encompass worlds

Challenge #11: In your own space, talk about your favorite trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme.

This is difficult because I like so many! I'm really easy to please when it comes to tropes, kinks, etc.

One of my favourites is loyalty kink, which I define as "enjoying and/or kinking on aspects of mutual loyalty, faithfulness, and devotion between two characters (who often but not necessarily have a power or status imbalance) which usually includes some degree of sexual tension, which may or may not build to a romantic relationship over time."

My ultimate par excellence example of loyalty kink is the relationship between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian in Heaven Official's Blessing. They are perfect; they tick every box for me and then some.

Some other great examples are Beleg/Turin and Fingon/Maedhros in the Silmarillion, Frodo/Sam, Aragorn/Frodo, and Aragorn/Faramir in Lord of the Rings, Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu in Word of Honor (about the time when Tian Ye Ke fans are complaining that the plot has gone off the rails, I'm rubbing my hands together with delight and asking for more delicious food), Marcus/Esca in Eagle of the Ninth, Jack/Ianto in Torchwood, Marco Loristan/The Rat in The Lost Prince, and Steve/Bucky in the MCU.

A very important part of the enjoyment is that the loyalty is mutual; the characters involved are devoted to each other, consider each other special, protect each other, sacrifice for each other. If one of them is pining and the other one is not really invested in the relationship, that's a different thing to me. I also enjoy it but it's not my absolute fave.

Looking back over this list, I've realised that all my examples are m/m couples, and I know I love this no matter the configuration. I'd include Dongfang Qingcang/Xiao Lan Hua(/Changheng) from Love Between Fairy and Devil as an m/f (and rare threesome) example, Aerin/Morwen from the Silmarillion (I <3 them so much!), Corky/Violet from Bound (SUCH a good movie!), and Yasmin Khan/The 13th Doctor from Doctor Who as good f/f examples of this trope.

I'm always looking out for more canons that feature loyalty kink, especially between women, so please, if you have any recs, let me know!

As part of my #fannish50 this year, some of the posts I intend to make will be about fanworks exchanges, both from the perspective of a participant and a moderator. This is the first of them, and I want to talk about Do Not Wants (DNWs). This particular subject can be quite sensitive and difficult to discuss, so I'm hoping to take some of the stress out of it by talking about my own mindset and experiences.

You look at almost any letter from any exchange participant (let's take my most recent letter to my Candy Hearts creator as an example) and the DNW section is one of the most important to be aware of when creating a fanwork for that person. But what might influence what gets added to DNWs? How important is it to be aware of how you're phrasing any particular DNW? And how should a creator read DNWs to be sure they avoid them?

( Into the DNWverse )



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Challenge #8: In your own space, create a quiz or a poll.




If you have thoughts on your multifannishness or lack thereof, please comment!

Over my roughly 23 years in fandom, I've witnessed a number of scam artists, grifters, and otherwise bad actors within fandom. I've had the good fortune, but also the wariness and caution, to not be taken in by these people. So today, for my second Fannish50, I'm going to talk about signs of scam artists and other kinds of grifters, gaslighters, and toxic people in fandom that have become apparent to me over the years and have helped me avoid them.

First of all, I would like to very much stress, these people are absolutely the minority in fandom. Most people in fandom are great! Most people are more or less honest, non-manipulative, and decent. Even if you have a falling-out with someone, it doesn't mean that person is a scam artist, a grifter, or otherwise trying to manipulate you. The vast majority of arguments and fights have very little to do with this; sometimes people just don't get on, for whatever reason, and have to walk away from each other.

( 7 Warning Signs of Fannish Scammers, Grifters, & Toxic People )


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I've seen several other people writing up their own fannish history for Fannish Fifty, so I figured I would do the same.

( In brief, for it is a long tale, of which the end is not known... )

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I'm elwinfortuna.

I'm so excited that you'll be creating something for me! I can't wait to see what you come up with.

Prompts are optional; if you get another idea, just run with it! The most important thing is that you have fun and love what you write/draw, I'm sure I will love it too.

Treats of all kinds are very welcome, including prompts I’ve given for previous years.

( General Likes )

( Art preferences )

( Shipping and smut preferences )

( DNWs )

Onward to the fandoms!

( Word of Honor RPF )

( Word of Honor )

( Tian Guan Ci Fu/Heaven Official's Blessing )

( The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-earth )

( Once Upon a Time in Lingjian Mountain )

( Cook Up A Storm )

( The Princess Diaries )

( Love Between Fairy and Devil )

( Rogue One: A Star Wars Story )

Challenge #3: In your own space, Scream Into the Void. Get it all out.

