What fanfiction taught me

I just got cool pictures from the ballet Wizard of Oz but I already made a post about that so I'm gonna cheer this post up with pictures from it, (mostly me as Glinda and the Wizard) even though they've got nothing to do with the topic.


All photos by Piia Kinnunen (@piijjakinnunen)

I used to have kind of a love-hate relationship with fanfiction and that's something I've been thinking about recently. For a long time I had this arbitrary rule for myself that I don't read or write it. Mostly because when I tried to read it, it just usually disappointed me, and the one time that I made a long fan comic in high school, it consumed me and held me back from writing my original stuff. When I grew out of that comic I decided I wouldn't make fanfiction again, because it wasn't as productive as making my original stuff.

But the thing is I loved making that comic. I was more into it than any of my original stories at the time. It was simply the one that interested me the most during that year. I think there was no way that I wouldn't have drawn it, I was that obsessed with the anime/visual novel: Fate/Stay Night, and so dissatisfied with the ending that there was no other way for me to get over it.

I was able to stick to my rule after that because I just wasn't as obsessed with any series after that in many years. Momentarily, sure, but if a series has a completely satisfying ending I'll usually just have a hangover about it for a week or a month or so during which I may fantasize about how the characters' lives go on, but it's not going to last long enough to be so strong that I'll HAVE to write about it. With Fate it turned to years and I thought about how I saw the story continuing every single day. That didn't happen to me for years after I got over Fate.

Until about three years ago when I almost accidentally watched an anime. Kuroko no Basket.

Oh dear. That was a rabbit hole.

Long story short, I've written close to 300 000 words of fan fiction about that series now. And for the first few months I felt so guilty about it. Like I was doing something despicable.

When you think about it objectively, it can't be. Especially when it comes to anime and manga, since in Japan they actually sell fan works, like, technically you could be a professional doujinshi artist. So, the moral side of it is definitely safe. Even if the original creator was bothered by some material that others make of his characters, considering the content people make of it and get actual money from, I don't see how my fic could be offensive in any way.

So, obviously that's not where my guilt was coming from. I didn't think it was bad to write fan fiction in general. For some reason I just didn't think it was okay for me.

Well, that's kind of hypocritical isn't it? And I guess it was that thought what made me realize what this was about.

I just didn't identify as a "fanfiction writer".

But the truth is it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you write if you have a passion for it. That's all that matters. And I've always been saying this, so it's kind of funny to find this hypocritical side of me.

I mean, it's not different. The way I feel about writing someone else's characters, the obsession I have for the story, the drive to put it into words is exactly the same as it is when I write my own stuff. So, just because, at one moment the story that I care about the most happens to have come from someone else's story, shouldn't make it less valuable. If I feel that strongly about it, I should just write it.

Now, I know that this may sound far-fetched, but thinking like this brought to my mind how often I had ranted about heteronormative people seeing love between people of the same sex as something "other". Using words like "gay love". Oh, how I ranted about love being just love! About how there's no such thing as "gay love". About how, no matter what sex or gender the people in love are or who they're in love with, it's going to feel exactly the same, (as far as love feels the same to people to begin with). It's not "other" and it's not less valuable. For some reason people just feel a need to alienate themselves from expressions of love they're not familiar with. They're afraid to empathize with it because they still see there's something wrong with it, even if they technically aren't against it.

Well.

Isn't that exactly how I felt about fanfiction!

I guess realizing that I was doing exactly what I criticized other people about in another context, was exactly what I needed. It released me from all guilt and made me embrace what I was doing more freely than I had before.

And guess what? I've still written two original novels during the year I've written this super long fanfiction piece. Because working on what you love doesn't drain your creative energy. It can make you more creative. Giving myself the freedom to do what I want, when I want, and not having the obligation to always write just my original stuff makes me more productive than I would be if I forced myself to write something else when I'm really into another thing. While it's true that you can't run solely on inspiration, and sometimes work is just work, and as a professional there's going to be deadlines too, still, in general, being able to do what inspires you the most at the moment, is way more beneficial for your creative energy than forcing yourself to work on the second or third best project at the time.

So what, if what I want to write the most at one moment happens to be someone else's characters?

Writing a story is, in a way, being in love. At least, I believe that the best stories come from being in love with the story and the characters. And our stories always come from somewhere anyway. Just because something is "original" as in, it can't be obviously traced back to one source, doesn't necessarily make it that original in the end. It's always coming from somewhere. Original fiction is just a more complicated synthesis of different things we've absorbed. With fan fiction the primary source of inspiration is more clear cut. However, that doesn't necessarily make it unoriginal, either. What you do with the characters, might still be something the original creator would've never thought of, and it can still be exactly what someone else needed to read. It can still be profound, nuanced, and make for great fiction. An "original" story could be a total rip off and a fan fiction story could be the most touching, well written and authentic piece you've read in a while. Original doesn't always mean better.

