#renna writes

[tiny-feisty-gay]

Fic Writer's Round-up 2025

Thanks for tagging me @calendials <3

Words written (published or not): 99,372 - sooo close to 100k. I'm gonna try to get it there by the end of the year I think! If I roll original work into it, I'm sitting at 155,248, which is less than last year but frankly more than I thought I'd do. It's been a very fic-heavy year! and because i was curious i did the math; 91,970 of those words are published, all fic c:

Number of smut scenes (if applicable/relevant): just one which is actually a travesty. i'll have to make up for it next year (and I do have ideas <3)

New things I tried: fandom events! i've actually never participated before, partly because they always feel a little unwieldy and partly because i just struggle to go along with themes sometimes? but i did two this year for dimension 20 (advent and a gift exchange) and had an absolute blast writing for them. related to the above, first holiday fic lol. i'm ambivalent to them in my own life so i rarely focus on them, but it was really fun doing something cute and cozy <3 (and angsty bc. yknow. a bitch loves angst)

Fic I spent the most time on: make me, unmake me (just reach for me), hands down. tracker says i worked on it for 2.5 weeks straight, daily. fun fact, i also clocked my greatest listening time with working on this, and it was the marmila playlist on repeat while i slammed out like 7k in a day.

Fic I spent the least time on: probably anything i wrote and threw at ao3 in a single day, but educated guess based on word count, i'm gonna give it to cradle my heart and i will make a home in your ribcage

Favorite thing I wrote: my gift exchange fic for @serenescribe, a thousand kind beginnings (a thousand bloodied ends)! this was truly such a delight to write. we've batted ideas back and forth before, and "golden heart is bad, actually" has been rolling around my head for a while, and we really don't have enough queen!marya roleswap and i love time fuckery... and concepts treated as sentient entities. tailor-made as a gift but i got very lucky that these are also all things that i like <3

Favorite thing I read: ... i have a few and i refuse to pick between them, so four-way tie going most to least recent!!

we're gonna sing it again by @herkimer-aurora have you ever read something that pulled you into the exact doom spiral of the pov character? because that's what this one did. grabbed me and dragged me right into the frustration of futility and the numbness right along with it, raked me over the coals, and then put a bandage over it. another tragic time loop! (this has apparently been the year of time loops for me?) and executed so well

of a love that never got to be by @serenescribe this is kind of cheating because it's technically two but this is my post and i do what i want, and i had to sit and stare at the wall for a few minutes the first time i read ludmila's pov, and then i went and read marya's pov and had to just sit and think. mutual love that never had the chance to grow my darling

I'd sooner die than bury you (grieving, grieving, constantly grieving) by ILovedHerAndSometimesSheLovedMeToo: a polytrix fandom darling, and for good reason. deeply tragic time loop au that leans harder on bad parent!celine while still keeping her sympathetic. heed the tags but a phenomenal read. HEAVY on the angst! this also has one of my favorite tropes, which is incorporeal/concepts treated as sentient <3 honmoon as a guiding force that loves its hunters <3

Test of Time by JinkyCanon: vintage sapphics! KiGo a few years in the future, the classic "forced to work together/oops i actually kinda like you." This is one of my oldest and most beloved ships and i'm thrilled to see new stuff for them. author updates regularly, though did have a longer gap recently -- just posted another this month and has been working on this since march of 2024! it's a really good time and it has just enough teeth to read more realistic without deviating from the actual KP universe.

... ok i'm done now lmao

Writing goals for next year: - finish naught but a scar (which... i fear may be a bit more than six chapters...), my "5+1 if you squint" marmila fic - work on to be a thing that wants

and i'd like to try my hand at a proper longfic this year. i have a few solid ideas for it, and i'm still thinking shorter end (~50k) but actually finishing several fics over 5k this year has given me a boost of confidence. and maybe it'll help kick me into gear to get the second draft of my novel done lol

tags. uhhh. @laikaspeaks if you feel like it? or whoever else wants to c:

[tiny-feisty-gay]

WIP Word Game!!

