Fic Retrospectives (2025)
Jan. 11th, 2026 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jajalalaTime to look back on the fic I posted in 2025! This year I wrote less than previous years, primarily due to doing grad school part time during the whole year. Though education is good, it made me sad to not have as much free time for hobbies... Oh well! I still found ways to write some :D. Pretty much all My Hero Academia... despite the manga being over, somehow I'm still obsessed.
Boku No Hero Academia
My Whole Life for Yours
September 2024 - March 2025
Canon finishing up means more room to explore post-canon stories, and even though one of the gals in the Himiko/Ochako ship ends up canonically dead, this fic was a chance to mostly align with canon while also creating both a semi-plausible way for both gals to survive AND creating a rich bunch of angst for Himiko. By having Himiko live disguised as Ochako and take over her life after their battle together, I got to explore a lot of themes about identity and the relationships she has with "Ochako's" friends.
Because Ochako doesn't actually show up until the midway point, and is shown sparingly even after that, a lot of the fic is Ochako haunting the narrative while Himiko has a smorgasboard of interactions with whatever characters I felt like. Somehow, this ended up giving her a bunch of homoerotic relationships with Camie, Mina, and maybe Kyouka too. When I'm trying to write an intense scene, I often find myself thinking "How would I write this as a sex scene?" and for some of these interactions you can really tell.
This fic also ended up bringing up a bunch of prison abolitionist themes. In canon, Himiko decides to die for Ochako partially because she would rather die than go to jail. Early on, I knew that I didn't want Himiko or Ochako to end the story as a hero--they've both gone through too much with the prison system, and pro-hero work seems pretty deeply tied to it. In searching for ways they could build their future, I looked up some stuff about prison abolition and found myself agreeing with a lot of the stuff I read. Perhaps related--while writing this, the United Healthcare CEO was killed, and I couldn't help but think "Why should whoever shot him go to jail when that CEO was signing off on the death of thousands and thousands of human beings to increase his bottom line with literally zero consequences?" it really highlights the way the state allows and accepts (even incentivizes) crimes against humanity when people with money are involved. Although I tried not to get too deep into the political weeds with the fic, it definitely comes up several times and helped me find an ending for the gals.
Thematically, Ochako and Himiko ended up becoming mirrors of each other in a really pleasant way. There were some people who wrote long analytical comments dissecting ways in which they'd swapped not only places, but also worldviews, and why reconnecting was such a struggle. Those comments made me very happy. My goal was to put each gal in the other's shoes, and the end result gave me a lot to write and chew on.
This was my major multichapter work for the year but it ended in March. Although I love a rigorous update schedule, my classes got intense enough that I hesitated to start anything else big seriously.
NagantBot
June 2025
This was such a fun oneshot for the NWA discord Fic Fight event! Someone had a prompt that mentioned the Murderbot series, and Lady Nagant listed among their favorite characters. Since Lady Nagant already has a gun in her body thanks to her quirk, it was only natural to give her a cybernetic arc. It's "Murderbot-inspired" rather than a Murderbot AU, since I wanted it to fit into a post-canon concept that would be plausible.
Though Lady Nagant thinks about combat situations and gives herself extra guns and such, the real thrust of the fic I wanted to explore was a disillusioned hero/villain who was used as a weapon coming to terms with being her own person rather than a tool of war. Though she tries to use her cybernetics as an excuse and explanation for distancing herself from humanity, she ends up finding herself and connecting with the world more deeply after her various installations instead.
Half the fun of this fic was thinking up what sorts of enhancements would be fun to give her. Although I'm not an expert on the tech and computer stuff, I did my best. I have a bit more expertise with the brain stuff, so I loved writing out some of the details about the brain surgeries and where/how chips were installed.
Though this is meant to be a chunky oneshot with a "coming to peace with oneself and working through depression" vibe, honestly I have thoughts about a more action-oriented sequel where Lady Nagant becomes instrumental in fighting in the Cyber War that canon's epilogue alludes to. Unfortunately, before writing something like that I'd want to learn a lot more about cybersecurity/cyberwarfare and tech stuff, and action is not always my forte, so it may remain a fun set of scattered thoughts in my head.
Dear Himiko,
June 2025
Another NWA Fic Fight fic, this time a genuine "Himiko stays dead" post-canon exploration of grief from Ochako. This is rare for me--I usually prefer to adjust canon in some way so that the two gals can survive, but the prompter for this fic specifically mentioned that what they liked about Himiko/Ochako is that it's "tragic and impossible", so I decided to put some serious thought to what a fic that genuinely grappled with the tragedy of canon would look like.
Turns out it looks like a series of letters from Ochako to Himiko, all written after Himiko's death (thanks to an "unsent letters" prompt as well). Part of the challenge here was that I like my fics to have some sort of plot/arc/conflict, but with Himiko being dead there's a stasis to her that meant all of that development had to somehow come from Ochako without any response prompting it.
I took an angle of Ochako slowly realizing her feelings for Himiko (and her sexuality) over the years. It's about grief, but also even though Himiko is dead, Ochako is still able to discover new things about herself thanks to her.
Magical Girl All Might
June 2025
Another NWA Fic Fight fic, and I'll confess: The person who gave the "Magical Girl AU" prompt for this actually gave that prompt for the 2024 Fic Fight as well. Although I couldn't write it in 2024, I had been thinking about it since then and was delighted to see the same prompt crop up for 2025 so I could put down the thoughts I'd had about it.
I grew up with several magical girl anime and really love them, so I was excited to merge my current obsession of BNHA with the magical girl genre. I also happen to love the moms of BNHA, and although they don't get to fight in canon, I realized that this AU was the perfect opportunity to give them a chance to get in on the action.
This fic deals with a dual timeline--In the current timeline, Inko has been forcibly pulled out of retirement to work as a Magical Girl, despite being a grown mother with a kid to look after (a kid who happens to be her biggest fan, lol). This is interspersed with the past--scenes of her starting out on her Magical Girl journey as a student, then various key scenes as she meets another Magical Girl, goes through some various classic Magical Girl trope shenanigans, and faces a gigantic and dangerous battle that made her want to retire in the first place.
One of the things I like most about Magical Girl stories is that there's a lot of themes about balancing responsibilities, and in this case I kind of went for a "magical girls have to be selfless and volunteer kindly to deal with all this shit" (AKA "women have to kindly take up all the thankless work of household chores that need to be done"). Having a mother occupy that role plays well with the theme, and the eventual resolution of her son taking up that mantle so she can enjoy her retirement is a nice end note that suggests some sort of incremental progress ("Hey, maybe boys could contribute and spread the load").
Although I had to be as efficient as possible to stuff everything into one big oneshot, presenting only various scene snippets of the past especially, and leaving a lot for the reader to fill in between those scenes, I had so much fun imagining what a "full" adaptation of this AU would look like, and all the various arcs and key emotional points would be. This is the kind of concept that COULD be a much bigger multichapter... but I was happy to get it down to a oneshot chock full of that Magical Girl energy.
A "Straight" Girl's Guide to Dating Your Best Friend
October 2025
A rare sight: A medium/short multichapter! At just four chapters and ~15k words, this is a cute concept that had enough meat and structure that I wanted to split it up a bit, but was short enough to be a nicely manageable size where I could finish the whole thing and then start posting.
Confession: This actually started thanks to a NWA Fic Fight prompt... however, although a certain prompt inspired it, the particular prompter had a DNW that directly contradicted something I really wanted to write as part of the concept. Rather than force myself to try and make it fit and compromising my vision, I decided to set it aside for June and return to it later as its own non-event project.
And I'm happy I did! Mina/Ochako is definitely a rarepair, but writing the energetic, sociable, and inadvertently flirty Mina with the more grounded Ochako opened me up to their charms. This fic also got two of my favorite tropes: Fake dating and sexuality discovery.
The structure was also fun. Although fanfic is often about OTPs, I love writing characters as having had previous romantic relationships, and I ended up using the framework of having each chapter focused on someone Mina was "dating" (Ochako) or had dated in the past. Since a lot of the fic is about her realizing her sexuality, it meant I got to both explore her current fake relationship with Ochako with its the heart-pounding moments AND go back and give snapshots of her relationships with men that highlight and contrast the differences.
Again, being just four chapters made this such a nicely sized project for my tight schedule. I ought to do more 10k-30k multichapters like this where I can dive into more obscure pairings/concepts and can get some meat on it without having to commit to a novel-length story...
