I’m the thing that monsters have nightmares about.
So this is coming way later than I would like, but here it is nevertheless. My 2014 writing round-up, which should be of interest to no one but me.
January
Big Talk, Little Man [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to In the Small of My Heart - 1,612
Waiting to Happen [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to In the Small of My Heart - 1,187
Between Scylla and Charybdis [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 12,413 (11,105 written this year)
February
Into Oblivion [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 24,390 (23,176 written this year)
April
Dark Paradise [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] salt_burn_porn - 3,552
May
A Doll's House [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] kidficstory - 20,763 (16,239 written this year)
June
Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_bigbang - 20,267 (2,241 written this year)
August
And a Hard Place [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_masquerade - 3,150
November
Revelations [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] salt_burn_porn - 7,984
December
Behold, A Pale Horse [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] samdean_otp Minibang - 19,221
Strawberry Fields [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_xmas - 10,942
We're Back!: A Dinosaur Story [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to Not the Gumdrop Buttons - 1,555
Unpublished But Written in 2014:
Come Along [CW RPF/Doctor Who fusion; Jared/Jensen] - 2,195 (2 written this year)
Do Androids Dream? [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] robotbigbang - 3,155 (21 written this year)
Golden [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_reversebang - 399
Into the City of Woe [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 2,913
(Love Is) A Violent Spiral [CW RPF; Jared/Genevieve] genteensybang - 7,377 (4,892 written this year)
Outtakes [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 1,604 (215 written this year)
Shipwreck Between Your Ribs [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 6,881 (3,170 written this year)
Untitled Timestamp to Rattling Your Locks [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 708 (47 written this year)
Untitled Flaneur!Jared/Hooker!Jensen [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 192
Untitled WWII Wincest AU [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 876
Whisk Me Away [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 778
Total Word Count: 115,469
Fandoms that I dabbled in this year, old and new: Supernatural and CW RPF exclusively. I'm a one trick pony, what can I say?
My favorite story this year: I guess Into Oblivion or Behold, A Pale Horse, I'm pretty proud of those. With maybe a slight preference for BAPH? Honestly, I think a lot of my best stories this year are incomplete right now, which is disappointing.
My least favorite story this year: Revelations ended up being a lot more story than I anticipated (A LOT) and I was only able to tell the barest bones of it with the time I had. I think it failed in a lot of ways.
Most successful story: Into Oblivion beat out my spn_j2_bigbang by 2 comments. Which goes to show how weak my bigbang game was this year. :/
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I know Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead is not my best work and it is definitely a pretty low-key fic in the context of the challenge it was written for, so I can see why it didn't get much traffic. That said, I am still pretty fond of it for emotional attachment reasons, and I am disappointed it got so many fewer comments than bigbangs usually do.
Most fun story: A Doll's House was pretty fun, even though it is not my type of fic at all and I often found that challenging. It's nice to write a little schmoop every now and again.
Story with single sexiest moment: I'm gonna sound crazy, because And a Hard Place was such a tame fic/kink considering the challenge it was written for. But it really worked for me.
Biggest story fail: I had a really epic story idea for spn_j2_bigbang, and I ended up not even starting it. I had to pull up another fic I'd finished ages ago to even stay in the challenge, and it was not the right kind of story for the challenge. I'm so upset, because it is the coolest idea. That said, I hope to write it for bigbang this year.
Hardest story to make: A Doll's House. I was stalled on it for so. fucking. long. Goes to show sometimes leaving your comfort zone doesn't really pay off (though I am happy with how it ended up).
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? I am nearly 100,000 words below my previous lowest yearly output since I got into the Supernatural fandom. Does that bum the crap out of me? Hell yeah. But I was drowning in work and school and I was burnt out. It happens. 2015 will be better.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Kidfic.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I didn't really take any risks, did I? I guess…I wrote really angsty things that I knew few people would want to read and I got pretty good turn out, so maybe trust my readers to be willing to travel down darker roads with me?
