ahh good questions good questions!!! thank u anon!!!
🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?
yes—there are a few! the most poignant one is not common (thankfully!) but all interactions along the lines of this never fail to make me SQUEE:
Character A: I love you so much. You're the only person I truly feel safe around. I can't imagine my life without you. You understand me in a way I'm terrified no one else ever will. I would die for you in a heartbeat, without a second thought.
Character B: That was all very sweet but let me get one thing straight—if you die for me, I will claw myself back from beyond the grave and kick your ass. We are a family and if you are going down, then we are going down together in the most beautiful fireball the world's ever seen because I will never, ever abandon you, not even if the world is crumbling around us both, and don't you ever forget it.
🤩 Who is your favorite character to write?
ooooh hittin me with the hard questions,,, Legend comes to mind first because of a few key things: versatility, intelligence, and projection—allow me to explain.
He's really versatile because he can fill almost any narrative role. That's not to say the others can't, but Legend, for me at least, has simultaneously more and less personality than the other Links. THE thing about LU as source material that has managed to wring over 425,000 words out of me and keep me in it so long (wonderful fandom friends notwithstanding) is the insane variety of perfectly valid characterizations for every boy. Aside from some facial expressions and dialogue options, all we really have to go off of are their life events. As with real people, a given event can affect different people in a startling multitude of ways, and that shines through in so many of the Links, especially those for whom their life events are less cut-and-dry. Legend is the epitome of this. There are so many seeming contradictions and different facets of his character, and you can highlight whichever ones make the most sense for the story you want to tell—which in turn means that there are so many stories to tell.
Legend is sometimes snappish and acts like he doesn't care about anyone. Legend cares so, so painfully much about everyone around him all the time and all anyone needs to do is express a need and Legend will move heaven and earth to see that need met. Legend is filled with wanderlust, loves adventuring with his whole heart, and never wants to stop. Legend is deeply scarred by some of the things that have happened to him and is terrified of what will happen if he stands still for long enough for them to catch up with him. Legend is an incredibly, unbelievably strong, resilient, courageous individual who has somehow managed to live through hell and laugh it off. Legend is in so, so much pain. Legend has countless friends and allies all across the worlds. Legend is so painfully alone. Legend is acutely aware of every way everything could go terribly wrong at any given moment because it's happened to him before. Legend always pushes on with a shrug and a wink and a "hey, it could be worse" because it has been before. Legend is so, so very tired. Legend will, without a doubt, save the world yet again because he has become a force of nature by the sheer weight of his reckless courage and determination to protect what he loves and nothing can stop him now. A terrifyingly high number of things can stop him now because he can never become omnipotent and can never prepare for every contingency. He's going to try anyway, dammit, because the day Legend gives up on helping someone in need is the day the stars fall and empty the sky and the ocean itself turns to ash.
I just. Of course the other heroes are just as complex, but they're also more focused. With Sky, for example, everything kind of revolves around his relationship with the other heroes (at least when I write him). And yes, everyone's relationships to the others do define their characters in a very important way—that's how writing works—but Sky's more aware of that fact and it naturally becomes the centerpiece of anything he's in. Nothing in Sky's life has ever been about Sky and he doesn't necessarily want that to change—everyone else is too important to him. No shade to Sky, obviously, I love him so much, but in having a more firmly established character, he becomes less versatile. Legend elbows his way into every fic I write because he can fill any role the story needs by simply emphasizing different facets of his character.
Second is intelligence. This is gonna be a lot shorter than the last bit. I just. I love smart characters. They suck me into the story because they become so active, even if not physically. They're observing, they're thinking, they're noticing, and it makes me want to observe and think and notice, too, because that means there's something to see and to find and it's just so rewarding to watch a character flex those brain muscles, be it in piecing together the story/plot/plan, figuring out what's going on in a non-POV character's head, discerning an enemy's weakness, or plotting a scheme to navigate a clever obstacle with insane displays of teamwork. That's not to say the others aren't smart, too—I stand by all the boys being incredibly clever because they are all the protagonists of puzzle adventure games—but I can literally come up with any hare-brained scheme I want and handwave it as "Legend came up with it" and nobody can argue with that because, well yeah, it's Legend. That checks out. Paired with his insane item arsenal, dropping Legend into a fic means I can do literally whatever I want if only I can piece together a scheme to make it happen that would make Legend proud.
