#me: ooh fun jewish fantasy book to distract me!

[midshipmank]

started reading the pomengranate gate & love it so far, but upon reflection, it was really not the book the pick to assauge my anxiety

[creacherkeeper]

ooh 4, 10, and 16?

4) favorite character you’ve written

fanfiction answer: i feel like this is not what people would expect from me, but in more recent fandoms, probably adora from she ra? (the truer, long term answer is prob fitz from a*s but we dont have to talk about that.) like adora is pretty multidimensional in terms of psychology, theres a LOT of complicated stuff to unpack with her but shes also like? pretty funny? and i feel like i was decent at writing humor with her? idk in real life im very attracted (broadly, non romantic) to enneagram 2 people and adora is a great example of one so. i really enjoyed writing her lol. also she has great dynamics with everyone so i liked how she plays off the other characters. love the repressed jock nerd

book answer: probably one of my antagonists, ms. angelina. shes a ... pretty complicated character in that she is actually motivated to do good but has fallen into the detached, selfish mentor roll due to trauma. i LOVED writing her because she's presented as one of the good guys who the main character very much hero worships through a lot of the book, but she's also very manipulative and smart and mean and. yeah. she was super fun. trying to toe the line of "this is a toxic mentor relationship" and "of COURSE the protagonist would turn to her for help" was a really interesting thing to balance in a middle grade fantasy. love a conniving old lady

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

so silence is preferred but im also VERY sensitive to noise and distraction, so i either have to put in ear plugs or just loop a song over and over. it doesnt really matter whether its instrumental or has lyrics but it MUST fit the vibe. i tend to go to video game OSTs a lot for this. sinking ship by wild child was my number 1 song for this spotify wrapped because i listened to it about 90 times while writing paladin!aelwyn fic lmaooo

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

oh a lot of them. if we're JUST talking writing -

fanfic: at the moment, definitely aelwyn abernant lol. listen sometimes you must simply lie awake at night staring at your ceiling crying over your good good daughter

original: my character dinara. she's actually the granddaughter of the character i talked about up there ^ she's a middle aged asshole scumbag who only shows up for two chapters to give some important info to the main character but like. she has a WHOLE backstory that i would love to write as a novel one day but dont see ever happening because getting companion books to standalone middle grades is,, well,,, but she really is so near and dear to my heart like. sometimes you just take a middle aged jewish lesbian woman and youre like i can pack SO much implied trauma into your two scenes here and i think i maybe just WILL