Warning: Pity-Fest!

I'm feeling really depressed, and I don't know why. 

Oh, wait, I do.

I'm depressed because I'm feeling overwelmed with schoolwork, which is making me worry that I'm in over my head and not smart enough or good enough to be here at Stanford. 

I'm depressed because my roommate has an absurdly cute boyfriend who spends the night almost every night and tells her she's beautiful at 4 in the morning, and it makes me terrified that I will never meet someone who loves me that much (and possibly that I will die an ugly virgin with 15 cats).

I'm depressed because my dad mentioned his fiancee the last time we talked, and I am /not/ coping with the idea of him getting married as well as I thought I was.

I'm depressed because 80-90% of my music is emo and I don't know why.

But I think mostly I'm depressed because Owen Harper died in Reset, and I don't know if they'll bring him back. 

Sorry bout that. But I feel better now, really.

Meme Time!

 

And somehow when I read that, even after /I/ had just typed it, I read "MIME TIME" which is not the same and in fact very very bad! But no mimes here! Just a fanfic writing meme that I ripped from Poisonivory. 

1. How about a brief introduction?

Hello! I am Zephra, also know as Ed (to a few) and Midget (to many). But if you're here, you probably knew that? Anyway, I write. Indeed. 

2. What got you into fan fiction (and/or adopting muses)?

Envy. Unqualifiedly, Envy sucked me into fanfiction. I mean, when I was younger I used to write horrible self-insert Mary-Sue style stories in my head, but with my utter lack of internet until the last year of high school, I didn't realize you could actually /write stories down/, post them online, and have strangers read them. But at the end of junior year (mine not hers) Envy started printing off FMA fics and bringing them to school for me to read, and *shrugs* I got hooked. Took me a couple months before I tried writing my own though. 

3. What kind of fan fiction do you write?

Oooooooh boy, do I write angst, and lots of it, with a dash of introspection and a strong helping of romance. Also, YAOI. NOTE THE LACK OF HET HERE, PLEASE. Length wise, I mostly go in for the oneshots, but I have a deep and abiding passion for drabble series.
4. Do you write for the same pairings/characters?

For the most part? I'm pretty heavily invested in most of my OTPs, so I tend not to mix pairings up.
5. What is your most popular fic/muse and why do you think people like it so?

Ummm...Ten Kisses in a Row (FMA, Roy/Ed not-quite-a-death!fic), and I am constantly bemused by its popularity, since it was just something I threw out cause I thought it was an interesting idea.

6. Forget other people, what is the fanfic/post/prompt you've written that you're most proud of?

Working Girl (Hary/Draco, cross-dressing prostitution angst), Happily Ever After (SakuSasu marriage fic that is actually SasuNaru), From Someone Who (Roy/Ed Valentine's fluff), and Just a Moment (FMA drabble series). I put a good bit of work into all of them, and I like the results.


7. Do you find writing easy? Hard? What aspects do you struggle with?

Depends on my mood, I suppose. Sometimes I'll get caught up in a story and write 2000 words without looking up once, and sometimes I'll get completely, horribly stuck on a single sentence and have to rewrite it fifty times - or worse, have it kill my inspiration for the entire story. I think I'm a fairly slow writer, though, and I can't produce fic on demand if my life depended on it, which is why I never enter any kind of challenges or ficathons. The hardest part of writing for me is dialogue - I think I'm finally getting to the point where my dialogue isn't too stilted and just plain bad, but it took a lot of work (and bad dialogue), and I still avoid it as much as possible. Also, I can't write smut XD I get very embarrassed if it's more than vague allusions to sex.

8. Write a few sentences of your favorite pairing or character.

Naruto

Naruto doesn't look into mirrors so much any more. It makes shaving more difficult, since he has to do it by feel, and more often than not he ends up with a face-full of rapidly-healing nicks and scrapes, but his hair would look wild no matter what he did to it, and he's never cared much about his clothes, so it doesn't really matter. He's never been one for staring pensively out of windows, and that helps, and when he's around still water he finds somewhere else to rest his eyes or manages in short order to make it /not/ still by splashing in it or jumping in it or running across it. 

