end of year writing meme

[kimaracretak]

Snagged from most of my flist but apparently originally from nomette, possibly but not likely to change if I finish anything else in the next four days.

A. If you could rec a piece of music to accompany one of your fics, what would you pick? Why?
Generally if I've pulled the title from a song I think the song is an appropriate accompaniment - I'm trying to be better about linking to the relevant song on youtube in the author's notes.

B. Who's your favorite side-character from something you wrote?
I'm pretty sure the only one of my fics long/plotty enough to make use of side characters was among the fallen stones, into the night less known, the Keyleth-and-Ripley-trapped-in-the-Shadowfell fic from fandom5k, so by default it's Yarol, I guess? Yarol appears briefly as an innkeeper in Gloomwrought: The Shadowfell and Beyond, and it made sense for Keyleth and Ripley to run into my version of him.

C. Get any good comments on your stuff this year?
I got some wonderful recip comments on exchange fics and the usual round of yelling from friends but the 'Also u have a vore problem. [...] Well written vore, to be clear, but I'm mildly concerned.' comment on nightshade morrowless is hands-down the funniest comment I have ever received in my life I have cackled about it every day since I first saw it.

D. Any drawings or pictures that had a big influence on your writing?
That Reylo art where it looks like she's fucking his soul into/out of his body is like Peak sex art for them, and explicit Reylo fic that doesn't at least gesture at those themes is. Hm. Boring.

E. Who's your favorite main character you've written?
I don't wanna choose but also (and this is maybe cheating because I haven't written from her POV yet) I love Amilyn Holdo, Immortal Space Witch Who Super Isn't Dead, Thanks.

F. What stories are you planning for the future?
Muffled shrieking about the sons and daughters of endlessness came to me, the Scandinoir-vibe'd Jedi!Ben + Navigator!Rey + Sith!Leia AU. I started outlining it for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology, the mods raised several eyebrows at the large supporting cast and also my unwillingness to commit to a level-of-shippiness, and I put it in the WIP folder. It is. Going to be very long, and I want

G. Where do you think you grew the most this year?
I committed to writing more horror, to the unsettling, to the weird, to the monster girls. I wrote in some new fandoms, or some old fandoms for the first time (The Haunting of Hill House, The Witcher, Agent Carter, and SVU).

H. How do you write? Paper, pen, computer? Music, no music?
Music always. My favourite place for ficwriting is my laptop, but for various work/living situation reasons in the second half of the year I have become a master of the phone-based ficwriting (Evernote is the love of my life).

I. What's your favorite work you did this year? Why?
I have a lot of love for inside my wounded soul (like mortal love) (Star Wars, Rey/Kylo, teen), which is both the longest fic I have ever written and virtually all of my headcanons for Ben and Rey's childhoods. I'm also really proud of spill a song for your dress (Agent Carter, Dottie/Whitney, explicit) - there was a lot going on emotionally and stylistically there and I think writing-wise it's one of the best things I've done in a while.

J. What are the best jokes you told this year? Any jokes you thought were funny that people didn't catch? Vice-versa?
I don't. Make jokes on purpose.

K. Who have you killed this year? Why did they have to die?
I killed Poe in endlessness, though that's not posted yet. He has to die because he bores me and is the direct cause of death of two of my favourite ladies in TLJ [shrug emoji]. In-fic, he had to die because [PLOT SPOILERS].

L. Which character did you most write about this year, and why do you like 'em?
That would be Leia Organa, being a vaguely creepy Force-sensitive and snogging many girls and also occasionally her brother across a full 24 fics this year. She's just ... she's Leia, yknow?

M. Meta! Have any meta about a story you're dying to throw out there?
I mean I could link to the specific bad takes that inspired some of my more spiteful fics but that's a bit more rude than I care to be in public.

N. Anything you were planning to write that never got written?
So many things, but the two I'm 100% positive I am not getting to in the last few days of the year are Nat's Janet~Tahani prompt from March (don't look at me) and something about the Ocean's 8 women and how buttercups are poisonous.

O. Do you believe in outlines? Show us one!
The only outline I have ever written is this massive disaster for endlessness.

