End of year round-up!
Dec. 31st, 2017 11:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineStolen fromlizbee!
Fic posted this year
per ardua ad astra (AO3 / Tumblr / here): Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi escape in a shuttle only to be sucked into the Death Star and taken for Imperials. (WIP.)
wandering inside this night (AO3 / Tumblr): On Hoth, Han and Cassian's mutual dislike is not helped by Han's friendship with Jyn or Cassian's with Leia, though for very different reasons. (WIP, technically.)
when hope is gone (AO3 / Tumblr): Rogue One/Persuasion fusion; inspired by operaticspacetrash's, but with Wentworth!Jyn and Anne!Cassian. (WIP; hiatus.)
the ghosts that survive (AO3 / Tumblr): Prequel to wandering inside this night; the proposal that led to Jyn and Cassian's secret marriage. (Complete. *gasp*)
threshold of a dream (AO3 / Tumblr): The concept from the original RO script does happen: Jyn and Cassian escape the otherwise-total devastation of the RO team in a shuttle. (Complete.)
in tongues and quiet sighs (AO3 / Tumblr): Leia, Cassian, and space!Spanish; shares continuity (and some scenes) with threshold of a dream and its sequels. (Complete.)
part of the past, but now you're the future (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to threshold of a dream. Cassian adjusts to survival--with Jyn and without Kaytoo--while recovering from his injuries on Scarif. (Complete.)
waking up in a minefield (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to part of the past, but now you're the future. Leia happens across Jyn and Cassian as he's about to be discharged. (WIP; temporary hiatus to avoid cross-pollination with ad astra.)
the sea that divides us (AO3 / Tumblr): Jyn, f!Cassian, and Baze reluctantly interfering after Eadu. (Complete.)
whatever we deny or embrace (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to the sea that divides us; Jyn and Cassia awkwardly share quarters after surviving Scarif. (Complete.)
the words we've both fallen under (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to whatever we deny or embrace; Jyn and Cassia's second first kiss. (Complete.)
the words are all escaping (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to waking up in a minefield; on Hoth, Jyn and Cassian settle into their relationship while talking about it as little as possible. (Complete.)
untitled (Tumblr): Everyone lives! (WIP.)
Total wordcount for the year
113,537 on AO3, which ... o_O
Overall thoughts
Almost nothing I wrote was what I had in mind on New Year's Eve, 2016. I thought ad astra would be ~30k and I could plow through it in a couple of months (lol), and that it'd be my only major AU (the Script AU alone is 25k right now). I sort of figured I'd get it out of my system right away and go back to my original plans, where instead I'm still as deep into RO as ever! But I honestly have zero regrets--in significant part because grad school is A Drain and consoling fic is doubly consoling.
Personal best/favourite
It's hard to choose between the Script AU (now you're the future etc) and the Queer RO AU (i.e., f!Cassian/Jyn + Baze/Chirrut + Bodhi/Luke) in terms of what I personally enjoy the most. But I think the best is easily part of the past, but now you're the future. I ruthlessly cut out anything that didn't seem to work and drilled into how I see Jyn and Cassian, while expanding on my two favourite relationships (Jyn and Cassian, Cassian and K-2SO) in the way that I genuinely see them for meta purposes. And I actually got a kick out of the Cassian voice (which I don't often use) + his increasingly drugged POV.
Most underappreciated
Technically, I guess it'd be the first fic in the queer RO AU, but it's odd to say so when it's much more appreciated than I expected (certainly on Tumblr--the least popular there would be ... something else, idk what). I don't really feel underappreciated about anything, though the contrast with the response to RO fic early in 2017 vs now is very stark. That's to be expected, I suppose. I definitely wouldn't expect a Baze POV on Jyn and f!Cassian's passive aggression-off after the escape from Eadu to be a big hit, lol.
