mondstadtlover6000

[mondstadtlover6000]

new crystal im obsessed with is flower agate IT'S SO PRETTY i'm gonna get some more on sunday i think,,,,, i also need to get a tarot deck cuz my sisters just is not cutting it anymore

[mondstadtlover6000]

hi!!! i rlly love ur pjosceu fics; im not so active in the pjo fandom anymore but i binge read them in a day. (if im being honest, im a writer more focused on ocs + original work, but ur fics actually made me want to write fanfic for some series i like!!) basically i was just wondering if u were planning to update the series?? if not, its ok, was just curious (and im sorry if this has been asked before!!)

anyway thank u so much for ur writing, i absolutely love ur works & im happy that u put them out into the world <3333 thank u for ur time!!

hihi!!!! omg it's so nice that you like them i'm really glad you do! i'm also kind of a fandom seesawer (especially since the pjo fandom skews younger) and thats rlly cool about your writing! if you get any ideas for some fanfic you should totally write it, it definitely helps prose skills with writing and also it's just fun :>

yes i am planning to update the series! like i said in a prev post i am currently working on original work (i'm just about to start querying for my novel actually!!!!) but i am in the middle of the next pjosceu fic right now, which is for pollux. (ik i said i was going to do katie next but pollux was just Calling to me.)

i don't know when i'm going to finish it, i'm currently 20k and 2/5 chapters into it, but once i start querying and stop spending all my free time editing my book i'll have a lot more time to write it. it'll be my top priority after editing i PROMISE.

thank you so much more reading, i'm so glad you like my works and thank you for taking the time to send this ask as well!! <3

[mondstadtlover6000]

Can I just say that I LOVE your Drew Tanaka fic(But What Am I to Do with All This Beauty?)!!! It’s so amazing and fire and I love how you showed Drew’s depth and character development while also subverting the narrative that femininity equals weakness! It’s so amazing and brings tears to my eyes. Also love the diversity in the Aphrodite cabin. Now I was just wondering, what inspired you to write this fic? Was it just to get rid of the “not like other girls” trope and to give Drew more depth or was it something else? Anyway, that’s all! Have a nice day!

thank you so much!! i'm so glad you liked it :) uhhhh idk my sisters and i would always just chat about pjo and make up headcanons for the cabins and drew was my sister's favorite so we rested a lot on her and made a lot of headcanons for her and her story. so after writing the connalia fic and the clovis fic, i decided i wanted to give a little story to a bunch of pjo side characters and she just felt very natural as i already had a lot of her story mapped out in my head! while motivations of giving drew more depth and trying to fix the nlog trope obviously had to do with it it wasn't my sole incentives. i just think there really was a missed opportunity and i wanted to explore that a bit more!!

thank you again so much :))) you as well and i'm sorry for the late reply!

[mondstadtlover6000]

How much do you think personal experience matters when writing fiction? More clearly, what’s the difference between someone writing about something they’ve experienced vs someone who’s just imagining it or has read about it?

hihi :> uhhhh i think personal experience is really important actually!! like obviously you're gonna be better at writing stuff you know a lot right? research is important of course but nothing's going to combat hands on experience. and sometimes, yeah, i think this is a little boring. self inserting is just so meh compared to new fun stuff, like when i was little i always got a little disappointed when i read the acknowledgements at the end of a book and found out x or x thing i thought was new and fun and exciting was lifted from the author's personal life. but who's gonna write a book about an obsessed artist better than an artist? divorce proceedings? what goes on in a hospital?

