#idk I had this idea for a Sabrina au literally at the beginning of starting my blog

[ghostbeam]

I also wanna write ten million fics based on romcoms and make it like a little series or something idk what that would be or maybe not idk dude

[justanotherpersonsuniverse]

ml other magic au

This is background character centric, literally the only important characters I’ve got planned out that are completely and utterly human is Adrien, Marinette, and Gabriel.

they get miraculouses they don’t get to complain, most of everyone else is either a monster(being of magic), or magic user(exactly what how sounds)

Heads up this has spoilers to the existing chapters of There’s More Magic Out There

okay so this is mostly Juleka centric but the rest of the supporting cast will get their moments to shine.

This fic takes place between sapotis and chameleon 

Juleka is a vampire, she’s still only sixteen though and was born a vampire. For the past five years since she’s met most of the class from like.. idk French equivalent of elementary school.. no one has noticed the fact that she’s a vampire. She thinks it’s hilariously stupid but still works to hide her true identity, especially now sense magic has basically been ripped open as possible again to the mortal world.

Thanks to this- things begin to unfold and her classmates who she thought were normal turn out to be hiding their truths as well.

So far I’ve revealed four people, I won’t spoil who else is what until their chapter is released.

Alya is a selkie, a shapeshifter who changes between animal and human form by shedding their animal fur, though she’s not the seal kind. She’s a fox selkie, who keeps her coat tied around her waist. No one notices it’s existence until Rose points out to Juleka how much Alya was fidgeting with it. Juleka and Alya become friends thanks to this. She, her mom, and Nora are selkies, however Otis, Etta, and Ella are not- because basically Alya’s mom went through that whole “stealing coat” thing by some other dude, had Alya and Nora, and then fled to Martinique where she met Otis, had the twins, then moved to Paris where the show starts. Alya’s fascination with LB and CN is supported by her general fascination with magic.

She has her Miraculous permanently here because Trixx saw her and was like “oh my god I have a fox child I’m never leaving” and refused to let Ladybug take them.

Sabrina is a changeling. Meaning (this gets a little complicated) she is a child of the fae, HOWEVER instead of being raised like a fae, the fae stole the original human Sabrina Raincomprix as a baby and replaced her with our current Sabrina. Roger and his wife at the time found out, and human sabrina’s mom divorced him immediately when he refused to kill Sabrina. Sabrina was not aware of this until age 10 when she met the mother of her original counterpart yelled at her. Ever since then she developed a fear of being alone due to the idea that she wasn’t “The real Sabrina” and that if anyone learned she was just a swapped out fae they’d hate her.  Alix is a sorcerer but can be filed specifically as a witch. Yes that’s pretty unexpected, you’d think she’d be a werewolf but.. ah.. no. That’s someone else.. I don’t have a backstory cemented for her, but basically her family has dabbled in ancient magic before so she’s pretty experienced with her craft. She doesn’t use magic much, only when she needs to, and usually stays away from it other than a few exceptions. One of those exceptions being our next character:

Chloe. She’s a werewolf. Yep. I won’t reveal her backstory just yet but she was bitten at some point in the last five years in this timeline. She’s been getting help from Alix on full moons by having the skater girl lock her up with magic so she doesn’t escape (werewolves can turn into Wolfs any time however on full moons they go apeshit without choice and basically become mindless blood thirsty monsters). A recent development however due to an escape Juleka, Alya, and Sabrina accidentally spurred is that Chloe is now Alix’s familiar.

This is not a master pet sort of thing and I will be addressing this next chapter (I had a very long and interesting conversation in the comments about it). However if you need a visual on what witch and familiar stuff is like: it’s more of the relationship between Weapon and Weapon Meister from Soul Eater. 

I’ll make a different post on it later once said chapter is finished

this fic is basically going to be monster shenanigans and hijinks, made some edge and angst, and a whole lot of fantasy lore- Hope you like it!

[princess-of-the-corner]

Lady Luck AU: Lila.

So, for those who don’t remember, the Lady Luck AU is where Chloé is given the Ladybug Miraculous instead of Marinette, and this kicks off her ‘try to be better’ thing, especially with Adrien and Tikki (And Plagg, sort of) encouraging her.