Most popular
LOL, I didn't even have to check. Per ardua ad astra. I do really love planning and (as far as I love working on anything) writing it, so even though it's not my #1 favourite and there are things I'd change, I don't mind at all. Given how much I put into it, I'm glad people have liked it as much as they do.
Story with the sexiest moment
For me, it's in the bedsharing fic for the queer AU, but that's ... very specific to my tastes, lol. In the fic, Jyn accidentally attacks Cassia when Cassia wakes her up from a nightmare, and it's about her dreams afterwards:
Story that shifted my own perceptions of a character
I'm not sure anything really did in itself--thinking through meta tends to do that more directly, and engagement with other people, even if it's just reading other fics and going 'yeah, exactly' or 'NOOOOPE.' My fics tend to reflect shifts, though: probably the biggest is that Jyn and Cassian's relationship seemed more glaringly romantic when I watched outside the theatre, and they themselves more nervously !!!!! about it than the kind of unsentimental UST or lalala denial that I saw a lot of at the time. While I've never gone in for the unsentimental angle, I did do quite a bit of pining/denial in earlier stuff (esp ad astra, though I deliberately split it off before the elevator scene). It doesn't bother me much, since SW is always such a highlights reel that there's a lot of room to imagine and re-interpret (esp for those of us who don't care about Lucasfilm's dictates), but you can definitely see the change over time.
If there's anything, ad astra probably influenced my perceptions of Bodhi (a character I liked a lot but had trouble pinning down). In part it's because he's in a position where he can't break down in terms of the plot, and when I went double-checking to justify it, he was tougher and more spirited than I remembered. So ... heh, I'm glad that I needed him to be!
Funnest story to write
Either ad astra or the lesbian bedsharing fic. The latter in a raw id way, where it had rolled around in my head for months, and eventually I just sat down and it just ~flowed~ between grad school meltdowns. Meanwhile, ad astra is a sprawling thing where I poke at just about anything that interests me, by its nature I have to write OCs, I get to explore Jyn in the more straightforwardly noble mode of the later movie while still playing up her defensiveness and self-preservation and such, I've got Cassian headcanons and thinking about how he acts under forced passivity and then severe strain, there's slow burn Jyn/Cassian, and everyone gets to be steely heroes in their own way.
Hardest
The space!Spanish fic. It was spawned by my dislike for the space!Spanish trope, when I irritably grumped about how it never actually considers it beyond tossing Spanish 101 around in a really fetishizing, stereotypical, Poirot Speak way. And there are interesting possibilities if you are going to do it: like, if the Bey-Damerons are going to use space!Spanish AND the Organas AND Cassian, then wouldn't there have to be a history at least vaguely similar to how languages get widespread on Earth? And there'd be dialectical differences, even if we do accept planets as something like small states, even if it's just slightly different connotations of 'usted,' and surely it'd mean something after the destruction of Alderaan, and ... yeah, by then I was just "gj Elizabeth, you played yourself."
But it was difficult to write because after all my complaining, I wanted to do it right (I'm not even fluent, I just have a bit of legacy Spanish + college foreign language requirements), and I deliberately restricted it to my Chaucer structure (seven parts of seven sentences each, no negotiation), but wanted something at least vaguely approximating a coherent narrative. And one of my pet peeves was that people would do all this worldbuilding for the Skywalkers and then just this lazy kneejerk stuff for "space Latinx" characters, so I was set on having at least a reference to space!Swedish for the Skywalkers (going with the original Skywalker's RL accent), which meant Luke and Leia stuff, too. And I wanted Jyn/Cassian undertones ofc. And I thought the language would make the most sense as Alderaanian, which would carry all sorts of weight after the destruction of Alderaan, so I wanted that too! All in 1k!
Yeah, it took months.
Biggest surprise(s)
The enthusiastic response to ad astra! As a writer ... hm, it's probably the sheer enjoyment I get out of the Script AU.
Biggest disappointment
I never wrote more than a tiny scrap of the Silmarillion/RO fusion plotbunny that I excitedly chased.
