I AM USING THIS ICON BECAUSE I CAN
Stories written this year: For The Benefit Of Mr Hargreaves, Streetlights, Wedding Present, Cracking The Flags, Three Dog Night and Love Lies Bleeding.
My favourite of my own stories this year: Probably either Love Lies Bleeding or Cracking The Flags. The former because it took up so much work and time and effort. I enjoy the blend of genres and smut, and all the different stories. I also like the fact that we managed to introduce so much canon into the story (well, snippets from interviews), although subversively, and because I enjoyed attempting to present their relationship as a realistic one that any person could have. I don't know if we were entirely successful with that approach but it was certainly fun trying. I also enjoyed trying to establish our own fanon time line with regards to that particular pairing; we make an effort with every fic to not only stick to real-life canon, but with our own fanon, thus the first time always happens in the same way, and we'll reference other fics as we go along (this will become more obvious the more we write, hopefully).
The latter I think is one of Silver's better pieces of writing and one of my more concise plots/plans. I like the curtness and sleekness of it. I also like the fact that we finally did a fanfic about adultery, which I don't think I've ever seen in this fandom before. I find that a bit strange because we're dealing with RPF and - certainly in our approach to it - we like to keep it as close to the source material as possible, which includes the fact that these people, in real-life, are married. Silver and I decided a long time ago that in our favourite pairing at least, the real-life significant others both know about "the other man", as neither of us could tolerate the idea that these people were essentially commiting adultery in our fics, and the audience is expected to appreciate this. We'll never write a fic dealing with this simply because we find writing about non-famous people objectionable (even RPS-ers have morals, however sketchy), and also because it's hard, so instead we found another outlet by having him have an affair with someone else entirely, and all the guilt and whatnot which comes with it. It was a great deal of fun, horribly enough.
My best story this year: Love Lies Bleeding appears to be the best one, if the comments are anything to go by. Silver and I love anything that says "this made me cry" and that fic is certainly winning in the audience angst stakes. I also think plot-wise it is probably the best. Purely on quality of writing, I still reckon that Cracking The Flags is the best.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Cracking The Flags. We got more comments on lesser fics, which I think is a dreadful shame.
Most fun story: For The Benefit of Mr Hargreaves was terrifically good fun. It was our first RPS ever, it was humour, and I think we both enjoyed writing it immensely. The bit with Ronaldo came from an MSN conversation and is actually what made us write the fic in the first place (therefore is solely responsible for our entire football fic career), and it's still one of my favourite moments we've written.
Most sexy story: I suppose it would have to be Three Dog Night, being that it is pure smut and was written as such.
Story with single sexiest moment: ...I'm rather keen on the scene up against the boiler in Cracking The Flags. It's so dirty and nasty. Also, Gary spitting between his knees in the shower scene of the same fic. And the description of David's bones at the end of the "first time" scene in Love Lies Bleeding. Someone told me they liked the bit with the pillow in Wedding Present, which pleased me for some reason. I liked it too.
Hardest story to write: Love Lies Bleeding. For a start, it took forever to find a plot for it; this is the same story which was germinated when I said I wanted to write rough angry sex. The summary stayed as that for about two months before the idea of writing lots of little stories with one underlying thread came into view. When I'd finally knocked together the plan for the thing, it took three months to write. THREE MONTHS. It was worth the pain though.
“Holy crap, that's wrong even for you” fic: For The Benefit of Mr Hargreaves, because we were writing RPS. It wasn't all that long ago I could barely read it, never mind write it. We felt very naughty writing it, and terrified posting it... and then it turned out the fandom seemed to love it and were really lovely about it. SO WE WROTE MORE.
Cracking The Flags because of the cardinal sin of writing Manchester United's Manc Captain/Liverpool F.C.'s Scouse Captain porn. LOLOLOL.
Fic that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: I'm not sure we've ever written anything that's done that, simply because these are real people we're portraying to the best of our (in)ability here, and we take all our cues from the real thing. Obviously we have to make some gargantuan assumptions because we don't actually know these people, and everything is complete lies being that they're not actually shagging, but we still like to make it realistic.
Biggest disappointment: Nobody asking what the title for Cracking The Flags was about. WHAT, ARE YOU ALL EXPERTS ON SCOUSE SLANG ALL OF A SUDDEN?! Fic-wise, I'm not especially keen on Three Dog Night, all though it does have bits I like.
Biggest surprise: The reaction to both Mr Hargreaves and Love Lies Bleeding. YOU GUYS ARE THE BEST.
Most telling story: All the ones with porn (so that's, like, all of them except Streetlights), which show the audience we're both sexually frustrated young women with a thing for Gary Neville and Alan Smith? Three Dog Night because of the thing about Gary hating having his feet touched, which came straight out of my own hatred of the same thing? I don't know!
What's next? A nice short fluffy Gary/David fic composed of five different stories with a particular theme. Which will then be followed by a huge angsty Gary/David fic, which may or may not be a companion piece to Love Lies Bleeding, I've not decided yet. We're hoping to make more people cry with that one. After that, we're not sure, but we're hoping to do brothersfic at some point (NOT incest), something with Alan Smith not being a total bike (and something with him being a total bike, because we like him like that), and a humour fic involving Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes trying to solve a mystery, which will be the BEST THING EVER if we can get it right. We have a lot of ideas, just not a lot of plots.