writing year in review: 2020

[rhodochrosite]

STATS
total number of completed stories: 

ao3: 7

3 on pyrophane

2 on sulfate

2 on resentfully

 

dw: 7

 

total word count:

ao3: 28 722

dw: 16 731

total: 45 453

 
FICS

title: a locked heart’s door

fandom: everglow

ship: sihyeon/aisha(/yiren)

summary: It’s easy to love beautiful things.

posted on: resentfully

best lines:

• All trainees have those long harsh unseen hours in common, but the maxed-out intensity of a survival show crams years worth of it into the span of months, light through a magnifying glass transforming itself into heat, capacity for harm, though any idol trainee worth her salt should already associate light with danger. Stage lights, camera bulb flashes, makeup counters, each demanding exposure, that carefulness of self like a one-way mirror, except it’s difficult to say for sure which side of the glass she’s on.

• But Sihyeon’d seen the raw terror in Eunji’s eyes and clocked it for what it was: fear that she hadn’t met her own exacting standards, hadn’t held on tightly enough to the lovely dream. Again, the way she hadn’t since stepping out of the pyramid room in the Produce set that no longer held any space for her, Sihyeon could feel in her teeth just how shaky their claim to the stage was, if they weren’t loved. So they had to be beautiful.

• It’d struck Sihyeon out of nowhere, then. The responsibility of holding another person’s faith in her hands. She hadn’t understood until that semiquiet moment in the dark, imagining Yiren’s wide eyes, Yiren’s hands clutching the covers, separated from Sihyeon’s field of vision but still within her space. Like it or not, they were each other’s people now. She thought, God, I am absolutely not equipped to be anybody’s first love.

commentary:

• this was an exchange gift for noura, i had fun going a bit harder in on the depressing idolverseisms for bbb than i usually do… i think ggroup fic is more conducive to a particular brand of sharpness/meanness that i find it difficult to write about in bgroup fic. my problem is that i have such a passion for bitchy cliquey elite private school girls and keep trying to transpose that kind of dynamic into settings where it isn’t necessarily applicable
• i made a conscious attempt to also branch out from the type of figurative language i usually use in idolverse fic, not sure if successful… i do like the ant/magnifying glass/light stuff i think that was a more interesting take on my usual light imagery fare

title: towards the only path

fandom: qcyn2/the9

ship: jiaqi/xueer

summary: Xueer never finds herself in an empty room.

posted on: pyrophane

best lines:

• The moment the full list of contestants was released Xueer’d triaged her competition name by name, and Xu Jiaqi came in near the very top. This isn’t the first time they’ve crossed paths; Xueer knows exactly what she’s up against. Jiaqi carries her beauty with a grace borne of long hours familiarising herself with each line of her body. Xueer’s seen it firsthand. There’s a magnetism to Jiaqi, even in stillness. She imagines the list of Jiaqi’s charms, pinned down precisely and named, one by one: longer or shorter than her own? 

• Blindly, Xueer reaches a hand out to Zihan beside her, and their fingers collide, Zihan seeking the same: something warm to hold onto. Zihan’s grip is firm, almost painful. Here is a girl who does not let go. 

• Xueer has: her face, her eight years, her muscle memory, her hunger. A mouth apt to land her in hot water, a heart like fire. 

Jiaqi has—

“Your company name this time, it suits you,” Jiaqi says gently. She reaches out and catches one of Xueer’s hands, grasping it between both of her own. Her palms are warm, warmer than Xueer’s. “Snow on the mountaintop… maybe that’s a sign.”
 

commentary:

• the obligatory ambiguous relationships 2pickshipping/3pickshipping idolverse… like in a locked heart's door i tried to lean harder into the nastiness but i feel like i actually went a bit overboard, i think the characterisations here are maybe too harsh. tbf this was written really early on in the course of the show so i didn’t have much to go off and extrapolated too enthusiastically, see above re: private school girls
• i still like the extended metaphor about the wolf at the door + 小兔子乖乖 i think that was good… writing fic for cfandoms feels more secure to me because of the language affinity + my understanding of more cultural norms -> i am more confident about accurately replicating speech patterns and grounding my fic in a realistic sense of cultural context

 

title: objects in mirror

fandom: qcyn2/the9

ship: jiaqi/xueer

summary: “True love’s kiss, of course!” Shuxin declares. “That’s how curses break in every story ever, hello? Have you ever seen a movie in your life?”

posted on: pyrophane

best lines:

• An Qi’s energy fireworks inside her, relentless as its source. Carrying An Qi’s instruction, aligning her body into more perfect form. What a secret relief in giving herself over to someone who knows better, who can tell her with certainty what to do next. An Qi’s steel in Xueer’s spine. Stand tall, it tells her. Now focus.

