Fic Retrospectives (2023)
Jan. 1st, 2024 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaWell it's 2024 and that means it's time for another Fic Retrospective on what I posted to AO3 during 2023!
This year I tried some new things, but also I ended up re-visiting some characters/relationships I had written in the past but through a new lens. There were two large multichapters, but also a handful of oneshots or short fics for fun or various little events. In general, IRL I think I've got a good stable routine down, and the wrist exercises+ergonomic keyboard I got in 2021 have continued to help me maintain the ability to write with minimal pain, so this year had a lot of room for writing!
Ace Attorney
The "B" in Butz stands for "Bondage"
January 2023
My dear roommate got me into Ace Attorney awhile back, but this is the first fic I've written for it. I have some interest in writing more, but right now I only know the original trilogy (watched the anime, currently working through the games), and I don't want to get too deep into the fandom so I can enjoy the upcoming games without spoilers. However, this fic is just a silly short concept with just the Phoenix-Miles-Larry trio who are well-established in the trilogy, so I felt comfortable writing and posting.
One thing about me is that I occasionally love a pathetic man, and in Ace Attorney there are few more pathetic than Larry. I love to call him my boyfriend when we play/watch it bc I find him just so endearing. So although I certainly ship the juggernaut Phoenix/Miles, I wanted to create a fic where Larry got to play a starring role.
So having Larry clumsily convince his two friends to do bondage with him is just zany (and a bit sexy) enough to compel me XD. This was a strange direction for me--I normally go for SFW or completely NSFW, but this fic ended up involving a lot of platonic bondage which kind of toed the line, so it's one of those rare fics I had to rate "mature". It was fun to balance Larry's comedic potential with Miles and Phoenix having various awakenings both to bondage and towards each other. I debated for a bit whether to make this one long oneshot or a multichapter, I liked multichapter to split up the scenes but got worried since the second chapter would be kind of short and the third kind of long... but in the end I liked it best that way, so I went with splitting it into three chapters.
Because my roommate got me into Ace Attorney (and we kind of joked about BDSM Larry together which inspired the fic) I ended up sharing this fic with her, and god that was embarrassing but she seemed to like it! I feel less embarrassed sharing stuff with her when she actually shares the fandom, but also giving someone a story about characters in intimate positions is sure flustering!
Awhile ago someone commented that they reread it as a comfort fic, and that really warmed my heart to hear <3. It's a pretty feelings-focused fic, with various vulnerabilities coming out but then being reassured... so I totally get it! I reread it occasionally too sometimes. I think there's a lot of Phoenix/Miles stuff out there, but there's a lot less positive depictions of Larry, so I'm happy to share my love for him with the world.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Valuable Chess Piece
March 2023
This was a silly little gift fic for the FE3H femslash exchange. I had never really thought about Hilda/Edelgard before, but I adore exploring unusual pairings so it was a fun direction to go with things. Edelgard is emperor of her empire, but in this I have Hilda play diplomat(/spy) from another country, which gave Edelgard someone she could talk to who is not technically her vassal. I adore Edelgard and Hubert's dynamic, but she expresses multiple times some discomfort about him having to "follow" her, even though he reassures her it's completely by his own choice, so I thought having a love interest who could abscond to her own country any time would actually be reassuring for Edelgard who sometimes worries about imbalance.
Also I think Hilda is so silly while Edelgard is so serious that she could loosen her up in general.
The Untimely Undeath of Imogen Madrigal
Fuck, Marry, or Kill?
May 2023
MY ROOMMATE PUBLISHED A BOOK! And because it is a whole published book that means it can be a fandom on AO3, so of COURSE I had to do my civic duty and write a fic for it!
One of the antagonists turns out to be a mad scientist AND the main love interest's evil ex-girlfriend, so of course she became my favorite. I felt compelled to write a scene exploring the history/relationship between the two, right before the breakup/murder, since it's not depicted in canon. I felt like that was the juiciest stuff to get into, especially when it comes to messy angry sex.
