#always a sucker for an askmeme

[kaydeefalls]

tag game! @what-alchemy tagged me, it's a new year, let's do this.

last song: well, my phone tells me it was enya's "fallen embers", so apparently we're partying like it's the year 2000 over here.

currently reading: between books at the moment, but the last i finished was "babel" by r.f.kuang and it broke me, so. i do have a stack of new books on my dresser glaring at me. my brain has been too mush to handle New Things of late, though, so i've mostly just been living on ao3 instead.

last movie: "the shop around the corner" was our final christmas movie of the season, since i'd never actually seen it despite loving everything based on it. definitely dated (1940, to be specific), but very cute.

currently watching: made my friends watch the first episode of leverage on NYE, which reminded us that we'd never finished s2 of redemption, so catching up on that now.

currently craving: any actual creative instinct in my brain

currently consuming: uh. water?

three ships: how very dare you, do you know how many ships i have. at the moment, joe/nicky (TOG), edgin/xenk (DnD), posner/scripps (history boys, because it's yuletide season and i always revisit them for yuletide)

first ship: mulder/scully obvs

favorite color: purple!

currently working on: oh god. i have to finish my festivid, which i'm at least a solid chunk of the way into. writing wise, i really want to pull some kind of seasonal TOG fic together, but also now that yuletide is done i can finally go back to the TOG/Inception fusion i've been chipping away at for a couple of months.

tagging, uh, no pressure... @turtletotem @knoepfchen @brendaonao3 and i think i was supposed to tag nine people but hey whoever wants to should totally take this as your excuse

[characteroulette]

Herlock Sholmes for the askmeme!

Oof okay I'm gonna do like. Pop Culture Sherlock Holmes and also DGS Sholmes because I know enough for two Holmes deargodhelpme

First impression

Sherlock is like. THE Bitch. You see someone making a parady of him and go "Hey I know that bitch!!"

Key point, Sholmes appeared and I was like "oh he's gonna be THAT kind of bitch huh". He's annoyingly endearing. Good character I have wanted to strangle AA characters less.

Impression now

Love that Detective who is so Gay and Ace. Congrats to the newly married couple it's about time.

I still want to strangle Herlock but also. He'd a dad~ He's a dad! Boogie woogie woogie~ you mean to tell me you knew this whole time and you said fucking nothing you bitch

Favorite moment

Yo I love it when Sherlock Holmes comes out and says, "Elementary, my dear Watson!!" I have never read a Sherlock Holmes book lol

okay this might be obvious but. I am a huge sucker for good dad characters. The final scene where Iris says "thank you, dad!" And then Sholmes turns to Mikotoba and goes "I just heard the sweetest expression of thanks and it is all due to you, my dear" HELLO I HAVE BEEN SLAIN AAAAAAGH

Idea for a story

Obvs planning the wedding for such a neurodivergent detective ought to be fun. Three murders he gets to solve at least (Watson my bud I am so sorry lol)

Fuck I already wrote the one where Herlock kills to protect Iris uhhh probs roleswap where Kazuma does get to Britain so he and Herlock can grate against one another their dynamic is underrated actually

Unpopular opinion

This Bitch is actually the biggest Bitch of them all (idk if that's unpopular or not)

Also I'll say it. Y'all love Herlock because he's a pretty blond man. I'll call y'all out for this I literally can't say anything I'm simp for Barok lol

Favorite relationship

Sherlock/Watson because obvs they're getting married finally good for them

I'll ship Herlock with Barok or Mikotoba but obvs my fave dynamic is Herlock and Iris.... Weird parent relationship that has so much love in it.... He lied so much to her it'd be neat to explore all the fallout that came afterwards.

Favorite headcanon

This bitch Ace! Good for him, good for him!!

Herlock was a noble but disowned for Reasons when he turned 18 and so he ran screaming out onto the streets as a consulting detective with barely anything to his name and Mikotoba sort of just adopted him lol. That's it that's the backstory I will always give him.

[mylordshesacactus]

1, 3, 15 and 23 for the askmeme?

What themes would you like to write about that you feel don’t get explored very often?

Hmm. See, I feel like it’s fairly self-evident from my writing what themes I care about and want to explore, and since 99% of that writing is already embarrassingly niche, it goes without saying that I don’t think those themes get enough love XD

Found family is, thankfully, a very popular trope. The slightly more niche themes that I enjoy exploring are...hmm. How to phrase this.

