guest: Mia Frenchfry

[quinnpriv1]

GUEST: Mia Frenchfry | FreinchFryGirl

PROFILE RATING: E/18+

BIO: Hello! I'm Mia (30, she/her) best known for ‘dying on hills I thought were funny’ in my prose and run-on sentences. Thank you for having me!

PREVIEW: Learning how to delay gratification and put all of that excitement, energy, and emotion into prose is the most essential discipline I’ve ever learned.

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GENERAL QUESTIONS

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[Quillifer: What is the first fandom you remember being involved in? What drew you to this fandom / community?]

Sonic is the only fandom I’ve actively participated in in any capacity. For decades, I quietly remembered everything I saw or [found related to] Naruto and My Hero Academia, but I was too afraid to make an account anywhere.

What drew me back in was my fiancé finding the music to Frontiers and trying to learn it on piano and drums. All of the dormant childhood obsession with Sonic Adventure 2: Battle came back because, like a godsend, I finally knew more about something he liked than he did.

We watched Sonic Prime on a whim one night and then the part of my brain that was desperate for rivals lit up. Within this fandom, the humor felt really accessible, and the creators seemed to have fun being silly with their chosen crafts.

Also, the minds I have had the opportunity to meet and get to know—this fandom has such big-brained energy and such a levity to it that I am always having fun talking with people.

SA2 was the game I looked forward to replaying the most. It is still my favorite game. (Sorry, Legend of Zelda.) So, maybe the hedgehogs were always on the table and I just wasn't ready to admit it.
 

[Quillifer: How long have you been involved in fandom?]

About a year and a half? It’s wild to say out loud because I jumped in and I really haven’t stopped swimming laps since I got in the pool.
 

[Quillifer: If you could travel anywhere for inspiration in your creative works, where would you go? Have you already gone on a majorly inspirational trip?]

Honestly? I have so much fun in my own head that I kind of forget to want to be anywhere else.

But, my favorite place ever to sit and enjoy what I was working on was the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. They had nice couch-benches in front of ginormous, gorgeous paintings. Anytime I could choose between campus stress and admission to that museum, you could rest assured that I was enjoying my time amidst priceless cultural focal points.

I loved reading the descriptions. The pieces have a wonderful, impeccable flow throughout every gallery. And, in the fall, the courtyard’s trees dust the ground in orange, russet, and yellow. Outside on the lawn, past the brachiosaurus statue with a Pitt’s scarf (1), there are canopies shading hammocks between these gorgeous, historic trees with that white-grey bark that you can only find in the central and southern US.

Everything is so green (unlike the golden hills where I live now) and it opens into a sprawling, stunning park full of lives lived, earned, stressed, and loved. Gorgeous people-watching. Plenty of birds. At least two fountains. Aloo samosas half-way up Craig Street. Better than Paris.

{1 University of Pittsburgh students tie their scarves around the massive dinosaur statues around Pittsburgh to ‘claim territory.’}
 

[Quillifer: If you had to choose an item of clothing, a food dish, and a color to describe yourself, what would you choose and why?]

If I were a piece of clothing, I’d be a modern-print floral romper— fitted at the waist with string straps and pockets because I am meticulous and always need to run and stretch, feel the sun on my back, and collect little treasures I find.

A peanut butter blossom cookie—pretty to look at, awkward to enjoy, best when already partially chewed (and my childhood favorite. I used to make them with my mom every Christmas.)

Turquoise, like the color I edit the sky for all of my photos, like my engagement ring.
 

[Quillifer: What are your hobbies / what do you do outside of fandom involvement?]

I grew up playing competitive volleyball, so I still love getting out to the sand courts just to dink around for fun. It's casual, but a great way to meet people and get exercise.

I'm also really lucky to have great friends, so getting everyone around good food and being together in good spirits is genuinely one of my favorite pastimes. And anything artistic, honestly—crafts, home improvement, drawing, clay work, pyrography (2)...if I can make something with my hands, I'm happy!

{2 A type of artform that revolves around using a soldering iron to burn/etch images into wood.}
 

[Quillifer: What kinds of technology do you use for your avenue and for your everyday life? (iPad, laptop, phone, etc.)]

I write on my laptop for fun nearly every single day. Even if it’s only 10 minutes and I can only proofread a paragraph—the day feels incomplete if I wasn’t able to make time for at least that.

I also write on the fly a lot in my Notes app when I’m out walking, or get an idea in the shower, or when I’m half falling asleep at night. I write my best dialogue on my phone.

I think it's psychological—it's where I talk to the people I love, where I read for fun. Something about it unlocks the conversational part of my brain in a way the laptop can't.

I have a bit of a commute, mostly in city traffic, and that forces me to think more than create for long periods of the day. I end up exploring more music than usual too, getting inspired by lyrics and podcasts. I’d happily throw my hatchback in here, because I wouldn’t have half my ideas without my thought-thinking car time.
 

[Quillifer: What is your advice for fellow creatives / people interested in getting involved in your avenue of fandom?]

Ahhhhh yes, yes, yes. I have three very important things that took me too long to learn, even though I’d been told them before.

