deadwine's ao3 wrapped 2021

[deadwine]

I lifted the memes I saw floating on twitter and here I am answering them, about my year as both a writer and reader of fics.

ao3 wrapped - writer

A.

1. As of 13/12/21, 56k, the shortest being 402 words and the longest being 10,641 words. This is excluding works solely on twitter.

2. heart song

3. i remember how the earth stopped turning by roxast

4. Minghao/Jungkook

5. Kyungsoo..I could say Minghao has been fun in the way looking in the mirror is fun in the morning before i put on my glasses, but I wont.

6. I'm including a few:
   
   “Minghao forces a feeble attempt at polite confusion onto his face. “Zhang Yixing— Lay the producer, am I right?”
   
   Yixing’s widening smile is a double-edged sword.
   
   Maybe this is what it means to grow up, Minghao muses, to estrange yourself from known faces in alien crowds with the mere twist and turn of your mouth.”
   (dead it, forget it, let it all disappear)
   
   “In July, he starts taking walks again.The grass teases his toes through his open sandals and on the days when his walk coincides with a post-rain dampness, its smell carries to his doorstep, as if the earth is keening, eager to have him back in its arms.”
   (heart song)
   
   “But the drop of the shirt on his spine feels as familiar as its give when he had peeled it off a body— his own, Jungkook’s; perhaps they were one and the same back then. Perhaps he still wishes for it to be true even now. Surely his imagination wasn’t strong enough to conjure up a dream so sweet? Broken whispers traded as dawn pierced through the solitary window on the eastern wall, marking out bruises the night had brushed over with a tenderness they weren’t permitted come daylight.”
   (salt)
   
   

7. None?
8. canon compliant minkey and post timeskip domestic oikagehina
9. all in my skin
10. spring at the moon
11. 뜬 눈으로 밤새
12. if a man is earth
13. Finding out that keeping it short can be fulfilling. All that drive from the end of last year to write longer fiction took its leave, for good I hope. Was I more intentional with my writing despite being even more crisp and to the point? I sure hope so.
14. So many...but I often think of the one left by user starbites on my namgi fic.
15. tinygumdrops (curryramyeon)
16. 33 across 8 fandoms

17. writing for haikyuu (marrying bbb back to what it originated from, blackswan thoughts, retirement thoughts)...and taking the 'my fics are haiku length' hyperbole seriously?

B.

1. A lot of things! New ships, new fandoms, metaphorical stuff, experimental prose! Something I wish I did…also a lot of things. Definitely finish the minkey wip which I had started in Jan.

2. They are the same this year- heart song!

3. Choosing something different from the the first meme just because I can, a section from spring at the moon:
   
   “Stupid, stupid, stupid—“ Fucking. Fuck. Sorry.” Minghao garbles as the tears fall freely now, into the sleeve of his hand he’s pressed into his eyes hoping to make it stop or to hide behind, he doesn’t know himself.
   
   What right does he have to cry? Seokmin’s right. Minghao fell in love with love long before he fell in love with magic, with life, or with Mingyu. All Minghao had to show for himself were bony knees and a flickering spark in his fingertips when he read I wish your heart will be like mine, Then not in vain for you I pine and thought oh. I want to know this feeling, too.
   
   Drowning himself in centuries-old elegies no one cared for anymore, especially in his circles, Minghao found himself becoming a fervent devotee of love, whatever it meant. But it was the kind of devotion that came with consequences in the real world.
   
   You’re too idealistic about things, his first legal studies advisor had told him, the sixth draft of a paper on ethics finally discarded instead of being returned with corrections. Spells had history, had structure...it wasn't Minghao's job to deem them right or wrong.
   
   His classmates in college used to tease him each time he updated his Instagram with a whimsical caption, each time they found him at the rooftop gazing silently at the sky. Xu Minghao can draw romance out of a trashcan, they used to say. And he could.
   
   But in year eleven Jeon Wonwoo from Geography class had quoted the definition of evolution verbatim as it was written in their Science textbook when he broke up with Minghao. Minghao didn’t know yet that it was possible to grow out of the love that you knew, but that’s what Wonwoo was telling him, wasn’t he, when he said that he didn’t want to eat lunch together anymore? And he didn’t look back over his shoulders at Minghao when he walked away in farewell, and Minghao, he had to believe it, just a little, didn’t he?
   
