The Collaboration period has begun! In these quiet months before works are due, we want to foster a sense of excitement, camaraderie, and celebration among our participants. To that end, all participants were given the option of a formal interview by our mod, Alix, or an informal “ask-game” survey. We hope you enjoy getting to know our phenomenal creators as much as we have!
Heartbreaking: long anticipated family reunion includes hazing ritual
Alix and Harper talk unhinged romances and making Hawke miserable
Alix: This is your first time doing the DABB, right? What drew you to the event?
Harper: It is! I wanted to do it last year but I wasn't in a position to due to a mixture of work, DMing a Curse of Strahd game (which is basically a second job with the creative workload you have to do for it) and health. This time around though, I'm not DMing at the moment, and a friend of mine messaged me to let me know that sign-ups were live and I decided to give it a go. It's been a long time since I've successfully tackled some long form writing and wanted to see if I still had it in me to do it.
Alix: How are you feeling so far, now that you've got the first major check-in behind you?
Harper: I feel pretty good. Shockingly, I'm ahead of schedule - for me, that's actually kinda huge because I'm a very slow writer. To put it into perspective, a 2,000 word fic can either take me 3 hours in one sitting or 3 months.
So to have that major check-in behind me in just over a month makes me feel more confident that completing it is doable.
Alix: Getting through the 7,500 check-in and having your pitch submitted always feels like such a relief. Like "Oh, okay, this is possible."
Harper: Yes, exactly! I have been putting all the deadlines in my diary because I knew my ADHD would be my biggest enemy with the DABB. I'm terrible with deadlines unless I have them in 5 different places all blaring at me 24 hours before it's due.
Alix: I know that feeling all too well.
You mention it's been a long time since you've done long-form writing. How long have you been writing fanfiction for?
Harper: So I remember my very first foray into fanfiction was when I was about 12, on Quizilla (RIP Quizilla, you were a real one for pre-teen me), writing Pirates of the Caribbean fanfic, but I don't think I started seriously writing it until a few years ago. My long-form writing was actually for my university degree - I studied Creative Writing for my undergraduate. Most of my weekly assignments by third year were 3,000 each, so for 3 classes a week, that was 9,000-ish words. Plus my dissertation work.
I did try my hand at a longfic for a different fandom, and that got to about 25k before I got hit with work-related burnout and I just didn't have it in me to finish. I'd love to return to it one day, but I think if I did, I would want to go back through what I already have and make some changes, y'know? It's been a few years since it's had an update.
Alix: Yeah, I feel like it's hard to go back to things after a certain point, because your writing has changed in the meantime and you see all the ways you would do things differently.
Harper: Absolutely. Stylistic changes alone would be some work, but if you've also decided that since then, the endgame of that longfic and the core relationship dynamic have both changed, you might as well start from scratch.
Alix: What's your general approach to writing? Are you more of a planner or a pantser?
Harper: Depends. Back in my uni days, I would plan things out because I would be workshopping weekly with my classmates or I would be having one on one sessions with my dissertation tutor, so having a solid outline was very helpful - especially as I also had to have an accompanying research essay with it to explain my processes. Now I'm more of a pantser and I'm going off vibes or a specific image in mind. I'm trying to be more of a planner for this though, since I'm balancing it with my job, my health and such.
Alix: Obviously we can't talk about your DABB fic specifically since it's all secrets, but broadly speaking, what kind of stories do you like writing? What gets you most excited about a fic?
Harper: I tend to focus on relationships or locations more than anything. I credit to having gone really hard on gothic fiction during my last few years of school. The relationships for me have to have some kind of bite to them - I adore fluff as much as the next person, but sometimes I'll look at the most unhinged romance option I can find in a video game, point at them and go "I want that one", especially if I know it's going to be a bad decision. Also, locations can be as much of a character as people in the gothic -- haunted houses and the like, y'know? There's this one location in Pathfinder: Kingmaker, absolutely infamous for how much it sucks as an endgame dungeon, that has so much crunchiness to it that I want to write something surrounding that location.
Alix: Okay, so—what's your favourite, most unhinged romance option in Dragon Age?
Harper: I wouldn't say it's my favourite, but by far the most unhinged experience with a Dragon Age romance was doing a rival romance Anders with a templar-aligned Hawke. Good lord, never again. It went crazy for the Drama and Angst™ though.
Alix: That feels ... very doomed.
