year in fic: 2021

[sword_logic]

word count for posted works: 61,474 words
word count for unposted works: 13,580 words
total word count: 75,054 words

this total word count is off on account of the posted works; i have no clue how to count the rewritten chapter for S11 au. in terms of net word count, S11 au as a whole gained 4,005 words - but almost the entirety of this chapter was rewritten from the ground up. my total word count for the chapter was 43,740, according to AO3, so i whacked 2k off of that as a very generous estimate of the words or phrases here and there that i left intact.

in any case: 7 individual works posted/updated in 2021 across 4 fandoms! deets under the cut.

exaptation
bleach, grimmjow/ichigo, 1,845 words, rated T — posted 1/21/21, last updated 11/7/21

these were really fun to write. i like the last two chapters in particular; i love outside POV a lot and getting to use aizen for it was really great.

bite down into me, ch. 7
destiny, shin/drifter, 476 words, rated T — updated 1/30/21 — twitter link

i like this one. very stream-of-consciousness, which seems to be a theme for s/d.

in the details (not the devil)
haikyuu!!, sakusa/atsumu, 2,799 words, rated T — 3/31/21 — twitter link

i liked this fic a lot; i feel like i captured a type of relationship i've been wanting to write (or read) for a while now. a bulk of my unposted word count is more of this fic, actually. just never came together in a solid enough way.

retrofuturist
haikyuu!!, oikawa/iwaizumi, 1874 words, rated T — 4/12/21 — twitter link

i like this one too, but not as much as the skts one. i feel a very strong way about iwaoi and would like to come back to them some time.

necessary conversations
haikyuu!!, gen, 436 words, rated G — 4/12/21 — twitter link

this was supposed to be part of retrofuturist, i think? anyways, i liked writing it. it's closure i wanted to see.

the more i run (the farther away it seems)
destiny, shin/drifter, 2,598 words, rated T — 6/28/21 — twitter link

i loved this fic. i loved writing this fic. i love aunor. what more can i say!

if you believed what you felt you would (never) be in love
haikyuu!!, bokuto/akaashi, 10,113 words, rated T — 9/12/21 — twitter link

this is another fic where i feel like i captured a type of relationship i've been wanting to read or write. this was a really challenging fic and i'm proud of how it came out.

bite down into me, ch. 8
destiny, shin/drifter, 505 words, rated T — 12/13/21 — twitter link

i've had this written for a long time with the intent of it being its own fic, but that clearly wasn't working. i'm glad i got it out on its own.

P vs NP, ch. 1
red vs. blue, wash/maine, 43,740 words, rated M — 12/31/21 — twitter link

god. i am so glad that i finished this. when i finished the bulk of the rewrite on... sunday? monday? i though "oh, i'll leave this for later, it doesn't need to be done This Year," and then i got seized by the urge to. just. be free of this fic. not that it ever felt like an albatross or anything, but i was so close to just being done and satisfied and closing this chapter that i wanted to do it. i'm really happy with the rewrite.

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i am (again) surprised by how productive this year was, considering not only [gestures vaguely at Current Events] but also that i had a HUGE life change in the middle of the year (a good one!) and i'm still adjusting.

looking back on this year and the previous one, i feel like my writing process has become a lot more linear. i used to just write sections and mash them together willy-nilly (see: reasons i felt compelled to do that rewrite), but i've found a planning process and a writing process that works for me and it feels good.

i feel like my growth as a writer has been especially evident to me this year as i worked on the rewrite; i changed so many things not only at the sentence-level (awkward phrasing, weird dialogue, whatever) but also at the big plot points/setup level and i'm so happy with the results. i found (and fixed) so many weird things that i used to avoid or use for totally arbitrary reasons. i used to feel like i couldn't use ellipses (i think ch. 2 still has a complete lack of ellipses, lmao) and that adding dialogue to the end of a sentence (i.e., He looked around the room and said, "Damn, bitch, you live like this?") was was... bad? for some reason? and there was also a lot of, like, weirdly quippy - dare i say, whedonesque - dialogue that just has no place in Today!Me's writing.

there were also a lot of sections that i genuinely felt sad that i had to get rid of, but they just didn't fit. first and foremost: the sparring section. within the larger scope of the plot... it was so pointless? i just wanted to write them sparring at the time, so i did. that totally could have been its own oneshot or something. i remember getting a lot of comments about that section in particular, and i'm so glad that people liked it, but it needed to go. a lot of the touchy-feely stuff ended up going, too, but i think it makes wash's emotional journey a bit more cohesive as a whole.

this took a hard turn into talking about S11 au exclusively so let me see what else i want to talk about. hmm. oh, i think shortfic collections like exaptation and bite down into me were also a really good thing for me this year. so much of my unposted word count is things that don't really fit within the larger fic/scenario/whatever i wrote them for, but they're capable of standing on their own, for the most part. if i keep writing stuff like that this year, i might make an effort to create more works to hold those kinds of fragments.