that being said it's still obviously totally okay to write things you haven't experienced. i feel like in that vein you have to write the MOODS, the THEMES, the MEANINGS of these experiences rather than the blood-and-bone stuff. like the obsession part of obsessed artist applied maybe to a different thing, if that makes sense. or expanding something you've felt into something extreme. god idk if i actually make sense. but like, instead of trying to be pendantic about the logistics of what i'm writing, i write stuff that i feel expanded to the ten. i haven't ever actually experienced a lot of the stuff i write but i think focusing on themes and universal feelings everyone has and expanding on that helps ground even things you might not know about. okay god i really wish i had an example but i don't think i have any works on this account that really goes into something i haven't experienced/really matters in this point

so let's talk about horizon, which you've read. this is a story (for everyone who isn't tan) in which the mc suffers from depression and escapes his hometown, keeping very minimal contact with his family. he returns to his hometown because his older brother is getting married/got married/whatever and has to work through his depression and his avoidance and work through his failed relationships (both familial, platonic, and romantic). throughout this story he also suffers from psychogenic vomiting, wherein he throws up instead of crying.

i have. never been in love and i'm not depressed, nor do i throw up particularly much. this is all stuff i have not experienced (and yes it's less pendantic than focusing on blood-and-bone things such as a profession or specific thing, but still). depression ofc is something i try to write very honestly because it's a topic that can very easily have problematic displayals in media. and yes research is important; obviously i did a lot of research on psychogenic symptoms. but what mattered was focusing on the interpersonal relationships, the feelings of loneliness and not knowing what to do with yourself, of being afraid to ask for help. i closed in on that and that's what i wrote!

okay so let's talk more about blood-and-bone. specifically, i'm going to use the concept of writing different ethnicities and cultures. this is because this is the main thing i don't have experience in that i do (rather than writing like, professions or life skills). this is mostly in my original works instead of fanfic but i try to write people of many different cultures and backgrounds. for example my main cast in the book i'm editing now features a german immigrant and a canadian desi, both whose cultures affect their characters. obviously research is important first, and you also kind of have to accept that it's not going to be perfect, nothing is going to be as perfect as someone actually of that culture writing that culture. it's easier if you have friends of those cultures to always come and check your work for you (this applies over the professions or life skills too of course). now it's a bit easier for me to say all this because the ethnicities of my characters don't often have a lot to do with the plot, so i can't say a lot if you're trying to make a main character who isn't your race and have that be a big part of the plot, but yk. i hope that all. kind of made sense. are my rambles actually coherent?

[mondstadtlover6000]

sorry came here first time in forever and i actually got new followers WTAF hi guys. sorry i'm not posting any new fics i'm trying to edit my book (currently in draft 4 as we speak actually).

[mondstadtlover6000]

archive locking all my fics cuz of the ai webscraping 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

[mondstadtlover6000]

YOU SAW THE ART!

OMGGGGG

ur fic is so good 😭😭🙇‍♀️♥️♥️♥️

thank you so much!!! your art is so beautiful :>

[mondstadtlover6000]

If you were a character in a movie, book, or television show, what genre would you want to live in?

hmmmm i think definitely something coming of age or slice of life! i feel like those are like 'normal' stories, yes, but they're cute and sweet and usually have some silly happenings without being whole out absurdist humor (though. come on. i'd like to live in scott pilgrim vs. the world let's be real). i like happy endings and i'd like to live in a story that has a happy ending too and i feel like those coming of age slice of life dramas usually have a happy ending! i wouldn't want a romcom even though that's kind of similar because i'm not interested in romance lol but def something along those lines!

[mondstadtlover6000]

why’d you choose to get into screenwriting instead of releasing a book?

hiii thanks for the ask tan!! and ok short answer: i'm not i'm doing both BUTTTTTTT long answer:

i've been doing prose writing a lot longer (11 years this year!) than i have been doing screenwriting and being a published author is my main and most important goal. like, if i write anything, i want it to be books, traditionally published, maybe make my own publishing company down the line and have a little bookstore when i'm older. and i have lots of novel WIPs and have completed a lot of first drafts, and i have one main WIP that i'm working my way to eventually start trying to publish!

while i'm doing that, i also really want to get into screenwriting because, well, my ideal ideal life is to write novels and then write adaptations of the novels a la JKR or jenny han and then do that for the rest of my life. and, this is probably inaccurate, but to me, screenwriting is easier to get into than traditional publishing. and more importantly: it's quicker. i mean, that's probably not true either, but i can complete a screenplay faster than i complete a novel (although that screenplay would be likely shoddy at best).

