rionaleonhart | Shutting The Fuck Up Is A Speciality Of Mine.

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Shutting The Fuck Up Is A Speciality Of Mine.

doreyg tagged me to answer these questions about fanfiction on Tumblr, and I thought I'd post my responses here as well! As I originally wrote this for a Tumblr audience, I'll probably end up reiterating some things I've already said on here.

How many works do you have on ao3?

On my main account, Riona, it’s 234. I also have 130 works across two pseuds on my secondary account, rionaleonhart (for older works and ficlets), so in total I’ve posted 364 works to AO3.

What’s your total word count?

My combined total on AO3 is 1,136,030 words. If I look at the documents in which I keep all my writing archived, it’s slightly higher - 1,266,834 words - because I haven’t posted everything I’ve ever written to AO3.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

My most popular fic, by a long way, is And Again (Danganronpa, Naegi is caught in a time loop, 7,227 kudos). This was the first fic I ever posted to AO3, and I was startled by the way it blew up! For a while I was slightly intimidated to post anything else in case I let everyone down.

The others in the top five: Life Imitates (FFXV, Noctis/Prompto, 5,566 kudos), Vessels (Deltarune, 2,635 kudos), Visitors (Assassin’s Creed/Sense8, 1,607 kudos) and Memory Error (Doki Doki Literature Club!, 1,551 kudos). Most of these were an accident of timing: I happened to post just when the fandom was starting to get big. The exception is Visitors, which mainly picked up readers because it ended up expanding into a vast cowritten series.

Interesting to note that four of my top five fics are gen; I wasn’t expecting that!

Do you respond to comments? Why/why not?

I used to be very bad at responding to comments, back in my Livejournal days - it was a struggle to think of what to say! - but nowadays I reply to every comment I get, unless they’re outright rude or I suspect that they’ve been left by a spambot. A nice comment can really make my day, so I always want to say thanks! Plus a lot of the things I write are a bit niche, so I’m always excited to have the opportunity to talk to other people in the same niche.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Probably New Game? (Until Dawn): Mike is caught in a time loop, endlessly trying to prevent his friends from dying, and there’s no way to get out.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Hmm! I tend to prefer hopeful endings to outright happy ones; it’s tough to think of an answer that feels right for this. I’ll just say Interweave (Lost, everyone/everyone), which ends with Jack accepting that he’s in love with pretty much everyone else on the island.

Do you write crossovers?

Not as many as I used to, but I still really enjoy crossing things over! I’ve only written one crossover this year (Always Believe, Death Note/Ace Attorney, Phoenix Wright defends Light in court), but in total I’ve written somewhere in the vicinity of fifty crossovers (including fusions).

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Fifteen years ago, I received a comment telling me 'FUCK YOU. SERIOUSLY. YOU SHOULD FUCKING DIE' on what I thought was a fairly innocuous Doctor Who/Silent Hill crossover. To this day I don’t know what my crime was.

I’ve had occasional negative comments since then, but that’s the only instance I can think of in which someone obviously just wanted to hurt me. A lot of people hated the concept of In Fainter Ink, my Last of Us Part II fic in which Ellie, Dina and Jesse navigate V-shaped polyamory, but most of the negative commenters were at least making some effort to engage with me in good faith. I still think it’s odd to read a polyamory fic and then tell the author you don’t want polyamory! But the commenters were nonetheless people who had genuine feelings about the story that they wanted to express, rather than just throwing hatred at me as a person.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I can’t write explicit sex at all! Most of my sex is fade-to-black. I do occasionally write 'onscreen' sex, but it tends to be very vague.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Three times that I know of! And Again, my Danganronpa time loop fic, was stolen twice; it was posted once to ffnet and once to Amino. Seems like a bad idea to steal my most popular fic; it meant that in both cases it was quickly recognised and people came to let me know!

My Doki Doki Literature Club! fic Memory Error was stolen, posted to Pastebin and shared with fans on some sort of 4chan-adjacent site. I didn’t bother taking any steps to get that one taken down; Pastebin seems such an impractical platform for pretending you wrote a fic that I could only shrug in bewilderment.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

A few times, usually into Russian! I’m always thrilled and honoured when someone wants to translate something I’ve written.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A small handful of times! I don’t recommend attempting to cowrite with me, because my attention span is a disaster and I may lose focus before the project is finished, but I’ve cowritten fics here and there.

What’s your all-time favourite ship?

I can’t say for certain whether Nate/Elena from Uncharted is my absolute favourite ship, but it’s always the pairing my mind goes to first when I’m asked about ships I like, so it’s definitely a strong contender. They’ve got such good chemistry!

