2021 Fanfic Year-End Summary-Type Thing
12/1/22 06:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchThese take... so long to write haha
I posted 120,480 words of fanfic last year! This is substantially less than last year, but it's still the third highest year total. Which I think is impressive, given how completely overwhelmed and exhausted I was for most of the year. 2021 hard.
This breaks down into 21 stories: 1 story/4,125 words of Yuletide and 20 stories/116,355 words of Transformers. I keep expecting myself to fall out of TF a little, but actually I REALLY struggled to focus my brain on anything not robots when I was supposed to be writing Yuletide. I think my tired brain just has no energy to develop new serotonin source haha.
55,537 words were co-written with Dez, and a further 12,353 were written in AUs shared with Dez. It's kind of funny, I felt like we were co-writing less but the three fics we did write together were so chonky that it ended up being nearly half my wordcount.
I do have to say that this was also the year of pwp. Like. 79,342 words of pwp. I just had no ability to plot, only to write horny nonsense. A VERY head empty year.
Yearly questions and answers under the cut. Mildy NSFW/teen rated this time
Best/worst title?
Mmmm I think all of the titles this year were very Serviceable... they all kind of trip off the tongue without really standing out. I do want to give a shout out to Discovery Chanel (Dinobot/Rattrap first time with new equipment) - there's the obvious song reference which is ESPECIALLY funny to me since Dinobot isn't a mammal, but also this is a fic about Rattrap... discovering Dinobot's... channel...
Dez was groaning as I explained this during the posting process haha.
These aren't BAD titles, but Lunar Perigee (Deadlock/OC coda to a larger Rung/Pharma fic) and Human Rhythm (little Jazz-centric fic) gave me spelling fits haha. Perigee and Rhythm just do not look like words.
Best/worst summary?
Again these feel very okay. I got into a pattern of one line from the fic followed by a quick summary of what the fic is. I think it works, it just doesn't really grab me as I'm looking back at these. And actually, the ones I like best don't follow that pattern:
Someone Borrowed (Impactor/Rung/Megatron cuck kink): Impactor's got a new job, a new house, and, improbably, a new sweet little conjunx that he 'found' languishing in the senate's dubious care. Megatron's happy for him. Really, he is.
Reviewer Two (Starscream/Minimus academia AU): If Starscream ever meets that fragging Reviewer Two, he's gonna make him wish he'd never even heard of academic peer-review. He's gonna be wiping up energon for weeks.
If Minimus ever meets that anonymous author, he's going to shake his hand and tell him how much he appreciates his tireless attention to Minimus' comments. Perhaps they might even have a lively little discussion!
Discovery Channel: Rattrap's got a brand-new piece of equipment, just so he can climb on top of his brand-new Eukarian conjunx and spark him up for peace or whatever. It's like something out of a bad xeno porn flick. He's so into it.
I just feel like all three of these dump you into the story and specific pov(s) right away, which is my ideal for a summary.
Worst summary is Split Stitch (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain/Lord Bertilak/Lady Bertilak): The Lord and Lady Bertilak are friendly, hospitable, playful people. Gawain endeavors to keep up with them.
It's FINE, but... embarrassingly, I put it in as a placeholder while I thought of something better and then just. Forgot to change it.
Best/worst first line?
When I went to fill this out I kept picking out first lines that Dez wrote (shakes fist). Dez wrote the first line of all three of the fics we wrote together and they're ALL bangers.
But I'd say my fave first line that I wrote is from Indulgences (Megatron and Starscream reframing fic):
Megatron turned, using the mirrored glass wall of the operating room to examine his new frame. The long black segmented wings were especially striking, though the controls weren't quite as intuitive as he'd expected them to be. Right now they were stuck at the same half-extension they'd been in ever since he'd woken up from the procedure and promptly fallen off the medical berth.
LIne here meaning. Three-line section. But look, I like how this immediately sets the scene and tells you everything you need to know - Megatron's had a reframe, he's some kind of jet, he's Into It, and he's still adjusting.
Also, shout out to Discovery Channel for this description of a phallus that I kept cracking myself up with: The new equipment looked like some kinda stubby tentacle, somehow stiff and squishy all at once.
And honorable mention to this first line from Have and Hold (Prowl/Rung cuck kink): Prowl knew he looked out of place, his stark monochrome paint and thick combat armor standing out against the delicate pastel trinkets and fripperies that decorated the dining room.
