Year-end fic memes!

[nonisland]

Here's last year's meme. (I am interested to note that I was wrong and the fic I thought was going to be the most under-appreciated [posted 30 Dec. or something like that] was...not.) Of my goals for this year, I actually met...most of them? All of them except the specific-story goals, actually.

Completed fics 2010: 56 of them! Of these, 15 were microfiction (which I define as "fics shorter than 100 words"), so one could say 41 if one would rather.

Total word count: 60,480 (in, er, completed fic, obviously--lots more in incomplete fic, because my attention span is superb like that).

What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest?: ugh I cannot choose why would you make me choose have a choice of three: 1) "Your Body Lost in Legends" [Merlin, Arthur/Freya (+Arthur/Merlin, Freya/Merlin), teen, afterlife!fic (warning: major character death)] -- 2) "The Tired Gray World" [Stargate Atlantis, Elizabeth, general, 3.10 missing scene] -- 3) "Lie a Lily on Her Grave" [Merlin, Morgana, teen, post-canon legends]

Okay, NOW your most popular story. "Pursue It With the Soul of Love" [Merlin, Arthur/Merlin, explicit, first time+sex pollen] I am shocked, shocked I tell you. (I am actually extremely proud of it, but that is...not really the point.)

Story most under-appreciated by the universe? "Each World of Blood Is Made" [Merlin, Morgana/Nimueh, mature, ritualish sex] I uploaded it a few minutes after my most popular story, and watching the hitcount gap (and feedback gap) grow and grow and grow was...somewhat rage-inducing. I'm not actually sure it is necessarily the fic that I feel has the biggest gap between How I Think People Should React and How People Have Reacted, but that memory sticks out a mile, so I couldn't choose anything else.

Story that could have been better? All of them. I'm really not happy with the entire concept for "(If You Want It) You Can Lean on Me" [Supernatural, Castiel & Dean (slashy gen), teen, attempted s6-finale fixfic]. Also, some of the things I did for kinkme_merlin's Never Have I Ever challenge aren't that great simply because they weren't my pairings and/or weren't my kinks.

Sexiest story? "We'll Get Her Hot, Show Her What We've Got" [Merlin, Gwen/Morgana/Vivian, explicit, 2.10 missing scene] (Honorable mention: "I Want Your Drama, the Touch of Your Hand" [Merlin, Elena/Vivian, explicit, modern AU PWP] I think Vivian may be my Porn Muse™ and I don't even know why.)

Most fun story? "The Spheres Are in Commotion" [Thor, unrequited Darcy/Jane, general, pre-canon Antics] So, true story: I am intimidated as hell by canons with long histories, and Thor was based on decades of comics canon and comics canon is a snarled and impenetrable mess like unto the thorns around Sleeping Beauty's castle, right? But. Darcy. Darcy is so awesome and I wanted to write about her so much that this fic practically wrote itself the afternoon I finished the movie, and it was fabulous.

Story with the single sweetest moment? "Chapter One Says to Love Her" [Merlin, Gwen/Morgana, general, the fluffiest thing ever to fluff]

Story with the best "yes that's it" characterization? I think possibly "Pursue It With the Soul of Love" [Merlin, Arthur/Merlin, explicit, first time+sex pollen] I am sort of in love with the Arthur-voice here. Um.

Hardest story to write: Mmm. Probably "The Way That Out of Hell Leads Up to Light" [Supernatural, Ruby, mature, Hellfic (warning: graphic violence)] I struggled a lot with some of the porny ones, too, but that wasn't quite the same. (Also: the fics I haven't finished! Several of those are also hard!)

Do you have any fan-fic goals for the new year? Can I just mostly copy and paste the ones I managed from last year?: Write more. Get a better grip on voice and characterization; (re)learn to plot. Entertain people. Try to finish some of my WIPs; finish my 100_women ten-prompt table for the fairy-tale retellings, and try to finish my other prompt tables. Play in new fandoms. Keep growing. Experiment; don't be afraid to screw up.


And, stolen from argylepiratewd, the first sentences of all my fics longer than 100 words this year!

Some of these fics contain language, others contain sexual content. One contains half-sibling incest (though I wrote the fic in an AU where the characters are not related); that one has several lines of spoiler space around it and a link to skip directly from the previous sentence to the next for those using screenreaders.

She wakes screaming from dreams of blood and fire to find her father gone.

Morgana can’t sleep.

There’s salt in fucking everything these days.

“Give me a sign,” Castiel pleads.

The disciplining of rebellious angels is outside Michael’s responsibility, but he becomes aware, as they all do, that Anael is—resilient.

