#blowingwinds

OH DAMN.  You’re not messing around with these and I am here for it.

9. Who accidentally pushes a door instead of pulling? -- Sarah, because she's always in a rush.  I feel like this could happen to Paul, too, on a sleep-deprived or just extra tired sort of day, or maybe even if he's distracted.  But Sarah does it more, definitely.  She just wants to get in, do whatever she has to do, and get out.  I don't blame her.  Paul never laughs at her when it happens, but he does like to tease her a bit and he'll point out the sign that she would notice if she only took another second to look.  She tells him to piss off.  Then laughs.

28. Who lets the microwave play the loud beeping sound at 1 a.m.? -- I feel like there would be so many occasions where they're both up at this time, so it wouldn't really matter?  I'm sure they'd both have trouble sleeping at times, or they'd get caught up in movie marathons or something.  But if we're talking about when one of them is awake and the other is sleeping?  I'd say Sarah.  She doesn't mean to--so it wouldn't happen every time--but she can never catch it in time.  Paul doesn't care, though; he's a pretty heavy sleeper, and if she's heating up the leftovers from what he'd cooked before, even better.

I want to learn more about my followers! Send me an ask and tell me your fandom/ship, your current fandom/ship, and/or another user your follow that you think everyone should be following!

I literally had to google this because I’ve never seen Sex Ed because I’m old and my Netflix list is the length of a CVS receipt but yes I’m going to rewatch Bridgerton for the fifth time this week, but!

I’m a huge fan of bittersweet endings and endings that are happy but not happiest. I love some angst and I love angst that you kind of have to accept what you get. Like... if I haven’t killed off half the cast, and shocked readers into quitting reading, I’m not doing it right.

F that. That was peak 2015. It’s 2021. Happy Endings for all my bitches!

HAPPY ENDINGS for everyone as well.

gemini: how often will your plot change throughout the course of writing?

I know there’s a whole “pantser”/”plotter” debate etc and I honestly don’t know which side I fall on, LOL. I found with more elaborate things I was planning myself that it helped to have a longer outline, but more often I just pop a paragraph of connected ideas or visuals at the beginning of a doc and then go from there, figuring out new things as I go. With smaller pieces, like a fanfic I have going at the moment, I often just start with my initial visuals and then just see where the words take me. When I’m working with a partner, it helps to plan more thoroughly and have an idea (and consent) for where a thread goes. I have surprised my partners with things in the past, but I think I’ve gotten less inclined to that as I get older.

virgo: are you very critical of your own writing? how much do you find yourself editing (either during the writing or after the fact)?

I’m probably not as critical as I could be, but I’m also writing pretty much for my own enjoyment and sometimes the enjoyment of a handful of friends, so I tend not to cut out large swathes or anything. I do, though, make little edits when I read back through docs, and sometimes I’ll write something just to get it out but not be happy with the phrasing, so I’ll earmark a section to come back to later when I have a better idea of how I want things to sound. 

aquarius: what is the most unique thing about your current wip?

I have a handful, so going through a few:

I’m really, really new to writing McKirk fanfiction, but something I noticed as I read the stories that got me into the ship is that a lot of them are strictly from Bones’ POV. Jim is the more interesting character to look at from the outside, so people like the allure of Bones learning who he is and what’s shaped him, and I totally get that. But to me there’s an equally interesting challenge in writing Jim looking at Bones--someone who in canon has kept a lot of pain very close to his chest--and especially how someone like Jim would deal with his feelings for him changing. I kept my first fic for them from Bones’ POV  because it made more sense that way, but the ones I’ve been picking at since have been me getting into Jim’s head since not many fics I’ve read for the pairing have gone there.

A fill I have going for Cait about our characters Mark and Eva is set in a period we haven’t explored too too much yet, when they’re each reevaluating their professional lives and figuring out what they want and what they can teach people younger than them. And now that I’m writing them in 2020/21 as opposed to 2012 when we first created them, I get to work in things like Mark listening to podcasts that I did not have in mind when we first started writing them and I... didn’t listen to podcasts yet. :p

jasmine; what mythical creature do you wish actually existed?

I was a huuuuuuuuuuuge unicorn fan as a kid! (I have a separate rant about how now there is SO MUCH unicorn ephemera for kids and there was NOTHING when I was a kid. Like there’s a Barbie unicorn vet kit. I WOULDA BEEN ALL OVER THAT.) Last year I read Dana Simpson’s Phoebe and Her Unicorn and it definitely reignited that love for them I had when I was young. (And this old unicorn book series I read as a young’un is being reissued digitally so it was a weird thing to be twenty-nine and be like my childhood hyperfixation is suddenly returning??). So definitely unicorns!

primrose; what book does everyone right now need to read?

You’re sweet, dear. I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, but the thing is, not a lot of songs do this for me–sometimes if I find a song with a meaning I really like, but the style of the music isn’t right for them, I disregard it. Here are a few that I stand behind fully.

For Frank Castle, Neil Young’s “War of Man” really does it for me. I’ve been listening to Harvest Moon a lot in the past couple of years.

For Frank and Karen specifically, I haven’t found a lot beyond the old standards that people have been talking about for years: Hozier’s “From Eden” and also “It Will Come Back.” It’s a great record and I can’t wait for new material.

And not ship-related, but there’s always The Most S1 Derek Hale Song I’ve Ever Heard In My Life, and the song on this list that outs me as a high school music snob, Thelonious Monster’s 1992 rock ballad “Body and Soul.”

It’s such a sad and horrible thing, especially when the overwhelming majority of fanfic writers/readers identify as women, to some fanfic might the closest thing to sex ed they’ve had in their lives.