but only because the bar was so low.’ ;A;

Let’s look at this- the main one: I stuck the character in the literally pits of hell on earth, slave to an actual Evil God, also took away some fingers and toes, kept him there for almost a century, had the other character also stuck in Evil God Central HQ as a prisoner after having her entire city destroyed by a dragon ….and it’s still a softer fate than their original canon. Other AU had the forgetting of identity with added animal transformation. Still nicer.

Plus, Halls of Mandos and Gardens of Estë. Even with the other fusion characters I’ve killed even with the one or two that didn’t die in the original canon, like Cloud Strife, I get that reset button of everyone heals and is reborn. Purely benevolent resurrections. No Red Gods.

1, 6 AND OFC 7!

1.       What are some writing tics that persist in your work but that you dislike?

Epithets. Omission or awkward clauses. Typos. That tic of peppering in non-English terms that immediately pegs me as a reader of anime/manga fanfic in the early 2000s even if I’m doing the equivalent with Sindarin/Quenya instead. I don’t have distinct voices for different characters/narrative tone.

6.       What’s your guilty pleasure as a writer?

Obscure allusions and private jokes hidden in name meanings (Four is Death so lets call this random OC Kanatië thus implied of the paired set with Kanat aka Number Four)

Fusions! Where I try to bury the characters and plot parallels of the inspiration work so anyone looking for a crossover will be disappointed, but the appeal is the fusion/crossover elements’ integration so I can’t divorce it.

7.       Be honest: are you mean to your faves, or do you go easy on them?

Okay, to be honest, I purposely picked out some no-name given plot devices would existed only to die and decided I will make several stories about y’all and make people care about them. Some of that blame is on me, but only because of the initial choice. And my AU Theon and Jeyne don’t go through as terrible shit as they do in canon, I think, but only because the bar was so low. That fluffy modern AU needs to be a proper fic so I can balance the metaphorical books. So moving on from the Red Band-

Ummm…okay like I feel I…for Elu…I’m sympathetic to him, very sympathetic, so I’m trying to make the reader relate and appreciate him. I wrote angst Aegnor/Andreth stuff, but I also have two comedy AU where they get a better than canon fate OTP fix-fic, so that balances, right?  ….Ingwë. Yeah I can’t dodge that shit. I love my Ingwë and it’s coming from a position of making a good appealing story, but he is fully entitled to rage against the author there. So, yes, I am more mean than nice. And characters I hate, if they show up, I am not making more than a token effort to be unbiased.

Heget i’m laughing, this is lovely hahahahahaha

i love the anticlimatic end, beautiful XD

And Hador and Fingolfin having this familiar attitude in close quarters!! yeah!!

Okay, but in an hour or so Fingon is going to be showing symptoms of lactose intolerance, so it’s not like there isn’t a explosive less anticlimatic ending. And yes! Fingolfin and Hador might not be Finrod and Bëor (or Finrod and Beren, or Turgon and Húrin and Huor), but they are very much bros. If they were in a modern AU, they would watch football together. I couldn’t decide who would be the Davos to Fingolfin’s Stannis, but Hador is applying for the position now.

option 2) anything with any of the three brothers princely :’)

Okay this doesn’t count as ABSOLUTELY NO ANGST, but the fic that will happen that does have young Elwë, Olwë, and Elmo hanging out with the other young elves and getting drunk and finishing the roof of a building has to wait a few days until I finish the next chapter of “Of Ingwë Ingweron”. But! here’s the scene from said WIP of that chapter (it’s right before the Finwë & Uinen scene):

In his family hut, comforted by the familiar smell of smoke and wood ash, Elwë held his younger brothers close, one tucked under each arm, listening to their even breaths as they finally fell asleep, exhausted from worry over the terrible lightning and evidence of distant terrible battles they still knew little to nothing about. He cradled his brothers and thought back to when they were young and small, thankful that even now with all into adulthood he was still much larger than either Olwë or Elmo. Sitting with his back against the wall of the hut, they had been able to squeeze all three onto the sleeping shelf, and Elwë had draped his favorite blanket over his brothers and lap, covering their feet. Unmindful of the patch of drool or the sharp elbows digging into his side, Elwë held them tightly and stared out the doorway. He could see the reflections of the lightning and fire against the waters of the lake. “Sleep,” he whispered to his brothers. “I will guard us.”

Look! cuddling! that counts, right?

POV!

Typing this on my phone – here’s the POV switch from Dreadful Wind:

