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2021 in fic
And a quick fic year in review meme! For obvious reasons this is me crouching like a gremlin over my pile of Mechanisms fic, so it's probably mostly of interest to me, but I did write a whole lot this year that I'm very happy with, so I wanted to talk about it.
Total wordcount for the year: 207,094 words
Number of fics: 12
Number of fandoms: only four; arguably, indeed, "only me finishing the Magnus Archives and falling down a rabbit hole of very specific obsession, from which I briefly surfaced to write a fic about my D&D campaign"
1. Favourite fic you wrote this year:
Extremely close competition, but I'm going to give it to moons in collision, like gravity or love, a fic in the genre of "I have fallen head-over-heels for a character and I'm going to spend somewhere in excess of 30k just basking in how much I love them."
2. Least favourite fic you wrote this year:
I honestly don't really have one -- there are none that I'm disappointed with, or that turned out wildly different than I wanted them to be. For the sake of completion, I'll say Spin the Knife, not because I don't like it but because it's a several-thousand-word joke about a silly stabbing game that I wrote all in one afternoon and it has basically no other qualities at all.
3. Favourite line/scene you wrote this year:
This bit of scene from stay with me, go places that is both one of my favorite "a character realizes that they're in love" moments I've ever written and also felt like a really nice bit of canon-characterization-flavor-translated-to-AU.
They've always been twined in his heart, Bertie for whom it was too late to do anything, Jonny who Tim refused to give up to the uncaring, months-dead world. "When you died," Tim finds himself saying, very quietly, "I was going to kill whoever'd done it, and I was going to kill anyone who got in my way."
The attentive look on Jonny's face cracks open into astonishment. Tim can tell that he immediately understands that Tim isn't being hyperbolic. "Oh," Jonny says unsteadily.
"I was going to raze all of London," Tim says, and this time the edge of a snarl creeps into his voice. Oh God, he only intended-- Jonny deserves to know, but Tim meant it as, as ... a confession about how bad things had got? The only way he has to tell Jonny the full weight and intensity of everything he's been carrying around these past six months? He hadn't meant it as-- Jonny's eyes are kindling. Tim's just confessed that he wanted to do a bunch of murder, and Jonny looks wrecked.
"Good thing we stuck to the one alleged homicide," Jonny says, in a way that's obviously meant to be lightly joking but comes out shaky.
"Convenient, that," Tim agrees, and suddenly they're laughing, leaning on one another, both of them shivering with the enormity of what they're feeling, and oh, Tim's-- He steals the end of Jonny's cigarette, swats Jonny's protesting hand away and laces their fingers together while he gives Jonny a triumphant grin, and he looks it straight in the face. He's in love.
4. # of words written this year:
207,094 words, which is, unless I'm really mistaken, fully the highest word count of the year I've ever achieved?? I want to emphasize that this was not at all because I suddenly had reams of glorious free time for pandemic reasons or anything, but I do think it was at least in part because this was a year in which hanging out in a particular fictional universe was one of the things that was bringing me the most joy.
5. Most popular fic this year:
By hit count: moons in collision, like gravity or love
By kudos and bookmarks: where you go, I'm going (so jump and I'm jumping) -- this latter makes perfect sense, because this was my one Magnus Archives fic and also my one fic that was in a fandom of actually reasonable size
6. Least popular fic this year:
By hit count and kudos: Tradition, the fic I wrote for my D&D group's yearly fanworks exchange, a fandom of ~7 people
By bookmarks: Call My Name and Save Me From the Dark, my Yuletide fic that originated the Protagonish tag; frankly I'm astonished that it has even the single bookmark it does!
7. Fandom you enjoyed writing for the most this year:
The Mechanisms, obviously, I wrote 191k and enjoyed every minute of it.
8. Favourite character you wrote this year:
Jonny d'Ville! He is a perfect example of a particular character type I have, which I usually describe as "mouthy bottom who commits war crimes," for various values of bottoming and war crimes; Jonny is a bit higher on the war crimes scale than most! All of the Mechanisms as characters were lovely to write in this, a year during which I've felt a lot of anger and despair, and it was really good to hang out with characters who also feel a lot of that, and also find a lot of beauty and joy in stories and the wide sweep of the universe. I think I ended up liking Jonny most because he has more text than a lot of the other Mechanisms do, so I could be really specific in the project of building him outwards as a character in fic, and it was just so, so much fun.
9. Favourite writing song inspiration:
I'm the sort of person who usually writes to instrumental music or the same looped playlists of music that has turned into background noise. However, if I wanted to feel cheerful and settle myself in to write Mechanisms fic, I often listened to Prometheus (Come On and Slam), a mashup by a Mechs band member of the Mechanisms song Prometheus and the Space Jam song.
10. A new kink you wrote by surprise in a fic this year:
Okay well sometimes when you're writing about violent immortal space pirates and one of them is canonically a cannibal you find yourself writing vore for the first time, and then also for a second time (Stave Off the Boredom (With Fire and Food) and Blood Like Wine).