• The air goes still and dense like the premonition of a lightning storm. Yu Yan’s hair shifts and spreads out behind her shoulders, bristling at the tips. But even now her expression remains dispassionate, unblinking. The line of her mouth taut as wire.

• She’d understand if Yuxin hated her. At this point she’d honestly welcome it; at least she knows what to do in the face of hatred. But the blade of Yuxin’s kindness, sharp enough to cut, doesn’t waver, not once. Every time she speaks to Yuxin she feels its cold, tender weight at her throat.

• Even as she wrestles that silvery inflow of energy under control, the familiarity of it settles her, as though her body recognises it. A sort of certainty of self, an ability to stand alone. The growing quiet of a dark, still pool within her. Xueer takes hold of that borrowed centre of gravity and breathes. 

“If this doesn’t work,” she whispers. She can’t look at Yuxin, not now. “Do you—do you still think I can win.” 

A considering silence. Then Yuxin touches the back of her hand. Contact, fleeting, so light Xueer wonders if she’d imagined it. She lifts her head, meets Yuxin’s gaze. Serious, clear, kind. Coring through her like a scythe.

Yuxin says, “Why do you always think you need me to tell you?”

• Jiaqi's energy flows into her like air. Its force inside Xueer lifting upwards, trying to press her closer to its source. Pulse in Xueer’s ears, giddy. Jiaqi holds her with all her dancer’s strength, muscles taut under wet skin, as though Xueer is the one who might be uncautiously consumed, who might slip out of her hold like a carp, twisting over the waterfall into a dragon. The cool air whispering over her bare shoulders, the water so warm now. Jiaqi kisses her breathless.

• Jiaqi draws back, but she doesn’t let go of Xueer’s arms. The steady sound of the water washing up against the sides of the pool envelops them like a heartbeat. Everywhere the light gleams blue. “Do you think it worked?”

Xueer says, hope like a pearl at her throat, “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
 

commentary:

• i don’t know what possessed me to write a fic centred around kissing when there is little i suck at more than writing kiss scenes hence why all my shipfic is like, And They Stood Vaguely Next To Each Other. and i think it shows so bad omfg i cannot reread this one without wincing… the characterisation has definitely improved since my first qcyn2 fic tho, and so has the balance between nasty competitive bitchery and real genuine connection
• the original idea was from a cc answer i wrote re: kxe’s industry history where i was like man it’s like kxe is cursed or something… and then i was like Well What If She Really Was… and she had to Break The Curse… opportunity for stupid ensemble dynamics interspersed with random bursts of idolverse angst! it’s a tone i really enjoy reading bc i love to be blindsided by The Terror while i’m like mid-chuckle but i am so bad at writing it because i am not good at humour
• i think lyx and xjq’s sections are the best in terms of executing the atmosphere and like thematic whatever that i was trying to convey but unfortunately i put them at the end for maximum impact and kind of half-assed the opening bits. which is my problem with nearly every single one of my fics… all the good parts are at the end and the beginning is really weak… also i think i could have done like some kind of broad extended metaphor running through all the sections but i’m pretty happy with how each section feels rounded and connected within itself with its own extended metaphor
• i was seeding my 9pick so hard… and in the end it didn’t even matterrr… it’s okay. i had fun thinking up characterisation-enhancing superpowers which is always my favourite part of writing mundane magic fics

 

title: we’ll know just what we want 

fandom: haikyuu

ship: hinata/oikawa

summary: Out on the sunsoaked sands of Rio de Janeiro, Oikawa hits the reset button.

posted on: sulfate

best lines:

• Sand punishes hesitation, gives way without mercy under an uncertain step. Nothing like the foundations laid down stone by stone over a lifetime Oikawa’s used to resting his trust upon. You have to dig your heels in, see—Hinata is saying, and Oikawa does, cautious flutter of delight at his throat like a pulse. 

