#ghostietea

@ghostietea tagged me in a post! :) I tried to use only photos I took to make it extra fun, but the buc-ee’s and rays aren’t mine, lol.

🖤 - Relationship / friendship you wish we could see more of?

There are so many that I think could’ve been developed more or had a little more time on the page, but every time I reread the series, I go absolutely feral over Hana and Akito becoming friends there at the eleventh hour, and we know that their kids are close, so I’m really interested to know what that looks like. 

🐉 - Favorite AU?

I can’t remember if I wrote this intending for it to be like, a general AU or a fic so. Both. 

Garden for the Ruined by @yunsoh is a really excellent Yukeru Yakuza au and I go. Like. Absolutely batshit for it every time I read it. 

In terms of just general AUs that I’ve thought up in my brain, I’m always thinking about one where the student council knows that Yuki can turn into a rat and they (Kakeru) take it upon themselves to guard this secret with their lives and also support their weird little rat friend. 

StuCo Indie Band AU is another one that lives in my head rent free. 

4. How many fic ideas are you nurturing right now? Care to share one of them?

There are currently 15 open documents in my wip folder, not counting Fundamentals, Caffeine and Copperplate, and precious metals which are also all in progress. 

I’ve got some fun ones, though: Nao and Kimi going on a practice date, a Hajime/Mutsuki 5+1, and a couple neat little Yuki and Tohru friendship fics. 

Here’s a bit of the 5+1:

“Mutsuki.” He can practically see his mother in the kitchen, phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder while she makes her coffee. She’s probably wearing her favorite red sweater, even though it’s always got a loose thread hanging somewhere. Last week she told him she was planning on a finger painting project with her middle-schoolers, and she never minds if the sleeves on this one get a bit messy. 

"Hi, Mom." He eases himself down onto the engawa, phone in one hand and coffee in the other. He usually doesn't call in the mornings, but he barely slept last night so it doesn't matter much anyway. 

"Are you sick?" she asks. 

"No," he says. "I don't think I have a fever or anything."

"Is something wrong?" 

"Not really." He fiddles with a loose thread on his own sweater and suddenly he's homesick on top of everything else. He wonders if she's by herself or if his father is there too, bespectacled gray eyes tinged with concern as he watches Machi on the phone. 

Machi hums lightly. “Not really isn’t no, Mutsuki.” 

22. Choose a passage from one of your earlier fics and edit it into your current writing style.

Honestly my writing style hasn’t changed a ton since April and I kind of write either snappy dialogue or rambling stream of consciousness narration so I’m all over a spectrum, which was also interesting to note while I looked for a passage to rewrite. 

But I think this is the first paragraph of my first fic: 

If someone had told Kyo a year ago that he’d be in this position, he would have laughed. Or punched them in the face. It’s anybody’s guess, really. There are a lot of things about his life now that Kyo wouldn’t have believed a year ago. He’s got a home he doesn’t hate coming home to, even if it also belongs to Shigure and Yuki. He’s got friends at school, guys his age who seem to think he’s cool enough, and Hana and Uo who tolerate him as long as he takes care of Tohru. And Tohru. She’s stronger than anyone he’s ever met. And stronger still because she’s been through so much and still maintains her kindness, still cares more about every other person around her - even the ones who have hurt her - than she does about herself.

He’s hopeless. And maybe in love, but he’s trying not to think about that. Yeah, no, he’s definitely hopelessly in love - with her.

But right now he’s fighting against every cell in his body, hair on end and ears pressed back, his feline instincts urging him to run away.

“You think we should what?”

And when I sat down to rewrite it (sort of leaning into a more stream of consciousness style that I’ve been into as of late), this is what I came up with: 

For someone who can fly off the handle at the slightest provocation, Kyo actually does know a few decent coping methods; Shishou had taught him how to meditate when he was a kid, backs straight and mirrored across from each other on the tatami floor of the dojo while Kyo nursed some bruise or abrasion or other, shameful spoils of war, consequences made concrete on his skin. 

But it’s an imperfect science and no amount of meditation could calm Kyo’s frazzled nerves right now, with Tohru’s suggestion suspended unanswered in the air between the three of them. 

He notices with a sharp jab of envy that Yuki looks entirely nonplussed, cool and unbothered while Kyo’s hair stands on end and his heart threatens to escape from his chest. 

“You think we should what?” 

2. Tell us what you’re most looking forward to writing - in your current project, or a future project

WELL I have already written the romantic climax of Caffeine and Copperplate, and I have a really cute chapter planned out that I think is going to be really interesting structurally, and I’m really excited to get to both of those things!! 

