2014, I am not writing about you anymore
"--OH MY GOD," I wrote this morning to 
adiva_calandia, "WHAT IS IF BIRBS WERE DAEMONS?"
That... seems like a pretty good (and possibly indicative) way to open the year! I stayed in last night, thanks to a contacts prescription change-induced headache, and probably would have fallen asleep at midnight if Brooklyn hadn't turned into this explosion of cheering, shouting and fireworks. I woke up at... 7:45, ugh, but oh well. I have every intention of getting going with this running thing I want to do again, but honestly, I really want to take a shower instead, and maybe I'll just hold off on the running and start gentle with yoga, I don't know. What I really want is to 1) magically have my apartment clean and organized, and 2) have a draft of my next fic ready for a real beta. I... will probably do at least one of these to avoid doing the other. Grown-up good habits!
I like doing that Year in Review writing meme every year. If you missed my general reflections on 2014 or my Yuletide reveal, there they are. Onward!
Full-Length (Ish)
The Hollow Crown
The Coil of Ribs Heats Up (RPF, Joe Armstrong/Michelle Dockery)
Medieval meet-cute WIP (Percys)
Kate and Harry Fight the Devil (Percys, Macbeth crossover, sort of; WIP)
Whose Dust Is Both Alike (King Henry is Hotspur's father AU)
Captain America/MCU
Bring Us Back a Souvenir (Sam, Bucky, baseball)
No Worse, At Least (Agents of SHIELD crossover; Ward, Bucky, ass-kicking)
In the World to Come (Jewish Bucky)
The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy (Therapy llama)
Of All the Boys I've Known (And I've Known Some) (Bucky/Pvt. Lorraine, WIP)
And All I Got (Col. Phillips, Bucky, WIP)
Other:
Radio Ink (WIP, still taking shape)
Off-Road Pecha Kucha: Repairing Cymbeline (PowerPoint metafiction)
Bzzt (Yuletide, gun safety PSA femslash)
Drabbles, movie memes and concepts
Original stuff, mostly
Pygmalion Industrial Complex, in which Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren battle each for control of hand-crafted androids with perfect bone structure
Slippage, in which Michelle Dockery and Tom Hiddleston accidentally swap bodies, which Alan Cumming cannot fix
Of Bricks, in which a family of werewolves and a family of merpeople are both trying to rob the same bank
Freedivers, in which Joe Armstrong is accidentally-on-purpose sucked into a fantasy quest and handed a sword like it's no big deal
Holiday Movies, in which Saoirse Ronan and Natalie Dormer try to settle on which picturesque coastal town they'll begin their zombie apocalypse from
The Use, starring Michelle Dockery, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hiddleston; about a ghost in the machine
Bits about Wine-Dark Sky, my actual space Odyssey of yore + Odysseus and Penelope
Your Crooked Soul outline/summary; Recasting Your Crooked Soul with two ladies
Wild West Macbeth, someone do this, please
What my steampunk Cymbeline is about
'80s hot air balloon pirate capers, starring Anjali Jay, Tatiana Maslany, John Cho, Anna Chancellor and Domo-kun
You're the Fox, a missing persons case with an actual man-eater
Ben Whishaw, Natalie Dormer and Gina Torres as post-apocalyptic dead matchmakers
Joe/Laura, Radio Ink, photographs
Fylgja and the outside world, Radio Ink
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.
Fanfictiony things, various
The Hollow Wing, the West Wing/Hollow Crown fusion I'd love to see, and how the Percy family fits into it
Kate Percy in a Roman Empire AU
Prometheus and Artemis, hangin' out
Joe and Michelle, the pros and cons of armor
Hotspur and Glendower, moved by poetry
That MCU/HBO WWII miniseries I never wrote
Captain America. Just. Captain America.
Bucky, therapy animal, basset hound
Peggy, Bucky, after the Triskelion falls
The Winter Soldier panics about his arm
Falsworth and Peggy, after the war
Bucky and hunger; first meal as a free man
The Winter Soldier is always a sergeant at heart
Sam should take over the VA
Sam and the help he needs
Peggy holds on to skinny Steve, after
Maria Hill as Nick Fury's second
Bucky remembers himself so quickly
Captain America meets Captain Northumberland
Steve introduces Bucky to the iPod
Mackie spends a whole interview mocking SebStan about being a werewolf
Steve Rogers falls hard for food trucks
What it means when Bucky spends a day at the aquarium
Bruce, Steve, Thor and hipster ketchup
Some thoughts on RPF daemons (CEvans, ScarJo, SebStan)
The first time Sebastian completely made a fool of himself in front of Robert Redford; The second time
Steve and Bucky's great American road trip
First therapy llama drabble; Second therapy llama drabble
Steve POV from "In the World to Come" scene
Steve is not a very good newsie
Peggy and lipstick
CEvans and SebStan, astronomy nerds
Captain America Cinderella AU
Steve & Natasha, forced to share a bed | Tumblr
Steve & Sam, accidental baby acquisition
Steve & Bucky, bodyswap | Tumblr
Steve & Bucky, swing dancing
Quinoa the therapy llama gets a robot suit
Uh. That was more than I thought. Huh.
