forestofglory

I'm trying out posting shorter and more frequent DecRecs roundups

6)Today's #DecRecs is Walkers Shortbread Scottie Dogs. The dog shapes are so charming and cute! (and yes they do taste better than the less cute version -- appearance matters!) These are a bit difficult to find where I live, which adds to their allure for me. R happened to pick up a box for me a few days ago and I've been eating them slowly

Today is the 7th day of #DecRecs and I want to rec the Qingming River Bot! (https://universeodon.com/@QingmingRiverBot)This bot posts details from the well known painting g “Along the River During the Qingming Festival” / 清明上河圖
I love seeing these little snippets of urban life in Song times on my feed! It's fun to see the boats and cows and horses and to imagine what all the people are up to!

8) It's the 8th day of #DecRecs and I haven't recced any fanfic yet. Let fix that!
on a long journey by twigofwillow is long time favorite of mine. It's post cannon Lan Sizhui story so themes of family living on with complicated pasts. The emotional stuff is very complex and nuanced as it should be.
I also love how its structured in a non-linear way , and features storytelling and and letters!
It's just a very beautiful fic!
https://archiveofourown.org/works/29819775/chapters/73366473

Fandomtrees gifts where revealed on Thursday

I made two gifts a cosy fantasy rec list and a CQL ficlet

I received two sets of amazing inkstone icons! And some lovely fanart of the first fic I ever wrote.

This was a really fun event!

End Racism in the OTW | Desk Tour: Dr. Jiang Yanli (2196 words) by coreomajoris, Forestofglory
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Jiāng Yànlí, Luó "Mián Mián" Qīngyáng, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Additional Tags: Worldbuilding, Fanart Welcome, Textiles - Freeform, artifact fiction, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic
Series: Part 1 of Fragments
Summary:

Transcript of video interview of Dr. Jiang Yanli, textile historian at the California Institute for Magic and Cultivation.

I co wrote this for End Racism in the OTW!

This was the first time I've co-written a fic and it was super fun. I showed Coero my draft of this which was just a list of items and they where like 'This would be better as an interview can I help you with that" and of course I said yes, and as a result you all get a fic that makes much more sense.

Also it was an utter joy to just nerd out about textiles

The stuff going on with respect to racism and other problems with the OTW is super bad, and I hope it can be fixed. (I'm not to hopeful) But I was super impressed with this event!

Last week one of my friends decided to run a Women of MDZS Flash Exchange. I'd never done an exchange before but I decided to sign up. This was good first exchange for me because it was low stakes, a bunch of my friends where taking part, and it was theme near and dear to my heart.

I was nervous about writing to a deadline, but I was able to come up with story idea and write it in the time allowed.

Here's the story I wrote:
福食; Lucky Meal (842 words) by Forestofglory
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bàoshān Sànrén/Lán Yì
Characters: Ā-Qìng (Módào Zǔshī), Bàoshān Sǎnrén, Lán Yì (Módào Zǔshī)
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, accidental auntie acquisition
Summary:

One day at the market A-Qing runs into a new stall run by two mysterious women

And I got this awesome story featuring textiles!

Fabric (958 words) by Cinnamon Seadragon
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jiāng Chéng | Jiāng Wǎnyín & Jiāng Yànlí & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Jiāng Yànlí/Jīn Zǐxuān
Characters: Jiāng Yànlí
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Friendship, Memories
Summary:

Jiang Yanli's wardrobe is full of memories

I haven't finished reading through the collection but there's lots good things there!

This was fun. I might do another exchange someday

2022 was not a great year for me writing wise. I have been dealing with tendonitis in my right wrist for over a year now. It's harder to write when I'm in pain. Several things that I used to do to help write no longer work. I'm slowly learning ways to work around it but that is taking some time.

I once again wrote both criticism and fanfic. I’m going to talk about each separately.

( criticism )

( fanfic )

I wish I had been able to write more in 2022, but I’m happy with the things I did write. I hope that in 2023 I can continue to find more ways to work around my tendonitis and write a bit more than I did last year.

2021 was not the best writing year for me, a lot of the time writing was difficult, and I was only able to write small amounts at a time. Nonetheless those added up, and I wrote some things I’m proud of.

I wrote four pieces for Lady Business:
Short & Sweet: Very Short Fiction
Short & Sweet: Blast from the Past
Adventures in Classical Chinese
The Layered Pleasures of Alternative Universe Fic

Two of these posts were for Short & Sweet, my column about short SFF. Sometime in the middle of the year I realized that I was not reading enough short SFF to continue writing about it regularly, which is a bummer! I like short SFF and I think it doesn't get talked about enough. However I just haven’t had the focus to read it since the pandemic started.

Then I wrote about my new fandom adjacent hobby of learning Classical Chinese. And finally I wrote about AUs! It was fun to write a critical essay about fanfic, and I’m especially proud of that piece.

