2024 in fic

[soobun]

writing this post because i’m pretty sure i’m never going to write THIS much fic in a year probably ever again, so i guess i might as well take this chance to reflect on it. and for once i’m actually kind of proud of it - often not even the fic itself but the fact that i pushed through and PUT some WORDS down even when it was hard (which it almost always was). but i’ve also never been inspired quite like this!!

i wrote 7 (seven!) fics this year:

→ 1.12.24 - impossible object, ncej, m, 6k

→ 2.18.24 - to live here untouched, hrls+ncej+hrmk, t, 6k

→ 3.7.24 - everything reborn after the storm, ncejfm, e, 7.5k

→ 4.14.24 - whenever, wherever, ncej, t, 4.8k

→ 8.1.24 - omakase, ncej, e, 5k

→ 9.29.24 - my heart between your hands, haepjae, t, 4.7k

→ 12.2.24 - expose / unearth, ncej, e, 10.2k

so in total that’s… a little over 44k words. for reference the most i’ve ever written before was 27.6k in 2021 which already felt like a number i wouldn’t surpass so um ❤️ that’s crazy. especially considering the fact that i only wrote ~4k for one silly enstars fic in 2023. so i guess thank you NICHOJOO. also it’s almost a year to the day from when i got covid and binged &team content and started writing for them in the first place so, kind of a nice full circle moment. i had absolutely no idea that they were going to infect me with the mind virus this horribly… life comes at you fast

realizing i’m rambling because i’ve never written one of these before lol but i found some questions on tumblr that i’m going to pick and choose from. we go

1. favorite fic you wrote this year

difficult question! i want to say impossible object but i’m not sure if that’s for sentimental reasons. when i read it back, it’s kind of a wonder how my characterization for them barely changed over the span of a year - ie having known them for about 3 days vs 365 i still pretty much write them the same way, but i also think with rpf some characters are just immediately understandable? i genuinely chalk about 70% of this up to tingle salon though, i don’t think a single piece of content has ever been so seminal in understanding a ship before. also nicholas wears all of his emotions on his sleeve + euijoo is transparent once you understand how his brain works, which is easy when yours works in a very similar way, lmao

2. least favorite fic you wrote this year

this one’s easier, i think it’s definitely omakase. i don’t think it’s Bad but it’s the only fic i wrote this year where the order of operations was “i want to write something” → “okay i guess i can write this idea” rather than how it usually is: “fml i can’t stop thinking about this idea” → “okay i guess i have to write this.” so it’s probably obvious why the latter makes for generally more compelling work lol even though it pisses me off while writing more!!!

3. favorite lines/scenes you wrote this year

letssss see. i’ll skim and try to pick one per fic

It’s immediately clear: Euijoo sees authenticity in others and it’s a virtue; Euijoo sees authenticity in himself and it’s something to scrub away.

^ this was the crux of impossible object for me, so i was pleased to be able to phrase it concisely. i was also pleasantly surprised that people seemed to enjoy the “there’s a light in your eyes” “being on stage was my first love” section so much, i really didn’t think much of it when writing but in retrospect can admit that it’s quite sweet T___T

Four months ago. The leaves were changing. Nicholas was reading in bed when Harua got back from his shower. Harua squinted at the Kanji spread over the cover page, frowning at his own illiteracy, before realizing that the book was obviously in Mandarin. He asked what Nicholas was reading, and Nicholas asked, “Do you like poetry?” and Harua’s breath did something funny, but he managed to say yes, and Nicholas patted the side of his bed like come here. Harua did, lying down gingerly, making sure to leave space between them in Nicholas’s tiny bed. He stared up at the ceiling as Nicholas read aloud, the sounds themselves incomprehensible, but that voice—

Two months ago. Somehow they had the shitty luck to be the only room in the dorm with a heater that can’t seem to hack it when the temperature outside gets into the negatives. Yuma and Jo stopped by with blankets from their respective rooms with matching grimaces of sympathy. Nicholas came in late from wherever he was that evening and said, “Score!” doing a silly sort of running leap onto the ladder leading to Harua’s bed where he was bundled up with what was verging on an excessive number of blankets. Nicholas collapsed half on top of him. Harua said, “Ow!” though he wasn’t hurt, and Nicholas just laughed, mumbled “Sorry,” right up in Harua’s left ear. He got himself comfortable on Harua’s bed, making room in Harua’s physical space the same way he had done so in the metaphorical sense: without asking. Harua looked over and there he was. Harua looked inside his heart and—well—there he was.

^ excessively long snippet but these are easily my favorite paragraphs; i remember sitting at my desk for a long time trying to get them just right.

Nicholas rubs little circles on Euijoo’s hipbones and watches him relax by degrees. “Probably a bad look if we get caught by Watanabe-san, huh?”

