A meme!

[dhampyresa]

Taken from snickfic


1. of the fic you’ve written, which are you most proud of?
2. favorite tense (past/present/future)
3. favorite POV (first/second/third/etc)
4. what are some themes you love writing about?
5. what inspires you to write?
6. thoughts on critique
7. create a character on the spot…. NOW!
8. is there a character you love writing for the most? the least? why?
9. a passage from a WIP
10. what are your strengths wrt writing?
11. what are your weaknesses wrt writing?
12. what’s your favorite place for writing resources?
13. who are your favorite writers?
14. anything else that you want to know XD

Comments

[snickfic]

I don't know your fic at all, so how about #1? :)

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

1. of the fic you’ve written, which are you most proud of?

This is a hard question, because I'm proud of all of my fic and especially proud of several, but for vastly different reasons.

I'm proud of Strange Aeons, because it's the fic that proved to myself that I could write. I am also very fond of what I did with names in that story: how AU!Doom think of himself as Victor, but the PoV voice switches to Doom in the last paragraph, when we're back in not!AU!Doom's head, the use of Cassandra vs Cassie, etc. I like that I was able to pull in lots of references and historical details and how everything came together.

I'm proud of The Hawk and the Bat for taking the crack concept of "Steph Brown and Kate Bishop fight a villain powered by fairytales" and making in work.

I'm proud of Punica Fides, because I have never been called a wizard before and that I made each AU believable.

I'm proud of Retrograde, because I pulled off reverse chronology and I really like the last line ("At the end of the world, Valeria runs.").

I'm proud of Radiance, for being good despite being written in under 24 hours in Kindle notes.

I'm proud of CSI: Harrenhal, for proving to me that I could take up again a WIP and finish it.

I could do that for all my fic, but I'll stop here. I kind of can't pick which one I'm most proud of, so I guess I'll say that I'm proud of being able to take crack-y/unlikely concepts (Doctor Doom's adventures in babysitting, Lantern Corps as mind-controlling bad guys, building a coherent narrative out the shifting description of the Afterworld in Egyptian mythology, Arya Stark and Tywin Lannister, THEY FIGHT CRIME, maths saves the day) and making them work.

[snickfic]

Very cool! I know what you mean; I could point out individual aspects I'm proud of on a lot of fics, too. I managed to restrict myself to two. :)

Also, OMG, CSI: Harrenhal. I must investigate this.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I really should have tried to restrict myself more, shouldn't I have?

(Thanks for the kudos, I'm glad you liked it.)

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

How about 5 and 8?

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

5. what inspires you to write?

I'll get this one idea that I want to exist in the world. I have trouble writing things I'm not emotionally invested in, so the hardest part of exchange fics are usually trying to find something, which is why I love letters. As for how I get ideas, I don't know. I'll have my core idea(s) and I just let them percolate until I have some vague idea of where I'mg oing, then (or before) I start writing. I'm a very character-driven writer, so character(s) + setting + starting point is all I need to start writing and see where they take me. I like to have an ending poing in mind, even if I end up miles away from it, but it's not necessary. Core ideas tend to show up randomly.

I know some people write fic because SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET, but that's not for me. I'd rather write the fic that I want to write, rather than the fic I wish other people would write.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

8. is there a character you love writing for the most? the least? why?

Like I said, it's hard for me to write about things I'm not emotionally invested in and that goes double for characters, so I tend to love all the characters I write, on some level. Which isn't to say I love writing all of them equally.

I enjoy writing Stephanie Brown's PoV because she's amazingly hopeful and snarky and determined and refusing to be broken by anything and such a hero and oh Steph ♥. Horsewoman was blast to write. Writing (Odin and) Loki (myth, not Marvel) is always a treat because tricksters are amazing and fun. I had a surprising amount of fun writing Doctor Doom's PoV. Valeria's characterisation unraveling was super interesting to write.

I had a hard time writing America Chavez's PoV. Young Avengers v2 gave us so little to go by characterisation-wise that I had trouble getting inside her head. I still don't know if I managed to pull it off.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

(Still question 8.)

