#tfecau

how long had you developed the worldbuild and story for the fanfics/AU[…]?

i’ve been working on ecau since february of 2014. it’s a massive, constantly changing, and ever-developing undertaking with a life of its own. it’s also a self-indulgent playground of a sandbox, and i have a ridiculous amount of content i need to refine and publish in terms of society, music, culture, mech “biology”, linguistics, “science” that’s just me pulling nifty concepts out of my ass… you name it, i’m working on it. i have a fuckton of character designs to do still, too (my lofty goal is to eventually design an ecau version of every character in transformers history).

most of my worldbuilding in ecau happens when other people ask me questions about it! i come up with answers on the spot, which then develop into bigger ideas and connect with existing content and characters. a lot of minor stuff changes over time

the seed was sown for aboard the prosperity a year or two before i ever started writing the story, in a crack roleplay on deviantart (i’ve since closed my account and can no longer check the date of the roleplay’s beginning). i started writing a shanix for your thoughts in september of 2015, and i wrote the vast bulk of the story in about a month’s time between mid october and november, if i recall.

loyalty for sale has been a much slower process, with several big ol’ hiatuses in between chunks of writing a couple chapters at a time.

the worldbuilding for atp develops naturally as i write and as i need worlds for certain purposes. dross, opulus, bk’n—these planets barely existed as mentions in the allspark almanac (according to tfwiki, which is much more accessible to me and was my only source of almanac info at the time of writing). i grabbed things that looked like i could make them what i needed… and i did. so it’s been a constant process, done as needed!

as for my other fic, well, i’ve been writing for over 5 years. it all varies, but ecau, atp, and soon also Transformers: Brutality are the biggest fan-projects i’ve ever undertaken. i’m also hoping to draw a G1-based comic by the title of [Virus], but that’s a whole other can of worms that i’ve been working on, in a very on and off (but mostly off) fashion, for something like 4 years. and then the post-S3 quintesson story comic for tfa, and the quintessence comic for ecau, and… geeze

how did you balance said worldbuilding with research in your daily schedule?

my guy, i have no idea what a “schedule” is. i write when the whim takes me and i have the spoons to do it. i build my aus up haphazardly and almost by accident when people happen to be curious enough to ask, or when i just see a headcanon or fanon that inspires me, or when i’m walking between my residence room and/or my college classrooms and i just happen to think hey, what if…

i have professionally diagnosed sleep dysfunction and self-diagnosed adhd. my mind wanders, i procrastinate hard on my schoolwork for no good reason, and i’m up at odd hours all the time… so why not write or draw? why not world-build? why not make a fucking conlang or two? why not compose music or design characters?

quite honestly, i don’t know how i manage all the ideas i do. i have so many.

i guess that’s what happens when you’re an overly-ambitious perfectionist and the existing canon and fanon material isn’t exactly what you want.