#mouseymightymarvellous

This past year I moved, and I'm very happy. Happy with my new job (which is like a job I had before that I missed but had to leave for a variety of reasons) and happy with the location which is more similar to where I grew up. We have seasons, there has been so much snow and I had forgotten just how much joy snow brings me.

But I'm also in one of the areas that is getting a lot of ICE attention right now. Which is, as I'm sure you can understand, massively stressful.

Which means I am trying to balance staying informed, being productive/involved in the community around me, and not losing my goddamn mind via stress.

I have been taking extra care to appreciate the beautiful moments -- sunset over sparkling snow, the feel of snowflakes on my eyelashes, cats cuddled up into improbable pretzels, cats making start up noises, poofballs of birbs in trees, sunlight through tree branches.

I have been purchasing art that makes me happy.

One of my coworkers has been 3D printing small animals and hiding them around the work building. He put about a dozen on my desk and I keep them in my pocket and enjoy feeling them in my fingers and pulling them out to look at the cute.

And I have been making art to survive.

6. How do you find new fic to read? Where do you primarily read fanfiction?

I occasionally will go through the pairing tags on tumblr to find things to read- I generally get in the mood to read stuff for like, one fandom at a time, and then go all in on that for a little while and then move to something different. Primarily, I read on Ao3, occasionally on FFN, but I am not planning on touching wattpad with a 20 foot pole haha. I looked at it once and was like ‘yeah this isn’t my thing’. Sometimes I’ll go through Ao3 tags to find new fics, and a lot of the time, I read things that the people I follow share on tumblr! :)

10. What’s your favorite fandom, pairing, or character to read fic for?

This is probably not what people expect, considering what I write, but the relationships and characters that I am most fascinated by, and that I enjoy reading about most generally involve Star Wars and the Skywalker family. There’s an AMAZING Jedi Shmi AU by MirandaTam that I cannot recommend highly enough- it’s one of my all time favs. There’s a really cute one about baby Anakin and Jocasta Nu in the Temple Archives called Biscuits in the Library, by fialleril.

Of all of them, I like reading stories about the complicated relationship between Anakin Skywalker and Leia Organa- it’s one that I think is really underexplored in the movies, considering that Leia is undoubtedly the twin that is most like Anakin in terms of personality. Bang The War Drums by surabayuh is an incredible one (also one of my all-time favs), as is the Double Agent Vader series and anything that Fialleril writes. Salanaland’s Skywalker Family Feels series is also lovely.

20. What’s your favorite part about the fanfiction writing process?

I really love getting sort of epiphanies about where a story is going to go, and immediately sitting down to write a scene that feels like it brings everything together! It’s a very encouraging and cathartic feeling.

By @mouseymightymarvellous

Link: Tumblr

Words: 6k | ? | tw: – | Complete

ah! someone answered that thing i reblogged forever ago!

awww, mouse, this is such a huge compliment!

the older I get, the more important those kinds of portrays are to me. it’s self-indulgent, me writing the things i want to see in fic. if anyone else enjoys them along the way, that’s a bonus

i think i might have done it a few weeks ago yea! haha i mean i don’t post that often on here anyway.

Oh that is such a good question! I’m drawing blanks a bit right now - I’ve not been deep in my own fic for a bit - but as I think about it, in terms of metaphors/imagery, I don’t know that I use the exact same ones often, but I do probably hold onto similar themes? The ones that especially can’t be shaken are those referring to the Sannin (big surprise to anyone, I know) as three parts of the same whole, for example, things like ‘love in three parts, not knowing where one began and the other ended’, more recently ‘a threefold cord not easily broken’. 

As for others that come to mind in existing works or wips, I know for emotional pain and heartbreak I’ve likened the feeling to versions of something like ‘adhesions torn open to bleed anew’ or ‘the hastily stitched wound where his heart once resided is now wrenched painfully open and he has been bleeding out ever since’.

I also think it goes without saying that serpentine imagery will never be parted from Orochimaru, nor will cool-water calm be removed from my portrayals of Dan Kato. I am unrepentantly in love with both.

I try to be somewhat intentional about my choices, though I know over the course of my growth as a writer, especially through the writing of my longer fic or older pieces, there are more instances of things I am self-conscious about and would change, but there are also things I know I love.

I don’t think there is a specific word I love that I overuse, just too many repeated adverbs or too many commas, lol. 

Thanks Maus - this really got me thinking :)

remember when milk toast centrists said we shouldn’t cut trump supporters from our communities because it was just a difference of opinions?

@mouseymightymarvellous HMMMMM