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

There are a lot! In particular, I’ve got a thousand words of a Kingdom Hearts/Neon Genesis Evangelion crossover in which Axel, Roxas and Xion are EVA pilots; I still like the idea, but I don’t think I’m ever actually going to get it done, particularly as I’ve forgotten everything about Evangelion by this point.

What are your writing strengths?

I tend to be good at dialogue, I think, and at pinning down what a particular character would do in a particular situation. I’m also strong on technical aspects such as spelling and punctuation.

What are your writing weaknesses?

I struggle with description and scene-setting; a lot of my scenes end up feeling like characters conversing in a void. I can’t plot things in advance, which means I’m terrible at writing anything long; it’s a lot easier to write on the fly with short one-shots. I find it very difficult to write a good opening; I’m more comfortable when writing endings.

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

Like many things, it can be done well or badly! It mainly depends on how it’s employed, and on the audience for your fic. If you include a lot of text that you don’t expect the audience to be able to read, it might become distracting or frustrating.

Basically, if someone asks the protagonist of your Spanish fic a question in German, and the protagonist doesn’t understand German, it makes sense to write the line in German. If the German speaker then gets into a long conversation with the protagonist’s German-speaking friend, it might be better for the fic’s flow to gloss over the conversation and have the friend explain it to the protagonist later, rather than writing the whole German conversation out word-for-word.

What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Pokémon! When I was twelve, I wrote a fic about Definitely Not Me going on a Pokémon journey with Definitely Not My Friends and Family. There was a subplot in which Team Rocket were abducting people and turning them into furries.

What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley is the latest canon to consume my mind. I’m working on a fic about Andrew and Ashley’s time imprisoned in their home together, so I hope to get that finished before long!

What’s your favourite fic you’ve written?

I’ve written a lot; it’s hard to narrow it down! I don’t want to spend hours overthinking this, so I’ll go with the first fic that comes to mind: Shackles. It’s a Death Note fic about Light and L being incredibly toxic soulmates, and I had a lot of fun with it.

I've really slowed down on writing crossovers, thinking about it. I should send someone to Silent Hill at some point; it's been years!

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in which Team Rocket were abducting people and turning them into furries

I'm intrigued. What was the endgame of this evil scheme?

1. Turn people into furries.
2. ???
3. Profit!

Good question! What I can tell you is that, according to a Team Rocket member, turning people into furries will 'create massive amounts of energy. Enough to easily take the world.'

There's presumably some sort of intermediate step between 'generate loads of energy' and 'TAKE OVER THE WORLD', but it's never made clear. I'm also not entirely sure how merging people with Pokémon is supposed to generate energy. So, yes, there are still a couple of '???'s in the agenda.

Your post made me realize I don't think I've ever written a true crossover? Unless you consider people in different sports being in the same AU fic that I wrote years ago for a friend's birthday?

Anyway, it's cool to see some of your thoughts about fanfiction and your history with it considering how long you've been doing it. Congrats on the long stay and hope the creative juices keep flowing :D

I didn't write any crossovers for my first few years in fandom, but it really opened the floodgates when I first gave it a go! They can be a lot of fun.

Thank you! ♥

Over a million words is SO COOL and so inspiring :D

a lot of my scenes end up feeling like characters conversing in a void

Sad relatable high five, except I didn't realise where in the void I was in relation to you and miss.

Thank you so much!

Sad relatable high five, except I didn't realise where in the void I was in relation to you and miss.

This is both beautiful and tragic.

The comments on In Fainter Ink still baffle me, but I like your gracious response to the whole thing. I'll just have to love that fic enough for everyone.

It's really puzzling! It's very rare for me to get negative comments; what is it about that fic specifically? I would not have expected it to be the most controversial thing I've ever written, but here we are.

I appreciate your support!

The WIP I want to finish but need some serious kick up the arse in order to do so is one I started in 2010 involving Sun having ended up join everyone in DHARMA era rather than remain in 2007 - I got about as far as where Ben is shot.

Then Smokey McSmokeFace intervened.

After The ~~Bloodbath~~ Candidate, I lost heart and wasn't sure how best to continue because I knew the one ending I didn't want was the ending that Sun and Jin actually got. But at the same time, I don't really want to abandon it altogether either.

Crossovers brings me to the eventual revenge I did get on old Smokey McSmokeFace (after 2000 years of him being desperate to leave the island, I did quite enjoy letting him think he got his wish only for him to find himself trapped in the FROM town with smiley monster and his band of merry men.)

