monkeys and ponies

I didn't do this meme last year, because I wrote one (1) fic in 2019, uggggh. But this year I have seven! It's a 2020 miracle!



Fic written in 2020
All of these are varying degrees of adult-rated except for the G-rated "Fragment of a Fragment," and teen-rated "The Cold Curve of the Moon" and "Can I Teach You a Lesson?". (The latter includes sexual metaphors, but nothing explicit.)

The Cliffs of Pandarium (Tenth Doctor/Dhawan!Master, Doctor Who; Teaspoon, AO3)
Round the Back Way (Thirteenth Doctor/Dhawan!Master, Doctor Who; Teaspoon, AO3)
The Cold Curve of the Moon (Tenth Doctor/Reinette, Doctor Who; Teaspoon, AO3)
The Question-Mark Curve of a Cat's Tail (Tenth Doctor/Missy, Doctor Who; Teaspoon, AO3)
Fragment of a Fragment (Eleventh Doctor, TARDIS; Teaspoon, AO3)
Can I Teach You a Lesson? (Badgey/Clippy, Star Trek: Lower Decks; AO3)
The Sixteenth Move (River Song/Dhawan!Master, Doctor Who; Teaspoon, AO3)

Leitmotif of the year
Sacha Dhawan is a ridiculously pretty man playing one of my favorite characters. Of course I'm going to write fic about his Master.

Overall thoughts
I am legitimately amazed I wrote this much during this miserable excuse for a year. I fully expected to spend the year depressed and writing absolutely fuck-all again, and instead, seven! whole! fics! Which won't seem like much for people who are more prolific writers, but for me it's a pretty decent year.

My best story of the year
It's difficult to define "best" in a year where I feel several of these fics are doing something especially good with language and/or plot and/or characterization, so I'm going to go with my favorite, the one I have yet to get tired of re-reading: Round the Back Way. I enjoyed the hell out of writing it, other than the fight choreography, and it came out exactly the way I wanted it to.

also, Can I Teach You a Lesson? is pretty damned good despite being ... whatever the hell it is

My favorite story of the year
Also Round the Back Way, though I was really pleased with how The Sixteenth Move mostly wrote itself over just a few days – not to mention how pleased I am that as far as I know, I'm the first person to write River/Dhawan!Master. (GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, FANDOM. This pairing is hot like burning!)

Most fun story to write
And again, Round the Back Way, because I had to come up with various scenarios about where and how the Master would be spending his time during that 77-year period he was stuck on Earth, and more critically, how the Doctor would foil his evil plans. Also, the Hello Kitty notes she leaves him still crack me up.

Runner-up: The Sixteenth Move, which began with "but what if River/Dhawan!Master" and detoured into "but what if River pegs him with the MacGuffin," and I basically was cackling to myself the whole way through. (Except for the truly awful pun midway, where I was yelling at myself for writing it.)

Story with the single sexiest moment
The Question-Mark Curve of a Cat's Tail: the pacing feels just right to me, and it turned out that the plot-driven reason for Missy not letting Ten kiss her until after they'd finished somehow made it sexier, at least to me.

Most "holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story
Can I Teach You a Lesson? No question. NO QUESTION. I mean, it's a story about a homicidal holodeck program shaped like a giant Starfleet badge essentially having sex with Clippy, the Microsoft Office Assistant. This is the kind of story where I spent the entire writing process going "I can't believe I just wrote that," and then you perverts liked it.

Story that shifted my own perception of the characters
apparently Clippy is generous in the sack

Hardest story to write
I don't remember any of them being unusually difficult to write, though The Question-Mark Curve of a Cat's Tail might have taken slightly longer than it should have.

Biggest disappointment
I knew that releasing rarepair fic literally 36 hours before the end of the year was not exactly a recipe for massive popularity, but dammit, The Sixteenth Move deserves more hits.

Biggest surprise
... that said, I am always surprised when one of my fics turns out to be popular, or at least popular by my standards, so the sheer number of people who have read and loved Round the Back Way make me very happy. Thank you, folks.

Most unintentionally telling story
Legitimately Can I Teach You a Lesson?, because it's further proof that apparently I have the world's most useless skill: being able to write pornography between inanimate objects. (See also the last two chapters of The Office Supply Chronicles and the Juicero/Unicorn frappucino fic.)

Story I haven't written yet, but intend to
No idea on the fic front – I'm hoping, but am not expecting, that maybe I'll be inspired to write more Thirteen-era fic – but I'm chewing over the idea for a novel that will probably never go anywhere. Eh, we'll see.