I've also realized that I have writing skills that come out in fanfiction differently than they do in my own writing. I've always gotten good feedback on my characters, how they're easy to grasp and like. That I'm good at writing different personalities and viewpoints. In fanfiction, this means that I'm good at maintaining everyone in character. I have a good grasp on other people's characters like I have on my own, and it makes my fanfiction easy to read and relate to, since the characters feel like they feel in the original work. (This is what people have told me, and I believe it, because it makes sense.)

However, I also have a strong drive to interpret things, not just replicate them, so my versions of other people's characters are always going to have some additional depth. In fact, I've come to think that characters that inspire me to write fanfiction fall on a specific point in a spectrum regarding character depth: They have a lot of potential depth that doesn't quite show in the original work. And that's what inspires me to bring it out of them.

So far it seems that I'm definitely not the only one who gets something out of my interpretations, so that's been a really cool experience!

I've come to realize that the same things that I always think, should apply to fanfiction. If I love it, if I have a drive for it, if I feel like I have something to give or contribute in it, I should just do it.

That kind of thinking is what has lead me to the stage, doing these roles in these pictures too, so why the heck should fanfiction be any different?

Sure, a new obsession is time consuming. But if it's meant to be, it's just meant to be.

Blog survey for writers: 10. What are some really weird situations your characters have been in?

Sometimes, when I was younger I had a habit of making situations really weird by mixing comedic elements with serious scenes. The problem was that I didn't really know how to do it skillfully yet. This was especially evident in my impro comic with my friend, because we both had this habit.

There was a time in the comic when Viola and Keller were participating in a singing contest their school held (which was weird on its own right because the prize was an actual recording contract...) and while Viola was watching Keller's performance, thinking how good she was, she saw a faint image of angel wings behind Keller. And then suddenly, surprise: Time stopped! And for some reason Viola was the only one whose time didn't stop. And she saw an image of a moon looming above her, and it started talking to Viola, saying that it was Keller's "sign" and had come to warn her.

Um... Some supernatural power, huh? Couldn't even come to the right person at the right time.

This was from my friend's pen, but I made this whole thing even weirder. Because I made the sign reappear when the girls were flying towards the cursed mountain in some freaky big soap bubbles. (Unexplained, of course.) And the sign told Keller that she had only two weeks left to live as a human if the girls didn't hurry up and complete their mission in that time!

Yeah, I had probably started to feel self-conscious about how little the characters actually did for their magical mission, so I wanted to speed things up. It sure worked, but looking back to it the scene with Keller floating in a bubble listening to her death sentence from a moon is pretty weird.


But it's not like my stories haven't been weird since then.

In my university years' writing project "Ashland" the characters were visiting a neighbour town when they passed by a haunted house, and heard the ghost claimed to be someone they knew very well, and who shouldn't have been anywhere nearby, so that was pretty weird.

Once one of them had to dance with another character and spin her around until she fainted, because she was possessed by a weird demon.

I've also drawn a good amount of character meme based situations for these characters for fun, and many of those are pretty weird and funny. Maybe not so much if you don't know the characters, but oh well, I'll share some of them anyway...

I drew these, because I like trolling on my characters' personalities and there isn't always enough room for that when you're telling a "serious" story.

Anyway, this is what I had on top of my mind, so let's leave it at this.

Blog survey for writers: 9. How do you get ideas for your characters?

My process of creating characters is very much unconscious, but they are usually one of the first ideas I have for a story's world. I'm conscious of someone being there, that I'm looking at this new paracosm through the eyes of someone specific, an individual. If you know about MBTI and cognitive functions, it has been said that for INFJs the creative process is often unconscious and that's why they feel almost like they aren't responsible for what they create.

Well, that happens to be exactly the case for me. I don't feel like I'm doing anything to create my characters. One day they just are there. It's like they already exist, they catch my interest. Some theme, or incident, or something made my mind wander where they already were and that's why I could find them.

It's almost like meeting a person in this reality. What I know first might be things like their name, their looks, the general air about them, their biggest obsession or how they treat other people. Something like that. To know more, I have to get to know them, either by perceiving, interacting, or listening them tell me.

Fictional characters are like that too. I have to write their story to get to know them in a level as deep as I desire to.

The characters are my window to their world and their story. While I learn about their world and story through their eyes, I also learn about them according to the world around them. When the story has been in my mind for a long time, I usually have a good idea about my character's reactions and opinions about things, but even so, to know what the character is going to do in a specific situation, I always have to write it. It's not uncommon for my character to make a completely different decision in their story, from what I thought they would, because I couldn't yet see all the variables that affected the character's decision in the specific scenario that I ended up writing.

So, as you can probably guess I'm one big discovery writer. I try to outline sometimes, with big projects, but I can't help it, it never turns out like the outline! It's just impossible to know exactly what the characters are going to do before the story actually gets there!

So, in short my characters seem to come to me out of nowhere, and they get fleshed out in writing only.

However, I'm not that unconscious of my internal processes anymore, that I would believe the characters actually come out of nowhere. I guess it would be more accurate to say that by brain synthesizes them from all the knowledge I have gathered about human mind, behavior, personality etc. Knowing this, I still feel like they are more than the sum of their parts.

