answering fanfiction asks from @ibonekoen, @voxiferous, and @celesticidal (and you can still keep asking, let’s keep this one going!)
1 What made you start writing fanfic?
I wanted to live in the worlds that I was reading about! The thing I keep saying is, I actually wrote my first fanfic as a response to a graded exercise at school. Must have been in the fourth or fifth grade. I wrote little stories about some of my favorite supporting characters in The Dragonriders of Pern (and man, am I ever lucky I never knew anything about the madness surrounding the author then). But I didn’t know what I was doing was fanfic – someone in high school had to teach me about the entire concept – but once I knew about it I really just decided I’d keep on expressing myself that way, having already made the first attempt. I haven’t looked back since.
(Yes, I’m a fandom old: I’m 36 now, which means I have been doing the fannish things for more than 25 years. I don’t ever want to stop.)
2
Which of your own fanfics have you reread the most?
Oh, I’ll be honest with you: it’s got to be my most kudosed story ever. It was a fluff-fest piece I did for MCU fandom: young hearts to yourselves be true – and if that’s familiar to you, then thanks! That’s my Steve-and-Bucky-get-deaged story and I reread it a lot because I’m fortunate that people are still commenting on it and kudosing it and everything :D
In FFXV I am currently rereading and rereading black madonna and golden knight, but that’s because it’s my big WIP and if I don’t reread it I’ll wind up contradicting myself as I push forward with the story! And now I am also rereading my NyxCor story,
all of your flaws and all of my flaws, they lie there hand in hand – I don’t know why, I just wanted to! XD
3 Describe the differences between your first fanfic and your most recent fanfic.
*blink* I think I still write lots of little snippets and mini-scenes, as I did with my very first attempts. But now – yeah, I know how to tackle AUs and crossovers and fusions, and sometimes I love those better than the canons because in the canons too many of my favorite characters die. Now I know how to really use language in order to bring the settings to life, and how to describe movement in both the story itself and in the characters.
4 Do you think your style has changed over time? How so?
Yes. See above. I mean: don’t get me wrong, there is something curiously satisfying and challenging in capturing the flavor of a moment and a scene, with freezing it in time and space like capturing a photograph. But now I think I do better when describing change, and movement, so the scene or the character shifts and shifts and tells a different kind of story – sometimes the story even changes from the beginning to the end of the movement, and I love the dynamic quality of that.
But that doesn’t mean – exclusively combat, or other big physical movements, mind you. A trail of thought or emotion is enough to drive a story or a scene. A small gesture, or a conversation of gestures, the same. I like to think my style keeps evolving, but – those are the goals, you know?
9
What do your fic bookmarks say about you?
That I don’t post nearly enough f/f fanfic XD. That I don’t feel adequate to do fic in some of my other fandoms. That I love some of my writer friends dearly and desperately. That sometimes I really won’t do anything else other than read fic in a fandom because – so much quality already, you know – I couldn’t possibly think of anything else to add to the conversation. That I hang out on TVTropes because some of those bookmarks come from various recommendation pages :D
10
What’s a theme that keeps coming up in your writing?
Trauma, the repercussions of, the ways it distorts a character, the process of recovering from. Little details that show how that trauma has remained with a person – and sometimes, that show how the trauma has sort of diminished, has become less of a weight, but remains as a constant mark on the character/s.
I wish I’d known to see trauma in myself as easily as I’d seen it in the various characters, scenarios, and AUs I had / have written about.
14 You’re applying for the fanfic writer of the year award. What five fanfics do you put in your portfolio?
*giggles* I linked the Steve/Bucky story already, didn’t I? So I have to pick four more???
the footsteps of uprooted lovers (Charles Xavier/Erik Lehnsherr, an entire battalion of MCU characters, and an AU concept that came from the Takarazuka Kagekidan)
Rey’s Feast (Rey/Finn/Poe Dameron, way too many food references including ones from the real world, and how a foundling from Jakku learns how to live with all the beings in the galaxy, especially the ones in the Resistance)
Padmé Lives to Tell the Tale (Padme Amidala, Luke and Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Rogue One crew, and my unfinished what-if take on a queen who diminishes in terms of titles or power, but never diminishes in life, love, or badassery)
oh don’t you wonder when the light begins to fade? (Noctis and the chocobros, sneakily a reincarnation story, and – I think – I really needed to get out my feelings about how Noctis sees his road trip companions and I did my best in this story)
PJ through the looking glass 