My 2012 Fic Year in Review, part one
According to the AO3, I have completed and posted forty-seven fics in three fandoms (45 Glee, 1 The New Normal, 1 Teen Wolf) in 2012 for a total of 448,391 words.
Okay, wow. Seriously? Given all of the re-writing I've done on those fics and the handful of stories I started but haven't finished, that's well over half a million words out of my fingers this year. I guess I can't be too down on myself for not being productive.
(I mean, I'm me, so I totally can, but still. Wow. I didn't expect it to be that high.)
And now, I shall blather on about every fic on that list! :D Spoilers through Glee 4x10!
"The Definition of Comfort Fic" - I started out the year working on "I'll Fly Away" (which comes next), but stoney321 needed a virtual hug in mid-January (despite me having just given her real ones in New York!), so I wrote one. It's a little story of how having people who love and get you can help with the melancholy of life. I have this thing for what kinds of pictures Kurt and Blaine must have of their lives, and that showed up. I also have a thing for snow, which I find very atmospheric and romantic, and that popped up, too. And I like Kurt, despite him being comfortable with Blaine, still being a bit awkward about his affection.
"I'll Fly Away" - As I wrote in my year in review for 2011, I frequently start writing fics from a question or problem that is bothering me, and I poke at the idea until I have an answer, which usually comes out in a fic. In this case, I had two questions: why the heck does Kurt keep sitting on the very edge of the choir room this season, and what's behind all of his bird and airplane accessories? I'm absolutely obsessed with Kurt's wardrobe, so I came up with a fic that was about accessories - canonical and non-canonical - his feeling of being on the outside of the community in Lima and in school, and his dreams of flying away to New York for a better future. It's about the way Kurt sees the world and one way he expresses it. And it's about his relationship with Blaine, in some parts more than others.
I really like the idea of this fic. It's more meta and requires more work on the part of the audience to connect the thematic dots than I usually write (and may require the reader to have paid as close attention to details about Kurt as I have), and I don't know if that makes it unsuccessful or not, but as a concept, structure, and focus for a story this is very me, not flaming muse but me in the real world… which is a distinction that probably won't make sense even to the very few of you who know me outside of fandom, but there you are.
"Something Blue" - I have this thing for outsiders watching Kurt and Blaine together, and when I got to thinking about how the boys might react to Will and Emma getting engaged and being a part of that and how they aren't able to get married in Ohio as gay men, Rachel started talking in my head, because of course her dads can't be married there, either. I also really like the dynamic where Kurt is comfortable in the girls' bathroom (as we see in canon) or locker room but Blaine is not; I've written it before (in "Reflection" at least), and it's personal headcanon for me.
I liked Kurt being able to show some guarded tenderness as well as bossiness around Blaine's grooming, and I liked Rachel kind of getting choked up about them. As the daughter of two gay fathers I don't think she so much fetishizes her two gay friends dating as finds it very comfortable. She loves them, wants them to be happy, and is incensed that they don't show all of their love in front of her (because when you write Rachel you always have to pull it back to being about her!). I love watching her watch Blaine watch Kurt. I like her feeling like she's playing in love when she sees them together:
And yet there was something about Kurt and Blaine that made her feel a little small inside, like she was a girl playing dress-up instead of the woman she was becoming.
It was in the way they didn’t seem to feel the need to express their feelings publicly all that much, like they’d been dating far longer than she and Finn had been circling around each other instead of the opposite. It wasn’t that they weren’t affectionate, and she knew a lot of their hesitation could be because of where they were instead of what they might have wanted to do, but there was a steadiness to them that she just couldn’t stop noticing. They didn’t need to show off for each other or anyone else to prove anything, because they already knew.
It was different from what she had with Finn. It was different from what Tina had with Mike. It reminded her of her dads, and not just because they were gay. It was because they were together, and there was no question for them of it. Like they were already the real thing, and she was just pretending the same way she’d pretended she and Finn were living together the magical night he’d made her a special dinner and held her close under the blankets by the fire.
And I had to comment on how ridiculously cold they all looked in the pool and the strangeness of Will asking Finn to be his best man. But mostly I wanted a sweet moment for Kurt and Blaine where Rachel is upset on their behalf.
"It's All Fun and Games Until…" - Post-"Michael" fic number one - This fic started with two lines in my head. First was: “I do believe, Mr. Anderson,” Kurt said dryly, “that you’re as high as the proverbial kite.” Second was: “At the end of the day, being pushed around still sucks even when the guy is gay, you know?”//There was a second of silence before Kurt let out a hollow chuckle, barely tinged with humor. “Oh, Blaine. I could have told you that and saved you a lot of trouble.”
Seeing Blaine on the ground in the parking garage in this episode, I knew I had to write about what it meant to Blaine to be hurt, Blaine who had been on the ground before when he was seriously beaten up before Dalton. The aftermath of Sebastian's attack isn't just the pain and horror of this incident but reflects back on his bullied life before. And yet, Blaine isn't always in touch with his feelings and is doped up on painkillers (this is my explanation for why he's so dippy in the "Ben" scene in his bedroom), so having him have some of his barriers down because of the drugs kind of made it easier for him to feel things he didn't know he was feeling.
I wanted this fic to have a light, dizzy feeling through it, a solid warmth and affection between Kurt and Blaine, and yet ultimately be about the fact that this attack is really hard and upsetting for them both. I wanted Kurt to be angry about Sebastian in general and not just about the slushie. I wanted Blaine to be upset about the Warblers. I wanted to see some physical connection between the two of them (but not be sexual). I wanted it to be bittersweet, because as much as they love each other bad things still happen. And yet I find it hopeful, in a way, because it's so much better for Blaine because he has Kurt. I think I hit all of that.
And I love the subtext/text in: Something in Blaine’s gut squirmed uncomfortably; he realized after a moment that it was his stomach twisting up in guilty, soup-free knots. He looked down at the throw over his lap and got caught in the neat lines of the plaid, so structured and stable, so full of rules of how to be and where to go. Thick line, thin line, black, red, answer the phone, smile when people talk to you, never step out of the boundaries of your place in the pattern -
"The Call" - My second "Michael"-related fic. I was thinking about what the immediate aftermath of Blaine's injury would be, who the kids would call, how he'd get help, and that got me to thinking about how Burt would feel about it. I had the mental image of him driving through dark, empty streets, frustrated and edgy and needing to be at the hospital already to see Kurt, and out came this fic. It's my first Burt-POV fic, and it pulled from a different part of my heart than usual, this time the side of me that's a parent. I like the idea in it that Blaine is part of the family and that Burt is grateful to and respects Blaine for protecting Kurt, even though he obviously doesn't like that Blaine is hurt at all. I also like how Burt can't solve things, but he wants to be there, anyway.
It's also the beginning of my headcanon that Burt doesn't understand the game Angry Birds.
"Feelings" - I wasn't planning on writing anything about "The Spanish Teacher," since Kurt hadn't done anything I needed to explore more and Blaine wasn't in the episode… but then nearing the end of my writing week I realized that I wanted to write about Blaine not being in the episode. I wanted him to felt left out and left behind. We return to the idea that Blaine being medicated makes him feel things he might not normally acknowledge to himself, and we really start in on the idea that was in my head since the beginning of the season that Blaine and Kurt are both aware that Kurt will be going away after graduation… and they feel differently about it.
I think I caught what I wanted to catch with Blaine feeling out of the loop and out of Kurt's life, and we'll see that theme crop up again and again as we go on this year. I think I caught the wistfulness and sweetness I wanted for them. And I like the idea of them planning to send daily pictures of their outfits to each other; I think Kurt would love that bit of sartorial knowledge, and Blaine would like the intimacy of it. And we end with them having new informal pictures of each other, their barriers down, and Kurt taking care of Blaine in his own Kurt way, which isn't necessarily how Blaine wants to be cared for but is love nonetheless. (That will come up again as well.)
