don't sleep through dreams

⚠️ major oblivion battery manga spoilers ahead!

( read here )

agott, crying: I don't wanna be 50 years old and "just friends" with coco like you and master qifrey

olruggio: okay first of all if I shaved you'd think I was 17

kiiiiiiiii hiiiiiiiiiiiiii mwah!

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

yearning!!!! but specifically when shen wei looks at zhao yunlan and is like, plain and clear in his internal narration: i wish i could do x. and then doesn't. or does like ... the palest nothingburger approximation of what he wants (shoutout to putting his hand on the shadow of zhao yunlan's shoulder instead of like. literally touching him in anyway). or, zheng bei's version of this, which is that he doesn't think about or acknowledge what he wants in any direct way, and then goes and does it in a way that's totally unsatisfying to him after all. hehe.

🤡 What’s a line, scene, or exchange you’ve written that made you laugh?

ok so i was so desperate i almost went and searched "haha" in my fic notes to try to scrounge up something BUT. i do have this amazingly spoiler-free exchange from 把时间都炖香 | let the years simmer to sweetness:

Zhao Yunlan goes to pick up his cup, pulls his hand away from it.   “It’s still hot,” Shen Wei says, belated. Zhao Yunlan makes a face that says, I know that now.

✍️ Do you have a beta reader?

can you fucking imagine. if i said no?????????????? to YOU? in front of the entire internet???

anyway, in answer to your question: i do have a beta! to whom i owe my fucking life. i so deeply cherish our conversations analyzing and dissecting tropes (dishwashing as sex my beloved), discussing fandom culture at large, etc, and of course the approach they take to betaing my work and the way we hold each other to our writing values and betaing values. im so grateful to have them as my beta! truly someone who makes me a better writer with every single project and conversation! i've said this to them, but of course worth saying again.

im genuinely so grateful we have the same values when it comes to storytelling, that they never come in prescriptive and only ever come in with readerly reactions or very poignant advice. they have saved my ass with talking through what my goal or intention is with writing a fic, helping me clarify the underlying themes of something, hands-down reoutlining a scene when all i have is disconnected paragraphs, helping me pick between phrasings, helping title when i'm at my wit's end, plus — genuinely i'm so grateful whenever my beta leaves line edit or spag-style suggestions in the final draft doc because it's like. i have them there to help me figure out the entire thematic and narrative structure of the fic already! so it's like damn okay they helped design and build the entire freaking house, and they wired the lights in, and they're still willing to sit there to sand off the extra wood glue drips on the underside of the front porch railing. hello!!!?

i spent so many years reading and hearing about the kind of intimate "they know my writing intentions better than i know them myself" writer-beta relationships, and it is ... incredible that i get to actually have that in my life with them!!! my beta is my awesomest writing cheerleader, and my comrade in arms through every step of a fic. whenever i am discouraged they are there for me! whenever i don't know how to continue forward with a fic they are there for me! i absolutely could not write what i write without them. i absolutely could not be the writer i am today without their consistent support through the years. mwah, bigtime!

🎉 What leads you to consider a fic a success?

before posting, basically if it's "done" to my standards and i feel satisfied by it, which i've outlined here. that probably accounts for 80-90% of a "success" feeling? post-posting, well. out of my control but reader response. generally i'll have some emotional experience i'm trying to lead the reader through over the course of the fic, and then via comments or dms or whatever i'll have a decent sense of if that happened. which, at the end of the day is just, whether i feel that me reaching my hand out shyly with a fic was reciprocated.