Happy New Year!
I hope everyone's New Year's Eve went well and no one's hangovers will be too painful.:) I spent NYE getting killed in D&D and watching a fictional island nation get set on fire in The Expendables. Because I am the party queen, yo.:)
End of the Year Fic Meme!
This year I wrote and posted (in chronological order):
1-12-11 - After Effects, Dean/Cas, PG, 1577 words
1-21-11 - Slipping, Dean/Cas, PG, 820 words
1-23-11 - The Second Rule of Hunting, Dean/Cas, PG, 500 words
1-28-11 - Daksinakali, Kali/Gabriel, PG, 868 words
2-14-11 - Harsh Words, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 1886 words
2-21-11 - Celebrations, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 3010 words
2-27-11 - Flyover, Dean/Cas, PG, 761 words
3-29-11 - Torn, Dean/Cas, R, 6996 words
4-2-11 - Who If I Cried Our Would Hear Me, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 6596 words
4-10-11 - Out of the Cold, Dean/Cas, PG, 765 words
4-24-11 - Black As Night, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 2474 words
4-30-11 - Cold, Cold Water, Dean/Cas, PG, 1090 words
5-14-11 - ...And Into the Fire, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 6171 words
5-21-11 - Good Night, Sleep Tight, Gen, G, 1417 words
6-16-11 Bible Study, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 2314 words
6-18-11 - Some Things That Are Broken and Some Things to Hold Tight, 2014!Dean/2014!Cas(Clairestiel), R, 4091 words
6-27-11 - Clearing the Air, NC-17, 4251 words
6-29-11 - Deliver Me From Evil, Dean/Cas, PG, 761 words
7-21-11 - Look, Up In The Sky, Dean/Cas (superhero AU), PG-13, 17,731 words
7-23-11 - If I Lay Here, Dean/Cas, G, 733 words
8-10-11 - Carve Your Name Into My Arm, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 6938 words
8-12-11 - Shimmer and Shine, Dean/Cas, PG, 928 words
8-21-11 - Needle and Thread, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 4064 words
9-9-11 - Gone Too Long, Dean/2014!Cas, PG-13, 1205 words
9-11-11 - Skin Deep, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 3054 words
9-15-11 - Lifelines, Dean/Cas/Lisa, R, 6253 words
9-20-11 - Learn Your Body Like a Nursery Rhyme in Braille, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 1888
9-28-11 - 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky, 2014!Cas/Anna, NC-17, 3306 words
9-30-11 - Your Fingers Stained Red, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 1458 words
10-25-11 - Semper Fi, Cas/John, R, 9868 words
10-27-11 - Where I Can See You, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 1677
11-15-11 - The General Tso's Special, Dean/Cas, PG, 737
11-21-11 - Outrun My Gun, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 33,100 words
11-27-11 - The Beginning Is Always Before Us, PG, 575
11-30-11 - The Road From Sodom, one-sided Uriel/Cas, implied Dean/Cas, PG, 4420 words
12-25-11 - To All a Good Night, Dean/Cas, PG, 1900 words
12-31-11 - Cold and Sharp, NC-17, 1573 words
Grand word count total: 147,756. Holy Crap. And that list doesn't have my deancas_xmas fic, since we're not allowed to talk about fight club yet, and it doesn't have the ficlets I wrote for 3 Sentences or the Prompt Party comment fics I haven't posted as their own entries yet.
Again: Holy Crap.
Overall Thoughts:
Can I say Holy Crap again? (I do think the fic as gotten better overall as the year went on, and I've gotten more confident at taking risks.)
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I've written more this year than I did my last three fandoms combined, I think. I've never actually done one of these lists before because I never really had the output for one.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I didn't see Cas/John coming but I had a blast making that work. Most of what I wrote for Doctor Who was muti-era, basically intra-canon crossovers (fics with 9 and Susan, or 9 talking to John Smith during Family of Blood, or Torchwood!Jack getting to talk to traveling-with-9!Rose again) and it was fun getting to do that with Supernatural. Outrun My Gun was that kind of story, too. And I never would have thought I'd write a story about Uriel in January or that I'd come to like him so much; that hit me like a truck when I did a S4 rewatch.
