aww thank you so much!! you literally understand everything, physical intimacy (ritualised violence edition) is sooooo good both in its own right and as a mirror of or substitute for physical intimacy (romance edition). which is inherently romantic to me but i know my romance writing often straddles the line between shipfic and gen, i really am guy who is always saying [thing that is not objectively romantic] is the most romantic thing in the world. still, i'm glad it worked for you! new world symphony was definitely a bit of a leap outside of my usual writing domain but i had fun exploring jaemle's dynamic and intend to continue doing so in the future. which reminds me i still need to make a fic post for new world symphony… back into the ms word graphic design trenches i go.

literally schedule writing time into my diary otherwise i too would never have any time to write </3 like it really is all about careful time management and you will simply have to prioritise writing over, as a purely hypothetical and random example, spending 8 hours a day playing merge games on your phone. but it's up to you how you want to prioritise your hobbies; personally i like to ration my time in the order of spending time with friends > running/working out > writing > other hobbies.

this year pea and i have found a lot of success doing irl writing dates where we go to a café for brunch and sprints (testimonials: pea has finished two wips and i have completed a 10k fic in the span of a month. it's working!!). but i've done it online too with mich via sprint room while on call, i think having the dedicated time set aside and the accountability of a writing partner to guilt you into putting your phone down are the most important parts of this technique(?). also it's nice to have someone to talk through things and give you ideas when you're stuck, i personally have been totally useless on this front since i am so bad at coming up with Things That Can Happen but everyone i've sprinted with has basically ended up co-writing my fics with me and i am very grateful 🥹

it may not surprise you to learn that my romantic history ranges from ambiguous classmate situationship to ambiguous classmate situationship LOL i've tried actual dating but i've come to the conclusion that i am just not that interested in it… i wouldn't necessarily be opposed if my exact type fell out of the sky in front of me (and we somehow already knew each other because it does take me so long to warm up to people irl) but i'd really rather spend my time with my friends who i already know i like and lowkey i'm married to my work. i already have such little free time, why gamble it on something that has so many costs and so few benefits from my perspective? i'm a romantic idealistic about love/relationships in theory but not practice, i think/hope that comes through in my writing as well as i'm obsessed with a happy or at least hopeful ending lmao.

also thank you for enjoying how i write romance!! subtle and melancholy is exactly what i try for tonewise <3 i love ambiguous relationships land, i sincerely believe that is the height of shipfulness even though it might not be the conventional image of it.

sure!! my #1 winning combo lately is external deadline x writing sprints, i've been doing irl writing dates with pea and we both agree it's boosted our productivity so highly recommend sprinting with a friend even if just online. i'm also addicted to exchanges rn and generally find that the pressure of an externally enforced deadline does wonders for my writing speed, so if you sign up to a fest or an exchange with a theme that you like it might help get you over the line. i'm not super clued into the kpop fest/exchange scene other than ficmix, but i am fairly across the broader ao3 exchange scene so let me know if you'd like pointers on the big multifandom exchanges especially if you write for non-rpf canons!

also c/p-ing from an old cc about how i manage procrastination and perfectionism:
"RE: PROCRASTINATION
- the main thing that works for me is that i have committed to the persona of being a tryhard who is All The Time All The Time and believes strongly in Why Do It Later When You Could Do It Now? and then the internal inconsistency shames me into doing work LMAO i have to like panopticon myself. but it gets the job done!!
- working on two things at the same time is pretty effective for me because when i don't want to do one thing i can switch to the other one and when i don't want to do that i can switch back, i think the artificial binary kinda tricks my brain (huge fan of binaries) into believing there are only these two things to do in the whole world and doing neither is not even an option
- writing out checklists of things i need to do in a nice physical planner that i can put pretty stickers and washi tape on also really motivates me because it makes me enjoy looking at my tasks and also the rush of ticking things off is actually kinda addictive

RE: PERFECTIONISM
- i think i mostly struggle with this in a fic posting context so how i get around that specifically is by having 5 million matryoshka doll ao3 accounts and telling myself that it's okay if the final product sucks because i can just put it on a random side account and nobody has to know it was me
- lately i have also been setting myself strict word count targets (applying my Why Do It Later When You Could Do It Now? doctrine) and basically just writing whatever in order to hit those targets regardless of quality and honestly it's turning out pretty okay, i think the key thing is like genuinely convincing myself that quantity is more important and nobody has to see this if it's bad"

hope some of this is helpful and good luck with finishing your fics!! you can do it!!