No fandom
Comprehensive Ao3 Fic In a Fic (Dark/Light Mode Compatible)
July 2025
This was the result of some experimentation I was doing for a fic about a character writing fanfiction. I decided that I wanted to go all-out in the AO3 formatting so that the reader would be immersed in the concept. Although I put together a lot of this for some meta tricks with Revolutionary Girl Ochako, I had to figure out how to make a "work blurb" appear like it would on AO3 (AKA when you search up fics, the formatting of the various results with the four boxes on the left side for each fic blurb).
In the process, I programmed some solid automation for the HTML formatting for my personal usage. Though this took some time, it made eventually starting to post the fic this effort was for SO much easier... instead of copy-pasting a template and then painstakingly changing every element, I can just run a python script with a more simply-formatted set of text and end up with exactly the HTML I need.
Turns out all those programming assignments for grad school came in handy in the fanfiction realm.
Technically, I started posting SushiLover69 left a comment... this year (AKA the reason I was working out that Fic-within-a-fic stuff), but that's incomplete so I'll discuss it more on the year I finish it.
As with last year, the NWA Fic Fight was a great way to stimulate my creativity and push out a few oneshots in June. Aside from that though, I just finished up a big multichapter from last year, pushed out a short concept multichapter in October (and I guess started posting the SushiLover69 fic towards the end with no set update schedule). Most years I have a big multichapter project that takes up much of the year, but I had to scale back. Looking at my word count on AO3 for the year, this year had the lowest word count in the past five years.
Which makes me EXTRA excited for this coming year! Without grad school, I'll have more free time and energy that could potentially include fic time. I'm currently dealing with an excess of WIPs--while being unable to commit to posting a scheduled multichapter, I nevertheless have been puttering and starting/stopping various concepts, and now I'm in a place where I kinda gotta choose one and commit, but making that choice is hard.
For now, I'm in the midst of putting together a more manageable 5-6 chapter fic that I wanna use to ease back into posting. I also technically have SushiLover69 going, but I wanna keep that very casual and unscheduled.
Of course, since I'm done with grad school I ALSO have committed to wanting to do more "for fun" classes and activities (dancing, guitar, etc) that might end up leading to me still not having as much fanfic time as I would like... but at least I won't have so much homework!
Boku No Hero Academia
My Whole Life for Yours
September 2024 - March 2025
Canon finishing up means more room to explore post-canon stories, and even though one of the gals in the Himiko/Ochako ship ends up canonically dead, this fic was a chance to mostly align with canon while also creating both a semi-plausible way for both gals to survive AND creating a rich bunch of angst for Himiko. By having Himiko live disguised as Ochako and take over her life after their battle together, I got to explore a lot of themes about identity and the relationships she has with "Ochako's" friends.
Because Ochako doesn't actually show up until the midway point, and is shown sparingly even after that, a lot of the fic is Ochako haunting the narrative while Himiko has a smorgasboard of interactions with whatever characters I felt like. Somehow, this ended up giving her a bunch of homoerotic relationships with Camie, Mina, and maybe Kyouka too. When I'm trying to write an intense scene, I often find myself thinking "How would I write this as a sex scene?" and for some of these interactions you can really tell.
This fic also ended up bringing up a bunch of prison abolitionist themes. In canon, Himiko decides to die for Ochako partially because she would rather die than go to jail. Early on, I knew that I didn't want Himiko or Ochako to end the story as a hero--they've both gone through too much with the prison system, and pro-hero work seems pretty deeply tied to it. In searching for ways they could build their future, I looked up some stuff about prison abolition and found myself agreeing with a lot of the stuff I read. Perhaps related--while writing this, the United Healthcare CEO was killed, and I couldn't help but think "Why should whoever shot him go to jail when that CEO was signing off on the death of thousands and thousands of human beings to increase his bottom line with literally zero consequences?" it really highlights the way the state allows and accepts (even incentivizes) crimes against humanity when people with money are involved. Although I tried not to get too deep into the political weeds with the fic, it definitely comes up several times and helped me find an ending for the gals.
Thematically, Ochako and Himiko ended up becoming mirrors of each other in a really pleasant way. There were some people who wrote long analytical comments dissecting ways in which they'd swapped not only places, but also worldviews, and why reconnecting was such a struggle. Those comments made me very happy. My goal was to put each gal in the other's shoes, and the end result gave me a lot to write and chew on.
This was my major multichapter work for the year but it ended in March. Although I love a rigorous update schedule, my classes got intense enough that I hesitated to start anything else big seriously.
