I need.... 2k more hits on Maybe this thing works out (if I'm lying too) (EXPLICIT, MINORS PLS STAY OUT) to make it my most visited E-rated fic.... please. consider. I need this to be the one, not the badly written kink stuff from 2017.....
Mimikitty are black, cat-like creatures that hide in things like discarded crates and boxes. It’s advised to avoid making contact with them, as their bites and claws can cause one to become very ill, and if untreated, the wound can lead to a nasty infection. Mimikitty who live outside cities tend to use things like rocks and shells to cover their bodies.
I need to start remembering to do this day of. I didn’t get as much as I wanted done yesterday, mostly because I had to do prep work that I had been putting off and by the time I was done, I was exhausted. But! We’re going to the new cafe we found yesterday to write, and fingers crossed we’ll get some done!
Oh, but I did write by hand for a bit at the end, so that should bring my total for day 3 over a thousand. I’ll update this once I type that up :)
so! 2025 was interesting, with a surprise change to how i post my fics on ao3 which really throws off the way ao3 tracks my word count. please appreciate the silly amount of effort i put into finding my actual word counts for this year's stats post.
as always, this is skyler hyping themselves up under the cut and may be a post for you to skip if you're going to potentially be hurt comparing your writing stats to mine.
general writing stats first! compare to last year, where i wrote a total of 280k and published 92k of that. also compare to my previous record: 315k written in 2021.
i wrote a LOT, just not a ton that is ready to share yet! in case you can't tell, In Love and Death is my precious baby fic, and it got a lot of the love!
my worst month was december at 32k (because I was close to my annual goal and lost motivation to go far beyond the original goal, whoops). the best was july at 60k, but 19k of that was stuff I forgot to count from back in march through may when i was working on something i didn't consider "real" writing at the time. then i realized, there's no such thing as "real" writing and went back and counted that work. ignoring the day I added all that backdated work, my best day was june 22nd at 5,365 words.
I wrote 321 days in 2025. if you include the 0-word days, my average word count per day was 1,384, and if you toss those 0-days out to only look at my active days, the average was 1,574/day, which is way more than I thought I could consistently sustain before I did this.
that said, now that I've done it, I would never ever ever recommend half a million words in a year as a goal. I was VERY easy on myself, counting things like journaling toward my word count, and even then, I spent a significant chunk of my free time in 2025 writing instead of doing anything else. I still made time to meet up with my mutuals in Toronto and Phoenix and at Voltcon, but I would've liked to have more time to do stuff like that. writing was THE reason I turned opportunities down this year, and it was fun but only as a one-time experience tbh. now I know I CAN write half a million words and hold a 40+ hour/week job, but I also know I do NOT want to do that. in 2026, we'll be taking breaks to touch grass and draw, even if it means we write less.
on top of that, because the goal was just about word count, I wasn't always focused on what matters to me. if a day was hard, I wasn't going to force out my 1,370 word par onto a fic I was excited about because it was way easier to just slam the par into a stream of consciousness journal entry. which for the record is useful to me! just not something I'd ideally spend 191k words a year doing. the word count focus also made it really hard to edit anything, which is why you did not see my best work this year 🤣 I had a vested interest in pumping fics out right the first time and not 'wasting' my draft time doing edits to old work, so most of what you saw got a couple quick reads using text-to-voice, and that's it. you can expect me to end up sneaking back in to edit everything i published in 2025 later.
because of how this year went, I adjusted my goal for 2026 to be 26 chapters instead of a specific word count. what I like about writing is getting to share what I wrote, so I'll be focusing on how much I share rather than how much I draft for this year!
as far as what went on ao3, it came out around 137k total, with about 40k going to Danny Phantom and the rest going to Voltron. a few are anon fics, so you're not going to see them on my ao3 works list, but they're out there!
final chart of word count day by day:
and final table of specific projects (with some titles scrubbed to avoiding sharing a few things I'm not ready for you guys to see yet):
NOW for the ao3 stats! I'm excluding word counts this year because, again, I changed the way I share my fics. they're all double posted now (once in an unrevealed collection and once publicly with text poison applied), so the word count is just entirely unrealistic.
also my ass fully forgot to take a snapshot on december 31st, so we're comparing january 1st, 2025 to january 1st, 2026 this year!
between those two dates:
155 new work subs
28 new user subs (hello in particular to the new jaithers!)