I guess how I think that differs from some other styles of creating a character, is that I still don't consciously create them. I don't make lists of their interests or characteristics, or family backgrounds, I let those things come to me in the story. I don't plan their role in the story from beginning to end, I let that unfold before me. I also don't get my ideas from any specific source, like a person I know. I don't base the characters on anyone.

(Well, I have, a couple of times, when I was requested to do so, but even then, deep down, I never thought that the character was that person, just similar to them in some major aspects, so the character ended up being their own person anyway and having characteristics the inspiration didn't have and making decisions they never would have. I think it would be very hard for me the recreate someone entirely, because my mind just isn't wired that way. Fictional characters are as unique to me as "real" people.)

Even though there are no specific sources where my character would spring from, there definitely are specific thoughts or ideas that come to my head, and because I was thinking them, these characters specifically came to me, and not some other characters. Let's take an obvious example: I never would've written an explicitly asexual character if I hadn't discovered asexuality. That's pretty straightforward. But how I think the characters come to me, is a process of more subtle and smaller thoughts and ideas.

In the end, it's a web. It's impossible to say, whether the character is like this because the story needed them to be that way for me to be able to tell it, or if the story is that way, because the character couldn't have made any other choices because of who they are. Everything is connected to everything. It's a whole, more than the answer of a math equation. The character, and the story.

Sometimes, of course, I can pin point that "I probably ended up writing a character who had this trait because I had seen or heard this thing." But that's not the norm. Most often I couldn't tell which came first, the egg or the chicken. I think the human brain is capable of so much more than A-> B -> C kind of thinking. I think it's more often that all these things that are enough for the character to be a person, just come to me at the same time. Or that this thing and that thing that resonated with an outside thing were already in me, and they together resulted in a character, so it's impossible to say which one was the main reason, or there first, or the last nail.

I'm rambling.

Let's look at some characters.

This is Gemma. She only came to me in one sentence, one encounter with one of the main characters. She was not pleasant at all, and I wasn't that interested in her in the beginning, but then it became apparent to me why she acted the way she did and how her life story had led her to that point, and she became one of the dearest faces to me in that world.

This is Sierra. She started out as a sick girl I didn't really know because she spent most of the time sleeping. But when she got better she became an important part of the story, and her story is everything but finished, so I continue to learn new things about her personality. 

These are Cherry and Forrest. I needed a detective who would be unable to solve the crime, and a detective who could, and these two came to me. Their individual strengths and weakness determined how the mystery unfolded.

This is Ririn. She's the character who was actually based on someone, but soon enough started to live her own life and oh my, did her and her friends adventures become a long story.

Derek is one of the characters that I can't say I like, but for some reason he insists on appearing in the story, over and over again. What can I do.

Hart is one of my most beloved characters. He's in a story with multiple viewpoint characters but he's sort of my default viewpoint, and I love looking at the other characters through his warm, fatherly, if often misguided eyes.

I guess what I'm saying is I discover characters in different points of the story and my initial thoughts about them may not always be right or fair to them. But I'll always get to know them more when I write more.

I love that they keep surprising me.

Blog survey for writers: 7. Music

7. Do you listen to music while you write? What kind? Are there any songs you like to relate/apply to your characters?

I don't think I could listen to any songs that have lyrics while I'm writing, and usually I concentrate better when I'm not listening to anything at all, but I have occasionally listened to instrumental music. Only when I'm really deep, like so inside the scene, that anything external will just become a part of it. Then I can listen to instrumental music that fits the mood. And only with really intense scenes. Like a werewolf hunt.

I definitely do associate songs with my (and other people's!) characters all the time everywhere. I don't think I can naturally listen to a song without a viewpoint of a fictional character. Yep. That's how hopeless I am. Of course I can make the songs about something else if I want but I have to make a conscious choice to do that. And why would I do that, when this is just how I get the most out of music? Fictional angles happen naturally. For every song, there's just definitely going to be a fictional character who could sing it, and I don't have to do anything to find them, just listen to music and they will come.

I've even made a game out of this, that I sometimes play with my roommate. It's the best when you find songs that you know are meant to mean something entirely different but all the same it makes complete sense from the point of view of your character. Most words just have a completely different meaning. I'm a very metaphorical person, but for some reason it makes me grin extra wide when something that is supposed to be metaphorical in the song, becomes literal through a character's eyes.

Out of my characters I've only really introduced ”Four Colours” in this blog, so I'll list some songs I associate with them.

The general feel-good song for the whole thing:

Viola songs:

Keller songs:

Sini songs:

Jasmin songs:

Ater:

Alex:

There's some. :D

This is going to be random

Here's a thing:

I should blog more about random things that are on my mind. (Or write my diary I guess?) Because if I don't write them, I'm never going to process them out loud either.

I used to have this dumb notion that I should only blog once I have something important and universal to say. (I had to let go of that thought to even start a blog, otherwise nothing was ever going to be important enough.)

Besides what's the point? Most people who read my blog are my friends anyway.

And the reason I don't blog that much is mostly that I think about what I say too much. (Which doesn't necessarily equal quality.)

