Interview Meme :D

[redthedragon]

Comment below and I'll ask you five questions. Answer them in your own journal, offer to give the first five commenters their own sets of questions, and let the cycle continue!

(Feel free to answer in the comments rather than continuing the game :D)

Meme from muccamukk, who asked me:

1. What's your favourite thing about pirate stories?
I am, for better or worse, a logistics nerd. Part of what captivates me about pirate stories specifically (highwaymen on the open seas instead of the road! Cool!) is what they actually do with all the treasure. Where do you sell it, and who do you sell it to? Do you sell it? How do you compensate your crew? What do you do when the treasure is cursed, or when you can't get rid of it? How long can you stay at sea without starving while the Crown is after your head? So on and so forth.
I also, of course, love robbery and murder and swashbuckling and magic sea creatures and all that stuff. But I put a whole pirate subplot into my longform wip somewhere because I just went "cool! robbery! this will factor into my shipping-and-goods logistics somehow" and then it did and now it's a major part of the plot.

2. What's a writing trick you wish you'd known five years ago? 
If you can't read what you wrote, you can't fix what you wrote. Use the most illegible font you can and just write words. I started doing this when I was about 17 (my light-sensitive migraines got worse and I didn't realize i could change my writing program to be black on black for a while, so I just started typing with my eyes closed) and it did wonders for my ability to not self-edit every two sentences. I'm pretty good at it now, and it also has the added benefit of meaning that when people come to talk to me while i'm writing it is apparently incredibly funny to watch me finish my paragraphs at approximately 120 words per minute while maintaining perfect eye contact and without looking at my screen to check what i've typed whatsoever because I'm also pretty confident once I've gotten going that I won't make too many typos.
... This requires a pretty good grasp of touch-typing, too, but I've been typing on black keyboards without backlight in the dark since before I was in middle school, so you best believe I'm good at that.

3. If you turned into a dragon for two hours, what would you do?
Depends if people know it's me. Probably go hork down an entire raw steak. Just to see what it tastes like now that it will not make me sick as a dog for the week after.
Then if I am not legally liable, uh... probably, like, arson. if i am a big fireproof lizard i can just put any spreading fires out and there are a few fully abandoned buildings around here that would go up like matchsticks and it would be really cool. it would be so cool

4. What's your preferred solution to the great "okay, but how do the robots fuck?" issue in Transformers fanfic?
I like "plug and play", where the robots plug themselves into each other and share data. I just think it's cooler and more interesting than human-analogue "they all have genitalia" and I've never really cared for sparkplay sex.
Though I will admit that I usually write sticky sex because it requires like 0 understanding to pass between the characters and lets me immediately go from "ok they're fucking" to "and here is what the story is actually about" in about one sentence flat.

5. What song did you most recently get stuck in your head?
I don't know if this is quite in the spirit of this question because it's two songs, but for some reason the inside of my brain has just been a godawful mashup of Sprawling Idiot Effigy by Nero's Day at Disneyland (specifically the vocal bit) and Turn Around from Valkyrie Vanguard (game) that I found in this one amv. It's not not true, but the one i heard most recently was Turn Around.

This game was a lot of fun! :D 

Comments

[autobotscoutriella]

The Turn Around AMV being for Warrior Cats gave me the most violent flashback to middle school I've had in a while XD

I'll play the questions game! These are always fun.

[redthedragon]

I was actually not ever in the Warrior Cats fandom, so it's just like "huh! animals" to me jfhfhfh. i know, i know, i'm the only person alive like this, but I remember being like 12, looking at the fanart, going "god this all looks so UGLY" and immediately snobbing my way to other corners of the internet LOL

For your questions:

1. What's your favorite kind of setting to write in? Why?
2. Where's somewhere you've always wanted to go?
3. What's a recent thing you've made that you're pleased with?
4. Do you have a favorite time of day? if so, what is it?
5. What's your current favorite song?

[autobotscoutriella]

I was never actually in the Warrior Cats fandom, but I consumed so much of the canon content that I recognized every single character in that video.

1. What's your favorite kind of setting to write in? Why?

In the very literal landscape sense: I like writing settings where I have lots of things to describe. The Redwall books (yes, more adorable animals doing horribly violent things!) were a very formative influence, and those are very big on the vivid landscape descriptions.

In the "setting of the story" sense: I like wartime. I like it when there's something huge going on in the background and I can focus on one or a few characters' experiences in front of this backdrop of Stuff.

2. Where's somewhere you've always wanted to go?

Guadalupe Island, in Mexico. It's a great white shark habitat. I want to pet the sharks. There is a reason no one wants to go with me to Guadalupe.

3. What's a recent thing you've made that you're pleased with?

I made chicken tetrazzini for lunch today and I am SO proud of it. Perfect cream sauce, perfect noodles, just enough chicken.

