#and my first collaboration for a zine as writer!
Text
THEOPHANY
by @morning-moonstruck
for the @orvwomenzine
Your last thoughts tatter apart. Dissolve around the pain. And the final image before you under the overcast sky:
your blood red fog thickening,
your soldiers roaring,
uselessly.
†
Jophiel’s head dips, letting Lee Seolhwa’s steady tugging soothe her too. If she’s right, then Jophiel’s stories are just her original own. Nothing’s overwritten. Nothing lost.
“It’s a nice change. Someone too stubborn to die.”
†
“Clearly, something else was needed first. Divine intervention, possibly. And I think I’ve got it.”
Lee Seolhwa pulls out three vials from her lab coat’s pocket.
YOU WANT TO LIVE, DON’T YOU?
†
Her warning might’ve meant the dosages’ effects stack. But you need that strength now. If you really trust Lee Seolhwa’s work, drink it.
Jophiel drinks the last vial.
†
“LET ME GO!” Uriel screeches, looming magnificently over Jophiel.
Oh. Jophiel’s heart cools, snaps into place. They wouldn’t want us living like this, isolated, and miserable. She drops the doll immediately.
On hands and knees, Uriel crawls fully out.
†
So do it. Love. And live like this: run down the slope, the grass blooming at your ankles, the wind tangling through your red braids in tandem with your sword slicing through your bandages mingling with your fog steadily flowing out your footsteps. The bated breath of your 503rd unit supporting your back, ready to charge. Your sword won’t be heavy, but balanced in your hand while your wings stretch out, throbbing but determined, twined with golden flame.
You will save them.
[You are building a new story!]
#First of all guys the title is an ao3 link!#Releasing my spot art! for the women zine!!#Please for the love of god read theophany. mornings is an absolutely fantastic writer and wonderful collaborator#I could not have been happier to work on this#Its about Jophiel (who stayed behind in the 1863 arc) and her attempts to deal with this new worldline#omniscient reader's viewpoint#orv#orv jophiel#orv uriel#demon like judge of fire#commander of the red cosmos#lee seolhwa#orv lsh#my art#orv spoilers
39 notes
·
View notes
Text
Image description: [ A digital poster with a beige background and a small graphic of a book that has yellow flowers growing out of it. Text says: Psych survivor Zine. Open call for submissions from Mad Artists. Looking for pieces that explore how psych survivors resist psychiatric violence, with a special focus on transforming our medical records. Pieces exploring topics in mad studies, antipsychiatry, and peer support are likely to be a good fit. $100 Stipend. Deadline for proposals: March 31st. For more information and next steps to submit artwork, please go to https://tinyurl.com/psychsurvivorzine. For any questions, email Elliott at [email protected]]
Hello everyone! I am thrilled to announce that I'm searching for collaborators for the first edition of a Psych Survivor zine!! I've been working on this project for a while, and there are several other components that will be rolled out throughout this spring (if you aren't an artist/writer but still want to be involved, keep an eye out on my blog.) This zine is going to be physically published and hosted on a website created specifically for this project.
This zine is open to anyone who identifies as mad/mentally ill/neurodivergent/psych survivor/ex patient, and any form of art is welcome, whether that's poetry, critical essays, digital art, photography, or anything else. Due to funding constraints, I will likely only be selecting 10-13 people to add to this edition. This edition is focused specifically on abolishing and transforming our medical records, and click on the link above to read the full prompt.
Please feel free to email me or message me on tumblr with any further questions, and I'm so excited to hopefully work with some of you on this project!
#antipsychiatry#antipsych#mad studies#neurodivergence#disability studies#peer support#disability#mental illness#mental health#psych abolition#psych critical#psych survivor zine
880 notes
·
View notes
Text
@shadamyzine is officially public!!! You can get the link to it here. I made this piece as a final farewell to the project- as for the art I made, I'll be posting it this weekend.
I cannot overstate how great of a time I had while working and collaborating with everyone on this; seeing the fruits of our labor has been really magical and I was so, so happy I got to work with all these amazing writers and artists on such a fun passion project.
Special shoutout to the Mods of this zine, who have been so incredibly kind during this whole experience, and really made my first zine feel like a special one. I really appreciate how much effort they put into this, and making it so great to be a part of.
166 notes
·
View notes
Text
hello! Welcome to the official tumblr page for the Hatchetfield High Yearbook Project!
I intend to roll out sign up forms during the first week of January, but in the meantime I'm going to roll out polls and posts to see what the starkid fandom would want from the project.
my poll tag is #yearbook polls!
posts about the project are tagged #hatchetfield yearbook project!
ask tag is #mailbox! don't be afraid to send over questions or suggestions!
a little bit about the project:
it will not be a zine, it will be free, both to participate in and consume, and I intend for it to be a collaboration between artists and writers!
When it is finished, I will roll it out as both a flipbook AND a slideshow, as the slide show will be of a higher/clearer quality than the flipbook program I use.
it will be modeled similarly to the Ride the Cyclone yearbook project, but without all the little info per character, as Hatchetfield High is a much bigger school than St. Cassian. (there will, however, be little club/sports/dance "interviews" on club/sports/dances pages (which is where the writers come in), and senior quotes for the seniors)
34 notes
·
View notes
Text
Meet the Team Lead - DinoKieran
Give a warm welcome to the passionate Lead for the Seyka route, it's DinoKieran!
You can find them on AO3 as DinoKieran!
Hi! The name’s Kieran (you can call me Dino) , long time nerd and longer time Fanfiction writer. I played Zero Dawn for the first time a few weeks before Frozen Wilds came out, and I’ve been enamored ever since. Before playing Burning Shores, I was a solitary fan just keeping to myself, but I finally decided to take a step out into the wider community and now look where I am! I’m knee-deep in Horizon Fanfiction WIPs, 3D printed Machine miniatures and the beginnings of cosplay, not to mention this huge project. I’ve never been a part of something so collaborative in a fandom before, and I can’t wait to share what I’ve made!
Q&A with Dino under the cut!
What is a favorite piece of work you've done (completed/ working on/ in-concept)?
Because I’m still such a newcomer to the Horizon fanfic world, almost all of the works that I’m most excited about are all works in progress (keep an eye out though, I’ve got a lot on the way! I love a good rare pair ship and it shows!), so instead I would like to draw your attention to a fic that connected me to an unexpected ship: "Snowburn" by OutOfRetirement. Ask anyone in my social circle and they’ll tell you just how obsessed I am with that fic!
What are some of your favorite tropes (to write/ draw/ read)?
