netgirl_y2k

In 2013 I wrote 40,000 words across 13 fics. Um.

The Truth Will Not Set You Free
Game of Thrones; variations of Sansa/Tyrion/Shae; 2150 words

It was not a future Sansa could ever have foreseen for herself: spymaster of the dragon queen's court.

But she would also not have seen herself wed to Tyrion Lannister, or bedded by a woman who'd been a harlot in the guise of a handmaiden when they'd first met.

Something Borrowed, Something Blue
A Song of Ice and Fire; Jaime/Brienne, Sansa; 550 words

Brienne nearly starts a brawl at Sansa Stark's wedding when she elbows Littlefinger in the face and bloodies his nose.

Five Dates Ruby and Belle Went On Without Realising They Were Dating (although, really, it was kind of obvious)
Once Upon a Time; Ruby/Belle; 840 words

Not that Belle found Ruby endearing, not that Ruby wasn't endearing. And not that, now things were finally straightened out with Rumpelstiltskin, Belle wasn't free to be endeared by anyone she pleased, but--

This is What You Will Wear to the End of the World
Merlin; Gwen, Morgana; 16,000 words

Gwen was still adjusting to her new role as the ruling queen of Camelot, Morgana was only intermittently sorry and even less frequently sane, but life goes on, even after destiny has chewed you up and spat you out.

Hot Blooded and Wolf Wild
A Song of Ice and Fire; Catelyn/Lyanna; 1395 words

Cat told herself that it wasn't improper. They would be family when she wed Brandon, and kissing games between ladies were not unheard of.

Burn Your Wings On The Sun
A Song of Ice and Fire; Daenerys, Samwell, Melisandre; 3130 words

"You could always stay."

"And what should I do at the Wall, Sam, style myself as the Night's Queen? Or Lady Commander of the Night's Watch?"

"Well, we do let girls in nowadays."

The Quiet Ones
A Song of Ice and Fire; Sansa/Myrcella, Brienne; 2500 words

Myrcella Hill is her mother's daughter, more or less.

Since The House Is On Fire, Let Us Warm Ourselves
A Song of Ice and Fire; Arianne/Daenerys; 1550 words

I didn't realise that it was the Silver Queen's heart you were trying to get inside.

Dark Wings, Dark Words
A Song of Ice and Fire; Maege Mormont; 2175 words

The king is dead, but a cousin cannot inherit before a brother, or before a sister.

Don't Ask Questions, Don't Ask Directions
Game of Thrones; Sansa/Shae; 2190 words

You could take Lady Sansa with you. You could take her away from this terrible place. Somebody should.

Song of Wolves
Merlin/Once Upon a Time; Morgana/Ruby; 620 words

Red can't decide if Morgana is the Evil Queen without a kingdom, or the Dark One without Rumpelstiltskin's sense of mirth.

Here Be Dragons
Merlin/Temeraire; Morgana, Aithusa, unrequited Morgana/Elena; 5550 words

In which Morgana becomes devoted to a young dragon, develops an attraction to a pretty girl, betrays her deepest secret, and accidentally joins His Majesty's Aerial Corps.

four times ysandre de la courcel thought about asking phèdre no delaunay to share her bed and one time she actually did
Kushiel's Legacy; Ysandre/Phèdre; 900 words

ysandre had never asked for naamah's blessing, or for kushiel's harsh mercy.

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

It's funny, I felt like I hardly wrote at all this year. I certainly dropped out of a few things, and spent a lot of time staring at a blinking cursor. But looking now, not only did I write more than I thought, but I actually feel good about what I did write, and am excited to write more, so. That's good.

Your best story of this year?

Burn Your Wings On The Sun was written for one of the rounds of

got_exchange, and was for a prompt for any future for Dany that didn't involve her being queen on the Iron Throne. And I pretty much assume Dany as queen, for a bunch of reasons; I like the idea of an epic fantasy story about the prodigal exiled princess, plus she has dragons -- which is silly, really, because Dany's story in aDwD was all about how those dragons that she thought were going to solve all her problems, they're kinda just making everything worse.

So, yes, I default to either Dany as queen, or Dany dead at the Wall, and the Seven Kingdoms broken up. Future fics that have, say, Stannis on the throne have to work a lot harder to hook me, because I'm sceptical of the set up from the beginning.

