2025 year in review
Dec. 31st, 2025 09:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shyshyshilohyear that simultaneously felt like it would never end and took no time at all. it has been september for five months
my final word count is 76,853. which feels like a lot and is certainly the most i’ve ever written in a year, but also everything is relative so, make of it what you will. i don’t know if i’ll be writing this much again next year or maybe even trying to write more… still trying to reconcile my relationship with output = worth but mostly i’m just here for a good time!
before the dreaded sun appears
quick stats:
i really don’t write for loona anymore, but moonlight party is pretty much the one thing that keeps me there haha. these days i think of loona ficdom as more about the community (and the commiseration…) than any huge desire to write about the group itself. and in a lot of ways i see what loona ficdom used to be in how the triples ficdom is currently shaping up! but also i have a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings about triples + the fandom which are currently neither here nor there (maybe a future dw post?).
i really love the genre conventions of mecha despite not having any real investment in any actual mecha media. i’ve tried and failed to watch several different gundams (not an indictment of gundam, i just suck at watching anything and specifically tv shows) and i keep telling myself that one day i will actually watch nge (i won’t). but there’s so much to play with in the pseudo-military setting and the very concept of a mech itself with regards to the self as a weapon and bodily autonomy and pilots vs. everyone else around them. so.
the prompt i was working off of was “reinterpreted fairytale”. and i know the fox and the hound isn’t actually a fairytale but a disneyfied 1960s novel but like. it just works so well with 2jin and the concept of a friendship gone bad… let it be known that 2jin was the only main ship i really truly loved.
corvi volantes
quick stats:
this was like. a particularly bad time of year for me. not to retread too much of what i said in the commentary but i was exhausted and grieving and just really going through it. but olymfics is always so so fun and i loved the opportunity to take a big swing and know that even if it wasn’t perfect, it was going to be a part of a really awesome community tradition.
however i have also realized that part of why this was so hard to write was because this chaeyeon and minju are like, normal — at least in the way they treat each other. this was maybe my first time writing a pretty much completely sweet and non-dysfunctional relationship dynamic and my god would the dialogue just completely refuse to flow. so unfortunately toxicity and antagonism and shame are my apparent modi operandi when writing and well. any self-reflection on that aside, that was a real roadblock in trying to write something about the joy of living. anyway!
also little treat for me was when i finally watched the music video for iz*one’s “suki to iwasetai” in, like, july and there were all these shots of minju and chaeyeon sitting on a couch together. i <3 retroactive crumbs.
chicane (chs. 1 & 2)
quick stats:
umm and then after olymfics i didn’t write anything for months and beat myself up the whole time about the fact that i wasn’t writing anything, for months (well except during this time i was also trying and failing to write my fth piece but that was also the part of the problem so like lol)
and very dramatically i was like this cannot go on!! i must do something about it!! and the something was natasha bedingfield releasing my inhibitions and writing something with the specific goal of being as self-indulgent and non-self-editing as possible.
like i’ve always wanted to write a multi-chapter sports au (see: doomed fromis curling fic, never to be completed) and i had started but never done anything with a planning doc of kpop idols and f1 academy teams like a year prior. so i did a little touching up (ex: originally nien and kotone were both race engineers but when i thought about it for longer than ten minutes i decided that nien could wreak much greater havoc via social media) (also originally kiof was one of the teams because when i’d made the doc The Incident had not yet happened but um. yeah that one was rectified immediately) and then removed all further critical thought from my mind.
and here we are. or there we were. the plan was to release a chapter a week (in time with the actual racing weekends that take place in the fic, ofc) but life happened / other things with real deadlines needed to be written instead and anyway, like fall out boy says, two out of three ain’t bad. the plot is a logical reach at best and the characterization is bent cartoonishly far out of wack, but i had fun and somehow slammed out 28k and that was the only real goal.
i promise i will continue to have fun aka finish the third and final chapter of this fic. soon. and with commentary.
wings to echo the light
quick stats:
ficmix is such a unique beast because, in a creative sense, i literally can’t follow directions to save my life. every round the mods clearly put all this effort into putting together good, sensible mashups and then my only instinct is to go off the fucking rails. so with my assignment this year, while it obviously would have made the most sense to go for velvet’s excellent kotonien, i unfortunately have multiple things wrong with me so instead i had to get into a jpop group i had barely ever heard of.