I don't think it's that outstanding on its own, but in my head it's a reference to 'his wife has filled his house with chintz. To keep it real I fuck him on the floor' only Rung's the one who filled the house with chintz AND he's gonna fuck Prowl over the table
Worst first line... I think they're all okayyy but I remember not being especially happy with this, from The Delegation Shuffle (SG Prowl/Jazz oviposition):
Jazz woke up in the middle of his off-shift to Prowl pawing at him. Which—okay, it was the third time that a week, Jazz was pretty used to it. He was sleeping in Prowl's berth, after all, and the mech had needs.
It just felt too similar to a chapter beginning from The Long Way Round (Jazz/Prowl corruption arc), but I couldn't be bothered to figure out a different way to start it :/
Best/worst last line?
I'm not really thrilled by any of my last lines this year... I think a lot of the time I was so ready to have a fic done and posted that I just kinda shoved it out the door, whoops. I do think that the ending to Indulgences is nice and atmospheric:
"You're probably a natural," grumbled Starscream, but he followed Megatron out of the room, both sets of wings folding easily to pass through the door.
Often I either rush an ending or go on for a little too long before someone reels me back in while editing, but this time it felt like I was ending the fic right when it was ready to be over.
Also honorable mention to the author's note at the end of The Delegation Shuffle which I just. Cannot get over. I find myself so funny.
Prowl: :D New couple's activity!!
Ironhide: Huh, that's a weird name for my spike.
Jazz: hgggk glgk
In terms of worst last lines, I just couldn't quite get the ending of Have and Hold to cohere like, grammatically... The IDEA is there but the actual sentence is just a little hard to read:
"Oh, I would never kiss and tell," said Rung, the little cogsucker, but then he said "but if you bend over I could show you," and, you know what, Impactor really did love him.
I had a few instances of putting a piece of dialogue in the middle of a sentence in my fics this year and I just never figured out how to phrase it. It FEELS so natural but. It is not.
Also the ending of Human Rhythm originally had a joke about Gary Numan which got cut because it made the tiny zine too long, and by the time I finally posted it on AO3, where I could go on as long as I wanted, I'd forgotten the joke. Devo reference had to do.
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
I wrote a little less than I thought I would... It felt like I was always stealing writing time rather than getting to just relax and have fun with it. But also this year was so frantic that I'm amazed at how much I got done. Brainstorming with Dez (and James, and Fas, and Jab, and Sroloc, and and and) was still really motivating - especially sending fic snippets and getting reactions right away. Little boost of brain chemicals for me haha
Last year my goal was to write Your Bloodstained Laurel Wreath (Pharma/Rung catharsis) with Dez (obvs check), finish The Long Way Round (check), and maybe do a collab fic with someone besides Dez (which I did at least in series format with the Medibot Pharma series I wrote with limitedpractice). So actually that all went pretty well! Also I succeeded in my goal of being EXTREMELY self-indulgent. Like I said. A very head empty year.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
Mostly AO3 as usual, but I did have a fic in the Spectrum Charity Zine (Indulgences, now also posted on AO3), and I gave away Human Rhythm as a tiny zine at TFCon. Still doing fic announcements on tumblr, twitter, here, discord, everywhere... And I had to turn off anon comments this year, which was too bad but I think the right decision for me.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
Really wasn't expecting to write a Chromedome pov fic (Giving Head, Chromedome/Rewind public use kink) - Chromedome's the TF character I've been most blah about, but then Fas started giving him little scenes in Sealpatico AU and I was talking to James about headmaster stuff on twitter and... suddenly I was getting Insight into his Personality whoops
As usual I'm an easy sell as soon as I start thinking about something weird or surprising or kinky about a character haha. For instance I wouldn't say I EXPECTED to write a cicada AU (The Mating Call, Starscream/Thundercracker/Skywarp), but if you'd told me I was gonna do it I would've been like 'yeah that sounds like me.'
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Man, I'm really pleased with a lot of my fic this year but I think Your Bloodstained Laurel Wreath is my favorite. It was really fun to write with Dez, it's got my boy Aglet in it, and it's also just... very satisfying... It has the kind of intense rescue/recovery/catharsis arc that I'm always craving from fic and very rarely get, and having it in this crystallized form where I can pick it up and look at it whenever I want is so nice. I also looked back recently at the chats we had while we were writing and man. That whole process was so enjoyable.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Technically it's The Long Way Round, but that's a fic that was posted partially in 2020 AND is multichapter AND was my most popular fic last year so let's just move that out of the running so we can look at something new.
