catchtens | 2019 IN FIC

STATS:

fics: 17 (+1 twitter fic)

female pov: 11

male pov: 11 [some fics switch between male and female povs]

ships: 11 [TOO MANY]

fandoms written in: seventeen, stray kids, day6, twice, got7, nct, fromis_9, itzy, misc kpop 97line

total word count: ~70,000

OVERALL:

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

about what i'd predicted...? my aim this year was to post at least one fic every month, which i did sans february, but i technically "posted" two fics in january so! word count wise, i think my initial goal was 10k but i always intentionally set it low because i try not to have expectations for myself slkdsfd

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?

jisun/lino >> did i even crackship this before i started my olymfics... when did this even start... why do i insist on writing ships that have zero (0) real content!!

Did you take any writing risks this year?

[sweats thinking about the double of last year's amount of fic events i signed up for this year] i think i wrote a lot more het than i did in the past few years and in a time when ao3 is not about it... ig braving the pitchforks is a risk...

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

i need to complete one of my 5000 wip ideas i've amassed over the years!! i'm hoping it'll be youngfeel buzzfeed unsolved au (hopefully actually finished before halloween...) or cardcaptor sakura seungjin (in time for shida's birthday...) or that sprawling joshuji pokemon trainer au (2 years in the making...) or txt and more fromis fic!

What were last year's goals?

copy pasta from last year:

"oh, i want to write joshua pokemon trainer au, and fromis_9 fic, and seungmin/hyunjin spiderboy au ♡ (EDIT: I FOUND THAT THERE ALREADY EXISTS A SPIDERBOY SEUNGMIN FIC... maybe i will write witch/warlock seungmin au instead hmm) and nisanis's wonhui idol prod au... the universe has already been created... ok i'll stop here before i make too many ambitious plans that i won't complete!"

>> joshua pokemon trainer au ✗, fromis_9 fic ✓, witch/warlock seungmin au ✓, nisanis's wonhui idol prod au ✗, made too many ambitious plans that i won't complete again for this year ✓

BEST AND WORST:

My best story of the year:

if you asked me a month ago, i would've said the season you live in, no doubt. but now after re-reading, i think it's a three-way toss up between the season you live in, awaken, my love!, and they don't know about us. re: season - i don't know why but the ending really makes me emotional and i think this fic has some of my best lines! re: awaken - for the longest time i couldn't bring myself to look at this fic but when i finally re-read it, i went "..maybe this does deserve rights..." i truly write the content i want to read... re: they don't know about us - i think this fic is so great only because of the great source material, but it also has some of my best writing though a little rushed!!

My most popular story of this year:

"stay golden, ponyboy" 1) i didn't realize doyu was so popular, 2) icb i became a first page fic author on a relationship tag with more than 20 fics...

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

none!! honestly over 5 kudos on anything is amazing in my eyes TT that said, thank you to everyone who read my fic this year ♡♡♡

Most fun story to write:

big fish theory and awaken, my love! honestly both these fics were a true struggle™ to write [big fish theory because i wrote it a week before my test instead of sleeping] [obv this was not a good idea] [awaken was just so LONG] but coming up with the ideas was fun! also the fact that big fish theory is just a poorly-concealed meta of what uni was like for me [looks off into the distance]

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

i don't know if this counts but GOTCHA! made me realize i truly do not know how to write lino... i call this lino lee i don't know!

Hardest story to write:

they don't know about us... there were several significant road blocks i ran into being: 1) ellie's fics are too intimidating to touch in the first place so i was [nervous sweats] until the last week before the fic was due, 2) i realized when i started writing the version of jb i know how to write is from 2014 (thank you shida for the jay bee meta TT that i still didn't really follow TT), 3) the original fic is >10k and i usually like to write remixes about the same length of the original work, but i couldn't due to time crunch... hence a lot of rushed/skipped over plot lines... i'm sorry @ ellie but i am glad you liked it despite all this T___T

Biggest disappointment:

i really lost writing steam in the fall/winter T___T i know this was because i got busy + personal factors but i feel like the fics i put out in the first two thirds of the year were much higher in quality than october-december... mostly because i defaulted to writing short wonhuis because they were easier to get out... i also feel like i got creatively burned-out and started wanting to spend my free time doing other things than stressing myself over fic but signed up to do fic events anyway! yes this is all my fault!

