year in review: 2011
Well, it looks like another year has come and gone! I've had this fic journal for almost three and a half years, and have been writing fic for six, easy. Crazy stuff, my friends. Crazy stuff.
Recently, with the changes to Livejournal's default comment pages, I've been debating what to do about this journal. Do I soldier on and continue to post fic here? Or do I suck it up and move everything over to Archive Of Our Own? I used AO3 for the first time for Yuletide this year, and I quite like the posting/commenting system over there, and the layout is clean. Four of my fics are over there now, and while I've linked them here on LJ, I won't be posting full versions here. They're going to stay on AO3, and I like having them there. I like AO3. I'm just not sure it's worth moving everything - and I don't think you can move over comments. And the selfish part of me doesn't want to post older fics there, because without the comments or a hit count, it'll look like no one has bothered to read my stuff in the first place. :P So, I haven't made up my mind yet. Thoughts?
But anyway, in the meantime! I did a Fic Year In Review meme last year, and really liked the way it laid out all my work and word counts. It's a nice way to get an overview of how much I write in the course of a year, so I've decided to do it again!
In 2011, I wrote 58,218 words in 8 fandoms.
Fic written, by month:
January:
sorry seems to be the hardest word | The Social Network | Mark/Eduardo friendship | PG-13 | 1,334 words.
course match | The Social Network | Mark/Eduardo friendship | PG-13 | 820 words.
pieces form the whole | The Social Network | Jesse/Andrew | NC-17 | 1,771 words.
February:
Nothing this month.
March:
Nothing here either.
April:
eavesdropping | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione, Draco/Ginny | PG-13 | 1,014 words.
hermione | Harry Potter | Hermione gen | PG-13 | 918 words.
divination | Harry Potter | Harry & Ron gen | PG | 1,037 words.
summer before the seventh | Harry Potter | Harry/Ginny | PG-13 | 1,010 words.
and a daisy-covered handkerchief | Harry Potter | Draco & Hermione gen | PG | 691 words.
une lune-voyage à paris | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione | PG | 420 words.
the full moon | Harry Potter | Sirius & Remus friendship | PG | 618 words.
stay warm | Harry Potter | Harry & Ron friendship | PG | 770 words.
nighttime | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione | PG | 983 words.
if i lay here | Harry Potter | Draco/Ginny | PG-13 | 1,023 words.
dress robes | Harry Potter | Ron Weasley gen | PG | 1,110 words.
eventually we find our way | Harry Potter | Neville Longbottom/Theodore Nott | PG | 5,269 words.
a little friendly competition | Harry Potter | Oliver Wood/Cedric Diggory | PG-13 | 1,028 words.
to the moon and back | Inception | Arthur/Ariadne | R | 3,748 words.
May:
don't tell anyone, but i love you | Mark/Eduardo & Jesse/Andrew | PG-13 | 3,965 words.
June:
Um. More nothing.
July:
I had a lot going on in July, so...
August:
Still nothing.
September:
hepburn had it easy | The Social Network | Mark/Eduardo | R | 15,427 words.
October:
new year's eve | Harry Potter | Neville/Ginny | PG | 889 words.
dress robes | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione | PG | 820 words.
confessions: good for the soul | Harry Potter | Fred & George Weasley gen | PG | 1,013 words.
alcohol makes the dumbest wizards dumber | Harry Potter | Trio gen | PG | 993 words.
November:
And again, nothing. /o\
December:
mistletoe | Harry Potter | James/Lily | PG | 2,255 words.
the correlation of salvation and love | Asuncion RPF | Jesse Eisenberg/Justin Bartha | R | 2,416 words.
snapshots and ultimatums | Community RPF | Donald Glover/Gillian Jacobs | PG | 669 words.
give me back my pieces | Everwood | Bright/Hannah | PG-13 | 1,804 words.
eventually we find our way | Ghostwriter | Rob Baker gen | G | 794 words.
midnight | The Social Network | Jesse/Andrew | PG-13 | 3,609 words.
