year in fic: 2020

[sword_logic]

word count for posted works: 97,830 words
word count for unposted works: 11,418 words
total word count: 109,248 words

whew. probably the most i've ever written in a year. probably definitely because of S11 au.

once again, writing sprints were hugely, hugely helpful for me this year. so was physical note-taking, especially for the two longer fics i wrote this year. i am definitely going to keep doing that in the future.

i posted more individual works this year than i ever have, clocking in at 12. the next closest year was 2012 with 7 works, and some of those were cross-posts, iirc. anyways, down to the nitty-gritty – list of works under the cut.

it's just a shot away
destiny, shin/drifter, 1832 words, rated E — 1/10/2020 — twitter link

ngl, i completely forgot about this fic. wow. upon reread, i just do not have any strong feelings about this. it was pretty eh. oh well!

weep not for sights unseen
destiny, uldren/jolyon, 4893 words, rated T — 2/6/2020 — twitter link

i really like this fic, i think it's my favorite of all the uldren/jolyon i've written. in particular i feel very (anime_push_glasses_up_nose.gif) about the "crow" name reversal; jolyon was – is – a crow still, and i presume he would refer to himself as such, in the same way that corsairs would refer to themselves as corsairs. i just really liked this fic!

classical electromagnetism
destiny, timur/felwinter, 1172 words, rated E — 3/12/2020 — twitter link

that fucking grimoire card that haunted me since RoI came back to bite my ass. GOD. i wrote most of this under the desk at work, i was so totally seized by the urge to just do something with timur and felwinter.

P versus NP
red vs blue, wash/maine, 40,086 words (ch. 3), 102,900 words (full work), rated M — completed 5/24/2020 — twitter link

what more is there to say about S11 au... wow. my longest fic. i'm so glad it's done, and i'm so happy with this fic. i'm so proud of it. other, longer posts about this fic can be found under this tag.

out of shadow, into light
halo (kilo-five trilogy), mal/vaz, 3084 words, rated M — 5/28/2020 — twitter link

i have really complicated feelings about the K5 trilogy, since... woof. yikes. of the things ktraviss did get right, she really nailed the squad's dynamic – i just wish the, uh, everything else had been a bit less ham-handed. as far as this fic itself, it's actually quite old; i think i wrote most of it back in 2016 or 2017, i just never finished or posted it since it was always missing something to me. after finishing a whole bunch of the MCC games on PC, though, i finally felt the burn to edit this into shape and post it.

firelight
destiny, saint/osiris, 1707 words, rated T — updated 5/29/2020

O14 promptfic from early in the year! my favorite is the one for "rain," i think; however, a lot of people really really loved the one for "anger" and the more i read over it, the more i like it too.

mnemonics
destiny, uldren/jolyon, 1693 words, rated T — updated 5/29/2020

more promptfic! "silent" is my favorite of this batch, though i also had a lot of fun turning "pillow fort" into the least pillow-fort-ish fill possible. i love writing things set in the black garden, too, because i get to write thoroughly contradictory things.

in/vocation
destiny, saint/osiris, 3679 words, rated T — 6/17/2020 — twitter link

we have both "saint's vocation" and "saint's invocation" in game, hence the title. the lore had me really yearning for something yearn-y and victorian and hopelessly romantic, so epistolary it was.

bite down into me
destiny, shin/drifter, 2718 words, rated M — updated 6/22/2020

more promptfic, and one set of deleted fragments i mashed into a ficlet. i have a lot of shin/drifter floating around as unfinished scraps. seems fitting somehow.

call and response
destiny, shin/drifter, 5106 words, rated M — 6/28/2020 — twitter link

i'd been wanting to do an identity reveal fic for so long! i had this idea in my head for so long. it wasn't until we got all the season of arrivals stuff that things really fell into place for this fic.

all their words for glory always sounded empty
temeraire, laurence/tharkay, 9696 words, rated M — 9/29/2020 — twitter link

i really like codafic, in case that wasn't obvious. :B i had a lot of fun writing this, and would have floundered completely if i hadn't finished reading all of cat sebastian's books earlier this year. regency england was beyond complicated. (pointlessly so. alas.)

quema
bleach, grimmjow/ichigo, 22,164 words, rated M — 12/15/2020 — twitter link

i ping-ponged directly from temeraire into bleach somehow, and when i say ping-ponged, i mean it was literally overnight, i became a bastard possessed. i started writing this fic just days after posting the previous one, and this fic fought me every inch of the way – i wanted to write something humorous with a bit of fix-it to it, and then i started re-reading parts of bleach, and then i re-read the whole thing, and it went full fix-it codafic.

