69,958 Words Later: My 2025 AO3 Year in Review

Taking a look at my Archive of Our Own stats page for 2025, I published a total of 69,958 words of fan fiction this year. Wow! In this post, I reflect on some of the stories I’ve published.

Top Five Works

The stats page also lists my top five works of the year by view count.

1. Phantom Eye Syndrome - 8,646 views

Excerpt:

Dignity is the first garment Aventurine dons during his recovery.

It is a familiar cloak, woven from threads of practiced charm and shrewd confidence, obscuring his true, weary frame with the weight of longstanding habit.

That facade is the first wall rebuilt, mortared with easy smiles and tales spun for his colleagues over the phone — gilded narratives of his own death and resurrection. Another legendary victory for the gambler who always comes out on top, no matter how high the stakes.

Aventurine of Stratagems is back. The weakness is an illusion. It was he who wrangled Penacony back into the IPC’s firm grasp.

Or so his performance dictates.

This story is a re-telling of Penacony with a canon divergent twist!

Confession: I have a complicated love-hate relationship with this work.

Being the first longfic I’ve ever finished, and having written it after an 8 year gap of not publishing anything, it isn’t my best writing. The prose is rough, and the pacing is a bit awkward. Plus, all of my writing experience is for short stories exclusively.

However, the worst offense was the fact that the work closely follows the events of the canon. I did not want to dryly re-write the canon in this work, but the canon was the plot. Figuring out what to omit and what was interesting enough to include with the added spice of Aventurine not being able to see was difficult and taxing. I got caught up forcing my way through many scenes that I didn’t like that ended up being scrapped.

My update schedule was pretty smooth for this work. I updated it about once a month. But the death of my brother led to delays in the final few chapters. Suddenly, I didn’t really feel like working on a piece of fiction that focused heavily on mortality, but not in the way I was personally thinking through things. On top of that, the work also got relatively popular, and the pressure of finishing it for an audience made me feel as though I wasn’t able to work on any other projects guilt-free.

Now that it’s finally completed, I don’t know if I’ll write a longfic again. It is unsustainable for my level of perfectionism. But I’m very proud of myself for finishing it, even though it took me over a year to publish the final two chapters. Overall, I do like the story.

2. Anti-Mimesis of Human Touch - 4,446 views

Excerpt:

For how long has Aventurine’s touch fulfilled him? How long has Ratio recognized himself, in his novel romantic partner’s sibylline eyes, as not only a man chasing a standard, but one who has somehow fulfilled it?

I am an avid roleplayer. My partner and I have been roleplaying Aventurine and Dr. Ratio pretty much since their release. We have thousands of roleplay posts between them.

So truly, my best creative output comes from collaboration. This fic is was co-written by Nhura, and I think that it’s fantastic. I really don’t have much else to say about it. It’s just a solid short story.

3. The Heretic’s Noose - 3,742 views

Excerpt:

“A vessel and its flame. A Titan and a heretic. The savior of the Grove and an eternal, hopeless romantic,” Cerces muses. “May I pose another question to you, alchemist: what will we become? Your body shall be returned to you, should you grasp for that fate. Should you fail, the vessel will belong to me. I don’t know if either of us want that.”

After playing Honkai Star Rail’s 3.1 patch, I was inspired enough by the story to quickly write this work.

Having played the rest of Amphoreus, I would have definitely written Anaxa differently, knowing what I know now. But I still like this work.

The canon never really explored the subject of two souls living in the same vessel as much as I hoped it would, so it’s able to stand on its own uniqueness. There also wasn’t enough Cerces in Amphoreus! She’s such a fun character.

4. That This Broken Instrument Might Still Hold Tune - 2,277 views

Excerpt:

Sunday’s thoughts turn to his mother and sister. Gopher Wood’s looming silhouette swallows them whole — a black, feathered stain across his mother’s smile, a bullet through Robin’s throat.