You know what's crazy? Last year, I wrote 44,954 words - and before I made up this list, I actually thought I'd written less than that this year. I thought I would have been lucky to hit 40,000 words. And yet... somehow I blew past that and wrote 58,218 words - more than thirteen thousand more than last year. And I somehow managed to do that without posting any fic in six out of the twelve months of the year. What the hell! I'm so pleased. :) I realize that, for a lot of people, 58,000 words wouldn't be a big deal. But I'm someone whose fics usually don't surpass the 5,000 mark, and I've only ever written two fics that were over 10,000 words. So to me, 58,218 words in one year is pretty impressive!
01. Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?:
Oh man, more!! Obviously. While I had hoped to write and post something every month of the year, I still ended up with a higher yearly word count than I'd expected. Which is awesome.
02. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?:
That would definitely be Ghostwriter! Like... what? :D Ghostwriter was a TV show from the 90s that I absolutely adored - I thought it was the coolest shit. I had my own pen on a string and my own casebook and I wrote "Rally J" on everything, I kid you not. I actually bought Season 1 on DVD (YES they have it on DVD!) earlier this year through Amazon, and I regret nothing. When I realized that someone had actually asked for a Ghostwriter fic for Yuletide, I got excited. And then I read their prompt - ideally, future fic with Rob Baker - and got even more excited! It was just a short little treat, but it was surprisingly easy for me to write. I had a lot of fun with it, and I'm glad I decided to give it a try. But yes, definitely would not have predicted writing a Ghostwriter fic back in January, lmao.
03. What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?:
I think that's definitely the correlation of salvation and love (Asuncion RPF, Jesse Eisenberg/Justin Bartha). This is also not a fic I'd have expected to write, but I'm really glad I did. This was my assignment for Yuletide, and it actually flowed out of me the same night I got the assignment email. Jesse/Justin is a different dynamic from the Jesse/Andrew I've written before, and I ended up loving that. I had a lot of fun exploring that sometimes-blurred line between friendship and romance, and setting it amid a wild night out in Manhattan's West Village just made it all the better. I'm actually surprised that I enjoyed writing this as much as I did, and I'm really glad I got this as my assignment and that it came out the way it did.
04. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?:
If I'm being honest, I don't think I took any risks. I mostly stayed to a few fandoms I knew well - The Social Network and Harry Potter - and dabbled with various dynamics and pairings within them. Aside from the few new, small fandoms that I dabbled in for Yuletide, I played it pretty safe. Granted, there is about 2,000 words of foursome porn (Jesse/Andrew/Carey/Emma) that's been sitting on my hard drive since April... but I never had the guts to actually finish that, so it doesn't count. Oh well. Next year, maybe.
05. Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?:
I'm going to try for the goal I set last year: to post one piece of fic every month in 2012. Last year I sort of made that goal and then completely forgot about it, but this year I'm going to give it more of a shot. And I think that, since I wrote over 58,000 words in 2011, I'm going to aim for 60,000 words in 2012. Why not, right?
From my past year of writing, what was...
My Best Story:
I'm trying to avoid repetition here, so I'm going to pick don't tell anyone, but i love you (The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo & Jesse/Andrew). This is a set of twenty drabbles for fics20in20, and it was actually a really great challenge to both be required to follow a prompt and to be required to fulfill said prompt in such a small word count (100-250 words each). I'm really pleased with how a lot of the drabbles came out, like 'minor' and 'minute' and 'middle', and my five food-centric drabbles are cute and make me really happy. They won a couple of awards and I'm really pleased with how the whole thing came out.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:
Oh man, this is easy! to the moon and back (Inception, Arthur/Ariadne). It's the only Inception fic that I wrote this year, and it was for the npmexchange, but I was so happy with how it turned out. And reading it now, I'm still really proud of it. (I think my style really works well with the Arthur/Ariadne pairing. My best work in the past two years really is largely in stories about them.) It's dark and angsty, sure, but I'm so proud of it. AND ALMOST NO ONE HAS READ IT. Why? Because it was never posted to the arthur_ariadne comm. Why? BECAUSE IT'S STILL SITTING IN THE QUEUE. I posted it to the comm back in April and since then, it has never been approved or rejected - and yet hundreds of other posts have been. I've emailed the mod about it twice, and haven't received a response either time. And what's worse is that, because that fic is still sitting in the queue, it won't let me post anything else to that comm. I apparently cannot write any more Arthur/Ariadne and get it at all noticed, because the mod of arthur_ariadne has never approved or denied my post, and nor will they reply to my emails about it. Lol this happened back in April but I am SO FRUSTRATED, STILL, because I am so proud of how this fic came out and no one has even seen it. :(
Most Popular:
Surprisingly, based on comments, it seems to be hepburn had it easy (The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo). I guess because it was written for thesocialbbang, so it was maybe more widely-read than some of my other stuff? Who knows. Either way, I'm incredibly flattered and grateful for the nice things people said on the fic, given how many mixed feelings I have about it. (More on those in a second!)