so my general life plan right now is to get my screenwriting portfolio done (3 screenplays, 3 spec scripts, a 6 episode miniseries AND THEN maybe 2 more screenplays and 1 network pilot). once i'm done that i will get a screenwriting agent, and then hopefully get some screenwriting jobs whilst 1. going to school for screenwriting, 2. writing my novel and prepping that to get a literary agent, and 3. writing prose short stories and submitting to journals etc.

moving up the screenwriting food chain will also take longer than publishing a book, at least i think in my unserious and uneducated opinion, so if i could go from tiny jobs to eventually a screenplay or even a whole tv show launched by moi then that's the ideal plan ykwim? but yeah, it's all kind of a fantasy and daydream but you know writing is about bringing those to life. and i'm gonna try my hardest to make it a reality.

so. that's my overall life goals/pipe dream/vague plan. is it delusional? quite probably. do i care? no.

[mondstadtlover6000]

how much of someone's writing ability do you think comes down to natural talent vs learned skill?

i think the majority of it is learned skill! natural talent really can't you get the same places dedication, practice, and discipline will. i'll use a few examples of how some writers i know (including myself) have progressed and how our writing ability has moved, but all of it has pretty much leaned on learned skill. first of all, you have to wonder what exactly 'natural talent' in writing is. it's kind of a confusing thing to put down because writing is all over the place and encompasses a lot of things. is it characterization? grammar? plot structure? original ideas? the prose itself? you can be a natural at any of these but there are so many things that put together a story that someone's talent at getting into a character's head won't carry their prose, plot progression, and stakes. of course you could be naturally good at all of it but let's be real… nobody is.

okay let's talk about me as an example. at first glance a lot of people think i'm naturally talented because i'm pretty young (19) but i've been writing since i was 8 years old. that's 11 years of writing. granted this was not full on obsessive grind 200k words a year writing, but i did write, pretty much every day, or at least thought about writing. one could say my early work was bad because i was a kid--but also because i was just starting out. it sucks. i'm not a prodigy at writing (i'm not good enough to be a prodigy, even) i've just had a lot, a lot, of practice. as i grew older, i learned more: grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary, things that made my prose pop. i learned how to properly use semicolons, how to indent, how to make paragraphs the perfect length, all little needless stuff. my plots and characterizations became less trope-y (i mean i still think they still are very trope-y but ykwim).

and most importantly because i've written so much i've found a STYLE. i've found a writing process i pretty much stick to. i know what genres i like to write (urban fantasy, coming-of-age) what tropes (found family, slice of life, adventure) and what my stories really focus around (character studies, character-driven work). my prose stays fairly consistent (even when i tried something new with 'gunpowder white' with my experimental formatting and almost poetry writing, you could see me kind of leading up to this with the repetition and prose i liked to use in previous works such as the drew pjosceu fic and, yeah, idk, probably others). this isn't something you naturally find or are naturally good at. it takes a while to learn about yourself, especially in a craft like writing--it's so big and wide it'll take a while to find something that makes you feel like you're writing your best.

next let's talk about someone i originally thought was just naturally gifted. my sister. i'm not even joking i had a crisis when she started writing (approximately 2 years ago) because i was like, what the hell, she's so good, why is she so naturally good, i've been doing this for 9 years and she's BETTER than me OFF THE BAT. well this is not true! my sister, despite not having written for very long, is extremely good not because she's naturally talented (i mean she is but not to that extent) but because she's familiar with the practice. first of all, she's an actor, so she's very good at character work and characterization. i mean her characterization and character motivations are so strong in everything she writes it blows me the fuck away, how do you even slip into someone's head that easily and write them in such a compelling way, tf? along with this, she's done a LOT of story and script analysis because of her being an actor, so she readily understands the structure of stories and plot progression so she's very good at detecting cliches and figuring out what really makes a good story.

