*runs around flapping arms* So many people did the thiiiiing, I love it!
7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?
Um…depends on my mental state that day. If I’m having an ‘up’ day where I’m in good mental shape and the anxiety et al are chill, I’m really enthusiastic about it. Because, God, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals, I love my writing, it is my whole heart, and I basically live in a constant state of “SOMEONE COME YELL WITH ME ABOUT THIS NOVEL THAT DOESN’T EXIST BECAUSE I HAVEN’T WRITTEN IT YET.” On the other hand, if I’m having a ‘down’ day, or a slightly precarious sort of day, I’m not embarrassed per se, but one disinterested remark or sarcastic comment can put me into a spiral that can last for a long time. I’ve abandoned whole universes without a backward glance because of stuff like that. There was this one universe that I created as an assignment for a science class that ended that way–we were supposed to create superheroes based on the four major biomolecules, and the whole class turned in crappy comics about, like, ‘Daring DNA’ and ‘Lady Lipid’ or whatever, but naturally I created four real people and gave them superpowers/secret identities and wrote up whole justifications for why their powers and personalities and places in the group fit each biomolecule and handed in twenty pages of origin story and action figures, and I got a D on the assignment. The teacher actually failed me at first, but raised it because “at least I knew what the four biomolecules were” and even though I had an entire novel and universe plotted out, I scrapped the whole thing and never touched it again.
8) favorite genre to write
*throws confetti* FANTASY, MOTHERFUCKERS.
10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?
In…what sense? In the positive sense, all my characters kind of haunt me, more so if I finished their novel or one of their novels. Like, they’re real people, my head is a pretty cluttered space with all the people up there. In the negative sense, the characters in the novels I’ve abandoned kind of…loom. Like that novel I mentioned up there? Fucking haunting me.
I love ask memes, I really do, they’re very soothing. From this!
3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?
I start on page one and write until I get to the last page. Every once in a while, when I’m bored and/or distracted and/or need motivation, I’ll do what I call ‘writing ahead’ and write individual scenes or events ahead of time and then integrate them later, but if I write ahead at length, it’s something that’s taking place immediately after the writing that I’m caught up on. I just really hate having to meticulously go over the stuff I’m integrating in to make sure it’s all contiguous and everything.
5) character you were most surprised to end up writing
6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now
Um…I dunno. It might have been kind of interesting to make Sam Lightworth a lesbian, but I like the dynamic of “tall snarky angry dude crumbles all over tiny lethal wicked-eyed girl with the fate of the world in her hands” that I ended up with in FtS. I just…have a lot of things that I write and generally I get pretty committed to the way things are, because my characters are very real to me. Altering them after the fact feels kind of like a betrayal.
do u ever wonder abt urself from an external pov??? bc like. everyone is p complicated and contradictory on the inside, but other ppl get a very simplified version of who u r based on ur interactions w them or what they see u doin
like if i was a cartoon character, what archetype would i be? if i was a design, if i was a DESIGNED person, what parts of me would be the most cohesive/emphasized, and which less significant traits would not be perceived at all???? its just bonkers to think abt i guess
new ask meme tell me what archetypal features i have and what gets discarded
Anonymous asked: Sorry go bug you, I just wanted to ask--what's Westworld? (your recs are always so fantastic and so much better than anything google could give me)
YOU ARE NEVER BUGGING ME, I LOVE TO TALK ABOUT STUFF I LOVE.
So. Westworld. First off: have you seen Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse? If no, proceed and read this pitch. If yes, second question: did you like it? If no, you won’t like Westworld. If yes, don’t even BOTHER with this pitch, just watch the show.
A quick disclaimer: Westworld is a brand spanking new show on HBO based on the 1973 movie of the same name and, HBO being HBO, they do what they fucking want, so this show…like, it’s a really good show, I really like it, but if you can imagine a trigger warning, it’s probably attached to this show. Sex, murder, rape, blood, gore, etc. This show is FUCKED UP. Ergo, the cut.
Anonymous asked: Psst John and Alexander meeting in your Hamilton Reincarnation fic series?
WOO, I am literal Laurens/Hamilton garbage, tell your friends. All In One Spot AU
John has been at Columbia for a year and, honestly, he’s starting to
think that he was wrong, that no one else is here. He walks past the law center every chance he
gets, and he doubles the time of the walk from his dorm to the natural sciences
building every single day to pass Hamilton Hall. The statue is…reassuring, somehow,
Alexander’s fine-drawn face cast in bronze and a quill in his clever
fingers. When John’s tired, or he’s had
a bad night, full of nightmares with bayonets jumbled in with cars, the cinch
of a noose tangled with the static of a television, he’ll stop and look at the
statue until he can breathe again.
