From regshoe, last seen at shipperslist's:

I think we should start sharing our most unpopular stuff. let's see those fics that no one else cares about (but I do. I care about them). Share your top 3 fics with fewest hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks.

I have a bunch of fic that was originally posted elsewhere, so it'll be interesting to see whether that affects this!

Fewest hits

1. scale to feather, skin to skin (Guardian: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong)
   Huh! I'm surprised how few hits this has, and espeically that this is the story with the fewest hits overall. For such a rarepair it's done quite well on kudos and comments!


2. Bloodied Hands (Detective L: Luo Fei/Huo Wensi)
   An unpopular rarepair in a rare fandom - not surprised to see this here. (But I still love it so!)


3. The Witch Is Dead (Guardian: Ge Lan/Sang Zan)
   Tied with the above on hits! A super-rare pairing (at least as more than a background ship) in a not-that-rare fandom.

And all of these are from the AO3 era, the first earlier fic doesn't turn up until 30 entries later.

Fewest kudos

1. Unwritten (Guardian: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong)
   Oof. This is from this year, and it flopped pretty hard, compared to my other works for the same ship. I honestly have no idea why. :(


2. Punishment (Legend of the Seeker: Darken Rahl & OFC)
   Rare gen for a not-very-popular character, involving an OC? Yeah, no surprise here. *g* (Still proud of this one, though!)


3. Seeing Ghosts (Starfire Series: Raymond Prescott & Zhaarnak'telmasa)
   Ooh, a Yuletide genfic for a fandom-of-two! Also very unsurprising. *g*

And again, nothing from the pre-AO3 era, though the first one turns up just seven entries later.

Fewest comments

I have a bunch of zero-comment fics - nine in total. Only one is from the pre-AO3 era, the rest aren't, but I did get comments for all of them on LJ/DW. I'll just list them all briefly, in alphabetical order - none of these are surprising:

• Centuries From Now (Torchwood: Jack Harkness)
• A Cruelty of Harpies (Original Work: Experienced Female Monster Hunter & New Female Monster Hunter)
• Devotion (Legend of the Seeker: Cara/Darken Rahl)
• Equal to the Challenge (Legend of the Seeker: Cara/Darken Rahl)
• Ordinary Morning (Doctor Who: Oswin Oswald)
• Punishment (Legend of the Seeker: Darken Rahl & OFC)
• Surpassing (Legend of the Seeker: Darken Rahl/OFC)
• A Time For Lasts (Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness)
• Worst Case Scenario (Doctor Who: Tenth Doctor & Jack Harkness)

Though I want to point out A Cruelty of Harpies in particular, because it's the first origfic I ever posted!

Fewest bookmarks

I have five works without bookmarks, so I'll just link them all briefly, in alphabetical order - nothing surprising here either:

• In Silence (Coldfire Trilogy: Gerald Tarrant & Damien Vryce)
• scale to feather, skin to skin (Guardian: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong)
• Seeing Ghosts (Starfire Series: Raymond Prescott & Zhaarnak'telmasa)
• Unwritten (Guardian: Ya Qing/Zhu Hong)
• Welling From Beneath (Once Upon a Time in Wonderland: Jabberwocky/Anastasia)

I've posted fic but not an update lately so - I am okay and getting more okay again now it is not summer and also now the country is not on fire (literally, at least, anyway). \o/ And I have managed to write for no_true_pair and should have a couple more to come, and have doubled some of them up for xoverbingo (which is also going well so far).


1. yuletide nominations are somehow open already! *panics* I really have no idea what to nominate this year, but I do know I will regret it very much if I don't, so I shall have to think about it.


2. The remainder of Ludwig s2 turned up on the iPlayer on Thursday, so I have watched that, because it is very addictive. It's as if someone decided to splice Line of Duty* with a quirky sitcom in which reclusive puzzle-setter David Mitchell reluctantly comes out of his shell to fight crime, and somehow the result worked. It's great fun. I don't know where they go from here though, so I'm very glad we have an upcoming Christmas special, because I think it was a 2 year wait between s1 & 2. (I was late to the party with s1, so it wasn't for me.)


3. Lots of other things. Must post more. <3


* Or what I vaguely assume LoD to be like, not having seen it.

Another one, this one rather last minute & hasty (so forgive errors etc.) for today's prompt for no_true_pair. (I actually wrote this to pair with another one of the prompts because it amused me once I'd worked out they were both possible without time travel, but as that one was done for the Sept 19th prompt, this one now comes first. But this way round is more in chronological order, anyway, it's true.)


Meeting of Minds (450 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Other Bennet Sister (TV), Winslow Boy (1999)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mary Bennet & Robert Morton (Winslow Boy)
Characters: Mary Bennet, Robert Morton (Winslow Boy)
Additional Tags: Crossover, 19th Century, Ficlet, Community: no_true_pair, Community: 51pluscrossoverfandoms, Books, Children, Pre-Canon, (for the Winslow Boy), Post-Canon, (for the other Bennet sister), Old Age, Mention of Tom having died (in passing & in the fullness of time after a long and happy life)
Summary: Young Robert Morton is left in the care of an elderly acquaintance of his Mama's, for a little while.