Naruto is scared that someday he will look into a mirror and Sasuke will be staring back at him.

Final Fantasy

Cloud expects his first time with Tifa to be awkward - as far as he knows he's never had sex before, and crowding out any thoughts of 'this will be good' were thoughts of 'what if I'm really bad at this' and 'where do I put my hands' and 'what am I supposed to say while we're doing it' and 'what if I hurt her'. So he expects it to be awkward. What he doesn't expect is for the first touch of her hand to jar loose a whole hoard of memories from the last time he did this with someone. He doesn't expect to be lying in bed with his (maybe-possibly?) girlfriend and having his head filled with the heat of Zack's skin and the Sephiroth's graceful fingers pressing inside him, silver hair like a curtain around them and a hot mouth wrapped around him and strong arms holding him tight as a gruff voice mutters "Gods, Cloud, you're georgeous" in his ear.

He isn't expecting it, but an hour later and eight shots into being blindingly drunk, he has to admit it explains a lot. 


9. Are there any fan fiction trends/clichés you hate?

Let's see - scenes where two characters sound as though they are having sex to someone listening in, but are really just pulling a splinter or something. MPREG. The reluctant uke who has sex forced on him and then really enjoys it. Making strong male characters into weepy ukes. MPREG.
10. Are you guilty of any of the trends you hate?

Nope!

11. What was the first fandom you wrote for? Do you still write for it?

Full Metal Alchemist, and more specifically Roy/Ed. I think about half of my fics are in FMA, but I haven't really written it in awhile, about 6 or 7 months, and I don't think I'll go back to it, not like I was in it before. Kind of sad about that, though.

12. Name your OTPs and explain what it is about them you love to write.

Eep! There are so many! But of the pairings I've actually written? Well, Sasunaru - I love the deep bond they have, and how they can't break it even though they resent it and that this forces them to hurt each other quite a bit. Remus/Sirius has a wonderfully nostalgic quality, as they have both have lives that are made up of little more than lost chances and regrets - as well as some truly happy memories. Seph/Zack/Cloud has the potential to be both absurdly cute and fluffy (pre-Nebeilheim), and terribly painful, as an in and post-game Cloud has to live with the damage done to him on his own. Akuroku is about two people in dire straits finding love, and clinging to each other as the only solace in a very violent world. And Jack/Ianto is all self-doubt and secrets and finding something real in the midst of madness.
13. What would you call your writing style?

Lyrical? Although that sounds really pretentious. But I like a sort of dreamy tone, with long sentences, a lot of deliberate repitition, and fairly rhythmic prose. I pay a lot of attention to the sound of sentences.

14. Do you read other people's writing? If so, what do you find yourself reading the most?

Of course! I read more fanfiction than I do real books *headdesks*. And I'll read just about anything - smut, fluff, angst, odd little oneshots, epics, etc etc. Although I have a great love for cracked-out crossovers - Gundam/Stargate SG1? Torchwood/House? Hell yeah!

15. Name one thing you'd love to write but have been too afraid or too shy to do.

There's a Final Fantasy piece I'd like to write - a weird, heavily symbolic look at Sephiroth, Zack, Cloud, and Shinra filtered through the lens of the song The Queen and the Soldier, but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it without it being extremely confusing and off-putting.

16. Do you feel uncomfortable taking criticism? Or worse, do you have the dreaded bloated ego?

GIMME CRIT PLZ.

17. When you write, is there anything that helps?

Music. Unless it's in the wrong mood for what I'm trying to write, and then that shuts me down pretty quick.
18. What inspires you?

Everything. But most of the time, I get hung up on a particular scene, a single line of dialogue or monologue, or just a mood, and write a fic around it.
19. Lastly, how would you sum up your fan fiction/RP experiences and you as a writer?

Good? Well, I've never RPed, but I think I'm a decent writer and getting better, and I have a lot of fun doing it.
20. Tag some friends, because they'll hate you for it.