11. Something you learned about writing this year:
There was a confluence of two specific things this year that contributed to me writing as much as I did: how much I just genuinely loved hanging out in and playing around with the world(s) and characters I was writing about, and having my housemates around to noodle about talking about those characters and worlds even when I wasn't actively writing. I don't know if that second circumstance is actually replicable, because it wasn't exactly the same thing as the similar and adjacent joy of hanging out in virtual fandom space with friends, but it was incredible to be able to just pop up at breakfast and be like "okay, I'm stuck on this scene, what do you think?" Probably what I learned is that I write well in community, especially if it's very immediate. My general delight to be writing was also a wonderful reminder that I don't actually have to be arguing with a text, or writing with the goal of getting lots of engagement with it; I can write so much if the reason I'm doing it is because I really want to tell myself a specific story.
12. Current # of WIPs:
My WIP folder has 38 documents in it, although a lot of them are also separate notes and metadata for fics, or separate chapters of longer incomplete works; realistically there are about half a dozen of the fics currently in my WIP folder that will eventually see the light of day.
13. Most memorable comment or review:
One I received on moons in collision, like gravity or love, which in excerpt says:
I have reread this a GREAT MANY times and every time I find new bits to love like...I want to bind a fic into a book at some point and I'm not gonna lie I want to do this one just cause like...it's perfect. It's hilarious and heart wrenching and I just love this horrible bastard space pirate and all the horrible bastard space pirates and this specifically just makes me feel like "hey all the ugly, not-fitting, inconvenient, and weird ways of feeling about the world are OKAY" cause like all the feelings in here are messy and obviously very different contexts here between space pirates and a weird little dude who reads too much fanfic but yeah. This sparks a weird big joy in me and makes me wanna rip something apart with my bare hands and sew it together again.
--which is at least two or three compliments that are absolutely wonderful to receive.
14. Favourite fic you read this year:
Solid tie between Sweet As Roses, a long plotty Magnus Archive fic that is the best one I've found in the "cursed artifact made them do it" genre, and life! life! eternity! an even longer and not-at-all-plotty Mechanisms mundane AU that I am fond of for reasons including that the excited brainstorming at breakfast goes both ways and it was so fun to beta all the new installments as they came in.
15. Longest fic you wrote this year:
lies we tell the universe, at 79k, my Mechanisms/The Wicked + the Divine fusion that, if not my very favorite fic from this year, is probably the one I'm most proud of.
16. Shortest fic you wrote this year:
Spin the Knife, 2k of, as I said, a silly joke about a stabbing game.
17. How many fandoms did you write for this year?
Four: the Mechanisms, the Magnus Archives, my own D&D campaign, and Protagonish
18. Favourite fandom to read fic from this year:
Solid tie between the Mechanisms and the Magnus Archives, but what's that, in December it's What We Do in the Shadows with a folding chair!
Total wordcount for the year: 207,094 words
Number of fics: 12
Number of fandoms: only four; arguably, indeed, "only me finishing the Magnus Archives and falling down a rabbit hole of very specific obsession, from which I briefly surfaced to write a fic about my D&D campaign"
1. Favourite fic you wrote this year:
Extremely close competition, but I'm going to give it to moons in collision, like gravity or love, a fic in the genre of "I have fallen head-over-heels for a character and I'm going to spend somewhere in excess of 30k just basking in how much I love them."
2. Least favourite fic you wrote this year:
I honestly don't really have one -- there are none that I'm disappointed with, or that turned out wildly different than I wanted them to be. For the sake of completion, I'll say Spin the Knife, not because I don't like it but because it's a several-thousand-word joke about a silly stabbing game that I wrote all in one afternoon and it has basically no other qualities at all.
3. Favourite line/scene you wrote this year:
This bit of scene from stay with me, go places that is both one of my favorite "a character realizes that they're in love" moments I've ever written and also felt like a really nice bit of canon-characterization-flavor-translated-to-AU.
They've always been twined in his heart, Bertie for whom it was too late to do anything, Jonny who Tim refused to give up to the uncaring, months-dead world. "When you died," Tim finds himself saying, very quietly, "I was going to kill whoever'd done it, and I was going to kill anyone who got in my way."
The attentive look on Jonny's face cracks open into astonishment. Tim can tell that he immediately understands that Tim isn't being hyperbolic. "Oh," Jonny says unsteadily.
"I was going to raze all of London," Tim says, and this time the edge of a snarl creeps into his voice. Oh God, he only intended-- Jonny deserves to know, but Tim meant it as, as ... a confession about how bad things had got? The only way he has to tell Jonny the full weight and intensity of everything he's been carrying around these past six months? He hadn't meant it as-- Jonny's eyes are kindling. Tim's just confessed that he wanted to do a bunch of murder, and Jonny looks wrecked.
"Good thing we stuck to the one alleged homicide," Jonny says, in a way that's obviously meant to be lightly joking but comes out shaky.
"Convenient, that," Tim agrees, and suddenly they're laughing, leaning on one another, both of them shivering with the enormity of what they're feeling, and oh, Tim's-- He steals the end of Jonny's cigarette, swats Jonny's protesting hand away and laces their fingers together while he gives Jonny a triumphant grin, and he looks it straight in the face. He's in love.