NagantBot
June 2025
This was such a fun oneshot for the NWA discord Fic Fight event! Someone had a prompt that mentioned the Murderbot series, and Lady Nagant listed among their favorite characters. Since Lady Nagant already has a gun in her body thanks to her quirk, it was only natural to give her a cybernetic arc. It's "Murderbot-inspired" rather than a Murderbot AU, since I wanted it to fit into a post-canon concept that would be plausible.
Though Lady Nagant thinks about combat situations and gives herself extra guns and such, the real thrust of the fic I wanted to explore was a disillusioned hero/villain who was used as a weapon coming to terms with being her own person rather than a tool of war. Though she tries to use her cybernetics as an excuse and explanation for distancing herself from humanity, she ends up finding herself and connecting with the world more deeply after her various installations instead.
Half the fun of this fic was thinking up what sorts of enhancements would be fun to give her. Although I'm not an expert on the tech and computer stuff, I did my best. I have a bit more expertise with the brain stuff, so I loved writing out some of the details about the brain surgeries and where/how chips were installed.
Though this is meant to be a chunky oneshot with a "coming to peace with oneself and working through depression" vibe, honestly I have thoughts about a more action-oriented sequel where Lady Nagant becomes instrumental in fighting in the Cyber War that canon's epilogue alludes to. Unfortunately, before writing something like that I'd want to learn a lot more about cybersecurity/cyberwarfare and tech stuff, and action is not always my forte, so it may remain a fun set of scattered thoughts in my head.
Dear Himiko,
June 2025
Another NWA Fic Fight fic, this time a genuine "Himiko stays dead" post-canon exploration of grief from Ochako. This is rare for me--I usually prefer to adjust canon in some way so that the two gals can survive, but the prompter for this fic specifically mentioned that what they liked about Himiko/Ochako is that it's "tragic and impossible", so I decided to put some serious thought to what a fic that genuinely grappled with the tragedy of canon would look like.
Turns out it looks like a series of letters from Ochako to Himiko, all written after Himiko's death (thanks to an "unsent letters" prompt as well). Part of the challenge here was that I like my fics to have some sort of plot/arc/conflict, but with Himiko being dead there's a stasis to her that meant all of that development had to somehow come from Ochako without any response prompting it.
I took an angle of Ochako slowly realizing her feelings for Himiko (and her sexuality) over the years. It's about grief, but also even though Himiko is dead, Ochako is still able to discover new things about herself thanks to her.
Magical Girl All Might
June 2025
Another NWA Fic Fight fic, and I'll confess: The person who gave the "Magical Girl AU" prompt for this actually gave that prompt for the 2024 Fic Fight as well. Although I couldn't write it in 2024, I had been thinking about it since then and was delighted to see the same prompt crop up for 2025 so I could put down the thoughts I'd had about it.
I grew up with several magical girl anime and really love them, so I was excited to merge my current obsession of BNHA with the magical girl genre. I also happen to love the moms of BNHA, and although they don't get to fight in canon, I realized that this AU was the perfect opportunity to give them a chance to get in on the action.
This fic deals with a dual timeline--In the current timeline, Inko has been forcibly pulled out of retirement to work as a Magical Girl, despite being a grown mother with a kid to look after (a kid who happens to be her biggest fan, lol). This is interspersed with the past--scenes of her starting out on her Magical Girl journey as a student, then various key scenes as she meets another Magical Girl, goes through some various classic Magical Girl trope shenanigans, and faces a gigantic and dangerous battle that made her want to retire in the first place.
One of the things I like most about Magical Girl stories is that there's a lot of themes about balancing responsibilities, and in this case I kind of went for a "magical girls have to be selfless and volunteer kindly to deal with all this shit" (AKA "women have to kindly take up all the thankless work of household chores that need to be done"). Having a mother occupy that role plays well with the theme, and the eventual resolution of her son taking up that mantle so she can enjoy her retirement is a nice end note that suggests some sort of incremental progress ("Hey, maybe boys could contribute and spread the load").
Although I had to be as efficient as possible to stuff everything into one big oneshot, presenting only various scene snippets of the past especially, and leaving a lot for the reader to fill in between those scenes, I had so much fun imagining what a "full" adaptation of this AU would look like, and all the various arcs and key emotional points would be. This is the kind of concept that COULD be a much bigger multichapter... but I was happy to get it down to a oneshot chock full of that Magical Girl energy.
