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ipreferfiction · 7 months

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20 questions for fic writers

@spyscrapper tagged me (shocking for everyone, i'm sure). thanks beloved

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

26!

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

337,006 (a chunk of which is cowritten)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

posted, i have star wars (totj, kotor, swtor, prequels, and tcw), lockwood & co., and asoiaf. i've also written hotd-era asoiaf fics, a couple of unfinished mdzs fics, and something for grimm floating around.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

The Bond Between: fic i wrote for a tcw zine, Ahsoka & Obi-Wan. 137 kudos.

(note: technically the second fic is one that got hit by the kudos bot, so i am taking it out of the ranking because i cannot trust its numbers)

How Far We've Come: Lockwood & Co., written and set right after TCS. Kipps and the crew. 62 kudos.

Wasteland: prequels/tcw/original trilogy, Obi-Wan on Tatooine having a truly questionable time. 60 kudos.

Dragon's Rise: asoiaf, post-series. Dany, Jon, Tyrion, and Arya go to Old Valyria so Dany can break the Doom and rebuild the Valyrian Freehold. i hate several things i did with characters here, truly, and i am never going to finish it; i'm keeping it up so i can see comments and kudos, because it got a lot of engagement (posted right after the show ended), but i would change so many things now. 54 kudos.

tremble for yourself, my man (you know that you have seen this all before): kotor - Cassus Fett dies on Malachor and wakes up six years in the past, with the knowledge that something is manipulating the war. he kidnaps Revan and Alek right off Dantooine at one point to help him. extremely full of torture! also the cousin of found family, sibling acquisition via kidnapping. 50 kudos.

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

i try to, but i haven't been great at it for a while. so occasionally it takes me a few months, lol

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

posted? probably my mando wars novelization. none of the really angsty stuff is finished, and i also tend to shy away from bitter endings because they make me depressed. and i do mean depressed, i have depression and i tend to get a little too into my characters' heads, which is not great when they're having bad times.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

uh. um. the... ahsoka and obi-wan one maybe??

8. Do you get hate on fic?

the only ones that actually hurt me were on a years-old asoiaf fic. i've gotten two or three in recent years when i've been writing star wars stuff, but they're so out of pocket they're absolutely hilarious to me. i make fun of them with my friends. shoutout to the person who told me not to use bitch because it was a slur against women when the context was literally a man calling his long hair a bitch to deal with. i am NEVER getting over that, it's so funny.

9. Do you write smut?

periodically, yeah. it's fun, i just am also horribly embarrassed trying to write it lol. i have very little posted, but i've got a handful of half-finished ones in docs.

10. Do you write crossovers?

nnnnnnot really? i toss them around for some of my OCs and original works (between each other), but i don't really write them or post them. now, fusions? yeah, i write those. the hp au is the only one i've posted, and also is my favorite. read the main fic before you read the oneshot, though, because besides being utterly awful (affectionate) it also makes no sense without context. not that the series has given basically any of that context yet, but, yk. it's coming. eventually.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not as far as i know. there's less theft in really niche communities like the stuff i tend to write.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

nope

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

yes!! @spyscrapper (i keep typing revanchxst as your url beloved when will you change it back) is my coauthor for the hp au and for our big swtor novelization, plus a couple of totj fics.

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

frankly, a couple of my ocs who live rent-free in my head at all times, from one of my original works. 1920s monster hunters, secret government organization, repressed queer people (person. the others are not at all repressed he's just a dumbass about emotions), constant threats of violence, morally grey pov characters, murder. i am literally insane about them. also a different set of ocs from fic that developed their own original work as well: magic university, depressed gay people, Plots, the usual. i am constantly chewing on them. in fandom, knight/scourge and cassus/ultimate, probably.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but probably won't?

most of my asoiaf stuff, tbh

16. What are your writing strengths?

prose. give me a good several paragraphs and i will give you gorgeous prose. flowing, poetic, great imagery, the works. i am not afraid to say that's what i'm good at

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

FUCKING dialogue. i hate dialogue so much. no more talking society has progressed past the need for talking. i can do a sentence or two, but full conversations? evil.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fics?

