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Hooray, another great FIAB! Reveals didn't happen at the greatest time for me (hence also the lateness of this entry and the unrespondedness of many comments), but I still managed to enjoy some of the collection and comment on 61 works. (With the massive number of works produced, that's still only about 6% of the collection!) I left some recs here, including the three gifts I received, all of which I was absolutely thrilled with!

I don't remember if I did anything different in sign-ups or if the mods/circumstances were just good to me, but I ended up with only 4 assignments this time, which was much more manageable than many little things. In all I wrote 19k words in 4 different fandoms, all of different media types. (Actually, checking my records again, I wrote 19k last year as well - it just felt a lot harder broken up into 7 chunks!) After my experiments last year, I decided to stick with normal prose this time, and am happy with that decision.

( Details behind the cut! )

Dear Yuletide Author,

Hello! I'm yelp on AO3. I hope that some of these ramblings may help inspire a story, but I'm also more than happy to receive whatever you want to write about these characters! I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( DNWs )

( Yamada-kun to Lv999 no Koi wo Suru )

( 20th Century Boys )

( Eyeshield 21 )

( Alice in Borderland )

Dear creator,

Thanks for taking a look at my small animanga fandoms letter this year! I'm thrilled that someone else may be enjoying these same characters with me, much less creating fanworks about them! For the latter 4 fandoms, besides some prompts about mediums, I've largely copied the rest from my previous exchange letters (in case that saves you a read!). I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( Golden Kamuy )

( Yamada-kun to Lv999 no Koi wo Suru )

( Chihayafuru )

( 20th Century Boys )

( Dr. Stone )

( Eyeshield 21 )

( Alice in Borderland )

Otherwise known as my belated post-HA wrap-up post. Long-term long-fic exchange (FFFX) was super challenging for me this year, so short-term long-fic exchange (HA) felt somehow less of a struggle by comparison.

There weren’t a lot of Genshin requests this time around, and certainly none for pairings I’d ever thought about, so I figured I was going to write Original Work as usual. But then this Albedo/Tighnari request started growing on me, and before I knew it I was drafting in-character research papers and doing the writing equivalent of that frazzled guy standing at a board connecting random things with strings. I always enjoy trying to tie together disparate parts of canon; it’s like jamming together pieces from different jigsaw puzzles. I also had fun trying to make subtle jokes in the research paper portions and poking fun at the seriousness with which people treat author ordering, etc. But I think different fields probably have their own styles and conventions, so it’s possible the academic context I’m used to is actually a hyperlocal fandom of one, and my jokes may fall flat!

My first draft weighed in at nearly 2k short of the minimum, but I knew I always add a lot during revisions, and I was certain these were the exact story beats I wanted to include, so I didn’t want to add any scenes. I ended up including a bit more context (and a couple scorpions) before a few of the scenes, which worked out for the better. I do tend to go a bit too in-media-res, to the point of confusion, and this probably helped ground the scenes better, especially with the non-linear narrative. The story is here: Sand and Chalk, Root and Stalk.

I received an amazing gift: an original work featuring robot monks, dragon riders, and, somehow, sign language! Then, towards the end of the anonymous period, I even got this fantastic Beidou & Kazuha treat that also connects disparate part of Genshin lore - via sea shanties. Receiving a late treat is so so thrilling, I have to say! I also read through some of the collection, found quite a few gems, and made my usual comment goal. That makes 3 years that I’ve completed Triple Crown, and certainly the last. I’m super happy with all the works I’ve created and received, but 10k is a lot to write for a stranger and then wait on tenterhooks hoping that they will like it! I feel like I joined exchanges at exactly the right time to experience this cool event from its inception.

PS. Unrelated to HA or any exchanges, I also came across this really well-done Genshin fan-animation. I have requested Albedo/Raiden Shogun before, and I frequently request cyberpunk AU, so this felt like a gift for me, somehow!

I just took a pass at responding to comments on AO3. Some of them have been languishing in my inbox since, uh, January. I'm thankful that procrastinating on

highadrenalineexchange has led me to finally tackle this months-delayed task. (I also find that responding to comments tends to give me a mood boost about my writing, especially when I'm in the low stages of early rough drafts not matching my expectations for them.)

Unfortunately, I'll be traveling during the entire week between assignments-due and reveals, which is 1/3 of the creation/revision period for this exchange. Signing up probably wasn't the brightest idea I ever had, but I am excited for the story I've outlined (if not entirely how it's shaping up so far). I hope to finish the draft by the end of next weekend, potentially get a second opinion on it, and intensively polish on Saturday before reveals that evening.

( Below the cut! )

FFFX has finally revealed! Here is what I wrote this time around.

( Below the cut! )

I thought the 2-week anonymous period was long, but it turned out to be just enough time to hit my usual comment goal of 10% of the collection.

