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scripsi ([personal profile] scripsi) wrote2025-07-25 07:16 pm

Sunshine Revival Challenge #7

 One more post before vacation.

 

Challenge #7

 

The Ferris Wheel

Journaling: Life in fandom goes through ups and downs. Reminisce about the "wild ride" of your time in fandom or in other online communities.

 

The net wasn’t around when I was a teenager, but if it had, I’m sure I would have written fanfiction. Because even if I didn’t write them down, I did long and elaborate stories about The Lord of the Rings in my head. First merely adding a female companion to the fellowship, but after I read Silmarillion I made up more independent characters and adventures. I’m sorry I never did write them down, but I still have some of the synopsis for them.

 

I ventured online for the first time in early 1999. My son was a newborn, and one sleepless night I did a search for Dorothy L. Sayers and found a mailgroup that had just decided on a read.through of all her books. It was my first online community, and we had so much fun. Now, 26 years later, I´m still in contact with some of them. At some point we decided to write a round robin to create Harriet Vane’s fictitious detective novel Death 'Twixt Wind and Water, as it has a fair amount of clues to reconstruct. It was great fun, and the first time I wrote fiction in English. This mailgroup also introduced the concept of fanfiction to me, as some members also wrote Harry Potter fic. 

 

For a couple of years I read fanfiction now and then, but never considered writing it. That changed when I happened to see a promo shot of Jason Isaacs as Captain Hook in Peter Pan in 2003. Peter Pan was one of my childhood favourites, and this picture triggered me into writing. For about 2 years I wrote feverishly, and wrote some really dark fanfic. And wrote myself into dealing with some trauma from my teens. To cut a rather long process very short, writing fanfic helped me heal in a way I had not foreseen, and was instrumental in shedding a depression I had lived in for years.

 

I didn’t write much between 2005-2013, even if I did write from time to time. I divorced, and juggling work and being a single mother gave me little time and energy for it. Even when life settled down I had got out of the habit to write, but in 2013 there was a sudden death in my family. It was a terrible and traumatic experience, and it triggered me into another feverish writing spell. I had just re-watched Doctor Who, from the First Doctor and onwards, and I started writing Whofic. 

 

Once again I found writing very therapeutic, but after the first rush of writing I realised something I never consciously realised before. I love writing. It’s good for my well=being, regardless if I write a blogpost or a fic. Up until early 2022 I wrote steadily, exploring  a number of fandoms and ships. Then I had a creative freeze when the war in Ukraine happened. I couldn’t do anything creative at all for a long time, and only got back to writing on a regular basis earlier this year. It feels good to be back!

 

As of now I have 123 fics on AO3 in 26 fandoms. 94 of those one-shots. I mostly write het, with a preference for strong and competent female characters and morally ambiguous male ones. I just checked, the ratio looks like this, F/M (80 fics), Gen (33), F/F (7), M/M (5), Multi (5). All my fics are in a historical and/or fantastical fandom. As a history nerd I spend a lot of time researching history when I write.

 

My fanfics can be found here.


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scripsi ([personal profile] scripsi) wrote2025-07-25 11:03 am
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What I have been reading, (almost) July edition

 As I'm going on my 4-week vacation tomorrow I know I won’t post much during that time. So here’s July’s books for most of the month, and the rest will be included for August. My goal this month was to actually finish some of the thirteen books I have started, but not finished. This is how it went.

 

The Empty Grave by Jonathan Stroud. The last of the Lockwood & Co series. I found it enjoyable, and the series ended with a satisfying conclusion. The reality of Marissa Fitts was more horrifying than I thought. But I also feel the ending opened for a sequel, with various things Lucy indicated that she had done since the grand finale, and also because we never found out Skull’s identity and why he was such a powerful ghost. But as this book was published in 2017, it doesn’t seem very likely it will come.

 

Det ockulta sekelskiftet (The Occult Turn of the Century) by Per Faxneld. How occultism influenced a number of Swedish artists in the late 19/early 20th century. Super interesting, and not something I knew anything about. Which is surprising as I’ve studied art history and consider myself pretty well-read on. But I think the idea that esoterism was influential to some of our more well-known artists has been seen as something embarrassing.

 

Of course I couldn’t abstain from not starting any new books, so I also read Stone and Sky by Ben Aaronovitch, the latest Rivers of London novel. I found it enjoyable, but not remarkable. Though I always like the inclusion of Abigail and the talking foxes.

 

Never Flinch by Stephen King. A return to Holly Gibney and her PI agency Finders Keepers. This time we have not one murderous person, but two. One that wants to kill a popular feminist, another who kills as revenge for a man who has been murdered in prison before it’s revealed he was wrongfully imprisoned. I like Holly as a character, but I kept putting this book down and then forgetting about it, so it’s safe to say it didn’t grab me.