“heart to heart to heart” changed my life, y’all. i watched pd101 jp the girls for this fic. i made my way through like half of me:i’s youtube channel for this fic. i learned the rules of team fencing and studied the women’s foil japan vs. canada bronze medal match for this fic. a poorly managed jpop girl group that also dabbles in the kpop industry can truly be something that is so personal (la la la what member hiatuses? fingers in ears i can’t hear youuu).
something that is also so personal are the OLYMPICS. and like blissfully clinging to the fact that any neurodivergencies i may have have never been medically diagnosed, i really, really love the olympics. like typing-this-sentence-made-me-giggle level of love the olympics. and to be clear i absolutely do not mean this as “i love the decisions made by the international olympic committee and the way the olympics make the privilege/hypocrisy of the global north + the continuous effects of imperialism + ugly global politics as a whole so transparent despite their constant and extremely face-saving efforts to cover it all up” but also if i didn’t think awful power systems were interesting and important to consider alongside the entertainment product itself i also wouldn’t be into kpop. so i mean this to say that i am fascinated with the olympics both as a Big Fancy Sports Competition and also a world stage for some of the most fucked-up shit imaginable.
where was i.
as a result it is probably no surprise at all that one of the things i’m most proud of with this fic is that it is accurate to the timetable and team japan results of the real 2024 paris olympics (beach volleyball, foil fencing [individual, team]) (yes this does mean that post-credits kokoro and momona get eliminated in the first round of 16 but like. the journey was never about that anyway!). i don’t actually know that this made for a better narrative but it was still really important to me.
also if anyone was curious about the sports for the me:i members who weren’t shown. it’s ran speed climbing, shizuku golf, kokona badminton, rinon hurdles. yes it was also important to me to make sure that those in the same level placement test team were at least in the same discipline (so along with kokoro+momona and miu+suzu teammates, keiko and rinon are both in athletics. lmao).
EDIT because i wrote all of this up before dec 22: god damn it
juliet loves the beat
quick stats:
fun fact: at the beginning i considered giving myself a goal to write ten different scarygirlynight fics. this obviously did not happen, but i still had fun messing around doing some low-pressure ficlets especially during a pretty writer’s-blocked period of my year.
though this one specifically is so. sorry girl @ hikaru. truth be told i had such a hard time narrowing down a kpop girl who i could cast as The Killer and i was still riding the high of popping that body like bubble gum so, there we were. i *do* think the prose here is a little bit edgelordy but again, it’s fine. low-pressure fic! halloween! it’s just supposed to be fun!!!
say it with your chest
quick stats:
i promise one day i’ll stop writing nien as so cynical and manipulative (lying). like yeah it is starting to verge on completely ooc but if the juice is there i’m not going to pretend it isn’t, sorry that i think it’s great when The Funny One is sad/bitter/awful do NOT look at my counseling records.
my wade-giles romanization taiwan uniqueness schtick is here to stay though. kim kardashian voice i’m like dropping hints that i’m taiwanese (i’m taiwanese)
like no one ever was
quick stats:
truly out of the three this is the one that is the most just. anything. like, i like the idea of writing a pokemon au in theory but i don’t think i could actually commit to anything longer / more serious than this because there are simply too many proper nouns involved in writing anything pokemon-related. and also i insisted on putting the proper accented “é” every time i wrote the word “pokemon” in this fic because, you know, i hate myself.
that said i stand by my opinion that seeun would specialize in rock types. and also i chose isa as the professor-in-training because the surname lee typically comes from the hanja “ζ”, meaning plum tree, and ofc all pokemon professors have to have tree-related names βοΈπ <- something absolutely no one was wondering about
pas de deux
quick stats:
i started writing this fic just over a full calendar year before it went up. over the course of that year, i would open the doc, fiddle with a few words, and then close it again. it was so slow. it wouldn’t leave me alone.
at the beginning i intended to post it but towards the middle i didn’t anymore. i thought, maybe, it’d be better kept to myself forever. and it wasn’t just because it wasn’t finished yet — i thought about putting it out there and all the things that could go wrong and it made me want to throw up.
my biggest fear was, always is, being misinterpreted. but there’s no point in writing unless my writing is brave enough to exist. and, still.
in the process of preparing to put it up on ao3 i originally wanted to include an author’s note to the effect of, “the jiyeon of this fic is a trans man, or should be, but is exclusively referred to as anything but. don’t get it twisted.” but i couldn’t find a way to word it right, and even if i were comfortable with the idea of telling readers what to think, i think this is a piece where that is a detriment more than anything. who am i to tell you what this jiyeon refuses to figure out herself?
