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starwardbestrewn2022-12-30 09:33 am
oncedriven) wrote in starwardbestrewn2022-12-30 09:33 am
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AO3 wrapped 2022
Hello everyone it is time for our annual and much beloved AO3 Wrapped longpost, where I talk about the fics I wrote this year. Please note that the first two fics on my AO3 for 2022 were actually written last year, but since I didn't talk about them last year it looks like? We're going to start there.
(Embarrassingly, neither is yet the endwalker DRK fic. I'm not sure that'll get written at this point honestly.)
Loose Ends (FFXIV/416 words)
A brief missing scene because it bothered me that the souls consumed by Meteion's despair had nowhere to go and no way home. And also because we deserve the Scions actually saying words to Emet, after everything.
Everything is Something to Somebody (and back again mix) (FFXIV/1.2k)
And similarly there's this where I got mad because - god damn it Zenos. Just goid damn it Zenos. You got so close to realizing what makes other people tick. You got so goddamn close!
Anyway I was briefly a Zenos liker about it but now I'm a Zero liker and he hurt my girl, so.
BIG BLADEWORK SECTION HEADER
I put out two Bladework fics this year, Damascus and Within the Crucible. I made the decision to dump Crucible on people in 10K chunks, which is for the better because otherwise I wouldn't have posted anything on it this year. I'm not saying it'll be as big as Feinting but I'm also not saying that. It covers a lot of material and I don't actually know how long it'll be fml.
But Damascus first. This is a two-shot of people who leave the screen in Feinting to do other things. The first is an Arietta and the Dark Wings bit, written from Noir's POV, that consists primarily of me yelling about Hod survivors again. I do tend to do that. There's some bits in this that are very raw about identity and feeling like a part of yourself went dfown with the ship (or the island, in this case) after a disaster, and how they can be unexpectedly brought back to the surface, which is... you know, very on brand for bladework.
The second part is a lot shorter than I actually expected it to be! (Yes I know. First time that's happened etc) It's Largo POV of what's happening... Well, on pre-Eldrant. And this is the fic bit that got everyone yelling "you actually did it you crazy bastard" at me. I don't know what else you expected, y'all. I am always the crazy bastard who'll do it.
Anyway. Crucible.
The first chunk of Crucible is Ion PoV, and deals with.... Well, what being back in Daath now that everyone knows the truth is like for him. Which is - the pressure valve containing everything is gone, and everything is a little bit looser now. I also introduced another OC here, Hazel, who fleshes out a bit of subcast that we never get to see in game but who I think we SHOULD have seen - the Fon Master Guardians who weren't Arietta but who were still replaced in favor of Anise when Ionswap happened.
There's also the very important matter of Asch's parents arriving in Daath for the Fon Mastering, which is the dominant narrative element of Crucible for at least the first chunk of the fic. Asch is still unconscious on page at this point, but obviously trhere's still stuff to be said about that - and stuff to be sauid in response to that. Tear isn't wrong in her judgement of how Asch would eviscerate Duke Fabre for his choices, and she doesn't even know the meat of the worst of them.
That's the bit that opens Chapter 2 - Asch waking in the middle of the night and Jade tells him how the evidence adds up. This leads to a scene my writing server has been calling pool scene redux (after the Locked Tomb scene, please read Gideon the Ninth) because it has that same mood of "character A has an absolute breakdown, gayly, on character B." pool scene redux is honestly me just flinging emotional damaging line after emotional damaging line onto the page, I think I slapped it out in maybe an hour.
And then after that there's a little politics and worldbuilding to nfill out the 10Km because the next scene is Asch actually going to see his parents and there's no way I could have cut that in half. I'm still working on that, lmao.
Moving on....
so how many milligrams of you are still left in there (Prey 2017/1K)
My first ever zine fic! This was for the 5th anni Prey fan zine, which was only ever digitally published, but that's fine. It's technically in Crown verse, but stands on its own within the nebulous postcanon setting, and deals with - why did January ask those probing questions about purpose, anyway? I do love milligrams even if i feel like it's a bit average-tier for my writing.
