Happy Croatoan, LJ friends!
Hello, darling LJ friends! Long time no see! My MIAness has been due to an incredibly stressful and terrible semester, a highly unplanned but great move to a new apartment, a trip to Canada, the holidays, and some health problems by which I mean I have the worst yeast infection in the history of vaginas--YOU'RE WELCOME. I did ring in the new year with another great beckaandzac party, but I had to leave before brunch because said evil vagina kept me up all last night. :(
But here I am, crawling back to LJ because I just don't know how to quit it, except for how most of the time I do. I want to be better in 2014 but won't make any empty promises since I say that every year and, frankly, it just depends on how stressful shit gets. BUT I DO MISS YOU ALL AND LJ AS A COMMUNICATION TOOL.
I have been doing a Show rewatch for a few months now and am drowning in the feelings, so I'm really hoping to get some good writing inspiration while I still have a little time before the semester (though said semester is going to be pretty chill compared to the rest of grad school, plus I AM SO CLOSE TO DONE).
Allow me to classlessly pimp this thing I just wrote for spn_j2_xmas:
Title: Stranger That I Used to Know
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual content (including barebacking), memory loss, and language
Word Count: 11,500
Summary: Sam and Dean wake up in a hospital without memories of their life before and no clues except for each other. Together, they try to hunt down the creature responsible for their memory loss, but what they find along the way might be even better.
Another thing that may interest some of you guys, eos_rose recently recorded a really great podfic of the Harry Potter-inspired Wincest fic I wrote last year, Erised. If you enjoy that story and want to hear it again or have not gotten a chance to read it and are into podfic, I highly recommend it!
Also worth checking out is this rec list of hooker fic I did for spn_themes last week. Reading for that one was basically the most awesome thing in the world.
Now I shall drop off that stupidly self-indulgent writing meme I do every year, but look I have it beneath a cut for better you don't have to look at it.
February
2 Drabbles [1 Supernatural + 1 Bible] - 1,464 (combined)
And the Winner Is… [CW RPF; Jay/Jensen] Timestamp to Oh, My Queen! - 5,193
March
In the Small of My Heart [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] j2_everafter - 16,055
Erised [SupernaturalxHarry Potter; Sam/Dean] - 5,701
When It's Over [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] insmallpackages - 3,839
May
Hydra [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] tentaclebigbang - 17,713
Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_cinema - 24,011
June
As Boundless As the Sea [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_bigbang - 35,209
Walk in Shadow, Move in Silence [SupernaturalxMen in Black; Sam/Dean] sncross_bigbang - 24,288
October
The Eagle Has Landed [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] salt_burn_porn - 4,822
November
Living on Flood Tides [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] samdean_otp Minibang - 20,000 (9,758 written this year)
December
Stranger That I Used to Know [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_xmas - 11,500
Unpublished But Written in 2013:
Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] apocalypsebang - 17,826 (17,285 written this year)
Off to See the Wizard [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 171 (54 written this year)
Baby, I'm a Put-On-a-Show Kind of Girl [CW RPF; Adrianne/Genevieve & Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to Vesti la Giubba - 227 (102 this year)
A Doll's House [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] kidficstory - 4,524 (360 written this year)
What's in a Name? [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 483 (158 written this year)
(Love Is) A Violent Spiral [CW RPF; Jared/Genevieve] genteensybang - 2,485
Come Along [CW RPF/Doctor Who fusion; Jared/Jensen] - 2,193
A Fire in the Streets, A Ghost Between the Sheets [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] with glovered - 4,539
Untitled Timestamp to Rattling Your Locks [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 661
Shipwreck Between Your Ribs [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 3,711
Do Androids Dream? [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] robotbigbang - 3,134
Into Oblivion [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 1,214
Untitled Tentacle Fic [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 1,308
99 Problems and Only Some of Them Are Bitches [Hannibal; Hannibal/Will] written for badficidol @ wincon - 1,106
Total Word Count: 197,863
Fandoms that I dabbled in this year, old and new: Supernatural and CW RPF were obviously the big ones. I did some crossover/fusion stuff with Harry Potter, Pokémon, Men in Black, Bladerunner, and Doctor Who, and wrote some cracky ficlets for the Bible and Hannibal.