The most difficult part was probably trying to come up with the dialogue from Imogen. She's a poet so there's high expectations for her dialogue, but also in canon her throat was slit (by her evil ex lol) before the story even begins, so canonically her words are almost always written or sparingly whispered. I think I ended up writing her a bit obnoxiously, but since it's from the POV of her ex-gf who hates her, I hope it's forgivable.
My roommate read it (Ahaha not every day that you get to share smutfic with the author of the canon) and she loved my concept for the relationship, but also I really put Imogen through it and so she had to write a little comfort fic for herself where Imogen heals from the trauma of that relationship. Sorry roomie! I should probably write some non-horror/angst stories to fill out the Imogen works on AO3 XD.
Boku No Hero Academia
If Pining's a Joke, We're a Comedy Show
January 2023
This was written for a BNHA WLW Bang where both my artist and the mods ghosted! The artist gave a heads-up that they were going through a lot and would probably be late or not do it, but it was ambiguous and they never followed up. And mods seemed to have been checked out by the time I tried to follow up. Ultimately, I was writing for funsies and have been through the unreliable Bang rigamarole before, so it was not upsetting, but I felt awkward having to ask like "So is there gonna be any followup here or can I just post for myself?" (nobody responded, so I posted for myself!)
The Midnight/Ms. Joke pairing is one that I find funny because of how much on opposite ends the two are. I think they also both have a strong persona for their hero roles--the sexy hero and the comedian hero. It was fun digging into making both of them a little insecure because they have trouble parsing whether the other one is actually trying to flirt or if they're just playing up their role. Pining is my favorite, so I made the two of them suffer lol.
A Broker's Greatest Asset
September 2022-March 2023
AAAAAAAAAAA This beautiful beast.... It might be a strange relationship choice to have Giran sort of adopt Momo to become part of his information broker business, but I love a slightly messed-up father-daughter relationship so it was really fun to write. It also gave me an excuse to write lots of Hatsume/Momo. Back when I first dipped my toes into the BNHA fandom, I wrote a medium-length comedic romance fic for HatsuMomo that was cute and lighthearted... but since then, I've craved much messier and more complicated F/F relationships, so I decided to go back to that fave ship but turn it angsty by having Hatsume be a hero while Momo becomes a villain.
Villain AUs are very hit-or-miss for me, since I think things can go full edge-lord territory quick and I don't find that appealing most the time, so for this I tried to hone in on an emotional core that could keep it sincere. Giran and Momo functionally act as father-daughter, but due to their beginnings (Momo "given" to Giran by her parents as collateral to pay a debt) and Giran's general operations (an information broker who's always making pro/con lists about any relationship) the two of them struggle to define and figure out what they really want from each other.
I think in terms of my overall corpus of work, on current reflection I consider this one of my strongest. The AO3 stats are relatively less "big" than some of my other similarly-sized multichapters, but I think that's because the true central relationship is a strange one (father-daughter Giran&Momo) and the romantic relationship (Hatsume/Momo) is relatively rare. Plus I put Momo through a lot of things and finished it with a fairly open ending that may not satisfy people who want something more straightforward and relationships with less difficulties. It's not something to recommend to just anyone, but it hits some particular niches strongly... especially for people like me who crave somewhat complicated/messy/repressed women, which are hard to find in BNHA XD.
There were several big scenes, especially towards the last third or so that I was so excited and thrilled to write, and I remember writing the messy finale with tears in my eyes. I recently ended up rereading some of those scenes for fun and was really pleased at my own writing. Aside from that, I liked putting Momo through it. She has a very powerful quirk, so I balanced her with a lot of psychological damage.
I'd like to reread it in full at some point, since I'm really pleased at how it turned out. It felt like I mostly kept focus throughout and did justice to a lot of very specific relationships. Again, I had written HatsuMomo before, but it had been so fluffy... it made me happy to give them a bunch of angst.
