quihi

The Rigel Black Chronicles Masquerade: In which I poured a horrific amount of time over two weeks trying to identify who wrote which of 45 fics, with quite a bit of success. I didn’t want to admit to all my reasoning before seeing the results, but a lot of it worked! I didn’t take notes while I was guessing, so this is all from memory and my spreadsheet. I imagine it’s not very interesting to read my rambling, but it’s probably a decent guide to how to disguise yourself on the punctuation side. Featuring: lots of grammar, HTML, and mostly unsuccessfully, trying to get a sense of how people write.

If anyone wants me to delete anything I write about you here, message me and I will!

Here’s my spreadsheet; click to go to a slightly redacted copy of it where you can read the text that’s cut off by the narrow columns.

Round 1

I wasn’t planning to spend a ton of time guessing, but it was so much fun! I hadn’t thought about what identifying features there were to look at, and I quickly realized that my own fic was not well hidden by my own search criteria. I actually briefly edited my fic to have only a single space between sentences, but since I know that’s not proper, I restored it after a couple days. Hope no one was looked closely at “The Aldermasters’ Sons” during the middle of week one.

Okay, okay, my reasoning.

Ones I got right

It’s mostly grammar, syntax, and meta reasons.

Riddle’s Vampire Halfblood Bastard? by Sandra_Rose. This was largely process of elimination: I eliminated 3 people from kudos, 4 because of the timing (it was posted before they joined the server or I at least thought they hadn’t posted yet), 10 due to punctuating dialogue differently in their posted fic. (“Yeah, no-one ever out duels Dawlish, its like impossible.” Claimed Auror Two. would typically be “Yeah, no one ever outduels Dawlish; it’s like impossible,” claimed Auror Two.) This left 5, some of whom I assigned to other fics, and of the 2 or 3 that remained, I think it sounded most like Sandra talked.

On Puppy by anaiata. Eliminated 3 due from kudos, 4 from timing, 3 who seemed unlikely to use a workskin, Rime since it wasn’t posted last minute, and 2 people who didn’t usually have spaces around their italics. (Some editor or conversion-to-AO3 method results in extra spaces around italic text - if you search for " " in these fics, you’ll see it. Often, people have it in some of their fics but not all, but there’s trends.) Then, On Puppy looked most like anaiata - she had previously used more than three dots in an ellipsis, and used lots of sentence fragments before. For an example, compare the fourth paragraphs of On Puppy - “Not there though, not then. Not with so much chaos and confusion, not with knowledge and questions that weighed so heavily in their minds.” - and snake trap - “Which brings him here.”

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown by Drake_temen. He was widely called out on the hgss discord, since the fic was apparently distinctively his style.

The Rigel Black Version of Sapphire by whatAreQuarks. whatAreQuarks removed the fic from the masquerade collection roughly the same time she left the discord server, and was already marked as a possibility for having mentioned Pokemon.

Dear Pansy by graveExcitement. I did this one towards the end, after I had eliminated a bunch of people that I thought wrote other fics (whether right or wrong). I was inclined to pick someone who had previously used the “Harriett” spelling, rather than someone who had consistently used “Harriet”. Sorry, Grave, I know you thought it would hide you, but sage wisdom and The Sanguine Strategem both use Harriett in their tags (though the latter mixes spellings and uses “Harriet” once in the story itself). I felt the old tags were more indicative than the recent ones, since AO3 didn’t have the character tags that would auto-complete then.

The Woman Who Would Be King by Elsin (liryian). He was one of three people (Grave and Rime being the others) who was definitely familiar with QZGS. Rime seemed unlikely, since they very obviously knew about QZGS and wrote fic for it previously - it was just too obvious. Guessing lir over grave was… vibes, writing style, feeling inexplicably certain that grave wrote Dear Pansy, something like that. They both have plenty of fic posted to get a sense of their stories’ rhythms.

