KELIDA HAUK
AUTHOR OR SOME SHIT
About Me
You can call me Kel. I'm an academic by day, writer by night and roleplayer always. My pronouns are she/her and I am an elder Millennial in my early 40s. I use a lot of profanity and enjoy writing some pretty depraved shit.I have been writing ever since I was a child — it is by far my longest-lasting hobby. I began writing fanfiction when I was in high school for the BattleTech: MechWarrior fandom. In college, I expanded to Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. And then, like many other writers who study writing, I stopped creating things for fun because I was so overwhelmed with my schoolwork.I have been published professionally as both a journalist and an academic. I have taught journalism, literature and research writing courses. My current job in academia also requires me to write professionally.I didn’t start writing creatively again until I graduated with my doctorate, which coincided with the time that I discovered the Haikyuu fandom. I did not realize how much I had missed writing creatively or the world of fanfiction. It's like I've found my passion again.I also write original fiction, but I'm currently deep in fandom with no regrets.Foes to hoes is my favorite trope. I love dark and dystopian worlds that drive ships to work together. I write shitty settings with happy couples. I believe love and relationships can manifest in various forms and I enjoy exploring those through my fics. My favorite things to write are fighting and smut — both action. When it comes to smut, I only write switches and I dislike top/bottom dichotomy.When I write fanfic, I exclusively write AUs. You likely won't ever catch me doing anything canon-compliant. World-building is one of my strong suits and I enjoy seeing how characters grow and change when I dump them in a new environment.
Fandom
I am mostly obsessed with the Haikyuu fandom, but I also really like Attack on Titan, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, The Way of the Househusband and The Saga of Tanya the Evil. My first love was Revolutionary Girl Utena and I think Yuki no Matsu is one of the most beautiful collections of love stories I've ever read.Outside of anime, I’m really into YA literature, particularly dystopians. My favorite authors are Tamora Pierce and Cinda Williams Chima. Favorite works include Pierce’s Tortall universe, Chima’s Seven Realms universe, Kristin Cashore’s Graceling series and the Partials Sequence by Dan Wells.I prefer to consume written works rather than media, but my favorite shows of all time are Firefly and Sense8. I am also currently very into the Thai BL KinnPorsche, which someone recommended to me as "a live action of your TKKG yakuza AU." I love the new remake of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire. When I was a child, I watched Star Wars the same way that most kids repeat Disney or Pixar films.I am notoriously picky about my shipping preferences. Ethically, I consider myself a proshipper — I strongly believe fiction is fiction and authors should write whatever they want to write (including all sorts of dead dove: do not eat content). In practice, I am definitely not a multishipper or polyshipper; I have just a few ships and tropes that I prefer to read.I mostly consume and create BL, but also have several het ships I like. Right now I am lodged solidly in the Haikyuu fandom, and my OTP is Tsukikage. I also really enjoy OiSuga, YamaYachi and SaeShin.Completed Projects:
Yours: A TsukiKage Wedding Zine - Guest Author, serve and king
Tsukikage Exchange 2021 - bad decisions, a gift for Roo
Moonshadow: A Tsukikage Fanzine - shut down
Writing Philosophy
I believe very passionately that writing is a skill that anyone can develop — and the best way to do so is to read broadly and widely, and to write as much as possible. It doesn't matter what you read; you can read manga, comics, fanfic or the literary greats. The idea is to get a broad perspective of style and to widen your vocabulary. Writing is exploratory, revolutionary and life-changing — through reading and writing, your perceptions are challenged and your view of the world around you expands.Maybe it's because I'm a Fandom Elder, but I don't think there should be any limitations on what people write. What you write isn't real. It's commonly-accepted now that violent video games don't cause violence; writing something that can be perceived as fucked up or inappropriate doesn't mean that the author is fucked up or inappropriate. Our online publishing tools give us the ability to tag for content and triggers, so there isn't a single fucking reason why writers shouldn't write what they want to write. Readers can read what they want to read, and keep their mouth shut and scroll past something they don't.Anyone can write about anything. I see people give a lot of excuses for why they don't write, and I want to challenge those.- My English isn't good enough. If you are an English Language Learner (ELL), fucking bravo, dude. I am only fluent in English and if I ever seriously decide to try to change that, you bet your ass I'm going to attempt to write in the language I'm learning. Through writing, you'll improve your grasp on the language. You shouldn't be embarrassed because you're trying to improve.- No one will be interested in what I write. Who gives a fuck? Write for YOURSELF, first and foremost. If there's a story you want to tell, then fucking tell it. It doesn't matter if anyone reads it. All that matters is you're exploring an idea that you came up with, figuring out the best way to develop it and learning something in the process. If you're an amateur writer, you're not being paid to write for someone. The only person you have to please is yourself. But, also? You have no idea if anyone else is going to be interested in what you write until you write it, so you might as well give it a shot.- I get sad when I don't get x amount of kudos, upvotes, likes, etc. This goes right back to my last statement: write what YOU want to write. Write for YOURSELF. You will always be your own number one fan, and you know what? That's perfectly fine. In fact, I think writing for an audience, with certain expectations of engagement, is some of the most soul-crushing and mind-numbing shit you can do. It limits the creative process. That's not fun! You should think of kudos, upvotes, likes, etc as a bonus — it's wonderful if someone else enjoys reading what you wrote. And you know what? You can tell when someone is enjoying what they're writing. That passion comes through, and in my opinion, makes it a better work.Writing is also a process, and I can't stress that enough. The hardest part is to start, so I always advocate for people to "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks." Just start writing your ideas out. Get some words out and see what happens. Editing is what makes things coherent, improves your sentence fluency, cleans up your initial mess.And it's also important to remember that unless you are publishing professionally, your work won't be perfect (and even then you can find typos and errors in things like Stephen King's novels). You're human, and your beta reader is human, and that's absolutely fine. To err is human and to forgive is divine or some shit like that. Don't sweat a missing word or a subject-verb agreement error or a comma splice. When you find an error in something you published six months ago, just silently fix it and move on with your life.
ROLEPLAY
Roleplaying has the dubious honor of being my second-longest hobby. My first introduction to it was my parents: they used to run a gaming night at our house every week, alternating between popular tabletop games like D&D, Rifts and WW. What really hooked me, though, was text-based RP on AOL in the late 1990s. I wrote different fantasy characters and got really into a mafia alternate universe (clearly, I’ve always been fascinated by organized crime).I had to quit online RP in order to successfully finish my undergraduate degree. I did some tabletop here and there, but got hardcore back into online RP in the summer of 2020. That’s when I was introduced to Discord as a tool for RP — a fandom friend invited me into a Haikyuu RP server.I was hooked.I currently run a Haikyuu Yakuza AU server for adults. It has been active since October 2020, which is an insanely long time in the Discord RP world. We have a very rich history and an in-depth lore system. People who join our server are always surprised by how literate our replies are, too; most people write 500+ words. It’s really more like collaborating on fanfic than the back-and-forth chat-style RP you find in many other servers. The biggest perk, in my opinion? It’s a large persistent world with 30+ players who can all interact and weave a story together.You are welcome to join us as long as you are an adult (18+). If you’re interested, but have never RP’d before, don’t be afraid to try it out. We’re really good at teaching you, if you’re dedicated to writing and telling a compelling story!