Goodbye 2021!
Dec. 29th, 2021 03:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
furniishedA wrap-up of this year in fic for ao3 user miissedappointments. I'm not sure where these questions originated from, but I got them from this tweet.
Fics published in 2021:
Grain by grain, we made this meal - SVT; 1.6k - May 2021
Cut through the wind - SVT; 2.1k - May 2021
To wake with stars still on my tongue - SVT; 1.4k - June 2021
Thinking of you beneath the moonlight - SVT; 4.0k - July 2021
My god, it's full of stars - SVT; 2.5k - July 2021
The time when I only watched you is not a waste - SVT; 6.5k (director's cut fest) - July 2021
Still bless me anyway - SVT; 11.0k (ficmix) - Sept 2021
Something new you tried? Something you wish you did?
Something new... *looks around at all of my svt fics* well... I mostly started writing rpf in earnest (ish) this year as a fun thing with friends without intending to share too much of my writing elsewhere. So technically, everything I’ve done is new, and I’ve definitely surprised myself with some of the pairings and prompts/stories I’ve written. Maybe the most notable thing was ficmix, which was intimidating but certainly the "most" new in many ways.
I don’t think there’s anything I particularly wish I did… since I didn’t start the year with any goals, I can’t say there’s something I wanted to accomplish but didn’t. There are a lot of things I want to try with my writing, and especially with the way I understand and develop characters, so we’ll see how that goes in the future. It’s probably better to have regrets than not, ultimately, since it means you at least know what you want.
The fic with your best writing? What about your favorite?
I think the fic with my best writing would have to be Still bless me anyway, since it’s my most recent fic and I would like to believe that my writing generally gets better over time. Also, I think it has some of my better dialogue, and I incorporated a lot of lovely imagery in a way that moved the story forward rather than just being purple prose/dead weight, which I'm guilty of in other works.
I don’t know for sure that my best writing and my favorite writing are different, but I think My god, it’s full of stars is probably my cleanest piece as a whole. I just like ~the vibes, and the way all the space metaphors came together. It’s very tumblr-esque, I think, how romantic it is — call it my Department of Speculation moment, I guess. It’s not a style that I want to always write, as I think there are some… fallacies, and potentially a serious lack of rigor, in co-opting facts to suit sentiment, but I did like how this one turned out.
A line/paragraph you wrote that absolutely bangs?
Grain by grain, we made this meal:
As previously stated… my favorite writing does indeed appear to be from My god, it’s full of stars. There are just so many lines in here that I’m endeared by…
And the ending, which — I don’t know, maybe it’s not as good as I think it is, but I just like how it’s a callback to the beginning of the fic. And “a sun by virtue of a sun” was a turn of phrase that took a lot of labor.
HONESTLY…. there are more lines that I like from various fics but a lot of them are really quick, or I like the insight they provide more than the language itself so I’ll leave it at this.
Skipping the fic to color question because I don't know what it means. Visuals are not my strong suit, which is why I stick to writing...
Three tracks you listened to a totally normal amount while writing
I wrote My god, it’s full of stars in 48 hours before Kit’s birthday and I listened to DEAR OHMYGIRL on loop the entire time. Which is actually strange because usually when I write fic I can’t listen to anything with lyrics, even in a language I don’t understand, so I just write in silence. But as Risa said, this is an album for alien lovers…
The fic you spent the most time on
I think my dcf fic (The time when I only watched you is not a waste) because I started it way before dcf, but signing up for the fest was what actually motivated me to finish it over the summer. With most of my other fics I “completed” them as shorter pieces pretty quickly and then just edited them after some time had passed before publishing. Technically though my very first fic (You know?), which I published in 2020, took me the longest to finish because I wasn't actually committed to writing or publishing fic and kept stopping and picking it back up over the course of a few months.
The fic that made you want to quit writing
Also my dcf fic… When I signed up I had a really clear vision, mostly driven by how much Mingyu was a perfect match for Hyunbin’s character in Late Autumn. Then I realized that writing a stylized version of an existing story that just tweaks the characters so that they’re recognizable as other people is… not a fic. I don’t think I ever felt truly desperate to the point of dropping out, but I struggled quite a bit with making the fic original and like, good… and I realized it’s difficult for me to write something based on narrative fiction because I care too much about being “faithful” to the text, even though there’s no real requirement that I do so... in the end, though, having the guideline of the plot helped me finish the thing, for better and for worse.
