#ty Amber ily 🥹💕❤️💕

[daisychainsandbowties]

4, 7, 21, 22, 33, and 40 from the writing asks? 🥰

4. do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

i have a lot of OCs actually because i have three novels i’m bouncing between. one is around 110k (almost done) and another is just 40k (almost at the second act) and then the third is like 10k and i’m still feeling out my guys in that one. but all my OCs have pretty solid backstories and i do actually plot out my novels because it’s a different arena than writing fic (no existing characterisation to fall back on, world i have to make myself, expectations about structure are largely different).

the novel i’m working on now is about a space racing polycule that’s like enemies-to-lovers in one direction, friends-to-lovers in another and jealous-to-oh i can be in love with you too l, asshole. in another direction. the OCs in that are pretty fleshed out at this point. one is this ship mechanic who talks as though she only vagely understands how to and also could get a phd in aeronautics if she wanted but she’s like. sorry i’m too busy being in love with my best friend 🥰🫶

i want to talk about my boy levitas again but we’d be here forever

7. your favourite ao3 tag?

i looked through my bookmarks and apparently it’s some variation on characters recovering from Bad Things that Happened. makes sense for me i suppose. i am very drawn to how we can come back from dark places. this is why i write about the mechanics of light so often i think. but yes. it’s cathartic to me in a very special way to see characters survive and get fat and go grey and fall in love again despite despite despite

21. Can you accurately predict how long your fics are going to be? If you can, what is your secret?

only with oneshots. so, for oranges are the only fruit and orbital mechanics and this red rock and pokemon au i knew almost exactly how long they would be. maybe it’s a function of short stories and the technical landscape of them. i’m not certain. i tend to simply feel a sense of inevitability about those ones.

for longer fics absolutely not. demonstrably not as we all probably know i tend to let those get out of my hands. i don’t treat them like novels so they become almost serialised narratives to me. they’re done when they say so and it’s never clear when that will be.

22. What is it about watching the same two idiots fall in love over and over?

oh, um, i think what is appealing to me about this is the certainty of it. i like knowing that they will fall in love, i like knowing that things will be okay. also it’s loving the characters individually and being interested in how and why they fall for each other. how much can i change them until they don’t fall in love anymore? how far can i push them before they are not the same character?

i read fanfiction when i’m unsteady. when i can’t sleep or when i’m sad or when i’m hopeless lonely sore tired trying to do something other than cry. and it’s like. here are dozens of stories to the tune of “well, of course they fall in love. of course they will be happy.” it’s a way to come close to being loved yourself. i have a handful of fics that literally saved my life and i like to examine why. what did i need from them? was it the comfort of something melodiously repetitive? was it hope, the actualising touch of the other who is not other because they love you? i don’t really know why it is so life-reacuing - these stories about love over and over, again and again, but i’m very glad they exist. 💕

33. Give your writing a compliment

😭bdsm torture scene where you force me to internalise a compliment 🥺🥰🫠💕

i suppose i like how i can put a theme inside of a certain um… distance of prose and sort of weave a theme around that and come back to it again and again. like an epiphany in language. i like that. it’s very difficult.

luckily 😌 Amber would NEVER ask me to write a 9-word fic because she knows i would find that terrible. nigh impossible. a biteable offense. unless 🧐😳 that was your plan all along?