Most popular by hits: Loose Hips, my OTHER Prowl-centric sex comedy haha. This was written in a frantic haze as I realized I hadn't prepped ANYTHING for Prowl Exes week and I'm not entirely sure the whole plot/emotional arc of it makes sense but y'know what I'm glad people liked it.
By kudos and bookmarks: The Mating Call, which is wild given that I think this fic is SO nonsense and only makes true visceral sense if you were stuck in the 17-year cicada vortex all summer. But I have noticed before that there's a large elite trine fandom that is often starved for content, and I'm happy to help provide :)
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
I feel very appreciated - it's so nice just hanging out in a fandom and carving a niche for yourself and having people come by periodically to tell you that you're good...
I guess in that vein I do think that Split Stitch is good and would scratch that gender itch for some people who like my TF fics, but of course fewer people checked it out because it's a Yuletide fic for a small fandom. The comments I did get on it were super super nice!
I would say that the second chapter of Heavy in Your Arms (Tarn/Pharma dark rescue fic) is a little unappreciated in terms of amount of feedback to how long we spent working on it but the thing IS it's SO niche and the people who did read it were SO enthused that I feel more like I intricately crafted a hole for like five people to throw themselves in. They love that hole. It's for them.
Story that could have been better?
I do feel like there's a universe where Split Stitch is more fleshed out and entrancing but unfortunately we are still in the universe where focusing on anything not robots feels almost impossible so,,,,
Also the second chapter of Heavy in Your Arms was being rewritten AS we were posting it, which makes me think we should have held on to it a day longer but. We really wanted it posted haha.
Sexiest story?
Gnffgh can I say. All of them. I was writing so much fic where I just kept going 'hmm. what is the horniest way to do this' at each decision point. Just super super tapped into my weird robot sex id.
If I have to make a choice I'll say The Vending Machine (megastar public use kink) because I have spent. A lot of quality time thinking about iterations of that concept. It was nice to finally get it on the page to share with others instead of hoarding it to myself.
Most fun story?
Ohhhh Reviewer Two was SO fun to write and then to have out in the world... I just love getting to captain the starmin ship and also exorcise some academia frustrations all at once. Also whenever I return to Starscream (my beloved) I just sink back into his voice and get to write the most RIDICULOUS lines. Him accusing a completely sincere Minimus of negging is one of the highlights of my year.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Definitely Giving Head - like I said above, I wasn't super into Chromedome, but by the time I was done writing that fic I was enjoying him and now I have started the new year by writing MORE Chromedome fic. He's always teetering between bluntness and self-loathing, steadying himself with his love for someone that he just assumes is settling for him... Very complicated, crunchy character. Heavy in Your Arms actually sold me on Tarn in the same way, where I had been a little like 'ugh, this guy,' and now I'm like oh ;-; poor little meow meow ;-;
I think I just don't like characters who are too obviously pathetic until I really dig into their mindset, and then I'm like okay he's pathetic but he's MINE and I'm keeping him. Which is exactly the kind of thing Rewind would say tbh.
Hardest story to write?
Ahhh, predictably Indulgences was REALLY hard and probably wouldn't have gotten written if I hadn't committed it to a zine specifically for the purpose of forcing myself to write it :p Gender... difficult to express... Relatedly I had to go back in and add all the gender stuff I'd been talking my way around into Split Stitch - Dez prodded me into it and I was so glad haha.
Whenever I write fanfic about gender I get really enthused and gratifying feedback which is so nice, but it also takes a lot out of me ;-; Much easier to write nonsense porn.
Easiest story to write?
Hmmm it's actually probably Giving Head - I wrote a lot of one-sitting porn this year, but Giving Head was the one where I kept that energy up for multiple writing sessions. Every time I sat down the words just flowed out. It was also helpful that I knocked most of it out once the semester was over and I could just focus on it instead of having to snatch 30 minutes here and there.
Most overdue story?
