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Unfortunately, this is the end of the time I had allotted for reading before creator reveals, but I'm happy to have found so many gems in what I managed to get to. It's been a wonderful exchange, and I hope you'll enjoy these fics as much as I did! (This tag has my earlier recs.)


The Lych Yew Gambit [Harry Potter] Mature, 13k words

He never meant to stay in Wiltshire, but for the past ten years Yefim Zelenyj has been fixing up an old cottage, staunchly ignoring the obviously supernatural occurrences in his garden, and sleeping with the ill-tempered boarding school teacher who drops by on holidays. Now it’s the spring of 1998 and the final battle of a war far beyond his understanding is poised to bring death to his doorstep–and Yefim is determined to keep what’s his.

Absolutely gorgeous. The original character felt more alive and tangible to me than the cast in canon, and the writing was so lush and lyrical I had to sit on my hands to not quote the entire thing in the comment box.


From my best side, darlings [Breakfast on Pluto] Mature, 5k words

Patrick "Kitten" Braden and her best friend, Charlie, emerge from a small town on the border of Northern Ireland into the vast and perplexing world of the 1970s, and try their best to follow their dreams.

Captures the film perfectly, along with Kitten's sweet, whimsical brand of strength. Everything down to the chapter titles feels so true to the source material, and left me with the same feeling of... startled optimism.


Silence [Hikaru no Go] General Audiences, 9k words

Once upon a time, Hikaru said, "I might tell you, someday."

 

Akira has spent a long time waiting for someday.

To be honest, I probably missed some of the full effect of the story since I don't know the canon well, but even without that, it was still a deft, tragic exploration of a relationship that's not quite holding together.

I can't believe it's finally upon us! fffx is such a strange beast of an exchange. The creation period alone is 7 months, so with nominations, sign-ups, and the anonymous period, the exchange is active for more time in the year than it isn't. This time around, we got assignments way back in August, so it feels almost surreal that gifts have finally been exchanged.

As someone who doesn't usually receive treats, I was blown away to receive three incredible gifts:



this sharing is what we both now need [Genshin Impact] Explicit, 5k words

Xiao asks Morax to punish him. Morax obliges.

A smutty zhongxiao fic involving caning, D/S, and that deep understanding and care between Zhongli and Xiao that makes the pairing perfect: 


Old Stars [Genshin Impact] General Audiences, 12k words

"Times have changed." Zhongli smiled, nostalgia evident in his eyes. "Liyue Harbour is but a memory of the past. Perhaps the name Liyue is an old-fashioned one, but I always have loved the city dearly. No matter what face it takes on, at its heart, the city will always be Liyue to me in some form. And that is why I named the teahouse after it."

 

The owner of Liyue Teahouse is traditional, refined, and seemingly older than he looks. As for how old… quite a bit older than expected, as one of his regulars comes to find out.

A plotty zhongxiao fic that makes excellent use of outsider POV. Set in a cozy teashop AU that nevertheless manages a mindblowing exploration of Genshin lore. I seriously had shivers by the end.


Living Just [Alice in Borderland] Explicit, 11k words

Kuzuryu joined games every three days, like everyone else.

I was planning to make this my last exchange for a while, but right now I'm just a little caught up in the exchange magic. Time to go check out the other works in the collection!

Challenge #8

In your own space, celebrate a personal win from the past year: it can be a list of fanworks you're especially proud of, a gift of your time to the community, a quality or skill you cultivated in yourself, something you generally feel went well. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I'm proud of the amount I've written over the last two years! (Over 300k! You can check out my year-in-review posts here, if you're interested.) It's been a long time since I've been able to be creative at all, so it's astonishing to look back and see the fruits of my labor. At the same time, it feels like a dormant part of me is starting to wake up, and long overdue.

While I still feel a little like I'm skating around the edge of exchanges, at least I'm taking pride in commenting widely in the ones I do participate in. For ficinabox, I set a goal of commenting on 10% of the collection, and indeed managed to comment on 55/546 works. Part of was realizing how antsy it made me, to wait for comments on an exchange fic that I tailored to someone else, so I tried to redirect that nervous energy into commenting on other works.

It's helpful that I enjoy reading original works, and also that I enjoy commenting. When I start reading something with the intent to comment, I typically open a second window, and copy over my favorite snippets as I go. Not only do I like to share these with the author as a sort of liveblog, going back over them after I finish reading can help me to structure the comment I want to leave. A lot of times, I find that they speak to a broader theme/characterization/aspect of the story that I liked, and I can phrase that in my own words while using the author's to give a concrete example.

