#pen caps

reminder that it's fandom etiquette to create a nonexistent term from combining the names of the ship: not just to make it easier to search for, but also to make it easier to exclude from searches

making your ship have a real word for a term just really is bad fandom hygiene

something like glimmbow is way better than glow. something like stellch would be better than starch

google:

[Also, for those who don’t have a link to my AO3, it’s ketherphorbia.]

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

If we’re counting series as a single unit, I think... nine? There’s a couple of indefinite WIPs among those, too. Five of those fics are for a single continuity.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

391,090. ...222k of that is Anatomy alone.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Purkinje Effect (42)

The Anatomy of Melancholy, First Instar: Lexington & Concord (34)*

“Running Interference” (9)

Amalgamation (7)

The 704 (7)

Donor (5)

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try my best to, if even just to say thanks for the moment of the reader’s time.

5. What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Of what I’ve posted on AO3 and actually completed, probably “Asking for Trouble.” Of what’s been lost to time and WIPs, I still haven’t got around to posting the rest of The 704 because it’s been in perpetual revision for almost eight years now; never happy enough with it. (If you’re truly interested in that series, the most complete upload of it is on @the-uptake and comes with a strict 18+ only label: heed all warnings or you’re guaranteed to have a very unwanted bad time.) The Uptake has been seeing most of its action in the past four years with its Fallout AU continuity (Purk/Anatomy/Kingdom).

6. What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

I want to say First Instar, if not just because it ends on multiple strokes of closure. It’s one of the messiest things I’ve written, though.

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what's the craziest one you've written?

Pokémon & Roadside Picnic. I dabble more in AUs than crossovers, but the prospect of that one really resonated with me when it came to me. It’s a reboot of my first PokéFic, RoseIII. It’s as weird as it sounds. (As a side note, The Uptake is technically Batman Beyond fanfic that became original fic then was later rebooted with a Beyond AU. )

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Hoooo boy. Mostly on my purely smut fics. Mostly because I tend to subvert or mishmash fetish tropes in ways that Do Not Blend for most. Trout in my peanut butter? It’s more likely than you think.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Awful stuff. Repulsive. Chances are at least one of your hard passes is in my existing tags (or at least among pre-chapter warning labels).

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not yet, to my knowledge.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not yet, to my knowledge.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I tried to co-write a comic in high school; we’d switch off page-to-page which of us wrote and which of us drew it. It never took off cause he and I drifted apart abruptly and didn’t keep in touch. I don’t know that I’d be able to handle a purely text-based collab. I’m much more of a “parallel play” kind of fella.

13. What's your all-time favorite ship?

I’m probably best known in fandoms for my love of DestinyShipping (Yu-Gi-Oh! GX), though it’s for cosplay not writing/art. I may not have been particularly active in any YGO fandom for many years now--last thing I remember watching was the pilot episode for ZeXaL, and I haven’t played since Synchros were new--but DestinyShipping still holds a very specific high regard in my heart. Other top contenders are Barry Hatch x Reaver (Fable), Alucard x Luke Valentine (Hellsing), and uh. James Ballard x Robert Vaughn (J.G. Ballard’s Crash). (Oh, and Sabrina x Giovanni of Pokémon, but I think I’ve only seen two other people ever express any interest in it, so I’m just leaving it as a side note.)

14. What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There’s a lot of WIPs that feel like I’m spinning my wheels, even when I manage to tack on a new chapter. My perpetual WIP will probably always be RoseIII/The Husbandmen, though. It’s only been “complete” once, back in 2004. I reboot it almost as often as DC reboots. I believe that complete upload is not particularly difficult to locate: though I personally deem it inadvisable for a lot of reasons (mostly “it’s long” and “it’s irreparably Byzantine”), I located it on BMG back in 2018 sometime iirc.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I doesn’t afraid of anything, I’m a pretty cool guy. I let myself get grotesque and messy. I also try to swing really weird, out-there concepts. Ambition and shamelessness? Lol Rip.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I get bogged down in worldbuilding way too easily, and often feel like I have drifted far from plot advancement. Keeping worldbuilding details strictly tethered to significance to character and plot is a struggle. I just like places too much. I’ve also got a tendency to start fics going solely off a concept, hoping I’ll figure out where once I get there. More often than not, I just lose the plot in every sense. I guess it all boils down to me having lots of ideas, but the execution falls through.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Awesome, fabulous, I love it. Footnotes/hovers with the translation are the ideal for them. If the inclusion is a block-quoted instance of a character reading text, I think it’s neat to see the text as-is in its intended language, down to the accurate alphabet. If it’s dialogue, though, using the accurate alphabet feels awkward. (Next best thing is using the translation for what’s said, while having a specific quote-mark style for dialogue in another language, like fancy brackets or special formatting. But sometimes the original language has got specific idioms that don’t translate to the other native-narration language.)

18. What's the first fandom you wrote for?

Rats of NIMH. It was an AU with cats, except rat-sized. First fandom I actually posted online for, though, was Pokémon. Damn, 1999 was way too long ago.

19. What's your favorite fic you've written?

I’m still head over heels proud of “Running Interference.” I had the idea bounce around in my head almost a year before I finally sat down, outlined it, and wrote it, all in one night.