I'll throw in a word or two without translating, because single words are easy to remember and write a glossary for at the end of the chapter. full sentences, though? They're either in italics (if the fic is generally speaking one language and this is another), or unmarked except by dialogue tags (much rarer, generally only do it if the pov character would mostly be speaking another language and so marking it as unusual doesn't make sense. e.g., Cassus talking to other Mandalorians isn't gonna be italicized because it being in Mando'a is expected.)

19. First fandom that you wrote for?

sherlock, i think? i wrote an OC fic that has now evolved into its own original universe because i ended up hating sherlock after season 4, and also the fandom was so fucking annoying. i was writing doctor who and supernatural OC fics around the same time, but i'm pretty sure sherlock was first.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

tremble for yourself, my man (linked above) or start a war, for posted fics. for unposted stuff, a cassus wip i will eventually. eventually finish

tags: @zaolat, @hermitmoss, yeah that's all i've got lee got all the other people i know lol

#things i have been tagged in

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ipreferfiction · 3 years

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i am living in hell (i read the revan novel)

as the old republic discord knows, for some godforsaken reason i decided i wanted to subject myself to karp's revan novel. it was... almost worth it for all the wrong reasons. if this thing was satire? i'd give it top marks.

unfortunately it's not satire, so i'm giving you people a very honest book review of the hot flaming dumpster that is Revan by Drew Karpyshyn. revan spoilers below, etc etc etc, also if you like the revan novel unironicallly this post is not for you in any way shape or form. if you, like me, have heard horror stories of the revan novel and want to know if it's worth it: this is your review.

(note: author shall henceforth be referred to as karp, karpy, or karpshit because i do not have enough respect to look up how to spell his name more than once. also because he deserves it.)

GENERAL OPINION:

on a standard scale of 1 to 5 stars, karp's revan gets a 1 in terms of genuine quality. on that same scale based on whether or not it entertained me, it's a solid 5. karp's writing is irredeemable, his pacing is complete garbage, and i'm not sure he's ever met an editor or a real woman in his life, and good god does it make for an entertaining book. it's a horrible addition to legends canon, but i laughed so hard i cried in multiple spots. no, he didn't intend this, but karp is not the one star wars author who has rights (shoutout to my boy Timothy Zahn) so he can shut up about it. it has some (some) almost redeemable qualities, introduces my favorite old republic character, and is mostly just generally bad in a "how did this get published" way. i'll be breaking it up into three categories to go over in more detail: actual decent parts, things that were so bad they actually entertained me, and genuinely bad parts that had zero redeeming factors. starting with the smallest, let's get started. the rest is below the cut because this is going to be a long post, sorry.

DECENT CONTENTS OF THE NOVEL:

not many, as a matter of fact. let's just get that out of the way first. now, karpy has no full rights as an author, but i will give him slivers of a right for his depiction of Nathema. Meetra Surik feeling as though the void was going to consume her, scatter her into atoms across the entire planet, was fascinating, and her enduring sensation of being hunted by something metaphysical was amazing. the way the entire planet made even sound and color feel devoid of any sort of emotion actually made me envision what Nathema was really like, and it gives a perspective even swtor doesn't. likewise, the bare bones of what karp was trying to convey about the emperor were excellent.

oh: also the introduction of Scourge. he is my beloved and everything about him is absolutely fascinating, karp just can't write.

another fraction of a right goes to the few lines karp spares for describing the way the mask turns Revan into a symbol. that... is exactly what the mask does and what the mask is. we've also got the bits where Canderous is reunited with Clan Ordo and relaxes for the first time in years - possibly since the war itself - and look, that made me feel things. it was a good reunion, and it's clear how much the Mandalorians value clan and family.

i will also say this. the depictions of multiple people getting hit with force lightning were viscerally realistic in a way that karp's writing never actually manages to be anywhere else. descriptions of searing pain, burning flesh, bubbling skin - they were good, genuinely good and actually horrifying. as far as good things go, though, that about concludes the list.

