straightforwardly

The Chocolate Box collection for 2020 opened up on Friday, and, after a weekend spent buried in the collection, I've come bearing recs.
( beneath the cut )

► Sign-ups for the Be the First challenge have opened up! So excited for this one this year—I think I’ll actually post something for it this time, haha. For those who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a challenge where you write a fic for any canon which doesn’t have any English-language stories already written for it. Like I mentioned in my last entry, I’m planning to write for and have already started on a story for oops the web novel Who Dares Slander My Senior Brother. So excited!

► Two more last-minute Chocolate Box fic recs before reveals: ( beneath the cut )

► While I’m at it, have two non-Chocolate Box fic recs—one for a canon that I’m not particularly fannish about but the story itself hit me hard in my time travel-loving id, and one for Scum Villain which made me internally shriek with glee a lot while reading it.
( also beneath the cut )

► I didn’t get around to talking about this last time, but, in the spirit of “finishing visual novels that I started then put indefinitely on-hold for various reasons”, I went and finished playing Hustle Cat not long after I finished OZMAFIA!!. (You can find my initial impressions on it and Finnley’s route over here, for the curious.) It’s… been some weeks since I finished it now, and I didn’t take any notes, so this is going to be short and pretty vague.
( and not super-positive, sorry )

► The Chocolate Box Collection is open! I’m still making my way through it, so I’ll post my recs in a later post. For now, I’ll share the absolutely lovely gift I received:

First frost (Stand Still Stay Silent, Ensi & Lalli, 1.5K)
Just another day, just another scouting lesson with Grandma.

► Pre-Chocolate Box, I’d started on a reread of the Naruto manga. ...Looking at my tags, it looks like I’ve never talked about Naruto on this journal, which is weird, because it’s basically my forever fandom? Anyways. I’ve been putting off this reread for literally years, because I wanted to wait until I actually owned all the volumes to do it, but finally I threw up my hands and decided that I’d just read the scanlations for the volumes I’m missing. ( beneath the cut )

► Still making my way through all of Yoosung’s Endings in Mystic Messenger. Since my last update, I’ve gotten Bad Ending 01, Bad Ending 02, and the Normal Ending. ( cut for spoilers )

► It’s… already been a few days since Chocolate Box authors were revealed, haha, but I wanted to share what I wrote! I wrote a few fics, but nothing longer than 1K. For Harry Potter, I wrote a Lucius/Narcissa fic and a Tom/Ginny, pre-Harry/Ginny fic. The former was my assignment. I also wrote Emma Woodhouse/Harriet Smith for Jane Austen’s Emma and Lucina/Severa for Fire Emblem: Awakening. (In unrelated news, I now have a new FE:A ship. :P)

► Speaking of which… between writing Fire Emblem: Awakening fic for Chocolate Box and receiving it, I got struck by the urge to replay the game. So that’s what I’m doing now. I’ve just finished Chapter 14. ( cut for spoilers and length )

►My big brother and I have started watching Wolf’s Rain together! God, it’s been ages since I’ve watched this anime— well over a decade, I think. We never finished it— we only knew it through renting a disc or two from Hastings. (I remember it as being only one volume— the first one. My big brother remembers watching the first two volumes. He has the better memory, so I’m tempted to defer to him.)

Speaking of which, I’d forgotten… pretty much everything about it? I remembered that the main characters were wolves, and that their human forms were illusions, and I had very clear memories of them standing on those pipes in the first city talking to one another, and a few bits of memory about how Kiba was re: Cheza, but that was about it. I’d even forgotten about some of the main characters! Kiba and Tsume I remembered pretty decently, but Hige and Toboe kind of blended together for me— I remembered there was a character who was the “youngest”, and I kind of remembered Hige’s character design, so when he showed up I went, “oh, he must be the youngest.”

One thing that strikes me: I remember when I was a kid, I was very focused on the “ooo, pretty boys!” bit, but now I’m very much focused on the fact that they’re wolves and that the human form is just an illusion. I just find it such an interesting concept? And I love the moments where it shows what’s happening underneath the illusion so much. ♥

We just finished up episode 8 tonight, and I’m cautiously intrigued by where this is all going. Post-apocalyptic futures with wolves, yess. ♥

Dearest Artist/Writer,

I’ve very excited about participating in this exchange! I sat out Chocolate Box last year, and while I don’t precisely regret it (it was the right decision at the time), I’ve also been considering what I might request the next time around ever since.

I think that I’m pretty easy to please. You might notice that some fandom or relationship sections are longer than others, and I’d like to reassure you that I’m equally interested in all of my fandoms and requested relationships. It’s just that with some I don’t have many specific ideas outside of “more more more, please!” while I’m full of ideas for others. But I do love them all— otherwise, I wouldn’t even be requesting them. As for the actual writing/drawing, I’m pretty straightforward there as well. I’m ecstatic when someone follows my general likes and/or one of my prompts, but as long as you avoid my DNWs and treat the characters (and relationships) that I love with love and respect, I’ll be happy.

This is my first time requesting art in any exchange, and I confess that I’m not really sure how to prompt for it. I’ve listed some general art likes that would excite me for any fandom; I’d also be interested in drawn versions for any scenario I mention when talking about each fandom and relationship.

AO3 Handle: straightforwardly

( cut to spare the flist )