Give me a slow burn, honestly. Getting the opportunity to detail the long and complex construction of a relationship from first meeting to falling in love speaks to my soul! It’s a perfect opportunity to carry out in-depth character studies. A good Modern AU wouldn’t go amiss either. I enjoy being able to take characters out of their world and creating a less chaotic, simpler world. Gives me a break from writing drama, I guess you could say lol.
What is an unexpected thing or fun fact about you?
Outside of writing, I have what I like to call my ‘roledex of hobbies’. These hobbies are a mix, from whittling and embroidery to wildlife photography and houseplant collecting, I know I never have to worry about being bored!
What has been your favorite thing about working on this project so far?
Honestly? Just getting to be a part of it! I’ve been a fanfiction writer for over a decade, but have never had the chance to work on anything collaborative outside of a singular joint fic I wrote a few years ago. Over the years I found myself watching other writers getting to be part of projects like Zines and believed that was something out of my reach, but now I’m here, surrounded by a wonderful community, and part of a project I never saw coming. Words cannot describe how thankful I am for this opportunity!
#focus on the heart#foth#foth dating sim fangame#foth visual novel fangame#meet the team: leads#team lead (seyka): DinoKieran
26 notes
·
View notes
Note
just curious who’s running this project! sounds like a cool idea and if i share it wanna know who to properly credit the idea to
The main person behind the account (and the one who's been answering all questions so far) is myself, Mimca! Hi!
About my modding experience, my first "big" experience as a moderator was for the French forum Nuzlocke France, dedicated to the Pokémon Nuzlocke Challenge, since 2014. From 2015 to 2021, every odd year I've been organizing an event called a Communitylocke. Basically, my job was to create a balanced, fair and easy-to-approach set of rules for participants, answer the participants' questions, and match-up participants when necessary. I've also helped create various timed events on several Pokémon roleplay forums, notably creating the scenarios and collaborating with the mod team in place to fit said scenarios into their setting.
I've participated in my first zine as a writer in 2020, and became a Social Media Mod for one in 2021 (if you're interested, you can read all about my previous experience on my Carrd). After a few years, I wanted to go back to "my roots" and organize a more casual event, one that everyone could join — and it just so happened that Level-5 announced a certain New World of Steam, so, here I am!
(This all sounded awfully corporate, but TL;DR: I've been modding fan events before, and I'll do my best to lead this new event to completion!)
As a Professor Layton fan, I've been a fan of the good British gentleman since the original release of Curious Village in Europe! I instantly fell in love with the characters and the setting of St Mystere. I've immediately preordered Diabolical Box (got the little Luke phone strap that came with it, he's been protecting my keys with vicious puzzles ever since!) and preordered every new Layton game since. My favorite game is Last Specter, and I'm a proud Mystery Journey defender. Ernest Greeves's got my heart.
Of course, I don't intend to lead this Big Bang all on my own, which is why the Interest Check will also double as Mod Applications! If we have enough interest (and I've got no doubt, with all the positive feedback we've got so far!), then I'll need some help to make the Big Bang a reality for all Layton fans out there! 🤎
#layton big bang#professor layton big bang#answered#every puzzle has an answer#in case anyone's wondering little ernest's custom-made and free to a good home
23 notes
·
View notes
Text
We’re happy to announce the next SSZ Zine!
The theme will be autumn-oriented and you can collaborate with fanarts, fanfics, photos and cosplays. Stay updated by joining our Discord!
Sign-up timeframe: 1-15/Aug/2023 (extraordinary sign-up 16-23/Aug 23:59 UTC -6, Costa Rica time)
Sign-up form: here
Taken Character list: here
Deadline: 22/Oct/2023 23:59 UTC -6 (Costa Rica time)
Description (in text) and FAQ under the cut
[About the Zine]
Description: Autumn is coming, and with it, spookiness is rising. Imagine your favourite Saint Seiya characters in autumn-themed scenes from around the world!
Participation: You will submit one (1) original, new fanwork (older/already published work is not accepted) to be compiled into a zine. Please do not share your final work until the zine has been properly published by SSZ (you may, however, share WIPs, previews, and/or close-ups as you work on it)
Type: The final compilation of all fanworks will be a free, digital PDF file (no physical versions will be made, no money will be earned or paid)
Character: restricted to one (1) character to be the main focus of the fanwork submitted (for fics: 1-2 characters)
The Taken Character List will be updated daily at 19:00 UTC -6 (Costa Rica time) until the sign-up period is concluded. We appreciate your patience while this occurs. Once you are added to the list and your character is confirmed, you may start working on your submission.
** Please note this zine does not review/approve/reject sign-ups, everyone is welcome to take part in the activity as long as they sign up and follow guidelines. If there are any issues, we'll get back to you.
Deadline: 22/Oct/2023 23:59 UTC -6 (Costa Rica time). Fanworks submitted after this will not be included (this is non-negotiable). However, if you are facing challenges with your submission, let the staff know ASAP.
Submission: Send via email to [email protected]. The email subject should be "Saint Seiya in Autumn Zine, [Creator], [character/fic name]", and the file name should be:
Visuals: [Character name] - [Creator]
Fics: [Creator] - [Fic title]. Writers, please also include a 400x400 px image you want us to use in the credits page
Examples:
Email Subject: Saint Seiya in Autumn Zine, El Cadejos, Alioth Fenrir
Fic file: Zeuse - “Encallar”
[About the Submissions]
Art/Photography Canvas size: 300 dpi, JPEG
2480 x 3508 px (portrait orientation) OR
3508 x 4960 px (landscape orientation)
Fics: docx file, prose, it doesn't have to be in English. You must include a title (please keep it short), but it won’t be considered towards final count
4 OR 6 full pages in total as exact as possible, Arial font, 11 pt, single space
Margins: 1 in (each)
Paper size: Letter (8.5 in x11 in)
There must be spaces between your paragraphs
Allowed:
Age reinterpretation (e.g., an adult character as a child)
Alternative Universes
Other applicable characters (including OC), please check FAQ
Not allowed:
AI-generated content of any kind
NSFW/Explicit content (contact staff for case-by-case reviews)
Non-official genderbends
Crossovers with non-StS series
[Frequently Asked Questions]
May I draw whichever character I want?
As the purpose of this zine is to include as many characters from the Saint Seiya universe as possible to bring variety into the final product, submission types have the following limitations:
Fanarts: 1 main character per submission (restricted ✪)
Fics: focus on 1-2 main characters per submission (not restricted)
Cosplays: 1 main character per submission (not restricted)
Merch Photographs: 1 main character per submission (not restricted)
Before filling out the sign-up form, check the Taken Character list. For fanarts, you'll input 5 different options, from your top choice to least. Your final selection will be made visible later that day. This is on a First Come, First Served basis.
