#i will joke abt fictional characters but there’s a level of fantasy there where it stops being real to me

[moontropy]

tags rambling

[qwertyfingers]

also while i got with understanding on the brain i wanna be clear that like... when i encourage people to read it i am not doing it in the sincere 'everyone should read this its amazing' way bc it IS fucked in the head its a truly insane piece of fiction, and it takes a certain fortitude and internal sense of like, healing, to be able to get through. its not a typical love story, its not a nice story by any means. it is a story about the realities of broken people, and how you live your life when trauma and circumstances have increasingly closed doors to you and taken away your options. it is also a story about synthetic and natural happiness. it is a story about healing yourself by healing other people. it is a story about the kind of person who can only find peace through giving it to others, and how they can navigate a world that hurts them. and ultimately its a power fantasy about having the power to change someone you love in a way that stops them from hurting you again; about someone loving you enough that it makes them change themself too.

it is not a fic that i read because of the romance, but because i'm fascinated by the psychology of it. i like the writing style, i like the voice of cas' pov. i like the authors choice to turn a trope that is nearly always extremely fucked up and turn it on its head without ever trying to say it isnt fucked up. they heal and move on from what dean did to cas without ever glossing over it, without ever forgetting and ignoring. they both acknowledge every messed up thing about their life, they talk and talk and they slip up and keep going anyway. its very moving, personally, but i also recognise why the level of fucked up the first section has will prevent a lot of people from being able to read it. thats fine!

i dont want to seem disrespectful of the subject matter when i make jokes about it and talk about it in a lighthearted way bc this shit is DEEP in my psyche, my friends and i have an entire groupchat for talking about this fic like we are. deranged. its very healing for me as a person w CPTSD and a history of sexual trauma to read a story where the pov characters thought processes sound so much like my own, where his decisions that make sense to me dont make sense to those around him. idk. could literally enver explain everything i have to say abt this fic in a tumblr post but yh. its god but its wack and its hard to read but also very rewarding?

[llampacaeatingguppy]

for that book ask game, i've gotta ask every. single. question. i love books and i love hearing abt ppl's opinions on books, so lay it on me, abi!!

I WILL, THANK YOU! 

book you’ve reread the most times?

The Princess Bride. I’m basic and it entertains me jaklfjdsakfjsaklfdjs. Really though, I don’t reread very much so that’s not a hard one

top 5 books of all time?

YOU KNOW I’M BAD AT RANKING WHY

ugh

fine

I’ll try. In no particular order:

The Princess Bride-- William GoldmanThe Enchanted Forest Chronicles (and more specifically the prequel trilogy Dealing with/Searching for/Calling on Dragons)The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy--book I beta read and isn’t published yet so idk if it’s okay to talk about--I should be able to think of another one, but I can sense a headache coming so I need to wrap this up and it’s taking me too long to think of one

What is your favourite genre?

Fantasy/science fantasy

what sections of a bookstore do you browse?

H A! Uhm, usually the YA/teen fiction section, fantasy/sci fi section, and art/craft section. If there’s a nerd section (like D&D stuff or whatever), I’ll stare at it and try to will friends who’ll play it with me into existence. So far, my mind powers aren’t powerful enough to succeed 

where do you buy books?

Usually either Barnes&Noble or thriftbooks, but I just borrow them a lot nowadays

what books have you read in the last month?

The Fall of Giants by Ken Follett and Dragonspell by Donita K. Paul

is there a series/book that got you into reading?

An old book from my teacher’s bookshelf in first grade. It was about a collie, but I don’t really remember details any more. i loved it so much she let me have it at the end of the year

More recently, The Enchanted Forest Chronicles was the first book I read that really reminded me that hey, reading is pretty neat I should do that more

what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

See above, paragraph 1

when do you tend to read most?

When I’m at my parents’ place

do you have a guilty fav?

A thing not at all taking itself seriously. The more ridiculous the better. Give me goddamn Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail or the original Star Trek levels of goofs and cheese in novel form and I’ll be the happiest camper to ever exist. This is most readily available in kid books, so uh. Seeing me reading dumb cartoony book for kids that may or may not have pictures in it isn’t terribly unusual

what non-fiction books do you like if any?

Yeah nonfiction can be fun! A Street Cat Named Bob is the last nonfiction I think I read. I’m a sucker for cats. There should be more cats in books

did you enjoy any compulsory high school readings?

I flipping LOVED Frankenstein

do you have a goodreads?

My guess is no, since I don’t know what it is and I’m too lazy to google it to find out jkafkalhfskladkjfshfskf

do you ever mark/dog ear books you own?

yeah. Not as much as I used to because I mostly borrow from the library now that I have to pay with books with my own gosh dang human money instead of my parents paying for them

recommend and review a book.

Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede. If you’ve ever heard me talk about books after I’ve started reading more, these have probably come up. It’s fantasy, but a goofy, ambling sort of fantasy. The characters are endearing, the jokes are funny, and it doesn’t take itself seriously in the slightest

how many books have you read this year?

How exactly do you expect me to know that? okay hang on let me try...

Eight? I know it’s not impressive I haven’t been reading again for very long

top 5 children’s books?

OH HELL YEAH THIS ONE I CAN DO

Gregor the Overlander -- Suzanne Collins

The Looking Glass Chronicles -- Frank Beddor

Lockwood & Co. -- Jonathan Stroud

The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom -- Christopher Healy

the Artemis Fowl series -- Eoin Colfer

This is literally almost all remembering what books I loved though, with the exception of Lockwood & Co.

do you like historical books? which time period?

Ehhhh I didn’t really like them much when I was a kid, but The Fall of Giants wasn’t bad so maybe I’ll branch into it?

most disliked popular books?

I dunno, man. 50 shades of gray? the game of thrones books? Like what books are even popular right now? You expect me to know that? 

what are things you look for in a book?

Humor. It’s not a dealbreaker, but dang will humor make me gravitate towards a book more than anything else. Other than that, happy endings. Bring me the happy endings. I will refuse to read something if I know the ending is unhappy. And also The Power of Friendship

[sol1loqu1st]

anyway as i avoid my responsibilities im thinking abt foi and how it fits into my progression as a writer

this is fuckin long so im putting it under a readmore lmao. tl;dr, i should be writing middle grade fiction

i joke about “not being nuanced enough back then” or smthn when i come across a piece of bad characterization or cliched plot or w/e, but honestly this book has a fuckton of nuance and i genuinely dont know if it was stuff i was thinking about as i was writing it or if it was just a whole lot of happy accidents

but like now when i write i try to make every character represent some aspect of the Theme and everything is a series of Metaphors and i pride myself on being Complex and Nuanced and everything is Super Intelligent and shit and like

foi doesnt do that. i didnt dumb things down/try to seem Smart for an imaginary fanbase, i wrote on my own level which was. just kind of??? me?? i wrote it for me? i was a middle schooler who liked fantasy thats who i wrote it for??

i also wrote it almost directly after i stopped writing twoe and i think that actually does have something to do with it -- the difference in quality between the very last thing i wrote in twoe vs two months later when i started foi is fucking astounding and it doesnt make any sense. its not like i suddenly took a writing course

but i think? the actual reason for the sudden jump in quality? was that i stopped trying to be dark and broody and Intelligent(tm)? like i started trying to write for my own age?

foi is a middle grade fantasy novel along the same reading level as percy jackson or the earlier harry potter books. it doesnt try to pretend like its anything else and it isnt ashamed of being a middle grade fantasy novel and thats what makes it a good, nuanced fucking story

twoe is a middle grade sci-fi/fantasy thats trying to be a ya novel and it fuckin shows. as i was reading it i could feel 11 year old me trying to sound older and more advanced that i was and i could feel every moment where i was embarrassed about my own writing/embarrassed about the story i was trying to tell and by book 3 or 4 i could feel myself trying to make it darker and darker because i was so obsessed with seeming “mature” that i stopped giving a shit about the story (or my mental health but thats another topic)

foi is a direct response, from myself to myself, to twoe. its everything that twoe wasnt and i dont remember but i think that was intentional

and i guess thats where sunless/mh comes in? i’d spent half of november obsessing over the characters of foi and writing a dark, broody sequel to the thing, but i think something in me said “nah thats not what this is” and i switched to a new concept entirely which was the earliest conceptualization of what is now sunless

i guess i thought it was time for me to write another ya? it turned out. better than twoe but worse than foi by a lot. i didnt fully grasp what it was supposed to be about i think, it was kind of. the writing equivalent of progrock, just a weird, surreal experimental piece where everything that makes a story a story took the background in favor of the stuff i was experimenting with -- 3rd person present, sentence fragments, characters who exist almost outside the plot as everything just happens, etc.

(eventually draft 2 happened, i found the plot, and then drafts 3 and 4 cleaned it up a lot but its roots as an experimental piece still showed and it was still dark and brooding and honestly pretty negative to my own personal development) it was necessary for me to have that experimental phase, i think, but it went on too long and i think its time for me to retire sunless, at least for now

conclusion: twoe and sunless can kiss my ass, foi is the most goddamn interesting and nuanced thing ive ever written