Most Fun:
Actually, that would be snapshots and ultimatums (Community RPF, Donald Glover/Gillian Jacobs). This wasn't a pairing I was expecting to write at all, but a Dear Yulegoat letter enticed me during the Yuletide treat-writing process. But I had so much fun with it! It's just this fun, short little scene where Gillian and Donald are being silly and using Twitter, but I really enjoyed writing their back-and-forth dynamic. It was fun. :)
Most Disappointing:
I'm not sure if I'd fully label it as "disappointing" or not, because people did seem to like it. But I'm going to say hepburn had it easy (The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo). Maybe I only feel this way because it was such a struggle to get it to a place where I was comfortable with it, or maybe it's because my longer fics never seem to turn out the way I want them to. I always dream of writing something epic, something with thousands and thousands of words that a fandom will love and talk about, and that never happens. The more I write, the more I'm learning that my style really is more suited to shorter, 2,000-5,000 word pieces. It feels more natural. Anything longer than that (this big bang story, and my big bang story last year), feel over-plotted and heavy-handed.
Most Sexy:
It turns out I only wrong one PWP this year! I usually write more than that, haha. I have several R-rated fics with sexy moments, but I feel like I should put pieces form the whole (The Social Network, Jesse/Andrew) on here somewhere.
Andrew’s fingers skirt down his chest and tug at the hem of his dress shirt, and Jesse doesn’t even remember losing his jacket when he feels Andrew tugging at his shirt buttons. There isn’t much he can do but hold onto Andrew’s tie, trying not to pull too hard but sort of enjoying the way Andrew’s breaths come in pants as he gets the last of the buttons undone.
That section actually feels sort of tame, but I didn't want to quote actual PWP sentences in this meme. You can find the rest of it at the link, if that's your cuppa. :)
Story With The Single Sweetest Moment:
Actually, I think the sweetest thing I've written is in nighttime (Harry Potter, Ron/Hermione). Ron/Hermione has been my be-all, end-all OTP since I was eleven years old, and there's a moment in Deathly Hallows where Harry wakes up in Grimmauld Place and thinks that Ron and Hermione fell asleep holding hands. And that? Is the sweetest thing I've ever heard in my life. So I worked that missing scene into a fic, and this is what I came up with:
The darkness makes it easier for Hermione to hide her eyes. She doesn’t want her gaze to meet Ron’s - not now when she’s practically admitting that she could be putting them in danger. She doesn’t want to see his worry or his disappointment.
But then she feels a large, warm hand wrap around hers.
“It’ll be fine,” Ron assures her quietly. “We’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Hermione knows they’re just words, knows that if Snape were to burst in here in the next few minutes, Ron wouldn’t be much of a match for the man who was able to disarm and kill Professor Dumbledore. She knows that they’re no safer than they were ten minutes ago. But the thing is, she feels safer. She feels like maybe they’ll all get out of this okay. With Ron’s hand around hers, she feels protected.
“Okay,” she whispers.