Although this wrap-up doesn’t ask, this fic is also probably my least favorite that I've written. I don’t think it’s very cohesive — which is kind of an intentional choice, as the story is supposed to be about two people who don’t know each other well and won’t get the chance to, but the fic also (imo) doesn’t quite evoke that sense of yearning or potential that makes you care about the characters and their doomed and fragmented relationship. I think it’s because I didn’t balance the external and internal narratives of the characters well — which, again, stems from my inability to deviate or extrapolate from the original work. In the film, the acting carries a lot of the characterization, as much or more than the dialogue or the actions. But I couldn’t really translate that into my writing well, and I didn’t substitute anything new (like dialogue, or action) in place of that lack. Also the ending is supposed to be ambiguous, as it is in the film bc of the way the scene is framed with only one character visible, and I think I kind of botched that. I'm really grateful to people who enjoy the fic because I think that means they really gave it the benefit of the doubt, and met the piece where it was for what it was, and I appreciate that.
The fic you had the most fun with
I was going to say My god, it's full of stars because of the “research” aspect of it, but when I think about it more, Still bless me anyway was probably the most fun to write. Part of it was because it was Seungkwan… But also all of the scenes were quite interesting to me, and I found myself really caring about each “act” and immersing myself into it to understand what was happening. Everything felt kind of reactive, which tested my understanding of my own characters in a fun way.
The fic that should’ve gotten more attention
Hmm… I don’t have strong feelings about this, but I guess I’ll say Still bless me anyway. I didn’t expect it to get a ton of hits because it’s such a rare pair, and kind of long, and also because my remixee doesn’t seem to be active on twitter so there wasn't any community hype around them and their works in the way there was around other authors. But given that it was part of a fest, and that my remixee had a somewhat long history of writing really interesting and good stories, I did think more people would read the remix when the fest was happening.
Favorite thing someone's said about your writing
:D all of the comments on my junhao fic are particularly special to me because it was my first svt fic and, y'know, the projection… Although to this day I'm not sure if I fully got all of my vision across, but (meme voice) at this point I'm too afraid to ask… Anyway, besides that fic, there's a long comment on my ficmix that really touched me when I read it because op seemed to resonate with a lot of the key aspects and themes of the fic that stood out to me when I was writing it, which has a twofold effect of making me feel a) that my writing is effective and b) not alone, bc someone not only understood what I was going for but also is plagued by the same things.
Also, these aren't comments, but there's this one account that has bookmarked some of my fics and I creep on the little tags/comments they leave in their bookmarks and find them so cute and endearing. Even though they've never interacted directly with me or my works but I kind of consider them a friend fhdhdhhd
People have also talked to me about my writing privately, which is such a great joy to me and I am forever grateful for all my friends who read my works with such kindness and are so generous in expressing their thoughts to me. I appreciate a lot when people comment on my imagery, and what impact certain lines have on them. I think my writing is generally quite understated so it's interesting to see what does end up hitting.
Your biggest writing grievance
I don't really know what this question means, like is this a grievance about myself, or about my works, or about fic on a more meta level... Writing is difficult, and it's rarely fun — especially fic, because I'm always preoccupied with whether my characters are properly “in character” as I'm writing, and it makes everything much more painstaking — but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. I have many grievances about myself as a writer; ultimately, I think I lack empathy in a way that affects my ability to write about things with enough complexity and/or nuance. I’m quite clinical, in certain ways, but I don't apply that precision to understanding characters’ emotional processes as much as I should, and I think my writing suffers for it. I wish I could write beautiful things, and especially dialogue, where one thing means a different thing, but — I can't! Re-reading my own work is also difficult, because I always see too much of myself in it. And by too much I mean like, any hint at all of my own intention or emotion. Writing rpf, as opposed to original fiction, kind of helps with that because projection is almost an inherent part of writing about real people in fictional scenarios, since we are supposed to fill in certain blanks ourselves, so it feels somewhat more acceptable. I think over the course of writing fic this year I've learned to cringe less when I encounter myself in my own words, which is hopefully a good thing.
