#anyway I’m rambling but fic writers !! I love you !! you’re so cool <33

[ghostdrinkssoup]

it’s crazy how much hannibal suits canon compliant fics that either change one key detail or diverge in some minor way between seasons and how that deviation radically changes everything while also maintaining echoes of canon scenes, only now they exist within a new context. I’ve seen so many fics like that and they’re all so cool because they honour canon while also using our knowledge of the story to rework certain moments and change whole plot arcs. it’s amazing what people come up with

[icedthoma]

W H A T

We finally hit 2k!!! Omg I’m highkey about to cry rn AJDNSJNS BUT ANYWAY THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH

My 2k event will also be up soon, so be on the lookout for that!

Appreciation post under the cut bc im a sap I hope the people I’m tagging don’t mind being tagged kjhxckksks

@ghoularaki​ you were literally the first person who ever followed me on tumblr. I remember your encouraging comment on the first fic I posted, and it really meant so much to me! I get so happy whenever I see you in my notifs even now! Thank you for sticking around since the very beginning <3

@senkuwu-chan​ aka the first person i ever received a dm from KJSDKNSKKS You’re so supportive and fun to talk to, esp about mysmes and BSD!! We haven’t talked in a hoT second, but I want to let you know I love and appreciate you, so thank you for being one of my first friends on here!

@myherowritings​ oh gosh um you’ve probably heard this many times before but you’re the reason I started writing for BNHA in the first place! I found your blog around June of 2019, and I was just so in awE of what a cool and funny person you are I was inspired to start a blog of my own! Thanks for being you, and I love all your work so so much <3

@necccomancy​ I remember when we first interacted!! I still stand by what I said the first time we talked, your headcanons are TOP TIER and your art is so adorable!! Thank you for being there to talk about random stuff like pandesal or art tingz, and being an amazing friend in general!!

@bnha-imagines-forall​ we haven’t talked all that much, but I love dropping by your inbox every so often and reading your work!! Thanks for being one of my wonderful friends on here, I love youuu~ (even if you are a chappie smh)

@edensxgarden​ EDEN!! I can’t believe we’ve only been friends for two months, I feel like I’ve known you for much longer!! I’m so thankful to have made friends with such a talented writer, I absolutely adore your MTCD series (as I will continue to remind you every update), so, thank you for being the fantastic person you are (and giving me that banana bread recipe HAHA)

@samayoshito​ another lovely human who slid into my dms with such kind words, I literally said 🥺 out loud the first time you messaged me KSHXKSKS I’d love to talk more and get to know you better!!

@kuraomi​ it has also been a hot minute since we’ve had a proper chat but ILY. I love all your haikyuu writings and HHH you’re a fun person to be around and have on my dash! I’m so glad we’re friends!

@katsukiscaramel​ my braincell buddy!!! Thank you for--well everything. From our 3am chats to fluff nights to being willing to listen to me ramble about anything and everything, thank you. Your writing is AMAZING, don’t you ever forget it, and I can’t wait for you to start posting again when you choose to do so!! <33

And to everyone in the bnhabookclub, even though I haven’t gotten to properly talk with so many of you yet, I’m thankful that I was invited to a server where I can talk and make friends with fellow writers and artists!

Once again because I cannot say this enough, thank you all so so sO much for 2k, you all mean the world to me!! I hope you’ll like my 2k event I put together for you guys~~~

[five-wow]

Hi, I'm a fellow writer in the fandom and I admire your work. I wanted to ask, as a popular writer, do you get fixated sometimes on the number of kudos/comments/hits etc that your new work gets, and does this impact your motivation/inspiration? I think comparison is the thief of joy, and I really want to get over this feeling when I post my own work, so was wondering if even popular and regular writers such as yourself feel like this to, and if , what's your secret? Thanks!

Hi! 1) You are so sweet, ahh, and 2) YES, I DO. Gosh, yes, I absolutely do get insecure about those kinds of things, and I think that anyone who says they don't ever feel that way is either lying (to themselves, possibly) or maybe just pure magic, like some cross between a writer and a unicorn.

