#truemagic

[carewyncromwell]

Happy FFWF! 💛 I’d like to ask, if you could pick ONE of your stories (be it a canon tale, or an AU) to be made into a film or TV series, which one would it be and why?

Oh gosh! Um...I guess I'd go with my Disney mega-crossover TrueMagic? I think it could be a fun TV miniseries pitch for Disney to pick up, if they were up for it! They could use kind of a "Rapunzel's Tangled Adventures" art style for it, but aimed toward a more "Young Adult" audience, and I would nominate self-professed Disney fan Tuomas Holopainen of the band Nightwish to write the intro song for it! (I personally could hear it having very "Last Ride of the Day" vibes.)

[imagitory]

8, 18, 29

8. What’s the biggest “challenge” for you as a writer?

Action scenes always need more of my time, just to get the pacing juuuuust right. I end up reading and rereading those scenes the most, and I usually need some good music in my ears when I’m writing it.

18. What fandoms do you write for?

My two most recent full fanfictions were in the Disney fandom (this one’s sort of a...mega-crossover, LOL) and the Harry Potter fandom, respectively, though I did write in the Yu-Gi-Oh and Princess Tutu fandoms too, once upon a time. Most recently I’ve been writing stuff for my Harry Potter Hogwarts Mystery character, Carewyn Cromwell.

29. Describe your style in three words.

Modest, flowing, vivid

Fanfiction Ask!

[carewyncromwell]

Do you like to use symbolism, foreshadowing... the sort in your writing?

When the opportunity arises, absolutely! I am a strong believer that an audience being able to tell where a story is going based on what they've already read isn't a bad thing, as it can signify that the audience is invested and paying attention, so foreshadowing when done right can be utterly fantastic. I remember when @lifeofkaze was reading the POTC AU and mentioned being surprised when Rakepick killed Jones because she'd assumed Jacob would do that, I was so friggin' over the moon because she’d picked up on the very foreshadowing of Jacob becoming captain of the Dutchman that I'd put in. And yeah, she was ultimately right!

In regards to symbolism, I tend to treat it much like sprinkles on a cupcake -- a light drizzle of it is usually more than sufficient. One of my favorite things to do with symbolism involves color psychology: when I wrote my Disney mega-crossover TrueMagic: A Disneyland Fairy Tale, for example, I dressed my main character Marcia Blair in a black T-shirt, to make her stand apart from the rest of her crew. Black as a color has a lot of connotations, both positive and negative, but the relevant ones in this case are authority, seriousness, confidence, and mystery. In TrueMagic, Marcia is a 20-year-old woman who grew up way too fast and has almost no inner-child left in her, and she gets thrown into a fantastical realm occupied by all of the characters we know and love from Disneyland, being forced to lead a team to covertly take down the villains terrorizing the land if she has any hope of making it back home again. At the end of the story, Marcia attends a party dressed in a gown with a black bodice, silvery gray sash, a wide white skirt, and purple heels -- the colors of the Asexual Flag. Mickey transforms that dress after it gets trashed into a bride-worthy white princess dress -- along with purity, white can also represent a "clean slate," A.K.A. a new beginning.

Fanfic Writer Friday!

[imagitory]

🎵 Lottie from PATF! 🐸💓

Waiting for Superman by Daughtry! When I was writing my fic TrueMagic, I loved listening to this whenever I had to write anything focusing around Charlotte, especially her more romantic interactions with Urchin (yes, Little Mermaid fans, that Urchin -- they’re both semi-major characters). It just sounds like the singer’s singing about her, to me!

Song Ask!

[imagitory]

Something I've been mildly curious about - have you ever thought about which Lamb Sauce OCs would be friends with which TrueMagic OCs? Like, I get the impression that Arjuna and Marcia would get along well, but you know them better than anyone :-)

OH GOSH, that is a fun thought! Hmm…

Yeah, I could see Arjuna and Marcia seeing pretty eye-to-eye – I always imagined Marcia being on the cusp of Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw, but ultimately choosing Ravenclaw, and of the Ravenclaw girls, I could see Marcia and Arjuna having the most similarities. (I could see Arjuna getting along with Urchin well, too, given their shared bent toward social justice.) I could also see Marcia getting along pretty well with Julien Montmercy, as they’re very driven, yet introverted people and they’re closer in age (Julien being 18 and Marcia being 20). I could see Walt getting along with Kevin and Astoria really well, but I think he’d like Hannah and Rose too. And Rob ‘Em I could totally see getting along swimmingly with Terence Higgs Goodfellow and Hyperion Carrow – if nothing else, Rob ‘Em is so Slytherin it hurts! LOL!

Ulf I could see getting along with all of the MagicChefs, given that he also likes to cook, but I think he’d probably get along best with the Hufflepuffs, Owen, Hannah, Rose, and Kevin. Though I could also see him being the sort to get along with Millicent, given that neither of them are very talkative but they’re deathly loyal to their friends and love cooking. Gabriella would adore Colin, Rose, and Owen – I could see Owen and her getting very excited about travel, and Gabriella would just feed off of Colin and Rose’s energy. OH, and Charlotte – oh gosh, she and Daphne would have SO MUCH to talk about. They’re both so stylish and creative and romantic and they both come from wealthy families – they’re definitely very different personality-wise, but interest-wise they match up pretty well! I think Charlotte and Cho would love hanging out together too: I could totally see them going shopping and out to the movies together.