Dez wrote me the opening for Heavy in Your Arms AGES ago, I just tracked it down and it was January 5th 2021 haha. We had been talking and talking about it and she got so excited and I was excited and then... I had to finish Long Way Round, and the semester was so busy and and and
By the time I actually sat down to write it, I got all the way to the ending (of what I thought was the whole fic) and realized I had a narrative that all made sense but didn't get to the end of the arc and I was gonna have to write a whole second part... and luckily Dez swooped in and helped me out with chapter two haha. But then! Chapter two took a whole two months to write! I had no idea why it was so much of a slog until we were nearly done and I checked wordcount and saw it was already over 10k haha. And then like I said, we were still making major edits all the way up to when we hit post. I'm really glad it's done and out in the world but MAN that was a process.
I also recorded a podfic of Twenty-Five to Life (last year's Starmin epic) and have had noooo time to edit it for posting. Someday. Soon.
Also wip check-in: alt ending the Long Way Round I'm totally stuck on, tfp megastar I adopted from Neery, ratchrod I adopted from Choko, innumerable Banners and miscellaneous concepts I've kicked around with Dez but not actually written. I was a lot more scattered this year, usually I just pick something up and stick with it but I think because it was so hard to find time to write it was always tempting to write the new shiny short thing I knew I could knock out instead of working on a wip.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I think this year was very low-risk, very high in comfort writing... I needed it haha, I needed to wrap up my brain in warm cotton. I did continue a lot of the things I started doing in the last couple years, like co-writing and shared projects and occasionally posting stuff without having the whole thing written out.
Oh the one thing I did do was write Jazz and Prowl as friends in Loose Hips where Jazz is aro/ace and Prowl is aro, and part of the fic is Prowl figuring out that he's aro and both of them figuring out that they're definitely not meant to be together. I didn't conceive this as a risk as I was writing it, I was just flying by the seat of my pants and scrambling to get any writing time at all that late in the semester... but I definitely lost some people with that one, whoops, you can see it in the way comments dropped off. I'm glad most people just rolled with it and didn't get mad about me baiting them with a popular ship or anything. I just love Jazz ;-; And Prowl ;;-;; and messy not-relationships ;;;-;;;
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
I will edit and post the 25TL podfic!! I will!!! And I will get the two fics I've adopted posted!!
Other than that... I'd like to write one or two plottier stories, in amongst all the porn haha. And maybe get to some kind of arc ending with Medibot Pharma? And keep chatting and working on stuff with my friendsssss. As long as I'm having fun, that's what matters :)
I posted 120,480 words of fanfic last year! This is substantially less than last year, but it's still the third highest year total. Which I think is impressive, given how completely overwhelmed and exhausted I was for most of the year. 2021 hard.
This breaks down into 21 stories: 1 story/4,125 words of Yuletide and 20 stories/116,355 words of Transformers. I keep expecting myself to fall out of TF a little, but actually I REALLY struggled to focus my brain on anything not robots when I was supposed to be writing Yuletide. I think my tired brain just has no energy to develop new serotonin source haha.
55,537 words were co-written with Dez, and a further 12,353 were written in AUs shared with Dez. It's kind of funny, I felt like we were co-writing less but the three fics we did write together were so chonky that it ended up being nearly half my wordcount.
I do have to say that this was also the year of pwp. Like. 79,342 words of pwp. I just had no ability to plot, only to write horny nonsense. A VERY head empty year.
Yearly questions and answers under the cut. Mildy NSFW/teen rated this time
Best/worst title?
Mmmm I think all of the titles this year were very Serviceable... they all kind of trip off the tongue without really standing out. I do want to give a shout out to Discovery Chanel (Dinobot/Rattrap first time with new equipment) - there's the obvious song reference which is ESPECIALLY funny to me since Dinobot isn't a mammal, but also this is a fic about Rattrap... discovering Dinobot's... channel...
Dez was groaning as I explained this during the posting process haha.
These aren't BAD titles, but Lunar Perigee (Deadlock/OC coda to a larger Rung/Pharma fic) and Human Rhythm (little Jazz-centric fic) gave me spelling fits haha. Perigee and Rhythm just do not look like words.
Best/worst summary?
Again these feel very okay. I got into a pattern of one line from the fic followed by a quick summary of what the fic is. I think it works, it just doesn't really grab me as I'm looking back at these. And actually, the ones I like best don't follow that pattern:
Someone Borrowed (Impactor/Rung/Megatron cuck kink): Impactor's got a new job, a new house, and, improbably, a new sweet little conjunx that he 'found' languishing in the senate's dubious care. Megatron's happy for him. Really, he is.