But right know the thing is that I'm so busy I'm not going to be able to blog at all if I think too much about what I say. I have possibly the busiest period ever in my school life going on right now.

I think I have to learn to get my thoughts out without being too critical about them. I mean, it should be okay if it doesn't always make sense. It's better to say something incoherent and reflect, and learn from it, than not say anything at all because every thought has to be "finished".

There are definitely a few things that keep coming back to haunt my mind even during these busy days, because I haven't really chewed on them by writing about them. That's how you can always see things in a new light afterall!

Good blogs are probably the ones that can get something general and relatable out of personal experiences, but right now I think I wouldn't mind not having that kind of standards for this blog. (I can try to do that with my typology blog if I want.) And even personal ramblings can be relatable, and I think they have their own value.

I'm not exactly sure where I'm going with this post, which feels oddly refreshing already. :D

I feel like overviewing some of the things I have in my mind but never put anywhere.


1. Books and other fiction in general

Have some bad cosplay I'm doing of my own character reading here!

I haven't had time to write proper reviews! And it makes me restless when I don't. I feel like there's a stack of books and series just waiting and waiting and getting heavier in the back of my head because I haven't gone through my love or hate or indifference for them, in a really satisfying way. I need to break them into pieces to let them settle to their rightful place in my mind.





2. My summer jobs

I had two this summer, and I definitely haven't gone through such a multifaceted work experience like... ever? At least not in a period of two months! I did talk about a couple of things that happened there with some friends, but my life has been so busy, I feel like I haven't really been able to digest it all. It's weird, because I kind of went through the highest highs and the lowest lows in my personality during these months... and they're all things I knew about myself but these jobs made me reinforce my understanding of them. I guess many of my problems and strenghts haven't been so... in my face? Not for some time. There's still stuff to think about there. (And it would be good now that I'm about to start an internship.)


3. The big career choice questions

Am I too liberal to work in a parish? Is the fact that I can talk about the matters of faith in "lutheran language", enough to actually call myself lutheran, when I could also talk about them in pretty much any "religious language" (and non-religious as well), and I only feel most at home with the lutheran one, because it's one of the "loosest languages"? Is the fact that I could definitely be understood as an atheist, a monotheist and a pantheist, or pretty much anything else, simultaneously, depending on your understanding and use of the terms, too impractical for a priest? I'm very content in my worldview but am I content in this environment? Is this the right place to do what I want to do, to help people? I guess this school year, and the internship, will answer that question. I hope.

4. Typing

I've said this before, and this relates to my other blog, but I need to start writing my fictional character typings. It's no good to just analyze them in my head, and since I'm going to do that anyway I should at least start getting some of them out of there. To stop thinking I need to be able write my reasoning perfectly. The whole thing about typing characters is to learn more about the theory. To make the understanding of it more accurate and articulate.


5. Kuroko no basket

Yeah, really. I didn't want to admit it, but this series has had more impact on me than any other since Harry freaking Potter. And the reason I didn't want to admit it, is because it hits a little too close to home. I've never related to a fictional character as much. (For the record: No, it has nothing to do with basketball. It has to do with... everything else. Everything that can be applied elsewhere, if that makes sense.) The thing is, until now I don't think I've ever been so aware if I relate to a character or not, because it never seemed relevant to me. It's not my comfort area to know that. I like to empathize with characters, not sympathize. I don't generally like the feeling that I'm seeing myself in there. So I have a love-hate relationship with this series. Something brings back painful memories? Easy, right: Don't watch/read it. But when I think that, I realize it's also surprisingly satisfying to feel understood. So... apparently there's still a dilemma there I need to work on.

It really was something like this at first.

6. Daily thoughts

I often find myself thinking there's some general phenomenon I'd like to write about when stuff happens during the day that relates to something like that, but then I never write about it. I forget, or there's too much going on, or I, AGAIN, feel like the thought isn't finished enough. My little inner perfectionist needs a kick or something.


7. HSP

I read Elaine Aron's book on the Highly Sensitive Person and related immensely, but, again, I feel like I haven't really had time to process this subject either (other than crying every other page and recommending it to other sensitive people). I have to have time to analyze this whole thing to pieces so I can really benefit from it.



Okay... this was really random. And really personal. I'm not saying I will blog about any of these things, but I do promise myself to write all my thoughts about them out in my diary at least.

Maybe it's not so bad to write something so personal though. Because I would really like to read things on similar level from other people's blogs!

30 Day Challenge: 5 current goals

Okay, let's get the obvious one out of the way first:

1. To get a book published

Of course I'd prefer it to happen rather sooner than later. But I also try to be down to earth about it. It's more important that I write what's important to me, and spend as much time writing and editing it as I feel I need. I don't want to rush because I might just be at my biggest growth spurt as a writer right now. There's a dramatic difference in skill with the beginning and ending of the last novel I completed. It's like they were written by a different person, or at least years apart, not months. I know my stuff isn't ready yet, but I'm getting so much better all the time, so I hope that soon something is ready, that I am ready.