I love ao3 and I love all of its metrics and I love numbers and statistics, but there’s definitely that shadow side where having all of that easily available makes it deceptively easy to compare your own work to other people’s. I do it all the time! It honestly makes it a little hard for me at times to read h50 fic and fully enjoy it, because I keep... looking at it and wondering how my own stacks up against it, unwillingly. That's not a relaxing experience, and sometimes not even a very fun one. (Another part of it is that I just write SO MUCH for h50 and there is SO MUCH I still want to write, and I don’t want to risk reading something that’s very close to an idea I had and then never being quite sure if what I write after that was influenced by the other person’s work or if it’s really still my idea, because I have this (pretty irrational) fear of accidentally stealing someone else’s work even though one of the really great things about fandom is that it’s a very collaborative process as a whole and being inspired by other people’s stuff is usually totally okay, buuuut that’s a different rambly story.)

And I definitely do also get... some cringey feelings, hardcore, around fics I posted that don't do very well numbers-wise. Sometimes it's expected - fic that doesn't follow traditional formats or doesn't feature Steve/Danny, for example, is always something where I KNOW it won't get as much attention because I know how fandom works and that lessens the sting because it doesn't HAVE to hold up to those other fics that perform way better, because I already know it's not really comparable. The truth is, of course, that most fic is not really comparable to other fic, but it’s easy to fall into that trap anyway. If I post something that seems like my average kind of work and it gets less kudos or comments than usual, I do start to doubt the fic and second-guess myself - is something about this weird? Is it too [insert quality x]? Is it bad? Did I unknowingly do something terrible and people are now avoiding me? The answer to all of those is probably no, and going through it a bunch of times has definitely helped, because what usually happens is that I end up somewhat avoiding the fic in question because it makes me a little ashamed and awkward to think about it (a relative failure! oh no! I'm human!) and then, eventually, I return and reread the fic. By that point I have enough distance from it in time that I can look at it a lot more objectively, and it's way easier to see what works and what does not than when I posted it and I had just read it a dozen times in twenty-four hours and the words were burned into my brain. And upon that reread, inevitably, I realize that, holy shit, it was NOT AS BAD as I had made it out to be in my mind! It’s actually kind of fun! Imagine the ego boost of realizing your most cringy recent work is actually pretty okay, haha, and it's silly, but it's a revelation every time. The quality of a fic is not dictated by how many people read it or comment on it or like it, and intellectually I absolutely know that, but it’s hard to remember when it’s about yourself and you’re still in that emotionally vulnerable place of having just shared your work with the world and it feels like the world is not as into it as you thought (or hoped) it’d be. It’s honestly very, very reassuring to have those experiences to fall back on, but sadly the only way I know to get there is to just tough it out and feel super awkward for a while.

When I’m writing, on the other hand, I usually don’t really think about what other people might think of it. I have the advantage that (pretty much) all of my work consists of fairly short stand alone stories, which means I don’t have to struggle with keeping my motivation up for a second chapter of something but I get to start fresh every time, and that’s nice, because I can just lose myself in the joy of throwing words around and making characters do things that make me giggle. That’s not to say I never think of the outside world while writing - I realized, pretty recently, that I occasionally end up constructing paragraphs or pieces of dialogue a certain way mostly so it will make for a good excerpt to put in the eventual fic description, which might give me a sense of accomplishment because it’s nice when things work out and look good, but in all fairness it’s probably far more motivated by attempts to package the finished work attractively so other people will want to click on it than by anything else. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing. I don’t think so - I don’t feel like it lessens my work and it doesn’t interrupt my enjoyment of it in the moment, which are the key elements for me - but other people might disagree.