Euijoo just glares flatly at him. This sort of joke would have been off-limits not even three months ago. Sometimes it’s tough, with Euijoo, his boundaries waxing and waning like phases of the moon. Euijoo had told him once, I don’t think I can be easy for you. Nicholas had just smiled, swallowed back the obvious joke and said, I don’t want you to be. And it was the truth. Nicholas hasn’t been easy for anyone a day in his life, though you wouldn’t know it by how deftly Euijoo handles him. So he likes Euijoo a little prickly, a little complicated. Sue him.

^ most of this fic is a little uh explicit (the first e-rated fic i’d ever written, lmfao) but i wanted to make sure the emotional bits hit just as much, so getting all of that established relationship goodness in the first scene before we bring fuma into it was important to me. also i was so embarrassed writing the second part of this compared to my most recent fic so uhhhh growth?

Euijoo thought—God. He is so unbelievably stupid. He thought that since Nicholas didn’t try to bring it up anymore, that he was fine with the strange wordless limbo in which they had found themselves. How could he have known that the wound had made a home for itself in Nicholas’ chest? That it was a mirror image of Euijoo’s own, the one that he gouged into himself the first time he looked at Nicholas and knew that he was fucked, forever?

When Euijoo looked, Nicholas looked back. When Euijoo took a step forward, Nicholas took two, and then ten—whatever it took to meet him. Whatever it took.

When Nicholas reached him, Euijoo dropped to his knees. He looked up, wordless. Nicholas looked at him like he was something precious and fleeting. A coin in midair. One side: everything you could ever ask for. The other: a wound’s violent re-opening.

^ if i had to pick a favorite scene in all of the fics i wrote this year, it’d probably be the flashback scene in this one. i’m not very good at making exposition sound poetic, but i needed to run through the highlights of essentially their entire relationship history in one scene, and i think the end result was actually… pretty good? who would have thought. not me.

this next one is a tiny bit nsfw sorry LOLL

Nicholas has a brief, vivid flashback to one of the first times they slept together, when Euijoo was feeling coy, or too jittery to be touched, or both, and he made Nicholas watch from the foot of the bed as he jerked himself off. He didn’t take his time, and he wasn’t particularly gentle—the opposite of what Nicholas had expected. Nicholas asked him if that's what he preferred, quick and rough. Euijoo had paused before he answered: No. Not really. I guess that’s just what I’m used to.

And then: I like it better when it’s you.

So Nicholas takes his time, for his own sake and for Euijoo’s. A beautiful, necessary shattering.

^ i haven’t reread this fic in forever so i honestly forgot most of what was in here, but i actually think this was a pretty good character bit. most of this fic is kind of sweet and silly though, which i guess is its charm.

“I’m okay,” Youngjae says. There’s no reason for him not to be. Jihoon, his own feelings, the weight of another’s—it’s his own burden to carry.

And, selfishly, he thinks: Not with him. I can’t do this with him. He can’t bare himself to Junghwan, of all people. If Junghwan goes looking, Youngjae can’t be certain what he’ll find. A single question, a single touch, and then: the loosening of his ribs, the buried sentiment of their shared past gushing out like so much blood.

^ my fav part of this fic is honestly the past youngjae→shinyu dynamic, i wanted it to be subtle but still very Present, and i also think the last line here is pretty good on a sentence level.

considering i wrote an entire post on e/u for some reason, i’m gonna do myself and everyone else a favor and skip that one.

4. favorite fandom/character you wrote for this year

most obvious answer of all time, but it’s &team and euijoo. though i’ve written the most words from nico’s pov by quite a large margin - it's an easy voice to pick up on and a fun headspace to inhabit. strange to think about how my fondness for him went from 0 to 100 slowly but very surely!

5. a fic you didn’t expect to write

um… all of them. LOL but especially the a/b/o, and ESPECIALLY so many words of it. that one was definitely the most violent exorcism of the year.

6. something you learned this year

how to use a semicolon successfully ❤️ maybe next year i'll learn how to stop overusing colons

7. fics you wanted to write but didn’t

anything that requires more than 10k words of plot… i’m glad that someone else has picked up the doctor au torch, i still think the restaurant au would be a lot of fun, but honestly i’m pretty pleased with my output. i don’t really have any ideas that are giving me grief rn [knock on wood]

8. favorite fic you read this year

genuinely impossible to pick just one even PER fandom, so in no particular order:

&team: (1), (2), (3) and many more.

iwtv: (1), (2), (3) and many, many more.

trc: (1), (2), (3) and many, MANY more.

assorted fandom favs: (1), (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8), (9), (10)

alright this has been sufficiently self indulgent. if anyone whos reading this has read and maybe even enjoyed any of my fic this year, thanks T__T it’s been fun.