And when she finally does drift off into sleep, Ron’s hand is still wrapped tightly around hers. It feels natural, right, to sleep like this, Hermione realizes right before she drops off.
And though she doesn’t know it, Ron lies awake, eyes focused on the ceiling and hand around Hermione’s, making sure she stays safe until the sun rises.
Hee. :D Awwww, right?
"Holy crap, that's *wrong*, even for you" story:
I... honestly don't think I have a "wrong" fic this year! I wrote mostly some pretty tame stuff this year, I guess.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I think we'll go with mistletoe (Harry Potter, James/Lily). I've never written James/Lily before and have written a very small number of Marauders-era fic, so I'd never really thought extensively about that 'verse or those characters and their relationships to one another. When I went to tackle this one, I had to figure out how Lily went from despising James to liking him, and I had to figure out how to do so without making it seem out of character or like a huge stretch. I also had to figure out how to make James a self-important prick, but how to also humanize him enough that we want Lily to fall for him. The story of Lily-hates-and-then-falls-for-James is basically a given in the HP universe, but I'd never really put that much thought into how that actually could have happened without compromising either James or Lily's characters. So writing this piece was definitely an eye-opener for me!
Biggest Surprise:
Ha! Oh, without a doubt, eventually we find our way (Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom/Theodore Nott). This was a very-belated Christmas gift for end1essly, and it was supposed to be a short little drabble with snow and a misunderstanding. I'd never written Nott before and essentially had no idea who he was, nor had I ever written Neville slash. But I did a bit of reading up on Nott's character and his interpretations in fandom, and I started sketching out a scene or two... and suddenly I had over 5,000 words on my hands! I was not expecting it to be that long, and I was definitely not expecting to enjoy writing this pairing as much as I did. Go figure, huh?
And I think that's it from me for 2011! Thank you to everyone who prompted, read, commented, and rec'd my fics over the past year. I know I'm definitely not the most popular, prolific, or frequent fic author out there, but I so appreciate that people take the time to read the stuff I do end up posting. ♥
Welcome to 2012, everyone! Here's to fandoms, new and old, and to lots more fic! :)
Recently, with the changes to Livejournal's default comment pages, I've been debating what to do about this journal. Do I soldier on and continue to post fic here? Or do I suck it up and move everything over to Archive Of Our Own? I used AO3 for the first time for Yuletide this year, and I quite like the posting/commenting system over there, and the layout is clean. Four of my fics are over there now, and while I've linked them here on LJ, I won't be posting full versions here. They're going to stay on AO3, and I like having them there. I like AO3. I'm just not sure it's worth moving everything - and I don't think you can move over comments. And the selfish part of me doesn't want to post older fics there, because without the comments or a hit count, it'll look like no one has bothered to read my stuff in the first place. :P So, I haven't made up my mind yet. Thoughts?
But anyway, in the meantime! I did a Fic Year In Review meme last year, and really liked the way it laid out all my work and word counts. It's a nice way to get an overview of how much I write in the course of a year, so I've decided to do it again!
In 2011, I wrote 58,218 words in 8 fandoms.
Fic written, by month:
January:
sorry seems to be the hardest word | The Social Network | Mark/Eduardo friendship | PG-13 | 1,334 words.
course match | The Social Network | Mark/Eduardo friendship | PG-13 | 820 words.
pieces form the whole | The Social Network | Jesse/Andrew | NC-17 | 1,771 words.
February:
Nothing this month.
March:
Nothing here either.
April:
eavesdropping | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione, Draco/Ginny | PG-13 | 1,014 words.
hermione | Harry Potter | Hermione gen | PG-13 | 918 words.
divination | Harry Potter | Harry & Ron gen | PG | 1,037 words.
summer before the seventh | Harry Potter | Harry/Ginny | PG-13 | 1,010 words.
and a daisy-covered handkerchief | Harry Potter | Draco & Hermione gen | PG | 691 words.
une lune-voyage à paris | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione | PG | 420 words.
the full moon | Harry Potter | Sirius & Remus friendship | PG | 618 words.
stay warm | Harry Potter | Harry & Ron friendship | PG | 770 words.
nighttime | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione | PG | 983 words.
if i lay here | Harry Potter | Draco/Ginny | PG-13 | 1,023 words.
dress robes | Harry Potter | Ron Weasley gen | PG | 1,110 words.
eventually we find our way | Harry Potter | Neville Longbottom/Theodore Nott | PG | 5,269 words.
a little friendly competition | Harry Potter | Oliver Wood/Cedric Diggory | PG-13 | 1,028 words.
to the moon and back | Inception | Arthur/Ariadne | R | 3,748 words.