THANK YOU FOR THINKING OF ME i am obsessed with every frame of this video firstly i love the Making My Boyfriends Kiss Like Barbie Dolls energy renjun is giving, love the closeup on nahyuck's faces around 0:09 where you can see renjun's huge smile in the corner. haechan grabbing jaemin's legs to pull him closer and jaemin wrapping his arms around haechan's knees/thighs and leaning forward to stare with huge predatory grin into haechan's eyes while haechan is visibly weighing up the perils of committing to the bit but going through with it anyway yay for menace4menaceshipping... they seriously looked like they were going to kiss at the end with that prolonged stareoff. and they should have. and/or renjun should have pushed their heads together. or i should have telepathically implanted the suggestion through the screen somehow.

hello anon! full disclosure i'm guy whose primary wip is turning 5 this year and also guy who regularly returns to wips i dropped years ago to finish them after everyone has already left the party BUT i do think it's important to triage wips depending on your personal cost/benefit analysis, because we all have a finite amount of time and energy in our lives. for me that looks like estimating how much i have left until the fic is done and weighing it against how much i like the idea and how much i've thought through what actually happens in the fic / how realistic it is for me to finish. since i have extremely limited free time for writing these days i tend to prioritise ease of completion above all else, so if i only have like 500 words of a very vague idea that i think will end up at around 10k but am not entirely sure where it's going, then i'm more likely to switch focus to something where i think i'm a couple k away from finishing (whether that's actually true or not is a vastly different question…) and know what i need to write to get there. you might assign different weights to these factors (eg maybe you value the idea more than the proximity to the finish line); the breakdown is fully up to you.

i also find that i hit a stage in every single wip where i'm irrationally convinced that it sucks and i should quit and move onto something i can execute better and/or quit writing altogether, and the only way out of that particular feeling is through unfortunately, so i've gotten used to recognising that it's a warped self-perception thing that doesn't necessarily reflect the reality of how good/bad the fic is and just pushing through. my view is always that it's better to have a fic that is imperfect but done and on paper where it can be improved, as opposed to a fic that is perfect but trapped in your head. i feel like we are often our own harshest critics and what we think isn't translating well is actually fine to someone outside of our minds. it definitely helps me to talk through scenes or plot points i'm stuck on with a friend! just last week i was complaining to pea about not knowing what the central conflict of my current exchange wip should be and she instantly came up with the perfect solution. or sometimes all a wip needs is some resting time. you can always put something on pause and revisit it later (and usually when i do this i find it isn't as bad as i remember), even if "later" is years down the track.

hope this helps! lmk if you'd like me to talk more about the process of pushing through / writing motivation generally, i have a few old ccs on the topic and would be happy to repost <3

OMG 🫂💖 vampire academy my beloved my vampire ya romance onepick even!! to be fair to you dimirose had uhh a lot going on even outside of the cheating LMAO i personally find teacher/student romances offputting even though i love power dynamics and mentorshipping and authority figure x subordinate ships in non-school contexts, so dimirose was never one of my main vampac agendas but the cheating did put me off even further. it's a shame because rose was one of my fave heroines but cheating kind of is where i draw the line 😭 still, i have always been a henchman enthusiast and rose was one of my first.

for me the emotional core of the series will always be roselissa (and christian can be there too <3), real true love that transcends the boundary between life and death :') invented bodyguard romance to me like hello the resurrection, the bodysharing, the ladyknight power dynamic, the rose letting lissa feed from her because keeping lissa alive is more important to rose than any societal taboo no matter how deeprooted, the rose literally dying to protect lissa… christianlissa is my fave canon ship and i loooove christianrose unlikely besties in violence and combat. was obsessed with the sex comedy scenes where rose kept accidentally getting pulled into lissa's body while she was having sex with christian like guys it's in the text My Ship Real. i would have been SO happy with a poly v endgame with lissa as centre (obviously was never going to happen but a girl can dream).

(assuming tristan is autocorrected from Adrian) yess i thought adrianrose was soooo sweet even though they had NOT ENDGAME stamped all over them from the start, they met too late for adrian "second male lead" ivashkov to ever have a real chance ): what's frustrating to me about their relationship is that i just don't buy rose's reasoning that even aside from rose being permanently hung up on dimitri, adrianrose still wouldn't have worked out because he was toxically using her as a ReasonsToLive therapy crutch – i don't think this is actually borne out in the text. imo even though adrian's relationship with rose did inspire him to be a better person and try to develop healthier habits, he wasn't hinging all of that on rose until right at the end when dimitri was back in the picture and rmead needed to get adrian out of the way asap. he was developing strong interpersonal connections with lissa jill et al separately from his status as Rose's Boyfriend and finding community and friendship and support to ground his management of spirit magic use side effects. so the authorial attempt to justify rose cheating on adrian / adrianrose breakup was just so disappointing to me. adrian one of the poorest meow meows of the whole series really.