3. What is the one scene you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need?

Honestly, almost everything in this category I want to write just ends up as a 450-word drabble with a “sorry no context” disclaimer, haha. 

I guess I do have a couple snippets I’ve written that don’t make sense on their own from an abandoned AU fic where Akito and Tohru become friends before the curse breaks and that’s what breaks the curse. Here’s one!

It’s snowing outside, a light dusting sprinkled over the sand of Akito’s zen garden. Outside, all is calm.

Inside, all is not. 

Akito screams like she’s a mother in labor and a mother losing her child. 

It’s somewhere in between. 

She can feel them dropping away, one by one. No longer pinned to her, slipping through her fingers and taking pieces of her soul with them. 

Tohru sits on the floor a few feet away, watching her as she bruises her fists on the floor, a wail tearing from the depths of her gut. 

Akito collapses, finally, and Tohru pulls her head into her lap, sinking her fingers into Akito’s hair. 

“I think that was very brave of you,” she says. 

20. Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about. 

Other than Stanzas, which I already rambled about a bit, I don’t really have a whole lot to wax poetic on. So I’ll tell you my top three funny bits in C&C: 

Harriet the computer

“‘E.L. James with less commercial success.’”

4 ⧽. is there an au or trope that you haven't written before, but would want to try?

i really want to write a detective story! i love maria lang’s operatic murder mysteries, and i want to write something that weaves together theatre or opera with dramatic real life occurrences (perhaps with a play-within-a-play that i also write, or an exploration of an existing play i love).

another thing i want to do is explore more extravagant, larger-than-life settings: space opera, or fantasy, especially something with big mechs.

a third thing i’m actually thinking about right now is that since i drew Fyfnar in Regency clothing, a couple of friends suggested i write something riffing off the Regency setting, and this struck me as a very fun project; i love Jane Austen and the most fun part of it for me would be really trying to lean into the stylistic conventions of the period. this comes with the awareness that the idealised Regency is inseparable from the issues with it; i don’t intend to handwave that away, though i do intend this piece to be fun and silly in tone.

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18 ⧽. how do you want your writing to feel to your readers?

oh this is fun to think about! the specific effect i’m going for varies from one piece to another (sometimes sunshiny, sometimes tense, sometimes cathartic) but i think what they have in common is that i want the words themselves to feel beautiful; i want them to have a harmonious, musical quality that’s about technical mastery of language as much as it’s about what’s being described. i strive for the satisfaction of perfectly precise phrasing, of absolute control over pacing (i’m not there yet but i try to pay attention to it), varying from a light touch to an orchestral crescendo; using words to create dynamic progression and sound and colour.

i also like to leave people with a sense of space and colour, especially when i describe the outdoors. i want my setting and descriptions to feel like an integral part of the story, and evoke the feeling of a place, or a season, or the touch of the air.

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20 ⧽. answer any one of the other questions that you want to!

17 ⧽. are there any songs you want to write a songfic for?

i think this would actually be really interesting to do for an older song, or a poem – one possibility would be one of the songs from Shakespeare’s comedies (o mistress mine, under the greenwood tree, and so on), or perhaps a Nordic folk song. i could also see myself doing something with one of the songs in James Joyce’s Chamber Music. my slightly unhinged idea is that this would be especially fun to do with something not in English; i’ve been wanting to write something that uses bilinguality in fun ways.

i also want to write something inspired by Rhapsody’s Emerald Sword! Though I don’t know if it would be a songfic so much as a fic of the song in particular – there’s something so enchanting about the line ’for the green valleys where dragons fly.’ other bands that come to mind are Ultra Bra and Ne Obliviscaris; they have such haunting soundscapes and evocative lyrics.

OHOHOHOH THIS IS A GOOD ONE favorite thing about them: NERD NERD SHE'S A NERD and she's so passionate about her interests!!!! I can relate.

least favorite thing about them: A lil selfish tbh

favorite line: "Yeah you'e right." *later that day* "NO YOU'RE NOT"

brOTP: Joe Sparrow is her heart ok

OTP: I'm a filthy Sahannarcy shipper

nOTP: Don't come between my polycule that's all

random headcanon: I fuck with the autism headcanon

unpopular opinion: Ok related to the above- I don't think she was treated badly for being autistic. There's a huge discourse going on in the fandom about how she was tortured and that she shouldn't have been bc she's autistic and like....no? I can't REALLY speak on this bc I'm not autistic (I might be actually but we're gonna go with no for now) but she's not even canonically autistic. And she wasn't tortured bc of it, she was tortured bc it was a good plot device lol. idk

song i associate with them: I do not have one

favorite picture of them: