Thank you to @dropthedemiurge and @doyou000me for tagging me initially, and @thepancakelady for tagging me before I got the chance to tag her, because I answered half of it and then left it in the drafts for months. I feel like there were others, but it was so long ago I can't see it now 😅
1. How many works do you have on AO3? -> 48, but if my count is correct, only 21 of them contain fics I wrote (the rest are other types of fanworks or collabs in which my part was not writing the fic)
2. What’s your total AO3 word count? ->
The stats page says 134,092, out of which other people's writing in collabs makes about 60k, so I guess around 74,000 including filks and podfic posting templates.
3. What fandoms do you write for? -> These days mostly Thai dramas, though you never know what I might offer for Yuletide! My top fandom in recent years has been the very obscure Home School. I didn't hear a lunch bell in a scene and misunderstood and ended up with a very random fuckbuddies to fwb ship I'm very invested in 😅
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos? -> Since I never took down my old HP fics and the other fandoms I've written for are all much smaller, the top spot is still taken by The Joy of Not-Sex, the sex-neutral/exploratory ace fic, which I now think is written in a pretty terrible style, but was quite unique and I guess needed in these spaces at the time.
I'll skip linking to the other HP fics on the list, though, because this game is supposed to be for bragging, and I'm not very inclined to brag about HP these days, even if I did slippery-slope myself into keeping all of them up.
The fifth spot, however, belongs to Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Beau, an Enola Holmes book series fic, which is also a very small fandom, but it seems like there is sometimes some spill-over of readers from the movie fandom. This one is a humorous investigation with a very obvious answer and a true queer happy ending. The beau is not Sherlock's, just to be clear. Or mysterious. Or a beau, for that matter.
5. Do you respond to comments? -> I do, in theory... I'm not the most consistent, so sometimes I forget and then reply years later, especially if the fic is part of an event and I stressed myself out with the deadline. And recently it just kinda feels like I forgot how. However, if you comment on my Home School fic, I'll probably reply to it just about immediately, even now. 😅
6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? -> While I love recording angst, I don't usually write it, so the most I have is the hopeful ending of Well I'll be Damned (Raya and the Last Dragon, fucked up estranged wives AU). But it has an angsty middle, at least?
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? -> Probably Sherlock Holmes and the Mysterious Beau. Giving Enola the happiest possible ending was one of my goals in writing this fic.
8. Do you get hate on fics? -> None these days. In the past I got a couple of comments that kind of admonished me for... I guess not writing my fic as a mutual pining story? It was for a specific fic and I was quite offended because I think it was aro behavior that was being criticized, but also I realize those were probably very young readers airing out their fears of not being loved the exact amount they love their crush. Idk, I deleted them. There was also at least one bookmark note horrified with me for pairing a popular character with an unpopular one for a smut fic, but I don't count what doesn't arrive in my inbox as hate, and it was mostly funny anyway. Read the tags, people.
9. Do you write smut? -> I do! I write about sex a lot, although I'm not sure all the sex scenes I write would qualify as smut. Some might be too realistic or didactic to fit the expectations of the genre.
10. Do you write crossovers? -> None so far
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? -> I don't think so
12. Have you ever had a fic translated? -> I've had two requests, but I think they didn't end up happening. I didn't get a link, anyway. One might still happen someday, since it was for an event that might happen again.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? -> Nope. We tried a round robin once and I'm pretty sure it disintegrated because I had a (different) popular character express sexual interest in the same unpopular character as before. Do you see a pattern here? 😅
14. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? -> See, I'm an optimistic person, so I still hold out hope for everything I still want to finish. What is that hope most unfounded for? Idk, maybe that one Otabek Altin fic, since it's been so many years and I still can't figure it out. Maybe I should just post chapter 1 as a standalone and scrap the rest.
Or maybe that High School Frenemy fic I started before I shipped it, as "the only way I can see it happening". I want to finish it because I'm kind of attached to the premise (inappropriate socially inept horny bestie ftw), but I see the characters differently now, so that should make it harder to do.
15. What are your writing strengths? -> Character feel, for sure. That's the most consistent compliment I get on my writing. I also think I'm good at humor, and laughing with the audience over the POV character's head. And sometimes I write stories that are important to people. That's definitely a strength.
16. What are your writing weaknesses? -> My vocabulary recall is weak, though I've at least gotten better at identifying words and phrases that need something better, though it still takes me forever to actually find that better phrasing. Recently I noticed I've been over-describing facial expressions and body language, probably because I didn't want to give up the expressiveness of the TV canon. It's kinda vaguely justified in the specific case, but it also doesn't work very well, probably, so idk. Also I guess I don't describe environments much, which is not great for readers who like to imagine the scene as they read.
17. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? ->
I absolutely would never, so this is from a reader's perspective: If your POV character is learning the language and keeps translating back and forth in their head, then sure. Can be fun, especially if they translate a little bit wrong and you use it to amuse those of your readers who know the language, while also hinting it to those who don't. Otherwise, if you don't provide a translation in the text, you have to take into account that some of your readers will still understand it, because they speak the language. It can ruin surprises you planned, or just give the wrong experience to those readers. It depends on how attached you are to the close POV idea. But I think it's pretty neat that in writing it's so easy to just not include the line and only say "X said something in French". You can't do that in a movie or TV series; anyone who does speak the language will necessarily miss out on any experience of confusion or unsatisfied curiosity you would have liked to give them.
18. First fandom you wrote for? -> The Mighty Ducks movies! One of those fics never saw the light of day, for good reason, and the other is still on FF.net, but was never finished, because I got stuck on something. I didn't even make it to the part that deviated from canon 🥲
19. Favourite fic you’ve written? -> I'm not sure. At this point it might be On Call (3 Will Be Free), a soft bickering threesome fic where the characters have very different preferences and sexual idiosyncrasies (one of them I just wrote as ace without saying so, but the allos also have their own stuff).
Or possibly it's Comfort Food and White Goop (Home School). Those two are a pair, different POVs of the same confrontation between two teenagers who really don't get each other but manage to make up anyway through the power of sharing food (and being horny for each other, but Tibet doesn't like to admit that 😜). I finish most of my stories on a sense of peace, I think, but the sense of peace after making up is extra therapeutic to me. I used to both hold long grudges and believe that if someone is angry with me, it's forever, so a story about making up is very healing to me. It also helps that one of the characters actively decides to make up and is very determined to succeed. I think it makes me feel less powerless. Also, it turns out I accidentally wrote a clash between two different worldviews I had at different times in my life. Truly, the real therapy is the fic we wrote along the way.
(Also, now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure what I got stuck on in that Mighty ducks fic was how to resolve an argument. Only took me 20 years to learn 😬)
Anyway, this got kinda personal...
Tagging @crispywizardtale, @blatantprinterpropaganda, and @crossroadswrite if you want to do it! Also @ablazenqueen and @welcometothelairofthebitchking who I assume have been tagged already, but if you've done it already I either missed it or forgot, so please send me a link 😁