So of course things are different with the Lila situation. Partly because Chloé is less likely to back down from Lila, partly because more people know about Chloé being Lady Luck, and therefore believe her. Let’s go through this episode by episode:

Volpina

Characters who know that Chloé is Lady Luck: Adrien, Marinette(learns this in the AU’s version of Antibug), and Alix(technically she only suspects it, but is quiet about it.). Marinette and Alix don’t know about Adrien being Chat though.

Lila shows up like usual, claiming to be bffs with Lady Luck.

Chloé honestly doesn’t care much about Lila at first. After all, if it becomes a problem Lady Luck can show up and clear it up.

Marinette is suspicious af and a good person so she wants to figure out what’s up with Lila and get her to stop

Adrien is still the ‘her lies aren’t hurting anyone(yet) so I’ll just let it go’ guy.

Alix is unsure what to do as she is only suspicious and doesn’t have proof either way and doesn’t really come into play here.

Adrien still took the Book Of Miraculous Bullshittery from his dad’s office. He asks Chloé to meet him in the library to talk about it.

They start discussing the book, and Tikki recognizes it and is like ‘We need to take this to The Guardian right away!’.

Before they discuss more of that, Lila shows up. She is heavily flirting with Adrien like usual, saying how she’s ‘bffs with Lady Luck’. Chloé’s just sitting there like “Get a load of this guy!”, but is getting more suspicious of Lila’s intentions

While Lila doesn’t steal the book, as Chloé knows it’s important and keeps an eye on it, she does see enough of it to get an idea.

Lila gets Adrien to agree to meet her in the park, and they both leave.

Chloé finds out that Marinette was behind a bookshelf eavesdropping on them and is just as suspicious about Lila.

They agree that Mari should follow Lila to the park while Chloé deals with the Book.

Lila does her usual deal of trying to convince Adrien that she’s a Fox Hero, but he’s actually the one to call her out on it.

He does make a half-truth and says he knows she’s lying because “Ladyluck was looking for you to discuss the false interview you gave’.

Lila is still pissed at Lady Luck for calling her out and becomes Volpina.

Chloé is on the way to Master Fu’s place when both Adrien and Marinette message her about what Lila did. Needless to say Chloé is fucking pissed. She also gets the alert about Volpina and decides to investigate that, putting the book thing on hold.

Both Lady Luck and Chat Noir are suspicious of Volpina being a Hero, considering Lila just tried that shit and might be an Akuma. Lady Luck decides to mess with her a little and also test her.

She does the ‘oh of course you’re a new hero! Btw us heroes don’t have secret identites with eachother, just civillians. Isn’t that right Richard?’ Chat plays along with a ‘of course Solaris!” (Bonus points if you know what those names are referencing). Volpina asks them to detransform, since they’re revealing identies and all. Lady Luck says ‘oh it won’t matter if we do! We’re total nobodies and wouldn’t really be recognizable. In a city this big I doubt we’d even pass each other by chance!’.

They ask more questions, making up things. Like, Lady Luck: “So what was your Trial like?” Volpina: “Trial?” Lady Luck: “Your Trial to be a hero of course! The whole ‘magic pocket dimension to prove your worthiness to wield a Miraculous?” Volpina: “Oh, right, that! Totally aced it. Pretty easy if you ask me!”.

When they call her out on it, Volpina goes to Plan B: convincing Adrien she’s really a Hero.

This whole thing goes pretty much the same. Chat goes back to his room to try and talk her down and/or trick her that way.

Volpina then heads out to the Eiffel Tower and dangles a fake Adrien off it.

Lady Luck knows that Adrien is fake because Chat is next to her, but it sounds real enough that she falters for a moment. Still they get through and defeat her.

Lady Luck does not apologize to Lila at all. In fact she might make at least a snarky comment at her.

Both Chloé and Adrien bring the Book to Master Fu.

Chameleon

Characters who know about Chloé being Lady Luck at this point: Adrien, Marinette, Alix(hasn’t had it outright confirmed, but is 99% sure), Sabrina(Learned when she became Abielle), and Mylene (learned when she became Turtledove).

Due to the events of the Queen’s Battle Trilogy, Chloé has been spending a lot of time at Marinette’s house. On these mornings she ends up being just as late as Marinette.

This is one of those mornings. They both assume the rearrangement is for Mari to sit by Adrien, but everyone’s like ‘nah we moved Mari to the back because Lila needs to sit in front’.

