FanFic Asks: D [And the World, A Little Bit Darker], O, S, Y, Z ✨👁👄👁
👁👄👁 Thank you so much for indulging me with these asks, I had a blast answering them!!!
D: Is there a song or a playlist to associate with [And the World a Little Bit Darker]? -- Actually yes! I wrote And the World, A Little Bit Darker to 198xAD by Mega Drive (warning, there’s a big skull with eyeballs on the cover) which was recommended to be by @saffronic! It’s a synthwave, retro-y album and was really fun to vibe to as I wrote. Later on, I delved into a few of their other albums but 198xAD was the main one! I think Hardwired and 199xAD were also ones I listened to. This was the first time I listened to a soundtrack while writing SF that was not a compilation of SF songs. (I have a SF-specific playlist that is mostly covers with some of the original OSTs from Assault and Adventures, and a bit from Dinosaur Planet.)
O: How do you begin a story–with the plot, or the characters? -- Usually for my large fics, I will come up with an overall large plot point and build from there. The story may see a few versions before I ultimately decide on one in the planning process. Usually I feel out what seems to fit the best and just “know” when to make certain calls. It’s a weird feeling I can’t really describe. Like for instance, with And The World, A Little Bit Darker, I felt the need to put Silas and co into the fic because I thought it would fit well + build up to future plans nicely. Originally, the plan was for him to beg for a spot on Eva’s brother’s ship as they headed to Venom but I didn’t feel like that would be interesting enough. For smaller fics, they’re usually disjointed scene ideas that I just jot down and post separately because I like them but I don’t have enough material for a multi-chapter fic. Burning Stars is a rare exception because it started out as Star Wolf running from Corneria and turned into Star Wolf fighting mobsters. But that’s just because I realized the potential after posting the first two chapters.
S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist? -- Morally-grey General Pepper. I’ve been told this trope comes from a fairly old fic that came out maybe in the early 2000s but I love it. I have a lot of headcanons about him, particularly regarding his family, that I started to delve into with a fic called The Price We Pay but I’ve kinda run out of inspo for it lately so it’s been on the backburner. I think having General Pepper be secretly Not So Nice and power hungry is kind of fantastic and really makes a lot of the Lylat System make sense. It really answers why Corneria seems to have a finger in every pie and seems to be so domineering compared to other planets.
Y: A character you want to protect. -- I want to protect all of the SF cast but mostly Andrew. As I’ve explored in my fics, I feel like Andrew is the type of character that was duped into joining the bad guys under false pretenses that they were secretly the good guys. He feels innocent, like he really just came to get his uncle back but got wrapped into a giant insurrection instead.
Z: Major character death–do you ever write/read it? Is there a character whose death you can’t tolerate? -- My stance on other people’s work is that I will read basically anything if it’s good. The only thing I really don’t tend to read are ultra-fetishy fics. I’ll even read fics with ships that I don’t personally ship if the author writes them in a way that I can appreciate and pays good tribute to the characters. With major character death fics, I’m kind of the same way. If the author does it in a way that feels appropriate and flows well with the story, I will read it. I have a fic flagged for Major Character Death atm (I just posted it today lol) but it’s for a different fandom. I don’t typically write fics like that but I’m not opposed to them. I would say, though, that the deaths I can’t tolerate for SF fics are Pigma, Andrew, and Panther, who I feel get killed off way too frequently because the author doesn’t know what to do with them and views them as joke characters. Usually if I read a fic and that happens in the first few chapters, red flags go off in my head.
