#KCrabb does asks memes

[kcrabb88]

For the character ask game! Quinlan + 10 + 13 + 25

<3

10. Could you be best friends with this character?

Oh yes I think so! He's one of those people that is both very fun/funny, but also has a lot of angst going on underneath, and I like people like that and I think we could both do fun stuff and also have really good talks about stuff. The best kind of friend, really! I'd also make sure to tell him that yes, he is a good person because I think he needs that sometimes. And I think he'd be a thoughtful, kind friend, too! His loyalty and love for his friends seems clear to me from the source material even if he gets messy at points. TL;DR yes I would love to be best friends with Quinlan.

13. What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

😏

25. What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

My first impression came from the OWK show, which was interesting because he's just mentioned there! I'd heard of him before, but hadn't watched TCW/Read Dark Disciple/Read the comics at that point. So, my first impression was "oh wow, he seems very important to Obi-Wan" and "what a good dude trying to save Force-sensitive kids from the Empire" and "judging by Tala's little smile it seems like he's funny." All of these things turned out to be true! My impression of him of course has deepened a ton over time! Quinlan is a good, kind guy who has so many layers under there. Fear of his own darkness. Pain from his past. A rare Force power that can be overwhelming. He can be stubborn and impulsive but he's also an incredible spy and tracker, a talented Jedi, and a wonderful friend who has a ton of love in him. He’s funny and loves to banter and make sarcastic jokes. Anyway, my first impression was right and has only grown better and better.

[kcrabb88]

2, 19, and 23 for Les Mis? (Choose violence ask meme)

 2. A compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

Ha, well, I have a couple of reasons for this one. First, I tend to think of Enjolras a non-sex having aro/ace, however! When I am convinced to ship him, I wouldn't put him in the category of top or bottom because he'd be versatile! He's all about equality, right? Also, I generally think people lean too hard into boxes for this type of thing? And sometimes create weird gender role stuff?

19. You’re mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like…

Hahahaha I feel like the only answer to this question is that I really like writing in Javert's POV? Do I agree with him? Fucking NO, but it's compelling and interesting to write from his viewpoint simply for the reason that he is SO deeply messed up and I like redeeming him and making him suffer, though admittedly writing him in the throes of a breakdown is one of my fave parts of that process.

23. Ship you’ve unwillingly come around to

Hahaha probably Valvert? I haven't written them in a romantic way myself, but I admit to having read fic for them in a post-Javert redemption situation, and you know, I enjoyed it! I'm not hardcore for it or anything, but the folks on that side of fandom are really nice and they write really well!!

Ask me my salty opinions!

[kcrabb88]

Black Sails!! 8,9, and 22! :D

8. Common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

I mean, I dunno that I would call this common so much as it is THE great debate in fandom and is pretty split, and that's whether or not Silver is lying at the end of the show about taking Flint to Thomas. So, did he, or is Flint dead? And I respect the other side's opinion on this, which I can't say for a lot of other fandom debates that I have deeply held opinions about because I'm petty, but the ending does leave itself open and it's meant to be like that. I have different friends with different thoughts and it's interesting to talk about it with them. However!! I firmly believe that Silver told the truth, and that is largely because if he shot Flint, then that's just, Flint AND James McGraw being dead. I'm obsessed with the concept of Silver UNMAKING Flint and leaving behind a tattered James McGraw at that farm with Thomas. I have other reasons, but this is one of the big ones.

9. Worst part of canon

Actively hard to pick with this show because I have not many critiques of it, but I don't like the becalming episode as much as other folks do? I get kind of bored during it. Most people agree that season 1 needed some work in places, but that's not salty cause we all agree (though! I will say once you see the whole show and go back and watch season 1 it actually really hits in a lot of places. Some GREAT monologues).

22. Your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

Madi I mean I'm not being fair, Madi def gets love, but not as much as she OUGHT to. I think especially Madi and Flint's friendship doesn't get the focus it should. To me. It's why both my Black Sails fics are, indeed, this.

