3 and 21 for the end of year asks ❤️
Oh Em, thanks so much for your asks, darling! Hope you're having a nice last day of the year!
3) favorite line/scene you wrote this year I have two, I can't pick.
"My scream wants to leave my body to shatter against your skin, to mar you, to marry you, to make you mine."
"And he feels a whole continent unravel inside his rib cages, like a blossoming flower bud so massive that it takes all the space inside his body and vibrates in the air around them."
21) most memorable comment/review
TW: HIV Thank you for asking this, Em. Actually, it was a comment on Dragons Don't Know Paradise (the fic that made us start talking!), my 25 days of Drarry 2020 muggle AU advent fic, a plot in which one of the characters is learning how to live with HIV. On the 1st of December 2021, World AIDS Day, I got the most amazing comment I've ever received in my life, from a reader who had been living with HIV for 12 years. I'll share an anonymised snipped of it here:
"this story has given me all the tears and mental therapy I never thought I needed, and I feel like wounds I never noticed I had, have been both reopened and healed. I can't begin to describe how grateful I am for the way you used the characters I love in such a brilliantly original way to shine a light on a fight I've been fighting for over a decade, and for how you've made me feel more whole than I've felt in as long."
I cried really hard and thought how amazing it is that my words reached someone who needed to hear my message of love and hope. Made me think of how wonderful it is to be able to share my stories for free in such a broad transformative archive as AO3.
I would like to end this ask saying that stories are powerful enough to create bonds, to give birth to love and sharedness and hope. It's often fun, but it can be so much more sometimes. Writing fanfic has been the only constant thing in my life for the last 17 years, and it is such a pleasure and a delight to share my stories with all my friends and readers. I read every single comment, even though sometimes I don't have the time or energy to reply. And I am SO GRATEFUL to everyone who dedicates a bit of their time to send me a few words, because these words are what keeps me going. This sharedness and connection is what keeps me hopeful. I LOVE my readers so much, I don't have enough words to describe the feeling. THANK YOU! This year was so rough, so raw and painful for me. But every single comment made me feel warm and seen and valid. Made me remember that we are NEVER alone.
I'm wishing everyone a happy new year! May 2022 treat as kindly. <3 Love, Tai.