Sehnsucht is complete as of 02/29/2016! Thanks to all my reviewers. Watch this space for announcements about the sequel.

About myself:

I am a twenty-four year old ciswoman with too much enthusiasm for her own good. Like most millennials, I was in love with Harry Potter in elementary and middle school, a love which my family shared as well. My parents followed updates on MuggleNet, found a few posts of fanfiction and thought "Oh, hey, our eldest daughter is a voracious reader of everything she can get her hands on, I bet she'd love the idea of people writing stories about Harry Potter!"

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they regret that choice.

I found this particular website through FictionAlley when I was around ten or eleven, discovered that people wrote fic for more than just Harry Potter, and the rest (as they say) is history.

I graduated from a small college in the Midwestern United States in June of 2014 with a degree in English literature. A little less than a year later, I picked up and moved halfway across the world to teach English in Korea. I've still vague notions of masters degrees (library science? education? creative writing?) and doctorates (English?), but that's several years off.

Personality wise, I'm a bit too intelligent for my own good. I've been told by various people at several different times in my life that my enthusiasm is endearing rather than irritating, and I am absolutely incapable of lying about myself and my interests. I don't understand liking something "ironically." I can sometimes pass as a functioning adult, but this is only a momentary disguise before my geekiness and childish whims win out.

I love to talk shop when it comes to writing (as evidenced by my tendency to ramble in author's notes), and I have been writing since I was eleven or twelve, so I don't think it would be arrogant to say I'm something of an old hand at this. I'm more than happy to answer questions about writing or reading or books or classic literature. Basically, invade my inbox! I will welcome you with open arms and hot tea.

My long term goals: to live in the UK and be a published author.

About my favorites:

Anime/Manga:
1. Godchild/Cain Saga by Kaori Yuki
2. Rurouni Kenshin by Nobuhiro Watsuki
3. Yu Yu Hakusho by Yoshihiro Togashi

TV Shows:
1. Merlin, BBC.
2. Inspector Lewis, Masterpiece Mystery Theatre
3. Criminal Minds, CBS
I'm also a huge fan of the How to Train Your Dragon movie franchise.

Books/authors:

1. The Harry Potter series, by J. K. Rowling
2. How to Train Your Dragon, by Cressida Crowell
3. The Kingkiller Chronicles, by Patrick Rothfuss
4. The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas
5. Tamora Pierce
(I'm also working on reading Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden series and Terry Pratchett's Discworld. There are lots of modern novels I haven't read and want to, and I have an extensive reading list...)

Quotes:

Go, uncover a book, because your voice is what this age is looking for and we writhe to dance to your words. (Mik Pozin)

Of course I'm a fairy tale, Wilfred Mott. And so are you. We're all made out of words, all us sapient beings. And when the all the stars go out and the sky is nothing but black, the survivors will huddle around stories. And wait, and hope, because you never know when someone will touch off a new universe. I may be a story, but that never means I'm not real. (Eleventh Doctor to Wilfred Mott, in Lyricwritesprose's short fic "Boxing Day" found on Whofic. Probably the most succinct justification of my love of words and writings I have ever seen, hidden within a beautifully emotional and in character fic)

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real … for a moment at least … that long magic moment before we wake.
Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?
We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.
They can keep their heaven. When I die, I’d sooner go to Middle Earth. (George R. R. Martin)

There are no more battles between good and evil, no monsters to slay, no maidens in need of rescue. Most maidens are perfectly capable of rescuing themselves in my experience, at least the ones worth something, in any case. There are no longer simple tales with quests and beasts and happy endings. The quests lack clarity of goal or path. The beasts take different forms and are difficult to recognize for what they are. And there are never really endings, happy or otherwise. Things keep going on, they overlap and blur, your story is part of your sister’s story is part of many other stories, and there is no telling where any of them may lead. Good and evil are a great deal more complex than a princess and a dragon, or a wolf and a scarlet-clad little girl. And is not the dragon the hero of his own story? Is not the wolf simply acting as a wolf should act? Though perhaps it is a singular wolf who goes to such lengths as to dress as a grandmother to toy with its prey. (Erin Morgenstern, in The Night Circus)

Fic Recommendations!

If you've found my profile because you wanted to see more of what I've written, might I recommend "In the Light of the Darkened Moon," "Poor Judgement," and "Listen"? Those are one-shots I'm particularly proud of, and the former two I would consider enjoyable even if you don't know the fandom.

If you're planning to investigate my overflowing, usually outdated favorites' list (I often do to find promising reads), I'd point you towards the following stories, most of which I'll come back and reread whenever I can't find anything new (most of these are completed; what aren't have been updated in the last year or so):

vivevoce's "silk skin, glass bones" and "Sooner or Later" (both Count Cain/Godchild, both Cain/Riff)
The Consanguine Mind (Criminal Minds)
War Crimes (Criminal Minds)
Running Blind (Danny Phantom/CSI crossover--yes, I know, but it works)
"Twofish" (Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley)
"The Wrong Week to Quit Smoking" (Good Omens/Sherlock crossover--again, it really works)
"Cauterize" (Harry Potter--note, I've actually made my parents read this one. It's painful, but important)
Becoming Lífþrasir and its accompanying sequels (How to Train Your Dragon)
Flying Through Mud (How to Train Your Dragon)
A Once and Future Destiny and its accompanying sequels (Merlin)
"All the Forgiven Things" (Merlin)
"Exaggerations and Overreactions" (Merlin)
"Familiar" (Merlin)
"Incomplete" (Merlin)
"Roundabout, Sometimes" (Merlin)
"The Cat Came Back" (Merlin)
The Order of Avalon: The Emrys Quest (Merlin: The steampunk Merlin AU I never knew I needed)
The Tricoloured Dragon (Merlin)
The Voice in the Dream (Merlin)
An Unexpected Lesson (Rurouni Kenshin)
Ichurizuka (Rurouni Kenshin)
"Ignotism" (Sherlock)
"How Far To Trust" (Yu Yu Hakusho)
Immortal (Yu Yu Hakusho)
"Jail Break"(Yu Yu Hakusho--honestly, pretty much everything this author writes for YYH is golden, but I haven't favorited it for one reason or another...)
"The Earth and Sky Arc" (Yu Yu Hakusho)

There are a few other fics that I haven't added to my favorites for one reason or another that everyone needs to read and I will be doing that soon, at which point this list will be updated.