Anyway, it was a prompt that really threw me, and sometimes those prompts result in the best fics because you really have to wrack your brain to make them work. Of course, those are also the prompts that sometimes make you throw up your hands in despair and go NOPE, and I did a fair bit of that this year too. But on this occasion I think I made it work, and came up with a take on Dany that was consistent with how I usually write her, but also able to accept that her "destiny" was to rid Westeros of the White Walkers but not to rule it.

I also got to have her interact with two of the characters I most want her to meet, even though I don't think it'll ever happen in canon. Sam, who was with Maester Aemon during one of my favourite scenes in the books, when he's talking about the possibility of Dany as the Prince Who Was Promised, and how nobody had ever thought of it before, because nobody had been looking for a girl. And Melisandre-- not going to lie, I just want to see how Melisandre would react to meeting someone who fit her prophecies better than Stannis.

What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Here Be Dragons which is a gleefully ludicrous fusion with Morgana and Aithusa in the world of the Temeraire books. It has fucked up Pendragon sibling dynamics that end on an optimistic note, because even if they can't communicate, they can at least acknowledge that they are both crap at talking to one another. It replaces Morgana's secret magic with secret lesbianism; she has a crush on Elena, which has less than no basis in canon, in fact I don't think they were even in the same episode, but who cares.

It is unadulterated idfic, with no redeeming qualities other than how happy writing it made me; I'm going to write another one.

Okay, NOW your most popular story?

AO3 tells my that by hits and kudos it's The Truth Will Not Set You Free, apparently I wasn't the only one watching the Sansa, Tyrion, and Shae stuff in season three and going: gosh, I wish you three could just get married.

By comments it is This is What You Will Wear to the End of the World which is cheating slightly, because it was posted as a work in progress, and so people were commenting as I went along. Which was awesome; I mean I love kudos, but I fucking adored talking to people about what I was writing.

Story of yours most underappreciated by the universe, in your opinion?

I am slightly loathe to say This is What You Will Wear to the End of the World because it got a much more positive reaction than I was expecting.

I thought there probably would be an audience for a post-series Gwen & Morgana story - at least three of you - but I was expecting the meta-criticism of the show, of the narrative, and of Merlin and Arthur as characters to put more people off. I mean, I may not like Merlin, but I know that's a minority opinion, and I tried to be very careful not let it turn into Everything is Merlin's Fault: the Musical. I mostly got round this by writing the fic in Gwen's pov, and putting the worst of my criticisms in Morgana's mouth, and keeping her as an unreliable narrator of her own life.

Like I said, it got more positive attention than I thought it would, nobody tried to run me out of fandom with torches and pitchforks, plus one of my very favourite authors commented on every chapter, and I would have written all 16k just for that! But it was my pet project and it was the culmination of things I'd been thinking for a long time about why Merlin's fail mattered, so however much attention it got I was always going to think it was underappreciated.

Both Burn Your Wings On The Sun and The Quiet Ones have gotten less attention that some of my less good A Song of Ice and Fire fics.

I mean, I get it; Dany isn't exactly a massively popular character in the fandom (admittedly, that does surprise me), so gen about her was never going to set the world alight, and Sansa/Myrcella was a pairing it took me a while to get my head round too, although once I realised that the age difference between them is actually less that it is between Sansa and, say, Sandor or Tyrion, and I was ageing them both up anyway they came pretty easily to me.

Anyway, they're two of my better efforts in ASOIAF fandom.

Story that could have been better?

Sorry, again it's This is What You Will Wear to the End of the World.

It was an interesting experience, posting it as a wip; and, really, it was the only way I was ever going to finish it and not just poke at the first two thousand words from now until the end of time. But it meant that there were some gaping plot holes left open; like how Aithusa could have asked Morgana to give up on the path of vengeance when Aithusa is mute? I mean, in my headcanon Morgana and Aithusa can sort of communicate without words, it's how they've been getting by all these years, but I didn't make it clear in the fic, so it's a plot hole.

Also, I sort of think it could have done with having been longer. Which is a bit silly, because it's already three times as long as anything else I wrote this year. I wish I'd written it for the big bang, because I think the enforced length would have forced me to colour inside the lines a bit more. But 1) I do not have a marvellous success rate with big bangs, and 2) meditations on how your show hated its female characters seemed like a shitty thing to offer up for the last year of the fandom's big bang, you know? But there were definitely things that could have been expanded on; women being allowed to be knights of Camelot, Morgana having if not allies, then at least friends, in Olaf and Vivian, what exactly was Morgana a priestess of and what did it mean?

