![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caihongthis is going to have no proper structure whatsoever so bear with me.
total no. of fics: 16 (including that awful taekook i posted just for shits and giggles)
total wc: 96831 (the goal is 100k by the end of this year!)
total hits: 12500 (what a neat little number)
kudos: 1319
bookmarks: 314
hey! pretty proud of myself! though i've got (1) official fic with a deadline and what feels like a thousand birthday fics that will probably not land on said birthdays, these numbers will increase somewhat. i've always been a tad too attached to stats the moment i found out about them, and following my proper resurgence onto twitter that wasn't just being a rt-bot for the better portion of four years on the app, i've become hyper-aware of them and reception feels like a funny thing to me. but one thing is for sure- i haven't developed a terrible relationship with writing which is a good thing! i don't want to flex this because we all have different perceptions of and relationships with writing, especially with something as... volatile (?) is that the right term (?) or just frankly, as weird as rpf, and mine happens to be pretty detached. although i haven't updated my markren wip from march in a hot minute, nor followed up on several sequels and spinoffs like i thought i would, it hasn't deterred me much from writing at all. i haven't double-dipped in any pairings save for markren, jukev, and markno, which i mentioned on twitter for my ao3 wrapped, and i think that's reflective of my sag sun perhaps [hayley pretends to know what she's talking about]- as in my interest for them is very passionate and long-lasting! versus the other pairings i've written for for which my interest in them peaks and then ebbs quite rapidly. me writing one fic per ship doesn't have me thinking that i need to do them more justice in another, because i am truly unbothered to write another fic when i already poured my heart and soul into the one i did publish. so perhaps laziness is the key to ignoring the flaws in your writing! i'm joking. half.
but anyways, despite 11/16 fics being for nct, i've hit my peak with them and it's been a rapid descent i'll say. think an endothermic reaction pathway (i'm sorry my brain is only wired to make nerdy chemistry references). and now, my main priority is tbz fic! i have so many ideas for them, and it's refreshing to step into a terribly under-funded fandom- in that there are not a lot of investments into fic for them which is surprising considering their... profound amounts of fan service and less-than-straight (to the rps/rpf eye of course) interactions but i digress. it's fresh territory for me to make my way around and make my mark almost? not to say the end-goal for me as a writer is to be remembered, as if i'm the emotionally-repressed male protagonist in a snooty film, but it'd be nice to be recognised for new things i can come up with for them. they also present a new canvas for me to explore, with dynamics that are quite different from nct's which is terribly exciting for me as a writer who has so many ideas all the time. i am creative to a fault but this is one of my favourite parts about myself [shaky peace sign]
i also wrote my first wlw fic! that's crazy news! you love me with your bones is one of my favourite fics, perhaps the favourite for the year if i'm just thinking about it. though i wrote it with hui on my mind, it became my own cathartic projection of my relationship that never was. i was going through it at the time, but i look at ylmwyb fondly now. even re-read time and time again when i get a particularly nice comment or bookmark. but it broke and truly obliterated my fear of screwing up wlw fiction- sure it took some goading to even start but once i did, it came like second nature to me. i guess becoming more in tune with my sexuality and having an experience to base it off was pretty helpful, but it was still with hui in mind, so that helped tremendous amounts. if you're reading this, i don't mean to come off creepy trying to attune myself to your every online-presented mannerism, interest, and etc. but! you were a great piece of inspiration to go off so it was really enjoyable and relatively easy to write :>
i wrote trans character fics ! woooooooo! that also took time, research, and involved some initial fears because i didn't think cis people were allowed to write trans characters for fear of being offensive. but after reading one of xavi's tweets about it at the very beginning of this year, before we were even friends like we are now and they were just 'omg ao3 user newheros' to me, when i searched and read up on valuable reddit forums and did my own personal research on top, it really isn't difficult nor should be ignored at all. as i wrote gay fanfiction for men i did not know at all, while not identifying as a man nor gay, i could write trans characters as well, respectfully and with a broader mindset so on so forth. so i went and said, yeah kevin moon is a trans boy let's go. i also wrote changmin as trans and non-binary which while did not have a chance to truly shine in either fic, i was happy with that too! i hope i do not need to preface this, but i will anyway- i am in no way presenting myself as the pioneer for all cis people writing trans characters, god knows that that's a criminal lie but i want to let other cisgender friends know that hey! you can do it too. and the trans community will support you all the way if you do it with the respect that it deserves.
