2013 in writing; or: Wow, more happened than I thought it did
FULL-LENGTH OR SORT OF MEANT TO BE
A Mouth-Filling Oath (Hotspur is a foreman of dockworkers in London in the '50s; Kate is a community leader in organized crime)
She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down (Joe and Michelle switch parts while learning lines)
radio-ink (an island that migrates; journalists in love; the late 1940s; the secret of the atomic bomb)
Joe/Michelle werewolf actors AU (floating around in emails somewhere)
The Percys Swing Dancers AU! (also email-only)
Yuletide (and if you can guess it, I'll chortle - and offer a drabble/fic as reward? why not)
DRABBLES
Lesbian modern AU Percys
But if you go- (Kate Percy as Orpheus)
Joe/Michelle, out of time (accidentally slipping into the story)
Beatrice and Benedick fight crime (Much Ado, natch)
Kate/Hotspur as cops (she's his guv'nor)
Southern Gothic Macbeths
Lix and Randall in Madrid (The Hour)
Macbeths Motown AU (ohmygosh I want more of this)
The Prince longs for an OT3 (Much Ado)
Lix and Randall, tea (The Hour)
Joe/Michelle, post-apocalyptic road trip (floods)
Percys as period superheroes
Joe and Michelle as hobo royalty?
Joe and Michelle as space pirates
Percys in space (Firefly-running-from-the-Crown style; Kate drives)
Crossdressing Joe and Michelle (is that a sword on your belt or are you just putting my makeup on wrong?)
Steampunk thieving Percys (!! I forgot this was there and now I really like it)
CONCEPTS
Werewolves in The Hour
Werewolf heritability
Six Joe/Michelle Hollow Crown RPF AUs
Thor attends a formal event with Natasha (MCU)
Hipster Robin Hood cast helps Joe avoid doing DVD commentary
Darcy Lewis meets the Winchesters (MCU/SPN)
Elementary daemons + Slings & Arrows playing the Percys
Thor, Jane and Darcy enjoy July 4th (MCU)
The Hour investigates the Percys (asdljfhalsjfk still want this so bad)
The Hour and telepathy (don't give it to Freddie Lyon)
Edith and Carson Deal With a Baby (Downton Abbey)
Easy Company with telepathy (Band of Brothers)
Hipster Robin Hood high school AU
Innogen body swap (with a character I haven't introduced yet!)
The Summer of Love in Omaha + possible MI-5 hippies
Idris Elba misses the point of The Truman Show
Legendary briefcase-carrying special agent just wants some sushi before she leaves L.A.
Convicted con artist tries to find a way off-planet by midnight on New Year's Eve
*
Leitmotif(s) of the year: oh god why can't i finish anything oh god will anyone read it if i do
But mostly:
Favorite(s) of the batch: Because I want to try and put different stories for this and the next answer, I will also say Joe/Michelle, post-apocalyptic road trip, which I loved for its atmosphere. I also really like Joe/Michelle, out of time, because my misinterpretation of the prompt produced such a neat, sensory AU.
Best of the batch: I am so proud of A Mouth-Filling Oath. I have a lot of feelings about how to deal with Harry Percy's anger. Sometimes I've seen people write him or write about him as stupid or simple or cloddish, and I can't help but be irritated by how lazy that is. His anger is a plague, a disease he suffers, and I was feeling a lot of it myself at the time I was writing it, because suddenly I'd been told, after paying three quarters' worth of tuition, that I wasn't going to be allowed to do the capstone project I'd come to Medill to do. So when I wrote:Oh, he wants sleep, he wants to slip out from the crush of this rage, but it’s curdling his blood, it’s pounding through every inch of him, it’s bearing down on his heart and he’ll never outrun it.
That was how I felt for most of July, August and September. It was horrible. And I got what I wanted, in the end, but I don't think I was pleasant to be around.
And the thing is, even bearing all that, Hotspur still accomplishes so much, both in canon and in this fic. It helps that he has Kate, who has anger of her own, but who knows how to manage it, and how to manage him. I loved writing this Kate, this calculating, performance-giving force of her own, and the way they worked together. I loved writing Hal, "all lines and misspent grace," with his own fury and revenges. I loved writing the Percy brothers, Thomas and Henry. I loved the narration, and the atmosphere and taking these Anglo-Norman Shakespearean heroes out of the nobility and into the working class, with all their same virtues and vices, and what that changes. And I loved
Gileonnen's incredible feedback, which I still return to when I think I'll never finish anything good again.
Most underappreciated by the universe: I'm going to take this as fandoms or pairings more of you should be grooving on with me and say again that Hotspur/Kate and Joe/Michelle are the best and oh god, I just want more people to talk to about them and write about them with/for, this is apparently the only fandom I care about and it's lonely. (Dear Fandom Fairy: Let me care about something other people care about too in the new year.)