I also thought the half-year writing period was long, but it— actually, yeah, it was really difficult for me to handle! This time around, I promised I wouldn’t start writing my assignment until 2023, but it still wound up being way harder than it should have been, maybe because I’d brainstormed the idea so long ago.

By contrast, I picked up a half-length pinch hit close to the deadline, and the ease of writing was like night and day. I basically churned the entire thing out in the short time it took to get beta feedback for my assignment. (The lower wordcount minimum probably helped.)

If I’ve learned my lesson properly, I won’t do this exchange again, but overall I’m pleased I got the opportunity to create the stories I did.

My assignment turned out much better than I thought it would at the end of draft 1, which was a major relief. While writing, I got really into this Josh Ritter song (as evident from the title), and listened to it on repeat. The poetic lyrics and meditative atmosphere ended up significantly impacting my story: the tone, the way that it slipped in and out of dreams, the weightiness of the past.

The more I listened to it, the more beautiful I found the imagery. Floating on dark and perilous waters, stars "directionless and drifting" overhead, drowned sailors and ancient ships rusting below the waves. Throughout the verses, there’s the sense of how easy it would be to give in and sink right down with them, anchored by the past—a struggle that manifests in my protagonist, Tobias. Then there’s this chorus, "only a change of time", which to me can have two meanings.

Either that the only thing that has changed is time; everything else will go on just as awfully it has before, and there’s no use fighting it. (In Tobias’s case: that his second "time" being married will be no better than the first.)

Alternatively, it’s only a change of time that can heal the past, nothing else. It requires patience, but it’s also inevitable. In the song, the narrator is still cutting forward, despite the "white caps of memory" impeding the way—because barely visible in the distance is the shoreline: some unknown land, person, or future, some reprieve from the dark ocean of the past.

I have a few recs from this year's

fffx collection - starting with my wonderful gift!

not harm but harmony
Fandom: Genshin Impact
Pairing: Kaedehara Kazuha & Kamisato Ayato
Wordcount: 13k
Notes: Could not have asked for more perfect character voices and interactions for these two! Ayato gets to do what he does best (scheme and overthink) and Kazuha gets to do not only what he does best (wander and philosophize) but also what he rarely gets to do in canon (make swords).

As for the rest: I didn't intend this to be a themed list, but somehow my recs this year are dominated by the amazing female narratives I've been encountering, so let's call that a loose topic.

Rainy night
Fandom: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Pairing: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Wordcount: comic
Notes: Gorgeous, moody art with many close-ups of hands and hair and caretaking. Supremely soothing and cozy.

World in a Square

Fandom: The Queen's Gambit (TV)

Character: Beth Harmon
Wordcount: 5k
Notes: Excellent Beth voice - analytical, chess-focused, but also late enough in canon that she knows how to receive support from those around her, and I love that for her.

Adept
Fandom: Original Work
Relationship: Magic Wielder/Warrior Bodyguard magically bonded to them
Wordcount: 12k
Notes: Great, skillful world-building with a tidy, fast-moving plot. Featuring hidden gender tropes and magical bonding under duress.

Nicht alle den gleichen Horizont

Fandom: Scholomance - Naomi Novik
Relationship: Liesel Mueller/Alfie Cooper Browning
Wordcount: 12k
Notes: I adore Liesel and this exploration of her character and backstory does a difficult character justice. The shape of her story arc is so strong and deliberate, like she is.

( triple triple crown! )

I feel a bit self-conscious posting this, because I know my favorite trope can be a controversial and problematic one. Please help me out and skip reading this entry if these topics may be uncomfortable for you!

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of crystal snowflakes on green leaves on a dark blue background. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

( slavery, power imbalance, fear and mercy )

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner with image of snow-covered mushrooms and green moss. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

Transformative Works Policy: [what is it, where is it posted] It's at my AO3 Profile, and it says that anything is okay, as long as you link me!

Current Passion [not necessarily fandom or fannish, but anything that takes up your time and thoughts - e.g. knitting, interpretive dance, meta about a movie that doesn't exist, or you know, one that does] I'm currently crocheting my very first scarf, I am writing a lot of fic and participating in a lot of AO3 exchanges (just finished my Writing Year in Review), and I play too much Genshin Impact (currently obsessed with the TCG). The most recent books I finished reading are Piranesi and Nona the Ninth. The most recent video game I finished playing is 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim (highly highly recommend). I also think a lot about and devote a lot of time and energy to work, but that's not what we're about here.

Where to Find Me: [what platform do you use the most, or what platform do you use for different purposes?] yelp is my primary platform. I reblog stuff at yelpfic, self-promote, and feel like I've found a good Eyeshield 21 community there. I am trying to write more longform entries here on DW as well, like writing meta, screaming about exchanges, etc.

