Author Interview -- theawkwardterrier
We have to apologize PROFUSELY to Leah over at theawkwardterrier because one of us (Suzanne *cough*cough*) really though she had posted this a LONG TIME AGO. Like back before Thanksgiving a long time ago. And then...turns out she's been hoarding all of Leah's wonderful insights and keeping them to herself. BAD SUZANNE. BAD. BAD.
Anyway! Leah over at theawkwardterrier (she writes under the name 'fluffernutter8') has written for about a dozen different fandoms and is gracious enough to use her talent to bless the Veronica Mars fandom. Her fics have been rec'd on VM Fic Recs several times and we're anxiously awaiting the completion of her WIP The Ninety-Nine Percent. Read on for insights and anecdotes galore!
1. What is the story behind your two different handles, fluffernutter8 and theawkwardterrier? Do you enjoy eating Fluffer Nutter sandwiches?!?!
Apologies to the Commonwealth (legislators have been trying to make the fluffernutter the state sandwich of Massachusetts since 2006 or so) but I actually dislike the fluffernutter sandwich. In a food rather than fandom sense, I’m not really a marshmallow/marshmallow fluff girl; my mother makes s'more brownies, and I peel off the graham cracker and fluff tops and just eat the brownie.
My first username on ff.net was, I think, LilyBlossom8888 because I was really into Lily Evans/James Potter fic (reminder for the rest of this interview: I made my account there at age 12). When I was around 15, I switched to the much more mature “Fluffernutter8,” because (I’m going to regret this honesty) I was nuts about fluff fic.
I started my tumblr account freshman year of college with my amazing partner in strictly non-criminal activities, Katie. We were both students at Boston University, whose mascot is the terrier. I am very awkward, Katie is far less awkward, and I had thought The Awkward Terrier would make a good blog name. We chose tumblr as our blogging platform because we did not actually understand tumblr. We had no idea what we were in for, but I can say that I never intended for anyone to connect my fanfiction penname with my tumblr username. But around a year ago I stumbled onto scandalpantsstuff’s tumblr where she had made a complimentary post about the story I was writing at the time (What You Know, and What You Don’t) and I couldn’t resist claiming it as my own, and starting to follow her.
2. When you're not writing fic, what are you doing?
You mean the other 98% of my life? (That was a “Leah’s an unreliable writer” joke, in case you didn’t get it.) I’m in school, working on the last few weeks of my undergrad career, so I do a lot of reading and writing and class-attending. I have a couple of jobs that I go to with low degrees of enthusiasm. For fun: I read, both books and fanfiction. I watch a bunch of TV shows. When I’m home, I like to cook and bake. Eat ice cream. Spend time on tumblr.
That’s the real question: what do I do when I’m not on tumblr? Because I am always on tumblr.
3. What do you think would be in the Veronica Mars (character) starter kit?
Her tazer - I fell in love with Veronica Mars the moment she zapped Felix in the pilot. Her laptop, or maybe her phone if there’s a Prying Eyez app, because V needs her information. Along the same lines, her camera or an array of wigs, glasses and costumes, because the girl does like to gather information up close and personal.
The final item would be something sentimental, because despite needing the tools of the trade, we all know Veronica Mars is a marshmallow inside. Maybe the Lilly necklace, because that’s one case and one friendship that’s never going to leave her. Or something like the key to the LeBaron, or Backup’s collar, or the paternity test papers, or the room key Logan gave her…lots of options, can’t pick one.
4. From what we can tell on tumblr, you are an avid consumer of stories -- whether it be books, television, or movies. You're also studying to be a librarian, so stories take up a huge part of your life! Could you give us a peek into what elements of a story really pull you in?
I’m going to answer this question by sharing a memory: it’s eleventh grade, and my BFF and I have a free period at the end of the day. So it’s growing dark outside as we sit in the cafeteria, and I’m just railing against some book series that I had read two pages of and put down (it might have been the Gossip Girl books, tbh). I’ve been going on for five minutes, and she looks up at me and asks why it’s bothering me so much, and when I tell her I don’t know, she says, “Do you know what I think? I think that for you to like a book, you need to like the characters.”