Favorite first lines: I really enjoy the opening on my Yuletide! So, uh, that.
She never wore gloves, nor those fancy straw hats, but she was never so high in society as they were now. (Southern Gothic Macbeths)
He picked her out from the line before he'd ever had his name in lights. (Macbeths Motown AU)
The dog wore Lady's face on all three heads. (But if you go-)
Most fun to write: Most of the concepts, probably, which give you the little high of storytelling without the work of writing: The Hour investigates the Percys has to be a thing in the real world someday, though, along with that Hollow Crown fusion where Harry is Freddie and Kate is Bel and everyone's self-preservation instincts are possibly even worse than they are in the original. That said, there was one character in my Yuletide that I was like, "Yup, I'm writing this so I can get to the next part that he's in." Ask me after the reveal, if you can't guess.
Sexiest fic: Hmm. This probably happened in RP somewhere, but I'll put in another vote for Joe/Michelle, out of time, on a conceptual level.
Fic that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Not a lot of paradigm-shifting this year, but I'm pretty pleased with/creeped out by Easy Company with telepathy still.
New pairing/genre/fandom you never predicted writing in January: It's… never a surprise to me that I tip into RPF. So maybe Lesbian modern AU Percys? Anything porny is still basically a surprise to me.
Hardest fic to write:
radio-ink, which in fact still remains mostly a bunch of reblogs with only discarded bits of prose in a Scrivener file somewhere. I was just talking with
eudaimon about outlining versus not, and sometimes outlining kills the desire to write the story and sometimes I panic if I don't know what's coming or what to plan for and set up. I'm trying to do this one as discovery writing, as just writing and seeing what comes out, but that's hard for me, for a number of reasons largely having to do with my own head. ("You only have value when you produce work and not just for being a person" is a hard beast to slay.)
Biggest disappointment: Mostly having to do with not finishing more. I was sort of in grad school, though, so I'm forgiving myself with that, for the most part.
Biggest surprise: …that I didn't get into any new fandoms this year? Wait, no, that's not a surprise at all. /o\
Most telling fic: It will surely be Coldspur, about how we bring our dead back to life, or
radio-ink, about how we find love after trauma, whenever those are finished.
What's next? I don't know.
I mean, I know a few things. I want
radio-ink to be a thing. I think I need to accomplish or finish some older stories, like Coldspur and Innogen, but I worry that these are stories I feel I have to finish in order to move on from my mother's death or something. That's when I was working on them or conceived them; same with Hipster Robin Hood werewolves. I want to tell new stories, and I also like these stories, but sometimes I feel stuck in modes from a very unhappy time in my life that I still think I need to tell because I put so much work into them.
I want to write more original fiction. I want to not forget that original fiction is what I've wanted for myself my whole life. Fandom has been satisfying for me only on such specific terms that I need to try and see what I can do outside it; otherwise I just hobble myself and get unhappy when things don't work out like I'd hoped. (That said, I desperately want to collaborate more. I keep saying that I don't understand how people do things like co-write a novel, but I'd like to try. I love collective or collaborative storytelling, especially across media. I want someone to say yes with, like what happened with The Shallow Project. But I shy away from the risk of the enthusiasm gap, which I find very painful.)
More than specific projects, I think what I want is people. Something I miss about fandom or someplace like Milliways is a churn of people who are making things and bouncing off each other and encouraging each other and daring each other to do more, consistently. (
byzantienne, whatever you have, I want it, badly.) I miss the soup, the environment, the mindset. I've tried to join writing groups or communities online in the past, but for whatever reason (probably just because most things fail anyway, which is not a condemnation), I didn't gel. Then again, I'm also contending with a lot of larger lonelies, in which I constantly feel like I'm the odd one out, that everyone else has found their people and thus has no room for me, and that my relationships are scattershot, temporary and conditional. Thank you, brainweasels. Stay awesome.
So I guess most of my work will have to be in my own head. I have to get better about trying out new people and new groups of people. I have to find a way to keep myself going when I'm convinced no one will like or read or engage with what I make, so it doesn't matter. I have to believe that doing these things for myself is enough, and worthwhile.
Today I read Noelle Stevenson's year in review, and was just - so glad she had such an amazing year. And so young! Like, yeah, on one level I'm a little jealous, but seriously, read that post. She worked hard and she's making incredible opportunities for herself. So, my goal, I guess, is to be more like
gingerhaze. I know I can get what I want. I just have to be vulnerable and smart and willing to fail about it. Over the last several years I've become very conscious of (and risk-averse about) how much emotional energy I've got, no matter how much I want to do something anyway, but I can also pick myself up and get back out there. I've accomplished a hell of a lot this year. I know I can do that, and more too.
