#loftec

GT: I know the feeling, you make up a username and password you're a teenager and end up being stuck with it forever lol

E: Exactly, but I like it though! I had a handful other usernames going at the same time but this was the one that stuck for a reason. Very few people know where it's from, it's closely tied to my best friendship, and it feels more like a nickname than a username at this point because it's been so long. It always makes me weirdly happy when people call me loftec or versions of it : )

GT: Ok, now tell us a bit about yourself, please.

E: Well! I'm turning 35 this year, I'm Swedish and I've lived in Japan and the UK, but now I'm back in my hometown. I studied music theory, cultural leadership (it's a thing but don't ask me what it means), printmaking and Illustration at university, and now I work as a graphic designer and learning designer. What else? I like all the things; the music and the films and the books, etc. I wish I had double time so I could work, relax a bit, and also have time for all my little plans and projects, such as writing and binding books and building tiny items, because I love doing those things but I never seem to have much time for them these days. I live with a small toothless cat.

GT: Ok, first of all, you are so talented in so many ways, I'm in awe! 

E: Thank you! I’m a little bit good at a lot of things, I think. I’m too interested in everything to ever be the best at anything, probably. This used to frustrate me when I was younger and I didn’t question that Middle Child urge I had to be The Best at everything I did. Now I’m just happy to find time to do anything and enjoy the process of making something!

GT: Second, a very important question: what's the name of your cat?

E: The most important question! She’s adopted, my brother took her in when she was two and then I took care of her while he was away for a bit, and now she lives with me permanently. This all to say that we didn’t name her Bella. I mostly call her ”[insert adjective] Cat” (Stretchy Cat, Sleepy Cat, Sneezy Cat, Poor Kitty; depending on whether she’s currently stretching, yawning, sneezing, or yelling at me to feed her) or Pigeon, Snek, Miss Piggy, etc, depending on what cat-unlike noise she’s making in the moment.

GT: And third, you lived in Japan? That's cool! Do you speak any Japanese? Or any other languages aside from English and Swedish?

E: I did! I lived in a town outside of Osaka, called Hirakata. They have a university there called Kansai Gaidai where they do an Asian Studies program for international students. I lived there for just under a year and at the time, I knew enough Japanese to sort of get by. But then I went home and didn’t make an effort to keep it, cue twelve years later and I’m on Duolingo desperately trying to get it back. So, yeah! I don’t really know any other languages well enough to do much with it but I did study French for six years (didn’t learn a thing!) and Danish and Norwegian are close enough to Swedish that I can understand them. Mostly. Honestly, maybe just Norwegian, Danish people normally just start speaking English when they talk to Swedes because they know we’re hopeless.

GT: Do you read or write fics in other languages too?

E: I think I’ve read two, I read one Norwegian SKAM fic once because I stumbled across it and I figured why not, and it was great! But SKAM is pretty much perfect the way it is, so I never felt a need to seek out more fic. And then the other was like a Doctor Who drabble crossed with some obscure Swedish thing from my childhood, that I found once when I browsed all the odd fandoms on AO3 that only have one fic written about them. I don’t remember what it was but I remember that it was cute and I just love that it exists. But those are pretty much it, I started reading books in English when I was around twelve years old and haven’t really read anything in Swedish since (which is a bit sad, thinking about it). English just fits me better in many ways, especially when I write, it allows me to be sincere and eloquent in ways Swedish often can’t.

But now I want to look up Swedish fics on AO3! I don’t imagine that there are many, but it would be fun to know what they are.

GT: You should do it! When did you start reading fanfiction and when did you start writing it?

E: I think I found out about it sometime in high school? And I probably started reading it in earnest when I was 17-ish? Ok so, I’m rubbish with dates, so I just did a light bit of research on my own life (that is, I broke into my old livejournal account) and I think I have a vague idea of the general timeline…

When I got into writing, I wrote a whole bunch of fic around 2006-2007, which unsurprisingly coincides with that one year between high school and university where I lived at home, worked as a part time telemarketer, and was generally miserable except for when I was online. This was when I got into my first big online fandom community, reading and eventually writing real person fic about a j-rock band. We were in this insulated bubble and I justified it to myself by asserting that I was writing about the on-stage personas, not the real people… a justification that didn’t hold water for very long. I don’t think RPF is this reprehensible thing, but I grew out of it pretty quickly and now I feel squeaky about it, personally. Most of my online community dropped out at the same time I did, but I must have continued reading fic from other fandoms because I distinctly remember when AO3 popped up in 2009, I know I managed to finagle an invite to start an account, which I eventually would delete only to get myself re-invited 6 years later when I fell in with the Shameless crowd. Good thing those pesky Russian architects didn’t snag my username while I was away!