The rushing wind retained his sense of self.  His master, the true king of all Arda, had not deluded or erased that from him. If memories were fogged, details forgotten, it was only because they had not been important enough to preserve.  He still knew of the joy that he had so cruelly lost, of a wife and young son (pride, such pride, and such sorrow, such hatred on their behalf), and his master had not discouraged those feelings but helped the wind to retain them.  It had been a long time since the rushing wind had been confined to a body -and oh! what a limiting torment that cage had been!- and unlike the other mere Houseless phantoms, the rushing wind did not hunger to be confined to that physical pain again.  What was the taste of food to this freedom?  Here on the plane visible to the soul and not sight, his body was whole and beautiful and powerful. He could run with perfect balance, without heed to blood or lung.  Faster than Nahar, more agile than the skittering brood of Ungoliant, he was uncatchable.  Death was a memory abandoned, for what use was he that need no longer fear it?  He was a storm wind loyal to Morgoth, a prize of the sky stolen from the Dark Lord’s younger brother.The rushing wind remembered his life as an elf -greater though his form was now, and he would not trade it.  He recognized his tribesmen -Minyar, Vanyar, the name did not matter- golden and beautiful, returned now, within his reach now.  And oh! no longer whole, were they?  No longer free from fear and misery!  What glee the rushing wind felt to see the twisted faces of anguish and torment on his kinsmen, his exaltation to taste their agony on the spectral plane.  Their deaths!  Now they were the twisted fearful things.  (That disgust, that fear, damn them!)  Now they were hopeless.They deserved it, for his wife and child if not the man that the wind had once been.
The rushing wind saw his former leader, arrogant ungentle Imin, the vain fool.  A shock, but a chance for delightful revenge.  He hated Imin most, the one who had allowed his cruel ostracizing, who had had power and love and opportunities.  A full belly.  Praise from everyone, universal adoration.  Imin who stood garbed in strength and wealth, unchanged in authority, who had never suffered as the wind had suffered.  Imin’s outward accouterments had changed, but not to extent of other elves, and the soul was the same.  No one had disfigured Imin; no death had touched Imin.  Imin First of Chieftains, who thought he knew the rushing wind, thought he could challenge that which the Maiar of Manwë could not best, could compel the wind to obey him as if he was still one of his subordinate tribesmen – that fool!  Oh Mighty Imin!  The rushing wind was stronger now; untouchable Imin could be -would be- bested.Slow, no, it must be slow.  Slow as his torment had been.Imin called for a grandson to flee, and the rushing wind choked on rage and resentment.  The wind remembered his own son, a bright clever boy, one with such unjustly thwarted promise.  His son deserved to be here, assured by the company of father or grandfather of how precious he was regarded, given command and safety.  The rushing wind felt divided, uncertain whose attention was more deserving.  The boy was running.  The wind laughed.  How dare he.  The rushing wind had been unmatched in that skill; not even Imin or his favorites had outclassed him, and this was before he had been found and shaped by Morgoth.  (Such bitterness, those years he had barely been able to walk- no one else deserved to do aught but hobble as he had been forced to.)  The boy ran towards a woman -Grandmother?  Yes, but this woman did not feel like Iminyë on the plane of thought and soul; something was off.  Was his memory not untouched?The rushing wind reached the Vanyar woman draped in fine lace and gold, this beautiful regal breakable thing, eager to revenge himself.  Revenge a wife and son.

He knew her.
He knew this woman’s soul; how could he not? It was the first soul outside his own that he had ever known. More familiar than Imin, more familiar than his -their- long lost son.
His companion, the other whole that was half of their union.
She was whole, beautiful, restored in body, healed in soul – how?
That meant the grandson – hers? Imin’s grandson? But then how- was he the child of his son? That beautiful child? What of his son, the clever boy, the quiet boy? Was he whole, happy? And had they not conceived a second child – had he forgotten them? What had been hidden from his memory? What else had he lost?

She screamed in anguish- not the same anguish he felt, not the same memories of resentment and loathing (self-loathing, oh! that had been as strong as his outward hatred, as hers, as what had poisoned and stunted their son). Horror, but not the horror he had meant to cause. She knew him as he knew her, saw all of his soul from shadows to depths. Echo of a scream of loss he had never heard, the scream of loss and horror and rage his death had forced her to make. Fear, horrible fear. For him. Always for his behalf. Love. Arm reaching for him. That outstretched arm, his

Maktâmê

. Trying to capture him, her Alakô.

No!

invite to dinner with your parents: beren, túrin, nellas, haleth, treebeard :D forest cryptids edition hehehe

Ironically I think Túrin has the best social skills and graces and is the most adaptive for various social groups and interactions, but with that Curse, I’m inadvertently dooming myself and my family to pain, death, and all manner of evil ironic bullshit. If not, he would have been at the top of the list, but now he’s at the bottom.

  1. Nellas – (here’s my shy friend, she’s new to the area, awkward explanations)
  2. Beren – (too sarcastic, bye dad, then again, maybe easier to explain, and he’s not my boyfriend)
  3. Haleth – (same problem of diplomatically bad sarcasm)
  4. Treebeard – (ohshit! a talking tree! How can I explain this- what do we serve him to eat? He can’t sit at the dinner table!)
  5. Túrin – ….Thanks, Morgoth

5, 13, 14

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

Ooooh. Ingwë as a main character, and then Unbegotten Imin. That was a unpredictable (but maybe not) development.

Writing a fic from the POV of Durin the Deathless- not only a dwarf fic (technically), but one from the Third Age. My focus is so strongly First Age that having something in the Third Age that isn’t even Gondorian Appendicies History was unusual.

13) your strengths as an author

Ummm. Like weaknesses, this is hard to see from the inside looking out. Dialogue is generally easy for me to write, and I think it sounds natural just as often as it doesn’t. Descriptive language, understandable metaphors and similes.

I think I’m well-practiced and strong at hitting that spot of giving the reader just enough gore and horror and sadness in a tasteful way that keeps it beautiful and bittersweet hopeful and not too overwhelming. 

14) do you make playlists for your current wips?

I’m not consistent on if I have background music or not while writing, and to make an actual playlist would require more effort and discipline than I have.