questingly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
questingly) wrote2021-01-01 12:46 pm
questingly) wrote2021-01-01 12:46 pm
2020 end of year fic review meme
HELLO GUESS WHO IS STILL WRITING THE FIC AND THEREFORE HAS POSTED NOTHING. but here goes!
Previous years: 2017 | 2018 | 2019
The Stats:
☆ Total Word Count: 9480 + 58k
☆ Total Fics Written: 2 + The Fic (and vixxmas change)
☆ Fandoms Written In: VIXX
☆ Pairings Written For: ....Taekwoon/Hakyeon.
Chronological list (or chronological number of words!):
☆ january: The Fic Ep 27 - 28
☆ february: The Fic Ep 29 - 30
☆ march:
☆ april: The Fic Ep 31
☆ may: The Fic Ep 32
☆ june: The Fic Ep 33 - 35 | when the sun lives in hell (vixx, neo, 1600w)
☆ july: The Fic Ep 36
☆ august: (I moved to NY)
☆ september: (Still moving to NY)
☆ october: The Fic Ep 37
☆ november: The Fic Ep 38 - 39 | as crickets herald spring (vixx, neo, 6400 w)
☆ december: The Fic Ep 40 | vixxmas
🟊 🟊 🟊
✿ Overall Thoughts ✿
🌲 Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? If you predicted anything.
Well. I thought I was going to fuck off to China for a month and hole up in my grandparents' one room apartment and we all know how that turned out. I'm a little sad that all I managed to write was birthday
So basically, I could not predict anything.
I'm surprised I wrote in April and May at all, though. I was writing something else that was Very Important.
🌲 What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January, and was it as unpredicted as this entire year?
yeah uh. none.
🌲 What’s your own favourite story of the year? Compared to overall?
I DO HAVE A FAVOURITE EPISODE AND A FAVOURITE SCENE IN THAT FAVOURITE EPISODE. Episode 34 and Episode 37. Please anticipate (if I ever finish this. Ever.)
🌲 Do you have a story from previous years you now feel is underappreciated? Better than you remembered it to be?
Honestly, I felt a little of the opposite, where last year I felt I'd done a great job on my two 'blockbuster' works (Fisheye Lens and run with me) but looking at them this year, I felt there was so much I could've done better and run with me may have been overappreciated. In terms of The Fic, Episode 20 is so well done, and was underappreciated by ME.
🌲 Did you take any writing risks this year?
Yeah. Writing at all.
🌲 Biggest source of inspiration?
I almost want to say Nirvana in Fire because it's given my brain a bit of room to reset but mostly it's nice to see The Gay is as strong as I remember. Although I do base my #aesthetics most heavily on it in any case. Although as I told my baby sib, it's really just every single period cdrama all mashed up.
🌲 Do you have any fanfic goals for the new year?
Hey what if I managed to finish The Fic, finally?
🌲 You survived a year! Did the circumstances drive your creative juices, or did it leave you as out of whack as it did everything else?
definitely....out of whack. For one, my usual writing enviroment up and vanished. So I guess in light of that, I wrote a startling amount.
🟊 🟊 🟊
✿ From my past year of writing, what was… ✿
🌲 My best story (or scene!) of this year:
UGHHHHHHHH IT'S SUCH A BIG SPOILER FOR THE FIC but there's a character secret reveal and it might not be as well done as I think it is, but I really like it. Similarly, the episode titled "#betrayal". So good. Very Good. Lovely.
Also from vixxmas fills: boyfriends being soft!!! clothes sharing!!! and jellyfish hunting.
🌲 My most popular story of this year:
I realised that it was probably one of the vixxmas fills, and it's a tie between VIXX killing hakyeon's cacti, and when the sun lives in hell aka birthday porn.
🌲 Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
y'álllllll when will I ever finish The Fic
🌲 Longest story of the year:
lol.
🌲 Shortest story of the year:
uhhh probably hyuk flavouring soup with plastic spoons?
🌲 Most fun story to write:
absolutely not The Fic but I enjoyed my shitpost fills for vixxmas. Especially jellyfish hunting, rusty lake hotel, clothes sharing, dead cacti, plastic spoons.