At the moment I'm writing for a contemporary YA novel competition (not my usual thing) and I only have three months to complete the novel that is still in the beginning, since my summer job has kept me so busy, so I guess that's a goal in itself, but let it be inside this bigger goal, since its just one way I'm trying to achieve this.

After that, I have my fantasy series to complete, which is still probably going to take me more than a couple of years, since it was only half way through and then I started writing the first book all the way from the beginning again...

2. To improve my drawing/Strenghten my style

I've only recently realized how much I've been trying to draw ”by the book” all these years. How much I've been trying to do the same as those who are actually good at it. But it has struck me: Why would I try to draw like people who don't draw for the same reasons or aren't about expressing the same things I want to express? I'm bad with anatomy. So what? I don't even want to draw realistically, so that shouldn't be my main concern. I'm good with faces, expressions, colours and contrast. And those are enough to express what I actually want to: feelings and atmosphere. It doesn't mean I don't need to get better at anatomy. It just means I should approach it in favour of the things that are more important to me, on their terms, to strengthen them.

I don't want to draw a mountain so that you can see in detail exactly what this particular mountain looks like. I want to draw so that I can make you believe there is a mountain there, and that it's there for a reason.

Not so good, no.

That's going in the right direction.

3. To improve my flexibility

This is probably my weakest area in ballet. Well, not in every single place, it seems my sides are more flexible than average and my attitudes and arabesques aren't half bad, so I guess my back isn't that stiff either. But I can't do a spagat, and I've never been able to lift my leg all the way up along my side with my hand on my heel. I guess I haven't really had to worry about it enough before, in class it's been enough to just do everything to the extend you can. But in our last performance we did can-can and we were supposed to end it in a spagat. There was only one other person besides me, who had to cheat, hiding the other leg under the big can-can skirt, since we couldn't get it straight.

This was the can-can skirt.

So, I'm trying to make it a habit to stretch my legs everytime I'm reading or watching something. So far, it's really hard. I might have to ask for someone's advice... so far I've only heard ”Just stretch untill it stops hurting” but the problems is, it doesn't. It just gets more painful. Either I'm doing something wrong, or the problem is that I've only been asking people who are naturally flexible.

My heels are my true achilles' heels, as well. (Heh heh, not so funny... I'm sorry, I couldn't help that.) They're just naturally stiffer than those of most non-dancers I know. Yeah... sad. I'm always worried that someday, they'll just snap. I'm trying to do something about them as well, since it makes me cheat in pirouettes, which is a shame, since otherwise, those are basically my only strong suit.

4. To finally start typing fictional characters on my personality blog

I type all the time. If I haven't typed someone I've read/watched it's because a) They're really hard for me to type and it's an on-going process or b) they aren't realistic enough to type which probably also means they weren't very interesting as a character.

But for some reason when it comes to actually writing about those typings, I keep putting it off. I guess I want to be exactly 112% sure of their MBTI, enneagram tritype, wing, and instinctual variants before writing anything.

But I want to do this because 1) It's just so interesting, plain and simple. 2) It's a good field for discussion, since when you're talking about real people, you can only really do it with someone who knows the person as well as you. Fictional characters can have so wide audiences. Sure, you can discuss celebrities too, but 3) you can get the thought processes of a character from the fictional work way easier than you can get real people's thought processes, and that's why, when it comes to the theory, I find fictional characters a better learning tool than real people. (Of course, I always recommend watching real people for practical learning, but the theory is just as important and the fictional characters are ideal for that.)

5. Finish my degree work

Yeah, the most boring goal. Okay, it's not like I'm not interested in my subject, of course I chose something that overlaps with literature, so I have an excuse to read more fiction: The images of God in self-published Christian fiction. That's my subject. I've read my material and I know approximately what's going to be in every chapter, and I think I've found some interesting spectrums and dichotomies in the way the concept of God is formed and used in these stories.

But you know, writing fiction and blogging about personality theories is just so much more interesting than actually doing the work: the academic writing. (Sorry I'm going to go Jungian here:) It's. So. Extraverted Thinking. It's always the same thing for me as an Ni-Ti looper: I don't actually do the work the way I have to present it. The Te part of the work is the last part I do. I fake it every single time, I've done that since middle school porfolios, since you're expected to reach your conclusion in a certain step by step manner. But I can't do that. I get to the conclusions first, I come to them in a complicated web of relationships of cause and effect, and then I have to go back and figure out how exactly I would've have gotten there, if I was using Te. And it's tedious.

But, my goal is to be done by Christmas. Unlike fiction, I write school papers the best in the morning, when I've specifically woken up to do them. So I'll have to welcome early mornings once summer's done.

This is the book that made me want to research Christian fiction. Check it out!

So, that's my five. Hope I didn't forget something important. I'm tired.

Blog survey for writers: 5. Youngest and oldest characters

5. By age, who is your youngest character? Oldest? How about ”youngest” and ”oldest” in terms of when you created them?

I have a few characters I've written about before they were born so one of them has to be the youngest but I'm not sure how to decide that. So, meet one of them, Lila.

She's the one on the left. I don't want to say much about her since I have high hopes she'll end up between covers some day. But let's just say she's a strong mage with peculiar magic and a spicy personality.