Another writing milestone for 2021 was that I was long listed for the Best Fanwriter Hugo! It’s an honor that I was not expecting at all.

Over the year I kept up with a couple of recurring series here. One was Observations my twice monthly posts about natural and built environments. I also posted Media Round Ups at least monthly where I talked about things I had been reading and watching recently. Over the year I managed to post here at least once every week.

As well as writing criticism I wrote fanfiction as well. In 2021 I posted seven fics and 39,372 words of fic to AO3.

The first four of the fics I posted where for The Untamed:

Gone to the Other End of the Sky
(5,168 words, Gen Space AU) This was part of the longer space AU project that I started and abandoned. This section works ok on its own, so I cleaned it up and posted it.

Family Economy (10889 words, Jing Ling & Luo "Mian Mian" Qingyang) The third story in my series “Your Life Again, Your Life Anew”

Letters (1633 words, gen) After reading Letters and Epistolary Culture in Early Medieval China by Antje Richter I wanted to try writing letters in the format mentioned so I asked for prompts on Twitter.

To Live Without Regrets (16,341 words, Teen, Lan Wangji/Wei Wuxian) I wanted to write a fic exploring Lan Wangji's Chief Cultivatorship, and his post-cannon feeling about justice and I was finally able to do that here.

Then I wrote three short Word of Honor fics. These are all a bit structurally weird, but I enjoyed writing them!

Knowing Everything in the World (1393 words, Gen, Chengling focused) I wrote this mostly to play around with the idea that Drunk like a Dream is memory enhancing drug.

The River Moon is Waiting (2260 words, teen, Space AU told in vignettes) I had a lot of worldbuilding ideas for this Space AU but not a lot of plot ideas, so I wrote this to play around with the world.

Correspondence (1688, Gen, Zhang Nianxiang centric, epistolary) I really love writing epistolary fic, and it was fun to play around with some minor characters that I like.

This year so many people encouraged me to write, spitballed ideas with me, helped me with research questions, read and commented on drafts, and copy edited my work. None of this would have been written or posted without help. Thank you so much to everyone who supported me!

Overall, 2021 was a year of slow but steady writing for me. In terms of criticism I was not as prolific as in 2020, but I still wrote some good pieces. I posted slightly more fic in 2021 than in 2020. I hope that in this new year I’ll be able to find more time and energy for writing. I'm excited to write more criticism about transformative fandom, and to work on my story crafting skills.

Letters (1633 words) by Forestofglory
Chapters: 7/7
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jiāng Yànlí & Wēn Qíng, Jiāng Yànlí & Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī, Niè Huáisāng & Niè Míngjué, Lán Qǐrén & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Lán Huàn | Lán Xīchén & Niè Míngjué
Characters: Lan Huan | Lan Xichen, Nie Mingjue, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing (Módào Zǔshī), Lan Zhan | Lan Wangji, Nie Huaisang, Lan Qiren, Wei Ying | Wei Wuxian
Additional Tags: Friendship, Travel, West Lake, Plants, Epistolary
Summary:

Letters between various characters. Featuring friendship, adventure and a surprising number of plants. Based on Twitter prompts

Decided to put these reposes to Twitter prompts on AO3 for accessibility and archival proposes. It was fun to try out an epistolary format based on middle period Chinese letters.

For several months I worked on a CQL space AU that I eventually decided not to finish. The problem was I had lot worldbuilding but no plot. I could have done a canon retelling but I just didn't feel like I had anything interesting to say with that. I did polish up a couple of pieces of it which are posted as The Other End of the Sky. But one of my favorite worldbuilding bits is just sitting in my draft folder, so I thought I'd share it here.

( Read more... )

Gone to the Other End of the Sky (5168 words) by Forestofglory
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Additional Tags: Space AU, In SPAAAACE with magic, Survival
Series: Part 2 of The Other End of the Sky
Summary:

Fleeing from the Wens, Wei Wuxian crash lands in a mysterious spaceship

So I decided to break off a smaller bit of the space AU, I was working but then decided to shelve and make it a smaller fic. I've lost perspective on this, so I'm not really sure that it's any good. I could polish it a lot more. But I don't really want to. So this very much in the spirit of just throwing stuff on AO3, because I can. It's nice to get something postable out of all the work I put into the project before

Traveling Traveling (1790 words) by Forestofglory
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Additional Tags: Space AU, In SPAAAACE with magic, MXTXGenWeek2020, Worldbuilding, 5+1
Series: Part 1 of The Other End of the Sky
Summary:

A few stops along the way as Wei Wuxian and siblings travel across space for Lotus station to Cloud Recesses Station.

Or Five Things Wei Wuxian Didn’t Buy and One that He Did

I think I've mentioned here that I'm working on Untamed Space AU. This a little prequel that I wrote for MXTX gen week 2020, with a focus on worldbuilding.