I've been in fandom for a very long time -- over half my life, and I've seen fandom (by which I mostly mean fanworks-style fandom) go from a sort of niche hobby to being more or less mainstream. And while that's good in some ways, it's also made things very difficult in others. Fanfiction, in some places and in some ways, feels more like being a "content producer" like some hideous Instagram influencer or Youtuber than it feels like just writing whatever randomness you think is fun or enjoyable today. There seems to be a lot of pressure to focus on stats, feedback, how well you're "performing," comparing yourself to others, etc, etc.

I hate all of this. Comparing stats is a game best not played, and dwelling too much on stats is a surefire route to depression no matter what they are. My own favourite stories aren't my most popular ones, they're the ones that I reread after some time and think, "yeah, I did good with that one!" As someone who writes all kinds of different stories, there are times I value getting just a couple of kudos on a femslash rarepair more than I value getting tons of kudos on a very popular m/m ship.

I want to make people happy (for values of "happy" that can sometimes mean crying buckets) with what I write, and the numbers on that don't really matter. Just as long as I make someone happy, just one person is enough. So my view on stats is: I get my kudos email and it makes me happy. I get a comment and it makes me happy (well, assuming it's a nice comment). I check my stats every now and again, usually when it comes up in memes.

I view fanfic as playtime, as an opportunity to explore and mess around and experiment. I have very few headcanons, ships, or perspectives that I see as set in stone, and I'm always pushing at my own boundaries in terms of what I'll both read and write. Sometimes I find out I don't particularly want to write certain kinds of fic, but I'm always glad I tried. I've written experiences from my own life in a fictionalised format, things I would love to try but are impossible, things I wouldn't ever do, and things I find morally repugnant in real life.

I strongly feel there should be very few limits on what a person can write about. I wouldn't necessarily want to read certain things, but I'll defend to the death a person's right to write them. Ultimately what matters is, is it well-written? What a person writes about in fiction is not reflective of their real-world moral viewpoint, and honestly one of the worst ideas floating around fandom today is a belief by some people (usually very young people) that it is.

Fictional people should not be treated like real people, and real people should not be treated like fictional people. One of the biggest problems fandom has right now is this tendency to attack real people, real authors or artists, because they've created something that "harms" a fictional person. Antis* dismiss the pain that they are causing to real human beings in favour of getting upset about the "pain" a fictional character might be in, and that is absolutely the wrong way around.

Fictional characters are fictional; ultimately they don't matter, they are toys, dolls. Fictional characters are there to be played with. I cannot fathom valuing them over a real person, cannot imagine causing harm to a person because of what they created, no matter how distasteful I might find it.






*Antis: people who are opposed to others writing certain kinds of stories or creating certain kinds of art, usually involving dark topics such as rape, incest, or underage sex. Antis attack and harass creators, and have driven some people to self-harm or suicide.

I added a sticky post to my journal including my Transformative Works Policy and main current fandoms, and also updated my profile.

I've been looking over my AO3 stats for the last year. Initially I thought I hadn't written much, but actually, 2022 has been about average at approx 37,000 words. (2015, when I apparently lived in a cave and wrote 224,000 words, is an outlier adn should not be counted.)

I wrote 13 stories in 2022, ranging from over 8000 words to just 224.

My most popular story this year was Heart In Paradise, a modern AU for Hua Cheng/Xie Lian from Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official's Blessing). I'm not a modern AU sort of person at all, but I really like the way this one came out. There is SO much background research; you should've seen all the work I did trying to figure out if my setting details were appropriate. If there's one thing I worry about, it's that I feel the setting did end up a bit vaguelandia, I was trying for China but I didn't want to set it in a specific city in case I got the feel entirely wrong. But in my heart the story is set in Shanghai.

Next in popularity is Release from Bondage, also a TGCF fic, but this time for Quan Yizhen/Yin Yu, my favourite secondary ship from the book. I adore Quan Yizhen as a character; he's such a wild card to play with. An adorable fluffy puppy of a person with zero shame and zero mouth filter. And his relationship with Yin Yu just intrigues me so much!

Then, the story that will probably come to my mind if I were asked sometime in the future what I wrote in 2022: Ten Thousand Years of Love, a Wen Kexing/Zhou Zishu story for Word of Honor, my longest fic this year. This was one of those sheer indulgence fics on my part; I gave them everything I wanted to see for them, kadianed every section by writing either 511, 1129, or 1640 words in each one, and posted it on the anniversary of the first episode of Word of Honor airing in China. I love WenZhou so much; they've grabbed hold of my heart in a way I haven't experienced in years. Such a glorious couple, such a wonderful show!

