#if you're reading this you're probably at least vaguely familiar with my Tumblr and you know i got the he/her in my bio

[lazy-toad]

I think I might be transgender

[phoenixradiant]

Writer Questionnaire

My thanks to @paeliae-occasionally for the tag! This gets pretty long so I'm putting it under the cut

About how long have you had your writing tumblr/writeblr?

Dunno, probably a bit over half a year at this point? Was it around February?

What led you to create it?

@ theidealistcynic (not actually @-ing him but he doesn't have a nickname like I do so) had one and he saw some people being less vague than he was and was like "Hey Fen here's a place where you can anonymously rant!" So now I'm here.

What’s your favourite thing about the writeblr community?

Probably the way we can joke about each others' characters. I don't do it too too much because I've gotten aspects of my mutuals' characters wrong before, but it's always fun either way.

What’s one thing you’d like your mutuals to know about you?

If you ever want real-life advice, I'm always willing to oblige. Can't promise it'll be helpful, but I'll try. You're all people with lives, same as me, and I'd be remiss not to try to help when I can.

Is there anything you’d like to see more of on your dash?

I actually made a post about this awhile back, but I'd love to see more unprompted rambling. I run across a lot of tag games, which are great, but not as great as someone choosing what they want to talk about for themselves.

Which wips or writing projects are you noodling about, lately?

I'm actually sworn to just the one until I finish Act II at the very least. Which means it's Kelovir, has been for awhile, and will be awhile longer.

How long have you been working on them?

This is a pretty loaded question to be perfectly honest. I've been working on the prose draft for a bit over a year and three-quarters at this point. But the larger world it's set in has been lodged in my mind for over a decade. I suppose it came to fruition in what can reasonably be called its current form in late 2021/early 2022.

Do you remember what inspired them/what got you started?

No. Ink runs through my veins, light resides in my lungs, lifting me into the sky to see worlds and powers beyond our own. It just sort of happened, kinda like how you just happen to think some things taste better than others. I prefer to write rather than play sports or draw. It's always been that way, I suspect it will always be that way.

How much time, in your best estimation, do you spend thinking about them?

Too much for how little I write.

When someone asks the dreaded, “what do you write about,” question, what do you usually say?

I'm an antisocial prick to 97% of people, so I don't often get asked that. My non-writer friends and family are all decently smart avid readers, so they're familiar with a decent number of fantasy classics and figure that's what I write because that's what I read. Among my writer friends we're all SSF writers, so we don't bother asking for generics. If someone asked that question right now, though, I'd probably say something along the lines of "A fantasy story about finding purpose in a world hellbent on destroying it." Most people who don't know what fantasy is proceed to disparage it if I bother to explain, so I leave off the explanation usually.

Name any characters you created. side characters, protagonists, antagonists, characters who’ve never been written, your first original abomination; whomever you’d like!

Hmm. I'm going to name Jikolovor. He's a very minor character who shows up for one scene with Maiph and Lycoris, but he has a lot of backstory importance for Radiaten specifically. He's an odd fellow who is very big on order and intentionality. He doesn't think of emotions as bad, but they must be in agreement with reason, and he doesn't hate freedom, but thinks it must be bounded to certain moral lines.

Who’s the most unhinged?

Kesh Anyraz. Unfortunately his whole personality is being unhinged so that's hardly an interesting answer. Cellic gets pretty unhinged for a bit there, but he comes out of it, so the character who was once on hinges that has since become unhinged would probably be Anesaru. She's just sane enough to be really dangerous, but just insane enough to... do what she does as a villain (spoilers).

Who comes the most naturally for you to write?

Cellic feels very comfortable to me because I understand and enjoy him. Kar is comfortable-ish because his narration style and speaking style is very informal. Narra isn't ever very comfortable, but her difficult moments are never as difficult to write as the other two either. As to non-PoV characters, Radiaten has a very consistent personality and shares my sensibilities for when is appropriate to quip, so he's about as close to a personality self-insert as I get. So not super close but you get the point.

Do you ever cringe at them?