Tagged by @calendials ! Thank youuuu <3 I'm only working on a few things atm but I will do my best to hunt.

Rules: You will be given a word. Then you share an excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of your word! The word I was given: ANCHOR

A

A ship trusts her captain effortlessly, without regard for herself; trusts the hands at her helm to guide her through the worst — and Ludmila has instead led the Kingfisher to her grave. Her unburnt fingers reach for a scrap of the hull close by, steely and half-melted where it was once a brilliant turquoise. Ludmila murmurs an apology up to the battered corpse of an honest vessel that now lays in pieces, all because of her recklessness. It is an even greater insult that in those final, critical moments, everything slotted into place. She was not a pilot but a piece of the ship itself — flesh and blood and steel, breath and pistons all part of the same beast. For one moment, she felt that tether to the machinery that she had before only witnessed in Marya's piloting. Marya. The world sharpens, pain sharpening alongside it. Marya.

(from: unfinished ch. 6 of naught but a scar)

N

"No, no, I mean it!" Comfrey arches her brows, daring Marya to challenge her again. She is much taller than Marya thought she would be, and everything about her makes that presence feel even larger. "What do you call him?" The little beast plods along behind them, metal hinges squeaking, and Marya bites her cheek. She has not officially named the thing made of discarded pieces, but she thinks of it with roughly the fondness one might think of an old alley cat, and so of course, it has a nickname. "Odpadku," she says, stopping at her door. Comfrey MacLeod tilts her head in silent question and Marya clears her throat. "Means 'little trash.'" A bright, bold laugh, almost startling, and there is that twinkle again. "Oh, that's clever, that's good stuff — sharp one you are, eh?" Comfrey claps her on the back with her free hand and, impossibly, Marya giggles.

(from Echoes, my mirror junkfrey/marmila WIP)

C

Captive in a new space, though this one at least offers him a view of the space around him. There is a door at the front that the hands close, seconds before he flies at it. When it does not open, he sets his teeth to the bars. He has chewed out of many predicaments before. Surely this will also fall to his jaws.

(unnamed, but from my Kočka-centric fic <3 little sonboy

H

He eyes her suspiciously, but seems content that his owner is showing him off like a little trophy and accepts the handling. "Kočka," Ludmila says beside her, bright and hopeful and —damn it all— breathless. Marya, despite herself, chuckles. Cat. "Have you ever worked on a vessel?" A pause. "Any vessel?" "Not… not exactly. But I am a fast learner!" No. No, Marya cannot allow it, cannot humor a girl with the sky in her eyes and hope in her heart, because the sky is better as a dream than a reality. Marya loves it with all her heart, of course —has never belonged anywhere else— but it is as terrible as it is wonderful. Often more so, and not always because of the sky itself. There are worse things than a storm to weather. But Ludmila is watching her such with bated breath, still glancing at the ship occasionally but locked onto Marya, that she cannot bring herself to refuse entirely.

(also from Echoes! just a bit later)

O

One of her beams lays heavy across Ludmila's back, crushing her lungs inward with each breath. When she tries to shift, something punctures deep beneath the surface. Metal shifts above her, groaning as the Kingfisher's death rattle echoes into the emptiness. Ludmila wants to be sick.

(from naught but a scar)

R

Rumi is… cold, she thinks. It's odd — she should be on fire, and she was for a moment, and she… still is, maybe? The nerves work. Her bones still slot together and her muscles move, but she feels it no more than a stone feels the river over it. She lifts her hand and flexes her fingers, examining the scratches over her skin. She knows what it looked like; has a snapshot in her mind where these fingers were sharp and blackened at the tips, remembers bruise-purple marks crossing her wrist and the way they glowed like embers from within.

---

had to dig back into the polytrix for this one bc i couldn't find a simple thing that started with R in my marmila stuff xD from ch. 4 of to be a thing that wants

truly i am just tagging in whoever wants to participate! dunno who's done it already and who hasn't <3

your word should you choose to accept it is SATIN

[rennali]

I Have a Need

Send me prompts and characters. I will write all the things.