But the heart of thing is, just, there are SO MANY factors that influence a fic’s numbers, and not all of them are visible (I’d argue most of them aren’t, in fact), and it always helps me to keep that in mind. It puts things in perspective somewhat and softens the harshness of a black and white kudo count judgment. Numbers can depend on when you post a fic (what day of the week, time of the year, time relative to big fandom moments, whether you’re in the middle of a global pandemic or not), how you pick your title, what you put in the description, how you use the tags, what genres or tropes are popular in your specific fandom, the genre of your fic in general (pwp as a rule tends to get lots of hits and few kudos or comments, for example, making it totally unfair to compare it to G-reated fluff fic with super different ratios), how much you’ve posted before (because if someone likes one of your works, they’re often likely to check if you have more in the same fandom), how many fics other people post around the same time (because yours might be gone from the first page of most recently updated works in a fandom or ship tag very quickly if others push it out), how big your fandom is(!!!) (over two thirds of my works on ao3 are for h50, but h50 only makes it into the top 10 of my most kudo’d works by the skin of its teeth) and definitely also what your fandom’s culture is like (compared to a lot of other fandoms, h50 fans are a-ma-zing when it comes to leaving comments, my gosh, and as a writer I adore all of you), how old your ao3 account is (the longer you’ve been around, the more likely a higher number of people is subscribed to you as an author or has read your previous work or has encountered your name, etc), how long your fic is (under a thousand words in my experience generally does less well than 1-5k, but longer fics might end up with lots of chapters which switches things up because people come back to it when there’s an update, and even if a long work is all in one chapter it will probably stand out for the wordcount and might attract attention that way, etc), whether or not your fic is part of a series (in my experience it will probably get more hits because it’s a chain of fics that leads you to the next one, but the kudos might not go up at the same rate because people might forget a kudo or reread previous works when a new one is added), whether you make a habit of commenting on other people’s fic (I’ve had comments saying MY comment on their work led them to my fic!), if you have social media like Tumblr or Twitter where you can promote your work (it’s advertising, basically), and any of a bunch of random little other factors. Sometimes, I see a sudden little cluster of kudos on an old fic in the daily ao3 kudos email, and I assume someone somewhere maybe recced that fic, but it usually remains a total mystery who or where or even if it happened at all and wasn’t just a weird coincidence to begin with. Sometimes the thing a fic’s popularity depends on is really just whether it clicks with people at that point in time, whatever that means, which is an even more impossible thing to grasp or predict than anything else.

Or you can look at things from a totally different angle and not try to make yourself care less about numbers, but just accept that you do because you’re human and we all crave validation, and instead try to roll with that. A brain hack: when I do start getting down about numbers, it also helps me to focus on one work and just... try to visualise what those kudo (or hit or bookmark or comment) counts mean, if you were to translate them to the real world. While it can be super helpful to remember that there’s a LOT going on that you can’t see and that’s virtually impossible to really explain, it’s also nice to somewhat do the opposite and try to make things as concrete as possible instead. I like measuring in school classes (~25-30 heads, I’d say) and “my fic only has fifty kudos but this other person’s has ten times as many” could easily make anyone sad and demotivated, but “my fic has fifty kudos and that’s TWO WHOLE CLASSROOMS packed full of people that all read my work and liked it so much they wanted to give me a little thumbs up for it” is actually pretty cool and encouraging, I think. Or you could measure in sports teams (I don’t know sports, but soccer has 11 players on the field per team, so as soon as your fic has 33 kudos that’s three teams which means you’ve got yourself a little beginning league! how exciting!) or in DnD campaigns (variable of course, but most of mine have had around four players plus a DM, so if you have twenty kudos? that’s FOUR WHOLE DnD campaigns that enjoyed reading your fic, and it’s fully up to you how many half-orcs that includes). You could apply this method using literally any other measurement that works for you, too. If you have a hard time painting a mental image of numbers, you could even open up a Paint doc or get a piece of paper and start counting out little dots or copy-pasted images of a person, or get a big bag of physically present M&Ms and count them out, or take a good look at your dog and then go around the neighborhood and collect forty-nine more dogs and pile them all into your home and be slightly frightened by the utter delighted fluffy chaos that ensues in your living room. That’s how many people liked your fic! That’s a heck of a lot of wagging tails! Who knew a kudo could bark this loudly!