Once, twice, and now a third time, Sunday whispers a hymn to himself. “Mother of Realms, turn not away. Let my knees wear grooves in penitent stone. Sing not my sins in major key. Brand this traitor’s tongue to mend your instrument’s dented horn—”

I had a vague idea for a fic like this after Honkai Star Rail 3.0 came out. The idea got shelved while I worked on Phantom Eye Syndrome, but one day, I suddenly got inspired to work on this, and I banged it out.

It’s a good showcase of my writing, and the prose came very easily to me. I certainly have a long history of experience traumatized religious characters, lol.

Xipe the Harmony is such a fascinating Aeon. And there’s nothing more I love to write than a man with crippling religious trauma. Exploring Sunday’s dark psyche was quite the adventure, and I adore his relationship with Welt and the rest of the Astral Express.

5. Zenless Zone Zero Inter-Knot (AO3 Work Skin) - 1,781 views

I have some weird form of mental illness that occasionally requires me to get completely obsessed with some coding project through sleepless nights and tireless days of work. I wish I was joking!

But anyway, I re-created the look of Zenless Zone Zero’s Inter-Knot post interface to HTML and CSS as faithfully as possible. I started working on this for a Vivian fic of mine that is still in progress. Perhaps I’ll finish it one day.

AO3’s CSS limitations made this an interesting challenge. I think it turned out really well.

Personal Highlights

A lot of authors say that their most popular works are not the works they consider their best. Here are the works I am the most proud of that didn’t appear in the list above.

Even Hounds Learn to Howl

Excerpt:

“My lucky little hound.” Master grabs Kakavasha’s chin, forcing eye contact, breaking into a dark, long laugh. “Yes, 35. You’re right. A stock like that should be shorted — under normal circumstances. But that stock is the Interastral Peace Corporation. Far from normal. They don’t play by the rules. The king of the market makes the rules. Remember that, sweetheart.”

Just like Anti-Mimesis of Human Touch, this work is a culmination of years and years of extensive Aventurine and Dr. Ratio roleplaying experience. Only this time, I wrote it completely on my own, as it was a birthday gift for my roleplaying partner. But it still drew upon years of our world-building.

I’ll be honest, I was shocked at how well this work was relieved. The work is just Aventurine backstory stuffed to the brim with all of our personal headcanons. Truly, it is meant for the giftee’s eyes only. And being such a dark work, I just assumed it would go unnoticed by the fandom.

I don’t think I’ve ever received so much praise for a work in my long lifetime of fandom! Wow! The response was staggering, and I’m truly touched more than I can even express.

I pour all the love in my heart into my roleplaying sessions with Nhura. With the logs being private, it feels amazing to have all of that work, character development, and extensive fanon world-building appreciated and praised by people other than ourselves! There will definitely be more of this work.

Chrysanthemums in Summer

Excerpt:

Belle only slides onto the same couch cushion as Harumasa, gently rubbing his back.

It’s humiliating, being the sick guy. Harumasa has dealt with a lifetime of being regarded first for his illness, and second as a person.

If there’s anyone in the world Harumasa can trust to treat him as a person foremost, it’s Belle. Belle doesn’t feel the need to lecture Harumasa about his health, nor does bring up his illness at every turn like others do. Never. She listens when Harumasa opens up about his struggles, and offers him everything that she can.

Do you ever just write something and go, “Oh… this is genuinely good. This is a masterpiece.”?

Yeah. It’s rare, but it happens. This work is so genuinely amazing. I don’t know how it came out of my. Many, many months of mulling over Asaba Harumasa privately in my own head, I suppose. If anyone was born to write a Harumasa hospital whump sickfic, it’s me. And boy, did I write that.

I wrote this work as a treat for the Hoyoverse Exchange, and loved every second of writing it! I am a huge fan of Zenless Zone Zero, but don’t know anyone else in the fandom, so I don’t have anyone to yell about it with!

Funny story: I had to research how men and women act in a relationship. Literally every single time Belle and Harumasa interacted, I had to search the internet for it. Male/female romance is genuinely that foreign to me! But man, these two have CHEMISTRY.