I like writing dopey, drugged Blaine. It makes me grin at the screen while I write. This mopey line is a particular favorite: "I know," Blaine said sadly. He picked at the edge of his throw. The same throw he’d have next year, while Kurt had a new, exciting New York throw.
"The Many Valentines of Blaine Anderson" - Oh, this is one of my favorite fics of the year. I had SO much fun writing it. As much as I am a very focused and usually very reality-based Kurt/Blaine writer, I adore the ensemble of the show and the often silly tone of it, and when I get to flex my muscles and write more characters in a more comic tone it's a treat. I LOVE this fic. (And I am writer who detests 99% of what I write. I have issues; just ignore them.)
I started thinking about this episode wondering why Blaine doesn't set Kurt straight about not being his secret admirer, because Kurt would obviously mention it with delight even if he assumed Blaine wouldn't admit he was said admirer. And then I thought about how Blaine would feel about Kurt having an admirer and what he might want to do about it even if he was trying to be supportive because Kurt was so happy. And then I couldn't fall asleep that night because I kept thinking with great amusement about all of the horrible ways the New Directions kids would "help" Blaine escalate the Valentine-giving process and all of the flirty comments Kurt would make that would be just awful because Blaine isn't the guy sending him the presents, only Kurt doesn't know that. :D
There's at least one line in pretty much every scene that still makes me laugh or smile, starting with Puck's "ribbed for his pleasure" and all of the way through Blaine singing "Lovefool" to Kurt and Kurt singing back. I like that the fic is achy and doesn't stay totally in the comic tone. I like the eyepatch emoticons (stoney came up with the best one! P-) ). I like them dancing at the end, even though their PDA is still a fine line for me in terms of how far I want to push it and still feel like they're them. I like that it fits into canon but is this whole other story set during the same time.
But mostly I just like that the fic wrote itself smoothly and makes me laugh in the voices of so many different characters.
"Make You A Man" - I think a lot about the differences between Kurt and Blaine and about how their external appearances shape their lives. I think a lot about gender assumptions and passing. I think a lot about how their personalities and experiences inform their personal and sexual expression (and we'll see more of that this year from me). I think a lot about how Blaine presents as more traditionally masculine and yet has in some ways a more passive (and thus "feminine" - lord, do I hate how these issues are gendered) personality to contrast with Kurt's more traditionally feminine exterior (if you don't have eyes - seriously, have you seen his shoulders and arms?), his happy mixing of male and female clothing items, and his stronger (and thus "masculine") sense of self. I think about how Kurt seems comfortable with things being fluid and yet is confident in his own maleness, and how that might be really disconcerting for Blaine. And sometimes, like here, I freewrite about it. I'm very pleased with how this story turned out.
"There But for the Grace of…" - "On My Way" was a terrible episode for me to write about, not because of the difficult subject matter, which I wanted to draw out, but because it ended on a cliff-hanger, so I couldn't comfortably write about what came afterwards. So I wrote instead in Burt's POV about the more immediate in-episode aftermath of Karofksy's suicide attempt, Kurt's guilt over it, his apparent distance from Blaine about it, his body language and brittleness in the episode, and the absolute horror any parent must feel about the thought of losing a child to suicide and bullying. I wrote, ultimately, about how it could have been Kurt or Blaine who tried to kill themselves instead, and about how it's still hard for them even though it wasn't.
I'm proud of this fic. I'm proud of the voices. I'm proud of the emotions. I'm proud of how difficult it is for all of them, both internally and in the jerkiness of their conversations. I'm proud of them all loving each other. And I'm proud of Burt pointing out that Kurt and Blaine should be told of the suicide attempt both away from other kids and together, because they're his boys and he gets them.
(And I fully expected to write more about this episode, only I spent the hiatus focused on "Near Misses" instead.)
"Brothers" - I really enjoyed "Big Brother," and I wanted to explore more of Blaine's hopes for his reconnection with Cooper and frustrations with him and Kurt's adorable fluttery side toward Cooper, and I thought both could come up nicely in a fic where Blaine's relationship with his biological brother is contrasted with Kurt and Finn as relatively new step-brothers. I have such a soft spot for the Hudmel family, and the tiny little hints we get from time to time of Finn and Kurt actually being brothers are never enough for me. Found/created families are so compelling to me.
Given that so much of what I drew on was the comedy of the episode, this fic is pretty angsty. I didn't feel any need to avoid that, because the episode itself makes Blaine feel better, and I liked exploring the darker parts of Blaine's feelings contrasted with Kurt's obliviousness. I also liked giving Finn, Kurt, and Blaine some mellow time in the kitchen and Kurt and Blaine some private time in Kurt's bedroom. I wanted to weave the threads of Blaine's unhappiness through the comfortable ease of what should seem like ongoing banter, shared histories, and familiar (instead of new and exciting) kisses and so forth, the kind that has to be a part of their lives only we don't see it much in the show. There are a lot of families in this fic, including Blaine being a part of the Hudmels and the little familiar that Kurt and Blaine as a pair are creating the two of them.
"Beneath the Surface" - I almost didn't write this story, and after I wrote it I almost didn't post it. My working title was the "Mildly Offensive Blaine is Bi-racial Story," and I wasn't sure if what I was writing was honoring the subject matter or just appropriating it for my own privileged use. I am a member of a trans-racial family (white parent of an Asian child) and drew from the experiences from friends of mine, as well, who grew up biracial and/or a person of color in the US, but still. The last thing I wanted to be was offensive. That was the whole point. I posted the fic prepared to get a lot of negative feedback about it, but I hoped that even if I totally missed the mark somehow the subject matter was important enough to merit starting the conversation.
The genesis of the story was there apparently some kerfuffle in fandom about Darren Criss being biracial. I am very much on the periphery of Glee fandom out of dislike of spoilers and negativity, so I never did see any of the conversation about it, only heard that there was one. I found it weird, because Darren IS, so how is there anything to argue about? But it did get me to thinking not for the first time about how Blaine might have experienced his life as biracial (because in my mind he is), and combining that with us meeting Cooper, who as played by Matt Bomer is white, and Blaine's jealousy around him stemming not just from their personalities but something also bigger and harder, I had a fic in my head. I wrote it very, very quickly, the words tumbling out of me and keeping me up at night, typing on my laptop in the dark while my son fell asleep in the room with me.
I am extremely glad I wrote this story. Not only did I get wonderful feedback from people who have lived the same kinds of experiences as Blaine, but I feel like I touched on truth with it. I write a lot about the LGBT experience through this fandom, but this fic let me talk about racism, too, in particular racism around Asians, which can get overlooked because a lot of the stereotypes are 'positive', as well as expand the ideas of passing and fitting/blending in around Blaine into more complex levels beyond his sexuality. It's one of the most interesting uses of fanfic, to explore real world issues as well as giving us deeper understandings of the characters. I think that's what I did.
When I look at my corpus of fanfic, this is one of the ones I hope people think of when they think of my writing.
"To Thine Own Self Be True" - "Saturday Night Glee-ver" was not my favorite episode in the world (I may echo the kids yelling "disco sucks!"), and I didn't think I'd have much to write about it… but then there was Unique, and I kept coming back to the incredibly important idea that Kurt might be gay, but he lives in Ohio and doesn't have an automatic pass into understanding all parts of the LGBT experience. His unwillingness to wear a complete outfit of women's clothing (no matter how he's pushed the boundaries), the assumption by some that he should easily dress like a woman, and the way he puts his own judgments onto Unique was huge to me, and I wanted to poke at that some more. It's a shock to his system; he's always been the most "extreme" gay person he knows, and suddenly he has to face the fact that he's only one color in the rainbow, one little, uninformed color. I wanted him to talk about it with Blaine, his gay BFF (as well as boyfriend) and former role model. I wanted to touch on why Kurt is a gay icon in the school and Blaine is not. So I wrote a fic about it. It may be a little less subtle than I'd like, but it is what it is.
