1 & 14 & 23 for the unique writing asks gvdhbsjaklj
Hello, Code! Thank you so much for the asks!
1. What themes would you like to write about that you feel don’t get explored very often?
Oooh. I thought long and hard about this one. I don’t know if this is a theme or just a trope, or what have you, but I think there needs to be more stories where the character doesn’t get the object of their affections, and that’s okay. I think there needs to be more happy stories of unrequited love, and more stories where it’s obviously acceptable for one of the partners in the main relationship to not be ready for a committed relationship by the end of the story. And that’s difficult to pull off realistically, so I get why it’s not done often enough, but I would love to explore something like that (and I kinda have but not successfully). I also think there needs to be more stories where romance isn’t involved at all. As in, no forced romantic subplots, no flatter-than-roadkill and interesting-as-drying-paint characters inserted just for the main character to kiss at the end of the book.
Now, some may call me a hypocrite here because basically all I write is romance, but I don’t think that the two concepts of me liking to write romance and me wanting to see stories where it isn’t the main focus, or maybe it’s bittersweet and/or skewed more towards the self-improvement angle are mutually exclusive. And I would like to write a story like that one day, and more successfully than my last go of it, at least. Of course I would have to be writing super fluffy, romantic fanfiction on the side to cope, haha, but I do want to represent the parts of life that aren’t tied to romance in my work as well, because love in a romantic sense isn’t all there is, and yet it’s such a be-all and end-all in storytelling. Love is wonderful, but there are far too many kinds of love that aren’t celebrated nearly enough, especially platonic love—and, even more specifically, platonic love between single men and women. I would also like to see how I can romanticize not being in love, and how that’s perfectly alright for the personal journey the character’s on.
‘La La Land’ really blew my mind with this concept, where the story goes in a direction where the main couple is arguably happier and more fulfilled without each other. You can also make the argument that they aren’t as happy as they could’ve been, but there’s a lovely ambiguity there because life isn’t cut and dry. Maybe they would’ve been happier with each other, and maybe they wouldn’t have been. There are some solid facts here, though: they made each other better when they were together, and because they knew each other, they wound up achieving their dreams. That’s certainly the happiest break-up story I’ve ever seen, even if it isn’t well and truly happy and more on the bittersweet side of things.
Of course I have other ideas, but this is just a set of very general concepts that I’d like to see more of and write about one day.
14. If you’ve written more than one story, what traits do your protagonists tend to share?
I think they’ve all got a fire in them. They’ve all got this sort of “fuck it” mentality where they’re not content with their lives and are desperate to change it through whatever means necessary. And they all do it for different reasons, but some of them have commonalities. Drag! Virgil and Inexact! Sock do it to outrun their pasts, for example. Inexact! Jonathan and Drag! Virgil do it to rebel against themselves and their environments.
They’re also gay and struggle with mental health dnfacdnkjdsfs
23. Do you prefer reading series or standalone novels and does that reflect on how you write?
Standalones, standalones, standalones. I can’t with series, I never finish them. Unless it’s fic. Then we’ll talk. But like, PUBLISHED books? No. I can’t, I just can’t for some reason. I can’t practice series/book monogamy. I think I’ve finished a series maybe once outside of fic. And yeah, I think it does affect how I write because I write standalone novels. I guess if I wrote series it would be a different story, haha.
Thank you so much for these questions, Code! Very thought-provoking!
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