🌲 Story that needed the most research:
The Fic? Maybe Ep 40 needed some cursory research to look up how vacations worked and a delve into how to name bureaucratic positions in English, which was a fun dive.
🌲 Story with the single sexiest moment:
God. I wrote two birthday
🌲 Story with the single cutest/sweetest moment:
ok this is ABSOLUTELY clothes sharing.
🌲 Most “holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you” story:
I took 0 risks.
🌲 Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
Mmmmm, I would say all the Sanghyuk scenes in The Fic. But mostly because his perception of himself changed so much.
🌲 Hardest story to write:
The Fic.
🌲 Biggest disappointment:
Not done The Fic.
🌲 Biggest surprise:
wow, I wrote at all?
🌲 Most unintentionally telling story:
The Fic.
🟊 🟊 🟊
These are again going to be from individual episodes, and some of my favourite lines are spoilers so I'll leave those out.
✿ Favourite Opening Lines: ✿
It was many days before he came back to himself. The winter solstice had passed and his father was buried, and the kingdom mourned the loss of a great man. For Jaehwan, it was the first time he'd known loss. Little Jinxi hadn't yet grasped all that would change, only that change would come. It was strangest to see on Hakyeon who'd been made one of the family without being family, with both who'd spoken for him no longer of this world. Hakyeon passed through the world with tight lips and hard eyes, and Jaehwan watched him go like a wraith untethered to the happenings of time. He was discovering a truth that many had learnt and time would ensure many more would: it was easy to mourn and difficult to grieve, and it was the latter that swallowed him in a cloak of paralysis.
It was on one of those days, after he found his place in the world again, that he understood just what a mistake he'd made.
- The Fic, Ep 29
The moon had been full.
Hakyeon would remember that later. Sitting in a courtyard he'd never return to, he'd tilted his head back to see the soft silver disk, mocking him in its completeness.
The moon was gone now but the sky was still clear, the dusty pink of sunrise edging the horizon. Hakyeon had left Ray behind. She'd be taken care of. He hadn't indulged in prolonged goodbyes or any sort of farewell. He couldn't risk having everything undone.
Not when there were lives beyond his own at stake.
- The Fic, Ep 37
✿ Favourite Closing Lines: ✿
But for Hakyeon, all he needed was for Taekwoon to live. And he'd do anything to make that so.
- The Fic, Ep 29
In this lighting, his winter plum seemed to be doing alright. He'd know better in the morning. His trees were doing just fine—the Duke's condescension had gotten deeper under Hongbin's skin than he would've liked.
"If you wilt I'm feeding you to a horse," Hongbin warned the plant as he replaced it on its table. He narrowed his eyes as he surveyed the room. "That goes for all of you."
The cuttings needed watering tomorrow. Those tiny buds would grow into leaves, or Hongbin would make good on his threat. It'd serve them all right.
- The Fic, Ep 34
Are you one of them? Sanghyuk had asked. A good man? I would hope so, Lu Cai had answered.
A good man.
They all thought Sanghyuk could be one too.
- The Fic, Ep 35
✿ Favourite lines from anywhere: ✿
This was the strangeness between the two of them, that Taekwoon wanted—needed—that moment when Hakyeon thrust up into his mouth, held Taekwoon down until Taekwoon was dizzy from the lack of air. Needed to give himself over to Hakyeon, his muscles tense and limp at the same time, Hakyeon's movements sharp and precise.
Somewhere through the haze, Taekwoon heard Hakyeon muffle another curse, and then, clear yet quiet, "Taekwoon." His name. His own name.
It'd only been days but how Taekwoon had missed it, missed hearing his name spoken in Hakyeon's voice.
Taekwoon swallowed and this time, clear as day, Hakyeon cried out and spilled over into Taekwoon's mouth. Hakyeon grasped desperately at Taekwoon, trying to pull him up, but Taekwoon just swallowed around Hakyeon again and again, wetness dribbling out the side of his mouth. At some point, he let Hakyeon wrap his arms around Taekwoon's waist and tug him close, Taekwoon crawling up to kiss Hakyeon messily.