✪ This means there will be only 1 fanart per character, no duplicates
May I include more than one character in my submission?
Yes, as long as there is a clear hierarchy where your chosen character is the main focus. Original Characters (OCs) may also be included in the background as long as they follow this guideline. There is no problem if those secondary characters are already taken, or if the mix of characters would not make sense in the official material (for example, Sasha interacting with Hilda).
May I use spinoff characters?
Sure! All characters officially included in the Saint Seiya universe are applicable (except those without an official visual design, like Chronos). Please note that even though there are characters with different versions across the franchise [ex: Aiolia], they are not counted as different options for the Zine, so if said character is already taken, no other version of them will be available. The only exceptions to this rule are Milo (Legend of Sanctuary) and Shaun (Knights of the Zodiac).
I changed my mind about the character I chose, and the new one is still available. Can I switch?
To prevent confusion and misunderstandings, all character selections are final and cannot be changed/traded.
Can I switch from one contribution type to another (e.g., fanart to fic) after I signed up?
To prevent confusion and misunderstandings, all contribution type selections are final.
Am I allowed to change certain aspects of a character’s official design?
It depends on the aspect, and should be reviewed case-by-case.
Example 1: as a Latin American, Io could differ in skin tone to the one seen on the official materials. However, characters like Hagen and Aldebaran, who have darker skin tones, should not be given lighter tones.
Example 2: if due to a personal headcanon, you believe a character has a certain scar or marking that is not seen in official materials, it can be included, but once again, please reach out to Staff for a case-by-case review.
What qualifies as "autumn-themed"?
This season is experienced differently all around the world, which is why the theme is broad on purpose. Any activity, scenery, meal, clothing, and celebration that is typical of this season is applicable. That includes (but is not limited to) All Hallow's Eve, Día de Muertos, Thanksgiving, Diwali, leaf color change viewing, and more.
What is the difference between an Alternate Universe [AU] and a Crossover?
Some AU use popular tropes as a base, while a Crossover uses an already existing material as base.
Examples:
Popular tropes for an AU: magic school, space fantasy/sci-fi
Existing material: Twisted Wonderland, Mass Effect [games], Little Witch Academia, Star Trek [series], Heralds of Valdemar, Dune [books]
So making a fanwork of the general "Saint Seiya × Magic School" or “Saint Seiya x space fantasy/sci-fi” concepts is an AU, but "Saint Seiya × Twisted Wonderland" or “Saint Seiya x Star Trek” are considered a crossover. In essence, heavy references to other existing fandoms are not allowed.
Could you please elaborate on what is/isn’t considered Not Safe For Work (NSFW)?
If it is not appropriate for a general, non-specialized office work environment, then it is not accepted.
Examples:
✅ blood depictions/mentions of it
❌ graphic/detailed gore, mutilation, or body horror
✅ sensual themes (e.g., pin up)
❌ sexual themes (including, but not limited to: genitalia, specifically erotic gestures like blowjob, etc.)
May I submit more than one work?
If, after the sign-up period is over, you would like to collaborate with a second submission, reach out to us. You may send different submission types if you want (e.g., 1 fanart and 1 fic). Please bear in mind the second character must still be available for you to take.
The sign-up timeframe already passed. Can I still join?
The extraordinary period is 16-23/Aug. Please check the Taken Character List first to ensure the one you want is available, fill out the form, and contact staff (El Cadejos, Zeuse) so we can add you to the list. After this extraordinary period, sign-up will be officially closed.
May I include a watermark on my submission?
Yes, we encourage you to submit already watermarked fanworks to the zine.
I’m a writer! What is an acceptable image for the credits page?
You can send an official StS work, fanarts (as long as it is made by you, gifted to you, or commissioned by you), or a picrew-generated image (as long as the picrew allows that use)
What are check-ins? Do I need to send something?
Nope. Our check-ins act as reminders only, so you know exactly how much time you have left to send your submission.
I’m unable to complete my submission and would like to withdraw. Is that okay?
Yes, you can withdraw at any time, for any reason (you don’t need to explain). Please just let us know in advance.
44 notes
·
View notes
Text
An introduction, by way of an unfortunate update
It has become apparent that the Golden Sun Art Initiative is going through a change.
Hello to all. I am Jass Kells, the de facto creative lead on the Golden Sun Art Initiative. I am an experimental writer, theatre artist, amateur dancer, and am involved in several more activities that are best left to the imagination. My GSAI responsibilities were more limited at the start to collaborating on prompt concepts and text, but I was bestowed as "creative lead" on the project, since over time other duties have come to include final approval of commissioned images. And unfortunately as of now, I am the only person on the GSAI "team" remaining. Social media is not my strong suit, yet that is now what I am handling as well.
This parting is unfortunate due to circumstances and timing. I am a particularly private person, and wish to respect the privacy of others without divulging too many details. Roughly one year ago, Golden Sun Art Initiative kicked off to support human artists and commission more artwork based on the Golden Sun games. This past year has seen too many changes and bumps in the road to count.
We have funded the creation of over 80 new images related to Golden Sun; a good portion of these are related to our spontaneous side project of Pixel Portraits, but even with those not included, there are 55 new Golden Sun artworks that are either complete or in production. Many have been previewed and the feedback has been mostly positive, a testament to this small yet passionate and loving community.
And yet, a critical time is approaching and I find myself without the support to make our goals a reality. I cannot criticize the choice or reasons to depart this labor of love, and so I will not.
I wish that I had more specifics to share, but all I will say for certain is that if you notice a drop off in social media activity, or if the final product is not up to the quality you were expecting, this is probably the reason. Also it puts in jeopardy the third GSAI zine which has been in the planning stage until the first two were complete.
For now I am going to proceed with the project as best I can. Compiling everything into a professional looking zine is beyond my skill or time allotment. This may impact the timeline and quality of the zines we have been working towards. I am uncertain how specifically or what will and can be done, but the work will continue. Additionally, this will not become a "Jass Kells joint" by which I mean this continues to be the Golden Sun Art Initiative. After all, there are 16 artists (and hopefully more soon) whose work is included in what we are doing. As I said; collaboration!
We are still waiting on several images from artists, so perhaps we may be on target for a first quarter 2024 release. In these days, who can say for certain? Thank you for your kind words and interest in this little Golden Sun fandom project.
