By changing some words. The world can move or not by changing some words.
Happy New Year, friends! I guess I officially have become the person who only swings by LJ once a year to post a meme summarizing the past year. If that is to be the case, then here is my post for 2019. XD
Written in 2018:
January
Over the Wall [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_xmas - 29,469
February
All That Is Gold [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_reversebang - 24,540 (4,817 in 2018)
March
Tunnel Vision [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] Timestamp to Hydra - 3,555
May
True Colors [Eyewitness; Philip/Lukas] - 2,999
June
ART FOR Rule of Thirds [Supernatural; Sam/Dean/Victor Henriksen] spn_j2_bigbang
ART FOR Under A Spell [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_bigbang
July
ART FOR Imaginary Friends [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_bigbang
August
For the Fae of Heart + ART [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 14,990
September
Youthfully Felt [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_masquerade - 4,581
December
Shrike [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_reversebang - 7,075
The Butterfly Effect + ART [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_xmas - 13,775
Unpublished But Written in 2018:
A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] unfinished spn_cinema - 28,510 (26,416 in 2018)
Lazarus Rising [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 2,029
[UNTITLED BALLET/STRIPPER FIC] [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 546
Total Word Count: 110,252
Fandoms that I dabbled in this year, old and new: Supernatural, CW RPF, and Eyewitness. I read in Voltron and The Adventure Zone and considered trying to write for them, but obviously that didn’t happen.
My favorite story this year: I am insanely proud of Over the Wall, and that is easily my favorite thing I finished and posted this year. I have been working really hard on A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me for the last couple of months, and I think if I pull off the rest of the scenes I have left, it would be up there with Over the Wall.
My least favorite story this year: I was really unhappy with my one spn_masquerade fill, Youthfully Felt, to the point that I made up my mind not to claim it and didn’t change my mind until today. I have never regretted finishing and posting something, even if I wasn’t happy with how it turned out, but that’s how I felt about this one. Granted, I was in a really weird place during this challenge and was mad at myself because I only wrote this prompt because I thought I could do it fast and then it took nearly 5,000 words and all of the time I had to fill prompts in this round, so that definitely played into it.
Most successful story: Over the Wall, and rightfully so.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I’m trying to work on my brattiness re: the current state of feedback culture and the fact that my fics don’t get read much these days, but the last few things I’ve posted have not gotten very many readers and it’s making it really hard to get excited about posting the story I’m working on now, which I’ve worked really hard on and really am proud of, because I know it’s not going to get much attention. So I feel like I am trying to accept preemptively that A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me will be underappreciated by the universe, lol. But as far as stuff I’ve actually posted, I thought my spn_j2_xmas fic, The Butterfly Effect, was better than the response it got. And also I’m really proud of how the banner turned out and no one’s mentioned it, which is dumb to be sad about, because it’s not like I’m an artist, but hey, emotions are usually dumb, right?
Most fun story: I’ve had a real blast writing some of the bantering between Jared and Jensen in A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me and I have really enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten from folks who have read those bits. For posted fics, I guess I would say For the Fae of Heart had some really cool concepts I enjoyed playing with (that story was a commission, so the ideas weren’t mine, which means I got to play with someone else’s and it led me to places I wouldn’t have gone on my own).
Story with single sexiest moment: I know it’s not very engaging for me to keep referring to a fic that no one has read yet, but A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me has probably the most porn scenes in it that I’ve ever written in one story, and some of them are pretty hot. The hottest is probably the desperate alley fuck when Jensen is wearing make-up? I’m not usually into my own porn very much, but there’s a few scenes in that one that I think are pretty sexy!
Biggest story fail: That’s easy. Lazarus Rising was supposed to be my spn_j2_bigbang this year. I was so into writing it on draft day that I wasn’t saving it, and then my computer crashed and didn’t autorecover anything from my last save, which was only ~2,000 words. I lost so many scenes and they were honestly pretty good. It broke my heart. I gave up on finishing a bigbang and haven’t worked on the story since, even though I really do want to finish it.
Hardest story to make: Over the Wall kicked my ass so hard, but I think it turned out worth it. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever written anything that ended up as close to the version in my head as that story did, and I managed that despite the incredibly complicated chronology and potentially disastrous POVs. I’m so proud of it.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? 2018 is the first time since 2015 that I broke 100K in fic writing. Granted, I didn’t go much above that, but I’m still really proud that I got as much done as I did, especially considering I had a really busy year at work and traveled more this year than I have ever before and there were like 4 months there where I was home for maybe 2 weekends altogether. So to have done that much and still write more than I have in years feels really good. And I’m really, really happy with a lot of what I wrote, too, so it’s not just quantity.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? I don’t really have an answer for this. I will say that Shrike was a moment in the verse it’s set in that I never expected to write, let alone for it to be the first (and probably only) version of that verse to ever make it to publication. But I think it’s pretty good!
