Interview: Forkanna/JessicaX

Hello everyone! Now, we know we said that the last interview wouldn’t be the last, and for a time, it kind of was. But now we’re back with a brand-spanking-new interview, courtesy of the lovely Forkanna/JessicaX. Instead of focusing on just one story, we decided to just ask her about a few of her stories and her own writing experiences (mostly due to the fact that we love all her fics and, with about a dozen published, we just didn’t have time to go through each and every one).



Now, many of you probably know her as the author of The Cake Fic, undeniably one of the most well-known fics in the fandom. But, from being part of the Elsanna Fervor team to writing fics with important messages, the value of this author absolutely cannot be understated. She’s more than a smutfic writer (so much more). She’s an author you can depend on to remain true to the characters – but also be daring, and bold, and enlightening. One can learn more about how to write by reading her, than a great majority of published work. Also, lesbians. The day she moves onto a new fandom will be a sad one indeed.

JessicaX’s FFN | AO3 | Tumblr

Now, onto the interview!

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First of all, how are you?

Overall, pretty good! Specific to this morning, I’m pretty tired; I got into a “someone is wrong on the internet” type of argument last night that left me so frustrated I had to watch several episodes of Bob Ross on Netflix to calm down, and by then I only was able to get about 5 hours of sleep. But coffee will fix that, right?

Gosh, there’s something with the way he speaks, isn’t there? Now, it has to be asked – what inspired you to write Elsanna?

The movie! (#stock answer) By the final scene of “DYWBAS” I already could feel the seeds of shipping, but I ignored them until the coronation party. Still, it wasn’t until Anna dropped the “I love you” that it passed Minimum Shipping Threshold into something that I knew I would eventually write for.

You jumped right into the incest and the smut with Min Søster Bursdagskake. Can I ask what inspired this fun little fic?

Fatigue and arousal, to be completely honest with you. A lot of my fics that aren’t from prompts start with me just letting my half-asleep mind wander, and once in awhile it wanders somewhere interesting.

What was the point of it? As in, was it just a smutty (though almost-odd in its emotion, too) retelling of the film?

No, no. The emotional component was always as important to me as the smut (but for most people, that got lost in the “WHAT?? CAKE?? FORKS??!?!”)

Currently, it’s tagged as ‘in-progress’ – do you have any plans to continue it in the near future?

Not the near future. I have too many other stories to tell, and no strong idea for a follow-up. YET.

I’m sure you have many fans who would love a continuation, if/when you’re ready to give it. Is that one your most popular fic to date? Or just the most well-known?

Definitely the most well-known! Depends on how you qualify popular; “The Aphrodite Curse” has almost twice as many reviews, and even “My Sister’s Mistress” has more. But Cake Fic has the most favourites.

… Why a fork?

What, you eat cake with your hands? Are you some kind of animal?! More seriously, all of that came about organically because I had used a birthday cake as a way for Anna to try to reconnect with her sister. The cake and utensils weren’t planned for such *cough* unusual purposes before I started writing.

Now, in your second fic, Parting Words, there’s actually some interesting bits to it which make it a little special. This one, like “The Cake Fic”, is incest (this time without the smut). You actually seem to have put a lot of work into developing ~feelings~ this time around. Why is that?

As I said in the previous question, I can’t write while ignoring the emotional facets to the characters (even smut). With that fic, though, you’re right that emotion was almost the sole focus.

Another interesting item of note is the complete lack of dialogue. Was that intentional?

YES. Words aren’t always necessary, and once I noticed I wasn’t using any, I decided to just avoid them completely. I think that turned out kind of unique.

They do end up parting ways, as the title suggests; however, this isn’t necessarily sad. I got the feeling that the end was supposed to be, perhaps not happy, but hopeful. Was sort of feeling did you hope to get across?

Yep! The future for them has possibilities.

It also seems to be your only elsanna fic written in first person. Why is that?

Well, a lot of people respond poorly to FPP. There’s that tumblr post that goes something like, “*opens a fic* *sees it’s in first person* *closes fic*”. That’s really unfortunate, because it’s an equally valid method of storytelling, but I think that’s because a lot of new fic authors start out writing that way. And it is trickier to write well with FPP, definitely.

Many of your elsanna stories are icest, and it’s only lately (seemingly with the EF blog, and the ECC) that you’ve written more non-incest. Do your thought processes change between the AUs, and if so, how?

Well, a lot of the ones from prompts are set up so that it wouldn’t make sense for them to be related (like SEEK, Polar Opposites). It’s just me trying to stay true to those prompts.

