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hello-em75 · 7 years

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Tagged by the wonderful @angies-team , @travelerchrisedward , @wilderwestqueen , @nightfurylover1112 , and @crazy4dragons ! Thanks so much guys! These were so fun to do!

Rules:

1. Always post the rules.

2. Answer the questions given by the person who tagged you.

3. Write 11 questions of your own.

4. Tag 11 people.

My Questions:

1. Best memory from the HTTYD fandom?

2. What are you hoping to see in RTTE S5 & 6 / HTTYD 3?

3. Who in the HTTYD fandom is the reason your heart beats (to quote the famous words of sleep-deprived Snotlout Jorgenson) ?

4. Have you been mistaken for someone else?

5. Any guilty pleasures?

6. Live action or animation?

7. Who do you think you would connect with the least if you were a Dragon Rider?

8. How many times have you binge-watched a TV show?

9. If you were able to choose to return to any point you wanted in your life, where would you go?

10. Have you ever met anyone in real life who’s reminded you of one of the Dragon Riders (I know this girl who has the last name Jorgenson and it’s pretty crazy) ?

11. Favorite snack food?

I tag @chiefhiccstrid , @drchee5e , @dragonlovertr , @fanaticfangirl2602 , @astridthevalkyrie, @fangirling1998 , @fanwriter02 , @lutavero , @spacekeet , @astrxd , and @dragontails89 !

Angie’s Questions:

1. What is your absolute favorite song?

I always jam out to Let Her Go by Passenger but I really love a whole bunch of songs and just happen to be very indecisive in choosing a favorite :)

2. Favorite form of physical activity?

What physical activity When I’m not being pressured to do it, I enjoy running. Just don’t get any bright ideas and sign me up for any marathons or anything.

3. Favorite 5 fanfics?

Okay, the fact that this was hard for me means I’ve definitely read too many:

1) Chasing Thunderstorms series by @tysonrunningfox . This was the first full-length fanfiction that I read when I joined the fandom a couple years ago and it totally blew me away how real and well-written the characters seemed when she wrote them. I haven’t reread the whole series in full IN AGES but sometimes I reread some of my favorite chapters and fall in love with it all over again!

2) Young God by @oh--you--pretty--things. If there was a fanfic that forged its own trail, this one would do just that. It’s so incredibly different from any other Hiccstrid or HTTYD fanfics out there in its plot and universe, but still manages to remain true to the characters and their personalities --even if its hidden somewhat under Punkcup’s incredibly hot exterior.

3) The Quest by @funkytoes. I love how unique the story is how characters like Astrid, Hiccup, and Eret are portrayed in such an exciting and new way! Plus, anything where my queen is rocking it as a resident badass always gets good marks in my book.

4) You’re Everything I Want (and Nothing I Can Keep) by @wilderwestqueen. The story is so fun and engaging to read and I’m SUCH a sucker for friends to couple AUs. Hiccup and Astrid are also both complete cuties in this fanfic so that’s always enjoyable to read.

5) I Knew You Were Trouble by @astridthevalkyrie. I really enjoy how this story humanizes Astrid: she’s not just a fierce and tough as nails badass, but she has a soft spot for kids and cares deeply about her friends. Not to mention that Jerkcup is actually an undercover cutie that I love to pieces.

4. Ice cream or warm, home baked, fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookies? >:)

GIVE ME THOSE COOKIES RIGHT NOW.

5. What inspires you to be creative?

My friends and family. If I know my friends and family are behind me, then I’ll have the will and the mindset to unlock my more creative side and actively express myself rather than just give a passive effort.

6. Does music influence how you act while it’s playing?

Definitely. Once Romantic Flight comes on, I’m a hot fangirl mess of emotions.

7. How do you express yourself creatively?

I really like wearing different kinds of clothes to express myself. Something about mixing and matching accessories and clothes to make an outfit I’m proud of gives me a sense of satisfaction.

8. Do you think Jar Jar Binks is a waste of a character?

I’m not a hard core Star Wars fan so I don’t really have an opinion.