I do like Kurt being so thrown by realizing he said and thought the wrong thing that he can't put together an outfit. :)
"Five Times Kurt Tried to Reach Out to Blaine... and One Time Blaine Reached Back" - Ah, "Dance With Somebody." How I loved that episode for all of the drama, the singing, and the happy ending. Also, Kurt bringing in a cheese board to eat with Blaine while watching TV. The only problem with the episode is that I wanted more. (This is a common problem for me. It's why I write fic.) I wanted to think about why and how. I wanted to think about what it felt like for Kurt to have Blaine pull away and to have Chandler showing interest, because if Kurt flirted in a way he shouldn't have Blaine pulled back first. They both hurt each other; it's not a one-sided problem in this episode. I wanted to think about how Kurt feels about Blaine taking their problems to the choir room and turning his friends against him. I wanted to think about how simple little throw-aways in Kurt's moments of self-absorption combined with Blaine's issues could help spiral things to the place it went. I wanted more!
It's also my first ever 5+1 fic! I think it was a good use of the structure to give us distinct scenes on a theme around the episode, and I like the moments I built here, especially the Kurt ducking his head behind the locker door and Kurt standing in the parking lot with Emma. I can see those so vividly in my head.
"Being Kurt Hummel" - It is not too melodramatic to state that if I'd been hit by a bus or lost my muse after posting "Being Kurt Hummel" I would have felt like I'd pretty much said what I needed to say in fandom.
Kurt Hummel is my character. He's one of those characters you meet in your life who touches you down to your soul. I've loved him since season one, I've laughed with him and cried with him, flailed over his outfits and his snark and his drive and his heart, and squeaked into my pillow with joy and despair as he's grown and loved and learned. As much as I love Blaine - and I really have grown to adore that boy - it's Kurt who has to be first in my heart, forever and always.
This story is my love letter to him, the real him, not the character who just pops up on our screen for not enough minutes a week but the real boy who grew up in Lima, Ohio, figuring out who he was and what it means, what it feels like, to be gay. This story is about Kurt coming out to himself and to the world and what that means.
In retrospect, I wish I'd let it be even longer than it is, and I wish I'd written the dancing-in-Lima scene somewhat differently… I don't know, I think I wish I'd been more willing to write beyond canon and talk more about him learning about himself all over again in New York, even though I was trying to stay within canon-as-we-knew-it as much as I could even at the end. But still, this fic comes right from my heart, right from my own knowledge of friends coming out, right from the grand moments and tiny clues throughout canon I wanted to stitch together into a bigger picture.
I wanted to talk about pervasive homophobia, about the fear of coming out, about hearing the word gay and knowing it's bad before knowing what it means and that you are. I wanted to talk about Kurt's relationship to being sexual, to pornography, to being bullied both physically and verbally about his desires. I wanted to talk about Kurt's tight body language and being so abrasive and closed-off, despite how huge his heart is. I wanted to talk about how people assume Kurt is submissive when he can be actually quite dominant in a relationship. I wanted to talk about Kurt learning to trust himself and feel comfortable in his own skin and with his own desires. I wanted to talk about Kurt's relationship within his friends and how that changes when his sexuality comes into play in the conversation. I wanted to talk about how having a boyfriend doesn't solve his problems, only changes them. I wanted to talk about how every teenager has a complicated relationship with sex and dating, though the road may be different. I wanted to talk about how the voices from Lima are in Kurt's head and color his view of himself even when he wants to reject them. I wanted to talk about how good Kurt and Blaine for each other because of how respectful they are of each other, how they listen and talk, and how that's something to be valued among the relationships of their peers. I wanted to talk about how it will be different for Kurt when he has a bigger world around him than just Lima.
I wanted to talk about how fucking hard it is to be Kurt Hummel in Ohio and still be standing tall and sure of himself despite what everyone around him tells him - including sometimes what he tells himself - and how amazing a character he is. How amazing a person he is.
This story took me over. He did. I worked incredibly hard on it, thought so very long about everything we know about him, what it means, and how to write it in a story form.
I will never be happy with it. It will never be enough. But I wanted to honor Kurt, and I think I did.
And this line is my favorite, because this is so much of what I think makes things complicated for him:
Returning the favor [of giving a blow job] is harder for Kurt, not because he doesn't want to do it but because he's been told so often for so long that this is one of the only things he is good for that the part of him that refuses to bend to the rules of society hates that they might actually be right.
"Prom Queen 2012" - I had some real problems with "Prom-a-saurus" around how they dealt with (or didn't seriously enough) the fall-out of "Prom Queen" (the most important episode for me of season 2 in many ways), and so I took the opportunity to write about just a few seconds of time in the episode that encompass so much of the horror Kurt must feel about being there on that stage again with the fear of being crowned. As short as it is, I needed to write this fic. I needed to let him have that moment when it was so glossed over in the episode. It's yet another fic where Kurt's already flying away, looking toward the future. It was also a good, little story to write on the heels of "Being Kurt Hummel," of a similar theme but separate enough that I could start to move beyond the feelings in my head about that fic.
"The Nature of Dreams" - One of the things I remember about getting ready to graduate from high school was how small everything began to feel at the end, and out of my wreck of emotions from "Nationals" and the seniors' impending graduation I wrote about Kurt and Rachel getting ready to say goodbye. I love Hummelberry BFFs and Finn and Blaine, and I gave Rachel and Kurt a moment to think on the present and the future. It's the passing of the torch to the next year, in my own little way.
I still get a sad face at the end of the fic, heavy handed as it may be:
“Hey,” Blaine says, stopping just inside of the darkened room, “why are all of the lights off?”
Kurt picks up his bag from the riser and walks over to him.
“Because,” he replies with one last look at the trophy case and a quiet sense of a door about to close, “it’s time for us to go.”
"Schadenfreude" - I know fandom flipped out that Kurt didn't get into NYADA at the end of season 3 (and I was sad for him, of course), but part of what I was struck by having lived in Blaine's head much of the season with him getting ready to miss Kurt was the relief he must feel at Kurt not going. Obviously he'd be heartbroken for him, but he'd also be relieved that Kurt wasn't leaving him behind, because he could have easily been Finn on that train platform waving goodbye. Add in some Kurt being brave and strong, honestly happy for Rachel, sad for himself but looking ahead, and I had a fic. Having spent the year writing him making plans for New York, Kurt having to reshape his dreams and feel stuck still hurts me to re-read. I think I said what I wanted to say. And I wish I could hear Chris Colfer say this line the way I hear it in my head:
He tilts his head and says with a sad wobble of a smile, “I’m happy for her, Blaine, but I wanted to be happy for me, too.”
"Boys of Summer" - I was feeling frustrated with "Near Misses" and the Kurt fic I posted next, which were taking too long for me to write, so I decided to do some summery freewriting. I had loved writing the hammock fics last summer to frame the summer hiatus, and I thought about doing something similar (and ultimately did). I also was supposed to be starting up some co-writing around seasons with a fandom friend that never happened because "Near Misses" was such a beast, and I wanted to try to think about that sort of thing. So I wrote this dreamy snippet of summer, and I love it.
"The One Where They Have Brunch" - I'd settled in after "Goodbye" and wanted the characters to settle in, too. I also wanted to hear Kurt's voice about not getting into NYADA and how it would feel when Rachel gets back from her trip to New York. He's a generous friend, but it would still be hard for him. I was thinking, too, about how Blaine might feel as a third wheel with the two of them and how Kurt has such close female friends and Blaine does not. I was also thinking that they'd all enjoy dressing up for brunch. :)
I like here how Kurt doesn't want to talk about himself, how his own feelings are kind of off limits because he's putting on a brave face for her. I like how he's proud of himself for it, though it costs him. He does love her, he can let down his guard some with Blaine instead, and he's feeling hopeful, because he's Kurt fucking Hummel, and when he's knocked down he gets his feet back under him and keeps going.
