#I've never actually crocheted anything for a cosplay before

[iamsweden]

So the cloak doesn't look very much like a cloak right now, but it's a start! I have the other pieces of a Siffrin cosplay (hat and eye patch) ready to go, but I'm either going to have to find giant safety pins or crochet appliques for the finishing touches. I'll post update pics as I go! I'm excited to see it all come together!!!

[usamamoweek]

Meet the Creators - RiverLethe

What username(s) and platform(s) can folx find you on? (Please include links!)

@riverlethe - I am on Tumblr and Ao3!

(Fun Fact) What is your favorite kind of potato?

Yes. If it is a potato, I will eat it (except for mayo-based potato salads - no thanks), and my preference absolutely depends on mood, but if I had to pick one.... Have you ever tried Chef John's Potatoes Romanoff? If the answer is no, go fix that right now! (add in crisped up pancetta before baking - you're welcome)

How long have you been creating works in fandom spaces? How long have you been active in the SM fandom?

If reading fanfic counts as being active in the fandom, I've been active, on and off, for a little over 20 years, but I didn't actually start writing fanfic until 2 years ago.

What type(s) of creative works do you usually make? (fanfics, digital art, cosplay)

Fanfics are my #1 contribution, but I also crochet. I made @linlamont's Sailor Rex plush based on her amazing artwork for her adorable story "Treasures", and I am currently working on a custom Sailor Rex for my 6 yo daughter. There are plans for a Tuxedo Rex and Tuxedo Kamen

What do you enjoy about creating for the SM fandom?

I love the sense of community and making friends within the fandom. Discussing and theorizing all things Sailor Moon is one of my favorite things! Plus, there is just so much to explore, both in canon and fanon

Are you strictly UsaMamo or do you create for other pairings as well?

I wrote a Kunz/Venus fic for Heavenly Pearl's/@kaleidodreams' first ever Rare Pair week, but I otherwise exclusively write for UsaMamo. Who knows, maybe I'll be inspired to create for another ship in the future. Never say never!

What inspires you to create works for Usagi and Mamoru?

The emotions! Everything these kids go through is dark, scary, intense, etc etc, and I love to explore how it affected them, how they're feeling in the moment, and how Usagi and Mamoru support each other through it.

Do you tend to work on multiple projects (WIPs) simultaneously or try to finish one at a time?

Ideally, I would work on one WIP at a time, but with my ongoing story Once More, with Feeling!, I always have multiple going on. While I normally don't mind putting OMwF aside for a OS or two, I haven't updated it in almost a year, which I feel really bad about, so I am trying to put any new ideas on hold right now so I can get Chapter 13 done. OMwF will eventually update, I promise!

Do you prefer large projects (chaptered fics, webtoons/zines, highly detailed art) or small projects (one-shots or simple art)?

I love how much of a story can be explored and fleshed out in a chaptered fic, but, for fans, they can be daunting to start reading if you aren't there from the very beginning (depending on length), and there is always that ever present nemesis: time. As a writer, I like the regular engagement with the community that posting new chapters allows, but writing as I go can be very stressful, especially when motivation just isn't striking. For OSs, I love that ability to focus on one small part of the characters' lives without needing to generate a lot of backstory or lore. Will I do another Chaptered fic once OMwF is finished? Probably, I do want to continue into R, but I will hopefully take everything I've learned working on OMwF (it's my very first ever fanfic!) into the sequel so I'm a little more prepared.

Are there any common themes, situations, tropes, or mediums in your work?

Angst and Romance are probably the most common as I love the emotional impact the angst imparts and how Usagi and Mamoru support each other through it. Honestly, I find the original anime (and the manga to a lesser extent) a bit emotionally stunted, so I absolutely love fics that elicit emotions, in me, either happy, sad or anything in between!, and I strive to do that for my readers. With any luck, I succeeded!

Is there anything you haven’t explored artistically and would like to try?

If I could draw, I would totally do art. I am in awe of what artists can create through their medium and would love to be able to visually see what so many of us use words to describe, but, alas, I'll stick to crocheted dinosaurs with odangos! Regarding writing, I have more OSs in mind for stories and ideas I haven't explored yet, and maybe I'll actually learn some restraint and create chaptered fics that aren't 12+ chapters long at 5k-12k words each. Anything is possible! (Except for me and art. Not gonna happen)

[underwhelmingalchemist]

Actually, I love being a cluttered person.

I love spending time in my room filled with pillows and shelves of knick-knacks where everything is decorated for Christmas and is lit by red LED lights

I love having a closet that can accommodate every aesthetic from jeans and a t-shirt to cottagecore scene kid to forest gremlin to full lolita coord and never sticking to any single aesthetic, even if I'm reusing the same core pieces over and over

I love teaching myself to sing, and to make edits, and bake things I've never made before, and sew, and craft with foam, and make props and costume pieces, and crochet, and fold paper stars, and write new genres, and learn about odd bits of culture and history, and cosplaying and making videos and dancing and anything else that might strike my interest all at once

I love listening to every genre of music and having my playlist skip from metal to bubblegum pop to country, without any particular devotion to any one artist or band, picking up bits and pieces from every tiktok I come across or album that was recommended to be years ago or music my mom used to listen to when I was a kid

