is Samaritan, who managed to convert Harold via nanites. The first is just a hint of the scenario; the second goes in his perspective as he realizes he's about to change and can do nothing about it.
This AU concept -- Samaritan/Decima using nanites to subvert its enemies, rather than directly killing useful assets -- is something I'd love to see explored in greater depth, but my plate is simply too full to go added longer pieces to right now. If anyone takes this idea and runs with it, I would love to hear about it!
I'm looking forward to more such unusual scenarios. They're tons of fun to dream up and write.
(In case it's not obvious, I can't get enough of Harold in Peril.)
Shortly after joining AO3, I tried to make use of their mechanics to create some story prompts. Sadly, I don't think anyone even saw them, let alone got interested enough to make something based on them.
Lastly: Integrity Crisis (a term coined by my beta reader)
Bob has been compromised (drugs, a spell, amnesia, emotional upset, whatever) in a way that removed his inhibitions. He starts coming on to Jim, and appears totally willing to have sex. However, Jim realizes that Bob is in no condition to consent, and so Jim resists. The temptation is strong, but Jim's integrity is stronger. Maybe he'll even have to take extreme measures to evade Bob's advances (while also keeping Bob safe).
I've seen this in a few fics, most commonly with a form of Sex Pollen, but I've also seen a nonsexual variant where Bob is willing to give Jim his secrets, but Jim, who desperately wants those secrets, refuses to let Bob tell him. It fascinates me that you can take 100% of the sexual content out of a normally sexual trope and still have the exact same trope; I would love to see if any other variants could be created.
I still don't know how these things work, but I challenge y'all anyway!
After getting no response to my initial attempts, I started making ficlets that were their own story prompts; these got some hits immediately, and turned into a whole series and more!
I pledged to create a follow-up based on the number of fills posted within a two-month deadline. About half the 2018 series got fills. I'm slow to update, so I've only written one follow-up so far, but I still intend to make good on my pledge (eventually), and possibly to write short follow-ups for the rest anyway.
So that's the 2018 series. That gave me enough feedback to settle on three prompts a year: January and July, plus my Birthday Prompt.
The Monthly Birthday Prompts led to a series of July Prompts, which are always the same thing: Push outside your comfort zone and create something in a medium you're not yet familiar with, or not yet comfortable with. This has led to some very interesting projects!
Thus began this series:
And it garnered these fills:
Who knows what next year's prompt will bring into the world?
My January Prompts have become one year-long prompt, giving a general idea with themes for each month. I've done this with POI and the MCU; not sure what theme I'll go with for the coming year. Crossovers, maybe?
Anyway, for 2019 and 2020, my prompts were based around actor birthdays: I grouped all the actors whose birthdays fell under the same month, picked the most prominent or interesting one, and added a couple of suggested themes:
Person of Interest Actor Birthday Prompts:
I write most of my POI fics from Harold's POV.
John comes in second.
This category covers single-chapter fics, along with short multi-chapter fics (low wordcount).
Each of these characters has only taken the helm in a single fic, so far.