Do you prefer exploring their relationship as sisters-cum-lovers, or are non-incest fics slowly gaining your attention as a writer? What would you say your favourite type has been?

Actually, I prefer them as sisters; that’s part of their charm and challenge. But I think it can be equally fun to write them without being sisters, if there’s a component to their relationship that takes the place of their familial connection (or at least, a barrier that takes place of that). With SEEK, it’s that Elsa is a rich celebrity, and that throws off their dynamic more than if they were both just two college girls. Polar Opposites, it’s that one is aro and the other is ace, so it’s hard for them to find middle ground. And of course, with all the ECC prompts, I’m only one person on the team, haha.

How does writing collaboratively help with your own thought processes? Do you find it’s easier, or harder?

Yes. (Sorry, couldn’t resist). It’s easier because I’m not called upon to generate 100% of the creativity and writing, but it’s also harder because I have to adapt if a collaborator throws me a curveball, takes the story in a direction I didn’t expect. Plus, sometimes scheduling gets in the way of collaborating. But it definitely keeps me sharp!

Of course, we also have to know, what has your favourite fic been? To read, to write, to help create or headcanon?

Ohhhhh that’s tough. I really don’t have an easy answer. If you mean Elsanna fics, it might really be SEEK; can’t tell you for sure. If not… it’s probably going to be either the Cheerless Saga, or “Chimaera of Judgement”. Those were a TON of fun! And sadly, I don’t read fic very often; I just write too much to have time for it, but I really liked “A Formal Arrangement” and Yamino’s “Shall We Dance?”

You don’t just write fanfic, though, don’t you? What kind of benefits do you think original fic has over fanfic? Has it made you a better writer?

None. The only clear benefit original fic has over fanfic is that it’s given more legitimacy; we’ve all heard the well-worn “HAH, that’s so bad it’s almost fanfiction” jokes a million times. But yeah, writing both original and fanfic all help to sharpen my skills. I’m as excited to publish my first lesbian novel as to publish my next chapter of SEEK. To me, it’s all of one (except for the part where I earn no money from fanfic, but money isn’t everything lol)

Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. What would you say is your best and worst aspects, of your writing and a writer? How do you overcome the less-than-stellar elements and become better at them?

My strength is probably… being able to put myself in the head of each character. Sometimes that takes writing mostly for one character, and then a second pass to make sure the other(s) in the scene are also being true to themselves. Worst trait might just be that I’m not as motivated as I could be to edit and post fic; if I don’t approach it in just the right way, I end up going “Oh that’s too much effort, I can do that later” and writing some more instead of showing people what I’ve already written.

So, do you finish stories before you post them? How much planning goes into each fic?

I’ve done it both ways, planning out a fic in its entirety, and flying by the seat of my pants. When I have no goal whatsoever, usually the fic turns out like “Freeze Out”, where I stall in the water. (Sorry to anyone waiting for that to wrap up… I’ll get back to it… eventually…) But with original fiction, I definitely always drum up an outline first.

With your later fics, you seem to be exploring more AU-style themes. The aro/ace fic is, as far as I’m aware, a first in the fandom (though ace!elsa is not). This one, along with the seek!Elsa fic, were both Elsanna Fervor prompts. How do you publish so fast, and what inspired you to write these particular stories? EF gets numerous prompts – what made these ones special?

That’s a tough question to answer. I see all the prompts in EF and I just sit back and think, “Do I need to write this?” Not in a bad gatekeeper-ey way, but as in, do I feel that spark of creativity coming to life when I think about this AU? Is it so intense that I can’t ignore it? If I do, I write it; if not, I leave it there for someone else to play with. Mostly, I think that’s served me pretty well. As for the speed… I mean, sometimes the muse is with me, sometimes it’s not. Who knows?

That makes sense. Now, with a few of your stories (not all) there seem to be themes running through them with the intention of educating people. The aro/ace fic, for one; you attempted to show a different type of relationship, and that regardless of sexual and romantic attraction (or lack thereof) two people can still form a happy, complete relationship with one another. Is this something you specifically set out to do, or did it occur naturally due to the content of the story and the characters’ personalities?

Wow, you picked up on that! Yeah, I’ve always thought that it’s important in media to not only tell a story, but to outline how I envision that things should be. Not from all characters (because obviously a story about a utopian society in which everyone treats each other perfectly and nothing bad ever happens is boring), but from the heroes, and occasionally even from the antagonists. But I never try to hammer it in there where it doesn’t belong; it has to be pertinent to who they are and what they’re doing.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever heard?