P. What are your pet peeves in other people's work?
Any of the billion ways people get Kylo Ren/Reylo characterisation Wrong, modern/mundane AUs for sff canons (looking @ u Critical Role fandom), people who tag their fic on-fuckening-AO3 with 'Harold they're lesbians' or 'disaster lesbians' and other variants of such, referring to f/f fic - especially porn - as 'sinning' even in jest, villains being softened for no reason (looking @ u Thirteen/Missy and Eve/Villanelle writers), any of the predictable bad porn cliches (looking @ u CAoS fandom), characters who don't want kids acquiring kids (looking @ u Ocean's 8 fandom), tropes/AUs that rely on biological essentialism and fucked-up gender roles, monstrous women being cured by love, only-one-true-destined-love-forever plots. I ... don't read a lot of fic outside of friend fic and friend rec and exchange gifts.

Q. Quote three bits of writing you read this year. Can be your writing, or not.

"Only half done," said Geralt. "A lot of Kaedweni soldiers between here and Vergen. Can you get me back?"

"I'm sure you can manage." She shrugged carelessly. "The camp’s terribly noisy tonight, with all the battle preparations. Surely a witcher of your abilities can sneak out as quietly as he sneaked in."

"But I –"

"Thank you, Geralt," said Sabrina. "And farewell." She was already beginning to fade from view as she stepped toward the entrance flap of the tent, and as she passed through the doorway she disappeared entirely.

You know that alarmed-yet-adoring 'BUT-' that Geralt blurts out whenever a lady asks him to do something? This is that, except right after Sabrina Glevissig uses him to kill Henselt and then leaves him alone to sneak back to Vergen in Assassins of Kings, which isis wrote for me in trickortreatex, and it's perfect.

The night after Rey’s departure is like his first night here all over again. She was on the island for a little more than a day and still, somehow, she changed something: she made the place seem warmer; livelier, a little less like a dream from which he hasn’t yet figured out how to wake.

With her gone Nimue is newly vast, empty and lonely and wild the way it was when Kylo first came to it. The night presses up against the narrow circle of light thrown by the fire, every unlit threshold thick with shadow, every clochán home to the ghosts of a thousand generations of the Force made flesh.

The living are long gone from this place, but their memory abides.

Was Kylo ever one of them?

Who will remember him?

The only reason I won't say Nina's a promise of grace (under silver-grey skies) is the best Reylo fic in existence is because they've written other Reylo fics, but, gods, please read this.

A raven lands between them in the frosty autumn morning, singing of the coming season. Vex's head is on Keyleth's shoulder and the thing growing out of Vex has tangled itself in Keyleth's hair, red and green against other reds and greens, and the reds and greens of the sky beyond. The raven is black, blacker than midnight, blacker than anything that lives, has lived, will ever live. Vex braids his feathers into Keyleth's hair, as he used to do for her, as he cannot now do for either of them; and the leaves of the thing she has grown in place of her heart change shape.

Nat talked a bit about seen and touched by the merciful, a Vex/Keyleth + Vax + Saundor archfey!AU in their own end-of-year recap but it is so much in such a beautiful and mildly terrifying way and it's everything I want out of life.

R. If you had to rewrite one of your stories from scratch, which one would it be? What would you do to it?
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm I wrote one more and forward again (SGA, Sheppard & Todd the Wraith) as a pinch-hit for the multifandom drabble exchange and it. It's Fine. But it feels like 200 words yanked from a bigger story that don't stand super well on their own and I would do More with this sort of vaguely-eldritch frenemey fic outside the boundaries of an exchange.

S. What's the sexiest thing you wrote this year?
Idk man I write sex scenes for character work first and in order to be Purposefully Sexy much later, if at all. Sorting my E-rated fics by kudos suggests it's reaction and release, the Beau/Jester magical bondage/coming untouched fic.

T. Themes, motherfucker, do you have them? What are they?
Horror, body horror, eldritch horrors, psychological horror, girls kissing girls, 'what the fuck even is the line between / and &', trickster gods, nature that wants to eat you, bad idea relationships and worse idea coping mechanisms.

U. Any stories that took a abrupt u-turn from where you thought they were going?
Did Not expect the Jester/Beau dubcon that to the willing souls decided it needed! I set out to write dark!Jester~Traveller fic and. Okay it's both and I'm super happy it's both but Beau definitely invited herself that wasn't me.