Also going to note down that I threw a 5Kish update onto Hold On my Naruto fic, in here, before I talk about the other monstrosity of a fic. It's there, it's fucking up my actual AO3 wordcount for the year because it's an update to a 65+k fic, eh.
I also slapped a like, 2Kish update on my extremely dead FFXV fic my soul is mine alone to keep better known as AO3 IS FULL OF COWARDS. The response I got to this was honestly kind of hilarious in the "yeah I haven't touched this in years,, but here's an update" way.
anyway.
there's no restart, but only proceed {ERAGON????, 73K and counting)
I think this was first published somewhere around here? I've been picking at it off and on all year. It's a monster on par with Bladework and has completely taken over my brain to an equal extent, so if you're disappointed in only 23K of Bladework this year, uh, here's your culprit.
That said, only proceed has a lot of commonalities with Bladework, and I do feel like it's my next level up as a writer, because this is - I have an ending. It's not written yet obviously (probably another 100K away, sighs), but it's very much there in my head. Part of it was in fact some of the first stuff I concepted for this fic, but now the narrative outline as a whole is synced up cohesively and I am VERY smug about it.
only proceed is a Murtagh-centric fic in which I take Paolini's worldbuilding - specifically, the completely unimaginative things he does with Shades, and his monoculturing tendencies for races that aren't humans - and chuck them out the window at high speeds. it's my canon now, motherfuckers. It also works through that nasty emotional place of - you've escaped your abuse, what now? How do you learn what normal is, when you've never seen it? And it's also about grief and moving on, pretty significantly, just... not in ways that have gotten to the page yet.
Sorry. I did say there's another 100K in it easy. And that's just the parts I have planned in that clear and tight narrative, not the more wandering second part which has a lot of meat I also want to write but less clear narrative structure.
It's also the biggest queer Murtagh fic on AO3 because my GOD this fandom is full of straight people and cowards, so please consider reading it. I'll have more words I'm able to say about it next year I'm sure.
Onward to the XB3 fics that finish out the rest of this.
write it down or you'll forget 2.2K
This is just. A moment dealing with the very real emotional aftermath of the chapter 5 reveal and specifically the M/Mio switch. And specifically, Taion - Noticer of Things - and how we might have noticed or at least suspected the swap before the reveal, because I feel like he should have. It's about trust, about being hurt, and choosing to continue trusting anyway.
deep down you know 1.7K
Joran/J character study. Which has been enlightening in a bad way, ass it's my least popular XB3 fic and, to my knowledge, is maybe the only one of its like on AO3? No one loves the fat kid so he's mine now. In a lot of ways it touches on toxic masculinity (though in the XB3 verse that element is removed from the... masculinity? of the term) and the way performing toxicity and villainy prevents people from acknowledging their softer sides to anyone else for fear of appearing weak. There's a lot to be said about toxic masculinity in XB3, really, but most of that is said through the character of N; this fic touches somewhat on the emulation of a toxic model when you don'tn know any better who to be.
I will outlive the feeling 4.2K
Conversely, this is probably my most popular XB3 oneshot. Y'all really like those 5+1 stories huh. Five different Noah moments, in five different lifetimes, with five moments of love with someone other than Mio. Because polyboros is important to me. And also you can't hand me a canon with reincarnation and "every previous version ended tragically" and expect me to NOT weaponize that.
It ends with N, because of course it does, because it has to, and specifically with N refusing to look at anyone but Mio to acknowlerdge that he loved them. Choosing Mio over the world means choosing Mio over everyone in that world, of course, and N can't choose otherwise now, because otherwise, what was it all for?
... Like I said, he's toxic masculinity guy.
let your words be anything but empty (1K)
I don't like the xb3 ending and I make no secret of that. But this is the one concept that wouldn't leave me alone from how it canonically plays out, so I wrote it. There's nothing really to say about it that isn't in the fic i think.
i am the only lonely casualty 3.7k
This fic is in direct reply to one of Lyre's. Lyre's fic is about N killing Noahs and Mios over and over again, because he and M should be the only ones that exist. This fic is about M, and how she sees those Noahs and Mios as hope, how they keep her growing - even at the same time as they make her feel like a fake Mio, just created for N's version of reality. Mio is dead, long live Mio, etc.
