2018 IN FIC

P R E V I O U S L Y :
fics written in: 2010 [39], 2012 [29], 2014 [34], 2015 [13], 2016 [32], 2017 [18]
word count: 2016 [78k], 2017 [82,593]

[ link to last year’s post ]




S T A T S :
fics: 19
total word count: 89,373

FANDOMS: Seven! Shadowhunters wins with 11 fics and American Horror Story: Apocalypse follows with 3; then it’s 1 each for The Punisher, The End of the Fucking World, In Other Lands, GLOW, and The Magicians.

SHIPS: 12 different ships in total
hetero: 6
slash: 4
femslash: 2
gen: 4-ish, but I counted mostly character-driven stories with side pairings, so.

female POV: 6
male POV: 6
most written character: Queen Maia Roberts, who was the POV character in 5 fics.
most written ship: Jace/Maia, with 5 fics, surprising absolutely no one.





O V E R A L L :

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?
I was surprised that I wrote basically the exact same amount of fic this year as I did last year — even the word count didn’t differ much! I felt like I wrote a lot, but it may just be that I’ve been writing a lot lately and I have a goldfish memory about the previous 11 months lol. It’s pretty amazing because there was definitely a time this year when I couldn’t imagine having the emotional energy to write at all.


What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I actually think I surprised myself with the variety of fandoms I wrote this year! I’ve been so deep in Shadowhunters emotionally that I didn’t really expect to focus my fannish energy elsewhere. But GLOW was probably the biggest surprise, because it wasn’t the kind of show I felt super fannish about. But when I got it for Yuletide, it gave me a chance to explore a lot of the feelings I had about the show and develop a way deeper understanding of the characters and their dynamics. Writing ‘borderline’ was a great experience for that reason. A truly lovely surprise.


What’s your own favorite story of the year?
Honestly, I think this was lowkey my best year?? I wrote so many things I loved and that I’m proud of. My Maia fics have been some of my most rewarding. I think I could write her forever. But I’m going to give this to my most recent fic, ‘nobody no body nobody,’ which was another surprise. I wrote it for a ficathon based on a line in girljustdied’s incredible fic ‘where you are you and I stay me’— in it, Maia says something about how Jace would make a good werewolf because he knows how to endure so much physical pain. And I never quite got that idea out of my head, so when I saw a prompt that clicked with it, I was off to the races. And I’ve written it in a way that goes against all my typical tics. I’m a BIG planner and outliner, down to the last detail, but I’m totally flying by the seat of my pants with this one and I find it incredibly freeing. And getting such a great response to it has been wonderful too!


Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Honestly, writing ‘nobody no body nobody’ without a plan is a risk for me. I’m afraid I’m going to jinx it by talking about it lmao. I know how disappointing it is to get invested in a WIP that never concludes, so I usually like to finish my longer/multi-chapter fics before I start posting. But this has definitely taught me that I can stand to be less intense! Don’t put so much pressure on myself, just have fun and write for me.


Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Oh boy do I. When it comes to Shadowhunters, I'd like to finish the Jace/Maia bookclub fic I've been percolating for a while but haven't actually started yet. There are a few pairings I'd like to explore, too. I've been wanting to write a romantic Simon/Meliorn fic for a while and I'd like to write more Simon/Maia/Jace, because I can't believe I've only written one (??????) fic for them. I'd like to write more Magnus as well. I really miss him. And I'd like to write more about Maia's relationships with women, specifically Clary and Gretel. How have I not written a fic about Maia and Gretel yet?

And more femslash, always. I had this feeling while I was writing ‘borderline,’ where I was like WOMEN ARE SO MUCH MORE COMPLICATED AND INTENSE AND MESSY THIS IS AMAZING. Which is obviously a huge generalization! But it just felt so exciting to explore that. I do feel like I write about women a lot because I just care more about female characters, but I don’t think I write about women’s relationships with each other enough and that’s an issue tbh.

AND LASTLY I want to write more fic for The Magicians.


Did you meet your goals from last year?
My eternal goal is more femslash and I’m still a failure, but at least I wrote 2 f/f stories this year that I was really proud of! Better than nothing! I also wanted to get out of my comfort zone, which I think I did.





B E S T   &   W O R S T :

My best story of this year:
Fuuuuuck I don’t know! I wrote a lot of things that I really like this year! But I think I will give this to ‘borderline,’ which I wrote all in one night while blasting ’80s music, because when I read it over the next day, I was like: yeah, that’s a good fuckin’ story.


My most popular story of this year:
Going by hits, kudos, and bookmarks on AO3, my most popular fic is ‘past lives,’which isn’t a surprise, really. That might be my favorite Magnus/Alec fic of mine; there was something really satisfying about it, trying to bend canon to be the thing I want it to be lol.

But. This is potentially a stroppy and ungrateful thing to say, but I am……perhaps……..slightly bitter that a short and simple Magnus/Alec fic will get ten times more attention than a Maia fic I poured my heart and soul into. I know how fandom works; I understand that they are hugely popular and that’s great! But I can’t help being a little grumbly about it. I thought maybe it was Jace that turned people off, so I tried to write Maia fics without him in them, but turns out people just don’t care about her! My Jace/Simon fics were also among my most popular in the AO3 stats, so he’s not the issue. I love her so much and those fics mean so much to me that it is….a thing that’s on my mind sometimes. Like, even the most popular chapter of ‘nobody’ was the purely expository one that Maia was barely in lol.


Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
Apparently my Quentin/Margo ficlet, ‘bite my tongue, bide my time,’was a big flop going by the almost total lack of response to it! Whatever, I thought it was fun! And I already complained about Maia.


