#i haven't even played the game but the amount of quality love care and effort everyone is putting into thr project makes me happy

[slymanner]

hot take!! WARNING!!!

my favorite video game genre is actually when a game is given all the time in the world to be finished and be as high quality as possible and it isn't announced TIL it's ready so there's no pressure on the developers to rush things and probably less crunch culture because of that, delays being allowed anytime possible cause no one online even knows about the ding dang game yet.

and the game is filled with so much love and care, you can deadass tell the company and everyone involved in the project had a fucking blast making it.

and everyone is happy with the final result.

and the people getting the SUPRISE announcement get a new high quality and amazing experience on the same day it was announced because everything is already done to perfection already and no more work is need to be done.

have fun, enjoy our game.

[hollow-lime-green]

Fanfic Writer Interview

This looks fun!

How many works do you have on AO3?

55!

Which is not what is listed lol. This is maybe a good time to mention that I actually have a side PWP AO3 although I haven't used it in a while, and haven't written any PWP for JJK. So only go check it out if you like FE3H rarepairs or Hades, I guess.

And if you do the math between my two accounts, you still won't get up to 55 because a few of those are actually posted anon. I did some kinkmeme fills for the FE3H fandom and while I'm not ashamed of the content lol, I did those as more of a writing reset thing and they're not as edited/polished as I would like? So I just don't want them under my real accounts.

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

So first, just, full disclaimer - kudos is not a good stats metric to judge your fics. Kudos amount is not sensitive to quality, it is sensitive to fandom size, fic type (pwp vs plot-driven, oneshot vs multichapter, au vs canon), rating, and length. Please god do not ever judge based on flat kudos.

A better metric (which by the way you should still not care about metric when you do Enjoyable Hobbies) is hit:kudos ratio, which I find is almost always around 10:1. If I want to see how well a oneshot does, that's a good metric. Repeat readers can't give repeat kudos, so that metric is useless for multichapters.

Anyway this is why it's good to comment on the fics that you like - the nice words people say to you are infinitely more valuable and better than numbers. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

A Real Breakthrough - Arcane Jayvik, PWP, 4.3k Set in S1 Act 1 (so no spoilers for S2)

Yeah so this is my most kudosed fic and it is not even close. I love this fic, I snapped with this fic, however it is also the only thing I have ever written for Arcane so it's like this one massive outlier on my AO3.

2. it's not gay unless the domains touch - JJK Stsg 40k

It's a little surprising to me that this one has so many more kudos than 2sorcs, but that has more to do with a.) if you like 2sorcs you'll go back and read domains, whereas you may read domains and not go on to 2sorcs and b.) fandom life cycle and when domains was coming out vs 2sorcs coming out after JJK ended

3. Bend the Knee - Hades Thesterius PWP 3.6k

Ahahahaha i forgot about this fic, I did snap with it though. I will play Hades 2 when it actually full releases and then I'll probably be insufferable. Hades fandom was very very fun and friendly, especially the Thesterius subsection. It may have been the nicest and most accepting fandom I've been in.

4. two sorcerers chillin' in a hot tub (five feet apart cause they're not gay) - JJK Stsg 115k

she's up there! she's on the board!

5. The Torment of Stillness - Hades Charmes PWP 4.4k

good for her, I didn't realize this fic had done so well

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i really try to respond to all my comments, or if someone writes a bunch I'll respond to them as a group. I struggle to write comments myself, even when I absolutely love a fic, so to me it's no small thing when people take the time to comment, and responding is a way I can say 'thank you' and 'hi yes i am a real person and your effort has made me tangibly happy'. plus like, we're all doing this for community, and community only happens when we actually talk to each other. interaction is the life blood of fandom, and it's how you make friends :)

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

weelllll I don't really write sad endings tbh. and maybe that's giving away the game a little bit with FIYM but I promise it's gonna be a tough road to the happy ending there. so if i had to pick one, it would be a Satoru POV piece but it almost doesn't count to me because those aren't exactly 'endings'. for that, I'd probably say the uncertainty principle (JJK STSG 1.4k) is the angstiest. it's also not really a plot story, so not really an ending, but I think 'angstiest character study' still counts.

by my definitions though, I am going to nominate Swan Song (FE3H Balthuri, 9.4k) This one is more full bore angst, although I think the ending is... optimistic? I really like this fic, although it is for a tiny tiny niche ship.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

uuuuuuuhhhhhhhh. how do you even measure happy? also i don't have a lot of longfics with 'endings' because i'm a piece of shit with abandoned wips (i am so sorry FE3H)

I'm going to say Limitless (Hades Patrochilles, 1.1k)? It's not a lot of plot to be ending but I think it's probably the most feel good? Second nomination to Condemned (Hades Thesterius, 7.5k) which has a little more plot.