My favorite story this year: God, I so feared this would happen. That I would get to 2014 and have to admit the best thing I wrote all last year was about Pokémon. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight. Or maybe my thus-far unposted apocalypsebang? I'm pretty proud of that one (for now).
My least favorite story this year: Of the ones I actually finished and posted, there's nothing I really hate. Maybe When It's Over just cause it's kind of boring/forgettable/dealing with the same old season 8 angst?
Most successful story: As Boundless As the Sea. Not surprising since it was my spn_j2_bigbang.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I know it's very hard to sell crossovers to people, but I was really happy with how Walk in Shadow, Move in Silence turned out and I wish it could have had a bigger market. Same goes for Hydra, my tentaclebigbang, which didn't even really get read by most of the usual tentacle kink suspects.
Most fun story: Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight was maybe the funnest thing I have ever written. This could be because I also played hour after hour of Gen-I Pokémon games as ~research.
Story with single sexiest moment: And the Winner Is… because this is still my favorite verse of all the things I've written and they are my favorite Jared and Jensen and their sex will always be the best sex.
Biggest story fail: Jesus Christ, I have failed so hard at so many things this year, but the one that haunts my mind and heart on the daily is my robotbigbang, which I was supposed to post in mid-October and which is still just in its beginning stages. I don't know what it is about that story that blocks me-I really like it! I have a lot of feelings! But every time I try to put things down in words, I just freeze up with this horrible conviction that it will never be as good as in my head. Meanwhile, poor blythechild did this amazing art for it MONTHS AGO and I am just DICKING HER ALONG. BUT I SWEAR IT IS GOING TO GET FINISHED. SOON EVEN?
Hardest story to make: Welp. *points to question above* I guess if we want to go with things that actually got finished and posted, I'll say Living on Flood Tides had me pretty stuck for a while there. I got really uninspired with it and convinced it was not very good.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? I had really terrible writer's block for almost this entire year with very few breaks. Even when I wrote a lot, it rarely felt *good*. Being in grad school and working fulltime has really taken away a lot of my creative energy, but that's only some of it. I don't know what the rest of my issue is. :(
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Um. I guess the Hannibal ficlet? But that was just badfic, anyway.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I didn't take a huge amount of risks. I think the closest I got was the thus-far-too-intimidating robotbigbang. Robot fic is a genre I have always fucking addoorreeddd, but I've always been scared to write it, not sure I'd be able to make the robot robot-y enough without losing the emotional crux of the story. Maybe that's why I'm so scared to work on it.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Stranger That I Used to Know has Sam and Dean make a decision in the end that I don't think is OOC (obviously, I wrote it), but which is certainly out of line with what we see them do in canon, so I did have to struggle a bit to see how believable it was for me and why in this instance and not others.
Biggest Surprise: I started reading a lot of things I previously assumed I would not like, hooker fic for instance, and was taking by how much I adored it. So I guess the surprise is that I want to write many of these things that I used to shy away from even reading.
Story with the sweetest moment: In the Small of My Heart when tiny!Jared risks his life to bring sick!Jensen a nice flower to make him feel better, probably.
Story that made you cry: The as-yet-unpublished apocalypsebang which is based on Josh Ritter's The Temptation of Adam.
Most eye roll-worthy title: A Fire in the Streets, A Ghost Between the Sheets the cracky Halloween fic glovered and I have been co-writing since Wincon 2012. But, like, that story is eye roll-worthy in general. And that's why it's *awesome*.
Most intentionally telling: I guess Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight and Walk in Shadow, Move in Silence were both about owning really dorky shit from the 90's that I'm still obsessed enough with to write 20K+ of fic about?
Unintentionally?: Hmm. I don't know. Living on Flood Tides probably read more like a list of things I wanted from canon than a good fic, and it was certainly not meant to be *that* self-indulgent, so maybe that one?