Ask me my salty fandom opinions!!!

[kcrabb88]

For the 🔥 ask game, can I ask for 16, 17, and 20 for Star Wars? 😃

16. You can’t understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

There are a lot of answers to this question because Star Wars is a huge fandom, HOWEVER, on that bothers me a lot personally are the crimes in the Quinlan Vos tag here and on Ao3. Quinlan IS funny and he IS flirty and he's really chaotic which I adore about him, but the last thing he is is stupid? And I see that characterization a lot? Either that, or he's just there to be the chaos guy. He's a Jedi Master! A legendary spy! He has insecurities about how close he has to walk to the dark side to do his job sometimes (and insecurities about his fall and return to the light). Quinlan has a grin that can kill, but he also has a lot of complex stuff going on underneath that grin. I get so frustrated when characters like him get reduced down to (1) trait. He's one of those characters where fanon really interrupts a much more compelling canon portrayal.

17. There should be more of this type of fic/art

I wish there were more fics about Obi-Wan and his friendships with Padme and Bail? I love his relationships with them, and they aren't as common as you'd think they'd be?

20. Part of canon you found tedious or boring

I really, really, really do not care about Mandalorian warrior culture? I like Din, I love Sabine, and while I have my issues with some stuff Satine does re: how she treats Obi-Wan and interacts with the Clone War as a whole, she was RIGHT about Mandalore. That planet doesn't need more warrior culture!! It needs what she was trying to bring: peace. The third season of Mando made me see red for how much it erased that part of the planet's history and held up Death Watch (a former terrorist group!) like it was totally normal, and brought back the warrior culture that was responsible for centuries of war like it was no big. I found it all so deeply boring and I wanted Din to leave tbh.

(This is not to say that the Mandalorians deserved what the Empire did to them, because no one does!)

[kcrabb88]

24, 6, ... no 0 so let's swap the order of the last two to get 10?

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

Hmmm let's see

Les Mis: Enjolras&Combeferre&Courfeyrac (in like, a Queer Platonic Partner sense, which I think counts)

Les Mis: Bahorel/Prouvaire

Phantom of the Opera: Raoul/Christine

Pirates of the Caribbean: Will/Elizabeth

Black Sails: Madi/Her Revolution

Black Sails: Flint/Thomas

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Quinlan Vos

Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker & Padme Amidala (a polycule in which Anakin and Padme are romantically involved and Obi-Wan is their platonic partner/third parent to the twins. You feel me?)

I'm sure there are other fandoms but these are the ones that come to mind!

10.  Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

Answered! :D

24. What fic do you desperately need to rewrite or edit?

I wouldn't say desperately, and I adore the fic, but if I could go back to Les Hommes de la Misericorde and re-do some of the historical stuff and rewrite the way I did the barricade escape in the first chapter, I would (I mean I COULD I suppose). I've learned sooooo much about French history since I wrote that fic, and while I researched of course, you can tell how much I learned when writing my later Les Mis fics. That fic is dear to me though, and I made some of my best fandom friends while writing it :D

[kcrabb88]

ooh-- 19, 39, and 50, for the asks?:D

19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?

This is a timely question because I saw Les Mis over the weekend with my high school best friend and she isn't fandomy really, so she leaned over and said to me "you know what people should write? Eponine and Cosette together" and I was like oh, that exists!! Like majorly exists. And that is one of the ships I do wish I could enjoy more? Because queer Cosette and Eponine and more WLW ships HELL YEAH. I guess I just see too many fics that ignore their complicated past that I can't get into it. But hey, I'm willing to be proved wrong!

My unpopular Star Wars ship opinion is that I'm not a Codywan enjoyer, even though I like both of the characters in that ship and like their friendship a lot. I'm just not into it from a romantic angle. Never thought I'd be a rare-ish pair shipper in SW fandom with Quinlan and Obi-Wan, both because I write a lot of gen fic and because I don't think I've ever really shipped a rair pair so much but you know. Here we are. Character growth.