along with this, she's my sister she's been reading what i write since i started writing, giving me advice, helping me figure out what my weaknesses are: she got a lot of my skill via osmosis. so even though she hadn't necessarily been PRACTICING writing, she knows a lot of THEORY. think about it this way: if you don't play basketball but you watch a lot of it and read books on it and figure out how the game works and how to be better at it, of course you're going to be "naturally" good at it.

this goes for readers too. if you're a big reader, you're going to more easily grasp story structure and writing than someone who isn't a big reader. for example my SECOND sister, who basically never writes, is super helpful with story and character analysis because she reads like 100 books a year. she tried her hand at writing last year, just a little 2k thing, but it was pretty good because she reads a lot and she's gotten all this theory from all the books she's read and of course helping me write.

so the general rule: keep writing. you'll get better only if you keep writing. read, because that helps; watch movies; read screenplays; read people explaining how they write (like i do on here, ha); read books on writing but don't take the word as gospel because writing is of course a highly subjective process (ones i've enjoyed are 'bird by bird' by anne lamott; 'dear ally' by ally carter; 'save the cat' by blake snyder). natural talent is certainly nice but it's a hoax. don't believe in it.

i'm gonna go on a tangent and talk about myself for a moment bc, uh, yk me. anyway relating to this question, i had mistakenly believed i WAS a prodigy because uh i guess i completely forgot about the fact i've been writing for 11 years. and i was like wow i'm so good at writing i must be naturally good at everything else i start too. well here i come starting to screenwrite (in 2021, it's been a bit but not long enough) and i'm so confident thinking i'll be #amazing and i'm not. a lot of this sucks really bad. most of it sucks really bad. i'm not good in the format, i have to condense things, i can't do as much introspection as i want, i have a limited number of pages to write things in, i can't add in too many funny liners and fluff. i don't know how to stick things in a movie and i don't know how to spread a plot out in episodes for a teleplay without making everything seem scattered, or too rushed, or too slow, and yeah a lot of it is about pacing which has never been my strong spot anyway. it's driving me halfway out of my mind. i hate being bad at things. all the screenwriting ive done right now sucks. i guess we move.

on a similar note, i suck at ballet because i've just started i guess but ugh, i get it, i want to be naturally talented so bad. but it's a disease and it doesn't happen and after i've written my fiftieth screenplay and finished my 200th ballet class, maybe i'll actually be good.

learned skill. learn learn learn. it's hard i know! just keep with it :)

[mondstadtlover6000]

what do you mean when you say some characters' stories need to be told? i guess it isnt a concept i understand or heard about when it comes to fictional characters

hmmm not to get like super dramatic about writing, but fiction is more important than just for creating entertainment. it's how we show our opinions, thoughts, values, traumas, and experiences. even when you're not trying to make a statement, the author's ideas, opinions, religions, and values will seep through in the writing; it's just what happens. sharing stories through characters are important because they share different values, opinions, and cultures with the world. you're always learning when you're reading--even if what you're reading is an insert penned by a 12 year old on wattpad, you're seeing things out of her eyes, her worldview, her mind.

by saying some characters' stories need to be told i guess i mean that it's important to encapsulate struggling, character arcs, beliefs, opinions, and values of certain characters? it's not so much an alive concept in writing society (at least i don't think so), it's just something i believe. i said it about drew because i truly do think her story needed to be told: she was represented terribly in the canon material, but there were layers and inferences you can make of the character that was important to her: it needed to be told. this is more of a subjective thing than anything because, well, drew was invented by riordan who wrote her in the backwards misogynistic way that he did: there shouldn't be any more to the character. but there is: i saw it, and a lot of other people on ao3 and in the fandom saw it, too.

a lot of it has to do with character motivations, too. i was into acting for a bit and it's all character work, and a lot of the focus is trying to understand every single character (even the side characters, even the ones with only one or two lines) because everyone always has a motivation for doing everything they do. taking this approach into writing i guess you can sort of see everyone with their own character: that's why i like to delve into side characters of pjo, because i find their character motivations and find a story in there.

