#i've already seen some detail points of the movie which make it seem super questionable

[4lph4kidz]

3, 4, 17, 18, 26 and 36 for the writer ask game. :3

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

i play ridiculous music when i can't concentrate and need stimulation. running in the 90s. mad rat monday. spamton CD. this kasane teto song which i have seen (accurately imo) described as penis music.

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

i can't really... think of any? there are words i like but i wouldn't say i hoot and holler if i see a chance to use them, or see them crop up in someone else's work. themes and ideas, yeah! specific words... idk.

17. Talk to me about the minutiae of your current WIP. Tell me about the lore, the history, the detail, the things that won’t make it in the text.

i've been doing a lot of probably entirely unnecessary research for my latest WIP which is... hm! how about i dm you about that one.

on the subject of research, i'm under no illusions, catabolic seed is sheer scifi nonsense (affectionate). i've purposefully held off from getting too in the weeds with it because i know i would stress too much about complex worldbuilding and scientific accuracy, so a lot of stuff that isn't directly relevant to the plot is broad strokes stuff. as per the main inspiration, wolf 359, i'm leaning more on the workplace comedy at the start (because, haha, i have a job, he just like me fr) but i may develop the sci fi elements more once its time to fully bring them into the story. what i do have is: detailed bios and job descriptions for each character, a rough layout of the spaceship Hemera, notes on robotics and spacefaring technology, rival factions within the worldspace, some alien biology stuff... i'm a pretty big science nerd, and i enjoy good hard sci fi! but we're not doing that here, we're putting guys in situations. this is about genre. verisimilitude. you're getting good old fashioned technobabble.

18. Choose a passage from your writing. Tell me about the backstory of this moment. How you came up with it, how it changed from start to end. Spicy addition: Questioner provides the passage.

alright, how about this part from ch1 of catabolic seed! i made some pretty big last minute changes to the beginning of the fic because the pacing wasn't working, and i ended up pulling in a scene from much later in the story to serve as a dirkjake meet cute.

i like set up. establishing tone, creating atmosphere... the way you introduce a character, even one known already to the audience, is something i think is important and i enjoy playing with that a lot. originally jane was present and dirk was going to be pulling a bunch of wires out of the wall, which jane described as 'disemboweling her spaceship' but at some point i decided him popping out of the vent and scaring the shit out of jake seemed like a more fun idea so i ran with it. this establishses dirk as a potential threat, which leads to the stupid kabedon moment later, which leads to the jokes about the disney cruise liner and the engineering section flooding... i didn't have time to think it through all the way but as far as choices made on the fly go i think i made it work!

dirk being in the vents was also pulling from wolf 359, specifically referencing the character captain minkowski who i felt was kind of comprable to dirk in terms of her neuroses - it wasn't till i got someone else's eyes on it that they pointed out that i'd introduced dirk exactly like a fucking xenomorph, which was perfect, so i scrambled to insert a textual reference to the alien movies and doing some hasty worldbuilding while i was at it.

in general i think exploring the relationship from jake's point of view is super interesting. in an au where they don't already know each other, dirk is an interesting figure for jake to 'figure out' - aloof, mysterious, other - classic love interest stuff. which is perhaps less interesting than their deal in canon, but hey, i'm having fun running with it.

26. How do you get into your character’s head? How do you get out? Do you ever regret going in there in the first place?

hm, i don't know. i hyperfixated on the alpha kids pretty hard so i think i already have quite well-formed interpretations of their personalities and perspectives, it's not hard to dredge those up when i need them. i won't pretend my writing is for sure an accurate reflection of canon characterisation or anything but i'll go read passages from canon when writing and refining dialogue especially. and hmm. i do end up going to dark places sometimes, and nearly every fic ends up quite a bit darker than i mean it to... i'm totally fine. don't worry about it.

36. They say to Write What You Know. Setting aside for a moment the fact that this is terrible advice…what do you Know?

be bisexual, eat hot chip and lie

aside from my aforementioned interests in genre fiction, or biology, i can see what i'm grappling with as a person reflected quite clearly in what i end up exploring in my work. i have the past experiences of being a queer teenager who had no idea what was going on, grappling with mental illness and feeling incredibly alone. or i can draw on my experiences as an adult, finding myself as a person, going out into the world, and all the struggles therein.

[cockmcstuffins]

there’s pure comedy in film red and the retcon of shanks’s daughter who was there the whole time and no it won’t ever not make me laugh that every single scene uta appears in feels like 2003 oc fanfiction come to life we came full fucking circle on this one