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rhodochrosite) wrote2019-12-26 03:59 pm
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WRITING YEAR IN REVIEW: 2019
total number of completed stories:
10 on pyrophane
total word count:
82 196
(+ 14k on other accounts)
fandoms written in:
nct
- in my face it still appears - jaemin/renjun
- remember the fireworks back then - jaemin/jeno
- such an obvious secret - jaemin/renjun
- look more carefully - jaemin/renjun
- future metropolis heart - haechan/jaemin(/renjun)
- fractionation - haechan/mark
- king’s gambit - haechan/renjun
- ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS - haechan/jaemin
pristin
- surely the summer is far from over - nayoung/seungcheol
seventeen
- heartlines - joshua/jun/seungcheol
- surely the summer is far from over - nayoung/seungcheol
wips:
- jaemin/jeno - musicians au (if you know then you know)
- jaemin/jeno - vampires au (aka tw^l^ght au) (some of us never recovered from the reneslec fic they read when they were 12)
- haechan/renjun - night world au (reread the whole series recently and i got night world fic for yuletide so i’m really in the mood to work on this one)
- xuanyi/yiren - some idolverse for bbbfest
- redacted wip for haggly holidays to be posted in early jan
looking back, did you expect to write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?
definitely more than i expected!! especially posting three times in september… i finished up a lot of longtime wips/ideas i’ve always wanted to write (hunger games au, microbiology internship au, svtbb wip, pacrim au, tinhet fic) and i wrote SO FUCKING MUCH nct fic, the # of nct fic i’ve written is now more than double the # of my next most-written fandom. something about dream really unlocked my productivity powers
what pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
augfhkjdfgjkdfgkj i did not expect that i would be writing this much pwp. i wrote more explicit content this year than i have altogether up until this point x___x i caught I Want That Twink Obliterated disease on several fronts strongly enough to force myself to act on it i was really going through something i guess... but isn't 6 e-rated fics a little too much for someone who still thinks of themselves as a GEN WRITER
did you take any writing risks this year? what did you learn from them?
i really wanted to push the boundaries of my comfort zone (ambiguous pining idolverse) this year so i think 2019 has really been the year of aus for me, i put myself on an unofficial idolverse ban excepting my obligatory idolverse fic for every new fandom so i’ve been branching out in terms of the… vehicle... of still the exact same themes haha. yet another year of writing about memory and identity and strongly-felt-but-difficult-to-define feelings!
i think it’s forced me to level up big time in worldbuilding, structure and dialogue… esp fractionation, god… it was humour- and dialogue-heavy and over 10k and took me 6 months from start to finish and almost killed me but it was good to challenge myself. also i dropped the l-word in a romantic context for possibly the first time ever in ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS, jury still out on whether it was deserved
what’s your own favourite story of the year?
remember the fireworks back then is my BABY i’ve been writing it in some form or another since 2016. but i think my true personal fic of the year is surely the summer is far from over, my tinhet real. i just think it's really good!!! and i love all my fellow nyscists so the entire experience was a great one from start to finish <3
best story of the year?
tie between remember the fireworks back then and ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS, i do think they represent some of my best (and longest) work ever. i even edited ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS and got it betaed by multiple people to try and make sure it was good, rather than slamdunking it onto ao3 the moment i finished writing the last word, so i’m pretty proud of myself for the final product!!
most popular story of the year?
