#heleentje

[coconi]

4 + 34!

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

I already answered this one, but another word I really adore is "iridescent". It's just very evocative.

34. Thoughts on the Oxford comma, Go:

Very much necessary for the sake of clarity (especially for lists that are rich in adjectives), but I don't begrudge its omission most of the time. It's not something I actively think about when reading or writing.

[ginneke]

7, 18, 58!

7. Post a snippet from a wip.

Have a baby bird:

He chattered on about the things he cared about most — like flying, which he thought even forest fairies must be able to appreciate, because those pink meadow fairies he sometimes glimpsed had wings so why wouldn’t these guys? And if they didn’t, well, Revali could at least share a bit of the sky with them through stories, which was very generous of him.

18. Do you enjoy research?  Which fic of yours required the most research?

It depends on the story and the research… Most of the stories where I try to do lots of background research wind up languishing as forever-WIPs, not necessarily because of the research process but because the more I think on something and turn it over, the more I start to notice and fixate on its flaws, and sometimes the more you know about a thing, the more unworthy an idea starts to sound :P

I like to do enough research to keep my stories plausible and consistent.

58. Do you have a favorite piece of figurative language you’ve written?

Any thought of Link is a crosswind throwing him headlong into turbulence; he can’t outstrip the storm of memory.

From 'this flooded sky', ch2.

[higuchimon]

For the guessing game: elegant!

hi there! Been a while! It took a little searching but I did find "elegant". This probably won't be finished for a while, but here it is!

"Saiou-sama's pure White Light will illuminate everything, with or without a light bulb!" Manjoume declared, striking what he probably thought was an elegant pose. No one else paid the slightest bit of attention to him.

Clearly it's season 2 GX. The story actually features Asuka, though.

[coconi]

👖💻

👖 Are you a planner, plantser, or pantser? Is it consistent?

I think I'm a plantser??

When it comes to short fics I usually jump in without a plan beyond 1 or 2 loose concepts or interactions I'd like to include, but for longer stories I do come up with an outline. The longer the story, the more detailed my outline is because I refuse to just... write something that long without having at least a loose idea of where it will end.

That being said, I never plan everything ahead. It doesn't work for me. I know all too well some of the characters will take one look at my script and go "nah, here's what I will do and good luck stopping me" (Revali is by far the biggest offender). So yeah, the hybrid option suits me best.

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

I do, sometimes! Depends on how familiar I am with the setting. My dives have been pretty shallow so far, but the ones that stick out to me are:

1) Opening BOTW and traveling on horseback from Hyrule Field to Rito Village to see how long it would take and whether it is feasible to do such a trip in a single night.

2) Exploring every nook and cranny in both Rito Village and Hateno Village (and a little bit of Zora's Domain and the Gerudo Highlands), down to where the sun rises and sets and what's visible from Revali's Landing and Link's house. Also NPC/monster activity!

3) Studying horse, wolf and chicken behaviors.

[coconi]

2 and 10 for the writer's ask!

2. Which sentence or paragraph is your favorite among those in the fics you’ve written? Why is it your favorite?

Aahhhhh this is so hard to answer! I have many favorites. Let's see...

From Treading Water:

Revali still lacks the right words, but he has no need of them. As his consciousness fades, he allows himself to sink into deep water at long last, and the surging currents that pull him under carry the sound of Link’s quiet laughter — only for Revali to hear.

Overall, the water imagery in this fic is one of my favorites. I remember I was struggling to pick a title/overarching theme for this story, and then it hit me that Revali would feel utterly out of his depth if he ever fell in love. He's a master of the skies, but he would flounder in deep water, and he would do anything to avoid sinking. I felt a little too giddy when that clicked.

The paragraph I picked is the moment where he finally gives in, but only because he thinks he's dying. I think that's very representative of Revali's stubbornness lmao.

That being said, honorable mention goes to these two lines from Swan Song:

Do what I cannot.

And Link does.