On many weekends I spend waaay too much time asleep. Saturday was quite the opposite. I slept really solidly on Friday night, got up early, and didn't go to sleep until the wee hours of Sunday morning.

Part of this was just energy and part of it was weird anxiety. I was kind of mopey and low level distressed a lot of the day on Saturday. Toward the end of the day, I got to speak with best friend a bit about some of the stuff I was talking about in my last post. Specifically, we spoke about how I sometimes get really anxious that even my closest friends don't really care about or respect what I have to say and that I'm not sure whether or not they should.

She handled it a lot more kindly than the mean parts of my self image expected.

I felt better after a few tears and reassurances. I still felt pretty wiped.

My dad is really worried about me not going to church much because I don't have much of a life outside work. I thought about going, but it's just SUCH a journey and time commitment that I did not feel like it was a good idea. Watched the livestream. Glad I did.

Took a nap in the afternoon, and I feel pretty good at the moment, but I gotta go back to bed in order to get up for work, and I just don't want it to be Monday ahead of a 6 day work week yet again.

1. What is your favorite soup?

I love tomato-based anything -- homemade soup and Chinese hotpot especially.

2. Have you made your favorite soup yourself?

I have made various tomato-based soups that are just a combination of whatever vegetables I like and usually a small amount of beef.

3. What is your favorite dessert?

I'm not that into desserts, but I guess I like a sort of minimally sweetened cherry or blackberry cobbler kind of thing that's sweet, buttery, and tart.

4. Have you made your favorite dessert yourself?

I think I've helped make it from like cobbler mix before.

5. What is your favorite flavor of ice cream or other frozen treat?

Of the basics, I like vanilla, but if you add a raspberry or blackberry type flavor I'm much more enthused. I also like cookie dough/batter flavor. Anything that sort of cuts the pure-sweet flavor without adding something I find to have a weird aftertaste.

The last time I was on my computer a few days ago, I turned on Balatro and forgot to turn it off. Now Steam and Discord have the notion that I've been playing the game for like 90 hours when it's just been like two or three of that time.

Most days, I come home and don't even rouse my computer from its sleep state, but I am still determined that I do need one for most of the hobbies I engage in when I engage in hobbies at all. The problem is that I don't really have any motivation to be involved in any hobbies except for passively learning or thinking about stuff. I have been really into youtube and podcast stuff about religion (my own or others) and weird history lately. I really enjoy it, but I have no one to talk to about it.

It's been raining for what feels like two weeks with just hours-long gaps here and there. School was closed this past Monday due to flooding risk, and seeing some of the people in the facebook group for women in Japan whining about how they should have reversed the cancellation since it was barely raining on Monday morning really made me feel a bit misanthropic. I sympathize with parents wanting a "break" from their kids and also with the particular stress of having to make arrangements or miss work to care for your children, but like... you had kids. That is part of the deal. Teachers don't exist solely for the sake of giving you childcare.

Hell, leave your kids at home if you think they're old enough to get themselves to school. It sure seems like parents here don't give a fuck about leaving their kids to get home alone and alone for three or four hours in the evenings after school.

Anyway, the rest of the week was okay.

I think I have settled into the idea of staying in my current job until the end of my contract in March 2028. Had a conversation with the international department directors, whom I got to build relationships with before they were in their current positions, so it felt pretty good. I explained my thinking, and they seemed to be fine with revisiting the question of renewal or not this time next year.

I plan to look into the idea of going to Australia for a few years after that if Canada doesn't become a viable option after the couple of online classes I'm going to take to try and make that happen and going home doesn't seem to be like it will work out. At least I'd be paid better there, and I need to think about the fact that I will most likely always need to "retire" or eventually rehome myself back to my country of citizenship due to how immigration and rights work.

One thing that I keep thinking about lately is how small I feel internally. I just wish I were more actively perceived and knew about being perceived in a positive way, not as a random person people see - the material part - but as a whole person. I hate the idea of seeing myself from the third-person, and I assume that I am not one's favorite person. Even when I have been complimented about my physical appearance, I always get adjectives that I don't particularly relate to or enjoy being perceived as.

It makes me think about how I am pretty intimately (I think) familiar with my closest friends' mindsets and have some idea how they will react to things before they are exposed to them. I'm not sure they could say the same for me unless it's about, like, media preferences. And I think some of that is on me, but I also think I stopped being as expressive and opinionated because I got tired of being talked down from anything that stood out or made them irritated that I didn't agree with and echo their sentiments about the matter.

It makes me feel like I am the only person who really knows me and that the interior landscape is pretty quiet. I live alone, and so I spend most of my hours in silence or listening to aforementioned youtube or podcasts.

While we were on vacation, I mentioned something about watching a documentary about guillotines and my best friend asked if it was an actual documentary or just a youtube video. It hurt my feels because, yes, it was a YouTube video but this person obviously does their research. And it just makes me feel like sometimes she thinks I am not actually capable of discerning information that comes in without her saying that.