• “Must be fate,” Oikawa says. “Or volleyball! Which is the same thing if you really think about it.”

“To you,” Hanamaki says.

• “Same old, same old,” Hanamaki says. “No encounters with ex-high school rivals in sight, very tragic, have been sighing fitfully at the moon lately wondering why Tendou Satori won’t call me back…”

• Hanamaki in Tokyo, Iwaizumi in California, Oikawa in San Juan, Hinata Shouyou in Rio de Janeiro. The astonishing new shapes of their lives leaving contrails crisscrossing the world, intersecting for briefly brilliant moments like these, a phone call spanning a twelve-hour difference, a week on a beach. 

• “I’m better now,” Hinata says. “Well, duh, it’s been years and years, but I mean—at taking care of myself.” And he shifts, flash of that preternatural instinct like light catching on the edge of a coin as it flips through the air, and presses the flat of his palm to Oikawa’s knee. Oikawa exhales. The injury’s long healed over but there’s a twinge of something, some psychosomatic sympathy that responds to that plain contact, the warmth of Hinata’s hand drawing up old muscle memory like water from a well. “Oikawa-san is too, I think.”

• Bodies are long-term investments, he understands this now. He hadn’t had a field of vision wide enough before, convinced that his life would be over at the end of his high school career and every wrung-out hour he spent in the gym was merely prolonging the steady march to the inevitable, those three short years closing in on him like a tightening net. Of course, once he got there, turns out it hadn’t been the end at all. It’s all just beginning. This is the rest of his life billowing outwards and upwards.

• Some part of him will always be the bitterly desperate middleschooler in the airless Kitagawa Daiichi gym, but in the exact same way some part of him will always be the child watching wide-eyed with awe as José Blanco steadied the ball, reveling in the triumph of someone else’s expertise. The capacity for wonder. It never left him. 

• “But I guess you do have a Nationals appearance on me,” and Oikawa’s unable to help the twist to his mouth as the words leave. The reason he didn’t make it in his final year blinks at him, clear-eyed and unapologetic for his competing claim to the title, but if it hadn’t been Hinata it might have been Ushijima, might have been any other player on the court. All those dreams, and Oikawa had thought his unique.

• I’d forgotten how it felt, he could say. You gave it back to me. But of course Hinata already knows. What they’ve done for one another a delicate crosshatch between them. They are watching each other watch each other. They know what they see.

commentary:

• i know i put a ton of quotes into the fave lines section but i really am soooo pleased with this one, definitely my top choice out of my 2020 output T__T i don’t have much more to say because i already gave my gay af piece on twitter about the difficult but beautiful process of reconnecting with your love for the activity you chose to devote yourself towards and the incredible kindness with which haikyuu treated oikawa’s growth… this fic is really personal to me and i feel like i was actually able to achieve what i set out to do / convey all the feelings i hoped to convey. idk! it has heart. i’m glad that if i could finally succeed in executing just one vision, it was this one

 

title: most people never even get a single high school rival

fandom: haikyuu

ship: iwaizumi/oikawa

summary:

“Iwaizumi Hajime,” Santiago sounds out. Those damn telescope eyes. “Huh. I thought his name was Iwachan?”

 

“Is it the wrong guy?” Mateo narrows his eyes. “No, that’s definitely him, that’s the dude from Tooru’s homescreen… is it?”

 

“Only one way to find out!” Santiago says cheerfully.

 

Team Argentina gets to know Iwaizumi Hajime (27) Athletic Trainer.

posted on: sulfate

best lines:

• Hajime’s expression goes distant. It reminds Mateo a little of how quiet Santiago gets after a loss. You didn’t expect it from him, the almost uncanny stillness, how his focus inverted itself, but he’s the type to hoard defeats close to the chest. So is Tooru, though. Mateo and the others—they curse, they yell, they go a couple hours in the gym to burn off the frustration. And Tooru seethes like the best of them, only there’s an eye to his storm. A hurricane bluster wrapping up a remote and lethal calm. Santiago and Tooru, turning their losses over like pearls, one more layer smoothing over the luminous centre so the next time they stand on the court they’re a little tougher, a little more whole.

