2020 Fic Memes

[nonisland]

I haven't done this in nine years, apparently, which is remarkable because I love doing stuff like this--and a little disappointing, since I got back into fandom this year for the first time in about five years, and it would've been nice to have looked at the ones from the last couple of years before this one that I was active in fandom. Still, here we are.

I'm posting this a day early so I stop pressuring myself to finish the accidental novella I'm...closeish to done on ("a short kinkmeme fill to get serotonin from feedback," I said a month ago, as the It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia title card announcing this plan physically manifested in midair behind me).

2020 in review:

Completed fics:

31, to my own shock (excluding one that is a repost of an older fic, left languishing for years on makinghugospin). It's, uh, it's been a year, I guess.

Total word count:

116,975, again excluding the old repost. (118,811 with it, which almost tempted me to just go with it.) I very close to doubled my entire posted fannish output this year.

There's also a lot more written this year but unfinished (a rough 30K in Criminal Minds, which I uhhhh probably won't be getting back to until and unless the political climate changes; probably close to 15K each in Castlevania and Les Misérables (both of which are on my to-do list to get back to at some point); some trivial numbers in other fandoms; and something like 110K extra in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, split between ~60K of a fix-it *sigh* series of high fantasy novels, 17K of the novella that I am not making myself finish this week, and assorted other WIPs, all of which! I do intend!!! to finish!!!!!).

What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that made you the happiest?:

Oh man, that's tricky, because I genuinely adore my most popular fic this year; I think it's going to hold up as an all-time favorite.

Take, instead, as the answer to this question, the amie Éponine series, a Les Mis canon-divergence AU that I started while in not-great circumstances myself (not only the pandemic, but some life things), which is, for all its quiet, almost furiously optimistic. It is a story about good things happening and horizons broadening, and it helped get me through the first couple of months of pandemic, lockdown, unemployment, and other not-so-fun things. This was a really hard question this year, though; I love and am proud of so many of the things I've written.

Okay, NOW your most popular story:

Beneath the Sheets of Paper Lies My Truth (Fire Emblem: Three Houses; technically Dimitri Blaiddyd/Felix Fraldarius, though neither of them ever appears in the fic; non-focal major character death). I think you could read this fic without knowledge of canon and still get a lot out of it, incidentally.

This is something I could never have done outside of fandom, that I loved doing, that in ten years in fandom I've never been given quite as good an opportunity to do by canon and could probably go another ten years in fandom without having so good a chance to do again. I could have written something like this for Merlin, but FE3H, with its post-game endcards getting into the historical impact of the events of the plot, served this one up on a platter. I adored writing this. I have become furiously passionate about queer history over the last few years (it started with Les Mis and went from there)--a scream of "we WERE always here; we HAVE always been here; this history IS ours as much as anyone else's, mine and yours as well as these people we're reading about and whose queerness has often been censored."

If I were to have written this fic as original fiction it would have been a doorstopper of a novel and one way or another it would have fallen flat: either the past relationship would have been so obvious that the eventual scholars' attempts to unearth it would have seemed pointless, or the past relationship would have been one prolonged tease, or the readers wouldn't have cared about the past relationship because I barely showed it. I love this fic. I love that I was able to write it, and that I was able to write it for people who wanted to read it.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe?:

That's always so tricky to define, you know? What is appreciation? How can I, a person who has spent the year hardly ever writing the same ship or group of characters twice even when I stuck in the same fandom for longer than a month or two, really judge fairness?

By hits it's And Ease Your Hurt by Singing (Fire Emblem: Three Houses; Dorothea Arnault/Yuri Leclerc/Bernadetta von Varley) by almost half, which doesn't shock me. Sometimes you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back, and you and the abyss shake hands on an OT3 that nobody else has thought of.

By kudos, to my surprise, it's The Way that People Come and Go (Les Misérables, Hugo-influenced but not strictly novelverse; Feuilly-centric, gen). That's probably one of my two favorite fics in the amie Éponine series, and it's not even the least-read of the fics in that series, so who knows.

Story that could have been better?:

I wish I had felt confident attempting something closer to Hugo pastiche for amie Éponine. There are things I wrote that didn't satisfy everyone who read them, but that's always going to be the case. I don't want to say there's nothing I can do to improve, because that's absolutely not true, but I am genuinely, sincerely proud of a lot of what I've done this year. There are a few fics I look at and go "you didn't quite do what I wanted you to" but this year I don't have that one fic that I cringe about, you know? It's weird. It's delightful.

(For completionism's sake: None of Them Will Comfort Me Tonight (Les Misérables, movie/musicalverse; triumvirate-centric, gen with background ships); dear forgiveness, (Fire Emblem: Three Houses; Dimitri Blaiddyd & Edelgard von Hresvelg); How Much Did We Lose to Live This Way? (Fire Emblem: Three Houses; Edelgard von Hresvelg & Hubert von Vestra, ambiguously shippy gen).)

Sexiest story?:

Very sincerely that depends on your preferences, good lord. I very rarely find Sex I Wrote erotic (it is, I suspect, a lot like asking a stage magician to be impressed by a video of one of their own performances, when at best they'll know how the tricks are done and at worst they'll realize that their elbow was sticking out at a weird angle while they were palming a card).

I was going to offer a sampling and then I realized that it was half the Mature or Explicit fics I'd written this year, so uh, I'm fairly proud of all of them? In their own way?? ("Fever 'Til You Sizzle" is, as Sour_Idealist put it, "character study first and porn second" but I think all the rest could make a fair case for being The Sexiest Story if that specific thing is what you're into!) I split M vs E ratings broadly based on how specific what's going on with the genitals is, but all of the M-rated fics are keyed on something that isn't...specific to exactly which bit of which anatomy is being touched when.