Asui Tsuyu's Heart Pounding Kidnapping
June 2023
This was done for a "fic fight" event for a BNHA writing server I'm on, which one basically selects basically any prompt given by anyone on an opposite team and writes something for it. I specifically targeted anyone who expressed a love for any F/F ship... and the thought of Tsuyu/Himiko was intriguing. Himiko wears her heart on her sleeve while Tsuyu is extremely calm, so it's opposites.
Because the server is SFW, I had to keep things pretty PG-13, but in my head there's much more intense/dark directions the concept I went with could go. Maybe I'll write something like it someday... but this is a nice snapshot/concept of how Himiko could mess with Tsuyu for now.
The Explosive First Meeting of Zoomies and TeaLover8000000
June 2023
More Hatsume/Momo! This was also for the same fic fight as the Tsuyu/Himiko fic. Someone had Hatsume/Momo for their likes and I was like "OKAY GOTTA WRITE THAT". For this I aimed for a comedy/action situation, since I had just put them through so much angst in my multichapter this year. It was fun thinking up what kind of trouble the two of them could get into.
Alone Together (We'll Freeze in Hell)
February 2023-November 2023
Hoooo boy holy shit this was a behemoth. 214k words. I think technically I could/should have split it into four works in a series, but ultimately it's all meant to go together and I don't love the formatting of series.
Back in 2020, I wrote a long Todoroki-family-focused fic (Mild-Mannered School Teacher/Adrenaline-Junkie Vigilante), but it was written with what we knew about the Todoroki's at the time. In the years since there's been a lot more reveals about characters and details that have retroactively made that fic less aligned with canon than I like. Well, I would never go back and edit that work, but it left me with a feeling of "I want to explore the Todoroki's again with what we know now in canon".
So in a server someone pinged me in a prompt about Endeavor merging Fuyumi and Touya together using Overhaul's quirk in an attempt to solve Touya's quirk problems... and holy shit. I thought it was horrifying, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm not gonna lie, when I saw fusion in Steven Universe I LOVED the idea ("Alone Together" in the title is a deliberate reference to an episode about fusion) and the concept in general is really intriguing. Especially two opposites like the angry Touya and the pacifistic Fuyumi screams constant conflict and struggle. Everything and every choice they make has to go through a battle since they disagree on so much, and there's room for all sorts of unique body horror and strange ways of interacting due to the nature or their situation. Basically, there was a LOT of meat to get into here.
As always, Fuyumi was my absolute favorite to write. I like pushing a peace-loving character into the kind of stress that could cause her to betray her own values and commit a murder or two in order to help her brother. Also I liked being able to critique her passivism and repressed anger while depicting exactly why exactly she thinks that way. Fuyumi has always been a character I love to project upon (I too have been an older sister/middle sibling in a conflict-heavy family who is desperate to maintain peace), so this fic allowed me to really delve into her and put her Through Shit in a way that felt very cathartic.
Touya is not as much of my blorbo, but I was excited to write him with more of what we've learned from canon. Previously, the fandom had depicted him as a loving older brother whose father forced him to train so hard that he "died". So a lot of fanfics have him wholly hating his father and deep down desperately desiring to protect his siblings. However, canon revealed his backstory in more detail and showed that he WANTED to train and push beyond his limits even when it risked his body, because he so desperately desired his father's attention/love. It also revealed some violence/jealousy against his youngest brother especially, who got his father's attention due to his quirk. It's a somewhat brattier and more selfish-feeling characterization, but one I really love and find complicated and realistic. So for this fic, I tried to write him with all of that in mind, a much stronger selfish streak and a deep-seated sense of justice that drives him to want to kill his own father even at the expense of those around him (like the sister he's attached to, lol). Because he's balanced out by Fuyumi, he ends up a little more stabilized than in canon, but I had a lot of fun writing his jealousy and anger towards Shouto.
This fic had a lot of fight scenes, which I find very hard to write, but I think these helped me develop. I remember during the fighting ring arc thinking about episodes of Dragon Ball Z that I had been recently watching with my roommate and interrogating like "Hmm what made those work and be compelling?" which helped. Also in general several of the fight scenes were more specifically about the relationship between the fighting characters which made them driven by the relationship, which I feel much more adept at and excited to write.