WIP you're most enthused about
To be honest I don't really have a lot going on right now… I have a junhao draft that is a magnum opus of sorts, in how much I'm drilling down into their dynamic and also exorcising some personal demons of mine, but the vibes are — not easy to wrangle!
Project you're happiest about finishing
Ficmix!
Your best oddly specific tags
Actually my favorite tag is one I FORGOT TO USE in Cut through the wind… When I shared the draft with rquive I literally wrote the tag at the top but then forgot to actually tag ;-;
Writing process moodboard
See tweet...
A fic you did the absolute most with
The fic that I really, really wrote for me was Thinking of you beneath the moonlight. I wrote it at a time when I suddenly really missed my parents after not seeing them for a year and a half because of covid. It was a strange feeling because my parents and I are, frankly, not very close and/or emotionally available to each other, and things are often difficult when we are actually together. Writing the fic was my way of processing the things I wish I could say to them, and the things I wish they would say to me, both of which are, at this point, impossible — not because the sentiments aren't true, but because that level of vulnerability and transparency just doesn't exist for us. I really wanted to write about family, and the distance between what you can say and what you feel, and how that distance is affected by physical circumstance, and I think this idolverse au was a good setting for that. I also watched every clip of Minghao talking with and/or interacting with his mother, including that old Andromeda episode where they call her on air, which made me really, really sad but helped a lot with making it a genuine story and not just a personal projection. For a while I wasn't a fan of how I ended the fic, but upon re-reading I actually think it's really not bad… my main gripe is still the part where they talk about Chinese — I think that motif of translation is generally a cop-out, but at the time I was using Wonwoo’s huya lives as character references and he does seem to have a genuine interest in learning words for the broadcast, which is why I included that part. I'm still on the fence about whether it's valid or not, but the rest of the ending is alright, I think, especially when you consider it takes place in the past and I purposely wrote Minghao and Wonwoo to be not as close or comfortable with each other as they are now. I actually really like a lot of lines from this fic that I haven't mentioned, especially for their characterizations —
I liked this exchange ^ in particular bc it's a reference to how debut Minghao always tried to be agreeable and would nod and smile even though he clearly didn't understand everything that was happening… And that Wonwoo would be able to tell, and offer an explanation, is to me a very apt kindness.
On continuing to write
Honestly, I haven't been writing fic long enough to justify being jaded, so I don't think this question is really meant for me. I like writing because it makes me think about seemingly intangible things and challenges me to wrangle them into a perceivable form. As a kid, I thought I had to be able to express myself well, and beautifully, in order for my ideas and feelings to have value. That's probably a flawed way of thinking about my self-worth, but the impulse to capture things inside my brain and package them into something comprehensible is still there. When I write, I don't usually start with too much plot in mind, but over time as a story develops I also develop a strong loyalty to it, and the questions and themes I start out with are deprioritized in favor of what feels “right” for the piece as a whole. The best case is that those themes do still persist as underlying forces, but otherwise I have to go back and edit to see what I'm actually trying to say and if I'm doing it effectively.
The nice thing about writing fic is that I have something to call my own, something I labored on and created for myself and not for a job or other obligation. That in itself is enough reason for me to continue, as a person otherwise working under capitalism.