May:
don't tell anyone, but i love you | Mark/Eduardo & Jesse/Andrew | PG-13 | 3,965 words.
June:
Um. More nothing.
July:
I had a lot going on in July, so...
August:
Still nothing.
September:
hepburn had it easy | The Social Network | Mark/Eduardo | R | 15,427 words.
October:
new year's eve | Harry Potter | Neville/Ginny | PG | 889 words.
dress robes | Harry Potter | Ron/Hermione | PG | 820 words.
confessions: good for the soul | Harry Potter | Fred & George Weasley gen | PG | 1,013 words.
alcohol makes the dumbest wizards dumber | Harry Potter | Trio gen | PG | 993 words.
November:
And again, nothing. /o\
December:
mistletoe | Harry Potter | James/Lily | PG | 2,255 words.
the correlation of salvation and love | Asuncion RPF | Jesse Eisenberg/Justin Bartha | R | 2,416 words.
snapshots and ultimatums | Community RPF | Donald Glover/Gillian Jacobs | PG | 669 words.
give me back my pieces | Everwood | Bright/Hannah | PG-13 | 1,804 words.
eventually we find our way | Ghostwriter | Rob Baker gen | G | 794 words.
midnight | The Social Network | Jesse/Andrew | PG-13 | 3,609 words.
You know what's crazy? Last year, I wrote 44,954 words - and before I made up this list, I actually thought I'd written less than that this year. I thought I would have been lucky to hit 40,000 words. And yet... somehow I blew past that and wrote 58,218 words - more than thirteen thousand more than last year. And I somehow managed to do that without posting any fic in six out of the twelve months of the year. What the hell! I'm so pleased. :) I realize that, for a lot of people, 58,000 words wouldn't be a big deal. But I'm someone whose fics usually don't surpass the 5,000 mark, and I've only ever written two fics that were over 10,000 words. So to me, 58,218 words in one year is pretty impressive!
01. Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?:
Oh man, more!! Obviously. While I had hoped to write and post something every month of the year, I still ended up with a higher yearly word count than I'd expected. Which is awesome.
02. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?:
That would definitely be Ghostwriter! Like... what? :D Ghostwriter was a TV show from the 90s that I absolutely adored - I thought it was the coolest shit. I had my own pen on a string and my own casebook and I wrote "Rally J" on everything, I kid you not. I actually bought Season 1 on DVD (YES they have it on DVD!) earlier this year through Amazon, and I regret nothing. When I realized that someone had actually asked for a Ghostwriter fic for Yuletide, I got excited. And then I read their prompt - ideally, future fic with Rob Baker - and got even more excited! It was just a short little treat, but it was surprisingly easy for me to write. I had a lot of fun with it, and I'm glad I decided to give it a try. But yes, definitely would not have predicted writing a Ghostwriter fic back in January, lmao.
03. What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?:
I think that's definitely the correlation of salvation and love (Asuncion RPF, Jesse Eisenberg/Justin Bartha). This is also not a fic I'd have expected to write, but I'm really glad I did. This was my assignment for Yuletide, and it actually flowed out of me the same night I got the assignment email. Jesse/Justin is a different dynamic from the Jesse/Andrew I've written before, and I ended up loving that. I had a lot of fun exploring that sometimes-blurred line between friendship and romance, and setting it amid a wild night out in Manhattan's West Village just made it all the better. I'm actually surprised that I enjoyed writing this as much as I did, and I'm really glad I got this as my assignment and that it came out the way it did.
04. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?:
If I'm being honest, I don't think I took any risks. I mostly stayed to a few fandoms I knew well - The Social Network and Harry Potter - and dabbled with various dynamics and pairings within them. Aside from the few new, small fandoms that I dabbled in for Yuletide, I played it pretty safe. Granted, there is about 2,000 words of foursome porn (Jesse/Andrew/Carey/Emma) that's been sitting on my hard drive since April... but I never had the guts to actually finish that, so it doesn't count. Oh well. Next year, maybe.
05. Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?:
I'm going to try for the goal I set last year: to post one piece of fic every month in 2012. Last year I sort of made that goal and then completely forgot about it, but this year I'm going to give it more of a shot. And I think that, since I wrote over 58,000 words in 2011, I'm going to aim for 60,000 words in 2012. Why not, right?
From my past year of writing, what was...
My Best Story:
I'm trying to avoid repetition here, so I'm going to pick don't tell anyone, but i love you (The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo & Jesse/Andrew). This is a set of twenty drabbles for fics20in20, and it was actually a really great challenge to both be required to follow a prompt and to be required to fulfill said prompt in such a small word count (100-250 words each). I'm really pleased with how a lot of the drabbles came out, like 'minor' and 'minute' and 'middle', and my five food-centric drabbles are cute and make me really happy. They won a couple of awards and I'm really pleased with how the whole thing came out.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:
Oh man, this is easy! to the moon and back (Inception, Arthur/Ariadne). It's the only Inception fic that I wrote this year, and it was for the npmexchange, but I was so happy with how it turned out. And reading it now, I'm still really proud of it. (I think my style really works well with the Arthur/Ariadne pairing. My best work in the past two years really is largely in stories about them.) It's dark and angsty, sure, but I'm so proud of it. AND ALMOST NO ONE HAS READ IT. Why? Because it was never posted to the arthur_ariadne comm. Why? BECAUSE IT'S STILL SITTING IN THE QUEUE. I posted it to the comm back in April and since then, it has never been approved or rejected - and yet hundreds of other posts have been. I've emailed the mod about it twice, and haven't received a response either time. And what's worse is that, because that fic is still sitting in the queue, it won't let me post anything else to that comm. I apparently cannot write any more Arthur/Ariadne and get it at all noticed, because the mod of arthur_ariadne has never approved or denied my post, and nor will they reply to my emails about it. Lol this happened back in April but I am SO FRUSTRATED, STILL, because I am so proud of how this fic came out and no one has even seen it. :(
Most Popular:
Surprisingly, based on comments, it seems to be hepburn had it easy (The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo). I guess because it was written for thesocialbbang, so it was maybe more widely-read than some of my other stuff? Who knows. Either way, I'm incredibly flattered and grateful for the nice things people said on the fic, given how many mixed feelings I have about it. (More on those in a second!)
Most Fun:
Actually, that would be snapshots and ultimatums (Community RPF, Donald Glover/Gillian Jacobs). This wasn't a pairing I was expecting to write at all, but a Dear Yulegoat letter enticed me during the Yuletide treat-writing process. But I had so much fun with it! It's just this fun, short little scene where Gillian and Donald are being silly and using Twitter, but I really enjoyed writing their back-and-forth dynamic. It was fun. :)
Most Disappointing:
I'm not sure if I'd fully label it as "disappointing" or not, because people did seem to like it. But I'm going to say hepburn had it easy (The Social Network, Mark/Eduardo). Maybe I only feel this way because it was such a struggle to get it to a place where I was comfortable with it, or maybe it's because my longer fics never seem to turn out the way I want them to. I always dream of writing something epic, something with thousands and thousands of words that a fandom will love and talk about, and that never happens. The more I write, the more I'm learning that my style really is more suited to shorter, 2,000-5,000 word pieces. It feels more natural. Anything longer than that (this big bang story, and my big bang story last year), feel over-plotted and heavy-handed.