*
Leitmotif(s) of the year: We are who we are, no matter what.
Favorite(s) of the batch: It's not actually my favorite, even if I enjoy it quite a lot, but I feel like The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy is the one that people responded to the most enthusiastically. There were some drabbles that I'm incredibly proud of, like Kate Percy in a Roman Empire AU and Steve & Bucky, bodyswap.
Best of the batch: In the World to Come, without a doubt. A story that's just incredibly important to me. Likewise, Kate and Harry Fight the Devil, even if it was never going to go further than where it ended.
Most underappreciated by the universe (aka fandoms or pairings more of you should be grooving on with me): Ha, probably The Coil of Ribs Heats Up. Actors sexing each other in character as one of Shakespeare's most intense/awesome couples!
Favorite opening lines: Oooh, a couple for these!
She was told she was too young for it long after she wanted it for herself. (Peggy and lipstick)
"No, you listen, you little shit," he growls, and it's only with the echo that he realizes he's pounded on the table. (Hotspur and Glendower, moved by poetry)
He wakes to the hand on his shoulder, the tentative murmur, my lord. He wakes happy from a dream of his son, the promise of Shrewsbury not squandered yet. (Whose Dust Is Both Alike )
Four hundred men dropped in the middle of your camp, somebody’s got to organize that. Phillips lets Rogers have his hero moment (and Carter her little gloat), but in the meantime, he’s got supplies to rustle up, medical to call in, bunks to find, a mess hall to mobilize. Not only that, but when he’s scattered every officer, NCO and spare hand he can find, he interrupts Rogers, who’s thick as thieves with one of the prisoners, and says, “You and I need to have a long talk.” (And All I Got )
Favorite closing lines: There were words he was supposed to say when he died.
There should have been words, but when they woke him, the words were thin air. (In the World to Come)
Favorite line from anywhere: Quinoa snuffles hopefully at his left pocket. She turns to look at Sam, and flicks her ears. Sam holds up both hands. “Hey, he’s your sugar daddy, not me.”
“I like to take care of my girls.” Barnes flips a switch on the cupcake, which flickers with dancing LED lights. (The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy)
Favorite title: A tie between some Hollow Crown stuff! The Coil of Ribs Heats Up and Whose Dust Is Both Alike
Most fun to write: Maybe Mackie spends a whole interview mocking SebStan about being a werewolf.
Sexiest fic: Heh. Uh, Bzzt, my explicit 4K femslash about 30-something moms from a 30-second PSA?
"Holy crap, that's wrong even for you" fic: Not really wrong in the way this question wants, but I'm super delighted by how well the Captain America Cinderella AU works. Quinoa the therapy llama gets a robot suit is pretty great crack too.
Fic that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: It's not so much that writing it changed my perception of the character, but No Worse, At Least really helped me voice and solidify my understanding of Grant Ward, world's worst person, which canon has totally confirmed in S2.
New pairing/genre/fandom you never predicted writing in January: Everything non-Shakespeare, probably. Like, Winter Soldier took me completely by surprise, as did my insistence on Bucky Barnes, cultural Jew. The Yuletide was a big surprise, though.
Hardest fic to write: Oh, that's actually the one I'm writing right now, which I started threatening sometime this fall, and which is requiring a ton more work and huge, fundamental revision than I've had to do for a long time. But I think my slew of WIPs and discarded stories speaks to a lot of fic being the hardest to write.
Biggest disappointment: Not finishing more. I had this elaborate, intense MCU daemon fic all plotted out, with some abortive first drafts and a lot of email conversations spitballing about the 'verse, but it just never took root.
Biggest surprise: In some ways, the incredible reaction to "In the World to Come." I've never written a fic that so many people responded to intimately to, which was amazing.
Most telling fic: I never know what this means. Am I supposed to speculate about my id here or something? Probably the series of Sebastian Stan completely making a fool of himself in front of Robert Redford. Basically I am really not cool, and I identify with goofball nerd sweetpeas, I guess.