What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I can't choose one. I'm really, really proud of how Torn came out; that story grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go until I wrote it. It's one of those rare times I felt like the story in my head matched the story on the page and I love that people had such emotional reactions to it. But at the same time, Outrun My Gun! I loved writing a complete love story from the first meeting. And Look, Up In The Sky is my baby - that 'verse and that Cas and that Dean got under my skin so much.
I love all my stories, but those are the ones that give me the happiest little thrill when I see a reply in my inbox.
Oh, and Lifelines. I jumped on that prompt, I was so happy to have the excuse to write Dean/Cas/Lisa.
I'm going to stop now before I name the whole list.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I'd never written an AU before I tried Look, Up In The Sky. I feel like I learned a lot about world building writing that story.
My best story of this year:
Outrun My Gun. Although like I said, I'm really happy with Torn. And I really do think I pulled off Cas/John in Semper Fi
My most popular story of this year:
On LJ? Who If I Cried Our Would Hear Me, hands down. Everyone loves Cas getting his smite on.:) On FF.Net and AO3, it's Black As Night, bless all you fellow wing!kink fiends.:)
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
Some Things That Are Broken and Some Things to Hold Tight. I don't know if it readers were turned off by it being Clairestiel/Dean or if I just wrote a bad summary, but I really loved that story. It was about second chances and holding on to what's important, Cas saving Dean not because it's going to change things or whether he even really deserves saving, because that's what Cas does and he doesn't know any other way. And I loved Claire being a bit of a BAMF and how she essentially grabs Cas by the shoulders and shakes him, all "You moron, I am trying to save you."
*pets story*
Most fun story to write:
I dunno. They're all fun as long as I'm not locked into some hideous writer's block. I really like writing Lisa and 5.04!Cas, and I loved doing all the world building for Look, Up In The Sky and Outrun My Gun. I mean, I pretty much got to set the timeline on fire with that one. That's always fun.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Cas quoting the Bible during phone sex during Bible Study
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Okay, now how are we defining wrong, exactly? Cold and Sharp probably has the heaviest kink I've ever written, but again, Bible Study involves an angel having gay phone sex by quoting the Bible.:) And I'm hard on Cas at the best of times (quick, count the stories where he doesn't wind up bleeding!) but Torn takes that to a whole different level.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I don't know if it shifted my perceptions, exactly, but The Road From Sodom codified a lot of personal canon I had floating around.
Hardest story to write:
Next year this answer will be my Firefly fusion, because that story hates me. This year it would have to be Outrun My Gun, just because it was the longest thing I've ever written and took so much work to finagle the timeline.
Biggest Disappointment:
That I found out about the DCBB deadline just too late to sign up. I felt so left out!
Biggest Surprise:
That I wrote that much fic.:) And the responses I got to Lifelines saying that they'd never thought about Dean/Cas/Lisa as a pairing or how they'd never found fic with them before, etc., because seriously, how is that possible? It can't really be that rare a thing, can it?
Favorite Opening Line(s):
From The Road From Sodom: "If asked, although he expects no one ever will, Uriel would say it began in the home of a human named Lot."
From Semper Fi: The presence filling the room drags Castiel back to awareness like a giant clawed hand.
From 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: A while back one of his girls gave him a book about a reporter and a motorcycle race and a drug-soaked weekend in Las Vegas, a city Cas wished he could have visited before the government nuked it into glass. The pages sang with disillusionment and despair and the fall of something called the American Dream and Cas read it until it fell apart in his hands. (just because I love the idea of Cas reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.:)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
From Torn: It turned out the hardest part was getting the wings to show. He was surprised at how deceptively delicate they were. Almost fragile.
Dean remembered being a happy little boy, chasing down butterflies.
From Slipping: If it costs his life, if it takes sacrificing every thing he is Castiel is determined to create a Heaven worthy of Dean Winchester.
Even if the blood caked on his hands means Castiel won't belong there.
Lifelines: Promises to keep, after all.
Top 6 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
But...but all the art!