I can't say that reading and/or being in community with other writers really encourages me to write that much on an immediate level, because I'm kind of conservative with what I decide to actually work on. But reading good works and knowing/talking to other fic authors is certainly a source of happiness for me that makes me feel very fond about writing, so that definitely helps. Thank you to everyone who has ever read, commented, replied, followed, DMed, prompted, voice-called, laughed, screamed, sent me frog memes, etc… each interaction really means a lot to me :’)
Favorite fics I've read
I don't think a wrap-up of the year would be complete without mentioning some fics I've read!! For the sake of this post I'll keep it to those that were actually published this year, in no particular order:
dancing days, sunburst
stars that split the moon, notspring
meteorological summer, tonyang (kurusui)
the end of the world, miuyi (rainiest)
a quiet color, capricornia
reciprocation complex, anonymous
THE BRIDGES WE BURNED IN YOUTHFUL SLEEP, evenings
doom daze (fear of the water), klavier
It may seem like I'm just uhh including fics by my mutuals but I think what this list really shows is that I believe in osmosis and am the type to want to be close to people I admire…
Goals for 2022:
Fics published in 2021:
Grain by grain, we made this meal - SVT; 1.6k - May 2021
Cut through the wind - SVT; 2.1k - May 2021
To wake with stars still on my tongue - SVT; 1.4k - June 2021
Thinking of you beneath the moonlight - SVT; 4.0k - July 2021
My god, it's full of stars - SVT; 2.5k - July 2021
The time when I only watched you is not a waste - SVT; 6.5k (director's cut fest) - July 2021
Still bless me anyway - SVT; 11.0k (ficmix) - Sept 2021
Something new you tried? Something you wish you did?
Something new... *looks around at all of my svt fics* well... I mostly started writing rpf in earnest (ish) this year as a fun thing with friends without intending to share too much of my writing elsewhere. So technically, everything I’ve done is new, and I’ve definitely surprised myself with some of the pairings and prompts/stories I’ve written. Maybe the most notable thing was ficmix, which was intimidating but certainly the "most" new in many ways.
I don’t think there’s anything I particularly wish I did… since I didn’t start the year with any goals, I can’t say there’s something I wanted to accomplish but didn’t. There are a lot of things I want to try with my writing, and especially with the way I understand and develop characters, so we’ll see how that goes in the future. It’s probably better to have regrets than not, ultimately, since it means you at least know what you want.
The fic with your best writing? What about your favorite?
I think the fic with my best writing would have to be Still bless me anyway, since it’s my most recent fic and I would like to believe that my writing generally gets better over time. Also, I think it has some of my better dialogue, and I incorporated a lot of lovely imagery in a way that moved the story forward rather than just being purple prose/dead weight, which I'm guilty of in other works.
I don’t know for sure that my best writing and my favorite writing are different, but I think My god, it’s full of stars is probably my cleanest piece as a whole. I just like ~the vibes, and the way all the space metaphors came together. It’s very tumblr-esque, I think, how romantic it is — call it my Department of Speculation moment, I guess. It’s not a style that I want to always write, as I think there are some… fallacies, and potentially a serious lack of rigor, in co-opting facts to suit sentiment, but I did like how this one turned out.
A line/paragraph you wrote that absolutely bangs?
Grain by grain, we made this meal:
With some members, it's easy. Seokmin, Seungkwan, even Mingyu. An apology works — the words wrap around the wound and massage until the bruise dissolves, clotted and discolored pride loosening easily under continuous pressure. Like it was never even there to begin with. Minghao's always been more prone to scarring. Sometimes, saying the words aloud feels futile when so much between them has been tinted with apology since the day they met. Jun’s never sure if he’s more sorry for the distance that still exists or for how much of it they’ve managed to close in the past eight years. He takes a breath and plunges in.
As previously stated… my favorite writing does indeed appear to be from My god, it’s full of stars. There are just so many lines in here that I’m endeared by…
A shooting star can be hard to spot. The streak of light is thin, barely a single stitch of white in the sky, and it’s quick. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, or if you’re expecting something much grander, more dramatic, you’ll miss it. The best technique is to let your eyes relax, to take in the whole domed ceiling of evening rather than focusing on a single swath, and to wait.
What would he say? The Russians sent their word for peace. The Americans, the chemical formula for DNA, as if knowing what we’re made of means we understand anything about ourselves at all. In 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were launched into space with copies of the Golden Record, which contained greetings in 59 languages in the hopes that one of them would be understood. The Mandarin recording said this, to extraterrestrial life that we had yet to meet: 各位都好吧? 我們都很想念你們. Are you doing well? We miss you, very much.