but at the end of the day it’s a fic about burying yourself. it’s a fic about resealing the shell. it’s a fic about the fact that sometimes no one can save you but yourself, and it’s a fic about how sometimes we still choose not to. it’s a fic about irreversible choices, and the ones we don’t make. it’s a fic about how we get told that some of them are right and some of them are wrong but it’s so often not about which ones would actually make you happy. it’s a fic about gender envy. it’s a fic about gender dysphoria. it’s a fic about experiencing the body as a prison and hating everyone who doesn’t agree. it’s a fic about dance. it’s always about dance.
two last things of note:
one, it was a happy coincidence to end up posting on 11/24. i think it was the last push i needed to get this fic out into the world.
two, it was very much inspired by beluvbug’s princess of gender dysphoria au. can’t recommend it enough.
whale fall
quick stats:
i was so so so nervous to do fth and had deliberately avoided doing it before this year because like a.) the mortifying prospect that no one would bid on me and b.) the whole premise, which is writing essentially a commission for someone else, because possibly my worst quality as a writer is that i absolutely cannot create anything of substance if it is not 110% what i Want to do.
very frequently i start with something that is completely different from what a fic ends up becoming because i have to burn through these iterations to reach the one i actually want to work on. the 2jin mecha fic was supposed to be an ex-childhood friends garlic farmer x celebrity au. earlier versions of chaeyeon fic had her teaching an ensemble class of like literally six to seven children. the me:ilympics started life as a bleak alt-canon kokoro-didn’t-make-it fic (in large part because i actually somehow lost the ability to read a wiki page and genuinely thought that she did not succeed in pd101) (and no i still don’t want to talk about it fuck lapone forever). the point being that i’m used to this and that all this craziness is acceptable when it happens within the bounds of my own head, but it’s really, um. rude to do that when trying to work with someone else, so i really didn’t want that to be the case.
however that is exactly what happened. in fact this is probably the greatest degree to which this has happened because all of the prior examples still kept core elements and characters and did not involve me getting struck by lightning in the form of blue valentine.
i mean i’ve already written a whole commentary on the damn thing but, god. in hindsight it had to happen. all the scrapped drafts and the desperate fruitless harom pinterest moodboards and i guess even the three-paragraphs-in-a-row at 2 AM into julien’s dms (i am. so sorry π) had to happen so that we could get somewhere else and also so that somewhere else could be something i am proud of.
julien, if you’re reading this, i really do mean it when i say i could not have asked for a better fth bidder. thank you for putting up with the process.
and to anyone thinking of bidding on me for fth in the future, know that it will probably take the entire creation period and that you will have unwanted access to my thoughts the whole time. it is for a good cause though!!
my 2025 goals were:
β finish at least 15 books
β/βchill the fuck out
yeah i dropped the ball here lol. but i actually don’t feel all that upset about it? wrt to the first one i ended up finishing 12 books so it’s. close-ish. and i started a lot more books than that but DNFed them for various reasons (truly i have a talent for picking up books that are extremely not to my taste and then wondering why i can’t get through them. and also for convincing myself that maybe This Time i’ll actually like the romance genre, when i absolutely will not). so we try again in 2026! and i’ve just signed up for a monthly book club at my local library so assuming i don’t flake, that’s at least 12 books guaranteed (kind of. for my own purposes, i don’t count books that i’ve already read before, some of which are on the reading list. but it’s both for the encouragement and the community, so, not really the point).
quick blast of reading highlights from this year:
as for chilling the fuck out, i feel like i have in fact done mostly that but it is a very recent development. like, i haven’t really been worrying about whether my writing is good enough and i don’t know when that started to happen, but it certainly hasn’t been longer than a few months at most. either way, i welcome it. and (“maybe i’ll never die because i’m crazy” voice) i know i care about writing so much that, even if the confidence comes and goes, i’m going to continue doing whatever the hell i want.
that said — i absolutely do not feel chill. when i was creating this goal last year i was referring to the idea of unchill = desperately wanting my writing to be Something, but now it’s that unchill = feeling a completely unwarranted sense of urgency. i want to write This and i want to write That and i want to reach a point with my writing so that i can finally attempt Whatever It Is and blah blah blah. it’s exhausting. i have that gears-always-turning brain and i guess what’s happened is that it’s made the jump from anxiety to productivity which is so ughhhh kill your inner capitalist. but also i want to write a billion things so i can’t turn it off. and to make matters worse a bunch of big life changes + a mold scare (i still have not received confirmation on whether or not i was breathing in black mold spores for three months… but i guess i presented relatively normally to everyone around me so idk) have made it so that i did not have the mental capacity to be doing all that but i did it regardless because again, i! have! no! chill!