The (inherent eroticism of the) loyal lieutenant trope; that not only is it okay to not want to lead, but that people can want to be a natural second-in-command without feeling resentful or having that itch of ambition. That being the loyal, quiet support and standing back and watching someone you trust implicitly lead can be what you aspired to in the first place.

The idea of kindness and respect being about what the other person needs to feel safe, not what feels right to do.

The bright, dramatic, larger-than-life fantasy realm is primarily populated by ordinary people. This does not have to be a “deconstruction” or “commentary” on fantasy tropes or on the larger-than-life canon characters; they can and should coexist, because they’re part of the same world.

Asskicking =/= authority. Authority =/= leadership. Leadership in its purest form is soft-spoken and sure, with nothing to prove and no need to posture. Authority only requires certainty that the people under your command can be trusted to do their jobs. Leadership requires certainty that the people under your command can be trusted, fully and completely.

Animals Don’t Work Like That, Actually

Canine Body Language Is Completely Different From That, Actually, You’re Thinking Of Cats.

Loyalty requires you to challenge the people you love outright. Anyone worthy of real loyalty might be angry at first, but will ultimately trust you more as a result.

True love means trusting one another to do the right thing, and knowing for a fact that the other person will not betray their greater responsibilities for your sake no matter how much it hurts them. Anything less is not love; it’s selfish obsession.

What loves do you tend to write about?

Oops I kind of gave that one away with #1 huh. Well, a quick summary then: Agape, philia, storge, pragma, are going to feature most heavily. 

Which isn’t to say there’s less of eros. And if you’ve read my smut you know I LOVE playfulness in sex and romantic relationships; all intense passion is exhausting, you should be able to laugh together, and honestly it’s healthy to still have the hallmarks of ludus show up sometimes. Especially when my faves have such fucking awful lives, letting them just kind of...be grinning, giggly young women who like each other a lot is nice.

Mania (as in, the term for obsessive love in the Greek tradition and not like, the psychological condition) is such an intensely terrifying and deeply unpleasant force--writing it makes me feel so dirty--that it doesn’t show up very often if at all. It’s always an antagonist, if it does, because it’s so incompatible with love.

And all my fanfic faves are like no philautia we hate ourselves like wlws.

What physical quirks do your characters tend to have?

Oooo, I LIKE this one.

This is pretty clearly OCs, since with fanfic characters I at least TRY to just accurately recreate what their physical quirks onscreen seem to be. So, my OCs...

One linguistic quirk that I like to give to OCs is an oddly specific one--you can get a LOT of characterization into a small package by creating characters who are extremely laconic--writing their dialogue by trying to get across their idea in as few words as you possibly can, and using body language for the rest. The most recent version of this is my WoW character Talet, who I actually write as mostly nonverbal. In her case, this is the result of long-term isolation and partially due to trauma; she can and does speak, but she communicates mostly through lupine nonverbal signals to the point where her ward (officially her “apprentice” but in practice, her adopted daughter) openly describes herself as Talet’s “translator”.

I also have a weakness for characters with extremely still body language; not necessarily stiff or tense, just....still. No fidgeting or wasted movement. And for characters who can be described as soft-spoken--often as surprisingly soft-spoken, like my blunt and impolite mule handler with a low, rough voice...who has a completely contradictory tone, very gentle, very calm. Only with her beasts, of course. Or trauma victims. Or children. Or--

Do you prefer reading series or standalone novels and does that reflect on how you write?

Oh that’s also a good one. I like both! Honestly, SHOCKING information from a fanfic author--I love stories that set up a unique and interesting universe with like...rules? Especially when that universe feels bigger than the one story we get to see in it. 

And I’m a sucker for the IDEA of spinoffs, I’d normally adore big sprawling universes that allow for lots of stories to be told in the same basic world. It’s a shame that expanded universes get so bloated and that the writing gets so bad--and I think a major failing of that format is that they so quickly lose sight of the POINT of an expanded universe and try to make every goddamn thing interconnected. The whole POINT is that you can just....read or watch the stories that appeal to you, and while knowing other stories might enrich that experience not knowing them doesn’t detract from it.

(Discworld. The perfect model for how to do this is Discworld. Not interested in the Watch? Cool, here’s a pile of books about other characters. Not interested in Granny Weatherwax? Cool, have fun being wrong but also have fun reading all these witch-free books while doing it. Not interested in Death? Tough shit and have I got news for you about the degree to which not being interested in Death affects its presence in your life, but you don’t have to read books ABOUT Death.)

