9. Write a recommendation of someone else's fic you enjoyed!
@theredheadedcaptain finished her long fic Celestial Storms almost exactly 1 year ago. This was the story that made me first fall in love with her story telling.
It's a beautiful post Endgame J/C romance with a robust ensemble cast (and some thoroughly engaging original characters!) It follows J/C through a new mission, an encounter with old enemies, and introduces a well handled interpersonal conflict that speaks to class tensions between former Maquis and other edge-of-the-Federation characters and the Earth-centric human Starfleet characters. In short I loved everything about it. The action and adventure, the political undertones and social commentary and the romance - omg the romance! It is a can't miss long fic!
14. Is there a character or ship you were so sure you would never write/draw but now you've changed your mind?
I struggled conceptualizing Seven of Nine when I first started writing Voyager fic. She seemed like a canonical mess of contradictions - first because of how the costuming objectified her in an extremely uncomfortable way - and then how the narrative really didnt deal well with how it must have felt being sexualized - by crewmates and her doctor and aliens - having just barely left the borg where her body was something that was probably only conceptualized in strictly functional terms (its own kind of objectification). All of her voyager era romance plotlines really squicked me for a long time (dont let me fall into my Doctor/Seven rant 😆)
And then two things happened.
(1) Picard came out and Seven had a queer romantic arc with Raffi.
(2) I met my wife, who had been a neurodivergent closeted teen in a much more social-norms-concious community than I'd grown up in, talking to me about how shed intensely studied and tried to emulate traditionally feminine things and had boyfriends as a way to "fit in" without actually knowing how it was supposed to feel
And suddenly a lot of things that never used to click with me about Seven - confusion about attraction and dating and insistence on performing heteronormatic romantic gestures as if dating was some essential part of being an individual - all of those offputting sexist storylines from the Voyager era looked a lot more like queer and neurodivergent coded behaviors.
And then Seven became a lot more intriguing and understandable to me on rewatches (Queer and Neurodiverent being neither of the things the original 90s character creators probably indented when they stuck her in the catsuit and had the Doctor give her social lessons) And shes now become a lot more fun to write now that I have an interpretation of her that jives with me.
15. Have you noticed your style change over time?
I dont know if i could pin point any one thing. but its like... I enjoy my own writing a lot more in the past 3-4 years than I did before. i feel more confident about it. A lot of that was rebuilding a writing community around me on discord (losing the in person one I had in college had me floundering for a while) and the second part was finding a planning process that worked for me - ive become a lot more confident that i can outline an idea, put it in a drawer and know that i can pick it up a few weeks or months later and have a solid blueprint for how to write that story.
Ive also gotten more concise and more conscious of a story's scope (i can finish a long fic in about 80-90k rather than 200k). And ive also gotten a lot more comfortable with the creative ebb and flow i tend to go through. just generally a lot more confident and comfortable with my craft. i know thats not the specific question but its definitely had a positive impact on my overall storytelling too.