39. What is you greatest strength as a writer?

Character arcs and development, I think! Characterization is soooo important to me as a writer, and I think it comes across in the way I write.

50. Rant or Gush about one thing you love or hate in the world of fanfiction! Go!

One annoyance that I've been thinking about lately is how there's a trend of way too many fics that re-invent gender roles with queer characters? We don't want gender roles!!! Away with them!!! I think this has happened because I've been reading more smut for my Star Wars ship and then stumbled across this while browsing and I ... don't like it.

One thing I love though? Is making friends via the fic I write. There really is nothing like it, because you can just jump into talking about your shared interest without any of the awkward beginning of friendship things. You're just like omg!! You're so great!! And they think you're great! It's nice.

[kcrabb88]

12 and 32 for the writing questions!

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be? Btw if you wish for more wishes the genie turns all your current WIPs into Lorem Ipsum, I don’t make the rules

Fix all my typos magically

Make blocking easier to write? It's not action scenes I struggle with, but simple ones, where people are just chilling in a room! Why is that so hard??? You tell me

Make it so I never have to grasp for a word. Took me a solid two minutes the other day to think of "poise."

13. What is a line from a poem/novel/fanfic etc that you return to from time and time again? How did you find it? What does it mean to you?

I think a lot about the last lines in Les Mis, which go "He sleeps. Although so much he was denied,/ He lived; and when his dear love left him, died./ It happened of itself, in the calm way/ That in the evening night-time follows day" and then proceeds to talk about how even these words (I think written in chalk on Valjean's grave) were eventually washed away by the elements. I definitely recall putting the book down and immediately crawling on my covers, because it is SO SAD but also always gets me thinking about how legacies are funny things. Valjean's grave was humble and unmarked, sure, but he did so much good for Cosette (and for others!) He was able to break the cycle for her, and taught her to be kind, and so she'll continue on doing good just like her dad. People might not know his name, but the people he helped through his life will remember him, and that has a domino effect. ANYWAY I'm in my feelings.

[kcrabb88]

✍️ What’s your ideal writing setup?

Answered! :D

[kcrabb88]

I would love your hot takes on Black Sails

I dunno if this is so much a hot take as it is a less common opinion, but I actually find Flint's relationship with Madi more personally fascinating than I do his relationship with Silver? Not that I'm NOT intrigued by them, of course I am, but I just LOVE Flint and Madi, and how she ends up as almost this kind of daughter and an equal to him all at once? He teaches her, but she teaches him, too. She could be his legacy, if things had been able to go forward. She has his anger and his passion and his leadership, but she can see more clearly. She's a BETTER leader and is open with the people she leads. She doesn't let things get in her way like he does, sometimes. And maybe that's because while her parents were slaves, she was shielded and protected (if extremely isolated), and Flint was ripped apart and lost his whole life for the sin of being queer. Flint was tossed out of civilization. Madi has never been allowed inside it. So they're like two halves of this whole, and it's very intersectional and just FASCINATING to me. And much as I have almost no complaints about Black Sails, I'd have liked to see more of that in the show itself, and in fandom.

[kcrabb88]

For the ask game 🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think? (Star Wars)

This took me a second to decide on because there are a few, but the first one that came to mind that I came back around to is, honestly, Commander Fox. I don't think Fox is like, Super Evil, but when I first watched TCW I thought he was kind of a jerk (and I was pissed when he shot Fives) only to find the fanon developed around him was pretty different from that. I mean, he's kind of a jerk in fanon but like a jerk with a heart of gold kind of thing and again, this is not to say he's Deeply Horrible, I don't think he is, I think he's a guy who doesn't question his orders and he happens to be serving under a secret Sith. I guess I just think Fox could stand to, idk, take a step back and question things sometimes? Of course, it's not like we get a lot of him! It's only a teeny bit, but sometimes the fanon can get a bit aggressive to the point where it feels a bit stifling to try and do something different. But! I'm actually doing an arc with Fox in my current longfic, Kill the Lights, that kind of digs into this (the fic starts during the Fives arc) and it's been really interesting to explore why he might be so loyal to Palpatine and what might finally cause him to break faith with that loyalty. So, I'm not just a hater, I really do think looking into Fox and the Corries as a whole is interesting!

