#my favorite one is day 7 so at least we'll end with a bang

[catgrump]

Soudam Week 2024 Day 3: Life Cycle

When one of the Four Dark Devas of Destruction suddenly falls ill, what are Gundham and Kazuichi to do?

Read on AO3 here!

@soudamweek2024

[veliseraptor]

Fic Writer Interview

I was tagged by @anghraine - thank you!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

under my main pseudonym that I actually use these days, 610. total, across pseuds, we're looking at 1,013.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

4,930,564, which is so close to 5 million!!! we'll see if I hit that threshold this year, I might if all goes well with big bang fic

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I thought I could do this from memory and I was so close, only missed two.

Life in Reverse (13,990)

With Absolute Splendor (10,436)

some good mistakes (6,551)

The Villain Wrangler (4,445)

half a league onward (4,437)

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do not, because I don't know what to say, get overwhelmed, fall behind, get more overwhelmed, and ultimately end up with a backlog I don't feel capable of dealing with so I just don't. I feel bad about this periodically (often) but I don't do anything with that feeling. Just kinda feel bad.

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I've written a lot of fics with angsty endings but I might have to give this one to Mercy, because that was a very mean fic on the whole. arguably even meaner than my other murder/suicide fic.

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I have a hard time with this question because I feel like most times my happy endings are at least touched with some kind of bitterness or loss or at least underlying open door that could be a problem down the line, or, like, lingering trauma.

but on the other hand I'm sure I have written generally happy endings in my backlog of fics, there's just a lot of fic in there so it's hard for me to pull them out, because they're probably also the ones that I find less memorable.

in some ways I think With Absolute Splendor might get this one, because it feels like it has ones of the strongest sense of earned catharsis, even if everything isn't all the way fixed. there's probably happier endings in terms of world state, but that's one where the ending feels happier because it doesn't start that way. but how this grace thing works is also one of the fics where I feel like it's on the whole softer/tenderer than my usual work.

7. Do you write crossovers?

not really! I wrote a few once upon a time, and a couple pastiches (one fandom in the style of another fandom), but those are years behind me and I'm not generally a crossover person as a rule.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

oh yes. most of it more entertaining than truly upsetting, but there are a few exceptions. my favorite remains the person who was really bothered by the fact that my Black Jewels Trilogy fic wasn't High School Musical fic. still no idea what was going on there.

9. Do you write smut?

sure do. I haven't been writing as much these days (but then, I haven't been writing as much these days, full stop) and I've never been all that much of a pwp writer but it's still very much a part of my writing.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

once, some time ago - I think it was Life in Reverse got posted on Wattpad. oh, though there was also another MCU fic that got reposted on AO3, but the person deleted it pretty quickly when I commented to inform them I didn't appreciate their doing so.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I have! into a few languages and it's always super cool and flattering to me.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I have the one in progress but never anything I've finished/posted. I've done a lot of RP over the years but I always kept it pretty squarely separate from my fic writing.

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

I've had a lot of all-time favorite ships, and there are plenty for fandoms I'm no longer really in that stick around in my head for longer than I'm really participating in the fandom (Celegorm/Aredhel is notable for this), but I think I will say that Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen occupies a very particular kind of sort of insane place in my brain that feels relatively unique. so I'll give this one to them.

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

oh lord, so many of them. mostly various MCU wips I'll probably never finish but where I'm like "this was a good idea and I like what I have of it so far, too bad the MCU killed my caring about the MCU." outside of those...I'm so loathe to accept that things will or might remain unfinished, so I'll go with one of those and say the "Hela is around when Thor and Loki are growing up" one, which would've been so good and I still sometimes toy with the idea of returning to, only, you know. aforementioned "caring about the original canon" issue making it hard to actually do the writing thing.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I've been slowly filling out this meme for a while and I left this question conspicuously blank almost to the last. I think my strongest area is probably dialogue, though I worry that I'm giving myself too much credit there. I think I'm pretty good at writing it, though. it certainly is one of the pieces of writing that comes most easily to me.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

description and action, for sure. I tend to skimp on description in a way that probably weakens much of my writing (I have so much respect for writers with good descriptive language), and I loathe writing action scenes the way that I loathe writing few things - it always feels like wrestling a bear. I usually know what I want to have happen as a result but getting there is just. very hard.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

something you gotta be very careful with. I was going to say I almost never do it, but the one exception to that is Lymond Chronicles where I do it a lot, but that's because it's a fairly important part of the style of canon and I'm just. following that lead. otherwise, I tend to shy away from it personally, partly because I write from pretty deep in a character's head and if they don't understand what's being said in another language then that's what I want to convey in the story, rather than giving the reader privileged access to what's being said that the character doesn't have.

does that sound really pretentious? probably.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

technically I wrote a cracky Harry Potter fic first, but I consider my first actual fandom to be Wheel of Time.