Chloé calls them out on that. “I would’ve expected you to send me to the back since you all hate me. But sending her to the back?” they’re all like ‘well you would’ve thrown a bitchfit so...” and she’s like ‘Didn’t stop you chucklefucks last time!’.

They call her out on some of her lies so far, with Chloé ignoring Miss Bustier trying to mediate the situation.

Alya accuses them of being jealous of Lila being near Adrien and both Chloé and Marinette are like ‘what the fuck are you talking about?’. She clarifies that they’re being mean to Lila because of their crushes on Adrien. Both deny that they have a crush on him.

Alya’s like ‘sorry to out your crush Mari but come on you can’t just attack someone because you’re jealous’.

Marinette replies that she does not, in fact, have a crush on Adrien. Alya counters with previous events trying to set them up, and Mari calls her out on the fact that those were Alya’s ideas.

Alya then says ‘okay, but you’ve told me how the guy you like is blonde with green eyes and is a dork that likes puns!’ Marinette answers with ‘That may be, but it’s not Adrien.’.

She also says that it’s not that she doesn’t like Adrien. She’s just in love with someone else and even says ‘maybe if I didn’t fall for him… you know?”.

Adrien is DYING because the guy she’s in love with is Chat Noir. Because Marichat is Canon by this point. The class thinks he’s dying because Mari just ‘shot him down’.

Marinette also points out that if she’s going to be a jerk to everyone who likes Adrien, then why isn’t she a jerk to Chloé over her supposed crush? No, her and Chloé are actually friends now and in fact literally just came from a sleepover.

Alya is real surprised by this, because she hadn’t noticed Chloé being a better person, and had no clue she and Mari were friends. Especially not to the point of sleepovers on schoolnights.

The class then addresses Chloé’s jealousy, bringing up the fact that she’s all over him all the time and used to go on about loving him. She’s just like “Yeah, it was the only way to keep his fangirls from harassing me but idk if you noticed but I’ve been trying to set him up with his dream girl?’.

She then goes on with ‘speaking of harassment though, let’s focus back on Lila and how my dislike of her is not just because she lies but because she tried to manipulate Adrien into dating her!’.

Adrien is encouraged to confess the stuff that happened in Volpina, how Lila claimed to have the Fox Miraculous in an attempt to make him like her.

Lila’s lie to cover for this? Claiming she wasn’t lying, she really is the Fox Hero! She only told Adrien because she wanted to impress him, but it totally wasn’t a lie!

Everyone goes ‘but you look nothing like Fennette!’. She ‘explains’ that her power is Illusion so obvs she looks different.

Adrien points out that Lady Luck told him directly that she wasn’t her friend. Lila says ‘She was the one lying. See, she has a crush on you and was kinda upset that I was interested in you. We had a bit of a fight but it’s fine now!’.

Chloé then asks about Volpina, since that was the first ‘Fox Hero’ to appear. Lila answers ‘oh, well, I was originally Volpina. But some people thought I was an Akuma so I decided to remake my Hero Persona!’.

Chloé then says ‘Well now I definitly don’t want you anywhere near Adrien, considering Volpina was the one who broke into his bedroom and kidnapped him to the top of the Eiffel Tower!’.

Oh boy. Lila manages to cover that with a ‘Okay, so that part was a half-truth. I was Akumatized, but Lady Luck begged me not to tell people about that because she doesn’t want people to worry that Heroes might get Akumatized.’

Marinette then gets her round of ‘fuck you’ by asking about the fact that Fennette and Chat Noir are dating. If Lila is Fennette then obvs she’s dating Chat so why is she going after Adrien? Lila says ‘oh, that romance is fake. See, Chat’s actually gay and wanted me to cover for him. But he’s decided recently to come out so I can tell you guys and clear that up!’. (Adrien is still DYING)

By the end of all this, Miss Bustier finally reins in the class and says ‘look. While I believe there are a lot of misunderstandings here, I also understand that these events have caused some of you to be a bit uncomfortable. If some of you would like to rearrange your seats, lets do it now.”

The seat rearrangement ends up with basically a split between the class.

Chloé’s side includes Adrien, Marinette, Sabrina, Alix, Mylene and Ivan.

