3 and 4 for any fic! Tell me about your favourite stuff you've ever written!
Ask Game
!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is a day later than I intended to answer, partially because I ended up being Busy And Tired after work yesterday, partially because I fully did take this as an excuse to go reread all my favourite things that I've written
3: What’s your favourite line of narration?
I thought about this one for a while because I've produced some turns of phrase of which I am very proud over the years. This is very much a case of 'it changes by the day' but I do, for now, have a solid answer!
It's this bit of Painted By An Accidental Brush
Paultin snorts and shoves him in the shoulder, which knocks him into Evelyn, who promptly collides with Strix, and Paultin apparently expected more resistance because he overbalances and all four of them topple to the ground in a mess of squawking, shrieking, and tangled limbs. Diath is pretty sure he hears at least one plate break. Lying on the floor in a pile of his friends, he laughs.
I've been incredibly fond of this bit ever since I wrote it, for a number of reasons. One is that I feel like it properly captures the elements of the party dynamic that I loved in the original show really well, along with the personalities of the characters. Another is that I think it delivers on the atmosphere and emotion I was going for perfectly. And a third, which is the primary reason it's taking the 'favourite' spot at the moment, is that I actually struggle quite a bit with group scenes in my writing. They challenge me! Put more than three characters in a room together, all interacting with each other, and I start losing track of people and worrying all the time about the Potential Implications of who's talking most and who fades into the background and so on. About half the reason that I put chatfic segments in We Are Full Of Stories To Be Told is because portraying the dynamics of Tomix's friend group via groupchat gave me an excuse to avoid writing them physically in the same room (the other half of my reasoning was that I liked the idea of incorporating group chats as part of the worldbuilding & such of the fic, given it's set in the in-universe future XD) And this bit of narration is the end of a four character group scene that I'm still proud of and think I balanced well and, in a way, a miniature four character scene to itself. That more than earns it favourite status.
4: What’s your favourite line of dialogue?
Okay, so, I knew the answer to this immediately, but alas, my favourite bit of dialogue I've ever written for a fic is as-yet-unpublished and also for a scene that I absolutely refuse to spoil, so I cannot share it
I can, however, pick a runner-up. Which, on this occasion, is this part of the Hero & Tomix reunion in I'll Be Alive Next Year
“Tomix?” they ask, something impossibly fragile in the simple question. “I didn’t go,” he says, their last words to him ringing in his ears “I’m sorry it took me so long to make it back. I’ve missed you, my friend.”
I've written a whole bunch of fix-it fic reunions for these two and I have even more in the works but I don't think I'll ever quite top the sheer satisfaction that was having the first words Tomix says to the Hero after convincing them that he's real be a direct response to their last words to him before he died ("Don't go..."), with a bonus quoting his last words in the past tense because he lived ("I'll miss you" when he thought he was dying -> "I missed you" when he knows he'll get to live)