It’s a toss-up between “Write every day” (Ray Bradbury) and “Your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect” (Ernest Hemingway; I’m paraphrasing in both instances). Those are both very important, they keep me moving when I want to nope out.

You seem to like a challenge – what is the hardest thing you’ve ever written?

The answers to this interview! Haha, sorry. Honestly, I would probably say it’s a novel I started that was very personal, and autobiographical despite being fiction. It was so hard I stopped! But eventually, it’s going to be revived, I’m sure.

I just want to chat quickly about your other major fic, Freeze Out. It is also different to your other stories (you just like writing lots of different things, it seems) because it follows a different formula. It reads like any other office-fic, except… it isn’t. What inspired this story? What made you decide that they would be related?

Well, at that time I was even MORE dedicated to Elsanna always being “icest”… but I also just thought it would be an unusual twist if it came out that late in the fic, instead of from the very beginning (or not at all). It had been done before I’m sure, but less often, so that appealed to me. A lot of the time, these stories tell themselves; I’m just the conduit.

This is the only fic I’ve read where Elsa is intersex, and it doesn’t boil down to it being g!p for smut. Was this aspect of her important for you to write, do you think? And, did you plan on this right from the beginning?

Yes, though I wasn’t committed to putting it in the story from the beginning; I debated making it Elsa’s ice powers instead, but it just seemed too overdone. So in the end, I went with my first instinct. Intersex characters don’t get a lot of love (other than, as you said, girls who magically grow a dick - which is fine for smut purposes but otherwise there needs to be more realistic representation). I’ve always been fascinated with uncommon people and things and ideas, and writing gives me a way to shed light on them, to talk about them more.

Uncommon people? How else do you feel that applies in your stories, and in how you write them? Are there any other examples you feel are noteworthy?

Aro and ace, for one; they aren’t insignificant in number but definitely when compared to allosexual/alloromantic. Then there’s anything LGBT in general; we’re a small percentage of society. Different races, different nationalities, different occupations. Anything like that is more interesting than “White girl falls in love with white boy who has a Traditional Office Job and they have 2.5 children.” I’ve read and seen enough of those.

Do you have any advice for people wanting to write a story where the sex and gender of their characters are not black and white? Any crutches or stereotypes that one should avoid?

Hmm. Just put yourself in their shoes. Imagine you’ve been told you’re This or That all your life, and you realise you aren’t. If they’re newly coming to grips with it, some confusion or even self-loathing might be necessary, depending on how they usually handle stress. If they’re a few years along, you can probably do away with that. Then, once you’ve established how they feel about themselves, work on how the other characters would react to them.

How did you become comfortable with it? Was it just due to years of writing femmeslash, and expanding on minority characters just grew from there?

Actually yeah, hit the nail on the head. A very natural progression a little at a time.

As with the Cake fic, do you have plans to finish this one?

Someday! Always someday… eheheh… heh.

Not least of all because of “The Cake Fic” (My Sister’s Mistress doesn’t help, either, I assume), you’re known for writing sex. And, not just that, but kinky sex. Do you think there’s a difference between writing sex for readers, and writing it for the characters? How do you show this in your stories – say the difference between the sex in Polar Opposites and Freeze Out, versus My Sister’s Mistress and The Cake Fic?

You always have to consider the audience. With a story like MSM or MSB, it’s intended for a smut audience; I have tried PWP, but I cannot cannot cannot write a story with zero plot or background. It doesn’t feel organic and doesn’t stimulate me creatively (even if it does in other areas lol). However, the idea is basically: get to the smut faster. Worry about doing something more unique in smut instead of more unique in plot. Channel your energy where it needs to go. With a non-smut story, it’s more about what feels organic for the two people involved to do under those circumstances than catering to a particular “kink”, I guess.

Possibly should have asked this earlier, but how long have you been writing for? Is it something you’ve always wanted to do? And, possibly important, too – how did you discover fanfiction?

I’ve been writing for about fifteen years; I had fics before those on FFn now, but they were crap and worthless; I hadn’t figured out how to write properly yet, how to tap into my muse. I had written fan stories before I found fanfiction, I just didn’t know what to call them; it was a huge relief discovering I wasn’t the only one who liked to do what I did!

You actually have a really impressive track record for completing stories. Tell me – what’s your secret? How do you remain so into a story that you can write to the end?

