Dee Moyza

12. If you write in more than one language, what’s the difference?

Nope, just English.

13. Rate your worldbuilding skills from 1 to 10.

I'd say 5. I love worldbuilding, but I don't do much of it, at least not from scratch. I enjoy exploring details of others' worlds and filling in the gaps, but when it comes to creating my own, I often get bogged down by the details. I think my biggest problem is trying to preempt any questions or criticisms, and then I just get too far into the weeds with the teensiest little thing that only relates to the plot tangentially for two sentences, and I get overwhelmed.

14. Write and share the first sentence of a new fic. Just that.

"He saw a flash of red between the falling stones, bouncing and weaving toward him."

15. What’s your favorite plotless fic you have written?

Good (Transistor, Red/Auden). Short, sweet, and to the point. No story here, just one of my favorite fictional couples enjoying a good time after a night on the town.

16. Are one-shots really underrated?

Yes.

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Full list of questions here.

Back at it.

9. Thoughts on cliffhangers.

I like to use them, if I already have the next chapter/scene/section planned out and started. They're a good way to build tension, but if you don't follow up quickly, a reader might simply give up (I know I have, on a couple of them), so it's definitely a risk worth calculating beforehand.

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Full list of questions here.

All right, let's get back to this!

4. Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

My only recurring OCs are Argider and Retta (and her family) from "Curious as a Cat" and my stalled-out "Esthar Chronicles" series. These characters are native Estharians in the FF8 world, and are shaped by the violent history and former isolation of their country. They are both warm and outgoing and incredibly curious, eager to meet people who grew up outside of Esthar and learn their stories. They both work in a public library in an older part of Esthar City that also houses archives and a laboratory for the study and development of Blue Magic skills.

Argider was born under Adel's reign, so he didn't know any other kind of life in Esthar. He excelled in his studies and was conscripted into the Estharian army when he came of age, where he discovered that he was a blue mage. After concluding his service, he continued to study the intricacies of Blue Magic, and still works closely with the Estharian government and the army to test for new skills and develop methods by which to teach them to other blue mages.

Retta, on the other hand, was a young schoolgirl when Adel took power, and so remembers not only the freedoms she had before, but also the terror wreaked upon any Estharians who refused to conform to Adel's wishes. Of particular distaste to Adel were the artists and other creatives of Esthar, and she worked hard to erase their history and silence their dissent. Passionate about history and mythology, and not terribly adept at mathematics and the hard sciences, Retta struggled to find her place in this new Esthar. She eventually became a professor at a local university, and, later on, was hand-picked by Argider to help him run the library. She was responsible for starting up the archives kept there by donating items her family had successfully hidden from Adel and the soldiers, and convincing others to do same.

Retta is married with two young sons, and often takes a maternal interest in younger characters, including Argider, Quistis, and Selphie.

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As for original fiction, I have written quite a few characters, but most of them are not recurring. (Except for my idea of Evalena Haven, the gunslinger, whose name I'm going to have to change because I took it for my own burlesque stage name. XD)

A few that stand out to me:

- Captain Ravosa of Drown My Soul in Sensory Pleasure, a cocky, headstrong pirate who believes she is immune to the charms of the sirens that have taken so many others. When her crew mutinies and abandons her on a deserted island, she will find she is not nearly as impervious as she believed.

- Esma Abaroa Prifti of Home is Where You Hold Me, a self-sufficient widow who maintains her family's lighthouse and rescues a sailor (also named Argider; no relation to the one above, I just like the name) from a shipwreck and nurses him back to health. As the two of them grow closer, she deals with her past and must decide whether to remain there alone or move into the future with someone new.

- Aurelia Morales (still in the idea stage) - the eponymous "Epistolary Killer" of this drabble, able to bend ink to her will, and as such, suffocate people with words. She is part of the one-day-I'll-write-it Evelena Haven "universe", where her skills will make her both antagonist and ally at varying points of the story. Damn, I should get around to actually writing that, huh?

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Full list of questions here.

In an effort to post here more often, I'll be taking an ask meme from Tumblr and answering one question at a time. I saw this meme here on my Network page a while ago, but can't remember from whom, and the original Tumblr post is gone, but the list lives on in reblogs! So, without further waffling, let's go!

1. Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?

"Curious as a Cat," for sure. I love the story of Quistis finally breaking free from Garden and starting her own life, but I do think my writing has improved since then. Furthermore, I wrote this when the FF8 fandom on Tumblr was still going strong, and I infused this fic with the kind of silliness that was prevalent then (tbh, I miss that). If I were to rewrite this now, I would possibly tighten up the friendship portions between Quistis, Rinoa, Selphie, and Xu – basically, cut a lot of the irrelevant banter – and I would make Argider something more than a one-dimensional dreamboat (I really like the character, but I wrote him pretty thinly).

Full list of questions here.