9 notes
·
View notes
Text
Preview of my art for the @batfam-au-zine! It was my first time participating in a zine and I'm honored to me picked up to collaborate with them and interact with so many amazing writers and artists also participating! (❁´◡`❁) ~
The zine is also now available for preorder! You can check for more information in OUR SHOP! :D
52 notes
·
View notes
Note
This is going to sound weird, but do you have any tips on how to gain traction as a fanfic writer? I've been trying for years and I get next to no interaction on my writing. I know I shouldn't care because I should be writing for myself, but it's still frustrating to see other writers get thousands of notes, and reblogs and asks praising their fics and I get maybe 20 likes. I've been looking into discord fandom groups but a lot of them don't allow people over 30, and I don't do well with busy groups anyway. I try to be active on my blog, and interact with other people and make myself approachable, but I'm getting so incredibly tired of talking to an empty space. Sorry, I think I ended up venting instead >_<
WARNING: DISCOURSE AHEAD
Omg hello my love!! First of all, I'm so sorry you feel this way! I have so many conflicting thoughts on this, let me try to get them in order for you!!
I guess, let me first start with some tips that I think actually answer your question, and then I'll just monologue about the ways I've been thinking about fandom recently, and you can skip that part if you wanna!
Part 1: Actual Thoughts on Your Question (lol)
I am possibly not in the best position to ask about this because I mostly happened to be in the right place at the right time, publishing my fics in the early part of the pandemic when people were more actively engaging in the fandom. But in my experience, outside of discord groups, other good ways to meet people and get your work out there are joining zines & collabs.
I'm not completely up-to-date with what the accounts are now that track these things, but there are several tumblrs and twitter accounts like BNHA Zines that exist to retweet & publicize zine posts. Look for zines that are in the interest check & application stages!! You can apply during the application phase and the good thing is that most zines will ask for an application piece and will judge you on your work rather than your follower count!!
Collabs are usually even easier because many of them are just open to whoever wants to join! I've only participated in server collabs but I've seen several posts cross my dash that are open to anyone. I'd probably monitor the collaboration and x reader tags on tumblr and join in on anything that looks fun!!
Another thing that I've noticed people do a lot is self-reblog their fics a couple times just to maximize their circulation. I've seen a lot of moots trying to make sure they hit good hours for different time zones and different days of the week to ensure their followers are at least aware that they've posted something if they don't have notifs on (I don't have notifs on so I'm grateful for these because otherwise I miss a lot!!). Even I have srb'd a time or two if I'm particularly proud of something lol.
And I think, if I also wanted to be a shark about things, I would try to get in on the ground floor of a fandom in its early stages!! For example, the second season of JJK is coming out soon and it's sure to bring a wave of new readers to the JJK fandom, especially for the characters like Gojo and Getou who look like they're gonna be the main focus of the season.
I think if you wanted to be extra sharp about things, you might time a fic release with some of the first couple episodes of a new season where you can be sure more people than usual will be poking around in the tags!! And if your fic is published during the early stages of a fandom, it's going to have more eyes on it overall than a fic published towards the conclusion of the series.
Anyway this is what I could think of. I hope this advice is practical and useful!! Now onto me blathering.
Part 2: Resisting Influencer Culture in Fandom Spaces
This part might be kind of controversial. I want to first acknowledge how easy it is for me to think and say these sorts of things when I'm already more than pleased with the amount of engagement I get. And I want to recognize that it is so, so deeply human to want recognition, community, and support for the things that we write.
I think it is so completely natural that you want interaction on your writing. All of us totally do, otherwise we wouldn't be publishing it publicly. If our work was truly, singularly for us and us alone, we'd keep it in the drafts lol. We put it out there hoping for praise and appreciation and connection, and in my opinion there is no shame in that.
So, admission time: I also definitely compare myself to other writers, and I have several times thought about transitioning more towards the type of content that drives higher note counts on tumblr: smuttier one-shots usually under 10k! I can see a huge difference in terms of just my own work on how my one-shots typically do in comparison to chaptered fics. And I definitely see how fast smutty imagines shoot up there in terms of note count.
But I was listening to a podcast episode recently on trying to sort of transition away from a metrics-focused approach to fandom. In the podcast, they talk about how in trying to legitimize fanfic as a literary mechanism, we've also sort of accidentally subjected it to our capitalist-influencer-mindset, where we see fic as more legitimate the more kudos it gets or the more followers it nets you, because in traditional influencer spaces, those followers are potential capital.
I'm definitely not saying you or I see people as potential revenue streams, but I think probably neither of us are immune to the culture at large, and we both probably carry some of internalized sense of our own value based on metrics, reach, and influence. And that sucks!!!!
Fandom, of all things, is supposed to be a specifically anti-capitalist space. We can't make money off of fanfic or fanart (legally, anyway lol), and we're all not the owners of the franchises either so none of our takes are necessarily more "valid" or weightier than others!! We're all supposed to just be trading stories around a campfire with no thought to their literary merit or monetary value. We're just supposed to enjoy the stories.
So, I don't know what the right answer is about how to try to resist the influences of our capitalist culture at large; I'm hoping someone smarter than me will tell me. But I do know that in fanfic, the value of your story can absolutely never be determined by how much engagement you get. Because fandom is not about metrics, and there is no inherent value in metrics. There is only the fun you had creating the story, and the depth of the connection you made with someone over it--even if that's just one other person.
And so I personally am at least trying to resist the lure of transitioning to smutty one-shots even though I think a lot of people would like that. Because what I like doing is writing my little 30k multi-chaps; those are my fave kinds of stories to tell, I'm not letting my metrics tell me what I should be writing.
I hope, at the very least, you know that your worth and the value of your story is not defined by how many other people have read it. And if you ever wanna chat more about this let me know, I'm still figuring this all out myself and could use friends to explore it with!!
21 notes
·
View notes
Text
Longing for Dick and Laughing at Death: The Story of Diseased Pariah News
All right, Tumblr, gather round. This is not my usual style here, and I have missed World AIDS Day by a number of days, but I searched for “Diseased Pariah News” on this nonsense site and got all of two coherent hits, and that does not sit right with me. So let me tell y’all a story of black humor, porn, a pre-venture-capital-overrun Bay Area, lovingly photographed penises, recipe testing, friendship, and death. It’s all true but I wasn’t there; sources are linked throughout and compiled at the end.
Cover of Issue #3. This and all illustrations courtesy of the GLBT Historical Society and Calisphere, the online archives of the University of California. Support your librarians and archivists, kids!