One: look for things you genuinely like in everyone you meet and practice describing what you like about them accurately. Practiced empathy will take you so far in writing real, honest narration. And also in life—you’ll find making friends easier and quicker.

Two: value your time—it is precious. If you want to pursue art for the craft of it—which is beautiful and fun and I cannot share that love enough—it’s worth it to make time for writing the way you would your quads at the gym. Balance it with your real obligations, but protect it.

Assuming you take the time to study the practical writing advice available to you—i.e. Save the Cat (3), Polti’s 36 Dramatic Situations (4), Therefore, Because Of (5) plot causality, etcetera—my third and final piece of advice is to never, ever talk about your plot before you write it.

If you have the energy to explain your story to a friend, sit down and write it. Sit down and think alongside it. Bring it water and watch how it rolls down the hill into plot points worth jotting down. The second you start telling someone how your story ends, your brain starts to think you already made it before there are even words on the page.

Learning to delay that gratification and contain all that excitement, that energy, that emotion inside my prose—through the structure, the pacing, the word choice—that was the most essential discipline I ever learned. Recognize your own inspiration and you’ll love everything that you create.

{3 Save the Cat — a guide about publishing novels written by Jessica Broody. Praised for pointing out tips about paying attention to plot beats, genre definitions, and more.

4 The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations — a descriptive list proposed by Georges Polti in 1895 to describe every dramatic situation that might occur in a story or performance.

5 Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, noticed that boring stories started build off of the words “And then,” while entertaining stories built off of the words, “but & therefore.” For example: Jimmy went to the mall, but realized he was tired when he stepped inside. Therefore, he picked up a coffee. But since he was tired, he had parked in an illegal spot. Therefore, by the time he returned to the parking lot, his car had already been towed.

Like this, conflict and tension has been established.}
 

[Quillifer: What is the mark that you want to make on other people? (Strangers vs. acquaintances vs. friends, etc.) What do you hope people take away after they get to know you / your work?]

More than anything, I really hope I make people laugh. That they close the tab feeling like life was fun while they were reading it.

That’s what fics I loved felt like for me—they made the world brighter. There's a consistent playfulness in how I build stories, one that throws a wrench in just to see if I can make the machine work with it anyway. I hope [my] readers [can realize that] ruining things like that doesn't make them worse.

It's worth putting in the effort to engineer a smile where it's the most counterintuitive—in the middle of heartbreak, in the midst of a difficult conversation, in a chapter where the reader wasn’t expecting to laugh. In work, in relationships, in prose.
 

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WRITER-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS

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[Quillifer: What is a word/phrase/etc. that you find yourself revisiting often? Alternatively: what is one of your favorite vocabulary words to use?]

Earnest. I think a lot about earnestness—how much more important that is than any other trait. It’s the first word I’d use to describe the five people closest to me.

I also seem to enjoy odd verbs for sentence tags, particularly those that are more familiar in noun form: needled, fretted, graveled, smoked, pirouetted. My favorite word right now is snarfed. It’s so much better than scarfed.

 

[Quillifer: What do you want readers to take away from your work? What is your favorite type of comment/feedback? (I.E. what makes you honored for people to point out when they read your work?)]

Other than laughter and reacting to what they found fun about a chapter, I love when readers pick up on easter eggs that I hid well enough that they wouldn’t be obvious to someone unfamiliar with the source media.

That’s really fun to do in a fandom where everyone has played and/or watched different versions of the characters over the years. Like yes, turn over the stones I laid. Find the pattern. It means something.

I think readers feel like there’s a pressure to say something unique about the writing or about me as a narrator and it's really considerate of them to want to add to the conversation so meaningfully—and I have learned a lot about myself and my style given what others have told me about their experience. I know that’s not a common blessing, so it isn’t one I take lightly.

How you interact with a story doesn't have to be unique, though. It’s okay if it’s similar to someone else’s. I think it's pretty cool to share experiences!

[That being said,] my favorite comments are the ones that note and/or appreciate the intentionality of the work, the structure of the story, or how their emotions changed with the chapter. Those make me feel incredibly seen in a way I rarely do in my day-to-day life. It’s a really special experience to read those.
 

[Quillifer: Are you the type to outline your work or do you just go for it? What does your drafting/editing process look like?]

Both, but I only outline once I have enough inspiration to hang a chapter on. Once there's enough to keep me genuinely excited to lock in and I've found the real conflict—story conflict, character conflict, etc.—then I'll map out the beats and see where it goes.

Over-plotting kills the vibe a little for me, and I'm trying to write inspired while I've got that figured out.

[Quillifer: Can you explain what you mean by trying to write inspired? Like, writing while the spirit of writing compels you?]

Essentially! I didn’t have inspiration or flow for a very, very, very long time after [I failed to complete] my original story, and now that the spark is back, I’m precious about protecting it and trying to get everything I can out of it.

I write down thoughts any time they come to me—even at funerals—because those moments when something is happening in my head won’t wait for me to be in my docs.

