2025 Review/2026 Visions

[extrapenguin]

AO3 Stats

Stat	2025	2024 then	2024 now	All years
User Subscriptions:	295	269	-	-
Kudos:	884	410	599	57624
Comment Threads:	129	99	104	3547
Bookmarks:	134	59	105	13732
Subscriptions:	21	1	3	1503
Word Count:	45047	9238	9238	957299
Hits:	15183	3550	6166	598872

45k! Much better than last year. Still not close to my 2018-2021 heyday of 100k+/year, but, uh, idk. I guess I need to learn to forgive myself. Or just get into a new fandom. The large numbers came from mostly Guardian fandom (RIP, for all I can remember is the fucking trashfire harassment campaign), bracketed by MDZS at the start (before my flist got anywhere near it, ofc) and Star Wars at the end.

I posted 49 things to AO3 in 2025. Again, mostly for Battleship – some fic, some art, a few vids, one fanmix.

Popularity

This year, popularity was much more evenly divided between the categories! Let's go take a look at each.

Hits
#1
As the Empress Commands (OW, F/F, 4.2k)

The Empress has been forced to send her previous toy to the Cold Palace. Her loyal Emperor gives her Concubine Gu as a replacement.

A porny fic written for Tit for Tat, ft. me treating my recip's tags like a blackout bingo. I did not quite hit all of them, but lots! Very kinky, appreciated by noncon boob drinking fans everywhere.

#2
There is no returning to (MDZS, Wei Wuxian/Lan Qiren, 435)

He'd come here to order the Yiling Patriarch to cease and desist this demonic cultivation, scourge of the cultivational world, source of countless even more troublesome imitators and a blot on Lan Qiren's perfect record as an educator. Instead, Wei Wuxian had showed him something he had been working on, and he had been seduced into letting him try it on him.

A short battleship work for a late board phase, when we had to hit "double penetration" and "foreskin", so that is what I did. Please enjoy Lan Qiren getting laid in medias res.

in the still of the night (MDZS, Wei Wuxian/Lan Qiren, 2k)

Lan Qiren decides to try, one last time, to lecture Wei Wuxian on propriety. When he arrives at the Burial Mounds under the cover of night, he discovers things aren't as he thought they would be.

More Battleship! This one's more of a normal canon divergence type thing, where Lan Qiren discovers the golden core loss (but guesses wrong about the reason for it ofc).

Kudos
#1
re-education (MDZS, Lan Qiren & Wei Wuxian, 1.2k)

There is a perfectly good youth here, and the Jiang are ruining him by letting him run amok! Lan Qiren is determined to fix the matter.

Again, Battleship. I can see why this is most kudosed: Lan Qiren is the POV and snarky af here, making it funny, and there's a canon divergence that suggests that at least the emotional health and coping of the Lotus Pier gang might be improved from canon.

#2
in the sill of the night again

#3
As the Empress Commands again

Comment Threads
All Battleship art this year!

#1
Professor Fuzang and the x-ray machine (OW, gen)

Investigating relics of the Dirt Empire! Or possibly vegetables.

A fun relic of my time writing lore for Team Pear!

#2
Snail's Daydream (OW, gen)
A snail that dreams of space travel! What's not to love?

#3
Fly Me to the Moon (OW, gen)

A dragon rider and a dragon, flying through the misty night.

Pretty and dreamy.

Bookmarks
#1
As the Empress Commands again

#2
re-education again

#3
in the still of the night again

Self-recs

Art/Comics
Hard to pick, this year! I decided against the art listed above, and instead have a mermaid:
Moongazer

(Honorable mention to Die Before You Wake, an OW F/M M-rated comic that is peak cdrama trope)

Fanmix
As is by now tradition, I made an Expanse fanmix! This one's about Laconia, and I uhhh got a bit fancy-ass about the formatting. I long to make a fanmix where the pull lines make a CYOA poem like Obligations 2 (image) by Layli Long Soldier, but, uh, at what point does a fanmix stip being a fanmix and instead become something else? Anyway, this is a regular, linear fanmix, but with the songs plonked into columns based on whether they are about the Leader, the People, or the Planet.
Write the History

Vid
I only published three this year (made a fourth, have one missing like 15 seconds, and then there's my festivids draft). My favorite is actually one of the unpublished ones, I think, but of the published ones I choose this one:
Sister Moon (Side Story of Fox Volant)
Yuan Ziyi is peak and I love the fight scenes and also how she does not compromise her principles for a man.

