Thank you so much for asking! I really appreciate it because nobody has ever asked me anything off one of these lists before – it’s really cool 🙂 However, this will teach me to reblog right before I go to bed.
4) What was the first fic you wrote?
Shall I be honest or shall I lie? Alright I’ll be honest *cringes* I was 9 and it was for Diagnosis Murder. Oh man, I’m embarrassed just thinking about it. Thankfully that one was written on paper, and I don’t think even I have a copy of it anymore. Now if it had been digital I would still have it as I never delete anything. Quite frankly the less said the better. Close to two decades later and some of my ‘logic leaps’ still baffle me. However, I suppose I was only 9.
11) If you could take one character from your fic and put it with another character in another one of your fics, who would you want to see together?
Hmm interesting. Alright this kinda violates the spirit of this question slightly but the honest answer might make you laugh, so maybe it’ll be ok. I have a couple of canon-divergent AU’s, they were actually the first Once fic ideas I had. I don’t know if I’ll ever actually write them so I probably shouldn’t talk about them. However, I have trouble sleeping and so I have a lot of time to think.
Anyway, I entertained myself for several nights imagining what would happen if I crossed over one of these ideas with the canon universe. You see ‘Her Happy Ending’ diverged after the curse (but before season one). Then at this time the show was on the Camelot arc of ‘must get the darkness out of Emma’ and I wondered what would happen if Merlin said “the darkness can’t be destroyed, it can only be transferred” and obviously Emma wouldn’t let someone else take it for her. Leading the only offer Merlin could make would be a spell that would transport them to an alternate reality, where in that reality none of them had become the dark one. Although he couldn’t promise what other differences the reality might hold.
It was a very “we are both” kind of deal, because they wake up in this new reality and they are all confused. At the start they don’t remember anything, it’s only over time that the new realities version of them (and all the memories) start to merge. So the Camelot brigade are canon show, and then are meeting my fanfic versions of the characters that didn’t go to Camelot.
Imagine waking up and you are in a house you don’t recognize, and you are sleeping next to someone you’ve never met. Or you find you have a kid you don’t remember having, it’s that kind of confusion level. Then obviously a) they start to remember/work out how this reality diverged, and b) this reality is a lot happier so maybe they are better off. It’s difficult because one half would be in love with say the canon partner, and the other half would be in love with this new reality/fanfic partner and so then they would be conflicted.
Plus they would be reacting to people differently, not just romantic partners but generally. I mean in canon the Charming’s kinda hate Rumple and don’t trust him but in ‘Her Happy Ending’ their son Nick (not Neal because Neal isn’t dead) calls him Grandpa because otherwise he wouldn’t have one and Rumple is Henry’s grandpa so it made sense to his two-year-old brain.
I hope that’s an acceptable answer, it’s the best one I’ve got.
18) Have you ever written a personal experience into your fic?
Yeah I have. For example my upcoming fic for the ‘Wrong Number’ prompt for this months Monthly Rumbelling is based on something that happened to me. That was something specific that happened but it can be more subtle. I don’t share any of Belle’s backstory in Painting Layers of Love, but for example she has my nervous habits. I’m sure if I thought about it, then I would be able to think of other examples.
Aside from something specific like the ‘wrong number’ prompt, I don’t usually intend to insert personal experience. However, I think everybody does it because we have to write what we know, or what we can imagine, and that is influenced by what we’ve experienced.