ANYWAY SO. this is another thing i will attempt again in 2026. there is no measurable metric for this goal (which makes it inherently flawed, i know) but really i just want to feel like i’m not fighting myself for control all the time. and also to get more sleep.
2026 goals:
these last two new ones stem from a thing i’ll go into in the next section but part of it is that i’m seeing/feeling a shift in the way people engage with fandom (for the negative — much more retreating inwards + keeping to selves) (and i’m not saying this to look down on anyone who is doing this, because hey, me too. it’s not like i’ve been around for a super long time or that i myself am so so good about interacting with other people… like lmao here comes the hermit to lecture us on social interaction) so i’ve just been feeling like it’s time for me to Do My Part. and just as a whole i really don’t read a lot of fic much less do a good job of letting authors know how great they are so, i want that to change.
in a very well-adjusted manner i think i’ll make a spreadsheet to keep track of the fics i read (both as a way to stay on track and also just to have something to look back on). and when it comes to comments, i don’t just want to be phoning it in for the sake of “achieving” my goal. i really want to acknowledge the writing and say something beautiful and true. probably this will take some figuring out (commenting is a skill itself after all) but starting somewhere’s the only way to do it.
and then dreamwidth is just like, fun. on one hand it is a beautiful repository of everything that is wrong with me but on the other i feels like a slower, more thoughtful online space that allows for connection in a nice + different way. the monthly music posts i’ve been doing have been a solid starting point but i’d like to write more (content-wise) and more (consistency-wise) on here, and i’d also like to start commenting on other people’s posts a lot more, too.
the most important thing that happened to me this year is the realization that i have the power to make myself who i want to be, which is simultaneously terrifying, and freeing, and obvious.
i suppose that, despite the obviousness, this is a realization several years in the making. when i started my medical transition without telling anyone beforehand or asking for their permission, that was one layer of it. when i started taking my writing more seriously than ever, that was another. but this year, i’ve pulled the trigger on so many things i’d always wanted but never thought i’d get around to — teaching myself to read traditional characters and fixing my posture and trying new things, over and over and over again.
in a particular way of looking at it, yes, it was always that easy. i just had to make my decision, and make the effort. the sheer abundance of everything that is potentially available to me, contingent only on whether or not i go for it, is more than a little exciting.
but the full truth is that it doesn’t completely work like that. that there are things outside of my control, that even when there aren’t it is actually so fucking hard. i am a person like everyone else and sometimes i am so tired of the hours i spend every day just so i can crawl my way towards the future, five characters or twenty reps or one more “yes” at a time. but at least my brain and my body are areas where i can notice my efforts paying off, no matter how slow. when it comes to my place in the world, i have no idea.
this is my roundabout way of saying: holy fuck i have no idea how to talk to people.
and like — that is hyperbole, at least a little bit. i am very fortunate to have a wide and lovely network of friends and family already, but with all the things i have tried and gone to and pushed myself out of my comfort zone for this year, i am starting to get the feeling that i am actually very bad at forming new connections.
which, yes! that difficulty is part of it, inherently! it’s this symbiotic relationship of “you try things until something sticks” <-> “you need to stick with something before lasting connections can happen”. and figuring out how to get in in the first place is what i guess your life is all about but god damn guys. sometimes i feel like i’m running head-first into zoo exhibit glass that no one else is surrounded by but me.
(doesn’t really help that, in general, community is such a nebulous thing — it requires an almost lightning-bottle combination of things [place, interest, purpose, so on] not only to exist but to continue existing, and yet it is so common and so natural. it’s what everyone wants and needs for a richness in life and yet what we increasingly get told comes secondary to profit/success/etc.)
so there is no real moral here and i guess i just have to keep trying. OR… βοΈ all of this is indicative of the fact that i am overthinking this way way way too much and that is the issue in and of itself.
but re: goals. that’s what all the commenting and dreamwidthing is about, along with the real-world things i have to keep putting myself out there for. the steps are there for me to take, both online and offline, and like with so much else in this year going into next, the main step is just for me to do it. and i already know it’s possible.