“It’s My Party and I’ll Die If I Want To”
The short version of the story is: Diseased Pariah News was a zine that ran for eleven issues, all published between 1990 and 1999. It was edited almost completely by, and addressed pretty much exclusively to, PWAs, or People With AIDS.
To remind you whippersnappers: to know you were HIV positive in 1990 was to know that you were going to die a lot sooner than average, and probably not peacefully. As Jonathan Kauffman wrote in “Get Fat, Don’t Die,” a 2020 Hazlitt essay on DPN: “So many of the narratives of the time circled around two themes: memorializing the terror and adulterated sweetness of being alive as everyone they knew was dying, and shearing through the cordon of dehumanizing indifference that the public had erected around plague-struck communities. The experience of daily diarrhea or constant nausea may have been too visceral, too private, or simply too grinding to fit into the arc of a plot.” The diarrhea could go on for months, by the way. And that was separate from debilitating fatigue, potential blindness (from CMV retinitis), or constant prickly pain in your hands and feet (from peripheral neuropathy).
This was years before the development of protease inhibitors and “the cocktail” could prevent HIV-positive patients from developing full-blown AIDS; AZT could slow things down, but it came with nasty side effects. AIDS was not like the tuberculosis, or rather like the romantic conception of tuberculosis, in which one’s dying status could be signaled by paleness and the occasional discreet cough. AIDS was painful, and complicated.
So somebody had to have a sense of humor about all this.
Co-founder, original Serene Editor, and the guy who gets the credit for having the idea in the first place, Tom Shearer
Tom Shearer was a computer hardware engineer living in San Francisco, running a zine on the side called GAWK (it stood for Gay Artists and Writers Kollective) when a reader named Beowulf Thorne (more on him later) complained that GAWK looked terrible. Shearer challenged Thorne to do better; Thorne rose to the challenge; one thing led to another and the pair ended up collaborating on a whole new zine, this one focused on the experience of dealing with AIDS. Shearer got the title from an Advocate comic in which a flight attendant asked a passenger: “Would you like the smoking, non-smoking, or diseased pariah section?” (This was during a time when airlines not only had smoking sections but were occasionally refusing outright to transport PWAs.)
From the very beginning, Diseased Pariah News was meant to be funny, helpful, and obsessed with dick. Page 3 of the first issue lists a number of practical steps PWAs can take (“Call Pac Bell for low income phone rates”). There was also a Resources page, dedicated to advocacy groups, support groups, even mail-order pharmacies easy to work with, anyone whom the editors judged would treat PWAs fairly and not waste their time. In between those two was the debut of the column, “Get Fat, Don’t Die!,” dedicated to high-calorie recipes specifically designed to combat wasting disease, illustrated by a naked man in a come-hither pose; the debut of the column “Porn Potato,” which reviewed porn videos while keeping a much better sense of narrative than its subjects; a short-short story titled “I Fisted Jesse Helms”; and a contest to guess Shearer’s T-cell count. (Not included yet was the centerfold feature, which would include the model’s history of infections and T-cell count alongside his full-frontal glory; that would come in later issues.)
Shearer died in April 1991, as the second issue of DPN was going to press. (”Thanks to Mike for guessing optimistically high,” ran the conclusion to the T-cell count contest.) Issue #3 starts with Thorne recounting the aftermath of his death, including a visit to “Akbar and Jeff’s Cremation Hut,” and then, contemplating taking over DPN by himself, allowing himself a rare show of mourning:
Seriously though, the reality of Tommy's death isn't funny. But then, neither is it funny that the first President to preside over the age of AIDS couldn't make himself say the name of the syndrome. Or that a septuagenarian senator would obstruct prevention programs because he would rather see his nation's children die than "promote deviant sexual behavior" (all the while forcing us to endure tobacco subsidies and its retinue of smoking related deaths). Or...well, you know enough about this yourself, you fill in the blanks. What can I say about this situation? You can either laugh or cry, but crying gives you crow's feet.
Fortunately Thorne wasn’t alone for the rest of the ride: as “Cranky Editor,” he was joined by Tom Ace, christened “Humpy Editor,” and Michael Botkin, who already had a reputation around the Bay Area as a suffering-no-fools journalist and critic, as “Sleazy Editor.” DPN had found an eager audience to begin with--Shearer and Thorne had to double back to the printer when the first print run of the first issue sold out--but at its peak it had a circulation of 5,000 and could be bought in dozens of bookstores across multiple countries. The guys were dedicated and passionate without being self-important, and it showed.
Left to right: Sleazy, Cranky, and Humpy, in an undated photo (1994?), for a DPN Christmas card.
All eleven issues have been archived and can be read in PDF form courtesy of the Gay and Lesbian Historical Society and the University of California’s online archiving efforts. Highlights include “AIDS Barbie,” in #8; an interview with playwright and ACT UP co-founder Larry Kramer in #9; Thorne’s evisceration of And the Band Played On author Randy Shilts (who had himself just died of AIDS) also in #9; and the Opportunistic Infection Merit Badges (OIMBs), introduced by Botkin in #10:
The outcome will be an array of badges and ribbons which tell the educated viewer, at a glance, just how progressed your HIV disease is. It will be particularly useful for health care providers, who instead of taking lengthy histories will instead be able to briefly study a PWA's array of service ribbons, badges, etc.... a careful study of my OIMBs would quickly reveal my obscenely low T-cell count (17 at last testing), the fact that I've had PCP, peripheral neuropathy, MAC, wasting syndrome, cryptococcal meningitis, and herpes, and that I've taken every nucleoside analogue known to man. This would allow those who want to fawn over or avoid me to act accordingly, and avoid the frustration of mistaken acquaintanceship.
I can’t speak for you, but the badges were what stuck in my mind: humor black enough to communicate the bleakness of its source. It’s funny how history can seem incommunicable. Odds are you reading this are young enough that if I try to tell you what it felt like to look down Lexington Avenue on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, and see a great column of smoke and no cars, you can place the reference but probably not the devastation. People dealing with the aftereffects of COVID now are having a hard time gaining empathy for what it feels like to have their body betray them; the distance of a couple decades or so is not going to help. To take history at all seriously is to admit that the various horrors of the past are ungraspable. But the badges allow you a glimpse of what it was like to live in the midst of this particular horror.
Which is not to say that the DPN guys were particularly concerned with history. Hamilton-style musings about legacies would have left them cold. History had, in a sense, been stolen from them, and so they were going to embrace the present they had left. Especially Thorne, who would be the guiding force behind DPN for the rest of its run.