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Behold, A Pale Horse had me working through a lot of my recent-canon feelings on how Sam and Dean are being written.
Biggest Surprise: I wrote WAY more Sam/Dean this year than Jared/Jensen. Don't get me wrong, Sam/Dean is and always will be my OTP, but I usually end up writing more J2 anyway. And this year was the year of the J2 renaissance, while on the other hand I have stopped being able to ship Wincest in canon, so I would have expected it to tip even more the other way. I don't know, maybe I felt there was more that needed correcting via fic in the world of Sam/Deam than Jared/Jensen.
Story with the sweetest moment: Of the stories I posted this year, Jensen giving Jared the night sky in Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead is definitely the sweetest moment. But since I did not write that this year, I will say in its own twisted way, the last scene of Behold, A Pale Horse.
Story that made you cry: Behold, A Pale Horse
Most eye roll-worthy title: Dark Paradise. I was in a rush to post because salt_burn_porn, and I really couldn't think of anything less awful.
Most intentionally telling: Strawberry Fields, although written primarily for someone else, ended up being an exercise in vomiting my Stanford era head canons on everyone.
Unintentionally?: Dark Paradise. I used to be so out on dark!boys, but I guess that cat is out of the bag.
Most overdue: God, how about everything in my unpublished list? The ones I feel worst about are the birthday fic I have been writing Deirdre_c for 2.5 years now (IT WILL GET FINISHED THIS YEAR!), my obscenely late charity fics, and the robotbigbang I still owe blythechild because she actually did the art on time for when we were supposed to post…IN OCTOBER 2013. *headdesk* IT IS STILL COMING, I PROMISE.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: It really looks like this year's theme was passive aggressive responses to S9 in which Dean actually loves his brother unlike the OOC piece of shit he was last season. So many could best demonstrate it, but maybe I'll go with Into Oblivion.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
Jared rides the bus.
That's what he does, he rides the bus.
He watches the people who get on and off, inventing stories for them. They interest him, these strangers who all seem to be different and complicated and confusing, even though they've all probably lived in these same neighborhoods and ridden this same route since they were, like their children now are, compelled to press their little faces to the big windows and wave at the other cars stuck in traffic.
It's therapeutic in a way. It teaches him that not everybody lives like he does, some people write new stories…but most of them don't. They stay trapped, like Jared, in an echo, moving through the same patterns, the same life his mom and dad did before him, their parents before them, and on it goes.
This is his one act of rebellion. He rides buses. He takes pleasure in the knowledge that no one in that endless family tree he's dangling from ever came to these places or saw these people. This is his crack in the spine of that droning Padalecki family history book that weighs more than he does. (Untitled Flaneur!Jared/Hooker!Jensen)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
"Do you like it?" Sam asks when he can't stand to wait a second longer.
Dean smiles. "It's beautiful, Sammy. I love it." ( Behold, A Pale Horse)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
1. Dean cutting Sam's hair in Strawberry Fields.
2. Well, blythechild hinted that she'd like to draw the scene in And a Hard Place. That would be cool if she ever did!
3. Shipwreck Between Your Ribs is one I want to see art for once it's posted. Luckily I have siennavie's enormous talent on tap for charity. :D
4. (Love Is) A Violent Spiral should get art but probably won't even get readers. I originally wrote it for the genteensybang, so it should have gotten art that way, but then that challenge and I went our separate ways, so now I just have this fic I really like and was excited to get art for that is just sorta sitting around. Wah.
5. Oh man, I would kind of love to see some art of the fucked up porn in Dark Paradise with demon!Dean carving sigils into Sam.
The things I've learned this year: Try that kink again. I bet you actually do like it. Oh my god, you do, you twisted little bitch.
Fic-writing goals for 2015: I need to post at least one story/month every month of 2015. I want to cut down on the list of fics that I've started and not finished. I'd also really love to finish the timestamps I owe people from the timestamp meme I did in August of 2012.
I will post my on-going list of things to write in 2015 tomorrow. I considered just including it in this post, but I don't want to have to wade through all of this whenever I visit it.
