#avalonia320

Let's spread the self-love 💗

Awww! Thank you! 💜

Okay, from one to five:

Freefalling (For You) . Honestly I think it's one of the best things I've ever written. Sci-fi Gallavich my beloved. 

In Another Life. My beloved dead dove. I think the fics I love best are the ones where I felt kind of possessed while writing them and this definitely qualifies (along with Freefalling).

Keeping Score. Orchestra Boys! The longest fic I've finished to date, and I'm so very fond of violinist Mickey and conductor/pianist Ian. 

Hiccup. One of my shortest fics. Still useful for getting me through bad days.

Oh yeah... These are probably my most nebulous ideas, and sadly the least likely to get written because I find the idea of long form canon divergent fics really tricky to tackle... But who among us hasn't watched season 5 and 6 and wanted to just... Rearrange the bits that don't make sense?

The season 5 stuff is mostly based on things from the South Side Rules podcast again (thank you @michellemisfit and @rutherinahobbit sorry to tag you again 💜💜💜); odd choices of pacing and escalation with Ian's bipolar (like Ian literally being ready to violently murder the homophobic pastor, but it's the suitcases that are the step too far)... So I was wondering how it would change things if the suitcases came first. And maybe Mandy leaves later or doesn't leave (because fic isn't beholden to Emma Greenwell's very valid real life choices). There were loads of snippets of ideas like that through the season of SSR and I'd have to listen again to remember them all, but they made my fingers kind of itch to write them.

The season 6 stuff... Well the reason I haven't done it is partially because another writer did it already in a way that's different to what I'd do but similar enough that it would have felt weird, especially at the beginning.

But it's the classic "what if Mickey didn't go to prison" fic. But they're still broken up. It'd be angsty, and I wanted to reckon with things like Mickey's drinking problem (which I'd want to parallel along with Lip, as I genuinely think the show was gonna go there if Noel Fisher hadn't left). And I'd have something with our beloved Svetlana and Yev, and how that would shake out if Mickey is still in the picture.

And I'd actually have things go similar for Ian to canon, even including Caleb (yes he's shit, but I'd want to focus on what that relationship was to Ian and why he (thought he) wanted something so radically different to Mickey). But things with Caleb would probably not get so far as they do in canon.

There were some other ideas also from SSR (they are inspiring to me I don't know what to say) that I'd want to incorporate... Like actually making use of Tony Markovich showing up again, rather than it being the oddest cameo... Instead he could be a person who knew driven, hardworking baby Ian and hasn't seen him in a while, and maybe that conversation is the actual spur for him to find his new purpose (EMT).

yess thank you for the ask!!

3. favorite musical artist/group you started listening to this year?

Frances Quinlan! whose music I already sort-of knew from their band Hop Along, but whose solo album I listened to while in the ER in January and which ended up being my winter quarter soundtrack. the top four songs of my top-100 songs of the year playlist were off this album (the linked one included)

10. something that made you cry this year?

this is in many ways not an interesting question for me, specifically, because crying is kind of my default emotional response to everything, but for a good and impactful cry: getting to see my college best friend again in-person for the first time in a whole decade. spent his whole wedding weekend crying. 10/10 would cry for this reason again.

23. if you could send a message to yourself back on the first day of this year, what would it be?

@avalonia320 Same, Kat, Same. It’s honestly baffling how little these writers seem to understand their shows, or even some very basic principles of storytelling. I’m mad at my friend for spoiling me, but also somewhat glad I got spoiled, because if I’d watched that nonsense without warning I don’t even know what I would have done. 

But yeah, it’s very much this. It’s not that there can’t be an interesting storyline written about Veronica being married but also solving cases - it’s that Rob Thomas didn’t want to write it. He was only interested in traumatized people (he seems to think trauma is what makes Veronica an underdog, which really just points to how insulated and out of touch he is), and he pretended there was no other way forward when he really just didn’t want to put the work in to write an actual new, progressing storyline. Much easier to reboot an old one, eh? So much less effort. 

Hi! Yes you may! 

Fic writer asks

2. What is your favorite paragraph from (Keeping Score)? Is there a reason it’s your favorite?

So it's hard to say without rereading the whole thing, but the one that came to mind was this one from chapter 4 (yes it's from the smut 😆🫣):

After a while it was all rhythms. His heart in his ears, presto. Mickey’s pulse against his fingertips in fluttery counterpoint. The thrust of his hips a solid beat, allegro ma non troppo. Steady. Best of all, Mickey’s voice on the offbeats, pleasure-filled staccato sighs and groans and breathy swearing “fuck, fuck, fuck”.

I had a lot of fun with musical metaphors throughout this fic, but especially in this scene. I went totally overboard and I'm not even sorry. This paragraph was in my head for a while before I got to writing it, and I was pleased with how it turned out.

6. What is your favorite type of feedback to receive (favorites/kudos, comments, DMs, complete and utter silence in the pursuit of remaining unperceived?)? If comments or DMs or anything else involving a reader writing, do you have a particular type of feedback that excites you more than other types?

I love it all, obviously, but I have to go with comments. I love comments they are joy and food. Nutritious and delicious. 

And again, while all comments are gratefully received and lapped up like the attention whore I am, my favourites are the really long juicy comments where someone essentially live blogs the fic with quotes and reactions and/or thoughts. They make me grin so hard, and commenters who do this are secretly competing to be my best friend ever (😘).

7. Share a line or paragraph you’ve written that you don’t think will ever actually be posted in anything! (Or, if you don’t hoard cut sentences and passages like I do, share anything you want that has yet to see the light of day!)

So I do hoard cut sentences, and every one of my fics has a companion file named <fic name>_excised. But... Most of it tends to be stuff I rework into the fic. I had a look last night and couldn't find anything worthy of sharing in the stuff I found. So I'm gonna go with something from a fic I may or may not ever post... I still like the idea but I started it before Keeping Score and it got very derailed.

Hi!

1. What book are you currently reading?

So I always have at least a couple on the go, and currently there are five including the ones I'm reading with the kids. 

The current three I'm reading for me are:

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab (wonderful premise, and I'm really enjoying it so far)

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton (another brilliant premise. Enjoying it as well but not as much as Addie LaRue)

Velocity Weapon by Megan E O'Keefe (very good space sci-fi... Looking forward to finishing it soon. Very good but not going to rank among my favourites.)

18. Do you read the book or watch the movie first?

I've done both, but I think I've been disappointed less often when I watch the movie first. When watching a movie of a book I enjoyed, there's almost always something I wish they'd done differently... But reading a book after a movie gives me a mental image of characters that I can use as a starting point, and I usually get extra detail that I enjoy.

30. What character do you connect with the most.

I can't really think of an answer to this... There are lots of characters I love, but "connect to" implies a feeling that I'm not sure I'd apply to most of them. Maybe I'm overthinking it... But my mind is going to white noise, sorry 😆.