Harper: It was totally doomed. My Hawke was absolutely miserable - Bethany died in the Deep Roads too. I felt so horrible by the time I imported Hawke into DA:I and she mentioned Gamlen was the only one she had left, I actually changed her romance to Isabela.
I rarely feel guilty about making my characters suffer, but I really, really did with that run.
Alix: Oh no.
Harper: Yeah. ....At least I made up for it by giving her a hot pirate girlfriend instead?
Alix: Seems fair to me
I feel like of all the DA protagonists, Hawke really does have the worst time of it.
Harper: I think if you view DA2 as a tragedy, absolutely. Mind you, I managed to make my Inquisitor suffer a great deal as well.
Alix: What are our characters for, if not to torture, really?
Harper: Exactly! I've been a lot nicer to some of my characters. You could call this playing favourites, I just call it having some variety.
Saying that, I don't think it should be all doom and gloom. There needs to be some lightness in there as well as a balance.
Alix: Absolutely! Like, the fluff is sweeter when it comes amidst angst, and you always need a reprieve so the horror can gut you even more afterwards.
Harper: You get it.
Hmm, maybe I should write more fluff to balance out the Horrors ™ ?
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
Running away from her own destiny, secret princess Rook stumbles upon cursed prince Lucanis as he is held captive in witch Zara's tower. After springing him from his prison, she agrees to help him break his curse and reclaim his crown.
Hijinks ensue. And cameos. And all the fairytale references I could work into this romp.
The ✨viibees✨
It's all fairytales, baby!
Expect a decent mix of humor and romance and bit of horror with an active narrator winking at the camera.
Short snippet
Unfortunately, Lucanis had already borrowed a knife from Lace and pricked his finger. With a sigh, Rook bent down to pick a leaf from a nearby shrub and handed it to him.
"For the record, I don't think this is a good idea," she said, still frowning.
"Noted," he answered with a smirk, before taking the last few steps to the waterline and carefully setting the bloodied leaf to float.
For a moment, they just watched it drift. Then he cleared his throat.
"My name is Lucanis Dellamorte, and I am here to petition the inhabitant of this lake for a sword."
Nothing but silence met his bold claim. They waited for a minute. Then another. Then they began to feel awfully foolish, and were just about to turn around when the water began to bubble and churn around the leaf, eventually pulling in under, like a great beast swallowing a fly.
In its place, a pale figure rose, all porcelain skin and moonlight hair and supple curves, holding a shimmering sheath in its outstretched hands. When it opened its delicate lips, the sound of its voice drifted like music over the still surface of the lake.
"Your plea has been heard, Lucanis Dellamorte, once and future king. You may enter the water and receive your boon."
What other media inspired this fic?
Books books books!
Ok, and maybe the Last Unicorn movie. But mostly books, like Howl's Moving Castle and The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making and A Sorceress Comes to Call.
What character trait did you amplify or minimise to make your version of a character work for your story?
I may have made Zara slightly more vengeful? And Illario less callous and envious, because he gets a redemption arc in the sequel.
Oh, and Neve. I think I changed Neve quite a bit, making *her* definitely more vengeful, but also less caring about the people around her, because I needed her to be a bit more mean.
What’s one thing you put in—trope, character beat, scene—that was just extra shamelessly self-indulgent?
The entirety of chapter 19 (Smooth like Skin), which is my idea of a fun filler episode whose only purpose is to make Lucanis extra flustered because this is my fic and I can do what I want.
You know that trope where your characters have to strip because they fell into a river or got caught in a thunderstorm? Yeah, that one.
What’s the structural choice you made on purpose—POV, timeline, chaptering—that most shaped the story?
I ... am actually super structured in how I plan out my fics? Particularly the long, plot-heavy ones? So there are a lot of very deliberate structural choices in there.
If I had to pick anything, I'd say the timeline most shaped the pacing? But the thing that shaped it the most was really the setting, and the rules and tropes inherent to fairytales and their retellings.
Which theme emerged accidentally, and which one did you pursue deliberately?
I think the surprisingly heavy focus on identity emerged largely accidentally, as my idiots have to figure out who they are and who they want to be.
The theme of redemption - of recognizing your mistakes and trying to make up for them - is very much intentional (for Neve and Lucanis, at least - Rook's still working on this).
(But really, most of what's in there is there by design.)