Without context, these don't seem like much, but they are the climax of that fic and they still hurt me to this day. That story started my obsession with sentient Divine Beasts, so this exchange is very dear to me.

10. Which of your fics do you wish more people would talk to you/ask questions about and why? Be honest!

Aw man I'd love to talk about All That You Rely On more often! I love Urbosa, and her having a bonding moment with Link over their shared experiences with love and grief was extremely cathartic to write.

Also What We Carry, since it's my only Fruits Basket fic to date and I'm kinda proud of it haha. But some of my loved ones really liked that one, so I consider that to be worth a hundred kudos <333

[ginneke]

🌝💻

🌝 Who is one character you haven’t yet written for that you would like to?

Ooh. Well, as I only have one fandom my bunnies are currently active in, I'll have to go with BOTW here.

...I do really want to write the fic relating to that Amali pun I made on Discord, at some point. LOL

💻 Do you do research for your fics? What’s the deepest dive you’ve done?

I do - deepest dive I ever did was for a 5Ds fic I'll probably never write, by now, since I doubt I have the notes anymore. I wound up reading so much about shoulder injuries and likely surgical interventions that might be required (which, for someone as squeamish as I am about medical images, was quite something).

(I don't know why, but forensics images? no problem at all. wound care or surgery? heebie-jeebies. I think it's all down to "was the individual alive in this photo?" and if the answer is "yes", somehow, it's worse. that's probably a bit strange, right? it's definitely strange.)

Most recent research dive: bow anatomy. Rito bows are beautiful but they're also so weird.

[silentprincesszine]

Hi there! Is there any flexibility on the word count for writing samples? One of my most representative fics clocks in at a little over 1.6k words. Removing 100 words from that would be a tough act and since the fic deals with, essentially, microaggressions, any scene would feel pointless by itself.

Many of our mods are also writers, and we understand the difficulty of altering word counts. But to be fair to all applicants, we have to keep the maximum word count at 1500. We hope you understand.

[ginneke]

💫🎈💞

💫what is your favorite kind of comment/feedback?

Favourite kind of comment can be divided into roughly three camps:

The quoters -- it's always interesting to know exactly which lines get to people!

The screams of anguish -- speak for themselves, are music to the ears

The journeyers -- this one's harder to pin down, exactly, so I'll elaborate! A journeyer is somebody who got taken on the exact "emotional journey" that I wanted the fic / chapter to take them on. One or two 'journeyer' type comment is a good sign. Multiple comments of this ilk (like I wound up getting on Seed of Song's fourth chapter) means that I achieved exactly what I set out to do. That's a wonderful feeling 😎

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

I would say that my style as a writer would be "descriptive, but not overwrought" (unless the character voice demands 'overwrought').

Description has long been something I've struggled with. I wrote very little between 2012 and 2021, a fairly substantial gap with only a couple blips here and there, and overall little that made its way online. One of the problems was finding my voice -- the balance between the beige and the purple. I think I've settled on a kind of mauve?

💞what’s the most important part of a story for you? the plot, the characters, the worldbuilding, the technical stuff (grammar etc), the figurative language

As a fanfic writer: characters. If I can write a character to the point that a reader can either 'hear' them as something a character might say in canon, or have them diverge and develop to the point that it seems like a foregone, natural conclusion that they would reach that point, then I'm doing what I set out to do.

As a reader (published fic version): plot / worldbuilding. There has to be something to hold my interest and make it feel worthwhile to keep going, even if the pace is slow for now.

As a reader (fanfic version): I'm sorry, but it's grammar. I can handle a lot of twists and turns in a sentence or a phrase or a paragraph, as long as the grammatical framework is sound. But if following a passage is like climbing a ladder, then every instance of agrammatical prose is a potential misstep. A single instance, well-utilised, is enough to give me a jolt. It asks me to pay attention to my footing. Repeated careless instances distract me, as though the ladder is rain-slicked and I have to be careful not to slip. If there's too much rain, I'm just not climbing that ladder. (Uh. which is to say, am hitting the back button.)

[Ask me something?]