I love consuming any media that catches my interest, from anime to indie films to marvel movies to media analysis to children's cartoons to documentaries to video essays to tiktoks to podcasts without any visuals at all

I love being in a hundred fandoms all at once, and creating content for as many as I can and cosplaying and writing meta posts and making video edits and memes and shitposts and writing fanfiction for dozens of pairings, plenty of which involving the same characters shipped with different people because I can't choose just one

I love my blog of random bits and bobs I've collected, with shitposts followed by fandom pieces and poetic phrases and a video that made me laugh

I love my gender and all its messy complexities, and how I want to go on T but still wear lolita and skirts and makeup but also do drag in both the king and queen categories and put on a performance both onstage and off that seems both feminine and masculine and some secret third option and it's all so chaotically off-putting but makes everyone around me gradually feel more at ease with themselves

I love my attraction and how I'm ace but also enthralled by the concepts of kink and romantically attracted to whoever my mind feels like that day, with preferences that swirl and shift in some nebulous cloud of identity that nobody could ever quite figure out, least of all me

I love dating two people and getting to text my boyfriend about my day and talk to my queerplatonic girlfriend about her plans to marry her boyfriend and tell both of my partners that I love them and kissing them and making plans for the future with both of them

I love my body with all of its squishy curves and rolls, and getting to decorate and customize it however I want, whether it's putting stickers on it or dressing it up in fun outfits or putting color around my eyes and painting on little designs

I love being talkative and knowing a little bit about everything because I remember reading about it a while ago, just like I remember when someone tells me about their favorite TV show or how they had a fight with their boyfriend a couple weeks ago or if they just started a new game, and crying with people in the same day I'll laugh with someone different

I love doing a hundred things at once, and putting on a podcast on while I play video games and monitoring my texts and discord servers I'm in, and finding the most overstimulating music to blast through my favorite pair of earbuds just because I like the bass and how it crunches

I love using language in ways that might seem a bit out of place, like trying to make things fit in a box together and saying I'm 'Tetris-ing it together" or calling certain sounds "crunchy" or telling my boss that I "had to go on a sidequest" when I had to deviate from what I was told to do, or just using the word "scrungly" at all

All of this makes up who I am, each piece making up a small part of a larger whole, no one bit able to exist without the other

I love all my clutter, no matter what form it takes

And I love being a cluttered person.

[revvethasmythh]

17 25 30

17. talk about your writing and editing process

Honestly, it varies wildly from project to project, and is especially different between fic and original fiction. I'm much more lackadaisical about fic because it requires a lot less prep and usually will have a lot less length than my original fiction (I never mastered the short story--all I know how to do is write full length novels).

The writing process for fic is usually that I'll come up with a concept, maybe scribble down a few lines that could work as an entry point to the story, and then I'll just do it and see where it takes me. I keep editing to the minimal, usually just line edits, though I'll do some structural edits when absolutely necessary and obviously edit to correct mistakes regarding canon. But that's basically it, the process isn't very complicated for me even dealing with bigger pieces (or pieces that get bigger as I go along), I'll just outline as I go until I've got it all figured out. I wing it, basically.

Original fiction is a little trickier. There's a lot more that you have to build out in an original story and I tend to let ideas simmer for a long time before committing anything to paper. I like to have a full compendium of main characters, setting, worldbuilding, magic, and some philosophical concepts where necessary (such as, my current draft is highly focused on death and the afterlife, so what does that look like in-world? How do people interact with the afterlife/ghosts? Funerary rites, philosophy on death, that sort of stuff). I've sat on stories for a year or two figuring this sort of stuff out before writing anything beyond cursory character descriptions. And editing for original fiction is a lot harder for me specifically, because I'm not great at editing! Large, structural edits are very difficult for me! (And they're usually necessary due to the "figure it out as you go" nature of the way I write). I prefer drafting a lot more than editing, which is probably my biggest weakness as a writer. The day I crack outlining and editing it's over for you all. Alas, who knows when that will be.

The only consistent thing about my process between fic and original is that I pretty much always take notes/figure out my next steps in a physical journal. I don't know what it is about writing on actual paper, but it's the only way I can really organize my thoughts. It just doesn't happen when I'm typing on a computer the same way at all. So my journals are filled with weird quotes and half-concepts that help get the ball rolling again. If I didn't do that, I'd get stuck on just about everything I've ever written.

25. besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

I have a lot of random hobbies. I knit, sometimes I crochet even though I hate it (holding ONE needle?? uncomfortable, impossible, awful), I'm an equestrian, I'd consider myself a home-chef and a hobbyist baker, I kickbox, I cosplay, sometimes I draw--man, I don't know, I do a lot when I can. Does working out in general count as a hobby? I'm pretty fitness oriented on the day to day.

30. share a fic you’re especially proud of

I'm pretty proud of this bg3 fic I wrote (for my durge) during the holidays actually. Considering I was low-key delirious for half of the writing time (I wrote 7 out of 9.5k of it in one night!) I think it turned out remarkably well and has some in-character dialogue/conversations I'm especially proud of in all my work.

ask me about writing!