I think she was right then, and she’s still right today. I need to like the majority of the characters to like a story. I can like different elements of them -- tenaciousness, or kindness, or wit -- but I have to be on board with the characters for the story to have a chance.
Beyond that, I like the things I read or watch to have a tone of non-cynicism. I don’t mind realism or even darkness, but one of the reasons I end up reading a lot of young adult fiction is this feeling of jadedness that I find really common in adult fiction. Also, if possible, happy or happyish ending.
(I know, it’s very weird that I love a show co-starring 'Shades of Gray' and 'Kids Growing Up Too Fast' and featuring 'We Regret to Inform You That the World Is an Extremely Screwed Up Place'.) (Editor's Note: This may be our favorite summary of Veronica Mars we've ever heard.)
5. You write across a number of fandoms (Veronica Mars, Buffy, Gilmore Girls, etc.). Of the major ones you write for, what are the biggest differences and/or similarities you've noticed in how you approach writing for them?
Well, all the shows listed are known for their fast, witty dialog, but they are all a little different. Buffy twists words, adding suffixes that don’t belong, sticking in parentheticals every so often. Gilmore Girls does more references, some tangents; it’s overall more…jocular, maybe?
They’re also all different genres: supernatural, teen, neo-noir/mystery, crime when I’m writing Bones, politics when I dabble in West Wing. I have written several stories that require plotting based on those worlds. At heart, though, it's not really Buffy fighting different demons or Veronica solving mysteries. I write stories about characters and relationships, and in most ways that transcends the differences between the various fandoms.
6. As someone who didn't immediately board the Good Ship Veronica x Logan (see this post), what was behind your initial hesitancy to ship that ship and what changed?
I like my ships to be pretty content (see above re: nuts about fluff, and happy endings) and on my first watch of the show, I wasn’t sure that Logan and Veronica could do that for each other. To quote the livejournal post I made as I finished the series:
“I can't tell whether or not I like Logan/Veronica. I think I do but they're just so dysfunctional. He's messed up and I don't see them living happily ever after. I can, however, see them snarking each other ‘til they die. Then again, I can't really see Veronica settling down anyway.”
My ships before watching this show were Booth/Brennan, which was at that point defined through friendship/romantic tension, and Buffy/Angel, which was shown as mutual attraction which turned to tension through no fault of theirs (also Jack/Sue; shoutout to the random Sue Thomas F.B.Eye fans who might be reading this). I’m a freely-admitted romantic, but I’m also a pragmatist, and there were significant periods of time when Logan and Veronica didn’t even seem to like each other, which seemed like a really poor basis for a sensible, long-term relationship. The season 3 hot/cold soap opera shenanigans certainly didn’t help on that front.
As for what changed…I’ll level with you, it was reading fanfiction. I originally watched the show sometime in my junior year of high school, rewatched halfway through my senior year, and then again right as I finished high school. (I remember cleaning my room the week after graduation while watching Keith Mars jump up at Veronica’s graduation, and thinking “holy hell, I’m the same age as Veronica Mars.” I felt deeply unaccomplished.) I went abroad after I graduated, and it was a little bit of a weird experience for me. I was living with strangers six thousand miles from home, the days were really long, and everything was stressful. So I started devouring fanfiction even more copiously than I had previously. Because Veronica Mars was the show I had watched most recently, it just happened to be the fandom I hit. And that was an amazing decision, because the VM fandom is full of tremendous writers.
I don’t really watch with a naturally critical or detailed eye (Leah: very terrible at figuring out mysteries) so reading fanfiction forced me to examine the show for the nuances of characters and relationships. Reading fanfiction made me look at the details of certain moments or pieces of dialog more significantly. It made me appreciate Logan, who I disliked for most of the show’s run. (I’m like the original stick in the mud; drinking and fighting make my heart race only in the “I’m going to tell your mom. Oh wait, your mom just died, sorry I don’t feel worse for you but you were drinking and fighting” way.) It made me look at Veronica more clearly. And it showed me a thousand different potential continuations and endings for the two of them. The next time I watched, I was able to think about them with those ideas in mind, and I fell pretty hard.