Only when I'm intentionally writing them to be cringeworthy. Other than that, I have an actor's sensibilities when it comes to earnesty in art. I cringe at real life far more often than I do at my characters, not because people in real life are earnest, nothing against that, but because I'm socially inept and even I can see how tactless and out-of-place they are.

How much control do you feel you have over your characters? do they ever “write themselves,” refuse to cooperate, or do things you didn’t expect? to what degree? are some less cooperative than others?

I'm a student of the "driver's seat" school of art, so I'm in control the whole way along. Characters can nudge me certain directions, sometimes I decide on the spur of the moment to add an extra scene or something, but ultimately I decide on the start and end points and most of how they get there. Sometimes that changes, but individual characters are never the cause of that. It's always two or three characters in confluence or, more often, a more thematic moment. I'm pretty good at wrangling my characters into shape... it just sometimes means writing new scenes takes awhile.

Do you enjoy people asking questions about your characters? and do you have a preferred means of receiving said questions? for example, as asks, as replies, as reblogs, as tag notes, as comments on ao3, etc.

Nods in laconic appreciation.

What makes you want to follow another writeblr account? do you follow ‘em as you see ‘em, or take time scoping out the blog to make sure you align with its content? do you follow based on wips, or vibes?

I follow people who I consistently see making or reblogging posts that I'm interested in. Simple as that. I suppose I can be a bit stingy with my follows, but a lot of it is that I don't want to find out they made one good writing post and then spend the rest of their time complaining about how everyone they know irl except them is a selfish bastard who deserves to be bound, gagged, and thrown into the ocean (yes I have someone in mind, no it's not any of you, don't worry). I am, I have discovered, a more plot-focused reader than a lot of people, and so I appreciate writeblrs who talk about their story as a cohesive unit, rather than just plot or just characters or just world. The weaving of all that together is definitely something I look for.

What makes you decide against following?

Oh whoops probably should've saved part of last question for this one. Ah well. Openly hostile and ungrateful people, mostly. Show common courtesy and you'll be fine.

Do you interact with non-mutuals often?

I mean... Do I?

Okay, so I looked into it, and I do routinely interact with a few non-mutuals, but I follow all three of them. I don't remember the last time I interacted with someone who I am not now following (actually I think I reblogged one writing advice post about dialogue tags). So not much, but sometimes, I guess.

Solid meh

Do your mutuals’ characters occupy space in your noodle?

A couple of them do. Not all of them, but a decent number. There's like a critical mass of information after which they can reliably stay in my head. The ones who I hear more about are the ones who take up occasional residence in my imagination.

This was fun! NP tagging @the-ellia-west, @pluppsauthor, and @somethingclevermahogony!

[evesaintyves]

I really disagree with the post about Teddy. You really think he’d be mad at his parents for not staying at home while all their friends and fellow Order members go and give their lives for the future of their world? Especially when he grows up around Harry and the rest. Children fought and died but they shouldn’t have because they had him? I actually hate the whole Lupin asking Tonks to stay at home. They met as part of the Order, and she was an auror. Becoming a mother doesn’t change that.

hi anon! i'm sorry you felt you had to send this anonymously, because i'd be happy to have this conversation with you in a way that isn't quite so one-sided.

first, let me make something clear: i'm fine with whatever your take on Teddy Lupin's psychology is. i am 100% not interested in pinning down some kind of absolute truth about Teddy, Tonks, Lupin, or any other character. i think that's a limiting approach to writing about people. human behavior is a complex, multifactorial, emergent process that's sometimes difficult to predict or explain. this is one reason why i rarely post or talk about "headcanons" - i'm open to the idea of multiple, even contradictory, interpretations that are equally valid, equally compatible with the information available in canon.

my interest in is storytelling. i want to read and write stories about what it's like to be a person. all these characters - especially remadora and teddy, about whom there is limited and sometimes unreliable information in canon - are full of possibilities and opportunities for extrapolating what we do know about them into a story about what being human was like for them.

being angry with your parents for doing things they thought were entirely justifiable at the time is, for many people, an aspect of the human condition.

but let's talk specifics. the truth is that we don't know, canonically, how teddy lupin feels about being orphaned. to me, that means it's fair game for all kinds of interpretations. now, i did not write the original post (gonna tag @jilylicious to chime in on this if they want since it's their work and i'm sure they have their own ideas) but i'd like to address your points and tell you why i think it's a perfectly valid interpretation of Teddy and his relationship with his parents' memory.

