scratchimpress

I'm cutting it a little close with a zine I'm participating in (as a writer). Between my PC breaking at the most inopportune of times — it's quite painful to try doing all your drafting and writing on your phone! — and getting a replacement, I haven't been able to write as freely as I wanted. It's frustrating since I know I can definitely fill out 2k words (and go over that) in a short time — I've finished ~7k word and above oneshots in a night, but now it's taking time.

And I'm aware that I can just talk to the zine mods. It's a free zine, so there's way less pressure, and I'm one of the only three writers on it. It doesn't get any less anxiety-inducing and embarrassing to tell them that. 

But at least free-writing  a drabble or two for something with way less expectations (my OCs and yumeship) have warmed up my writing muscles and I feel more relaxed to just yap on the word processor. Small mercies that it worked.

Tonight, I'm going to try getting to at least 1k and finishing the first half of the pitch I gave. It doesn't need to be pretty or perfect, since this isn't the final check-in, but dammit I'm at least going to get something done.

I have been meaning to back up the posts I made studying some characters from my favorite visual novel, The House in Fata Morgana, after Twitter became X. It should all have been moved to my tumblr, but I never got around to it. I think I might just use my tumblr blog moving forward as a place to post my xreader fics and interacting with the friends I've already made in the reader-insert and yumeshipping community there. 

Lately, I don't think Tumblr is a good place to journal or share strong opinions on fandom. Not anymore. The fan police have already stricken a lot of the popular writing blogs for the HSR (and HYV, in general) space.

In contrast to HYV games, The House in Fata Morgana is certainly a more niche and indeed much less well-known game. Its fandom is much smaller; though it gained a huge influx of new blood after the Nijisanji VTuber Fulgur Ovid's playthrough, a visual novel is still a hard sell for younger fans to get into. The VN genre has a certain reputation. Most people still think that all visual novels are hentai dating sims, a stigma that has been around for longer than I have even been an active participant in fandom. 

So the stereotype for visual novel fans is usually: straight white men with a preference for pornographic content to get their fix of their 2D waifus. Delightful. Incredibly dismissive of the queer fans.

But Fatamoru is considered one of the more progressive visual novels, despite the incredibly dark subject matter it ventures into. This has caused a lot of fiery and often hostile discourse in its English-speaking community, especially surrounding certain protagonists. I hold the opinion that these characters are fictional; no matter the so-called atrocities (and almost all of its cast has done Problematic stuff!), at the end of the day, these are just words and images on a screen. I will not in any way diminish every person's connection to their favorite media—casual or deeply personal, this is none of my business—but I also don't think people have the right to besmirch another human being's reputation on the basis of events and stories that aren't IRL.

So! I've distanced myself from the Fata Morgana community precisely because I don't think it's a comfortable space to freely discuss in. Not anymore. I still love this game on a level that you wouldn't believe; it's one of my creative pillars, a formative experience that continues to influence how I write stories and develop characters to this day. I would still love to continue writing posts and analyses on all the characters, given the time and the inclination. But this time, I'd rather do it all in a much cozier and quieter space. A space where I can decide who can or cannot comment or impose themselves upon a hobby that I do purely for the love of the game.

I will post updated versions of my character threads here. Twitter didn't give me as permissive a space to freely format and write longer posts, but there's no limit on DW. So it might take time; I want to finish my yearly replay to grab some screenshots and further quotations, if it betters the thoughts I had already laid down. Look forward to it! Might take weeks or months, but they'll all be up here. 

So, I decided to make a Dreamwidth journal because the enshittification of Discord is threatening to uproot some of the fannish communities I'm in. Welp, hello, dreamwidth. Though I wasn't super active in the livejournal communities of yesteryears, this still feels rather nostalgic.

I'm a fic writer who goes by lunafleurette on ao3 and bsky; my blog username is  flower-seeks-the-moon on tumblr. I'm in my late 20s and have been immersed in the fic and roleplaying side of fandom for more than a decade, as early as 2009 or so—trawling the trenches of ffnet for the Naruto, Hetalia, and Vampire Knight fandoms in particular, though most of my earliest fannish works have since been lost to time (and an embarrassed older Luna deleting them). 

This journal is intended to be both a writing repository—for my fics as well as other creative works I feel like posting—and a personal blog. Yeah, I also use Tumblr in a similar fashion. Time will tell how my usage for Dreamwidth shall develop, but so far, I do like how this place feels. I miss actually seeing searchable interest tags that let me find users with the same tastes, for one; it feelsl like ages ago since I saw such a feature, back when I was young and cringe and free on Fanpop...

Anyway. Yes. My fanfiction will also be posted and backed up here on Dreamwidth. Yay for my paranoia that AO3 or Tumblr might someday implode and lose me all my writing (I kid, I do have cloud storage and offline backups).

Oh! I also post yumeshipping content, from time to time. I consider myself a very casual yume; I don't quite selfship, though my OCs do have bits and pieces of myself lovingly baked into them (along with a sprinkling of my own experiences and issues here, a dash of my weirdness there...). I'm mainly a Mydei (HSR) yume, very comfortable with sharing, but to a lesser extent I also post yumeship stuff for Baxter Ward (OLBA). Tangentially, I write xreader / reader-insert fics from time to time, when the mood (or the inspiration) strikes. 

This space is very much going to contain all sorts of indulgent content. I do what I want. This also includes writing smut; if you're uncomfortable with explicit sexual content, worry not. I'll endeavor to tag appropriately. I'd still recommend you to turn back, however, if you're not cool with dark/''problematic'' fic content.

I'm cool with interactions, but I don't do mutual subscription just for ''collecting''. Unless we've interacted or plan to interact, enough to be familiar with each other, don't sub to me expecting that. Feel free to comment or chat with me. I have low energy and get burnt out easily, though—this doesn't mean that I don't enjoy interaction, but I might take my time to respond. Additionally, I'm also autistic. Sometimes I will miss social cues or fail to follow them. You may tell me if I've crossed a boundary, or if I've misunderstood something.

Now, I think I've yapped for long enough in this intro post. I'll wrap it up here. A navigation and about me post will soon be pinned when I have the time to add it. Nice.