#I read the fanfiction page on reddit but I find that a lot of the folks on there are pretty insensitive and a little whiny

[gabby-msr]

As a more recent fan of the x files (first watch in 2020), can I just thank every single person who has ever contributed to this online fandom, especially when it comes to fic archives?

It took me a while to find today's fandom in 2020 so at first I kind of just wandered around the internet and found so much.

I remember distinctly reading about Gossamer on a reddit thread so I looked it up and to this day I don't think I can explain in words the feeling of complete euphoria that overcame me as I explored the site and discovered endless pages of fanfiction. I loved reading fics that were submitted there, as many came with comment thanking betas, about their lives, and also their thoughts about the show as it aired. I felt like I'd found my people (a little too late). People cared (and still care) so much about the fics, enough to have had fandom awards, and really put in the work to keep these stories around.

There is something really special about reading a fic from 1997 from a writer who had no idea how the show would turn out, in 2023.

While Gossamer isn't exactly AO3, it has story categories, divided into themes (romance, adventure), and then again, sorted by the 1st letter of the title. And then there was the possibility to sort by spoilers. And sort by author and date, and a search function. Fic ratings and even ship tags.

It's so impressive. I'm in awe.

And I know lots of fics were lost because some websites purged content in many fandoms, and it has probably happened to us too, but we still have so many stories on Gossamer and other smaller archives.

Thanks to you, the stories have survived and new people get to read them. Some are fandom classics now. And some of us out there do read them, years later.

[colleybri]

Answer the questions and tag 5 Fanfic Authors

Tagged by @mosylufanfic :)

1. How did you get into writing fanfiction?

I’m relatively unusual here, I think, in that whilst I’ve been writing it since my teens I have had a good twenty year break up until a few months ago. Years ago, I just started writing it for my own pleasure - certainly no internet or easy ways to share it back then. More recently, I can attribute my return to one thing and one thing only: my love of the series Andor. An obsession that came out of nowhere in September 2023 when I watched it for the first time and it resonated with me in a way nothing has come close to in quite some time. After several months of writing various analyses of it I felt the urge to get creative.

2. How many fandoms have you written in?

Not many - most recently, Andor - obviously - and with the obvious overlap of Rogue One. Going back: I started out on E.T. (early teens then so that will date me accordingly :) ) - moving on to Aliens, The Silence of the Lambs and The X Files. Some novels then too: Narnia and Clive Barker, notably.

3. How many years have you been writing fanfiction?

As above, really. I’m in my mid 50s now - which I imagine makes me one of the older ones here. I dabbled most recently in the late 90s, with The Phantom Menace slashfics that were hugely popular back then - one of my friends was a superb writer (her stories were considerably better than the film itself ) and absolutely churned them out on whatever forums were around. They were a wholly new thing to me and I hadn’t even seen the film, but I dabbled a bit anyway :)

4. Do you read or write more fanfiction?

I write more at the moment, but I’m gradually trying to catch up with the reading. I missed Andor when it was first released and therefore the glut of fics from that time. But I’m getting to know the writers I really like and rediscover my own interests, genre speaking, along the way.

5. What is one way you’ve improved as a writer?

It’s really hard to compare as I haven’t got much left hanging around from my earlier years, but I would say that with several decades of teaching Lit under my belt now I do care a lot more about characterisation than I ever used to. It used to be all about the plot. I’m finding myself very drawn to subtext-heavy dialogue, internal monologues, drabbles and even poetry - the last being something I never thought I’d touch with a barge pole. I’m not saying I’m any good, just that I enjoy the challenge. That’s the main thing, in fact. These days I’m happy to embrace a challenge rather than shy from it. 

6. What’s the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project?

That would be what human flesh tastes like. For a Silence of the Lambs fic, obviously. The answer is apparently “pork crossed with beef” so I guess a genuine ragu lasagne would scratch that particular itch if anyone’s curious. 

7. What’s your favorite type of comment to receive on your work?

At the moment, as I’m pretty much starting from scratch and trying to find readers, absolutely anything. Probably excluding ‘don’t give up the day job’. 

8. What’s the most fringe trope/topic you write about?

Probably the cannibalism thing. Though that’s no doubt more mainstream nowadays…. I haven’t even looked at all the Hannibal (tv series) fics out there. 

9. What is the hardest type of story for you to write?

Anything long - the longest thing I ever completed was a 250 page novel but I was 14 at the time and haven’t come close since. Haven’t the stamina these days. Same with reading – I prefer one shots.

10. What is the easiest type?

Missing scenes or scene commentaries - not so much easy as such but probably my favourite forms, so they come relatively easily once I really put my mind to them. I find analytical essays the easiest of all, if I know the text well, but that’s no doubt a teacher-thing. I’ve made myself a regular feature on the Reddit Andor sub, probably to the chagrin of some :)

11. Where do you do your writing? What platform? When?

Looking at other answers to this one, I’m a bit perplexed. I have an elderly iMac and write on that. Hell, I used to do everything in long hand. Thank God I learned to touch-type. I guess I use Googledocs when forced to use my laptop. I’m fortunate to be semi-retired, so I generally find the time.

12. What is something you’ve been too nervous/intimidated to write, but would love to write one day?

Something longer, I guess. Hard to tell. I was and am intimidated by Smutfics, but had a go at a challenge recently and was quite pleased with the result. Not something I’ll be writing often though - not the main event, anyway. Love the buildups, and there’s some really great erotica out there, but I do get pretty stuck using the same vocabulary if I’m not careful. I’ve done a few humorous variations and quite liked those too. I’m British, lived in Bath for many years so like to imagine Austen’s ironic take on sex scenes quite a bit. 

13. What made you choose your username?

Nothing very deep - it’s to do with where I live. I’m a keen birder and Colley is an old West Country (England) word for a blackbird. 

Apologies in advance for tagging you - I’m sure some or all of you have been ‘done’ already! I don’t know a huge range of writers yet and I’m new to Tumblr and Discord. Absolute social media dinosaur as I am. 

Tagging @beladonna02, @ceruleanphoenix7, @faceofpoe, @jake-and-amy-are-married, @vadercat

[not-alien-girl-v]

Internet Hcs About the Evans

i don’t know. read it

warning: like everything language mentions of porn idk dont read it if ur gonna be like ew stop being lewd

Tate: Knows the fnaf lore. Specifically watched Markiplier play it and also a Sally Face fan like hardcore and kins both Sal and Larry equally. Has a Tumblr acc but it’s only to interact w fanart of fnaf and sally face and like idk follow other fan accs he’s one of those empty accs with some random ass username no posts no bio no prof pic just his name in lowercase. has a deviantart?? again doesn’t post just to look at fanart he’s really into fanart and almost gets into reading fanfiction about his various interests but ultimately decides against it cuz i feel like violet would clown on him for it if she ever found out

Kit: Has an insta but it’s private with like 27 followers and it’s all like just his family and friends and sometimes when his friends post he’ll comment something like ‘Looking good bud 👍’ and then disappears from the internet for another month or two until he gets a notif that his wife posted or something. too scared to go on twitter and i don’t blame him. for the most part he just doesn’t understand how the internet works and has no intentions of finding out so he leaves it alone. he also has a facebook but same rules apply with the instagram only ever goes on to hype up his wife and kids and sometimes friends

Kyle: frat boy sorry cuz i don’t imagine frankenkyle can fathom the internet anyway i feel like kyle gets into debates online like way too much and he sees nothing wrong w the fact that he’s like actively searching out bigots to give a piece of his mind to. he’s got a tiktok and only follows like racist sexist ppl so his feed is full or opportunities to curse someone out digitally. he’s also got a twitter thats almost been banned a lot. he’s completely anonymous w it tho and his insta is completely regular he’s got like maybe 900-1000 followers just of like his friends and frat guys from his own or other frats and a bunch of girls who asked for his insta cuz they thought he was cute even though he never replies to flirty dms. he WOULD have several white boy went fishing posts and you guys can’t argue w me on this ok i wrote too much for him. he definitely has a lot of girls commenting every time he posts and i think his brothers would give him a lot of shit for not ‘jumping on that shit’ but he’s all like ‘oh i’m old fashioned u know i’m not like that’ has an active snapchat that he adds stories to all the time but once again never responds to messages

Jimmy: he has an account on instagram, twitter, probably facebook but they’re all mostly like linked to the freak show ykwim like he’d have like a verified checkmark but he only ever posts like freak show related announcements or like every now and then a little video that he records of him and some other ppl in the show behind the scenes and it’s captioned like ‘come see us (enter date here)’ and that’s pretty much it he’s not super big on being active in social media because he claims he has plenty of friends irl he doesn’t need fake robot friends. also may not know how the internet works

James: i mean sally runs the hotels official instagram page and all other socials and he probably has no idea that she’s doing that until he finds out she posted some image of video of him on one of the accounts and then some guests recognize him at the hotel and say like ‘omg ur that guy!!’ and he has no idea what it all means n shit. I think he would get a great kick out of instagram reels like non tiktok but you know how like a month after a trend happens on tiktok then it goes to reels? right like he eats that shit up he thinks its the funniest goddamn thing like funny cat videos or someshit

Kai: right so like we all know he trolls reddit and 4chan and posts rude reviews on thatcow. the kinda guy that kyle finds himself internet battling like this is the enemy he's been preparing for. he has a tiktok to stay relevant and he's just a comment section lurker 'user17896379' type shit he just likes various biggoted comments and occasionally replies just to start fights and shit. he's got a facebook and insta where he's totally normal tho like 'hey guys vote me for senate!!' again similar to kyle but like opposite ends of the same spectrum. i would love to view his search history. searches the most despicable things on p0rn websites every time he yanks it and i just am desperate to know what shit he's looking at

[spaceumbredoggos]

The state of things going forward

Let’s be clear. Despite Illegal bindings and spellings of fanfiction, I will not stop making fanfiction.

I have stopped using Character AI for a few reasons:

1. AI is getting out of control. Sora AI can perfectly replicate movies and television, removing the need for actors, streamers, influencers, film writers, directors ect. Basically, AI is endangering the entertainment industry as a whole. I have pulled out of the character AI community and will soon be pulling any mentions of AI from my tumblr, as I had already done so from my YouTube, TikTok, and Reddit. I apologize for using this technology, as it has no place in the entertainment industry period. AI is stealing jobs when it could really be used to cleaning our oceans, solving world hunger, and refreezing the poles. I have tried to refrain from making political statements on this blog, but when the arts are at risk, I cannot just stand by. Coupled with the recent attacks on fanfiction due to illegal sellers, character AI and other platforms could decimate the community.

2. I am pulling out of the character AI community and AI as a whole also because I feel like it was making me lazy with my own creativity. I would waste countless hours on Character AI writing less than (how can I put this… wholesome.) which includes a lot of iffy things that the average person would be canceled for. I won’t get into details, but it was pretty vulgar and disgusting. I was in a dark place mentally, and the only way I feel like I can move forward is to not use Character AI and other programs that are similar.

3. It also makes it easier for me to focus on creating a portfolio of content creation as a whole. I am planning on starting a Minecraft streaming career (along with Pokemon and whatever games I find.) on my YouTube starting March. My channel (which is the same as my tumblr name) will have gameplay, speedpaints, AU’s, and hopefully my own indie animated series that I am working on that’s based on Purgatory. I am planning on taking classes on animation and making animation memes as well as my own indie animated series. I will be writing my own Gravity Falls fanfiction along with headcanons and fanart of my self insert, as well as AU’s based on the self insert later on this summer. The first two chapters are available to read on my blog, which will be due for rewrites and drafting on my AO3 page as well as Quotev and Wattpad. I used to think of Character AI and other ai chat bots as a tool to write fanfictions. This is no longer the case, and I apologize for doing such for well over a year now.

I used to think that jobs in the arts would never be taken by AI because AI can’t create. Given the events of the past two years, I now know that that couldn’t be further from the truth. I now refuse to support any ai generated art, text, and video.

I may go as far as to call for another strike for writers, content creators, actors, and filmakers to protect the rights of all in the creative arts. However, this isn’t my place to say, and I am leading it up to the people to make their decision. Just know that the arts are at the greatest risk it has ever faced. I can’t bare to see a world where AI takes the one thing that makes us human; the ability to tell stories.

I will discuss this on my TikTok and YouTube channels with videos this weekend.

[wolfsbanesparks]

Ask Game: do you ever use betas? when, why, how do you decide who they're going to be?

Thanks for the ask!

