year of fic in review~

[volpish]

miss steal-yo-meme is AT IT AGAIN—this one is from isadorator ~~ 😘

January

the year i started really trying to drop ml in earnest because i was #dying and it was only making it SO MUCH WORSE. i actually spent new years' in a few voltron servers! which was step one, and i'm glad i took it. voltron was very much an empty surrogate, but i really think anything would have been an empty surrogate at that point because i was still on the very first doses of my mood stabilizers, which were so stabilizing that I Felt Nothing.

Subzero -- ml piece for the 2017 flash exchange, a.k.a. "I'M REALLY REALLY DONE WITH ML but ilu fandom friends so i'll participate Just This Once" -- also i was still pretending really hard that i wasn't a_miiraculer, so i finally achieved my ultimate goal of being assigned to myself!!

i'll be as honest as you let me -- second piece for the 2017 flash exchange, ditto the above.

not so far away -- "we're getting into voltron for now or so help me" meets "i am physically incapable of feeling any form of emotion" meets "but oh god please there are People I Don't Know Here release me from my old sins my new friends"
sirens wailing by -- ^^^
break a sweat -- ^^^
half of my heart is in havana -- ^^^
satin and silk -- ^^^

start a fire -- "I'M GONNA RUN THIS TOWN WITH GOOD ML SMUT OR SO HELP ME" and "watch the queen conquer fuckers" because all the people i truly hated had a lock on the smutty ml longrunners and i h a t e d that even more than i hated them lol
gonna miss this someday -- teeechinally a repost of an old thing because a Good Shit ladynoir episode came out and i D I E D but anyway yeah.


February

still in the january state

more and more -- this one was so much fun to write?? i'm always a sucker for high school romantic comedies and i got to try my hand at it here, and it was gr8
first time -- my first shot at shance \o/ god this is such a cute shipppppp

March

still in the january state

girls just wanna have fun -- trying to get back in touch with tactile detail, commenters told me it'd managed it \o/
it's all about the team -- first thing i managed to make myself laugh with in a looooooong time
new rules -- "man all the cool kids like sheith shouldn't i also like sheith? .....nope nope nope nope nope nope nope this is bringing back too much painful shit noP E"
venti caramel frappuccino with a shot of vanilla -- "okay but what if we did a sheith meet-cute...? yeah okay i can do that"
addicted -- i loved the song a lot and it didn't translate well into the fic but whatever
confidence -- possibly one of my least favorite fics i've written, actually? i was running entirely off cookie-cutter tropes that fit allurance okay but didn't really have anything specific to them and it just felt so it just felt... ick.
sit still, look pretty -- in contrast, i actually really liked this one. it was electric to write in the ways i wasn't managing in my allurance fic, so i was happy about that. ...somehow, it didn't occur to me to main lotura, but that was probably just the rut i was in.
heartbeat's running away -- another dull one, but not quite as dull. just kind of 'why the fuck did i even write that?'
excuse me, you're a hell of a guy -- i don't give two shits about shallura but i love the 'discovering fanfic of yourself' trope, so

April

still in the january state, with bonus "like three friends told me i really fucking sucked at writing voltron, even the ones that are normally infallibly encouraging and upbeat, and now i really want to fucking die."

...ngl, i think a lot of that was my shoddy brain giving me a painful case of aphantasia. still. fuck you guys.

i dropped pretty much all of the fan events i'd signed up for at that point lmao. they all congratulated me and told me i'd done the right thing and i'm still fucking bitter.

kissing strangers -- repost of an old ml tumblrfic that i'd never bothered to upload before.

May

only kept one of my event pieces, and i'd say i got more despair-y, but i was actually at a fairly even level of despair all throughout lmao.

chasing cars -- SHIRO DRIVES HIS MOTORCYCLE LIKE A GRANNY PASS IT ON


June

emara was suuuper cool so i gave it a shot, hoping for a better fandom experience. no dice, but i tried.

ghosting -- thinking about how someone who's wheelchair-bound would feel about Super Leg prosthetics was pretty cool, actually? like, even Super Leg prosthetics are probably not that infallible and if you're not used to walking then they're probably even WORSE and etc.
better -- voltron season six came out and gave me about 22 more emotions than i could handle. damn, what a trip.


July

slowly letting go a little more...

resonance -- "whoops still got prompts huh" and "SO MANY ALLURANCE FEELS"
hope, love, and other 4-letter words -- a pinch-hit for the shklance exchange. it only occurred to me later that maaaaybe killing off shiro hadn't been the best idea for a gift for someone named "kuron-protection-squad" lol. on the other hand, i did toy around with a few fun concepts; the (new) age difference between k/l and what it means when someone makes you want to be better and what the purpose of a soulmate actually is.

dual wielding -- written as soon as the tdp preview was shown at that one con—i hadn't even watched the preview, i just wanted to be the first one in the ao3 tag, lol.


August

a slow month. i think this might have been right around the time i started therapy?? i remember talking out my difficulties with the one fic i posted and also with the exchange(? big bang? i forgetttt) i was trying to run simultaneously... which eventually led to 100% fucking comatose shutdown where i lived my life in a series of naps, between which i would type up fic sentences on my phone before passing out again. i lost count of the times i woke up with my screen still held in front of my nose lmao.

incidentally, i am Bad at dealing with pressure.

knowledge is power; power corrupts -- Study hard, Katie. Study hard and be evil. GOD lotor and pidge just //clenches fist// work together. i feel like i would've managed better if i wasn't trying to juggle other really tough stuff next to it, but i was and it's about 1k under the word minimum (it was a reverse bang piece with ruxee ) so y e a h. i've made my peace with that... i think.


