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End-of-year writing meme, 2024 edition
I received an email from the city that was much more exciting than the usual: they're reopening the city rink soon! It's been closed almost since I moved here, and I didn't know that they were still working on renovating it. It's still not a walk down the block for me, but it will be much easier for me to get to, and they already have a schedule up with skating hours every day. Looking forward to trying it out!
Apparently I haven't done this for a couple of years, but here's a year-end fic writing meme.
This year's fic stats:
Total number: 32 fics (+ 1 art + 1 AMV)
Total word count: 107409 on AO3
Ship/character breakdown:
Category breakdown, excluding the art:
Gen: 14
M/M: 15
F/F: 0 (:()
F/M: 5
Multi: 2
Fandoms:
More than half (17) were Yuri on Ice fics (still!), but Morrowind swooped in like a cliff racer on my brain this year with 11 fics. Besides a couple of fics for my other two small mainstays (Onmyouji, Mononokean), I also wrote a couple of short stories for two other favorite media of mine, Mononoke and I Was a Teenage Exocolonist.
Specifics:
Best/worst title?
Best: I have too many favorites this year, but I'm going to go with "There Are No Impossibilities" (in love or in war).
Worst: "Second-Best" - I couldn't think of anything better and probably didn't feel like title-hunting very hard for a ficlet.
Best/worst summary?
Best: This one might be my favorite, at least: "After Felura gets attacked by a guard who is displeased about her claim to be the reincarnation of the great Nerevar, she decides it might be nice to take a vacation. In the northern wilderness. Alone.
She picks flowers, finds a cool Dwarven artifact, and has some very interesting dreams about Nerevar's life."
Worst: I'm not entirely happy with my AMV's AO3 summary, but for actual fic: "Phichit takes Yuuri up on an invitation to visit Hasetsu during the off-season and meets up with him and some of the other men's skaters."
Best/worst first line?
Best: I like a few of them, but I'll go with this one: "What the hell," Yuri breathed under his breath, scrolling fast and furious down his feed.
Worst: "It was nice to finally set Hasetsu in person."
Best/worst last line?
Best: "Nerevar stands, too, alight the pedestal, and his raised hands are stained black with gods' blood."
Worst: "Yuuri shows him another new dance, teaches him the steps, and this one is way more fun."
General questions:
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
More than I would have thought if you'd asked me in May. I went through something of a writing slump, and then the late spring and early summer were extremely stressful for me (I was essentially helping my partner full-time with mental health stuff and his thesis when I wasn't working), but that situation wrapped up for the better right before Battleship. I wrote... a lot for Battleship. And then in October I started working on my current WIP, so there's a bunch of words in that which haven't been posted yet.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Only the Morrowind obsession! Look, it's not my fault that Bethesda wrote Dagoth Ur as being "obsessed with" and "seducing" and "wooing like a lover" the Nerevarine, not to mention everything else going on with Nerevar & co.
What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
It might be The Dreamer is Asleep, where I went ham with the experimental formatting. But it was just a lot of fun to write and gave me a couple of new headcanons.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Mirror and Moon, my one Mononoke story, got a surprising amount of attention even before the new movie finally came out on Netflix. The first YOI story I posted this year, Second Things Second, was up there as well, which didn't surprise me.
The one art I drew received more comments than anything I wrote, even though I wouldn't call myself a "good artist". I think it's easier for a lot of people to say something nice about a picture they liked than about a story.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
This one is hard for me to choose this year. I suppose Makes to Shine, though I'm not surprised since ficlets don't tend to get as much attention, and it got a couple of nice comments on the original meme prompt anyway. The Dreamer is Asleep didn't get a lot of clicks, but maybe it was just too niche? And that also got several kind comments, so.
Story that could have been better?
My one Mononokean story, For Crows to Pick, didn't come out as I wanted it to; their relationship change is too rushed, and the first scene is somewhat clunky.
Sexiest story?
Either 'the Heart of Lorkhan Made Them Do It because I can make up how tonal architecture works if you're swinging a hammer at it with no idea what you're doing' enemy-sex in Under Mountain, Under Ground, or Yuuri cross-dressing his way to confidence in Most Beautiful Man in Town.
Saddest story?
There's a couple of contenders in My Darling, Stay Gold, where Victor gets a foot amputated and I wrote in a very sparse style, or "the one where Lilia is abusive", Step Softly. But personally, From the Head of the Road was the one that pulled at my heartstrings while writing the part where Yuuko realizes that she's not going to "make it" the way she's been dreaming of since she was a kid.
Most fun?
On Our Original Archive, wherein Yuri discovers RPF, discovers all the fic of him banging Otabek, and discovers that he wants to bang real Otabek. Featuring this paragraph that still makes me laugh about Yuri discovering how not-AO3 ratings work:
"And it had a little E next to it. He'd seen video game commercials in English, he knew that E was the rating they gave to the cute little games with zero violence or sex or whatever else Americans had hangups over in them. So he clicked."