7. Also in the post above you mentioned some of your qualms about the way Piz was introduced into the narrative of season three. Do you think there was a better place for his character in the season, and if so what would you have liked that to have been?
Like the czar in Fiddler on the Roof, may God bless and keep Piz…far away from us! No, I’m sorry. I don’t think Piz is a bad character. But, as I wrote in another post which I now can’t find I think that introducing Piz as the Alternative, Clean Cut, Good Boy Love Interest was a mistake. I think it had to do with a misunderstanding about the tone of the show, which Piz just did not fit. The main interest for me would have been to take advantage of that and use Piz as an outside lens into Neptune. Parker would have worked for this also, but, unfortunately, she comes around to the dirty side of Neptune pretty quickly.
Piz has this really interesting scene in 3x01, right after Veronica has revealed the criminal and gotten his stuff back, where he asks Veronica why she’s in the whole private eye game, and she’s taken aback. She plays it off once but he presses until she says something uncomfortably before saying something witty and pushing the scene forward. The people close to Veronica -- Keith, Wallace, Logan, Weevil, Mac -- see Veronica doing the things she does and accept it as just being Veronica. I think that if Piz had played the role he had in that first episode for the whole season, the friend who was seeing everything with fresh eyes, knew none of the backstory, and took nothing for granted, he would have made a really interesting addition to the cast. Season 3 would have been a great time for some introspection, and Piz could have been a really great tool for that. (No double entendre intended.)
8. Pick one character in the Veronica Mars universe you love writing for. What are three things you like to keep in mind when writing for that character?
I don’t know that I love writing for any of the characters, or for characters from any show, because I am at all times plagued with crippling doubt (is this right? Would they do this? Are they speaking the right way?!) but I seem to write a lot of Logan, so I’ll go with him.
a. Logan is pretty honest with himself about himself. He might hate the things he’s feeling, but he admits that he’s feeling them. Logan doesn’t need to be reminded of his flaws; he lives with them daily, to the point of being potentially suicidally depressed.
b. Logan is conscious of actions, particularly touch and space, particularly with women, and I think even more particularly with Veronica.
c. Logan craves affection and treasures relationships, although sometimes he does himself a disservice in maintaining some of those relationships.
9. Pick one moment from the series, movie, or books that you had qualms with. How would you have liked to see that moment handled and how do you think it would have altered the Veronica Mars trajectory?
This is a lot of pressure. Justice for Parker Lee? Season 3 of introspection rather than CW teen schtick? Can the entirety of Un-American Graffiti be striken from the record? Not just the Piz/Veronica kiss of aggressive semi-molestation which I hate, or the Logan seeing them by the elevator part, but the whole cheesy peace, love and America thing they had going. Also the anti-firefighter line that I know gets to rottweilersatemylaptop.
Really, though, I wish that there had been some more follow-up on the Casablancas brothers. I wish there had been more indications of the full on traumatized into evil Cassidy from the roof of the Grand. I don’t think it would have changed things significantly, but watching Veronica describe everything he had done -- crashing the bus, running over Curly, raping her -- always makes me ask where that guy came from. We knew about the abuse, both sexual and mental/emotional/verbal from his home life, but there were limited instances of him acting out based on that trauma, and certainly not to the degree of the way he acted on the roof. With Aaron, it was easy to understand him as the villain; we had already seen him being controlling, narcissistic, and violent in multiple contexts. With Cassidy, though, there seemed to be something of a shock factor in play. (Related, however: Who is Sally, and why does Dick remember her? I am not joking around, Thomas. Answer this question.)
As for Dick, although I have no expectation of it: more examination of his depression, more ownership and an actual apology for his actions and mentality, some growth to be a character who I don’t write while thinking, “Why does Logan have to be friends with this guy again?”