While writing this fic, I felt so deep in the sauce, I was vibing and marinating in the angst. I felt proud and satisfied when I finally (finally!!!!!) reached the end. I think I had been working on it in my drafts for some months before I started posting, so I spent a long time with it. Because it's so long and took such time, I wonder if I didn't have the best view of it since I was so close and drowning in it.
I would like to reread the whole thing now that I've had some distance from it. But... it's just so long! I'm a little scared that if I start rereading I'll start being like "Ooh I should have cut that" or "I wrote that so messy" etc etc... I want to believe I'll be happy and proud because of how it felt to write it, but I find when a fic goes too long, sometimes it gets scattered in a bad way... I don't know. I will reread it at some point, but because it's so big I need to really sit down and know I have plenty of time to enjoy it.
Still, I'm happy. I spent a long time on the epilogue bc I put the characters through SO much. I tried to make a happy ending plausible despite all the angst, and I thought the response from commenters seemed satisfied, so hopefully I'll still feel good about it when I eventually reread. I want to believe even when times are dark and one goes through pain, that it's never too late to break the cycle of violence and make a change in one's life.
An Easier World
December 2023
This was a fun little pinch-hit for Toga/Ochako. This summer the canon gave them some BIG chapters of pure focus on them and their relationship, so there's more to work with than in the past. For this fic, I also used scenes from a little special "what if" animation that was released depicting TogaChako as childhood friends. It was interesting to merge canon with the what-if, and to explore a bit of stuff about reincarnation and the choices we make.
I feel happy with the fic thematically, the pinch-hit was a fantastic excuse to bang out this fic and give a somewhat canon-compliant TogaChako concept a chance.
While writing this, I've realized that I wrote so little smut this year! That makes me a little sad, I love writing smut, but I guess I've been distracted with some big (and huge) SFW multichapters. Next year I gotta engage with my slutty side XD. Still, I'm really happy with what I wrote! This felt like a nice balance with some big multichapters and a nice smattering of oneshots and short concepts to keep things varied. It's also been interesting to occasionally share fic with my roommate. I'm still extremely shy about IRL people reading my fic, but when she shares the fandom it's perhaps alright.
I'm currently posting a fusion of BNHA characters in the world/concept of Revolutionary Girl Utena that I'm having fun with. In a strange twist, I actually had that FULLY written out before starting to post! But I've only just started posting and won't finish until sometime in 2024. There's lots of creator skin style stuff that I've been having fun playing with, but I'll get into that in next year's fic retrospective.
There are various other little things in my drafts (including a "Nemuri Using Sex As A Bad Coping Mechanism" fic and a silly Bulma/Vegeta oneshot), but I also have my eyes on Maya/Franziska from Ace Attorney... the thing is I want to give them a long delicious multichapter (a cyberpunk AU potentially), but for such an involved project I want to have a full understanding of the main canon first! So they're on hold until I finish playing the mainline games with my roommate. But I hope I can start on them, they're currently lightly haunting me, aside from them I don't have a multichapter currently in the wings... but I guess we shall see what 2024 brings!
This year I tried some new things, but also I ended up re-visiting some characters/relationships I had written in the past but through a new lens. There were two large multichapters, but also a handful of oneshots or short fics for fun or various little events. In general, IRL I think I've got a good stable routine down, and the wrist exercises+ergonomic keyboard I got in 2021 have continued to help me maintain the ability to write with minimal pain, so this year had a lot of room for writing!
Ace Attorney
The "B" in Butz stands for "Bondage"
January 2023
My dear roommate got me into Ace Attorney awhile back, but this is the first fic I've written for it. I have some interest in writing more, but right now I only know the original trilogy (watched the anime, currently working through the games), and I don't want to get too deep into the fandom so I can enjoy the upcoming games without spoilers. However, this fic is just a silly short concept with just the Phoenix-Miles-Larry trio who are well-established in the trilogy, so I felt comfortable writing and posting.