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so this year i ended up posting works in five different fandoms – bleach, destiny, halo, red vs. blue, and temeraire – which is more than in any other year. and that felt good! it felt good to not be ass over teakettle in just one fandom, and to just go with whatever i was feeling. not that i've ever felt like i need to stick to one fandom or anything, but it's good to look back and see that a lot of different things sparked enough in me for a fic, especially during. you know. this.

i've already said a lot about S11 au (i should really, really start calling it by its name some time), but i want to bring it up just to say that i'm surprised that i managed to write a 22k-word fic after slamming out well over 40k (probably closer to 50-55k with all the edits i did on part i) for S11 au. i really thought i wouldn't have lengthy fic in me for a while after that. the temeraire fic also surprised me in that regard; 9k was much more than i thought i'd have in me.

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original post via tumblr – i've done this meme a few years in a row now, i like it.

1) What’s your personal favourite thing you wrote this year?

S11 au P vs NP. need i say more? though setting that aside, i really liked writing weep not for sights unseen and i am really, really happy with quema. partially because it's.. hmm. nostalgia closure? and partially because i'm just really happy with my quality of writing.

2) What’s your least favourite thing you wrote this year?

probably it's just a shot away, like i mentioned earlier. i don't feel like it was bad, i just don't particularly feel about it. you know?

3) Which of your fics was most different from what you usually write?

this is a difficult question because (hannibal buress voice) ships is the same. i guess the promptfic from earlier this year counts! i don't usually do prompts, so i feel like all of that fic turned out pretty different.

4) Which of your fics this year was most successful?

as per ushe, i'm defining "successful" as "achieving what i wanted to achieve" rather than numbers. and, surprise surprise, it's P vs NP again. i did exactly what i set out to do six almost seven fucking years ago. i had the ending (the broad strokes, at least) in my head for so long and i pulled off exactly what i wanted to pull off.

5) Which of your fics do you wish was more successful?

again, same metric as above, but i don't feel like i wrote anything this year that didn't do what it was supposed to do.

6) What’s your favourite piece of dialogue you wrote this year?

oh boy. hmmm. i liked this bit from call and response:

"Don't insult me, Shin," Drifter says, voice cold, without a trace of his usual flippancy. "You really think I wouldn't put the pieces together?"

Shin’s ears ring. It’s almost a welcome reprieve from the hum of Hive magic, the edge of whisper that’s been haunting him. He struggles for another beat before words spill out of his mouth, unbidden.

"And you still—" Shin stops, pulled up short. Still what, exactly? Still played along? Still let him lie? Still fucked him, kissed him, let him stay?

Drifter shifts uneasily, fingers flexing around the barrel of his rifle.

"Yeah," he says, distinctly uncomfortable. "I still."

7) What’s your favourite piece of description or narration?

i wrote way too much this year to have an answer in mind. hurgh. HUH. okay, i'll have to come back to this one. i just liked a lot of what i wrote this year.

8) Which fic this year was most fun to write?

i think i'll give this one to in/vocation! it was really fun to some up with sweet letters for saint and osiris to trade.

9) If you could go back and change something about one of the fics you wrote this year, what would it be?

honestly? i'd add more to classical electromagnetism. it was an in-the-moment fic so every time i've considered editing it to add more, it's felt wrong, but damn. shoulda let timur [REDACTED].

10) What, if anything, are you going to try to do differently in your writing in the new year?

last year my answer was to write/plan on paper more often, and i'm redoubling that. it was really helpful this year. this year i would like to write for more fandoms again, too. it was fun to explore different canons and i want to do it again. i guess that's not really "different," lmao. it's a goal, though.