#i still haven't made my top completed dramas set lmao

[yourstormthlaylirahh]

Top Thai Dramas of 2022 - Still Airing Edition

[nirikeehan]

Interview with a Fic Writer

Tagged by the lovely @monocytogenes!

How many works do you have on AO3? I've got 17 to date which is really amazing, considering for the longest time I had like, 2. Joining DA Drunk Writing has enabled me to write a lot more short pieces that I then post on AO3 for posterity. I'm at least one behind on that score, too.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? ... 178,475. Holy shit, lmao. It is about 60% all one fic, though.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? The Force's Will, the aforementioned fic that makes up 60% of my word count, is ahead by a mile, at 193. It's a canonverse post-The Last Jedi Reylo fic started at the height of SW sequel trilogy fandom, before The Rise of Skywalker came out, so that doesn't surprise me.

Next is Stealing the Light at 52, a shorter fix-it Reylo fic I wrote for an exchange shortly AFTER TROS came out.

Third is a short Dragon Age: Inquisition fic called The One That Got Away at 41. It's mostly an introspective piece of Blackwall doing some disgusting pining for my Inquisitor, Thalia Trevelyan. I think it got targeted by some sort of kudo bot that artificially inflated the number. I'll take it, though.

Fourth is back to the Star Wars sequels: Iron, my bizarre experimental Hux/Kaydel ship fic. One day I'll continue this fic, even if I'm like the only person writing for this pairing. This one has 30.

Fifth is another experimental SW sequel fic, Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife, set several years before The Force Awakens and has a younger Hux meeting a child Rey on Jakku. They form an unlikely friendship and he recruits her into the First Order. Another idea I would like to continue playing with, if I can ever find the spoons. This has 25 kudos.

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Every single one on AO3 for sure. Those are precious gems. I find comments harder to reply to on Tumblr because of the site's janky UI, and a lot of people like to add commentary in tags, which is difficult to know how to acknowledge properly. But I'll talk with you all day long about my writing nonsense on AO3, LOL.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending? Oooof boy. That one probably goes to Surrender, my latest DWC entry. I wrote it in an AU timeline where the Inquisition loses. Cullen does very little else besides suffer in that one. He finds out Thalia might still be alive though, so it's not completely bleak? I honestly want to continue that timeline so badly, just to see where shit goes in the nightmare au.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending? That one probably goes to Stealing the Light. That one is definitely an "everyone lives and everything is going to be okay" story. It was the least I could write after the abomination that was TROS, lmao.

7. Do you write crossovers? Rarely and not recently enough that I have any I can share. I keep threatening to write a Star Wars/Dragon Age crossover in which Thedas exists on some backwater planet in the SW universe, but I haven't made good on it yet. Maybe one day if I ever finish my current longfic WIP.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic? No, everyone has been really positive and encouraging, which I am so grateful for.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? 👀 I used to not write any, then I decided I wanted to be the smut I want to see in the world. I only have one explicit fic posted at the moment, though. But if you like Blackwall x Trevelyan, love triangle drama, and enthusiastic consent, uh, here you go.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen? If I have, I don't know about it! lol.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated? I don't think so. That would be rad, though. If I had my shit together maybe I'd work on translating my own fic into Russian for practice, but... lol I definitely don't.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before? Sort of? Nothing posted online, but there has been various contributions I've made to the worlds of my gaming group's Star Wars and Pathfinder campaigns over the years.

13. What’s your all time favourite ship? I usually gravitate back to Reylo even if it's been awhile. It's a pretty popular and reliable ship. I like an assortment of Star Wars ships, though, so that's definitely not a mutually exclusive pairing.

In the Dragon Age realm, I've been favoring the Blackwall/Thalia side of the Love Triangle That Never Ends recently. I think I just like star-crossed lovers and disgusting, angsty pining, IDK.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish, but don’t think you ever will? I will finish The Force's Will, goddammit, even though it's been three years. I mean, what?

15. What are your writing strengths? Characterization and dialogue, generally. I have a more recent affinity for setting and try hard to incorporate a sense of place in what I'm writing.

16. What are your writing weaknesses? Writing anything short. Finishing the long stories. Endings are difficult to land sometimes, too, probably because I have less experience with them since I love starting long projects and have rarely finished them!

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic? Unless it's a conlang, I don't see much of a point in doing it. Usually when I see it in fiction (fic or otherwise) it's being done as an indicator of cultural exoticism and is frequently misused. I generally don't bother unless a word is difficult to translate into English without losing its meaning.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Ironically? Star Wars. Original trilogy, though, in notebooks when I was like 10. This shit's been in my blood a long time.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet, but want to? I've been contemplating Rey/Poe aka Damerey a lot recently for some reason. I've also wanted to try my hand at Gingerrose (Hux/Rose Tico) for ages now and have not had inspiration properly hit me yet.

20. What’s your favourite fic you’ve written? The Force's Will is the obvious answer, as it's the "Star Wars EU novel I've always wanted to write meets Disney canon" magnum opus. However, I'm really partial to A Little Grace, and Some Elegance right now. It is an intense 10k word-long character study of Dragon Age's Cullen Rutherford, his history with addiction, trauma and the Templar Order, that I wrote in a fever dream-like deluge a few months ago. I think I was channeling some real life catharsis into that one.

Tagging it forward in case anyone wants to do this:

@for-the-ninth | @ocean-in-my-rebel-soul | @musetta3 | @fandomn00blr | @wildercrow | @bogunicorn 

If you would like to be added or subtracted from these tags just let me know!