WIP-wise, I have this one WIP where my PoV character is Jason Todd post-Red Hood and his arc in the fic is supposed to be him getting out of the super bad mental place he's in right now and I kind of can't write that without sending myself into that mental place. I mean I know it's going to go to such places as:

Jason facepalms with his Red Hood helmet. If this is going to be his life, maybe he should have stayed dead. He's holding the helmet at arm's length, looking for scratches, when Steph comes in. And, come on, he's not stupid. He knows what he looks like and knows Steph will never let him hear the end of it.

He holds out the helmet towards her. "Alas, poor Red Hood! I knew him, Batgirl: a fellow of infinite anger, of most excellent firepower: he hath patrolled Gotham a thousand times; and now how abhorred in its imagination he is! My gorge rims at it," he flubs the lien about lips, on purpose, thank you, "where be your bullets now? Your knives? Your smiles? Your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the night on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning? Now get you to Batwoman's chamber," shit, he missed a bit didn't he? "and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must come; make her laugh at the Bat. Prithee, Batgirl, tell me one thing."

Steph stares at him, nonplussed.

"What?" he asks. "I read. Shakespeare, even."

But I'm a very chronological writer and I've not touched the fic in months because right now it's more in this kind of place:

"I was dead for two minutes and fifty-three seconds," Steph says. "It felt longer."

"It always does," Jason says.

That's the thing about death (the place) that drives people mad when they come back. When your mind has expanded enough to handle the Untime of the Sunless Lands, you're bound to leave pieces behind when it's stuffed back into a broken shell of a body. Untime broke Jason in the following ways: he met Steph and he met Damian. He met Bruce and Dick and Tim. Barbara held him tight and Cassandra shook his hand. Kate and Betty and Kathy and Carrie and Helena and Helena and all the others and so many more all came to pay their respects. He saw the End that comes for all things.

And then he forgot.

It's hard to tell which of these broke him more.

It's one thing to know that this life will fade and turn to dust and another to face the insignificance of it all, to know that nothing you do matters, in the end. That the people you love and admire, hate and despise, respect and fear, the ones that will carry you in their hearts after you're gone, they too will die and the memory of you will dissolve into the ether, until all that's left of you is a name and then not even that. You will have died a pointless death, lived a pointless life and fought a pointless fight.

This is your eulogy, Jason Todd.

Nothing you did was of any importance and when this universe crumples into the endless dark, whether you lived forever or died trying will matter not at all. Give it long enough and mountains wear themselves down into nothing and empires will fall and empires will rise and you still will not have done anything that amounts to anything.

What are you against the endless press of time? In this and in all things, nothing.

What wars you fought would have been lost or won without you, what students you mentored would have found better teachers and what friends you had would have been better off never knowing you.

The point of you is that there is none. Stop fighting and relish the comfort of death and the oblivion beyond. You were dead for a reason, Jason, and you should have stayed that way. Look at you rage against the dying of the light. You don't matter, you never have and you never will.

Stop trying.

So yeah, uhm, Jason Todd. I love him, but writing his PoV is a headtrip.

[ladymercury-10.livejournal.com]

Somehow I didn't realize you were into DC Comics, which is especially silly of me because I just went and looked at your AO3 page and I totally remember reading a lot of those stories and even commenting on them. I think I must have read them before author reveals and never realized they were yours. *smacks own face* I love Stephanie Brown a lot too, btw. :)

I know some people write fic because SOMEONE IS WRONG ON THE INTERNET, but that's not for me. I'd rather write the fic that I want to write, rather than the fic I wish other people would write.
What, like they write meta-fic because they feel the predominant characterization in fandom is wrong?

Good luck with your WIP, btw!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

I remember you commenting on them! It was mostly before reveals too, I think. (I really should get into the habit of reposting fic to my LJ/DW.)

What, like they write meta-fic because they feel the predominant characterization in fandom is wrong?
I think. I'm not sure, because that mindset is alien to me.

