ratherastory | End of the Year Fic Meme

Stats designed to show just how much I sucked this year

Total number of stories: 35
Total word count: 246, 128

Gen: 26

Het: 1

Slash: 8
Longest: 41,321
Shortest: 1,511
Could possibly be a part of canon or future canon: Um, none?
Totally an AU: 4 (thought this is debatable)

Fic by month

January (10)

• Not the Fall, But the Landing: Fusion 'verse, Dean POV

• The Best We Can With What We've Got: Sam is probably dying, and Dean tells himself he's too drunk to care.

• Not Just Any Port in a Storm: Fusion 'verse, Dean POV

• The Only Voice I Hear: Sam is recovering from throat cancer. There are feelings.

• Making It Work: Fusion 'verse, Dean POV

• The Cold Fall: After the End 'verse. Sam has a seizure in the forest. Cas pretends to be unsympathetic.

• Days and Counting: Teenaged Sam is used to being on his own. He copes.

• And I Will Sing A Lullaby: Future!fic. Sam has insomnia, Dean fixes it.

• Fear Not That Ye Have Died For Naught: Fusion 'verse, outsider POV.

• Among Your Friends And Kindred: Fusion 'verse, Dean POV.

February (4)

• I'll Close Your Eyes So You Can't See: reaper!Dean

• Safe in Your Hands: Fusion 'verse, Cas POV

• i am never without it: Sam/Dean Valentine thing, with bonus

de_nugis references

• The Wide Open World: Fusion 'verse, Dean POV

March (2)

• Hello, Goodbye For Now: Fusion 'verse, Lisa Braeden POV

• Save Me From the Dark: Blind!Sam, in a S5 AU.

April (1)

• Smile Even in the Dark: A Sam/Dean/Cas coda to 7.17

• Except a Memory of the Smell of Smoke: Garden 'verse

• Ho'opakele: Grace's class is kidnapped. Five-0 to the rescue.

• But World Enough, and Time: The H50 re-telling of The Time Traveller's Wife

• Of Old Time, Which Was Before Us: Sam gets anteretrograde amnesia. It sucks. The boys cope.

May (1)

• Show Yourself: H50 Ferret 'verse.

June (0)

July (2)

• Pressure Point: Avengers migraine!fic. Because I wanted to.

• The Burning Bridge: S6 Casefic with Robo!Sam. Wherein I ended up trying to Fix All The Things™.

August (0)

September (5)

• If I Die Before I Wake: aka All the Deathfic

• Just a Broken Lullaby: Avengers de-aging fic. Again, because I wanted to.

• Only the Next Moment: a sort-of sequel to Of Old Time, Which Was Before Us

• The Kids Are Still Alright: Garden 'verse

• Can You Hear Me (When I'm Calling Out To You): Avengers fic, in which Tony suffers hearing loss and is trying to cover it up.

October (3)

• Life in the Valley: foursome H50 fic, not nearly as sex-filled as you'd think

• Do You Still Feel Me (The Altered Senses Remix): Sam/Dean, in which the boys are soul-bonded, or something.

November

• For the Holidays: shameless h/c, pre-Sam/Jess
• All I Needed to Hear (Was the Sound of Your Voice): Neal is trapped, Peter talks him through it

• Sometimes, All I Need: Fusion 'verse, Cas POV

• Like A Skunk At A Garden Party: Fusion 'verse, Dean POV

• Find Your Light: in which I totally fail at making this not a Slings & Arrows J2 AU.

December (0)

Unless I somehow write something between now and the 31^st.

Qualitative Analysis

Favorite of the year:

Just A Broken Lullaby

It flowed well, hit all my own kinks, and was very well received by the Avengers fandom. All-around win.

Best of the year:

But World Enough, And Time

This one was fucking epic. It was hugely complex to write, and given how fast I churned it out, it's probably one of my best pieces ever.

Most fun to write:

I'll Close Your Eyes So You Can't See

Reaper!Dean, people! It flowed beautifully, and I love writing these little episodic hings.

Most underappreciated:

But World Enough, And Time

Woe is me, I wrote 40k of het in a fandom which has a monster slash OTP. I also didn't read the label and didn't realize that my exchange recipient didn't want death fic, so she couldn't read it either. This story got ignored by everyone except a handful of people, but I do love it to bits.

Sexiest fic:

i am never without it

It's a toss-up between this one and The Only Voice I Hear, frankly. Though the stories were less about the porn and more about the feeeeeeelings. :P

"Holy crap that's wrong even for you":

I don't think I have a story that qualifies for that. I stayed well within my comfort zones this year, for the most part, and all my stuff was pretty straightforward and not kinky or otherwise outside the norm.

Fic that shifted my perspective of the characters:

Days and Counting

I've always had a pretty good grasp of Sam, but this really cemented it for me.

Hardest to write:
Do You Still Feel Me (The Altered Senses Remix) and If I Die Before I Wake

I think I started about seventeen versions of each of these and Nothing. Worked. OMG. Like pulling teeth. I couldn't get the tone right, couldn't get the characters right, couldn't get the plots to work. An absolute nightmare.

Biggest disappointment:

Find Your Light

I fell in love with the prompt, and then failed to do it justice. Real life + writer's block were a winning combination to make this story fall far, far short of where I truly wanted it to be. It was my second time writing a J2 AU, and I would have liked to give it all the care and attention it deserved.

Biggest surprise:

Save Me From the Dark

I'm not sure what happened. I never intended to write this fic, though I'd been toying with writing a blind!Sam AU for a while. I have no idea why I ended up writing it the way I did, but there you go. It was pleasurable to write, and I'm glad I did.

Most telling:

Among Your Friends And Kindred

Hah. So, uh, Dean with a screwed-up leg, Sam with screwed-up lungs, and Cas is grounded for reasons best known to him. And yet they're all happy and surrounded by family. The end.

Yes,ratherastory has a lot of h/c curtain!fic kinks, can we tell? Right.

In Sum:

This was a shitty year for fic writing. I wrote about 1/3 the amount I did in 2011, and the quality was nowhere near the same.

I burned myself out on But World Enough, And Time, and never recovered. I poured all of myself into, it, wrote it in about eight days, and then kind of had a little nervous breakdown after I realized that the person I wrote it for as a pinch-hit would never be able to read it. It was my own fault for not reading the notes more carefully, and the idea that I had basically fucked myself over was extraordinarily demoralizing.

After that, it was pretty hard to muster the energy and enthusiasm to keep writing. I did manage a few times, but all the rest of the year doing any kind of writing has felt like a joyless chore. I'm hoping 2013 will change that.

End of the Year Fic Meme

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