broken-nosed gods

So I think I wrote a lot less than last year, but more fic & ideas for/of fic actually happened? Which is to say, I am very unsatisfied with myself all around, but I actually made some stuff.

Leitmotif(s) of the year: Freedom, escape (as usual); relationships that may or may not be romance, no one is quite sure; poetry; meta-fiction; and "Well, what do we do now?"

Favorite(s) of the batch: history of the rose, because even though I don't think it's particularly well-written, it's a bunch of things I love all squished together.

Best of the batch: streets and skies and open doors is the only thing I wrote this year where I feel like I really got everything just (almost) the way I wanted it. Writing is a giant pain sometimes, because I keep wanting everything to be a great big spiral of perfect, but honestly if I can get the phrasing and imagery right then the rest doesn't matter that much.

Most underappreciated by the universe: ars poetica, first fic in which I publicly mentioned Tracey Davies and poetry in the same sentence. I feel like I got more of the imagery right here than in the actual poems I wrote for her, mostly because actual poetry is a fucking pain in the ass.

Favorite first lines: My actual favorite first line is Their lives are made of ink and paper, which was going to be in history of the rose until that turned into a completely different fic. My favorite posted line is Latin leaves me like an ex-boyfriend, from wizard-born.

Most fun to write: no such thing as silence was super fun, because it is one of those short crunchy character-sketch fics, self-introspection cheap at twice the price. And I learned that I really do love Taki quite a lot.

Sexiest fic: (not gonna write you a) love song, which I have barely even started on, because I'm still hashing out all the characters in my head. I'm not even sure it's going to have romance in it, let alone sex, but it is still the sexiest thing I have written all year, because it involves a lot of girls staring at each others' hands or hair or mouths. This untitled Chrome fic is probably a lot closer to the traditional definition of sexy, but it's actually asexy so it doesn't count.

"Holy crap, that's wrong even for you" fic: That Hermione-goes-to-Ohtori fic. It is self-indulgent crossover meta-tastic idfic at its finest, and at some point I will finish it and post the damn thing.

Fic that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: (not gonna write you a) love song, absolutely. The reason none of it is done is that I'm spending lots and lots of time thinking about Pansy and Parvati and Tracey and Ginny and Hermione, and I still haven't gotten their basic characteristics all worked out in my head yet. But it's going to be fantastic.

New pairing/genre/fandom you never predicted writing in January: I certainly didn't think I was even going to consider writing Mahou no Tenshi Creamy Mami fic! And yet it is happening.

Hardest fic to write: ALL THE ONES I HAVEN'T FINISHED YET. Everything I have finished was easy, otherwise I couldn't have done it. These current ones, now, these ones are hard.

Biggest disappointment: ME. More particularly, the fact that I haven't written those help_pakistan and help_japan fics yet. They're on the work table, I swear! It's just going slow.

Biggest surprise: The amount of fics I actually did manage to write this year, even if they're tiny.

Most telling fic: silence speaks louder than words, I think. The way Taki relates to the world is not the way I relate to the world, but the way she reacts to great pressure is the way I hope I would.

What's next? Finishing some of the things I've started. Starting some of the things I've talked about. DEFINITELY NO THOR FIC. I refuse!

I feel like those memes about writing always ask about titles, so here is a slightly better answer than I tend to give most of them.

I love titles! Usually. But mostly I try to title things before I write them, or at least before I get too far in, because I like titles that are really relevant to the story. And I tend to build off titles: I don't need a title to start out with, but if I just stick on a title at the end it feels sort of disconnected, even if I've spent a long time thinking about it. I tend to pull a lot of the theme from the title, and doing that in reverse is a little more difficult. A title is a foundation, a direction; I think in a much clearer and more constructed way about a story once I have a title to go off of.

I mean, Knife and Ink is a lot less fun-and-games-in-Ba-Sing-Se than it used to be, and a lot more about Mai and spirits and things that are written down, or not written down, or written down somewhere else. Blood Dreams (that mostly-genderswitched KHR AU that I have posted one fic of) has gone from just being an excuse to write a darker and mostly-female KHR to something that is about inheritance and the lack thereof, about the refusal of gender roles, and about discovering the time for an old dream to die. (I am also fighting a terrible urge to retitle it Girls' Generation.)

Not that I haven't come up with some terrible titles, mind, that never did anything at all. But I think I've gotten better about that lately, and I'm very much looking forward to what that Hermione-in-movie-Ohtori fic is going to look like once I've found it a proper title. (Let alone all the auction fic and challenge fic that are simmering on the stove of my brain.)


TL;DR: Titles are hard, but they're also fun and very useful. I need to go think up some more.

So, earlier today littlebutfierce reminded me that May is MAGICAL GIRL MONTH. And since I missed it last year, I have some making up to do! Happily, I posted some squee about Lenalee in what was in some timezones May 1st, so let's see if I can keep it up.

And since we're using a broad definition of 'magical girl' here, I'm going to talk about Chrome Dokuro.

I never thought I'd turn into the kind of person who kept up with a fandom for one or two characters and ignored the rest. And I haven't! But even though I do love a lot of other things about KHR and its fandom (see: this) Chrome and Mukuro are the ones I think and write and fic about to near-exclusion. They combine a lot of things I like—reincarnation! illusion! the blurring of lies and truth! unshakable partnerships of the not-necessarily romantic variety! Gender issues! Mental health issues! Buddhism!—and stay away from a lot of the things I don't.