"Tomorrow, Today Will Be Yesterday" - I was very sick when I wrote this story, and it shows in the style. Not badly, I think, but I tend to write differently when I'm sick, a little more meta. I was sitting in my comfy chair in my office one morning, dizzy on cold medicine, and ended up thinking about how things that are hard for Kurt and Blaine now - like holding hands - will be so different and easy to take for granted when they've grown up and are settled into an adult relationship somewhere safe. It's a fic about growing up and about being able to be free and open about being in love, which is a luxury for them now.
I really like this fic, what it says about them as boys and them as men, and how it comes together.
"Near Misses" - Oh, god, this really deserves its own post to talk about this 200,000 word monster in any detail. I shall try to be brief. (Ha ha ha.) The genesis of this story started during the summer after season 2, when I started to think about how Kurt was changing and feeling more settled and sure and how different Kurt and Blaine might have been if they hadn't met each other, but when I started writing it I felt like we didn't know enough about Blaine to do him justice in the story. I wrote the introduction, the meeting on the quad scene, and a little bit of Blaine meeting Peter and then set it aside. As season 3 progressed, though, we learned a ton about Blaine, and I reshuffled the cards in my head and got a really interesting (to me) picture of what life without Kurt might have done to him, especially after the introduction of Sebastian.
I thought about a Kurt who had never had anyone interested in him finding himself flirted with in college and how the fluttery boy inside of him would have been so giddy about it, giddy to the point that he'd think he was getting romance when he was actually getting picked up and how hard that would have been for him to come to realize, that even in college and in New York he wasn't being swept off of his feet. But still, the lure of that kind of sexual desire and connection - as incomplete as it is for him - isn't something he can just shut off. Nor is his much deeper and never-fulfilled desire for real and true love. But he can't control that, and he can control his career, the only thing that is up to him (more or less), so he focuses on what he can do and become because he can't have what he wants, which is love.
I thought about a Blaine who had a boyfriend who was petty and jealous of him as well as admiring, who got sex and thought it was love, whose place in his safe home of the Warblers was undercut, and who was never coaxed out from behind his façade and who was in fact not understood or cared for when he shared the darker and more insecure parts of himself. He never had someone like Kurt to accept him, he was only accepted if he was perfect and easy, and he had put up his walls higher and thicker, only peeking out in the kind way he treats the boys he hooks up with.
I thought about a Kurt who wants love but who assumes his feelings will never be reciprocated, and I thought about a Blaine who only connects on the surface and has lied to himself that he wants nothing more.
And I thought about how much they needed each other and how badly it would go if they met like that. "Oh," I said to myself with growing glee, because I'm evil as a writer. "That would be a disaster."
What I love about AUs is how they can illuminate so much about the canonical characters and what canonical events mean to them, and this idea really hit the mark for me. Good thing I didn't know how many words it would take me to write it. :)
I wrote this story over many months, mostly over hiatuses. The bulk of the big arc and character movement was firmly fixed by April, and I remember being very worried when I saw the promo blurb on my TiVo for the episode that whatever we might learn from "Big Brother" would blow my understanding of Blaine out of the water. (It didn't at all, just added some nice layers, but writing within open canon is scary that way.) The pieces I knew from the very start were that they'd be drawn together at that dance, would sleep together, and because of their baggage would make a total mess of things afterwards. I loved the contrast to canon, because even though the sex would still be meaningful they wouldn't know each other. They wouldn't know how to read each other. And I loved the idea of them slowly growing to be friends and valuing each other as people and finding they need what the other has to offer (like in canon) but with all of the subtext of what had happened coloring it.
There were meant to be more contrasts with canon both subtle and broad, like more being made of Kurt going to junior prom with Mercedes and the ensuing Prom Queen incident and more importantly Kurt not getting into NYADA, which I assumed he would attend in canon, largely because he would push too hard at his auditions and not be real enough in this 'verse. Hrm.
I reworked and edited much of this story many times over, because the emotional arc was so very important to me. Every step had to fit together; every choice had to come from something I knew about the canonical characters going through this new history I'd given them. I talked about it endlessly with stoney in person and over e-mail. I came very, very close to not finishing it more than once, and I shelved it a few times in despair. I wanted it to feel real and organic and make sense every step of the way, and I failed at that a lot in my drafts, because I tend to write short (i.e. too few words, not getting out all of the fullness of the scene and its beats that are in my head) and then flesh out. I am not a confident writer even on a good day, and this story made me doubt I could actually write it. But thanks to my inability to say I can't do something and the very kind encouragement of stoney and many of you through the feedback on my other stories, I did it. I learned a lot about my writing process as I bashed my head against every available hard surface, and I think I came out of it a better writer.
I learned a lot about fandom, too, to be honest, because posting as I did - one chapter every other day, which was absolutely necessary for me logistically and also for the reading experience of the story - got me more comments than I'd expected from people upset that the boys didn't get together faster and then have them be happier longer (not just wishing for more, which I understand, but actually upset with how I was writing them), and since the slow build from the disaster of them hooking up to becoming friends who really saw each other to falling in love was the fundamental point of the story for me it made me unhappy that people were telling me they weren't on board. It's fine that they weren't, nobody has to like what I write or the heart of the story, but I was hurt that people felt the need to tell me they didn't.
Anyway, it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was a lesson for me about how I choose to interact with people and that ultimately I don't understand people being unkind anywhere but especially in fandom. (And I'm snarky and critical, don't get me wrong; I just try not to be unkind.) On the way more positive side, I had so many lovely, supportive, encouraging commenters that I can't even count them all, and thank you guys for that. Truly, from my heart, thank you.
I haven't re-read this story except for bits here and there for later writing since its final edit in August, but I'm proud of it. I have to be. I think I pretty much nailed some parts of it the way I saw them in my head, both big things like that first sex scene and small things like the ride on the subway where they first talk about being bullied or Kurt sliding down the door of his room when he breaks down. I'm proud of what I did, imperfect as it is.
This story is also at its core my love letter to canonical Kurt and Blaine, because at the end of the day it is about how as much as they are meant for each other in any 'verse these two have made each other's lives better by being together and given each other an important foundation in love in canon no matter where they end up.
"Forever" - Birthday fic for my darling stoney, written while doing the final edit and posting of "Near Misses" and perhaps a bit unpolished for it. I wanted to write her a fic about how when you grow up things don't always happen like you plan but they can be wonderful anyway. Also, moving always sucks. I was going for the feeling of frustration, bone-deep exhaustion, joy at finally being together after all of their time apart, and love, always love. I still think this fic is sweet, kind of wrapped up in this perfectly imperfect moment:
Watching Kurt leaning over the opposite edge of the bed in a box-filled room making a perfect hospital corner with the wrong sheets in a dirty outfit to the light of a bare-bulbed lamp because they hadn’t yet unpacked its shade, Blaine found himself beaming. His heart was so full he felt like it could burst in his chest and take half of the block with it. It everything he’d ever wanted. It was everything.
"Song of the Season" - This was my other summer hiatus bracket fic this year. I wanted one last lazy afternoon with the boys, filled with love, before canon snatched them back and had its way with them. I didn't know what was coming, but I knew things would change. The coming of fall is also always a bit wistful for me now that I'm out of school, and I thought it would be extremely strange for Kurt to feel like he wasn't going anywhere while Blaine was still caught up in the academic routines. I also wanted to write smut without it being the majority of the fic. I'm pleased with the atmosphere of this one, its emotional and physical sense of place.
"What it's Like Being Your Boyfriend" - My last fic of the summer, and it turned out to be very meta. I'd been chewing on that line of Kurt's from "Dance With Somebody" for a long time, because of all of its implications around passing and acceptance and so forth, and I had also been thinking about Blaine's face when Kurt says it, like he's helplessly caught up in the same trap. I could have written 30,000 words like "Reflection" about this issue but instead wrote this little thing. It hits a lot of the issues I'm really excited about with this pairing, but I still want to write about it as a full story and show instead of tell.
