#junietuesday

Rules: Make yourself with this picrew and then take this uquiz to find out how fandom would see you if you were a fictional character.

tagged by @enchantlost thank u<3

Mentor

You might not be the main character, but you're still very important. You're the older, or at least wiser one, who guides all those little youngins to victory. They may not always listen to you, but at least they respect you. The fandom looks on you as either a MILF/DILF, the lovable cooky old guy, or the one who really, really needs a break. Maybe all three. Probably all three.

Aw thank you! I always feel like I am yelling into the void whenever I make posts about the things I'm reading, so I'm glad you enjoy reading my thoughts <3

For books I haven't posted about yet... I just finished Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid (and will make a post about it soon). It's not a perfect read, but if you like horror and fairytale tropes, you'll get something about this.

Besides that, I recommend The Bell Jar by Slyvia Plath, and the works of Robert Cormier (I Am the Cheese and The Chocolate Wars are two of my favorites). If you like war stories, All Quiet On the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque is required reading.

I really enjoy the works of Octavia Butler. Kindred is my absolute favorite, but Parable of the Sower is very relevant to the current political moment. Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich also scarred the fuck out of me, but is a great work on reproductive rights.

I did an entire seminar on Virginia Woolf. Besides Mrs. Dalloway, I think Into the Lighthouse and Orlando are very good.

For the classics, I love Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. One of the first classics I ever fell in love with was Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, though Great Expectations is also exceptional.

One of my favorite books of all time that I never discuss with anyone anywhere is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, for obvious reasons. Read this book for two reasons. One, it will fuck you up. Nabokov's work with perspective and unreliable narrators is fucking insane. Second, Nabokov does something with the English language that I have never seen before and will probably never see again. If anyone has a command of the English language, it's him.

How do I find books to read? Some of the books I read before they are recommended to me by friends or by someone online. As long as you avoid romance/romantasy, BookTok/BookTube/Bookblr is a great place to get recs. I watch a lot of CariCanRead on Youtube because she reads a massive amount of books I have never heard of and is generally really honest about what books she liked/hated and why. I also windowshop at bookstores and libraries and just check out what is available on the shelves.

Honestly, the best advice I can give you is to let go of the idea of every book being impeccable art. You do not have to always be reading the Great American Novel. You can read books that are silly and outright trash. Once you shed the idea that books are some higher form of art, you remember that they are made to be entertainment. Like movies, there are going to be days where you want to watch post-modern French films or Oscar-winning movies about the turn of the century. There are also going to be days where you want to watch a silly comedy, or a trashy reality TV show, or you just go to the movies for something to do.

It's healthier for you if not every book is life changing. I have read some really bad books (some on purpose), and I have read some books that were just aggressively mediocre. Even if they didn't transform me into a better writer/reader/person, they were still worth reading. And when you give yourself permission to read books you might not necessarily like, it gets easier to try new genres and take risks on unfamiliar works. That's where you get new experiences. That's where a book sneaks up on you and smacks you on the back of the head with something that will absolutely make you change the way you see the world.

gonna do these slightly out of order for length

3 - Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic

Even discounting stories from Moonlight, which were written in close creative collaboration with @heleentje from the start, I would say that the majority of my works have a common root: instant messenger conversations -- mostly with @heleentje, a few with @coconi (who gets credit for enduring the bad puns that started A Seed of Song in particular), @ghirahimbo too for giving me permission to play in the Pinesong sandbox and cross it with Moonlight. In essence: talking about it = a major part of the process of actually getting around to writing it!

I have sliiiiiightly different processes for a zinefic, since they're more secretive projects: those will tend to have an actual outline written on paper. The Mirrored Path had a process flow path from the opening scene to its ending, and then trying to determine what would be the best places to have interludes. My unshared piece for Eyes of Hyrule also started with a handwritten outline, even if I actually changed it completely with 3 weeks to go until handing it in 😳 (it started developing additional narrators).

I think the fic that had the most out-there creative process, though, was Diagnose Some Fault Line (part 7 of Moonlight), which was proving... troublesome. I couldn't quite get everything into the order that I wanted it -- not on a screen, anyway. So I actually ended up printing the fic out, cutting it up, and playing jigsaw puzzles with the diary entries! Looking at it in a completely different way helped resolve the problems I was having, and made it clearer where entries were 'missing', needed redrafting, or needed to be chopped up further and redistributed within the story. I'm not in a hurry to write in that style again, but it's surprisingly fun!

56 - What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

When I set out to write knives, I am very, very successful with them.

39 - Share a snippet from a WIP

it's revalink, of course. under a cut for length:

Thank you for the motivation! Have a snippet of bloodweave that's been taking up brain space for too long.

Shadowheart blinks—her only sign of embarrassment—and refuses to get any further off track. "Fine. Fine! I don't care. Now that you've thoroughly wasted my time, could you at least try to answer my one, singular question?" The gaze she turns on Gale could etch glass, probably with a nasty word in beautiful calligraphy.

Reluctantly, the two men's eyes sidle slowly around the room, eventually meeting in the middle with an awkward bump. Gale raises his eyebrows. Astarion bites his lip, gaze flickering; his focus slinks down to the shiny floor tiles.

"Astrophage will consume other stars, correct," Rocky says, and there's something bleak about knowing that even with Earth and Erid saved, these other stars will die. That when his students grow, those who have kids will have to tell them stories of what it was like to look up at a sky full of shimmering stars and search for their favorite constellation. "Nothing we can do to save other stars. Not enough time. Not enough resources." Grace looks away, but doesn't say anything.