And the ending, which — I don’t know, maybe it’s not as good as I think it is, but I just like how it’s a callback to the beginning of the fic. And “a sun by virtue of a sun” was a turn of phrase that took a lot of labor.
HONESTLY…. there are more lines that I like from various fics but a lot of them are really quick, or I like the insight they provide more than the language itself so I’ll leave it at this.
Skipping the fic to color question because I don't know what it means. Visuals are not my strong suit, which is why I stick to writing...
Three tracks you listened to a totally normal amount while writing
I wrote My god, it’s full of stars in 48 hours before Kit’s birthday and I listened to DEAR OHMYGIRL on loop the entire time. Which is actually strange because usually when I write fic I can’t listen to anything with lyrics, even in a language I don’t understand, so I just write in silence. But as Risa said, this is an album for alien lovers…
The fic you spent the most time on
I think my dcf fic (The time when I only watched you is not a waste) because I started it way before dcf, but signing up for the fest was what actually motivated me to finish it over the summer. With most of my other fics I “completed” them as shorter pieces pretty quickly and then just edited them after some time had passed before publishing. Technically though my very first fic (You know?), which I published in 2020, took me the longest to finish because I wasn't actually committed to writing or publishing fic and kept stopping and picking it back up over the course of a few months.
The fic that made you want to quit writing
Also my dcf fic… When I signed up I had a really clear vision, mostly driven by how much Mingyu was a perfect match for Hyunbin’s character in Late Autumn. Then I realized that writing a stylized version of an existing story that just tweaks the characters so that they’re recognizable as other people is… not a fic. I don’t think I ever felt truly desperate to the point of dropping out, but I struggled quite a bit with making the fic original and like, good… and I realized it’s difficult for me to write something based on narrative fiction because I care too much about being “faithful” to the text, even though there’s no real requirement that I do so... in the end, though, having the guideline of the plot helped me finish the thing, for better and for worse.
Although this wrap-up doesn’t ask, this fic is also probably my least favorite that I've written. I don’t think it’s very cohesive — which is kind of an intentional choice, as the story is supposed to be about two people who don’t know each other well and won’t get the chance to, but the fic also (imo) doesn’t quite evoke that sense of yearning or potential that makes you care about the characters and their doomed and fragmented relationship. I think it’s because I didn’t balance the external and internal narratives of the characters well — which, again, stems from my inability to deviate or extrapolate from the original work. In the film, the acting carries a lot of the characterization, as much or more than the dialogue or the actions. But I couldn’t really translate that into my writing well, and I didn’t substitute anything new (like dialogue, or action) in place of that lack. Also the ending is supposed to be ambiguous, as it is in the film bc of the way the scene is framed with only one character visible, and I think I kind of botched that. I'm really grateful to people who enjoy the fic because I think that means they really gave it the benefit of the doubt, and met the piece where it was for what it was, and I appreciate that.
The fic you had the most fun with
I was going to say My god, it's full of stars because of the “research” aspect of it, but when I think about it more, Still bless me anyway was probably the most fun to write. Part of it was because it was Seungkwan… But also all of the scenes were quite interesting to me, and I found myself really caring about each “act” and immersing myself into it to understand what was happening. Everything felt kind of reactive, which tested my understanding of my own characters in a fun way.
The fic that should’ve gotten more attention
Hmm… I don’t have strong feelings about this, but I guess I’ll say Still bless me anyway. I didn’t expect it to get a ton of hits because it’s such a rare pair, and kind of long, and also because my remixee doesn’t seem to be active on twitter so there wasn't any community hype around them and their works in the way there was around other authors. But given that it was part of a fest, and that my remixee had a somewhat long history of writing really interesting and good stories, I did think more people would read the remix when the fest was happening.
Favorite thing someone's said about your writing
:D all of the comments on my junhao fic are particularly special to me because it was my first svt fic and, y'know, the projection… Although to this day I'm not sure if I fully got all of my vision across, but (meme voice) at this point I'm too afraid to ask… Anyway, besides that fic, there's a long comment on my ficmix that really touched me when I read it because op seemed to resonate with a lot of the key aspects and themes of the fic that stood out to me when I was writing it, which has a twofold effect of making me feel a) that my writing is effective and b) not alone, bc someone not only understood what I was going for but also is plagued by the same things.