One thing about me is that I occasionally love a pathetic man, and in Ace Attorney there are few more pathetic than Larry. I love to call him my boyfriend when we play/watch it bc I find him just so endearing. So although I certainly ship the juggernaut Phoenix/Miles, I wanted to create a fic where Larry got to play a starring role.
So having Larry clumsily convince his two friends to do bondage with him is just zany (and a bit sexy) enough to compel me XD. This was a strange direction for me--I normally go for SFW or completely NSFW, but this fic ended up involving a lot of platonic bondage which kind of toed the line, so it's one of those rare fics I had to rate "mature". It was fun to balance Larry's comedic potential with Miles and Phoenix having various awakenings both to bondage and towards each other. I debated for a bit whether to make this one long oneshot or a multichapter, I liked multichapter to split up the scenes but got worried since the second chapter would be kind of short and the third kind of long... but in the end I liked it best that way, so I went with splitting it into three chapters.
Because my roommate got me into Ace Attorney (and we kind of joked about BDSM Larry together which inspired the fic) I ended up sharing this fic with her, and god that was embarrassing but she seemed to like it! I feel less embarrassed sharing stuff with her when she actually shares the fandom, but also giving someone a story about characters in intimate positions is sure flustering!
Awhile ago someone commented that they reread it as a comfort fic, and that really warmed my heart to hear <3. It's a pretty feelings-focused fic, with various vulnerabilities coming out but then being reassured... so I totally get it! I reread it occasionally too sometimes. I think there's a lot of Phoenix/Miles stuff out there, but there's a lot less positive depictions of Larry, so I'm happy to share my love for him with the world.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Valuable Chess Piece
March 2023
This was a silly little gift fic for the FE3H femslash exchange. I had never really thought about Hilda/Edelgard before, but I adore exploring unusual pairings so it was a fun direction to go with things. Edelgard is emperor of her empire, but in this I have Hilda play diplomat(/spy) from another country, which gave Edelgard someone she could talk to who is not technically her vassal. I adore Edelgard and Hubert's dynamic, but she expresses multiple times some discomfort about him having to "follow" her, even though he reassures her it's completely by his own choice, so I thought having a love interest who could abscond to her own country any time would actually be reassuring for Edelgard who sometimes worries about imbalance.
Also I think Hilda is so silly while Edelgard is so serious that she could loosen her up in general.
The Untimely Undeath of Imogen Madrigal
Fuck, Marry, or Kill?
May 2023
MY ROOMMATE PUBLISHED A BOOK! And because it is a whole published book that means it can be a fandom on AO3, so of COURSE I had to do my civic duty and write a fic for it!
One of the antagonists turns out to be a mad scientist AND the main love interest's evil ex-girlfriend, so of course she became my favorite. I felt compelled to write a scene exploring the history/relationship between the two, right before the breakup/murder, since it's not depicted in canon. I felt like that was the juiciest stuff to get into, especially when it comes to messy angry sex.
The most difficult part was probably trying to come up with the dialogue from Imogen. She's a poet so there's high expectations for her dialogue, but also in canon her throat was slit (by her evil ex lol) before the story even begins, so canonically her words are almost always written or sparingly whispered. I think I ended up writing her a bit obnoxiously, but since it's from the POV of her ex-gf who hates her, I hope it's forgivable.
My roommate read it (Ahaha not every day that you get to share smutfic with the author of the canon) and she loved my concept for the relationship, but also I really put Imogen through it and so she had to write a little comfort fic for herself where Imogen heals from the trauma of that relationship. Sorry roomie! I should probably write some non-horror/angst stories to fill out the Imogen works on AO3 XD.
