#i would say that someday I'll share this fic but at this stage i don't want to promise anything

[tippenfunkaport]

I've always loved Glow and Arrow! They're easily some of the best Glimbow fankids out there by far. I love their designs. Just out of curiosity, do you have any other fankids from spop?

Ahhhh, thank you so much!

I am basically a lazy writer in that I have a general sense of what fankids everyone has (like in my head Caradora eventually adopt a second kid when Finn is much older that they name Mara and Flora has several siblings) but I don't bother to really flesh them out in my head until I actually need to write them.

Which is why the only other kids I've actually named (because I started to write something with them that I never actually got around to finishing) are my Seamista kids and those are...

Their oldest son, Oshin, and the middle daughter, Shelli, both carried by Mermista.

And then Sea Hawk carries a set of twins like a proud Papa seahorse that they name Ember & Blaze.

[theladyragnell]

How did you get to a stage where you love your writing so much you don't care about marketing it? I have had trad pub in my head since I was 13 years old and struggle not to think about what others would think of my writing even even I tell myself it's just for me :(

Oh, anon, I wish I had easier answers for you, or really any for-sure answers at all.

First, I just want to say that for me, this is a few different questions! Wanting to do traditional publishing, loving your writing, and not caring what people think are all related, but they don't have to go together all the time.

Because I do still, in my pie in the sky dreams, want to be traditionally published! I read a lot, and I love my writing, and I think that my writing does stand up to a decent amount of what's coming out, but it's not currently a path I'm pursuing, which is largely because publishing is full of Nightmare Tasks for people with difficult brains (query letters my beloathed), somewhat because of how the industry is treating workers and authors these days, and somewhat because of how hard I find criticism to take.

Which leads to, as you say, struggling with what other people think of your writing. And I do! When I post a new fic, or share a new story with a friend, I get anxious and I want people to like it! But nonetheless I write things I love and want to write, because I have tried the "write trends" thing and tried the "write things to make a specific person happy that I'm not into" thing and popular as the results might be, and they're fine stories because I'm a good writer, but I don't love them or come back to them.

But also, that "that I'm not into" thing is very important! Because I do still care a lot what people think of my writing. It's just that I count myself as one of those people, and I try to write for certain people or subsets of people, not the whole world, because the more people I try to please, the blander and less like myself I feel like my writing gets. So I try to write for myself, and also I'll write a trope or relationship dynamic a friend likes, or I'll write for a subset of a fandom that has a particular taste, or I'll just make up a guy in my head (positive). It becomes an exercise in triangulation! This is something I do a lot with exchange fics, where I try to find a midpoint between my tastes and my recipients' tastes, something I find very enriching. So yes, I do care a lot what other people think!

But the loving my own writing ... that's a mix of a lot of things. Some of it is experience. I have been writing as a major hobby for literal decades, and I write fast, which means I have written enough to feel comfortable with my skills. Some of it is wrapped up in the previous point, where writing things I love makes me love my writing more, which means even if I'm not writing publishing trends (my pacing is slow and has too many conversations! I don't like a lot of the current romance genre trends, much less SFF romance trends!) I still love what I'm doing.

But it's also learning and growing so that I know my writing is getting better! It's analyzing what an author I love has that I lack and trying to find my own way to it. It's learning to use language in new ways when I'm not a very language-forward writer. A lot of times, it's trying (and frequently failing, because this one is hard as hell and easy to do wrong) to find the core of my id on a certain trope or relationship dynamic and go all in on it.

I love my writing because it's mine, and my writing is the way it is because I love it. I loved my first embarrassing gel-pen-in-a-cat-notebook "novel" in seventh grade, and I love the epic 6-book sci fi romance series that I finished most recently and may someday be brave enough to self-publish. None of them are trendy. But for me and the people the stories matter and have mattered to (friends I no longer speak to from middle and high school passing my handwritten works back and forth in the middle of class, friends who read my works as I write them or when I finish them now), and the people they might someday matter to, I don't think the trendiness or the marketability matter.

And I don't think they will for you either someday, anon. <3

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

which of your fics could you see making the best full length movie or novel? aside from the hotd references and context they are all such beautiful standalone stories in their own right.

I always visualise a really haunting trailer for 1968. Starting with a snippet of Aegon and Io’s beach conversation…. “If he loses on Tuesday, I can leave him.” or “I feel like you could kill me if you wanted to” or “Do you wish you could go back to when you hated me?”

then music kicks in. National Anthem or Sometime Around Midnight. And it’s constant camera flashes and brief moments from the story. Aemond screaming with a bloody eye, Aegon with his guitar, Io being chased through the maze, Greek statues, Io and Aemond waving to a crowd, Mimi’s coffin, Io dancing, Cosmo chasing one of the dogs, Aemond on TV, Aegon spinning on his boat, someone screaming for an ambulance in the rain, Io being wheeled on a hospital gurney, Someone driving through the desert in an open top car, Io sinking in the bathtub, Aegon on stage. Constant cuts to news reports and TV screenings.

The final clip is just a rat scurrying around with a voice in the background saying; “I don’t think she knows about Alys.”

(Or it’s Aegon whistling the opening notes of Here’s To The State and turning around to get punched in the face.)

anyway that vision has been haunting me so I had to share it. Love you!!

Ohhhh this is so cinematic, I can picture everything!!! I ADORE it!!! 😍😍

If 1968 was a movie, I imagine an opening montage ft. Olivia Rodrigo's All-American Bitch, alternating between scenes of Io on the campaign trail (shaking hands, Jackie Kennedy chic, praying demurely in Greek Orthodox churches) and flashbacks of her in college (smoking weed, going to parties, skipping class, having a boyfriend, student teaching), setting up the difference between her past/true and present/manufactured self. Then a fade to black and the sound of gunshots, then we go to the Breakers Hotel in Palm Beach.

I've always felt that North To The Future translates most easily into an original novel (and maybe a limited Netflix or HBO series a la Sharp Objects?? 🤩). I do actually really want to novelize and self-publish NTTF, but between a full-time job and keeping up with my latest fic series, I haven't gotten around to it yet. But someday!!!

It is interesting that you mention 1968, because recently I've been thinking about that story's potential as an original novel as well. I feel some pressure to choose the right fic if I decide to novelize one of them, as since they're all HOTD fics originally, a lot of the characterizations and dynamics repeat, and I don't think I could publish multiple without seriously overhauling them to the point where they would lose whatever made them so beloved to begin with.

I'll let y'all know in advance if I am ever about to self-publish a story that started as a fic, as I'd have to remove the series from Tumblr and AO3 first, and I'd want to give readers notice so they could download a personal copy for themselves if they want it 🥰💜