• Then he’s beelining towards them, flanked by two stone-faced teammates, who together create the world’s most impassive retinue. It’s as if they’re operating on a strict quota of expression shared among the three of them and Vitamin C Supplement has used it all up. 

• The only Tooru Mateo knows is the one so settled in his own skin it ripples outwards from him like water displaced by a stone, imparting some of that assurance to every other player on his side of the court. Not complacency, just self-knowledge, completed.

• There’s an instability there, crime scene under the blacklight of his spiker’s instinct, but this isn’t the court. And this is what Hajime must have repurposed his own for, too, the process of pressing for sore spots and shoring them up instead, the setting of a bone and not the breaking. “Still,” Mateo says gently. “It’s good to hear things even if you already know them. It's good to hear someone else say them.”

He considers Hajime, the brittle structure of his discontent. The things he won’t say to Tooru but will say to the person who stepped into the space he used to occupy. My job, as if it were an obligation and not something he’d chosen to undertake and kept choosing, quietly, like any alternative was unthinkable. They both know what it is to be an ace directed by Tooru Oikawa; there’s a thread there, some gradation of blue, that lies loosely between them.

• “You don’t forget,” Mateo says. Hajime’s eyes gleam. The flex of his fingers, that little unconscious tic shared by spikers everywhere; even now Mateo’s own hands twitch in echo. “How it feels. You don’t forget it.”

• You never forget where you were the first time Tooru told you he was counting on you, but Tooru’s been counting on Hajime his whole life. Does Hajime remember? The terrifying, stunning depth of Tooru’s faith in him, does he grasp its sheer dimension? Mateo looks at the firmness of Hajime’s grasp, the attentive tilt of his head, and it’s the same instinct that zeroes in on a gap between blockers or sends him diving to one side in anticipation of a feint or intuits the precise trajectory of a serve as it hurtles through the air, the same instinct every single person in this arena shares: of course Hajime does. 

• They stand on opposite sides of the court now but Hajime had been Tooru’s team before there was a team at all. Still looking out for Tooru even now. Winding the tape around the length of Tooru’s fingers, scaffolding with care the instruments with which Tooru conducts his work.

commentary:

• if we’ll know just what we want was my love letter to oikawa, this fic was my love letter to iwaoi, one of my longest-enduring and most important ships ever even though it is the antithesis of my usual ship type… SOMETIMES childhood friends can be true love but only after they separate for a bit first and only if they’re captain and vice-captain of the same sports team
• this was also my first time trying outsider pov and i was really nervous about the prospect of making people give enough of a fuck about my argentina national team ocs to bother reading but it turned out well i think!! the response to this fic has been so overwhelming… i didn’t know if i would be able to pull off the humorous tone because i am fundamentally an unfunny person but i think the moments of lightness here are fun! lately i’ve figured that surrounding moments of anguish and terror with comedy and levity makes them pop more and i have been trying to strike that balance particularly in my sports anime fic… it is a work in progress
• i know everyone and their dog does blue-related imagery for iwaoi but well… it is right there after all
• there is just enough thematic coherence and extended metaphor execution in this fic to satisfy my standards even though this fic is literally structured the way my year 8 geography teacher taught me to structure reports lmfao, each section picks up from a motif or thread from the previous section. it’s pretty obvious that i gave up trying to find fun ways to phrase things at certain points in the fic but i think there are other moments of good prose that make up for it

 

title: still as the world is never still

fandom: nct

ship: haechan/renjun

summary: The first time Donghyuck meets Renjun, he’s a hunched-over figure sticking out like an underturned foot in the middle of the empty field just behind the carpark.

posted on: pyrophane

best lines:

• Shocked into stillness they both stare, shredded flowers sifting through the air like slow-motion confetti, the ball knocking into the base of the tree and coming to a standstill. He has to shake the floral debris from his hair. The world reasserting its presence with such gorgeous, unmissable fervour they’ve got no choice but to stop for a moment and watch. 