I've gotten a lot of response on this that the idea of M just being created by Z is haunting and fits all too well in the canon, which pleases me very much. It's the Kingdom Hearts showing through - specifically, the Xion fan in me - but also touches on the fact that Z doesn't have nearly as much control over the Agnian souls as he does the Kevesi.
and eat it too aka cake 2, 15K
This was going to be my xb3 postcanon AU nlongfic and I still hope to come back to it eventually, there's half a chapter idling in my gdocs. This is once again a mirror to Lyre's longfic, which uses a lot of the same concepts but ddifferently, hence why they're the two cakes fics. We simply deserve to not have all the messy recovery from a worldwide war and having to learn to work together erased. Fuck that ending.
Also this fic got me my first overlong whiny message about shipping because XB2 fans are absolutely insane about Rex and his harem ending. To That Guy, Specifically, fuck off. Nia/Zeke for life.
we've crossed paths and made our vows 2.5K
And now for something completely different, but still on-brand for me with the tragic reincarnation thing - Ashera and Teach past ouroboros fic! Ashera very much was. I hated her up to the reveal of her story at the end of her questline, and then, while I still find her outward mannerisms annoying, she became one of the best written characters in the game. She makes SENSE once you know her secret. And I wanted to see how that would play out within the Ouroboros context and play with that a bit. And also just Teach and Ashera are very good foils and I wanted more of that.
That's it for the stuff that got to AO3!
I'm only going to talk about one thing that didn't, which isn't going to AO3 for good reason, and that'sprofessor of the year, which is uh... one of those "dead character becomes a Hogwarts professor" AUs, but it's Emet-Selch and he's teaching civics rather than being volunteered into the DADA position. I will not be putting professor on AO3 for Fuck Wizard Lady reasons, but I do experience a lot of feelings about it.
Most of those feelings because "why didn't anyone do anything about all this blatant child abuse and abuse enablement, oh yeah, we know why, I hope her kids are ok.." It's fifth year and has an average amount of politicking for a Nael fic (lots) and features the only time it's reasonable to have a character notice the voldyshard and fix that without dumbledore's say-so, imo. most fics I've seen do that are very contribed about it BUT EMET CAN SEE SOULS SO, YOU KNOW. I scriubble it in the margins when I can't stand it anymore and eventually Venat will be there. thanks professor of the year for getting me through the hard times.
AO3 says IO wrote 213K this year but that's including all oif Hold On and cowards, so it's really more like 150K. Not as good as last year but good enough for me.
(Embarrassingly, neither is yet the endwalker DRK fic. I'm not sure that'll get written at this point honestly.)
Loose Ends (FFXIV/416 words)
A brief missing scene because it bothered me that the souls consumed by Meteion's despair had nowhere to go and no way home. And also because we deserve the Scions actually saying words to Emet, after everything.
Everything is Something to Somebody (and back again mix) (FFXIV/1.2k)
And similarly there's this where I got mad because - god damn it Zenos. Just goid damn it Zenos. You got so close to realizing what makes other people tick. You got so goddamn close!
Anyway I was briefly a Zenos liker about it but now I'm a Zero liker and he hurt my girl, so.
BIG BLADEWORK SECTION HEADER
I put out two Bladework fics this year, Damascus and Within the Crucible. I made the decision to dump Crucible on people in 10K chunks, which is for the better because otherwise I wouldn't have posted anything on it this year. I'm not saying it'll be as big as Feinting but I'm also not saying that. It covers a lot of material and I don't actually know how long it'll be fml.
But Damascus first. This is a two-shot of people who leave the screen in Feinting to do other things. The first is an Arietta and the Dark Wings bit, written from Noir's POV, that consists primarily of me yelling about Hod survivors again. I do tend to do that. There's some bits in this that are very raw about identity and feeling like a part of yourself went dfown with the ship (or the island, in this case) after a disaster, and how they can be unexpectedly brought back to the surface, which is... you know, very on brand for bladework.
The second part is a lot shorter than I actually expected it to be! (Yes I know. First time that's happened etc) It's Largo POV of what's happening... Well, on pre-Eldrant. And this is the fic bit that got everyone yelling "you actually did it you crazy bastard" at me. I don't know what else you expected, y'all. I am always the crazy bastard who'll do it.