When will ours be? by 62442lovmagic. My note says simply, “ellipses”. 62442 had previously used very long ellipses on discord. She also mentioned having emoji in her fic, and the A/N did say “*grins nervously*”. Other than that, it just gave off a bit of a sense of being a newer writer (the section dividers specifying event times, the internally inconsistent grammar, just the general feel of the writing). They’d also been online early in the morning (from my American perspective) before and mentioned on 2/4 that they’d been working on a fic for the masquerade, and it felt honest.

Harry Hidden by PerfectionJune. It used two spaces between sentences, and she was one of like 3 writers (see: cupcake and lir, who both covered it up for the masquerade) who had done that before. The grammar surrounding dialogue was inconsistent, though, and neither of June’s recent fics contained dialogue, and the tone felt similar to her other fics - very internal and descriptive and drabble-y. The unusual fandom tags also led me to believe it was someone who hadn't written RBC fic before. For confirmation, out of the last seven fics posted, this was the only one she didn’t give kudos to.

“I…sold it.” by Doreling. I double guessed Doreling. I guessed Dor for this one in no small part because of minx’s claim that Dor wrote it, despite the utter lack of explanation. It seemed reasonable that Dor would write something very different from her usual silly tone for the masq, and this was far off. Dor also seemed likely to say “f*cker” in a fic and had used the word previously in discord. Other supports included the lack of extra spaces around italics and use of hyphens to connect words.

And the ones I got wrong

This part’s boring and useless for guessing; I don’t know if I’d read it. It’s full of find techniques to hide, I suppose.

The Quality of Quidditch Supplies by WolfRune20855. See below for why I was convinced this was not WolfRune and decided to try the accusations getting thrown at Daydreamer.

cradled in fire by Taitia. Taitia mentioned not knowing how it happened, but somehow the fic ended up with straight quotation marks. (Here are "straight" quotation marks and here are “curly” quotation marks, for reference. Most editors will automatically put in curly ones, with varying levels of success based on what I observed in the masq.) Taitia never had straight quotes before; WolfRune20855 and Dalia had, so I assumed it had to be one of them.

Eric Albright and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by TimeTurner394. I joked that it was someone who’d reacted to one of my earlier comments, then voted for someone who hadn’t - meek-bookworm, who I thought maybe was trying a change of setting. Ah well.

kasten, reborn by Ebaz. I could get any sense of what Ebaz would write. I had no idea and guessed Doreling.

There is More to Life than Brewing by Dalia. I basically guessed from the 7 people I hadn’t eliminated, and didn’t know who’d write Harry/Ginny.

Sympathy for the Devil? by PrettyPinkCupcake. I considered going with the accusation thrown at her, and decided to try something different and go with meek-bookworm again. Either one fits with the “not a Caerry shipper” part. Missed again!

The imPractical Parchment Prank by foolishness. I’d guessed that foolishness wrote Flight, based on their asking what AIM stood for. Turns out they weren’t asking for a masq fic! So, I picked SarenAranthel by process of elimination.

True Friendship by SarenAranthel. I suspected him based on his use of apostrophes instead of quotation marks to highlight things outside of dialogue, but guessed Taitia, who apparently doesn’t do that. I guess it sounded like her? Oops!

Perspectives by rimenorreason. I didn’t even try to guess Rime. They can hide too well. So, I picked Time from the ~7 people I had left.

Lie-Detector, Secret-Keeper by aoverlordmidmolt. I picked Dalia, who had repeatedly used the word “well” as a filler in previous fics, like this fic did. I’ll note that in the line “(The lie buzzed against her magic).” it’s unusual to put the period outside the parentheses, since the part in parentheses was a complete sentence on its own, but couldn’t find anything to compare it to.

Letters to the Editor by readertorider. I picked Cupcake; given all the report-fics she’s written, the “letters to the editor” seemed plausible. You both wrote Caelum!