• He raises a hand and catches Renjun’s wrist, pulling the obstruction to his vision away so he can catch Renjun’s gaze, that little flare of surprise. Thumb to the delicate inside, between the bones. The skin there soft as petals. The light in Renjun’s hair almost violet.

• “I never asked you,” Donghyuck says. “What do you do with the clovers for the wishes that don’t come true?”

Renjun doesn’t answer. Just sticks his hands in his pockets and offers Donghyuck a stray penmark of a smile. An invisible wind gently dislodging his bangs from his forehead, though Donghyuck can’t feel it himself, can only see its aftereffects. The shape of everything yet to come taking root around them all. Things buried. Things reaped?

• Donghyuck scrubs his hand across his eyes, shutting off the vision of Jeno with his palms open and pleading and blameless on the table, just for a moment. Then he drops his hand, says, “Hey, do you think I’d look good with red hair?” and Jeno smiles, only the minutest of tremors to the expression, and answers, “Yeah, I think you’d look great. Yeah.”

• He watches the struck bell of Renjun’s expression, the shivery slow-blooming delight, exhausting and inexorable hope. The same parts of himself moving in concert, perfect pas de deux, helpless with fondness. Yes, I’m saying yes. You in the clover fields with dirt under your fingernails, you in the studio surrounded by mirrors, you in the shade and in the sun, all your selves, all your luck that you entrusted to me. 

• Impulsively he reaches out to fit his thumb under the ledge of Renjun’s collarbone, then draws the line of his knuckles from shoulder to elbow, an improvised choreography. Renjun’s hand comes to rest at Donghyuck’s waist. Not the closed and secure grip of a lift. Only an open palm, like how he’d presented the proof of his gift to Donghyuck that first time behind the carpark all those years ago, that small and vital part of himself shared. Waiting for Donghyuck to do the same.

commentary:

• ficmix for kels… i think this was massively self-indulgent and i’m grateful to kels for like, bearing with all the stupid shit i put in this remix just for myself (the gratuitous volleyball scene… i’m so sorry). when in doubt i really just go for the mundane superpowers huh… 
• i always wanted to write something drawing on my own history with ballet! one thing crossed off my fic bucket list… the main motif of four-leaf clovers came from a childhood memory of a clover patch on my primary school oval that was like absolutely overflowing with four- and five-leaf clovers, and i thought it would be fun to try writing about luck(/choice/fate/etc) as a Main Theme rather than the same three things i always write about
• it’s pretty egregious how every second line of dialogue is a question but i think the conversations kind of read like actual humans speaking to each other so that’s an improvement for me
• i really like the purple floral imagery callback even though i don’t know if it added to anything other than the general atmosphere… and maybe contributing in general to the idea of growing things and clovers. the last scene is so shoujo romance LOL i had a really really clear mental image that i was trying to convey i hope it was successful!! i think overall this fic has a really unified atmosphere and sense of thematic coherence which i’m glad for, i seriously have to stop slacking off on the technical aspects of my writing

title: nothing i can’t have

fandom: prince of tennis

ship: kirihara/an

summary: “Sorry for pushing you down the stairs,” she says.

 

“You didn’t,” Kirihara says.

 

“I hit you, and then you fell,” An amends. “I wouldn’t say that makes an awful lot of difference.”

posted on: rhodochrosite

best lines:

• An does know. Sunset in Kumamoto, the hard and distant twist to her brother's mouth. She'd seen firsthand how he'd wrestled his wild fury into a painstakingly collared shape over the past year and all the while never forgot Chitose's unfocused gaze in the hospital and now the memory dovetails: Kippei in the hospital. Kirihara's brittle mouth. She sets her fork down. She hums. “If you aren’t happy with the way you play, you can always just change."

• He breaks off, focus turning inwards, that familiar process of rigorous self-assessment she’s seen on so many players. It contextualises him in a way that startles her, how neatly he clicks into place in her mental landscape.