What story do you want to have written? All the original stuff. Maybe the full-length version of The Winter Soldier is always a sergeant at heart.
What's next? My shorthand for this fic is "Peggy/Bucky/Cold War trauma bomb." If I do it right, it might be one of the cruelest stories I've ever written, and I am super excited about carrying it off. No fic plans after that, but I have high hopes for original works again this year.
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!
adiva_calandia, "WHAT IS IF BIRBS WERE DAEMONS?"
That... seems like a pretty good (and possibly indicative) way to open the year! I stayed in last night, thanks to a contacts prescription change-induced headache, and probably would have fallen asleep at midnight if Brooklyn hadn't turned into this explosion of cheering, shouting and fireworks. I woke up at... 7:45, ugh, but oh well. I have every intention of getting going with this running thing I want to do again, but honestly, I really want to take a shower instead, and maybe I'll just hold off on the running and start gentle with yoga, I don't know. What I really want is to 1) magically have my apartment clean and organized, and 2) have a draft of my next fic ready for a real beta. I... will probably do at least one of these to avoid doing the other. Grown-up good habits!
I like doing that Year in Review writing meme every year. If you missed my general reflections on 2014 or my Yuletide reveal, there they are. Onward!
Full-Length (Ish)
The Hollow Crown
The Coil of Ribs Heats Up (RPF, Joe Armstrong/Michelle Dockery)
Medieval meet-cute WIP (Percys)
Kate and Harry Fight the Devil (Percys, Macbeth crossover, sort of; WIP)
Whose Dust Is Both Alike (King Henry is Hotspur's father AU)
Captain America/MCU
Bring Us Back a Souvenir (Sam, Bucky, baseball)
No Worse, At Least (Agents of SHIELD crossover; Ward, Bucky, ass-kicking)
In the World to Come (Jewish Bucky)
The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy (Therapy llama)
Of All the Boys I've Known (And I've Known Some) (Bucky/Pvt. Lorraine, WIP)
And All I Got (Col. Phillips, Bucky, WIP)
Other:
Radio Ink (WIP, still taking shape)
Off-Road Pecha Kucha: Repairing Cymbeline (PowerPoint metafiction)
Bzzt (Yuletide, gun safety PSA femslash)
Drabbles, movie memes and concepts
Original stuff, mostly
Pygmalion Industrial Complex, in which Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren battle each for control of hand-crafted androids with perfect bone structure
Slippage, in which Michelle Dockery and Tom Hiddleston accidentally swap bodies, which Alan Cumming cannot fix
Of Bricks, in which a family of werewolves and a family of merpeople are both trying to rob the same bank
Freedivers, in which Joe Armstrong is accidentally-on-purpose sucked into a fantasy quest and handed a sword like it's no big deal
Holiday Movies, in which Saoirse Ronan and Natalie Dormer try to settle on which picturesque coastal town they'll begin their zombie apocalypse from
The Use, starring Michelle Dockery, Scarlett Johansson and Tom Hiddleston; about a ghost in the machine
Bits about Wine-Dark Sky, my actual space Odyssey of yore + Odysseus and Penelope
Your Crooked Soul outline/summary; Recasting Your Crooked Soul with two ladies
Wild West Macbeth, someone do this, please
What my steampunk Cymbeline is about
'80s hot air balloon pirate capers, starring Anjali Jay, Tatiana Maslany, John Cho, Anna Chancellor and Domo-kun
You're the Fox, a missing persons case with an actual man-eater
Ben Whishaw, Natalie Dormer and Gina Torres as post-apocalyptic dead matchmakers
Joe/Laura, Radio Ink, photographs
Fylgja and the outside world, Radio Ink
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.
Fanfictiony things, various
The Hollow Wing, the West Wing/Hollow Crown fusion I'd love to see, and how the Percy family fits into it
Kate Percy in a Roman Empire AU
Prometheus and Artemis, hangin' out
Joe and Michelle, the pros and cons of armor
Hotspur and Glendower, moved by poetry
That MCU/HBO WWII miniseries I never wrote
Captain America. Just. Captain America.