You really think he’d be mad at his parents for not staying at home while all their friends and fellow Order members go and give their lives for the future of their world?

sure, why not? Teddy isn't a Remadora fan on tumblr, he isn't necessarily familiar with and sympathetic to his parents' story in the way we are. he's a kid who has to come to terms with the fact that his parents left him with his grandma as a tiny baby and went to fight in a battle that killed them. that's fucking unfair to him. he's allowed to feel all kinds of ways about that.

what do we think an abstract concept like "the future of their world" means to teddy? as a young child, probably not much, right? the capacity to even understand something like that - as a vague abstraction mostly concerning the well-being of a bunch of other people - probably wouldn't even develop in teddy until at least around the time he went to hogwarts (and i am not about to make this shit even longer by citing child development theories, but you're welcome to look it up). meanwhile, his whole childhood, he's dealing with the consequences of his parents' choice, forming an identity that includes "my parents left me with my grandmother one night so they could fight in a war and never came back," and probably developing all kind of feelings about that, right? abandonment, whatever the circumstances and mechanics behind it, is hard on kids and has knock-on effects that can be lifelong: issues with trust and attachment to other people, feelings of worthlessness, fear of intimacy and commitment. those things can be forged in early childhood and it's not as simple as being talked out of them with some explanation of why it had to be that way.

is Teddy's life actually even better than if his parents hadn't gone off to die? maybe. Teddy might or might not feel that it is. we don't really have any evidence that Lupin and Tonks's participation in the battle had much of an effect on the outcome. one or both of them might have stayed home and the battle might have been won anyway and he'd be chilling with them right now. the idea of his life if the battle had been lost is another abstraction based on political and social developments that mostly happened before he was born. understandable for young Teddy, and even adult Teddy, not to really grasp all the could-have-beens there. even with the war won, Teddy may have grown up experiencing the social stigma of being the child of a famous werewolf who's not even around to help him through it. reasonable and okay to be angry about that, and understandable to still resent your parents for putting you in that situation even if you agree that it had to be that way.

i would argue that, however childlike, irrational, or self-absorbed Teddy's early feelings about his own trauma are, they're probably going to inform his ideas about his parents for a long time. like, have you come to a rational, all-perspectives understanding of all the ideas you developed in childhood? about your earliest sense that life was unfair? i don't think everyone does, at least not without a lot of difficult work. maybe he comes to a fuller understanding later in life. maybe he decides that he agrees that it had to happen but he is still plagued by this anger and hurt that won't be argued with. i think this is a pretty relatable idea. things can be true but not feel true. things can make sense but you're still sad and mad about them.

Especially when he grows up around Harry and the rest.

he does grow up around Harry! and Harry lost his parents too, so maybe he's in a unique position to counsel teddy about that - but Harry's situation is markedly different from Teddy's, isn't it?

Harry's parents went into hiding as a family to protect him. they didn't leave him with a relative in a safe house and carry on with their Order duties. James didn't send Lily into hiding with Harry while he kept fighting. the fact that they stood their ground together and died there to protect him is central not just to Harry's story but to the entire HP universe.

how might Teddy feel about the differences between their two stories? maybe fine. maybe it wouldn't even occur to him. maybe he'd feel cheated and abandoned by his parents who left him and went off to fight instead - yes, Teddy was one reason they felt they had to fight, but might Teddy not see it as them going to lay their lives down for Harry and for a cause? imagine how that might inform the way he feels about Harry. Teddy isn't required, especially as a kid, to think about this in a way that we feel is rational or sympathetic to his parents.

even if Harry does his best to present the story to Teddy in a way that's sympathetic to Teddy and his parents, Harry probably isn't the only source from which Teddy is going to hear this stuff. it's gonna be in history books, periodicals, fictionalized retellings, everyone's personal Where Were You On May 2nd story - and those accounts are likely to frame what happened as a bunch of people dying for Harry Potter and the fate of the wizarding world. not Teddy being able to live a happier life. that might be difficult for a kid to grapple with, no?

