Hello! Nice to meet you, and if you have found yourself inexplicably at this profile page, thank you very much for visiting. It is always a pleasure to have guests, especially if they're readers.

Stories enjoyed: Fullmetal Alchemist, Doubutsu no Oishasan, Gin no Saji, Detective Conan, Shingeki no Kyojin, Gintama, Baccano, Durarara, Psycho-Pass, Paranoia Agent, Pandora Hearts, D. Grayman, Kindaichi Shounen no Jikenbo, The 13 1/2 lives of Captain Bluebear, Library Wars, Fahrenheit 451, Discworld City Watch, Life of Pi, Harry Potter, Edge Chronicles, Sherlock Holmes, Tantei Galileo, Hikaru no Go, Lord of the Flies, Now and Then Here and There, Shinsekai Yori, Midnight's Children, Tokyo Ghoul (Kushu), 1Q84, Abhorsen Trilogy, Imperium/Lustrum and Thermae Romae.

In short, my perfect story would be: A mind-boggling, twisting mystery with fantasy elements, bordering on surreal, with psychological drama and plenty of blood and dark places, but with the odd spike of fizzy comedy and down-to-earth characters...Any recommendations?

I make no distinction between different media for telling stories - if it is a good story, it is a good story, and it happens to have been presented in a particular media format.

Current status: It's been up and down. I'm currently navigating the Twilight Zone of 'I have a degree from a good uni but it's difficult convincing employers that they want me', alongside my own writing project, which is why updates have become very sporadic. I'm truly sorry about that, but once life has stabilised, I'll be writing my fanfiction more regularly. ;)

Tanka in Ode to Block by Zen in Desperation

This feeling like bleurgh
Our blaaah for when words run dry
Writers' block is real.

An excuse for our own fail
Or the dying brain's best friend?

Story Progress:

Ghost in the Machine:

Chapter 6 in progress - apologies for the delay - working on own fic - 4389 words so far

Generally speaking I do a bit of writing every day and I keep a word count tally on a tumblr. Surprisingly, it's quite a good motivator, having the me from yesterday giving the me of today a talking to!

Current my-boom: 2013: Miyazawa Kenji's Night on the Galactic Railroad - a classic SF novella, with beautiful and surreal descriptions of a train journey along the banks of the River of Heaven i.e. the Milky Way, that leaves you guessing all the way. I was convinced Campanella was a girl though. That was a bit embarrassing. 2014: Writing my own novel again, which is nice! 2015: So excited for the return of Digimon Adventure in Spring! I can't believe it's been 15 years since 'That Summer'.

2020: The notable jump in readers of Spring of the Plague makes me a little concerned. Each to one's own coping mechanisms, but I do hope you make for yourself a hot drink and have other comforts at hand. Life is still up and down. My mental hasn't been kind to me for quite a while, and 2019 was something of a crunch year in that regard. Ideas were considered and discarded, and here I am, on the other side of it: Please insert your upbeat song from Portal of your choice. I like both potatoes and cake.

On Writing: I'll only go ahead with an idea if it's never been done in the fandom before, otherwise, why do it?

"Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‘infinitely’ when you mean ‘very’; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite."
— C.S. Lewis

I'm also, rather misguidedly, on fictionpress, under the same pen-name: https://www.fictionpress.com/u/975479/Zenthisoror - although the story that's on there is one I wrote before starting on fanfiction and I was in a dark place at the time. It's a bit of experimental fiction that I really must insist you DO NOT read the last chapter before starting, but if you ever feel curious, there it is. Personally, I think fanfiction's been absolutely brilliant for practicing characterisation, and I owe it a lot for improving my writing since!

Current Top 12 Complete Long Fanfics (in no particular order):

1. Ascendant by Samurai101

(Naruto) Possibly my favourite time-travel fiction from any fandom. A dying Itachi ends up in the young mind of pre-Massacre Itachi and it's all glorious downhill mystery and drama from there. You can feel the main character falling apart at the seams, especially when he's still in conflict with the younger mind.

2. The Fifth Act by Sinnatious

(Final Fantasy VII) Accidental time-travel dumps Cloud in the past without rhyme or reason or hope of going back. As satisfying as it is to see an attempt to fix the plot, it's also tremendous fun to watch an attempt to fix things look terribly as though it's going to fail in the most ironically possible of ways. Great action, characterisation, and use of the ripple effect. Read in one sitting and it totally delivers.

3. Syrgja by Lady Charity

(Thor) Oh boy, where to start. There's a development of a romantic relationship that really should be crack but somehow this story manages to convince you that it actually works. Big story with a big, weeping, wounded heart on its sleeve and beautifully written, be it the icy world of the frost giants, the kindness of strangers, or wars to end all wars.

4. RED by Sherbet Mayhem

(Naruto) Based loosely on the Book Thief, and it uses some of the Book Thief's narrative quirks very effectively. Konoha has become a parallel to Nazi Germany and it all begins with Kakashi and Sakura hiding an Uchiha boy in the basement. The writing is gorgeous. Death as a narrator is dry as a bone. An emotionally tough but rewarding read.