*deep breath (optional, say it with me)* i want to try! i want to live! i want to be involved! i want to be real and not care how embarrassing it is! i want to love people, and to be loved in return! i want, and i will! i want, and i will!
happy new year. thank you, and good night.
FIC WRITING:
my final word count is 76,853. which feels like a lot and is certainly the most i’ve ever written in a year, but also everything is relative so, make of it what you will. i don’t know if i’ll be writing this much again next year or maybe even trying to write more… still trying to reconcile my relationship with output = worth but mostly i’m just here for a good time!
before the dreaded sun appears
quick stats:
- posting date: march 5
- fandom: loona
- pairing: heejin/hyunjin
- wordcount: 4,094
- written for: moonlight party
i really don’t write for loona anymore, but moonlight party is pretty much the one thing that keeps me there haha. these days i think of loona ficdom as more about the community (and the commiseration…) than any huge desire to write about the group itself. and in a lot of ways i see what loona ficdom used to be in how the triples ficdom is currently shaping up! but also i have a lot of mixed thoughts and feelings about triples + the fandom which are currently neither here nor there (maybe a future dw post?).
i really love the genre conventions of mecha despite not having any real investment in any actual mecha media. i’ve tried and failed to watch several different gundams (not an indictment of gundam, i just suck at watching anything and specifically tv shows) and i keep telling myself that one day i will actually watch nge (i won’t). but there’s so much to play with in the pseudo-military setting and the very concept of a mech itself with regards to the self as a weapon and bodily autonomy and pilots vs. everyone else around them. so.
the prompt i was working off of was “reinterpreted fairytale”. and i know the fox and the hound isn’t actually a fairytale but a disneyfied 1960s novel but like. it just works so well with 2jin and the concept of a friendship gone bad… let it be known that 2jin was the only main ship i really truly loved.
corvi volantes
quick stats:
- posting date: april 12
- fandom: iz*one
- pairings: chaeyeon/minju, chaeyeon&oc
- wordcount: 18,842
- written for: olymfics
this was like. a particularly bad time of year for me. not to retread too much of what i said in the commentary but i was exhausted and grieving and just really going through it. but olymfics is always so so fun and i loved the opportunity to take a big swing and know that even if it wasn’t perfect, it was going to be a part of a really awesome community tradition.
however i have also realized that part of why this was so hard to write was because this chaeyeon and minju are like, normal — at least in the way they treat each other. this was maybe my first time writing a pretty much completely sweet and non-dysfunctional relationship dynamic and my god would the dialogue just completely refuse to flow. so unfortunately toxicity and antagonism and shame are my apparent modi operandi when writing and well. any self-reflection on that aside, that was a real roadblock in trying to write something about the joy of living. anyway!
also little treat for me was when i finally watched the music video for iz*one’s “suki to iwasetai” in, like, july and there were all these shots of minju and chaeyeon sitting on a couch together. i <3 retroactive crumbs.
chicane (chs. 1 & 2)
quick stats:
- posting dates: august 8 & 15
- fandom: triples
- pairing: kotone/nien
- wordcount: 28,671
umm and then after olymfics i didn’t write anything for months and beat myself up the whole time about the fact that i wasn’t writing anything, for months (well except during this time i was also trying and failing to write my fth piece but that was also the part of the problem so like lol)
and very dramatically i was like this cannot go on!! i must do something about it!! and the something was natasha bedingfield releasing my inhibitions and writing something with the specific goal of being as self-indulgent and non-self-editing as possible.
like i’ve always wanted to write a multi-chapter sports au (see: doomed fromis curling fic, never to be completed) and i had started but never done anything with a planning doc of kpop idols and f1 academy teams like a year prior. so i did a little touching up (ex: originally nien and kotone were both race engineers but when i thought about it for longer than ten minutes i decided that nien could wreak much greater havoc via social media) (also originally kiof was one of the teams because when i’d made the doc The Incident had not yet happened but um. yeah that one was rectified immediately) and then removed all further critical thought from my mind.
and here we are. or there we were. the plan was to release a chapter a week (in time with the actual racing weekends that take place in the fic, ofc) but life happened / other things with real deadlines needed to be written instead and anyway, like fall out boy says, two out of three ain’t bad. the plot is a logical reach at best and the characterization is bent cartoonishly far out of wack, but i had fun and somehow slammed out 28k and that was the only real goal.
i promise i will continue to have fun aka finish the third and final chapter of this fic. soon. and with commentary.
wings to echo the light
quick stats:
- posting date: september 23
- fandom: me:i
- pairing: kokoro/miu
- wordcount: 7,242
- written for: ficmix
ficmix is such a unique beast because, in a creative sense, i literally can’t follow directions to save my life. every round the mods clearly put all this effort into putting together good, sensible mashups and then my only instinct is to go off the fucking rails. so with my assignment this year, while it obviously would have made the most sense to go for velvet’s excellent kotonien, i unfortunately have multiple things wrong with me so instead i had to get into a jpop group i had barely ever heard of.