GT: When did you start watching Shameless and what made you ship Ian and Mickey?

E: It was in spring 2015, while season 5 was airing. I was watching a bunch of compilation videos of queer relationships from different TV shows (perfectly normal behaviour) and there was this 1,5 h long video with all of Ian and Mickey’s scenes up until season four. I instantly loved Ian, I think he was such a unique, understated and layered character, and I loved that I could recognize so much of myself in both of them even though their situation and issues were about as different from mine as they could be. At the end of that video I knew I wanted to watch the whole show to get the full context for their story, but they didn’t have it on Swedish or UK Netflix so I ended up watching five seasons of Shameless UK instead. Bad idea on the whole, it’s not very good (especially if you go in specifically caring about Ian).

In the end, I got my hands on some ~files~ and I think I spent less than a week watching all five seasons. It was not a particularly good time in my life, and I suppose Shameless was a distraction… Ian and Mickey made me feel feelings, which I appreciated, and the end of season five made me so Sad and Angry that I pretty much couldn’t think about anything else for a good few months (which I also appreciated). Well, naturally I started reading fic and found this community on Tumblr, and by the end of the summer I’d read Every Fic and was unexpectedly planning my own. I hadn’t written anything for about 8 years at that point, so I’m incredibly thankful for the whole thing, in retrospect. When a show has such luminous characters and brilliant potential, but then makes such terrible choices… it’s unfortunate, but it’s also the perfect storm for fic *chef’s kiss* and apparently exactly what I needed at the time.

GT: Wow, I thought you had been in the fandom for longer. Not that since season 5 isn't long, but you're one of the authors everyone has read (rightfully so), and it felt longer to me. Binge-watching Shameless is a very relatable experience, from what I've heard. Seems like we've all done it. And that's true, trying to fix the show’s messes is always a great writing incentive.

E: Haha yeah, no I slipped in just under the wire I think! Because I was there during that upset period when people started denouncing canon in earnest, I kind of belong to the old guard even though I’d pretty much just wandered into battle like Troy with his pizza.

GT: Not Troy with his pizza! [reference to Community] Lol Best episode of any TV show ever.

E: Agreed

GT: What do you like most about writing Gallavich?

E: Starting out, my heart was just overflowing with feels for them, and because their canon storyline was in such a crappy place at the time I loved imaging all sorts of alternative scenarios for them. I’d spent so much time thinking about their characters as individuals and their chemistry as a couple, that building a story or a world around them turned out to be easy and such excellent fun. It’s still the thing that drives me even though I’m pretty much estranged from the show. I feel like I know them (or, at least the version of them as I’ve understood them) and I want them to like, get to do stuff. Have a conversation, for example, or fight giant squid aliens, why not, or escape from the Matrix, sure! I think they have so much potential to be funny and serious and exceptional and perfectly normal. They both have very distinctive and complex characters, but there’s also this vast amount of space around them for me to imagine pretty much anything I want.

GT: Absolutely agreed. Also, your Matrix AU [White Swallow]? *chef's kiss*

And what do you consider the most difficult thing about writing them?

E: Hehe, thank you! Hm, the most difficult thing is probably that I am very different from them. I'm not American, I'm some unknown amount of years older, I'm not a gay man... trying to fully embody another person and figure out how they tick is one of the most fun parts of writing, but it's fun also because it's difficult. Understanding my own limitations, interrogating my biases, and considering every choice I make... without letting it completely overrule the flow of the story or conversation, or the fun of exploring a set of characters. I want them to be true to their own experiences, but also let them be a little bit of me as I write them.

But the actual most difficult thing to me is just time management, I have the ideas and itch to write, and I find joy even in the more tedious or tricky parts of writing, but time is always an issue and often when I do have time, I don't have the energy. I'm at a point where I have started to daydream about retirement! I can't wait to be a fandom grandma. So I don't know, look forward to a lot of updates in about 30 years, I guess?

GT: I feel slightly better knowing you have the same problems, not gonna lie lol. Do you prefer writing Ian or Mickey?

E: We’re all in this together! I do prefer writing Mickey, for a few different reasons. We all know he’s extra fun to write, he has such a distinctive style and he allows for both deep introspection and brash fun expression, and the dynamic push and pull of those things. And the thing is that I have identified more with Ian from the start, so writing from his perspective usually means that I have to grapple more with my own stuff and be more careful about not projecting too much… But really, I prefer Mickey mostly because I love writing his snarky, funny, clever dialogue and pair it with a softer and unfiltered inner life. What he says and what he thinks are two different types of unfiltered; he will say anything but can’t say everything. I think he’s very interesting that way as a POV character. And I find Ian very interesting as someone who rarely says what he’s thinking, so not letting myself or Mickey or the reader know his thoughts feels like an extension of his character.