Also, these aren't comments, but there's this one account that has bookmarked some of my fics and I creep on the little tags/comments they leave in their bookmarks and find them so cute and endearing. Even though they've never interacted directly with me or my works but I kind of consider them a friend fhdhdhhd
People have also talked to me about my writing privately, which is such a great joy to me and I am forever grateful for all my friends who read my works with such kindness and are so generous in expressing their thoughts to me. I appreciate a lot when people comment on my imagery, and what impact certain lines have on them. I think my writing is generally quite understated so it's interesting to see what does end up hitting.
Your biggest writing grievance
I don't really know what this question means, like is this a grievance about myself, or about my works, or about fic on a more meta level... Writing is difficult, and it's rarely fun — especially fic, because I'm always preoccupied with whether my characters are properly “in character” as I'm writing, and it makes everything much more painstaking — but that doesn't mean it's not enjoyable. I have many grievances about myself as a writer; ultimately, I think I lack empathy in a way that affects my ability to write about things with enough complexity and/or nuance. I’m quite clinical, in certain ways, but I don't apply that precision to understanding characters’ emotional processes as much as I should, and I think my writing suffers for it. I wish I could write beautiful things, and especially dialogue, where one thing means a different thing, but — I can't! Re-reading my own work is also difficult, because I always see too much of myself in it. And by too much I mean like, any hint at all of my own intention or emotion. Writing rpf, as opposed to original fiction, kind of helps with that because projection is almost an inherent part of writing about real people in fictional scenarios, since we are supposed to fill in certain blanks ourselves, so it feels somewhat more acceptable. I think over the course of writing fic this year I've learned to cringe less when I encounter myself in my own words, which is hopefully a good thing.
WIP you're most enthused about
To be honest I don't really have a lot going on right now… I have a junhao draft that is a magnum opus of sorts, in how much I'm drilling down into their dynamic and also exorcising some personal demons of mine, but the vibes are — not easy to wrangle!
The night isn’t young, but the morning is still far off. If Minghao were sure about how Junhui felt, he could at least know if he had been selfish or selfless, be able to measure out portions for that strange alchemy where one becomes the other, desire beaded and glistening and dangerous. Self-denial was a familiar comfort, and Junhui was right — they were both romantics, still guided by starry-eyed voices from long ago. The difference was Minghao would never admit he’d done something out of desperation.
Project you're happiest about finishing
Ficmix!
Your best oddly specific tags
Actually my favorite tag is one I FORGOT TO USE in Cut through the wind… When I shared the draft with rquive I literally wrote the tag at the top but then forgot to actually tag ;-;
#if it looks like a metaphor for diaspora it most certainly is a metaphor for diasporaSecond place for oddly specific tag would definitely have to be
Author projects their second-gen feelings onto china linewhich is basically the same idea, so.
Writing process moodboard
See tweet...
A fic you did the absolute most with
The fic that I really, really wrote for me was Thinking of you beneath the moonlight. I wrote it at a time when I suddenly really missed my parents after not seeing them for a year and a half because of covid. It was a strange feeling because my parents and I are, frankly, not very close and/or emotionally available to each other, and things are often difficult when we are actually together. Writing the fic was my way of processing the things I wish I could say to them, and the things I wish they would say to me, both of which are, at this point, impossible — not because the sentiments aren't true, but because that level of vulnerability and transparency just doesn't exist for us. I really wanted to write about family, and the distance between what you can say and what you feel, and how that distance is affected by physical circumstance, and I think this idolverse au was a good setting for that. I also watched every clip of Minghao talking with and/or interacting with his mother, including that old Andromeda episode where they call her on air, which made me really, really sad but helped a lot with making it a genuine story and not just a personal projection. For a while I wasn't a fan of how I ended the fic, but upon re-reading I actually think it's really not bad… my main gripe is still the part where they talk about Chinese — I think that motif of translation is generally a cop-out, but at the time I was using Wonwoo’s huya lives as character references and he does seem to have a genuine interest in learning words for the broadcast, which is why I included that part. I'm still on the fence about whether it's valid or not, but the rest of the ending is alright, I think, especially when you consider it takes place in the past and I purposely wrote Minghao and Wonwoo to be not as close or comfortable with each other as they are now. I actually really like a lot of lines from this fic that I haven't mentioned, especially for their characterizations —
Unlike Junhui, he’s never felt like the wind is his own to hold. And he doesn’t quite know how to hide like the older boy does, in plain sight, easily accessible yet more of a mirror than a window.