September

with therapist help, i started to let go more. ghosted on a few people, slept a little more, started kicking my guilt in the butt and interacting with people again. tried to get into tdp for the fame and bolted at the sheer density of antis lmao.

SECOND!! VERY!! IMPORTANT THING!!!!! HAPPENED!!!! i discovered the ffxv_kinkmeme. for the first time in god knows how long, i found a space that welcomed literally everything. that was active!! that had real live people accepting rape whumpfic prompts just as happily as kinkfic and plotty plot and silly fluff and it was like coming home.

touch fluffy tail -- honestly?? probably one of the most technically shoddy things i've ever written. i said i was comatose and i fucking meant it. there's a few places in there where you can tell i fell asleep and woke up with a completely different idea of the fic's backstory and where it was supposed to go... multiple times. in succession. HOWEVER. it was also the very first thing in a very, very long time that i wrote purely for self-indulgence. no thought of fame, firmly pushing aside the purity culture moral guardians... it's fake-furry and ridiculous and not paced well and my ust is hella far from my A-game and... i felt so good writing it. i was in full introvert swing, hiding out in my ridiculous bunk bed that i share with no one, typing into a word program that i rarely use, and just... enjoying the story for once. like hey. i can make words.

like a fifth avenue diamond -- written for the emerging fandom. someone with the url 'raylasgay' liked it and it set off every klaxon in my head. rip my time in tdp. you will (not) be missed.

i'm a screamer so baby make me a mute -- pictured: underage. both dubcon and enthusiastic consent from the same pov character at the same time. 5k of multiple orgasms and creampie and overstimulation and what may or may not be aftercare easing into still more fucking. i grabbed this prompt in my greedy little hands and injected every single one of my semi-problematic kinks into it and loved every second. the ffxv kink meme saved my life.
feather therapy -- somehow the highest sustained kudos/hits ratio i've ever had??? it kept up a 1/3 ratio for the first few days and has leveled off at 1/5 and i'm still not 100% sure how i managed it.
one does not simply walk into the closet -- trapped in a closet. a trope i will never get tired of. ever. also the first time i managed to truly indulge my lunoct feels!! also a fix-it because godDAMN


October

got in over my head trying to manage a big exchange for a fandom i hated. it was a stressful month.

just let go -- heatfic :D :D :D i think the prompter wanted it kinkier but it ended up with Feels and i have no regrets.

November

still #suffering in eventrunner hell, but i think i just up and ghosted towards the... middle? end? of the month. suddenly, i could see color again! it was a vast improvement.

stars are falling all for us -- okay so the one line i will n e v e r be over in this ship is noctis saying "all i wanted was to save you," but i ended up listening to the japanese version of the scene and that line was "even if i had to die, all i wanted was to save you" and anyway. anyway. like fuck i'm tearing up just thinking about it?? MOVING ON it killed me dead and so this fic happened. it was for an ageswap prompt and several headcanons came together to create this beautiful cacophony—tho the biggest one is that as desperate as noctis was to save luna, he would probably be 10x MORE desperate to save her if she was younger and more vulnerable than in canon, which was the perfect excuse for a fix-it. because fix-its are important. especially when it comes to luna and noctis.

December

SO
1) i got upset with my mom and decided to try retail therapy for once and went to buy persona 5 and meta ended up getting it for me, which she probably regretted because i spent two weeks beating a 100+ hour game when she needed support for nanowrimo lmaoooo BUT ANYWAY THANK U META AND HELLO NEW OBSESSION
2) the tumblr Panic™ happened and i uploaded a bunch of old fics to ao3 as backup and honestly... i'm lazy lol. i'm just gonna grab the two i actually liked, which are...

First Fight -- a pinch hit for one of my own events, which was a bnha big bang focused on uraraka. this one was for her tournament fight and i couldn't stand to write her losing again so here she is, kicking bakugo's ass. and everyone else's. :D
just for luck -- hi new otp~ short and fluff to get a feel for the akirann dynamic. i'm still trying to nail akira's specific brand of stoic/smug/forthright/sly but ann-voice comes so easy omg i l o v e her.


Total Year’s Output: 75,674 words

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted?

less than i wanted, but more than i had any right to 😅 god what a RIDE of a year.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2018?

hhhhh you know? i'm not really sure. i didn't really predict finding a safespace in fandom again, that's for sure, but my content... is pretty steadily the same shit it always is :D;;;

What’s your favourite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest.

hhhh there are actually lot of contenders for this one? probably stars are falling all for us (because i love this au to DEATH), one does not simply walk into the closet (because closet. and lunoct. and the punchline is frickin KILLER if i do say so myself), or touch fluffy tail (because it was an eye-opener in all sorts of ways).

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
i've pledged to write 150k words for getyourwordsout and i'm excited for that :D already it's a nice push to kick me out of this... ennui i've been in.

other than that, i'm not going to jinx it XD