   Maybe Wonwoo had liked him more than he let on, maybe Minghao was the one who loved him less than he wanted to be able to claim. The fact remained that Wonwoo outgrew his love. As did Yanan.
   
   Minghao realised then that it was inevitable that evolution would outpace love. Once could be chance, but twice was law. And at 19, Minghao was far from understanding the magic that ran through his veins since birth, but he felt more than capable of dealing with legality, with principles—that’s what he was trained for.
   
   And Minghao was a lover, he believed it still. But at the first sign of something real, something that didn’t just look like love but felt like it, he had run away.

   
   

4. empty cup is definitely a dull purplish grey. Something about the album covers of the songs in my playlist and how I imagined cold tea drained out of an empty cup. I doesn’t make much sense but yeah.

5. Anti-romantic by TXT, Simmer by Hayley Williams, Happen by Heize.

6. spring at the moon undoubtedly. Given its length, the nature of an exchange fic based off someone else’s story and just the details I wanted to include as also the fact that I’m not really a gyuhao thinker, if I'm being honest.

7. Hmm. I think I had long months of inactivity and feeling uninspired/unable to write both for my yoonkook zine fics that I’m legally unable to talk about until next year and during my ficmix piece. But I think. Hope, in retrospect, I never wanted to quit. Cause I didn’t let myself take my writing that seriously? (Like. I’m talking seriously quitting-- Did I get depressed and never want to try to write again every other week? Sure.)

8. Ooh a fair few. night rather than day, the sunmi/hani fic for emofest was so fun and self-indulgent. Writing a ship only I cared about with two idols I love, expanding a universe I had written last year which was already so self-indulgent, blasting Avril’s Hot for the writing process. I also had so much fun writing no season for lonely weather and look too good to be alone, they took me literal hours to finish, from the minute I began. Easy, fun writing as I wish writing would always be.

9. Honestly, given what gains attention depends on a lot of things-genfic or romantic pairing, nsfw or not, rarepair or not, what fandom etc…one kind of makes peace/understands why stats are how they are but if I had to pick one-was i supposed to keep sweet, my namgi fic is probably one of my best bts works this year

10. That I write grief well. In my comments for heart song and for empty cup, two people had said that. It makes me wanna cry and stare at the wall forever and also scream every time I remember that.

11. Besides having to write myself instead of my thoughts autofilling onto the doc? What is a grievance (that I can make in public and not be sniped for/ that I'm allowed to say without being an entitled asshole) hmmm idk

12. Sigh. Both minkey and oikagehina. Both gathering dust since god knows when. I think the fact that they’re both dialogue heavy is what’s stalling me.
    
    minkey:
    
    “Sometimes it creeps up on Kibum, this insurmountable wave of emotion, beating against his chest—at just how far they’ve come. Some of their past they play up for broadcast, embellishing things, tweaking memory: everyone loves a good rivalry story.
    
    Only that which is true can be exaggerated.”
    
    
    oikagehina:
    
    “Tooru jumps half a foot in the air. Not even a second later Shouyou snips dangerously close to his ears and whispers, “You will do good to remember I have your most treasured quality in the palm of my hands right now”, and then saccharine tongued, “Oikawa-san.”
    
    “His setting?” Tobio muses out loud.
    
    Shouyou smiles, sharper than the edge of the blades in his hand. “His vanity.”
    
    Ten seconds pass in absolute silence—
    
    “So you think my setting is my best quality, huh, Tobio-chan?”
    
    Tobio flushes but holds his ground. “Not like there’s a lot to choose from.”
    
    “Oi!” Tooru pipes up but Shouyou hisses before his body can move an inch and Tooru quiets down, if only just to harrumph at Tobio’s snickers.”

    
    

13. empty cup, the verhao! I know it’s short and it’s not exactly something I worked on for years or anything but it was very close to getting abandoned between march and july and middle school poetry teacher minghao is my favourite headcanon from this year so I would’ve definitely missed out.