the shakespeare x truman show collab that no one asked for but i delivered. taking the tempest as being one of my focus texts at school for the time of quarantine, and one of the films i've never forgotten despite me watching it three years ago, i went and made something magical i think. that experience truly made me more immune to stats, because that au was ... something other. not only was it for a rarepair, but it was such a fucking WACKY alternate universe that i couldn't describe it to you now even if i tried. but i loved my writing style, and found a home in it. sure they were stress-writes and just done before exams were galloping at me at full speed, but they meant a lot to me. the universe i created had never been done before, and it was something that people did enjoy and one bookmark said 'a lot to think about' which is something i take in stride. taking my superficial critiques of renjun studio ghibli protagonist that has almost become canonified in ncity, mixed with the incredibly meta contexts of both the truman show and the tempest, both being of entirely different mediums (film vs 17th century play), the possibilities were truly endless. and count on me to chuck in a few supernatural elements aka gods of an ambiguous identity who were drunk and apathetic to everything around them that wasn't about themselves. so yeah it's a milkshake of hayley's niche interests but i re-read it often and smile while doing it. i've never had difficulties re-reading my own work, because i truly do write for myself. my being weirdly sensitive to stats and yet not giving a damn about reception is just one complex characteristic of silly little hayley that makes me human i think. but yeah. this thing of darkness i call mine is one of my favourite series ever and i think i will carry that with me to the grave.
participated in two fic events! nnbb and director's cut ! nnbb was my first fic exchange and boy was it a fun time. i learnt how to use discord properly, how to sprint for the first time, realised that this is common thing that occurs and i had been dead to the world when i wrote for weishen fest and 00ff r1, and made many friends along the way! i think 85% of my friends on twitter came from that exchange and i wouldn't have it any other way. although my own gift for nnbb fell through due to ~things~ i don't mourn it- lots of markno fics around the world for me to consume and enjoy and it wasn't too catered towards my interests anyway. not a bad thing! but not hayley-specific enough for me to regret any decisions i made ... uh iykyk. but anyways! nnbb was a great time and it truly seems like a world ago. and director's cut! alas... an interesting time. procrastinated it a helluva lot and had exams to prepare for so it was a bit hellish to be honest. but i came out with a fluffy, fun jensung band au which i'm glad a lot of people liked apart from me! considering no one knew k-on save for... victoria? i consider that a win. and jess beta'ed for me for the first time which i think catalysed great things for our friendship. she even made a playlist for it! my heart hurts. but yeah, probably was a bonding thing for the jiemeis as well which is always a good thing albeit the pain we went through along the way.
summertime is meant to fall in love ! wow my asian-australian piece de resistance. not a lot of reads for that one, but the happiness it gave me will always always surpass it. i wrote about mine and my best friend's shared experience as first gen (well immigrant in her case but semantics) asian-aussies, and children of immigrants, and it was great, not only in the comments i received from my fellow aussies, but also in the fact that i published it and showed it off to the world no matter if they'll read it or not. i've become so accustomed to the as-am way and while it's very valid and important to read, i was like, why can't i do that for myself? if people can rack in so many reads for their incredibly specific, lowkey hard to understand if the reader is not an overachieving asian kid in the states (i don't mean to sound bitter SFKHK this is truiy just how i perceived it back when i was an avid reader of such fic), why don't i make my own attempt? granted we don't have half as many co-curriculars down under, or at least that were offered to me, i still believe summertime was so important for myself to write. representation for my kind if you will, and i'll confidently, despite with a small voice, say it was one of the firsts of its kind. jeno doesn't do debating but he does curse the fact that his parents inadvertently forced him to take 4u maths and physics and that he had to go to ace and matrix and spend thousands of their hard-earned money to attend while also doing training for athletics and swimming on school nights and dawns on weekends and being a sad fuck and yearning for his best friend while he was at it so yeah . have that. i'm sorry i don't mean to be rude (2) but i want to start a revolution in where you read something like this and you make do with what you can to make sense of what /we/ do at school- it's not rocket science for sure but hey! love me! pick me! choose me! learn about me! i say this with major positive connotations. do ask me if you'd like! we can compare experiences! that will be fun if it doesn't spark traumatic memories for you /srs.
a trend: a lot of my fics this year were inspired by songs and seasons. i make my spotify playlists for two-three months (aka seasons), my profound titles being 'warm' for summer, 'wind' for autumn, 'morning dew' for autumn's transition to spring, 'home stretch' for spring, 'hayfever' and 'naitre' for hayley birth season spring, 'half n half' for spring to summer. though i had a pretty depressing playlist called 'end of the world' for quarantine times, i mainly revisited the aforementioned playlists for my inspiration for many of these works. songs are a great source of inspiration for me and for many others, but i feel so much when i listen to one song on repeat, or an album/body of work on repeat for a long period of time. it lets your emotions become entrenched and makes for great writing :> coupled with my influences, whether from academic texts and things i'm studying, to my rapidly appearing interests and non-academic facts and tidbits i've learnt, and my concerning devotion to figurative language, my silly sense of humour and other bits and bobs, you get a hayley-trademark fic!
i hope you didn't get hurt reading all that. i know i tend to ramble but hey you signed up for this when you subscribed to this silly old thing.