On a more artistic level, I'm still very proud of Trip's last scene in Shatterpoint. You know. That one. It went through SO many revisions and I really like the final version.

4. Do you have a favorite time of day? if so, what is it?

I do, but only on days where I don't have work. It's late afternoon, when the sun's streaming in through my apartment's balcony door and everything is warm and quiet.

5. What's your current favorite song?

I don't know if it's my favorite so much as it is my current obsession, but Starset's Something Wicked has been on repeat in my head for at least two weeks.

[sexytronians]

I usually write sticky sex because it requires like 0 understanding to pass between the characters and lets me immediately go from "ok they're fucking" to "and here is what the story is actually about" in about one sentence flat.

Much as I love plug'n'play (it is where my online name comes from) sticky doesn't require as much worldbuilding about 'do they pass files or energy?' and 'where are these robot plugs and sockets on their frames? How do sex positions work' or 'how intimate is this kind of sex for this narrative? How do I communicate that without too much exposition'

Sticky I can be like 'They are fucking.' I may have to consider the logistics of how a Volkswagen Beetle and a space shuttle get it on, but I don't have to worry about the worldbuilding of why robots have dicks and how they work.

I think I get some questions from you then for this meme? X3

[redthedragon]

Truth be told I don't think pnp requires that much worldbuilding- it's a pretty generally understood concept in the fandom at this point. But it does mean that scheming is harder to do and it does require a little more work to make it appropriately, like, sexy. whereas "and then they put spike in valve and wiggled around a bit" is kind of hard to make unsexy if you want to drop literally one to two sentences of establishing scene data and then go straight to "and this was a scheme" in my experience lmfao.

For your questions :D

1. What's something you've done recently that you're proud of?
2. What's your favorite kind of setting to write in? Why?
3. What's your current favorite song? (Or at least a song you want to rec around..)
4. What's a story element or trope you'd like to write your own take on?
5. What's your personal favorite thing about the Stunticons?

[sexytronians]

Perhaps it's just me overthinking robot sex then lol. XD

1. What's something you've done recently that you're proud of?

Learning touch typing! I still have to learn the lower keys properly and not go back to picking the keys. But I'm getting there with it, it's making writing a lot faster and easier already for me.

2. What's your favorite kind of setting to write in? Why?

G1 S2 universe on earth or an AU after the war on Cybertron. Season 3 doesn't do it for me I'm afraid.

3. What's your current favorite song? (Or at least a song you want to rec around..)

Not a song specifically, but I'm really enjoying the Nova Twin's music right now. Cleopatra, Antagonist and Choose Your Fighter all go hard for me imo.

4. What's a story element or trope you'd like to write your own take on?

Hmm. I do want to write the whole 'Matrix makes everyone magically able to have babies and they're pregnant now ' trope I see occasionally but make it horror. As in 'actually this is major consent violation.' Nothing against the trope! But pregnancy outside of fiction horrifies me on a deep level and I can get some horror fic mileage.

5. What's your personal favorite thing about the Stunticons?

That is a hard question! I think it's their characters in general. Each of them would react to any given situation in a different way and that's so fun. Combine that with their actions and emotions bouncing off each other and there's so many different situations and plots I can do with them.

The fact also they won't be sensible is fun. What I mean is if I stuck the Constructicons in a situation I'd have to write them having common sense reactions to it and behaving like emotionally mature adults (mostly.) The Stunticons are not sensible or emotionally mature so I can go wild with them making a situation worse or at least more dangerous.

[muccamukk]

My cat found that first song very upsetting for some reason, and has now run away.

I like the logistics and boats a lot more than the actual pirating, I admit. Though I do have a book about the forms of pirate power structures around here somewhere.

I used to do the same font-same background colour thing when writing in cafes, so you could write smut without anyone noticing. Though if you misspell a word, it still gets a red line under it, which is distracting. Used to do write or die a lot, too, where you had to keep typing or it would delete words. IDK why I haven't done that in ages.

[redthedragon]

I can't lie, I'm not terribly shocked that the kitty wasn't a huge fan. My dog really absolutely hates my weirder music, and will cry if they come on while she's in the room with me LOL.

I can't lie, I do find the pirating fun, but isn't knowing what the point of all the piracy is half the fun? If they're just running around stealing junk and doing nothing with it, then what's the point? I wanna know what they're doing with everything, and "occasionally stealing cursed goods and then getting cursed" is jut the tip of the iceberg! i need to know more. i need to know where they buy their food from. i have to know eeeeverything LOL

I've never had anyone give me a hard time about writing smut in public, whether or not I made an effort to make it hard to read. If someone is in a public space looking at my computer, then they should simply stop doing that.

Ooh, I've never heard of write or die. That sounds like FUN (but also like it would make me cry a lot LOL)