And I like what Reborn said about them. "Because of Chrome, Mukuro can exist. Because of Mukuro, Chrome can live." (or something like that) In my head, they're separate characters, but not entirely separate people; that's why I'm talking about both of them and not just her. Mukuro will have to break out of prison sometime, but I kind of don't want him to. I like the way that Chrome is his lifeline to the world, I like the idea that they've blurred together a little, or maybe more than a little. I like the idea that Mukuro used to be a girl like Chrome, once upon a time, and he enjoys being that again and also offering the help he didn't have when he was. I like the idea that Chrome's strength is in silence and passivity right up until she needs it to be otherwise, and I like the idea that Mukuro is a little bit the same way.

I love Bianchi and Kyoko and Haru and Hana and Adelheid and Shitt P. and Lal Mirch and Uni, but Chrome will always be my favorite of the KHR ladies. She's the kind of quiet character I don't get to write very often, the one who's polite and loyal and a little bit lonely and goes unfazed by things that would knock less-experienced people flat.

Also, I wrote Chrome fic! It's kind of unpolished, but is about Chrome thinking about how D. Spade is a LYING LIAR WHO LIES and how hard that's going to hurt him. CHROME ILU LOTS OKAY ♥ ♥ ♥

I love things like Detective Conan/Magic Kaito and DNAngel(god knows why) and Yu-Gi-Oh! and Katekyou Hitman Reborn, I really do. Because I love phantom thieves and detectives and weird magic-y shit and reincarnation and whacked-out fights and art and the mafia! They're super fun to write about, you can do all sorts of stuff with them.

But all the phantom thieves and detectives and mafia bosses are boys.

And that should be fine! It's bad that there aren't more women in those positions, of course, and that bothers me just as it should. But I love all those things listed above, and want to write them, and the fact that those characters are male stops me from writing about them.

I have very complicated feelings about this. Because of course that shouldn't stop me, and if it bothers me that much I should just genderswitch one or two and be on my merry way. But I don't do that, because . . . why don't I do that? I don't know why. It would help, even if it wouldn't fix the underlying problems in canon. But that feels like it would be too complex, too top-heavy (hah) for the little ridiculous crossovers and for-want-of-a-nail I want to write, and I know all too well how changing too many things right off the bat can unbalance a fic liek whoa.

I don't think my problem with the canons mentioned above (and others) is that the main characters are male. My problem is that the main characters, their best friends, their rivals, their colleagues, their villains (well, okay, their shounen villains; I'm not sure about Vermouth, as I haven't gotten to her yet) are all male. DCMK almost makes up for this with Ran and Ai and Sato-keiji, but it's not enough: if Heiji or Hakuba or -- ooh, yes -- Kid were female, I would be writing so much fic right now and re-reading bits of canon every week. If Satoshi and Krad and/or Dark were female, I would still be in love with DNAngel no matter how stupid it was. If Kaiba Seto were a girl, I would write thousands and thousands of words just about her being awesome in a trenchcoat. KHR . . . well, my feelings are complicated about KHR.


Well, off to read some josei, and maybe see if Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne gets any better.

I wrote fic again! :D

Title: Passion for Greatness
Characters/Pairings: Tsuna, Xanxus
Word count: 800
Contains: Genderswap
Summary: She can't win, but she's not going to lose. First in a series . . . maybe.

( Read more... )


Writing Xanxus is haaaaard. *sigh* And there was a lot more Mukuro in here when I started. And it was longer. But fem!Tsuna is lots of fun, so that's okay.

I was just re-reading the Mukuro arc, and . . . damn. I didn't notice it before, but Tsuna-tachi are actually really strong. It somehow doesn't feel like the typical shounen thing of new-powers-as-the-plot-demands, I think partly because it doesn't do the thing where Ichigo gets near-killed by Byakuya, trains for like a week, and then beats him -- we get sixty chapters of training disguised as light-hearted comedy, and then our main cast (some of whom were already really strong before canon started, like Hibari and Gokudera) goes up against a dangerous criminal escaped from the highest-security prison in the world. Who proceeds to make comments like "This is a first. No human has ever been able to sense, with one look, when I am possessing another," and "What a frightening man, Hibari Kyouya . . ."

IDK, it just never occurred to me before that Tsuna & co. go into their first serious fight already trained and strong, rather than kind of useless like most shounen heroes. I think I like KHR a lot more now.

Also, belated Yuletide reveal! I wrote Content for the Chrestomanci fandom. I'm kind of sad I only managed to write one thing, but considering my usual glacial pace it's not too bad. I'll probably try to write more next year.

The giftfic I got was super awesome, too! \o/ Explosions is a lovely fic about Conrad's time at Chrestomanci Castle, with lots of cameos by all the castle staff. READ IT. :D


BTW, writing for KHR is hard. I'm used to fandoms with lots of convenient, well-trod AU-diverging points and fic challenges (*cough* Severitus *cough*), and Reborn! really just doesn't have those, or at least not so many as I'm used to. Then again, this is probably just my usual inability to think of actual plot. Seriously, I start off with an idea like 'female!Tsuna/female!Gokudera yes do want' without actually thinking of anything more first and I end up just kind of rewriting canon with more boobies and UST. X.x Oh well, I'll think of something good eventually . . .