#langlu is life

[juurensha]

2023 Fic Recap

It's close to the end of the year again, and while I do have a little piece ready to post for the New Year, all my fic for this year has been posted, so let's do a recap post now! According to Ao3, I've written 124,187 words this year. It's obviously not counting the many WIPs I have socked away that aren't done yet, but good enough considering this was a pretty difficult year for me this time!

Most popular fics by kudos this year: my love language is fighting, bickering, and caring, Marriage isn’t a Game (it’s a fight that we’re both going to win), Thirst Traps Not Feelings: The Grindr Fic, crocodiles are not nurturing (but they certainly protect their young), and kissing in the rain (while locked up in the zoo’s bird enclosure)

New fandoms written for this year: One Piece (both the manga/anime and live action), Glory (the Long Qi webnovel), Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order series, Eyeshield 21, and Barbie (2023 film)

(no fandom tags created this year)

Total new fics written: 17

Favorite fic written this year: I think this year, just based on how many times I've reread it myself, it's going to have to be my Eyeshield 21 fic, dissonant notes can combine into a beautiful song (and other stuff my weirdo boyfriend says). I just had so much fun cramming all my favorite E21 pairings into it, and it's such a fun whacky cast to play with. Sadly, the fandom is pretty dead, but supposedly the manga-ka is going to release a new chapter in the new year, so who knows!

Hardest fic to write: I think this year that's going to have to be Nightsister: Dawn, not really because of the fic itself but because around the same time I was trying to finish it before Jedi: Survivor released, a lot of things happened in my life, and afterwards, I really wasn't in the headspace to write. I actually had more planned out for this fic (there was originally going to be some smut), but afterwards, when Jedi: Survivor also released and kind of turned my fic into an AU, I just wasn't feeling it anymore. However, I did already have 10k written, and I didn't think what I already had was too bad, so I decided to just wrap it up and post it. I still really love Cal/Merrin, so maybe I'll write more for them in the future, it was just bad timing around this one.

Most self-indulgent fic written this year: So, both My family’s purple water yao has dragged off a silver cabbage and Scum Man Gege Knows Best are fierce contenders for the title, since one is a happy WTA AU fic where everything is fine and dandy, while the other is a cultivation AU for Glory, featuring all my headcanons of my favorite scummy gege, but in the end, I think the title has to go to See you in the stars (and recite some love poetry together). I know not many Tianbao fans have watched Dimension 20's Starstruck Odyssey or know what the Starstruck universe is, but I had so much fun sticking Tianbao into the zany retro scifi world of Starstruck and including all my favorite tropes in the quest to get both Longjun and Langlu together.

Most underrated fic this year: Even though I just posted it, I think that's going to have to be A Violet By Any Other Name. I knew it wouldn't get much attention considering it's mainly about a minor female side character, and that the basis of the fic comes from an offhand Q&A session by Oda (and that the main character doesn't even have a tag with her real name in Ao3, my god), but I really wanted to explore her feelings about romancing and working for the enemy for more than a decade. Personally, I think I did a good job with it!

Original Work published this year: I managed to get my "A Haunted Person" short story published in a Gothic Romance anthology, which was very exciting for me. Also had my horror story "What Comes Up From the World Below" get published by Haunted Word Press in their Ghoulish Grimoires Issue 6.

Fic Plans for Next Year: Hahaha, reading my plans from 2022 for this year, I realize that I....basically didn't follow any of them, but to be fair, WIP's pop up, and you just never know! I actually still am working on that Yugi/Kaiba piece; it's currently sitting at 20k with just a love confession, so it's....long going. I really would like to finish that at the start of next year and then figure out how to split it out and post it! Besides that, there's an AU Choso/Junpei fic I'm working on that I hope will be fun, and a Jason Todd/Dick Grayson fic that's an ongoing project that I pick up occasionally. I really do want to do that Gaara/Naruto I Ship My Adversary x Me AU piece eventually as well, but I know that one would be multi-chaptered, so we'll see what my schedule is like next year. I would also like to eventually write a post-canon LawLu piece, but I kind of want to see where the manga is going to end up first. And yes, yes, there's the 79 actor AU that still needs to be done, and I'd like to pick up the Schoolmance AU 2ha Xue Meng/Mei HanXue eventually again. But in the meanwhile, there's a lot of DabiHawks zine fics that I will hopefully be able to post next year, along with a JJK piece!

[langlu]

“You’re the second one allowed to do so.”