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!
A Mouth-Filling Oath (Hotspur is a foreman of dockworkers in London in the '50s; Kate is a community leader in organized crime)
She bids you on the wanton rushes lay you down (Joe and Michelle switch parts while learning lines)
radio-ink (an island that migrates; journalists in love; the late 1940s; the secret of the atomic bomb)
Joe/Michelle werewolf actors AU (floating around in emails somewhere)
The Percys Swing Dancers AU! (also email-only)
Yuletide (and if you can guess it, I'll chortle - and offer a drabble/fic as reward? why not)
DRABBLES
Lesbian modern AU Percys
But if you go- (Kate Percy as Orpheus)
Joe/Michelle, out of time (accidentally slipping into the story)
Beatrice and Benedick fight crime (Much Ado, natch)
Kate/Hotspur as cops (she's his guv'nor)
Southern Gothic Macbeths
Lix and Randall in Madrid (The Hour)
Macbeths Motown AU (ohmygosh I want more of this)
The Prince longs for an OT3 (Much Ado)
Lix and Randall, tea (The Hour)
Joe/Michelle, post-apocalyptic road trip (floods)
Percys as period superheroes
Joe and Michelle as hobo royalty?
Joe and Michelle as space pirates
Percys in space (Firefly-running-from-the-Crown style; Kate drives)
Crossdressing Joe and Michelle (is that a sword on your belt or are you just putting my makeup on wrong?)
Steampunk thieving Percys (!! I forgot this was there and now I really like it)
CONCEPTS
Werewolves in The Hour
Werewolf heritability
Six Joe/Michelle Hollow Crown RPF AUs
Thor attends a formal event with Natasha (MCU)
Hipster Robin Hood cast helps Joe avoid doing DVD commentary
Darcy Lewis meets the Winchesters (MCU/SPN)
Elementary daemons + Slings & Arrows playing the Percys
Thor, Jane and Darcy enjoy July 4th (MCU)
The Hour investigates the Percys (asdljfhalsjfk still want this so bad)
The Hour and telepathy (don't give it to Freddie Lyon)
Edith and Carson Deal With a Baby (Downton Abbey)
Easy Company with telepathy (Band of Brothers)
Hipster Robin Hood high school AU
Innogen body swap (with a character I haven't introduced yet!)
The Summer of Love in Omaha + possible MI-5 hippies
Idris Elba misses the point of The Truman Show
Legendary briefcase-carrying special agent just wants some sushi before she leaves L.A.
Convicted con artist tries to find a way off-planet by midnight on New Year's Eve
*
Leitmotif(s) of the year: oh god why can't i finish anything oh god will anyone read it if i do
But mostly:
Click to viewFavorite(s) of the batch: Because I want to try and put different stories for this and the next answer, I will also say Joe/Michelle, post-apocalyptic road trip, which I loved for its atmosphere. I also really like Joe/Michelle, out of time, because my misinterpretation of the prompt produced such a neat, sensory AU.
Best of the batch: I am so proud of A Mouth-Filling Oath. I have a lot of feelings about how to deal with Harry Percy's anger. Sometimes I've seen people write him or write about him as stupid or simple or cloddish, and I can't help but be irritated by how lazy that is. His anger is a plague, a disease he suffers, and I was feeling a lot of it myself at the time I was writing it, because suddenly I'd been told, after paying three quarters' worth of tuition, that I wasn't going to be allowed to do the capstone project I'd come to Medill to do. So when I wrote:Oh, he wants sleep, he wants to slip out from the crush of this rage, but it’s curdling his blood, it’s pounding through every inch of him, it’s bearing down on his heart and he’ll never outrun it.
That was how I felt for most of July, August and September. It was horrible. And I got what I wanted, in the end, but I don't think I was pleasant to be around.
And the thing is, even bearing all that, Hotspur still accomplishes so much, both in canon and in this fic. It helps that he has Kate, who has anger of her own, but who knows how to manage it, and how to manage him. I loved writing this Kate, this calculating, performance-giving force of her own, and the way they worked together. I loved writing Hal, "all lines and misspent grace," with his own fury and revenges. I loved writing the Percy brothers, Thomas and Henry. I loved the narration, and the atmosphere and taking these Anglo-Norman Shakespearean heroes out of the nobility and into the working class, with all their same virtues and vices, and what that changes. And I loved
Gileonnen's incredible feedback, which I still return to when I think I'll never finish anything good again.
Most underappreciated by the universe: I'm going to take this as fandoms or pairings more of you should be grooving on with me and say again that Hotspur/Kate and Joe/Michelle are the best and oh god, I just want more people to talk to about them and write about them with/for, this is apparently the only fandom I care about and it's lonely. (Dear Fandom Fairy: Let me care about something other people care about too in the new year.)
