Earlier this week I, Little Miss Mionie, sat down (aka: talked via email correspondence!) with the fantabulous HalfHope, author of infamous fics such as Hush, Little Baby, Hijacked, Terrors and Joys and I Do, to talk about her fics, the fandom and her writing process. Read below to find some some very interesting information about I Do revealed....
Hi HalfHope! Thanks for letting
little ole’ Nightlock interview you!
Thank you for thinking of me! I’m excited to be here. :)
“I Do” is your most popular
fic, with over 1,500 reviews. What do you make of this response?
I remember when I Do hit 1,000 reviews, I thought
(after asking myself how in the world it happened), “Well, that’s going to be
the last milestone in reviews for this one.” Then even after it was complete,
somehow people kept finding it, and the movie boosted it to its current count.
I’m excited so many people took time to read and review. Whenever I get a review,
not just of I Do but anything, it makes me just feel warm and fuzzy to know my
stuff is being read.
Do you feel as though this
fandom has many reviewers that take the time to critique your creative work? Do
you like this, or are excited reviews more your style?
I really appreciate reviews that critique my work.
After all, if no one does, how will I get better? Other than one troller, all
of my reviewers have been lovely, whether or not they like what I wrote. I do
get more excited reviews than critiques, but I think both have their place. If
every one I got was a critique, then I’d probably just get beaten with it and
never share my work again. But if every one was an “OMG! Amazing!” then they’d
all blend together and I’d get a big fat head.
Do you think there is a big
want in the fandom for AU fics?
Oh, most definitely. One of the comment I get most
for I Do is people feeling like Mockingjay didn’t deliver it for them. Now, I
love Mockingjay (I’m the minority, it’s my favorite of the trilogy) but some
people looked for more, especially with Peeta and Katniss. I think AU fics give
them more of what they hoped for in Mockingjay. And even for people like me who
loved it, AU is just fun to imagine the characters in different situations.
Where did you get the
inspiration for I Do?
A simple “what if.” I asked myself what would happen
if Katniss and Peeta did get married by the Capitol. I pictured an awkward
scene of getting to a hotel room for their wedding night, Katniss freaking out,
and Peeta being…well, Peeta. Then he whipped out annulment papers and I got
excited and knew I had to write it. I Do started as a one-shot, but as I noted
in the second chapter, my imagination ran away with itself. After that things
just flowed out from there.
Did you find anything hard to
write in it? I am always struck when I read I Do at how wonderfully you kept
canon elements in the story. I felt as though these really kept the story
grounded – a believable AU, if you will – was this a conscious decision?
My decision to continue or not was the hardest thing
for me in I Do. I started it before Mockingjay came out. I’d already written my
ideas of what District 13 would be like in another AU of mine, my second fic,
Hush Little Baby and its sequel, Down Will Come Baby. I didn’t really want to
do that over again, so I figured I’d leave it off like CF did. Then it took me
longer to finish it than I anticipated, and MJ came out. I agonized whether I
made the right initial decision. The hard thing about fics is that you publish
them chapter by chapter, and then you can’t really go back and edit. Figuring
out where to take things from where I left them was hard. But after pounding my
head against my wall and thinking some more, I knew that to start off I Do, I
just put the characters into the situation I thought of. So I tried to do the
same with the District 13 and other characters we know. A lot is the same,
because some of the same decisions would have been made, however events that
happened before left the outcomes and responses different than in MJ. The
Capitol would still hijack Peeta, but Katniss would demand to act sooner,
resulting in a less hijacked form, but still difficult to deal with. Coin would
still be evil, but with new complications of dealing Katniss, her tactics would
be different. I hoped to keep elements of the story that I love: its honesty in
war and the pain it brings, while combining it with my fluffy side. Fluff with
pain, so to speak. So yes, I definitely kept the book’s message and its
characters in my head while writing and canon played a huge part in it.
Something that I also thought
you did wonderfully in I Do was the growth of Katniss. Despite her
circumstances, she grows into someone who does love Peeta, and grows into a
motherly sort of character (ie. She keeps her pregnancy later on in the fic,
although miscarriages later.) without becoming an OOC character. I honestly
felt like it was one of the few times in the fandom where Katniss didn’t turn
into the idealised version of a woman (a dutiful wife and mother) because the
author wanted marriage and babies. There were definite political underpinnings
to this plotline, and the character progression was kept in check by her
fighting spirit. Basically, I’m saying you are awesome and this fic is so
layered. Was it originally this way? Or did Katniss not progress this much?
First, I feel like I have to say thank you for that
lovely comment. I strive to stay in-character and Katniss can be hard for me,
because I’d be running down the aisle to marry Peeta and have his babies, haha.
As for your question, I feel like Katniss’s development outside of growing to
love Peeta comes from my decision to continue on. That’s when the war starts
and it’s more than just the two of them and their relationship. So, as I said
in the last question, it wasn’t originally that way. Her layers, as you say,
come out in the latter half of the fic.
Read more of HalfHope's interview under the cut!
