alias_sqbr

Haven't done one of these posts in a bit. Fanart, fanfic, and a guide.

Mass Effect/Pride and Prejudice crossover, Homestuck, isabel_lunnen's unpublished novel, Blake's 7, MDZS/The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Jack Jeanne, Howl's Moving Castle, TGCF/Heaven Official's Blessing

Includes me being inspired to try readerfic, which took me by surprise!
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So what with everything happening at the AO3 (see synonymous) I thought it would be good to create dreamwidth crossposts of my AO3 works. And thus: square_bromides

Currently I've just posted my work with the oldest posting date, the cracky Stargate fancomic Mafdet Slayer of Serpents, which I'm still pretty happy with 14 years later. I don't have any set schedule in mind but will probably post in fits and bursts.

I have 216 works at sqbr, some of which are Very Long, so I don't know if I'll get around to archiving all of them, but the only way to start is by beginning!

The name is silly ('bromide' is an old fashioned word for a boring story) but there aren't a lot of relevant words starting with 'br', and once I saw the diagram of bromide crystals I couldn't not use it. Purple AND square!

Because I had fun playing with the data about my statistics from flamebyrd's bookmarklet when I was doing the AO3 Averages meme.

In short: Hits seem to not be very closely correlated to word count except for very long fics, which I think is caused by people coming back to multi-chapter fics multiple times, eg each time a new chapter is added.

Fanart seems to get about 2/3 to a half of the feedback that fanfic does by most metrics, and even fewer when it comes to bookmarks. But the feedback on fanfic is also more inconsistent, possibly because most of my fanart was posted for exchanges, where you're generally guaranteed SOME feedback. The most popular works by all metrics are long, multi-chapter fics.

And the thing people on the AO3 like least is Mass Effect fic with an unflattering depiction of Commander Shepard.

At least based on the data to hand. YMMV ;)
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I was tagged by tree/ hoidn but I'd been vaguely pondering doing what I think is the same meme after seeing it a bunch on dreamwidth. So I'm not tagging anyone because I can't remember who's done it already but have enjoyed seeing everyone's responses and would enjoy seeing some more!
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I was poking around the Japanese art site Pixiv and there was surprisingly little art for some MXTX characters/pairings I like, so I finally got over my self consciousness and uploaded some of my art, eventually going through my art tumblr and posting a bunch of my better pieces from the last few years. I've gotten a smattering of likes which is good enough for me.

The site is pretty easy to use in English, especially if you're just bookmarking other people's art. And then you get some very pretty recs! You can see my bookmarks here if you have an account. You don't need an account to see this little article about MDZS which has some lovely fanart.

Figuring out the Japanese tags for non-Japanese canons can be challenging, in some cases I gave up and used English. Luckily, for the MXTX novels they use the Chinese spellings(*), and from there I could find the pairing tags.

Two annoyances are that the site keeps randomly not loading, and that free accounts can't edit an image once it's posted, though you can edit the tags and notes.

I copied over my existing author's notes, which are generally like 90% image description, but I feel a little weird about it. The odds of anyone who needs an image description AND reads English stumbling across my art on a Japanese art site seems low, and I imagine all that English text is just a confusing annoyance for the average only-kinda-English-fluent Pixiv user. But they can hopefully still enjoy the art!

Since I'm an inveterate tweaker I'll probably only upload art every now and then, when it's old enough that I'm unlikely to edit it again.

(*)I know Japanese people sometimes write Chinese words/names using the same characters as in Chinese, and sometimes don't, and am incredibly fuzzy on the difference.

Wow I haven't done one of these in a while! Art for Dragon Age 2, Animal Crossing, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, Samurai Love Ballad: Party, Cafe Enchante, She-ra, and fic for Dragon Age Inquisition.
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FFA is an anonymous forum where a lot of unfortunate stuff gets posted but searching for "she-ra" was definitely a good choice. Here's the collections of fanart I encountered, I haven't looked at all of it but there's a lot of cute stuff from what I saw.

Spoilers in the art and my commentary.
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I am very very slowly learning how to draw kimono-y sleeves.

Original art, Venom, Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation/The Untamed, Heaven Official's Blessing, Hakuoki, Samurai Love Ballad: Party
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DeviantArt have changed their setup and I can't find the preview images, if they're even still a thing. I'm too lazy to make my own, so it's just text links today!

One fic for Interviews with Monster Girls, original art, and fanart for Labyrinth, Heaven Official's Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation
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So, this is mostly for my own future benefit because I keep forgetting my own methods. But I'll try to explain things enough that it might be useful to other people too. You should be moderately competent with whatever art program you're using, and have some idea about colours and shading.

My basic philosophy is: realism is boring, and mistakes add texture.


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