19. What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

either bingjiu or beefleaf are two pairings that I love and have a lot of strong feelings about but haven't actually managed to write anything for, and both are on my list as like...just #waiting for the right idea.

also hua cheng/mu qing, which is a tiny pairing of my heart that Needs Me (or whatever) and I know the kind of fic I want to write for it but actually executing it is, as usual, proving harder.

20. What's your favorite fic you've written?

it fluctuates wildly depending on mood, but I'll give this one for now to the backyard is full of bones - it was the first project I bound into a book, which I feel like says something for it.

tagging @gloriousmonsters, @curiosity-killed, @mikkeneko, @brawlite, and @feralkwe; not actually sure how many people I'm "supposed" to tag on this one so if you want to do it consider yourself tagged as well.

[satancopilotsmytardis]

7, 9, and 17!

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

I like just being able to make something entirely with words! Whole worlds, histories, feelings! Just made out of strings of letters. I have always been a person who like making things, so writing is a wonderful way of doing so for me.

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know

I believe that the energy of living things must be changed in some fundamental way when it leaves the body and I believe that people may not fully understand that process. (I have no fucking clue but sometimes places do be 'spooky' in strange imperceptible ways and I'm open to the possibility that ghosts are the cause.)

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

I have. NINE current WIPS. Thankfully I can group up a good number of them.

I have a bunch of installments in the Mishap series that I'm working on which while looking like nothing more than PWPs, are actually a fun way of exploring emotional intimacy as much as physical intimacy because one of my favorite things to do is discuss the idea of BDSM as a way of exploring vulnerabilities that it might be uncomfortable or frightening to do in other settings.

There's also Bonded, which I am really struggling with. I started writing the series just because I was having fun playing with a lot of silly ideas, but Shattered is much more serious in tone and while I usually love that, and I have a full outline of Shattered as well as outlines for the next two installments as well, I just haven't found the joy in it that I did in the beginning. I really like how chapter 6 wraps up, and it's been torture trying to move on to chapter 7. I don't know when I'll get over that hump, but it's been 3 months and I still haven't managed it yet.

Tumblr prompts, going well enough. Taking this as an opportunity to just write fast(ish) snippets. I often really want to linger and show how relationships develop thoroughly because (and especially with ShigaDabiHawks) I need a believable progression to show how those character could have possibly ended up together when they're at odds with each other's goals. However, for these I'm just going ham and that's a nice little change of pace.

Stalling out on the original piece (shigadabi with the serial numbers filed off because I wanted to use an original fantasy setting I've used for other OC work). Having trouble balancing how to progress the plot without losing the spark between the two characters after a... disagreement.

The Hanahaki piece is my fucking baby right now. Feeling as good about this one as I did about Honeytrap and Grey Area. It's so achingly tender and I love it to absolute bits. I have one area that I'm still trying to make a decision on and thought that the tumblr prompts would be a good way to step back and give it some breathing room after banging out 27k for it in two days. I'm very excited about this one.

And last but not least, the Time Travel fic! I'm enjoying this one too but I'm thinking about it logistically right now and trying to decide if I'm going to make it a multi-chapter or not. I usually don't like to do that because I write very differently for a multi-chap than I do for a one-shot and I much prefer the style of writing for an insanely long one-shot than a multi-chap (yes this may be why Shattered is fucking me up so badly, also why I really hated Playing Favorites by the end), but I'm not sure if it would be too jarring to go from Hawks' POV to Dabi's after minimum of 12K in Hawks' POV, but I need some scenes to be from Dabi's so eeehhhh. I'll figure it out. I like this one, alternate timelines are always fun to play around with and the butterfly effect here is so fucking strong.

I think I'm going to be finishing the Tumblr prompts before going back to the Hanahaki fic, but we'll see! And this is all dependent on me not starting any more pieces in the meantime. Which. Oof.

Thanks for asking!