I have only used a beta once (as part of the Duke Thomas Big Bang event last year) and it was a wonderful experience! But besides that I never really felt inclined to find a beta for my works. Part of that is because, as someone who does a lot of beta reading for others and even a tiny bit of freelance professional editing on the side, I feel pretty confident in my technical writing skills (though there are always things that slip through that an additional set of eyes could catch). And part of it is that I am used to writing without one so it doesn't cross my mind when I think about posting something new.

If I were to go looking for a beta reader there are a few things I would want from them:

Be familiar with the fandom. While it's possible to beta read fandom blind, someone who knows the characters/setting/world better could offer better feedback on things like characterization, consistency with canon, etc.

Open communication. We need to be on the same page as to what is expected of them/what they are willing and able to do. if we can't reliably communicate throughout the process it wouldn't work. Sometimes after a bit of chatting we might realize what I want and what they are able to do don't match and that's okay! It just means we're not a great fit.

Experience. Because I personally have a lot of writing and editing experience myself, I'd prefer someone who already has writing and/or beta reading experience (especially if I was looking for more than just spelling and grammar checks).

Generally, if I wanted to use a beta reader I'd start looking after I wrote a couple of chapters so that once we hashed out some details I could give them something right away to see if we work well together. (for a oneshot I'd probably have the story finished or mostly finished).

Now for how to find one:

You can check out the Beta File for a possible match. It's a list of people who actively offer beta reading including fandoms, areas of interest, contact info, and content they are and aren't comfortable with. (I'm on there!)

If you're on Reddit at all r/fanfiction hosts a weekly beta bartering thread where people can ask for and offer beta reading.

If you are a part of a fandom/fanfiction specific discord server you should be able to find someone willing to beta though that largely depends on the fandom.

And of course you can ask fellow writers in your fandom if they'd be willing to beta read for you (or you could swap stories and beta for each other) This is probably the easiest way if you already have a circle of fandom friends, but can be harder to deal with if things don't work out.

This ended up way longer than I thought it would (especially since I don't actually have a beta reader), but I hope this makes sense! (And hopefully it helps anyone who is thinking about looking for a beta)

[heroes-fading]

tumblr did eat this but as a wise poet once said “honey i rose up from the dead i do it all the time”

so i feel like i have been slowly entertaining in the back of my head for a year or two now the idea of writing again. it started with like, writing bad poetry in journals. i’ve been consuming media, but in a lot more of a disconnected way. engagement was like, reading reddit and twitter threads for a day and putting it back down. then episode 8 happened, and i was like FUCK i’m unglued.

to put in perspective what kind of shit i was up to in high school: i wrote half a million words of like...once upon a time fanfiction. and in that i found lots of lovely connections to people but amidst a sea of other factors: being a literal teenager who still thought i could be the smartest person in the room (spoiler: never), having no real social net outside of the internet (and i will say my internet friends -- many of whom i still love and talk to today -- got me through some of the WORST times of my life), and having a very fragile ego. probably related to points a and b. everything felt like the biggest thing in the world because my world did not feel very big.

now i look back at it like...holy shit you wrote a goddamn novel. who cares if it was like, literature or not? 

to be honest one of the things that got through to me was this cj the x video, especially their point which i’ll recap here:

“We are under the impression that art is something special people do, and to do it well makes you a genius, and to do it poorly is embarrassing. This sectioning off of the art world for artists from regular life and regular people is completely artificial and it is bad for the soul of your society.”

and they talk a bti about the Terrifying Ordeal of Being Known and perfectionism and just the amount of fuccccckin mental blocks we put around what’s good art and bad art and we spend so much time agonizing over what’s good and what’s cringe and you know what? embrace cringe! who cares! none of us will live forever!!! sharing art is the way we sustain ourselves in the long run.

i always have an internal voice saying something’s not good enough. i’m Always like “damn, these metrics ain’t metricing like they were earlier...” and then i’m like fuck...am i doing this for the Idea of Fandom Success or because of my fun silly lil hobby? my fun silly lil hobby? aight guess i ought to just embrace the Terrifying Ordeal of Being Known and accept that silly lil numbers ain’t what’s fufilling, it’s the practice of writing and sharing and going at the end of the day “at least one person liked this, and being known isn’t the Most Horrific Thing Ever”.

another thing i Never did when i was a teenager is tell anyone i wrote fic in real life. now my husband and friend and sister-in-law know (the latter involved either alcohol or being confined to a plane, which is a lot like alcohol) and you know how much they think i’m embarassing? they don’t. oh and actually a co-worker. they just go “lol, this is My thing” and it’s a novel they tried to write in college or fanart they post on a secret instagram or a monsters inc page they ran in high school (all real examples) because everyone has some kind of thing they care about, some artistic expression, and we’ve conditioned people to think trying is embarassing. trying is vulnerable and the point, i think! no matter how cringe! 

and vulnerability is this awfully stingy thing because sometimes when you think about it for too long it’s not unlike putting your hand on a hot coal. like, fuck, laying awake at night knowing that people know You Tried and what if they still didn’t like it? humiliating. awful. please schedule me with the goddamn firing squad. you didn’t get the metrics you wanted. or worse, you did and now people don’t think you deserve it. they’re gonna find out you’re just a big fanfiction writing fraud.

but maybe that’s the point! i don’t know! vulnerability is hard and painful and growth and sincerety is almost WORSE. but there’s also something lovely and cathartic about it and at the end of the day knowing that other people feel that, too. can never get too lost in either sauces of thinking you’re the worst thing ever or the best and the only one who gets it. just gotta accept the vulnerability of it all~

i’m back in my daydreaming era, i think fic gave that back to me. i shut her off for a little while, but she’s still there! and it’s not the worst thing, having overwhelming creative ideas on the treadmill or in a hotel lobby or furiously writing in a google doc in the middle of the night even if it does feel Silly. sometimes it does make the world a little more magical, framing in a narrative. 

(my therapist at some point has made comments about my narrative framing skills in the context of my life and getting out of a shitty family situation with a lot of embedded generational cyclical fun stuff to a point i have a lot of the things now i used to dream about despite it, my pathological need to write my way out also applying to my life and maybe it’s not the worst way of moving a locus of control inwards. i used to dream about feeling safe and being respected interpersonally and professionally because it’s something no woman in my family ever really got and i get that now. anyway, as i said, radical vulnerability!)

narratives are powerful and meaningful and art is too, i don’t care if it’s fanfiction at the end of the day! we’ve all felt something or gptten something or felt community and that’s meaningful enough. 

this is a very long-winded and frankly chaotic way of saying sure, i’m a writer enough!

[deniigi]

Okay so I'm about 30k into writing a fic, with about the first 20 chapters roughly plotted out, and I was thinking about starting to publish the first chapter with weekly updates, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with the publishing. Do you think it's better to write a large portion then sit back and post regularly or start posting and kinda wing in the end?

What’s a good chapter length?            

Idk if this is the same anon, but these asks seem like they go together I think!!

Okay, so I’m not here to tell you how to live your life or write, but I can tell you how I think about chapter fics and chapters.

Starting with chapter fics and posting:

lot of it depends on your motivation. What drives you? What encourages you and makes you want to write?

If comments and kudos drive and encourage you, then by all means! Go ahead and post a couple of chapters. I often post around 3 chapters of a long-fic to see what kind of reception it gets. If folks are excited about it with me, then chances are that I will extend it into a longer piece than originally intended or plotted out because I want to give those people time and space to play in the space with me. An immediate and broader reception puts a little more pressure on me to keep a fic moving and that pressure often takes the form of excitement, which can be really fun for everyone involved.

If folks are a little lukewarm at first, then I take that as a sign that I’m writing mostly for myself and a handful of super cool folks and that means that I’m going to work at a more leisurely pace and trust that those readers will stick with me and indulge me (and they usually do because readers are great!) This means that I’m still having fun, but I can post in a more erratic way and people aren’t going to mind or notice all that much because we’re all being chill in a little bubble together. In this case, a lot of times, I’ll just write out the whole fic and post it at once or very quickly over the span of a week or so. (Whispering Seas and Level Up were like this. I wrote them primarily for a limited audience and myself and so they went up lickety-split because I wasn’t so invested in building suspense or keeping the momentum rolling. It was about what I was enjoying.)

So from there, it depends on you.

What feelings are you chasing friend? Validation or relaxation? You interested in rolling around in the writing process or are you trying to get/fling an idea out into the abyss because it just needs to be out there?

Either way is totally fine. But knowing which way you lean will help you decide what posting method will help make sure that you finish the fic (because that’s the hard part and the end goal here.)

For chapter-length:

this depends on your fic, your pacing, your writing, and the overall length of your piece.

For me, when I write chapter-fics, I want to give my readers a good 15-30 mins of reading time per update. That feels like a really satisfying chunk of time for an update or chapter to me. I, personally, read pretty fast and luckily, I write at the speed of light, so my chapters tend to be around 4,000 words.

If I’m writing a climax, I’ll take it up to 6,000 words. But when I start butting up against 8,000 words in a single chapter, I’ll start to consider breaking it into 2 because usually there is a natural splitting point in there somewhere and around then, you start to run the danger of having too many ideas in one long stretch.

That can exhaust your reader.

Also for me, personally, I find that chapters that are shorter than 2500 words are a little frustrating. Chapters that are around 1000 words are especially frustrating, because I just have to keep hitting that ‘next’ button and every time I do that, I break out of the story.

So if you’re doing short chapters (around 2,000 words I would say) your pacing needs to be on point. You need to make sure that you are driving those transitions (i.e., there better be a cliff-hanger at the end of every chapter to keep me wanting to crash forward in spite of everything telling me I’ve got important shit I need to do) And you need to make sure that you have a very specific reason for keeping the chapters so short (i.e., building suspense or moving between POVs or settings).

Obviously, this is different if you’re writing a slow burn or if you’re doing something with more purple prose, in which case more is more and less is more, but if you’re trying to drive a plot, these would be my suggestions.

They may not work for you and your story-telling practices and likes, though, so definitely don’t consider them a rule!

Hope that helps, anon(s)!

[lady-fey]

Setting Expectations for Writing Fanfic

Before embarking on any creative endeavor, it's really important to set your expectations for what the results are going to be. It's why I highly, highly encourage people to research the hellscape that is professional publishing before trying to get something published. But these expectations aren't limited to the professional world. They apply to fan spaces, too. I see a lot of people on disheartened by their experiences with fanfiction so, today, I wanted to talk about a few things that I do when writing on AO3 to make sure that I don't get discouraged while writing.

Suggestion One: Treat Kudos as Comments Saying "I liked your story" or, if you're a bit more cynical, "I read your story to the end"

The kudo button is at the bottom of the page. For you to get a kudo, someone read at least the whole first chapter. That's honestly impressive. A total stranger was engaged enough to read every word that you wrote. Be proud of that! I'll click away from a reddit comment if it's boring. A 1k story? It's gotta be engaging for me to engage.

If you're like me and you like data, take this a step further and consider tracking kudos over time. A number on the page might not mean much, but I find it fulfilling to see the numbers go up over time as more and more people read my stories. I have an excel sheet and I write down the kudo counts for all of my stories anywhere from once a week to once a month. Look at all of those pretty trend lines! (Fanfiction.net did this for favorites by default, btw, this wasn't an original idea). I also added a few notes about why the trend lines look the way they do.

Suggestion Two: Learn what a reasonable amount of kudos looks like for your fandom

Those graphs up there are for stories in two different fandoms. The yellow line is for a story that's in the top 3% in its fandom. Meanwhile, the dark blue line right there at the end just barely made it into the top 10% even though it has about 3x the yellow one's kudos.

How do I know this? Well, AO3 lets you sort by kudos and, if you look in the URL, then you can set the page number, too. One of the first things that I do when entering a fandom is go to the middle of the story list and see what the kudo counts look like at that 50% range. This gives me a good idea of what the average story is going to get in this fandom so that, when I start writing, I don't feel disheartened by some arbitrary expectation of what the kudos are going to look like. You can further refine this by doing things like limiting the stories to ones that feature the pairing that you're writing for or stories at the same rating as yours. (That blue-ish purple line at the bottom is an E fic and I knew when I put it out there that it was going to get about that many kudos just based on how E fics work.)

Also be sure to look and see how active the fandom is. I once made the mistake of writing for a video game years after its release and I ultimately abandoned that fic because no one was engaging with it. If I'd payed attention, then I would have realized that was going to happen before I started writing just based on the amount of stories getting updated. If there aren't at least a few new fics of updated fics every day, then realize that you're in a "dead" fandom and you're not going to see much or even any engagement. Decide if you're okay with that before you put your story out there.

