I feel like you've probably always been popular but I'd like to know, how did you get people interested in your fic?
oh gosh golly, no I wasn't really all that popular before ruins xD
and it's completely chance and luck and honestly a mix of beings friends with the right people? (that isn't the best way to put it but my mind is on the fritz because of driving all day and words are hard man)
but the precursor to ruins getting so popular was being challenged to an angst off in one of @thesearchingastronaut ‘s streams. she drew a lance piece that just Killed(tm) and well, the writers in that stream took it and ran with it. I was literally working on a completely different piece at the time (rift I think..) and wasn’t really doing the angst thing. and well I hopped over and lo and behold lance was being shot and he looked like he was gonna be dead. (i made him dead anyways in the end lmao)
and it ended up being.... 1.9k long, and an hours worth of straight up writing from me. and it was done. finally warm existed and the tears were flowing. next thing I know (after some pushing from friends and stuff) Caro is messaging me, crying, about how my fic made her cry. she dubbed me the winner and it was off to the races from there. our friendship took off, we saw each other through some hard times and basically, we became collab partners. some more spontaneous than others, but ruins became one of them.
and like... ruins is our baby. it inspires us, and those that read it. it started out as my idea, but Caro has become such an important part of it, that it literally would not have nearly as much depth to it if it weren't for her. she helped me develop parts that I was struggling with, parts that I was actually planning to gloss over because I didn't have anything for. she helped me add more romance to it, so it became more of a slow burn. she added so much to this fic that, if I didn't have her, I swear this fic would be sitting like my other fics with 3k and fewer hits on it.
the other big thing? she motivates me and pushes me to write more for it. the epilogue is her baby, the middle of the story with all the rising action is her doing. hell, she even created half of lances backstory and now we have plans to work on that as a spin off fic for this universe. there's just so much she's done, so much that she has pushed me to do, and to get better at that, really, if it weren't for her, ruins would be a project that I had big dreams for but would have never seen it through to the end.
now I'm looking at a fic that is more popular than I could have ever imagined, that I could have ever dreamed, and its really thanks to her. I'm so glad I made her cry that one day, because honestly? we would be sitting here now talking about this fic because it would be lost to my notebooks and forgotten as I move on to other ideas. we wouldn't even have other projects possibly lined up for after ruins. like seriously, this woman never stops, and I'm being dragged along with leaving pages of words behind for others to look after.
she's my work wife, my brainmate and we support each other. ruins isn't the only thing I'm focused on, and the same goes for her. she has a whole story for her OCs she's working on, and I help out where I can. I have 2 big bangs I'm writing for, a charity zine that I'm filling in for, and I'm running a big bang, not to mention various other ship weeks. (and like balancing college and a job with all of that, AND opening commissions? count me among the dead I don't even know what relaxation is anymore. xD)
so that's the story of how Ruins became an attention seeking monster that people give into. and I really couldn't have it any other way.