It’s incomprehensible to Minghao in more ways than one. Every time he changes, he thinks it’ll be for good.
She never tells him to come home. He never tells her that sometimes he hears her voice calling his name [...] It’s the same for both of them – too much pride, and too much love. It’ll take years for both of those to dull enough that they can say to each other what they’ve always wanted to say.
“People in Changwon…” he watches Minghao for a response; the younger boy nods dutifully, though he’s not familiar. “It’s far south from here, by Busan, but not as urban.”
I liked this exchange ^ in particular bc it's a reference to how debut Minghao always tried to be agreeable and would nod and smile even though he clearly didn't understand everything that was happening… And that Wonwoo would be able to tell, and offer an explanation, is to me a very apt kindness.
On continuing to write
Honestly, I haven't been writing fic long enough to justify being jaded, so I don't think this question is really meant for me. I like writing because it makes me think about seemingly intangible things and challenges me to wrangle them into a perceivable form. As a kid, I thought I had to be able to express myself well, and beautifully, in order for my ideas and feelings to have value. That's probably a flawed way of thinking about my self-worth, but the impulse to capture things inside my brain and package them into something comprehensible is still there. When I write, I don't usually start with too much plot in mind, but over time as a story develops I also develop a strong loyalty to it, and the questions and themes I start out with are deprioritized in favor of what feels “right” for the piece as a whole. The best case is that those themes do still persist as underlying forces, but otherwise I have to go back and edit to see what I'm actually trying to say and if I'm doing it effectively.
The nice thing about writing fic is that I have something to call my own, something I labored on and created for myself and not for a job or other obligation. That in itself is enough reason for me to continue, as a person otherwise working under capitalism.
I can't say that reading and/or being in community with other writers really encourages me to write that much on an immediate level, because I'm kind of conservative with what I decide to actually work on. But reading good works and knowing/talking to other fic authors is certainly a source of happiness for me that makes me feel very fond about writing, so that definitely helps. Thank you to everyone who has ever read, commented, replied, followed, DMed, prompted, voice-called, laughed, screamed, sent me frog memes, etc… each interaction really means a lot to me :’)
Favorite fics I've read
I don't think a wrap-up of the year would be complete without mentioning some fics I've read!! For the sake of this post I'll keep it to those that were actually published this year, in no particular order:
dancing days, sunburst
stars that split the moon, notspring
meteorological summer, tonyang (kurusui)
the end of the world, miuyi (rainiest)
a quiet color, capricornia
reciprocation complex, anonymous
THE BRIDGES WE BURNED IN YOUTHFUL SLEEP, evenings
doom daze (fear of the water), klavier
It may seem like I'm just uhh including fics by my mutuals but I think what this list really shows is that I believe in osmosis and am the type to want to be close to people I admire…
Goals for 2022:
- Get better at writing in all of the ways mentioned above...
- Join at least two fests (ficmix will probably be one of them)
- Write another TXT fic — I miss my children!! I'm not as active in consuming their content these days but I'm still fairly confident in my ability to vibe check these boys
- Write a fic from a new pov/main character
- Ask people for [critical] feedback on drafts so I can get out of my own head (also, this isn't quite a goal but I really love talking about craft so I'm always down to beta/workshop with people :))
- Make more playlists for my fics — this is just for fun, as I mentioned I don't listen to music while writing but it's a good exercise in vibe curation and maybe will help with direction in my writing
- Stop writing fic at work LOL — I did this a lot at my last job and honestly it never bit me in the ass, I was quite good at my job, but it makes my brain feel weird and lethargic to switch between such different things so I would rather not do it anymore