Suggestion Three: Ignore the "Hits" on your fic

AO3's hit counter is somewhat useless. While those who have accounts will only ever get counted as one hit, anyone reading in anonymous mode will get counted as a unique hit based on IP. Which means that, if I'm reading on my phone, my one read can count as multiple hits if I switch networks and then the page refreshes or I go to a new chapter. I'll also get counted as multiple hits if I switch over to my tablet or my laptop. This means that the hit number is artificially inflated, especially for longer works. You have no idea what the real hit count is, so don't obsess over it. Especially if you write longer fics. To illustrate this, look at these hits to kudos for two of my fics:

Top fic is at almost 100k words and the bottom one is just below 10k.

Suggestion Four: Don't expect comments

The reason that I spend all of this time tracking kudos is that comments are just never going to be in abundance. It's the reality of writing. And while that's disheartening on some level, it's important to just accept that fact before you start writing. The fandom stars that you see getting tumblr anons and emails begging for updates are rare exceptions to the rule. Their experience is not common even for "popular" writers.

The orange fic in the graph above was lucky enough to make it to the top page of its fandom when you sort by kudos. I have an older fic that's still in the top 10 by favorites over on fanfiction.net. I am, by some metrics, a "known" author. However, my reader interactions for those fics were not substantially different than my interactions for my less popular ones. I rarely get anyone popping over to tumblr to say hi (though you are welcome to do so!) and the more popular fics don't even get that many more comments. A fact that's true even if they're in larger fandoms.

To illustrate, here's the stats for two complete fics of about equal length (10k), both written by me! The top one has 7 chapters, the bottom one has 5. They were both written and published over a few days. Notice how the comment thread count is about the same even though the top one is way more popular?

I will note that the bottom one has been out for a year while the top one is only a few weeks old, so it will have comments trickle in and raise the number over time, but it will never see a major jump unless it performs differently than everything else that I've ever written. The bottom one is also for a fandom that's been around for almost two decades now, so the readers skew older, which is probably why it's a little better for comments.

Better, but not shockingly good.

I know people say that, back in the fanfiction.net days, you got more comments, but I personally don't find it overwhelmingly different. The orange fic in my graph (my "popular" one from AO3) averaged about 13 comments a chapter while it's ffn "equivalent" was at about 39 comments a chapter. Of course, that's comparing between fandoms, which makes this awkward. I do have a way to gage the relative popularity, though: kudos.

If I look at the ffn fandom over on AO3, the top fics all have at least 3x the number of kudos as the top fics my orange fic's fandom. 13 X 3 = 39. So, yeah, not that different as best as I can tell.

Either way, the number is pretty low when you look at how many people are reading these stories. The orange fic has 1100+ kudos and the ffn fic has 2,200+ favs (the closest kudo equivalent). In other words, in the 10+ years that I've been writing, I've never reached a point where I didn't recognize commenters by name. It's just the nature of the beast.

So, cherish the comments that you do get, but treat them as an unexpected gift.

Suggestion Five: art if you can

If you're at all artistically inclined, illustrate moments from your fic and post them on tumblr with a link back to the fic. That often wildly increases engagement for some reason and is why a lot of seemingly popular authors are also artists. I don't have the skills for it, but I thought that I'd mention it both to help expectation set and to hopefully encourage.

Final Thoughts

This whole post has been to encourage, honestly. I know that writing can be a struggle at times, but know that you're not alone in wondering if people are reading you stuff and, if they are, do they even like it? Those feelings are normal, but I hope that this does something to mitigate those feelings. To show that we all struggle to get feedback, even when we write "popular" stuff.

It's why I started tracking kudos. The lack of comments made me sad, but I remembered those graphs from my ffn days. I remembered getting excited watching the line go up for every new favorite because it was another person who like my work. I wanted to recapture that joy.

Looking at my kudos in log form has changed the way that I see kudos. They're no longer just numbers sitting there. They're an active metric for me. They're real people who I can say with certainty read my story. Going in and doing my log is fun because, slowly but surely, the numbers go up. Those numbers tell me that more people have read my stories and I know what stories can do.

Stories brighten people's day. The fact that you could write something good enough for even one person to make it to the end is more potential positive impact than many people will have. So watch the numbers go up and remember each one is someone you affected so much that they let you know about it. Even if all they did was "click a button".

[olderthannetfic]

If someone wanted to get to know fandom history better, do you have any specific blogs/youtubers/websites to reccomend reading through??

--

I recommend not trusting youtube.

The place to start for AO3-adjacent history is Fanlore. Just browse around. There are tons of different great articles. Fanlore is strongest on the sort of fandom that came out of Star Trek fic zines in the 70s and that progressed through Usenet, Mailing lists, and Livejournal. This is more of an English language fandom of US tv shows emphasis, though it varies.

There are certain individual fandoms with really distinct, interesting histories, like Sherlock Holmes. I know there are various podcasts and things that cover that. I can't recall what the one was that people liked that was broader. I remember the Three Patch Podcast being popular for Sherlock-centric stuff.

The hard part is finding things that cover Fanlore's weak points. It's just not as developed for English-speaking anime fandom from the 1980s-2010s. (Now that anime fandom, at least for m/m shipping, overlaps more heavily with AO3 use, I suspect things will improve for recent fandoms.) And being in English, Fanlore is very spotty on non-English fanworks fandom. It's strong on fic, podfic, and vids but weaker on fan art and AMVs. For example, Fanlore's DeviantArt article is quite short.

The place I personally encounter fans outside of my AO3/tumblr bubble is r/FanFiction on reddit, but that's better if you have a question to ask than for easy browsing of fandom history posts. And of course, it can be hard to tell if a post is good if you're starting from zero.

I might start with a brief overview of what the internet was like early on:

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Fandom_and_the_Internet

There are a lot of broad articles like this that could provide some ideas of where to look next.

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_RPF

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Slashed_Sources

It's also often easier to approach certain long tumblr posts with many reblogs via a fanlore page:

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Was_Fanfic_Any_Different_in_the_Olden_Days%3F

[nought-shall-go-ill]

Writer ask game - 1, 6, and 32

Sorry for taking so long to reply to this, wonderful @hpeveryonelives! I’ve actually started a Tumblr hiatus, but I wanted to quickly answer before I good and proper delete the app. Thank you so much for asking though! They were so fun to answer.

1. How long ago did you start reading fanfiction? Writing fanfiction?

I started reading fics as a wee bairn in around 2005. I started writing fanfic not long after that (2006 maybe?), but the first fic that I ever published publicly was made in mid-2007. I was then really into fanfic for about 2 years before taking a 12-year or so hiatus and returning last year.

6. How do you find new fic to read? Where do you primarily read fanfiction?

I go through stages! When I first returned to fanfic I was aware that the world had changed a lot since my days on MNFF and HPFF, so I just searched online for recommendations. I then found a lot through Reddit, though I quickly became disillusioned with that, and then I became fully committed to Ao3, so I would just search through the tags/filters/ships on there.

These days, however, I am quite a bit busier, so I rely mostly on Tumblr (after creating my page) and Discord. I am aware this makes me miss a lot of smaller fic writers though, so I am hoping to rectify this (and return to my Ao3 strategy) when life calms down a little.

32. Copy and paste your top three favorite lines/jokes/sentences you’ve ever written. What fics do they come from?

This is a hard one, as I can be super critical of individual sentences after the fact, but here are a few from some recently published fics that I don’t entirely hate:

① Until the Tree Dies, Chapter 2:

The second rumour limped in on a Tuesday morning and haunted the castle for the rest of the day.

I like it because I think it encapsulates the combined disgust and ever so slight fear of Remus I imagine Snape having just several years after the prank.

② The Other Half of the Sky, Chapter 1:

Yet just as from time to time she saw the most exceptional sights in the rundown areas of this otherwise quaint coastal town, she often wondered if exceptional things might be possible from her very own brand of filth.

I’m not 100% satisfied with the composition of this sentence, but I do so very much love the meaning behind it for my protagonist. I think it embodies a lot of what her journey will be.

③ The Other Half of the Sky, Chapter 2:

Emmeline had the sort of handshake that made Lily think she would be rather good with horses.

This is nothing special, but it made me chuckle when writing because I felt people would just know what Emmeline was like from that one sentence. And I was right! @mabeltothknows commented pretty much saying exactly that.

Thank you so much again, lovely!

[beemovieerotica]

so there was a reddit post about how somebody's manager at work hunted down a fanfiction one of his younger subordinates was writing on ao3 (based on 1 line), realized the characters were loose stand-ins for him and the subordinate in romantic/sexual scenarios, then he read it out in front of her coworkers to embarrass her.

overwhelmingly people sided with the writer (which I agree with) but for a lot of like....objectively bad reasons. "those writings were PRIVATE!" "fanfiction is an intimate, sacred activity to explore one's self" and....I'm sorry but y'all NEED to learn your rights.

if you post your fanfiction online, on a publicly accessible site, it is not private. you have no argument for "my privacy was invaded" and you will not win that case. unless somebody hacked your google docs,

you need to shut the fuck up, and not admit to writing anything.

if someone finds something they believe that you wrote online and seek to humiliate you for it, in a professional setting, you are in a great position to get that person fired.

especially if the content is sexual.

because publicly attributing sexual ideas to a coworker and reading it in the workplace is, in fact, sexual harassment.

the burden of proof is entirely on THEM to establish that you wrote the work. and if you've been smart about your online presence and don't have a fucking carrd 20 pages long listing down life details that can 100% be used to identify you, then you'll be fine.

it is extremely difficult to prove who the author of a work is unless actual, legal names are included. i guarantee that HR doesn't give a shit about investigating authorship of a fucking fanfiction UNLESS you have done the work for them by admitting you published it.

they will, however, be happy to get rid of a manager who distributes weird, romantic / sexual stories to his subordinates.

your fanfiction is not private and it is not sacred. be smart about it. keep your mouth shut.

[hughjidiot]

Hugh Jidiot’s Weekly Whatever #1

Hey there friends and fans! Welcome to the inaugural post of my new blog, the Weekly Whatever.

Since I’ve recently had some more free time added to my schedule, one of the things I want to do is be more sociable online. To interact more with the folks who follow me, whether they follow me for my fanfiction, my original fiction, my opinions on cartoons and media, my stupid memes that aren’t half as clever as I think they are, and so on.

So I’ve decided to start this new blog series where I talk about everything I listed above, share random facts about myself, discuss upcoming projects... Pretty much ramble about whatever’s on my mind. I do have a fair number of follows, so hopefully at least some of you will find some of my blathering interesting and could potentially open further avenues of conversation. Naturally if I want to get really in depth into a particular subject that will get its own blog post(s) in the future.

Let’s start!

- All my life I’ve loved creating things, writing stories in particular. From a young age I decided I wanted to make a living writing books, and I’ve been regularly writing fanfiction on and off for well over a decade as a way of cutting my teeth. The Hugh Jidiot moniker is probably my... tenth account I’ve had over the years? At any rate, it’s by far the most successful.

- I’m hoping to make this the year I finally write a novel I’ve dreamed of writing for years, now that I’ll be having a lot more free time. I have many ideas, some more developed than others. Currently I’m in the process of refining one idea that’s been in my head for years, and hope to start on the project proper soon.

- This project in question might not even be a traditional novel. It might work better told in a non-traditional format like a web series, or even an audio drama.

- In case it wasn’t obvious by anyone who’s seen my stories on Reddit, I love horror. I grew up on Goosebumps and was reading Stephen King as early as 6th grade. I hope to write more horror/thriller themed fanfiction as well at some point.

- I’m also interest in a lot of other creative venues: graphic design, drawing, sculpting, painting, even tabletop game design. That last one in particular is a favorite hobby of mine, and creating a full tabletop game - board game, card game, RPG or whatever - has also been a lifelong dream of mine.

- I’m a tarot geek, big time. I love studying the meaning behind all of the different cards and how they link when paired with others as part of a larger reading. Of course I don’t really think tarot cards can predict the future; I just think they’re neat.

- I’m secretly five raccoons who stand on each other’s shoulders and don a trench coat when I need to go outside.

- To give you an idea of just how much I love writing: in fifth grade we had a creative writing assignment to write a short story based around an illustration. Most kids’ stories were one or two pages. Mine was seven pages.