All of a sudden, exhaustion hit them both, drowning them in a deluge instead of the faint blanket from what seemed like moments and an eternity ago. Taekwoon kissed him, and Hakyeon kissed him back. Against Hakyeon's bare chest, he could feel the roughness of the clothes Taekwoon was wearing, and through it, feel his heartbeat, firm and steady and alive.
This was the strangeness between them, that that moment was all Taekwoon had needed to fully, finally accept that he was here and that Hakyeon had forgiven him. That Hakyeon needed Taekwoon, as much as Taekwoon needed him.
- when the sun lives in hell
His clothes were soaked through with his blood. He switched his sword to his right hand and cut wildly at legs and ankles, his grip slipping, hand drenched in his own blood. He managed to fell one, or two, or just enough space to get free. He could barely stand. There was blood in his eyes. His broken arm hung uselessly at his side. Unsure when he'd taken another slice at his leg. After everything, he was going to fail Hakyeon.
"Taekwoon!"
Taekwoon knew men heard things, saw things, in their last moments. Taekwoon didn't want to think he was that close to dying. How else could he explain his brother, his partner, his other half flying to appear in front of him, to stand between Taekwoon and the men who wanted him dead?
So he really had failed. And it was on that thought that he finally fell unconscious, pain overtaking him like a pack of wolves.
- The Fic, Ep 33
It was a strange realisation. She was his sister just as much as Taekwoon was his brother. She wasn't only Taekwoon's occasional guest, or someone who happened to share a father. She was really and truly family. And just as Jaehwan finally understood this, she was about to go away again.
It was a loss so sudden and wrenching that Jaehwan almost wished he hadn't, that the surface knowing of the fact hadn't gone beyond that. It was a loss not so different from the one still fresh and raw, an open wound Jaehwan had spent the past few days trying desperately to hide. He was so very tired of losing. He was especially tired of losing what he'd never truly had—because that was what this was. The loss of something never present, but that could've been present if only he'd been given a chance. People were saying his father had been a great man—but when was the last time Jaehwan had really talked to him? He had faint recollections from his childhood of a man that now seemed larger than life, but Jaehwan hadn't been much of a priority. He was there, one of thirteen surviving sons and twelve daughters. Neither particularly bright or talented, but not a disgrace that was better unseen. No, he just was. Which left him mourning for a man who'd been his father but one Jaehwan barely knew.
He understood, then, the sorrow that poets were so fond of. We all will, will we not, with the passing of time and the inevitable progression of our lives. If we are fortunate, those days are still far off.
- The Fic, Ep 29
"The ends for his plans differs from mine," Hakyeon said softly. "I have often wondered if there can ever be a plan, so complete that there is no chance for failure. A shield that no spear can break, or a spear that no shield can stop. What do you think, Jaehwan?"
"Yes," Jaehwan said, with more conviction than Hakyeon would've ever thought. He straightened, his body tense with the unexpectedness of it. Jaehwan's brows creased further, lines etched deep between his eyes. For all his thought, there was a finality to his answer Hakyeon could never hope to replicate.
"Stay alive," Jaehwan said. "That's the best plan—and don't give me that bullshit about honour. It's not honour—it's reputation, it's what other people think of you. It's selfishness."
"It's not—"
"If you really think you can do it, if you think you can change things, do you think you can do that if you're dead?"
"It is better to die with honour—"
"Don't be in such a hurry to die," Jaehwan snapped. "Once you do, it's over. A lifetime, a hundred lifetimes, it doesn't change anything in this one, and it's this one we're living in right now. So yes, gege, there is an infallible plan. Stay the fuck alive."
- The Fic, Ep 30
🟊 🟊 🟊
✿ Looking back at 2020: ✿
FUCK THIS YEAR. Although on a more positive note, my friend reminded me last night this is the year several of us had one of our greatest personal achievements.
My 2019 fic goals were: FOR FUCKING REAL PLEASE LET ME FINISH THE FIC. No idea when it's going to happen (take a month long vacation in China and live in the Starbucks closest to my grandparents' apartment?) but please... Also, to reread The Fic in January. If I can stop falling asleep.
Also to be more positive about my own writing! This is the first step!
So yeah. 0 percent accomplished.
✿ Fic-writing goals for 2021: ✿
Pleeeaaaassseeeeee let me finish The Fic. Also don't drop out of olymfics. Please T_T