Anyway, from my Zodiac - Book 1 WIP. For your consideration:

Eli’s fingers grazed the table as he moved carefully toward his son. “You say that, but you’ve been avoiding telling me ever since you burst into the house in a panic.” He reached forward in the general direction of Tristan. “Here, let me weave it for you.”

Always in awe of his father’s magic, Tristan took his father’s hands and directed them to the wound. “It’s here. A… horn swipe.”

His father nodded and traced his fingers over the wound. “Doesn’t feel too bad. Must’ve when it happened, though, eh?” He grinned and closed his milky white eyes.

Tristan flinched as his wound glowed just barely with his father’s magic. He smiled and watched the process of his skin weaving a scab over the wound, then crusting up and falling off to reveal a slight scar happen in just a few seconds. His father, eyes still closed, ran a finger over the wound. Satisfied with his work, he tapped his hands over Tristan’s arms, down his chest a bit, and pulled him into a hug. The size difference brought Eli’s face into his son’s chest.

“My good boy. I’m sorry this happened. Did you want to tell me about it?” Eli patted Tristan’s back and pulled back from the hug.

Tristan shook his head and directed his father back into the chair. “Just… the usual.”

Eli dropped into his seat at the table. “Bigotry? You’d think they’d have gotten over it by now.”

I got tagged by @mysteries-x-mistakes for this! Thank you! I’m really confused at all the attention (read: any) I’m getting recently, but I welcome it. I am in desperate need of new friends as all the ones I currently have suck.

Favorite color: Short answer: pinks and purples. I have found that I hate locking myself into one thing via favorites, so I try not to. My favorite colors are pinks and purples. I would probably be one of those obnoxious UwU gamer girl aesthetics but without the personality.

Currently reading: Short answer: The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie. I haven’t read much since middle school and I’m trying to get back into it. I watched a Youtuber talk about his favorite books over the last year (he read 45!) and he said as a writer, reading is the closest thing to an apprenticeship you can get. But I don’t like reading, so it’s proving difficult. Being broke, though, has made it so I don’t want to purchase books when I don’t think I’ll like them, because then I’m out an increasing amount of money that I don’t have to spend. So I’ve gotten a library card, but my library doesn’t have all the books I’m finding, so when I get the desire to read a certain one and I can’t, then I just... add other ones to my list and never pick one to read. I acquired The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie and I’m not enjoying it because it’s too edgelord and gory for my tastes, but it’s the one I invested in for now. Also my husband was home on summer break, so I couldn’t really read while he was home. And the library loans are 2 weeks. I also tried to read a Jane Austen book and there was a sentence that went on for an entire paragraph in like... 1800s fancy English and I couldn’t do it. So I figured I’d grab the audiobook at some point.

Last song: Short Answer: I have no idea. A Youtube compilation of City Pop. I don’t listen to Spotify because of ads and I can’t curate it myself, so I listen to a lot of Youtube compilations. I love the Japanese 80s City Pop, the one popularized by Mariya Takeuchi’s Plastic Love. I also enjoy the like 2hr long compilations of video game music, or piano medleys of video game music, or covers. I listen to them while I write because I can’t process auditory words and writing words at the same time, so the instrumentals and foreign language don’t bother me. Kanye just released another album and my husband likes him, so he was trying to make me listen to all of Kanye’s discography, so I might’ve been subjected to that if my husband hadn’t realized I didn’t like Kanye after all his good albums.

Last movie: Short answer: I don’t remember, actually! So, my husband and I probably went to see Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker in theatres here in Japan, but as for a movie on, like, Netflix or something... Probably Spiderman Far From Home? Or maybe something else I don’t remember. We watch a lot of series, either on Netflix or an anime site. There’s plenty of long-form Youtube video essays, but I wouldn’t count those as movies...

Last series: Short answer: Star Trek Deep Space Nine Before that it was My Little Ponies, The Chair, Star Trek Voyager, and... Boku no Hero Academia. Star Trek DS9 became our comfort watch for a while. It’s very philosophical and relaxed and character focused. My husband really digs it. And I loved it as a kid. And I remember loving Voyager, but upon rewatching it, Voyager is way different than I remember.

Craving: Short answer: Chocolate. Always chocolate. Sometimes I crave other things like Coco’s curry or American chinese or American Ramen or Chef Boyardee or other stuff, but right now, I just wanna stuff my face with Arnott’s Tim Tams.

Coffee or Tea: Short answer: no thanks. My husband started to drink a little coffee every day to stay awake at school. In solidarity, I asked if maybe I should start trying coffee so he wasn’t alone. We stopped at a rest area along the toll road between Yamaguchi and Chiba (I don’t remember where) and got me a Cafe au Lait from a vending machine. I readied myself for it to be gross, since I’ve always hated coffee, but it tasted like chocolate and smelled like the best parts of coffee smells. Now I can tolerate a latte, but that’s as far as I’ll go down on the milk content. As for tea? I hate pretty much all teas except for dumb Crystal Light Peach Tea or Peach Mango Green Tea. It’s really difficult to live in a country with a million different bottles teas and coffees and I hate all of them. I usually grab a Salty Lychee or a Coke Zero if we get a beverage at the konbini. Or, lately, a Protein Drink or something as a meal replacement.