As for the rude commenter, my money is on a troll in high school. That was definitely what I thought about the one that was leaving me lots of comments like that on a The Flash fic (said troll was known at the time for leaving that shit for anyone who didn't take it up on its "Do you take requests?" comments, and also didn't like the main character - well, it was obvious from the summary that Nora was the main character in that one, so if you hate her, don't read it, fool.)

Thing is, if it had been civil, I would have engaged with it as to why I didn't need its "corrections" (One was a name it thought I got wrong; in fact, the character hyphenated her mother's name to her own as a result of events in the alternate timeline, it was going to be explained fully in the next chapter, but was a conscious choice and not a mistake. One was objecting to the way a character reacted to an event; troll was basing that on something that happened in an episode, however I wrote that chapter and posted it before the episode aired, so I didn't have the context when writing that the troll had when reading. Would I have done it differently had the episode aired first? Possibly, but I made the choice not to rewrite the fic. And the other was just a difference of opinion rather than anything being wrong in the first place - "one troll doesn't think you should include an Earth-1 version of an Earth-38 character in an earth-1 fic" isn't a good enough reason for me not to do it. I wasn't writing for the troll.) But for someone who was going to be rude, I wasn't wasting my time.

I can see how 'The Candidate' could have been discouraging! Good luck with your WIP, if you do pick it up again.

I'm sorry you got rude comments! It's always so frustrating when someone goes 'hey, you got this wrong' based on a detail that only showed up in canon after the fic was written.

I don’t recommend attempting to cowrite with me, because my attention span is a disaster and I may lose focus before the project is finished, but I’ve cowritten fics here and there.

Well I enjoyed it, so there

♥!!! No regrets. (Possibly some regrets.)

This was a lot of fun to read, both on here and on tumblr! Thank you for answering it for me. :D

Mean comments are always so confusing, because they can get SO intense. I would not describe myself as a particularly chill person, but I cannot imagine the impulse that leads people to charge into the comments of a fanfic screaming.

It's amazing how many lovely translators are out there! There are definitely a lot of Russian ones, and it's super flattering when they want to translate something.

I enjoyed answering, and reading your answers as well! Thank you for the tag ♥

Mean comments are always so confusing

They really are! Why be rude to someone who's writing and sharing stories purely for the love of it? If the free stories someone has offered to the world don't live up to your personal standards, you could just read something you like instead, rather than taking time out of your day to be unkind to a stranger!

They really are! Why be rude to someone who's writing and sharing stories purely for the love of it? If the free stories someone has offered to the world don't live up to your personal standards, you could just read something you like instead, rather than taking time out of your day to be unkind to a stranger!

Exactly! I've read plenty of fanfic I ended up not liking over the years, and even a few that I've found borderline offensive (like everybody in this corner of the internet). I then stop reading it, don't leave a comment and go find something I do like. There are better things to get mad about, if you have to get mad at all!

The dialogue in other languages thing is tricky to navigate. I've been reading a ton of Star Wars fic recently and some people seem to be able to balance use of Mandalorian while others definitely are not. I don't think I've ever tried it, just had Opinions about other people doing it.

I've never tried it myself either, although that might just be because I can't write in anything but English! I'm surprisingly bad at learning languages for someone so interested in linguistics.

It's an interesting question, but it seems odd that it was included in this meme! All the other questions are about your own writing; it's strange that there's just one question about your opinion on a specific writing detail that might not show up in your own work.

I'm going to jump in on this one with a cringy story.

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

The earliest fandom that I ever settled in for a while was The Mediator fandom. I wrote a fic about Maria de Silva, with all her dialogue in Spanish. For what it's worth, I don't regret that choice, but here is the author's note I wrote explaining this:

"The reason I use Spanish is because it sounds better and I imagine that, in those times, they would have mostly spoke in Spanish. I get the hunch mostly from Jesse, who seems to know a lot of Spanish but only uses it -now- to curse."

Politely in the 20 plus years nobody has picked me up on that actually, Jesse (and Maria) speak Spanish because they are, y'know, Hispanic. What on earth, young me. Did I think that all America spoke in Spanish in the 1700s or whenever it was? I really have no excuses! For what it's worth, I think I was trying to say "Spanish was his first language but now he doesn't use it as such and Maria is his cousin", but I expressed it so badly that it sounds like the former.

(In fairness, Jesse's name is Hector, which probably did not sound like a very Spanish name to young me. The de Silva is very Spanish sounding though! It's still not an excuse!)

I love this story. Back in the day, when everyone in America mainly spoke Spanish!

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