#hyperfixated? hyperfocused? idk what the right term is

[corvigae]

I didn’t know the sims had lore! What are some of your favs?

Neither did I honestly until I started following some Sims Youtubers - I was always one of those players that just made my own household (consisting of whatever ship I happened to be hyperfocused on at the time) and ignored literally everything else in the game BUT them. But there's actually a canon timeline of the games, and it goes 3, 1, 2; with 2 being a sequel to the original Sims game and 3 being a prequel (and 4 being EA saying they don't give a shit abt longtime fans of the game and just saying "4 takes place in an alternate timeline!!" to try to escape judgement for the game having absolutely no depth whatsoever BUT THAT'S A DIFFERENT RANT).

For me some of my personal favorites are the Curious brothers from Sims 2, who in short are a bunch of scientists who aliens apparently look at and go "It's free real estate," and also I have a big softspot for Agnes Crumplebottom, who in Sims 1 is a bitter old woman NPC who ruins your dates by beating the hell out of you with her purse, but in Sims 3 you see that her backstory is that she was a hopeless romantic who'd just gotten married and was ready to start a family before her new husband died unexpectedly, leaving her all alone in a big empty house with a half-finished nursery.

Fun fact - in my own current game I gave Agnes the life she deserves by giving her a wife with whom she can adopt as many kids as they want

[bard-llama]

For the end of the end of the year fic asks, 3,4,6,14,18,21 answer all of them or one of them your choice :)

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year

Turns out, the hardest part of this is gonna be remembering what I actually wrote lmao. But some things stick in the head better than others. I’m actually really, really proud of this short Saskia fic (Inspired By Her Fire) because it was a really different way of writing and it was fun to explore. Specifically: 

Saskia rose, facing the spike of fear with stern calmness. “Gentlemen,” she said – though that wasn’t precisely right. Dwarves thought humans didn’t understand their system of gender, and while she wasn’t human, Saskia could admit that she wasn’t sure of a better term to encompass men and dwarves-who-don’t-care-about-pronouns and dwarf-who-very-much-cares-and-is-a-man. “I give you Iorveth.”

So, first off, this is probably my all time favorite scene in the game. Just like, the sheer confidence Iorveth radiates and the way he’s immediately, openly loyal to Saskia is just 👌💗. But also, I really liked playing with this bit of worldbuilding that’s basically like, dwarves have many genders, but tend to use “he” amongst humans so they don’t break tiny human brains. I thiiiink the dwarf I had in mind as “very much cares and is a man” was Yarpen, but tbh, it might’ve been Skalen, mostly because Yarpen looks very masculine, so it would be cool if he just didn’t give a fuck.

4. total number of words you wrote this year

Hahahahahaha okay, uh, this almost gave me a heart attack when I was calculating it. Idk about my WiPs, but my total published word count (for only Witcher fics, because I transferred old fics to ao3 this year) is 581,211. Wtf that’s so many omg.

6. least popular fic this year

By hits, The Lion in the Woods (Mousesack teaching Ciri about balance) and O war! thou son of hell (Eist reflecting on war) are the lowest, at 56. Which like, is still amazingly high tbh. I spent so much time reading and not writing that now I’m like “👀 me? you like what I write? 🥰”

The Lion in the Woods wins for fewest hits, too, so it’s definitely an underrated one!

14. a fic you didn’t expect to write

All of them?? jk jk, but uh... genuinely, did NOT expect (Im)Perfect Strangers. It was supposed to be a quick “haha, Iorveth sounds really gay when he says ‘I don’t regret that it’s you’, what if they had a fling before and it’s like... finally acknowledging that?”. And then somehow I rewrote all of Witcher 2 and created a massive universe and I really love it.

I will say, though, I genuinely did not expect to write at all. Before February this year, I hadn’t written since about 2013. Then, boom, the Witcher got me back into writing and I’m so glad!

18. current number of wips

Hahahahahahahaha um okay, so I have to explain something about how I work. I don’t abandon WiPs, but I do follow my hyperfixations. Which, for those of you concerned about Geraskier/Geraskefer fics - they’re on hold right now because my brain has hyperfocused on Iorveth/Roche, but they are not abandoned or forgotten!

But uh.... I have literally so many, I cannot count all of them. So, JUST for my current fixation on Iorveth/Roche/the current tabs I have open (out of sight, out of mind is real), I have... holy fuck, 70. Jfc I think I have a problem.

21. most memorable comment/review

Oooooh, so the wonderful BubblySpiral left incredibly detailed comments on (Im)Perfect Strangers and it definitely made my day every time I got one. They are also the reason I need to work more Rinn, Boussy, and Lily the Messenger Falcon content in lmao

This is super fun! Feel free to send me a Fanfic End of Year ask!!