Reviewer Two (Starscream/Minimus academia AU): If Starscream ever meets that fragging Reviewer Two, he's gonna make him wish he'd never even heard of academic peer-review. He's gonna be wiping up energon for weeks.
If Minimus ever meets that anonymous author, he's going to shake his hand and tell him how much he appreciates his tireless attention to Minimus' comments. Perhaps they might even have a lively little discussion!
Discovery Channel: Rattrap's got a brand-new piece of equipment, just so he can climb on top of his brand-new Eukarian conjunx and spark him up for peace or whatever. It's like something out of a bad xeno porn flick. He's so into it.
I just feel like all three of these dump you into the story and specific pov(s) right away, which is my ideal for a summary.
Worst summary is Split Stitch (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain/Lord Bertilak/Lady Bertilak): The Lord and Lady Bertilak are friendly, hospitable, playful people. Gawain endeavors to keep up with them.
It's FINE, but... embarrassingly, I put it in as a placeholder while I thought of something better and then just. Forgot to change it.
Best/worst first line?
When I went to fill this out I kept picking out first lines that Dez wrote (shakes fist). Dez wrote the first line of all three of the fics we wrote together and they're ALL bangers.
But I'd say my fave first line that I wrote is from Indulgences (Megatron and Starscream reframing fic):
Megatron turned, using the mirrored glass wall of the operating room to examine his new frame. The long black segmented wings were especially striking, though the controls weren't quite as intuitive as he'd expected them to be. Right now they were stuck at the same half-extension they'd been in ever since he'd woken up from the procedure and promptly fallen off the medical berth.
LIne here meaning. Three-line section. But look, I like how this immediately sets the scene and tells you everything you need to know - Megatron's had a reframe, he's some kind of jet, he's Into It, and he's still adjusting.
Also, shout out to Discovery Channel for this description of a phallus that I kept cracking myself up with: The new equipment looked like some kinda stubby tentacle, somehow stiff and squishy all at once.
And honorable mention to this first line from Have and Hold (Prowl/Rung cuck kink): Prowl knew he looked out of place, his stark monochrome paint and thick combat armor standing out against the delicate pastel trinkets and fripperies that decorated the dining room.
I don't think it's that outstanding on its own, but in my head it's a reference to 'his wife has filled his house with chintz. To keep it real I fuck him on the floor' only Rung's the one who filled the house with chintz AND he's gonna fuck Prowl over the table
Worst first line... I think they're all okayyy but I remember not being especially happy with this, from The Delegation Shuffle (SG Prowl/Jazz oviposition):
Jazz woke up in the middle of his off-shift to Prowl pawing at him. Which—okay, it was the third time that a week, Jazz was pretty used to it. He was sleeping in Prowl's berth, after all, and the mech had needs.
It just felt too similar to a chapter beginning from The Long Way Round (Jazz/Prowl corruption arc), but I couldn't be bothered to figure out a different way to start it :/
Best/worst last line?
I'm not really thrilled by any of my last lines this year... I think a lot of the time I was so ready to have a fic done and posted that I just kinda shoved it out the door, whoops. I do think that the ending to Indulgences is nice and atmospheric:
"You're probably a natural," grumbled Starscream, but he followed Megatron out of the room, both sets of wings folding easily to pass through the door.
Often I either rush an ending or go on for a little too long before someone reels me back in while editing, but this time it felt like I was ending the fic right when it was ready to be over.
Also honorable mention to the author's note at the end of The Delegation Shuffle which I just. Cannot get over. I find myself so funny.
Prowl: :D New couple's activity!!
Ironhide: Huh, that's a weird name for my spike.
Jazz: hgggk glgk
In terms of worst last lines, I just couldn't quite get the ending of Have and Hold to cohere like, grammatically... The IDEA is there but the actual sentence is just a little hard to read:
"Oh, I would never kiss and tell," said Rung, the little cogsucker, but then he said "but if you bend over I could show you," and, you know what, Impactor really did love him.
I had a few instances of putting a piece of dialogue in the middle of a sentence in my fics this year and I just never figured out how to phrase it. It FEELS so natural but. It is not.
Also the ending of Human Rhythm originally had a joke about Gary Numan which got cut because it made the tiny zine too long, and by the time I finally posted it on AO3, where I could go on as long as I wanted, I'd forgotten the joke. Devo reference had to do.