9. What would cheer you up if you’re having a bad day?

Anyone just taking the initiative to even ask and sit down to listen always makes me feel better whenever I’m down. But sometimes I appreciate little gifts too, like when my mom brings me a drink from Starbucks on her way home from work if she knows I’ve been stressed.

10. Where have you traveled that you would love to travel to again? (or) Where would you like to travel to?]

I’d love to travel to Europe and explore all of those cliché tourist spots like Paris and London and Rome and all that, especially since I’ve never been out of the USA before.

11. Who is your Tumblr crush?

There’s actually way too many to count for me to just say them here but I’ll let you know that you’re on the list @angies-team ;)))

Chris’s Questions:

1. Favorite villain in TV series / movie?

Viggo Grimborn (whether dead or alive) will always be remembered as one of my favorites (but also one my most hated) villains because of how different he is from the typical villain mold in the Dragons series. He runs on his intellect rather than his physical strength; a quality to be appreciated whether you’re the protagonist or the antagonist.

2. Have you been abroad before?

I’ve never been outside of the USA, so unfortunately no :(

3. Favorite class at school?

I love studying history! Learning about the past of the world strangely always makes me feel more in touch and connected with what’s happening in the present.

4. What’s your preferred lifestyle?

I don’t like moving around too much, so I’d prefer to live a more sedentary and constant lifestyle rather than always be jumping around from place to place.

5. Are you afraid of anything?

If we’re talking material things, than not really. But if we’re discussing more abstractly, then definitely things like failure and being isolated and not wanted.

6. Describe your Tumblr dashboard in three words?

Informative, fun, and crowded :)

7. What’s your eye color?

Hazel

8. Favorite musician / band?

I’m pretty mercurial as far as music preferences go, but right now I’m hardcore rocking out to Ed Sheeran.

9. When did you get into your biggest fandom?

I think I joined the HTTYD fandom almost three years ago? I look back on some of my posts I made when I first came onto Tumblr and can’t help but cringe.

10. If you could be a new, original character in your favorite TV series / movie, what would you be like, and what would you do?

I’d like to think that I’d be the sarcastic and friendly Dragon Rider that people enjoy spending time with but who knows?

11. Favorite dragon?

The Night Fury is absolutely amazing! But if I wasn’t able to choose the obvious, probably the Triple Stryke or the Deathsong.

Wilderwestqueen’s Questions:

1. What one thing never fails to make you smile?

Listening to music always has a way of making my mood improve, no matter how horrible life can feel sometimes.

2. If you had to make your own Awesome Mix (Guardians of the Galaxy style), what tracks would be on it?

The entire soundtrack of HTTYD and HTTYD 2, plus probably a bunch of random pop songs that I like (hopefully there’s no song limit).

3. Biggest celebrity crush?

I actually have the biggest girl-crush on America Ferrera. But why wouldn’t I? She’s an activist, a talented actress, and immensely successful. Sounds pretty much like a person that I’d want to get to know.

4. What’s your favorite book and why does it mean a lot to you?

It’s been forever since I’ve actually sat down and read a book just for the sake of enjoyment, but I really enjoy The Book Thief because of how meaningful the story is. It has so much depth to it that not many other books can claim to have.

5. What song makes you want to get up and dance?

Right now, I’m the One by DJ Khaled, Justin Bieber, Quavo, Chance the Rapper, and Lil Wayne is my favorite dance jam!

6. If you had to make a superhero team out of any fictional characters, who would you choose?

Astrid Hofferson, because she’s an amazing and intelligent warrior; Black Widow, since she has so much spy training and I can imagine would get along great with Astrid; and Allura, because she’s also an accomplished fighter as well as another strong leader.

7. What fictional world would you choose to live in?

B E R K BECAUSE I APPARENTLY THINK I CAN MAKE IT IN THE CLASSICAL ERA ARCTIC CIRCLE AS A VIKING.

8. Dream job?

Teaching has always been something that I’ve had at the forefront of my mind as far as careers are concerned, but if I was more musically inclined or dramatic I would probably want to be a musician or an actress.