About My Fic:

I will fight anyone who tells me fanfiction is worthless or a waste of time and effort. I will not go off on a ten-page tangent about the significance of fic, but the fact is there. This is something I am deeply passionate about.

My general philosophy: If a story doesn't exist that I want to read, I will write it. If it exists, but is poorly written, I will re-write it.
(Sehnsucht should demonstrate that this applies equally to my own works.)

I move from fandom to fandom. When I left high school, I lost interest in most anime (Godchild/Count Cain being an exception). In the last few months, the interest has reignited in a major way. Mostly, it's been nostalgia-fueled binges; it's forever fascinating to me what I notice and enjoy now compared with what I noticed and enjoyed ten years ago, when I was first discovering the series. Sometimes my tastes have drastically shifted; sometimes they haven't.

That said, I still flit from fandom to fandom like an overly-energetic moth. There are some fandoms that I cycle back to, eventually. Unfortunately, there's never a guarantee I'll ever be finishing a story. Like fandoms, I have a deplorable tendency to be distracted by the newest, shiniest idea that I get.

I tend to write character exploration and/or interactions. I'm a sucker for Alternate Universe shenanigans, and crossovers make me happy. Some of my fondest memories of middle school were conversations about "Hey, what would happen if YOUR favorite character met MY favorite character because of reasons?" Never mind that said favorite characters weren't from the same series. I still tend towards the ridiculous in my crossovers: I've written mash-ups between Godchild and Doctor Who, Godchild and Inspector Lewis, Godchild and Good Omens, Rurouni Kenshin and Doctor Who, Rurouni Kenshin and Yu Yu Hakusho... I think the only crossover I've actually posted is Criminal Minds and Doctor Who, but that... might change. And soon(-ish). I unironically love that pretty much every fandom has at least one Harry Potter crossover.

Hurt/Comfort and fluff are my bread and butter when it comes to romance, and sad endings make me sob. (Ten years after I learned the ending of Godchild, I can still make myself tear up on command by thinking about it.) I want my characters to be happy. It's rare that I'll enjoy an angst fic; even more rare that I'll write one.

I use too many commas and too many dashes. I've started using too many semi-colons in an effort to combat the dashes, and it's been semi-successful. My grammar tends to be good, though not perfect, and I'm usually pretty proud of my dialogue. Descriptions tend to be hit-and-miss. I write with a dry sort of humor and tend to love witty banter. I am a self-professed irony junkie, especially when it comes to dramatic irony (the reader knows something the character doesn't).

Stories within shapeshifting universe, in chronological order:

1) "Cats' Eyes and Tea" (complete)
In which Riff is woken by Cain. Again.
2) "Forms" (complete)
In which Riff attempts to get Cain to sign some forms, and Cain attempts to get some answers about forms.
3) "Hunter" (complete)
In which Cain at last learns Riff's other form, and Cassandra Gladstone makes the mistake of underestimating a servant.

Announcements:

12/11/2015: I just wrote about two thousand words of Kuronue finally putting all the little pieces together, and he only lacks one or two final realizations to actually get everything and I'm just really excited about this chapter, guys. And even more excited for the chapter after this one. I've also figured out that there should be somewhere between eighteen and twenty chapters for this, which means that, assuming I finish writing it, it'll be completed by the end of February or early March. Personally, I'm hoping for nineteen chapters so I can finish posting on February 29.

12/13/2015: Chapter fifteen is done. And it might be my favorite one I've written so far. I'm really looking forward to getting that one up. I don't know if it'll break your brains, but I'm internally screaming.

12/28/2015: ARGH! Chapter eighteen was like pulling teeth to begin, but after two false starts I think I got it and I'm fairly satisfied with the ending. There's just a (super) short epilogue after this and the story will be completed. Finished. Entirely. Whoo boy. As it stands, there are a few things that are open-ended enough that a sequel doesn't feel out of place, but the goal is for this story to feel closed. There will probably be a sequel, but it'll also probably take a while, conceivably months. I have a concept but no concrete plot yet.

12/29/2015: And I just finished the epilogue, which while super short answers a few questions and hopefully leaves you with a few more. It also sets up for a potential sequel, which will probably happen, though I don't know when. But the good news is that this thing is actually finished, against every expectation I had, and will not be dropped midway through. I honestly didn't think I would finish it until just now, so. Yeah. Wow.

I've got a couple of ideas for fic after completing Sehnsucht, one of which is another "this was actually a good idea, let's try and do it justice" thing. I will probably post it on this account, but only after I've made head-way in it. I've also got a vague idea for a sequel to Sehnsucht, but I right now I lack a detailed outline and plot for said sequel, so it'll be a while after the fic is completed for anything to happen with that. I can tell you this: if I do write a sequel, Makai will feature prominently and I'm hoping there will be lots of political intrigue. It's a genre I don't write for very often, which is another reason why the sequel will be very slow to develop from the conceptual stage.

I haven't been writing as much original fic in the last few months as I would like, but it is a thing and I'm hoping to get back to it soon. I don't post anything online, really. If I do, I'll be sure to let you know.