5. Battle Royale: Digimon by Miss Anonymous hp

(Digimon) You'd think from the premise that it really wouldn't and shouldn't work, but stripped of their Digimon and left with just their experiences from the Digital world, it's interesting to see how the Chosen children cope. Brutal, especially since it's Takeru, Hikari and Daisuke who've been thrown onto the island - the nice guy, the sweet girl, and the every-dude - and they've been written true and straight to character.

6. Asylum by Strix 4

(Fullmetal Alchemist) AU based on the 2003 Animation, which I don't even like, but I enjoyed this fiction. A group of teens are brought together into a mysterious asylum run by a certain Dante for dark purposes of her own. Needless to say, they start planning an escape and all the horrible truths come out.

7. Will of Foxfire by Quill of Molliemon

(Naruto) A magical fantasy AU, seamlessly adding mythologicial creatures into the Narutoverse with its ninja villages, technique and history and making it all work wonderfully. There are werewolves, there are kitsune, and themes of racial prejudice and Naruto is the 'neither-nor' fumbling for his identity in the midst of it. Tightly plotted with some very memorable scenes from Minato (let's just say, 'Cry Wolf').

8. Just One Chance by AmunRa

(Naruto)

9. Playing with Evil by R.G. Waffles

(Naruto)

10. Casework by Basser

(Detective Conan % House) Yes. You read that right. Detective Conan, crossed over with House, and it works fantastically, as House tries to solve the biological mystery that his new patient presents and ends up digging dangerously deep. Battle of minds and wits (at first), but great character interaction and plot throughout.

11. At the End of All Things by Mengde

(Final Fantasy VII) If this was the sequel to Final Fantasy VII, I would have no complaints whatsoever. Time has passed, the world has changed, Cloud had been missing for half a decade and a strange illness is turning people into monsters with no hope of a cure. When Vincent rediscovers Cloud and brings him into the new world, they face a new group of enemies with a surprisingly familiar face at their head. Fantastic plot and characterisation, breathtaking scope, believable and genuinely frightening villains, and wonderful at depicting the vulnerabilities that go in hand-in-hand with what it means to be human.

12. Number Twenty Eight by Sevlow

(Fullmetal Alchemist) The chimera fiction to end all chimera fictions and it's sequel Snow is just as painful. Definitely an emotional challenge.

On Editing: Spring of the Plague will, unfortunately, never again be edited, as much as I can clearly see it needs to be done. Why? Because something wonderfully awful happened between me and my computer and the real documents for Spring, Lines - in fact, everything barring the final three chapters of Spring and the first four chapters of Winter - have been wiped away. And I hadn't backed them up. The moral of this story, writers: BACK UP EVERYTHING. The only reason I still have these chapters is because they were stored here on fanfiction's document manager!

Pet Writing Peeve: Calling eyes 'orbs' and then describing them using some kind of precious/ semi-precious stone...or 'chocolate' if they're brown. Well, it works for some people, but in my books, brown is brown and blue is blue. The exact shade is up to the imagination of the reader.

Writing ambition: To have one story go over 100 reviews, to have one get 100 favourites and to have one story recommended on...haha, in my dreams! I've got to seriously up my game.

And eventually, to write original stories that will have lots of fanfiction written about them - because fans make a story live on, don't they?

Spring of the Plague Glossary of Terms

Keepers: Nara clan based plaguetime police force who ride deer and follow the motto, 'Keep the Calm, Keep the Peace'. Shadow binding used to hold mobs in place.

Grey Cross: Hyuuga clan based investigation teams, who visit the houses marked by Runners that may potentially contain the dead or the dying. They use byakugan and other chakra sensory techniques to investigate the house without having to break inside. Their logo is the Caged Bird seal. Members are known as Marksmen.

Runners: Ninjas delivering food and amenities to locked in families.

Locked in families: Ninja families who have notified the council that they are barricading themselves into their homes and receive Runner deliveries. Recommended for all with Academy age children.

The Sixth Repentance: Religious cult that believes the end of the world has come and that the Plague is punishment to those who have inherited chakra, because chakra was stolen from the gods. They demand the ninjas to repent. If they don't they will help. The First Repentance is the Word, the Second of Earth, the Third of Fire, the Fourth of Iron, the Fifth of the Spirit, and the Sixth of the Cry. They deliver poison known as konseigan to locked in families and are responsible for many deaths.

Konseigan: Poison the Sixth Repentance encourages to be given to ninja children, thought to purify the soul. It is the Fifth Repentance of the Spirit.

Hazard visor and cloak: Covers the ninja head to toe - effectively a hazard suit. Colour coded red for jounins, blue for chuunins and yellow for genins, and black for medic-nins.

Latents: Those who are latently infected, i.e. in the first three days of disease progress. Infected but not contagious. Asymptomatic.