9. If it was your last day on Earth, and you had to pick one last meal, what would you have?

I’d devour all of the Indian food I can. Bring on the samosas.

10. Least favorite movie? Why?

I don’t know what possessed me to see the Peanuts movie, but let’s just say I almost fell asleep three times.

11. What kind of fictional character is your type?

Pretty much anyone that’s anything like Hiccup would be my type. Humble, smart, funny, caring, and fiercely loyal.

Nightfurylover1112′s Questions:

1. What is your hair color?

I have dark brown hair, but it looks pretty black if you’re looking at it from a distance.

2. Who is your favorite animated character?

G E N E R A L H O F F ALL THE WAY.

3. iPhone or Android?

iPhone! But my iPhone is staring to show signs of age after about a year and half of having it unfortunately.

4. Have you ever been on a plane?

I have! Can’t say I enjoy the experience though.

5. Where do you want to be right now?

Exactly where I am is pretty nice -- sitting in my living room in a HTTYD blanket typing answers to asks is fun!

6. You have one wish. What would you do?

World peace is where it’s at y’all.

7. Do you have your ears pierced?

Yep! I kind of want to get another piercing in my ears (I only have one right now) but my parents would definitely go against that.

8. Are you tall or short?

I’m short and proud of it, thank you very much.

9. Why do you like your followers?

Because you’re all so friendly and supportive of each other! I’ve found so many great friends in you guys!

10. What do you mostly like to do at home?

Besides sleeping, being able to binge watch Netflix and go on my phone and scroll through Tumblr is pretty fun for me.

11. Do you like dragons?

Nope, I hate those useless reptiles more than words can describe. Such a nuisance LOL.

Crazy4Dragons’s Questions:

1. Favorite movie?

I count the series as one thing for the sake of this question so HTTYD/HTTYD 2!

2. Are you a fan of any sports?

Not too hardcore. I’ll root for home teams (anyone from California) for any sport but I won’t be too broken up if something doesn't go my way and they don't win.

3. Would you rather be stuck in a library or stuck in a movie theater?

I’d probably be okay with either, but more so in a movie theater.

4. If you could marry any fictional character, who would it be?

Hiccup is the only man for me everyone so HANDS OFF (jk).

5. Coffee or tea?

I like both, but I actually need coffee to function normally so COFFEE

6. What’s the furthest you’ve been from home?

Without my parents, the furthest I’ve been from home was when I was in Pennsylvania for my 8th grade trip. Probably would have been more exciting if I had actual friends to talk to that whole week.

7. Do you/did you like school?

Right now, school and I aren’t on speaking terms.

8. Favorite dessert?

I love pies. But not like creamy ones, the ones full of fruit filling that are warm from the oven and have vanilla bean ice cream just oozing down the sides (crap now I’m hungry).

9. Do you have any pets?

Nope, but I have two younger siblings if that counts.

10. Have you ever seen the ocean?

I live in California, so I’ve had my fair share of ocean-viewing lol.

11. What’s your least favorite food?

I’m not that picky when it comes to food, but I can’t bring myself to eat hardboiled eggs; the smell is WAY too strong for me.

#httyd fandom #httyd

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anghraine · 7 years

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Having been wowed by your fanfic ("wandering inside this night" holds a special place in my RO heart), I'm curious: what is your writing/editing process like?

Oh, thank you!

My writing process really varies depending on what I’m doing, but I can explain it in terms of wandering inside this night.

It’s long and rambly, so you can scroll down for a very concise tl;dr version of The Process.

1. Eureka!

I pretty much always start out with 1) a vague sense of something I want to write about, and I sort of mentally fish around until I land on an idea, or 2) an idea pops into my head, or 3) some combination of both.

The last two are the most common for me—I have more ideas than I could ever write. With wandering, it was definitely that way.