I also think the fail!Nerevarine in Under Mountain, Under Ground desperately trying to figure out how to beat the final boss was pretty funny.
Story with single sweetest moment?
Overlapping Circles has a few, like Yuuri cheering Phichit on in Thai and Phichit going on to have what for him at that point is an awesome Junior Worlds debut.
Hardest story to write?
Every Strand a Star to Bind, to count a fic I started writing in October but only started posting right before the end of the year - I began feeling not very confident writing characters whose lives are managing national/subnational politics, even if they mostly aren't getting Schemey about it. While I'm still not super comfortable with that, research has helped some there. Elder Scrolls also has a lot of Lore, so I'm always looking things up and occasionally worrying I'm doing wrong by something in there. (I'm still not satisfied with the summary and might change it sometime, if I figure out a better way to convey both the opening hook and 'these two are going to spend a long time falling in love and then denying their attraction to each other while taking care of their everyday duties and the occasional political drama'.)
For stories posted this year, A Weary Soul's Repair was also difficult; I'm really not confident writing Vivec, and it was difficult writing relationships that are basically "I love my old friends but also they murdered me and I can't forgive them for it but I still love them too much for anyone to get murdered about it?" and I'm not entirely happy with the last section.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I really enjoyed writing There Are No Impossibilities and riffing (not for the last time) on the dreams in Morrowind.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Not really this year. Although the Nerevarine character in Bind the Broken ended up different in tone than I initially imagined her to be; it was supposed to be a humorous fic given the premise (what if the Nerevarine chained up the Big Bad in her basement instead of killing him?) but it turned out more serious.
Most overdue story?
I suppose that would be From the Head of the Road - I've been wanting to write a Yuuko-centric backstory fic for a while. I've also wanted to write a story about Phichit meeting Yuuri by training in Japan, so it was nice to have a chance to put that into Overlapping Circles.
Did you take any writing risks this year?
I did a couple of 'unconventional formatting' fics for Battleship with use of CSS elements. They were more prominent in The Dreamer is Asleep (which also makes some abuse of ruby text - that was a pain to re-code after they didn't copy from my word processor, let me tell you), but Blessing of Dreams combines third-person narration with second-person dreams and first-person journal entries. I think it worked out for both stories.
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
I'll keep it simple: Finish off that one WIP that has been sitting at n-1/n chapters because I hated how the last one started coming out, scrapped it, and then never came back to it >_> And also finish off my Morrowind WIP. I have OW that I want to work on as well, but I don't want to put any specific goals on that.
Apparently I haven't done this for a couple of years, but here's a year-end fic writing meme.
This year's fic stats:
Total number: 32 fics (+ 1 art + 1 AMV)
Total word count: 107409 on AO3
Ship/character breakdown:
Category breakdown, excluding the art:
Gen: 14
M/M: 15
F/F: 0 (:()
F/M: 5
Multi: 2
Fandoms:
More than half (17) were Yuri on Ice fics (still!), but Morrowind swooped in like a cliff racer on my brain this year with 11 fics. Besides a couple of fics for my other two small mainstays (Onmyouji, Mononokean), I also wrote a couple of short stories for two other favorite media of mine, Mononoke and I Was a Teenage Exocolonist.
Specifics:
Best/worst title?
Best: I have too many favorites this year, but I'm going to go with "There Are No Impossibilities" (in love or in war).
Worst: "Second-Best" - I couldn't think of anything better and probably didn't feel like title-hunting very hard for a ficlet.
Best/worst summary?
Best: This one might be my favorite, at least: "After Felura gets attacked by a guard who is displeased about her claim to be the reincarnation of the great Nerevar, she decides it might be nice to take a vacation. In the northern wilderness. Alone.
She picks flowers, finds a cool Dwarven artifact, and has some very interesting dreams about Nerevar's life."
Worst: I'm not entirely happy with my AMV's AO3 summary, but for actual fic: "Phichit takes Yuuri up on an invitation to visit Hasetsu during the off-season and meets up with him and some of the other men's skaters."
Best/worst first line?
Best: I like a few of them, but I'll go with this one: "What the hell," Yuri breathed under his breath, scrolling fast and furious down his feed.
Worst: "It was nice to finally set Hasetsu in person."
Best/worst last line?
Best: "Nerevar stands, too, alight the pedestal, and his raised hands are stained black with gods' blood."
Worst: "Yuuri shows him another new dance, teaches him the steps, and this one is way more fun."
General questions:
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
More than I would have thought if you'd asked me in May. I went through something of a writing slump, and then the late spring and early summer were extremely stressful for me (I was essentially helping my partner full-time with mental health stuff and his thesis when I wasn't working), but that situation wrapped up for the better right before Battleship. I wrote... a lot for Battleship. And then in October I started working on my current WIP, so there's a bunch of words in that which haven't been posted yet.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Only the Morrowind obsession! Look, it's not my fault that Bethesda wrote Dagoth Ur as being "obsessed with" and "seducing" and "wooing like a lover" the Nerevarine, not to mention everything else going on with Nerevar & co.