Ivan is a bit confused over why Mylene believes Chloé, but he’s already guessed that she’s Turtledove. So she would know whether Lila is being honest or not. He also begins to suspect Chloé might be Lady Luck because of this(He later gets confirmation in Oblivio, as well as confirmation on the other Heroes).

Everyone else is on Lila’s side. Although there’s also a split there.

Alya, Kim and Max all 100% believe that Lila is telling the truth and Chloé’s just being a jerk like usual, and Mari’s jealous.

Nino, Rose, Juleka and Nathaniel are a little different. While they think Lila might be honest and all, they don’t think this is just about drama. That said they are defending her.

Lunch continues the split, with the Hero Group and Lila’s fanclub

Chloé purposely goes to the bathroom and waits for Lila to follow her because tbh she know the old bullying tricks.

Lila tries the ‘we got off on the wrong foot how about we be friends?’ thing, and Chloé tells her to fuck right off.

Lila tries the different approach, of ‘we could rule the school together!’, and Chloé again tells her to fuck right off.

She then goes with the ‘I’ll make all your friends turn against you then!’ thing. And Chloé laughs in her face saying ‘bitch they already hate me! You can’t do shit!’.

After Lila leaves, Chloé does get upset at the potential of that threat. Because while she’s used to everyone hating her, she’s been making progress over the last year and the idea of everyone hating her for things she didn’t actually do is terrifying

She almost gets Aumatized, but reminds herself that she has people on her side for once. Her closest friends know that Lila is a trick ass bitch, and wouldn’t fall for anything Lila says.

The rest of Chameleon happens pretty much the same, up to the ending.

Adrien suggests the ‘take the high road’ option, but Chloé’s like ‘yeah, sit back and let her do what she’s doing. Worked out great for me!’. And he’s like ‘okay, you have a point...’.

The seating situation isn’t fixed, it’s still split.

While Marinette does try to remain friends with Alya, she isn’t dropping the Lila thing any time soon. It causes some problems later on. Basically they’re still friends unless Lila comes up in conversation, and Mari refuses to hang out if Lila is there.

Oni-Chan

Some of this is still the same.

Adrien is still kinda naive about how bad Lila is, and agrees to help tutor her in an attempt to make peace.

Chloé advises him against it, considering all she’s done before.

Adrien’s like ‘look, let’s give her a chance. I mean, you changed for the better so maybe if we try she will too?’.

She has to give him that, but she makes him agree to do the tutoring somewhere public and with a group.

He sticks to that, convincing his father to let him stay over lunch to tutor her in the cafeteria. So how does Lila end up in his room? She lies her way in.

After Adrien goes home, Lila shows up and tells Nathalie she’s here to tutor Adrien since he misses class so much.

Nathalie believes it because of the previous schedule change with the lunch session, and lets her in.

Adrien is definitely very upset to have her in his room all of a sudden

He tries to play nice but she does the kiss selfie thing and he snaps

He storms downstairs and… I don’t want to say he yells at Nathalie because he’s sweet and he understands that Lila tricked her

But he very forcefully says ‘Whatever she told you was a lie. You should not have let her in. I do not want her anywhere near me.”

He storms back to his room before Gabriel can come yell at Nathalie, and Lila is escorted out by The Gorilla.

When Gabriel asks Nathalie about the incident, she admits to what happened and tells him what Adrien said about Lila.

Kagami is still Akumatized into Oni-Chan. But the fight goes differently.

First of all, Kagami isn’t Akumatized due to being jealous of the picture. She’s Akumatized because Adrien has mentioned Lila before and he sees how uncomfortable and low-key furious he is in the selfie. Adrien is her friend and she would’ve gone after Lila even without Hawkmoth’s help.

Secondly, Fennette, Abielle, and Turtledove are permanent heroes, so they’re all fighting her. When Lila tries to do the ‘oh no I’m injured can someone get me out of here?’ act, it’s either Abielle or Turtledove helping her.

The last part of this episode deals with the Marinette/Adrien subplot.

So, I mentioned in other posts about this AU that Marinette loves Chat Noir, and Adrien loves Marinette. At this point in the story Chat and Fennette are dating, but while he knows who she is, she doesn’t know who he is.

After this whole incident, Chloé makes the decision that Marinette has to know now.

The Kwami and Master Fu are kind of against this, but so far the lack of identity shenanigans between heroes has been helpful.