Biggest surprise:

after last year's disaster of being two weeks late to turn in my ficmix, icb miia mod let me sign up this year (!!) and assigned me one of my friends again (!!) i really don't think i'll have this luck again! also, icb i finished my gg jukebox fic in like 3 days... i realized a few years ago i could write super fast (like 1000+ words in an hour, 5k fics in one sitting) but now 500 words a day is very decent for me lol

Most unintentionally telling story:

isn't every wonhui fic i write just me projecting... i think unexpectedly that hot, young millennial anthem? in the sense of reflecting on your high school years when you're forced together with the people you used to know... also suburbs!!

HIGHLIGHTS + WRAP-UP:

Favorite opening lines:

awaken, my love! --

Okay, stop Seungmin if you've heard this one before but: you're sixteen and you're in love, and you're sitting in the car next to the most beautiful boy you know. And you've wanted to tell this boy that you've liked him ("Since friggin' forever," or, at least as Jisung likes to put it over their large-sized milk teas and SAT handbooks after school on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Hyunjin conveniently has club swim practice. Unholy shit, it's like Seungmin can hear his nasally, harmful decibel level voice even now. They've gotta stop hanging out so much, centuries-old family friendships be damned) for a while now but it never seems like the right time to say it. And so this feeling ends up swelling and swelling and swelling inside your chest until something ruptures and your heart fails and you die, just like that ("I'll go in the family plot," Seungmin told Jeongin the last time he'd talked himself through this scenario, which was yesterday. "Next to great-uncle Jinyoung or something. He was the High Priest, you know? That'd be pretty cool." Jeongin only twitched his ears at him, looking thoroughly unimpressed before darting off). It can't be all that bad. At least you take your dignity with you to the grave.

GOTCHA! --

Ask Jisun in a couple years about the moment when she knew she'd made it as an idol and she'll tell you with a pretty, practiced smile tugging on her perfectly-lined lips that it was when she held her first music show trophy in her hands.

In all actuality though, this moment comes down to Jisun squinting at her phone screen first thing in the morning two months before that, trying to decipher her newest notification. Which is courtesy of Instagram user id54399: yew row two-friend batman!! Jisun squints a little harder. Oh, it's you're a two-faced bitch!!, with an impressive 422 likes. Huh.

i hope you hurt like me --

"You know you do this thing," Wonpil says when Jinyoung finally comes back with their two iced Americanos sweating all over his hands. He'd stopped to talk with Jackson when he ran into him near the pick-up counter and his fingers went numb as he laughed along to jokes that were mediocre at best. "Where you try to act cooler around other people?"

[honestly, i think i struggled a lot with openings this year and am not particularly proud of most of them!]

Favorite closing lines:

the season you live in --

She smiles, opens her eyes, Seungcheol's hand still in hers. And then, of the summer where it all began, and the winter where it ended, Nayoung lets go.

juicebox hero --

But the seasons change and the tides eat away at the sand. And they are over. // Seokmin opens his eyes. This, he thinks, deep breath, is the first step.

GOTCHA! --

And the grin spreads across Minho's face with that, just like a cat that got the cream.

Favorite lines in general:

the season you live in --

Sometime after she'd moved back, she and Jeonghan stood out in the rain, waiting for a train to pass, and somehow ended up on the topic of the five of them as kids, growing up. "I used to like you so much," Jeonghan admitted, laughing to an overcast sky. "I don't think you ever knew, did you?"

"Oh." Nayoung felt her cheeks flush. They'd just come from the outdoor market, and she'd unapologetically called him, "Terrifying," when he'd flattered an auntie into giving him a half-price discount. "You're terrifying, Yoon Jeonghan, you know that."

He'd grinned at that, walking backwards to face her. "That's why you're glad to have me on your side, right?"

It all kind of made sense to her, then. "Oh," she repeated. And he'd kept laughing, but Nayoung couldn't figure out what exactly was so funny. She remembers biting her lower lip carefully, thinking about it. "What about now?" she'd asked, and then the train was gone.

that young, hot millennial anthem --

In ninth grade, Jisun made up her ideal type. On the fly, when Jiwon asked her one day in the middle of gushing over some boy in her math class during lunch, Jisun constructed this idea that she'd only be happy with him if he was tall with symmetrically broad shoulders, a slim waist, and a small face, acknowledged as handsome by some universally-accepted beauty standard.

