OK, this is becoming less and less of a real hiatus and more "I'm just calling it a hiatus because Archive Panic is in full effect regarding all the fics I wanna catch up and review" but whatever the case, I peeked in here, saw it's been kinda slow, and decided to answer a few bold topics that tickled my fancy.
Have any of your characters written themselves?
Pretty much any character that gets sufficiently three-dimensional and/or entrenched in my imagination -whether they be an original fiction character, OC, or even canon character - has this happen in much the way Dragonfree described. (Speaking of which, Dragonfree, if you read this I'll be going into what you said about the topic and my own thoughts in more detail in one of those PMs I'm planning on sending you because I could go for paragraphs and paragraphs about it but would rather not make a wall of text here.
)
As your stories get longer, do you ever start finding it hard to keep track of everything? Do you have any methods for keeping track of things?
I have a good enough memory of my own stories to keep track of things pretty well, but even so these days for almost every fic project I write at
least a basic outline of the plot with various story/character notes and often far more, all for the sake of having something at least resembling a coherent plan for the whole thing - which historically has increased my chances of success.
Have you ever written 2 or more stories at once and enjoyed doing it? If so, how did you go about doing it? Meaning, how did you divide up your time to write both stories?
I'm actually doing that right now and actually succeeding - I'm working on my Criminal Intent entry alongside an outside project I've been trying to get wrapped up and finished for oer a year now, mostly working on the contest entry during daytime hours and the other thing later in the evening. Given the rapidly-approaching deadline for the former though I'm definitely considering shifting much more of my focus to it until the first draft is done at
least.
Which genre do you think would be hardest for you, personally, to write? Why?
Well, in general I don't really like writing anything that doesn't have sufficient elements of fantasy, science fiction, or both, since I'm a fantasy writer at heart who also loves sci-fi and any attempts to write anything more "mundane" utterly bores me.
When it comes to
other speculative fiction genres, however... While I feel I don't have too much problem pulling of horror
elements in my stories or just creepy/disturbing/terrifying/gory/overall dark scenes when the story calls for it, an Old Shame of mine's pretty much convinced me I can't write actual horror stories competently at all and... I'll just leave it at that.
Is there a specific trope that pops up in a majority of your writing projects either intentionally or subconsciously?
I've got a whole list I'm continually adding to (on my actual TVTropes userpage, even) but tropes related to deities, Eldritch Abominations, angels, demons, and other such powerful supernatural beings tend to crop up a lot.
As for subconscious stuff,
some variation of the theme that no matter who or what we are we're all ultimately human for better and for worse has managed to worm its way to some degree into literally everything I've written... Including in conjunction with the above.
Which actually ties very nicely into this next topic...
How do you handle Legendary Pokémon in your stories?
Well, as for the headcanony stuff about them that defines them in the universe of my fics... The vast majority of Legendaries are outright deities, powerful spirits, or somewhere in between, the only three exceptions being what I refer to as the "cryptid trio": Mewtwo (Frankensteinian genetic modification of an existing Legendary) Genesect (Frankensteinian
cybernetic modification of what was likely a normal fossilmon) and Diancie (A very rare and unusually powerful, but not unique or really unnatural mutation of Carbink). Genesect and Diancie would likely be considered unusually powerful "normal" mons under other circumstances; Mewtwo's more ambiguous/borderline due to sheer power level and being created from a more "
bona fide" Legendary.
In addition, all the truly godlike ones are unique; the ones below that level mostly are too but there are a few exceptions I won't get into here since this is getting too damn long and one hints too much at something I'm planning a fair bit down the line I'd rather keep a surprise (Though the Latii are the obvious example and as mentioned earlier Diancie is one too).
As for how they're handled plot-and character-wise... Well, every Pokefic I've ever written has featured at least one Legendary, and the reasons can be summed up by the following.
1. I'm a fantasy writer at heart and thus just generally like playing up the more fantastical aspects of the Pokemon world.
2. As hinted above, I absolutely
love writing characters that are deities or some other such beings for various reasons I won't disclose here, mainly again to avoid making this wall of text even longer (Though again Dragonfree if you're reading this you'll get the whole shebang in one of those PMs I'm sending you EVENTUALLY).
So Legendaries are ubiquitous in my fics and sometimes are even the protagonists, and despite alleged clicheness they'll continue to show up because they're just so freaking fun to explore as characters in their own right.
Now back to solitude and working on contest entry/that other thingy.