Thank you!

[island-of-reil.livejournal.com]

#4, please.

(also, mad icon love)

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

4. what are some themes you love writing about?

The theme I write the most about is people chosing to do the right thing, because it's the right thing to do. Obviously, it's more apparent in some fics than others (In Perfect Light has the exchange “There’s a war we have to fight.” / “We don’t have to,” Steph says. She was a warrior in Gotham too. “But we will. No one dies on my watch.”, for example), either because it's a theme that's prevalent in the character already (like Stephanie Brown) or in the canon, but I'm hard-pressed to think of any fic of mine where that doesn't come up. In Punica Fides, it's also a big theme as seen with this line "Murder will not win me this war.", for example. (Although I feel like I should point out that, while Hannibal and Scipio are both good people, the difference is that Scipio is kind and Hannibal is fair.) Somewhat ironically, Strange Aeons kind of deconstructs that with "We're doing the right thing," Victor adds. / "Are we?" she asks. and They hadn’t been doing the right thing, but the necessary one., for example.

Another theme I love writing about is friendship. I fucking love frindship fic, it is my favourite kind of fic in the entire world. I love friendships, especially epic ones, or 'found family' types. I've written friendships where they're now enemies, one is immortal and the other is not and where they were both destroyed after having never really existed in the first place, for example.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ooo, 9! And 10!

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

9. a passage from a WIP

Aside from the two passages I used to illustrate a point to ladymercury_10 on a WIP I haven't touched in months, I only have two fic WIPs I'm currently writing that I can post.

There's the Benjamin January series/Ancient History RPF one.

He broke the kiss. "I think I'll pass out now."

Her Hannibal caught his other side when he did. In his hand, he held the missing book. She nodded at him.

That was how Shaw found them. He took one look at the man bleeding in her arms, the shackles on the wall and the two white men unconscious on the floor and said, "Seems to me you'll be a valuable witness with what happened here, Maestro. Iffn you'll be kind enough to follow me to the Cabildo?"

Hannibal and Shaw went, leaving Rose to make her way alone to Olympe's house.

"Aunt Rose!" That was Gabriel. His face brightened when he saw her, but he soon dropped the smile. "Who's this? Is he okay?"

"He is a friend," Rose said, taking care to put in her words the inflection that would convey that he was a runaway. Without his papers - forgeries though they may have been -, he might as well have been. The man who almost marched on Rome was in New Orleans no more than an unclaimed piece of property.

Then there's the one where Hannibal and Scipio are immortal, because why not, I guess.

"They really are delicious," Scipio says, lounging on a apple tree branch. He holds out a piece to Hannibal, still on the ground. "Here, try it."

Hannibal eats the apple quarter directly from Scipio's hand. "I think," he says, "it's the company."

"Be serious," Scipio tells him. He's smiling. "Do you remember apples tasting half so good when we were mortal?"

"Unlike some people," Hannibal says, "I did not always have the luxury of intact supply-lines." He sighs. "No. They did not taste half so good when I was mortal."

"Why do you suppose that is?"

I also have a bunch of WIPs on the backburner, but let's not get into them, because there are more than three dozens of them hahaha lol wat. (Not counting original fiction, even.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, yay! I've been watching for and enjoying the updates of both these stories in the WIP thread so much. They're my favorites.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! That means a lot. I have a feeling I was less than completely stealthy, though.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ha, it's alright. I haven't been posting in that thread recently, but when I do I am also pretty easily identifiable.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

10. what are your strengths wrt writing?

As far as I can be objective about my own writing, I'm good at characterisation, I think, and taking crack-y concepts and making them work. (I love doing that. Yes, I will write you a plot where Hannibal Barca interacts with Hannibal Sefton. Sure, I'll write Doctor Doom's adventures in babysitting. Arya Stark and Tywin Lannister FIGHT CRIME? Hell yeah, bring it on.)

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

That's impressive! And a very good skill to have, I think.

[dhampyresa.livejournal.com]

Thank you.