I was hollering into my tags about the Cassian-Leia parallels pretty early, which … Jyn-Han is obvious, but I felt like the Cassian-Leia ones went relatively unnoticed but were probably more profound. And as spies in the ragtag ANH-era Rebellion, it’s more than possible that they’d know each other; I’d made babbling posts, but I really wanted to do something with it. So I sketched out a backstory in until the last chance is spent, but I still wanted more, and also to get into Han-Jyn at the same time, and also just—have something fun! And suddenly (I was actually at a Trans-Siberian Orchestra concert, lol) the idea popped into my head of jumping to the Han/Leia meltdown of 1980 with established relationship Jyn/Cassian.

2. Percolation

This is particularly important for longer fic (or any long-form writing, really), but it helps with shorter things, too. It’s where you’re not actively working to figure out details or more ideas, much less writing, just passively letting your mind wander. It’s best if you’re actually doing something else—something that doesn’t take much attention, but enough that you can’t completely focus on your thoughts, like showering or washing dishes or something.

When something does come to mind, I scribble it down (or stick it in a doc in some form that will hopefully make sense to me later). Sometimes it’ll be scraps of dialogue, or a phrase I want to make sure gets in somewhere, or a plot-point, just anything that pops up. Ideally, though, I don’t write anything beyond that—just note down anything I might forget and let my ideas develop freely.

Normally, I’d only do so much of that with something like wandering (fairly short, fairly light). But I ended up snowed in with my extended family, where I was both bored and unable to sit down and write. So I’m sitting there entertaining myself by imagining Jyn and Han, drinking buddies, and how that’d work with the Cassian-Leia brotp of ruthless idealism (Han would be jealous!), and just having that percolating in my head while I read fic and let stray thoughts pass through my mind. (‘Okay but Cassian would fucking hate Han’ being uppermost among them, lol)

3. Brainstorming/Outline

At this point, I try to pin down the free-floating ideas and/or organize what scraps I have into something coherent. With something longer, like ad astra, I generally do a pretty traditional outline—decide what the story is specifically going to cover, and where the things I’ve actually written fit with that, and what’s going to go in the spaces between.

It’s not classroom-style brainstorming; I usually brainstorm ideas by trying to put together an outline. I’ll be “okay, I want to start with something like that shot of Jyn on the platform with an Imperial ship at the end, but it’s Bodhi” and “they get sucked into the Death Star and Jyn exploits Cassian’s injuries to get in” and then I sit down and figure out how I’m going to get from one to the other. “Okay, so—there’s no way they can actually get Kaytoo, but maybe something—yeah, she just up and grabs his dismembered head l o l, okay, and there’s the jump into the ship which rattles Cassian further, and she’d try to treat him with whatever supplies are available, and we’d have Bodhi trying to get out without being shot down, and maybe I can work in the your father would have been proud of you line, and Jyn goes to check on Bodhi and they see the Death Star and…”

Also, it helps a ton to actually talk ideas over with someone else. With me, it’s generally @steinbecks—not some strict ‘this, then this, then this, tell me what you think’, but ‘I had this idea’ and ‘OK BUT IMAGINE IF’ and ‘haha yeah exactly’ and ‘shit you’re right they do change outfits’ etc.

4) Drafting (The Big One)

Ideally, I only get to this after nailing down an outline or at least getting a lot figured out in chats/notes to myself. That’s what I did for pretty much all my most successful longfics—First Impressions (f!Darcy/m!Elizabeth), Season of Courtship (Darcy and Elizabeth’s engagement), we get dark, only to shine (AU of The Borgias that moves the canon pairing getting together from S3 to S1), and now ad astra. It helps a TON if you have trouble with discipline and direction, as I do, because you can always go back to it and figure out where you need to be headed when you’re muddled/uninspired, even if some details change along the way. (They always do, for me.)

I did some of that with wandering, but … I was snowed-in, lol, and finally everyone had gone to sleep and my head was full of ideas. So I laid down with my laptop and just dove right in with the only clear line I had in mind:

Han Solo once had apleasant conversation with Cassian Andor.

Just once.