total no. of fics: 16 (including that awful taekook i posted just for shits and giggles)
total wc: 96831 (the goal is 100k by the end of this year!)
total hits: 12500 (what a neat little number)
kudos: 1319
bookmarks: 314
hey! pretty proud of myself! though i've got (1) official fic with a deadline and what feels like a thousand birthday fics that will probably not land on said birthdays, these numbers will increase somewhat. i've always been a tad too attached to stats the moment i found out about them, and following my proper resurgence onto twitter that wasn't just being a rt-bot for the better portion of four years on the app, i've become hyper-aware of them and reception feels like a funny thing to me. but one thing is for sure- i haven't developed a terrible relationship with writing which is a good thing! i don't want to flex this because we all have different perceptions of and relationships with writing, especially with something as... volatile (?) is that the right term (?) or just frankly, as weird as rpf, and mine happens to be pretty detached. although i haven't updated my markren wip from march in a hot minute, nor followed up on several sequels and spinoffs like i thought i would, it hasn't deterred me much from writing at all. i haven't double-dipped in any pairings save for markren, jukev, and markno, which i mentioned on twitter for my ao3 wrapped, and i think that's reflective of my sag sun perhaps [hayley pretends to know what she's talking about]- as in my interest for them is very passionate and long-lasting! versus the other pairings i've written for for which my interest in them peaks and then ebbs quite rapidly. me writing one fic per ship doesn't have me thinking that i need to do them more justice in another, because i am truly unbothered to write another fic when i already poured my heart and soul into the one i did publish. so perhaps laziness is the key to ignoring the flaws in your writing! i'm joking. half.
but anyways, despite 11/16 fics being for nct, i've hit my peak with them and it's been a rapid descent i'll say. think an endothermic reaction pathway (i'm sorry my brain is only wired to make nerdy chemistry references). and now, my main priority is tbz fic! i have so many ideas for them, and it's refreshing to step into a terribly under-funded fandom- in that there are not a lot of investments into fic for them which is surprising considering their... profound amounts of fan service and less-than-straight (to the rps/rpf eye of course) interactions but i digress. it's fresh territory for me to make my way around and make my mark almost? not to say the end-goal for me as a writer is to be remembered, as if i'm the emotionally-repressed male protagonist in a snooty film, but it'd be nice to be recognised for new things i can come up with for them. they also present a new canvas for me to explore, with dynamics that are quite different from nct's which is terribly exciting for me as a writer who has so many ideas all the time. i am creative to a fault but this is one of my favourite parts about myself [shaky peace sign]
i also wrote my first wlw fic! that's crazy news! you love me with your bones is one of my favourite fics, perhaps the favourite for the year if i'm just thinking about it. though i wrote it with hui on my mind, it became my own cathartic projection of my relationship that never was. i was going through it at the time, but i look at ylmwyb fondly now. even re-read time and time again when i get a particularly nice comment or bookmark. but it broke and truly obliterated my fear of screwing up wlw fiction- sure it took some goading to even start but once i did, it came like second nature to me. i guess becoming more in tune with my sexuality and having an experience to base it off was pretty helpful, but it was still with hui in mind, so that helped tremendous amounts. if you're reading this, i don't mean to come off creepy trying to attune myself to your every online-presented mannerism, interest, and etc. but! you were a great piece of inspiration to go off so it was really enjoyable and relatively easy to write :>
i wrote trans character fics ! woooooooo! that also took time, research, and involved some initial fears because i didn't think cis people were allowed to write trans characters for fear of being offensive. but after reading one of xavi's tweets about it at the very beginning of this year, before we were even friends like we are now and they were just 'omg ao3 user newheros' to me, when i searched and read up on valuable reddit forums and did my own personal research on top, it really isn't difficult nor should be ignored at all. as i wrote gay fanfiction for men i did not know at all, while not identifying as a man nor gay, i could write trans characters as well, respectfully and with a broader mindset so on so forth. so i went and said, yeah kevin moon is a trans boy let's go. i also wrote changmin as trans and non-binary which while did not have a chance to truly shine in either fic, i was happy with that too! i hope i do not need to preface this, but i will anyway- i am in no way presenting myself as the pioneer for all cis people writing trans characters, god knows that that's a criminal lie but i want to let other cisgender friends know that hey! you can do it too. and the trans community will support you all the way if you do it with the respect that it deserves.