And finally is projection. This one is pretty straightforward. It's no secret that Wind, Sky, and Legend are my three favorites and they're easily the boys that have the most self-insert quality to them, but Sky... he's emotionally charged to write, for me. I have superficial similarities to all of them, but when I'm delving into their issues, insecurities, unhealthy coping mechanisms, and just generally hurt/comforting them, it's Sky with whom I have the least amount of distance between his darkest places and my own. I love him so, so much, and I love writing him—in part because of the way I can explore myself by using him as a lens. That very strength of his does, unfortunately, bar him from being my favorite to write, simply because he hits so close to home and becomes so emotional to write so easily. Wind is different but still doesn't quite hit the spot of "favorite" for me. He's honestly really, really fun, and I love giving him complexity and a sort of unexpected wisdom, but I feel he's most interesting when juxtaposted/foiled against a specific other hero. The entire fic becomes a "Wind And X Fic", lest I sideline him and risk him becoming flattened by lack of screentime/character focus.
The best way I can explain this is that I love writing Legend because he's a swiss army knife. Not just in the fact that he can play a lot of different roles in a story, but if you have your beautiful state-of-the-art woodcarving kit, you want to save it for your really good wood sculptures that are made from The Right Kind Of Wood and really draw attention to all the love and care you're putting into your carving and you also really want to take care while using them because you don't want to frick them up. I feel the need to do my other faves Justice™ and, if I am to give them focus, give them Substantial Focus that becomes the center of the story. I don't feel this way about Legend. I can use and abuse my swiss army knife without remorse and it'll still always manage to get the job done.
As for the other six boys, they're cool characters and I do love them (obviously) but they're just not in my top three favorites to write, for assorted reasons.
This was a long-winded answer but in short, Legend is so much fun to write because he can worm his way into any story and still fit, elevate that story in scope and scale by way of the insane amount of weight he can throw around—intellectually and in combat—and because he's someone I can write comfortably, familiarly, without having to step too far outside my own shoes, and it's easy to make him interesting or give him a background/side arc without accidentally opening too many cans of worms and needing to devote the whole fic to him lest I fail to do his character justice.
I just. I just really like Legend okay.
💔 Is there a fic of yours that broke your heart?
hmm... there's two ways to look at this. one is that the events of the fic broke my heart because MY BABIES NOOO and the other is that the meta broke my heart, as in it was a painful writing process. I'm gonna assume it's the former, in part because I have yet to abandon a WIP (yes! i'm still working on to isolate and hey four, i promise!!) so I'm staving off any meta fic-related heartbreak by sheer force of authorial gumption and a determination to not give up that would make Legend proud. As for in-universe heartbreak... I don't know. This may come as a shock to many, but I am a HUGE softie. I cannot stand it when the babies are in pain. Of course, I inflict pain on them quite merrily, but I always fix it, or at least help them come to terms with it in an appropriately cathartic fashion. Because of this, every pain I put them through is tempered by me plotting how I'm going to fix it and setting up the ways the pain is going to resolve as I'm inflicting it.
This is kind of how I deal with hardship irl, too. I'm the kind of person who can say "I'm not okay, but I will be," and the full certainty inherent in that "I will be" makes the pain somehow seem so much lesser. In telling myself that the boys aren't okay, but they will be, because I'm actively plotting their recovery right now, I spare myself that same kind of emotional damage I inflict upon my readers. There are probably other examples of moments from my fics that have given me those ow-my-heart physical chest pains that I love too much to be good for my health probably, but the one at the forefront of my mind is part of Chapter 10 of To Isolate because I was just writing it. Without spoiling anything, it's a kind of hurt I haven't really had the chance to write before and one that hit me surprisingly hard, even though I KNEW I was going to fix it. When that chapter comes out (sometime soon I hope!!!), feel free to ask me which part it was—I'll be happy to share.
Anyway thank you so so much for these asks and I hope I didn't overwhelm you with my essay-length answers!! Have a lovely lovely rest of your week, anon (and all you miscellaneous readers who got this far) and take care of yourselves! <3