What was the biggest risk you took with this fic? In a hypothetical scenario where you are forced to rewrite the whole story from scratch, what would you do differently?
Eh, the biggest risk was writing this at all; looking at what does and does not work well on ao3, not making it spicy was probably also a risk ;)
If I *were* to write the whole story from scratch, I'd try to make more space for my companion stories - giving Lace, Taash and Davrin more of an arc of their own, as well as expanding on the fairy godpeople lore (though I can still do the latter in the sequel, I suppose).
Gently tagging ... uh ... @sorrygoldfish and @dreamywritingdragon :)
Tumbl, you are the only place I can think to turn to so: please help me find the actor interviews from the cast of Star Trek (I think it's mostly TOS actors and writers but the guy plaing Q in TNG also had some valuable lines so anything goes as far as I'm aware). And I mean the gay fucking cursed content along the lines of "I wanted to fuck him and that's what I acted on" (which also I'm. Not sure where is from nor if it's even real, I migh have just imagined it). I am trying to win an argument with my mother here, it's high stakes!
Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.
✓ Live Streaming✓ Interactive Chat✓ Private Shows✓ HD Quality✓ Free Actions
Free to watch • No registration required • HD streaming
The thing that has always drawn me to writing sci/fi is that the really good versions of it deal with real issues - so much of what goes on in the sci/fi world is an allegory for what is going in our world. I’m inspired by the struggles that people go through and how they overcome them and I think the Shadowhunters world deals with a lot of that in terms of race relations, how politics can endanger our way of life, etc.
As we look forward to another year, there’s no better time to celebrate our wonderful community of creators. This year, we’re shining a spotlight on our alumni: the talented writers and artists who successfully completed the Dragon Age Big Bang in previous years. All past DABB alumni were given the option of an interactive interview with our mod Alix, or an informal written survey. If you’re thinking about participating this year, check out the insights and advice from those who tread this path before!
On cave trauma
Alix and Joly talk first fandom events and scope creep
Alix: So, DABB retrospective time! Tell me a little bit about the fic you wrote last year and what drew you to your idea?
Joly: I wrote "The Scorpion and the Halla" which was about an Arlathan-era agent of Fen'Harel investigating the first instance of Ghilan’nain’s Blight Labs and the concept of the Blight as something that could infect people and cause problems. DAtV has those memories you can uncover, and I have complicated feelings about them, but they are a neat narrative device and I really wanted to look closer at the concept of the Blight as both an experiment gone wrong (or right, if you're Ghilly) and the repercussions of the war with the Titans.
Alix: What was your favourite thing (or thing(s), if you can't pick just one) about your fic? Is there anything you were particularly proud of?
Joly: I joke a lot about the Cave Trauma because it was really hard to write such an extended action-heavy sequence, but I am really pleased with the result! I think the rising action and climax of discovering the Blight experiments and trying to get that news back to the Rebellion reads well as an action-sequence, which has never been something I feel strong about in my writing.
Alix: I do remember all the talk of caves!
Joly: It went on so long. I think it ended up being like. Five chapters? Maybe six? It was supposed to be two.
I thought I was gonna die there.
Alix: It's wild how things can grow beyond our control like that. You think you have it all planned out, and then....
Joly: I feel like that happened to a lot of folks. We all got into some spot where it just kept going or we realized this one spot needed to be dialed in to focus.
Alix: There's a reason we all joke about scope creep!
What was it that made you sign up for DABB in the first place?
Joly: I hadn't really done a fandom event before, and I knew I had an idea I could stretch into the word count. Prior to last year's DABB I'd never really attempted a multi-chapter fic so it was super intimidating, but I wanted to see if I could hold a narrative that long. Turns out I can!
Alix: One of the things I've noticed doing these interviews is how many people signed up for DABB as their first significant fandom event, and that's just so delightful to me.
Joly: Yeah! It was a really nice experience to introduce me to fandom events, when I had worried it was going to be overwhelming.
Alix: Is there any advice you want to share with this year's writers?
Joly: I think for me it was really important to get the idea down before worrying about word count. You can always go back and pad places or cut back. What helped me stay on track was making sure the narrative was moving forward and then coming back to fix the paint.
Mostly I think being active in the chat and encouraging others and receiving that encouragement was the best part of the experience, so I would definitely recommend getting brave and making friends. It never felt like a burden to work on the project, because the chat was always active and ready to cheer whatever you manage for that day.
