Astralore Games

Thank you! Let's see here... (Who is interviewing, you ask? I don't know! Imagine whoever you want haha) 22. What’s the easiest way to flirt with you?

Cailean blinks, momentarily unable to process the question. Then, slowly, the magenta flush rises from his neck, over his cheekbones, all the way to the tips of his ears.

"I, uh... Why?"

The interviewer smiles and sits back in her chair, her posture relaxed and nonthreatening. "Come on, Cailean, I'm supposed to be the one asking questions here. You'll put me out of a job."

"Oh... Right. Sorry." Cailean swallows and shifts nervously in his seat. "I don't really think about things like that."

"Really? You've never imagined what it would feel like to meet The One? How it would play out, what they would do or say to make you know they were the one for you?" She gestures to him. "Go ahead, close your eyes and tell me what you see."

Cailean takes a shaky breath and his tail twitches anxiously, but after a moment, he closes his eyes. Absently, he crosses one arm over his chest and grasps one of the straps that lays across his collarbone. He takes a deep breath, seeming a little steadier.

"I guess they would... make me feel safe? No, wait, that sounds stupid... Maybe they'd just listen, even if I don't have anything to say. We could talk about our dreams for the future and somehow... they'd just line up together. And they'd be able to understand me and they wouldn't..."

He stops, teeth clenched tightly. Less than a second later, he lets out a tense laugh. "Forget it. The rest of that sentence is pathetic."

He opens his eyes, but he doesn't make eye contact. "Honestly, I'm not sure that any of that stuff matters anyway. People can act as sincere as they want and it can still just be... an act."

He laughs again, this time apologetically. "Sorry. I guess that didn't really answer your question."

24. What would you consider your main love language?

Cailean furrows his brow. "What's a love language?"

The interviewer smiles and patiently explains the concept of the five love languages. Cailean mulls this over for a few minutes, eyebrows still drawn together in concentration. "So, the love language that I would like to receive or the one I'm more likely to display?"

"Are they different for you?"

"I'm... I'm not sure." He leans back, tilting his head as he considers the options. "Maybe they're the same? I think I'm probably either 'Acts of Service' or 'Quality Time', if it's okay to pick two."

"And what if you had to narrow it down to just one?"

LINK

Pink: Which of your characters would become your best friend? This one might actually be harder to answer than the enemy one! Mostly because, while I want and like friends, I often don't have the emotional energy to pursue them and I am scared they won't like me. (I used to do it when I was younger... maybe I just need therapy? lol) Again, it's pretty context-dependent, based on who I would be to them and what our interactions would be like. I think I have to assume that Nikolai would be impossible for me to be close with. This is going to sound awful, but I'm not fond of feeling like I'm not the coolest person in the room, therefore I may have to hate him on principle. He also tends to put people on edge, which can be draining to be around. On the other hand, I am okay with sharing the status of 'coolest person in the room' with other people if I am friends with them, so if we somehow did became friends then maybe we could be pretty good friends? At least until it crashes and burns fantastically and then we hate each other forever. I would probably become friends with Cailean, but we would never become "best" friends. This is because I'd be willing to pursue his friendship to a degree, but while he wants friendship, he also requires the other person to keep pursuing him while not crossing too many boundaries too fast in order to get close to him. And I just wouldn't put the energy into doing that. I could also be friends with Deka, but best friends still seems unlikely. Deka likes people but tends to hold them at a distance, for different reasons than Cailean does, and again, I probably wouldn't put the energy into getting close to them. I would just eye them sometimes and wish that I was cool enough to talk to them more. Elsie would be a little easier. She makes herself easier to talk to and pulls you into her orbit, so she doesn't require as much energy as some of the others. She's also less intense than Nikolai and more likely to set you at ease, making her easier to hang out with casually. However, she has some flaws that would probably bother me majorly, so it's hard to say how long our friendship would last. Vivietta, hmm... Vivietta is hard to get close to because of... well, how she is. Assuming circumstances worked out to where we ended up becoming friends in the first place, I think she would be a strong contender for a best friend honestly. Once you get past her defensive exterior, I think something about her exudes a sense of sincerity (and rage) that most of the others probably lack. You can tell she's hiding things, but she would probably still feel like someone you can trust. So, short answer, I guess Elsie and Vivietta? Vivietta is both my worst enemy and my best friend. Context is key. XD Green: Pencil, typewriter, or computer? These days, definitely a computer, but maybe I shouldn't be so quick to rely on it. When I was in high school, I did all of my fanfic writing by hand on lined paper and then typed it up/edited it when I got home. It's easy to do that way when you're in school because you can just sit in class writing fanfiction and it looks like you're attentively taking notes. (Also, all my writing got a light editing pass because of this, which probably made it better-- but it was still absolutely atrocious. I physically can't make myself read it.) I was incredibly prolific! At the peak of my productivity, I was able to update four different stories, a chapter apiece, daily. (How do I regain that power?! Well, if it means exchanging for the quality of 17-year-old me, I guess I'll stick with being slow...) These days, I can't stand using pencil and paper to write. I'm out of practice, I suppose-- I press the pencil too hard against the paper. My hand begins to ache. I want to change a line or rearrange some sentences and I have to erase erase erase to make it happen. That being said, probably writing by hand forces us to let go of a tiny bit of that desire to get it "perfect" the first time, as long as we reassure ourselves that it's fine to just make a note of what you want to

