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#oh the things we left behind by furiosophie on ao3
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MCM, furiosophie
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<<This post is a part of a longer conversation about fanfic writers, how they view fanfic, and their writing process. All views are the fanfic writers’ own, and whatever fanfic they choose to write is entirely their own decision. No judgement value will be placed on fic content. These conversations are meant to provide insight for other fanfic writers in whatever stage they are at in their writing life>>
Meet-Cute Monday (with furiosophie, @furiosophie)
AO3 Stats:
Pseud: furiosophie Pronouns: she/her (currently) Current fandoms: Star Wars Current pairings: Dinluke (Din/Luke), Dopeyluke (Din/Poe/Luke) How many total fic: 6 How many fandoms: 1 Total word count: 202,988 Longest fic word count: 103,615 Shortest: 2,148 Highest kudo count: 2,928 Lowest: 107
What's the story behind your pseud? It's a dumb pun I have with myself - my name is Sophie, I easily get furious about fandom shit and I'm dyslexic thus "furios sophie" with one s and no u.
You get furious? I am actually really surprised, I don't think I’ve ever noticed you getting furious before. Hahaha well I'm working on it. It's less furious, more very, very passionate. Like talking a mile a minute, forgetting to regulate my tone of voice, gesturing wildly, the whole deal.
How long have you been reading and writing fanfic? I'm not fully sure how long it's actually been but I remember asking my mom to print out fanfic at work that I copy and pasted into a doc so I could read it up in my room because we only had one pc at home, so I'd say probably 17 years or so? And I wrote my first fanfic at nine, I remember that very vividly because I wrote it in a notebook with some company logo on it and spent more time drawing the Star Wars logo on top than actually writing. Plus I had my mom proofread it so it would count as me doing my spelling homework.
It was set just before the beginning of Empire Strikes Back on the rebel base on Hoth and it was basically just a conversation between Leia, Han, Luke and the OC (original character) I created who used to be Vader's apprentice but had a change of heart and came to warn them about the imminent attack. Which I am aware is not super exciting but apparently my nine-year-old self really needed to write a fix-it.
No no! That's actually surprisingly involved for a nine-year-old kid, I'm impressed. Well my OC also rode a space skateboard and wore turquoise overalls so I feel that balances it out.
Ha!! Spectacular! Okay, so this furiosophie incarnation is your newest writing self, though you've been a few other people before this, right? I've had two other pseuds before this, yes. Kind of one for every phase of my writing: one for back when I was still writing in German during high school and one for when I first switched to writing in English during uni.
What was the inciting incident that led to the creation of this pseud?Honestly? I saw the Mandalorian season 2 finale, absolutely lost my mind when Luke showed up, went on tumblr to soak up any crumb I could get, got hit with a dinluke meme and thought "hahaha what a fucking dumb idea" and then three days later I found out that my note program apparently has a character limit because I had typed out the first 7k of “oh the things we left behind” on my phone. So I just resigned myself to my fate and created the new pseud. I had no idea what it would end up being. “ottwlb” was supposed to be three chapters, max maybe 30k. To put that into perspective - it had been roughly ten years since I had written anything at that point and the most I had written in one go was around 22k.
And it ended up being nearly 104k words. So what happened, exactly? What was it about this story that needed to come out of you and why? It started with the simple line of "Din thinks of the Jedi often. More specifically, he thinks of Grogu." That was the first thing I wrote down, and for a long while it was very much just an exploration of that thought I had since I first watched the movies which was something along the lines of "the Force and post-Return of the Jedi Luke must seem terrifying to others" until that turned into "if the Force and post-ROTJ Luke seems terrifying to others, how terrifying must that feel for him?" and I think that is where it clicked for me suddenly that I was processing a lot of my own complicated emotions around mental illness with some of this fic, that simple truth of "part of your mind is no longer your own.”
It’s funny to think, looking back, that I wasn't really aware I was processing anything with the story until I was in the thick of it. Like I knew I needed to process some shit-- I was one and a half years into recovery from severe burnout when I started writing-- but I didn't set out to do any of that processing through writing, it just happened. So this fic kind of became about accepting that sometimes the darkest parts of yourself just won't go away, that there is no absolution and no easy fix and that the only way through that is choosing to move forward. Or it's simply about two idiots taking 80k to kiss, you decide, haha!
If it’s not too invasive, do you mind talking a bit about what “severe burnout” means? Because before I met you I’d heard of burnout but it was always just a term tossed around when people got tired. I didn’t realize what it actually meant from a mental health perspective. Oh yeah sure! Though I'd like to preface this with simply saying that everyone's journey is different and this is just my personal experience. In retrospect it is not that surprising that I burned out eventually–  I had been struggling for a while in my twenties because I had a very intensive job, moved countries multiple times, tried to maintain relationships with friends, etc., but burnout is something that creeps up on you slowly and is often very hard to catch in time. It started with insomnia, then came the constant health issues, then the irritability, then I lost all interest in things I used to love, was unable to write at first, then draw, then hang out with friends, then watch TV, eventually I stopped making dinner because it was too much of an effort to make and then, right in the thick of it, I was unable to take care of myself at all.
But that whole process happened over the span of nearly two years, and in my case really probably my whole life because my specific type of burnout was brought on by the fact that I grew up undiagnosed autistic. So it wasn't one big thing, it was me continuously over-exerting myself from a very young age. There is this concept of disabled/neurodivergent kids being "twice exceptional"  which basically means that to excel you have to work twice as hard as your peers, once to bridge the gap of the base requirement of function and then once to actually thrive at school, or university, etc. and that ultimately led to me burning out. I actually had several unrelated burnouts throughout my life, the most severe ones after high school and university which, since I was seemingly functioning, were all treated as "you're just a little tired".
When you had that “a ha!” moment that your first fic was really about you processing what you’d just gone through, how did that inform your writing? I think the biggest plot point that was informed by that "a ha" moment was the choice to write chapter seven from Luke's perspective. Once I knew what I was doing it seemed impossible not to tell the story from his POV. I also kind of doubled down on the "being force-sensitive is a metaphor for being neurodivergent" thing because that analogy was just very comforting to me.
And “go and get your hands dirty”? Lmao. Very, very different vibe. I think dinluke kink week was going on back then and myomikan was drawing something for it so my idiot brain thought "you are incapable of writing smut why don't you also participate?" Which ended with me writing the first scene of that fic and then it just...I honestly don't know what happened, it was supposed to be max 10k. I had it all planned out, but apparently I am not only incapable of writing smut but also incapable of writing anything other than a slow burn. There really are no deep thoughts in that fic, which is probably why it was fighting me in the beginning, but it did end up being very helpful as a kind of sandbox where I could try out different pacing and character conflict that I struggle writing. I am still very on the fence about that fic, I know it had somewhat good reception but it is the one fic where I honestly can't tell if it works or not.
What's something in that one that you were intentionally trying out all the while knowing it wasn't your strong suit? The physical elements of it mostly. I am not joking when I say I am very bad at that, as well as the conflict based on miscommunication/a secret rather than outside factors, and the tension that comes with that. In “ottwlb” there is conflict but they are always a unit, while in “gagyhd” their turmoil is to some degree self-inflicted. Also parts of their relationship are genuinely unhealthy but in a sort of helpless way that stems from their trauma and upbringing which I really enjoyed exploring because trauma does not absolve you from being an asshole so my challenge was kind of to walk that line of "they are very dysfunctional but aware of it and trying to work towards being better."
Dysfunctional but aware. I think there’s a lot of us that can relate to that, lol!
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