#I have another wip that I already like infinitely better LMAO

[theoldwest]

just trying to become competent in procreate + with shading and such :3

babe n dean

pose ref @mellon-soup as usual

[benperorsolo]

Do all of them babe ;)

1. What is your favorite fic you have under your belt?

If we’re talking fics I have finished (ahaha), then probably Brew Me Tea of Broken Leaves, which was written for Zutara Week 2014. 

2. What is your favorite snippet of dialogue? (From chapter 17 of Letters from an Apologist)

“And then whathappened?” Ben chances to ask, like a fairy tale, like a story.

And then the bad guys were defeated and the good guys livedhappily ever after, his mother won’t say, because here he is, alive, and here sheis, so angry and so sad.

“Luke told me. How…Anakin had looked, in his last moments beforehe died. Let me see the memory, in fact. And I remember thinking how, for thatsingle moment, he might have been a man I could forgive. And what a shame itwas that his life was full of so few of those moments, the ones I could seeworthy of forgiving.”

Her hands find his shoulders, spinning him gently until he’sfacing her, propped on the hospital bed with one leg on the floor and the otherfolded at the knee. Ben doesn’t want to look at her, unsure of what he would doif she excused him or damned him or simply said nothing.

“But the Light,” Leia says, unbearably softly, as if theLight were here with them right now, as easily frightened away as a deer.“I saw it with him. There, in that very second, when he died. No matter what hehad done. No matter if I never forgive him, or anyone does. It was somethinginternal, a decision made and a self-promise kept, and if the whole world wasout to kill him, then at least he’d have a lantern to run by.” She goes silentagain, hands inert in the curvature between Ben’s neck and the thick planes ofhis shoulders. “Your father used to say that there was too much Vader in you.And for the only time in my life, I hoped like a fool that what he had said wastrue.”

3. What inspired Letters?

Justice 4 Leia.

4. Do you prefer writing long or short fics?

I prefer writing long fics. I think long fic makes it easier for me to make subtle moments build over the course of several chapters, so that the payoff feels more earned. 

5. What’s your favorite headcanon you use in fics?

Usually the one that pops up most often is that Ben is kind of an insufferable history and poli sci nerd. He’s read, like, every thesis on politics and the Dark Side that Palpatine ever produced. Even after returning to the Light he never really ends up taking a mainline Resistance position, but at least Leia & Co appreciate that he has a better intellectual grasp of the enemy than a lot of them because he actually reads their boring intellectual treatises.

6. What’s the detail you wait on bated breath for readers to notice?

There’s a lot of those, since I’m a pretentious symbolism ho. Probably the most consistently done one is that when Ben is somewhere in a scene by Leia or Han, I always position him on their right side— because the name Benjamin means ‘son of my right hand.’

7.  How much do you like symbolism in your fics?

ALL THE SYMBOLISM. I dunno, I love using symbolism because it allows me to tell a story at multiple levels. There can be the base level of actual plot, and the metalevel of the thing I’m trying to convey with that plot. I think symbolic meanings tend to grip us more than the particulars of a plot because it’s through the specifics of a story that we’re trying to reach the overarching symbols that inform our whole lives. “A novel is a machine for generating interpretations” and all that. Symbolism helps on that front rather than having an author beat me over the head with it. Provided the symbolism isn’t so stupidly obscure and the plot so convoluted that you have to have a hundred pages of endnotes (cough Infinite Jest what)

8. How often do people catch onto your little details?

A lot. I have some commenters who are just insanely in-tune with my own intentions for each update, and I love reading their comments a lot.

9. What’s the fic you like the least?

lmao a bunch of ones I haven’t published because they’re that stupid.

10. What would you change if you had it all to do again?

For Letters, I’d tighten up some story arcs and maybe delete ¾ of entire chapters. That’s kind of the peril of publishing a WIP, so though it’s annoying I don’t think I’m ever going to go through and overhaul 100k+ words like that.

11. What’s a fanfic idea you haven’t done yet?

I have a lot of those. One I’ve recently really got the bug for is one where Leia never discovers that Ben is Kylo Ren, and assumes that Kylo Ren murdered Ben along with all the other Padawans…and only discovers his identity when Ben is literally at gunpoint, surrendering to the Resistance on his knees.

12. Do you have a favorite character to write for?

Post-redemption Ben. All that melancholy, hollowed anger, the been-burnt-before sorrow, the whole practical work-out of the idea that “when a man is getting better he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him”. I really like that Prodigal Son headspace. I like it a lot.

13. What’s your favorite shipping fic you’ve written? Favorite gen fic?

I’ve written so few completed fics that this question is pretty much everything I’ve already said. Fave shipping fic— Brew Me Tea of Broken Leaves, fave gen fic— Letters from an Apologist. 

14. Give us a snippet of something from your WiPs!

From the Leia-doesn’t-know-Ben-is-Kylo-Ren-WIP (working title is dumb so let’s just not)

“I thought I knewyou,” Leia rasps out.

Ithought I loved you, comes another voice, alie, because his mouth is the pink pout she remembers and his hair brushes pasthis ears in an inky cascade, and his freckles are wild and unrepentant and she loves him now and still.