- I love Pokemon, even though I sort of fell out of it in recent years and am just now trying to get back into it. One of my possessions I still have from my childhood is a small stuffed Squirtle, who is also my favorite Pokemon.

Well, I’d say that’s enough rambling for now. Hope some of you found this interesting, at least. Until next time, peace from the heart my friends!

[agrarianradfem]

hi, this is random but what do you like to read? I'm in a rut, so was wondering if u have recs or current reading list or tbr or smth? I rmbr u saying that u read 3 hrs a day? :)

Hi!! I do read a lot! Mostly nonfiction, romance, and a little bit of fantasy and contemporary/literary fiction. I’m currently reading The Hellion’s Waltz, the third in Olivia Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series (all three are ff historical romances set in England - Hellion’s Waltz isn’t out yet but I have an advanced copy). I would absolutely recommend the first, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics if that sounds interesting.  In general, here are some of my favorite books: Nonfiction:  - Sweetness and Power by Sydney Mintz: A history of sugar, colonialism, and power dynamics in its production and consumption. Is rather academic but it is readable and slim. - Who Cooked the Last Supper?: This book is always recommended among radfems with great reason - women need to learn that the male way of thinking is wrong in so many ways, and that women have been making vital contributions to humanity that have been misattributed (purposefully and incidentally because of patriarchy) to men.  - Milk by Kurlansky: This is the history of milk. It includes a wrong fact about the history of cheese (Kurlansky misattributes it to a man as part of Myth of Man the Hunter - see Who Cooked the Last Supper? to learn more about misattributions. Cheese was absolutely developed by women who were at home caring for children). But otherwise it’s a great and very readable history of one of humanity’s most important foods.  - In The Shadow of Slavery: All about how enslaved Africans brought their foods and food traditions to the Americas and how food was a key part of resistance. Great information about things like rice cultivation in South Carolina and food as resistance in Brazil.  - Invisible Women by Criado-Perez. Excellent book on the ways in which failing to sex disaggregate data (aka not separating out data on women vs men instead of lumping it all together) fails women, from car design to snow clearing plans. Great as an audiobook.  - Fran Lebowitz Reader: This audiobook is amazing.  - In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson. He brings his humor to Australia and you’ll want to purchase plane tickets immediately. (Can’t wait for Australia and NZ to open to vaccinated travelers!) I also love Thunderbolt Kid, At Home, and The Body by him.  - The Emperor of All Maladies: This is a history of cancer and its treatment. This is a tome, but is absolutely fascinating.  Romance:  - A Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics: Really a lovely novel about female empowerment (like the real kind: standing up for oneself in the face of male efforts to hinder women, women becoming the best patrons and confidants for each other, etc) - Ravishing the Heiress: This is a straight romance, and one not the best intro to the genre for lesbians who don’t read any straight romance. But for fans of the genre (or even just romantic subplots in books and fanfiction) this is a masterclass example of a marriage of convenience and slow burn romance.  - Devil in Winter and Marrying Winterborne by Lisa Kleypas. For those who loved Bridgerton, these are amazing. DinW is one of the most beloved historical romances of all time, and Marrying Winterborne is from her newest series and that book is becoming beloved as well. 

Fantasy: - When Women Were Warriors: This is a story told in three parts (it’s not three books, you have to read all three parts to complete the story) set in pseudo-medieval England about a matriarchal, matrilineal society where lesbianism is common. Great for fans of fantasy who don’t need magic, creatures, or space travel, etc.   - All the books written by Tamora Pierce. Her books are mostly YA/Middle Grade but they have excellent pacing, plots, and character development. My favorites are the Alanna books and the Immortals series. These are great if you’re someone who likes shorter books where for attention purposes or just for a fast read. I reread these all the time - Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs: TW sexual assault at the 1/3 point in the series (and for basically every book in the sister Alpha and Omega series). This is Urban Fantasy for all the fans of werewolves, vampires, fae, fairy tales, wendigos, and all the other scary legendary creatures. Features a great female lead, a straight romantic subplot, inter-species alliances and wars, fighting for good, and is set in the Pacific Northwest. There’s a billion of these books (read in order) so you’ll have plenty to keep you reading if you like the first.  - Daughter of the Forest: TW graphic sexual assault. This is a famous retelling of The Six Swans story. Straight romantic subplot. This book is constantly recommended as one of the best retelling stories and I agree. I would recommend reading rather than listening to an audiobook of this one because there’s no reason to read the assault scene - just get to it and skip a few pages and resume. I fully believe that if this book was written now it wouldn’t have the descriptions, but it is important to the plot.  Contemporary/Literary Fiction:  - Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters: TW for abusive relationship and prostitution. This story of the underground of London at the turn of the century is a lesbian classic for a reason. Happy ending! Great exploration of the time.  - Bastard Out of Carolina: TW graphic sexual assault of a child. This book is a really hard read about the ways in which women pick men over their own daughters, religion oppresses women, poverty is worse for women than men, women are expected to be quiet and just suffer their burdens. I read this for the first time in a Women’s Writing course in college and it made me bawl my eyes out. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.  - The Well of Loneliness: I love sad books and this is no exception. Sad lesbian at the turn of the century. Historically important book.  - Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver: This ecofiction book is not the usually recommended book by her. This takes inspiration from Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and interweaves three stories of women, life and death, and the health of the environment.  I use goodreads and Kirkus reviews to find books all the time. If any one of these sounds interesting, put it into goodreads and you’ll be able to find other books by the author, books similar to it, and lists that contain the book (for instance, if you look up prodigal summer it’s probably on an ecofiction list and you can find a ton of ecofiction books that way!). Kirkus is amazing for finding new and upcoming books. The online reviews are free (I think - my mom is a paid subscriber to the magazine). For nonfiction I also look through Washington Independent Review of Books.  Another underrated way to find books is Facebook and Reddit! If there’s a genre you really like, then find a facebook group for it. This is a great way to find what others love, new releases, and you can save posts (underutilized thing fb does) and have something to scroll through the next time you are looking for a book. Reddit has a bunch of subreddits for different genres. Many of the large genre groups run books clubs (fantasy runs a bunch of structured book clubs, romance runs buddy reads, etc.).  Hopefully this gives you some place to start!

[utt-er-nons-ense]

If you have a Tumblr and you're on it a lot like I am, I really highly suggest joining the same fandom on reddit. I have 10 reasons.

1. They're 2 sides of the same horrific political echo chamber. While Tumblr and twitter are screaming and crying about the producer possibly using a homophobic slur in 1956, reddit is screaming and crying because a minor side character is bi and they simply cannot relate anymore :(. Both platforms firmly believe that ALL movies, tv, books, magazines, comics, blogs, posts, tweets, and news providers should be sanitized until they churn out pure propaganda; they just disagree on what the propaganda should promote. (They also both pretend it's only propaganda if they don't agree with it.)

2. You might forget cishet people exist. To remind yourself, so that it's not jarring when you rejoin the real world, you can find all the cishet people in America on reddit. They have straight ships. They do not see the subtext. They think you're nuts for saying Sherlock Holmes and John Watson are together. I promise you that you need this slap in the face occasionally.

3. Reddit lets you show tiddie.

4. Tumblr praises and criticizes media based on how progressive it is. Reddit praises and criticizes media for like, everything else under the sun. If one platform HATES your favorite show, the other one probably loves it.

5. With really divisive tv shows like always sunny, you'll get to see 2 totally different plot breakdowns. It's like watching the show twice. Once "Tumblr style", with lots of ships, subtext, longing, pining, fanfiction, fan art, and slowed-down 3 second gifs that make every scene look romantic and sexy. Tumblr style fandom is intense, emotional, and deeply connected to the underdog characters. Then you can watch it again "reddit style", with pages of analysis on writing styles, acting styles, line delivery, and the items in the background, but no mention of The Way Those Two Looked At Each Other™.

6. When your normie work friends ask you what you thought of something, you can give them the normie answer. (Hint: there are 0 normie opinions on Tumblr. They're all bonkers in funking yonkers, I promise. If they seem normal to you please talk to a well-adjusted adult who supports themselves in the real world)

7. It is SO FUN to dump all of tumblr's hcs on your "reddit friends". I dare you to find a friend who uses reddit and then tell them about the absurd amount of gay porn for star trek. Tell them there's gay subtext in every episode of Merlin. Show them jack and ianto making out shirtless in the lab if they're a doctor who reddit friend. Remind them that Dennis had a m/m/m threesome in the pilot episode. Point out the 45x johnlock's close friends assumed they were together. Rant about whatever tf happened in supernatural with the gay angel. Every time one of my reddit friends (republicans if I'm not being clear enough here) recommends a show to me I immediately tell them how gay and GNC his faves are. This is a very fun game that will alienate everyone that you really don't want as a friend anyway.

8. Reddit also has a horrible UI and the messiest code I've ever seen, a poorly-functioning mobile app that crashes constantly, and community guidelines that are fuzzy at best. Anyone from Tumblr should be perfectly comfy there.

9. Entire fandoms dry up on Tumblr after someone involved does something unprogressive. You'll find the remaining fans on reddit because reddit doesn't give a fuck about progressivism.

10. And lastly... Because a LOT of bloggers on this hellsite need to learn that the culture here isn't the culture of the world. It's NOT pedophilic to like a post written by someone younger than you, and it's NOT sketchy not to have all your personal information in your bio. No one cares about your carrd/pinned/DNI, no one is going to read a terms and conditions document to find out if they're allowed to follow you. The rest of the world doesn't hold insane beliefs like "all harry potter fans are fascists". No one is going to tw food, alcohol, swearing, smoking, or thin bodies. And before you go "I know it's not like this irl but -", You're wrong, you DO think the real world is like this and I see it all the time. I see y'all out here being Karens about the nonsensical expectations that you developed here. I see you harassing actors for stuff their characters did! Do not do that! The cure for Tumblr psychosis is to get OUT of the feedback loop and read another opinion once in awhile.

[charmedseoull]

Interview with sugamins about her work House of Cards (Ao3′s second most hit English work and most hit BTS work)

Before You Read the Interview

Archive of Our Own Transcript

Reddit Transcript Part 1 / Part 2

House of Cards is documented within the Top 50 Most Hit BTS Works on Archive of Our Own Project, otherwise known as T50BTS, by Charmedseoul. It is the second most hit English work on the Archive of Our Own platform, most hit BTS work, and 16th most hit work overall. It centers around the internationally popular K-Pop idol group BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) with the main characters being Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, and Jeon Jungkook. This work is being documented for historical purposes for the Fanlore website with its own page. Charmedseoul is a BTS-focused anonymous historian who plans to eventually document each of the top 50 most hit BTS work on Ao3 as in depth as this one. If you are in contact with any of the authors of these works, please contact her on Twitter @charmedseoul or on Tumblr @charmedseoull.

Parts of this interview have been edited with links to Fanlore and Wikipedia pages for understanding. Any information in [brackets] serves for further clarity for readers and elaboration of information.

Disclaimers: This interview contains spoilers for the BTS Archive of Our Own work House of Cards. The story’s Archive of Our Own tags contain violence and gangster activity, along with discussion of prostitution and drug use. The full tag list is:

Alternate Universe - Gangsters

Gang Violence

Violence

Drugs

Drug Use

Explicit Sexual Content

Explicit Language

Blood and Gore

Blood and Torture

Gambling

Gunplay

Undercover

Disturbing Themes

Homophobic Language

Attempted Rape/Non-Con

Xenophobia

Dom/sub

Threesome - M/M/M

Drug Addiction

Dubious Consent

This interview discusses an 18+ mature work and Not Safe for Work topics. Please read this interview at your own discretion. You are responsible for the content you consume.

House of Cards by sugamins is a multi-chapter Archive of Our Own fanfiction that follows police officer Kim Taehyung’s undercover operation into the gangster world of Haedogje Pa. Jeon Jungkook, shrouded in an air of mystery and dubbed “The Boy,” is the heir to this crime empire. Park Jimin lives with him, acting as a lover of sorts in a high, pristine penthouse apartment. The story follows the three and their complicated relationship where sex, violence, and drugs surround them. Kim Taehyung tries to take down the empire as his moral lines of black and white begin blurring into gray. In this crime-ridden alternate reality to Seoul, everything from the structure of the gangster world to the trust between three lovers is as fragile as a house of cards.

Now presenting the interview with sugamins, author of Archive of Our Own’s second most hit English work and most hit BTS work, House of Cards:

How did you start writing?

How did you get into fanfiction?

How much writing experience did you have prior to House of Cards?

Do you have any literary or artistic inspirations? Any other authors or works that have inspired you to create anytime before or after House of Cards?