No Body No Crime by DistractedDaydreamer. This was very good hiding. I assumed it wasn’t someone who previously hadn’t left extra space between paragraphs and guessed aoverlordmidmolt, who had no AO3 history. Also, that weird double-hyphen thing threw me off - though you missed a couple towards the end and maybe I could have guessed that was your usual em-dash style, it threw me off completely.

Flight by NevermoreWrites. I see how people guessed based on kudos, but I didn’t look closely at the timing of which fics hadn’t been kudos’d. As I said, I picked foolishness based on their asking what AIM stands for.

Round 2

I was burned out from round 1 and barely looked at the fics for the first few days. I still haven’t finished reviewing these; so many were posted the last day!

The TL;DR is the same - most of the people I caught were for grammar, syntax, and meta things.

Ones I got right

An unwanted company by Karigan0. This was pretty straightforward from editor details - I’m not sure how you have things set up to have straight quotation marks and curly apostrophes (which switched to also be straight towards the end of the fic), but it’s very distinctive.

Attack on Novus Industries - Behind the scenes by Momiji_Dysprosium. A lot more fics in group two consistently used straight quotation marks, but that (and the few kudos) still helped to eliminate a bunch of people who had never used straight quotes outside of an author’s note. (A lot of people use curly quotes in the fic that they write in an editor, and straight quotes in the meta stuff they write directly in AO3.) The main thing here was ending dialogue with periods, even if there was a tag afterwards, and then having the tag lowercase, like this: “I will help you both.” said Lily. instead of “I will help you both,” said Lily. Her questions about James’s and Caelum’s eye colors definitely threw me off, but that information didn’t come up in any of the late posted fic and were instead used in Horizon.

Mr Ollivander by Meiyaki. This was pure elimination - she gave kudos to all but 2 fics. She didn’t join the hgss server until 1/23/2021, so that eliminated the remaining fic, Where to Drop the Knife.

The Aldermasters’ Sons by Quihi. I wrote it! I didn’t try to hide super well; I’ve talked about Albright a bunch. The only lie I remember telling (that wasn’t blatantly a lie like “I didn’t write any of the fics”) was that I was between Haga, Tamari, Stories, and Sakina for this fic. I didn’t change any of my formatting because I didn’t think to look at any of these things until I started guessing! I figured someone would catch me off my double-spaced sentences, straight quotation marks, and favorite character (favorite in some sense, I’m sure).

A Demure and Dutiful Pureblood Wife by skivingsnaccbox. She mentioned that made “zero effort to hide” and posted a fic she was writing anyway. True to form, this story was excellent, featuring strong female characters, lots of eyebrow-raising, smiling, and descriptions of facial expressions. I was thrown off, though, because the fic contained curly quotes, and all of her posted fics had straight quotes, with the one exception of Celebrity in Reverse. More helpfully since it stayed consistent in this fic, she doesn’t usually put spaces on either side of ellipses, whereas a majority of people put spaces after ellipses.

Astoria Greengrass, second born daughter of Lord and Lady Greengrass by bamatlaslammas. This was tricky, because most variations in grammar come around dialogue, of which this fic only contained a single line - the preceding tag lacked a comma at the end, but that’s a very small sample size. Overall, though, most of the writers I’m more familiar with use a lot more commas and em-dashes, and write shorter paragraphs. This fic looked very similar, at a glance, to their posted fic, Drowned. They also, in both this and Drowned, wrote all the numbers as numerals, rather than writing short numbers as words (e.g. they wrote “10” instead of “ten”).

my eyes (they follow you) by dainpdf (Haganeko). I was impressed when you asked about the medical term in the fic, and that made me hesitate, but I had looked up “cacosmia” and it seemed to be used incorrectly. Also, using “,,,” is distinctive enough that it had to be her or someone imitating her. The tone and sentence structure are similar too. I think people tend to start fics similarly, and most of Haga’s start with the character looking around - compare “Leo looks around Tate’s Apothecary” in my eyes to “Antiope looked around the quaint little town” in Like Fire.

