Hi. My name is Chelsea, and this my bio for my account, Fire From The Ashes.

"Chelsea" may or may not be my real name. In fact, any "fact" on my profile may or may not be true. Some call me paranoid; when they have their identities stolen and their credit cards maxed out, I will laugh at them.

Warning: My writing contains instances of violence, coarse language and mature subject matter. Reader discretion, also known as common sense, is advised.

What Floats My Boat:

Sarcasm, irony, and snark

Antiheroes and antivillains

Individual works including but far from limited to Watchmen, Harry Potter, Criminal Minds, much of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, and most things written by Jim Butcher.

Novelizations (a.k.a. the best thing to happen to 'B' grade movies and video games, ever)

Speculative fiction

What Sinks My Boat:

Hypocrites, self-righteous jerks, and two-legged sheep. (Four legs good, two legs bad, to quote Animal Farm.)

Pornographic pop-ups and banner ads on otherwise decent sites (What you want to watch in the privacy of your own basement is your business, provided you wash your hand before shaking mine, but I'm trying to read/watch something, not conduct an amateur gynecological exam).

Movies, books, and TV shows with no decent plot or characters. (Contrary to what some believe, these lacking qualities cannot be "compensated for" by making the cast/characters pretty and getting them naked, making the violence gorier, or adding fight/chase/shit-blowing-up scenes.)

Most books, movies and TV shows with plots that revolve almost entirely around romantic relationships. (This often falls under the above category but deserves its own mention. The characters tend to be over-emotional, irrational, self-centred, and so focused on their relationships with people that they have just met that it's a wonder that they don't walk into traffic and get hit by cars. Yes, I mean like Twilight and its lovely cast of characters.)

Idiotic and/or smug people that you actually have to be nice to. (They're like naked-in-public stories: hilarious unless they're happening to you. No, that's not from experience.)

The Boat's Captain:

Hi. I'm twenty years old, drop-dead gorgeous, filthy rich, witty as hell, and smarter than Einstein and Newton's hypothetical love child. Nice to meet you.

Again with the "'facts' on my profile may or may not be true".

Okay, I'm twenty, give or take a couple years, fairly average in the looks department, not wealthy, and just a touch crazy. I think I'm relatively smart, but that's a fairly common delusion amongst idiots, so don't take my word for it. I also have a sense of humor, and it entertains me, but comedy writer is not among my career prospects.

I, like pretty much everyone with a profile on this site, am an aspiring writer. However, I aspire a little harder than most; I have studied grammar, read and analyzed a lot of original novels, written original narratives and short fiction as well as fan fiction, and had a few short works published in anthologies. I am also in the process of writing an original novel that I hope to have published some day. My career goal is to be a published writer, but I am not so delusional about my abilities that I will quit my day job.

If you do review, please give me constructive criticism. Even one comment on any aspect of my writing would be greatly appreciated. If you want to feed my ego, I won't stop you, but while I appreciate the sentiment, I've also seen glowing reviews of some truly awful writing.

I do not write (or generally read) the following:

Slash: I am not a homophobe, but slash is almost always very (and badly) OOC. To be honest, it's uncomfortable in the same way as watching someone you know acting wildly out of character and suddenly hooking up with someone they've never been attracted to or even liked. You want to tackle him (or her) and sit on his back until you're sure he's not drunk or roofied.

Incest: It's illegal, it's wrong, it's about as sexy as Hutt-on-pterodactyl porn, and not necessarily in that order.

Smut: In simplest terms: "No story pointless explicit sex = BAD." Scenes are to be included for three reasons: plot advancement, character development, and establishing the setting. Not to relieve the frustrations of an author who can't get any.

Mary Sue: Perfect people do not exist and will not be reading your stories, so Mary Sues do not make sympathetic or compelling characters. Flaws are what make a great character, not how close he or she can get to flawless without the author being called on it.

Ships with major age differences: Meaning people of whole different generation in a relationship. The litmus test: If one partner is old enough to be the other's parent, they probably shouldn't be together. For older couples, I'll assume them to be mature enough to make their own decisions, but a 17-year-old should not be dating a 40-year-old.

My style of fiction:

As a writer, I consider the following to be traits of good writing and try to include them in my own writing:

Realistic, developed, competitively-balanced, consistent characters: As a rule, characters should act like human beings unless there is a very good reason they don't. Human beings have flaws and virtues, motivations and weaknesses, and follow their own individual patterns of behavior that only change if they do. Characters just have to be more internally consistent, motivated, and unique than most self-centred human beings to be sympathetic; nobody wants to read about lazy, confusing, confused assholes. There is also a certain level of realism that needs to be applied to characters' abilities, namely that abilities must be plausible given setting and characterization.

Competitive balance: For a good narrative, the outcome of the conflict should always be in question. Easy or contrived victories do not make for good storytelling. For this to hold true, the abilities of the characters should match up approximately to what they will face--one hero facing dozens of henchmen can be stronger or smarter than any of them, but a team of heroes facing one villain should individually be outmatched--and be realistic. Everybody with even a little characterization should have their strengths and weaknesses, and these strengths and especially weaknesses should be plot-relevant and treated as such by other characters. Not, oh, how terrible, our dashing and courageous hero can't make speeches, though he hasn't had to yet, but at least he's a crack shot with every weapon ever invented.

Cause-and-Effect: There should be no change in a character or in a plot's direction without some event causing it, and events in the story should have an effect on character and plot. Nobody should suddenly get over a fear of heights just because it's plot-important, and if two characters are shown having sex, it should be important to either the story or their characterization. Also, unless there is a very good justification or it is very early in the story, coincidences should not be the driving events that change the direction of the plot, lest the ending feel contrived and unearned.

The Invisible Author: Real life is not filtered through a lens of bad grammar, purple prose, and an author's opinions. Thankfully. Therefore, although there have been great works of fiction that contain poetic descriptions and a narrator that is as much a part of the story as the characters despite not being one, I feel that most of the best writing has a narrative style that is concise, well-written, and does not interfere with the story.

I also, as a writer and reader, tend to like certain themes, motifs, and tropes. I find themes of friendship, betrayal, forgiveness, and redemption to be particularly powerful. In my mind, friendship is the basis of all loves, romantic and platonic; betrayal is the means by which a relationship is broken, and forgiveness, when earned, is how it is repaired; and redemption is the path along which a damaged person becomes more whole. I also have a particular love for morally ambiguous characters such as antiheroes and antivillains. They're all people, after all, with all the flaws that entails. I do try to keep my "heroes" at least somewhat sympathetic, but I like them a bit dirty and damaged, and don't be surprise if they put a toe (or leg) across The Line. Considering all the crap most plots put them through, it's quite unrealistic for them to start out as pure as the driven snow, survive it all, and leave just as undamaged. And the female characters don't get any special treatment just for having their reprodutictive organs inside.

Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, stories, or anything else you recognize in any story I post on this site. It is "fan fiction"; I am a fan. I play in others' sandboxes to develop the tools I hope to later carry over to my own. This goes for all my stories. If I ever write anything a piece or series of original fiction that gets its own category on this site, I will never read fan fiction about it or let anyone on this site know that it belongs to the owner of this account. Ever.

Author's Note: Learning to write is a bit like learning a sport: for every point where you think you're pretty good, there's another further down the line where you look back, wince, and say "I did that?" Then you start plotting to destroy the evidence. As it stands, the one story I have posted is something I'm not very proud of. When I get something else up to publishing quality, I'll take it down, post that something else, and maybe rewrite the crappy one later if that particular plot bunny bites hard enough to draw blood. Also, if my stories update without announcement or the number of chapters changing, I've just posted a later draft.