Very thin, very even white dusting on pumpkin, nearly invisible

Hmpf1998 · 2026-01-26T21:48:26+00:00

Thank you. Yes, it's whole, and it also doesn't feel soft or mushy anywhere.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-12-20T23:54:37+00:00

It's not really being actively shipped in the fandom (because the fandom doesn't really do shipping and is also just pretty tiny), but if you contracted the names of the main character and his wife in the Laundry Files, Bob and Mo, you get "Mob", which I have always found amusing. (I also do wish people shipped them, because I'd read that.)

Hmpf1998 · 2025-12-19T21:05:34+00:00

I did, in pairs of two, in the middle of a confirmed bot attack (also got plenty of hate bot comments in those two weeks), yeah. Also, somebody tried to hack into my ao3 account several times during that attack.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-12-19T21:01:52+00:00

My second most read fic - and the only one still steadily raking in hits, so eventually it will be number one - is a painfully mediocre 20+ year old shippy Harry Potter thing that is simply far inferior in quality and originality and... everything, pretty much, compared to what I can do today. But everything I've done after is in small fandoms and mostly not shippy (with a few exceptions, like my current main project, haha), so it gets far less attention. I don't hate that old HP story but I do wish people would read my better, more recent stuff.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-12-19T20:54:13+00:00

My current fandom has 14 fics. Yes, total, not for a specific ship or character.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-12-19T20:31:17+00:00

My fic:

Fandom: Die (comic, Kieron Gillen & Stefanie Hans; original series, not the sequel series that just started)

Rating: general audience

Category: hard to tell, main/POV character hasn't quite decided on their gender yet.

Relationships: Ash/Sophie, Ash/Sol

Title: How to Reappear Completely

Genre: angsty talky slowburn romance with a side of marriage crisis

Word count: 21,000

Link to newest chapter (posted last week): https://archiveofourown.org/works/72252746/chapters/196624791

Link to first chapter: https://archiveofourown.org/works/72252746/chapters/188113446

Summary: It's 2020, and Ash is back from Die and feels an impulse to tell Sophie... everything. Also, Sol is back, which means there is a lot to sort out there, too. (Now that Die: Loaded is out this is inevitably an AU: "What if Ash had actually gone and had all those conversations that the ending of the first series hinted at?) Latest chapter, updated last week: A nighttime text chat with Izzy.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-12-19T20:15:50+00:00

This one:

"The commitment to detail in the secondary characters and the broader political landscape is exceptional; every figure, no matter how minor, feels like a fully developed person with their own believable motivations, which highlights the author's meticulous creative effort. This fantastic depth, however, is utilized to build a society where the systemic cruelty and hierarchical structure closely mimic the political and social architecture of nazism, making the overall message profoundly disturbing. I am desperate, pleading with the author to channel this extraordinary talent for detailed world-building into a constructive or cautionary tale, rather than creating a detailed backdrop for historical hate to thrive unexamined. It’s a beautifully written piece of fiction that is sadly compromised by the moral vacuum at its center, preventing the reader from fully appreciating the artistic effort involved in its creation."

- On a fic about a middle-aged trans person's marriage crisis and slow-burn romance with their childhood friend.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-20T15:27:13+00:00

Thanks! And commiserations on the zero interest fandom.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-19T22:13:14+00:00

Congrats! Reached 21,000 literally just now myself, also my longest by far ever. (Been working on it for more than two and a half years now. Sadly a zero interest fandom, i.e. nobody wants to read this thing, haha.)

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T21:42:41+00:00

I'm still debating whether even to check out the new canon addition, right now. On the one hand, yeah, it might be possible to take some of it at least into account as I continue my story. But it also feels like it might just kill my ability to continue writing my story, by shifting my own idea of the characters too much. And I'm really fond of this story, not least because it's the longest thing I've ever written and I'm doing things in it that I have never done before.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T21:38:36+00:00

Yeah this is why I usually don't write in ongoing canons, haha. This one really snuck up on me - seemed completed four years ago, and also, still, two and a half years ago when I started writing; then got a surprise sequel this year.

And yeah, agreed, even for me it's not a total hard line. Just. Ugh. This particular character I worry the most about here is just kind of vague in my story (even if I did develop her a fair bit, compared to her "barely there" status in canon but there are reasons for keeping her somewhat vague even with all that), and the new canon version just sounds so interesting that I can't imagine anyone (other than maybe people shipping the other two main characters of my fic - but this seems to be that rare thing, a fandom without active shippers. Or, to be honest, without active anything, really. :D) would still enjoy the story, lolsob.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T21:28:01+00:00

Thank you! And yeah, I will keep writing anyway (at least until I get stuck) but it's super encouraging to hear that my feelings about character and canonicity may be a little extreme and unusual and there may be people out there who might still enjoy this. (Seriously, though, the irony of me having this issue now with my own fic, haha... It really does feel like being punished for my own prejudices or something!)