Part two, season 4 of Glee and two new fandoms!
Okay, wow. Seriously? Given all of the re-writing I've done on those fics and the handful of stories I started but haven't finished, that's well over half a million words out of my fingers this year. I guess I can't be too down on myself for not being productive.
(I mean, I'm me, so I totally can, but still. Wow. I didn't expect it to be that high.)
And now, I shall blather on about every fic on that list! :D Spoilers through Glee 4x10!
"The Definition of Comfort Fic" - I started out the year working on "I'll Fly Away" (which comes next), but stoney321 needed a virtual hug in mid-January (despite me having just given her real ones in New York!), so I wrote one. It's a little story of how having people who love and get you can help with the melancholy of life. I have this thing for what kinds of pictures Kurt and Blaine must have of their lives, and that showed up. I also have a thing for snow, which I find very atmospheric and romantic, and that popped up, too. And I like Kurt, despite him being comfortable with Blaine, still being a bit awkward about his affection.
"I'll Fly Away" - As I wrote in my year in review for 2011, I frequently start writing fics from a question or problem that is bothering me, and I poke at the idea until I have an answer, which usually comes out in a fic. In this case, I had two questions: why the heck does Kurt keep sitting on the very edge of the choir room this season, and what's behind all of his bird and airplane accessories? I'm absolutely obsessed with Kurt's wardrobe, so I came up with a fic that was about accessories - canonical and non-canonical - his feeling of being on the outside of the community in Lima and in school, and his dreams of flying away to New York for a better future. It's about the way Kurt sees the world and one way he expresses it. And it's about his relationship with Blaine, in some parts more than others.
I really like the idea of this fic. It's more meta and requires more work on the part of the audience to connect the thematic dots than I usually write (and may require the reader to have paid as close attention to details about Kurt as I have), and I don't know if that makes it unsuccessful or not, but as a concept, structure, and focus for a story this is very me, not flaming muse but me in the real world… which is a distinction that probably won't make sense even to the very few of you who know me outside of fandom, but there you are.
"Something Blue" - I have this thing for outsiders watching Kurt and Blaine together, and when I got to thinking about how the boys might react to Will and Emma getting engaged and being a part of that and how they aren't able to get married in Ohio as gay men, Rachel started talking in my head, because of course her dads can't be married there, either. I also really like the dynamic where Kurt is comfortable in the girls' bathroom (as we see in canon) or locker room but Blaine is not; I've written it before (in "Reflection" at least), and it's personal headcanon for me.
I liked Kurt being able to show some guarded tenderness as well as bossiness around Blaine's grooming, and I liked Rachel kind of getting choked up about them. As the daughter of two gay fathers I don't think she so much fetishizes her two gay friends dating as finds it very comfortable. She loves them, wants them to be happy, and is incensed that they don't show all of their love in front of her (because when you write Rachel you always have to pull it back to being about her!). I love watching her watch Blaine watch Kurt. I like her feeling like she's playing in love when she sees them together:
And yet there was something about Kurt and Blaine that made her feel a little small inside, like she was a girl playing dress-up instead of the woman she was becoming.
It was in the way they didn’t seem to feel the need to express their feelings publicly all that much, like they’d been dating far longer than she and Finn had been circling around each other instead of the opposite. It wasn’t that they weren’t affectionate, and she knew a lot of their hesitation could be because of where they were instead of what they might have wanted to do, but there was a steadiness to them that she just couldn’t stop noticing. They didn’t need to show off for each other or anyone else to prove anything, because they already knew.
It was different from what she had with Finn. It was different from what Tina had with Mike. It reminded her of her dads, and not just because they were gay. It was because they were together, and there was no question for them of it. Like they were already the real thing, and she was just pretending the same way she’d pretended she and Finn were living together the magical night he’d made her a special dinner and held her close under the blankets by the fire.
And I had to comment on how ridiculously cold they all looked in the pool and the strangeness of Will asking Finn to be his best man. But mostly I wanted a sweet moment for Kurt and Blaine where Rachel is upset on their behalf.
"It's All Fun and Games Until…" - Post-"Michael" fic number one - This fic started with two lines in my head. First was: “I do believe, Mr. Anderson,” Kurt said dryly, “that you’re as high as the proverbial kite.” Second was: “At the end of the day, being pushed around still sucks even when the guy is gay, you know?”//There was a second of silence before Kurt let out a hollow chuckle, barely tinged with humor. “Oh, Blaine. I could have told you that and saved you a lot of trouble.”
Seeing Blaine on the ground in the parking garage in this episode, I knew I had to write about what it meant to Blaine to be hurt, Blaine who had been on the ground before when he was seriously beaten up before Dalton. The aftermath of Sebastian's attack isn't just the pain and horror of this incident but reflects back on his bullied life before. And yet, Blaine isn't always in touch with his feelings and is doped up on painkillers (this is my explanation for why he's so dippy in the "Ben" scene in his bedroom), so having him have some of his barriers down because of the drugs kind of made it easier for him to feel things he didn't know he was feeling.
I wanted this fic to have a light, dizzy feeling through it, a solid warmth and affection between Kurt and Blaine, and yet ultimately be about the fact that this attack is really hard and upsetting for them both. I wanted Kurt to be angry about Sebastian in general and not just about the slushie. I wanted Blaine to be upset about the Warblers. I wanted to see some physical connection between the two of them (but not be sexual). I wanted it to be bittersweet, because as much as they love each other bad things still happen. And yet I find it hopeful, in a way, because it's so much better for Blaine because he has Kurt. I think I hit all of that.
And I love the subtext/text in: Something in Blaine’s gut squirmed uncomfortably; he realized after a moment that it was his stomach twisting up in guilty, soup-free knots. He looked down at the throw over his lap and got caught in the neat lines of the plaid, so structured and stable, so full of rules of how to be and where to go. Thick line, thin line, black, red, answer the phone, smile when people talk to you, never step out of the boundaries of your place in the pattern -
"The Call" - My second "Michael"-related fic. I was thinking about what the immediate aftermath of Blaine's injury would be, who the kids would call, how he'd get help, and that got me to thinking about how Burt would feel about it. I had the mental image of him driving through dark, empty streets, frustrated and edgy and needing to be at the hospital already to see Kurt, and out came this fic. It's my first Burt-POV fic, and it pulled from a different part of my heart than usual, this time the side of me that's a parent. I like the idea in it that Blaine is part of the family and that Burt is grateful to and respects Blaine for protecting Kurt, even though he obviously doesn't like that Blaine is hurt at all. I also like how Burt can't solve things, but he wants to be there, anyway.
It's also the beginning of my headcanon that Burt doesn't understand the game Angry Birds.
"Feelings" - I wasn't planning on writing anything about "The Spanish Teacher," since Kurt hadn't done anything I needed to explore more and Blaine wasn't in the episode… but then nearing the end of my writing week I realized that I wanted to write about Blaine not being in the episode. I wanted him to felt left out and left behind. We return to the idea that Blaine being medicated makes him feel things he might not normally acknowledge to himself, and we really start in on the idea that was in my head since the beginning of the season that Blaine and Kurt are both aware that Kurt will be going away after graduation… and they feel differently about it.
I think I caught what I wanted to catch with Blaine feeling out of the loop and out of Kurt's life, and we'll see that theme crop up again and again as we go on this year. I think I caught the wistfulness and sweetness I wanted for them. And I like the idea of them planning to send daily pictures of their outfits to each other; I think Kurt would love that bit of sartorial knowledge, and Blaine would like the intimacy of it. And we end with them having new informal pictures of each other, their barriers down, and Kurt taking care of Blaine in his own Kurt way, which isn't necessarily how Blaine wants to be cared for but is love nonetheless. (That will come up again as well.)
I like writing dopey, drugged Blaine. It makes me grin at the screen while I write. This mopey line is a particular favorite: "I know," Blaine said sadly. He picked at the edge of his throw. The same throw he’d have next year, while Kurt had a new, exciting New York throw.