However, I do have a firm policy about series, and ESPECIALLY about the first book in a series: Cliffhangers are cheating, and they’re weak writing, and they’re only allowed if they’re setting up the actual finale. 

(It’s a mark in Rise Of Kyoshi’s favor that I didn’t....entirely....mind the cliffhanger because the rest of the book was so good. And since the Kyoshi novels are a duology, it’s TECHNICALLY allowable)

You CANNOT use a cliffhanger at the end of your first book. That’s a horrible sign in the author’s faith in their own story. If this is your FIRST IMPRESSION, and you don’t think the story you told is good enough, you don’t think your world and your characters are compelling enough, to get me to come back without straight up leaving the story unfinished in order to make me come back if I want to find out basic information?

Cool. You’re probably right. I don’t care anymore.

Your first installment HAS to stand on its own. The penultimate book can end on a cliffhanger if you really must, because at that stage in the plot it’s normal to assume there’s lots of things happening quickly, and it feels like less of a cheap trick; if I got four books into a five-book series, or two-thirds of the way through a trilogy, I was probably already planning to come back for the finale. But the first installment has to tell its own story, whole and entire, or I’m probably not gonna care enough to stick around.

Open endings are not the same as cliffhangers. Open endings are great.

So, yeah. A well-written standalone novel and a well-written series are basically the same, and the initial book in a series at least should also serve as a well-written standalone novel in the first place!

[whenyoulosesmallmind]

how about triple threat and aether for the ask meme!!

hell yes!!

- here’s the FE askmeme, feel free to drop me a question!

Triple Threat – Swords, lances, or axes?: I am but a simple person with simple tastes, I see an axe character and I use it. May our lord and saviour Hector bless us all. (I like lances too, tbh, mostly due to the GBA lance twirl animation - and because wyvern lords at the time didn’t use axes -, but just a tad bit less. Itty bitty.)

Aether –  Favorite lord?: Do I get, like, murdered instantly if I say Michalis? Since he’s not even a Lord and technically a villain... can I get a pass saying Minerva? No? It’s our dear lord and saviour Hector, then, of course! Memes aside, I have the softest spot for Hector and the GBA games in general. I’ve always been a sucker for strong but soft(tm) characters, and Hector just hits all the marks on my board, so to speak. Bonus, he has a BIG AXE. (Second comes Edelgard, because I’ve only finished her route a few weeks ago but if anything happened to her I would murder everyone on this site and then myself).

[sorrelchestnut]

5 and 36 for the ship meme, Whisper and Deacon?

Yay!  Thanks for the submission.  From the ship askmeme here: still taking questions if anyone wants to play!

5. Nicknames? Pet names? Any in-jokes?

Weirdly, considering their lifestyle, not a lot of extra names!  Whisper’ll shorten it to “D” a lot of the time, if she bothers to use his name at all, which isn’t often.  Pet names are for when they’re in cover, real names are for suckers, and they’re both weirdly reticent to use even their actual code names all that often.  You’ll notice they almost always call each other “partner” instead of “Deacon” or “Whisper.”  They are literally the only people in the entire Railroad who haven’t noticed they do this.

The “caveman versus astronaut” joke is the gift that keeps on giving, and that is 200% Whisper’s fault.  

36. What’s their greatest strength as a couple? Their weakness?

I think I kinda touched on this when I answered #35, but both their strength and their weakness lies in how utterly similar they are at the core of things.  Both of them lie and evade as a defense mechanism, to the point that any kind of emotional honesty is a genuine fucking struggle for them, and it leaves them trapped because neither of them can take the initiative to improve things.  (Without a sufficiently dramatic climactic plot point, obviously.)  But that same similarity also leads to an unspoken understanding and trust that they couldn’t possibly have gotten in any other form.  Not that they couldn’t have fallen in love with someone else, I think they definitely could have, but it wouldn’t have been that.  The easy give-and-take of their partnership, the close-your-eyes-and-dive way they stumble into deep waters regarding their mutual kink for rough sex, that couldn’t have happened without that first blush of yes, hello, I know that face, that’s the face I see in the mirror.  It’s easier to accept parts of yourself if you can love them in someone else first, after all.  And the things that they love about each other are, at the base of it, largely the same things they start out by hating about themselves.