Boku No Hero Academia
If Pining's a Joke, We're a Comedy Show
January 2023
This was written for a BNHA WLW Bang where both my artist and the mods ghosted! The artist gave a heads-up that they were going through a lot and would probably be late or not do it, but it was ambiguous and they never followed up. And mods seemed to have been checked out by the time I tried to follow up. Ultimately, I was writing for funsies and have been through the unreliable Bang rigamarole before, so it was not upsetting, but I felt awkward having to ask like "So is there gonna be any followup here or can I just post for myself?" (nobody responded, so I posted for myself!)
The Midnight/Ms. Joke pairing is one that I find funny because of how much on opposite ends the two are. I think they also both have a strong persona for their hero roles--the sexy hero and the comedian hero. It was fun digging into making both of them a little insecure because they have trouble parsing whether the other one is actually trying to flirt or if they're just playing up their role. Pining is my favorite, so I made the two of them suffer lol.
A Broker's Greatest Asset
September 2022-March 2023
AAAAAAAAAAA This beautiful beast.... It might be a strange relationship choice to have Giran sort of adopt Momo to become part of his information broker business, but I love a slightly messed-up father-daughter relationship so it was really fun to write. It also gave me an excuse to write lots of Hatsume/Momo. Back when I first dipped my toes into the BNHA fandom, I wrote a medium-length comedic romance fic for HatsuMomo that was cute and lighthearted... but since then, I've craved much messier and more complicated F/F relationships, so I decided to go back to that fave ship but turn it angsty by having Hatsume be a hero while Momo becomes a villain.
Villain AUs are very hit-or-miss for me, since I think things can go full edge-lord territory quick and I don't find that appealing most the time, so for this I tried to hone in on an emotional core that could keep it sincere. Giran and Momo functionally act as father-daughter, but due to their beginnings (Momo "given" to Giran by her parents as collateral to pay a debt) and Giran's general operations (an information broker who's always making pro/con lists about any relationship) the two of them struggle to define and figure out what they really want from each other.
I think in terms of my overall corpus of work, on current reflection I consider this one of my strongest. The AO3 stats are relatively less "big" than some of my other similarly-sized multichapters, but I think that's because the true central relationship is a strange one (father-daughter Giran&Momo) and the romantic relationship (Hatsume/Momo) is relatively rare. Plus I put Momo through a lot of things and finished it with a fairly open ending that may not satisfy people who want something more straightforward and relationships with less difficulties. It's not something to recommend to just anyone, but it hits some particular niches strongly... especially for people like me who crave somewhat complicated/messy/repressed women, which are hard to find in BNHA XD.
There were several big scenes, especially towards the last third or so that I was so excited and thrilled to write, and I remember writing the messy finale with tears in my eyes. I recently ended up rereading some of those scenes for fun and was really pleased at my own writing. Aside from that, I liked putting Momo through it. She has a very powerful quirk, so I balanced her with a lot of psychological damage.
I'd like to reread it in full at some point, since I'm really pleased at how it turned out. It felt like I mostly kept focus throughout and did justice to a lot of very specific relationships. Again, I had written HatsuMomo before, but it had been so fluffy... it made me happy to give them a bunch of angst.
Asui Tsuyu's Heart Pounding Kidnapping
June 2023
This was done for a "fic fight" event for a BNHA writing server I'm on, which one basically selects basically any prompt given by anyone on an opposite team and writes something for it. I specifically targeted anyone who expressed a love for any F/F ship... and the thought of Tsuyu/Himiko was intriguing. Himiko wears her heart on her sleeve while Tsuyu is extremely calm, so it's opposites.
Because the server is SFW, I had to keep things pretty PG-13, but in my head there's much more intense/dark directions the concept I went with could go. Maybe I'll write something like it someday... but this is a nice snapshot/concept of how Himiko could mess with Tsuyu for now.
The Explosive First Meeting of Zoomies and TeaLover8000000
June 2023
More Hatsume/Momo! This was also for the same fic fight as the Tsuyu/Himiko fic. Someone had Hatsume/Momo for their likes and I was like "OKAY GOTTA WRITE THAT". For this I aimed for a comedy/action situation, since I had just put them through so much angst in my multichapter this year. It was fun thinking up what kind of trouble the two of them could get into.