That said, my Big Bang is from Ian’s POV and I really love writing it, but I’ve thought about it a lot and I think it will end up being a very different style from how I normally write.

GT: That's a very interesting analysis and I think you're absolutely correct. Mickey is easier to read, which also makes him easier to write, in general. Which other Shameless characters do you enjoy? Do you include them in your fics?

E: I think I always have the ambition to include all the Gallagher siblings, because I love the idea of their chaotic dynamic; how they’re so ride or die for each other but also really bad at it, at the same time. Ian has very different and all interesting relationships with his siblings, and I often like to set up these relationships as a way of tracking where he is emotionally. I think I more often than not end up focusing on Lip, he’s fun to write and I have a lot of love for the character still.

On Mickey’s side, I’m a real sucker for Yevgeny. I’m not a big kid fic fan, but I usually write fic set some ten years ahead of the canonical end of season 5 and I always feel compelled to include Yevgeny somehow. I think it has a lot to do with my general ”Let Mickey Have Friends” campaign,I want to surround him with people who love him and appreciate him for who he is. I know a lot of people feel it’s wrong to ”force” Mickey into fatherhood considering where it started and I have a lot of respect for that point of view. But I like the idea of the two of them growing together, and for Mickey to have a family in Yevgeny with which he can be entirely himself; loving, protective, strong, loyal… it could be a way for him to break a lot of patterns that were forced on him as a kid, and a way for him to build a life that isn’t entirely centered around Ian.

GT: What kind of fics do you write the most? 

E: AUs, definitely, love a good AU. Beyond that I’d say I mostly do two extremes? Either small-scale no-stakes humdrum slice-of-life AU, or big bombastic Adventure AU with lots of world building and plot. And long. Never-ending multi chap long. I’ve been trying to get into the mindset to write some short things, but I find it really difficult. I love reading short one-shots, fics that drop you into a story running and then pull you back out again wanting more. But I’m not good at writing like that, myself. I’m all about the pining, and any elements of fluff or angst is just there in service of the mighty slow-burn Pine. Tedious canon-divergent pining with a side of banter, is that a genre?

GT: You ARE an AU queen.

E: That is a title I would proudly accept! I feel like I have more Adventure AUs in my WIPs than on my AO3 though, really need to do something about that...

GT: What does your writing process look like? 

E: Whenever I have an idea, I write it down in broad strokes so I won’t forget it. Then, whenever I have time, I flesh it out by describing the plot and each scene in more detail, typing out dialogue if I think of something specific, making connections, writing down different versions or new ideas, feeling them out and letting things marinate until I have time to actually write. When I do, I start at the beginning and work my way through to the end, I can’t jump around and write a little here or there. At some point, I will have a feeling that it’s ~done~, the last paragraph of a chapter is very obvious when it suddenly appears. Then I start editing, I usually go through the thing four or five times to rewrite the first draft, check for flow and write around repetition, and figure out if I need to cut anything or obfuscate something. Then it’s usually four in the morning and I post the thing because I can’t resist it any longer, even though I probably should have let it rest for a bit and checked it again in the morning.

With None the Wiser, I had maybe 10 chapters accumulated before I started posting, thinking that it would last me long enough to keep a real-time posting schedule for the next six months. I am, in case it wasn’t already obvious, a bit of an idiot about these things. A time optimist, we very kindly call people like me in Sweden. So yeah, now I write a chapter and as soon as it’s done I can’t wait to post it.

I think it’s probably smarter to write everything at once and then post the chapters at set, reasonable intervals. But I have done that (for White Swallow and Take This Waltz) and I didn’t enjoy it as much. It’s really absurd that it has taken me over five years to write not even all of NTW but I’ve enjoyed every minute of it… and I think it has evolved into something much better than it was supposed to be, because of it.

GT: How much research do you typically do before or during writing?

E: I think it depends! For NTW I research a lot of location stuff (Ian traveling right now is so much fun for me) and a lot of the time I will have a vague idea of what kind of odd reference I want Mickey to make for different situations and then I’ll have to research very specific things to find something that’ll fit, like Care Bears, or Dutch settlers, or buttresses.

When I write something that’s about a certain thing, like an illness, or set in a certain time period, I try to find facts to back me up but mostly I try to find accounts from people who have dealt with the same thing, or been the same age during the time when it’s set. Researching something like cancer treatment, or what living with bipolar actually is like, makes it very obvious very quickly that it’s often about experiences and not exact rules, so I try to respect that and not specify the things I can’t find examples for.