Disclaimer: maybe keep the dog thing as your very last resort, because your neighbors might not be super into their pet getting dognapped for the purpose of visualizing fanfiction stats. The point is really just to remember that there’s an actual person behind every kudo you get, no matter what the cumulative number is, and even if you have seven or five or three kudos, that’s seven or five or three very real people that hit that button. That’s pretty damn awesome. Also keep in mind how you feel if you read a fic, and take some time to realize that every single person that left you a kudo went through that same process of spending time reading words (the words you wrote!) and experiencing that story and THAT’S why they left that kudo. It’s a real person’s real investment.

This ended up very long and rambly, so tl;dr: You are in no way alone in feeling that way, it's okay and normal and so very very human to feel like that, but you still shouldn't let it get you down, because numbers fake being meaningful very well but are deep down just little squiggles on your screen and they’re more scared of you than you are of them, while at the same time there are real individuals that enjoy your work even if you usually never see them. Your fic is worth posting. That’s the one factor in all of this that’s a constant, not a variable.

(And as a very important sidenote, just be kind to yourself, always. Does it truly stress you out? Are you feeling really bad about it today? Does it make your anxiety spike? Then give yourself room to take a little step back and allow yourself some time away from it. Go watch something you enjoy, or read something nice, or do something else that makes you feel good. Fic is something that should add to your life, not subtract from it. You don’t owe anyone anything, not even yourself in this context, and I used to push myself occasionally to get something finished TODAY, and eventually I started realizing, well, why? Why not instead of reading it over again just get some sleep or watch an episode of something I want to watch, especially if I literally just finished the fic and I feel a little unsure about it and it might actually be beneficial to me and my own feelings about it if I just give it a day or even a week and let it rest and then look at it again and THEN post it, if I want to, whether that’s with some changes beforehand or not? Who set me that deadline that’s apparently looming over me? I did, and it’s fake, and it’s there for absolutely no good reason. Breathe. Put yourself first. Be really really really selfish about your own fic writing experience, even, because it’s supposed to be something you enjoy (that’s what a hobby is!), and the rest is secondary.)

[fangirlandiknowit101]

For the writer's ask game, All Odd numbers 😁 no need to answer all if too many. Just wanna hear ur ideas on somee 😁imiss your fanficssss

omg idk if i love you or hating for asking so many questions in one goXD Aww i’m still writing, just veeery slowly... and i’ve had a few very rough weeks (mostly bc of work) so i haven’t had much energy or motivation at all - trying to get back into it so i can write the whole weekend!

1.  Do you listen to music when you write?

Sometimes. It depends! Sometimes it helps get into the mood or avoid distraction, but sometimes the music makes me think of other plot ideas which is highly distracting *sweats* Lately, i’ve listened a lot to imagine dragons while writing!

3.  Computer or pen and paper?

computer. i have some notebooks with old stuff written down, barely readable. why did i write plotlines in pink?? can’t read it at all lol

5.  How much writing do you get done on an average day?

haha.. on average it’s like, nothing. but if i actually have time to write that day, it can be anything from 200 words to 4,000. usually i don’t get to more than 4K in one day for some reason (unless i switch fics to write on lol). maybe 1,000 words is a fairly accurate average!

7.  Standalone or series?

usually standalones. i’ve only written one sequel in my life and it’s not even finished (Missing pieces)

9.  Current WIP

The sun within me, Lessons in love, For You My Sun, Sugar Star are the ones waiting for new chapters. i’ve got a couple unpublished/unfinished WIPs in my folder... we’ll see if i manage to finish them at some point but i don’t really dare to describe them in case someone would actually want to read them