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and the usual end-of-year meme! as with every year i've done this, i'm defining "successful" as "achieving what i wanted to achieve" rather than any kind of numbers metric.

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

the more i run, by a long shot. that fic got ripped out of me in a very intense burst of inspiration and i love it. i love it.

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

agh. idk! i didn't dislike anything i wrote this year. if i had to arrange my fics in "most liked" order then.... idk, i guess retrofuturist would be at the bottom, but only because i happened to like all the other fics i wrote more.

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

i think the S11 au rewrite qualifies for this. i've never actually rewritten something massive like that before, and it was very challenging. kinda like writing fic of my own fic, because i still had to make stuff fit within the larger skeleton of that chapter. i think it also made me a better editor.

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

the more i run takes this one, too. i feel like i expressed every single thing i wanted to express with that fic. and it was written based off of one (1) line of description on an item. i still feel TV static filling up my brain when i think about that loretab.

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

this question keeps getting harder and harder to answer, lol. i think the only thing i can say here is that i wish i had been able to wrangle some of the huge amount of unpublished stuff from this year into an actual fic - but on the flip side, most of stuff i don't publish tends to be additions to something i have published, so it's not like the entire concept was unsuccessful. does this make any kind of sense??

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

if you believed what you felt was a really dialogue-heavy fic, at least by my general metric. i really liked all the conversations everyone had. the older i get, the more i'm drawn to writing fic where people find ways to be straightforward with each other. (i say this and look directly at s/d, who are allergic to straightforwardness.)

“I do,” Akaashi says, “want you,” and he falters, only briefly, “to be you with me. I’d like to keep doing that.”

“And the other stuff?” Bokuto asks. Want you rings in his ears. “The romantic part.”

“It doesn’t–” Akaashi looks away, just briefly. “It doesn’t have to be. That. I just meant to be honest with you.”

“But you want it to be,” Bokuto insists. “Right? So I want to be that for you. Let me, okay?” The flush on Akaashi’s cheeks rises and falls like the tide; it seems that gravity’s pull is a little stronger now, that soft pink spilling out bright again under his skin. So he repeats, more gently, “Okay?”

“Okay,” Akaashi says; his voice is hushed, but his smile is louder than a packed stadium.

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

i really, really liked all of my description/narration in in the details. sakusa's (admittedly short) POV/narration in canon is very straightforward, dry, blunt to the point of meanness, and very self-aware; i had a really good time trying to recreate that. two snippets for this one, the first sfw and the second nsfw.

i really, really liked this line in particular:

There are small things one takes from a partner; a thievery of quotidian mundanity, slivers of intimacy dislodged and left to disintegrate under his skin. Sakusa keeps them like an unwilling hoarder, tucked away in some primal corner of memory immune to purging.

as well as this one — nsfw mention:

Here is the text of Appendix C, a strange footnote that is neither unimportant nor crucial: some remnant of one awkward, exhilarating blowjob from the depths of their third year coalesced between two people incapable of half-measures into a pull so powerful it would make any black hole seem like a simple magnet. In half a year of sweat-soaked skin and angry mouths, it never got better, and it never got worse. Black holes acquire accretion disks. Accretion disks generate friction. Heat can destroy magnetism. This is physics: it’s straightforward. (Sakusa has always been a cold person.) The singularity collapsed. The universe ended, and began again.

Here is the text of Appendix D, the critical framework for his life since that point: two days after the last time they slept together, Miya smiled at him genuinely off the court. There was no supermassive object involved. Sakusa smiled back.

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

hmm. either the more i run or if you believed what you felt, i think? the first because it was a whirlwind of inspiration yanking me along for the ride, and the second because it was a lot of fun (and very challenging) to get into the mindset of a character who has a very, very different personality from me.

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

i wish i could have made some of these fics longer. god. the more i run and in the details in particular. they're complete, and dragging them out would feel really awkward, but i liked those fics so much that i find myself wanting those scenarios expanded upon.

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

whew, i have no clue. i kinda just want to stay the course for 2022. i've found a good workflow and i want to keep it up.