(If any of you would like to meet any of these characters, you can find them either here in Harry Potter and the Lack of Lamb Sauce or here in TrueMagic: A Disneyland Fairy Tale! ^.~)

[imagitory]

[TrueMagic] Walt Aesthetic

“I might not know who I am, but I'm sure to find out! Even if…I somehow never find out who I was…I know what I want and I know where I'm going, so maybe I'll find myself along the way! A new me.”

The boy nicknamed Walt the Wanderer is a new arrival in the Kingdom of Dreams, the magical realm of Imagination that inspired the place called Disneyland. His origins are very mysterious, as the first thing he can remember is a wise voice telling him that “this is his dream” and no one has more power over it than him. Walt doesn’t know who this voice belongs to, nor does he know what it meant or even who he was before he woke up outside the castle of Eyvind. What he does know is that he loves the castle’s prisoner -- a sweet, dark-haired lady called Lily -- and will do anything necessary to rescue her from her captor, Maleficent. Fortunately Walt just might have a chance, as he later discovers that he has a rare kind of magic, which could allow him to create portals just by imagining himself in another place. He befriends a young woman from the real world named Marcia Blair when she accidentally goes through a portal into the Kingdom of Dreams, and the two team up with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey’s faithful dog Pluto, and an assortment of new friends in an attempt to save the Kingdom of Dreams from Maleficent and her villainous associates once and for all.

Meet Walt in TrueMagic: A Disneyland Fairy Tale!

[imagitory]

Yoooooooooo I just finished your story TrueMagic on AO3 and left a long-ass comment! Letting you know because the story is a couple years old and I want to make sure you see all the praise I dumped on it!

Hi!! When I got your review in my inbox, I just about died, since it has been such a while since I finished TrueMagic and the feedback I’ve gotten for it has understandably been sort of dwarfed by the stuff I get for Lack of Lamb Sauce. I’m so, so happy you gave it a chance and that you enjoyed it so much!! It really represented something so personal to me, being sort of a time capsule of all of the feelings and changes I went through on my Walt Disney World College Program as well as the shift between that, going home, and becoming a Disneyland Cast Member…so yeah, you getting anything out of that means a lot to me! In the case of the representation aspect especially, it’s particularly touching, as I’ve really enjoyed imagining worlds where many different kinds of people can find happiness. With Ulf in particular, he was partially based on a family member of mine – although he doesn’t have a stutter, he does have dyslexia and he’s a very soft-spoken, smart person, and like Ulf he’s struggled a lot with people misjudging him based on his tough appearance and thinking he’s far less intelligent that he really is. And considering that I come from a biracial family, identify with the LGBT+ community, have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dyslexia, and ADHD in my family, and have both suffered from severe depression and been diagnosed with ADHD myself, I understandably feel strongly about depicting a more tolerant world in my works than you sometimes find in real life. After all, what is Imagination if not an escape from Reality?

Thank you so much for both this message and for your amazingly kind review – it really means so much, and I can’t thank you enough!

[imagitory]

OC asks, if you wish to...Rob 'Em Iwerks, 32 (as of post-fic) and 50!

For those of you who don't know my trash pirate son Robert "Rob 'Em" Iwerks, you may meet him through reading my Disney mega-crossover fic, TrueMagic: A Disneyland Fairytale!

32. What do they dress like? What sorta shops do they buy clothes from? Do they wear the fashion that they like? What do they wear to sleep? Do they wear makeup? What’s their hair like?

Well, of course while in the Kingdom of Dreams, Rob 'Em dresses like a pirate (tricorn hat, long coat, leather boots, and all). When he goes to Disneyland as a guest, his clothes are super casual and kind of worn. Jeans, well-fitted T-shirts, white undershirts, baseball caps, leather jackets, and flannel shirts are his Real World aesthetic; Rob tolerates sneakers and sandals, but he'll probably always be most partial to boots. He wears an eyepatch rather than his usual bandana while in our world, and he also often wears fake military dog tags around his neck: one of his "Friends" suggested them to him, so as to give other people less reason to question why he's missing an eye. Rob 'Em doesn't wear make-up, but he does have a pirate "P" brand on the inside of his wrist and a tattoo of a large sparrow on his shoulder (in honor of his not-so-great quasi-father figure, Captain Jack Sparrow). His hair and facial hair has always been shaggy, but since he became a Cast Member, he's had to keep both much more trimmed.

50. If they could only take one bag of stuff somewhere with them: what would they pack? What do they consider their essentials?

Rob 'Em never goes anywhere, whether in the Kingdom of Dreams or Reality, without his ship (which he can shrink to a small size and wear on a chain around his neck). While in the Kingdom, he always has his pistol and cutlass on him. Post-story in the real world, he'd bring the shield Merlin gave him (which can be shrunk to the size of a coin so he can carry it around in his pocket), his Cast Member ID, maps of both Disneyland and the Kingdom of Dreams, a compass, a calculator, and the pin lanyard Marcia bought him.

OC Ask!