in general i think i do take more of an "omniscient" approach to my writing, especially with my fanfiction. it doesn't really feel like i'm "inventing" characters, a story, a plot: it's more so like i'm finding them and expressing their story for them in a prose format. i'm really sorry if this is hard to understand it might just be, like, stuck up nonsense but it's truly how i feel about the subject.

and it's all fiction, obviously, so it's all subjective: up to the eye of the beholder. what one writer finds will be different than the other, which is why when you find a story that needs to be told, you should tell it.

[mondstadtlover6000]

which character have your written for do you identify the most with?

ooh i love love love LOVE this question! okay as a general yappy answer i'm gonna say i personally believe that fictionalization of authors is INCREDIBLY important in creative writing. i don't want to specifically say 'self-inserting' because it's more than just that: taking from authors' experiences, jobs, personalities, hobbies, appearances, fears, aspirations, preferences, et cetera is really what makes their work because… art is all in the artist, really. it's what sets the tone for what we write. fictionalization of real experiences, projection of self, and "self-inserting" is more than just making something realistic via the rule 'write what you know'---and it DEFINITELY does not mean write autobiographically, because i hate it when the advice gets misconstrued and people instead start writing straight-up nonfiction. it's all about adding perspective, author voice, vulnerability, and authenticity in writing. i can't even fully describe it it's more just like a vibe you can understand.

with that being said, i heavily avoided writing inserts and identifying with my works for a very long time. this was because i believed all self-insert was bad due to the prevalent mary sueification of inserting and also because i heavily detested myself in my tween and early teenage years and didn't think i 'deserved' to be inserted into anything i wrote. i wrote to escape myself! (if only little me thought more about it, she'd realize there's nothing more 'myself' than my writing.) but even with this, myself slipped through---of course it did. my current novel entirely surrounds my fears and struggles with friendship, keeping friends, the true meaning of it.

there's no one character that has 'most' of me in it. i relate to many of them. i'll try to find one that i identify a lot with, for the sake of the question. there's one fic on a different account that takes the theme of 'high-functioning depression' and explores it, which i relate highly to because i've had struggles with depression whilst being high-functioning and successfully masking it. like aforementioned, the plot of my novel surrounds issues with confidence, friendship, and coming of age, which i struggled and still struggle with. pjosceu drew is a reflection of how i long to be in control, of how i try to needle every little thing from my appearance to my future to my writing, how my biggest goal in life is just to be able to Control Everything, to control my own piece of mind. that's the only piece of that fic i can relate to, though--a lot of drew's mentality is alien to me, but her story needed to be told. pjosceu connor deals with how much i WANT things, how i feel like i'm cursed for things to always leave me, for me to get the opposite of what i want, even if not in the vein of romance, love, parental need. gunpowder white ekko relates to my determination, how hard i try for my goals and dreams, although we don't face the same struggles and challenges. of course the dead dad fics series is pure self-projection about… my dead dad. pjosceu clovis covers my fear of being useless, of always needing to do SOMETHING, of wanting to make a legacy. these are expounded, i don't have them as fiercely as these characters do, so i can't truly say i identify with them---my personality is nothing like drew's, nor connor's; me and ekko can't be more different in every sense other than we're both ambitious.

now that i think about it, the short answer is all of my fics tagged 'character study' are gonna be the ones that have the most of me in them. it's always easier to insert in emotional circumstances. i draw from a lot of my own experiences when writing them, even if it's just one small fear or thought i had a grand total of ONE SINGULAR TIME---it's the easiest way to write, if i think 'what would happen if this went totally, teeteringly, out of control'? i've got an original novel wip that covers a teenage girl who's stuck in a time loop murdering people because of her love for her best friend and i relate so much to that character despite the fact. well. i'd never murder. fictionalization of author experiences is something i've been getting into recently, so thank you so much for the question! i'm still playing around a lot with writing things i identify with, and while i'm still uncomfortable to write characters where more than one or two traits match up, i feel like it's a skill i need to learn because these stories can be important. really important. and the voice that needs to tell that story is the one who can relate to it, has experienced it, and identifies with it.

