🍦ICE CREAM—What is a realization you had about yourself when creating a specific project or work? Do you view it as something to continue or something that you should change?
ooo, let's see... i think amicus curiae made me realize that i'm more interested in writing about platonic alecourtney than any romantic ship? or i'm just more interested in writing friendships than romances in general? or maybe it's just that if i'm gonna write a fic where the main character has a romance arc, that has to be the main focus of the fic.
like, i love gwourtney, but they are not gonna be getting together in cstl because i feel like i would REALLY have to focus on their relationship to make that work properly and gwen's just not the focus of that fic. kind of similarly, i had a romance initially planned for courtney in ptu, but i'm currently trying to figure out whether i want to keep it or have it stay platonic because i'm not sure that's the right fic to explore romance for courtney when she's already got so many other things going on.
while i used to be really into writing romantic shippy stuff, i've kind of moved away from that and into writing complex platonic relationships. writing amicus curiae and realizing i cared more about the platonic alecourtney than the alenoah or courtemma is sort of what marks that shift for me. this may be a reflection of how i have Very Complicated Feelings About Romance And Its Role In My Life (i like to say i'm not 100% aromantic but i believe in their beliefs lmao)
personally, im fine with my fics shifting to focus more on platonic relationships than romantic ones! we could always use more of that in fandom spaces
🍨SUNDAE—What is something that you always try to include in your projects/work? What is something that you always try to avoid?
humor!!! even if something is super angsty (like chapter 2 of cstl and later chapters of amicus curiae) i gotta weave some humor in there. i love a tragedy, but if it's SAD SAD EVERYTHING'S SAD throughout the whole story without giving you a chance to catch your breath or laugh, then i'm not really into it. breaking up the angst for a good giggle not only makes a story more engaging to me, it makes the next bout of angst hit that much harder.
funnily enough, this is something i kind of struggle with in my original writing. i have a bad habit of steering away from messy, raw emotion and going for the glib. but i think i'm getting better about it!
as for something i try to avoid... i think irrational character decisions? or rather, i want the reader to understand WHY a character is doing something, even if the reason is stupid or mean or counterintuitive. understanding the internal logic behind a character's decisions helps flesh out that character a lot to me, and it makes conflict more complex—emma and kitty's big fight in amicus curiae is written from emma's pov BECAUSE she's in the wrong. if it's from kitty's pov, we just see emma being terrible, but since it's from emma's pov, we see her reasoning behind overprotective and controlling. we can understand her, even if we don't agree with how she's acting.
this is also why hawaiian style is written from duncan's pov! bc in slippery slopes, he's pretty shitty and one dimensional, so i not only wanted to give him a chance to redeem himself in the side story, but also to explain himself. i initially got comments expressing surprise that duncan was the narrator for that fic, but as more chapters came out i think people understood why i wrote it that way and enjoyed the story that was being told. though i do kinda regret not having any heather or courtney povs in the slippery slopes series, unsure of where they would've fit in but i wish we got the chance to hear from them. i think heather DEFINITELY deserves a side story from her pov in the cstl universe, though i have a lot more chapters for cstl to write before i can seriously plan that out.
thanks so much for the ask!!!