Bucky, therapy animal, basset hound
Peggy, Bucky, after the Triskelion falls
The Winter Soldier panics about his arm
Falsworth and Peggy, after the war
Bucky and hunger; first meal as a free man
The Winter Soldier is always a sergeant at heart
Sam should take over the VA
Sam and the help he needs
Peggy holds on to skinny Steve, after
Maria Hill as Nick Fury's second
Bucky remembers himself so quickly
Captain America meets Captain Northumberland
Steve introduces Bucky to the iPod
Mackie spends a whole interview mocking SebStan about being a werewolf
Steve Rogers falls hard for food trucks
What it means when Bucky spends a day at the aquarium
Bruce, Steve, Thor and hipster ketchup
Some thoughts on RPF daemons (CEvans, ScarJo, SebStan)
The first time Sebastian completely made a fool of himself in front of Robert Redford; The second time
Steve and Bucky's great American road trip
First therapy llama drabble; Second therapy llama drabble
Steve POV from "In the World to Come" scene
Steve is not a very good newsie
Peggy and lipstick
CEvans and SebStan, astronomy nerds
Captain America Cinderella AU
Steve & Natasha, forced to share a bed | Tumblr
Steve & Sam, accidental baby acquisition
Steve & Bucky, bodyswap | Tumblr
Steve & Bucky, swing dancing
Quinoa the therapy llama gets a robot suit
Uh. That was more than I thought. Huh.
*
Leitmotif(s) of the year: We are who we are, no matter what.
Favorite(s) of the batch: It's not actually my favorite, even if I enjoy it quite a lot, but I feel like The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy is the one that people responded to the most enthusiastically. There were some drabbles that I'm incredibly proud of, like Kate Percy in a Roman Empire AU and Steve & Bucky, bodyswap.
Best of the batch: In the World to Come, without a doubt. A story that's just incredibly important to me. Likewise, Kate and Harry Fight the Devil, even if it was never going to go further than where it ended.
Most underappreciated by the universe (aka fandoms or pairings more of you should be grooving on with me): Ha, probably The Coil of Ribs Heats Up. Actors sexing each other in character as one of Shakespeare's most intense/awesome couples!
Favorite opening lines: Oooh, a couple for these!
Favorite closing lines: There were words he was supposed to say when he died.
There should have been words, but when they woke him, the words were thin air. (In the World to Come)
Favorite line from anywhere: Quinoa snuffles hopefully at his left pocket. She turns to look at Sam, and flicks her ears. Sam holds up both hands. “Hey, he’s your sugar daddy, not me.”
“I like to take care of my girls.” Barnes flips a switch on the cupcake, which flickers with dancing LED lights. (The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy)
Favorite title: A tie between some Hollow Crown stuff! The Coil of Ribs Heats Up and Whose Dust Is Both Alike
Most fun to write: Maybe Mackie spends a whole interview mocking SebStan about being a werewolf.
Sexiest fic: Heh. Uh, Bzzt, my explicit 4K femslash about 30-something moms from a 30-second PSA?
"Holy crap, that's wrong even for you" fic: Not really wrong in the way this question wants, but I'm super delighted by how well the Captain America Cinderella AU works. Quinoa the therapy llama gets a robot suit is pretty great crack too.
Fic that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: It's not so much that writing it changed my perception of the character, but No Worse, At Least really helped me voice and solidify my understanding of Grant Ward, world's worst person, which canon has totally confirmed in S2.
New pairing/genre/fandom you never predicted writing in January: Everything non-Shakespeare, probably. Like, Winter Soldier took me completely by surprise, as did my insistence on Bucky Barnes, cultural Jew. The Yuletide was a big surprise, though.
Hardest fic to write: Oh, that's actually the one I'm writing right now, which I started threatening sometime this fall, and which is requiring a ton more work and huge, fundamental revision than I've had to do for a long time. But I think my slew of WIPs and discarded stories speaks to a lot of fic being the hardest to write.
Biggest disappointment: Not finishing more. I had this elaborate, intense MCU daemon fic all plotted out, with some abortive first drafts and a lot of email conversations spitballing about the 'verse, but it just never took root.
Biggest surprise: In some ways, the incredible reaction to "In the World to Come." I've never written a fic that so many people responded to intimately to, which was amazing.
Most telling fic: I never know what this means. Am I supposed to speculate about my id here or something? Probably the series of Sebastian Stan completely making a fool of himself in front of Robert Redford. Basically I am really not cool, and I identify with goofball nerd sweetpeas, I guess.
What story do you want to have written? All the original stuff. Maybe the full-length version of The Winter Soldier is always a sergeant at heart.
What's next? My shorthand for this fic is "Peggy/Bucky/Cold War trauma bomb." If I do it right, it might be one of the cruelest stories I've ever written, and I am super excited about carrying it off. No fic plans after that, but I have high hopes for original works again this year.
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!