[kaydeefalls]

7. Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

Hi! So normally I'd probably pick on one of my fusion AUs for this and feel like I was cheating a bit, since I'm not technically building any of those worlds, just finding ways to draw two different ones together. But what the hell, I spent most of this year writing a goddamn historical AU set during the Fall of Carthage, and I did SO FREAKING MUCH research for that. But I am not a historian, and there's only so deep a rabbit hole I can dig into for one stupid story, so yeah, I did a lot of stitching-gaps-together as best I could within the boundaries of all the historical details I could find. And I think it holds together as a portrait of a world and the characters who could have inhabited it. I did my best, anyway.

Thank you for asking!

[kaydeefalls]

would love some director's commentary on basically any part of Carthaginians you'd like to talk about, but my favourite part was the second last chapter/the siege itself and I'd love to know how you worked out what trajectory to take the characters on through all the historical records. would also love to know more of your thoughts on Yusuf and Nico's backstory and families, if you have thoughts!

Thanks! <3 All right, Carthaginians, let's go.

The siege - or, more specifically, the final Fall of Carthage - was definitely what came first in terms of planning out this fic. When I first had the idea of writing Joe & Nicky's backstory further back in history, the Punic Wars were a logical setting to start with due to simple geography - Carthage being in modern day Tunisia, and Rome being, well, Rome.

So as with any vague idea, I started with a wikipedia deep dive, kind of assuming that I'd stick to the general canon template of them killing each other for the first time in battle and then becoming lovers afterward. But I immediately stumbled across the fact that Carthage's final stand, after the city had surrendered, consisted of about 900 Roman defectors in the Temple of Eshmoun setting the temple on fire around them rather than allowing Rome to execute them. Which. So that was obviously going to Nicky's arc. Which meant he would have to defect to Carthage much earlier on. Which meant I could give him and Joe a much richer relationship build over the course of the war itself. At that point, there was no question that their first deaths would be more of a suicide pact due to having no other options. I thought about having them, IDK, leap off the temple roof together or something, but nah, it felt much stronger to have them kill each other directly, as per canon, but with a complete subversion of what got them to that point.

I wrote chronologically and posted as I went, but it definitely helped going in to know exactly where they had to end up. For example, I deliberately seeded their exact dialogue together in the temple at the end of the siege as lines in their very first idle political debate in Rome in chapter one, so that Nicky could do a complete 180 on his initial stance in the debate by the end.

Embarrassingly, while that was all planned out from the beginning, I was WELL into the middle of the fic before realizing that, uh, Eshmoun is literally the god of healing. I mean, I knew that from the start, but I literally had my own personal OH DUH moment that they would be dying and resurrecting for the first time in the temple of the god of healing, and would OF COURSE think that Eshmoun himself had literally healed them due to their sacrifice on his own figurative altar. So that was an incredibly lucky piece of historical fact to tie into the immortality narrative.

In terms of their family backstories there - I think Yusuf's is about as fleshed out in the fic as it's going to be, it's all his POV and I included all the family info/dynamics I'd thought about. Nicky's didn't get as much detail in the fic, since we're never in his head and he didn't talk about it as much, but his family was the rough equivalent of landed gentry back in Genua - relatively high status for his own tribe, but doesn't mean much to the Roman Republic as a whole. They were granted Roman citizenship when the Genuates allied with Rome, and Nicky received a formal education, but their family wealth took a huge hit during the second Punic War (when Carthage sacked the city) and never really recovered, which is why Nicky left to join the Roman army and make his own fortune. I think he's not the oldest of his siblings - not the one expected to inherit and carry on the family legacy - but probably the second son, with several younger siblings in the mix as well. He has a strained relationship with his father and a better one with his mother, who I imagine died before he left home. He misses his younger sibs, who he helped raise, but never returns to Genua in their lifetimes.

So...yeah! I spent all year with the world of this fic in my head, it's been hard to let go of it. Thank you for asking!

[kaydeefalls]

WIP snippet game

@tardis-stowaway tagged me in a WIP snippet game (thanks!), looking for the words fire, table, fresh, peace, and hand.

So what the hell, I'll bite. For once, I managed to find all of these in active (by my standards) Old Guard WIPs.

Fire (from Firefly AU):

She fires off two warning shots behind them, and at least one of the assholes in question yelps audibly. Joe's already on the comm to their ship. "Nicky, Booker, we might need to leave in a hurry."

Table (from the last chapter of Carthaginians, which I badly need to get cracking on):

Many, many centuries later, in an abandoned church in Goussainville, the newest among them will look around their dinner table with wary eyes. "How are you all in my dreams?" she asks.