Most fun story to write:
‘borderline’ was fun for the aforementioned fevered night of ’80s music (plus rewatching the whole series in preparation), while ‘nobody no body nobody’was a much-needed break from routine. But then my 10 Things I Hate About You AU, ‘I want you to want me,’ was also a really fun project that led to me watch 10 Things so many times in a month that I could probably recite it top to tail from memory right now. Plus I loooooved getting to explore Clary and Maia’s relationship in that.


Story with the single sexiest moment:
I will give this to a few: Frank fingering Karen in ‘drown in the desert’ + Jace and Simon finally fucking in ‘stay with me under these waves tonight’ + Debbie and Ruth going down on each other in ‘borderline.’ All quality!


Most ‘holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you’ story:
I guess the AHS: Apocalypse Antichrist stuff came the closest, but honestly, I could have gone harder.


Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I think ‘liminal spaces’ maybe helped me get a better sense of Alec, though I am still very insecure about writing him. I need to keep doing it until I crack the code lol. I had that issue with Serena in Gossip Girl too; it was so difficult to write her until one day I finally figured it out, somehow. And then I loved writing her, could do it without thinking.


Hardest story to write:
Hmmmm. I think ‘bite my tongue, bide my time’ because I wanted to write for that fandom and that ship so badly but I’m still so new to the show that I’m not settled enough in the world yet. It was okay once I got started but it was tough to start and I was not confident.


Biggest disappointment:
Lmao literally so disappointed I don’t even want to talk about it. I had started ‘already knew I couldn’t fake it,’a Simon/Jace ficlet, before January of last year and spent ages hemming and hawing over it because I felt like I couldn’t get it right. Then the whole Dom thing happened and I was REALLY upset about it (on top of some personal stuff that was happening at the time) but I just couldn’t look at the story anymore so I posted it even though it was bad timing + I wasn’t happy with it. And I think that shows. Ugh!


Biggest surprise:
I feel like I’ve covered this already.


Most unintentionally telling story:
I work out a lot of my personal shit in fic, lol, though it's not a 1:1 situation. I repurpose the feelings. Like, for the past four months I’ve been deeply grieving the loss of my dog; I can be fine one minute and a wreck the next, and I feel like I’m only now emerging from the nadir of my depression. But it could swoop back on me at any moment! On top of that, my dad has gotten really sick in the same timeframe (though he’s been ill for the last year) and it’s just made my emotions crazy + my anxiety really intense. And I didn’t write about sick parents or lost pets. But I put a lot of those feelings into what Jace is going through in ‘nobody no body nobody.’ The suddenness of loss, the loneliness, feeling empty and cut off from my own personality, not knowing how to keep going but just kind of doing it on autopilot because that’s what you have to do sometimes. All of that’s coming straight from me.





W I P   T E A S E R S :

nobody no body nobody [6]— shadowhunters; maia/jace.
It was a mistake to invite Jace behind the bar.


both sides now — shadowhunters; maia/jace.
“Can I see it?” Jace asks. “Again?”
Maia takes a breath that is not quite a sigh. She shifts and tugs her skirt up half an inch, moving her leg out to show him the little bluish butterfly on the inside of her right thigh. Somewhere a sixteen year old girl chose so her family would never see it. So the boyfriend she thought she loved could touch it when he curled his hand possessively around her thigh.
Now Jace bends and presses his lips to it, warm and soft, stubble scraping pleasantly against her sensitive skin.




R E C   L I S T :
where you are you and I stay me. girljustdied. shadowhunters; jace/maia.
There’s a spot above the line of her left collar bone. If she presses a thumb into it, tears blur her vision. It’s instant, and forceful; her throat closes and her mouth gasps open for air.

Totally brutal.


happy families are all alike.scioscribe. flowers in the attic; cathy/chris.
(Our world kept being changed and revealed to us by the same small things. Milk, a candle, a whisper. We had nothing else.)

Tonally perfect, and beautifully written.


I could stare at your back all day. girljustdied. shadowhunters; jace/maia.
Tells him: “Adversity binds people together. I know you and Clary were tangled up with it, I know how much you loved her. I can’t imagine—”
“It wasn’t like that,” he lets go, voice raw. “We went through everything apart.” After a prolonged silence, continues, “It was never us against the world.”

Painful, emotional, hot: the holy trinity. Jace and Maia have a conversation about Valentine and Jordan that I would kill to see in canon.


the mirage. breathedout. GLOW; arthie/yolanda.
But of course it wasn't like Arthie had taken photographic evidence in order to confront Yoyo with proof of her own happiness when Yoyo threw Arthie's words back in her face, in public, in front of a display of flamboyant silk dinner jackets. It had been like—like a bit they'd developed. Arthie bitched about the hotel room and Yoyo bitched right back at her and it was all part of the fabric of their little life together. Like fooling around after rehearsal on Thursdays. Like Burger King with the girls.

Such a grasp of character, setting, and tone. Explores relationships in a realistic way that felt lived-in and real; a rarity in fic tbh.


can't take it with you. girljustdied. the punisher; frank/karen.
His lips on the swell of her cheek is not a tender thing. It’s stones in her pockets. Roots her feet to the earth, halting her pacing. She does not turn her mouth towards his. Does not touch the spot of skin when he steps back, or regard him as he walks away. Only breathes, shivers in her exhales. The wind from the river is frigid and sour.

I swear to god if these two characters don't fuck in Season 2 I'm gonna scream. K just gets them. I wouldn't even bother going anywhere else to read about this ship.


brooklyn in the mists. paperiuni. shadowhunters; magnus/alec, clary/isabelle.
Izzy turned, her throat thick with the sight of Clary. Any crisp words of comfort failed to spark. You're alive, she thought, and for a long silent second the thought was wide as the sky.

I'm really enjoying the building mystery in this. Fantastic grasp of the characters and tangible ambiance.