Do you write crossovers?

not exactly. I write AUs, but I don't generally cross characters over, which I feel like is more of what 'crossover' entails. No hate, just not something I feel particularly compelled to do.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

nope. literally never. it is extremely rare on AO3 (in my experience) unless you are dealing a Really Big Ship and you run into people with extreme T/B or characterization preferences. I have seen friends get hate, esp in Big Ships in the FE3H community, so I know it is a real thing that exists, but I have fully dodged it.

the closest thing I've ever gotten is someone being like "ew, you wrote Ares/Dionysus?? that's incest!"

but all you can do with that is laugh, because... my brother in christ, do you know Greek canon?

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yep. lots. I don't know what 'what kind' means, but I write all kinds. with and without plots, with and without inhuman genitalia, with and without consent.

i currently only have mlm and mlmonster posted, but i have written (and not been happy enough to post) wlw and het. hopefully that eventually changes, because I do feel bad that I don't have more equal opportunity smut out there. women are great we love women. i just don't feel like I write wl well enough yet.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i don't think so!

Have you ever had a fic translated?

i have had someone ask, i don't know if they ever posted, it is still an extremely high compliment and it makes me smile that someone even wanted to do it.

i have had a fic recorded, which is definitely my peak (The Prince of Roses, FE3H Ashedue Sleeping Beauty AU 1k/6min). that was so cool. podficcers are very cool, they are doing god's work, and I would totally do it if I didn't hate my voice.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

no, and I think I would be a nightmare to work with, because I am very particular about everything.

however, i love love love collabing with artists and I have done that several times. and I would love to do more!

What’s your all-time favorite ship?

FE3H Balthuri. It's so niche but it's so good. Balthus has a lot of depth to him if you look past the surface. And Yuri's backstory is an incoherent, impossible spaghetti bowl caused by the creative team not being able to say no to any single idea. love them.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

The Lion of Kupala - Balthuri Canon Divergent AU 30k Political Intrigue

i think my plot ideas for this fic were very interesting, but the amount of effort I put into the atmosphere building and stuff was burning me out compared to the size of the community. and I would expect the fandom for this ship is basically dead these days so if I did go back to it, it would be a pretty solitary labor of love. I am unlikely to finish my Ashedue fics either, but I am significantly more likely to finish those because there's more potential that people might cheer me on and help me get to the finish line for that ship.

What are your writing strengths?

comedy, apparently! i didn't really write comedy until JJK, so that was kind of a surprise.

i would probably say characterization too. different reads on characters are (or, can be) equally valid because you're working with limited text. I think the key is staying consistent.

i'm very good at dialogue matching if there is a good enough sample size to draw from, which I don't think there is for lots of manga. i don't think my dialogue matching is good for JJK, especially with the translation from JP making some of the ENG sound unnatural in the actual manga. but I think for my other fandoms, I did pretty good

What are your writing weaknesses?

action for sure. and people are very nice to me about my action scenes, but they are for sure the hardest pieces for me to write and they take a long time for me to conceptualize and wrangle into coherent words.

these days, atmosphere has been a weakness too, I think. i used to really focus on that in my writing, but it has been more fun to be a little more dialogue and plot driven vs super rich moments. that's part of why I burned out on some of my FE3H fics. it takes a lot of mental energy for me in the writing process to constantly check in on scene setting/atmosphere.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

clarity is the most important thing - your reader should understand what you are saying and be drawn into the context of the world. sometimes writing dialogue in other languages adds, sometimes it subtracts. does the character understand that language? if so, they should hear it in the reader's language so that is understood. if they don't, then it should be given outside of the reader's language. and in that case, you should always have your specific translation in the end notes (if you want the reader (not the character) to know what was said), or you lose some clarity/intent.

What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

Chainsaw Man.

when i started FIYM, the other Big Project I was looking at was a multipart 'X Lives and Here's Exactly How it Could Work in Canon". but i didn't find the ship very compelling and it takes a lot for me to write gen because I find the community is better/more active for ship fics. so we went with FIYM even though my idea was less fleshed out (narrator: that would soon change).

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

string theory (JJK, stsg, E, 17.4k)

which is funny because it's the only piece of FIYM that was totally unscreened by betas, it took the least time to write (proportionally), and I wrote it when I was probably at my lowest with anxiety, sleep deprivation, and stress.

actually right before I started therapy lol.

'tortured artists' or something like that

Ty for the tag @marichild <3 Tagging: @detta-pica @fireflywitch @ anyone else who wants to do it :))