It’s not all bad. John is in New
York City, and he finally gets where Alexander was coming from all those years
ago, this might legitimately be the greatest city in the world. It sure beats South Carolina, hell and
gone. He’s introduced himself to
everyone as John, here, and even admitted to a handful of people that he was a
soldier in the Revolution. He doesn’t
have any close friends, but he doesn’t have any enemies, either, and the handful
of familiar faces who see him when he quietly attends a Pride parade don’t say
a word. He’s taken a handful of
prerequisites for a biochem degree, in the pre-med track—he always wanted to be
a physician last time, and his father is too distant to fight him this
time.
He spends a little money on a sketchbook or two, on a set of pencils,
and draws old faces, tries to imagine them in the modern world. Lafayette, eyes bright and smiling, dressed
in a suit. General Washington, hands
folded behind his back—no matter how many times John tries to give him a modern
military uniform, his long heavy coat takes shape. Aides and friends and soldiers whose faces he
half-recalls, in t-shirts and jeans and flannels. And Alexander, a thousand times Alexander,
Alexander in modern clothes, in his Continental Army uniform, in shirtsleeves,
in the coat he wears in the statue. A
few times, in the safety of his locked single room, John carefully sketches
Alexander stretched out in their cabin at Valley Forge, lit in candle-flame and
all smooth planes of muscle and skin, smiling at John, soft and sated. An entire sketchbook fills itself with
Alexander, over John’s first year at Columbia.
I know the idea about Obi-Wan being called Sith Killer (or Sith Slayer, perhaps?) has been done before but what about this:
After Naboo, Obi-Wan becomes known as the Sith Killer in the Order. It makes him uncomfortable but he can’t get people to stop calling him that; even before he had killed Maul, he had already defeated two Darksiders (Xanatos and Bruck) so after this, his status as that really cool, badass Jedi to emulate just skyrockets, especially among the newly Knighted and all the Padawans and Initiates. It’s also pretty clear from the fire in his eyes that he is deadset on finding the other Sith. Other young Knights are eager to help - it starts with his friends Bant, Garen, and Reeft: Whenever they’re on a mission, they also look for clues about Dark Side activity; sometimes they’ll follow up on those leads after their official Council-assigned mission ends and then hand that information to Obi-Wan, who’s compiling them. More and more Knights and even young Masters start doing that. Soon, Obi-Wan unofficially is the head of the Sith Hunting Task Force.
Anyway, so Anakin becomes known as the Padawan of the Sith Killer, not the Chosen One (how many Jedi even knew that Qui-Gon thought he was the Chosen One? He only told the Council about it, after all, not made a general Temple-wide announcement). The Jedi are a little flummoxed at first about Obi-Wan taking on a non-Temple raised Padawan but then they’re like, okay, well, this is the Sith Killer. If he wants to do things differently, who are we to tell him no? It’s not like any of us have encountered, fought, or defeated a Sith. And maybe that’s even the better way to do things??? Bringing on people who have life experience outside the Order so they can bring new ideas in?
Every time Anakin does things that they don’t expect, or show more emotion and passion than they’re taught to allow, they’re just like….well, he is the Sith Killer’s Padawan. Obviously the Sith Killer is teaching him differently. Maybe this is how Obi-Wan was able to kill a Sith himself???
(Some enterprising Padawan managed to get their hands on the footage of the fight from Naboo and they all watched it. Obi-Wan was obviously feeling a lot of anger and fear during his fight, and then he calmed himself at the end and managed to defeat his opponent. So Emotions, then peace becomes the new motto for this generation of apprentices.)
Everyone starts trying to befriend Anakin. All the other Padawans start trying to be more like him. He’s passionately speaking out about slavery? Well, they will too then. Obviously, slavery is an evil that will lead people to Fall. It should be stopped. He talks openly about his attachment to his mother? Well, attachment must be okay then. (And they remember from that video that Obi-Wan was obviously very attached to Qui-Gon so there’s another point in favor of attachments.)
Some overly enthusiastic Padawan also hacks into the Temple records and finds out about Obi-Wan’s fights with Bruck as an Initiate. And everyone’s like, even then, he must have somehow known that Bruck was going to Fall. So people all try to avoid getting into fights with Anakin cuz like, if they do, does that mean that they’re going to Fall? Anakin’s the Sith Killer’s Padawan, after all. There must be something special about him. What if he too can tell when someone’s gonna Fall and that’s why he’s fighting with them?
So that’s how Obi-Wan and Anakin inadvertently change the Order. The Council starts noticing that something’s changing but they can’t manage to stop it or reverse it. The younger Knights, Padawans, and Initiates have stopped thinking of them as the all-knowing wise senior members of the Order and started seeing them as the old guard clinging to outdated traditions - none of them have ever fought a Sith or seen one in person, after all. Few of them even go on missions anymore. They just sit in their tower handing out assignments and reprimanding Jedi for not following their Code.