Most Sexy:
It turns out I only wrong one PWP this year! I usually write more than that, haha. I have several R-rated fics with sexy moments, but I feel like I should put pieces form the whole (The Social Network, Jesse/Andrew) on here somewhere.
Andrew’s fingers skirt down his chest and tug at the hem of his dress shirt, and Jesse doesn’t even remember losing his jacket when he feels Andrew tugging at his shirt buttons. There isn’t much he can do but hold onto Andrew’s tie, trying not to pull too hard but sort of enjoying the way Andrew’s breaths come in pants as he gets the last of the buttons undone.
That section actually feels sort of tame, but I didn't want to quote actual PWP sentences in this meme. You can find the rest of it at the link, if that's your cuppa. :)
Story With The Single Sweetest Moment:
Actually, I think the sweetest thing I've written is in nighttime (Harry Potter, Ron/Hermione). Ron/Hermione has been my be-all, end-all OTP since I was eleven years old, and there's a moment in Deathly Hallows where Harry wakes up in Grimmauld Place and thinks that Ron and Hermione fell asleep holding hands. And that? Is the sweetest thing I've ever heard in my life. So I worked that missing scene into a fic, and this is what I came up with:
The darkness makes it easier for Hermione to hide her eyes. She doesn’t want her gaze to meet Ron’s - not now when she’s practically admitting that she could be putting them in danger. She doesn’t want to see his worry or his disappointment.
But then she feels a large, warm hand wrap around hers.
“It’ll be fine,” Ron assures her quietly. “We’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
Hermione knows they’re just words, knows that if Snape were to burst in here in the next few minutes, Ron wouldn’t be much of a match for the man who was able to disarm and kill Professor Dumbledore. She knows that they’re no safer than they were ten minutes ago. But the thing is, she feels safer. She feels like maybe they’ll all get out of this okay. With Ron’s hand around hers, she feels protected.
“Okay,” she whispers.
And when she finally does drift off into sleep, Ron’s hand is still wrapped tightly around hers. It feels natural, right, to sleep like this, Hermione realizes right before she drops off.
And though she doesn’t know it, Ron lies awake, eyes focused on the ceiling and hand around Hermione’s, making sure she stays safe until the sun rises.
Hee. :D Awwww, right?
"Holy crap, that's *wrong*, even for you" story:
I... honestly don't think I have a "wrong" fic this year! I wrote mostly some pretty tame stuff this year, I guess.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
I think we'll go with mistletoe (Harry Potter, James/Lily). I've never written James/Lily before and have written a very small number of Marauders-era fic, so I'd never really thought extensively about that 'verse or those characters and their relationships to one another. When I went to tackle this one, I had to figure out how Lily went from despising James to liking him, and I had to figure out how to do so without making it seem out of character or like a huge stretch. I also had to figure out how to make James a self-important prick, but how to also humanize him enough that we want Lily to fall for him. The story of Lily-hates-and-then-falls-for-James is basically a given in the HP universe, but I'd never really put that much thought into how that actually could have happened without compromising either James or Lily's characters. So writing this piece was definitely an eye-opener for me!
Biggest Surprise:
Ha! Oh, without a doubt, eventually we find our way (Harry Potter, Neville Longbottom/Theodore Nott). This was a very-belated Christmas gift for end1essly, and it was supposed to be a short little drabble with snow and a misunderstanding. I'd never written Nott before and essentially had no idea who he was, nor had I ever written Neville slash. But I did a bit of reading up on Nott's character and his interpretations in fandom, and I started sketching out a scene or two... and suddenly I had over 5,000 words on my hands! I was not expecting it to be that long, and I was definitely not expecting to enjoy writing this pairing as much as I did. Go figure, huh?
And I think that's it from me for 2011! Thank you to everyone who prompted, read, commented, and rec'd my fics over the past year. I know I'm definitely not the most popular, prolific, or frequent fic author out there, but I so appreciate that people take the time to read the stuff I do end up posting. ♥
Welcome to 2012, everyone! Here's to fandoms, new and old, and to lots more fic! :)