[kcrabb88]

Flint from Balck Sails, 1, 7?

1. Why do you like or dislike this character?

He's so goddamn compelling! This man very nearly burned down the British Empire in his queer rage like!!! He does some Bad Shit along the way (I don't mean piracy, that's rad, but like, killing Gates, among other things) but man I just forgive him every time. His speeches alone would be enough (there is freedom in the dark, the empire survives, this ends when I grant them my forgiveness etc.) but his arc and his backstory are just delicious. What a CHARACTER he is and so well-acted.

7. What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

Black Sails fandom is small, and so I feel like most writers really, really understand this character well. Most fics I read have gorgeous character work and understand the rage and the gentleness living inside Flint. Waaay too often fandoms will assign a character (1) trait and that's it, but not with Flint or in Black Sails fandom generally. It's great!

[kcrabb88]

For the ask game - 22. What is it about watching the same two idiots falling in love over and over again? With, if you're amenable, an addendum - one thing I've noticed (& love!), at least in your QuinObi fics, is that you don't shy away from writing older characters as fully realized people and as protagonists and that often, their relationship is already deep and meaningful - so not so much the falling in love as the navigating life through love. What leads you to write from that perspective?

!!!!! I love this question omg.

This definitely has become a theme for me both in my QuinObi fics and other fandoms I've written for (and also in my pirate novels!) and I think part of the reason why (other than me being in my 30s now) is that sooo many stories are about the falling in love part, but I love to see, as you put, characters navigating life with each other. The "I chose you and will continue to choose you" of it all. As Red, White, and Royal Blue put it, "I love you on purpose." I think, too, I enjoy writing big epics, and having relationships within those big epics, and so, I often will have an established pairing facing all that together, which I just think is really intriguing and fun. They might fight, bad things might happen to them, but they'll keep holding on to each other.

One of my favorite things about QuinObi specifically is just, the years behind them. I loooove childhood friends to lovers, and the thing about Quinlan and Obi-Wan is that they keep coming back to each other. Whatever they may be to one another at any given time, to me, at least, they're always in love with each other. I love exploring a relationship that begins (in the legends comics at least) at thirteen, and just keeps going. I love writing about them falling in love with each other once and twice and three times throughout all those years. Them choosing each other and sticking by each other's side in this steady way that never feels like possession. I think that's the thing that's interesting to me about older characters navigating together rather than the more-common falling in love story. They grow and change together. They know each other in this deep way. They're like, entwined with each other, have watched each other grow and become who they are, so I could write them being in love over and over again in different scenarios forever. They know each other's flaws and fears. It's so!! I just adore them I can't deal.

I could wax poetic for ages, but I'm glad you appreciate me writing older characters as fully-realized people! Cause god knows, I learn stuff about myself every year and feel more settled in myself. I think fic should reflect that too. <3

[kcrabb88]

For the ask game: 2 and 28!

2. Anything that you’d like to write but feel like you’re unable to?

Funny and very relevant question, because I like, never write modern AUs in any fandom I'm in, either because I didn't feel compelled or because I didn't think I could, but that is about to change! Because! I am going to write a QuinObi (and Anakin and Padme and Qui-Gon and lots of the cast) 80s/90s AIDS Crisis AU. Not, you know, current modern day, but still qualifies. I'm actually really hype about it, so we'll see how I do.

Also kind of related, but I used to have quite a bit of trouble not pulling my punches when writing my more intense scenes (violence, sexual assault, torture, anything like that) which is funny for a person who writes a lot of whump, but I've worked really hard over the past few years to just GO for it, and I'm really proud of that!

28. Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

My most boring but tried-and-true advice is that it's MUCH easier to fix a thing that exists than to stare at a blank page. You can edit as you go along, like that's no problem, but trying to make everything PERFECT as you go along will probably make writing a lot more painful. Writing is supposed to be fun! Another thing I do that goes along with this, is that I often will read over things I've written the night before the next day like over lunch or on the train or what not, like in a place where I can't edit it (such as on my phone on Dropbox) and it kind of gets my brain spinning for what I might do later. It's a neat little trick!

Also, if you're stuck, read aloud to yourself or even to someone else (or via a voice memo to someone far away). That has helped me a ton!

[kcrabb88]

For the writing asks, honestly would love to know your answers for like, 20 of them XD, but very curious on 24 (Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.) and 36 (How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?)? :3

24. Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but I love both! And I use them really often in my fics (and in my original writing too). I think the key with both (unless it's something like an epilogue, which is a bit different) is tying them--especially with flashbacks--to a theme and/or event in the current storyline and doing it really clearly and with a structure in mind. That's usually how I try to do it, anyway. I also, as I've progressed in my writing, tend to make them their own separate scene rather than in the middle of another scene unless the flashback is on the shorter side or is made up of little snippets interspersed. With flash forwards (or time skips as I usually call them) I think they're not as scary as people make them out to be :D You just have to be precise. And I'm a big fan of like, time/date cards at the top of scenes that take place over a longer period or involve time skips. People worry a lot about being clever in the body of the story to indicate time has passed, and then it can be unclear to the reader. You already have to work with time passing, might as well be straightforward. But, yes, I'm a fan of both!

36. How do you come up with fic titles? What’s the one you’re most proud of?

I overwhelmingly use either lines from the book/movie/show I'm writing about, song lyrics, or a passage that gets repeated a lot in a fic and/or one from the fic I like a lot.

Tough to pick a fave, but one of my more recent ones I really like was Whispers From the Dead, which is the title of the sequel to my RoTS fix-it that most people know me for, Shoulder the Sky. It's from an Amazing Devil song called Unwanted Animal, and I remember listening to it and being like OH, so I had a good experience coming up with the title so I'm really fond of it!

[kcrabb88]

I assume you live by the ocean and I assume that you write by hand relatively often

The ocean one is half true! I did live in Florida for five years and lived just a couple miles from the ocean and went regularly! Now I live in DC, but I do go to Florida yearly and spend Christmas by the ocean, which is, frankly, ideal.

Writing by hand a lot is also half true :D I used to carry around notebooks with lined paper and write everything that way and then transcribe it, but now my hand cramps too much. I do write a lot of notes and/or research stuff down by hand though, and a big part of my editing process is sitting on the floor and writing the title of each scene down on paper to see if I need to re-arrange it.

So, you've got my vibes right! <3

[kcrabb88]

For the writers ask game: 2 and 16!

2. Is there any specific ritual you go through while/before/after your writing?

It really depends! If I need to deeply focus I tend to pick a song from my playlist and listen to it on repeat as I write (I always make playlists for my fics, which I suppose does count as a ritual!) and sometimes I can just sit down and write with the TV on in the background. But, music is my big thing with writing. I make playlists and walk around and listen to them a lot and get some of my best ideas from that! Like little movie scenes in my head. So that's like, the most important thing for me. Music and my creative process are suuuuper intertwined.

16. Do you have structured ideas of how your story is supposed to go, or make it up as you write?

It's a bit chaotic? I have a wild notes document of Things I Know Will Happen, and I outline the first few chapters and then the rest of it is just like, notes organized by character/theme/what not. And then as I go I start to outline more chapters. So I have loose structure to start, and I absolutely figure things out as I write--my brain won't know every single thing before I start for sure. It builds on itself as I go. And I sometimes write way later snippets and tuck them away for later because when they pop into my head I need to write them down. So I don't know if this would work for everyone but it works for me :D