alias_sqbr

A Different Roll Of The Dice (19177 words) by sqbr
Chapters: 3/3
Fandom: Baldur's Gate 3
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Astarion/Tav
Characters: Astarion, Tav
Additional Tags: Gnome Tav, Gender Non-Conforming Tav, Fantasy Racism, Slavery, canon typical references to slavery, canon typical references to sexual trauma, the slavery isn't a core plot point this is just for people who want to filter it out, Getting Together, Fluff and Angst
Summary:

Whatever Astarion might think of gnomes, he wasn't going to insult one to their face when it might get him into trouble.

Not on purpose, anyway.

I haven't written anything complete in ages. Turns out the trick was to completely ignore what anyone else might want and just follow my heart. Which has predictably resulted in only a moderate smattering of feedback, non-binary gnome romance being a niche genre even when it involves Fandom Fave Astarion, but I'm still very happy.

I'm slowly filling out square_bromides with my old works. Each post includes the original AO3 tags in the text, but I'm also adding new dreamwidth tags, which will help anyone wanting to see all my works of a particular type.

So now I have to decide what people will be interested in, and how much detail I can be bothered going into. Which has me thinking about different ways of tagging and categorising fanworks in general.
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I've been pondering how to resolve how focused Jonathon and Mina are on each other, but also shipping Mina/Lucy, and also thinking about how the the whole thing with Lucy feels like a timeloop story or the bad ending of a "save the character" narrative game.

I think a straightforward retelling as a branching game where you play as Mina figuring out how to save Lucy could be fun. But here's another, odder option that popped into my head.
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Via phlebasphoenician: First Line Game: List the first lines of the last ten (10) stories you published. Look to see any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any. Then tag some friends.
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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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After two years I have finally finished my beefleaf fixit fic!

Into Darker Water (114892 words) by sqbr
Chapters: 27/27
Fandom: 天官赐福 - 墨香铜臭 | Tiān Guān Cì Fú - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: He Xuan/Shi Qingxuan
Characters: Hè Xuán, Shī Qīngxuán, A bunch of beggar OCs
Additional Tags: Post-Canon Fix-It, Fanfiction, Post-Canon, genderfluid shi qing xuan, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, the self indulgent wish fulfilment of fighting systemic poverty, with good will and literal magic
Summary: There's an old man at the temple with a dark look in his eyes, and Shi Qingxuan doesn't want to admit to themself why it's so familiar.
I'm pretty happy with it, but it will make no sense if you haven't read Heaven Official's Blessing and be no fun if you don't ship the pairing.

Feels good to be DONE, I haven't finished anything lengthy in AGES. And this is pretty lengthy, I've never written anything over 100K before! Or anything quite so sexually explicit, for that matter (It's super tame, my stuff is just usually even tamer haha)

One of my reasons for writing this fic was that none of the other enemies to lovers slow burn fics I'd read for the pairing quite hit the spot, so my philosophy was to just wallow in whatever emotions the characters were feeling until I didn't feel like wallowing in them any more. That turned to out to take quite a while, but was pretty satisfying.

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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phlebasphoenician tagged me (which is cool! I like being tagged in interesting memes even though I never tag anyone else) Posting on dreamwidth since it's long.

rules: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. send me an ask with the title that most intrigues you and i’ll post a little snippet of it or tell you something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

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I got this fantastic remix of a little painting I did years ago of a jar (with hearts inside it) and never expected to inspire anything so cool:

Long Live The Heart (That Knows What It Wants) (1600 words) by geckoholic
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Dark Magic, Fantasy
Summary: The oldest house in town sits not in its center, but right at the edge of the town limits. Rumor has it the old building is cursed, that whoever enters will never again be allowed to leave, but Teddy considers that nonsense.

Something I love doing with art is depicting single moments that imply some interesting broader story, and I love when authors create their own version of what that broader story might be. Especially when it's dark femslash :D (My picture didn't even have any people in it! A+ extrapolation)

And I drew this picture of Aveline and Isabela from Dragon Age 2, based on the very sweet Make This Easy by ziskandra. Pretty proud of the rain effect in this one.

So. We have a 'villain' character who has done objectively terrible things. In a rigid good-vs-evil dichotomy, they would generally be classified as evil.

And we have a fic where this 'villain' is now the sympathetic protagonist, possibly involving some sort of redemption arc or AU.

There are some villains I just can't read such fic about, but in this case I am open to the idea.

My preference is for the fic to not have a rigid good-vs-evil dichotomy, and instead either see pretty much everyone as having the potential to be good, or cheerfully wallow in shades of grey. There can be some glossing over of the villain's sharper edges, but for the most part I want the moral framework to be consistent with the events of canon, just one which has space for sympathy towards characters as "bad" as the protagonist.

But a great many fics just create a new moral framework with it's own rigid good-vs-evil dichotomy, and set things up so the 'villain' is now on the side of Good, and other canon characters are on the side of evil, even though their actions in canon aren't significantly worse than the villain's.

Which is perfectly valid as an approach, but unless I think canon is wrong about the villain doing bad things, I will not enjoy this kind of narrative at all.

Note that this is about fanfic based on an existing canon. My feelings on original works which turn bad guys into good guys etc are broadly similar, but harder to sum up.
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