The oldest one is just as hard to know, since I have a few characters who've lived multiple lives (and there could be more of them than just the ones they remember).

If I count together the known lives, then my oldest character is Deimos from Four Colours, I guess. I don't know his age precisely but it's somewhere between 450-530 years.

 
 

If I'm only allowed to count the age achived during one life then the oldest is Nene, a half giant I wrote a short story about. She's 423 by the end of the story.

My newest character then, would be Ia. I know next to nothing about her, except that she's the neighbour of my newest protagonist Jaro, and I have a vague idea about her role in the story but I haven't actually even mentioned her in it yet. I think she'll show me more soon, though.

And it's impossible to know who was actually my first character, so I'll go with the oldest that I still write about. And, they're actually all the Four Colours, since they were created at the same time.

Blog survey for writers: 3. Names

3. How do you come up with names--for characters, and for places if you're writing about fictional places?

With characters, they often come out of nowhere, just like the characters themselves. It's like they already exist. At least when it matters, I should say. I don't think I've ever come up with, at least, a main character without already knowing their name. They just sound right and I don't really have to think about them. (Except a couple of times when I've had to change the name because of a too strong association. Argh, that's REALLY hard for me. It feels like I'm beating my mind up.)

Examples of characters who were ”born” with their name:

Ririn and Evangelica from "Ashland".

Dina from "Anem".

Then, sometimes I do have to decide names for less essential characters. And I always have to do it with places. They never seem obvious to me and if someone looked close enough, I bet they could tell that I find naming places the least interesting.

I don't have an actual plan for this. Well, I don't have much of a plan with anything regarding writing. I go with the flow. But here are some ways the names come to me:

1. Wait. Just wait long enough and a name will pop up. Once it does, it's usually the right one. Possibly several but the choice never seems hard for me. I named a character "Leco", because he just sounded like a Leco, and that's how it usually goes.

2. Let whatever names you remember come to your mind and a bell will ring once it sounds good. If it's a fantasy story, just alter it a bit to fit the universe. I like to use names that have a familiar sound. I named a character "Nia" and it came from "Nea" (which is a popular name in Finland).

3. Look around, find text, and start switching the syllables around. If it doesn't work, start changing letters. At some point, something will sound like a name. Once I named a castle "Labelend" because there was "Yellow Label Tea" on my table.

That's pretty much all there is to it.

Blog survey for writers: 2. Gender

2. What gender do you prefer to have as a protagonist? If you have no preference, what gender do you most often have as a protagonist?

No preference. I don't think I've ever counted this either. So, let's see. I guess I'll count the protagonists from all the projects that currently seem to have a future. Most of them are still in progress, or I'm rewriting them. Not counting short stories.

Male:

• Valter Forrest, originally from a silly school play called Case Casanova, then recreated as a detective novel with fantasy elements. On hiatus, because I decided in high school that I wasn't mature enough to write it the way I wanted it to be. I was definitely right, but the characters in it are dear to me, and I think that in a few years I could write it again.
  
  
• Roux, from a draft currently titled Warlock. It's a very surrealistic story about love in a world where life and death work quite differently than in ours.

• Elias, from a speculative story called Locks, for now. He's a high school teacher who comes across a group of students who seem to have formed some kind of a cult.
  
  
• Jaro, my first asexual protagonist from a story I've working titled Closet. Set in modern world with no speculative elements (rare for me). It's about the everyday life and relationships of a few high school kids. Most of them are LGBT+ in one way or another.

Valter Forrest and his rival/partner Cherry.

Female:

• Sessa, from a middle grade kind of novel with a title I'm not sure how to translate well. It's a linguistic reference to the Finnish name for Sleeping Beauty. It's about a girl who attends a magical ballet school. I wrote this in high school and it's crap but I want to write it again.

• Dina, and Semira from Anem, the only dystopian and the only religion themed story I've ever written. They live in a medieval-esque village overruled by religious elite.

• Viola, from the first title, Villa Viola, in what I've planned to be a series (I haven't started writing the others yet though), based on an exchange comic I drew with my friend as a kid. Set in a world where people go about their lives based on strong intuition, which Viola has trouble relating to.
  
  
• Lilea, from another magical school story, also called Lilea, since I discovered that Lucky Islands was a bad name. (Don't worry, it's not like Harry Potter.) The students learn magic through music and Lilea is not very interested in her instrument.
  
  
  
  

Dina, having a weak moment. Overly dramatic, I know...

Non-binary:

• Yene, from a scifi novella Miss Anti-luck about a bunch of people sent to do community service in an alternate universe.
  
  
• Felix, from my only historical story ever, called Mimina Optimus Maximus. It's about a roman theather troupe and originally written with a girl called Mimina as the protagonist, but later I felt like it was better from Felix's viewpoint.

Mixed:

• Then there's my massive fantasy project currently named Ashland, with three female protagonists Sofie (though she's really gender apathetic), Evangelica and Ririn, and one male protagonist Hart, in its newest version. Before rewriting, I had written two novels in this series with so many viewpoint characters it was really hard to draw the line between protagonists and supporting characters, so I don't really know how to count them.