Fic

Best Title is shared between Breast Foot Forward (OW, F/M, making the most of being forcibly remarried to an Emperor young enough to be your son) and Ka-BOOB (OW, F/F, having your way with the concubine you've been told to breast expand), both of which are lactation kink boob expansion Battleship fics.

"But Pingu, did you write anything other than boob-focused OW porn?" Oh yes I did! This year the theme seems to have been "understated, maybe wistful, potentially hopeful". Have three, with escalating positivity:
Watching the world come undone (MDZS, Wei Wuxian/Jiang Yanli, 1.1k) post-apocalyptic, making the most of a bad situation
Horizons Deep (SWTOR, Acina/Sith Inquisitor, 1k) "What does one want when the wanting is done?" wistful yearning-ish
End of Exile (Expanse, Filip Nagata, 1.3k) post-canon, hopeful ending
(+ OW on the mood: With Eyes Wide Open, F/M steampunk ritual sex)

"But surely you wrote something weird this year????" A bit less weirdery than is typical of me, but I did write something on the unusual end:
reborn (MDZS, Wei Wuxian/OFC, 1.8k)

Wei Wuxian gets resurrected by ... matriarchal necromancers?

I did so much research for this, considering that it's for Battleship, speed writing event extraordinaire. The ruling clans bear the Eight Great Surnames of Chinese Antiquity and then I went on a deep dive of what other Chinese surnames have the woman radical in them. (Spoiler: exclusively the Wei of Wei Wuxian. He was made for this!)

"Pingu, I want something dumber!" OK, have this
The Emperor's New Woes (OW, F/M, 2.1k)

Emperor Zhao Yiqin has, to the consternation of all of his ministers and his eunuch friend Lan He, bought a stack of talismans (which obviously won't work, come on, Your Majesty) from a Daoist (charlatan) in an effort to guarantee conception of a son and heir. Things don't quite go as anyone expected...

Emperor hires Daoist to guarantee that he'll conceive a son with the Empress; ends up being the one carrying the baby. Smut is Emperor/Empress, emotionally the core relationship is Emperor/Head Eunuch (who is plotting to mpregnate the Emperor later).

2025 Resolutions & did I do them

Write 10k
Yes! I wrote over 40k! That's as many as four tens!

Be more present on DW
Uhhhhhh no. Did not really happen. I think I need some level of fannish fixation/new and improved energy.

But on the community front, I did befriend tavina via battleship! (Like the one (1) good thing that happened relating to the battleship 2025 mod team. Jesus fuck was that a clusterfuck.) And I got the rest of Team Pear! Tower and Volcano just bye'd off, but now I have a new community of peeps in the After Pearty. One quarter of a point?

Get a new vid_bingo card and make at least one vid
This also didn't happen! However, this didn't happen because the new round didn't start, so I'm pleading force majeure.

2026 Resolutions

Go to a Cultural Event at least once a month
The opera. Ballet. Some other dress-up event. I am giving myself permission to skip July, as I will probably be back home, and idk if there's anything in August, but the goal is 12 events.

Community in fandom, part 1
I think I need to get into a new fandom. Does anyone on DW want to suggest a new fandom for me? Science fiction books and historical/scifi cdramas preferred. In addition to my love for worldbuilding and weird stuff, I love significant female characters that don't have romance-related plots. Must have a fandom on DW that is not just me. (No Murderbot, Guardian, MDZS.) I just want the 2018 Guardian fandom energy and idk, I guess the chance to fall in love with something new. I only need like 2-3 other people, I think, if they're willing to fall in and be active about timeline posts and fanmixes and stuff.

Community in fandom, part 2
I am a member of the fanwork exchange community and shall continue with that. I have space_swap, but also, I am (with some friends) building a replacement for battleship. Please welcome taggle to the world! Everything is still under construction, and none of what we have is on DW, but we're tentatively thinking about an early summer date and should have things up in ... a few months?

Real announcements will, of course, wait for us to have something to announce; consider this an executive pre-announcement.

Comments

[flowersforgraves]

omg taggle is such a good name! excited to see what you do for that, though I don't think I have Events in me these days.

[tavina]

I'm very happy to be friends with you Pingu! (and also very excited for Taggle)

Re: the fandom situation, I am not very active fannishly on dreamwidth, so I'm not super able to offer much input. On that note I feel like I am also(?) moving away from Being A Part of An Active Fannish Community Wherein I Fan Over A Specific Canon Or Something -- which I think is a sentiment shared by more than one fandom friend of mine this year, I'm not quite sure what to make of it tbh, so at least we're all lost in the soup together.

Sending you many hugs! 2026 resolutions looking spiffy, and I hope you have many more fun times at the ballet - your thoughts on them are super fun!