THINGS SO GENUINELY BAD THAT THEY WERE GOOD:

this is most of the novel right here. karpy's writing somehow consistently manages to come off with the sort of description one expects from a cheap romance novel, despite any actual romance being largely nausea-inducing. there are - my count may be incorrect - somewhere around eight or nine uses of the word primal, and exactly zero of them are good. also this is a screenshot from revan's pov that is somehow supposed to be read with a straight face and made the entire discord server laugh so hard they started crying. i am serious. karpshit published this. revan why does this read like you think scourge has a crush on you.

honorable mentions along a similar vein include the fact that every time revan and canderous interact, it reads like they're an old married couple. they were definitely flirting. they share a tent on rekkiad. revan gets bitchy about canderous sneaking out to visit his. wife? she was a person who sure existed, more on her in the next section. canderous kills his wife for revan. said wife tells him to choose between Clan Ordo and revan and he chooses revan! without hesitation!

scourge. just... every single one of his POVs. he's so unnecessarily dramatic, he has a weird fondness for force leaps, he's paranoid as all fuck and is fairly convinced that Everyone is trying to kill him. he lets himself get shot multiple times because his armor can absorb it. he plays 5d chess with himself every time he tries to figure out if something is a trap or not. he wants a seat on the dark council. he's dramatic, has this been mentioned? he keeps stabbing things because he's too annoyed with them. i genuinely think karp's bad writing enhances these chapters because the amount of times i started laughing aloud were unparalleled. take this, for example:

the writing is genuinely abysmal, and that's about the quality karpshit's fight scenes always come across as, but oh boy did it make me laugh. karp's attempts to write a Very Intimidating Sith just sort of ended up with... very much not that. such as the time he jumps over a three-meter fence and lands in what karp assures us is a three-point stance. i lost it. it's hysterical. this is a SITH LORD and his cape is described as billowing behind him as he jumps. he's so needlessly dramatic and it's ridiculously in character, from the constant complaints about rain in his first chapters to his on-sight desire to murder Sechel (that rivalry is also a highlight of the book. it's written so badly and it cracks me up every single time. the highly evolved skills of a true coward still makes me laugh. oh scourge at least you're in character here).

in an effort to not spend this entire section talking about scourge: the weird and hysterical double manipulation thing where Revan is trying to manipulate Scourge into letting him out and Scourge is trying to manipulate Revan into telling him things and they're both entirely aware of what the other one is doing but there's an incredible certainty that They Are The One In Control. it clearly wasn't meant to be funny, because karp takes himself too seriously, but it was hysterical. the return of scourge's mental 5d chess matches with himself and revan thinking... what he thinks in the first screenshot of this section. no one can read this with a straight face and i love it.

...i got very derailed there. in my defense, karp thinking scourge should be taken seriously is very very funny. but, in only tangentially scourge-related things, the fight with Vitiate! containing some of the absolute best lines in the book (in terms of humor, of course. not quality. what do you think this is, goodreads?) my personal favorite is this absolute gem that i don't have a screenshot of because i was too busy screaming about it to the discord:

"No!" Revan screamed from the ground as bits of his friend rained down on him in the form of unrecognizable shrapnel.

yes. this is about... T3. i am dead serious. karpshit decides to have T3 join the battle by shooting at Vitiate with his flamethrower. in retaliation, Vitiate unleashes the full power of the Dark Side on him. he explodes into thousands of little tiny pieces. the above line happens. i was laughing so hard i was legitimately crying. this is so fucking funny. the entire scene of the battle, revan just being turned into crème brûlée by force lightning... and poor little T3 goes out with a quite literal bang.

and now an aside as scourge commits some more murder and it is revealed literally as an offhand mention for the first time in the novel that scourge can use his lightsaber with his left hand as well as with his right. at this point i think karpshit was just throwing darts at the board to see what his latest skillset should be, but it's equally in character. and then comes my second favorite line from this section, a true gem of wit and humor:

Scourge hesitated before joining her, taking a moment to survey the situation, memories of his vision of their failure still fresh in his mind. What he saw was not good.

which, in this circumstance, means revan half-cooked behind his mask and T3 having been made into bestie confetti. yes, i think not good adequately describes this, wouldn't you agree?

and now, some honorable mentions of lines that made me wheeze because they were so utterly abysmal. from the beginning of the book, when scourge was (as per usual) killing some people:

Holding his lightsaber high above his head with both hands, Scourge charged the downed speeder.

i'm... karp are you certain you know how fights work? are you really sure? are you? and then there's the time he describes a three year old as having dark and brooding eyes.

(just read the book, the entire thing is written like this and i'd end up with another revan novel if i tried to copy everything that was this level of abysmally bad.)

and for the grand finale...