She feels that they should know because then Marinette can date Adrien and have an excuse to keep Lila off of him/perhaps she might quit if he’s ‘off the market’.

The reveal goes about as expected.

Adrien goes home and Gabriel asks him about what happened with Lila.

He tells the truth, that Lila is a classmate that has lied and manipulated before. He tried giving her a chance to be kinder, but she crossed several lines by lying her way into the house and forcing a kiss on him.

Tbh, Gabriel is very disgusted by Lila’s actions. While he thinks that she might be useful to ‘Hawkmoth’, he decides to keep her away from Adrien as much as possible.

Adrien also comes clean about his actual love interest, Marinette. Gabriel’s just like ‘hey out of all the friends you’ve made at school she’s like the only one I actually super approve of so go for it!’.

He does warn them that Mari would face some backlash from it, since she’s aiming to be a designer. People might say she’s with Adrien just to get ahead in the industry. Gabriel, having met Marinette and dealt with her sense of Justice before, knows that she isn’t doing that and absolutely doesn’t need to.

When Adrien and Marinette show up at school the next day and are being all couple-y, Alya kinda calls Marinette out on the ‘what happened to you not having a crush on Adrien’?

Mari kinda plays it off with ‘well I guess I have a type. I didn’t really realize how much I liked him until you pointed that out!’.

Lila tries to play the victim with ‘oh no you’re totally seducing him just to spite me!’.

Adrien snaps and is like ‘oh, btw, you’re officially banned from my house after your little stunt yesterday’.

They mostly leave her alone after that, but Chloé makes one last comment: “My mother would love you.” (like ¾ of the class physically recoils at that).

Mirculer

Lila kinda doesn’t actually play much of a part in this because of major plot changes. I mean, the whole AU involves Chloé having a Miraculous in the first place, so Lila can’t mess with her over that, and none of the other Heroes had a mental breakdown and revealed their identity to all of Paris, so she can’t mess with any of them.

I might change this if I can, but given what I have planned it’s unlikely.

Ladybug/Lady Luck

I’m only going to address the ‘Lila frame jobs’ thing here, and there’s a few changes in the how and who.

First of all, this has nothing to do with Hawkmoth since Gabriel actually likes both Marinette and Chloé. He does take advantage of the fallout, but he doesn’t cause it. This is all Lila.

Secondly, Lila focuses more on Chloé. While she hates both Chloé and Marinette, Chloé is the easier target due to the history of bullying, while people would probably be suspicious of sweet little Marinette being mean. Sure they believed it before, but since Marinette already ‘won’ Adrien, she has no reason to be jealous!

The whole chapter is Chloé playing into Lila’s lies just enough to disprove them.

Framed for cheating on a test?

Tbh someone suggested Tikki seeing the answer sheet being planted and sneaks it back onto Miss Bustier’s desk and I might snag that idea.

Barring that though, Chloé points out the weirdness of it. Like, why would she still have the answer sheet instead of throwing it away and not getting caught?

Furthermore, while she’s never cheated on a test before, Miss Bustier tends to grade homework during tests, and doesn’t notice when Chloé finishes a test and pulls out her phone for an online shopping spree. Why not just look up the answers on her phone instead of taking the risk of being caught stealing the answer sheet?

Chloé also plays up the dramatics of ‘Here I am, trying to be a nice person. But someone still holds such a grudge that they’d plant evidence as revenge! Or just to give everyone else a reason to believe I’m not trying!”.

Accused of pushing Lila down the stairs?

Instead of saying ‘uh, she just walked down and started screaming?’, Chloé plays along a bit.

“Oh no, I didn’t push her! She tripped and fell. I understand why she assumed she was pushed though, as we do have some animosity, but I don’t want her harmed! In all my years here when have I ever gone with a physical assault? Perhaps we should check the security cameras to be sure?”

Lila realizes that would show her walking down and decides to agree that she ‘hastily assumed because of their fighting’.

Oh no! Someone stole Lila’s necklace, an heirloom from her grandmother! And what’s this? It’s in Chloé’s locker!

Chloé just calmly says ‘that isn’t your grandmother’s necklace.’. Lila insists it is, and the teachers start to believe her act.

Chloé just says ‘That’s a necklace from the Agreste Collection. I bought it last year. I found it again when cleaning out my closet and was going to see if one of my friends wanted it since it’s out of season now. Actually, Marinette has one too.”

