#jestershark

Do you have a recommended translation??

As a tried and true city gay I cannot relate

Shhhhhhhhh

Cut for spoilers and for length!

2. Which scene was your favorite to write in The Drop?

God, it’s been a long time. I don’t know if I could pick one favorite scene–there are a lot that I enjoyed, and it was so long ago it’s hard to remember which was my favorite at the time. I know I really enjoyed writing both shaving scenes, the one on one match with Tex, and maybe most of all the scene where Sigma lets Maine see the truth about how the fragments were created.

6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in The Drop?

Haha oh man, I had to go back to an old pre-scrivener file to find my cuts for The Drop. There’s over 6K in there but not all of it is straight cuts, some of it is stuff I rewrote and just archived the original versions to have them.

There’s one particular scene I cut from early in the fic with Maine and Connie, where they’re talking (well, mostly Connie’s talking) about terraforming and glassing. It was neat and I did like it, but I cut it for several reasons: 1) It pulled in some worldbuilding that is not from Halo but from Robinson’s Mars trilogy (regarding the colonization of Mars) and though I don’t think it’s incompatible with Halo canon, there was really no reason to have it in this fic and it was kind of apropos of nothing; 2) the final bit of dialogue was a little too philosophical for Maine and didn’t really fit the characterization I was building for him overall; and 3) there just wasn’t any good place for that scene, even if I’d fixed 1 and 2, and it didn’t add much to the story.

I also cut a brief bit of dialogue where Carolina and Maine are talking about the Insurrectionists and how it’s odd they think about them more than the Covenant. I cut it because it was a little too on-the-nose and too early in the timeline for Carolina to be voicing that kind of concern about their mission.

I wrote a ton of sexy bits for that fic and just cut the stuff I didn’t need, which was a lot. I cut a lot of bits and pieces I wrote when I was first playing with the idea of the idea of the trilogy and I hadn’t solidified my Maine voice yet.

As for what I added, it’s been so long that I don’t remember much of when I wrote what’s in the final draft. I do know that a few chapters got heavy re-writes, most notably any chapter involving combat.

5. Did you make an outline for the whole trilogy? Did you stick to it?

Oh my god, I would’ve died without outlines. I would’ve have written a single damn chapter without outlines.

9. Which fic has been the hardest to write?

The Fall is by far the hardest thing I’ve ever written. There was so much I had to accomplish in that fic, from juggling a large handful of disembodied character voices to covering a very long canon timeframe. I’m not convinced I did it all successfully but it challenged me tremendously and I learned a lot and I am pretty happy with the finished product.

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

I don’t even know how I would do this one to be honest. Like I’m sure I have some kind of style that is identifiable across works but it’s so dependent on the POV character of what I’m writing. So if I were to re-edit something, I guess I’d probably just be shooting for better character voice (or adjusting worldbuilding details I’ve changed my mind on). But hell, let’s grab something and see how I’d edit it now, just for kicks. Here’s a bit from Flying Lessons (nsfw, below the cut):