V. Which story was the most viscerally pleasing to write? Tell us your narrative kinks.
Hands down save me, tear me to pieces, the Reylo body horror/eldritch Force dismemberment fic I wrote for Nina a couple months back - visceral in the most literal sense of the word,

W. Who are your favorite writers?
Nat and Nina are my forever lights and loves, but special other shoutouts to spookykingdomstarlight for consistently amazing Star Wars fic (including some Jyn/Leia AUs I am still dying over months after they were gifted to me), elleth even though she's mostly wandered away from our shared fandoms by now, and venndaai who appeared from nowhere to write me the femslashy Picnic at Hanging Rock/SWTOR fusion of my dreams.

X. What's your least favorite work of this year?
I stand by the final version of in a gilded trail of stars (Star Wars, Rey/Kylo, teen) but trying to write it for the Reylo Fanfiction Anthology was a mistake times a hundred that made me very nearly stop writing for Star Wars entirely and I can't. Look at it without remembering how horrible the writing process was.

Y. Why did you write? For fun, for a friend, for acclaim?
For friends or exchanges or because someone(s) had a Very Bad Take on my favourites and/or the amount of sexuality women are Allowed(tm) to have.

Z. If you could choose one work and immediately finish it, what would it be? How would you end it?
I would love to magically finish in hard armoured words we are drowned (The West Wing, Carol/CJ + Carol/OFC, mature), because whilst I've entirely fallen out of love with the fandom - to the extent that I made peace this year with the fact that I'm not going to finish the show - it's a fic that means a lot to its readers and it's taught me a lot about plotting and pacing. I think it would no longer be a whole-series AU, I think I would end it on the night of the election victory. I think it would no longer be a Carol/CJ endgame, but I think they would sleep together at least once. I think Carol needs to have a conversation or two with Andy. ...I think this may be my wipbigbang fic next year.

Comments

[thatyourefuse]

... okay "spill a song for your dress" just made me g a s p like five times, so.

(IS THAT SEX SCENE HAPPENING WHERE I THINK IT'S HAPPENING because my brain is fizzing like blood-soaked Pop Rocks regardless, but --)

[kimaracretak]

eeeeee that is exactly the reaction i hope for with it >:}

if you're thinking that sex scene happens in the vacant lot where elizabeth short was found murdered then YEP, i checked and the black dahlia murder and agent carter s2 were the same year and there was no way i wasn't gonna work that connection in somehow!!

[thatyourefuse]

THAT IS WHAT I WAS THINKING. And it would have made me lose my utter mind even if I didn’t have an occasionally shameful quantity of feelings about James Ellroy's LA Quartet(s), really, because... yes, truly and deeply yes, holy hell.

[kimaracretak]

I have read ... almost no Ellroy, actually - hazards of growing up here, perhaps? I always was of the opinion that there were more interesting people writing about LA, but I feel like I should get round to him eventually. I originally intended the Black Dahlia references to be an entire subplot - possibly with the implication that Dottie had killed her - but I was writing two other things for the same exchange and moving across the Atlantic, so. I still want to do a proper LA story for Dottie/Whitney though - maybe next year!

[thatyourefuse]

Ellroy qua Ellroy tends to be one of those situations where I sit here going "okay, he gets steadily better if you like having your soul run through the sink disposal and are willing to give him credit for not being a serial killer in real life despite having the origin story for it, but the one that blew my head off and has multiple successfully written female characters who interact... probably doesn't make a lot of sense without the preceding four to seven doorstoppers that are basically wall to wall, like, pick something you probably don't want to read about, it's in more than one of them. Also that was the first of a projected four and he's seventy."

So I would not in good conscience call anything I say a recommendation, as such.

[kimaracretak]

"Not a serial killer but HOW" is ... yeah, that's about my understanding of Ellroy too, yeah. I think the only book of his I actually finished was his Black Dahlia book and I found it decidedly meh. I may go back to his work at some point but my expectation are ... low.

[thatyourefuse]

In scrupulous fairness, that one was the first of what I suppose you'd have to call his major novels, and he did get just, like, objectively better at words almost immediately. But that's still not a recommendation as such especially if you've got other things on your to-be-read pile.