Hi, I'm yelp! I've been writing fanfiction on and off for about twenty years, and enjoy it probably too much. This AO3 account started as my "alt" for problematic content, but it's also currently where I'm most active in fandom, so I've started publishing everything new there. I try to tag heavily with content warnings, so please check before reading. No hard feelings if something isn't for you!

I'm currently writing primarily for the following fandoms:

• Eyeshield 21 (the American Football manga popular also, er, 20 years ago)
• Genshin Impact (the beautiful gacha RPG that takes way too much of my time)
• Original Work (the... hold on, is this really a fandom?)

I'm always up for talking about ES21 manga, Genshin gameplay, and writing in general. Feel free to reach out!

This journal mostly contains letters for exchanges at the moment, but I'd love to start using it for other things (hence this post). I'm currently most active at yelpfic, but I could never wrap my head around how those newfangled sites work. You can find a few of my favorites of the things I've written at my masterpost. You can find my transformative works policy on AO3. (To save you a click: anything's fine, just link me!)

I'm not affiliated with any business review websites, though I do enjoy receiving reviews.

Hello!

This letter is heavily copied from my FFFX and FIAB letters this year. If you've already read those, the only new things here are the Original Work and Project Hail Mary sections.

Here are some general ideas of plots I might like:

• Forced to work together, especially if the arrangement is initially uncomfortable.
• A has to seek out B for help/guidance; is both reluctant to do so and uncertain whether B will agree.
• A assumes B will want revenge for something in their shared history; B wants something! else!!
• That moment when A sees/learns/realizes something that entirely changes their initial impression of B!
• Canon divergence: how things might have happened differently with one small change!
• Alternate universe: demons! rock band on tour! cyberpunk hackers! oh my!

I also have a general likes and dislikes post here.

( Fandom-specific rambling and prompts below )

Hello!

Thanks in advance for creating for me. I'm so excited to see more content for my favorite fandoms! Here are some general ideas of plots I might like:

• Forced to work together, especially if the arrangement is initially uncomfortable.
• A has to seek out B for help/guidance; is both reluctant to do so and uncertain whether B will agree.
• A assumes B will want revenge for something in their shared history; B wants something! else!!
• That moment when A sees/learns/realizes something that entirely changes their initial impression of B!
• Canon divergence: how things might have happened differently with one small change!
• Alternate universe: demons! rock band on tour! cyberpunk hackers! oh my!

I also have a general likes and dislikes post here.

( Fandom-specific rambling and prompts below )

Specific prompts available under the cut. This is an exchange for non-consensual porn, so prompts will include mention of rape.

I have also updated my general likes post with smut likes - apologies that it doesn't all fit with the theme of this exchange (but rest assured I still like it all)!

( prompts below )

In 2019, I posted 3K words on AO3.

In 2020, I posted 214K words on AO3.

I have probably written more fic this year than I have in my entire life... and I didn't even start until April.

Since I feel like I'm new to writing all over again (the last time I wrote regularly was probably about a decade ago), this has been a year of experimentation. One obvious change is that I'm writing from this "alt" account, where I've been posting whatever the hell iddy, gratuitous, self-indulgent stories happened to fall out of my brain. (Perhaps as a consequence, I noticed that the ratio of public bookmarks across all my fics clocked in at around 50%. In other words, half the people who bookmarked my works chose to do so privately!)

I also experimented with:

• participating in fic exchanges and prompt memes
• writing for a variety of fandoms: big and small, new and dead
• varying up my writing style: using present and past tenses, ranging from super florid descriptions to conversational prose
• self-promotion on Tumblr, which meant attempting to learn how to use it. I'm sure I still don't have all the etiquette down, but no one's complained yet I guess.

My main project this year has been Once a Runner, the fic that got me started writing again, so I owe quite a lot to it. It's also sucked me deep into Eyeshield 21, a fandom that was active 10-15 years ago but still somehow has a few loyal fans. I am deeply grateful to these folks for... well... existing! In addition to OAR, I've written four other ES21 fics this year, each with a different pairing. In all but one fic, I managed to use a different obscure character tag that has never been used before!

This year, I've done a decent job (mostly) working on one big project at a time. I'm starting to get used to the feeling of always having an active writing project again, letting it churn away in my brain in a background process. Sometimes I'm rewarded with a scene or a plot idea that comes out of nowhere, like a plant that produces mysterious fruit - both delightful and worrying at the same time.

I wrap up this year embarking on a new project, Solid as Stone, which, as currently planned, is going to take me even further out of my comfort zone.

( AO3 stats and meme responses below the cut. )