end-of-year fanfic meme
Jan. 1st, 2026 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluatime for the annual tradition~
Total number of completed stories: Six! They are:
Four Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn fics:
* Man of Letters (Pelleas & Naesala, Pelleas/Micaiah/Sothe)
* a way in the wilderness (Naesala/Leanne)
* Solstice (Reyson & Lillia)
* snake & sweet flower (Sothe/Tibarn/Reyson)
A Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fic:
* thrash the lake white (Verso &/ Sciel)
And my Yuletide fic, which was written for the James Tiptree Jr. story "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever":
* That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground (...er, weird sentient birdlike things...?)
Total fanfiction word count: 45,030
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? About what I expected in quantity, though pretty different in terms of content.
What's your own favorite story of the year? i felt physically ill after writing "thrash the lake white" so it's gotta be that one
Did you take any writing risks this year? yuletide lmao. i'd forgotten how hard it is for me to write book fandoms. it's good though. healthy for me to push my limits sometimes
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? I'M NOT ANSWERING THIS ONE. IT'S A TRAP. (i'm looking at my goals from last year, and i'm like. oh i literally did none of these huh. so this year i'm not jinxing that shit!)
My best story of this year: probably "Man of Letters"
Story with the single sexiest moment: "snake & sweet flower" was this year's obligatory porn. you're welcome, perverts.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Sciel's now entirely My Girl™ thanks to fic'ing her in "thrash the lake white", hahaha
Hardest story to write: "That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground"
Most unintentionally telling: i had a few cheesy feelings leak out into "Man of Letters"
Biggest disappointment: i'm bummed i never managed to beat that ike/reyson thing i was working on into a satisfying shape. that draft hit 16k and went NOWHERE smdh
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Clair Obscur came out of nowhere and grabbed me by the throat... bless...
Miscellaneous categories so that everything gets at least one shout-out:
* Most likely to have people asking if i'm a furry: "That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground"
* Most blatant ripoff of another story: "Solstice"
* Most likely to inspire a future "Teach for America" enlistee: "Man of Letters"
* Most blackpilled: ...okay i made up this category in order to throw an award at "a way in the wilderness," but it occurs to me that it's actually a tossup between that and "That Which Crieth Unto Me From The Ground", haha. the latter is more philosophically blackpilled whereas i think the former is more emotionally blackpilled, yaknow. "the universe is hell" vs "these specific relationships, despite how much you might wish otherwise, are doomed to exist in a hellish state" sort of thing.
Choice Lines: man the more the years go on the weirder i feel about this question. i like my prose but i think calling attention to any one line, paragraph, etc, feels like picking out a... best note, or a best brushstroke, idk, a total category error. plenty of great works of literature are held together with scummy hacks and pedestrian prose as duct tape between the big moments. idunno.
that being said: i like the horse metaphor in "Man of Letters" & i like a lot of what's happening on a sentence level in "thrash the lake white". in that one, i felt like i needed to Very Precisely Calibrate some of the language in the last two scenes to make stuff land the way i wanted, and i think it had a pretty neat effect!
Total number of completed stories: Six! They are:
Four Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn fics:
* Man of Letters (Pelleas & Naesala, Pelleas/Micaiah/Sothe)
* a way in the wilderness (Naesala/Leanne)
* Solstice (Reyson & Lillia)
* snake & sweet flower (Sothe/Tibarn/Reyson)
A Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 fic:
* thrash the lake white (Verso &/ Sciel)
And my Yuletide fic, which was written for the James Tiptree Jr. story "Her Smoke Rose Up Forever":
* That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground (...er, weird sentient birdlike things...?)
Total fanfiction word count: 45,030
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? About what I expected in quantity, though pretty different in terms of content.
What's your own favorite story of the year? i felt physically ill after writing "thrash the lake white" so it's gotta be that one
Did you take any writing risks this year? yuletide lmao. i'd forgotten how hard it is for me to write book fandoms. it's good though. healthy for me to push my limits sometimes
Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the new year? I'M NOT ANSWERING THIS ONE. IT'S A TRAP. (i'm looking at my goals from last year, and i'm like. oh i literally did none of these huh. so this year i'm not jinxing that shit!)
My best story of this year: probably "Man of Letters"
Story with the single sexiest moment: "snake & sweet flower" was this year's obligatory porn. you're welcome, perverts.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Sciel's now entirely My Girl™ thanks to fic'ing her in "thrash the lake white", hahaha
Hardest story to write: "That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground"
Most unintentionally telling: i had a few cheesy feelings leak out into "Man of Letters"
Biggest disappointment: i'm bummed i never managed to beat that ike/reyson thing i was working on into a satisfying shape. that draft hit 16k and went NOWHERE smdh
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Clair Obscur came out of nowhere and grabbed me by the throat... bless...
Miscellaneous categories so that everything gets at least one shout-out:
* Most likely to have people asking if i'm a furry: "That Which Crieth Unto Me From the Ground"
* Most blatant ripoff of another story: "Solstice"
* Most likely to inspire a future "Teach for America" enlistee: "Man of Letters"
* Most blackpilled: ...okay i made up this category in order to throw an award at "a way in the wilderness," but it occurs to me that it's actually a tossup between that and "That Which Crieth Unto Me From The Ground", haha. the latter is more philosophically blackpilled whereas i think the former is more emotionally blackpilled, yaknow. "the universe is hell" vs "these specific relationships, despite how much you might wish otherwise, are doomed to exist in a hellish state" sort of thing.
Choice Lines: man the more the years go on the weirder i feel about this question. i like my prose but i think calling attention to any one line, paragraph, etc, feels like picking out a... best note, or a best brushstroke, idk, a total category error. plenty of great works of literature are held together with scummy hacks and pedestrian prose as duct tape between the big moments. idunno.
that being said: i like the horse metaphor in "Man of Letters" & i like a lot of what's happening on a sentence level in "thrash the lake white". in that one, i felt like i needed to Very Precisely Calibrate some of the language in the last two scenes to make stuff land the way i wanted, and i think it had a pretty neat effect!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-02 02:34 am (UTC)I laughed. ;D
no subject
Date: 2026-01-02 07:47 am (UTC)it's a tight competition given a bunch of my fic DOES, uh, feature humans-with-anthro-characteristics by default, but some fic's gotta WIN and that one in fact does LOL
no subject
Date: 2026-01-02 04:44 am (UTC)anyway congrats on a good year of writing and hope you have another good one this year :D
no subject
Date: 2026-01-02 07:30 am (UTC)but the nice thing about fic is it's there forever :) if you ever do take the Radiant Dawn plunge, it will be waiting there for you!
hope YOU have an excellent new year & good writing ahead of you, yourself!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-02 05:24 am (UTC)laughing at ~most telling~ category, hehe
no subject
Date: 2026-01-02 07:46 am (UTC)and re: most telling: look, i could learn things about myself via Introspection and Self-Awareness and all that, OR, i could just write tens of thousands of words of fanfiction and occasionally find myself confronted with my own writing like a slap in the face. and empirically i have chosen one of these options over the other, so,,,...
no subject
Date: 2026-01-04 12:44 am (UTC)