4) favorite character you’ve written

Answered before, but expanding: It’s harder for me to write characters whose POVs or opinions don’t align with me, and as a sarcastic shit I like to narrate from POVs that do make these asides to the audience even when not actively attempting full humor. ‘Passive’ characters are easier for me, I feel, though I don’t know if that’s the right term. I don’t usually write about characters I dislike/try to write about characters or places I do (though I have a lot of favorites I haven’t got around to!) I like the slightly outside view on my favorites, hence so many OC narrators. It’s surprising how often I’ve written from Elu’s POV, and I don’t think I’m 100% successful, but my favorite two are melian through his eyes and beren. Not sure if he’s a contender for favorite. Ilsë was all my unadulterated rage and very cathartic to write. So were the Bór matriarchs.

5) character you were most surprised to end up writing

It wasn’t fully from Melkor’s POV because I didn’t want to dive all the way in – more like dipping two toes in, a tiny taste of Humorous!Melkor, but this morning’s whatever-you-wanna-call-it. (There is a fic on the back burner to-do list that would be from Melkor’s POV that would be character study meets sensory deprivation and mind games porn, if I felt comfortable writing pure smut)

Imin- before the Klingon Vanyar eureka moment he wasn’t even a conceived character in my head and speaking of which: boy has my view for Ingwë changed!

10) write in silence or with background noise? with people or alone?

Either silence of background music- generally a soundtrack or whatever song/pair of songs I’m listening to on repeat that day. Try to keep the song appropriate for the mood. Ingwë tends to get written to via the Journey game soundtrack, Squidboy in Angband I try some GoT but usually ends up my selection of indie-pop. Wrote the bits with under the rose hood to the medieval party mix.

Rest of the answers under the cut!

18) were there any works you read that affected you so much that it influenced your writing style? what were they?

I read a lot, professional stuff and fanfic, and I know they have influenced my style. I think I’d blame Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time – I don’t know how much of my style matches up but I know that has to be a bigger influence on my than even i can clearly distinguish. I’m not comfortable with a sparse style and while i try a little, limited third-person POV where that really has a bearing on the reader isn’t my strength. I try for symbolic and dreamy but can’t get too into it either as a reader or write.

22) are there any subjects that make you uncomfortable to write?

Porn. I love to read it, can’t write it. POVs of characters that have vastly different personalities or opinions that aren’t brief glimpses into the villains. I don’t have a problem writing about violence and torture, but I’m not really good and practiced at fight scenes or long action scenes- I don’t feel I have the knack for those, though I try my hand at them.

The long self-reflective moments when a character reexamines themselves and changes, because I’m uncomfortable with self-reflection and I don’t write long enough stories for characters to really undergo ‘big character development’ – not saying none of them, but it one of those things I like to read and admire when authors do them well and it’s not something I feel proficient at. Like I don’t feel I provide as an author ‘great character development and journey!’ because I don’t sit down and outline that – or ‘long epic well-constructed intrigue and action plot!’

25) copy/paste a few sentences or a short paragraph that you’re particularly proud of

I’m just gonna go to town on this and link to lines that tend to stick out to me as I re-read my works. Consider this a very small sampling:

Her face is hot and breathing muffled and tight as she smothers her weeping into the earth lest the air catch it and carry it to the Bright Ones.

The first tribe of Speakers, Kwendî, were never large in number, and their choices would keep their tribe small. In this time all elves lived near the shores of the Great Mother Lake that had birthed them, Cuiviénen, and there did most remain. Yet some chose to venture away from shore, for in that time all elves were curious. But curiosity and hunger drew the people of the first tribe away from the safety of the lake more than all other elves and thus sealed their fate. (How the first paragraph starts and ends- it’s not the strongest one, but I think I got the tone right and it sets up the quasi-didactic narrative)

Rúth swallowed a laugh, though her eyes were bright. “That, Bledda, is a dog. A hound, like in the stories. The man owns it, like one does a horse. It is no werewolf.”

His gasp, like the very first gasp of air that the first of all elves ever took, wakes his wife Iminyë from her sleep. She opens her eyes and turns to her husband. Sometimes in these moments she will reach a hand to touch him. She reminds him in these simplest of movements that he did not sleep alone, nor does he wake alone.

This passage:

Angrod leans against the inner curtain wall of the fortress, gripping the makeshift tourniquet to staunch the bleeding of his missing arm.  An orc blade has severed it above the elbow, and it is the most grievous of his injuries.  Not that he believes he would be walking away.  Not since the first red stains on the sky.

A young Edain leans against his other side, a Bëorian warrior in a mailshirt and the tatters of a green scarf around his neck.  Angrod peers closely at the scarf with the focus born of anything to avoid thinking of the pain.  He studies the patterns in the weave as if it is the knowledge most worthy of contemplation, the most wondrous note in the Song.  Angrod can distinguish the colored threads under the gore and dirt.  The green, blue, red, and gray.  This simple Hildor scarf is the most glorious creation in all of Arda, equal to the Silmarils.

“Brother.

“Brother, look at me.”

Aegnor looms over him, filling his vision, a hand gently shaking his body.

“Stay with me, Brother.  Another sally is coming.  We need to move you into the keep.  Can you walk?”

Aegnor’s tone is concerned, gentle, and firm.  Angrod pulls at the corners of his lips to make a small smile.  He is using my voice, the one I tried to restrain and console him with.  I taught him that voice.

Angrod tilts his head to the Edain, leans his weight over.  He is so tired, too tired to speak or use his remaining hand to gesture.  He hopes his question is understood.

“The boy is dead,” Aegnor says softly.

Oh, Angrod thinks, he must be right.  I can’t hear the rattling half-drowned noises of his chest anymore.  So young, the boy was, even for a human who were all so terribly young, so swiftly grown and gone.  Angrod had saved the boy from the orcs, had dragged the tiny Edain warrior inside the gate before it shut.  I’m sorry, Children, for our failure.  For getting you involved in this war, for failing in our duty to protect you.

Perhaps he knows and says nothing, as all his kindness.

…and she held up a skein of beer laced with honey from azalea flowers. With a laugh she drank deep, and shouted, “Come, I wish to share my laugh with your master.”

“Carry my song on your winds,” she cries to Ossë, feeling his storms whip at her silver hair. He knows her feelings of sorrow, has shared them with her these long years. More importantly he knows rage, and Ilsë screams her grief in anger, feeling the heady satisfaction that there is finally a way to sate her cries for vengeance, to expel the hurricane of rage and horror and weeping upon targets that can be smashed and drowned. She desires a storm to carry her ships laden with soldiers and spears and the reckoning of the Valar to the shoreline of Beleriand, to the very feet of the Great Enemy. She wishes the very sea to swallow him. The is a dark undertow in Ilsë from too many years of pain. “Hear me, oh stars of the Hinder Shore! Hear me, oh stars of my birth!

“Air has a great weight. You don’t feel it, as it is always pressing in from every direction. You don’t see how much it weighs.”

–all of this short fic let’s be honest it’s not my strongest writing but sometimes I think it’s my strongest work–

Aegnor made a slow sort of noise, which Angrod thought was a little ridiculous, considering his brother had an even higher alcohol tolerance and thus completely avoided hangovers, a trait that served Aegnor well while dealing with all his new in-laws.

And of course this one, because I will never stop patting myself on the back for this ending line gem:

“I am finally crossing the sea,” Arodreth said. “Tell her I was too stubborn to go any other way.”