finally, Harry didn't raise Teddy. Andromeda Tonks did. how do you imagine SHE feels about what Teddy's parents did? what Lupin did? she might very well have seen leaving to fight in the battle as another attempt by Lupin to go redeem himself with a hero's death instead of facing his responsibility for Tonks and Teddy (and, honestly, i think that's a possibility worth exploring in fiction about Lupin and his motivations). how might that have filtered down to Teddy and his understanding of his parents? Andromeda is grieving while she raises her orphaned grandbaby, and i bet she has her own anger and resentment and despair to deal with there - that's understandable whether you agree with her conclusions or not. it's not hard to imagine Teddy overhearing some bitter asides from Andromeda, or picking up on the tension when she answers his questions about his parents.

Children fought and died but they shouldn’t have because they had him?

i mean, you're not going to catch me arguing that children should have died instead of Lupin and Tonks. i have mixed feelings about the choice they made that could be its own whole long post, but they're irrelevant here.

Teddy doesn't have to feel that way to be mad that his parents left him to go die. he also doesn't really have to give a shit about those long-dead children - another possibly hard-to-understand abstraction. he doesn't even have to think his parents should have stayed in order to be justifiably angry that they left! even if Teddy agrees they had no choice he can still be fucking pissed off at them! the dissonance between these ideas is probably pretty distressing, in fact!

feelings are like that sometimes. relationships with parents are like that sometimes. grief and feelings of abandonment don't always listen to logical arguments. that's what makes this take interesting and relatable, to me. being a person is fucking messy as shit. i'm sure there's an interesting story to be told about Teddy... being fine with his parents' deaths or whatever, but it's not any more representative of the spectrum of human emotions and trauma responses than the ideas the OP wrote about Teddy.

I actually hate the whole Lupin asking Tonks to stay at home. They met as part of the Order, and she was an auror. Becoming a mother doesn’t change that.

i think that's valid! i totally understand it. i think the way the situation was written reveals a lot about JKR's ideas about gender roles and parenting. i have different ideas about those things, which is at least partially down to the generation i belong to and my status as a queer person and a non-parent. i also really like interpretations of Tonks as a soldier who's as committed to the cause as any of her male contemporaries.

but this is one of those times where, you know, there isn't necessarily a wrong answer. just to play the devils advocate, i could argue that Lupin asking Tonks to stay makes as much sense in-universe as any alternative interpretation: we're we're talking about two people in a pretty heteronormatively-written universe set in the 1990s. Lupin was born in the 60s and might have had the same kind of internalized sexist background noise as, you know, everybody else. Tonks already, canonically, put her career on the line by marrying Lupin and having his baby. they've both been hiding from the fighting for most of her pregnancy. (which, if you want to go down a rabbit hole, might be another reason for Teddy not to understand their choice - it was okay to abstain from the world-bettering while he was a fetus but once he was born they changed their minds?) if one of them is going to stay and be the surviving parent of a three-week-old baby i guess it might as well be the one that's breastfeeding him. we don't get to see a lot of Tonks being an auror and resistance fighter or hear a lot of her feelings about it in canon, especially after Teddy is conceived. whatever we may surmise about her identity as an auror vs her identity as a mother and all the other factors that would play into how that situation went down - it's just surmising, it's subjective interpretation, and there are so many different storytelling paths to follow from it!

maybe you should write an AU where that conversation goes down differently, or a post-war Tonks-in-wizard-heaven monologue about how she felt about it, or just a gritty breakdown of how it might have actually happened in the light of your thoughts about Tonks's character! if you disagree with all of my conjecture here, maybe you should write a deep dive into Teddy's process of grieving and understanding his parents! fascinating! this is what i mean when i say it's not about the truth, it's about storytelling: there is so much more art and wonder and discovery in exploring all these possibilities than in haggling over which possibility is Correct.

Edit: read the original anon's very thoughtful responses here:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6