The Story-within-a-Story of Beowulf “Biffy Mae” Thorne, Writer, Editor, Graphic Designer, Illustrator, Cartoonist, Recipe-Tester, Critic, Know-It-All, and Horndog Extraordinaire
and also, a babe. I don't care what your gender/sexuality combination is, you would've been at risk of doing some pining.
Beowulf Thorne--no, that wasn’t his birth name, but it seems to have been the name he used exclusively during DPN’s run, so that’s what we’ll stick with--was born in 1964 and grew up in southern California, but fled to the Bay Area in 1983. I saw one source say he tested HIV-positive as early as 1986, which is to say before the term “HIV” was even in widespread use. Suffice to say, dude had to start contemplating his mortality far, far earlier than he should have. He was enrolled at UC-Santa Cruz for a while, studying biology, but that whole contemplating-his-mortality part led him eventually to focus on graphic design and advocacy: first with various condom-promoting organizations, such as the Condom Resource Center in Oakland, and then DPN.
If he hadn’t been doomed, Thorne probably would’ve been one of those guys resented by his acquaintances, just for the sheer number of things he was good at. He was not only DPN’s chief writer and editor but its layout artist and the designer of its related merchandise (not to mention the OIMBs). While working as a graphic designer for Addison-Wesley, he would occasionally piss textbook authors off by pointing out errors in their text, even though he wasn’t supposed to be factchecking: he just couldn’t help it. He did full-page, multi-panel “Captain Condom” comics for several DPN issues; that takes some time and effort now, never mind with Adobe Illustrator as it was three decades ago. He tested all of the “Get Fat, Don’t Die!” recipes. He was a gardener who specialized in orchids, cacti, and meat-eating plants, and beautifully detailed plant sketches are scattered in his collected papers.
1994 version of the Condom Educator's Guide, co-written by Thorne and Daniel Bao (who would later work on DPN issues) and designed by Thorne on "his trusty Macintosh."
And he could write. Reading him, you’d never guess the man wasn’t a trained writer, or is now twenty-three years dead: his voice is unstoppable. I’m not the type who laughs out loud at books easily, and while reading the DPN back issues, I found myself giggling repeatedly at the turns of phrase in Thorne’s porn reviews.
Oh, yeah: he also was Porn Potato. And just generally an unabashed horndog. He and Ace met when Ace saw Thorne’s personal ad: “Relatively stable 25-year-old design student seeks other adventurous good-looking men for mutual sodomy and oral copulation.” When a POZ writer asked Thorne about this in 1997, Thorne--who by this point was dealing with neuropathy and killer candida that ate his gums down to the bone--said cheerfully of Ace: “He’s quite buxom. I’ve always had a letch on him.” If Thorne and DPN stood for anything, it was the conviction that an AIDS diagnosis could not take away the right and responsibility to live, and living included being sexual.
But You Already Know the End of the Story
The hardest issue of DPN to read is the eleventh and last one, which came out in 1999, three years after #10. “In the eternity since DPN #10 appeared,” ran a note under the masthead, “66.67% of the editorial staff expired.” Botkin had died in 1996; that left Thorne and Tom Ace. By this point there was a new set of treatments available, but they worked a lot better if you hadn’t already been fighting HIV (plus the side effects of AZT) for over a decade.
One of the last DPN pieces Thorne wrote was on viatication, the practice of selling your life-insurance policy to be able to collect cash while you’re still alive. His health was failing pretty fast at that point--another of the last pieces is about CMV retinitis blinding him--but the article is practical, funny, and devoid of self-pity. It will break your heart nonetheless.
Deciding to viaticate my policy started with some soulful contemplation. The first thing I had to face was my own impending mortality. It was as though signing the paperwork obliged me to kick the bucket on some kind of schedule. For an obsessive taskmaster such as myself, there were some control issues....
Finally, there's a little roulette. The closer to death's door you are—on an actuarial basis—the more moolah you get. You don't want to cash in too early for a measly 50% (two-year life expectancy). On the other hand, if you wait for that 80% jackpot (six-month life expectancy), you might croak before you can enjoy it all. I was feeling pretty grim at that point, so the time seemed right.*
* For all you voyeuristic sickies, It was necrotic periodontitis.
He died on May 8, 1999. Reportedly his friends tried and failed to create a snowglobe with some of his ashes and Astroglide lube.
Tom Ace, miraculously, is still in possession of his mortal coil, or at least was as of 2010, when Vice interviewed him. Kauffman was able to talk to several of Thorne’s friends for his 2020 Hazlitt article. Beyond that I didn’t find a lot of easily accessible information about DPN’s survivors, either editors or readers.
Why Remember Diseased Pariah News
It’s not for everyone, I’ll grant you that. It never was. Even setting aside the sharp (necessary) line it drew between PWAs and HIV-negative onlookers, it was very much a product of a small, dedicated group with its own goals. If you are not a white gay cis man, you were not going to feel seen, as the modern saying goes, reading DPN. And if you don’t draw as strong a link between sex and vitality as its editors did, the repeated explicit celebration of dick might well put you off.
It’s still worth remembering, and celebrating. DPN is the kind of work that’s not easy to preserve. There were thousands and thousands of zines in the 1990s, and we’ve got no hope of learning from all of them, or even a good percentage of them. Eventually the people who can remember getting zines in the mail (my husband still sometimes uses the term “trib,” short for “minimum acceptable contribution”) will be gone. Our ability to communicate has expanded so much in the last three decades that it’s hard to archive and learn from all that communication--think of all the lost MySpace and Geocities pages, bulletin boards, emails. Preservation will be by definition selective, and later generations’ sense of what was actually happening thereby skewed, but we ought to preserve what we can.
But also: these guys were trying to bring laughs, help, and comfort to a vulnerable population, and in 2022 we like to think we approve of that kind of thing. Meanwhile they themselves were vulnerable, far more so than they should have been, and they recognized the unfairness of their situation but they did not whine. They were brave in the face of death, which is hard, and physical pain and the deterioration of the body, which is even harder. And we still in these supposedly enlightened times don’t have a good mechanism for thinking of campy gay men as brave. They weren’t looking to be remembered. We should remember anyway.
Sources
All the back issues of DPN are archived on Calisphere, the archives of the University of California, with Beowulf Thorne’s papers. Direct links: #1 (1990), #2 (1991), #3 (1991), #4 (1991), #5 (1992), #6 (1992), #7 (1992), #8 (1993), #9 (1994), #10 (1996), #11 (1999). Some of the information comes from this collection of contemporary articles Thorne clipped.