Most unintentionally telling story
No idea, really. I'd say the queer AU, but that's entirely intentional.
Favourite lines/scenes
I've gotten this for the end-of-year meme on Tumblr a few times, and there I picked 1) Cassian's memories of stripping out Kay's Imperial constraints and 2) Jyn and Cassian's first, casual acknowledgments of being in love, which they themselves don't realize are the first, esp Jyn's. But it really depends.
The first to come to mind tonight is ... well, it's awful, but the destruction of Alderaan in ad astra. It built up for a really long time, and I wasn't sure if it would live up to all that, and I spent entire chapters on the aftermath (esp for Cassian, whom I initially headcanoned as Alderaanian for no particular reason--probably by association with Leia, both in general ideological terms and in relation to Han-inspired Jyn). But I'm actually happy with it.
Lines/scenes you'd change
The continuity problems in a lot of early scenes in ad astra. There are quite a few open contradictions, and it messes up things in the movie because I'd only seen it once at the time.
Top five scenes you wish would be illustrated
Off the top of my head:
1. Jyn and Cassia about to kiss in the words we've both fallen under.
2. Jyn angrily protecting Cassian in now you're the future while wearing clothes she stole from him.
3. Jyn and Cassian watching the destruction of Alderaan in ad astra.
4. Jyn and Cassian squabbling over medical appointments in the words are all escaping.
5. Han longing after Leia while she and Cassian talk over Rebel plans in wandering inside this night.
2018 writing ambitions
Finish things.
I'd like to finish, or at least wrap up the plot threads, of ad astra in particular. I'd also really like to make progress on the Lucy fic (I have pretty significant scraps written, just not full-on chapters). And I'd like to write some Darcy/Elizabeth and more on the f!Faramir fic. All between my PhD work? Haha, we'll see.
lizbee!Fic posted this year
per ardua ad astra (AO3 / Tumblr / here): Jyn, Cassian, and Bodhi escape in a shuttle only to be sucked into the Death Star and taken for Imperials. (WIP.)
wandering inside this night (AO3 / Tumblr): On Hoth, Han and Cassian's mutual dislike is not helped by Han's friendship with Jyn or Cassian's with Leia, though for very different reasons. (WIP, technically.)
when hope is gone (AO3 / Tumblr): Rogue One/Persuasion fusion; inspired by operaticspacetrash's, but with Wentworth!Jyn and Anne!Cassian. (WIP; hiatus.)
the ghosts that survive (AO3 / Tumblr): Prequel to wandering inside this night; the proposal that led to Jyn and Cassian's secret marriage. (Complete. *gasp*)
threshold of a dream (AO3 / Tumblr): The concept from the original RO script does happen: Jyn and Cassian escape the otherwise-total devastation of the RO team in a shuttle. (Complete.)
in tongues and quiet sighs (AO3 / Tumblr): Leia, Cassian, and space!Spanish; shares continuity (and some scenes) with threshold of a dream and its sequels. (Complete.)
part of the past, but now you're the future (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to threshold of a dream. Cassian adjusts to survival--with Jyn and without Kaytoo--while recovering from his injuries on Scarif. (Complete.)
waking up in a minefield (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to part of the past, but now you're the future. Leia happens across Jyn and Cassian as he's about to be discharged. (WIP; temporary hiatus to avoid cross-pollination with ad astra.)
the sea that divides us (AO3 / Tumblr): Jyn, f!Cassian, and Baze reluctantly interfering after Eadu. (Complete.)
whatever we deny or embrace (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to the sea that divides us; Jyn and Cassia awkwardly share quarters after surviving Scarif. (Complete.)
the words we've both fallen under (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to whatever we deny or embrace; Jyn and Cassia's second first kiss. (Complete.)
the words are all escaping (AO3 / Tumblr): Sequel to waking up in a minefield; on Hoth, Jyn and Cassian settle into their relationship while talking about it as little as possible. (Complete.)
untitled (Tumblr): Everyone lives! (WIP.)