If I must chose: from Look, Up In The Sky: Cas and Dean watching the sunrise on Dean's roof. Or Cas sacked out in Dean's bed. Or Dean holding him when he and Sam finally find him in the demon nest. Or that big kiss after Dean brings him back.
(Okay, I'm not good at choosing.:)
Cas watching over Dean and Sam in Good Night, Sleep Tight.
Cas kissing Dean against the wall in Clearing the Air
I'll stop there. Anything from anything.:)
Story I haven't yet written, but intend to:
Okay, excepting what I have already in progress, here's what I'm (at the moment!) planning:
The one where Dean saves Cas and accidentally grows wings because his soul grabs onto Cas' Grace as he's dying and won't let go.
High school AU (God help me.:)
S4 AU where the "angel" shenanigans from S2 actually did have an angel behind them pulling the strings, and Castiel and Uriel show up asking Dean and Sam for information about the incident and help bringing the rogue angel in. Things go poorly. (this may be a DCBB fic.)
Finish Inheritance, my future fic where Claire is a BAMF and Ben wonders what's happened to his life. I may rejigger this to be a S7 AU instead of a S6 AU to up the angst.
Another Dean/Cas/Lisa fic. Lifelines was actually my third go at that prompt; my first try wound up way too long to finish by the deadline (it would easily be 15K, maybe longer), and the second try was a sort of Five Things fic with timelines running in opposite directions that a) needed more work to make the timelines, y'know, work, and b) was also way too long. But I like them!
Possible sequel to Look, Up In The Sky, one that brings Anna and Jo and Lisa and Ben into that 'verse.
Raphael fic contrasting the Book or Tobit with Dean/Cas to try to explain what is his deal, already.
At least one crossover.
The one where Cas messes up time traveling back during TSRtS and winds up meeting 16-17 year old Dean and things happen.
Fic-writing goals for 2012:
dark_fest!
deancasbigbang!
spn_reversebang again!
Also, to be less horrible at responding to fic comments. I get flustered and don't know what to say and put it off, then I have a huge backlog and feel terrible about it because getting comments makes my heart twirl around with joy. No more!
Thank you to all my new friends for welcoming me into your fandom and all my old friends for putting up with me talking about angels all the time. *MWAH*
End of the Year Fic Meme!
This year I wrote and posted (in chronological order):
1-12-11 - After Effects, Dean/Cas, PG, 1577 words
1-21-11 - Slipping, Dean/Cas, PG, 820 words
1-23-11 - The Second Rule of Hunting, Dean/Cas, PG, 500 words
1-28-11 - Daksinakali, Kali/Gabriel, PG, 868 words
2-14-11 - Harsh Words, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 1886 words
2-21-11 - Celebrations, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 3010 words
2-27-11 - Flyover, Dean/Cas, PG, 761 words
3-29-11 - Torn, Dean/Cas, R, 6996 words
4-2-11 - Who If I Cried Our Would Hear Me, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 6596 words
4-10-11 - Out of the Cold, Dean/Cas, PG, 765 words
4-24-11 - Black As Night, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 2474 words
4-30-11 - Cold, Cold Water, Dean/Cas, PG, 1090 words
5-14-11 - ...And Into the Fire, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 6171 words
5-21-11 - Good Night, Sleep Tight, Gen, G, 1417 words
6-16-11 Bible Study, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 2314 words
6-18-11 - Some Things That Are Broken and Some Things to Hold Tight, 2014!Dean/2014!Cas(Clairestiel), R, 4091 words
6-27-11 - Clearing the Air, NC-17, 4251 words
6-29-11 - Deliver Me From Evil, Dean/Cas, PG, 761 words
7-21-11 - Look, Up In The Sky, Dean/Cas (superhero AU), PG-13, 17,731 words
7-23-11 - If I Lay Here, Dean/Cas, G, 733 words
8-10-11 - Carve Your Name Into My Arm, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 6938 words
8-12-11 - Shimmer and Shine, Dean/Cas, PG, 928 words
8-21-11 - Needle and Thread, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 4064 words
9-9-11 - Gone Too Long, Dean/2014!Cas, PG-13, 1205 words
9-11-11 - Skin Deep, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 3054 words
9-15-11 - Lifelines, Dean/Cas/Lisa, R, 6253 words
9-20-11 - Learn Your Body Like a Nursery Rhyme in Braille, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 1888
9-28-11 - 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky, 2014!Cas/Anna, NC-17, 3306 words
9-30-11 - Your Fingers Stained Red, Dean/Cas, PG-13, 1458 words
10-25-11 - Semper Fi, Cas/John, R, 9868 words
10-27-11 - Where I Can See You, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 1677
11-15-11 - The General Tso's Special, Dean/Cas, PG, 737
11-21-11 - Outrun My Gun, Dean/Cas, NC-17, 33,100 words
11-27-11 - The Beginning Is Always Before Us, PG, 575
11-30-11 - The Road From Sodom, one-sided Uriel/Cas, implied Dean/Cas, PG, 4420 words
12-25-11 - To All a Good Night, Dean/Cas, PG, 1900 words
12-31-11 - Cold and Sharp, NC-17, 1573 words
Grand word count total: 147,756. Holy Crap. And that list doesn't have my deancas_xmas fic, since we're not allowed to talk about fight club yet, and it doesn't have the ficlets I wrote for 3 Sentences or the Prompt Party comment fics I haven't posted as their own entries yet.
