#this was the first kamatani manga I'd read and for that I will always have a soft spot for the story and characters

[worthlessandembarrasing]

Sharing my favourite panels from Our Dreams at Dusk bc why not, honestly?

[kinosternon]

20 Questions

Got tagged by @marezelle (like a month ago, whoops) and this looks fun, so I'm gonna try it!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Officially 37, unofficially 57-ish (I have a lot on anon right now, plus some semi-ancient FFN stuff posted under a pseud)

2. What’s your total AO3 words count?

Apparently, 644,538.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Kind of a lot? One "it's complicated" fandom which I tend to stay on anon for, especially lately; a fair bit for a very specific corner of Free!, also for Natsume's Book of Friends. Voltron's an ex-fandom but I had fun with it right when it started; there's a handful of other anime I've cycled through. I've got an Undertale longfic I'd really like to get back to one of these days. Lately, a whole bunch of stuff for the 9 Worlds series by Victoria Goddard, which is both amazing in itself and also has my favorite fan community to date.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Names Gone Before—my one and only Adventure Zone fic, and a oneshot, but apparently it was a hit lol

Chasing Silver, Chasing Gold—my beautiful monstrosity of a love letter to the characters introduced in the third season of Free!, and which came out too late for most of the English-speaking fandom to notice it very much (this goes for the show itself and also the timing of my publishing🥲). I am so grateful that so many people have managed to find it regardless!

Equivalence—aforementioned Undertale longfic. I really want to finish it one of these days, but I know what's coming in the last arc and it intimidates me. XP

Omimai—of all my Natsume fics, I'll admit I wouldn't have figured this to be the top one. But I guess Natori is a fan favorite, and I do appreciate that it's very solidly a gen fic that gets a lot of love regardless.

Like trust falls from towers—aforementioned s1-era Voltron fic. It was an experiment to get me posting more, I had fun with it while it lasted, and I got some truly wonderful comments and support from folks reading along while I was working on it. I still go back and reread it sometimes, and I think it was pretty good.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always try to! I want to show appreciation and make sure people know that going to the effort it takes to write a comment means a great deal to me.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

That's a tough one. Probably Pistachio Christmas Tree, as it's a snapshot of a really rough time in the POV character's life and doesn't really show any signs of things getting better for him anytime soon. (All my angsty endings come from canon compliance, lol)

OH. Or Chasing Fingerprints, which is a Nabari no Ou AU oneshot that I wrote back in high school. I wrote it under some weird constraints and don't really like it all that much, but the ending is ambiguous and deeply angsty.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

That is also weirdly difficult to say! Snapshots for Natsume, Slow your breath down (just take it slow) for Victoria Goddard's novel Plum Duff, and turning in your hand for At the Feet of the Sun (also by Goddard). Two of those three are wintertime fluff; I enjoy that subgenre a whole lot.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No. I've occasionally had some slightly weird interactions, but overall I'd say even those were well and enthusiastically meant.

9. Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Occasionally, and I'm not sure what kind it'd count as. Insecure, possibly? (me or the characters, either-or XP)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Only two so far! The weirder one was my first-ever fic, where I technically crossed over Twilight with both old!Who and new!Who. Then there's Clowder, which crossed over two of Yuhki Kamatani's manga from pretty different eras and genres and which I'm pretty darned proud of.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not to my knowledge, no.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

I had someone ask once, a while back, but at the moment I don't remember which fic it was, or if I ended up hearing how it went.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

...If adding to a bredlik compilation counts, then yes? And I've also done a fair bit of writing to requested prompts for gift exchanges and the like, which isn't the same thing as cowriting but which feels at least a little bit similar.

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

Oh man, how can I choose? 😭 At the top this has to be a tie between Miharu & Yoite (Nabari no Ou, QPR extraordinaire) and Yukito/Touya (Cardcaptor Sakura, TRC, etc). But also Merthur was my first ship-ship. HiyoIku (Free!) for writeability and general fucked-up-ness, but I'm not always 100% sure I ship it, tragically. Natsume and Tanuma for the same uncertainty minus about 90% of the toxicity, whee.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I'm not going to say "doubt," but uh. A couple of "it's complicated" fandom pieces (especially the ones I originally meant to be series) and also the Undertale longfic. Also some 9 Worlds WIPs, but I haven't started publishing those ones yet, either.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Characterization is a big one—it matters a lot to me and also I've been complimented on it. Fic is my love letter to canon and so I tend to focus on what I love about canon the most, which is almost always the characters' interiority and/or relationship dynamics. I also think I'm usually fairly good at matching the tone of the original, though admittedly the translation aspect of anime stuff gives me a bit of leeway there.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Logistics. I will forget who I put in a room over a certain number of characters, and explaining how people get to and from things (or even appear in a scene) is a terrible chore. (And that's just people—my track record for items, especially furniture, is even worse.) I suspect that my overall pacing also suffers from this because coming up for practical reasons for scenes to start can be difficult.

Also scene transitions, because I write things out of order. :B

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I probably won't, for several reasons. For one, I feel like without a dedicated beta, my errors would be immersion-breaking for anyone with high enough Japanese proficiency. Also, on the other side of things, presumably most of my readers wouldn't be able to make the jump from English into Japanese (which is the only other language I'm remotely able to write in), so accessibility would be an issue. That said, I've occasionally tried to factor in what I know about Japanese and "translate" (at least a bit) to adjust how I write dialogue, when writing fics based on anime.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Doctor Who/Twilight, lol. (I cared a lot about them both, okay? Also I thought trying to mash up their canonical vampire mythologies would be funny! And I was definitely right about at least one of those things.)

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

Oh this is also mean. It's gotta be Chasing Silver, Chasing Gold though. It kicked my ass but I also put my heart and soul into it, and its length, completion, and the responses I've gotten to it have all combined to profoundly affect how I see myself as a writer. (Which may sound a little suspect, but the thing is, I spent years massively looking up to people who could write longfic, most of all to people that could do so and finish. It meant so so much to be able to join those ranks myself, whether or not I manage to do it again someday.) It genuinely feels like one of the most significant things I've done with my life, and it's something I think I'll always be proud of myself for managing to write through to the end.

Annnd done! I'm gonna tag @octopus--writer just for fun ;)