deerna: beheaded human; the cut is clean and stylized (Default)
deerna ([personal profile] deerna) wrote2025-01-17 07:54 pm
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reviewing 2024 | writing

writing 2024: a summary

2024 masterlist

  • 62 work(s) for 4 fandom(s)
  • posted 73k words
  • drafted 84k words

i’m late as fuck with this post but it’s fine. so apparently 2024 continued the trend that i picked up at the end of 2023 and wrote, wrote, wrote. it's my most productive year so far, even. on one hand i’m proud of myself; on the other hand i’m dreading this post lmao. my saving grace is that many of the things that i wrote aren’t available so i’m giving priority to those that can be read… but also i’ll be a cryptic fuck about those that can’t, why not.

▲ favorite

half of the things that i’ve written this year were my favourite, which is crazy, given the amount of stuff. i picked something that would always be around because of logue mostly, and because it’s cute af and i loved coming up with a little nickname for him (he’s always gonna be my lil chickie). rewritings gets a mention because it was so satisfying working on it — both coming up with the plot and doing back and forth with editing.

▲ proudest of:

all these stories started out as very different drafts. the concept was solid but it took me a while to come up with a shape that agreed with the narrative that i wanted to tell, and working it out was a challenge for all three of them. i often run out of steam in this sort of situation, but this time i managed to stick it out.

▲ most fun

i didn’t write a lot of “fun” stories this year — but tbf i never do lmao. much a-purr has a very silly premise though (astarion not realising that staeve is purring because of him hehe) and good girl is just the shortest snippet of smut in existence. new ties is fun to me personally bc i realised i managed to tie (hehe) the theme to the premise nicely and i didn’t even do that on purpose heh

▲ sexiest

i haven’t written smut in a hot minute bc it’s a lot of thinking for me, but these were pretty nice — skin hunger turned out a little different from what i wanted it to but it’s still urgent and sexy imho, and drinking games is my first lesbians wohoo

▲ rearranged my brain about characters

the whole series these two stories are taken from is pretty much a huge character study about astarion and his relationship with staeve. it got me thinking about what sort of person staeve was before the tadpole and how he deals with stuff like stress and the situation he found himself in general — the tadpole, being leader of a group, finding love. i’m still very grateful to alex for letting me play with his boy heh, it’s been an interesting exercise. using him as an external point of view to explore astarion has been so much fun.

▲ surprise

  • the under garden (MAF), rebirth (570 words)
  • the under garden (MAF), bonds (266 words)

the main way i interact with fiction is thinking too much about it and writing between the lines. that’s what i do, that’s how i express my appreciation for it. i fell so much in love with the under garden and all its characters it was bound to happen — but it was still a surprise, because i don’t usually walk the indie scene. so rebirth is inspired to ashton’s backstory (which is technically still pretty under wraps, but MAF gave me permission to post it anyway), and bonds is inspired to a piece of art that has three of the main party interacting — and i just went off, 100% vibes. i need more of this energy in my writing. more vibes.

▲ easiest to write

i remember writing this story in under twenty minutes, and it was the very first bit of writing i did last year. i rarely get things out this quickly heh.

▲ badwrongest

  • baldur's gate, vitals (5800 words)
  • dnd — silver sun, consumed (425 words) 🔒 locked

vitals was a struggle. the concept was formulated somewhen during 2023, but it took me a while to make it into what i wanted it to be. i’m happy with how it turned out— i like my tongue-cutting fic better, but the gorey bit turned out intimate and intense, i feel. consumed is just. wrong. you’ll have to trust me on that one.

▲ most unintentionally telling

  • the under garden (MAF), trust (1541 words) 🔒 locked

i didn’t show my ass too badly this year lmao. or maybe i did it everywhere and i didn’t notice myself (it wouldn’t be the first time). this one was particularly self-indulgent though, in a bunch of ways. maybe it’ll get unlocked in the future