Most of all I look up words, because I don’t know how to trust my own knowledge and I like words, so learning more about them is always fun.

GT: What's your favorite Gallavich fic that you’ve written so far and why?

E: This is a tricky question, isn't it? On the one hand, it's easy for me to say NTW because I'm still actively working on it and it's the thing I've put the most time and effort and love into, and having it grow with me over the years helps with the whole 'looking back at what I wrote last year and cringing about it' thing. It's an absurd mess in many ways but I love it so much and it's a constant source of joy and amazement for me whenever someone tells me they also enjoy it. So it gets a lot of points for that alone.

But honorable mentions to 'Come and Get Your Love', it isn't the one people generally tell me they like best but I think it's the one that has aged best for me, in the sense that I had an idea of a moment that I wanted to capture and I still feel like I did capture that moment. It's far from perfect, but it reminds me of my friend who made the art for it, which is always nice, and if I close my eyes I can still perfectly picture that moment.

GT: For the record, my favorites of yours are White Swallow and Rudie can't fail (the one you wrote for me in a gift exchange).

E: Thank you for saying that! I loved writing Rudie and knowing that you liked it makes the memory of it so much better. I think I'm of two minds when I think back on fic, where one is solely focused on the technical aspect of it (did I manage to do what I set out to do? Is it well constructed in hindsight? The answer is usually no, because things like that can always be better). The other is audience focused. Because I know I can't trust myself to be kind about my own work, I have to trust other people to be truthful when they are kind about it. Rudie Can't Fail belongs to you, so you liking it is all that matters in the end. On a technical level, I think I'm just not good at writing something in that quick way that you need to write a gift exchange fic, and I can't stop myself from thinking about what I would have done differently with more time.

But also, just thinking about things and never actually writing them is why I have more WIPs than finished fic! So I'm grateful for events like the exchange or Gallavich week that has pushed me out of my own thinking ways <3

I'm also really proud of White Swallow, but I focused so much on the broad vision of it; how does it fit into the Matrix universe, how does the philosophy and the timeline work out... I can't help thinking I dropped the ball on some of the more small scale parts of it. But also! I love reading fic that is a bit raw and unpolished, so I don't know why I have such a hard time with my own fic when I allow myself to write without questioning it to no end.

GT: Don't be so hard on yourself, you're an excellent writer. I understand the feeling about fandom events though - I feel like I wouldn't have written half the stuff I wrote without them.

What are your favorite type of comments to receive? 

E: Saying 'all of them' feels like such a non-answer, but it's true! I think I've had two comments in five years that didn't make me happy, everything else has – be it one word comments or comments long enough they have to be split in two. I'm not very good at commenting myself and I've got some anxiety wrapped up in it sometimes, so getting any kind of positive response is amazing to me, and always makes my day.

Of course, there are a handful of comments that I can still recall pretty much exactly what they said and how they made me feel, and who made them. Like the first really long and sincere comment I got on NTW, or the musician who said I inspired them to create something... when people are enthusiastic and sincere, it's just very special to me and I keep that stuff with me always. Where else do you get that kind of feedback? That kind of connection? I feel like it's unique to fic and the kind of community we are able to build in fandom if we take care to be kind to each other.

GT: What are some of your favorite fics and/or writers in the fandom?

E: So many, I'm trying to think of a good approach here so I won't just list people and fics endlessly...

Ok so, these are the inexplicable top tier; the 'I read them 4 years ago and they still hit me hard in the feels when I think about them' tier – the no rhyme or reason favourites (also I haven't actively read fic in any real way in this fandom for some time now, so these will probably all be Classics).

Flyboy and the Gearhead (and everything else by @the-rat-wins), I'd Follow Your Love Down a Dead End Street (by @thehummingbirdsound​), The New Year (by @lan-jev), Familiar (by MimiLaRue), dreams so real (by ironspines), Twelve Months (by @jellovich​), and eighty-four (by kissteethstainred).

I'm stopping myself now because I feel the need to make a complete list of every brilliant writer and work in this fandom... that will have to wait for another time and place.

GT: What are your favorite tropes?

E: I love myself a slow burn, obviously... Mutual pining is always nice, a well-placed feelings-reveal. Love a fix-it. Or very specific canon divergence, where the author knows exactly the moment where they change tracks and take off somewhere else. I don't know, I just realised that since I started reading fic in multiple fandoms and not just Shameless, I think I like different tropes for different fandoms. Like, I know exactly what a top tier Merlin fic would look like, but I don't have that kind of wish list fic for Shameless. Back when I only read Shameless fic, I truly tried to read everything and only stopped if I didn't like the style or characterisations.