“heart to heart to heart” changed my life, y’all. i watched pd101 jp the girls for this fic. i made my way through like half of me:i’s youtube channel for this fic. i learned the rules of team fencing and studied the women’s foil japan vs. canada bronze medal match for this fic. a poorly managed jpop girl group that also dabbles in the kpop industry can truly be something that is so personal (la la la what member hiatuses? fingers in ears i can’t hear youuu).
something that is also so personal are the OLYMPICS. and like blissfully clinging to the fact that any neurodivergencies i may have have never been medically diagnosed, i really, really love the olympics. like typing-this-sentence-made-me-giggle level of love the olympics. and to be clear i absolutely do not mean this as “i love the decisions made by the international olympic committee and the way the olympics make the privilege/hypocrisy of the global north + the continuous effects of imperialism + ugly global politics as a whole so transparent despite their constant and extremely face-saving efforts to cover it all up” but also if i didn’t think awful power systems were interesting and important to consider alongside the entertainment product itself i also wouldn’t be into kpop. so i mean this to say that i am fascinated with the olympics both as a Big Fancy Sports Competition and also a world stage for some of the most fucked-up shit imaginable.
where was i.
as a result it is probably no surprise at all that one of the things i’m most proud of with this fic is that it is accurate to the timetable and team japan results of the real 2024 paris olympics (beach volleyball, foil fencing [individual, team]) (yes this does mean that post-credits kokoro and momona get eliminated in the first round of 16 but like. the journey was never about that anyway!). i don’t actually know that this made for a better narrative but it was still really important to me.
also if anyone was curious about the sports for the me:i members who weren’t shown. it’s ran speed climbing, shizuku golf, kokona badminton, rinon hurdles. yes it was also important to me to make sure that those in the same level placement test team were at least in the same discipline (so along with kokoro+momona and miu+suzu teammates, keiko and rinon are both in athletics. lmao).
EDIT because i wrote all of this up before dec 22: god damn it
juliet loves the beat
quick stats:
- posting date:
- fandom: kep1er
- pairing: hikaru/bahiyyih
- wordcount: 792
- written for: scarygirlynight
fun fact: at the beginning i considered giving myself a goal to write ten different scarygirlynight fics. this obviously did not happen, but i still had fun messing around doing some low-pressure ficlets especially during a pretty writer’s-blocked period of my year.
though this one specifically is so. sorry girl @ hikaru. truth be told i had such a hard time narrowing down a kpop girl who i could cast as The Killer and i was still riding the high of popping that body like bubble gum so, there we were. i *do* think the prose here is a little bit edgelordy but again, it’s fine. low-pressure fic! halloween! it’s just supposed to be fun!!!
say it with your chest
quick stats:
- posting date:
- fandom: triples
- pairing: nien/jiyeon
- wordcount: 480
- written for: scarygirlynight
i promise one day i’ll stop writing nien as so cynical and manipulative (lying). like yeah it is starting to verge on completely ooc but if the juice is there i’m not going to pretend it isn’t, sorry that i think it’s great when The Funny One is sad/bitter/awful do NOT look at my counseling records.
my wade-giles romanization taiwan uniqueness schtick is here to stay though. kim kardashian voice i’m like dropping hints that i’m taiwanese (i’m taiwanese)
like no one ever was
quick stats:
- posting date:
- fandom: stayc
- pairing: seeun/isa
- wordcount: 912
- written for: scarygirlynight
truly out of the three this is the one that is the most just. anything. like, i like the idea of writing a pokemon au in theory but i don’t think i could actually commit to anything longer / more serious than this because there are simply too many proper nouns involved in writing anything pokemon-related. and also i insisted on putting the proper accented “é” every time i wrote the word “pokemon” in this fic because, you know, i hate myself.