Most overdue: See above re: robotbigbang.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: The theme this year was: Cherie has a giant tentacle kink and doesn't care who knows it, as embodied by As Boundless As the Sea, the bigbang I wrote basically just because I couldn't get over how clever 'Jensen Tentackles' was.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
"Step on this dress and I will kill you," Jay says, her voice light as she laughs. She's not drunk, but she is all bubbly-hah, bubbly. 'Cause that's what they've been drinking.
Alright, so Jensen's not sober either. Cut the man a break, he just won a fucking Oscar. ( And the Winner Is…)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
"Starting tomorrow," Jared agrees. "What was that brilliant battle cry of ours?"
"Together we'll stick it to Team Rocket-and sex on the way!"
"That's fucking beautiful." Jared gives Jensen a Very Very Serious Expression, complete with capital letters. "We're catchier than Pokémon." ( Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
1. clex_monkie89, JAY NEEDS AN OSCARS DRESS. :DDDDDD
2. I cannot wait to see what ordinaryink does for our apocalypsebang.
3. There can never be enough art of Jared hanging out with Pokémon, especially if one of them is his were-Pokémon boyfriend, Jensen.
4. Maybe Erised when Dean looks into the mirror and sees Mom and Dad and Sam is hanging back being all heartbroken.
5. The temple confrontation between Sam, Dean, and the Tara goddess in Stranger That I Used to Know.
The things I've learned this year: I'm really disappointed by how little I wrote, but at the same time, I know that this is part of being a real adult: fandom is going to have to take a hit, and I need to learn to accept that. Even when I do have a break, some nights I'm going to be too burnt out to write, and that's okay, you know?
Fic-writing goals for 2014: I need to post at least one story/month every month of 2014. Ideally, I'd love to also wrap up all my current WIPs, but since that was last year's goal and I now have like 10 more WIPs st the end of the year than before, I'm not even gonna pretend. I'd also really love to finish the timestamps I owe people from the timestamp meme I did in August of 2012.
Okay! That is all I have for now. I hope you guys are all having a way better new year than I am so far. I want y'all to know that i read my flist almost every day and stay up-to-date on your lives, even if I am a shit friend and rarely comment. What better time than a new year to fix that, right?
♥
But here I am, crawling back to LJ because I just don't know how to quit it, except for how most of the time I do. I want to be better in 2014 but won't make any empty promises since I say that every year and, frankly, it just depends on how stressful shit gets. BUT I DO MISS YOU ALL AND LJ AS A COMMUNICATION TOOL.
I have been doing a Show rewatch for a few months now and am drowning in the feelings, so I'm really hoping to get some good writing inspiration while I still have a little time before the semester (though said semester is going to be pretty chill compared to the rest of grad school, plus I AM SO CLOSE TO DONE).
Allow me to classlessly pimp this thing I just wrote for spn_j2_xmas:
Title: Stranger That I Used to Know
Fandom: Supernatural
Characters/Pairings: Sam/Dean
Rating: NC-17 for explicit sexual content (including barebacking), memory loss, and language
Word Count: 11,500
Summary: Sam and Dean wake up in a hospital without memories of their life before and no clues except for each other. Together, they try to hunt down the creature responsible for their memory loss, but what they find along the way might be even better.
Another thing that may interest some of you guys, eos_rose recently recorded a really great podfic of the Harry Potter-inspired Wincest fic I wrote last year, Erised. If you enjoy that story and want to hear it again or have not gotten a chance to read it and are into podfic, I highly recommend it!
Also worth checking out is this rec list of hooker fic I did for spn_themes last week. Reading for that one was basically the most awesome thing in the world.
Now I shall drop off that stupidly self-indulgent writing meme I do every year, but look I have it beneath a cut for better you don't have to look at it.
