14 & 15 for the end of year fic ask thing :)
14. a fic you didn’t expect to write
actually okay in a real way chapters 2 and 3 of long ride were totally unexpected.
i was really nervous about writing for arcane at all! it was a new fandom for a show i really liked with a lot of great fic already out there. and it was moving SO fast - i felt like a small fish in a very big pond.
honestly, i'm so grateful for my beta for that fic @channeleleven for putting up with me bc i needed so much reassurance and i did sooo many revisions. but the thing i told myself over and over again while writing the first chapter (lol) was like - okay, don't stress. this is a oneshot. you don't have to explain that much and you don't need to worry about writing yourself in a corner bc you're never coming back here.
and then. i did go back there.
i got a lot of nice feedback on the first chapter! and as time went on i found i had a lot to say about caitlyn. and honestly - writing a fic where vi bottoms for the first time under these really fraught circumstances but caitlyn doesn't ever find out felt like leaving so much on the table. i wanted to put her in the taffy puller. she needed to go in the blender.
those chapters were also unexpected bc they got so fucking LONG that was like 23k words worth of stuff that was originally intended to be just one follow-up chapter. i ended up having to split it bc that wordcount felt way too insane.
and now i wanna go back again! something about this fic just won't let me go!
15. something you learned this year
oohhh. many things. some of them annoying (i feel like fic culture changed a lot when i wasn't looking lmao) but some of them have been good! i feel like i regained some confidence i lost after finishing my last big longfic and stagnating for a while.
mostly i think this year has really helped sharpen my beliefs around fandom etiquette and how to navigate content i don't want to see.