Alone Together (We'll Freeze in Hell)
February 2023-November 2023
Hoooo boy holy shit this was a behemoth. 214k words. I think technically I could/should have split it into four works in a series, but ultimately it's all meant to go together and I don't love the formatting of series.
Back in 2020, I wrote a long Todoroki-family-focused fic (Mild-Mannered School Teacher/Adrenaline-Junkie Vigilante), but it was written with what we knew about the Todoroki's at the time. In the years since there's been a lot more reveals about characters and details that have retroactively made that fic less aligned with canon than I like. Well, I would never go back and edit that work, but it left me with a feeling of "I want to explore the Todoroki's again with what we know now in canon".
So in a server someone pinged me in a prompt about Endeavor merging Fuyumi and Touya together using Overhaul's quirk in an attempt to solve Touya's quirk problems... and holy shit. I thought it was horrifying, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I'm not gonna lie, when I saw fusion in Steven Universe I LOVED the idea ("Alone Together" in the title is a deliberate reference to an episode about fusion) and the concept in general is really intriguing. Especially two opposites like the angry Touya and the pacifistic Fuyumi screams constant conflict and struggle. Everything and every choice they make has to go through a battle since they disagree on so much, and there's room for all sorts of unique body horror and strange ways of interacting due to the nature or their situation. Basically, there was a LOT of meat to get into here.
As always, Fuyumi was my absolute favorite to write. I like pushing a peace-loving character into the kind of stress that could cause her to betray her own values and commit a murder or two in order to help her brother. Also I liked being able to critique her passivism and repressed anger while depicting exactly why exactly she thinks that way. Fuyumi has always been a character I love to project upon (I too have been an older sister/middle sibling in a conflict-heavy family who is desperate to maintain peace), so this fic allowed me to really delve into her and put her Through Shit in a way that felt very cathartic.
Touya is not as much of my blorbo, but I was excited to write him with more of what we've learned from canon. Previously, the fandom had depicted him as a loving older brother whose father forced him to train so hard that he "died". So a lot of fanfics have him wholly hating his father and deep down desperately desiring to protect his siblings. However, canon revealed his backstory in more detail and showed that he WANTED to train and push beyond his limits even when it risked his body, because he so desperately desired his father's attention/love. It also revealed some violence/jealousy against his youngest brother especially, who got his father's attention due to his quirk. It's a somewhat brattier and more selfish-feeling characterization, but one I really love and find complicated and realistic. So for this fic, I tried to write him with all of that in mind, a much stronger selfish streak and a deep-seated sense of justice that drives him to want to kill his own father even at the expense of those around him (like the sister he's attached to, lol). Because he's balanced out by Fuyumi, he ends up a little more stabilized than in canon, but I had a lot of fun writing his jealousy and anger towards Shouto.
This fic had a lot of fight scenes, which I find very hard to write, but I think these helped me develop. I remember during the fighting ring arc thinking about episodes of Dragon Ball Z that I had been recently watching with my roommate and interrogating like "Hmm what made those work and be compelling?" which helped. Also in general several of the fight scenes were more specifically about the relationship between the fighting characters which made them driven by the relationship, which I feel much more adept at and excited to write.
While writing this fic, I felt so deep in the sauce, I was vibing and marinating in the angst. I felt proud and satisfied when I finally (finally!!!!!) reached the end. I think I had been working on it in my drafts for some months before I started posting, so I spent a long time with it. Because it's so long and took such time, I wonder if I didn't have the best view of it since I was so close and drowning in it.
I would like to reread the whole thing now that I've had some distance from it. But... it's just so long! I'm a little scared that if I start rereading I'll start being like "Ooh I should have cut that" or "I wrote that so messy" etc etc... I want to believe I'll be happy and proud because of how it felt to write it, but I find when a fic goes too long, sometimes it gets scattered in a bad way... I don't know. I will reread it at some point, but because it's so big I need to really sit down and know I have plenty of time to enjoy it.