January
Big Talk, Little Man [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to In the Small of My Heart - 1,612
Waiting to Happen [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to In the Small of My Heart - 1,187
Between Scylla and Charybdis [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 12,413 (11,105 written this year)
February
Into Oblivion [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 24,390 (23,176 written this year)
April
Dark Paradise [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] salt_burn_porn - 3,552
May
A Doll's House [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] kidficstory - 20,763 (16,239 written this year)
June
Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_bigbang - 20,267 (2,241 written this year)
August
And a Hard Place [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_masquerade - 3,150
November
Revelations [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] salt_burn_porn - 7,984
December
Behold, A Pale Horse [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] samdean_otp Minibang - 19,221
Strawberry Fields [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_xmas - 10,942
We're Back!: A Dinosaur Story [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] Timestamp to Not the Gumdrop Buttons - 1,555
Unpublished But Written in 2014:
Come Along [CW RPF/Doctor Who fusion; Jared/Jensen] - 2,195 (2 written this year)
Do Androids Dream? [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] robotbigbang - 3,155 (21 written this year)
Golden [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_reversebang - 399
Into the City of Woe [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_reversebang - 2,913
(Love Is) A Violent Spiral [CW RPF; Jared/Genevieve] genteensybang - 7,377 (4,892 written this year)
Outtakes [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 1,604 (215 written this year)
Shipwreck Between Your Ribs [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 6,881 (3,170 written this year)
Untitled Timestamp to Rattling Your Locks [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 708 (47 written this year)
Untitled Flaneur!Jared/Hooker!Jensen [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 192
Untitled WWII Wincest AU [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 876
Whisk Me Away [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] - 778
Total Word Count: 115,469
Fandoms that I dabbled in this year, old and new: Supernatural and CW RPF exclusively. I'm a one trick pony, what can I say?
My favorite story this year: I guess Into Oblivion or Behold, A Pale Horse, I'm pretty proud of those. With maybe a slight preference for BAPH? Honestly, I think a lot of my best stories this year are incomplete right now, which is disappointing.
My least favorite story this year: Revelations ended up being a lot more story than I anticipated (A LOT) and I was only able to tell the barest bones of it with the time I had. I think it failed in a lot of ways.
Most successful story: Into Oblivion beat out my spn_j2_bigbang by 2 comments. Which goes to show how weak my bigbang game was this year. :/
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I know Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead is not my best work and it is definitely a pretty low-key fic in the context of the challenge it was written for, so I can see why it didn't get much traffic. That said, I am still pretty fond of it for emotional attachment reasons, and I am disappointed it got so many fewer comments than bigbangs usually do.
Most fun story: A Doll's House was pretty fun, even though it is not my type of fic at all and I often found that challenging. It's nice to write a little schmoop every now and again.
Story with single sexiest moment: I'm gonna sound crazy, because And a Hard Place was such a tame fic/kink considering the challenge it was written for. But it really worked for me.
Biggest story fail: I had a really epic story idea for spn_j2_bigbang, and I ended up not even starting it. I had to pull up another fic I'd finished ages ago to even stay in the challenge, and it was not the right kind of story for the challenge. I'm so upset, because it is the coolest idea. That said, I hope to write it for bigbang this year.
Hardest story to make: A Doll's House. I was stalled on it for so. fucking. long. Goes to show sometimes leaving your comfort zone doesn't really pay off (though I am happy with how it ended up).
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? I am nearly 100,000 words below my previous lowest yearly output since I got into the Supernatural fandom. Does that bum the crap out of me? Hell yeah. But I was drowning in work and school and I was burnt out. It happens. 2015 will be better.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? Kidfic.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I didn't really take any risks, did I? I guess…I wrote really angsty things that I knew few people would want to read and I got pretty good turn out, so maybe trust my readers to be willing to travel down darker roads with me?
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Behold, A Pale Horse had me working through a lot of my recent-canon feelings on how Sam and Dean are being written.