Fourth, another indulgent fic on my part: Find Home, a crossover story featuring Maglor from the Silmarillion, and Hua Cheng from TGCF. These two needed to meet, and I thought it would be so nifty if Maglor's sword ended up in Hua Cheng's armoury as a gift for Xie Lian. There had to be a fair bit of balance in this story; they needed to find common ground, and they do in their similar definition of what home is. Also, Maglor's power impresses Hua Cheng, but it's his honesty that wins him over.

My next most popular fic is a short scene, In This Moment (Word of Honor). Along with A Moment in the Sun (Word of Honor), Joyous Moment (Silmarillion), and A Moment of Respite (Silmarillion), it was written as part of a bunch of short shippy ficlets for nerdyjellyfish for Trick or Treat, just a box of sweet little treats. I do love Trick or Treat so much for its low word count minimum; it's one of the exchanges I'm always excited about every year.

Then, the only Junzhe fanfic I managed to write this year, For Real This Time, for the DZZS Server Exchange. I like the way it turned out, but it was tough to write. This whole year has been a hard time to be writing Junzhe fic. I have so many thoughts and ideas burning a hole in my head for them, but it's been difficult to get them onto the page. Maybe 2023 will be kinder to Junzhe fandom, and most importantly, to Zhang Zhehan.

And now, my Innumerable Stars story, A Cup of Tea and a Message from Beyond the Sea. I really loved this one; it's so delightful to get two characters talking and see what comes out. In this case, Elwing and Gandalf really do have a bit to talk about, and it was so much fun to weave through Gandalf's thread about trying to learn how to act like a mortal rather than a Maia. I think also, I wanted to write Elwing as contented, settled, matured, and happy with her life. She has regrets, but she's old enough to realise that her younger self didn't have much in the way of choices, and what's done is done.

My Bëor/Finrod magnum opus for the Tolkien Reverse Summer Bang, Give Back the Gift, is pretty low down on this list, perhaps less popular than it deserves. It's a sad story but with hope sprinkled throughout, it's bittersweet but I hope not heartbreaking. I didn't put any smut in it but I do want to write a couple of smutty/shippy side stories at some point. I wrote it while struggling with my mental health and I think it impacted not the story itself but the way I dealt with the story afterwards; I didn't really promote it properly. But despite that, I've had a lot of love from readers, and I did my best to write a story I've been wanting to write for years, so I'm happy with it.

Lastly, there's two stories I wrote for The Untamed, Stay Forever, and Close Together. I'm not surprised at all that these two aren't super popular; both involve rarepairs and unique scenarios, as requested by my exchange recipients. I, however, am very happy with them both, and would definitely prefer to both read and write more rare ships and different takes than any Extruded Fic Product(tm) that this fandom in particular seems to be so very fond of. (It's the curse of fandoms that are very mainstream and large, sadly.)

Next year, with a little effort, I'm pretty sure I can top a million words total on AO3; I'm about 73k out from that now. In terms of fandoms, definitely going for more Junzhe and Wenzhou, more Hualian, more Silmarillion fic of whatever kind, some rarepairs, maybe some rarer fandoms, maybe some Star Wars, maybe that long long overdue sequel to my Truce of the Games Space AU. Or maybe something original that I'll try and publish, who knows?

(Or, me watching Rogue One in 2016: boy I sure hope this doesn't awaken anything in me...)

Watched Rogue One again last night (for I think the 4th or 5th time maybe, but for the first time in a long while), and was struck dizzy by Chirrut Imwe/Baze Malbus all over again.

But unlike when I watched it in 2016, or any of the times since then, I finally got why: they're my first proper Chinese wuxia battle couple. So many of the tropes they play out I've seen in "hao xiongdi" (lit. "good brothers" sometimes code for a gay relationship) and dangai (censored live-action productions of danmei novels, such as The Untamed for Mo Dao Zu Shi or Word of Honor for Faraway Wanderers) shows since.

This meta by evocating on Tumblr, Baze/Chirrut in the context of Chinese culture, does a much better job of explaining them and their relationship than I ever could, and really helped me understand them in their proper context.

While I love so much about Rogue One, and I treasure each and every character, Chirrut and Baze really elevate the movie for me. They bring so much humour, snarking back and forth at each other (like the old married couple they CLEARLY are), and also bring in that feeling of trust in the eventual outcome, even if the present looks dark, that sort of looking-forward, seeing the big picture, hope in the sense of estel to borrow from Tolkien, and belief in the eucastastrope (to borrow again) that will come in A New Hope.

I think without them the movie would have felt a lot more grim and dark, and it needed that lightness to carry us through. And their last scene is the only point in the movie that makes me cry, because it's so perfectly balanced between despair and trust that they are almost the same thing.

Anyway! Rogue One is the best Star Wars movie, fight me, and Chirrut/Baze are the best couple in all of Star Wars, fight me again, and they should be acknowledged as husbands, fight me Disney!