Most fun story to write?

Here Be Dragons.

Fusions are always fun to me, and as already mentioned I found this one especially delightful.

Sexiest story?

I still don't really write sex -- I'm better that I used to be, there's a lot of sex being had in my stories, it's just more alluded to than actually described.

Like, four times ysandre de la courcel thought about asking phèdre no delaunay to share her bed and one time she actually did is my one and only Kushiel's Legacy story for just that reason. I was excited to sign up for the new Kushiel's exchange this year, and then I bottled it at the last minute. It's not just the sexuality, but in style and tone, it's so far outside my comfort zone and what I'm used to writing, that it's a little intimidating.

Hardest story to write

I talked a bit about this on the run up to the

femslashex deadline, but I found Don't Ask Questions, Don't Ask Directions ludicrously hard to write, and I just don't know why... I mean, Sansa & Shae escaping King's Landing for brighter shores was something I'd been thinking about since season three, and I'd found The Truth Will Not Set You Free pretty easy to write, so it's not like I couldn't get a handle on the characters or pairing.

Looking back on it now I still find it awkwardly worked, which sucks because I do think that Sansa & Shae escaping to the Free Cities to spend their lives making wine is an idea that has legs.

Easiest story to write?

It took me a long time to get started on This is What You Will Wear to the End of the World, mostly because I kept trying to write it, or at least parts of it from Morgana's point of view, and that was never going to work. By the end of series five Morgana's characterisation was so muddled that writing a coherent canonical version of her, as opposed to an AU version, was basically impossible.

Also, writing it from Morgana's pov, it was too easy to fall into the squee harshing and character bashing that I was trying so hard to avoid; I needed to filter my criticisms through Gwen who loved Arthur and Merlin, and wanted to think well of them.

But once I started writing it it flowed -- and flowed, and flowed, and flowed. I guess I had a lot of residual Merlin feelings that I needed to get out there.

Story I haven't yet written, but intend to

Okay, "I intend to" covers all manner of sins from, I have most of this written already, to, so I had this idea in the bath the other night. And as they say, the road to Hell is paved with good intentions...

-I want to write another story in my Merlin/Temeraire fusion AU, because it just delights me so; maybe it turns out that Morgana isn't the only lesbian in His Majesty's Aerial Corps.

-I've got snippets of a Game of Thrones modern university AU, which is meant to be eventual Sansa/Margaery, but is currently mostly about Sansa, Shae and Brienne sharing a flat.... with bonus Jaime, he came as a pair with Brienne, and there's nothing to be done about it.

-The Sisterhood of the Night's Watch AU; featuring Arya and Lyanna Stark, Asha Greyjoy, assorted Mormonts, at least one Sand Snake.

-I've been getting nostalgic about about Morgana/Vivian since I've been talking about Merlin, and femslash, and Morgana this month -- so I want to revisit my modern AU take on the episode Sweet Dreams, which takes place at Arthur and Gwen's wedding, with more lesbianism and less Merlin.

-I keep thinking of a canon era fic where Sansa is a lesbian, but because of who she is and the life she's led she has no way to really process it; and she still idolises knights and believes in happy endings, but she's not attracted to men, she's drawn to the fairer sex, and she assumes that that's just how all ladies feel.

-I write a lot of future fic where Brienne has found Sansa, and is her sworn shield or the like, but I'd like to write something that actually focuses on their hopefully inevitable friendship and courtly love rather than it just being in the background of a fic about something else.

-I have been threatening to write a Felix Castor fic about Juliet and Sue and how they rebuilt their relationship in the wake of book 5 for at least a year now, and I'd like to actually do it. It'd necessitate a reread of at least book five, but that's no bad thing.

-We have a three month hiatus to play in, and I'd like to fill that with some Once Upon femslash, as is right and proper. Aurora/Mulan, if I can figure out where on earth you go from the aborted declaration of love/pregnancy scene. Ruby/Belle, back in the Enchanted Forest without Rumplestiltskin. Or maybe some Emma/Regina, now that I'm belated onboard with that ship, only for the show to break my heart with handholding and teary goodbyes.