thank you for all the love for remember the fireworks back then ;___; by far my most popular work this year, and i think probably the one most people associate me with. also i gained over 100 subscribers this year, and i'm guessing the majority of them were thanks to rtfbt <3
story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
actually aren't i overappreciated!! like in terms of stats surely the summer is far from over is my lowest but it's a crossover het rarepair so i think it's performed incredibly well for that, though i do adore it and think it's some of my best work of the year. maybe heartlines? it's also rarepair fic but it's pretty good imo and i am twitter user juncheolsoo after all
most fun story to write:
it’s always hard for me to answer this one bc i always go thru such intense suffering + hatred of my own writing as an integral part of my process but i think overall ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS made me happiest to write bc it was for some beloved friends and i got to put a lot of my fave tropes in it!! hand-to-hand fighting as a metaphor for intimacy, identity, memory, violence vs tenderness, extreme emotional anguish, etc
story with the single sexiest moment:
fuck i don’t know i’m terminally incapable of finding my own writing sexy… i think maybe on a sock? it was pretty sexy of renjun to keep trying to kill haechan in future metropolis heart though
most sweet story:
fractionation contains absolutely ZERO emotional anguish it’s just 12k of banter and romance, i don’t recognise myself either. otherwise probably on another account… i even wrote about true love v__v
“holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you!” story:
on a sock
story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
well i think in rpf our perceptions should constantly be evolving to take into account new "canon" info and dynamics and the ever-shifting meta anyway… i do feel like i kept confirmation-biasing myself with characterisation which is a bad habit of mine lol so i am really surprised anytime anyone says they like my characterisation. this got off topic but i don't think i wrote anything on main that changed how i view any character. though remember the fireworks back then really helped me solidify my jaeminthesis? maybe in my face it still appears… i think writing out my jmrn thesis in fic form gave me a better handle on both of them
most unintentionally telling story:
fractionation and ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS were kind of like *accidentally doxxes self* in terms of how much personal experience went into those two fics—fractionation is heavily based on True Events that happened in my life, and the noncanonical settings in ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS are all places i’ve been to myself. but other than that, i don't think i did a lot of projection this year. maybe that’s why i’ve been feeling so :| about most of my output haha
hardest story to write:
fractionation may have taken 6 months but tbh in terms of density of anguish experienced during the writing process even if it was much shorter it was look more carefully T__T i shed real actual tears looking up gun specs and being like why am i doing this to 1) renjun 2) ME. but i am not a quitter so i stuck with it, ymmv on whether it paid off
biggest disappointment:
kind of in a huge slump wrt my own work atm so i want to respond to this with EVERYTHING even though objectively i know i did well with some of my output. it's really frustrating to look back at some of my older fic from ~2016 and see so clearly how little i have improved (or even how much i've gotten worse) since then for the sole reason of my extreme laziness lmfao but am i going to take any steps to fix that? no.
another thing is that nct fandom has been hugely kind to me and i'm humbled by it, but it's also been a tiring space in terms of drama this whole year, which probably contributed to my general feelings of unhappiness. getting into promare and fe3h recently made me remember how fun fandom can/is supposed to be. we'll see how jobful renjun is in the coming year...
also disappointed in myself for having to default on yuletide, i have never defaulted on an exchange before but trying to write 5 fics on my phone in a month while overseas was just too much for me to handle T_T so now i have 1.4k of wjsn 2jung smsy au fic and idk what to do with it. and i’m soooo close to 100k cumulative wordcount without hitting it, and i really doubt i’ll ever get this close again <//3 being laptopless for the majority of december threw a huge spanner in my plans… if i hadn’t defaulted on yuletide i would easily have hit that cool 100k milestone T___T
biggest surprise:
i absolutely did not think anyone was going to read future metropolis heart since it's so like niche and confusing even for me, so the really thoughtful responses i've gotten on it have been really shocking!! also like… i've been seriously blown away by how much love everything i posted on a different account has received (honestly even more than the fic i put on main lol, maybe it's a sign to switch mains...)
favourite opening line(s):
from heartlines:
Joshua crumples to the ground like his strings have been snapped. A million arrowheads of light piercing him through for an immeasurably long moment and Seungcheol watches the arch of his body buoyed up seconds before the collapse as if in slow motion, the line of his throat gilded. All of it flashing out of order, displaced from time, fall and rise, and then Junhui dashes forward to catch Joshua before he hits the ground and everything wrenches itself back into place, Junhui the drawstring pulling the universe together.
favourite closing line(s):
from remember the fireworks back then:
Jaemin could kill him now. He thinks the realisation is simultaneous, though none of it shows in Jeno’s expression, except for the way his eyes darken. But Jeno makes no move to bring his sword up. Instead he tilts his head up, almost imperceptibly. Still watching him. That gaze like a live wire. It would take nothing to drive the knife in his hand through Jeno’s windpipe, bring himself and Jisung so much closer to the finish line. At this distance he could have three embedded in Jeno’s throat before his body hit the ground. His fingers tighten on the hilt. Jeno in front of him, throat bared, stance easy and open, life in Jaemin’s hands as surely as if it were his neck beneath Jaemin’s fingers instead of a blade. This too is a test. What is he waiting for?