February
2 Drabbles [1 Supernatural + 1 Bible] - 1,464 (combined)
And the Winner Is… [CW RPF; Jay/Jensen] Timestamp to Oh, My Queen! - 5,193
March
In the Small of My Heart [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] j2_everafter - 16,055
Erised [SupernaturalxHarry Potter; Sam/Dean] - 5,701
When It's Over [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] insmallpackages - 3,839
May
Hydra [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] tentaclebigbang - 17,713
Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_cinema - 24,011
June
As Boundless As the Sea [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_bigbang - 35,209
Walk in Shadow, Move in Silence [SupernaturalxMen in Black; Sam/Dean] sncross_bigbang - 24,288
October
The Eagle Has Landed [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] salt_burn_porn - 4,822
November
Living on Flood Tides [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] samdean_otp Minibang - 20,000 (9,758 written this year)
December
Stranger That I Used to Know [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_xmas - 11,500
Unpublished But Written in 2013:
Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] apocalypsebang - 17,826 (17,285 written this year)
Off to See the Wizard [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 171 (54 written this year)
Baby, I'm a Put-On-a-Show Kind of Girl [CW RPF; Adrianne/Genevieve & Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to Vesti la Giubba - 227 (102 this year)
A Doll's House [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] kidficstory - 4,524 (360 written this year)
What's in a Name? [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 483 (158 written this year)
(Love Is) A Violent Spiral [CW RPF; Jared/Genevieve] genteensybang - 2,485
Come Along [CW RPF/Doctor Who fusion; Jared/Jensen] - 2,193
A Fire in the Streets, A Ghost Between the Sheets [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] with glovered - 4,539
Untitled Timestamp to Rattling Your Locks [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 661
Shipwreck Between Your Ribs [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 3,711
Do Androids Dream? [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] robotbigbang - 3,134
Into Oblivion [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 1,214
Untitled Tentacle Fic [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 1,308
99 Problems and Only Some of Them Are Bitches [Hannibal; Hannibal/Will] written for badficidol @ wincon - 1,106
Total Word Count: 197,863
Fandoms that I dabbled in this year, old and new: Supernatural and CW RPF were obviously the big ones. I did some crossover/fusion stuff with Harry Potter, Pokémon, Men in Black, Bladerunner, and Doctor Who, and wrote some cracky ficlets for the Bible and Hannibal.
My favorite story this year: God, I so feared this would happen. That I would get to 2014 and have to admit the best thing I wrote all last year was about Pokémon. But I'd be lying if I said it wasn't Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight. Or maybe my thus-far unposted apocalypsebang? I'm pretty proud of that one (for now).
My least favorite story this year: Of the ones I actually finished and posted, there's nothing I really hate. Maybe When It's Over just cause it's kind of boring/forgettable/dealing with the same old season 8 angst?
Most successful story: As Boundless As the Sea. Not surprising since it was my spn_j2_bigbang.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I know it's very hard to sell crossovers to people, but I was really happy with how Walk in Shadow, Move in Silence turned out and I wish it could have had a bigger market. Same goes for Hydra, my tentaclebigbang, which didn't even really get read by most of the usual tentacle kink suspects.
Most fun story: Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight was maybe the funnest thing I have ever written. This could be because I also played hour after hour of Gen-I Pokémon games as ~research.
Story with single sexiest moment: And the Winner Is… because this is still my favorite verse of all the things I've written and they are my favorite Jared and Jensen and their sex will always be the best sex.
Biggest story fail: Jesus Christ, I have failed so hard at so many things this year, but the one that haunts my mind and heart on the daily is my robotbigbang, which I was supposed to post in mid-October and which is still just in its beginning stages. I don't know what it is about that story that blocks me-I really like it! I have a lot of feelings! But every time I try to put things down in words, I just freeze up with this horrible conviction that it will never be as good as in my head. Meanwhile, poor blythechild did this amazing art for it MONTHS AGO and I am just DICKING HER ALONG. BUT I SWEAR IT IS GOING TO GET FINISHED. SOON EVEN?