that said i stand by my opinion that seeun would specialize in rock types. and also i chose isa as the professor-in-training because the surname lee typically comes from the hanja “ζ”, meaning plum tree, and ofc all pokemon professors have to have tree-related names βοΈπ <- something absolutely no one was wondering about
pas de deux
quick stats:
- posting date: november 24
- fandom: triples
- pairing: jiyeon/kotone
- wordcount: 3,304
i started writing this fic just over a full calendar year before it went up. over the course of that year, i would open the doc, fiddle with a few words, and then close it again. it was so slow. it wouldn’t leave me alone.
at the beginning i intended to post it but towards the middle i didn’t anymore. i thought, maybe, it’d be better kept to myself forever. and it wasn’t just because it wasn’t finished yet — i thought about putting it out there and all the things that could go wrong and it made me want to throw up.
my biggest fear was, always is, being misinterpreted. but there’s no point in writing unless my writing is brave enough to exist. and, still.
in the process of preparing to put it up on ao3 i originally wanted to include an author’s note to the effect of, “the jiyeon of this fic is a trans man, or should be, but is exclusively referred to as anything but. don’t get it twisted.” but i couldn’t find a way to word it right, and even if i were comfortable with the idea of telling readers what to think, i think this is a piece where that is a detriment more than anything. who am i to tell you what this jiyeon refuses to figure out herself?
but at the end of the day it’s a fic about burying yourself. it’s a fic about resealing the shell. it’s a fic about the fact that sometimes no one can save you but yourself, and it’s a fic about how sometimes we still choose not to. it’s a fic about irreversible choices, and the ones we don’t make. it’s a fic about how we get told that some of them are right and some of them are wrong but it’s so often not about which ones would actually make you happy. it’s a fic about gender envy. it’s a fic about gender dysphoria. it’s a fic about experiencing the body as a prison and hating everyone who doesn’t agree. it’s a fic about dance. it’s always about dance.
two last things of note:
one, it was a happy coincidence to end up posting on 11/24. i think it was the last push i needed to get this fic out into the world.
two, it was very much inspired by beluvbug’s princess of gender dysphoria au. can’t recommend it enough.
whale fall
quick stats:
- posting date: december 21
- fandom: nmixx
- pairing: haewon/lily
- wordcount: 12,516
- written for: fandom trumps hate
i was so so so nervous to do fth and had deliberately avoided doing it before this year because like a.) the mortifying prospect that no one would bid on me and b.) the whole premise, which is writing essentially a commission for someone else, because possibly my worst quality as a writer is that i absolutely cannot create anything of substance if it is not 110% what i Want to do.
very frequently i start with something that is completely different from what a fic ends up becoming because i have to burn through these iterations to reach the one i actually want to work on. the 2jin mecha fic was supposed to be an ex-childhood friends garlic farmer x celebrity au. earlier versions of chaeyeon fic had her teaching an ensemble class of like literally six to seven children. the me:ilympics started life as a bleak alt-canon kokoro-didn’t-make-it fic (in large part because i actually somehow lost the ability to read a wiki page and genuinely thought that she did not succeed in pd101) (and no i still don’t want to talk about it fuck lapone forever). the point being that i’m used to this and that all this craziness is acceptable when it happens within the bounds of my own head, but it’s really, um. rude to do that when trying to work with someone else, so i really didn’t want that to be the case.
however that is exactly what happened. in fact this is probably the greatest degree to which this has happened because all of the prior examples still kept core elements and characters and did not involve me getting struck by lightning in the form of blue valentine.
i mean i’ve already written a whole commentary on the damn thing but, god. in hindsight it had to happen. all the scrapped drafts and the desperate fruitless harom pinterest moodboards and i guess even the three-paragraphs-in-a-row at 2 AM into julien’s dms (i am. so sorry π) had to happen so that we could get somewhere else and also so that somewhere else could be something i am proud of.
julien, if you’re reading this, i really do mean it when i say i could not have asked for a better fth bidder. thank you for putting up with the process.
and to anyone thinking of bidding on me for fth in the future, know that it will probably take the entire creation period and that you will have unwanted access to my thoughts the whole time. it is for a good cause though!!