OMG thank you so much!!! ;~; I really appreciate that aaaa <3 Incoming text wall omg Gold: Do your stories usually contain lessons or morals? Yes, absolutely. I feel like it would probably be hard to write a story that doesn't have some lesson in it for the reader, whether the writer intends it or not. A lesson or moral is just a type of message or theme, and message is inherent-- every story has a message, and many have multiple. I feel that messages are what we're actually seeking when we read a story, something unspoken that we crave in order to expand ourselves and our understanding of the world-- stories are just the vehicles that carry them. Because of this, I think it's important for writers to keep in mind and think about what messages they might be sending. If you aren't making conscious decisions about what you're trying to say with a story or character arc, then it's very easy to end up with a message that you didn't intend or that might even be detrimental, harmful, or ignorant. (As an example, the Hermione-house elf side plot in the forth Harry Potter book. What the hell was JKR trying to say with that?! Probably not what she actually ended up saying.) Even if you are trying to send a conscious message, it's easy to slip into writing that's counter to the message you want to send, or muddies your intent. To me, I think the active enemy of a clear and focused message is indulgence, which sounds like a weird puritanical thing to say, so bear with me for a moment. For writers, indulgence and message seem to end up frequently at odds with each other. (For another example, what message comes across in Fifty Shades of Grey? It's a pretty extreme example, but I think there's no arguing that the writing was heavily influenced by self-indulgence.) I'd like to make it clear here that in the sense of writing, indulgence absolutely doesn't mean something traditionally considered immoral, despite the fact that I'm saying it is often in direct conflict with the moral a story tries to explore, haha. It could be something like that, but often indulgence in writing is actually where you make a compromise, usually on your character or plot, in order to write something that is personally very appealing to you. That doesn't mean that the particular subject that is personally appealing to you is inherently bad, either! Context is key here-- to go back to the Harry Potter example, it's not bad for JKR to write Hermione having an arc where she becomes an activist for house elf rights. It is bad if JKR uses that narrative to indulge in her weird hatred of Hermione by showing what a ridiculous and ignorant know-it-all she is for believing house elves shouldn't be subjected to slavery-- since the message that actually comes across to the reader is that JKR thinks something like, "slavery is okay, actually" which I would assume was not her intent! (Whether or not she actually thinks that isn't relevant, that's the message that came through regardless and 'death of the author' says that's all that matters.) Another example could be like, trying to justify an evil character's behavior by having them divulge a long and tragic backstory and having that be enough to redeem them. It's not inherently bad for a villain to have a tragic backstory, or even for them to talk about it, but you have to be careful to not send a message that says, "doing bad things is okay as long as people can be convinced to show you sympathy." Think of any scenario where a writer could indulge in a particular interest-- popular fanfic genres are an easy start (they're popular for a reason!), like hurt/comfort, enemies-to-lovers, etc-- and though they're not at all inherently bad things themselves, you can probably come up with a lot of examples where indulging in them would derail or muddy the story's larger message. So, ALL THAT BEING SAID... When working on narrative or character arcs, we do try to think about interesting concepts to explore and what they mean and what things the reader could learn as the characters learn. That doesn't mean these things will always come across as we intend, but we are definitely thinking about them, working them in, and hoping some people will benefit from them by experiencing a new perspective or idea.

Clear: Do your characters control where the story goes or do you maintain control?

Yellow: What’s a common writing tip that you mostly ignore? Oooh hmm. I've read a lot of writing tips and I probably ignore mostly all of them even though I obviously shouldn't because I'm not very effective as it is. I'm not a very organized person haha! Pretty much any writing tip designed to make you more productive is one I ignore (unless it's Nanowrimo which, let's be honest, is the only time I get actual substantial amounts of writing done. I can't be trusted unless I have a deadline.) Purple: Which of your characters would become your sworn enemy?