#I'd rather believe in plants willingly offering their fruits than be cynical about any time humans have a spiritual connection with nature

[thehoneybeet]

B, W, Y for the ask game, if you wish 🤩!

Ali, all of these are wonderful!! Thanks for the ask (full alphabet here).

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

In plant me in your garden, the scene in which Draco explains how to ask for permission from the plants before taking their fruit is based on something a parent taught me when I was young. You could take it literally and see plants as sentient beings with some level of autonomy, or you could take it as a metaphor, a reminder to be present and hold space for gratitude when receiving things from nature.

This story as a whole was inspired by my own experience exploring and thinking about gender fluidity in a way that felt safe and transformative.

In everything is relative to you, one of Harry and Draco's past lives (the lesbian witch burning) was inspired by a past life regression of someone very close to me.

W: Do you like more general prompts, or more specific ones?

I see you gearing up for fth :) I love prompts that start with a story concept and also include certain tropes, elements, etc. that you love to read. I find it really fun to combine those things and try to fit them all in a (somewhat) coherent story. This challenge is why I love doing @hd-erised. I also find that it makes me write things I would never have thought of on my own, which makes the process much more interesting and enjoyable. That said, I can't guarantee I'll stick with every element in a specific prompt. If the prompt is extremely detailed (for example, outlining the plot) I think the prompter should take a stab at writing it themselves.

Y: A character you want to protect.

None of them. To me, this is the point of characters, that no matter the shit they've gone through, no real person is getting hurt. I find it compelling to read about characters who have experienced pain and dealt with it through some sort of catharsis. I love happy endings, but to me angst is more stimulating, emotionally complex and rewarding by the end of the story. And by definition that means no one is totally protected from being hurt.

In a completely different sense, I do want to protect certain characters from their limited and "ethically mean-spirited" portrayals in canon. Part of this is the joy of fandom, that we look at a character like Draco and not see someone irredeemable, but rather someone who's been on the wrong path and is struggling to change himself and how he engages with the world. Same with Harry--I almost think that allowing Harry to be truly hurt by the events of canon and process them in fic is kinder than pretending everything was fine, that he was straight, cis, etc. And having them love each other so completely obliterates this black and white idea that some people are Good People and some are Bad People and that's an unalterable fact. So I do want to protect them from that.

Thank you again for asking and would love to hear your answers to these as well 💕