GT: What are some of your fanfiction pet peeves?

E: This can also differ from fandom to fandom, but there are a couple of general things that will make me click out of a fic if it's done excessively. The blond/e / brunet/te thing (or ginger/raven thing for Ian and Mickey, which honestly is even worse) is one of my smallest but most pervasive gripes. If the fic is otherwise capturing my interest, my brain will just do its very best to skip over every mention of hair colour and fill it in with a name, but if it's one of many little things this is often the final straw for me. Other little petty things are like, physical descriptions that don't make sense? And I'm not actually talking about the Confusion Twister sometimes going down in the bedroom (because I normally skim over those scenes anyway) but just, where are people in relation to each other in the room right now? Where are their hands? What are they doing? How is this guy rubbing his stomach and petting his head, I thought he was carrying a cup of coffee? I'm extra weird about this because one of my biggest issues with my own writing is my bone-deep urge to describe every single second and account for every little movement, which probably can be just as bad to read, honestly. But yeah, understanding a character's physicality is a big thing for me. The amount of grown-ass men just casually sitting on each other's laps or carrying each other around in fic? I mean. We all have our fantasies, I suppose, to each their own. But there's physics to consider. I also don't like it when people overly describe characters, their faces or what they're wearing. But this is entirely a me thing, I've never liked that stuff even in books.

Also, at the first mention of eyes as 'orbs' I'm out of there. My friend actually told me about this before I saw it with my own orbs, and I didn't believe her. It wasn't really a thing in Shameless fic at the time, I think, but reading in other fandoms I soon found out that she was telling the truth. It doesn't necessarily turn me off a fic, but I definitely have to pause and mentally screech ORBS!!! whenever it happens.

Those were the petty ones. Normally, if I read something I don't like I will just click out of it and no harm done, it's just clear that this trope or style or plot isn't for me and I'll just back away and find something else. So I don't think stuff like that counts as pet peeves, they're just Different Tastes. 'Don't like, don't read' is definitely my approach... and honestly, good on the people who delight in the things that bug me. I may not like some of it, but I admire anyone creating and putting themselves out there by sharing it.

GT: What’s your favorite season of Shameless? Do you have a favorite episode?

E: It’s been so long since I watched the first five seasons now, I can’t really remember a specific episode that I liked best as a whole. If I think of moments that stick with me most, they’re mostly from seasons four and five I think, and I think my favorite season is probably the bridge of time between four and five lol. The switch from winter to summer is great, the emotion packed into the unspoken, the time gap, the potential. It was great, it was subtle but clear. Things still felt purposeful at that time, for me.

GT: Do you have a favorite Gallavich scene?

E: I had several classic contenders, but a little voice in the back of my head kept saying ”guest womb, it’s guest womb!”. And I have now rewatched that scene and yeah, I can’t deny it, I just really love that scene. It’s got everything I like; casual conversation, serious conversation, word play, cheeky smiles. Like with every single one of their scenes at this point, there’s bad stuff brewing under the surface that makes it hurt a little, but I still feel like this scene is one of the few casual examples we had of how they could be together. How they moved around each other, how they talked about their relationship and about the people and things around them, about their circumstances.

GT: That's not one I was expecting you to say, but I love that you did. The domestic banter always gets me too.

E: I know right, I really tried to think of a more impactful scene I could talk about, but one must be true to oneself I suppose. Domestic bants!

GT: If you could go back and change one thing in canon, what would it be?

E: I would change the end of season 5, I think. I don’t mind so much that they broke up (although the writing was awful and made very little sense), but I wouldn’t have Mickey go to prison. I’d rewrite Ian’s speech so it made sense, and then I’d cut the scene where Mickey got arrested… Image how good it could have been if Mickey stayed on while they were broken up! They could have had their own storylines about non-romantic things for a while, doing their own things and growing as individuals; missing each other, hurting from this decision, maybe even reuniting as friends for a bit when being apart gets too hard, and then finding their way back together? Ian breaking up with Mickey at that point could have been a massive decision with real emotions and consequences, building the characters up instead of tearing them down, but it ended up just being a shit plot point because of all the transparent behind the scenes reasons for it happening.

GT: Final question: what's coming up next? What have you got planned fic-wise?

E: Up next is the Big Bang! Posting starts early May, so there will be something up from me then at least. Beyond that… I just hope my work situation changes soon, so I can start writing more again. I have a couple of stories I’d like to get out of my system in addition to finishing my current WIPs… and I pretty much have a whole lifetime of NTW planned, so there’s that to look forward to, as well.

GT: Well, that's it. Any parting words?