Happy Wednesday evening to everyone else.

Has it really been 4 weeks since I've posted? *hangs head*

And now I'm in to say "Hi, I survived Sandy" and to post a meme: In honor of All Hallow's Eve (otherwise known as Halloween), I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door'. Comment "Trick or Treat" to this post and... well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that strikes my fancy (pics of your fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.). The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be, so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!

Stolen from bethbethbeth. The deal is to pull up the stories that you have on AO3 (would work for any archive with hit counts enabled though) to see which are the top 10 in terms of hits. Then, I gather, later you compare to see what shifts. This sounds cool to me, as my overall impression is that there are more people reading (or at least leaving kudos and comments on) the smaller fandoms, like Vorkosigan and Temeraire, but that may not turn out to reflect who's reading, just who's more inclined to give feedback. So, here goes, though I'm going to go from 10-1:

10: The Morning After (HP, SS/HG/LM, Explicit, "Hermione rolled over to her left and found something in her way. Rolling over to her right, she found another obstruction. This woke her up enough to wonder what could be crowding her." 314 hits)

9: How Hermione Got Her Groove Back (HP, SS/HG, Explicit, "Hermione finds herself alone in the Headmistress’ office one afternoon with Snape’s portrait, and things get … interesting." 316 hits)

8: Burnt Offerings (Vorkosigan, Miles & Cordelia, Gen, "On the anniversary of his father’s death, Miles ponders the way they mark it." 317 hits)

7: Wherever I May Roam (DW, Jack/Doctor, Teen, "It was supposed to be a simple stop to pick up supplies at the famed market of Avicephalon." 331 hits)

6: Moulding to the Pitcher (Temeraire, Gong Su, Gen, "The chance to serve a Celestial had seemed a blessing to Gong Su, one normally reserved for those who served the imperial family. And it was, but frequently not in the ways he had imagined." 406 hits)

5. Keeping the Goal in Sight (Vorkosigan, Ekaterin/Miles, Gen, "There must be a reason she needs to learn Comparative Botanical Genetics, right?" 413 hits)

4. Never Chose This Way (Vorkosigan/BtVS, Ivan/Byerly, Teen, "Ivan and Byerly are on their way home from Beta Colony when something goes very wrong. Gigantically wrong, you might say." 442 hits)

3. The Doors We Open and Close Each Day (HP, SS/RL, Teen, "Young Severus Snape was packed off to Hogwarts with instructions to ingratiate himself to the pureblooded Slytherins who would surely be his House-mates. By the time it’s his turn to sit under the Sorting Hat, he has other ideas." 458 hits)

2. A Perfectly Normal Day (HP/Temeraire, CW/HG, Gen, "Just when Charlie thought he'd seen everything, along came Iskierka." 460 hits)

1. An Ordinary Man (Vorkosigan, Ivan/Byerly, Explicit, "Byerly gets Ivan drunk, and one thing leads to another." 557 hits)

==================================================================

Some musings. An Ordinary Man is the first completed fanfic I posted online. So my first thought was, "It has the most hits because it's the oldest, so it had more time to collect them." However, it was not the first uploaded to AO3. That honor goes to #2, A Perfetly Normal Day. It'd be interesting to compare in a few months or a year to see how things shift (or don't).

Stats as of right now:

Fandoms: Vorkosigan 4, HP 3, Temeraire 2, Crossover 2, DW 1, BtVS 1
Ratings: Gen 4, Explicit 3, Teen 3
Ship type: Slash 4, Het 3, None 2, Multi 1 (Misleading, because some have implied or background ships but are basically genfic. Could also read as Slash 4, None 4, Het 1, Multi 1.)

I'm not sure any of those stats reflect the overall percentages of my fic. Even though I think of myself as a slasher, since that's where I started out, I've written far more het, mostly SS/HG, though of late there's been more and more gen or quasi-gen. It is interesting that VK fandom does have the most hits represented, as that was the impression I had going in, even though I've written comparatively little of it.

Meanwhile, I need to try and do a little writing this afternoon before it's time to run off to dinner and a blues concert.

I kind of saw this coming (heh) from a mile away, given how some of the questions were set up. I actually think Martha or Donna would make more sense, but I'm hardly complaining.


You are Captain Jack Harkness
Take The Doctor Who Personality Test and Horoscope today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

Also, I am made of fail in the Gratitude Project this year. Let's just consider most days were all about me reminding myself that I'm grateful to have a job, any job, in this economy, and call it done.

Which, calendar-wise, the project is for the year, so Happy Mabon to those celebrating, and Happy Fall/Spring (depending what side of the equator you're on) to those who aren't!

Back at the end of May, there was this drawble meme going around, and I jumped on. Took me forever to make an attempt at this request from emelye_miller for Snape/Willow, which ended up more Snape and Willow, but I did finally do it at work last night. This morning. Whatever.

( Snape and Willow )

I also did some drawbles for hpcon_envy: Snape-Winky shouting match, Malfoys post-final battle, and Angelina & Oliver. Oddly, considering it's by far the most stylized of the lot, I like the Malfoy one best. Definitely need to work on getting better control over the charcoal though. And noses and mouths are going to be the freaking death of me, but then, part of the point is to get the practice.

Time to hit the hay. Have a lovely Saturday!

So, not one but two real artists took me up on this. Yikes! karasu_hime, from whom I nicked the meme in the first place, requested Snape/Tonks - bleeding hearts.

And there's no way to do Tonks without color, or at least I can't, so for this one I went with pastels using this dA stock photo for reference on the people and this image as a reference for bleeding hearts. It took me awhile to figure out what to do with "bleeding hearts" as a prompt until I finally remembered it's a flower. Still chickening out on hands though.

( Snape/Tonks bleeding hearts )

Nicked from karasu_hime. The next five people* to comment in this post get to request a drawble of any pairing/character of their choosing that I am familiar with from me. In return, they have to post this in their journal, regardless of their ability level.

I must be out of my mind. But, if I'm going to try to improve my drawing skills this summer, maybe stuff like this will keep me at it.

*Not that I'm expecting a huge response, but this is being x-posted to IJ and DW. So it's the first five in each place for a total of 15.