KARP PLEASE JUST STOP:

this here comprises basically everything he tries to do with the Force, every single line about, containing, or even remotely mentioning Bastila, basically Meetra's entire character, the name Vaner, Vaner's existence, Bastila somehow being attracted to this Revan, Meetra again, this particular flavor of heterosexuality, and karp's entire writing style. this is why the book is genuinely bad in bad ways as well as funny ones.

the writing style is self-explanatory, you've all seen the screenshots. he's mediocre at his best points, and utterly dull at the worst. unfortunately, karp's particular flavor of misogyny also seeps in. this becomes very evident with Bastila - but my least favorite part is when describing the rumored backstory of Vitiate, talking about what six-year-old Tenebrae did to his entire family.

for background: Tenebrae was a bastard, the son of a poor farmer and the lord of the entire planet, Lord Dramath. there were instances of similar things happening throughout our own medieval history, and they generally had a name: rape. it is incredibly unlikely that Tenebrae's mother was in any position to give consent to the Sith who ruled the entire planet, regardless of whether or not she was married. so naturally, when Tenebrae's adopted father, the woman's husband finds out (unnamed mother "confesses the affair"), he flies into a fit of rage and attacks her. Tenebrae subsequently snaps his neck. he is in fact still six years old. and then we are treated with the following line:

Tenebrae made her suffer for months as punishment for betraying the family, torturing her with the Force as he honed his powers.

yeah. not at all weird, gross, and misogynistic, karpshit, thanks for making me read this.

and it gets worse. not in Tenebrae's case, luckily, but with Bastila and Meetra. i won't go over the whole essays people have written about both their characterizations - suffice it to say they're equally bad, both used pretty much exclusively as props for Revan in various unappealing ways. but the worst part about how karp writes them is the jealousy. Bastila sees Meetra as some sort of threat to her and Revan; the worst offender is this passage from Bastila's first POV chapter.

(as a side note, the constant descriptions of both Alek and Meetra as Revan's underlings/subordinates really rubs me the wrong way and is not at all accurate, but that's another essay.)

the women are pitted against each other, with Meetra much later feeling jealous when Revan says i love you too to the holovid of his wife and three year old son because apparently the bond he shares with Bastila is much deeper than the one Meetra has with him. Bastila's entire character is reduced to the wife of Revan and the mother of his child, and Meetra is little better off. her entire death is over in the span of a sentence and a half, and her ghost is tied to Revan, literally giving him her life's energy so he can resist Vitiate. it's no surprise the outcry over this novel was strong.

because you all don't deserve to suffer through much more of this, the ending complaint is reserved for the clear lack of understanding karpy has for the Jedi Order and the Force itself. revan is described as using both light and dark - even though he's supposedly a Jedi, and the two sides of the Force cannot be used together for any sustained period of time. either you turn your back on the dark, or you fall. but no; revan's special breed of arrogance means he offers to teach his understanding of the Force to other Jedi, and sees the council as backwards and hidebound for refusing, never mind that he's married and with a child on the way. karp claims that Bastila was redeemed through Revan's love for her, that he was redeemed through love - and once again shows the issue that many writers have of conflating emotions and attachments. attachments are unhealthy, things you'd choose over the greater good and things that lead you to the dark side. emotions, including love and relationships, can and have been had in healthy ways by Jedi before. clearly not revan, but others. and this misunderstanding runs through the entire novel, making most of revan's POV chapters utterly insufferable (along with his arrogance and general existence as drew's self-insert mary sue).

CLOSING COMMENTS:

as with everything, you have to decide for yourself if this is worth it. the writing is bad in enjoyable ways, but there are swaths of the novel that i would gladly ignore if i ever did a reread (not that my self-loathing would be that bad, i don't think). the misogyny is a genuine problem, and karp is a very bad writer. on the other hand, you do get some lore and context for things, and scourge's pov chapters especially are. mostly funny in how bad they are, and sometimes actually leaning towards mediocre. i've laid some evidence on the table, so make of it as you will. and may the force be with you if you attempt this, because it sure wasn't with karpshit.

#kotor #kotor ii #swtor #darth revan #revan #lord scourge #bastila shan #jedi exile #revan novel hate tag <3 #kinda sorta but it does give much scourge context #i'm so sorry exile you don't deserve this #who also does not deserve this #??? tumblr can you please function for once #this is star wars!#let me tag it #star wars #i mean that works i guess #but all of you need to see this anyway <3

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