11.  Books and/or authors who influenced you the most

hmm tough question. i grew up reading authors like David Eddings, Eoin Colfer, Tamora Pierce, i went down and checked my bookcase and those three are actually the ones still on display haha. of course i read books like harry potter and narnia etc. too. lots of fantasy basically - and lots and lots of horse books, but i don’t think you can tell in my writing lol. Ender’s game by Orson Scott Card is a favorite, as well as the hobbit and The name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss. when i studied Finnish in university i had to branch out and read books i would never choose myself, and that really influenced me to broaden my perspective so to say. last book i read was probably Wayward son by Rainbow Rowell (i’m a sucker for sad gay vampires apparently). i also read a ton of murder mysteries like agatha christie when i was younger.

plus, all the manga i read - dragon ball and naruto and love hina and yaoi and god knows what

13.  Describe your writing process from idea to polished

oh dear. i usually get an idea that goes sth like “wouldn’t it be hilarious if...” and then it spirals out of control. like, my first long fanfic, Results of a shitty day, was literally me saying “you know what? i want to write a long drama fic like all those other cool authors do” and there was no plan besides at all at first.

i tend to just write a first chapter and then have a general idea of what i want to explore - a certain character growing a certain way, or a certain trope, or just the one scene that won’t go away. For The sun within me, it was literally “hey what if i wrote naruto and sasuke in the road to ninja universe” and for Lessons in love it was “man i really want a fic where Yurio is Viktor’s son and they’re fanboys of Yuuri’s skating”, and me rambling to a friend in the car about it until i was forced to sit down and write it. i definitely make up the plot as i go. every time i decide the plot in advance i end up changing it anyway (yes, this happens even for oneshots sometimes). i love planning though - so much that i constantly re-plan the stories and plan the chapter while writing it too. 

15.  How do you deal with writer’s block?

badly. i’m a procrastinator. usually i switch between stories, if that doesn’t work, i try to write sth new, usually that doesn’t work and i end up reading fics until i’m convinced i can never write as well as other people can. and then i just have to take a break until my brain goes ping! and i can write again.

17.  What writing habits or rituals do you have?

i think the only habit i have is getting easily distracted. *cough*

19.  How do you keep yourself motivated?

i’m constantly writing in my head - daydreaming if you want to call it that. typing is very difficult, but i’m usually motivated by the fact that there’s nothing better than to sit down after a long day and just enjoy a really good fic about your OTP, and since people enjoy my writing i can’t just quit and rob them of this. i can’t just enjoy fandom without paying back when i actually have the possibility to do so. it usually works!! also, when i type, the story takes shape in a way it doesn’t in my head, which is actually really cool so i read my own stuff now and then just to remind me of this. 

21.  Who is/are your favourite character(s) to write?

Sasuke

23.  Favourite author

hmm i don’t have just one. or do they mean fanfic author? well i wouldn’t be able to choose either way!

25.  Favourite part of writing

when i manage to type a scene the way i pictured it in my head. and when i just write without a plan and things start to make sense!

27.  Favourite line/scene

actually, every single scene in The sun within me is my favorite lol

29.  Favourite villain

does Sasuke count? no? i’ll say Baz in the Carry On series

31.  Least favourite part of writing

the first sentence of a fic or chapter. getting started is the hardest!!

33.  Have you ever killed a main character?

i wrote a drabble with naruto and sasuke in the afterlife once. i don’t think i’ve actually killed anyone???

35.  What scene/story are you least looking forward to writing?

the next chapter for Lessons in love is giving me a lot of trouble currently :(

37.  First sentence or your current WIP

This is the first sentence of chapter 16, Lessons in love: Their last full day in Hasetsu passes in a blur.

And this is the first sentence if a yoi smut fic i’ll post when i finally finish ch 16 for LiL:  The metro is always crowded at this time, and Yuuri hates it.

Don’t tell anyone i’m working on yet another smut fic for yoi.

Aaaand this is the first sentence of a sasnar fic i’m writing on when i’m too tired to actually write anything seriously:  Sasuke was surprised to find that he was not the only one to be summoned to the Hokage’s office.

I know it was an earlier question, but i actually have something like 17 WIPs in my WIP folder that are not posted in any part yet, of which most will probably never see the light of day. 