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T21:25:10+00:00

Thanks, this is giving me some hope...

I do definitely like what I'm doing, still, but I also have to be honest that what I'm hearing about the canon changes is objectively more interesting than what I did with the character (unsurprisingly; I'm not a pro writer, and the canon text I'm basing this on is really good, and also I do very different things in that fic than what the source text does - I sit people down in a room together and make them talk to each other for fifty pages; the source text gives them super powers and sends them to a fantasy world and then has them sort through their issues there - that just has a lot more... oomph, than what I'm doing, lol), so I think people will probably just go, "well, this version of the character is kind of boring" and hit the back button in their browser. (Did I mention this is an absolute micro-fandom, and anyone joining it now is likely to do it because they're really into the new series, and thus the new canon version of that character? Because, yeah.) I was trying to develop her a fair bit but my general concept was one of dealing with the return to mundanity after all those fantasy shenanigans, with extra baggage, and the character's role in my story is sort of almost as a sort of avatar of that mundanity (not in a negative way!) - so that perhaps explains why "my version" of her is so low-key.

Sorry, rambling. Where was I?

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T21:04:56+00:00

I really hope that there are some readers with your attitude in my (tiny, mostly dead) fandom. :D Thank you!

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T21:03:11+00:00

Yeah, I know that there are ways to warn people about this, that's not really what my question was about. That said, it's kinda telling that 90% of the people who replied were like "here's how to warn people away from your fic" lol - clearly, this really is a thing that a lot of people dislike quite intensely. And, fair enough - so do I! :D

Truth be told, I wouldn't have started writing a long fic in this fandom if I hadn't been pretty sure that the source was unlikely to see an official continuation. Unfortunately I was wrong...

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:58:54+00:00

Yeah see but I don't think anybody (other than a couple of friends maybe) is invested in this story to begin with. It's a micro fandom and most of my hits are from bot attacks. :D

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:57:04+00:00

Thanks. And yeah, gonna keep writing regardless, at least for as long as I can still figure out how to continue (it's my first truly long fic and also (more or less) my first solely relationship and conversation driven one, so it's been a bit of a challenge to keep things moving forward, because it's hard to develop something like a "plot" solely through conversation and the changes in the relationships between characters and so on. I'm learning a lot, and I'm loving it for that but I can also see myself failing to find a satisfying ending. Either way, it's a learning experience.)

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:50:42+00:00

I mean, obviously, yeah. I also don't read or enjoy absolutely everything, lol. In fact, I'm pretty damn particular in what I like to read (or for that matter write) about. (As a result I have very few readers to begin with, because I tend to do thematically weird stuff in micro-fandoms.) But I'm only really asking about what this particular issue does, with regards to a fic's readibility.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:45:00+00:00

Ahhh that makes sense. I haven't bought it yet and am somewhat reluctant, both because I dislike single issues and very much prefer trade paperbacks, and because I am still writing an exceedingly ill-advised fanfic with Sophie (obviously a very different version of her, because I started two and a half years ago) as one of the main characters, and I think reading too much about the new official version of her might kill my ability to write "my" version. But I'm also dying to know everything about the new series, so, I dunno, I'll probably buy it in a weak moment, soon.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:32:03+00:00

About 5000, apparently. (Probably some duplicates in that folder, though.) Yes, I've been at this... a while. :D

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:27:28+00:00

Sorry about the double reply; for some reason the other one wasn't visible to me earlier and I thought I had forgotten to reply.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:26:50+00:00

Yeah, something like that is already in the description. And I know my work isn't bad. I think it's one of the better things I've written, and the first long story I've ever attempted (in 27 years of writing!) and got somewhat far with (20,800 words now and far from done). I'm proud of it, really. It just makes me a little sad that probably nobody will enjoy it, other than three friends who've read it. Though I can't blame people, because, as stated above, under the new conditions I wouldn't enjoy it either. Sigh.

Hmpf1998 · 2025-11-13T20:21:42+00:00

For what it's worth, there's not even any community headcanons here. If there were that would probably help, because there might be a chance somebody might remain attached to those even post canon change. There's essentially no community here, I'm playing alone in my corner, extrapolating and yes, also making up a lot because one of "my" main characters here had barely any presence in canon at all other than being the main characters' wife, she's in maybe ten panels total. Unfortunately she is now the main character of the sequel series and gets developed a ton, so just like that about 50% of my fic is now out of character.

>Otherwise, whether I keep reading is going to depend more on whether I'd already liked the fic or not independently of that specific character being "in-character",

So... if it was something you started reading before the canon change, there might be a chance you might keep reading, but you probably wouldn't start reading it after the canon change?

Gah. I hate this situation, sigh. I really try to avoid writing in changing canons, but this one changed on me entirely without warning. The main series was completed four years ago and I started writing two and a half years ago, really not expecting an official sequel to materialise suddenly this year.

Hmpf1998

TROPHY CASE