4. # of words written this year:
207,094 words, which is, unless I'm really mistaken, fully the highest word count of the year I've ever achieved?? I want to emphasize that this was not at all because I suddenly had reams of glorious free time for pandemic reasons or anything, but I do think it was at least in part because this was a year in which hanging out in a particular fictional universe was one of the things that was bringing me the most joy.
5. Most popular fic this year:
By hit count: moons in collision, like gravity or love
By kudos and bookmarks: where you go, I'm going (so jump and I'm jumping) -- this latter makes perfect sense, because this was my one Magnus Archives fic and also my one fic that was in a fandom of actually reasonable size
6. Least popular fic this year:
By hit count and kudos: Tradition, the fic I wrote for my D&D group's yearly fanworks exchange, a fandom of ~7 people
By bookmarks: Call My Name and Save Me From the Dark, my Yuletide fic that originated the Protagonish tag; frankly I'm astonished that it has even the single bookmark it does!
7. Fandom you enjoyed writing for the most this year:
The Mechanisms, obviously, I wrote 191k and enjoyed every minute of it.
8. Favourite character you wrote this year:
Jonny d'Ville! He is a perfect example of a particular character type I have, which I usually describe as "mouthy bottom who commits war crimes," for various values of bottoming and war crimes; Jonny is a bit higher on the war crimes scale than most! All of the Mechanisms as characters were lovely to write in this, a year during which I've felt a lot of anger and despair, and it was really good to hang out with characters who also feel a lot of that, and also find a lot of beauty and joy in stories and the wide sweep of the universe. I think I ended up liking Jonny most because he has more text than a lot of the other Mechanisms do, so I could be really specific in the project of building him outwards as a character in fic, and it was just so, so much fun.
9. Favourite writing song inspiration:
I'm the sort of person who usually writes to instrumental music or the same looped playlists of music that has turned into background noise. However, if I wanted to feel cheerful and settle myself in to write Mechanisms fic, I often listened to Prometheus (Come On and Slam), a mashup by a Mechs band member of the Mechanisms song Prometheus and the Space Jam song.
10. A new kink you wrote by surprise in a fic this year:
Okay well sometimes when you're writing about violent immortal space pirates and one of them is canonically a cannibal you find yourself writing vore for the first time, and then also for a second time (Stave Off the Boredom (With Fire and Food) and Blood Like Wine).
11. Something you learned about writing this year:
There was a confluence of two specific things this year that contributed to me writing as much as I did: how much I just genuinely loved hanging out in and playing around with the world(s) and characters I was writing about, and having my housemates around to noodle about talking about those characters and worlds even when I wasn't actively writing. I don't know if that second circumstance is actually replicable, because it wasn't exactly the same thing as the similar and adjacent joy of hanging out in virtual fandom space with friends, but it was incredible to be able to just pop up at breakfast and be like "okay, I'm stuck on this scene, what do you think?" Probably what I learned is that I write well in community, especially if it's very immediate. My general delight to be writing was also a wonderful reminder that I don't actually have to be arguing with a text, or writing with the goal of getting lots of engagement with it; I can write so much if the reason I'm doing it is because I really want to tell myself a specific story.
12. Current # of WIPs:
My WIP folder has 38 documents in it, although a lot of them are also separate notes and metadata for fics, or separate chapters of longer incomplete works; realistically there are about half a dozen of the fics currently in my WIP folder that will eventually see the light of day.
13. Most memorable comment or review:
One I received on moons in collision, like gravity or love, which in excerpt says:
I have reread this a GREAT MANY times and every time I find new bits to love like...I want to bind a fic into a book at some point and I'm not gonna lie I want to do this one just cause like...it's perfect. It's hilarious and heart wrenching and I just love this horrible bastard space pirate and all the horrible bastard space pirates and this specifically just makes me feel like "hey all the ugly, not-fitting, inconvenient, and weird ways of feeling about the world are OKAY" cause like all the feelings in here are messy and obviously very different contexts here between space pirates and a weird little dude who reads too much fanfic but yeah. This sparks a weird big joy in me and makes me wanna rip something apart with my bare hands and sew it together again.
--which is at least two or three compliments that are absolutely wonderful to receive.
14. Favourite fic you read this year:
Solid tie between Sweet As Roses, a long plotty Magnus Archive fic that is the best one I've found in the "cursed artifact made them do it" genre, and life! life! eternity! an even longer and not-at-all-plotty Mechanisms mundane AU that I am fond of for reasons including that the excited brainstorming at breakfast goes both ways and it was so fun to beta all the new installments as they came in.
15. Longest fic you wrote this year:
lies we tell the universe, at 79k, my Mechanisms/The Wicked + the Divine fusion that, if not my very favorite fic from this year, is probably the one I'm most proud of.
16. Shortest fic you wrote this year:
Spin the Knife, 2k of, as I said, a silly joke about a stabbing game.
17. How many fandoms did you write for this year?
Four: the Mechanisms, the Magnus Archives, my own D&D campaign, and Protagonish
18. Favourite fandom to read fic from this year:
Solid tie between the Mechanisms and the Magnus Archives, but what's that, in December it's What We Do in the Shadows with a folding chair!