39.  Weirdest character concept you’ve ever had

hmm i don’t know

41.  Any advice for new/beginning/young writers?

i have much advice. but i don’t think any of it is very original. the most important thing - there’s no such thing as failure when you’re writing fanfic. write what you want and when you want, the only way to get better is to keep writing! i just re-read an old story to see if it was worth editing and copying over onto ao3, and realized i had used the word “pinkette” to describe sakura. we all start somewhere... and if you ever look back on old fics, focus on how much you enjoyed writing the fic, not if it’s good or not!!

43.  What do you do if/when characters don’t follow the outline?

if they don’t, it’s generally because they’re right and i’m not. forcing them back into the outline only makes for awkward writing. i always go along with it to see where it goes - sometimes it ends up somewhere much better than planned, sometimes you realize you’ve made mistakes way back in the fic and now you’re stuck with the choice of changing the plot or going back to rewrite. 

45.  How much world building do you do?

i actually hate world building. and describing things like scenery and places and clothes. i’ve had to really force myself to work on it. but i also make sure that i only give the absolute necessary information and then slip in the rest in bits and pieces where it fits. but since i mostly write in already set worlds, it’s usually not that necessary. 

47.   Best way to procrastinate

look at fics and put them in my marked for later and then procrastinate reading them by working on WIPs that are not my published WIPs and then procrastinate those WIPs by finding new fics to read and then maybe re-read my own fics. oh, and scrolling through social media

(i don’t actually have a lot of time to procrastinate bc it’s usually work-take care of horse-shower and dinner-sleep)

49.  Which character would you most want to be friends with, if they were real?

Phichit. so much fun!!!

Wow, that was a lot of questions and a lot of fun!! Sorry for the super long post you have to scroll by lol

Thank you for asking!!!

[humanity-shortest-soldier]

Question tag for AO3 writers~~

I found the original questions on AFF a while back, and I thought since I’ve been tagged in so many meme things lately, I’d also tag a bunch more people in this one XD Since the questions were designed for AFF, I’ve reworked some of them to fit for AO3 writers. I also removed two questions rather than trying to translate them to AO3 terms. So, I’ll fill out my answers first, and then put the blank questions again at the bottom for you to easily copy and paste!

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

SIFU_HOTMAN because Zuko is one of my favorite characters and honestly Aang calling him “Sifu Hotman” is hilarious. 

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos)

Exactly My Type by a long shot, lol. 

3. What is your AO3 profile icon and why did you choose it?

It’s Izaya Orihara to represent the trash on my page. 

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

Yes! I’m shocked when I read through my comments and see how often the same people will comment on each chapter. And there are definitely one or two that I look forward to seeing. I recognize a ton of usernames on AO3 but I don’t know many of them on here.  

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

THIS fic by the super-talented @courtingstars! I swear I’ve reread this fic like 6 dozen times at this point, as well as the sequel! (For real tho, I could probably recite this fic word for word, I love it so much. AkaFuri fans, if you haven’t checked it out, I can’t recommend it enough!)

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

I’m guilty of not subbing or bookmarking that much, because it got to the point where I had so many that it kinda made it pointless, lol. But I’m subscribed to 2 users, and 5 fics, and I have 46 bookmarks. 

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

I don’t really write AU’s all that much? (I think I only have 2, the Nanny/Single Parent AU and a Red String of Fate AU). I definitly want to try doing more tho! I was super nervous about the Nanny/Single Parent one, but now it’s my hightest hitting fic! And it was from a prompt! lol

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

Total bookmarks: 311 Total subs: 337

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

The only thing I can think of right now is I want to get better/ more comfortable with writing smut lmao. I’ll conquer it one day! 

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

Updating better, for sure. It eats me alive that it’s been almost a year since I started Exactly My Type, and I’ve only written 5 chapters! It’s so hard to find time with all the overtime at work, and with everything else. BUT that’s something I definitely plan on changing. 