Favorite first lines: I really enjoy the opening on my Yuletide! So, uh, that.
Most fun to write: Most of the concepts, probably, which give you the little high of storytelling without the work of writing: The Hour investigates the Percys has to be a thing in the real world someday, though, along with that Hollow Crown fusion where Harry is Freddie and Kate is Bel and everyone's self-preservation instincts are possibly even worse than they are in the original. That said, there was one character in my Yuletide that I was like, "Yup, I'm writing this so I can get to the next part that he's in." Ask me after the reveal, if you can't guess.
Sexiest fic: Hmm. This probably happened in RP somewhere, but I'll put in another vote for Joe/Michelle, out of time, on a conceptual level.
Fic that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Not a lot of paradigm-shifting this year, but I'm pretty pleased with/creeped out by Easy Company with telepathy still.
New pairing/genre/fandom you never predicted writing in January: It's… never a surprise to me that I tip into RPF. So maybe Lesbian modern AU Percys? Anything porny is still basically a surprise to me.
Hardest fic to write:
radio-ink, which in fact still remains mostly a bunch of reblogs with only discarded bits of prose in a Scrivener file somewhere. I was just talking with
eudaimon about outlining versus not, and sometimes outlining kills the desire to write the story and sometimes I panic if I don't know what's coming or what to plan for and set up. I'm trying to do this one as discovery writing, as just writing and seeing what comes out, but that's hard for me, for a number of reasons largely having to do with my own head. ("You only have value when you produce work and not just for being a person" is a hard beast to slay.)
Biggest disappointment: Mostly having to do with not finishing more. I was sort of in grad school, though, so I'm forgiving myself with that, for the most part.
Biggest surprise: …that I didn't get into any new fandoms this year? Wait, no, that's not a surprise at all. /o\
Most telling fic: It will surely be Coldspur, about how we bring our dead back to life, or
radio-ink, about how we find love after trauma, whenever those are finished.
What's next? I don't know.
I mean, I know a few things. I want
radio-ink to be a thing. I think I need to accomplish or finish some older stories, like Coldspur and Innogen, but I worry that these are stories I feel I have to finish in order to move on from my mother's death or something. That's when I was working on them or conceived them; same with Hipster Robin Hood werewolves. I want to tell new stories, and I also like these stories, but sometimes I feel stuck in modes from a very unhappy time in my life that I still think I need to tell because I put so much work into them.
I want to write more original fiction. I want to not forget that original fiction is what I've wanted for myself my whole life. Fandom has been satisfying for me only on such specific terms that I need to try and see what I can do outside it; otherwise I just hobble myself and get unhappy when things don't work out like I'd hoped. (That said, I desperately want to collaborate more. I keep saying that I don't understand how people do things like co-write a novel, but I'd like to try. I love collective or collaborative storytelling, especially across media. I want someone to say yes with, like what happened with The Shallow Project. But I shy away from the risk of the enthusiasm gap, which I find very painful.)
More than specific projects, I think what I want is people. Something I miss about fandom or someplace like Milliways is a churn of people who are making things and bouncing off each other and encouraging each other and daring each other to do more, consistently. (
byzantienne, whatever you have, I want it, badly.) I miss the soup, the environment, the mindset. I've tried to join writing groups or communities online in the past, but for whatever reason (probably just because most things fail anyway, which is not a condemnation), I didn't gel. Then again, I'm also contending with a lot of larger lonelies, in which I constantly feel like I'm the odd one out, that everyone else has found their people and thus has no room for me, and that my relationships are scattershot, temporary and conditional. Thank you, brainweasels. Stay awesome.
So I guess most of my work will have to be in my own head. I have to get better about trying out new people and new groups of people. I have to find a way to keep myself going when I'm convinced no one will like or read or engage with what I make, so it doesn't matter. I have to believe that doing these things for myself is enough, and worthwhile.
Today I read Noelle Stevenson's year in review, and was just - so glad she had such an amazing year. And so young! Like, yeah, on one level I'm a little jealous, but seriously, read that post. She worked hard and she's making incredible opportunities for herself. So, my goal, I guess, is to be more like
gingerhaze. I know I can get what I want. I just have to be vulnerable and smart and willing to fail about it. Over the last several years I've become very conscious of (and risk-averse about) how much emotional energy I've got, no matter how much I want to do something anyway, but I can also pick myself up and get back out there. I've accomplished a hell of a lot this year. I know I can do that, and more too.
This was originally posted on Dreamwidth, where it has
comments. I would love to hear from you at DW! If you can see this post, you can comment here using OpenID. Thanks!