Fandom Snowflake Challenge #8

Fandom Snowflake Challenge — January 15th

❄ Challenge #8 on snowflake_challenge.

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Creative Process

Talk about your creative process. :)

There are a handful of ways I can approach this, so I'll just...do a little thing for each type of process my brain immediately called up.


• Idea Process:
  Idea ⇨ Build Something ⇨ Tinker until all the pieces are moving.
  
  I always start with a seed idea, where I get really excited about one small concept. Like everyone has a representation of their magic that orbits their head or parkour dragons or what if the magic system is backed by an eldritch entity. Whatever it is, that's what I wrap my idea around. Sometimes it takes a few tries to get anything functional out of an idea. (One of my notes just says chintacles. Where was I going with this? No clue.) I'll write stub first chapters, sketch an outline, or run through a scene from later in the book in my head, just to kick the tires a bit and see if the whole thing falls apart. Not everything is viable, lol, even if it's awesome.
  
  I write with an eye towards the mechanics of a story, because I'm a tinkerer-type. I build something and then I spend almost as much time editing as I did writing, because I very much tinker with whatever it is. I will start with a foundation of a story or world and try to make sure that all the pieces move and function properly within the whole. And I really do consider a story to be something that NEEDs moving pieces along a timeline. I do a lot of testing and trying and revising and doing something new with new ideas.
  
  
• Drafting process:
  Write Draft Zero ⇨ Make Human Readable ⇨ Get Feedback ⇨ Edit/Redraft ⇨ Go.
  
  So my drafting process is much more concrete. I go in waves. While I'm writing draft zero, I do little revolutions where I'll read a bit from the last session and then keep going, so I'm always editing a bit as I go. that said, draft zero should never see the light of day. I pretty much must have at least one pass after that (preferably with some time between writing and editing) to make the dang thing human-readable. I am very prone to word salad, or writing chunks where I'm the only person who could possibly know what I was trying to say, and I can only catch those if I've stepped back and I'm approaching my work as a reader/editor.
  
  After that, I toss it to the wolves to be savaged. I do this so I can't try and 'get away' with stuff that I know needs to be fixed, lol. My brain does this weird 'it's good enough, right?' even when I know there's issues. Feedback helps push me into trusting my gut and ripping out and replacing whatever needs it. Then I will do the actual edit, sometimes taking out huge chunks and redrafting, when the issue is on the structural level. I...am much less precious about my work than I used to be, lol. Into the bin it goes, if it's not working.
  
  
• Overall, though, honestly? My creative process represents a safe place to dump my extra brain cycles, rather than get anxious about things for no reason. When I have a project or two, I always am just like...calmer? Chiller? Happier? Even if my brain is just meandering through something I will never write, it's still an enjoyable thing for me to have my brain doing.

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Fandom Snowflake Challenge #9

Fandom Snowflake Challenge — January 17th

❄ Challenge #9 on snowflake_challenge.

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Favorite Trope(s)

Talk about your favorite tropes in media or transformative works.

So. My absolutely hands-down favorite is the one I wrote up last year that I called "Where You Go, I Go." Also known as loyalty kink, lol. I wanted to do something a bit different this year, and I immediately came up with one I absolutely love.

Mutual Pining

I just adore it when two idiots just fuckin' love each other so much and for whatever reason they aren't or can't be together. But oh how they want to be. They're drawn together. There's that little buzz beneath their skin when they are in the room with one another, a hyperawareness that lights them both up from the inside.

The stories that use mutual pining all seem to be about finding one another, or overcoming whatever is keeping the two apart. It's very different, I think, that the basic meetcute to falling in love to getting together type of romance arc. They don't have to fall in love, they're already in love, which changes the dynamic (and also, not gonna lie, leaves a LOT open for the many shades of 'where you go, I go.' Ahem.) so that the getting together is much more about choice and revelation. It's a shift in a previous relationship to a new relationship, rather than starting right out with the characters as romantic interests.

I think part of why I enjoy it is that when they're pining, they already know so much about each other. You get the illustration of all the ways these characters fit together, on the page, to the point where it's clear why romance. One character will do something and the other will react, and you get to roll around in the yearning and the affection, and a good writer really will pull out all the stops and make you feel it in your chest. So delicious. Contrasting this to most romances, where the 'falling in love' plots do not often sufficiently explain themselves to my aromantic satisfaction (lol).

Another facet is that there is that unique element of something new and exciting that you and this person who you've gotten to know and already like outside of a romantic context get to do together. It's like coming home, in my mind, which always reminds me of my favorite lines from a fic: "He loves like something you live in." The romance is an edifice that has stood before and will stand after. There's no falling in love or falling out of love. It just exists, waiting to be inhabited.

I've been contemplating, though, that I don't...honestly think I've read/watch/etc. any really good books/tv/movies with this kind of mutual pining? At least not that I recall. Though this is something I've only started to recognize specifically as something I enjoy in the past decade or so. I mean, there's the 'will-they-won't-they' suff, but that's really not the same thing, imho. So...heck yeah, if anyone has any recs for mutual pining out in the wild of original fiction? I'd love to read it. And, of course, as always, hit me up with any fic whatsoever. I do have endless MDZS Wangxian fics that hit the spot, and I have been nibbling my way through Codywan stuff, I just love this trope so much.

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