Tom Ace, “Thorne on Our Side,” POZ, August 1, 1999
Mark Allen, “That’s Not Funny, Or Is It?,” Vice, December 31, 2010
Jonathan Kauffman, “Get Fat, Don’t Die,” Hazlitt, April 28, 2020
Greg Lugliani, “Last Laughs,” POZ, October 1, 1997
72 notes
·
View notes
Text
2023 was great to me both art wise and irl 🥹
Got to draw things close to my heart, collaborated with amazing writers - especially many collabs with Bea on zhongxu and lld project- took part in a zine, exchange and challenges, created first art prints, got commissioned to design a tattoo, got noticed by Julien Fournie.
But also I traveled a lot and spent time with parents and friends, got to see Gong Jun 4 times, watched some great (and worse) shows and movies and continued studying Chinese through the year. I hope 2024 will be as kind and maybe even better！
10 notes
·
View notes
Text
20 Fanfic Questions
Thanks to @randomfoggytiger for tagging me again. This was fun!
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
72. But not all of them are mine. I've been transcribing and posting some fics under a pseud, from Beauty and the Beast 4th Season hardcopy zines written by folks who've since passed on, just so that part of the fandom's history doesn't get lost.
2. What's your total AO3 words count?
1,133,574, but half of those are fics posted under my pseud. Nan Dibble was a writing fiend when it came to her Acquainted With the Night series. 💕
3. What fandoms do you write for?
The X-Files, Beauty and the Beast 1987, A Song of Ice and Fire.
4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?
Huh, interesting. They’re all ASOIAF/SanSan fics. In descending order: These Scars We Wear, The Calling, Beggar’s Banquet, Blessed Be (The Third Night) and Pas de Deux.
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
Yes, as often as I can. I feel bad if I don’t. If you can take the time to leave a comment, I can take the time to thank you for it.
6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Probably Pass You By and Incomplete, both in TXF ‘verse.
7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
I have a few. The Possibility of Being, LifeSongs and Upsidaisium (BATB 1987) and These Scars We Wear and The Calling (ASOIAF). Both these ‘verses seem to lend themselves to happier endings than TXF.
8. Do you get hate on fics?
Nope.
9. Do you write smut. If so what kind?
I used to. I got bored with it. And when it started to feel as though it were expected of me, I lost interest. I still write steamy stuff, just not explicitly anymore. I'd rather you use your imagination instead of mine. 😉
10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?
Nope.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Yeah. Someone plagiarized one of my TXF fics back in the day and reposted it for The Nanny fandom. Who knew?
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Several, mostly the ASOIAF fics.
13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?
Yes, once. I collaborated with Alanna Baker on a TXF fic called Doors.
14. What's your all-time favourite ship?
Can’t narrow it down to one and you can’t make me. But the Big 3 are Mulder and Scully, Vincent and Diana, Sandor and Sansa. I do love me some big, tortured and damaged men in romantic relationships with stubborn redheaded women. What can I say? It's my kink.
15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?
The case file I started for TXF many, many moons ago. Sticks and Stones. It’s dead in the water.
16. What are your writing strengths?
Dialogue is the big one. I think my pacing is pretty good, and I have a feel for knowing what POV should be used when and where – and how to stick to that (I can't tolerate wandering POVs). I think I'm good at showing body language and tone in a way that's in-character and doesn't hit you over the head. Is it a strength to know when and how to ignore “common” writing rules? If so, I think I’m pretty good at that, too.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
I tend to overthink things, which leads to too much exposition. I try to cut out as much of that as I can when doing final edits. The danger there lies in cutting too much, though. It’s a fine line I’m still learning to navigate. I generally suck at plotting anything unless the muse steps in and demands to take over. Now that I think about it, most of the very favorites of my fics are long and plot heavy, which makes no sense. I’m also not so great at beginnings, but my middles and ends are usually shiny. Is it a weakness to be The World's Slowest Writer? (On second thought, I think GRRM would beat me at that.) But yeah, takes me forever to get anything done. So that, as well.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
I have, but I do it sparingly. I added a few short sentences in Italian for The Possibility of Being. Thank you Google.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
Beauty and the Beast. 1990-ish or so. I've been at this for a while.
20. Favourite fic you've ever written?
Nope. Can’t do it. That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child. I love them all, for various reasons particular to each one.
13 notes
·
View notes
Text
✨ artist interview ✨
i was tagged by @you-are-so-much-better-than-that @mikhailoisbaby and @deathclassic to do this artist interview that chrissy whipped up off of the popular fic writer one! thanks for the tag even if i feel like a grand ol' imposter 😅
1. Do you post on Ao3? If so, how many works do you have on AO3? If not, where do you post?
i do! i didn't before, but i was bullied by tumblr into doing so after they took down the art for "cinematic" lmao! then the pals encouraged me to upload the rest! i have 4 works: cinematic, kinktober, gallacrafts, and original art.
2. What is your total art count?
83! (including the zine stickers/tattoos)
3. What are your top 5 pieces by likes/kudos?
i used the helpful stats website @suzy-queued suggested!
4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
yes! i still think it's insane when people choose to leave nice comments, so i try my best to respond!
5. What is your current fandom, and what was the first fandom you drew for?
shameless, hi. if we're talking about art that i've shared, then it's also shameless. but the first one just for fun was harry potter (yeaaa yeaaa 🙄)
6. Have you ever received hate on any art?
yep lol
7. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t drawn for yet but want to?
i guess the true answer is none. however, i get the urge to draw every time i watch something that i end up loving. recently i've wanted to draw for young royals and stranger things, but i never ended up doing anything. i would also be too shy to post 😅
8. What’s your all-time favorite ship?
i've had many, but based on impact and inspiration i'd have to go with ian and mickey 💙
9. Do you draw outside of fandom?
i do!! it's my favorite hobby! the only difference is that outside of this space i usually just sketch. so it's very different than what i share here.
10. What’s the an art piece you’ve drawn that came out completely differently than you expected?
oh probably this one! it changed quite a bit and was originally drawn flipped around. i think it tells a different story depending on which way you look at it!
11. Do you draw smut?
yes! the teasing kind. the "what's that hand doing?!" kind lmao
12. Have you ever had any of your art stolen or copied?
not that i know of!
13. Have you ever collaborated on a piece?
yea! i've collabed on art for fics with @whatwouldmickeydo and @metalheadmickey and on the zine and timeline with @you-are-so-much-better-than-that 🥰
14. What’s an idea you have that you have yet to draw?
omg i have an entire list of ideas that just exist and may never come to life lol! they range from extreme fluff to absolute filth... my notes app: -kiss on the cheek/scrunchy face -mickey's head hanging off bed/mouth open/ian's hand wrapped around the nape of his neck -holding hands at the alibi alsdkfjlk
15. What are your drawing strengths?
i would say adding details and tying the story i'm trying to convey together. and i like to think that i'm ok at giving them that tender and in love feel no matter the situation.