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? The subject matter, the characterizations, and the chronology in Over the Wall were all really risky. I spent most of January 2018 eating, sleeping, and breathing this fic. It took so much work and reworking and reworking the reworking to get it where it ended up. And what I learned is that if I am willing to put in that effort, I actually can produce something I’m really, really proud of.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Over the Wall let me explore more faults in both Jared and Jensen than I usually do, and I think that gave me a more layered depiction of them as characters.
Biggest Surprise: I’m going to depart from the writing discussion here to say: I learned how to use photoshop this year and I’m really fucking happy with some of the art I created! I know it’s mostly just banners and manips and stuff a lot of people don’t think of as art, but I got some of those pieces to look exactly like I wanted them to and it’s not a skill I ever thought I could just casually pick up.
Story with the sweetest moment: I’m not allowed to answer something that I haven’t even written yet, am I? It’s the Christmas scene in A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me. Since that isn’t up yet, I will go with Jared coming out of detox in Over the Wall.
Story that made you cry: I cry over everything. That said, Over the Wall made me cry multiple times, especially in the scene where Jensen became vulnerable for the first time, because I felt like I really earned that from him and did a good job establishing how hard it was for him.
Most eye roll-worthy title: I love the quote it’s referencing so much, especially for a story that is hooker fic, but A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me sure is a goddamn mouthful and no one is going to remember it, so I am second guessing myself a lot on that.
Most intentionally telling: I was asked to set For the Fae of Heart in D.C. so that I could write about a city I knew really well, so I slipped a lot of what I love about D.C. into it and I think it’s probably pretty easy to pick up on a lot of that.
Unintentionally?: Youthfully Felt probably has a lot of the sadness I’ve felt over J2 this year baked into it.
Most overdue: I got the idea for A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me in my Latino Transportation Cultures class in grad school in 2013 and started it for spn_cinema so many rounds ago and then was supposed to finish it in November for this round. Soooo…probably that one. But, hey, you can’t rush perfection, right???
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: Don’t try to write what you think people want to read. Write what you want to write. I expected people not to want to touch Over the Wall because of the subject matter, but it was the most amazing response I’ve gotten to a fic in years. Meanwhile, the fun urban fantasy adventure I thought people would go crazy for, For the Fae of Heart, hardly made a splash.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
It's lights out at ten p.m.
That's reassuring, in a way. In twelve hours, there won't be light anywhere for anything in Jensen's life, but for now, the blackout is just business as usual. Routine chugging along like a train. It’s dull and depressing, sure, but dependable. Nothing in here changes except the people.
(Over the Wall)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
Jared thanked him. Thanked him, as if Jensen is still the person who rescued him from the exact violation Jensen was too drunk and too desperate to stop himself from committing. He feels the same conflict he does after a job, the overwhelming guilt sated by the extravagance of the payment: the stretch of Jared's cock on his jaw, the passion of that kiss, the wrecked way Jared said his name when he came. Invaluable treasures Jensen will cherish forever, and they didn’t even cost him anything. Jared doesn’t remember.
It’s not the first time Jensen gets away with murder.
(Shrike)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
1. Beautiful transgirl!Sam from The Butterfly Effect.
2. Literally anything from Over the Wall. marietwist surprised me with an amazing drawing of the opening scene and I love it so much! But it was such a big fic for me, so I of course want MOAR art, lol.
3. I know Eyewitness is over, but I would have liked to have seen Ricki Anderton, Lukas’s drag persona in True Colors. I wish I’d learned photoshop earlier in the year, because I feel like I could have made a pretty decent manip of this.
4. I’m actually really, really happy with how I managed to pull off the striking visual at the end of For the Fae of Heart, but of course that doesn’t compare to what a drawn version of that scene would have looked like.
5. The scene in All That Is Gold where Jared teaches Jensen to talk to the woods was so visual to me, so I would have loved to see art of it.
The things I've learned this year: I started training for a half-marathon late this year and am sad to report that what I’ve learned is that physical exercise actually does make me feel a lot happier and more energetic than being a lazy slug like I prefer to do. I won’t pretend I enjoy the exercise, but I was able to write so much more in December than I usually do after long work days/weeks because I didn’t feel drained all the time. I thought I would lose wordcount because I’d be spending more time at the gym, but the opposite turned out to be true.
Fic-writing goals for 2019: I really just want to not fail at any deadlines this year. That means being realistic about how much I sign up for, which can be challenging. I’d also like to finish some big fics I’ve had on the backburner the last few years and will once again try to post at least one fic each month. But if I can just not drop out of any challenges I’ve committed myself to, I’ll be happy.