10. Okay. Let's talk The Ninety-Nine Percent. What was the inspiration behind this story and what are you finding to be difficult about finishing it? Also, what can your readers and friends do to support you as you finish? Send you gifs? Send you memes? Send you pictures of Matt Czuchry? We'll do it!
The Ninety-Nine Percent…hmmm…oh, you mean The Current Bane of My Existence? That’s the fun little nickname I have for it, so sometimes I get confused.
I don’t remember the exact inspiration behind this story but it was probably that I have no instinct for self-preservation. Also factoring in was my love for stories about characters growing up and becoming functional adults with functional relationships and functional mouths with which to exercise their functional communication skills.
ghostcat3000 asked me way back at the beginning why I was writing this story and I told her:
“I like placing Logan (and Veronica, but mostly Logan for some reason) in situations of upheaval and watching him handle them in an adult way. It's like my version of porn. I want to show that there's a lot of trauma and anger and fear in him but that he can step up when needed.”
So I think I've been moderately successful there.
The reason it’s taking so long to write is that I didn’t properly outline or anticipate what was going to be needed to write this. Probably the biggest complaint I get about my writing is how episodic it is. I write a lot of oneshots. I give glimpses into worlds, and don’t necessarily open the door all the way. This story was meant to function in something of the same manner. All the scenes from my original, shoddy outline are or will be in the story. But as I started writing beyond the first chapter, I realized that there needed to be more in between the scenes I had planned. The first chapter takes place mostly over two days, and barely over two weeks. It wasn’t fair to skip from that into a construction laden with invisible ellipses and “six months later…”s.
The story is absolutely better for it. Emily became a more fully realized character, and in the original conception I don’t think that Matthew would have passed whatever is the baby equivalent of the Sexy Lamp test. But having more to write means having more to write. It takes more time, and more effort and brain power to make sure it reads smoothly.
I’m a slow writer, and a poorly disciplined one. I don’t usually write until I have at least a sketch of what is going to happen laid out in my head. I don’t know if that’s a super well-known fact about me, because with Wingspan, the chapters got posted pretty rapidly. That’s an aberration in my writing history. Taking this long to write a story, getting bogged down by the plot or annoyed with the process, is not uncommon for me. The difference is that this time, riding high off my first completed chapter fic and anticipating that this would be much shorter than it has turned out to be, I started posting before I had the majority of the story written. I’ve since learned that I’m definitely one of those writers who needs to have the whole thing written before I start posting. It’s not fair to the readers otherwise.
The readers are really why I’m doing it, so while I will more than happily accept all of the above suggestions, what really helps me through is knowing that people want to know what happens in the end. I know the story already. I’ve had the ending scene written basically since I started writing the second chapter; it gets cut and pasted to the end of the page every time I start a new document. So it’s really the knowledge of the reader’s (readers'? I don't want to be presumptuous) investment that keeps me pushing through this. I was a reader for years before I was a writer of any quality, so I’m intimately acquainted with that torture of the unfinished story. Having even one person who is as eager to see this story to the end inspires me to keep writing until I get there.
Although, seeing as I recently had a minor breakdown over some pictures of Matt Czuchry and his niece playing with Hulk hands, I am clearly in need of more pictures of that boy, so hand them over.
11. BONUS QUESTION!! Why do you think Veronica Mars has lasted, in some capacity, for the past ten years? What is it about these characters and this story?
When you finish a volume of Talmud you say a short text that starts “hadran alach,” “I will return to you.” It’s based on the concept that there is always more to study, that there will always be more you can learn and analyze. I think Veronica Mars acts in the same way. Every time I watch it, there is some different element to explore. It’s a father-daughter story. It’s a story about friendship. It’s romance. It’s neo-noir. I might be saying that because I’ve watched the show in multiple periods and stages in my own life, and have been affected by the different facets in different ways because of that, but I think it holds true in general.
Veronica Mars is appealing to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons. There’s something for everyone. But it’s lasted because you can discover something new, or new layers in something you'd only noticed the surface of before, every time you watch it.