For some HTML details: the text is justified (), making the paragraphs stretch so the lines end together, and she’s done that before in most of her stories. Though standard in printed books, it’s rare in fanfiction. There’s also some weird spaces that appear at random, due to  tags in the HTML. It turns out a lot of people’s fics have these, often in only some of their stories! I’m not sure what editor or AO3 posting process causes this.  tags allow you to apply special formatting to bits of text using CSS, but since there’s no CSS attached in any of the fics I’ve seen, they don’t serve any purpose. I don’t like them. In Haga’s fics in particular, they cause bizarre spacing issues like “Tic k , toc k”.

Sublimate by tossedwaves. Another quick HTML lesson: either text or text causes “text” to be shown in italics, 99% of the time.  used to be everywhere but is now supposed to be used more narrowly to mark text as distinct but not emphasized, and  is used most of the time now and is recommended on AO3, and simply means that text is emphasized, which might be indicated differently in certain situations (e.g. accessibility). (Huh, apparently I should actually be using  for styling all the letters I put in fic, but I’ve been using  everywhere.)

Anyway, three masq fics in group 2 used  - The Inconvenient Indenture, Sublimate, and All the King’s Horses - and two writers with an AO3 history had used  - beelzebubble and tossedwaves. The Ouran fic was too hard to get a handle on, so I tried to split the other two between them. Sublimate went to tossedwaves partly on tone and a similar tagging style, but mostly because of the quirk that in some people’s fics (from Google Docs, apparently) where if you end a bit of dialogue with an em-dash, the closing quotation mark will face the wrong direction, like this: “Hello, I—“ The one time that occurred in Sublimate, it was backwards, like two out of the three times it appeared in tossedwaves’s “to find a home”. (In contrast, it was correct all seventeen times it appeared in beelzebubble’s “a simple accident of birth”.)

Potentialis by 999238. This was all process of elimination. Several of the paragraphs were separated by only a single line break ( ) instead of being with their own paragraphs (text), which none of the established writers had done before and weren’t likely to do here. I had already figured out what several of the new writers wrote and believed dalekchung’s claim that she wrote another Potentialis fic, and I suspected she wouldn’t post two versions of the same story. That left Numbers.

And the ones I got wrong

A lot of group two was very, very hard. I was completely guessing for a lot of the rest off vibes, and guessed wrong.

This is Just a Queen’s Gambit AU by insearchofamonstergirlfriend. She’d never mentioned The Queen’s Gambit or anything related to the masquerade, so while I didn’t eliminate her from this fic, I didn’t know who wrote it and guessed Tamari. The double-hyphens-as-em-dashes with spaces on both sides was fairly distinctive, but specifically different from her typical use of em-dashes with spaces on both sides.

Where to Drop the Knife by Tamari. Again, no idea who wrote it after eliminating people who never had extra spaces surrounding their italic text. I hadn’t eliminated Tamari, but guessed rockerlullaby since I got a similar vibe and the phrasing seemed similar to some of her fics.

Dirigible Plum Earrings by dalekchung. I’m amused that two people guessed me after I talked about how much I liked it. This was well-hidden; it was particularly good and I assumed it was someone who’d posted a lot of fic before! That she posted for the first time in a long time on 1/8/2021 to say that she rarely talked but loved all the fics made me inclined to guess her for something posted after that date, too.

Auror Office - Notes on the Pureblood Imposter by Tsume_Yuki. Yeah, the horny vibes were the biggest hint here. I was misled by Tsume’s comments on discord hinting that she might remove British spellings, and particularly by her comment six hours after it was posted that she wished she hadn’t posted her last fic so she would be done by now, and was scrambling for an idea the night before. She did a lovely job pretending to take notes on how to hide herself just after posting her fic.