I just feel like two of the closest people to me are like... super skeptical to the point that my personality and self - which are more faith-oriented and willing to believe in stuff - has just shrunk down.

I also don't even listen to music that often lately. I just feel like my role is that of a listener and not anyone who's listened to outside of being a teacher, and particularly when I am teaching English as a second language to kids who may or may not need or use it in the future, that can be even more isolating. I just feel like a waste of voice sometimes.

That drama about the TVs spying on us or whatever. I'm not sure if it would matter if mine did. It would just be recording my phone or computer playing noise at me and me being silent, all the time.

I wish I knew how to express this TO people who could actually do anything about it without it seeming like a guilt trip that would just result in me trying to fix it for them.

I was inspired to do today's prompt for no_true_pair from two of the lists I signed up with. (This happened with Sept 1 as well, but couldn't do them both on time, so I'm saving the other for amnesty. Happily, the 4th = more time, and one of these is a drabble anyway.)

Mountains to Climb (100 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Fifteenth Doctor & Ruby Sunday
Characters: Fifteenth Doctor (Doctor Who), Ruby Sunday
Additional Tags: Drabble, Community: no_true_pair
Summary: This isn't just a magical mystery tour...


Fates Worse Than Death (888 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Red Dwarf (UK TV), Once Upon a Time (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Evil Queen | Regina Mills & Dave Lister
Characters: Evil Queen | Regina Mills, Dave Lister, Kryten (Red Dwarf)
Additional Tags: brief Jefferson cameo, Jefferson's hat (Once Upon a Time), Crossover, Humor, community: xoverbingo, Community: no_true_pair, Community: genprompt_bingo, Community: 51pluscrossoverfandoms, lister is out of luck again, Set in whatever era of Red Dwarf you prefer, Hallucinations, Curses
Summary:

Regina has to go somewhere hellish to retrieve a magical artefact. Dave Lister isn't very happy about it, either.

Also for xoverbingo, genprompt_bingo & 51pluscrossoverfandoms

One good thing this school year is that all the full-time employees get one half "work from home" day a week under normal circumstances. This helps a lot with my general high fatigue, but it's a little unpredictable because there are a lot of circumstances that result in it being taken away temporarily.

I came home from work on Tuesday evening, took a shower, and immediately went to sleep without even drying my hair much.

I woke up around 2am and am gonna back to bed around 5am.

I am really frustrated with how sleepy and tired I am. Also, it's the time of the school year where - since I did some advance planning - I am not drowning in work backlog yet.

This makes it so I want to be creative, but after finishing with the posting of my last fic earlier this year, I just kind of don't feel a lot of motivation to keep going. When I wrote the Death Note fic, I had this whole series planned in mind, but I knew that it would be better to write a chapter fic that could stand alone or could spring into something else. And sure enough, writing all of it in advance made it so that by the end of posting, I wasn't as emotionally invested in it anymore. Having a more "professional" attitude toward fanwork seems to take a lot of the joy and dopamine out of it.

Even though I received a steady and healthy amount of feedback for that fic, I just kind of haven't felt like I knew what I wanted to do next since. Every now and then I feel the tiniest spark of a motivation to do something creative, but it never crystalizes into anything real. That's not to say that I'm not enjoying some fandom and private RP stuff, but I guess I just feel like my whole footprint as a person has shrunk down again.

I feel like a slug who's been salted, but it doesn't actually hurt that badly. Like, depression but not in the active sadness sense, I guess. It just feels weird to want private and personal time but to have no energy or motivation to do anything with it. I know I could tidy my apartment more, even though it's currently pretty livable, just needs some sprucing, but I have that resistance to only WORKING all the time.

Even being online lately, I don't have the same routine of websites or information to check. I am trying to be more active here since I know real people are around as users, but beyond that ????????

There's this lady named Taylor Black (not the first one that pops up if you search online) who's a pretty brunette influencer type whose primary posts seem to be reading and reacting to comments sections of other people's tiktoks/shortform videos. I have been enjoying her energy a lot, though. Parasociality seems to have a certain allure given my energy level, but then I feel sad that I don't really talk about anything of substance, even with the friends I do speak to every day.

Frustrated by how little of an effort my own father makes to talk to me regularly. I ask to, but then he doesn't meet me halfway or calls once a month when I'm asleep. We used to be SUPER close, and I know he loves me, but it still just feels like that social atrophy thing.

Written for no_true_pair September 1st (Mary Bennet & Zak Gist, 9 o'clock on a Saturday), 100fandoms, and xoverbingo.

Angels Unaware (1093 words) by thisbluespirit
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Other Bennet Sister (TV), Eternal Law (TV 2012)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Mary Bennet & Zak Gist
Characters: Mary Bennet, Zak Gist
Additional Tags: Mentioned Tom Hayward, Mentions of Mary Bennet/Tom Hayward, Pre-Canon, Post-Canon, Angels, Community: no_true_pair, community: xoverbingo, Regency, mentions of wordsworth, Chance Meetings, Crossover, Community: 100fandoms
Summary: Two unlikely good angels meet in the street, by chance.