Currently working on: My WIP I have affectionately called Zodiac. It is a multi-book epic elephant of a series that I am feeding every day with more ideas. I don’t know if I’ll ever start eating it.

Yes of course! Let's see here.

4) favorite character you’ve written

So this one is a little difficult because I feel like I've written a lot of characters because I've made so many fanfics, some that have never seen narrative prose (stayed as self indulgent outlines) or because I've spent so much time with the same cast of original characters for so long.

For fanfiction characters, I think my favorite is either Lucretia Doppel, the X-men OC I made, or Velstadt from Dark Souls 2. Doppel has a cool powerset that I've given her and she's kind of a damaged warrior that seeks out the good in others regardless of their alignment. And Velstadt is a loyal, strict, disciplined, faux-noble and was my primary example of Character Voice in writing.

As far as original content goes, I haven't really given anyone a solid characterization as yet. Alden was supposed to be my husband's humor masking side, but he's kinda devolved into an emo grump. Idania was supposed to be a better version of me to pair with Alden, but she's actually become her own character, an opinionated servant that suffers some great tragedies and then finds her strength out of spite to become a force of nature, literally. Billy, I think, is my favorite, just because I've spent the most time honing his character through his immortality survivor's guilt.

As a bonus! My favorite DnD character that I've made was the original version of Dahlia/Rokaria. She was intended to be a trickster Fae kind of character but the DM doesn't have the same idea of fae that I do, so it didn't work out. But none of my DnD games have, unfortunately, so.

9) what, if anything, do you do for inspiration?

I'm a terrible writer because I don't control myself or focus very well. There's plenty of times I will tell myself that I'm gonna write tomorrow/today and then sit around watching Youtube and playing video games and not writing.

But, I guess it depends on what inspiration means in this context. Is it the desire to write or is it like, what is your wip inspired by?

What gives me the desire to write is typically engaging with something that is well-written. Like watching a movie/show and realizing that they executed a story well and I wanna do that. Or reading something and having fun with the book and now I'm happy so let's get to typing. And the "I can't sleep so I might as well work on my story" and then waking up with ideas or something. Sometimes I just want to present my current situation to my husband, we brainstorm a while, and I start writing. I've also gotten an old friend to read my stuff and she sent me some feedback on my first chapter and it inspired me to go back and edit. (Then I remembered where I got stuck and got scared to keep going.)

For the other question, fanfiction inspiration is obvious, but the rest of it is hard. Because I don't feel like I write things with intentional inspiration, with the intent to make an ATLA inspired thing. It's more like I take the things I want to see happen, fantasize about them before bed, and then write. My husband came up with most of the premise of Zodiac, then I fell in love with it and took it over and I'm still trying to figure out what it's about and what I want to do with it. Wouldn't it be cooler if the Virgo Princess had agency and saved Alden and the other two idiots from their fate, but in doing so, made it look like they kidnapped her? Alden and Idania fall in love, but how long does it take and what brings them together? How does Gary being a Cusp affect how people interact with him and how his life plays out? You know, I guess ultimately the inspiration is answering questions.

I got super inspired and organized, however, when I started watching Youtube video essays about the craft of writing. Brandon Sanderson and Hello Future Me and OSP and such. TotallyNotMark and... other people I can't remember. People breaking down media that I already know and enjoy and showing me its core universal components. Like what my English 1102 class was supposed to teach me in college. But now let's discuss One Piece's themes and characterization.

Short answer, I dunno.

And the last question!

19) when it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

...I remember them.

It's only within the last couple years that I've started to actually work on hard worldbuilding for my WIP. I don't want to pay money for something like Scrivener and I tried yWriter but it didn't work for me. In a desperate bid to get people to pay attention to my WIP, I started trying to make one of those Comic Sans powerpoints and discovered a lot of things about my WIP and myself. The Powerpoint was really pleasant and I enjoyed using it to hold information. Then I started watching Youtube and started an outline of the overall series. And I did this because I wanted to participate in NaNoWriMo at least once. Because I've written so many words at this point, but nothing publishable.

I have a MSPPT for like, characters. Then another one that my husband called the World Bible, which has all the worldbuilding for the 12 different races. Then the big like 71 page outline in MSWord of half the series where I finally ran out of ideas and figured I'd know how to progress once I fleshed out the stuff that was already there. (I haven't yet, because I keep splitting myself between whatever feels the best to work on as a way of procrastinating on the stuff that's hard, so nothing is getting very done.)

The husband has decided, since he wants to be more involved with the project, to convert all that information into some kind of Wiki and is looking into World Anvil (free) to see if it will function for our purposes.

I'm verbose, apparently. I hope that was enjoyable, at least! Thank you so much for asking!