osprey_archer | Fic Written in 2018 Meme

Everyone else is doing it, so I couldn't resist: the Fic Written in 2018 Meme!

List of Completed Fic
The Royal Touch. Three Musketeers fix-it fic, focused on Constance Bonacieux and Anne of Austria.
Birds of a Feather. A Marsh/Sayers crossover. Lord Peter Wimsey hires Troy, the wife of his old school friend Inspector Alleyn, to paint his own wife Harriet; Harriet and Troy become fast friends.
The Past Is Another Country. Captain America. Bucky is back, but Steve is having trouble adjusting to the distance between them.
Reunion. Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Changeling. Martha & Ivy meet again years later in New York.
Susceptibility. Captain America. Steve/Rumlow dubcon.
Ships Passing in the Night. Captain America, canon-divergent AU. During the Battle of New York, Steve meets the Winter Soldier, who looks mysteriously like his old friend Bucky Barnes. Steve jumps to the obvious conclusion: someone at SHIELD is trying to fuck with his head.
A Cabin in the Woods. Captain America. You know that throwaway line in season two of Agents of SHIELD about how SHIELD sent Steve to an isolated cabin surrounded by a laser fence soon after he defrosted? This is about that. Hydra takes the opportunity to fuck with Steve’s head.
The Cat’s Meow. Captain America. Steve/Bucky werecat roleplay sex.
Angels with Dirty Faces. Captain America. Pre-war Steve & Bucky.
Haircut. Steve cuts Bucky’s hair so he’ll look like his pre-war self when they go to visit Bucky’s sister.
Man’s Best Friend. Captain America. Bucky’s presence gives Steve flashbacks to their fight on the helicarrier. Also, Bucky adopts a dog.
Storytime. A Reciprocity fic set during Steve’s nervous breakdown. Bucky tells Steve orphanage stories to try to cheer him up.
The Lady’s Boon. Elizabeth Marie Pope’s The Perilous Gard. The Lady comes to see Kate when she’s ill.
Kids These Days. An MCU/Agent Carter crossover. Dottie Underwood complains to young Natasha that Red Room standards have fallen since her day. They don’t even handcuff them to their beds anymore! HOW STANDARDS HAVE FALLEN.

Total Number of Posted Stories in 2018: 15

Total Word Count: 43,691

Fandoms Written In The Three Musketeers, Lord Peter Wimsey Mysteries/Inspector Alleyn Mysteries, The Changeling, Captain America, The Perilous Gard, Black Widow/Agent Carter

Fandoms I wouldn’t have expected to write this year: Except for the Captain America fics, I didn’t really expect to write in most of these fandoms.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d predicted? Definitely more. Nine of these fics were written for charity, and the others were almost-finished MCU fics lying around my hard drive that I decided to polish up before the Tumblr exodus occurred.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? Oh, this feels like picking a favorite child. I don’t think I have a favorite this year, anyway.

My best story of this year. I don’t think there’s a clear-cut best of show, either. It’s been a solid year for fic - no real standout. (Well, I guess if we’re counting original fiction, Briarley is probably the best.)

My most popular story this year: The Past Is Another Country, by all measures: hit count, kudos, and comments. (Again, unless we’re counting original fiction. In that case, Briarley, again.)

Story most underappreciated by the universe. I think the universe has been pretty appreciative of all my fic this year, actually. But it totally failed to appreciate my novella Iced Coffee Dreams, possibly because the title is not obviously romancy enough, possibly because it’s the fourth book in a series and it’s not immediately clear that it’s a standalone, and possibly because… who knows really. Because sometimes life is like that.

Story that could have been better: The Past Is Another Country, which is kind of funny given that it’s my most popular story this year. But I tried to do too many things with it while also trying to keep the word count reasonably low and the end result is that it feels compressed and misshapen and infodumpy, at least to me.

Sexiest story: The Cat’s Meow. Someone wanted Stucky werecat roleplay sex and so here we are.

Saddest story. Oh, dear, so many contenders for this one. I’m thinking either Ships Passing in the Night or A Cabin in the Woods.

Story with the single sweetest moment. Maybe the ending of Haircut?

Hardest story to write. Man’s Best Friend. My god, like pulling teeth. Why was this one so hard? Bucky being adorable with a dog ought to be the easiest thing.

Easiest/most fun story to write. The Lady’s Boon. I read the prompt, the story idea came into my head, and it just rolled right off my pen more or less complete.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I don’t think so.

Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year? I’d like to do some fic exchanges this year. It’s been ages since I’ve done one and I’ve been feeling nostalgic for the sense of fannish community they have.

For profic, I’ve got a couple of novellas that I want to knock into shape to publish - Ashlin & Olivia and the romance set after the Civil War about the war widow who had a nervous breakdown after nursing for the Union army and the army doctor who was wounded at Shiloh.

Oh, and I have an idea for a Little Red Riding Hood story where the wolf is actually a Russian anarchist girl student whose revolutionary cell turned her into a werewolf after she suggested that their plan to make a deal with the devil to free Russia from the tsars would almost certainly backfire. The devil never keeps his promises, you guys! That’s why he’s called the Father of Lies.