Hardest story to make: Welp. *points to question above* I guess if we want to go with things that actually got finished and posted, I'll say Living on Flood Tides had me pretty stuck for a while there. I got really uninspired with it and convinced it was not very good.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? I had really terrible writer's block for almost this entire year with very few breaks. Even when I wrote a lot, it rarely felt *good*. Being in grad school and working fulltime has really taken away a lot of my creative energy, but that's only some of it. I don't know what the rest of my issue is. :(
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Um. I guess the Hannibal ficlet? But that was just badfic, anyway.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I didn't take a huge amount of risks. I think the closest I got was the thus-far-too-intimidating robotbigbang. Robot fic is a genre I have always fucking addoorreeddd, but I've always been scared to write it, not sure I'd be able to make the robot robot-y enough without losing the emotional crux of the story. Maybe that's why I'm so scared to work on it.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Stranger That I Used to Know has Sam and Dean make a decision in the end that I don't think is OOC (obviously, I wrote it), but which is certainly out of line with what we see them do in canon, so I did have to struggle a bit to see how believable it was for me and why in this instance and not others.
Biggest Surprise: I started reading a lot of things I previously assumed I would not like, hooker fic for instance, and was taking by how much I adored it. So I guess the surprise is that I want to write many of these things that I used to shy away from even reading.
Story with the sweetest moment: In the Small of My Heart when tiny!Jared risks his life to bring sick!Jensen a nice flower to make him feel better, probably.
Story that made you cry: The as-yet-unpublished apocalypsebang which is based on Josh Ritter's The Temptation of Adam.
Most eye roll-worthy title: A Fire in the Streets, A Ghost Between the Sheets the cracky Halloween fic glovered and I have been co-writing since Wincon 2012. But, like, that story is eye roll-worthy in general. And that's why it's *awesome*.
Most intentionally telling: I guess Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight and Walk in Shadow, Move in Silence were both about owning really dorky shit from the 90's that I'm still obsessed enough with to write 20K+ of fic about?
Unintentionally?: Hmm. I don't know. Living on Flood Tides probably read more like a list of things I wanted from canon than a good fic, and it was certainly not meant to be *that* self-indulgent, so maybe that one?
Most overdue: See above re: robotbigbang.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: The theme this year was: Cherie has a giant tentacle kink and doesn't care who knows it, as embodied by As Boundless As the Sea, the bigbang I wrote basically just because I couldn't get over how clever 'Jensen Tentackles' was.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
"Step on this dress and I will kill you," Jay says, her voice light as she laughs. She's not drunk, but she is all bubbly-hah, bubbly. 'Cause that's what they've been drinking.
Alright, so Jensen's not sober either. Cut the man a break, he just won a fucking Oscar. ( And the Winner Is…)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
"Starting tomorrow," Jared agrees. "What was that brilliant battle cry of ours?"
"Together we'll stick it to Team Rocket-and sex on the way!"
"That's fucking beautiful." Jared gives Jensen a Very Very Serious Expression, complete with capital letters. "We're catchier than Pokémon." ( Arm in Arm, We'll Win the Fight)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
1. clex_monkie89, JAY NEEDS AN OSCARS DRESS. :DDDDDD
2. I cannot wait to see what ordinaryink does for our apocalypsebang.
3. There can never be enough art of Jared hanging out with Pokémon, especially if one of them is his were-Pokémon boyfriend, Jensen.
4. Maybe Erised when Dean looks into the mirror and sees Mom and Dad and Sam is hanging back being all heartbroken.
5. The temple confrontation between Sam, Dean, and the Tara goddess in Stranger That I Used to Know.
The things I've learned this year: I'm really disappointed by how little I wrote, but at the same time, I know that this is part of being a real adult: fandom is going to have to take a hit, and I need to learn to accept that. Even when I do have a break, some nights I'm going to be too burnt out to write, and that's okay, you know?
Fic-writing goals for 2014: I need to post at least one story/month every month of 2014. Ideally, I'd love to also wrap up all my current WIPs, but since that was last year's goal and I now have like 10 more WIPs st the end of the year than before, I'm not even gonna pretend. I'd also really love to finish the timestamps I owe people from the timestamp meme I did in August of 2012.
Okay! That is all I have for now. I hope you guys are all having a way better new year than I am so far. I want y'all to know that i read my flist almost every day and stay up-to-date on your lives, even if I am a shit friend and rarely comment. What better time than a new year to fix that, right?
♥