What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
It might be The Dreamer is Asleep, where I went ham with the experimental formatting. But it was just a lot of fun to write and gave me a couple of new headcanons.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Mirror and Moon, my one Mononoke story, got a surprising amount of attention even before the new movie finally came out on Netflix. The first YOI story I posted this year, Second Things Second, was up there as well, which didn't surprise me.
The one art I drew received more comments than anything I wrote, even though I wouldn't call myself a "good artist". I think it's easier for a lot of people to say something nice about a picture they liked than about a story.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
This one is hard for me to choose this year. I suppose Makes to Shine, though I'm not surprised since ficlets don't tend to get as much attention, and it got a couple of nice comments on the original meme prompt anyway. The Dreamer is Asleep didn't get a lot of clicks, but maybe it was just too niche? And that also got several kind comments, so.
Story that could have been better?
My one Mononokean story, For Crows to Pick, didn't come out as I wanted it to; their relationship change is too rushed, and the first scene is somewhat clunky.
Sexiest story?
Either 'the Heart of Lorkhan Made Them Do It because I can make up how tonal architecture works if you're swinging a hammer at it with no idea what you're doing' enemy-sex in Under Mountain, Under Ground, or Yuuri cross-dressing his way to confidence in Most Beautiful Man in Town.
Saddest story?
There's a couple of contenders in My Darling, Stay Gold, where Victor gets a foot amputated and I wrote in a very sparse style, or "the one where Lilia is abusive", Step Softly. But personally, From the Head of the Road was the one that pulled at my heartstrings while writing the part where Yuuko realizes that she's not going to "make it" the way she's been dreaming of since she was a kid.
Most fun?
On Our Original Archive, wherein Yuri discovers RPF, discovers all the fic of him banging Otabek, and discovers that he wants to bang real Otabek. Featuring this paragraph that still makes me laugh about Yuri discovering how not-AO3 ratings work:
"And it had a little E next to it. He'd seen video game commercials in English, he knew that E was the rating they gave to the cute little games with zero violence or sex or whatever else Americans had hangups over in them. So he clicked."
I also think the fail!Nerevarine in Under Mountain, Under Ground desperately trying to figure out how to beat the final boss was pretty funny.
Story with single sweetest moment?
Overlapping Circles has a few, like Yuuri cheering Phichit on in Thai and Phichit going on to have what for him at that point is an awesome Junior Worlds debut.
Hardest story to write?
Every Strand a Star to Bind, to count a fic I started writing in October but only started posting right before the end of the year - I began feeling not very confident writing characters whose lives are managing national/subnational politics, even if they mostly aren't getting Schemey about it. While I'm still not super comfortable with that, research has helped some there. Elder Scrolls also has a lot of Lore, so I'm always looking things up and occasionally worrying I'm doing wrong by something in there. (I'm still not satisfied with the summary and might change it sometime, if I figure out a better way to convey both the opening hook and 'these two are going to spend a long time falling in love and then denying their attraction to each other while taking care of their everyday duties and the occasional political drama'.)
For stories posted this year, A Weary Soul's Repair was also difficult; I'm really not confident writing Vivec, and it was difficult writing relationships that are basically "I love my old friends but also they murdered me and I can't forgive them for it but I still love them too much for anyone to get murdered about it?" and I'm not entirely happy with the last section.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I really enjoyed writing There Are No Impossibilities and riffing (not for the last time) on the dreams in Morrowind.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Not really this year. Although the Nerevarine character in Bind the Broken ended up different in tone than I initially imagined her to be; it was supposed to be a humorous fic given the premise (what if the Nerevarine chained up the Big Bad in her basement instead of killing him?) but it turned out more serious.
Most overdue story?
I suppose that would be From the Head of the Road - I've been wanting to write a Yuuko-centric backstory fic for a while. I've also wanted to write a story about Phichit meeting Yuuri by training in Japan, so it was nice to have a chance to put that into Overlapping Circles.
Did you take any writing risks this year?
I did a couple of 'unconventional formatting' fics for Battleship with use of CSS elements. They were more prominent in The Dreamer is Asleep (which also makes some abuse of ruby text - that was a pain to re-code after they didn't copy from my word processor, let me tell you), but Blessing of Dreams combines third-person narration with second-person dreams and first-person journal entries. I think it worked out for both stories.
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
I'll keep it simple: Finish off that one WIP that has been sitting at n-1/n chapters because I hated how the last one started coming out, scrapped it, and then never came back to it >_> And also finish off my Morrowind WIP. I have OW that I want to work on as well, but I don't want to put any specific goals on that.