"Oh," she'd added belatedly, as she was munching on a carrot stick. "And he has to be crazy about me."

rocket science --

Imagine: the month after, Hyunjin caught Yeji looking at Seungmin in this certain way he’d never noticed before. Like, in the midst of the vast emptiness that is space, she'd seen the bloom of a supergiant in the distance and found herself indescribably drawn to it. Hyunjin didn't realize he'd been staring until Yeji happened to meet his gaze. The two of them understood, in that moment.

Imagine: twin planets, circling a single, gargantuan star in an otherwise lonely universe. And, give or take some, that's just celestial mechanics.

juicebox hero --

There was this week or two after their graduation last year, when all their other neighbors had moved out for the summer, that he and Jaehyun fucked on every possible surface of their apartment. It was like after all the months of pent-up stress and being unable to spend as much time together as they used to leading up to it, they were completely starved of each other's existence, and the singular way to satiate that hunger was to have sex. Constantly.

Presently, Seokmin is making a PB&J after an upsetting early knock out of the Mario Kart tournament, right where he nailed Jaehyun approximately ten months ago.

big fish theory --

Jiho knows Woojin from every summer since eleventh grade, when they worked jobs at the same food court stall in the KTown Galleria and Jiho went home every night with the smell of galbi clinging to her hair. Besides grunting orders to each other, they never talked, but Jiho was pretty sure it was more out of a kindred antisocial need to hibernate from human interaction over the summer in order to become fully charged for the interpersonal bullshit that usually went down during the school year. That, or Woojin silently hated her guts, which – out of self-preservation – Jiho started warily hating his for no reason, too.

wi-fi --

It was funny. You could know all the language in the world and not have the words to put your thoughts into. Likewise, you could have all the words to put your thoughts into and not have anyone there to listen to them. Or, you could have someone willing to listen only to find you didn't actually want to say anything to anyone, at all.

they don't know about us --

"I'm getting married," Suzy said suddenly, gently as if to not break his heart, "In two months."

He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. "What the hell, Suzy?" He laughed incredulously, wondering if it was all some sick joke.

Jaebum heard her stand up from the bed and walk over to him. "To Jungsik." He felt the warmth of her, pressed against his shoulder. "I thought it would make you happy."

A mild rush of anger coursed through him. And then as quickly as it had come, it dissipated. "Why the fuck would that make me happy?" he breathed.

Suzy reached up and peeled his hands away from his eyes. In the sudden light, she was too bright to look at but Jaebum could not bring himself to avert his gaze.

"Didn't it always bring you such joy," she continued steadfast, like these were lines in a movie she had been scripted to say, "Holding things close and then letting them run away from you?"

LIST OF COMPLETED STORIES:

stars space stars (young k/nayeon) [covered in last year's year in fic]

"stay golden, ponyboy" (doyoung/yuta) [original completion date 12/25/18]

awaken, my love! (seungmin/hyunjin)

GOTCHA! (jisun-centric, jisun/lee know)

juicebox hero (dk/jaehyun)

[untitled hot!brian fic] (young k/nayeon)

big fish theory (jiho-centric, 97line)

yes, you need to be there to plant a garden (jisun/lee know)

sucker (sana/dowoon)

shark! (chaeryeong/hyunjin)

the season you live in (nayoung/seungcheol)

rocket science (hyunjin, yeji, seungmin)

that hot, young millennial anthem (gyuri/jisun)

they don't know about us (jb/jinyoung/suzy)

kingfisher (wonwoo/junhui)

wi-fi (wonwoo/junhui)

i hope you hurt like me (nayeon, jinyoung, suzy, jb, wonpil, young k)

vhs (jiheon, yuna, jeongin)

IN CONCLUSION: how did i write so much fic this year... [ignores the voice saying "sapphy u didn't even hit 100k"] i think i'm proud of most of the fics i wrote, and the ones i have reservations about i just posted on my other pseud, which was a pretty good strategy sldkajkfsd. i honestly don't know if i'll want to write as much as i did this year in 2020, but we'll see if i suddenly get inspired like i did this summer!

big thank you to all my supportive and lovely friends who held my hand while i was [screams on the inside] [this is fine.gif] TT___TT also for witnessing me speak into the void about my own writing TT it seems like we didn't learn anything about procrastinating but there's always next year!! another big thank you to everyone who clicked on any of my fics ♡ i hope 2020 and the new decade is lovely to you all ♡♡♡