16. What are your drawing weaknesses?
all of it? haha proportions and certain angles are really hard for me. hands and noses yikes! i am also terrible at drawing from memory. i usually draw with about 20 references pulled up on my laptop. like, i am the bozo googling "table".
17. What’s your favorite art piece you’ve drawn?
it's gotta be the roadtrip one! but i also really really love this one:
18. What is one thing you’d like to tell people about your art that they might not know?
i love adding/repeating little details that no one would really notice unless you're zooming all the way in or seeing a few pieces as a set. i built a color palette very early on that has stayed consistent throughout. i play a lot with blues and greens as a motif. and uh i'm still learning! everyday! with every single one!
19. What inspires or motivates you to create for fandom?
i genuinely love doing it! i also love a prompt, that's why i started all of this with gallacrafts. and i just really love putting them in situations i want to see them in and drawing them stupidly in love!
but, i also hoard unhinged tags in my cheeks like a chipmunk lmao every series i've done was born from people screaming a version of "YOU'RE INSANE" at me 😂
20. And finally, can you describe your process a little? Do you have a favourite place to draw? Do you play something in the background? Do you do research or just go for it? Give us a little insight.
i usually draw on the couch, hunched over like a shrimp. i’m normally up really late (i see 3am too often) and that’s when i get most of my work done. i typically watch something i've seen before so that i don't have to fully pay attention or i'll listen to music. i sketch a rough draft of what i want the final piece to end up looking like, then i do a shit ton of research and pull up a stupid amount of references. i have a really creepy pinterest board full of body parts lol! then i fight for my life and rage until the line work is fully done. after that, it’s smooth sailing with coloring and shading 😌
i'm feeling a little tag shy, but i'll tag @gallawitchxx @doodlevich @y0itsbri and @grumpymickmilk if you want to play! if not i'm just giving you some flowers 💐
#why the fuck do i talk so much? why was this so hard?#chrissy encouraged me to just ramble and that i did. i'm sorry about it.#artist interview#tag game
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
It came in the mail!!!!! Baby's first physical zine 😭😭 What an absolute gorgeous beauty!
This is the Changing Colours: A Mob Psycho 100 seasons zine that I helped contribute to (*whispers* I'm the one on page 50)!
Thanks to the mods of @mp100seasonszine for bringing this baby to my door step. There are more pictures of me geeking through the package under the cut
Firstly I want to show you guys my page for the Autumn section !!!! It's an illustrated part I did as a collaboration between me and aideminty (its writer) on twitter!
EEEE!! Im so happy! The delight of reading a fic while holding it physically does not compare to reading it online.
The formatting of the zine is super well thought out and cohesive. Each piece flows well with the one next to it, that even the single pages look like theyre intentionally part of a spread. Not a single color out of place. well done!
No kidding, before I went through everything, I made sure to get myself a cup of a nice cocoa to drink while I sit down and flip through the pages. I cannot wait to read all the stuff the writers worked on. I'll even be leaving them a heartfelt message in their digital inboxes somehow, somewhere.
THERE IS MEEEEE!!!!!
I am trying to hold these as delicately as possible despite my sweaty, sweaty hands. I truly was not expecting to receive anything beyond the book itself, that when I felt a bump in the package I said "Oh no........ they gave me.... buttons.... maybe even tape!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
They were not joking. Owning physical trinkets really heal the soul....
Finally. Here is the back cover.
I'm just gonna be sitting down and enjoying myself reading this. I'll find uses for the stickers once I get over the fact that I'm emotional about this entire situation.
Again, thank you so much to the people who worked on this, who supported this zine, who supported me, and the mods that made sure it got onto my door step. It was a well timed package.
12 notes
·
View notes
Note
11, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 30!
11. What work took you the longest to write?
I'm going to skip the ongoing fics for this one considering, well, that depends on how many chapters and all of that. In terms of the other works, it was probably "The Heart Is a Thing to Be Broken," which was my "Straw Hats learn about Winner Island" fic. It basically consumed my soul for days until I finished it
There was also "To Call Myself Beloved," which turned out longer than I was expecting it to be. My Truffyfest server peeps can attest to my complaining about how the story kept expanding 😂
18. The character that gave you the most trouble writing this year?
I wrote Drake for the first time this year for the Dark Waters zine, so I was definitely not as comfortable writing him as I am characters like Law and Doffy. Still, I'm really happy with how that fic, "To Prove Worthy," turned out! It focuses on Drake's relationship with Sengoku after he takes Drake in post-Minion Island.
20. Which work of yours have you reread the most?
Oh, this is a good question! This year, I've reread my "Your Heart, In My Chest" series from Lawlu Week pretty frequently. In it, Law and Luffy switch hearts post-Wano, but then Winner Island happens; Luffy realizes something is wrong because Law's heart is all wrong in his chest, so the Straw Hats track down and rescue Law and Bepo.
23. Did you do any collaborative works this year?
I helped beta @thedoctor91011's wonderful fic "Caught in the Web" and @betsib's delightful fic "(Love Will Find a Way) Where Wolves Fear to Prey" but that's about it. Tragically, I had to drop out of the Big Bang because my schedule this fall has been absolutely hellacious.
24. Did you write any gifts this year?
I'll be writing a Secret Santa fic once I'm done with grading, and that will go up around Christmas.
25. Did you receive any gifts this year?
I should be getting a Secret Santa fic in return! Oh, and @cal-cium-the-nerd wrote a delightful Heart Pirates fic, "Common Factor," for a couple of my One Piece fight prompts!
28. Favorite work you wrote this year?
Oh, this is hard. I think I'll cop out and use the same answer as the one I used for #3 here: "To Call Myself Beloved" and “A Fleeting Moment (When the Sun Can Kiss the Moon)."
30. Biggest surprise while writing this year?
I'll say, I was very surprised by how well-received "Hurricane Heat in My Head" was. It's a jealous!Luffy fic that I wrote for Lawlu Week, and it was the one I was most unsure about, but it was probably the most popular fic I did for the entire event. Go figure!
Also, I'm constantly amazed by how often I break through writer's block for a fic in the shower 😂
Thanks for the ask! This was fun.
AO3 Wrapped [Writer's Edition]
I've answered 1, 3, 7, 11, 12, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 30
7 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