"The Many Valentines of Blaine Anderson" - Oh, this is one of my favorite fics of the year. I had SO much fun writing it. As much as I am a very focused and usually very reality-based Kurt/Blaine writer, I adore the ensemble of the show and the often silly tone of it, and when I get to flex my muscles and write more characters in a more comic tone it's a treat. I LOVE this fic. (And I am writer who detests 99% of what I write. I have issues; just ignore them.)
I started thinking about this episode wondering why Blaine doesn't set Kurt straight about not being his secret admirer, because Kurt would obviously mention it with delight even if he assumed Blaine wouldn't admit he was said admirer. And then I thought about how Blaine would feel about Kurt having an admirer and what he might want to do about it even if he was trying to be supportive because Kurt was so happy. And then I couldn't fall asleep that night because I kept thinking with great amusement about all of the horrible ways the New Directions kids would "help" Blaine escalate the Valentine-giving process and all of the flirty comments Kurt would make that would be just awful because Blaine isn't the guy sending him the presents, only Kurt doesn't know that. :D
There's at least one line in pretty much every scene that still makes me laugh or smile, starting with Puck's "ribbed for his pleasure" and all of the way through Blaine singing "Lovefool" to Kurt and Kurt singing back. I like that the fic is achy and doesn't stay totally in the comic tone. I like the eyepatch emoticons (stoney came up with the best one! P-) ). I like them dancing at the end, even though their PDA is still a fine line for me in terms of how far I want to push it and still feel like they're them. I like that it fits into canon but is this whole other story set during the same time.
But mostly I just like that the fic wrote itself smoothly and makes me laugh in the voices of so many different characters.
"Make You A Man" - I think a lot about the differences between Kurt and Blaine and about how their external appearances shape their lives. I think a lot about gender assumptions and passing. I think a lot about how their personalities and experiences inform their personal and sexual expression (and we'll see more of that this year from me). I think a lot about how Blaine presents as more traditionally masculine and yet has in some ways a more passive (and thus "feminine" - lord, do I hate how these issues are gendered) personality to contrast with Kurt's more traditionally feminine exterior (if you don't have eyes - seriously, have you seen his shoulders and arms?), his happy mixing of male and female clothing items, and his stronger (and thus "masculine") sense of self. I think about how Kurt seems comfortable with things being fluid and yet is confident in his own maleness, and how that might be really disconcerting for Blaine. And sometimes, like here, I freewrite about it. I'm very pleased with how this story turned out.
"There But for the Grace of…" - "On My Way" was a terrible episode for me to write about, not because of the difficult subject matter, which I wanted to draw out, but because it ended on a cliff-hanger, so I couldn't comfortably write about what came afterwards. So I wrote instead in Burt's POV about the more immediate in-episode aftermath of Karofksy's suicide attempt, Kurt's guilt over it, his apparent distance from Blaine about it, his body language and brittleness in the episode, and the absolute horror any parent must feel about the thought of losing a child to suicide and bullying. I wrote, ultimately, about how it could have been Kurt or Blaine who tried to kill themselves instead, and about how it's still hard for them even though it wasn't.
I'm proud of this fic. I'm proud of the voices. I'm proud of the emotions. I'm proud of how difficult it is for all of them, both internally and in the jerkiness of their conversations. I'm proud of them all loving each other. And I'm proud of Burt pointing out that Kurt and Blaine should be told of the suicide attempt both away from other kids and together, because they're his boys and he gets them.
(And I fully expected to write more about this episode, only I spent the hiatus focused on "Near Misses" instead.)
"Brothers" - I really enjoyed "Big Brother," and I wanted to explore more of Blaine's hopes for his reconnection with Cooper and frustrations with him and Kurt's adorable fluttery side toward Cooper, and I thought both could come up nicely in a fic where Blaine's relationship with his biological brother is contrasted with Kurt and Finn as relatively new step-brothers. I have such a soft spot for the Hudmel family, and the tiny little hints we get from time to time of Finn and Kurt actually being brothers are never enough for me. Found/created families are so compelling to me.
Given that so much of what I drew on was the comedy of the episode, this fic is pretty angsty. I didn't feel any need to avoid that, because the episode itself makes Blaine feel better, and I liked exploring the darker parts of Blaine's feelings contrasted with Kurt's obliviousness. I also liked giving Finn, Kurt, and Blaine some mellow time in the kitchen and Kurt and Blaine some private time in Kurt's bedroom. I wanted to weave the threads of Blaine's unhappiness through the comfortable ease of what should seem like ongoing banter, shared histories, and familiar (instead of new and exciting) kisses and so forth, the kind that has to be a part of their lives only we don't see it much in the show. There are a lot of families in this fic, including Blaine being a part of the Hudmels and the little familiar that Kurt and Blaine as a pair are creating the two of them.
"Beneath the Surface" - I almost didn't write this story, and after I wrote it I almost didn't post it. My working title was the "Mildly Offensive Blaine is Bi-racial Story," and I wasn't sure if what I was writing was honoring the subject matter or just appropriating it for my own privileged use. I am a member of a trans-racial family (white parent of an Asian child) and drew from the experiences from friends of mine, as well, who grew up biracial and/or a person of color in the US, but still. The last thing I wanted to be was offensive. That was the whole point. I posted the fic prepared to get a lot of negative feedback about it, but I hoped that even if I totally missed the mark somehow the subject matter was important enough to merit starting the conversation.
The genesis of the story was there apparently some kerfuffle in fandom about Darren Criss being biracial. I am very much on the periphery of Glee fandom out of dislike of spoilers and negativity, so I never did see any of the conversation about it, only heard that there was one. I found it weird, because Darren IS, so how is there anything to argue about? But it did get me to thinking not for the first time about how Blaine might have experienced his life as biracial (because in my mind he is), and combining that with us meeting Cooper, who as played by Matt Bomer is white, and Blaine's jealousy around him stemming not just from their personalities but something also bigger and harder, I had a fic in my head. I wrote it very, very quickly, the words tumbling out of me and keeping me up at night, typing on my laptop in the dark while my son fell asleep in the room with me.
I am extremely glad I wrote this story. Not only did I get wonderful feedback from people who have lived the same kinds of experiences as Blaine, but I feel like I touched on truth with it. I write a lot about the LGBT experience through this fandom, but this fic let me talk about racism, too, in particular racism around Asians, which can get overlooked because a lot of the stereotypes are 'positive', as well as expand the ideas of passing and fitting/blending in around Blaine into more complex levels beyond his sexuality. It's one of the most interesting uses of fanfic, to explore real world issues as well as giving us deeper understandings of the characters. I think that's what I did.
When I look at my corpus of fanfic, this is one of the ones I hope people think of when they think of my writing.
"To Thine Own Self Be True" - "Saturday Night Glee-ver" was not my favorite episode in the world (I may echo the kids yelling "disco sucks!"), and I didn't think I'd have much to write about it… but then there was Unique, and I kept coming back to the incredibly important idea that Kurt might be gay, but he lives in Ohio and doesn't have an automatic pass into understanding all parts of the LGBT experience. His unwillingness to wear a complete outfit of women's clothing (no matter how he's pushed the boundaries), the assumption by some that he should easily dress like a woman, and the way he puts his own judgments onto Unique was huge to me, and I wanted to poke at that some more. It's a shock to his system; he's always been the most "extreme" gay person he knows, and suddenly he has to face the fact that he's only one color in the rainbow, one little, uninformed color. I wanted him to talk about it with Blaine, his gay BFF (as well as boyfriend) and former role model. I wanted to touch on why Kurt is a gay icon in the school and Blaine is not. So I wrote a fic about it. It may be a little less subtle than I'd like, but it is what it is.