Story with the single sweetest moment?:

This one has to go to Whisper Soft and True (Fire Emblem: Three Houses; Dimitri Blaiddyd/Dedue Molinaro), which is just...soft all the way down, warm with no regret to it. I wrote it in the middle of a very bad week; it was a comfort to me as well.

Story with the best "yes that's it" characterization?:

...honestly, I think I have to say I am most proud of my characterization in the two sex pollen fics I wrote/am writing this year (both Fire Emblem: Three Houses; the one that's finished instead of accidentally turning into an entire novella that won't release me is Fever 'Til You Sizzle (what a lovely way to burn), Sylvain Gautier/Mercedes von Martritz, by which I mean it's ambiguously romantic and is primarily a Sylvain character study disguised as porn).

I...yeah, I got nothin'. I have other fics that I like the character voice in, or where I did something I'm proud of with regards to shifting perspectives, but no other fics where I sat down and went "well, time for a character study" and actually wrote one. I am sorry about me.

Hardest story to write:

Of the finished ones, probably we'll lay on the grass and let the hours pass (Fire Emblem: Three Houses; Blue Lions ensemble, shippy gen for almost any pairing you like among them). It was supposed to be a short 3houseskinkmeme fill for a prompt about living vicariously through fictional characters experiencing nature while we were all in lockdown; it got...badly out of control. It is a novella. I went in without an arc or a plan (it was supposed to be short!!!) and just, well, kept going, too stubborn to back up or change my mind. I like the results but it truly felt like it was never going to release me, and I still think the end was a little rushed (maybe file this under the "story that could have been better" too, actually).

In a different way, Who Are We to Turn Each Other's Heads? (Troy; Andromache/Hector, discussion of Andromache/Hector/Helen), which I started six years ago and only got around to finishing this year. I'd been trying to take it in the wrong direction, it stalled, I left fandom for a while, and, well, here we are now.

Also, as ever, most of the porn. I always charge in going "yes! I will write some pornography!" and then immediately have regrets.

Do you have any fanfic goals for the new year?:

Finish some of the blasted WIPs, especially the fix-it *sighs* series of epic fantasy novels. Try to finish the row I'm working on for bannedtogetherbingo2020. Continue working on various writing-craft things: characterization, voice, theme, plotting, prose, pacing, all that fun stuff. Attempt to get back to at least trying to archive/cross-post fics over here as well as on the AO3, which I'm horribly behind on. Continue making art in this world even when it is on fire, and bringing joy to people through my art.

And seriously, the WIPs. I need to finish more of them.


Next, the first line of every fic longer than 100 words that I finished this year--broken down by fandom, to be nice.

First Lines:

Emily drifts back to the surface of consciousness to the sound of beeping, soft and easy.

“I’m sorry,” Hector breathes, in the darkness of their bedroom.

In his younger days, Adrian had never questioned why his father had a collection of stories about the Sleeper Awakened when he had little interest in any other aspect of Wallachian folklore.

“Do you know anyone who might be able to help a girl?” Marius asks one night when work has been slim and he’s retreated back to Courfeyrac’s rooms.

Marius Pontmercy isn’t any of the things that Éponine had once wanted in a husband—he’s pleasant-looking but not so beautiful that people would turn and stare when he walks into a room; he’s as poor as she is, scraping pennies just the same as she does, with no house or carriage or park.

“I still can’t believe you told Marius that no one cares about his soul,” Courfeyrac says.

“Wages,” Jean Prouvaire says softly, with the self-deprecating look of a rich man talking about money to someone who doesn’t have it.

Dimitri knows that you cannot measure forgiveness.

“You’ve got—” Yuri says, laughing.

Imploring Byleth Eisner—Professor Byleth, Dimitri reminds himself again—to come teach the Blue Lions had been a catastrophic mistake.

Edelgard wakes up in a whitewashed room with sun streaming through the windows onto unbleached linen.

The first time it happens—the first time Edelgard knows it happens—is a few months after she declared war, when she wakes from a nightmare she already can’t remember.

From a letter from Lady Rose Llefelys to Élise, Queen Dowager of Faerghus and all the United Kingdom of Fódlan, preserved in the Royal Blaiddyd Archives in Fhirdiad:

The list of tasks to be completed does not grow shorter.

The crown of the Adrestian Emperor is…

Sylvain finally finds Mercedes in the kitchen with Annette and Ashe.

The Guardian Moon of 1181 blows in bitter and furious.

When he looks back on it, it astonishes Hubert that their first meeting was not more momentous.

Ferdinand was six years old when he met Edelgard von Hresvelg.

This month’s meeting to determine new governance is with representatives of the territories north of the Oghma Mountains, and it is going…poorly.

So Leonie thinks about it sometimes. So what.

“Well, here we are,” Lady Edelgard says quietly.

“I’d really be much more comfortable in my dress armor.”

There are any number of things that it is most unsuitable for a noble to feel.

The Officers’ Academy at Garreg Mach Monastery is big and beautiful and exciting, and Annette is thrilled that Mercie is here too after all.

Verdant Rain Moon in Garreg Mach is hot.

“I can’t believe you’re still only thinking about girls,” Felix sneers.

Richard von Edmund is editing a speech he means to give at the Roundtable two days hence when his world changes.

Night falls too lightly over the camp.

Annette taps on the door to the queen’s study.

Byleth doesn’t expect to see Dimitri again.

...good lord, I feel like I ought to award prizes to anyone who can guess more than one of the Fics With Sex In just from those first sentences, because I knew I got self-parodically plotty about most of them but I had not consciously realized just how self-parodically plotty at least one of them is.