Total wordcount for the year
113,537 on AO3, which ... o_O
Overall thoughts
Almost nothing I wrote was what I had in mind on New Year's Eve, 2016. I thought ad astra would be ~30k and I could plow through it in a couple of months (lol), and that it'd be my only major AU (the Script AU alone is 25k right now). I sort of figured I'd get it out of my system right away and go back to my original plans, where instead I'm still as deep into RO as ever! But I honestly have zero regrets--in significant part because grad school is A Drain and consoling fic is doubly consoling.
Personal best/favourite
It's hard to choose between the Script AU (now you're the future etc) and the Queer RO AU (i.e., f!Cassian/Jyn + Baze/Chirrut + Bodhi/Luke) in terms of what I personally enjoy the most. But I think the best is easily part of the past, but now you're the future. I ruthlessly cut out anything that didn't seem to work and drilled into how I see Jyn and Cassian, while expanding on my two favourite relationships (Jyn and Cassian, Cassian and K-2SO) in the way that I genuinely see them for meta purposes. And I actually got a kick out of the Cassian voice (which I don't often use) + his increasingly drugged POV.
Most underappreciated
Technically, I guess it'd be the first fic in the queer RO AU, but it's odd to say so when it's much more appreciated than I expected (certainly on Tumblr--the least popular there would be ... something else, idk what). I don't really feel underappreciated about anything, though the contrast with the response to RO fic early in 2017 vs now is very stark. That's to be expected, I suppose. I definitely wouldn't expect a Baze POV on Jyn and f!Cassian's passive aggression-off after the escape from Eadu to be a big hit, lol.
Most popular
LOL, I didn't even have to check. Per ardua ad astra. I do really love planning and (as far as I love working on anything) writing it, so even though it's not my #1 favourite and there are things I'd change, I don't mind at all. Given how much I put into it, I'm glad people have liked it as much as they do.
Story with the sexiest moment
For me, it's in the bedsharing fic for the queer AU, but that's ... very specific to my tastes, lol. In the fic, Jyn accidentally attacks Cassia when Cassia wakes her up from a nightmare, and it's about her dreams afterwards:
It didn’t take long for her to fall asleep again, or to see more horrors through the night, variously real or magnified or spawned by her mind. Less of them, though. And once or twice, they slipped into something altogether different: Cassia, soft and pliant beneath her again, her pulse thrumming against Jyn’s teeth.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of a character
I'm not sure anything really did in itself--thinking through meta tends to do that more directly, and engagement with other people, even if it's just reading other fics and going 'yeah, exactly' or 'NOOOOPE.' My fics tend to reflect shifts, though: probably the biggest is that Jyn and Cassian's relationship seemed more glaringly romantic when I watched outside the theatre, and they themselves more nervously !!!!! about it than the kind of unsentimental UST or lalala denial that I saw a lot of at the time. While I've never gone in for the unsentimental angle, I did do quite a bit of pining/denial in earlier stuff (esp ad astra, though I deliberately split it off before the elevator scene). It doesn't bother me much, since SW is always such a highlights reel that there's a lot of room to imagine and re-interpret (esp for those of us who don't care about Lucasfilm's dictates), but you can definitely see the change over time.
If there's anything, ad astra probably influenced my perceptions of Bodhi (a character I liked a lot but had trouble pinning down). In part it's because he's in a position where he can't break down in terms of the plot, and when I went double-checking to justify it, he was tougher and more spirited than I remembered. So ... heh, I'm glad that I needed him to be!