67k new hits
2,623 new kudos (<3 my beloved)
119 new comments
836 new bookmarks (and I only found TWO mean ones this year)
as of today, 1 voltron fic has broken into my top 10 by hits, but SIX of my voltron fics are top 10 for comments (and i love all of you for that ;_;)
for overall stats, I'm going into 2026 hoping to hit 3,000 bookmarks on my fics and 500 comment threads (but if there are other milestones to hit, bring those on too!)
I'm bringing plenty of wips into 2026 with me, but the ones I'm currently most excited about are tis the season, in the garden, by the weeds, and Vulnerable, which actually means for once, my ship excitement is evenly spread out instead of all dumped into one pairing. I'm also starting 2026 with a couple zine pieces I'm excited for you guys to see much later this year! more on those to come with the official zine announcements, but trust that skyler will be applying for more projects like this in 2026.
i fear the key to writing a lot is just... having something with a deadline that you are procrastinating on. because tell me how i've hit 12k already this month and only added 800 words to the project i need to finish soonish ;_;
Little 2024 update because my ass can never get enough statistics! (I enjoy the writing, but I fear my true love is math.)
Anyway, skip this post if it will bother you reading about a year of someone else's achievements! I will totally understand. Literally jerkin' myself off under the cut on this post, my dudes.
This year's new fics (in order of date first posted):
Ratings and TWs can be found at the links. Please check the TWs before reading!
09-Jun-2024: 5 Times Lance Doesn't Matter +1 Time He Finally Does (my first fic after an 18-month break!)
01-Jul-2024: Smiling 'cause you're used to it (a house that's always haunted) (first fic where I truly let myself go wild & write for my own dick & no one else)
03-Jul-2024: Chemicals, chemicals in my brain (where'd you go, where'd you go anyway?) (first time writing the fluffy part & enjoying it)
01-Aug-2024: Nowhere to call home (so I'll pack and run away) (first time completing a writing challenge on time)
10-Sep-2024: What are you wondering? (What do you know?) (I hate this one actually, but I wrote it this year so we'll just give it..... shortest fic I've written in AWHILE)
15-Sep-2024: On it, yes, indeed (on it, watch me bleed) (ugh opposite problem... I loved this one! but there's nothing really standout about it, I guess. just accept that I love it even if it doesn't have a Special Thing)
14-Oct-2024: 5 Times Keith Relies on the Blade +1 Time... (first time creating something to celebrate a fictional character's birthday. also first OCs with more than one line of dialogue, I think)
07-Dec-2024: With talk of love (as I make-pretend) (first work for a gift exchange! whole new scary experience for me!)
22-Dec-2024: Maybe this thing works out (if I'm lying too) (longest thing I have EVER written and shared. the inspiration for this thing is endless, I fear)
Stats I thought were interesting:
I wasn't actually back in fandom until June 3rd, 2024, so all the AO3 stats are based on the difference between my snapshot of that date and my snapshot on December 31st, 2024. Not a huge difference; it's just chopping out all the January through June interaction with my Spider-Man stuff that was already up since the last time I took a stats snapshot before that was 2021.
Published in 2024: 92k words, all VLD!
Written in 2024 but not yet published: 188k words, also all VLD
General new stats in 2024: 128 new work subs (we're so back), 20k new hits, 1.2k new kudos, 94 new comment threads (and i happy screamed at every single one), & 339 new bookmarks (and i crept through every single one with comments or tags attached... like a creep...)
New finished works: 7
New unfinished works: 2
Top artist for title lyrics this year: Those Who Dream at 16 unique titles (1 work title & 15 chapter titles)
Word count range for 2024 published fics: 527 (complete snippet) to 26k (WIP)
Most common additional tags: Keith-centric, POV Keith, Hurt/Comfort (these are surely surprising to you....)
Number of times I used the word 'just' in published & unpublished fics this year: 993 (0.355% of all words I wrote were this word.......)
Other milestones: first time writing someone who was Not My Blorbo and having fun with it, first time writing without it being an escape from something terrible, first shipfic, first time participating in a fandom event where there would be Consequences if I'd backed out, first explicit content posted on my main account, closest I've ever gotten to finishing NaNo* with one single project, first time c*mm*ssioning art for my fics, first time learning you have to censor the word c*mm*ssion to avoid getting scam bots in your tumblr DMs (just a huge milestone year actually)
New word count for this year technically doesn't beat my previous record of 315k in 2021, but 1) I was only employed full-time for 5 months of 2021 so I had way more free time then and 2) I didn't write a single word in 2024 before June 3rd, so 280k in 7 months of 2024 feels like a lot more than 315k in 12 months of 2021.
