Treacle Mine Road

Doing this because it looks fun!

Most hits: falling leaves return to their radish fields (MDZS, Lan Sizhui-centric with LWJ/WWX on the side) - 6k hits

I have some guesses as to how this fic got so popular, but it never ceases to surprise me how much people seem to like it! It began when I was noodling around on Twitter with nonsense and Izzy asked if I might consider turning it into a short 500 word thing. Well, it did not stay 500 words, and has done shockingly, shockingly well for my first published fic after a 7-year dearth of energy and time.

This fic also holds the record amongst all my AO3 fics for most kudos, comments, and bookmarks, so I've removed it from the running for the rest of the meme for the purposes of making this not boring.

Most kudos: Find Your Light Again (Princess Tutu, Fakir/Ahiru) - 388 kudos

:> A five things fic written for Fakiru Week 2013. I do go back and read it periodically because why not read fic aimed perfectly to hit your fic buttons. It's my best performing Princess Tutu fic and I still get kudos from it to this day, which is always nice to see in your emails.

Most comments: the daughter of earth and water, the nursling of the sky (SHL, Zhang Nianxiang-centric) - 21 comment threads

Written as part of a 15-day fic fest earlier this year! Nianxiang is basically 75% an OC because we only really see her at the end of SHL, but I LOVE thinking about futures with kids in many many classic wuxia stories, in addition to just being a big sap for kids and family relationships in general, so this was very fun to write. Format-wise I also really like it as a way to get a writing project moving.

Most bookmarks: A Place in the Mind (Discworld, Tiffany Aching-centric with background Tiffany/Preston) - 36 bookmarks
snow peaks, frozen winds (SHL, ZZS/WKX) - 36 bookmarks

This is the most important stat to me! My top fic by this metric is actually falling leaves return to their radish fields (254 bookmarks), but runner -up is Find Your Light Again (96 bookmarks)! So I've also excluded that in order to talk about my other fics.

A Place in the Mind was written in 2012 and is full of a lot of silly jokes. I do still get kudos on it and I'm very very pleased to have a Discworld fic still in my top 5 by bookmarks even though I haven't written Discworld in years and it's so old.

snow peaks was written on my phone in the middle of the night, and I'm constantly surprised by how well it's done, given that I wrote it basically off the cuff in GDocs and it's only around 500 words long. I think this one was partially down to timing, because I finished it not too long after the series had just finished airing in 2021.

Most words: the doors of the wind (Princess Tutu, Fakir/Ahiru) - 8k words.

From my most recent Princess Tutu series! And currently ALSO in my top 5 by bookmarks, kicking out another MDZS fic and a HMC/Tiffany Aching crossover. If you add the 2k from violins will soar, it adds up to 10k. I wrote this because I read some of my old fic and laughed about my own teenage ideas about books and knowledge and especially some off the cuff lines I wrote about pens, because I am now very into fountain pens. So I wrote like 7.5k of set up to give Fakir a fountain pen.

I wrote this when I was recovering from COVID, and I wrote most of it from end to end in a slim staple-bound Midori exercise book using a glass dip pen with PenBBS Oolong Tea ink. Researching Pelikan pens for this fic resulted in buying an all-white pen for myself, which I now fill permanently with PenBBS Oolong Tea and is one of my favourite pens for long writing bouts. I only wish I could acquire the right nib upgrade for it. (I want a Hongdian 长刀 nib for it, but Hongdian doesn't sell them loose, I think. Maybe I should check Taobao again.)

Fewest words: The Charm (or Good Things Come In Threes) (Ace Attorney, Nick/Miles) - 53 words

HAHA oh god how does this have 53 kudos and 2 bookmarks. I wrote this in...... I don't even fucking know lmao, it's dated 2012 on AO3, but I'm 66% certain it was LJ comment fic first and I don't feel like checking back. It was an excuse to write a bunch of silly puns again, with just enough scaffolding to imply established Phoenix/Edgeworth.

This is the funniest category of stats, I don't think I've ever looked at it before now! My top three are ALL crackfic lmao (POTC fic (baby delivery tall tales), Discworld/HMC (Ghibli) fic (the Luggage meets the Castle)).

I have already read more books than I expected to this month! Some short reviews for each of them. Spoilers for all three books below.

Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty

( Space station murder mystery )

---

Nettle and Bone by T. Kingfisher

( Princess sets out to save her sister from an evil prince )

---

The Keeper's Six by Kate Elliott

( Jewish mother whose highly skilled party of magic travellers was suspended in disgrace must get the gang back together to save her kidnapped adult son and keep their family together in the process )

I spent too long thinking about this book to just let it sit on Goodreads. Here's my review of Yan Ge's Strange Beasts of China (translated by Jeremy Tiang), slightly expanded because I cut some parts from Goodreads for being more my own digression.

( snip )

I vaguely remember ordering Gideon the Ninth but when Kindle informed me that my book had arrived and was ready for download, I definitely had to go look up what Gideon the Ninth was actually about, which I will share here:

Brought up by unfriendly, ossifying nuns, ancient retainers, and countless skeletons, Gideon is ready to abandon a life of servitude and an afterlife as a reanimated corpse. She packs up her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and prepares to launch her daring escape. But her childhood nemesis won’t set her free without a service.

Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House and bone witch extraordinaire, has been summoned into action. The Emperor has invited the heirs to each of his loyal Houses to a deadly trial of wits and skill. If Harrowhark succeeds she will be become an immortal, all-powerful servant of the Resurrection, but no necromancer can ascend without their cavalier. Without Gideon’s sword, Harrow will fail, and the Ninth House will die.

Of course, some things are better left dead.

In short, I mainlined the entirety of this book on my day off (which was supposed to be spent finishing my library books) and now I have a slight book hangover on top of being upset that I have to wait for Harrow the Ninth to come out next year.

( spoilers below )

SO TUMBLR AMIRITE??

Anyway, I am excited about the prospect of more people being on DW even though I imagine this wave of good intentions to revive personal DWs might die out after a while. My DW flist is the most active it has been in months (or possibly years?), which is exciting!!

Meanwhile, if you got here via my Tumblr, please do say hi and let me know who you are!

Work is getting hectic, so who knows when I have the time to be.....around in general! We are extremely short-handed at the moment and I'm injured and trying to be careful with myself. So we'll have to wait and see how that goes.

Meanwhile, I'm racing through Okami! I've gotten like eight of the brush gods (counting the Hanagami trio as 3), and I thiiiiiiiink the Orochi boss battle is imminent! I wanted to play for about half an hour this morning, before I realised I need to mentally prep myself for it first. Waka has appeared a few times and it has been delightful!

Just for BotW and Okami alone, the Switch has been my best 2017 purchase.

I finished the game! Aaaaaand I'm replaying the first game.

( Dual Destinies spoilers )

I've been watching and reading Mushishi lately because I watched the Running Man horror special at night and now I am hearing random knocking sounds in the shower and I find it difficult to go to the bathroom at midnight.

I suffer from an overactive imagination. :<

But anyway, Mushishi is helping me a lot because it's calming and good. I realised after I started the anime that I hadn't finished all the manga so I've been catching up on that too. I do prefer the manga to the anime, but I've skipped the manga chapters that I already watched. Save it for a future reread.

I kind of want to reread Lu Xun's A Madman's Diary and do a compare/contrast thing with The Heavy Seed because they feel tonally similar to me for some reason. They deal with COMPLETELY different things, but I dunno.

Anyway, I figure if I'm still jumping at shadows when I finish the anime, I have two seasons of Natsume Yuujinchou that I haven't watched yet on my HD and those might even help more? Yeah.

(lkshfafjk I was doing a Mononoke rewatch also, but that one is on pause, haaaaaaaaa.)

So, uh, Pacific Rim reawakened my long, long dormant love of mecha, which means I'm going to watch Gundam Seed again.

But also, like, mecha in general! Anyone want to rec me shows? I think I'm putting Evangelion on the list (which, having heard Things and having lost interest in mecha, I figured I was never going to watch but you know) and I might finally finish Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. I've watched Gundam Wing already, and I'm not interested in finishing Code Geass. Not sure I'm interested in Gundam 00, but I am willing to be swayed on that one if anyone cares to tell me why I should watch it.

But is there anything else?

It has been a while. Uh. I had a lot of stuff to post about regarding my long hiatus in May, but it got too overwhelming to post about (like, whenever I talk about the highlights of that thing I was working on, it takes me at least an hour to get through, that's how much and how terrible it was), so I have decided not to do that until maybe later if at all.

Instead, here are some things I have read/watched with quick one-line reviews.

( The Ocean at the End of the Lane, Pacific Rim, Welcome to Night Vale, Obernewtyn )