A "Straight" Girl's Guide to Dating Your Best Friend
October 2025
A rare sight: A medium/short multichapter! At just four chapters and ~15k words, this is a cute concept that had enough meat and structure that I wanted to split it up a bit, but was short enough to be a nicely manageable size where I could finish the whole thing and then start posting.
Confession: This actually started thanks to a NWA Fic Fight prompt... however, although a certain prompt inspired it, the particular prompter had a DNW that directly contradicted something I really wanted to write as part of the concept. Rather than force myself to try and make it fit and compromising my vision, I decided to set it aside for June and return to it later as its own non-event project.
And I'm happy I did! Mina/Ochako is definitely a rarepair, but writing the energetic, sociable, and inadvertently flirty Mina with the more grounded Ochako opened me up to their charms. This fic also got two of my favorite tropes: Fake dating and sexuality discovery.
The structure was also fun. Although fanfic is often about OTPs, I love writing characters as having had previous romantic relationships, and I ended up using the framework of having each chapter focused on someone Mina was "dating" (Ochako) or had dated in the past. Since a lot of the fic is about her realizing her sexuality, it meant I got to both explore her current fake relationship with Ochako with its the heart-pounding moments AND go back and give snapshots of her relationships with men that highlight and contrast the differences.
Again, being just four chapters made this such a nicely sized project for my tight schedule. I ought to do more 10k-30k multichapters like this where I can dive into more obscure pairings/concepts and can get some meat on it without having to commit to a novel-length story...
No fandom
Comprehensive Ao3 Fic In a Fic (Dark/Light Mode Compatible)
July 2025
This was the result of some experimentation I was doing for a fic about a character writing fanfiction. I decided that I wanted to go all-out in the AO3 formatting so that the reader would be immersed in the concept. Although I put together a lot of this for some meta tricks with Revolutionary Girl Ochako, I had to figure out how to make a "work blurb" appear like it would on AO3 (AKA when you search up fics, the formatting of the various results with the four boxes on the left side for each fic blurb).
In the process, I programmed some solid automation for the HTML formatting for my personal usage. Though this took some time, it made eventually starting to post the fic this effort was for SO much easier... instead of copy-pasting a template and then painstakingly changing every element, I can just run a python script with a more simply-formatted set of text and end up with exactly the HTML I need.
Turns out all those programming assignments for grad school came in handy in the fanfiction realm.
Technically, I started posting SushiLover69 left a comment... this year (AKA the reason I was working out that Fic-within-a-fic stuff), but that's incomplete so I'll discuss it more on the year I finish it.
As with last year, the NWA Fic Fight was a great way to stimulate my creativity and push out a few oneshots in June. Aside from that though, I just finished up a big multichapter from last year, pushed out a short concept multichapter in October (and I guess started posting the SushiLover69 fic towards the end with no set update schedule). Most years I have a big multichapter project that takes up much of the year, but I had to scale back. Looking at my word count on AO3 for the year, this year had the lowest word count in the past five years.
Which makes me EXTRA excited for this coming year! Without grad school, I'll have more free time and energy that could potentially include fic time. I'm currently dealing with an excess of WIPs--while being unable to commit to posting a scheduled multichapter, I nevertheless have been puttering and starting/stopping various concepts, and now I'm in a place where I kinda gotta choose one and commit, but making that choice is hard.
For now, I'm in the midst of putting together a more manageable 5-6 chapter fic that I wanna use to ease back into posting. I also technically have SushiLover69 going, but I wanna keep that very casual and unscheduled.
Of course, since I'm done with grad school I ALSO have committed to wanting to do more "for fun" classes and activities (dancing, guitar, etc) that might end up leading to me still not having as much fanfic time as I would like... but at least I won't have so much homework!
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 08:49 am (UTC)And more exciting plans ahead!! Good luck and the best of time with all the things :D
no subject
Date: 2026-01-12 04:20 pm (UTC)Grad school at least took away my energy :'(. It was more coding than writing, but after chugging away at an assignment all weekend, I was way more inclined to be like "I wanna just scroll tumblr and chill for the evening rather than focus on writing..."
I'm excited to hopefully be back on DreamWidth a little more this year! I still enjoy the long textpost formatting of it, and although I am trying to fill my new free time with fun IRL things, I cannot deny my love of online activities and fandom remain. Happy new year to you! Let's have a great 2026