Fresh (from a Quynh&Nile ficlet that may or may not ever be finished):

"Where does she go, in the between times?" Quỳnh asks Booker, because he is the closest to Nile in age and furthest in demeanor. They share a strange and sometimes uneasy kinship, the two youngest among them. The burden of still-fresh memories of their first lives weighs upon them very differently, but they understand each other in ways neither always likes to admit.

Peace (Quynh&Nile, again):

Half a century and more since she emerged from the ocean, and still, she can't quite keep up with the relentless pace of modern life. She needs longer breaks than the others, to let her mind catch up with her body, to make peace with her many ghosts.

Hand (Lykon-as-new-immortal!AU):

The combo of leather jacket, tasteful jewelry, and well-groomed beard is fucking catnip as far as Lykon is concerned. "Well hello, Daddy," he purrs, taking Joe's proffered hand. "It is very nice to meet you."

So that was fun! Feel free to hassle me about any of these, I'm desperately trying to force my brain back into writing mode after recovering from three solid weeks of travel plus work conference.

If you want to play (no pressure!), tagging @turtletotem, @knoepfchen, @werebearbearbar, and anyone else who wants the excuse to share a WIP snippet - your random words can be interest, eye, thought, morning, never.

[kaydeefalls]

For that meme:

5 about the opposite of people, 8 and 15

Roz! Hiiiii! Answered 8 already, so:

5. What do you wish someone would ask you about The Opposite of People? Answer it now!

LOL I literally wrote this fic for you, didn't I? Or, well, I started it on my own time and got stalled pretty early on, but then circled back to it to fill one of your exchange prompts (as a pinch hit, even, I think?), and I will ALWAYS appreciate that final push. So ask me how much of that fic was true to life. I dare you.

So much of it is the answer. Wayyyy too much of it. That was straight up take-your-fandom-to-work day, at the time, and I exorcised a LOT of my professional stage management demons by throwing them all into that fic. It was fun, in a deranged schadenfreude sort of way. I mean, none of this is a secret, but still. You can't make this shit up. Well, except for the plot of the fake play within it, but even that was still heavily inspired by a Shakespeare adaptation I really did work on (of a different play, not Macbeth). Good times.

15. What’s your favorite AU that you’ve written?

HOW CAN YOU MAKE ME CHOOSE. HOW. WHY. Oddly, I'd rarely played around with AUs apart from the odd canon-divergence until the XMFC fandom, specifically, at which point I just shot off the rails entirely, apparently. Canon divergence and fusion AUs are my faves overall, though I've dipped more into the modern AU in TOG fandom. I guess I have to go with Boden's Mate et al if I have to pick just one, only because that really changed my approach to writing fic as a whole, and I do kind of mentally feel like who I was as a writer before vs after that fic are miles apart. I've written technically better fics since then, I think (and hope - it's been more than 10 years at this point, I REALLY hope I've improved as a writer over that span of time!), but that one is still very Personally Significant. So. Let's go with that. <3

[kaydeefalls]

WIP game

@andrea-lyn tagged me (thanks!) so here we go.

Rules: In a new post, post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it!

(so the embarrassing thing about this is that my wip title list tends to be nearly identical every time i play this game, because i just add new wips and then finish them and the old ones just...continue to linger in my wip folder. but on the other hand, how many people other than me remember which wips i listed the last time this meme came around? so whatever. i am, however, restricting myself to docs that were last modified in the past year, because let's be real.)

all of these are TOG. it's a new year. have at it.

tagging anyone who'd like to play, i don't wanna put anyone on the spot but would love to see other folks' lists.

[kaydeefalls]

Fic writer question 17!

What highly specific AU do you want to read or write even though you might be the only person to appreciate it?

...when I tell you I currently have THREE of these sitting in my WIP docs as I type this.

But I think the most niche is likely the TOG canon divergence where Lykon is the new immortal in the modern era, and Nile one of the eldest. I really need to get back to that one. Gen Z Lykon is just something that can be so personal...

To make it even more niche, I would really love to explore the possibility of transmasc Lykon becoming immortal and discovering that his body naturally produces T now because he was on it when he died so the immortality-magic-whatever assumed that's part of the default reset every time. But I really don't think I'm the person to do justice to that portrayal, and it doesn't quite fit with the rest of the plot I've been working out - the last thing I'd want is to just kinda tack that storyline onto something completely different. IDK. But it would be RAD. Someone else should totally run with that, or take it in a better/more nuanced direction than I could come up with.

[kaydeefalls]

8, 25, 31 for the ask meme!