Written in 2018:
January
Over the Wall [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_xmas - 29,469
February
All That Is Gold [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_reversebang - 24,540 (4,817 in 2018)
March
Tunnel Vision [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] Timestamp to Hydra - 3,555
May
True Colors [Eyewitness; Philip/Lukas] - 2,999
June
ART FOR Rule of Thirds [Supernatural; Sam/Dean/Victor Henriksen] spn_j2_bigbang
ART FOR Under A Spell [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_bigbang
July
ART FOR Imaginary Friends [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_j2_bigbang
August
For the Fae of Heart + ART [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 14,990
September
Youthfully Felt [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_masquerade - 4,581
December
Shrike [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] spn_reversebang - 7,075
The Butterfly Effect + ART [Supernatural; Sam/Dean] spn_j2_xmas - 13,775
Unpublished But Written in 2018:
A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] unfinished spn_cinema - 28,510 (26,416 in 2018)
Lazarus Rising [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 2,029
[UNTITLED BALLET/STRIPPER FIC] [CW RPF; Jared/Jensen] - 546
Total Word Count: 110,252
Fandoms that I dabbled in this year, old and new: Supernatural, CW RPF, and Eyewitness. I read in Voltron and The Adventure Zone and considered trying to write for them, but obviously that didn’t happen.
My favorite story this year: I am insanely proud of Over the Wall, and that is easily my favorite thing I finished and posted this year. I have been working really hard on A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me for the last couple of months, and I think if I pull off the rest of the scenes I have left, it would be up there with Over the Wall.
My least favorite story this year: I was really unhappy with my one spn_masquerade fill, Youthfully Felt, to the point that I made up my mind not to claim it and didn’t change my mind until today. I have never regretted finishing and posting something, even if I wasn’t happy with how it turned out, but that’s how I felt about this one. Granted, I was in a really weird place during this challenge and was mad at myself because I only wrote this prompt because I thought I could do it fast and then it took nearly 5,000 words and all of the time I had to fill prompts in this round, so that definitely played into it.
Most successful story: Over the Wall, and rightfully so.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: I’m trying to work on my brattiness re: the current state of feedback culture and the fact that my fics don’t get read much these days, but the last few things I’ve posted have not gotten very many readers and it’s making it really hard to get excited about posting the story I’m working on now, which I’ve worked really hard on and really am proud of, because I know it’s not going to get much attention. So I feel like I am trying to accept preemptively that A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me will be underappreciated by the universe, lol. But as far as stuff I’ve actually posted, I thought my spn_j2_xmas fic, The Butterfly Effect, was better than the response it got. And also I’m really proud of how the banner turned out and no one’s mentioned it, which is dumb to be sad about, because it’s not like I’m an artist, but hey, emotions are usually dumb, right?
Most fun story: I’ve had a real blast writing some of the bantering between Jared and Jensen in A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me and I have really enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten from folks who have read those bits. For posted fics, I guess I would say For the Fae of Heart had some really cool concepts I enjoyed playing with (that story was a commission, so the ideas weren’t mine, which means I got to play with someone else’s and it led me to places I wouldn’t have gone on my own).
Story with single sexiest moment: I know it’s not very engaging for me to keep referring to a fic that no one has read yet, but A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me has probably the most porn scenes in it that I’ve ever written in one story, and some of them are pretty hot. The hottest is probably the desperate alley fuck when Jensen is wearing make-up? I’m not usually into my own porn very much, but there’s a few scenes in that one that I think are pretty sexy!
Biggest story fail: That’s easy. Lazarus Rising was supposed to be my spn_j2_bigbang this year. I was so into writing it on draft day that I wasn’t saving it, and then my computer crashed and didn’t autorecover anything from my last save, which was only ~2,000 words. I lost so many scenes and they were honestly pretty good. It broke my heart. I gave up on finishing a bigbang and haven’t worked on the story since, even though I really do want to finish it.
Hardest story to make: Over the Wall kicked my ass so hard, but I think it turned out worth it. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever written anything that ended up as close to the version in my head as that story did, and I managed that despite the incredibly complicated chronology and potentially disastrous POVs. I’m so proud of it.
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted? 2018 is the first time since 2015 that I broke 100K in fic writing. Granted, I didn’t go much above that, but I’m still really proud that I got as much done as I did, especially considering I had a really busy year at work and traveled more this year than I have ever before and there were like 4 months there where I was home for maybe 2 weekends altogether. So to have done that much and still write more than I have in years feels really good. And I’m really, really happy with a lot of what I wrote, too, so it’s not just quantity.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January? I don’t really have an answer for this. I will say that Shrike was a moment in the verse it’s set in that I never expected to write, let alone for it to be the first (and probably only) version of that verse to ever make it to publication. But I think it’s pretty good!