Again: Holy Crap.
Overall Thoughts:
Can I say Holy Crap again? (I do think the fic as gotten better overall as the year went on, and I've gotten more confident at taking risks.)
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I've written more this year than I did my last three fandoms combined, I think. I've never actually done one of these lists before because I never really had the output for one.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I didn't see Cas/John coming but I had a blast making that work. Most of what I wrote for Doctor Who was muti-era, basically intra-canon crossovers (fics with 9 and Susan, or 9 talking to John Smith during Family of Blood, or Torchwood!Jack getting to talk to traveling-with-9!Rose again) and it was fun getting to do that with Supernatural. Outrun My Gun was that kind of story, too. And I never would have thought I'd write a story about Uriel in January or that I'd come to like him so much; that hit me like a truck when I did a S4 rewatch.
What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I can't choose one. I'm really, really proud of how Torn came out; that story grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let me go until I wrote it. It's one of those rare times I felt like the story in my head matched the story on the page and I love that people had such emotional reactions to it. But at the same time, Outrun My Gun! I loved writing a complete love story from the first meeting. And Look, Up In The Sky is my baby - that 'verse and that Cas and that Dean got under my skin so much.
I love all my stories, but those are the ones that give me the happiest little thrill when I see a reply in my inbox.
Oh, and Lifelines. I jumped on that prompt, I was so happy to have the excuse to write Dean/Cas/Lisa.
I'm going to stop now before I name the whole list.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I'd never written an AU before I tried Look, Up In The Sky. I feel like I learned a lot about world building writing that story.
My best story of this year:
Outrun My Gun. Although like I said, I'm really happy with Torn. And I really do think I pulled off Cas/John in Semper Fi
My most popular story of this year:
On LJ? Who If I Cried Our Would Hear Me, hands down. Everyone loves Cas getting his smite on.:) On FF.Net and AO3, it's Black As Night, bless all you fellow wing!kink fiends.:)
Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
Some Things That Are Broken and Some Things to Hold Tight. I don't know if it readers were turned off by it being Clairestiel/Dean or if I just wrote a bad summary, but I really loved that story. It was about second chances and holding on to what's important, Cas saving Dean not because it's going to change things or whether he even really deserves saving, because that's what Cas does and he doesn't know any other way. And I loved Claire being a bit of a BAMF and how she essentially grabs Cas by the shoulders and shakes him, all "You moron, I am trying to save you."
*pets story*
Most fun story to write:
I dunno. They're all fun as long as I'm not locked into some hideous writer's block. I really like writing Lisa and 5.04!Cas, and I loved doing all the world building for Look, Up In The Sky and Outrun My Gun. I mean, I pretty much got to set the timeline on fire with that one. That's always fun.