Oh, that’s been… a really, REALLY long-term effort on my part. I was diagnosed with ADHD as a child and was on medication for it until the end of elementary(primary) school. That’s still true, and I still bounce around somewhat, but I’ve learned how to aim my bounces, if that makes any sense; I bounce from one productive thing to another, instead of from productivity to wandering around in a forest and contemplating why Twinkies are so sproingy. If you look at the “first published” and “last updated” dates for “Evolution of Friends” on FFn, you’ll see how long I took to get THAT one done!

Six years, geez. Makes me feel better about my slow updates. Has that made you better at managing your time, too? You’ve had to figure out your own schedule – does it make it easier to use your time wisely, perhaps I should say?

It does and it doesn’t. I’m still bad at time management (as anyone who has hoped I would be on time for something can attest). But I have learned to indulge in leisure time a little less. Mostly because for me, writing is also leisure time; it’s the “fun” activity that feels most rewarding.

Is there a story that has received far more positive feedback than you had anticipated?

Cake Fic, really. I didn’t think anybody would read it at all!!!!

Well, you were definitely wrong in that regard ;) Do you think you’ve learned anything about the Elsanna fandom based on the responses and feedback to your fics?

Yes. I’ve learned that, like any other fandom, it has a huge community of really awesome people… and one or two jerks. I get really sad when people say “Well that’s it, this fandom went to hell,” because it’s almost never true. They all have those bad apples in the barrel, and it’s up to us if we let them ruin it for the rest of us.

So, do you get writer’s block at all? How do you, personally, overcome it?

Every writer does - except maybe R.L. Stine and James Patterson, they’re machines. With me, I used to get more frustrated by it than I do now, it would really torture me. Now I’ve learned to just work on something else. If I absolutely can’t write that day, there’s always my neglected Netflix or Xbox (someday I might actually break 5000G).

You mentioned above that you’ve both planned fics well in advance, but also just done it chapter-by-chapter. When you think up your ideas, do you do it with Elsanna in mind? Or do you occasionally retrofit them to fit an Elsanna fic?

Oh no, the idea is always begun with who the characters are in the beginning. Though I have had someone tell me I should change the names for SEEK and pull a “Fifty Shades” (to use a horrible but pertinent example).

So you have no plans to attempt to publish any of your Elsanna fics?

Hmm… we’ll see. For now, I’m generally keeping OF and FF spheres separate.

Now we get into the slightly more general questions: Who is your favourite character to write?

Out of Elsanna? Anna, for sure! There’s also Weiss from RWBY, who is endlessly entertaining to me; just that exact brand of snootiness balanced with her insecurity and genuine desire to be a good person. Something about that holds my attention.

Why Anna (unfortunately I haven’t seen RWBY, so I can’t comment, but Weiss sounds interesting)? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it seems that many people choose Elsa. Of course, you do tend to focus on Anna a lot in fic, but to you: why is she so interesting?

It’s a really interesting phenomenon. Most people watch Frozen, they buy the merch, read the fanfic, etc. And they somehow forget that Anna is the protagonist of the story. It’s all about Elsa, since she’s the one who goes through the transformation into the person she wants to be. Not to take away from the HUGE importance of that, but why is there less love for the one who already knows who she is, and fights so hard to help her sister discover the same? Plus, I’m a lot like Anna in some ways; stubborn and loyal to a fault. Also, dorky.

Also, favourite character/film from Disney in general?

Don’t put me in this position!!! Either Anna or Belle, even though I haven’t put much Belle in my fics.

Is there a reason for that? Or just that you’ve found better/more accurate characters to use?

Partly that Belle gets used a LOT in Elsanna fics, especially with all the Belsa in r9k. It made me want to unearth more varied personality types and lesser-used characters. But then again, I usually stick Rapunzel in there somewhere, too, like most Elsanna authors - though that’s because she was literally IN Frozen, I think, haha.

Do you have any advice for people just beginning to write?

Don’t stop! Write more and read more. Grammar counts - especially if you want to be published. Tell the story you want to tell, not what you think they want to hear. And again, DON’T STOP.

And, finally, do you have anything you want to say to your fans?

EAT YOUR VEGETABLES AND GO TO BED

Well, there you have it. The wonderful Forkanna, who is honestly just an interesting gal all around. Thank you for letting us probe you, your fics, and your writing habits (hopefully it wasn’t too invasive ;) )

If this has piqued your interest at all, go ahead and check out her stuff! This interview was an absolute pleasure to conduct, and we hope just as much fun to answer. Until next time!