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
I wrote a little less than I thought I would... It felt like I was always stealing writing time rather than getting to just relax and have fun with it. But also this year was so frantic that I'm amazed at how much I got done. Brainstorming with Dez (and James, and Fas, and Jab, and Sroloc, and and and) was still really motivating - especially sending fic snippets and getting reactions right away. Little boost of brain chemicals for me haha
Last year my goal was to write Your Bloodstained Laurel Wreath (Pharma/Rung catharsis) with Dez (obvs check), finish The Long Way Round (check), and maybe do a collab fic with someone besides Dez (which I did at least in series format with the Medibot Pharma series I wrote with limitedpractice). So actually that all went pretty well! Also I succeeded in my goal of being EXTREMELY self-indulgent. Like I said. A very head empty year.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
Mostly AO3 as usual, but I did have a fic in the Spectrum Charity Zine (Indulgences, now also posted on AO3), and I gave away Human Rhythm as a tiny zine at TFCon. Still doing fic announcements on tumblr, twitter, here, discord, everywhere... And I had to turn off anon comments this year, which was too bad but I think the right decision for me.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
Really wasn't expecting to write a Chromedome pov fic (Giving Head, Chromedome/Rewind public use kink) - Chromedome's the TF character I've been most blah about, but then Fas started giving him little scenes in Sealpatico AU and I was talking to James about headmaster stuff on twitter and... suddenly I was getting Insight into his Personality whoops
As usual I'm an easy sell as soon as I start thinking about something weird or surprising or kinky about a character haha. For instance I wouldn't say I EXPECTED to write a cicada AU (The Mating Call, Starscream/Thundercracker/Skywarp), but if you'd told me I was gonna do it I would've been like 'yeah that sounds like me.'
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Man, I'm really pleased with a lot of my fic this year but I think Your Bloodstained Laurel Wreath is my favorite. It was really fun to write with Dez, it's got my boy Aglet in it, and it's also just... very satisfying... It has the kind of intense rescue/recovery/catharsis arc that I'm always craving from fic and very rarely get, and having it in this crystallized form where I can pick it up and look at it whenever I want is so nice. I also looked back recently at the chats we had while we were writing and man. That whole process was so enjoyable.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Technically it's The Long Way Round, but that's a fic that was posted partially in 2020 AND is multichapter AND was my most popular fic last year so let's just move that out of the running so we can look at something new.
Most popular by hits: Loose Hips, my OTHER Prowl-centric sex comedy haha. This was written in a frantic haze as I realized I hadn't prepped ANYTHING for Prowl Exes week and I'm not entirely sure the whole plot/emotional arc of it makes sense but y'know what I'm glad people liked it.
By kudos and bookmarks: The Mating Call, which is wild given that I think this fic is SO nonsense and only makes true visceral sense if you were stuck in the 17-year cicada vortex all summer. But I have noticed before that there's a large elite trine fandom that is often starved for content, and I'm happy to help provide :)
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
I feel very appreciated - it's so nice just hanging out in a fandom and carving a niche for yourself and having people come by periodically to tell you that you're good...
I guess in that vein I do think that Split Stitch is good and would scratch that gender itch for some people who like my TF fics, but of course fewer people checked it out because it's a Yuletide fic for a small fandom. The comments I did get on it were super super nice!
I would say that the second chapter of Heavy in Your Arms (Tarn/Pharma dark rescue fic) is a little unappreciated in terms of amount of feedback to how long we spent working on it but the thing IS it's SO niche and the people who did read it were SO enthused that I feel more like I intricately crafted a hole for like five people to throw themselves in. They love that hole. It's for them.
Story that could have been better?
I do feel like there's a universe where Split Stitch is more fleshed out and entrancing but unfortunately we are still in the universe where focusing on anything not robots feels almost impossible so,,,,
Also the second chapter of Heavy in Your Arms was being rewritten AS we were posting it, which makes me think we should have held on to it a day longer but. We really wanted it posted haha.
Sexiest story?
Gnffgh can I say. All of them. I was writing so much fic where I just kept going 'hmm. what is the horniest way to do this' at each decision point. Just super super tapped into my weird robot sex id.
If I have to make a choice I'll say The Vending Machine (megastar public use kink) because I have spent. A lot of quality time thinking about iterations of that concept. It was nice to finally get it on the page to share with others instead of hoarding it to myself.
Most fun story?