Funnest story to write
Either ad astra or the lesbian bedsharing fic. The latter in a raw id way, where it had rolled around in my head for months, and eventually I just sat down and it just ~flowed~ between grad school meltdowns. Meanwhile, ad astra is a sprawling thing where I poke at just about anything that interests me, by its nature I have to write OCs, I get to explore Jyn in the more straightforwardly noble mode of the later movie while still playing up her defensiveness and self-preservation and such, I've got Cassian headcanons and thinking about how he acts under forced passivity and then severe strain, there's slow burn Jyn/Cassian, and everyone gets to be steely heroes in their own way.
Hardest
The space!Spanish fic. It was spawned by my dislike for the space!Spanish trope, when I irritably grumped about how it never actually considers it beyond tossing Spanish 101 around in a really fetishizing, stereotypical, Poirot Speak way. And there are interesting possibilities if you are going to do it: like, if the Bey-Damerons are going to use space!Spanish AND the Organas AND Cassian, then wouldn't there have to be a history at least vaguely similar to how languages get widespread on Earth? And there'd be dialectical differences, even if we do accept planets as something like small states, even if it's just slightly different connotations of 'usted,' and surely it'd mean something after the destruction of Alderaan, and ... yeah, by then I was just "gj Elizabeth, you played yourself."
But it was difficult to write because after all my complaining, I wanted to do it right (I'm not even fluent, I just have a bit of legacy Spanish + college foreign language requirements), and I deliberately restricted it to my Chaucer structure (seven parts of seven sentences each, no negotiation), but wanted something at least vaguely approximating a coherent narrative. And one of my pet peeves was that people would do all this worldbuilding for the Skywalkers and then just this lazy kneejerk stuff for "space Latinx" characters, so I was set on having at least a reference to space!Swedish for the Skywalkers (going with the original Skywalker's RL accent), which meant Luke and Leia stuff, too. And I wanted Jyn/Cassian undertones ofc. And I thought the language would make the most sense as Alderaanian, which would carry all sorts of weight after the destruction of Alderaan, so I wanted that too! All in 1k!
Yeah, it took months.
Biggest surprise(s)
The enthusiastic response to ad astra! As a writer ... hm, it's probably the sheer enjoyment I get out of the Script AU.
Biggest disappointment
I never wrote more than a tiny scrap of the Silmarillion/RO fusion plotbunny that I excitedly chased.
Most unintentionally telling story
No idea, really. I'd say the queer AU, but that's entirely intentional.
Favourite lines/scenes
I've gotten this for the end-of-year meme on Tumblr a few times, and there I picked 1) Cassian's memories of stripping out Kay's Imperial constraints and 2) Jyn and Cassian's first, casual acknowledgments of being in love, which they themselves don't realize are the first, esp Jyn's. But it really depends.
The first to come to mind tonight is ... well, it's awful, but the destruction of Alderaan in ad astra. It built up for a really long time, and I wasn't sure if it would live up to all that, and I spent entire chapters on the aftermath (esp for Cassian, whom I initially headcanoned as Alderaanian for no particular reason--probably by association with Leia, both in general ideological terms and in relation to Han-inspired Jyn). But I'm actually happy with it.
Lines/scenes you'd change
The continuity problems in a lot of early scenes in ad astra. There are quite a few open contradictions, and it messes up things in the movie because I'd only seen it once at the time.
Top five scenes you wish would be illustrated
Off the top of my head:
1. Jyn and Cassia about to kiss in the words we've both fallen under.
2. Jyn angrily protecting Cassian in now you're the future while wearing clothes she stole from him.
3. Jyn and Cassian watching the destruction of Alderaan in ad astra.
4. Jyn and Cassian squabbling over medical appointments in the words are all escaping.
5. Han longing after Leia while she and Cassian talk over Rebel plans in wandering inside this night.
2018 writing ambitions
I'd like to finish, or at least wrap up the plot threads, of ad astra in particular. I'd also really like to make progress on the Lucy fic (I have pretty significant scraps written, just not full-on chapters). And I'd like to write some Darcy/Elizabeth and more on the f!Faramir fic. All between my PhD work? Haha, we'll see.