Story with the single sexiest moment:
Cas quoting the Bible during phone sex during Bible Study
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Okay, now how are we defining wrong, exactly? Cold and Sharp probably has the heaviest kink I've ever written, but again, Bible Study involves an angel having gay phone sex by quoting the Bible.:) And I'm hard on Cas at the best of times (quick, count the stories where he doesn't wind up bleeding!) but Torn takes that to a whole different level.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I don't know if it shifted my perceptions, exactly, but The Road From Sodom codified a lot of personal canon I had floating around.
Hardest story to write:
Next year this answer will be my Firefly fusion, because that story hates me. This year it would have to be Outrun My Gun, just because it was the longest thing I've ever written and took so much work to finagle the timeline.
Biggest Disappointment:
That I found out about the DCBB deadline just too late to sign up. I felt so left out!
Biggest Surprise:
That I wrote that much fic.:) And the responses I got to Lifelines saying that they'd never thought about Dean/Cas/Lisa as a pairing or how they'd never found fic with them before, etc., because seriously, how is that possible? It can't really be that rare a thing, can it?
Favorite Opening Line(s):
From The Road From Sodom: "If asked, although he expects no one ever will, Uriel would say it began in the home of a human named Lot."
From Semper Fi: The presence filling the room drags Castiel back to awareness like a giant clawed hand.
From 'Scuse Me While I Kiss the Sky: A while back one of his girls gave him a book about a reporter and a motorcycle race and a drug-soaked weekend in Las Vegas, a city Cas wished he could have visited before the government nuked it into glass. The pages sang with disillusionment and despair and the fall of something called the American Dream and Cas read it until it fell apart in his hands. (just because I love the idea of Cas reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.:)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
From Torn: It turned out the hardest part was getting the wings to show. He was surprised at how deceptively delicate they were. Almost fragile.
Dean remembered being a happy little boy, chasing down butterflies.
From Slipping: If it costs his life, if it takes sacrificing every thing he is Castiel is determined to create a Heaven worthy of Dean Winchester.
Even if the blood caked on his hands means Castiel won't belong there.
Lifelines: Promises to keep, after all.
Top 6 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
But...but all the art!
If I must chose: from Look, Up In The Sky: Cas and Dean watching the sunrise on Dean's roof. Or Cas sacked out in Dean's bed. Or Dean holding him when he and Sam finally find him in the demon nest. Or that big kiss after Dean brings him back.
(Okay, I'm not good at choosing.:)
Cas watching over Dean and Sam in Good Night, Sleep Tight.
Cas kissing Dean against the wall in Clearing the Air
I'll stop there. Anything from anything.:)
Story I haven't yet written, but intend to:
Okay, excepting what I have already in progress, here's what I'm (at the moment!) planning:
The one where Dean saves Cas and accidentally grows wings because his soul grabs onto Cas' Grace as he's dying and won't let go.
High school AU (God help me.:)
S4 AU where the "angel" shenanigans from S2 actually did have an angel behind them pulling the strings, and Castiel and Uriel show up asking Dean and Sam for information about the incident and help bringing the rogue angel in. Things go poorly. (this may be a DCBB fic.)
Finish Inheritance, my future fic where Claire is a BAMF and Ben wonders what's happened to his life. I may rejigger this to be a S7 AU instead of a S6 AU to up the angst.
Another Dean/Cas/Lisa fic. Lifelines was actually my third go at that prompt; my first try wound up way too long to finish by the deadline (it would easily be 15K, maybe longer), and the second try was a sort of Five Things fic with timelines running in opposite directions that a) needed more work to make the timelines, y'know, work, and b) was also way too long. But I like them!
Possible sequel to Look, Up In The Sky, one that brings Anna and Jo and Lisa and Ben into that 'verse.
Raphael fic contrasting the Book or Tobit with Dean/Cas to try to explain what is his deal, already.
At least one crossover.
The one where Cas messes up time traveling back during TSRtS and winds up meeting 16-17 year old Dean and things happen.
Fic-writing goals for 2012:
dark_fest!
deancasbigbang!
spn_reversebang again!
Also, to be less horrible at responding to fic comments. I get flustered and don't know what to say and put it off, then I have a huge backlog and feel terrible about it because getting comments makes my heart twirl around with joy. No more!
Thank you to all my new friends for welcoming me into your fandom and all my old friends for putting up with me talking about angels all the time. *MWAH*