Once there’s enough of those moments saved up—inspired lines of dialogue, emotional description, jokes—I structure them in an outline and jump on actually writing.

It keeps the process fun and vibey, which has been helpful for the long form / multi-chapter style I gravitate towards.

[Quillifer: What are the easiest / most difficult things for you to do as a writer?]

Getting through a lot of emotions and worldbuilding quickly is something that comes naturally given how my brain works. I’m acutely aware of too many things all at once. I can track several people’s emotional states in a room and know what the mountains outside look like and how the weather impacts my commute later.

That multilayered narration [is something] I think anyone can pick out in my stories and it is a fault of existence on my part, recycled in the right medium.

The hardest thing is reading my work out loud because I can instantly tell when I was bored with what I was writing, and then I don't want to admit it, so I just...keep going. I keep the momentum up even when it might be worth a shift in focus.
 

[Quillifer: What are some of your major media influences? (Books, movies, music, etc.)]

All the above. I read voraciously as a child and a teen. I was diving for books every second I wasn’t on the volleyball court, absorbing and imagining. I grew to love essays and academics, taking philosophy courses and social studies, history, cross-disciplinary honors courses in college, marketing campaigns (yes, like the full campaign), press tours…

All of that shaped my logic, my psychology, how I verbalized my experiences.

The Giver by Louis Lowry, Tell Me an Ending by Jo Harkin, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life by David Foster Wallace, The Shape of Water by Guillermo Del Toro.

EveryFrameAPainting on YouTube taught me a lot about structuring emotion through dialogue, pacing, comedy, etc. I take a lot of my scene pacing from movies (i.e. enter late, leave early, show don’t tell, center the scene around movement whenever possible, etc.)

Music is perhaps where I get the most linguistic inspiration. RAYE and her sister, Absolutely, as well as Jensen McRae are some of my favorite lyricists right now.
 

[Quillifer: What is your dream story to write?]

One that knows how to stay seven chapters, ha ha. That's the dream. Just a story with a little self-control.

My best friend is really interesting. I would love to author her memoir on her behalf.
 

[Quillifer: Who are some of your favorite authors (fanfiction or published)?]

Ray Bradbury is high up there. Tim O’Brien and Oscar Wilde, too.

But, contemporary—Jo Harkin if we’re talking published narrative. Her prose in Tell Me an Ending is something that has to be experienced. It is so clever and adult, it's smart and wry about everything. The volume of character personality she is able to access is enviable. Societally intellectual, creatively genius.

NavyBlueWings for their SasuNaru fic Therapy. It found me when I needed it the most as a teen and it made everything the rest of my life so much brighter for it. I’d say Beccamon, too, for Spiral Falling.

I would read anything SevenTowers writes—they excel in clean, efficient, stunning-visual-prowess prose. Lalazee, who blessed this earth with a god tier BakuDeku / DekuBaku (My Hero Academia) Omegaverse, and Shealaa for her wonderfully fun, cartoony, vibrantly free storytelling.

A story I've been absorbed with lately is indigo sunsets by IncrediblyOrdinary. Her prose is so elevated, creatively literary and a perfect Western genre study. Her scenes are animated and intimately aware of themselves. It's quite a nice read.
 

[Quillifer: What do you think brings readers to your work? What could you show a new reader to entice them to subscribe to you??]

I think readers come in for the familiar tropes and fun, but end up staying for the storytelling, the interiority of the characters, and the relatability of their flaws and emotions. I write in a very close third-person, so you get a little bit of everyone.

I’d show them the opening to A Siren’s Shanty. It’s fun, gets into action right off the bat, it’s written in-theme, the dialogue bounces. It’s Sinbad meets Sonic with magic and a close friendship between Amy and Sonic —and Shadow is an old flame who came back at the oddest time. And I will finish it, my swashbuckling heart, I shall finish it.

I always have an angle and a gimmick or three + a fourth wall break in my back pocket. Empty handed, I am not.
 

[Quillifer: Do you like your old work? Why or why not?]

I have an original story I never finished. I spent more time talking about it than writing it because everyone around me was so encouraging—they wanted to be proud of me, and that's a beautiful thing.

However, that convinced me that for a story to be meaningful, it had to be serious. That pressure of worrying about how people would react to what I was making, or that I had to be able to elevator pitch something I was exploring myself—that ended up halting me instead of propelling me. My brain felt like it had already seen the ending because I already communicated it. I chose talking over writing as my medium—and I wish I hadn’t done that.

I love that story and those characters because I just do, unconditionally. I love it for teaching me that I needed to listen to them in order to write them. I love it for helping me find and hone my voice, a writing style that revolved around thinking and constructing words naturally. I had to listen to myself in order to write for myself.

I found joy in my humor this past year and a half. I figured out how to pepper, perry, and parlay jokes in a way I didn’t see was important before. And I think the fact I can’t openly share what I am working on in fandom with the people in my life actually keeps me focused on creating instead of performing creativity. It provided the exact limitation I needed to shut up and write, haha.
 

[Interview hosted on May 22, 2026 via Discord. Edited & Posted by Quillifer.]