How did you become an ARMY [ARMY stands for Adorable Representative MC for the Youth. It is the fandom name for fans of BTS, otherwise known as Bangtan Sonyeondan]?

I started writing fanfiction in 2012. But before then, I used to enjoy writing stories as a child and young teenager. I used to write and illustrate my own stories. I even had a sketchbook filled with my own comic book, which was terrible! But I've always been creative. It started with art and then I moved onto writing when I discovered I was able to be much more creative with my words rather than my pencil.

I first got into fanfiction through my years spent on Tumblr. I had always known that it had existed, but I had never really gone looking for it because I hadn't belonged to a fandom at that point in my life. It was back in 2012 when I stumbled upon an EXO fanfic that a lot of people were talking about (Arbitrage, you can find it on Livejournal.) I read it and then thought...wow, so this is fanfiction! From that point, I started reading more and more, mostly Infinite fanfiction. And then I decided to start writing with the encouragement of an old online friend, and here I am!

In terms of writing experience, I have never formally received education. I stopped studying English Language and Literature when I was 16, instead focusing on Art, History, and Religious Education (purely because I wanted to learn about philosophy and quantum mechanics) for my final two years at high-school. The only experience I have is through writing fanfiction. I started back in 2012, and I've developed a lot since then. I started off small, writing horror short stories and little collections. Brotherhood was the first 'long fic' I created. I was shocked that it managed to get so big because I had never created a story of that size before. Writing helped me gain experience and figure out what worked and what didn't work, what I was good at writing, and where I was lacking and needed to learn. I don't think you can really experience an art form until you start doing it. You can learn all about the techniques and the conventions, but until you pick up a pen and start writing or drawing, you won't ever know what it means to create.

My literary inspiration has always been Stephen King. Which is funny, as he has described himself as 'having diarrhea of the typewriter.' I think that applies to me sometimes. I am a bit of a wordy writer, though I've started honing it down for certain stories. Sometimes, a story needs to be floral and descriptive, sometimes, it needs to be punchy and direct. So, King was my major inspiration, especially with horror. I also enjoy the works of Poe and Lovecraft (I acknowledge the problematic themes in the work of Lovercraft and seek not to praise him as a person. He was a terrible person for sure, but sadly, he had a way with cosmic horror that is hard to find.) I also enjoy Chuck Palahniuk and the dark, seedy and overall zany stories that he has created. I like his style a lot!

In terms of inspirations for House of Cards, I was obviously inspired by the films Infernal Affairs/The Departed. American Gangster and Training Day were also major inspirations (and also because I love Denzel Washington's performances in both films. I mean, who doesn't love him?) But I also drew inspiration from other sources that were less focused on gangs, more focused on the dark, nihilistic state of the world around us. I couldn't recommend the TV series True Detective hard enough. It is one of the best series I have ever watched. It handles dark and disturbing content so well, and its fractured, unreliable story-telling and philosophical musing is some of the best I've ever seen on screen. I highly recommend checking it out, but be sure to check the content warning and triggers because it certainly isn't suitable for younger audiences and those with triggers. In terms of real-life content, I think Ross Kemps' docu-series are very good. Particularly Extreme World and On Gangs. His docu-series show the dark and disturbing side of criminal activity, the drug trade and more. 

I became a fan of BTS [Bangtan Sonyeondan] back in 2013. I had already been a fan of K-Pop for some time by then, as I had started listening to various K-Pop and K-Rock artists back in 2009. I knew of their debut, but I had seen hundreds of new acts debut by the time that they broke into the scene, and so I didn't pay much heed. Someone I followed on Tumblr at the time kept posting about how much she loved them, especially Taehyung [BTS V/Kim Taehyung]. One day, I stumbled upon a gifset of Yoongi [BTS Suga/Min Yoongi] being sarcastic in one of their first interviews. I thought he was funny, so I decided to check them out. At the time, they had recently released We Are Bulletproof Pt. 2 [BTS’s second music video release with their debut album 2 Kool 4 Skool]. I followed them from that point, and their first comeback [A “comeback” refers to when a K-Pop idol group releases new music, usually done twice a year.] was also my first comeback. I liked their music [BTS released Boy In Luv and Just One Day in 2014, both music videos of songs from their Skool Luv Affair EP.], but I liked them even more as individuals. I loved watching their shows [Here is a link to BTS’s schedule during 2014 when they had their first comeback. You can find the shows and interviews they were on there.], even though they are incredibly embarrassing to look back on now. They just had so much energy and looked to be having so much fun that I was having fun just watching them. I was a fan, I liked a lot of their songs and followed their activities. But it wasn't until they released HYYH Part One [Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa Part 1 (Korean) = The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1 (This is the title in English), released with the I Need U and Dope music videos.] that I really became a fan of their music. I had already created a couple of small horror stories for the fandom at that point. HYYH Part One [The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1] inspired me so much that I created Brotherhood, my first 'long fic.' I joined AO3 [Archive of Our Own] and started posting there. I received so much support from fellow fans that I carried on writing, and the rest is history!

How has your experience being an ARMY [Adorable Representative MCs of the Youth, BTS’s global fan base name.] been? Did you ever leave the fandom then come back? How did you interact with others when you first got into the fandom and as you grew up?

How have you been since you wrote House of Cards? What have you been working on? 

Are you okay with talking about how old you are now and how old you were when you wrote House of Cards?

Before you even wrote House of Cards, what inspired it? Any TV shows? Music? Movies? Books? Ideas? It could be anything.

How did you start writing House of Cards? Did you finish the entire story then publish it or did you write it as you went? What was the writing process like?

Did you have any beta readers or editors? If you did, are you still in contact with them now? How did they feel about your work?

My experience being a fan has mostly been positive over the years. In the earlier days, back around when I first started writing for the fandom, it was certainly much more positive. I've received so much support over the years, not only in my writing but in my personal life from readers and fellow fans that being a fan of the boys [The members of BTS] really has changed my life. That's not an exaggeration. I doubt I would even be here now without those years having such a positive effect on my mental health. I've never really been the kind to interact with others and form cliques within the fandom, I just like being in my own space and interacting with everyone that comes my way, I guess?

These days, I'm not as active as a writer or in fandom spaces however. I feel like my time in the fandom has started to come up and I don't know how I feel about it just yet. I feel nostalgic for the time when I was first starting out in the fandom and I didn't really know much, but everything was fun. It doesn't feel so fun now, but I mostly contribute that to the effect that Twitter has had on shaping the fandom's growth. Twitter has never been a good place for creatives within fandoms because of issues with algorithms and such. Tumblr was always the better website for hosting artistic content for a variety of reasons. So, I think the fact that everything is on Twitter now has been partly responsible for my decline in engagement and overall enjoyment. I'm currently taking a break from Twitter. The next couple of months will be what makes me either stay or leave the fandom.

Since writing House of Cards, I've been an active writer in the fandom. Over the years, I've added quite a lot of stories to my AO3 accounts and various pseuds. My largest ongoing story is another gang story, set in the 1980s, called Valentino Summers. I actually started writing and publishing it on Ao3 just four or so months after I finished House of Cards—which is wild to think about. Finally finishing House of Cards seems like such a long time ago in my mind, and yet I'm still working on a story I created that same year! I like contributing horror stories to the fandom, especially in the Halloween period. I like publishing series in the month/upcoming weeks before Halloween—though I won't be doing so this year [2020].

When I started writing House of Cards, I would have just turned 22. It was inspired by the song 'Wires' by The Neighbourhood. I might be mistaken, but I believe that Jungkook [BTS Jungkook/Jeon Jungkook] posted a tweet with the song in it. [Jungkook did tweet about this song. Here is the English translation.] I had never heard of the band before, but my partner was a fan of their music. She sent the song to me and I was very interested in the lyrics, so I started discussing them with her. One thing led to the next, and then we had basically come up with the entire plot of the story. We just needed to create the characters. We spent a little while doing so, and then I started doing some research and started writing the story. There really isn't a grand backstory to House of Cards, it just happened so fast. We often come up with story ideas like that, and my partner is responsible for a huge amount of my stories. She has the creative visions, which I then turn into words. We make quite the team, haha~ The inspirations, I mentioned those in my previous answer regarding films and TV shows.

I published the story as I went, though I staggered the updates because I didn't want to post too frequently. I had the entire story planned out from the start——I didn't change a single aspect of the story no matter what I received in terms of feedback. I think a lot of readers assume that writers might tweak things if they sense the audience wants something to happen in terms of plot or relationships. Personally, I don't like doing that. I like sticking to my plans even if I know my vision might not be what the readers want. I think it's important for the story to be created the way I see it because my vision is what made me create it, if that makes sense.

The writing process was surprisingly smooth! You might not think it because the story is big and there are a lot of characters and plot threads to keep on top of, but it went smoothly for me. It flowed just as smoothly from start to finish as Brotherhood did. I never struggled once with writing the chapters, nor did I ever get stuck and wonder if I should change the content in order to make it easier to write. I'm surprised that I managed to complete it so easily because that's not the case with writing now! I tend to be a lot slower now, more deliberate and more open to changes in order to ease the process and the overall flow of the story. In a way, this change has been for the best. I do wonder what House of Cards would be like if I were to write it now, with my different approach to planning and writing. It would probably have a quicker flow, and the word count would either go down as a result of cuts, or go up because of additional scenes I would have likely included.

I didn't have any betas, which you can probably tell from the work. My stories are so big that I never wanted to put the burden of fixing them onto someone else. I know they are imperfect, oftentimes bloated things, but that's just what they are. I did try creating a story with another writer in the past, but it didn't go very well. She would often have conflicting opinions on things and would not have any leeway for anything I suggested, whereas I always had leeway to allow her to change things. Even to the point of completely changing the plot of the story that I had already started writing, and then allowing her to add graphic sexual content she didn't even want to be in the story. She actually stopped writing fanfiction randomly in the middle of us creating the story! She made a post about it being disgusting and nasty and then bowed out. I have no clue if she ever came back! So, my negative experience with attempting to work with someone else when creating a story kind of made me not want to have a beta. It's a wild story, I know!

House of Cards is praised for its realism and accuracy with weaponry, torture, sex, and violence. How did you research these things?

How did you come up with the gangster universe in House of Cards? How did you develop Haedogje Pa?

How did you name the original characters in House of Cards? Did any characters in particular take inspiration from existing characters in TV shows, anime, books, any type of media?

How did you decide on Vminkook as your main characters for the story? What do you see in their dynamic and them as characters?

Jimin is claimed to be one of the best written characters in the entire story. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?

Taehyung is an especially dynamic character whose morals get tested time and time again in House of Cards. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?

Jungkook is one of the characters that the readers spend the least amount of time getting a perspective from, but is incredibly well written in his character progression. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?

When it came to various aspects in the story, I did do research. Most of it never really had an impact on the story itself. For example, I would be looking up gun models that are used by law enforcement agencies around the world and trying to find specs of them so I could learn how many bullets each gun held, or how much a magazine could hold. In action scenes, I didn't want my characters firing off 20+ bullets for a gun that—in reality—holds far less. That's a fact that doesn't really mean much to the average reader, but it meant something to me! I've always hated how many bullets fly through the air in action scenes in films and TV shows because I'm always wondering if it's possible with the firearms featured in the scene haha~ In terms of torture, I've come across the subject through various documentaries and TV shows about gangs, crime and serial killers. I didn't really do much additional research into the topic, beyond reading up on what I had come across to make sure it wasn't fictionalised for drama purposes. Obviously, there will be some lack of realism in my story because I couldn't possibly write a realistic portrayal of gang violence and torture when I have zero personal experience with it. My aim wasn't to give the story 'full' realism (I'll explain more about that in the next question) but to simply create a world that felt real, even if there were little aspects that had to be exaggerated for the sake of the story. Taehyung's behaviour when undercover certainly broke many procedures. The only thing working in his favour that allowed him to get away with it is that the crimes he committed couldn't be directly traced to him. But a real undercover agent would never do the things that he did on behalf of the gang. Basically, this means that the entire story is unrealistic! But of course, it wouldn't be very entertaining if Taehyung simply observed from the background and didn't dirty his hands. So, I had to bend and break the rules a little!