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? The subject matter, the characterizations, and the chronology in Over the Wall were all really risky. I spent most of January 2018 eating, sleeping, and breathing this fic. It took so much work and reworking and reworking the reworking to get it where it ended up. And what I learned is that if I am willing to put in that effort, I actually can produce something I’m really, really proud of.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Over the Wall let me explore more faults in both Jared and Jensen than I usually do, and I think that gave me a more layered depiction of them as characters.
Biggest Surprise: I’m going to depart from the writing discussion here to say: I learned how to use photoshop this year and I’m really fucking happy with some of the art I created! I know it’s mostly just banners and manips and stuff a lot of people don’t think of as art, but I got some of those pieces to look exactly like I wanted them to and it’s not a skill I ever thought I could just casually pick up.
Story with the sweetest moment: I’m not allowed to answer something that I haven’t even written yet, am I? It’s the Christmas scene in A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me. Since that isn’t up yet, I will go with Jared coming out of detox in Over the Wall.
Story that made you cry: I cry over everything. That said, Over the Wall made me cry multiple times, especially in the scene where Jensen became vulnerable for the first time, because I felt like I really earned that from him and did a good job establishing how hard it was for him.
Most eye roll-worthy title: I love the quote it’s referencing so much, especially for a story that is hooker fic, but A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me sure is a goddamn mouthful and no one is going to remember it, so I am second guessing myself a lot on that.
Most intentionally telling: I was asked to set For the Fae of Heart in D.C. so that I could write about a city I knew really well, so I slipped a lot of what I love about D.C. into it and I think it’s probably pretty easy to pick up on a lot of that.
Unintentionally?: Youthfully Felt probably has a lot of the sadness I’ve felt over J2 this year baked into it.
Most overdue: I got the idea for A Dime If You Tell Me That You Love Me in my Latino Transportation Cultures class in grad school in 2013 and started it for spn_cinema so many rounds ago and then was supposed to finish it in November for this round. Soooo…probably that one. But, hey, you can’t rush perfection, right???
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: Don’t try to write what you think people want to read. Write what you want to write. I expected people not to want to touch Over the Wall because of the subject matter, but it was the most amazing response I’ve gotten to a fic in years. Meanwhile, the fun urban fantasy adventure I thought people would go crazy for, For the Fae of Heart, hardly made a splash.
Favorite Opening Line(s):
It's lights out at ten p.m.
That's reassuring, in a way. In twelve hours, there won't be light anywhere for anything in Jensen's life, but for now, the blackout is just business as usual. Routine chugging along like a train. It’s dull and depressing, sure, but dependable. Nothing in here changes except the people.
(Over the Wall)
Favorite Closing Line(s):
Jared thanked him. Thanked him, as if Jensen is still the person who rescued him from the exact violation Jensen was too drunk and too desperate to stop himself from committing. He feels the same conflict he does after a job, the overwhelming guilt sated by the extravagance of the payment: the stretch of Jared's cock on his jaw, the passion of that kiss, the wrecked way Jared said his name when he came. Invaluable treasures Jensen will cherish forever, and they didn’t even cost him anything. Jared doesn’t remember.
It’s not the first time Jensen gets away with murder.
(Shrike)
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere You Would Choose to Have Illustrated:
1. Beautiful transgirl!Sam from The Butterfly Effect.
2. Literally anything from Over the Wall. marietwist surprised me with an amazing drawing of the opening scene and I love it so much! But it was such a big fic for me, so I of course want MOAR art, lol.
3. I know Eyewitness is over, but I would have liked to have seen Ricki Anderton, Lukas’s drag persona in True Colors. I wish I’d learned photoshop earlier in the year, because I feel like I could have made a pretty decent manip of this.
4. I’m actually really, really happy with how I managed to pull off the striking visual at the end of For the Fae of Heart, but of course that doesn’t compare to what a drawn version of that scene would have looked like.
5. The scene in All That Is Gold where Jared teaches Jensen to talk to the woods was so visual to me, so I would have loved to see art of it.
The things I've learned this year: I started training for a half-marathon late this year and am sad to report that what I’ve learned is that physical exercise actually does make me feel a lot happier and more energetic than being a lazy slug like I prefer to do. I won’t pretend I enjoy the exercise, but I was able to write so much more in December than I usually do after long work days/weeks because I didn’t feel drained all the time. I thought I would lose wordcount because I’d be spending more time at the gym, but the opposite turned out to be true.
Fic-writing goals for 2019: I really just want to not fail at any deadlines this year. That means being realistic about how much I sign up for, which can be challenging. I’d also like to finish some big fics I’ve had on the backburner the last few years and will once again try to post at least one fic each month. But if I can just not drop out of any challenges I’ve committed myself to, I’ll be happy.