Master List: [for fic, for art, for recs, or anything else] yelp has all my fic, and I try to maintain a list of my favorites of what I've written, but I don't update it often.

Anything Else: [anything else you'd like to include] I somehow wandered into helping out with comments on challenge #1, but never got around to doing challenge #1 myself. So here it is!

This year, I posted 90k words on AO3. This is just 15k short of what I posted last year (maybe

highadrenalineexchange being moved to spring accounts for the difference?), and again more than I planned!

I kind of categorize my AO3 works as "for exchanges" or "for myself". Before checking, I had thought I'd written literally nothing in the latter category this year, but it turns out they were only clustered towards the beginning of the year, before I fell into the exchange hole again, haha. I'll once again express my faint goals to dial it back on exchanges this coming year. I have a WIP that I didn't update in all of 2022 (sorry, readers!), and there are always personal projects that I keep saying I will work on too!

On the other hand, I've enjoyed participating in exchanges very much, including the opportunity to write for fandoms and pairings I would never have otherwise considered. I also have a better sense of what kind of exchanges I'm likely to enjoy, so I hope I'll still be able to participate responsibly.

( Stats and Q&A )

Works in the collection: 787
Works I commented on: 70
Works I made: 7

I collected these stats yesterday, but I won't update them because they are more numerically pleasing this way :) Unfortunately, I didn't meet my commenting goal of 10% during the two-week anon period, but holy cow did people create a lot of things!!

Not sure what magic causes it, but I always have an amazing time with this exchange. There were a lot of great things to check out - most especially the wonderful gifts I received. Exchange collections are marvelous things in that way: this assortment of works that we each painstakingly tailored to a different recipient, so that so many people can look at it thinking their gifts were clearly the best things in the collection, and all be simultaneously correct. I managed to get my rec list in right at the end!

One of my favorite parts of FIAB is swaps, where you can trade away pieces of your initial assignment. I love being able to write for many different people, especially the knowledge that they'll also be receiving many (or at least plural) gifts. It makes me feel better if mine misses the mark for some reason. That being said, I went a little overboard, and swapped my original 10k assignment for 6 mini-assignments of 1-2k each. There's a lot of overhead in writing a gift, and obviously each time you try to target a certain wordcount, you'll go over a little, which is how I wound up writing 19k words in total.

The other unique aspect of FIAB is that you're encouraged to create for a variety of different mediums besides the traditional fic and art (if the recipient opted in to it). It's a bit ironic, considering the exchange is one of the few to actually have "fic" in the name :). I usually stick to only fic, but this time I decided to try my hand at Reddit posts and making a few other skins. I'm not totally sure how I feel about it. Creating them was fun, and made me feel like I was getting into the FIAB spirit more, but I still feel more confident with plain prose.

Details of my works behind the cut!

( Read more... )

I'm lumping these together because they ended up overlapping, and by ~~completely avoidable~~ unfortunate circumstance, I spent two weeks trying to juggle both simultaneously.

Eyeshield 21 Prompt Bingo actually started in April, but after a lot of big plans and daydreaming (and very few fills), my output sort of petered off partway through. (It didn't help that the bingo squares that I managed were nowhere close to making a bingo.) Then suddenly, before I knew it, there was only one week left - which also coincided with the first week of Battleship! I plotted out a multichapter fic, hitting 1-2 prompts per chapter, that would indirectly take me to bingo by the end, and tried my best to speedwrite it!

Battleship was a super unique exchange where participants were divided into two teams, each with their own battleship board. To fire on the enemy team's board, we had to create fanworks containing tags assigned to each square. It was so cool to see a social and strategic take on exchanges, and chat was very lively. Having the prompts to create for, and a sense of deadline-inspired urgency, was very motivating (not unlike Prompt Bingo, actually)!

Anyway, rather than describing how it all played out, here's a hasty chart/timeline I made.

( How it went! )

( What I wrote! )

Moral of the story? Prompts on grids + deadlines = good for my productivity, I guess.

Thanks for taking a look at my letter! I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( Below the cut! )

Ahoy! Thank you for checking out my letter! I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( Below the cut! )

I'm trying out some new exchanges this year, and this turned out to be a very fun one! As someone who mostly requests tiny fandoms, it was nice to feel like everyone was on equal footing, more or less, since it takes no more than a few minutes to consume each "canon". It was such an exciting moment for me to check the sign-up summary and see offers for my requests! Plural!!

To figure out my own offers, I listened my way through all the songs during signups, and was captivated by this music video. It was so atmospheric and engrossing yet left me with so many questions. I'm very pleased I got the chance to try to answer them with No Delusions of Grandeur, Just Grandeur (one of the few comprehensible lyrics in the song, hehe). I'm mostly happy with how it turned out, though I worry it's not as polished as I usually like my exchange work to be. (I overestimated the amount of energy I'd have for writing/revisions while taking a work trip + ensuing jetlag, and didn't manage nearly as many revision passes as I normally would.) I'm curious whether I'll be able to feel the difference when I reread in the future, or if all the rough corners I think I'm sawing off during revisions are just in my head!