One heartbeat, then another. Jaemin smiles at Jeno, a deliberate flash of teeth. “You’re missing out on all the fun,” he says. “Are you coming?”
favourite 5 line(s) from anywhere:
from surely the summer is far from over:
In some ways it was easier to have nothing and want everything than to have something and still want more. Back then debut had been a far-off dream made a little less unattainable with each hour she spent in the practice rooms, the net of promises she’d made to herself and to her family and to the girls that might be her bandmates in the future closing around that dream, hauling it hand over hand towards shore. And she’d lived it three times over, hadn’t she? Ambition tempered by responsibility weathered itself into guilt.
“I remember,” Seungcheol said slowly. “I didn't think you would.”
“Of course I remembered,” Nayoung said. “It was—very kind of you.” She cringed at the delivery, hurried to rephrase herself. “It meant a lot to me. That you noticed.”
“Anyone would have—should have noticed—”
“You always had a lot of love to give,” she said. “Even when you thought you didn’t.” She gripped her elbows, conscious of the wind bristling over her exposed forearms. She hadn’t thought about the cooler air by the ocean, had left her coat slung over the back of her seat. “But I’m sure you’ve heard that enough times.”
“Not from you,” he said.
from future metropolis heart:
In the wrong light, love tastes a lot like resentment. Donghyuck’s face swims in front of him like an apparition. Then, like a switch kicked, there’s no more light at all.
from king's gambit:
They’re spies. They lie. Honesty sits out of place like a second heart, dislodged and vulnerable outside of the ribcage. Maybe it’s because of that that Donghyuck recognises it so unmistakeably, in the way Renjun looks at him, in the way Renjun’s mouth shapes the word darling. In himself, racing underneath his skin with every pulse of blood. Love or duty, love or duty, the coin somersaulting through the air in a wide copper arc, flipped on its edge, catching the light. You have to choose, Renjun is saying. You have to choose.
from in my face it still appears:
The moment goes brittle, cracks open like ice. Jaemin pulls his hands away, fumbling for his phone, and Renjun can’t help the awareness like the view through a camera lens sharpening into focus of the space between them multiplying, contact to handspan-width to the blank of an inverted body. How keenly an absence is felt, once the alternative becomes known to you.
from ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS:
The biology wasn’t really his area of expertise but it was something like this: the Drift necessitated alignment down to the neurons. Repeat the process enough times and the body started remembering, preempted it even without a neural bridge. An entire ocean apart Jaemin’s body echoed Renjun’s like a harmonic wrung out by resonance. Jaemin’d read somewhere that the cells in the cerebral cortex never renewed themselves. That meant parts of his brain would always carry the imprint of Rise Falcon's Drift. Could, maybe, still slip into alignment. Receiver for a homing signal transmitted all the way from the ocean floor.
[lmao i didn't realise basically all of these were about love but i guess............... #themez]
top 5 scenes from anywhere you would choose to have illustrated:
- renjun and haechan messing around in the ocean, from king's gambit
- any of the sparring scenes from ANTITHESIS / SYNTHESIS
- joshua using wind magic to reveal the nine of swords card jun's drawn for seungcheol, from heartlines
- nayoung with seungcheol's blazer jacket over her shoulders, from surely the summer is far from over
- markhyuck kissing outside the lab, from fractionation
- + SPECIAL SHOUTOUT to all the gorgeous art i've received for remember the fireworks back then: jaemjen practising sword skills at the training centre / jaemren hugging right before jaemin enters the arena / jaemjen with weapons
- write more depressing idolverse. i have realised that i've barely scratched the surface of potential bleakness and also i haven't written idolverse in so long i suspect i've forgotten how to, and i have a bbb board to meditate on
- i am going to write fe3h fic. it's going to be about felix experiencing misery and emotional anguish. i haven't decided on the exact contours yet but my main options are felixgrid non-am ending mercenary roadtrip blackrom fic / sylvix non-am ending fic about their onetime reunion as margrave and mercenary / postcanon dimilix in some form. or like idk. idol au. blions childhood quartet as smrookies-style predebut group I Will Never Change I Will Never Improve
- for the past few years i've been really focused on improving my writing in a technical capacity but tbh i think at this point i need to sort out my relationship to writing and learn how to be happy with my work again. AND also get good at the same time. i'll figure it out as i go along