• “What!” Kirihara stabs his fork into the remnants of the cake in consternation. The tips of his ears turn the same colour as the single maraschino cherry still on the plate. “That’s not what—I was just saying! Or I mean… Rikkaidai also has a high school. I’m gonna go there when I graduate. It’s a really good high school. For tennis, and… things that aren’t tennis.”

• From the length of a court away, she can’t see the colour of his eyes. Her breath catches on old fear, a heart-sized obstruction in her throat, memory superimposed over real-time vision—the red-eyed demon gleefully torturing her brother with shot after shot calibrated precisely to exacerbate his injury. But she’d been watching from outside the fence, then. Facing him down across the net he only looks like a boy.

• “Here,” An says, taking one of her barrettes out and holding it out to him over the top of the net. He stares at it like she’s just offered him a bloody knife blade first, and not a glittery heart-shaped hairclip. “For your hair,” she clarifies. 

commentary:

• this was written very early on in my tennis experience before i even finished watching the show and It Definitely Shows but because it’s pretty grounded in the anime-only arc of junior invitationals i think the characterisation missteps are not too egregious, i did a slight rewrite later after finishing the anime and further developing my tinhet visions. the kirihara here is very much the junior invitationals JustABoy kirihara on the path to renouncing violence but i think if i were to redo this fic i would put the focus more on control rather than eradication, as tachibana mentions in the 2wings radio commentary (? i think). i would probably also try harder with the soft drink and cake motifs LOL
• wow it’s actually unreal how much more intricate my conceptualisation of kirian has become since this starting point :’) but i’m glad i was able to create something for my beloved ya supernatural romance het… i am far from done with them. when an becomes rikkai high’s manager then we will all realise

 

title: watch the water run uphill

fandom: prince of tennis

ship: yukimura/niou

summary: "He's a dangerous guy," Niou said. 

 

"He's a member of the golf club," Yukimura said. 

posted on: rhodochrosite

best lines:

• One of Yukimura's pens had somehow materialised in his hands and he was spinning it idly between his fingers, the silver cap flashing in and out of view, glint of fishscales in dark water. Glint of light off Yagyuu's glasses as he exchanged pleasantries with Yukimura whenever they happened to pass one another in the corridors. The net cast out and tightening.

commentary:

• this is like, obviously a scene from a longer fic except i don’t know what the longer fic was supposed to be nor do i have the capacity to write it. 2882 are very intimidating to tackle… yukiniou was super fun to write though, i love their We Are Normal Friends cosplay despite both being really fucked up people because their fucked-up-ness occurs in ways that don’t really affect each other, and they are also both aware of this. to me it’s like, yanagi and sanada are yukimura’s left and right hands, but niou is the wild card, yukimura’s ace up the sleeve… loyalty at a distance
• crying at the very half-assed fish motif for the sake of having some kind of throughline

 

title: heart not giving in

fandom: red velvet

ship: irene/seulgi

summary: “It isn’t something that magic can fix,” Irene told her once. Dusk bruising the shadows red and violet; they seemed to slink a little too close to Irene, considering the source of the light. “It’s only the payoff for the rest of it.” She smiled, then, the expression too distant to be reassuring. “You know that magic demands balance. I taught you that.”

posted on: resentfully

best lines:

• Seulgi turns back to her laundry basket. Heart an unwrung washcloth. Its burden a heavy knot in her chest.

• The weight of her heart trembles behind her breastbone; steadies. Irene fits one hand and then the other around the curve of Seulgi’s jaw. Her palms are so cold they almost burn, like iron, but the pressure of her fingers is gentle, and Seulgi doesn’t flinch. 

commentary:

• i’m super disappointed in myself for how this fic turned out, it definitely needed to be much longer to execute the premise satisfactorily, but i’m not even sure how i would have done that even with a longer wordcount. like i want to be clear it is entirely on me that this fic kind of sucks and that is why i kicked it to a separate pseud. i don’t really want to think about my abject failure to deliver in this fic so… moving on

 

title: take the remorse out of defeat

fandom: prince of tennis

ship: niou/marui

summary: “It’s the sports royalty event of the year. Our baby is getting married to our cute manager. Everyone who has ever vaguely registered on our radar is going to be there.”

posted on: rhodochrosite

best lines: 

• Marui’s head reels, a sense like vertigo. For a terrifying moment it’d felt like it used to, years and years ago back when they all still thought themselves invincible and interminable because Yukimura said they were and because they hadn’t known any differently, not yet.