Ohhhh Reviewer Two was SO fun to write and then to have out in the world... I just love getting to captain the starmin ship and also exorcise some academia frustrations all at once. Also whenever I return to Starscream (my beloved) I just sink back into his voice and get to write the most RIDICULOUS lines. Him accusing a completely sincere Minimus of negging is one of the highlights of my year.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Definitely Giving Head - like I said above, I wasn't super into Chromedome, but by the time I was done writing that fic I was enjoying him and now I have started the new year by writing MORE Chromedome fic. He's always teetering between bluntness and self-loathing, steadying himself with his love for someone that he just assumes is settling for him... Very complicated, crunchy character. Heavy in Your Arms actually sold me on Tarn in the same way, where I had been a little like 'ugh, this guy,' and now I'm like oh ;-; poor little meow meow ;-;
I think I just don't like characters who are too obviously pathetic until I really dig into their mindset, and then I'm like okay he's pathetic but he's MINE and I'm keeping him. Which is exactly the kind of thing Rewind would say tbh.
Hardest story to write?
Ahhh, predictably Indulgences was REALLY hard and probably wouldn't have gotten written if I hadn't committed it to a zine specifically for the purpose of forcing myself to write it :p Gender... difficult to express... Relatedly I had to go back in and add all the gender stuff I'd been talking my way around into Split Stitch - Dez prodded me into it and I was so glad haha.
Whenever I write fanfic about gender I get really enthused and gratifying feedback which is so nice, but it also takes a lot out of me ;-; Much easier to write nonsense porn.
Easiest story to write?
Hmmm it's actually probably Giving Head - I wrote a lot of one-sitting porn this year, but Giving Head was the one where I kept that energy up for multiple writing sessions. Every time I sat down the words just flowed out. It was also helpful that I knocked most of it out once the semester was over and I could just focus on it instead of having to snatch 30 minutes here and there.
Most overdue story?
Dez wrote me the opening for Heavy in Your Arms AGES ago, I just tracked it down and it was January 5th 2021 haha. We had been talking and talking about it and she got so excited and I was excited and then... I had to finish Long Way Round, and the semester was so busy and and and
By the time I actually sat down to write it, I got all the way to the ending (of what I thought was the whole fic) and realized I had a narrative that all made sense but didn't get to the end of the arc and I was gonna have to write a whole second part... and luckily Dez swooped in and helped me out with chapter two haha. But then! Chapter two took a whole two months to write! I had no idea why it was so much of a slog until we were nearly done and I checked wordcount and saw it was already over 10k haha. And then like I said, we were still making major edits all the way up to when we hit post. I'm really glad it's done and out in the world but MAN that was a process.
I also recorded a podfic of Twenty-Five to Life (last year's Starmin epic) and have had noooo time to edit it for posting. Someday. Soon.
Also wip check-in: alt ending the Long Way Round I'm totally stuck on, tfp megastar I adopted from Neery, ratchrod I adopted from Choko, innumerable Banners and miscellaneous concepts I've kicked around with Dez but not actually written. I was a lot more scattered this year, usually I just pick something up and stick with it but I think because it was so hard to find time to write it was always tempting to write the new shiny short thing I knew I could knock out instead of working on a wip.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I think this year was very low-risk, very high in comfort writing... I needed it haha, I needed to wrap up my brain in warm cotton. I did continue a lot of the things I started doing in the last couple years, like co-writing and shared projects and occasionally posting stuff without having the whole thing written out.
Oh the one thing I did do was write Jazz and Prowl as friends in Loose Hips where Jazz is aro/ace and Prowl is aro, and part of the fic is Prowl figuring out that he's aro and both of them figuring out that they're definitely not meant to be together. I didn't conceive this as a risk as I was writing it, I was just flying by the seat of my pants and scrambling to get any writing time at all that late in the semester... but I definitely lost some people with that one, whoops, you can see it in the way comments dropped off. I'm glad most people just rolled with it and didn't get mad about me baiting them with a popular ship or anything. I just love Jazz ;-; And Prowl ;;-;; and messy not-relationships ;;;-;;;
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
I will edit and post the 25TL podfic!! I will!!! And I will get the two fics I've adopted posted!!
Other than that... I'd like to write one or two plottier stories, in amongst all the porn haha. And maybe get to some kind of arc ending with Medibot Pharma? And keep chatting and working on stuff with my friendsssss. As long as I'm having fun, that's what matters :)
