that "pakige?" post, but on the inside

(Or, more accurately, "comints?" cat…)

Challenge 13.

In your own space, share a favorite memory about fandom: the first time you got into fandom, the last time a fanwork touched your heart, wild times with fellow fans (whether on-line or off-line), a lovely comment you’ve received or have left for someone. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I've already mentioned the Murderbot server in a previous Snowflake post but they deserve another shoutout here – my first fic for the fandom got shared there and summoned a literal deluge of lovely comments within hours of posting. I recall sitting there just going "??!?!?!???!????!!" internally at the number of email notifications in an extremely flattered-if-mystified way. 10/10 amazing reception, would experience again.

I often say I've been very lucky in my fandom experience because while I don't really get lots of engagement (partly expected given what I usually write, i.e. short gen fic with no popular ships in sight, if you consider that niche) I've also never had bad experiences firsthand, and what interactions do happen are often fun as hell.

Other particular favourites aside from the above: every time people go capital-letter-swearing at me in reblog tags while I cackle like a poorly-casted witch, unorthodox but extremely heartwarming compliments in anonymous asks (quotes include "your writing is like. soup. good." and "but the marbles that make it out of YOUR pinball brain maze are fantastic"), and fanworks accidentally inspired by my own stuff (podfic(!!) of the Night Vale!FMA AU by angel-bazethiel, and this cinematic expansion of my MDZS timetravel au idea by brawltogethernow also originator of the very appropriate tag "#okay hold on i was trying to write YOU a tiny gift fic based on a tumblr post slow down"). Great times!

i don't actually read hanahaki fics, but

*sees a hanahaki au prompt over at 3SF*

*proceeds to have An Idea*

*but first: embarks on a half-hour mental digression of what my preferred Chinese term for hanahaki would be*

Obviously a completely expected and normal chain of events.

Anyway. In a very-direct translation of 花吐き病, the accepted terms appear to be 花吐病 or 花吐症 (per Fanlore and Baidu respectively) and a cursory search also turns up the pinyin in occasional English usage.

Which is… fine, I guess, except the word order makes no intuitive sense in Chinese and also where's the poetry of it? Even literal VD gets the more graceful-sounding 花柳病, never mind that I'm not gonna look up why that is because medical conditions are PG content for me.

So have my non-rigorously-considered proposals for alternatives:

• 花疾 as a slightly-archaic parallel to 心疾 (which appropriately enough covers both worry-induced ailments and actual heart disease). 花炎 would be an option except I don't think there's inflammation involved?
• 落花病 as the more-modern term – "fallen flower" at least sounds better to me than flower vomit while also being appropriately evocative. Also used as 落花症, because vocab-wise 病 generally refers to the illness itself while 症 is more symptoms/presentation, but both seem applicable in this case. Doubly appropriate because I just got reminded while searching that 落花有意，流水无情 is essentially poetic imagery for unrequited love. So yeah.
• 花痴 already exists as a term for someone easily infatuated with attractive people, but it'd be wasted if you didn't borrow it as slang for people with hanahaki (cue in-universe discourse™️ about how this term is #problematic and oversimplifes the condition, etc).

…and that's all so maybe now my hamster brain will allow me to write the remaining 1.8 sentences of that fic. Roundabout much?

ETA: Here is the fic! All three sentences of it. Also fun: come discuss the horrors of Dixing-esque hanahaki in the comments of this post.