the shakespeare x truman show collab that no one asked for but i delivered. taking the tempest as being one of my focus texts at school for the time of quarantine, and one of the films i've never forgotten despite me watching it three years ago, i went and made something magical i think. that experience truly made me more immune to stats, because that au was ... something other. not only was it for a rarepair, but it was such a fucking WACKY alternate universe that i couldn't describe it to you now even if i tried. but i loved my writing style, and found a home in it. sure they were stress-writes and just done before exams were galloping at me at full speed, but they meant a lot to me. the universe i created had never been done before, and it was something that people did enjoy and one bookmark said 'a lot to think about' which is something i take in stride. taking my superficial critiques of renjun studio ghibli protagonist that has almost become canonified in ncity, mixed with the incredibly meta contexts of both the truman show and the tempest, both being of entirely different mediums (film vs 17th century play), the possibilities were truly endless. and count on me to chuck in a few supernatural elements aka gods of an ambiguous identity who were drunk and apathetic to everything around them that wasn't about themselves. so yeah it's a milkshake of hayley's niche interests but i re-read it often and smile while doing it. i've never had difficulties re-reading my own work, because i truly do write for myself. my being weirdly sensitive to stats and yet not giving a damn about reception is just one complex characteristic of silly little hayley that makes me human i think. but yeah. this thing of darkness i call mine is one of my favourite series ever and i think i will carry that with me to the grave.
participated in two fic events! nnbb and director's cut ! nnbb was my first fic exchange and boy was it a fun time. i learnt how to use discord properly, how to sprint for the first time, realised that this is common thing that occurs and i had been dead to the world when i wrote for weishen fest and 00ff r1, and made many friends along the way! i think 85% of my friends on twitter came from that exchange and i wouldn't have it any other way. although my own gift for nnbb fell through due to ~things~ i don't mourn it- lots of markno fics around the world for me to consume and enjoy and it wasn't too catered towards my interests anyway. not a bad thing! but not hayley-specific enough for me to regret any decisions i made ... uh iykyk. but anyways! nnbb was a great time and it truly seems like a world ago. and director's cut! alas... an interesting time. procrastinated it a helluva lot and had exams to prepare for so it was a bit hellish to be honest. but i came out with a fluffy, fun jensung band au which i'm glad a lot of people liked apart from me! considering no one knew k-on save for... victoria? i consider that a win. and jess beta'ed for me for the first time which i think catalysed great things for our friendship. she even made a playlist for it! my heart hurts. but yeah, probably was a bonding thing for the jiemeis as well which is always a good thing albeit the pain we went through along the way.
summertime is meant to fall in love ! wow my asian-australian piece de resistance. not a lot of reads for that one, but the happiness it gave me will always always surpass it. i wrote about mine and my best friend's shared experience as first gen (well immigrant in her case but semantics) asian-aussies, and children of immigrants, and it was great, not only in the comments i received from my fellow aussies, but also in the fact that i published it and showed it off to the world no matter if they'll read it or not. i've become so accustomed to the as-am way and while it's very valid and important to read, i was like, why can't i do that for myself? if people can rack in so many reads for their incredibly specific, lowkey hard to understand if the reader is not an overachieving asian kid in the states (i don't mean to sound bitter SFKHK this is truiy just how i perceived it back when i was an avid reader of such fic), why don't i make my own attempt? granted we don't have half as many co-curriculars down under, or at least that were offered to me, i still believe summertime was so important for myself to write. representation for my kind if you will, and i'll confidently, despite with a small voice, say it was one of the firsts of its kind. jeno doesn't do debating but he does curse the fact that his parents inadvertently forced him to take 4u maths and physics and that he had to go to ace and matrix and spend thousands of their hard-earned money to attend while also doing training for athletics and swimming on school nights and dawns on weekends and being a sad fuck and yearning for his best friend while he was at it so yeah . have that. i'm sorry i don't mean to be rude (2) but i want to start a revolution in where you read something like this and you make do with what you can to make sense of what /we/ do at school- it's not rocket science for sure but hey! love me! pick me! choose me! learn about me! i say this with major positive connotations. do ask me if you'd like! we can compare experiences! that will be fun if it doesn't spark traumatic memories for you /srs.
a trend: a lot of my fics this year were inspired by songs and seasons. i make my spotify playlists for two-three months (aka seasons), my profound titles being 'warm' for summer, 'wind' for autumn, 'morning dew' for autumn's transition to spring, 'home stretch' for spring, 'hayfever' and 'naitre' for hayley birth season spring, 'half n half' for spring to summer. though i had a pretty depressing playlist called 'end of the world' for quarantine times, i mainly revisited the aforementioned playlists for my inspiration for many of these works. songs are a great source of inspiration for me and for many others, but i feel so much when i listen to one song on repeat, or an album/body of work on repeat for a long period of time. it lets your emotions become entrenched and makes for great writing :> coupled with my influences, whether from academic texts and things i'm studying, to my rapidly appearing interests and non-academic facts and tidbits i've learnt, and my concerning devotion to figurative language, my silly sense of humour and other bits and bobs, you get a hayley-trademark fic!
i hope you didn't get hurt reading all that. i know i tend to ramble but hey you signed up for this when you subscribed to this silly old thing.