Obvs the necklace is actually Lila’s, but Chloé is playing it cool since she recognized it immediately. Marinette just shows off her Miraculous, which looks similar enough to the necklace to fool everyone else.

Lila says ‘okay but this one is mine!’. Chloé points out ‘That necklace can’t be yours since you said your necklace was an heirloom from your grandmother. I’m sure it’s around here somewhere. Hey, maybe it was stolen! Last year a small magic creature stole my bracelet and I accused some people until Lady Luck found it. Perhaps the same happened to you!’.

I’m debating about this being the moment where Lila gets exposed for lying and trying to frame her and all, with that being the event to trigger all the negative emotion with betrayal and/or righteous anger.

Either way I’m def making Miss Bustier handle things better here because 1. she deserves better too and 2. that instagram pic made me want her to replace Chloé’s mom so hell yeah.

Also I now I said I was just focusing on the Lila plot but you can bet your sweet ass that Senitmonster!Lady Luck is sticking around entirely because of my feelings over that episode of W.I.T.C.H.

[proserpine-in-phases]

@nachttour tagged me in a writing question thing!

1) is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

uh yeah there’s like, several. some of them are better developed than other but a lot of the reason I’ve been holding off on writing them just comes down to feeling inadequate due to my own limited experience with relationships and feelings of complete inadequacy. it’s hard to write an epic romancu when I’m aromantic as fuck and have a hard time conceptualizing what those feelings might be like to experience, for example, or like, I want the story to be funny but I feel like I’m not actually a very funny person?

also I always feel like I need to do more research. I get stuck on the research phase about 85% of the time haha

2) what work of yours, if any, are you the most embarrassed about existing?

man I am embarrassed by MYSELF existing, so  idk probably all of it when you get right down to it

3) what order do you write in? front of book to back? chronological? favorite scenes first? something else?

it seems to vary a bit. sometimes I just power through start to finish, but sometimes I need to write the ending first to remind myself of what I’m shooting for. sometimes I just gotta write some random scenes in the middle before I forget what they are and have to figure out where they’ll go later.

considering the longest thing I’ve managed to finish comes in at about 12 k  I don’t know if I have enough data to really come up with a firm answer for this one though. from what I can tell, it really does seem like I start at the beginning and go for a bit, write the end, and try to connect the two with occasional random middle bits getting written out of order and a general feeling of “I’ll fix it in post” carrying me through

4) favorite character you’ve written

probably Samantha Traynor. she’s such a fucking nerd and I love her. it was surprisingly easy to write for her once I got started. at least I THINK I did a good job writing her, I have no actual idea haha

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

I’ve written TWO mass effect fics featuring Samara as a main character and I have no idea how this happened or why because she’s about in the middle when it comes to my most to least favorite mass effect characters list

6) something you would go back and change in your writing that it’s too late/complicated to change now

there’s a couple of fics I wrote for fic exchanges that I kinda wish I could take back and turn into something else because I love the concept but feel guilty about idk, using as a springboard because the original is a gift, or something. it feels ehhhhhhhhh disingenuous to continue them when the gift is supposed to be a singular and self contained unit

for example, oh man I would love to take that vrisrezi space pirates au someplace, but I don’t know if I should because the fic itself is a gift, complete, and so forth. 

plus I hate the way I run out of steam about 4 chapters into everything. I would like to not run out of motivation please

7) when asked, are you embarrassed or enthusiastic to tell people that you write?

considering my output is so low I barely consider myself a writer at all tbh.

but yes, embarrassed. I hope to god the three people I know irl who follow me just like. never see those posts haha

8) favorite genre to write

space adventure! and lately? mysteries even though I have no FUCKING idea why or even how to write them, which is why I have at least three projects stalled out on me haha

9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

I read a lot, mostly. sometimes I stare at a wall. or play minesweeper. 

also when I’m doing something fairly mindless sometimes my mind wanders and I hit something. 

oh and music. music is great

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

I usually need music, mood music preferable, instrumental so the lyrics don’t distract me. generally I prefer to not be around people when I write, though a public setting is also fun to write in. I’m too distractable to actually get any done though, so I usually end up just looking like a tool with their notebook out if I try to write in a coffee shop or whatever tho, haha

11) what aspect of your writing do you think has most improved since you started writing?