• Jade and Oliver, from an exchange story of the same name (this time, written) with the same friend I drew the exchange comic with. Written in the middle of Twilight hype. We wanted to write... a somewhat different kind of paranormal romance. All the ideas weren't half bad, so I have the permission to rewrite this story as well.
  
  

Sofie, Evangelica and Ririn.

So, it looks pretty even for male and female. A few more female protagonists but like I said, there's no preference related reason behind it, so I guess it's just random. Everyone just pops up in my head the way they do.

Blog survey for writers: 1. Your favourite project

I found this survey when this inspiring person posted a video about it. I got exited, so I guess this blog will be all about too much information about my writing for a while. :D I don't feel like trying to answer briefly, so today I only take the first question:

1. Tell us about your favorite writing project/universe that you've worked with and why.

Oh my. The hard questions first I guess.

Okay, if I absolutely had to choose, like if I was allowed to write in only one universe for the rest of my life... It would be a comic called ”Four Colours”. Or rather, what started as a comic that I drew with one of my oldest friends from the end of elementary school until high school. Since then the story has actually developed multiple universes in my head and I have my friend's permission to recreate it in book from. Currently it's not an active project but it's in my mind a lot.

Obviously, the comic isn't very good, at least from the perspective of someone who is serious about writing. I mean we started it when we were 12, had no script, and exchanged a few pages of our stream-of-consciousness doodling at a time (though the ”few pages” turned into a few dozen pages in a couple of years, especially for me). The other always continued where the other stopped, without any hint about how we had thought the story would develop, so it has taken many, many, weird, unexpected turns of events which makes the overall plot convoluted at best. It's heavily influenced by the Italian comic called W.i.t.c.h., both the story and the drawing style, for both of us. For my friend I guess Digimon was the other series her art was most influenced by. And from my part there's borderline plagiarism (picture-wise) from certain shoujo mangas I had just found as my inspiration and sometimes wanted to use for reference to get certain poses anatomically right.

Even so, this was the story that inspired me the most through my teenage years and it was by far the longest of my stories at the time. (Over 500 comic pages when it went on hiatus in 2010.) It was while drawing this comic that I first experienced I was in perfect flow with the story, like there was no pen and paper between my inner world and its expression. The first time I stayed up an entire night drawing, was with this comic too. (40 pages in 14 hours or so.) It was also the first time I got to experience someone really loving what I came up with, and excitedly waiting for me to draw more. All of these are feelings that nothing can compare to.

Also, I don't think I can do anything like this ever again. I mean, I'm interested in writing with a partner but I don't think there's any chance I could do it like this anymore. I take my characters far too seriously for it: I couldn't create a story by taking turns anymore. I would have to know that we agree about everything regarding the characters and the plot. This of course, takes away the surprise element, which I loved when I drew this comic with my friend, but nowadays I just take writing too seriously to do it the way we did. (The exception would be if we decided to continue with my friend for fun. We've already spent so many years drawing these characters that I think we both have a clear enough sense of who they are.)

Ahem, what is this comic really about then? As you might have guessed, (if you know anything about W.i.t.c.h) it's about a group of girls with magical powers. It's mostly set in our modern world.

Meet the Four Colours:

Their names mean their signature colours (with slight variation, in Finnish) with a fail. We thought there was a colour called ”jasmine red” at the time. Turns out there isn't. Oh well. (This mistake inspired a short story were the colour ”jasmine red” is created but unfortunately I never finished it.) Originally, Sini and Keller were my designs, and Viola and Jasmin were my friend's, but for a long time it has felt like they're all equally from both's pen.

The girls have pretty nonsensical colour related powers and outfits. They also have their signature symbols. They yell a lot of nonsense when they use their magical abilities. None of it was planned to function effectively, it's basically all there to support the image we wanted to(?) create for them as characters.

The colours we chose for them didn't go the most stereotypical way, though. Blue is often associated with wisdom, understanding and some kind of otherworldliness. Our Miss Blue is rather head-strong, somewhat simple-minded, and really down to earth. Purple is usually somewhat mysterious, borderline dark, maybe even poisonous, but our ”Viola” is the jester of the group, the most energetic, wild and ”innocent” by nature. I think that's usually what yellow represents, but our yellow character, Keller, is the gentle and sort of motherly empath of the cast. Red is often the colour of power and leadership, and though there isn't clearly anyone with the most dominant personality, if I had to choose, it still probably wouldn't be Jasmin. She's a pretty sensitive and introverted character, who generally avoids conflict, even if she's inflexible at times.

The premise of the story was that these four girls got a mission from a supernatural being, to save a small village by a mountain, tormented by a magical illness. The girls were to fight their way to the mountain, guarded by evil forces, and reach the top of it, where they would unite their magical powers and clear the village from the illness.