And maybe replying to comments? I generally don’t reply (I feel so bad about this, I’m so sorry. Comments just make me an incoherent mess and I’m never sure how to reply without rambling and making an idiot of myself)

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

Is AkaFuri a rarepair? I know it was more considered one a while ago, but I don’t know anymore. I guess whatever category they fall under, that’s it lol. 

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

Eight! Which is eight more than I thought I would write. 

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

I have 30 stories saved on Google Docs. (I’m shocked? lmao)

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

Everything in my head. My ten hour shifts at work mostly consist of me staring off into space and writing fan fiction in my head. 

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

Other than bouncing ideas off of a friend, no. It sounds fun tho!

16. How did you discover AO3?

Searching for ATLA fanfiction like, 4 years ago. After reading everyting FanFiction.net had to offer, I found AO3 and immediately made the switch. 

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

God, no lmao. I think I’m IN the AkaFuri barrel, but far from the top of it.

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

Not that I know of? I get comments about how much people like my username sometimes, so I’m cool with it if people just wanna call me Sifu Hotman lmao.

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

My inspiration mainly came from a desire for more AkaFuri fics, lmao. But there were a few amazing writers who reallllly made me want to try writing, and I was encouraged plenty by my best friend, so here I am lol. 

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

To just write. I worried for so long (and I still do) about not being good enough, or making a mistake, or failing. But the only way to get better at writing is to write! If someone doesn’t like you’re story, odds are you’ll either get some helpful advice, or feedback on the part they did like. Even if you don’t want to post it publicly, just write it out anyway. I think I’ve improved so much since the first thing I wrote, and I hope I get even better the more I do it. 

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

Again, spending 10 hours a day, 5 days a week in my own head, I get most of my stories down to the tiniest details before I even get to a computer. Once I sit down, some things may change or come out different, but I rarely go to write without having any idea. 

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

Actually... no, I don’t think I have.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

Smut, for sure lol. 

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

Fucking chapter 6 of Exactly My Type! (I just broke 6K the other day, and it’s not even halfway done). After that, I’m on to Defying Fate, with a couple of prompts inbetween. 

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

Sorta...I guess. Exactly My Type happened because of a prompt request that got waaaay out of control, so that was poor planning on my part lmao. 

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

Not at all. I just go for it whenever I get the chance. 

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

100% yes. I want to crawl into a hole whenever I think about my first fic, lol. 

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

I’m gonna shove the AkaFuri away for a second and go with Absolutely Baked. Mayuzumi is my favorite character to write for, and I think I got some pretty funny dialogue in that one. It makes me laugh, and the extra chuckles my friend and I got while discussing it were totally worth it. 

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

I don’t think I have a least favorite? If I had to pick probably my first fic, Emperor's Weakness. 

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Hopefully still writing fanfiction, lol. I would like to try writing some original work, but I doubt it. 

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

Dialogue, I think. Once I get in a characters head, I find it very easy to write from their point of view. 

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Getting a full plot to run together. I’m pretty good at getting certain scenes down, but I have trouble piecing them all together sometimes. 

33. Why do you write?

Simply, because it’s fun. I know how happy it makes me when I read a super-awesome fic, and I like the feeling I get when someone tells me I gave them the same feeling. 

Anyways that’s all the questions, so I’ll put them here as well without the answers to easily c+p.

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean? 2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos) 3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it? 4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters? 5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again? 6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked? 7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most? 8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page) 9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!) 10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc. 11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often? 12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)? 13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program? 14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head? 15. Have you ever co-authored a story? 16. How did you discover AO3? 17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3? 18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers? 19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write? 20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author? 21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go? 22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do? 23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..) 24. What story(s) are you working on now? 25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)? 26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself? 27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started? 28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written? 29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written? 30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years? 31. What is the easiest thing about writing? 32. What is the hardest thing about writing? 33. Why do you write?

I was tagged by: @herdustisverypretty <333

People I’m tagging: @anime-saved-and-destroyed-me | @kaguneko | @shootmesenpai | @cerberosthehellguard | @jubesy