For the universe, I knew that I couldn't base it too much in reality. Because of basic Korean law, it would have been impossible for me to write the gang operating in the way they did in the story—especially with guns. Most Korean gangs tend to use other forms of violence and weapons in order to control their respective areas, rather than guns. My other story, Taste of Ink, has what I would consider a more realistic approach to gang activity—with the main weapons being knives, baseball bats, etc. and the main forms of violence being assault instead of flat-out murder. So, for the sake of allowing guns to appear in the story, I had to create a Neo-Seoul, so to speak. I took inspiration from Korean gangs, and mixed it with influences from other gang cultures in order to create 'Haedogje Pa.'

When it comes to naming original characters, I honestly don't put much thought into it. I like to use real names for inspiration. I often Google various Korean films I've watched and read the cast list in order to find interesting character and actor names. This is because I have a habit of reusing names sometimes. For example, readers of my stories might have come across a couple of Daesu and Goohee characters. Do you know where I got these names from? I picked Daesu from Oh Daesu - Choi Minsik's character in Oldboy. Goohee comes from the manhwa 'Let Dai' - he is the stubborn gang leader that actually has a good heart beneath his rough exterior. I ended up liking him the most by the end of the story, so his name is one that often comes to mind when I need to pick an original character name.

I never really consider real life dynamics when I'm writing because my stories are so detached from reality that it seems pointless including any inspiration from reality. I chose the three main characters simply because, at the time, they seemed to fit the character moulds the best. The other characters fit their respective characters so well (especially Namjoon [BTS RM/Kim Namjoon] and Yoongi) that I simply thought it was best to have Taehyung, Jimin [BTS Jimin/Park Jimin] and Jungkook as the three lead roles. I chose them more based on how I thought they could personally fit the characters, rather than focus on the dynamic. To use Taehyung as an example, I thought that he would fit the character of the informant in my story because in reality, he is intelligent and seemed like he would suit the role. For Jimin, I thought he would be a good choice for a character that some might think is vulnerable or even weak. He is actually very strong and the most important character for the plot progression. For Jungkook, I liked the thought of someone with such an innocent outer appearance hiding a dark secret.

I'm so glad that readers took to Jimin so positively on a whole. I know there are some that hated him, or that hated the fact I chose him for such a role (a 'negative' sex worker role). But Jimin is the most important character for the plot progression. It is through him that the entire plan finally culminates in the explosive finish. I wanted to treat him with care because I understood that his character could go very wrong if not handled correctly. It would have been easy for him to simply become nothing more than a sexual prop, should the story have focused too much on Taehyung and Jungkook as the key players. So, I decided to subvert it by giving Jimin the ultimate hand in the story and allowing him to have more control than Jungkook in the end. If Jimin had not decided to follow through with the plan, if he had decided to snitch or had simply refused to do his part in exposing the gang, the story would've ended drastically differently. But I also didn't want to write Jimin taking control of the entire situation at the end because it would've felt ingenuine. He is a character that has been deeply affected by a lifetime of trauma. I was worried that some might take my portrayal of his trauma the wrong way, and see him not as a character that has suffered immense mental damage but rather as an annoying, weak character that gets in the way of more 'interesting' dynamics. I'm sure there will be readers that think that. Mentally traumatized individuals are often seen in such negative light, be they fictional characters or real people. When writing his character, especially in the later scenes, I wanted to make sure the trauma he experienced would shape his behaviour. Writing the scene of him getting ready to leave, when he is taking his pills and he doesn't think he can do it, it was hard. It was hard getting into that headspace of feeling so powerless in the moment and knowing that freedom is in reach, but not knowing how to achieve it. He was a difficult character to write, but I think he turned out just right in the end.

Taehyung was probably the best character to write. I love characters that start off so morally upright and pristine, and by the end of the story, their backs are bending and close to breaking from the weight of their conscience and misdeeds. His character has many facets to him that made his perspectives so interesting to tackle. From his green days in the gang, where he is horrified by the violence he sees, to the changes in his psyche as he starts to become desensitized to it all. Fundamentally, Taehyung begins the story as a good man, a hero, but by the end, there is no black and white thinking. He has become grey, muddied from his time spent in the gang. Is he a hero for bringing them down? Would a hero do the things that he did in order to bring down the gang? He killed people. He tortured people. He threatened a man with a gun, a man he knew had a deepset fear of guns that would severely trigger him. I think it all depends on how the reader sees it. The hardest thing to write for his character was his troubled descent into the relationship between him, Jungkook and Jimin, and how it affects his thought processes and emotions. I didn't want House of Cards to be seen as a romantic story when I created it. If readers see it that way, they are more than entitled to their own interpretations. I cannot tell them how they can interpret my art, that is not my role as the creator. I don't know if I effectively portrayed the co-dependency between the three main characters as well as I would've liked. But I had never tackled such a story and themes before, and so it was all new to me.

I didn't know that Jungkook had the least perspective from the three main characters. Similarly, I never really put that much effort into creating and developing his character! Jungkook simply 'happened' in the moment. He would appear in the chapter, and then his character would basically take control of the scene. I never really knew what he was going to say or do beyond my rough plans for each scene. I just waited until he appeared and let the creative spirit flow through me. That's how he came to be! I've had that happen many times in the past with characters—they have a life of their own and I've no control over them. In my story, Brotherhood, Taehyung happened the same way. It was impossible to write his character in that story because he was so wild and free-spirited that it didn't feel right unless his behaviour was a total spur-of-the-moment reaction to the other characters and new plot points. But with Jungkook in House of Cards, I don't know why I didn't have him planned out like the others. It's interesting to think that he might've had a good progression when I never planned any of it in detail!

Were there any original characters you particularly liked writing or enjoyed?

When you wrote for the BTS hyung line, how did you determine their roles in the story and characterize each of them?

Is there a reason behind Namjoon saying “brother” or was it a consciously written character quirk?

When you handled more serious subject matter in House of Cards, how did you feel when writing it? Were you ever startled by your own work?

Was there any type of purposeful titling for the fanfiction chapters?

What was your reason for House of Cards’ open ending?

I liked writing Lim, the original informant that helped Taehyung join the gang. I like writing characters that come across as sleazy. In his case, the sleaze was all an act and wasn't true to his character; he was affecting it for the sake of creating a persona. But I enjoy writing absolute sleaze balls too—the kind of guys that have chest hair and wear gold chains and thick watches, who practically ooze oil. I just find them fun! Lim was a good teacher, even when he was rough around the edges. It was sad doing what I had to do to him for the sake of the plot. But I feel like Lim understood the game as well as everyone else, and so he knew he was running on borrowed time. 

Of course, I loved writing Bae Goohee too! He was an absolute bastard! I loved writing this figure that is spoken about throughout the story as a frightening man, one so brutal that the readers are already wary of him before he even appears in the story. I believe that Taehyung refers to him as a 'guard dog' at some point. I think Bae is the scariest character in the story for me because he is so ruthless and willing to do any order that the Jeon clan give to him. That kind of blind and unwavering devotion is frightening!

I also enjoyed writing Sungah and Jangmi. I think they're the only female characters in the story that have dialogue? Sungah has a great backstory that I unfortunately couldn't go into too much in the story, but it shaped her character a lot. I like how frank and intelligent she is—she holds her own even in a department filled with men that receive far more praise than she does simply because she is a woman. She also allowed me to add an angle about the unfair treatment of women in jobs that have power, drawing parallels with how Taehyung faces discrimination from his fellow officers when his sexuality is abruptly revealed during the investigation. As for Jangmi, I just liked writing about the wife of a mob boss! And not one that is simply a trophy wife, but actually has a lot of power and influence across the city. I wish I had been able to feature her more, alongside her husband, Jeon himself. But I like the scenes they appear in and I enjoyed writing them.

For the rest of the members, I had Namjoon and Hoseok [BTS J-Hope/Jung Hoseok]'s characters planned right from the start. I had also created plans for Yoongi and Seokjin [BTS Jin/Kim Seokjin], but I wasn't sure how much of a role they would play in the overall story. As I started writing them, I realised that Yoongi would play an important role in both Taehyung and Jimin's character development, and so he ended up featuring a lot more than I had expected. I planned their jobs and then let them influence how I would write them. Namjoon and Hoseok's characters came naturally. Yoongi's character completely took over his job role and basic description and became a really strong character that I'm proud of. Seokjin was a little trickier because he doesn't appear in too many scenes—but the scenes he does are integral to the plot. I needed to make sure that his character said everything he needed to in his limited scenes. He has quite the bombshell to drop after all! Seokjin was also tricky because I wanted him to have an air of mystery around him. I wanted him to be the kind of guy that not even Taehyung and his police connections would be able to unearth much about; a ghost in the system. I would've also liked for him to feature more in the story, but I feel like his character appeared in the essential scenes that the story needed. He was going to feature more in the planned sequel, being one of the first characters to appear alongside Yoongi. He was going to serve an important role, so I'm disappointed that I didn't get to show those scenes to readers.

With Namjoon, I wanted to portray him as a mature character, but not one that was conservative and stiff. I thought about having him say things like 'man' but that seemed too casual and didn't suit his character. 'Man' made him seem more like a surfer than a police officer. But when he said 'brother' in one of the scenes, I realised the word suited him better. It was fraternal, and it allowed him to show some affection towards the other characters without having to have physical contact with them. It's not the only Namjoon I've written that says 'brother' a lot. In Valentino Summers, Namjoon has experience with hippies in the neighbourhood that he lives in, so he also refers to other characters like Jimin as 'brother.' It just seems to suit him! I guess it's because I like creating Namjoon characters that are intelligent and mature, but still have a gentle and warm presence. I could picture him saying it in real life (I'm certain he already has!)

When writing serious subject matter, I'm surprised to admit that I was never shocked by what I was writing! I guess it's because I already knew that I was going to be handling dark themes. I wouldn't have tackled such subjects had I not felt comfortable doing so. Dark content isn't for everyone, and by that I don't simply mean consuming it. Creating it can be very difficult for some writers, and can even cause distress. It's not easy diving into a world that is filled with crime, pain and fear. It's even harder putting yourself into the shoes of a character that is suffering/has suffered. I was never writing in a desensitised state though. Far from it. I'm actually very sensitive to violence in reality. In fiction, it depends on the violence—but I'm usually not too affected by it. I've been a fan of horror since I was a child, and so I've seen a lot of nasty films filled with gore and 'shocking' deaths that never really had much of an effect on me. Unrealistic violence doesn't scare me. But when it comes to personal violence, that is always frightening to me. It's far scarier writing a scene where a character feels threatened by another character and doesn't know what is going to happen to them then, say, writing a scene of a character dying a bloody, ridiculous death in a horror story. Personal violence is much more realistic, therefore it is more unsettling to write. In House of Cards, the violence is very personal. It's in your face, it's inescapable for the characters that are involved in it. But at no point did I ever feel like I needed to stop writing because I was uncomfortable or scared by the content. If I had been uncomfortable, it would have been very reckless of me to continue writing the story.

My word of advice to fellow dark content writers: it's always important to recognise your own boundaries. There's nothing wrong with removing dark content from a story if you get a bad vibe or feel strange when writing/reviewing it. Always follow your gut instincts and never put out work that you don't like.

When writing stories, I vary between titling the chapters and leaving them blank. For House of Cards, I cannot remember the exact method for naming the chapters. Sometimes, the title comes to me when I am writing the plans and I have an idea that just suits the mood of the chapter. Other times, I have finished the entire chapter and I have to spend some time reviewing the content to decide that the title will be. In some cases, I have finished most of a whole story and I'm still not certain what to title it! I feel like with House of Cards, the titles came after the chapters were finished, or at least when they were works-in-progress.

There are some titles that really stand out to me. 'Nice Teeth' for example, is a really ridiculous title. Going into the chapter, I don't think many readers would've imagined what it could mean. 'Submachine Sodomy' is even funnier. I really can't believe I chose that as a title! I'll bet a lot of readers saw it and thought, "Oh no! Not another gunplay scene!" Luckily for them, it wasn't a reference to Jungkook's predilection for firearms in bed.

In terms of chapter titles that I really like: 'Delusions of Grandeur,' 'I Own This Fucking City,' 'Sleeping Dogs Bite' and 'Carpe-fucking-Diem.' I just feel like these titles are very well suited to the contents of the chapters. They are the kind of titles that have bite to them, that hint at action or an important plot point.

As for the open ending, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I had planned to continue the story in a sequel that would pick up after the events of House of Cards, roughly a year on after the investigation. However, I did not pursue this sequel. I wanted House of Cards to end on an open note for the sequel to continue the story. When it comes to certain stories, I just feel that closed endings aren't always necessary. I often enjoy stories with open endings. With House of Cards, it didn't seem right just closing the book and saying it was over. There was still so much that needed to be explored. Unfortunately, I decided to not continue it. But I still think that House of Cards' ending fits the story.