(Yes, this is actually what twelve-year-old kids think is a great plot!) No, it is never explained why there's an illness in the village. No, it's never explained why only the power of these girls can save it. The girls don't even wonder about it. Nor do they give any second thought to whether they should do something like this or not, of course they're all in for putting their lives in danger! (I think this might have something to do with the W.i.t.c.h. influences. It is shown over and over again in W.i.t.c.h. that the chosen ones just can't escape their fate, so maybe we just accepted it so we didn't need to raise the question, haha.)

This, and brief character profiles, were all the planning we did. Then we just started drawing. And oh boy, didn't it get out of hand. Kind of in a good way, from the eyes of someone who loves the story despite its shortcomings.

I think the most endearing thing about this comic is how reluctant both, me and my friend, were to actually move the plot forward and focus on the whole ”fighting evil on a mountain” part of the story. We were clearly more interested in exploring the characters' everyday lives and relationships. The comic is full of magicless everyday side plots, regarding everything from shopping to romance, school concerts to hobbies, parties to family drama. Sure, it's enough that the characters go to the mountain when they feel like ”it's the right time”. It isn't very often, it seems.

Eventually, they do manage to clear the village from the illness. Their next mission is brought on by one of them, Keller, who has turned out to be an angel born on earth, among six other angels she knew in the alternate universe where the angels of this story live. So, Four Colours are up to find those other six, to save them from the fury of a really mysteeeerious guy named Deimos, who's a foster parent to Keller's childhood friend Ater who happens to have a neat amulet which can help find the remaining angels. (Yes.) It sounds really bad like this, but later it is revealed that Deimos is actually one of the seven angels and the explanation why he thinks the other angels have betrayed him and why Ater has this convenient amulet sounds pretty convincing for a 15-year-old me.

After Deimos is redeemed, no new mission is introduced, and the story focuses on the characters everyday lives, before it goes on hiatus.

That's it in a nutshell. I'm not really a fan of nutshell, and I think I'm pretty bad at writing it too, so what I want to do now, is to focus on more detailed aspects of the comic and put parts of it on display.

BEHOLD,

Four Colours: The Weird, Silly and Reoccuring Stuff

• amazing anatomy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• it's always raining for no reason
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• ripping off shoujo manga
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• the ”evil” takes many half-assed and unexplained forms
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• it's totally normal for an elementary school to host a singing contest with an actual recording contract as the prize
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This pet hawk is never mentioned or seen again after its first appearance
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• they actually had a hot tub inside a bus
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• generic villains are generic
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• angels have elf ears
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• infodump
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• a mandatory Digimon haired boy
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• children are the most perceptive creatures
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• oh hello Sauron
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• confessions are always interrupted
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• characters just can't do without symbols
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• when you travel by magic... the landing always sucks
  
  
  
  
  
   
• when the stakes are highest, everyone meets in a void
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• It's okay for the villain to explain their plan... if the characters point the cliché out first
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• no perspective whatsoever
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• the running gag of a character who takes everything literally
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• romantic moments get faded into a joke (my personal sin)
  
  
  
  
  
• the conscience
  
  
  
  
  

Okay, now that I've mocked our precious child enough, let's have some

Moments I Honestly Like:

• The girls don't lose faith when they think one of them is dead
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Keller was assigned Viola's guardian angel before being born on earth (only a few months after Viola)
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola meets the human Keller the first time as a kid and thinks her voice sounds familiar
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Deimos can't ignore frozen roses, because they remind him of his beloved Radja
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Radja is determined to save Deimos and his villain role cracks
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The angels are reunited (and off to save Deimos and Radja)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola remembers Keller's voice (I know that's completely unrealistic since she was like max four months old but hey magic)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Keller and Viola are left by their band mates and they form a new one that includes all Four Colours
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• We drew some pages taking turns every panel and it worked surprisingly well
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ater, Deimos, Radja and her little sister Zenja move in together
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Sini and Keller regain trust in a dream world
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Josh can put it simply enough for Deimos to regain some sanity
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola wakes up characteristically ungracefully after thinking she just vanished from existence
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Keller and Ater bond on the balcony
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Alex breaks up with Jasmin undramatically and realistically
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ater and Josh forget for a moment that they aren't on good terms
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Viola confesses her love to Alex who shares her feelings
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Ater and Alex bond
  
  
  
  
  

Um, why exactly is this my favourite project then?

I admit that some of it has to do with nostalgia. But even more has to do with the characters. I think the characters are great, and that's why they take up a significant portion of space in my head. I wasn't a great writer when I drew this comic, so the story sucks in many ways, but my idea of it doesn't suck. How it should actually go inspires me. How the characters actually are, everything that isn't in the comic already but is a significant part of who I think the characters are, inspires me. How everything will unfold, if I give them a different starting point somewhere else, inspires me. There are themes and concepts in their life that intrigue me. Some of it is (implied) in the story in someways, but not nearly as deep as there would be to tell about it.

I want to see where those themes will take these characters. They are so close to me, they're like thought patterns. And if I let my thoughts on their path, it just doesn't end. They're endless. I could write anything about them and never lose interest. They've been with me constantly longer than any other of my characters. It doesn't matter what kind of story it is, if it's theirs, I'm at home. I guess that's why I would choose them.