14. what if recent gym hitter namjoon was your ex and also your new boss (namgi), kevin moon voice: can i get a reptilian horanghae (soonsol), are you even a witch if you can't control the weather (gyuhao)

15. Writing process moodboard:
    
    

16. Almost everything I write fits this but haokook and hani/sunmi fic most especially. Like there was no motivation except that i needed ME to write these pairings and see them together. Thats all.

17. Two. Why I wrote: The need to get stray thoughts out of my brain so I can be at peace—lol. Why I posted: The desperate desire to find someone, anyone, even just one person who’d understand why I needed different medias to align in the same story. So, basically fic as a medium to talk about music and poetry and whatever else found its way into it. And in general for the community of it all, you know? Where and how else do I look for companionship given the state of things?

ao3 wrapped - reader

1. Just under 3k. About 2.8k fics

2. something more by celestialshellfish

3. fig. 25 by pagdiwa (neko11lover)

4. Hinata/Kageyama ;_;

5. Atsumu

6. A few:
   
   “Until we’re eighty-five, Sihyeon had said once, at Yiren’s birthday broadcast, and the others had protested, but what Sihyeon meant anyway was that by then they would long be dead in the public eye, which was the only death that mattered.”
   (a locked heart’s door by resentfully)
   
   “A few weeks into summer his girlfriend tells him, “You’re going to be smiling the day you die,” and Oikawa wonders why the hell that’s such an unforgivable thing. His girlfriend tells him, “You’ll never really love anyone, will you,” and Oikawa thinks, don’t flatter yourself.”
   (foolish, fragile spine by aruariandance)
   
   “But Hinata doesn’t look phased at all. He just nods his head and bites at his metal straw a little before answering. “Well, my sister is my best friend,” he says, very seriously. “She’s also six, so if she wasn’t my best friend it would break her heart, but I can’t think of anyone better. Siblings, you know? There’s no shame in it.”
   
   

“Yeah,” Atsumu mutters. “Siblings.”

If she wasn’t my best friend, it would break her heart.

Atsumu starts drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

Osamu’s voice is echoing in his head again. When you’re eighty, and have the confidence to say you were happier than me — then that time, make fun of me.

Great, his own voice answers. When you’re dead, I’ll tell you, ‘See? I was happier than you ."
(don’t know what we craved it remains unspoken by jublis)

7. doom daze (fear of the water) by Klavier

8. Meeting Halfway by gaiabythesea

9. sunset troubling the sky by Klavier and it’s like you told me, go forward slowly by elenoir

10. heart lines by mysterytwin

11. fault of humanity (a quiet tick tack fills the silence) by pinball_mentality

12. where your song sounds by batman

13. alkene groups (and they were roommates, oh my god they were roommates by birdcat)

14. balconys, bazooka (in 2021? really? Yeah….), rabenhorst on lj (its the minkey brainrot)

15. Happy tears: set your summer dreams alight by suganii, not at all happy tears: things fall apart by lookformeunderyourboots

16. Title of Your Sex Tape by panyang, when the moon hits your eye by Metis_Ink

17. As always bbb-isms and idolverse stuff but with haikyuu it was the really crunchy character studies spanning high school all the way to post time skip. And also unhappy/ambiguous relationships and sad/open endings.

18. blue & grey by nitilia, this is a series I can never talk about enough, it's seen me through so much of the last three years. paying our bills by fractalkiss got me into a ship singlehandedly while the 'compatibility study' in OBSESSION by tonyang (kurusui) is also incredible.
    
    
    

    Forgive me for leaving the formatting to the gods after being so patient with it all year. all year is catching up to me or something of that sort. If you've read my fic or betaed for me or talked fic with me or exchanged recs or whatever it may be, thank you for hanging out with me in this space. I'd never have gotten past all of this without some tremendous hand-holding!! Here's to more days of friendship through collective brainrot!

Comments

[nitilia]

you write grief insanely well. it makes me need to stare at the ceiling for forever.

also your writing mood board sdkfhdsklfjls

[deadwine]

now im gonna go look at the ceiling forever