 

And that’s it, so far for July.


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scripsi ([personal profile] scripsi) wrote2025-07-22 03:02 pm
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Fanfic meme

 

Fanfic game from [personal profile] kitarella_imagines

 

If you’ve written fics for more than one year on AO3, go to your statistics page. Click on the different years at the top to see the categories of statistics for each year.

 

1. Which year did you write the most words? Do you know why? e.g. you had more time; you were caught up in an exciting new fandom or pairing; you got a rush of ideas etc.

The year with the highest word count is 2015 with 137 352 words. But that is because when I signed up to AO3 in the very late 2014, I uploaded most of the fics I had written from 2003 onwards. Even if I had a writing spurt in 2015, I'm quite sure it wouldn’t be the year with the highest word count if I just checked the new fics. So the year where I can be absolutely sure is my most productive one, would be 2021 with 94497 words. I had watched The Queen’s Gambit over Christmas, and fell for Beth Harmon/Vasily Borgov. At the time there was a very active Discord for that pairing, which was very inspirational, and I wrote 6 fics for that fandom, one of them being the longest and most ambitious things I have ever written. I also started fanfics for The Mummy and All About Eve.

 

2. Which year did you write the least words? Why was this? e.g. lack of time, too busy, no inspiration etc.

2023 with zero words. The war in Ukraine completely killed my inspiration. So from March 2022 to March 2024 I didn’t write anything at all. I’m writing again now, but I have only worked on fics I started in 2022, I still haven’t got any ideas for new fics. The year with the least wordcount when I have actually written anything is 2024 with 2948 words.

 

3. Which years did you get most hits, kudos, bookmarks and fic subscriptions? Do you know why? (e.g. popular fandoms, lots of words written.) Are there years where you have the same amount of bookmarks and subscriptions?

Again 2015 racks them up, but it’s 2021 that I can be sure of. It has the most of everything. I think it’s because, completely by accident, I managed to fall for a fandom that was hot right then, The Queen’s Gambit, and I have found that The Mummy fanfic seems to have a perpetual fandom, as those fics always are among my most popular. And to my surprise my all About Eve fanfic has got a lot more attention than I ever thought, considering the pairing is so unusual I’m the only one who has written it on AO3.

 

4. Which years did you get least hits, kudos, bookmarks and fic subscriptions? Do you know why? (e.g. niche fandoms, not many fics written.) Do you have any other conclusions?

Apart from the nothing year of 2023, it's 2024, when I only updated with a chapter on a WIP. If I take a year when I participated actively, then it’s 2019, when I wrote 6 fanfics in as many fandoms. But 4 of those were one-shots, and only 2 in fandoms that are on the bigger side. Most of my fandoms are small, and usually I enjoy pairings that aren't the popular ones.


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scripsi ([personal profile] scripsi) wrote2025-07-21 06:04 pm
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Sunshine Revival Challenge #4. #5 and #6

 

No energy at all for doing the creativity prompts right now.

 

Challenge #4

 

Fun House

Journaling: What is making you smile these days? Create a top 10 list of anything you want to talk about.

 

  1. Getting a message from Stepdaughter with pictures of my granddaughter.

  2. Face-timing with my nephew and niece.

  3. My cat.

  4. Taking a walk by the lake where I live.

  5. Going to the summer house.

  6. Finishing a sewing project.

  7. Trying a new recipe and really liking it, so it gets added to the dinner rotation.

  8. Thinking about it, cooking in general makes me smile.

  9. Finishing cleaning the house. I loathe the actual cleaning, but love the finished result.

  10. Listening to music I love.

 

Challenge #5

 

Journaling prompt: Be a carnival barker for your favorite movie, book, or show (or any other of your choice - game, comic, anything else)! Write a post that showcases the best your chosen title has to offer and entices passersby to check it out.

 

I will do a little rerun here, and point you to this post, where I talk about two of my all time favorites, Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë and Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.

 

Challenge #6

 

Journaling prompt: What games do you play, if any? Are you a solo-gamer or do you view games as a social activity?

 

I don’t play computer games, apart from solitaire. I’ve tried, and promptly get mind-numbingly bored. I do enjoy board games on occasion, though.


possibilityleft: (cat eye)
Peel ([personal profile] possibilityleft) wrote2025-07-20 03:25 pm

I Shall Wear Midnight, If I Told You I'd Have to Kill You, Murder by Memory, & 2 more

Invested in a nice new monitor (since the last one unexpectedly died) and what a delight! Maybe I should replace the other one I've had since like 2006 lol.

*****

books! )
shamanicshaymin: Bob doing his iconic dance. (Bob :: No One's Around to Help)
Puri ([personal profile] shamanicshaymin) wrote2025-07-17 07:39 am
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Stealing more memes from Sara

Give me a fandom and I will describe the most self-indulgent fic I could write for it.