#and ofc iris goes off with structure every time

[guopei]

Iris Van Herpen- Fall/Winter 2023-2024

[habibialkaysani]

2,6,8,12,21,23,27,28,29,30

2) What fandoms do you write for and do you have a particular favourite if you write for more than one?

currently I write for: killjoys, arrow and the flash and I dabble occasionally in legends of tomorrow. I used to write for: supernatural (god help me but it was only one story phew), still star crossed (cancelled after like half a season sadly) and harry potter (on another site, mugglenet fan fiction).

6) If you had to delete one of your stories and never speak of it again, which would it be and why?

lmaooooo what about every single ol!c!ty fic ever? mostly because they were my first attempts at writing after like two or three years of a completely dry quill so I feel like my rustiness really showed. esp with the smut :P

8) Where do you take your inspiration from?

often it’s the little things - a line on a tv show, a bit of poetry, the chorus of a song, a gifset or fanvid that is particularly hurty. it’s like - when I feel that emotional punch I’m like YES I gotta try and replicate that feeling in something else. 

but also - it’s kinda weird, but longish journeys on public transport, esp when there is little to no internet access, is really helpful for my muse. it kinda forces me to step away from distractions and focus on writing and I honestly didn’t realise how much I needed that until I moved back home and worked pretty close to home so I didn’t travel as much. now I’m commuting a fair distance every day, I’ve been much more productive.

12) Who is your favourite character to write for? Why?

 dinah laurel lance, ofc. but with iris west allen and nyssa al ghul being joint close seconds nowadays :)

21) Tell me about another writer(s) who you admire? What is it about them that you admire?

so I love love love @freaoscanlin‘s fics. I’m not caught up on my faves’ ao3 pages yet but I have a ton of things bookmarked for when I get a moment and guhhh I’m looking forward to reading frea’s because there’s always this sense of empowerment in the women she writes - laurel, felicity, nyssa, sara, helena. not to mention her dialogue is spot on, so sharp and on the nose that honestly she does a way better job than the error writers ever could. 

@smilinstar also is someone I want to give a shoutout to. again I’m not caught up on everything and I know she’s been writing spideychelle fic lately but like. there’s such a wonderful strong sense of setting to her fics and it makes for wonderful reading that would be page-turning if I was reading her fic as a book. (page scroller doesn’t have the same ring to it lmao but that’s what it is :D) and just. there is so much heart in everything sumona writes that it honestly makes my heart ache, and considering I was nowhere near as invested in time canary before I started reading her fic and now I adore it and have even had a go myself, that is definitely saying something.

23) Do you prefer listening to music when you’re writing or do you need silence?

music, usually. sometimes my music auto stops and I don’t realise because I’m just that engrossed in writing. but mostly I do need some kind of noise.   

27) Do you make a general outline for your stories or do you just go with the flow?

I write almost entirely oneshots and my longer fics are either unfinished or still short by long fic standard. so I am definitely more a go with the flow kinda girl. having said that, I am currently planning and writing an original novel and I’ve been using a three-act structure to try and make sense of all the ideas I have. and although I haven’t updated them in a while, I do mostly have my fics on ao3 grouped according to pairing/characters and then put in chronological order from the show’s canon. so in that sense I don’t have an outline but I keep up with what goes on on different timelines within my own fanon.

28) What is something you wished you’d known before you started posting fanfiction?

um if I could I would go back in time and tell past me to look up the words she didn’t understand so she could avoid badfic and in particular badsmut and smut involving questionable kinks that would scar her for life.

29) Do you have a story that you feel doesn’t get as much love as you’d like?

rarely do I like how a fic turned out. but vows was one of them - a lauryssa fic where laurel and nyssa make promises to each other over four different universes. and idk. maybe it was the length - I rarely go over 3k in all honesty so this being 6k may have scared people off or something. I got some comments but kudos wise this is one of my lowest which makes me sad. 

30) In contrast to 29 is there a story which gets lots of love which you kinda eye roll at?

if I look at the top of my ao3 stats page again all I see is ol!c!ty smut and it’s just all so bad that I wonder why I haven’t taken those fics down. I know why - because I like feeling validated knowing my most read fic has 9k views and well over 200 kudos, even if it’s for badly written sex and like. really rusty writing lmao.

thank you ally you’re my hero

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