Peeks around the corner* Can I come in?

I last updated this profile in 2012, and wow... I had no idea it had been that long.

I haven't written anything in years, so this new story took me completely by surprise. For those of you who remember me from eons ago, I apologize in advance. My new story is in a whole new category. My old incomplete stories are dead-dead probably, and my writing skills (such as they were) have atrophied.

For anyone new, hello! Refer to the above statement about my writing skills. This new ZZZ story happened only because I'm a lore whore and it chewed on my brain until I couldn't sleep. I'm not joking. Also, this is a chaptered story - it wasn't supposed to be, yet here we are - but it is complete already. I'm just gonna upload 1-2 chapters every few days until it's all there. Partially because it's so much longer than I intended, but mainly because I'm performing a temperature check. I'm not sure if my writing is suitable for public consumption anymore. If I see that it's not, then I'm not making anyone suffer the whole 45k word monstrosity. And I love having time to read comments. No shame in this game.

Added 5/27/25:

So people are actually finding me here again - wow!

For anyone who DM'ed me, I'm so sorry. I hardly check it, and I had my alerts off. I'm starting to catch up, kinda. I'm much easier to reach on the BluSky platform under my new pseud AffinityTheBard. (Sorry but I refuse to subject myself to the toxicity that is Twitter or X or whatever that psycho that owns it calls it now.)

Also all of my new stories as well as the full It's All Fun and Commissions Until It's Not series can be found here: AffinityTheBard on Ao3

Please do not repost my work without permission. I have allowed a beautiful soul to begin translating it into Russian with permission, so I'm not opposed as long as you ask first and give credit where it's due.