#So long story short I'm not 100% sure this is coherent cuz I wrote it right after waking up and finalizing it sleep deprived...

[babycharmander]

Double ask meme time!? 1, 3, 8, 21, 23; 💖, 📥, 🏅, 🌝, 🍰 (Gosh that's a lot I'm sorry)

OKAY SORRY THIS TOOK A LONG TIME TO WRITE OUT

1.) give short descriptions of all your current WIPs.

OH BOY. Here we go!

No Secrets in Wartime: Between the climax and epilogue of Psychonauts, Sasha, Milla, and Ford drag Oleander kicking and screaming through his mental world so they can be sure that he's going to stop being evil. (Finished--the final chapter just needs to be beta-read and edited.)

Oh Crap He's Alive [temp title]: Part of RoR from Oleander's perspective as he rushes off to rescue Raz. (Finished, just needs to be beta-read and edited.)

dentist-sitting [temp title]: During Psychonauts 2, Oleander is in charge of watching Loboto while Sasha is away on a mission. Nonsense ensues and I'm not 100% sure if this one is getting finished..

Psychics Ruin Everything: Post-Psychonauts 2, Loboto's escape attempt fails, he is re-captured, and Raz is tasked with diving into his brain to see if he's fit for release. Loboto is Not Happy about this. (I'm like two chapters from finishing the rough draft of this.)

Weird-Psychonauts-AU-Where-Ford-Kidnaps-Loboto [very obviously temp title]: An AU I started BEFORE Psychonauts 2 came out, and it was so wildly different from canon I just embraced it being a total alternate timeline AU. In an alternate timeline where the Psychonauts are an older organization and Ford and the rest of the Psychic 7 are just a small group within it, Ford receives a psychic distress signal from a child who is undergoing a lobotomy, and breaks into the hospital to rescue him. He's too late to stop the surgery, but takes the kid to the Psychonauts anyway, which results in A Lot of Problems because FORD YOU ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO KIDNAP CHILDREN, but he tries to make the best of this really, really awful situation he created and attempts to make things better for Loboto, somehow... (I got 14k words into this, but it needs a lot of rewriting and restructuring before I can continue.)

Beclaws [temp title]: pre-Psychonauts oneshot taking place after For Want of an Elevator/Patient where Oleander meets with Loboto and sees his prosthetic arm for the first time. I have no idea if this one will actually get finished.

That's all the WIPs I'm actively working on, anyway. I have others sitting around but they're not actively being worked on.

3.) what makes you love writing?

Already answered!

8.) which of your own projects have shaped your writing the most? in what way?

Oh man this is an interesting one... Uhhh... I mean, A Light in the Darkness is my longest ongoing writing project (I started it like 20 or more years ago) and I've learned a lot through the process of working on it and repeatedly re-writing it.

Also like... I think my Redemption Line series was when I started embracing more self-indulgent writing but like, in a constructive way that it actually translated into a coherent story. That was when I realized that yeah I could just dive headfirst into completely self-indulgent nonsense AND make it into a coherent story AND something other people would enjoy, and I feel like from that point onward my writing improved a lot? Cuz like, looking back at my writing before that point, it was more restrained, I think? And the more self-indulgent stuff was reserved more for RPs. Mostly, anyway--I also wrote silly dramatic nonsense as a kid but, y'know, I was a kid and it was just kindof silly edgy nonsense and most of it I took down because it was dumb. XDXD; Not all of it was taken down though--you can still see some of my silly edgy drama on FFN. But yeah, like, I think Redemption Line was when I actually figured out how to translate the stuff I really wanted to write into something that was actually coherent. So let's go with that?

21.) what are the most important facets of creating a character, to you?

Creating a character??? Geez I don't know. My thing is like... most of my original characters that I use today are ones I created YEARS ago. like, YEARS AND YEARS ago. The exceptions are the ones I wrote for an original short story, which, the entire short story came to me in a dream, so... But like... I guess like, making sure those characters have a life beyond what you're writing--you don't have to explain that life to the reader, but it should be there, like, the characters having interests outside of what's going on with the main plot. Though sometimes that's not always possible if the plot just focuses on the character's entire life, in which case their life IS the main plot, if that makes sense...

Also, like, something I'm learning is that it's important to acknowledge that you don't know your characters. If you claim to know everything about them, then that can prevent you from developing them further. It's better to realize you don't know everything about them--that way they can surprise you, or you can tweak their characters into something more interesting.

I... don't know if any of that made sense.

23.) what do you do to engage with your projects which isn’t actually writing? ex: playlists, pinterest boards, etc. how much do they play a role in the development of your work?

Oh! I very frequently sketch stuff related to my stories. Sometimes it's scenes, sometimes it's maps, sometimes it's character designs. They can help me get a better visual idea of what's going on in the story. Sometimes I'll sketch scenes before I write them so I can get them into something a bit more concrete than just floating aimlessly through my head, and that can help me get a better direction of things.

I've also made exactly ONE playlist, and it's for ALitD. Listening to it can help me get in the mood for working on it, or get my brain thinking about the story.

💖 What do you like most about your own writing?

Already answered!

📥 What is your fave fic to receive comments/messages on?

Oooh... honestly just about any fic, but I really like getting comments/messages on fics I've worked particularly hard on or agonized over, or whatever my current still-being-posted WIP is (currently No Secrets in Wartime), OR something from my tiny fandoms, like my Return to Oz fics! But I even like getting comments on my older fics like my Portal stuff or Coco stuff! (seriously comments are Good please do not be afraid to leave comments on my stuff)

🏅 What is something you recently felt proud of in regard to your writing (finished a fic, actually planned for once, etc).

I'm really proud that I managed to finish writing No Secrets in Wartime, though the final chapter is still in the process of being edited. This was my first time writing from Oleander's perspective and I feel like I did a decent job with the characters? Maybe? Working on this fic helped bump Oleander up from "character that is pretty cool" to "one of my favorite characters" too, haha.

🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?

The rest of the Psychic 7!! I mean I have written Otto briefly in a fic I haven't posted yet, but I really want to write all of them for my AU and I'm excited to get to do so. (Less excited about having to rewrite parts of what I've already written, but I'll get over it.)

🍰 Name one of your fave comfort fics (doesn’t have to be your all time fave).

Already answered!