I think writing fanfic has really helped me figure out what it means to write in character. also I think I’m starting to get better at balancing dialogue versus narration? at least a little bit

12) your weaknesses as an author

the inability to actually finish shit. 

unwillingness to approach emotions that make me feel uncomfortable. 

the fact that I often approach writing a character with the thought of what I would do in a situation rather than what the character would do (which is why writing fanfiction is helping me with that haha)

coming up with plots that lend themselves well to longer stuff

13) your strengths as an author

pretty good at dialogue

when it comes to my own shit, pretty good at coming up with interesting fantasy worlds (I think they’re interesting at least)

I’ve got a pretty firm grasp overall just the nuts and bolts of writing: I mean I tutored English in college for fuck’s sake I know how to write a grammatically correct run on sentence when I want to 

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

not really

15) why did you start writing?

I wanted to know what happened next

16) are there any characters who haunt you?

not really? I mean, there are specific character TYPES that’ll get me every time, though, like the happy go lucky person who has to learn what pain is but still come out the other side a LOT worse for wear but not completely broken (think Tasslehoff Burrfoot, or perhaps less obscure Vash the Stampede) but I wouldn’t say they haunt me, per say

17) if you could give your fledgling author self any advice, what would it be?

don’t be afraid to be self indulgent. you’ll enjoy it more and who the fuck cares, anyway? people who’ll make fun of you for doing what you love are ass holes

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

If I’m honest I can’t really say what influences my writing style, if I even have one. Mostly all I can do is list off my favorite authors because I’m pretty sure they all have something to do with it. 

so let’s just do that I guess.  when I was a teenager I tended to find a single author and just read through all their works before moving on, and these are the big ones that stand out:

Connie Willis, Anne McCaffrey, Steven Brust and Ursula K. Le Guin. Connie Willis for the humor she includes in almost all her writing, Anne McCaffrey because I STILL spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about Pern. She had a real skill for coming up with both great characters and great settings, even if what she did with them, and also her inability to keep continuity were less good. Steven Brust introduced me to the idea of relating to morally reprehensible characters at an alarmingly young age. Ursula K. Le Guin, I just love her. No idea if it’s actually done anything GOOD to my writing but she gives me something to aspire to.

I read just. a ridiculous amount of fantasy and science fiction as a kid, the genres as a whole without a doubt influence the type of shit I end up writing. also in seventh grade I mainlined dragonlance, just the whole damn thing

later in college I got really into Margaret Atwood. her focus on female characters and narrative just is really great.  

then I went through a depressive phase in my late 20s and just exclusively read Julia Quinn, Joanna Lindsey, Sabrina Jeffreys and Eloisa James, and that was IT. so I’m pretty sure my foray into the romance genre is what makes me honestly prefer povs limited to two or three characters  hey, reading romance novels also lead me to the realization that I’m aromantic so \o/ I guess

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

I outline and then give up lol

20) do you write in long sit-down sessions or in little spurts?

little spurts until something grabs me and makes me marathon. usually that’s a deadline, but sometimes it’s also inspiration 

21) what do you think when you read over your older work?

mostly just holy shit I can’t believe I wrote this! sometimes that’s bad, sometimes it’s good. I can’t really tell if I’m good at divorcing myself from my writing enough to give me perspective on it, to tell the truth, because for a good lot of it, I still think it’s pretty good so ???

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

it’s hard for me to let a character be embarrassed by the dumb shit they do. I don’t want them to do dumb shit because of it, which makes it hard for the character to have shit to grow and learn from.

23) any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

I’m pretty sure my own issues with having and experiencing some emotions makes its way into the stuff I choose to write about, especially when it comes to the original stuff (I have. at LEAST three different plot outlines that involve characters literally losing the ability to experience emotions and having to find a way to heal or gain it back haha)  

also the fic I wrote about the box ghost is literally just about what it’s like to work in a factory haha

24) have you ever become an expert on something you previously knew nothing about, in order to better a scene or a story?

listen. 

yes.

I fucking. LOVE. research. 

honestly this is the stage where I most often get lost in the weeds, distracted by my own need to know more

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

“He was not the knight Casey taught him to be, but he was close enough for government work“ remains the single best pun I’ve ever written

tagging: @anthropwashere @inktail @manicpixiesdreamdragon if you guys are up for it!