Because all the works were based on songs/music videos, I found it really easy to read through the collection during the anonymous period. The barrier to entry was similarly low as for Original Work, with the added dimension of also getting to see how the creator spun the source material. I ended up reading about 90% of the collection during the anonymous period, and left 48 comments. During this time, I saw someone else also commenting widely, and sent mental good vibes to them as we crossed paths on our journey (especially when they commented on my fic, heh).

The exchange was also an excellent way to discover new music! As mentioned, I listened to all the nominated songs, and came out with a lot of new Spotify likes. Some of my favorites:

The Curse of the Blackened Eye (Orville Peck) - I actually listened to this one a lot when writing my fic for this exchange. It has such a chill, meditative beat - perfect for writing to!
Sweet Jezebel (Mean Mary) - there were two great fics in the collection for The Guitar, which I also liked a lot, but sadly none for this one, which to me had a similar vibe. The storytelling and singing in this were both great!
Anthem for the Already Defeated (Rock Plaza Central) - I didn't watch the video for this (I don't remember whether it was nominated as a song or MV), but I found the tune very catchy in an edgy, emo way.
Hoist up the Thing (The Longest Johns) - This was just a lot of fun and put a huge smile on my face!

It was my first time signing up for this exchange, and my second time pinch-hitting. I love freeform exchanges and I love gen, but the timing never worked out in the past. For some reason, I found myself feeling very uncharacteristically chill over the entire process. Not sure if because 1) I've finally done enough exchanges to be over the anxiety, 2) real-life busy-ness prevented me from having enough mental energy to stress over it, or 3) having a short fic in the collection in a popular fandom meant I got some early feedback and could rest assured that I was an ok writer after all. If the latter, I'll have to remember this strategy for the future!

The fic I wrote for my assignment was The Supreme Art of War, an original work for the pairing "Disabled Male Veteran of Magical War & Traumatized Child He Accidentally Acquires". I still remember being so delighted to discover how very specific original works pairings can get in the exchange scene, but it's also become my downfall. When I look at a tag like this, I feel like there is so much to unpack, and I can't resist writing a ton. How is the first character disabled? Was it from birth or from circumstance? If he's a veteran, what's the war? Is it ongoing? Is it done? And so on. I ended up writing almost 6k words for a 1.5k minimum, but at least I think I managed to pack in several of my recipient's freeform requests: Person Used to Being Treated Like a Weapon Gets Treated Like a Human Instead, Awkward Conversations, Hurt/Comfort - Hurt character initially mistrustful of comforter, Emotional discussions over firelight. Maybe even Found Family and Cross-Generational Trauma? I also saw one of their other pairing requests had something to do with witches and familiars, which mildly inspired some of the worldbuilding here.

I also snagged an exciting pinch hit and wrote Girl Out of Time. The recipient has great taste in fandoms, but Arcane: League of Legends was the only one I've seen recently enough to write about, and even then I still had to do some light canon review. I'd never considered writing in this fandom before, and have hardly ever read in it, but the prompts were great. (So great that someone else wrote basically the same premise as me in the same exchange, haha.) The entire story came out in one sitting, and was much closer to the wordcount minimum, but I feel like I was able to honor the various time travel freeforms in my recipient's request (Time Travel - Character changes the past to prevent traumatic events and succeeds, Time Travel - Character saves their younger self from trauma, Time Travel - Character meets their child self, Time Travel - Peggy Sue (which I had to look up!), Time Travel Fix-It), as well as working in some dreams/nightmares + mentally unstable narrator that I hope landed right. Their likes also mentioned "elaborate descriptions of sights and smells", which inspired me to put in more detailed descriptions than I normally would, and I'm happy with how that turned out.

I signed up for

comment_bingo! It's the second bingo I've signed up for in as many months, and also in my whole life.

UPDATE 5/22: it's done!

Overall thoughts:

Searching by year is a great way to find gems in an old, small fandom.
I spent a lot of time looking for "black and white art" and "comic without dialogue" and ended up commenting on a lot more art than usual.
Probably my first time reading meta on AO3 - interesting glimpse at what else is out there!
If you want to maximize the number of squares you get without a bingo, you need to plan ahead.

( Card + comment log below. )

Dear Jukebox Jockey,

It's my first time doing this exchange! I threw in some of my favorite songs, and hope my ramblings, interpretations, and prompts for each one will be helpful to you. Some are vague and some are perhaps too specific, but for all I'd be happy for you to ignore them entirely, and take your creation in whatever direction inspires you.

I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( Below the cut! )

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