#whatsherfacewrites

Hmm. HMMM. This is possibly the hardest question. 

- Aloo chana chaat. Oh God I crave it. - Biscuits and gravy - Okonomiyaki Hiroshima-style - Nachos - Congee with thousand-year egg

12. Who is your favorite author? 

Oy. This is a difficult question! How can I pick just one? I’ll just list some of my favorite fantasy authors as I gaze at the bookshelf behind me: Madeleine L’Engle, Garth Nix, James Gurney (artist as much as author), Terry Pratchett, and just recently, because I started listening to audiobooks while driving my toddler around in the car (cuz COVID), Diana Wynne Jones and N.K. Jemisin!

19. What words do you think you tend to use the most? 

(Answered here)

29. What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? (Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etc) 

Outlining!!! OMG...I absolutely love it. It gives me life. Outlining with bits and pieces of conversations or interactions that NEED TO HAPPEN...

2. describe your ideal/perfect day?

asked and answered!

10. do you prefer the ocean or the mountains?

uh oh. asked and answered...

14. what is your go to snack?

asked and answered :(

26. favorite fruit?

...............asked and answered 😔

-

lol thanks! 

1. What's something you've written that you know is OOC and you just don't care?

characters are so subjective, but I can see how people would find Cullen in my DA modern AU as OOC. however, this is a different Cullen, as this Cullen didn’t work as a templar in Kirkwall, and is younger than he is at the start of inquisition. Honestly too I think Cullen is more of a nerd than a lot people think and not so much a jock. Like he’s athletic obviously but that doesn’t necessarily make you a “jock,” and I could write more about this but I’ll stop there, lol.

10. What’s your least favorite part about posting?

Thank you for the ask!

1: Origins! How did you come up with the concept for your OC?

Answered here, but I’ll elaborate a bit. Rolfe’s personality quirks usually came around from spiderweb brainstorming sessions and looking up stuff. Matt Rhodes’ official concept art of a hooded Inquisitor chilling in a tavern with Sera, Blackwall, and Cassandra shaped a lot of Rolfe’s tavern-centric stuff, then my brain went “taverns = ale = brewing = historically something churches/monasteries did = some Chantry sister got Rolfe interested in brewing. NEW BACKGROUND CHARACTER, ACTIVATE!  Bring it back to Rolfe: he starts up a brewery post-Inquisition and names the house ale after said sister who taught him everything she knew.”

Most of his other things that make Rolfe who he is went through a similar type of thought process.

3: Has your OC gone through different incarnations during their stay on Tumblr? Were they reimagined or have they stayed the same all this time?

Not so much reimagined, but more like reconfigured, especially when it comes to his family dynamic. The whole thing with Rolfe being a bastard son didn’t even come around until I had finished playing and had created Vincent, and then that idea was one of those 3 AM, wake out of a dead sleep ideas with Rolfe yelling “I HAVE A WHAT NOW??” at me and begging me to give him a good sibling relationship since the one he currently has with his half-brother and sister is downright awful.

The only thing that’s been really tweaked is an addition to an AU that @alittlestarling and I have been yelling back and forth about recently where we paired Rolfe and Roz up together. While Rolfe/Cassandra will always be my OTP for him, putting aside his “I Heart Cassandra Pentaghast” t-shirt and mug and having him carve R + R into trees has been so much fun and has really gotten me to get invested in his character all over again.

4: How do you get into your OC’s mindset to write for them? How do you find the muse for them?

I made a playlist (that I really need to update) for him, and his pinboard has like 500+ pins to scroll through to grab some inspiration. It’s either that or I’ll re-read any sort of headcanons or fics I’ve previously written for him to get back into the swing of things.

thank you for asking! i did create ellinor before playing DAI, and i did do some fic reading before playing the game, so i knew it would be cullen going into the game. i also saw some gifsets and art and stuff (after playing DAO and DA2) and i was like hmMMMmmmm cullen “glow up of the century” rutherford hmmmmm. and tbh i don’t know who else i would’ve picked! i adore sera and would love to play her romance sometime, but she wouldn’t have meshed well with ellinor in a romantic sense. cassandra might have a similar tension-to-romance sort of dynamic with her, but i play on xbox so i can’t mod her romance at all. but even then, i just love her so much WITH cullen that i never really could see her with anyone else!

Thank you for the ask lovely!!! ❤️

4. If you could change anything in WitD, what would it be?

*calmly inhales*

Ok, believe it or not, the ONE thing I would go back and change is the last half of CH17; specifically, the smut.

It was something I had partially written in the early stages, sort of “I knew where the fic was going & how to get there would be the fun part” -- ANYWAY, I was really struggling with WitD at that point. I wanted to finish it SO BAD & I got hung up for like 3 months on how the newly written section clashed with the prewritten smut. I did my best to blend it, but when I look at it, it all still reads slightly OOC to me. Hopefully this is just me, but... there it is. *cries*

6. Which scenes did you cut, and which were added in WitD?

CUT SCENES: I was always planning on covering the final battle & the conversation with Solas. However, when I got there, I felt it took away from the build up & the intent to have an open/ambiguous ending. Plus it brushed a little too close to canon in ways. Amladaris dies, the orb is destroyed, Solas disappears - all of that was easily implied without covering it, so it was axed & the world’s shortest epilogue was written instead.

ADDED SCENES: Believe it or not, in my original outline, Ez had died, so everything surrounding him was an addition. I felt it impacted Evelyn WAYYYY more find her brother tortured & broken after years of uncertainty. Give her that extra boost to be selfish & impulsive toward the end; tip her towards Eirlys Amell in ways. Plus, I needed an extra way to hint that Evelyn lived. I hope that wasn’t TOO subtle, but with Ez’s & Cole’s combined vague insight into the past/future, I wanted to set up that even though her & Cullen disappeared, they went to find Justice, ie Anders.

Plus... these changes set me up for a sequel if DA4 gives me the opportunity.

*phew*

I still have a lot of feelings about this fic & I’m incredibly proud of it. In fact, I thinks it’s the ONLY DA fic that I am proud of... So with that said, here is some shamless self-promotion: You can find this Noir/Dystopian AU - Wandering in the Dark - here, on Ao3.