They broke him, Anna thinks, feeling the sick swoop of dismay.

redefining brotherly love (samlicker81) wrote,

They take Rapunzel’s children away and give them to nurses and nannies.

Mary’s cousin David is a little less than two years older than her, almost old enough for the draft, and he’s taking advantage of what might be his last Christmas home to practice being a hero.

The fells of the North Marches are honeycombed with caves, made when the world was young and green and sunlit, that lead under the hill.

Fire reflects in the darkness around her.

She’s fifteen years old and she sleeps with a knife under her bed.

The first time Jo kisses Ash it surprises the hell out of her.

Elizabeth goes to the ocean and it smells wrong: seaweed and brackish tide-water, trash and rot and shallowness.

The records in the court historians’ books tell it like this:

The tapestry is beautiful—nineteenth century, clearly inspired by Morris & Co. but not quite matching their style—even though it hasn’t been preserved as well as it should have been.

“Sister,” says Uriel.

Morgana is combing her hair when Merlin arrives.

Summer spreads out across the land, hot and flat and brassy.

Camelot is all spires and spikes, silver-white and sparkling in the distant sunlight.

Sometimes Morgana dreams about it: Lancelot hands Gwen roses in lovers’ crimson, full-blown and thornless; she smiles at him as she binds her favor around his arm, and her hands linger when he smiles back; in the gardens at twilight they walk hand in hand; they kiss by the lake, in flower-strewn meadows, in an alcove of Camelot’s library, on the field of battle, in Gwen’s own chambers; they are found out and banished, imprisoned, executed.

Vivian is definitely the most annoying roommate Elena has ever had.

Gwen Smith is elbow-deep in delicate wiring when Lancelot arrives at the door of her workshop to report that the mining station on Isgard has stopped transmitting.

Freya feels it when spring breaks through winter.

“Is my armor polished yet?” Arthur asks.

The Isle is silver in the moonlight—unnatural-bright, almost as clear as day although nearly all color has faded from the scene—and Morgana shivers only a little as she crosses the grass to Nimueh’s altar.

Before, they hadn’t had much time, or much space—before, they had lain together still fully-dressed, words turning to kisses that turned longer and longer until they were drowning in each other, kisses turning to touches, touches lingering, and Merlin still has fond memories of Freya’s proud smile when she made him come and her startled gasp when he did the same to her.

Merlin has taken over Arthur’s thoughts since he came to Camelot.

Gwen hurries into Gaius’s rooms with her arms full of something lavender and luxurious.

     [The following first sentence contains half-sibling incest. To skip directly to the one after it, follow this link.]





Arthur knows what Morgana looks like in the center of her bed, dressed in gauze-fine nightclothes, candlelit and beautiful; he knows what she’s like with most of her edge gone so she’s almost tender as she tells him how to touch her.





It is a normal day, ordinary and peaceful, when the stone first becomes aware of a presence in the woods around it.

It’s been a long day and Arthur is tired, the kind of tired that means his mind fades out and he moves through the evening in a fog of sensation.

The storm comes up as Darcy’s trying to get back to her dorm, and she ducks into the physics building to wait for it to go away and the ground to dry back out—she’s heard stories about people getting completely swept away by what looks like really shallow water, and that’s not on her to-do list for today.

Freya thinks, You killed me, but she looks beyond that at everything that Arthur has become—the good he’s done with his life and the bad he’s undone—and she stretches out her hand toward the boat and does not push it away.

Gwen hadn’t expected that Morgana would—well, no.

Ruby’s skin is smooth and warm, silk-fluid under Anna’s hands.

A couple of other people in Darcy's hall are chattering about how much their internships sucked/rocked, and how much menial labor/cool shit they did, and it's sort of turned into some sort of employment-related Never Have I Ever thing by the time Alex turns to Darcy and says, “You're awfully quiet, Darce—nothing happened to you, really?”

Jane reads her first calculus textbook when she’s eleven.

“I’ll never leave you,” Gwen promises, and Morgana looks at the sweet open brightness of her face and thinks of everything Gwen could leave her for—a knight who wants a lady, a village with an empty forge, a lord who wants a mother for his sons, a horse and a sword and the open road—and lies, “I know.”

The circles under Morgana’s eyes look like bruises.

It is, Vivian discovers, extremely boring sitting in guest chambers at a castle without even a single lady-in-waiting to help her do her hair or help her pick out a gown for the evening or gossip with or, well, anything, really.

If you'd like me to tell you which fic any of those sentences came from and you don't feel like counting through the fics to figure it out, I'd be happy to do so.