• “That’s—so not the point. I did that for her. And I didn’t break her heart by vanishing into thin air the second I could—”

“She left first,” Niou says. “Even you left. At least I stayed until the end.”

“It isn’t over,” Marui snaps. “It didn’t end—”

“And yet neither of us have stood on a tennis court since we left Rikkai.”

“You know it was never about tennis!” 

• It’s not like this is something Niou can’t do on her own, but Marui remembers Yagyuu and Niou’s pre-match rituals had consisted of touching up each other’s disguises. Niou drawing her beauty mark onto Yagyuu’s chin with eyeliner, Yagyuu holding Niou’s chin between forefinger and thumb to dab concealer over Niou’s own beauty mark. A clinical briskness to the motion that somehow turned it even more intimate than it would have been if executed gently. Just as briskly: Yagyuu, after Niou’s disappearance, tucking her hair behind her ear—if Niou-kun wants to be found, she will be.

• Marui grasps Niou’s chin. Forefinger, thumb. She’s good at being what other people want, these days. Niou’s eyes lid. How long has it been since someone did this for her? Carefully, Marui dots concealer onto Niou’s beauty mark, then pats the pigment in with the tip of a finger until the mole disappears from view.

• But kissing Niou won’t fix her; she’s tried that. Kissing Yukimura didn’t fix her either, but at least Yukimura had smiled afterwards, pale and exhausted in her narrow hospital cot. Her fingers fluttering weakly against Marui’s; she’d already lost the majority of her grip strength at that point. Niou’s hands as she pressed Marui down had been bruising, viciously so. She wanted it to hurt, and Marui wanted to hurt, if it meant Niou would hurt a little less.

• Watching Niou’s face floating beside hers in the mirror, a perfect replica of her own, there’s enough distance for the unease to gradually alchemise itself into nostalgia. How Niou used to Illusion into Marui mid-rally to throw her off her rhythm with the sudden appearance of a doppelganger staring her down over the net. The ache strikes her like a hunger pang. So she does want them back, all those sunglazed days of her youth. Retying Niou’s hair ribbon in the 3B classroom, gossipping with her on the bench at tournament matches, even the endless laps they slowed to a walk the moment they were out of Sanada’s line of sight.

commentary:

• i was tweeting about the highrankerisms that would undoubtedly unfold at kirian’s wedding + thinking about my visions of rikkai’s future career paths + how i love weddings as a backdrop for reunions and reconnections… then cindi said something about 3b being the reconnection in question and marui convincing niou to go to the wedding in the first place which is what kickstarted this fic. 2882 is also going to be the reconnection in question later at the wedding but whether it ends in Route Of Light (healing truelove endgame) or Route Of Darkness (folie a deux spiralling endgame) is up in the air
• i decided to make everyone girls (except kirihara who is so Boy to me, and because i wanted to keep kirian as ya supernatural het romance) because one of my fave aspects of 3b is their bitchy popular girlisms and i felt like having nyota 3b would allow me to severely dial up the anguish LOL. 3b being straight girls who drunkenly make out at parties when everyone is watching except they aren’t straight also a concept from most bigbrained cindi… as ciel said, business popularity relationship! but also except marui truly does care about niou and niou would care about marui if she wasn’t mired in 5 million personal issues
• i think the dialogue in this one is better than usual… most of my dialogue is like, things i need the characters to say in order to progress the themes or the plot or whatever, but i feel like i did a good job with the half-friendly half-bitter sniping. knowing where to hit to make it hurt most because you’re so close, or were so close, but niou has not changed anyway, or at least marui does not perceive her as having changed… also there’s no real extended metaphor to tie this fic together but it still reads okay to me? i’m unnecessarily fond of this fic because it has so many of my tennis visions in it
• writing the yukimarui in this made me actively feel like i was dying
• having my last fic of the year technically also be about an idol really brought everything full circle lol

 

wips:

• kiriryom brazil arc fic: 500w/5k
• dreampuri fic: 3.8k/10k

 

looking back, did you expect to write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected?

simultaneously more and less than i expected… my ao3 output ended up being disappointingly low but somehow i managed to scrape together 14 fics altogether thanks to the power of tennis

 

what pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

i… prince of tennis honestly came out of nowhere for me, like my brief return to haikyuu was simply closing a circle but i could never have guessed the extent to which tennis would take over my life. probably i should have guessed “what if yugioh had even more sports and even more violence” would be exactly up my alley but it’s shocking how everything about tenipuri is so insanely tailored to my interests. the fact that 50% of my fic output by numbers was for tenipuri really goes to show how deep i am in this thing and i plan to stay here for the foreseeable future… this retrospective is so late i have already written 2 more tennis fics in the meantime

 

also i wrote a lot of f/f! it was good to go back to my roots, i hadn’t written about girls since i moved from anime to kpop

 

did you take any writing risks this year? what did you learn from them?

i tried out a lot of new tropes mostly porn-related lmao but all things i never thought i would be able to write… bdsm, p*gging, explicit femslash… unsure what i learned other than that there is clearly a reason i never thought i would be able to write them previously. also i’m stretching the definition of risk here but i think taking a step back from the validation trap of posting to ao3 has been good for me, very cautiously saying that i may have finally killed the part of my brain addicted to validation via ao3 stats. i’ve never been more productive or happy about my productivity than i am now, even if what i’m producing isn’t up to what i’d consider my usual standard. i know i have a fucked relationship with creativity but i think i’m getting better at having fun and writing shorter things that i enjoy rather than destroying myself struggling through sustaining longfic… in the end i am a shortfic writer after all

 

best story of the year?

we’ll know just what we want is objectively the best thing i wrote this year and also my personal favourite, i was so so happy with everything about it when i posted it—prose, structure, characterisation, themes—and i still am… my personal brazil arc moment. i’d been having a pretty depressing time with my writing before then, and catching up 250 chapters of haikyuu in a manic rush the weekend before the finale dropped + experiencing the triumphant conclusion of oikawa’s character arc gave me so much euphoria that this story just flowed so easily and resulted in some really nice lines i’m pretty proud of. it was just like this huge outpouring of love for one of my all-time favourite characters and it reminded me that actually writing is something that i like and enjoy. the creative process makes me so miserable most of the time it literally shocked me to realise i was having fun / was still capable of associating positive feelings with writing. very life imitates art i suppose lmao

 

most popular story of the year?

most people never get a single high school rival, which definitely extremely reaped the benefits of popular ship + good timing right at the height of the post-haikyuu-finale excitement. it’s my most popular fic of all time by leagues and leagues, accelerated by the gorgeous art leonie drew for it for my birthday ;___;

 

most fun story to write:

i may not be able to reread it now without cringing but i remember i had a lot of fun writing nothing i can’t have because it was sooooo enjoyable to manifest all my tinhet visions, i’m still a ya supernatural romance fan at heart and getting to play around with those tropes again for kirian made me really happy… i’m still figuring out how to navigate the comedy/anguish tonal zigzagging tenipuri necessitates but i can tell i’m gradually improving which is nice

 

hardest story to write:

i struggled a lot with heart not giving in because of an id mismatch with my recip and also because i mixed up my exam dates and ended up having way less time to write than i thought i did. obviously not my recip’s fault but it resulted in a work i’m not really happy with and i don’t think they were happy either… 

 

goals for the new year:

i honestly don’t know… i really want to finish dreampuri but other than that i don’t have anything specific in mind. i’d like to maintain my current mindset of only writing fun and self-indulgent stuff though. i looked at my goals from last year and i’m not sure if i managed to improve on a technical level (i think i did! take the remorse out of defeat feels like a stronger work than my earlier tenipuri fics, though that could be recency effect talking) but i definitely did improve my relationship with creativity. i don’t think writing will ever be something that is Easy or Uncomplicated for me but i am gradually (re?)learning how to enjoy myself. guys isn’t it crazy how your hobbies can be sources of joy and not suffering 😂