Sweet, thanks! <3

8. What song would make a great fic (to either write or read)?

Oh noooo. Um. I rarely have that kind of mental relationship between music and fic, which I have come to learn makes me unusual among the fic authors of tumblr. If a song pings my brain, that's nearly always a fanvid, not a fic. So I kinda have no good answer for this one, sorry. I used to want to write a Charles & Raven fic loosely based on Tom McRae's "Houdini and the Girl" - does that count? In general, my brain vibes with Tom McRae and Vienna Teng by default - they have complex, evocative lyrics that are very storylike to me. (Hence the many, many vids I've made to their songs in the past.)

25. What other websites or resources do you use most often when you write?

Wikipedia. Hands down. It's rarely the extent of my research, but it's often a jumping-off point. But also google maps, to check on geography/distances/travel time - that's probably second.

31. What’s your ideal fic length to write?

Hmmm. I think, like, 10-20k has become my sweet spot of late. But honestly it depends on the fic. Longer than 20k invariably means I've spent months and months of work on it, and those are very satisfying AFTER the fact, but frustrate me quite a bit during the process. 10-20k is long enough for me to sink into a story, but not so long that I'm gonna drown in it, if that makes sense. (Well, usually, anyway. Then there are the 4k fics that take me half a year to finish, so. Who the hell knows.)

[kaydeefalls]

wip guessing game: hair

Heyyy, thanks! From the Lykon-as-new-immortal AU that I will someday power through so help me:

Lykon releases Joe with a sigh, turning to see a white man with a deeply mediocre haircut and striking eyes, who is clearly suppressing laughter.

[kaydeefalls]

9 and 73 for the fic writer asks please. Also I'm cheering you on re: the last Carthaginians chapter. Whenever you end up sharing it, it will be a lovely gift. Everything you've written for the Old Guard has been a treat to read, so I acknowledge and respect the current difficulties while also having faith that you will find a way to make it work.

@astrabear Thank you, I appreciate that! I promise I am working on the last chapter, this summer has just been kind of a whirlwind IRL and my brain just Does Not Work sometimes when it comes to writing, sigh.

So, Fic Writer Askmeme!

9. Do you comment on stories you read?

Yes, I try to, though not as often as I should. I know how valuable comments can be from a writer perspective, and I've been trying to be better about commenting myself. Sometimes I just don't have the mental energy to engage. But I try.

73. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

*squirms uncomfortably* Honestly, I don't know that I stand out as such. I think I'm pretty reliable/consistent in terms of quality and tone at this point. If you like one of my fics, you'll probably like the others (fandom/pairing preferences aside). So that's something?

[kaydeefalls]

about me meme

Tagged by @brendaonao3 🙂

Fav Color: nice deep purple

Last Song: "West End Girls", Pet Shop Boys

Currently Reading: "Babel" by R.F. Kuang - HIGHLY recommend, fantasy alt history, I'm only like 100 pages in and I already know I'll be requesting it for Yuletide this year

Last Movie: Barbie, because Reasons.

Sweet/Spicy/Savory: Sweet, please and thank you

Currently Working On: final chapter of Carthaginians! and after that I'll either return to one of my three existing TOG WIP docs or, y'know, start something brand new from scratch just to clear all the angst out of my brain.

No Pressure Tagging: anyone in the mood! I'm crap at tagging.

[kaydeefalls]

1 & 7 for the fic ask game!

Alright!

1 - What fic of yours would you recommend to someone who had never read any of your work? (In other words, what do you think is the best introduction to your fics?)

Gahhh, the hardest question! I mean, obviously the first criteria would be what fandom they're into, because I've written in quite a few different ones, and the answer definitely changes based on that. But I do tend to default to she's the one that they call old whatsername (even though it's my only Star Trek fic, apart from crossovers) as a decent representative sample of me as a writer. I'm very fond of that one.

7 - Any worldbuilding you’re particularly proud of?

I love me a good fusion AU, and I am proud of how I mesh different canons together in those fics overall. Like, it's not worldbuilding in the purest sense, since I am taking existing worlds rather than creating my won from scratch, but effectively combining the characters from one fandom with the universe of a completely different fandom takes its own particular skill set, I think, and I LOVE that. My puzzle brain is always pleased with those. So yeah, Boden's Mate is the obvious fic that comes to mind here - I do think I expanded quite a lot on how Inception-verse dreamsharing could work, in addition to translating elements of the X-Men characters' mutant powers into a dream context.