I do like Kurt being so thrown by realizing he said and thought the wrong thing that he can't put together an outfit. :)
"Five Times Kurt Tried to Reach Out to Blaine... and One Time Blaine Reached Back" - Ah, "Dance With Somebody." How I loved that episode for all of the drama, the singing, and the happy ending. Also, Kurt bringing in a cheese board to eat with Blaine while watching TV. The only problem with the episode is that I wanted more. (This is a common problem for me. It's why I write fic.) I wanted to think about why and how. I wanted to think about what it felt like for Kurt to have Blaine pull away and to have Chandler showing interest, because if Kurt flirted in a way he shouldn't have Blaine pulled back first. They both hurt each other; it's not a one-sided problem in this episode. I wanted to think about how Kurt feels about Blaine taking their problems to the choir room and turning his friends against him. I wanted to think about how simple little throw-aways in Kurt's moments of self-absorption combined with Blaine's issues could help spiral things to the place it went. I wanted more!
It's also my first ever 5+1 fic! I think it was a good use of the structure to give us distinct scenes on a theme around the episode, and I like the moments I built here, especially the Kurt ducking his head behind the locker door and Kurt standing in the parking lot with Emma. I can see those so vividly in my head.
"Being Kurt Hummel" - It is not too melodramatic to state that if I'd been hit by a bus or lost my muse after posting "Being Kurt Hummel" I would have felt like I'd pretty much said what I needed to say in fandom.
Kurt Hummel is my character. He's one of those characters you meet in your life who touches you down to your soul. I've loved him since season one, I've laughed with him and cried with him, flailed over his outfits and his snark and his drive and his heart, and squeaked into my pillow with joy and despair as he's grown and loved and learned. As much as I love Blaine - and I really have grown to adore that boy - it's Kurt who has to be first in my heart, forever and always.
This story is my love letter to him, the real him, not the character who just pops up on our screen for not enough minutes a week but the real boy who grew up in Lima, Ohio, figuring out who he was and what it means, what it feels like, to be gay. This story is about Kurt coming out to himself and to the world and what that means.
In retrospect, I wish I'd let it be even longer than it is, and I wish I'd written the dancing-in-Lima scene somewhat differently… I don't know, I think I wish I'd been more willing to write beyond canon and talk more about him learning about himself all over again in New York, even though I was trying to stay within canon-as-we-knew-it as much as I could even at the end. But still, this fic comes right from my heart, right from my own knowledge of friends coming out, right from the grand moments and tiny clues throughout canon I wanted to stitch together into a bigger picture.
I wanted to talk about pervasive homophobia, about the fear of coming out, about hearing the word gay and knowing it's bad before knowing what it means and that you are. I wanted to talk about Kurt's relationship to being sexual, to pornography, to being bullied both physically and verbally about his desires. I wanted to talk about Kurt's tight body language and being so abrasive and closed-off, despite how huge his heart is. I wanted to talk about how people assume Kurt is submissive when he can be actually quite dominant in a relationship. I wanted to talk about Kurt learning to trust himself and feel comfortable in his own skin and with his own desires. I wanted to talk about Kurt's relationship within his friends and how that changes when his sexuality comes into play in the conversation. I wanted to talk about how having a boyfriend doesn't solve his problems, only changes them. I wanted to talk about how every teenager has a complicated relationship with sex and dating, though the road may be different. I wanted to talk about how the voices from Lima are in Kurt's head and color his view of himself even when he wants to reject them. I wanted to talk about how good Kurt and Blaine for each other because of how respectful they are of each other, how they listen and talk, and how that's something to be valued among the relationships of their peers. I wanted to talk about how it will be different for Kurt when he has a bigger world around him than just Lima.
I wanted to talk about how fucking hard it is to be Kurt Hummel in Ohio and still be standing tall and sure of himself despite what everyone around him tells him - including sometimes what he tells himself - and how amazing a character he is. How amazing a person he is.
This story took me over. He did. I worked incredibly hard on it, thought so very long about everything we know about him, what it means, and how to write it in a story form.
I will never be happy with it. It will never be enough. But I wanted to honor Kurt, and I think I did.
And this line is my favorite, because this is so much of what I think makes things complicated for him:
Returning the favor [of giving a blow job] is harder for Kurt, not because he doesn't want to do it but because he's been told so often for so long that this is one of the only things he is good for that the part of him that refuses to bend to the rules of society hates that they might actually be right.
"Prom Queen 2012" - I had some real problems with "Prom-a-saurus" around how they dealt with (or didn't seriously enough) the fall-out of "Prom Queen" (the most important episode for me of season 2 in many ways), and so I took the opportunity to write about just a few seconds of time in the episode that encompass so much of the horror Kurt must feel about being there on that stage again with the fear of being crowned. As short as it is, I needed to write this fic. I needed to let him have that moment when it was so glossed over in the episode. It's yet another fic where Kurt's already flying away, looking toward the future. It was also a good, little story to write on the heels of "Being Kurt Hummel," of a similar theme but separate enough that I could start to move beyond the feelings in my head about that fic.
"The Nature of Dreams" - One of the things I remember about getting ready to graduate from high school was how small everything began to feel at the end, and out of my wreck of emotions from "Nationals" and the seniors' impending graduation I wrote about Kurt and Rachel getting ready to say goodbye. I love Hummelberry BFFs and Finn and Blaine, and I gave Rachel and Kurt a moment to think on the present and the future. It's the passing of the torch to the next year, in my own little way.
I still get a sad face at the end of the fic, heavy handed as it may be:
“Hey,” Blaine says, stopping just inside of the darkened room, “why are all of the lights off?”
Kurt picks up his bag from the riser and walks over to him.
“Because,” he replies with one last look at the trophy case and a quiet sense of a door about to close, “it’s time for us to go.”
"Schadenfreude" - I know fandom flipped out that Kurt didn't get into NYADA at the end of season 3 (and I was sad for him, of course), but part of what I was struck by having lived in Blaine's head much of the season with him getting ready to miss Kurt was the relief he must feel at Kurt not going. Obviously he'd be heartbroken for him, but he'd also be relieved that Kurt wasn't leaving him behind, because he could have easily been Finn on that train platform waving goodbye. Add in some Kurt being brave and strong, honestly happy for Rachel, sad for himself but looking ahead, and I had a fic. Having spent the year writing him making plans for New York, Kurt having to reshape his dreams and feel stuck still hurts me to re-read. I think I said what I wanted to say. And I wish I could hear Chris Colfer say this line the way I hear it in my head:
He tilts his head and says with a sad wobble of a smile, “I’m happy for her, Blaine, but I wanted to be happy for me, too.”
"Boys of Summer" - I was feeling frustrated with "Near Misses" and the Kurt fic I posted next, which were taking too long for me to write, so I decided to do some summery freewriting. I had loved writing the hammock fics last summer to frame the summer hiatus, and I thought about doing something similar (and ultimately did). I also was supposed to be starting up some co-writing around seasons with a fandom friend that never happened because "Near Misses" was such a beast, and I wanted to try to think about that sort of thing. So I wrote this dreamy snippet of summer, and I love it.
"The One Where They Have Brunch" - I'd settled in after "Goodbye" and wanted the characters to settle in, too. I also wanted to hear Kurt's voice about not getting into NYADA and how it would feel when Rachel gets back from her trip to New York. He's a generous friend, but it would still be hard for him. I was thinking, too, about how Blaine might feel as a third wheel with the two of them and how Kurt has such close female friends and Blaine does not. I was also thinking that they'd all enjoy dressing up for brunch. :)
I like here how Kurt doesn't want to talk about himself, how his own feelings are kind of off limits because he's putting on a brave face for her. I like how he's proud of himself for it, though it costs him. He does love her, he can let down his guard some with Blaine instead, and he's feeling hopeful, because he's Kurt fucking Hummel, and when he's knocked down he gets his feet back under him and keeps going.
