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 and enjoy it! Thank you so much, I hope you enjoy the experience too and are happy with what you make.

Of course any prompts are optional and just there to serve as a jumping-off point for you. Take what you make in whatever direction seems best or come up with something I didn't prompt at all, I'll love it!

Treats are very welcome (and enabled on AO3), including past prompts from previous exchanges.

( General Likes )

( Art preferences )

( Shipping and smut preferences )

( DNWs )

Fandoms I've requested:

( Crossover Fandom )

( The Adventures of Tom Bombadil )

( Leaf By Niggle )

( Farmer Giles of Ham )

( Smith of Wootton Major )

( The Notion Club Papers )

( The Silmarillion )

( The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son )

( Sir Orfeo )

( Sir Gawain and the Green Knight )

My beloved wibbble has booked me a trip to Madrid for early March as a birthday present. It's the first holiday I'll have been on since January 2020 (when he took me to Aberdeen to play Skeeball in an arcades hall -- I love Skeeball and hadn't played it for years), and the first time I've been out of the country since our tenth anniversary trip to Amsterdam.

I also have another holiday coming up in February: a two-night trip away with some friends to a place near Loch Lomond. We're planning to spend a lot of time in the hot tub or roasting marshmallows over a fire, should be lovely.

So I'm feeling very spoiled and have lots of exciting things to look forward to, which actually seems to do wonders for staving off the winter SAD.

After a break for a while, I'm restarting my weightlifting in February. Quite eager to get back to it. I'm really hoping this is going to be the year I do better at fixing the various physical things that are going on, and doing some exercise is going to help with that.

Uni is going fairly well; I fell behind a bit due to being sick in November/December, but I'm catching back up. We are now working on the English Lit section of the course, reading Jane Eyre and Twelfth Night. I love both of those so I'm very happy with it. Next is the Creative Writing section, so it's a good time from here on out in this module.

Here's hoping my 44th year is a good one! I think it will be.

Time passes so much!

Anyway, quick update on me: I was knocked flat at the end of November by a really rough chest infection that left me useless for about three weeks, and I'm still not 100%. Apparently it was going around -- so many of my friends had this exact same thing at some point in the last couple of months.

Holidays have been quiet and nice, with an undercurrent of stress because, due to aforementioned chest infection, I didn't get my assignment in for uni before the holidays. I got an extension, but that means I have to do all the work now. :(

So, I have watched a few things and I'm going to give brief non-spoilery reviews of them!

Doctor Who: Enjoyed the specials, love Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor, very excited to see more of him. Finally the Doctor gets to be as fabulously queer on the outside as they have always been on the inside! Meh on Ruby Sunday at the minute but maybe she'll grow on me. Love her mum and grandma though.

Heaven Official's Blessing Season 2: OH MY GOD it's SO good! I love it I love it I love it, I want it to never end. I know some people are worried about the pacing, and the fact that if they keep going this slowly through the book, it's going to take like 8-10 seasons to get through it all, but frankly I feel the donghua team are here to adapt TGCF accurately and commit gay crimes, and there's plenty more of both! The English dub is vastly improved this season too; the writing is MUCH better.

Violent Night: John and I watched this movie the other night, and really enjoyed it! It was a little, um, spicy on the gore at times but the storyline was fun, the dialogue was excellent, and the character of Santa Claus really captured me. His backstory is revealed just enough to be tantalising, honestly! I want more about him!

Happy holidays and New Year to everyone, I hope you're all having a great time! I'm planning to participate in snowflake_challenge again next year, looking forward to seeing all of your posts for it as well.

Edit: I'm also planning to restart #fannish50 in the new year, maybe that will get me posting again. I've been so social-media-avoidant since I quit Twitter in August.

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 and enjoy it! Thank you so much, I hope you enjoy the experience too and are happy with what you make.

Of course my prompts are optional and just there to serve as a jumping-off point for you. Take what you make in whatever direction seems best or come up with something I didn't prompt at all, I'll love it!

Treats are very welcome (and enabled on AO3), including art treats and past prompts from previous exchanges.

( General Likes )

( Art preferences )

( Shipping and smut preferences )

( DNWs )

( Prompts for the fandoms I've requested: )

Please comment with as many of these as you would like for me to answer and I will!

1. What font do you write in? Do you actually care or is that just the default setting?

2. If you had to give up your keyboard and write your stories exclusively by hand, could you do it? If you already write everything by hand, a) are you a wizard and b) pen or pencil?

3. What is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

4. What’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

6. What is your darkest fear about writing?

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

9. Do you believe in ghosts? This isn’t about writing I just wanna know.

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

( the rest of the questions are below the cut )

Challenge #15: In your own space, opine on the future of fandom.

I'm not sure I have much to say that hasn't already been said better by others.

I think fandom will continue becoming more mainstream and there's every chance in another twenty years, you're as likely to be asked what fandom you're into as what sports team you support.

Even now, fandom isn't just one thing. It's too big for that. The sort of nebulous "science fiction and fantasy fandom" populated mainly by older, often white, and sometimes very conservative people who attend and run conventions, which tends to be what is generally meant by "fandom," is by far the minority of fandom now.

Now, fandom is defined far more by how you feel about a canon rather than what activities you do, and I think that will continue. No one asks you what you do for your favourite sports team when you say you're a fan of them, and this is also becoming the case for fandoms in general.

I think I need to write up a whole separate post on what we mean when we say "fandom." It's hard to talk about the future of something that I haven't yet fully defined in my own mind.

Challenge #13: In your own space, rec three fanworks that you did not create.

I'm going to rec some of my favourite stories that can be read without knowing the canon.

Digging for Orchids by betts
Fandom: Heaven Official's Blessing/Tian Guan Ci Fu
Rating: E
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Pairing: Hua Cheng/Xie Lian

A modern AU of Heaven Official's Blessing. Xie Lian is a Cdrama actor who was injured in a stunt gone wrong and then cancelled/blacklisted when provoked into a fit of rage about it. Afterward, he moves to Los Angeles and exists in a depressed haze, until a sexy art student shows up to house-share with him. An art student who, apparently, has been telling everyone they're married.

This fic does a great job of capturing what the vibes between Hua Cheng and Xie Lian might be in a modern context. I enjoyed how the author incorporated details of the backstory as elements in dramas Xie Lian has acted in. Although the plot is totally different, of course, the characters feel very similar. The sexual and romantic tension also builds beautifully through the story, with the fake-married elements providing a great excuse for the characters to act out what they are really feeling. You can read this fic canon-blind without worrying too much about spoilers; I think there's only one relatively minor spoiler for the actual plot of TGCF.


At Aphelion by gunjourui
Fandom: Word of Honor RPF aka Junzhe
Rating: E
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Pairing: Gong Jun/Zhang Zhehan

Junzhe in spaaaaaace! Zhang Zhehan, a human from Earth, falls into a wormhole and encounters Gong Jun, pilot of the Exa, and the rest of the Exa's crew and passengers.

This story is very easy to read as original fic. I love the worldbuilding, the space politics, the danger that the Ataraxians present as a superior fighting force, the wormhole thing in and of itself, and the characterisation.


Happy For Now by ScarlettStorm
Fandom: The Untamed
Rating: E
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Pairing: Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian (genderswapped)

Lan Wangji and Wei Wuxian are romance novelists, at a convention, sharing a bed. As you do.

Love the characterisation in particular. This story gets the vibes and their personalities so right. The story is full of humour and fun, as well as some good old-fashioned mutual pining.