Sisters by Bagheera95. I picked Tsume for this one! I was looking for a fic with long sentences with lots of commas for her, and this seemed like the best option since I’d eliminated the previous one based on timing. I hadn’t eliminated Bagheera95 from Sisters since neither her fic nor Sisters had extra spaces around italics, and Sisters seemed inconsistent about using single quotes or double quotes around phrases other than dialogue.

Hush Little Baby Don’t You Cry by rachel614. Rachel. This was the most chaotic fic there was. Those comment replies. The ellipses with the bolded periods in the middle. It was art and I had no idea who wrote it. The formatting was a mess, and there were no italics to have extra spaces or not. I had it down to eight people after eliminating people I was pretty sure wouldn’t mess up their formatting, and I didn’t think Mercury would write “said” that much, nor that LinaoftheAlleys would double bluff and lie about not writing it, but then I just guessed. Rachel leaned hard on the chaos.

boots by booksandbreadcrumbs. I did not eliminate booksandbreadcrumbs based on spelling Harriet as Harriett, since barely anyone does that normally, but there wasn’t anything particularly distinctive - no extra spaces around italics and very normal line breaks and ellipses and curly quotes just aren’t enough to conclude anything. I guessed Bagheera95 after failing to eliminate her from anything and didn’t guess booksandbreadcrumbs at all.

Riddle Me This by BlueFin314. I picked Rachel based on the shaky evidence of leaving extra spaces between paragraphs. Possibly should have guessed BlueFin since she did it as well, and Rachel hadn’t previously put spaces after ellipses. BlueFin314 inconveniently didn’t have italics in her posted fic, so I couldn’t verify that she also had extra spacing around them.

The Inconvenient Indenture by beelzebubble_tea. This fic had  tags, so in hindsight, I should have guessed beelzebubble for both the fics with  tags that I couldn’t identify, especially since she’s familiar with Ouran. In the end, I guessed mercury, who was too chaotic for me too get a handle on.

How Wonderful Your Life Will Be by mercuryandglass. Of course, since mercury sowed as much chaos as possible in chat, How Wonderful Your Life Will Be was a relatively tame AU with very few distinctive tells (there were no ellipses or italics), despite the A/N being written in the fic section. Mercury did a truly impressive number of things differently than usual - and HTML isn’t really useful at identifying things unless there’s something particularly weird about it.

Did someone ask for A/B/O? Here you go! by FeatheryMinx. This was a truly chaotic fic content-wise, but without much distinctive on the more technical side. Well, the section dividers with the characters’ ages were distinctive, there were no extra spaces around italics, single quotes around short phrases were before subsequent punctuation, and it used “James’” with no “s” after the apostrophe, but I couldn’t match it up to anyone specific. Minx had previously used numerals for numbers but spelled them as words here (because of context, I assume), and in this fic wrote “seven-year-olds” instead of “seven year olds” as she had in Anonymous Notoriety, so that was a bit misleading, and I ended up guessing mercury for the chaotic aspect.

Green was the color of the fire by rockerlullaby. The long title should have been a hint, but - oh, now that I look back, she had used straight quotes before. I wrote her down as curly in my notes - oops! I wasn’t sure who’d use the Rigelverse tag, though I did notice it. I guessed BlueFin314 and my reasoning was quite literally, “why not!”

The Dragon’s Call by LinaoftheAlleys. There was some talk that this might imply a Harry/Caelum ship, which I didn’t expect from her. I was definitely suspicious of her based on the double en-dashes as em-dashes and in hindsight maybe should have guessed her based on that, but I fairly arbitrarily guessed FeatheryMinx instead after I couldn’t find any other fic I thought FeatheryMinx had written.

All the King’s Horses by syrenia. The last  fic! Their lack of AO3 history meant I had no idea they would be an  user, and I went with beelzebubble, who was a known  user.

This whole event was a lot of fun! Thank you so much to Rime for organizing it. It was really interesting to study fics that closely. I’m gradually regaining the ability to read a fic without mentally making notes on the formatting!