Biggest Surprise: I wrote WAY more Sam/Dean this year than Jared/Jensen. Don't get me wrong, Sam/Dean is and always will be my OTP, but I usually end up writing more J2 anyway. And this year was the year of the J2 renaissance, while on the other hand I have stopped being able to ship Wincest in canon, so I would have expected it to tip even more the other way. I don't know, maybe I felt there was more that needed correcting via fic in the world of Sam/Deam than Jared/Jensen.
Story with the sweetest moment: Of the stories I posted this year, Jensen giving Jared the night sky in Carve Our Names in Hearts Into the Warhead is definitely the sweetest moment. But since I did not write that this year, I will say in its own twisted way, the last scene of Behold, A Pale Horse.
Story that made you cry: Behold, A Pale Horse
Most eye roll-worthy title: Dark Paradise. I was in a rush to post because salt_burn_porn, and I really couldn't think of anything less awful.
Most intentionally telling: Strawberry Fields, although written primarily for someone else, ended up being an exercise in vomiting my Stanford era head canons on everyone.
Unintentionally?: Dark Paradise. I used to be so out on dark!boys, but I guess that cat is out of the bag.
Most overdue: God, how about everything in my unpublished list? The ones I feel worst about are the birthday fic I have been writing Deirdre_c for 2.5 years now (IT WILL GET FINISHED THIS YEAR!), my obscenely late charity fics, and the robotbigbang I still owe blythechild because she actually did the art on time for when we were supposed to post…IN OCTOBER 2013. *headdesk* IT IS STILL COMING, I PROMISE.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: It really looks like this year's theme was passive aggressive responses to S9 in which Dean actually loves his brother unlike the OOC piece of shit he was last season. So many could best demonstrate it, but maybe I'll go with Into Oblivion.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
Jared rides the bus.
That's what he does, he rides the bus.
He watches the people who get on and off, inventing stories for them. They interest him, these strangers who all seem to be different and complicated and confusing, even though they've all probably lived in these same neighborhoods and ridden this same route since they were, like their children now are, compelled to press their little faces to the big windows and wave at the other cars stuck in traffic.
It's therapeutic in a way. It teaches him that not everybody lives like he does, some people write new stories…but most of them don't. They stay trapped, like Jared, in an echo, moving through the same patterns, the same life his mom and dad did before him, their parents before them, and on it goes.
This is his one act of rebellion. He rides buses. He takes pleasure in the knowledge that no one in that endless family tree he's dangling from ever came to these places or saw these people. This is his crack in the spine of that droning Padalecki family history book that weighs more than he does. (Untitled Flaneur!Jared/Hooker!Jensen)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
"Do you like it?" Sam asks when he can't stand to wait a second longer.
Dean smiles. "It's beautiful, Sammy. I love it." ( Behold, A Pale Horse)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
1. Dean cutting Sam's hair in Strawberry Fields.
2. Well, blythechild hinted that she'd like to draw the scene in And a Hard Place. That would be cool if she ever did!
3. Shipwreck Between Your Ribs is one I want to see art for once it's posted. Luckily I have siennavie's enormous talent on tap for charity. :D
4. (Love Is) A Violent Spiral should get art but probably won't even get readers. I originally wrote it for the genteensybang, so it should have gotten art that way, but then that challenge and I went our separate ways, so now I just have this fic I really like and was excited to get art for that is just sorta sitting around. Wah.
5. Oh man, I would kind of love to see some art of the fucked up porn in Dark Paradise with demon!Dean carving sigils into Sam.
The things I've learned this year: Try that kink again. I bet you actually do like it. Oh my god, you do, you twisted little bitch.
Fic-writing goals for 2015: I need to post at least one story/month every month of 2015. I want to cut down on the list of fics that I've started and not finished. I'd also really love to finish the timestamps I owe people from the timestamp meme I did in August of 2012.
I will post my on-going list of things to write in 2015 tomorrow. I considered just including it in this post, but I don't want to have to wade through all of this whenever I visit it.