[mondstadtlover6000]

where does the 6000 come from

the entire username is random. i'd change it if i wasn't stuck to the brand now. ao3 usernames choose you, not the other way around. jeez louise how i wish i had something aesthetically appealing, but whatever i'm past it now

[mondstadtlover6000]

if you have a niche sport/job/hobby it’s your sacred duty to make the most specific incomprehensible AUs with the characters you like. no more coffeeshop aus no more college aus you have to put those guys in a microbial lab. your fave is a high school english teacher. that show is about bowling now sorry. THIS IS MANDATORY!!!

[mondstadtlover6000]

Where do you start your stories? Do you write them linearly, or do you sometimes start by writing the ending first

i am definitely a linear writer! it's just easier for me to understand and compute, i mean obviously sometimes i get ideas for scenes and i will jot those down but i'll usually just write the general ideas and then continue to follow my outline in a linear manner. i'm open to being more flexible with my process but i get overwhelmed SUPER easily, lol, so yeah: i try to follow a linear timeline and also all of my outlines!

[mondstadtlover6000]

favorite "darlings" you had to kill because it didn't fit the narrative or story?

oh 😭

tbh i actually don't have a lot of darlings i kill fanfic wise because like i've stated before i don't really edit my fanfics? it's only if it's experiencing a serious issue that i actually wipe out some of it and change stuff; otherwise i just kind of let it live lol. that's not to say i don't have any darlings i killed!

i had like 2k of percabeth princess charm school scrapped because i decided to write it in a different direction. originally i was going to start it from annabeth and percy's youth but it just wasn't working. i really liked that universe though and i really wished i executed the 2 fics i wrote in it a bit better but ah well we live and we learn. my original outline for the story was so beautiful... and then i had to rewrite the entire thing. so so tragic.

i pocketed a lot of plotlines and stuff from drew's pjosceu fic about silena, beckendorf, and clarisse. but i say pocketed because i'll reuse them for those threes' pjosceu fics when i eventually get around to writing them! best part about killing your darlings is you don't have to kill them forever. you can always bring them back.

i have 10k of a marvel fanfic i'll probably never finished hidden in my docs. abandoned wips come aplenty, i guess, but they're not very familiar for me, so i'll always mourn that one.

a lot of them have to do with regret and not having enough time or purpose to write the end goal, actually. like, i wanted to rest a lot more on drew's whore era in the pjosceu (for lack of better terms) and give her more time to devolve into her state of madness (for lack of better terms, again) but when i wrote what i planned it ended up shorter, and the empty space i could have filled is darling enough to me. i can't exactly explain why i see it that why "oh selene you couldve just written more" but you see i COULDN'T have because then i'd have veered off track or made things too complicated, which i have a tendency to do.

most of my darlings are in my originals, though. i had to be heavy handed with my current novel wip in draft 2 and draft 3 brings along more horrors. it's currently extremely complex to the point of nonsense and i KNOW that i have to simplify it, that it'll make more sense, that i don't have the skill to weave so much plot and character arcs etc etc into one book but it's so sad... these aren't technically darlings i've killed yet, but i know which ones i have to and it's one reason i haven't started writing draft 3. i have to cut out a whole conflict because it doesn't make sense... mash together two... change an arc i thought was really important in order for it to make more sense to the overarching plot... revise the goals of the 'antagonists' and figure out how to redefine the stakes.... ugh i can't even get into it but i'm just dreading it it's going to be a mess and hard work and sad work. sometimes the plants you have to weed up for the sake of the garden are really beautiful, you know.

i don't have anything else that necessarily springs to mind. lots of stuff have been lost to time and age and now even though i look at them with love i don't think i'd be able to write them properly in my current mindset.