Also since literally no one IRL cares, some non-writing achievements I'm also proud of for 2024! Going in rough order from earliest in 2024 to latest:
Quit the most abusive job I've ever experienced
And immediately got my first job in my intended career field
Finally coded an AO3 stats tracker after 6 years of having it in the back of my mind
Grew my first ever eggplant (it was very small....)
Paid off my car
First semi-solo business proposal presented with a base price totaling more than all of the bids combined that I supported over 2 years at my last job
Made new friends I love <3
Acquired an unquenchable thirst for vld merch....
Went to my first con
And finally as of today, I'm under 89% of my original mortgage balance & on track to own this thing in half the original loan term! (praying this series of words doesn't wake up the sugar daddy bot again, he LOVES when I discuss my mortgage)
Also, some shoutouts for the year! In order of when we first met:
@zelandiangelo for being one of the few OGs I know still around and always being so nice to talk to and supportive. ;_; In case anyone's forgotten, they're the one who convinced me to write and post my first ever hurt/comfort fic and sucked me right back into fandom after I'd been clean for like... six years at that point.
For the record, there are other OGs and I'm glad to see them around! We're just not as close (but you can change that in 2025 ;) )
@hurtwithabitofcomfort for also being crazy supportive through all the fandoms I've been through. I didn't get to shout 'em out last year since I wasn't active on Tumblr then, but they're the one who kicked off me getting back into writing in 2023. I know I didn't SHARE anything from 2023, but they made me see how much I loved writing again around that time when the rest of my life kinda sucked and I was giving up on everything.
@perpetuallylatetothefandomparty for their incredibly nice comments! Deadass, I probably would've just posted my first one or two fics of this year and disappeared for another year or two if they hadn't been such a constant presence this summer, hyping up all the gen fics I was working on then.
@voltrohgodwhat for being so easy to talk to and being the kind of friend where either of us can like... disappear for a month and still be totally cool with each other. Also for sharing WIPs that still haunt me on a weekly basis because they're so unique and good ;_;
@existwound for being too intimidatingly cool for awhile but STILL hyping me up. If you've liked anything I've posted in the past three months or so, you've probably got Astra to blame for brainstorming it with me, letting me ramble about it, giving me fresh ideas when I'm stuck on something, or hyping it up.
@langst for always yapping to me about Klance and ALSO hyping up my WIPs and letting me ramble about ideas. Also special shoutout to El because she got me back into writing sprints and that is the source of a LOT of this recent word count. There is something so special about getting to stomp people's asses as you write.......
I'm not gonna harass all the writers I like who aren't like... people I talk to regularly, but even though this has been a VERY light reading year for me, there's a whole little list of VLD writers who I read over and over and like... instantly got motivation to write on my own fics afterward. If you've been in any of my 2024 fic rec lists, it's you... you are my motivation....
(Also, I am OLD and don't have my incredible teenage memory anymore, so if you see me add someone to the shoutouts later, no you didn't and I'm SORRY for not remembering in the first place.)
And final thing! Goals for 2025!
500k written in 2025: Just a little above my daily average in 2024 when you account for the 5 months I wasn't writing this year. The goal is to keep up the pace I've had since June 2024, but extend it through the full 12 months of 2025. Might be a bit of a reach but hey, I'll be happy to get anywhere near 500k in a year, so it works!
Start posting In Love and Death by the end of 2025: I'm running SO behind on where I thought I'd be with this project when I started, but there is no excuse for this to not be close enough to finished to start posting by the end of next year. Mark my words.......
Continue posting work I love: I fell out of habitually writing the last time because I was writing based on what I thought other people wanted to read and holy shit, it is so much easier to write what I want to read. So I'm gonna keep doing that in 2025. In 2024 we moved between gen whump, semi-shippy whump, and shippy non-whump, and I enjoyed them all because that was what I felt like writing at the time. I'll slide between them all as I feel like it again in 2025.
Prioritize my mental health online: I've mostly gotten through it fine, but every burst of bad mental health that affected my writing this year was a direct result of continuing to follow people who are just plain assholes and ruining my mood for no good reason when I'm trying to enjoy scrolling my dash. In 2025, I'll be reminding myself more often that no one is talented enough to make up for being a dick, and I will be more brutal with the unfollow and block buttons for anyone who's making my fandom experience worse.