Anyway. Crucible.
The first chunk of Crucible is Ion PoV, and deals with.... Well, what being back in Daath now that everyone knows the truth is like for him. Which is - the pressure valve containing everything is gone, and everything is a little bit looser now. I also introduced another OC here, Hazel, who fleshes out a bit of subcast that we never get to see in game but who I think we SHOULD have seen - the Fon Master Guardians who weren't Arietta but who were still replaced in favor of Anise when Ionswap happened.
There's also the very important matter of Asch's parents arriving in Daath for the Fon Mastering, which is the dominant narrative element of Crucible for at least the first chunk of the fic. Asch is still unconscious on page at this point, but obviously trhere's still stuff to be said about that - and stuff to be sauid in response to that. Tear isn't wrong in her judgement of how Asch would eviscerate Duke Fabre for his choices, and she doesn't even know the meat of the worst of them.
That's the bit that opens Chapter 2 - Asch waking in the middle of the night and Jade tells him how the evidence adds up. This leads to a scene my writing server has been calling pool scene redux (after the Locked Tomb scene, please read Gideon the Ninth) because it has that same mood of "character A has an absolute breakdown, gayly, on character B." pool scene redux is honestly me just flinging emotional damaging line after emotional damaging line onto the page, I think I slapped it out in maybe an hour.
And then after that there's a little politics and worldbuilding to nfill out the 10Km because the next scene is Asch actually going to see his parents and there's no way I could have cut that in half. I'm still working on that, lmao.
Moving on....
so how many milligrams of you are still left in there (Prey 2017/1K)
My first ever zine fic! This was for the 5th anni Prey fan zine, which was only ever digitally published, but that's fine. It's technically in Crown verse, but stands on its own within the nebulous postcanon setting, and deals with - why did January ask those probing questions about purpose, anyway? I do love milligrams even if i feel like it's a bit average-tier for my writing.
Also going to note down that I threw a 5Kish update onto Hold On my Naruto fic, in here, before I talk about the other monstrosity of a fic. It's there, it's fucking up my actual AO3 wordcount for the year because it's an update to a 65+k fic, eh.
I also slapped a like, 2Kish update on my extremely dead FFXV fic my soul is mine alone to keep better known as AO3 IS FULL OF COWARDS. The response I got to this was honestly kind of hilarious in the "yeah I haven't touched this in years,, but here's an update" way.
anyway.
there's no restart, but only proceed {ERAGON????, 73K and counting)
I think this was first published somewhere around here? I've been picking at it off and on all year. It's a monster on par with Bladework and has completely taken over my brain to an equal extent, so if you're disappointed in only 23K of Bladework this year, uh, here's your culprit.
That said, only proceed has a lot of commonalities with Bladework, and I do feel like it's my next level up as a writer, because this is - I have an ending. It's not written yet obviously (probably another 100K away, sighs), but it's very much there in my head. Part of it was in fact some of the first stuff I concepted for this fic, but now the narrative outline as a whole is synced up cohesively and I am VERY smug about it.
only proceed is a Murtagh-centric fic in which I take Paolini's worldbuilding - specifically, the completely unimaginative things he does with Shades, and his monoculturing tendencies for races that aren't humans - and chuck them out the window at high speeds. it's my canon now, motherfuckers. It also works through that nasty emotional place of - you've escaped your abuse, what now? How do you learn what normal is, when you've never seen it? And it's also about grief and moving on, pretty significantly, just... not in ways that have gotten to the page yet.
Sorry. I did say there's another 100K in it easy. And that's just the parts I have planned in that clear and tight narrative, not the more wandering second part which has a lot of meat I also want to write but less clear narrative structure.
It's also the biggest queer Murtagh fic on AO3 because my GOD this fandom is full of straight people and cowards, so please consider reading it. I'll have more words I'm able to say about it next year I'm sure.