Were there any scenes or moments or lines in House of Cards that you were particularly proud of or want to highlight?

If you were to write the Yoomin sequel to House of Cards, how would’ve that looked like?

How were readers’ reactions to your work in the beginning?

Did any reader comments stick with you in particular?

How did you take the criticisms and hatred towards House of Cards for its serious subject matter? When did those types of comments start appearing? Also, where did the hatred come from? Twitter? Tumblr? Ao3 comments? Did people harass you at all or hurt you? How did you heal from that?

House of Cards has a lot of scenes. I'm proud of most of them and I think I did the best I could when writing them. I do not really like the sex scenes, but that is because I wanted to write them in a dirty, sleazy way. If I could, I would change them. I like the action scenes, especially the Gold Monkey Casino and police raid scenes. Action scenes are hard to write! Fight scenes in particular are so tricky. I often sit there, choreographing the fights so I can describe them! I loved writing Yoongi's introduction to the story, when he walks into the scene wearing nothing but his underpants.

One scene that I really liked writing is the scene where Namjoon and Hoseok investigate the USB stick that Taehyung sends to them. I personally love Namjoon and Hoseok's characters. I always enjoyed writing them. In this scene, I liked getting to write them in a setting that was not the police department office. A scene where they got to relax and banter with each other, even though they were still working. They discover a horrifying crime ring in the city, but they are left with no choice but to keep it secret because they do not want to risk blowing Taehyung's cover. I do not know why I really like this scene, I just do.

In the sequel, which focused primarily on Jimin and Yoongi, the plans were to have them reunite through Seokjin—who has avoided jail time through a plea deal with the SMPA. They undergo a healing process together as they try to come to terms with what happened to them. Yoongi has a lot of unhealed trauma from his childhood, much like Jimin, which I only got to briefly touch upon in House of Cards. They grow closer from bonding over their traumatic experiences, and they become happier and healthier as a result. Taehyung and Seokjin were also going to be main characters, with Jungkook, Namjoon and Hoseok making supporting appearances over the duration of the story. It was going to be drastically different from House of Cards because it would be lacking in action and violence. It would have been much more intimate, with much more scenes of characters talking and discovering things about one another.

I cannot remember early reactions to the story, I just know they were positive. There was a lot of positive support from the start. As I updated and started to get more and more into the story, I received a lot of support on tumblr too. I started posting chapter previews there, as I used to get asks [On Tumblr, users are able to ask bloggers questions through an “Ask” function. This can be done anonymously or with their own blog username associated with the question.] requesting them. I got A LOT of asks on my original Tumblr from readers that wanted to discuss the characters and certain scenes. It was really interesting seeing just how much the readers were interested in the story, so much so that they wanted to learn even more about the characters and the universe I had created.

Through House of Cards, I have received comments and messages from readers that had addictions. They told me about how they recognised their own behaviors through Taehyung, and this helped them realise what was happening to them. Those comments stuck with me for obvious reasons. I have family members with addiction issues, and knowing that I could help some stranger I have never met before come to terms with their own addictive behaviours had a massive impact on me. Funnily enough, a negative comment stuck with me. It was not a bad comment, by no means meant to cause offence. It was a comment that was left on the story when I was posting the early chapters. I recall the reader asking when the story was going to pick up the pace because it was too slow. It stuck with me because, at this point in the story, Taehyung had already trained to become an undercover agent, had enrolled in the gang, had met and interacted with Jungkook, and had murdered a man. I was surprised that this amount of development had been seen as 'slow' by a reader, as I had thought the plot had been moving very fast.

I never really had any hate posted on the story when I was updating it. I got angry reactions when I had finished it. Because the story had not ended the way some readers had wanted, I think that was what caused the negative reactions. On my original Tumblr, I even got an ask about how an anon reader was going to write their own ending because my one was bad. I told them that I did not want them to take my story and change it like that. I have no idea if they ever posted the ending anywhere. The angry reactions were mostly from shippers, who were upset with the story not ending the way they had wanted. To them, I ask: what were you expecting from the story? I thought it was always obvious that Taehyung was going to do what he had set out to do from the start, so I do not think I misled readers at all. It was a story about an undercover agent taking down a gang—and that is what I wrote.

I know there was some animosity towards me on Twitter too. Twitter is a whirlpool of negativity, I am not surprised. Writing House of Cards made me appear problematic. My partner used to follow an author a long time back, who tweeted about me being problematic—despite having never interacted with me or admittedly read my stories. It was shocking to me that people were making assumptions of who I was as a person based on a story I created. I have never created stories with the aims of hurting or upsetting others. I am a very quiet and private person, and I hate the idea of hurting others. It was strange to me that people could assume me to be this cruel or even dangerous individual, intent on hurting others, because I created a fictional story. Do they think the same of script writers for television shows? Or film directors, who create films with dark subject matter? Do they think published authors are problematic people for writing dark and disturbing content? Do they think certain genres should not exist because they do not personally like them?

I do think it is strange that fan fiction writers are placed on these ridiculously high pedestals of moral absolutism. Fan fiction was created to be a space for creative outlet for marginalised individuals, particularly queer individuals. The heavy censorship of dark and unusual content is putting this entire ethos at danger. I understand not wanting to have certain topics included in stories because there is a risk that the content can be used for grooming or can be presented in a way that can negatively affect young consumers' perceptions (like pedophilia for example.) I certainly agree that there needs to be boundaries in place to stop the community from being flooded with such illegal content. But I think there is a difference between wanting to remove dangerous content, and wanting to get rid of content you do not like. Content can be problematic to you, but that does not make it dangerous, illegal, or bad. For some readers, the content they create is their way of dealing with trauma. Maybe this is not healthy for them. But that is their decision to make, not yours.

I orphaned the story because I did not want to handle the potential backlash. To put it simply, I do not handle negative criticism well. Not because I am stuck-up and think I am perfect, but because I am a very anxious person. Just reading angry comments makes me feel very uncomfortable, often nauseous. I know that House of Cards has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from readers, and for that I am thankful. But I had to distance myself for the sake of my own mental health. Since orphaning it, it exploded in popularity. I am thankful that I orphaned it because that amount of attention would frighten me a lot, haha~

What was your reaction to the fanfiction trailer by Sappiamur?

How did you come to the decision to reveal your real name in the end note of House of Cards?

How did you feel when you finished House of Cards?

How did you come to the decision to orphan House of Cards?

Did you ever anticipate the overwhelming fan reaction to House of Cards?

How do you feel knowing that House of Cards is one of the most read fanfictions on Ao3?

What do you want House of Cards to be remembered for?

What do you hope people take away from House of Cards?

Why do you think House of Cards became so popular?

I had to go back and watch it. It's been some time since I last have, and I'm still as amazed by it now as I was back then. The trailer is insane. I cannot imagine how much work went into making it. It's so good and it fits the vibes of the story to perfection. I think the first time I watched it, I was in shock. I must have repeated it at least 10 times in a row, just to make sure it was real and I wasn't imagining it. Then I think I screamed about it on my social media accounts, haha~ If you reading this have not watched the trailer, consider doing so. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Back when I first started posting fanfics, I used to get a lot of asks wanting to know my name, my pronouns, stuff like that. I thought by adding my name at the end of the stories, it would help cut down on these requests. But I also did so because I used to get a lot of asks referring to me as 'author-nim' and I didn't like being addressed by this honorific. I'm not Korean so I have no right to receive that honorific. So, I included my real name so readers could address me with it when sending me asks and interacting with me. I don't add my name at the end of my stories now, but my name is in my Twitter bio for those that want to know.

When I finished it, I felt relieved! I was so calm in the moment! Looking back on it, I can't remember much. But I do remember finishing House of Cards without any issues. The final chapters flowed smoothly, it all clicked into place, and I had a great time writing them.

I came to the decision to orphan the story after several nights of contemplation. I was considering deleting the story, along with a few others, but my partner and some friends told me I shouldn't do so. They suggested orphaning it instead. So, I did so. I didn't want to delete it in case readers that had started it had not gotten to finish it yet. I would've felt very mean robbing them of the opportunity to finish the story like that. I don't regret orphaning it instead of deleting it. I didn't want to destroy the story, I just needed some distance between me and the story.

I didn't anticipate it, and I still don't understand it! I'm shocked that House of Cards got the reaction that it received. Do I think it's a good story? Yes, I think that I worked hard to create a story that is enjoyable to read. But did I ever think it would get the reaction it did? Not in a million years! I thought that it would be one of my more popular stories because a) the pairings and b) the content. Gang stories usually tend to get a lot of attention because it's a popular genre in fanfiction. I just didn't expect it to reach such a vast amount of hits, kudos and comments.

I'm in shock that it is one of the most read stories on AO3. I don't think I will ever be able to create another story that will garner that kind of attention and feedback. It's a once in a lifetime thing, so I'm immensely proud of myself for achieving such a feat. But really, it's all because of the readers that it achieved such a goal. I'm so thankful for every single one of them.

I just want it to be remembered for being enjoyable, I think. I don't have any grand and lofty ambitions for the story. I think so long as the readers enjoyed it, that is all that matters.

I'm not sure what I would like readers to take away from House of Cards. I guess I want them to reflect on the idea of morality and that not everything is black-and-white. Good people can do bad things, and bad things can happen to good people. It's hard to answer this question because House of Cards isn't a story that I consider to have deep messages in it? There are no messages about acceptance and love and healthy relationships and such, like some of my other stories.

Honestly? I don't know what made it get so popular. I assume it's because of the pairings or the setting of the story. I know that a lot of readers say they love the story because of how well it's written, but I can't comment on that as the creator, haha~ I can't say my story is well-written as I'm not consuming it from an outside perspective. What I can say is that I do think I created a story that has a lot of twists and turns and betrayals, which I think adds to the enjoyment factor.

How are you now in 2020? Are you writing professionally in real life at all? 

How do you feel BTS fanfiction has changed over time? Since you’ve been writing for it for so long. 

Do you have any messages for people who may read this interview in the future?

I'm not writing professionally. I have self-published two books via Amazon and Lulu. One was a basic re-branding of my story babes in the woods. The other was a total rewrite of Brotherhood, which I called 'Brothers,' featuring a whole new setting and roster of characters. I published them as readers showed an interest in reading original stories. I have been considering rewriting House of Cards as an original work in the future, but I can't say for certain that I will do so.

Since I started writing, I think there's been a lot of changes in the fandom—not only in fanfiction but in general. There's been popular trends that have come and gone (I was around for the explosion of social media and text-based AUs, which I personally am not a fan of) but there's also been a lot of push for more inclusive content. I'm really happy by the amount of inclusive content that I see these days. Despite some pushback from non-queer fans that sometimes have an issue with queer subject matter (for example, trans characters) I think it's wonderful that artists of all colours, genders and sexualities are now proudly creating content they want to see, and not simply just what is 'in demand' from the fandom.

The message that I would like to share with readers of this interview is: stay healthy, stay happy, and most importantly, stay you. I also want to take this moment to tell them this - if you are considering becoming a creator, but you are worried about reception to your work, or that it might not be good enough, stop right now! Stop doubting yourself and just give it a shot! I was once like you, scared that my weird and niche interests and writing would be ignored or even mocked by the fandom because no one would like it. Had I not decided to take the plunge, my life would be so drastically different. I've made so many friends, fallen in love, and completely changed my life by creating fan content. It can be scary, but once you take the leap, you will find your feet coming down on solid earth without any danger.

Thank you for reading this interview. Further below are reminders and information about this interview and Charmseoul’s Fanlore project.

sugamins is still writing on her sugamins Archive of Our Own account today if you are looking for her works. Charmedseoul will not be sharing the author’s social media or contact information.

This interview is a part of the Top 50 Most Hit BTS Archive of our Own Works Project by Charmedseoul. The project documents the works and authors of the top 50 most hit BTS works on Archive of Our Own. All work for this project is done through Fanlore, which is run by the Organization of Transformative Works. However, Charmedseoul herself is not associated with Fanlore or OTW directly. All information documented through this project is done with full transparency.

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This interview was conducted through email from September 23, 2020 to October 25th, 2020 with sugamins’ consent and protections under Fanlore’s Identity Protection policies. Unauthorized reposting of this interview is forbidden. Quotation and screenshot share of this interview is allowed.

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Thank you for reading. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them.

Charmed Seoul. Fandom Historian based on Fanlore.com. Twitter. Tumblr.

