Hey there,
I am a writer of Star Trek fan fiction that mostly focuses on plausible, canon-friendly, non-romantic fiction: something known in the fan fiction space as “gen fic” or “general fic”. It is quite unpopular compared to stories about romantic or sexual relationships involving established characters.
What’s more, I write about original characters, which is even less popular; for example, I am currently working on a little series about a Kaferian freighter crew in service of the Merchant Marine without any known face in the story.
All that seems to be why I have had little success in finding a community around that type of fan work both for finding others’ stories and readers for mine.
I was wondering whether there is a community like a forum, a Matrix room, an IRC, a Fediverse instance of some kind or whatever for this niche where one could talk canon, share stories, talk about fiction writing or read others’ works. Something more focused than this Lemmy instance .
I can imagine that Star Trek is a fandom that lends itself quite well to genfic more than some others, considering its broad expanded universe and plenty of potential for narratives about all kinds of Federation ships, jobs, lives, planets; not even to mention non-Federation stories.
@[email protected] I’ve got a few ways to find fics with all-OC casts, which usually fit the bill (Trek BBS forum; fanfiction.net’s StarTrek: Other section; looking at AO3’s Star Trek tag and then excluding each individual show). Problem is, I’m usually more interested in hearing people talk about their stories / ideas / etc than actually reading them, and I don’t know where that sort of thing happens, if at all.
Most of the active fic writers I know are talking to one another in closed discord groups that come out of fandom discussion boards like the ones here.
It all has the feel of the old mimeo groups that sent one another stories before printing them in fanzines. Basically, someone has to invite you.