That was where I planned it to begin! The actual beginning came later, because I very quickly ran into a problem—the sentence worked to jump into exposition, not an actual scene. And with the exposition, I needed to introduce 1) Cassian’s hatred of Han, 2) Han’s lesser but firm dislike, 3) Cassian and Leia’s history together as spies, 4) Han’s brief and half-hearted attempt to suck up, 5) Jyn and Cassian being married, 6) Han’s friendship with Jyn, 7) Han’s jealousy as contrasted to Cassian and Jyn’s mutual trust, etc. Yikes.

So I kept getting mired down in explanations and flashbacks (I actually wrote the scene where Jyn drunkenly complains about finding something for Cassian’s birthday, lol) that slowed it down. And I wasn’t really happy with anything—I constantly niggled at sentences and moved things around and rephrased and it just didn’t work right. I actually have the document I worked in (I didn’t have Internet at the time), so you can see this sort of intermediate stage:

I niggled with it for the rest of the vacation, then it hit me that the issue was that starting a fic with exposition was the real problem. Starting with ESB-era Han just being ESB-era Han could let me work the exposition section in, and without the pressure of it being the opening section I could keep it to a tangential aside and move the jealousy around and so forth. And from there I could just leap to the canon scene with bonus Cassian-Leia shared indignation, and impulsively I added Kaytoo at the end.

Moral of the story: if you keep trying to make something work and it just won’t, there’s probably something deeper going on. Take a step back and figure out why it’s not working, and often you’ll be able to correct course. Once I tacked in that little ‘Han sulks’ section at the beginning, it all fell together easily.

5) Revising!

You can probably guess from #4 that I do a lot of this as I write rather than after I write. That’s true, to an extent.

It can be a very … I wouldn’t say discouraging, but sluggish way to write, because you end up struggling over phrases you might not even keep in the end. I genuinely think it’s best to at least try to restrain the impulse to polish everything, but at the same time, there are some of us who genuinely can’t keep going if the current section isn’t working (again, see #4!). So I allow myself a certain amount of freedom in polishing-as-I-go, while restraining the impulse to do anything more substantial. The single best way of doing this is sprinting—writing in short, timed bursts with little to no editing, ideally with a partner that you check in with. (Again, I generally do this with @steinbecks.)

However, even if you edit as you go and turn out pretty clean drafts, you should still revise at the end. What I generally do is, first of all, just quickly re-read. The writing process is a lot slower than the reading one, and it’s easy to get so focused on particular passages or sections that you lose sight of how it’s working as a whole. So that quick read-through is a way to back up and see how it’s holding together. It’s best if you give yourself a break before you do this—a day or two at least, to get your mind out of the writing mode and look at it with relatively fresh eyes.

(I will say that I almost never wait. But I do pretty much always end up editing chapters yet again in the first couple of days after I’ve posted them. Sometimes it’s contuinity, sometimes a passage that isn’t working quite the way I thought, whatever. There’s always something. It’s why the chapters I post at Dreamwidth are generally cleaner than the ones at Tumblr, which are cleaner than the first versions posted at AO3.)

However you do that read-through, the most important for me is the next one. At this point, I read the whole fic/chapter/essay/whatever from start to finish—out loud. In fact, if it’s possible, I’ll do a full-on dramatic reading. By reading aloud, you can catch things like typos that your mind silently corrects for your eyes, but also it’s easier to notice sentence-level problems like repeated words/phrases and unvaried sentence structure. If something makes me cringe when I read it aloud, I cut it or rewrite. If saying it aloud makes it sound wrong for the character, it probably is wrong for the character. Sometimes I do the dramatic reading revision two or three times.

And then I either post or print!

The short version:

1) I get an idea, 2) I let the ideas develop without thinking too hard about them, 3) I nail down and think up specific ideas, mostly through chat and/or outlines, 4) I plow through a draft, rearranging/adding material if things just aren’t working, and 5) I revise, once with a quick re-read of the whole thing, and then again by slowly reading it aloud to myself to catch problems with (primarily) mechanics, voice, and word choice.

#faithfullyfalse #respuestas #nice things people say to me #fic talk #esb au #words about words #thank you for this!#in my other life i've taught writing so this was like SING THE SONG OF MY PEOPLE

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