i am a firstlovetruther but i do really really love adriansydney – have you read the sydney-centric sequel series bloodlines? i didn't enjoy it as much as vampac but the developing relationship between adrian and sydney did make me smile, i think their personalities complement each other so well and they have some fun romijuli forbidden love tropes going on!

this is making me so nostalgic i should reread the series soon :')

hello anon!! thanks for reading my reviews i'm glad you're enjoying my bookposting <3 this is a bit complicated to answer since the venn diagram of Things I Like and Things I Dislike has a 95% overlap (see especially: gore, amnesia/memory problems, pairing off an entire ensemble cast) because most tropes are heavily dependent on execution for me and i have sofuckingcomplicateditis. but the main story elements i dislike in published fiction regardless of execution are:

• focus on real-world oppression / homophobia, sexism, racism, transphobia etc being a heavy part of the plot or worldbuilding – kind of inescapable in my fave genre (sff) so i just have to cope
• a character's reputation being unjustly ruined eg public humiliation, lies that turn their loved ones against them, false accusations, etc
• medical realism eg pregnancy, infections, surgeries, needles, blood withdrawals/transfusions specifically
• unrelenting misery that also ends badly – i have a weak heart and need a little bit of hope/light/love at some point to live >_< love interests having names i find unappealing

and a few other notes:

• cheating is my #1 dnw in fic where i don't even want to see a mention of it, but i have a bit more tolerance of its existence in books, although it will permanently sour me on the ship and characters involved (dimirose vampire academy……………….)
• similarly switching/reverse is tied #1 dnw in fic but i'm less bothered by it in books because i rarely care for canon m/m or f/f so it's really none of my business if it shows up
• 95% of authors need to be banned from writing enemies to lovers

obviously not a value judgment on any of the above tropes, just what i personally prefer not to read. all this being said, i basically never dnf books no matter what (i have literally only ever dropped two books, being 1. evermore by alyson noel which was legitimately so bad i could not force myself through it and don't intend to ever revisit + 2. jade city by fonda lee which was actually really good but so insanely stressful for me i couldn't keep going although i haven't ruled out picking it back up) so i'm always shopping at the landmine store for landmines lol. probably i need to go back to my crime procedural roots and make 2025 the year of mysteries which rarely if ever fail me, but i really love magic systems so much i can't stop picking up romantasy glurge #949273939383 in the hopes that this one will be different for real not clickbait. :')

hi anon!! thank you for sharing your thoughts, i am always so happy to discuss books and feel like the_school_of_athens.png <3 really my opinion on the radiant emperor duology comes purely down to a matter of personal preference. i wish i had a better time reading them than i did! i think they are objectively excellent books and i wouldn't hesitate to rec them to people who i know are interested in the topics they explore. i also really liked everything you've mentioned enjoying here--the tragedy, the doom, the self-sabotaging behaviour exhibited by so many characters but especially ouyang, zhu's willingness to bear any human cost for the sake of her ambition--but unfortunately the books also ran into so many of my major dislikes in their subject matter that my feelings netted out to a negative. i don't like historical fiction and i don't like stories that focus heavily on characters facing prejudice and oppression whether those attitudes are period-typical or not. however, i think it's so important that these stories are told and that there is space to explore real-world oppressive power structures in fiction. i'll defend the right of those stories to exist until i die. i also accept that it's entirely on me that i was shopping at the landmine store for landmines, i knew more or less what i was going into but as sffliker9000 i hoped it would be worth it and i do think it ultimately was! i enjoyed the characters and the insane cast dynamics and the awful feeling of doom pervading every (beautifully chosen) word. but parker-chan is obviously very interested in exploring gender and sexuality, and i am not very interested in reading fiction that primarily concentrates on those themes. that's really all there is to it.

i hope that explains my views on the books! i did think they were good, i just didn't like them, in a way that casts no value judgment on them. i felt a similar way about the baru cormorant books--i respect them on a craft level and there are discrete themes and aspects that i did enjoy, but overall the story was just not something i wanted to read.

happy holidays & happy new year to you too!!

i wish i could answer you with a book that i actually liked but unfortunately things have not been going well on the literary enjoyment front for me recently 😭 just posted a book review roundup on dw for the past few months here: https://rhodochrosite.dreamwidth.org/47990.html. out of everything on there i did think the radiant emperor duology by shelley parker-chan was fairly compelling but i did not like it. however i'm pretty excited for a few entries on my tbr list, particularly exordia by seth dickinson, the queen of nothing by holly black and long live evil by sarah rees brennan, so hopefully things turn around for me soon reading-wise! which i feel like i am saying every time...