Onward to the XB3 fics that finish out the rest of this.
write it down or you'll forget 2.2K
This is just. A moment dealing with the very real emotional aftermath of the chapter 5 reveal and specifically the M/Mio switch. And specifically, Taion - Noticer of Things - and how we might have noticed or at least suspected the swap before the reveal, because I feel like he should have. It's about trust, about being hurt, and choosing to continue trusting anyway.
deep down you know 1.7K
Joran/J character study. Which has been enlightening in a bad way, ass it's my least popular XB3 fic and, to my knowledge, is maybe the only one of its like on AO3? No one loves the fat kid so he's mine now. In a lot of ways it touches on toxic masculinity (though in the XB3 verse that element is removed from the... masculinity? of the term) and the way performing toxicity and villainy prevents people from acknowledging their softer sides to anyone else for fear of appearing weak. There's a lot to be said about toxic masculinity in XB3, really, but most of that is said through the character of N; this fic touches somewhat on the emulation of a toxic model when you don'tn know any better who to be.
I will outlive the feeling 4.2K
Conversely, this is probably my most popular XB3 oneshot. Y'all really like those 5+1 stories huh. Five different Noah moments, in five different lifetimes, with five moments of love with someone other than Mio. Because polyboros is important to me. And also you can't hand me a canon with reincarnation and "every previous version ended tragically" and expect me to NOT weaponize that.
It ends with N, because of course it does, because it has to, and specifically with N refusing to look at anyone but Mio to acknowlerdge that he loved them. Choosing Mio over the world means choosing Mio over everyone in that world, of course, and N can't choose otherwise now, because otherwise, what was it all for?
... Like I said, he's toxic masculinity guy.
let your words be anything but empty (1K)
I don't like the xb3 ending and I make no secret of that. But this is the one concept that wouldn't leave me alone from how it canonically plays out, so I wrote it. There's nothing really to say about it that isn't in the fic i think.
i am the only lonely casualty 3.7k
This fic is in direct reply to one of Lyre's. Lyre's fic is about N killing Noahs and Mios over and over again, because he and M should be the only ones that exist. This fic is about M, and how she sees those Noahs and Mios as hope, how they keep her growing - even at the same time as they make her feel like a fake Mio, just created for N's version of reality. Mio is dead, long live Mio, etc.
I've gotten a lot of response on this that the idea of M just being created by Z is haunting and fits all too well in the canon, which pleases me very much. It's the Kingdom Hearts showing through - specifically, the Xion fan in me - but also touches on the fact that Z doesn't have nearly as much control over the Agnian souls as he does the Kevesi.
and eat it too aka cake 2, 15K
This was going to be my xb3 postcanon AU nlongfic and I still hope to come back to it eventually, there's half a chapter idling in my gdocs. This is once again a mirror to Lyre's longfic, which uses a lot of the same concepts but ddifferently, hence why they're the two cakes fics. We simply deserve to not have all the messy recovery from a worldwide war and having to learn to work together erased. Fuck that ending.
Also this fic got me my first overlong whiny message about shipping because XB2 fans are absolutely insane about Rex and his harem ending. To That Guy, Specifically, fuck off. Nia/Zeke for life.
we've crossed paths and made our vows 2.5K
And now for something completely different, but still on-brand for me with the tragic reincarnation thing - Ashera and Teach past ouroboros fic! Ashera very much was. I hated her up to the reveal of her story at the end of her questline, and then, while I still find her outward mannerisms annoying, she became one of the best written characters in the game. She makes SENSE once you know her secret. And I wanted to see how that would play out within the Ouroboros context and play with that a bit. And also just Teach and Ashera are very good foils and I wanted more of that.
That's it for the stuff that got to AO3!
I'm only going to talk about one thing that didn't, which isn't going to AO3 for good reason, and that's
Most of those feelings because "why didn't anyone do anything about all this blatant child abuse and abuse enablement, oh yeah, we know why, I hope her kids are ok.." It's fifth year and has an average amount of politicking for a Nael fic (lots) and features the only time it's reasonable to have a character notice the voldyshard and fix that without dumbledore's say-so, imo. most fics I've seen do that are very contribed about it BUT EMET CAN SEE SOULS SO, YOU KNOW. I scriubble it in the margins when I can't stand it anymore and eventually Venat will be there. thanks professor of the year for getting me through the hard times.
AO3 says IO wrote 213K this year but that's including all oif Hold On and cowards, so it's really more like 150K. Not as good as last year but good enough for me.