"Tomorrow, Today Will Be Yesterday" - I was very sick when I wrote this story, and it shows in the style. Not badly, I think, but I tend to write differently when I'm sick, a little more meta. I was sitting in my comfy chair in my office one morning, dizzy on cold medicine, and ended up thinking about how things that are hard for Kurt and Blaine now - like holding hands - will be so different and easy to take for granted when they've grown up and are settled into an adult relationship somewhere safe. It's a fic about growing up and about being able to be free and open about being in love, which is a luxury for them now.
I really like this fic, what it says about them as boys and them as men, and how it comes together.
"Near Misses" - Oh, god, this really deserves its own post to talk about this 200,000 word monster in any detail. I shall try to be brief. (Ha ha ha.) The genesis of this story started during the summer after season 2, when I started to think about how Kurt was changing and feeling more settled and sure and how different Kurt and Blaine might have been if they hadn't met each other, but when I started writing it I felt like we didn't know enough about Blaine to do him justice in the story. I wrote the introduction, the meeting on the quad scene, and a little bit of Blaine meeting Peter and then set it aside. As season 3 progressed, though, we learned a ton about Blaine, and I reshuffled the cards in my head and got a really interesting (to me) picture of what life without Kurt might have done to him, especially after the introduction of Sebastian.
I thought about a Kurt who had never had anyone interested in him finding himself flirted with in college and how the fluttery boy inside of him would have been so giddy about it, giddy to the point that he'd think he was getting romance when he was actually getting picked up and how hard that would have been for him to come to realize, that even in college and in New York he wasn't being swept off of his feet. But still, the lure of that kind of sexual desire and connection - as incomplete as it is for him - isn't something he can just shut off. Nor is his much deeper and never-fulfilled desire for real and true love. But he can't control that, and he can control his career, the only thing that is up to him (more or less), so he focuses on what he can do and become because he can't have what he wants, which is love.
I thought about a Blaine who had a boyfriend who was petty and jealous of him as well as admiring, who got sex and thought it was love, whose place in his safe home of the Warblers was undercut, and who was never coaxed out from behind his façade and who was in fact not understood or cared for when he shared the darker and more insecure parts of himself. He never had someone like Kurt to accept him, he was only accepted if he was perfect and easy, and he had put up his walls higher and thicker, only peeking out in the kind way he treats the boys he hooks up with.
I thought about a Kurt who wants love but who assumes his feelings will never be reciprocated, and I thought about a Blaine who only connects on the surface and has lied to himself that he wants nothing more.
And I thought about how much they needed each other and how badly it would go if they met like that. "Oh," I said to myself with growing glee, because I'm evil as a writer. "That would be a disaster."
What I love about AUs is how they can illuminate so much about the canonical characters and what canonical events mean to them, and this idea really hit the mark for me. Good thing I didn't know how many words it would take me to write it. :)
I wrote this story over many months, mostly over hiatuses. The bulk of the big arc and character movement was firmly fixed by April, and I remember being very worried when I saw the promo blurb on my TiVo for the episode that whatever we might learn from "Big Brother" would blow my understanding of Blaine out of the water. (It didn't at all, just added some nice layers, but writing within open canon is scary that way.) The pieces I knew from the very start were that they'd be drawn together at that dance, would sleep together, and because of their baggage would make a total mess of things afterwards. I loved the contrast to canon, because even though the sex would still be meaningful they wouldn't know each other. They wouldn't know how to read each other. And I loved the idea of them slowly growing to be friends and valuing each other as people and finding they need what the other has to offer (like in canon) but with all of the subtext of what had happened coloring it.
There were meant to be more contrasts with canon both subtle and broad, like more being made of Kurt going to junior prom with Mercedes and the ensuing Prom Queen incident and more importantly Kurt not getting into NYADA, which I assumed he would attend in canon, largely because he would push too hard at his auditions and not be real enough in this 'verse. Hrm.
I reworked and edited much of this story many times over, because the emotional arc was so very important to me. Every step had to fit together; every choice had to come from something I knew about the canonical characters going through this new history I'd given them. I talked about it endlessly with stoney in person and over e-mail. I came very, very close to not finishing it more than once, and I shelved it a few times in despair. I wanted it to feel real and organic and make sense every step of the way, and I failed at that a lot in my drafts, because I tend to write short (i.e. too few words, not getting out all of the fullness of the scene and its beats that are in my head) and then flesh out. I am not a confident writer even on a good day, and this story made me doubt I could actually write it. But thanks to my inability to say I can't do something and the very kind encouragement of stoney and many of you through the feedback on my other stories, I did it. I learned a lot about my writing process as I bashed my head against every available hard surface, and I think I came out of it a better writer.
I learned a lot about fandom, too, to be honest, because posting as I did - one chapter every other day, which was absolutely necessary for me logistically and also for the reading experience of the story - got me more comments than I'd expected from people upset that the boys didn't get together faster and then have them be happier longer (not just wishing for more, which I understand, but actually upset with how I was writing them), and since the slow build from the disaster of them hooking up to becoming friends who really saw each other to falling in love was the fundamental point of the story for me it made me unhappy that people were telling me they weren't on board. It's fine that they weren't, nobody has to like what I write or the heart of the story, but I was hurt that people felt the need to tell me they didn't.
Anyway, it's not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was a lesson for me about how I choose to interact with people and that ultimately I don't understand people being unkind anywhere but especially in fandom. (And I'm snarky and critical, don't get me wrong; I just try not to be unkind.) On the way more positive side, I had so many lovely, supportive, encouraging commenters that I can't even count them all, and thank you guys for that. Truly, from my heart, thank you.
I haven't re-read this story except for bits here and there for later writing since its final edit in August, but I'm proud of it. I have to be. I think I pretty much nailed some parts of it the way I saw them in my head, both big things like that first sex scene and small things like the ride on the subway where they first talk about being bullied or Kurt sliding down the door of his room when he breaks down. I'm proud of what I did, imperfect as it is.
This story is also at its core my love letter to canonical Kurt and Blaine, because at the end of the day it is about how as much as they are meant for each other in any 'verse these two have made each other's lives better by being together and given each other an important foundation in love in canon no matter where they end up.
"Forever" - Birthday fic for my darling stoney, written while doing the final edit and posting of "Near Misses" and perhaps a bit unpolished for it. I wanted to write her a fic about how when you grow up things don't always happen like you plan but they can be wonderful anyway. Also, moving always sucks. I was going for the feeling of frustration, bone-deep exhaustion, joy at finally being together after all of their time apart, and love, always love. I still think this fic is sweet, kind of wrapped up in this perfectly imperfect moment:
Watching Kurt leaning over the opposite edge of the bed in a box-filled room making a perfect hospital corner with the wrong sheets in a dirty outfit to the light of a bare-bulbed lamp because they hadn’t yet unpacked its shade, Blaine found himself beaming. His heart was so full he felt like it could burst in his chest and take half of the block with it. It everything he’d ever wanted. It was everything.
"Song of the Season" - This was my other summer hiatus bracket fic this year. I wanted one last lazy afternoon with the boys, filled with love, before canon snatched them back and had its way with them. I didn't know what was coming, but I knew things would change. The coming of fall is also always a bit wistful for me now that I'm out of school, and I thought it would be extremely strange for Kurt to feel like he wasn't going anywhere while Blaine was still caught up in the academic routines. I also wanted to write smut without it being the majority of the fic. I'm pleased with the atmosphere of this one, its emotional and physical sense of place.
"What it's Like Being Your Boyfriend" - My last fic of the summer, and it turned out to be very meta. I'd been chewing on that line of Kurt's from "Dance With Somebody" for a long time, because of all of its implications around passing and acceptance and so forth, and I had also been thinking about Blaine's face when Kurt says it, like he's helplessly caught up in the same trap. I could have written 30,000 words like "Reflection" about this issue but instead wrote this little thing. It hits a lot of the issues I'm really excited about with this pairing, but I still want to write about it as a full story and show instead of tell.
Part two, season 4 of Glee and two new fandoms!