[moonlightreal]

Strange Fate linkdump: Questing, Empathy and Endgames

Huge long post!  Linkdump and many many thoughts that wandered through my mind while going through these links.

Last Lullaby stuff:

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/hachette-signs-new-l-j-smith

About the international licensing of The Last Lullaby in 2013.  Strange Fate is the big obvious lost book but it’s not the only one.

https://booknode.com/the_last_lullaby_0705503

French bookseller page about The Last Lullaby, with back cover blurb in English but no cover picture.  So whatever happened happened before an artist could be commissioned. The book seems to follow unscarred teen Brionwy rather than scarred child Crispy who we met in the Strange Fate chapter

https://spotlightreport.net/featured/burn-bright-presents-l-j-smith-interview

2013 interview about The Last Lullaby.  In this interview Crispy and Brionwy are two different characters, though I’d always had the impression that they were the same person and Brionwy was Crispy’s real name.  Maybe just because Brionwy is the name in the title and then it’s Crispy’s story, back in whatever first incarnation I read of it whatever incarnation that was.  And it’s poetic nfor the scarred child to have a beautiful name.  

So we have the short story Brionwy’s Lullaby about Brionwy in the harem and the Strange Fate chapter about Crispy in the ruins.  Two pieces.  Less than we have of Strange Fate, but there is a looooot of worldbuilding in Brionwy’s Lullaby.  Lots of worldbuilding but no hint of where the story goes next.  Do Brionwy and Crispy meet?  Is there some connection between them?  How does the story end?  In the Strange Fate incarnation of the story this future is traded for a happier timeline when characters in our time avert the apocalypse but as a separate story how would it conclude?

Honestly I’m sadder about this book than I am about Strange Fate; I loves me some YA dystopias and the whole dragons and vampires thing is just neat.  But this book’s as lost as lost can be.

Recent Stuff:

https://www.reddit.com/r/YAlit/comments/krlvr1/lj_smiths_night_world/

Reddit thread from two months ago.  The rabbit hole is real and nobody else seems to have found the bottom.

https://deadline.com/2020/05/greg-berlanti-productions-adapt-the-forbidden-game-novels-lj-smith-as-tv-series-the-vampire-diaries-author-1202944224/

Article about the upcoming Forbidden Game TV series.  Forbidden Game is a Simon & Schuster series, not Alloy, so while I’m sure Ms. Smith has no say in how the show will go she will at least get royalties!  However much royalties book authors get from TV shows, no idea how much that is.  

https://micky.com.au/the-vampire-diaries-writer-reveals-new-fantasy-horror-series-the-forbidden-game/

“LJ Smith has just revealed that its horror trilogy novels...”  Um.  Not quite.

I looked through half a dozen articles about the Forbidden Game TV series and none of them had anything from Ms. Smith.  I knew the chance that this would draw comment from her was only a tiny chance, but it seemed worth looking.  

Interviews and Stuff:

https://www.saltlakemagazine.com/qa-the-vampire-diaries-creator-l-j-smith-on-writing-and-losing-the-series/

2012 interview about Vampire Diaries

https://peoplepill.com/people/l-j-smith-1

Just a biography page.  

http://theliteraryconnoisseur.blogspot.com/2014/05/an-interview-with-new-york-times.html

2014 interview with a blogger.  Ms. Smith does seem to be an absolutely lovely person.

https://areiterowski.wordpress.com/2013/02/10/author-profile-l-j-smith/

2013 Blog post about Ms. Smith, ending with a quite long list of “things she’s currently working on.’ the medical stuff didn’t happen until 2015 though with six projects in progress it’s believeable that she didn’t finish any of them before being felled by illness in 2015.

http://luanatormesdemattos.blogspot.com/2013/11/interview-with-one-and-only-l-j-smith.html

2013 interview with a blogger.

Into the meta: Aubrey Clark and the ghostwritten books

https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/5760167.Aubrey_Clark

Books by Aubrey Clark.  Secret Circle and Vampire Diaries.  I assumed Aubrey Clark is a woman and the other book listed is by a man with the same name, but Aubrey is traditionally a male name and modernly a female name so who knows. Hardly the first time a dude wrote a series aimed at girls under a female name.

https://www.romance.io/authors/54558f9b87eac323ffb2cc31/aubrey-clark

Bio listing Ms. Clark as a she, and classifying her books as romances.  Says she’s been writing for eight years.  Just on the VD/SC stuff or did she write before?  Alloy hiring an existing writer to ghostwrite and that existing writer using a pen name so her new work wouldn’t be connected with her old work is perfectly possible.  I swear I read somewhere that Ms. Clark was Ms. Smith’s editor, or her “person” with Alloy, making her signing on as ghostwriter a bit of a betrayal… but I can’t find my source.

And how much of a betrayal is it really, if Ms. Smith got fired it’s not Ms. Clark’s fault if the series got offered to her, and who could say no to getting to write for a series you know?  It’s a job and a chance to be a published author and nobody should be judged for grabbing that candy if offered it.  

I wish we could hear what happened from Aubrey Clark’s side, just because the story of What Happened to Strange Fate is a mystery I to figure out… it’s easy for me to forget this mystery isn’t a Nancy Drew video game, it’s people’s real lives.  Ms. Clark is not the villain, she’s a writer in a situation we don’t fully understand but she’s just a writer like any writer.

http://debrasbookcafe.blogspot.com/2012/11/book-review-secret-circlethe-divide-by.html

Review of Secret Circle: The Divide

http://bookandbroadway.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-temptation-tsc-6-by-aubrey-clark.html

Review of Secret Circle: The Temptation.  The reviewer was not impressed.

http://yepireadbooks.blogspot.com/2013/04/book-32-temptation.html

Another review of The Temptation.  This reviewer was a bit more impressed than the last one.  I admit I ragequit the ghostwritten books after Ms. Clark started killing off characters, I don’t remember if I even hit book two…  

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/The_Vampire_Diaries_(novel_series)

Publishing history of Vampire Diaries

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304058204579495491652398358

2014 “Vampire Diaries Writer Bites Back.” we’ve all read this one...

https://uniquelygeekygirl.com/2013/05/20/1223/

2013 “LJ Smith vs ghostwriter” from a blog called uniquely geeky girl.  The next article on the blog is more about Alloy and its practice of hiring ghostwriters.

The Rise and Fall of Kindle Worlds:

https://the-digital-reader.com/2018/05/15/amazon-to-shut-down-kindle-worlds/

https://fanlore.org/wiki/Kindle_Worlds

https://www.thebookloft.com/fanfiction-and-kindle-worlds

https://www.hiddengemsbooks.com/amazon-closes-kindle-worlds/

https://gigaom.com/2014/08/17/amazons-fan-fiction-portal-kindle-worlds-is-a-bust-for-fans-and-for-writers-too/

https://www.wired.com/2013/05/kindle-worlds-fanfic-copyright/

http://www.roxannestclaire.com/barefoot-bay-world-kindle/kindle-worlds-faq/

https://www.bustle.com/articles/36237-amazons-fan-fiction-site-kindle-worlds-is-flopping-but-why

It rose, and it fell.  As far as I can tell Alloy is the only publisher to put its works out on Kindle Worlds, I guess because that’s what they were already doing with their hired authors!  Other authors seem to have opened their worlds individually and I guess not many of them signed on.  

LJ Smith and Kindle Worlds

https://www.theawl.com/2014/02/the-writer-who-beat-the-system-how-one-woman-resurrected-her-sexy-vampire-brothers/

https://www.mhpbooks.com/fired-vampire-diaries-writer-takes-to-kindle-worlds-for-revenge/

http://floor-to-ceiling-books.blogspot.com/2011/02/l-j-smith-fired-from-writing-vampire.html

A blog post with some comments so you can read the state of the fandom at the time.

https://www.dailydot.com/parsec/fandom/vampire-diaries-lj-smith-kindle-fanfiction/

http://leegoldberg.com/tag/alloy-entertainment/

“Read the contract.’  This one is interesting because it’s the only one that isn’t in defense of Ms. Smith.  She should indeed read her contracts unless she wants to just be a fanfic writer, which… I don’t think I’ve ever heard of an author going from published to fanfic, but why not?  

Also, good question, where was Ms. Smith’s agent?  And where is Ms. Smith’s agent these days when someone should maybe be being the Strange Fate Police?  

Unrelated: I swear I read an article from Alloy’s perspective about what happened.  Maybe it was this one and I thought it was from Alloy when it wasn’t.  It is the only article not in support of Ms. Smith that I could find.

https://editingeverything.com/blog/2014/04/25/fanfiction-is-letting-lj-smith-tell-her-vampire-diaries-story/

https://www.tvovermind.com/vampire-diaries-lj-smith-fired-book-series/

https://thegameofnerds.com/2018/03/03/originals-10-facts-about-the-woman-behind-the-vamps/

https://dc.uwm.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1952&context=etd

https://www.cbr.com/the-secret-circle-why-the-vampire-diaries-author-l-j-smiths-other-cw-series-failed/

I watched one episode of the Secret Circle series because I loved the books so much, but the CW style is not my jam.  But it is interesting to read the pitch for a fewer-character second season.

https://anovelbookblog.com/2014/06/12/leeching-off-the-talent-writing-for-hire-the-dark-side-of-publishing/

About the Secret Circle sequel novels and Alloy

https://www.jeanienefrost.com/2019/02/ghosts-in-the-machine/

Ghostwriting and plagiarism and ethics.

https://www.fanpop.com/clubs/stefan-and-elena/articles/94267/title/lj-smith-fired-from-writing-own-novels

This is the full letter from Ms. Smith about getting fired.

https://teleread.com/thanks-to-kindle-worlds-fired-vampire-diaries-writer-continues-her-own-series-as-fanfic/index.html

http://iswimforoceans.blogspot.com/2011/02/help-lj-smith-vampire-diaries.html

2011 blog post

https://indecisiveturtle.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/assignment-4-ghostwriting-in-the-vampire-diaries-by-l-j-smith/

A long blog post that goes into detail about the writing of some of the books, how to tell Ms. Smith’s style from the ghostwriter’s, sentence length and similes and stuff, all very academic!  I’ve retyped a couple pieces of Ms. Smith’s writing and I noticed she handles punctuation-with-quotes differently than I do, making it very weird to retype.  This is an interesting one.  Someone dived way deep!

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/10/19/the-gossip-mill

New Yorker article about Alloy

https://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/05/29/the-not-so-secret-backdoor-to-publishing/

Article about Alloy and package writing

https://www.vogue.com/article/the-secret-circle-young-adult-witch-fiction

Just an article about the Secret Circle books and how they’re kinda bad but actually good.  Which they are.

That’ll keep y’all busy for a while!

Quest wishlist: I wish we could ask someone in the publishing industry about rights to series and rights to “publication canceled” books and how all that stuff works.  And I wish we could hear Aubrey Clark’s side of the story, but it just seems unkind to reach out to her to ask about this.

But the problem is… I call it “the quest for Strange Fate” because I’m melodramatic and like calling things quests, but what it the victory condition for this one?   The obvious: we win if we find and read Strange Fate, but I don’t think that will ever happen.  No matter how much we learn about what happened that won’t make Strange Fate appear.  

I do wish we could tell LJ Smith that plenty of authors these days have a Patreon.  If the people who still care about the lost books and the story of Ms. Smith could turn that caring into actual useful help for the people and maybe the books too that would be the best outcome.  That would be a successful quest.    

A darker timeline possibility: maybe S&S read Strange Fate and it wasn’t any good. Ms. Smith is a good writer.  But take a good writer and give her 20 years off from writing, and make those the 20 years where the teen experience of life changed radically, her genres of choice became big and popular and evolved and built up tropes, and language itself did… things…

I stan language but it’s a little sus how new lettery bois go brr everywhere I look.  I love it, but it’s humbling having to ask my niece what all the new words mean, and why so many of them seem to begin with S!

And Ms. Smith is sixty and has twenty years of rewriting Strange Fate, pulling it apart and tinkering until it probably doesn’t much resemble the book she started in 1998. Stir up all this in a pot and we’ve got a recipe for making a talented author drop a mediocre book.  Maybe S&S read it, said “it’s a dud, the fandom is 20 years old, let’s just not” and Ms. Smith retired from public life in defeat.  

This makes an unhappy sort of sense, but it doesn’t answer the question of why The Last Lullaby never appeared either.

Anyway. This has been a long post, lots of links and some thoughts on the philosophy of questing.