Still, I'm happy. I spent a long time on the epilogue bc I put the characters through SO much. I tried to make a happy ending plausible despite all the angst, and I thought the response from commenters seemed satisfied, so hopefully I'll still feel good about it when I eventually reread. I want to believe even when times are dark and one goes through pain, that it's never too late to break the cycle of violence and make a change in one's life.
An Easier World
December 2023
This was a fun little pinch-hit for Toga/Ochako. This summer the canon gave them some BIG chapters of pure focus on them and their relationship, so there's more to work with than in the past. For this fic, I also used scenes from a little special "what if" animation that was released depicting TogaChako as childhood friends. It was interesting to merge canon with the what-if, and to explore a bit of stuff about reincarnation and the choices we make.
I feel happy with the fic thematically, the pinch-hit was a fantastic excuse to bang out this fic and give a somewhat canon-compliant TogaChako concept a chance.
While writing this, I've realized that I wrote so little smut this year! That makes me a little sad, I love writing smut, but I guess I've been distracted with some big (and huge) SFW multichapters. Next year I gotta engage with my slutty side XD. Still, I'm really happy with what I wrote! This felt like a nice balance with some big multichapters and a nice smattering of oneshots and short concepts to keep things varied. It's also been interesting to occasionally share fic with my roommate. I'm still extremely shy about IRL people reading my fic, but when she shares the fandom it's perhaps alright.
I'm currently posting a fusion of BNHA characters in the world/concept of Revolutionary Girl Utena that I'm having fun with. In a strange twist, I actually had that FULLY written out before starting to post! But I've only just started posting and won't finish until sometime in 2024. There's lots of creator skin style stuff that I've been having fun playing with, but I'll get into that in next year's fic retrospective.
There are various other little things in my drafts (including a "Nemuri Using Sex As A Bad Coping Mechanism" fic and a silly Bulma/Vegeta oneshot), but I also have my eyes on Maya/Franziska from Ace Attorney... the thing is I want to give them a long delicious multichapter (a cyberpunk AU potentially), but for such an involved project I want to have a full understanding of the main canon first! So they're on hold until I finish playing the mainline games with my roommate. But I hope I can start on them, they're currently lightly haunting me, aside from them I don't have a multichapter currently in the wings... but I guess we shall see what 2024 brings!
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Date: 2024-01-01 06:23 pm (UTC)And wow, I gotta say a bang in which even the mods ghost is new to me :o What a disappointing experience, though super cool how you were able to just make the most of it anyway :D
So many super long and impressive projects, it's so cool and really inspiring how you find a Cool Concept and jump right in, fearlessly digging and following them into the depths :D Definitely something I want to learn to do more and better. Best of luck with the exciting things that are on-going and coming up! :D
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Date: 2024-01-08 08:12 pm (UTC)Ahahah yeah at that point I had been through enough disappointing bangs that I started with low expectations XD. I think at the beginning I was already a lil "hmm" about the organization of it, but since it was a WLW-themed BNHA Bang I still wanted to participate.
Thank youu I used to struggle to complete things, so I've been honing my ability to plan/outline/FINISH projects, even bigger ones. I'm also very lucky that my life right now is pretty peaceful and not too busy, so I have time to dedicate to writing.
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Date: 2024-01-09 06:26 pm (UTC)You're kicking ass at finishing things!! :D Onwaaaard \o/
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Date: 2024-01-02 05:43 am (UTC)I'm still extremely shy about IRL people reading my fic, but when she shares the fandom it's perhaps alright.
Saaaame. I'd rather step on a bunch of Legos rather than have IRL people read my stuff, but I make exceptions for my friends from my uni animanga org because we're all weebs. (I also know their fannish usernames, so I suppose you could call it a situation of mutually assured destruction if they ever decide to embarrass me 😂)
Best of luck with Slutty 2024!
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Date: 2024-01-08 08:13 pm (UTC)Thank you this is the Year of the Slut!!!!