GOALS:
my 2025 goals were:
β finish at least 15 books
β/βchill the fuck out
yeah i dropped the ball here lol. but i actually don’t feel all that upset about it? wrt to the first one i ended up finishing 12 books so it’s. close-ish. and i started a lot more books than that but DNFed them for various reasons (truly i have a talent for picking up books that are extremely not to my taste and then wondering why i can’t get through them. and also for convincing myself that maybe This Time i’ll actually like the romance genre, when i absolutely will not). so we try again in 2026! and i’ve just signed up for a monthly book club at my local library so assuming i don’t flake, that’s at least 12 books guaranteed (kind of. for my own purposes, i don’t count books that i’ve already read before, some of which are on the reading list. but it’s both for the encouragement and the community, so, not really the point).
quick blast of reading highlights from this year:
- On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong — i mean, it really is that good. i think the first chapter is so much stronger than the entire rest of the book (to the comparative detriment of everything that comes after) but that doesn’t mean it’s still not worth the read
- They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us by Hanif Abdurraqib — also just as good as everyone says it is. maybe even better. i really should not be giving book recs but if, for some reason, you are looking to me for them and can only pick one, it has to be this
- Floating Hotel by Grace Curtis — incredible prose and a really refreshing take on hopepunk sci-fi. if you are also like me (a bit worn out on becky chambers and looking for something with a little more teeth), this is a great one to check out
- Spread Me by Sarah Gailey — freakiest piece of published literature i’ve ever read. really fast-paced so i finished it in four days but i felt like i was getting hit over the head every chapter
as for chilling the fuck out, i feel like i have in fact done mostly that but it is a very recent development. like, i haven’t really been worrying about whether my writing is good enough and i don’t know when that started to happen, but it certainly hasn’t been longer than a few months at most. either way, i welcome it. and (“maybe i’ll never die because i’m crazy” voice) i know i care about writing so much that, even if the confidence comes and goes, i’m going to continue doing whatever the hell i want.
that said — i absolutely do not feel chill. when i was creating this goal last year i was referring to the idea of unchill = desperately wanting my writing to be Something, but now it’s that unchill = feeling a completely unwarranted sense of urgency. i want to write This and i want to write That and i want to reach a point with my writing so that i can finally attempt Whatever It Is and blah blah blah. it’s exhausting. i have that gears-always-turning brain and i guess what’s happened is that it’s made the jump from anxiety to productivity which is so ughhhh kill your inner capitalist. but also i want to write a billion things so i can’t turn it off. and to make matters worse a bunch of big life changes + a mold scare (i still have not received confirmation on whether or not i was breathing in black mold spores for three months… but i guess i presented relatively normally to everyone around me so idk) have made it so that i did not have the mental capacity to be doing all that but i did it regardless because again, i! have! no! chill!
ANYWAY SO. this is another thing i will attempt again in 2026. there is no measurable metric for this goal (which makes it inherently flawed, i know) but really i just want to feel like i’m not fighting myself for control all the time. and also to get more sleep.
2026 goals:
- finish at least 15 books [AGAIN]
- chill the fuck out [AGAIN]
- read and comment on more fanfiction (at least one every two weeks) [NEW]
- use dreamwidth more [NEW]
these last two new ones stem from a thing i’ll go into in the next section but part of it is that i’m seeing/feeling a shift in the way people engage with fandom (for the negative — much more retreating inwards + keeping to selves) (and i’m not saying this to look down on anyone who is doing this, because hey, me too. it’s not like i’ve been around for a super long time or that i myself am so so good about interacting with other people… like lmao here comes the hermit to lecture us on social interaction) so i’ve just been feeling like it’s time for me to Do My Part. and just as a whole i really don’t read a lot of fic much less do a good job of letting authors know how great they are so, i want that to change.
in a very well-adjusted manner i think i’ll make a spreadsheet to keep track of the fics i read (both as a way to stay on track and also just to have something to look back on). and when it comes to comments, i don’t just want to be phoning it in for the sake of “achieving” my goal. i really want to acknowledge the writing and say something beautiful and true. probably this will take some figuring out (commenting is a skill itself after all) but starting somewhere’s the only way to do it.
and then dreamwidth is just like, fun. on one hand it is a beautiful repository of everything that is wrong with me but on the other i feels like a slower, more thoughtful online space that allows for connection in a nice + different way. the monthly music posts i’ve been doing have been a solid starting point but i’d like to write more (content-wise) and more (consistency-wise) on here, and i’d also like to start commenting on other people’s posts a lot more, too.
REFLECTIONS:
the most important thing that happened to me this year is the realization that i have the power to make myself who i want to be, which is simultaneously terrifying, and freeing, and obvious.
i suppose that, despite the obviousness, this is a realization several years in the making. when i started my medical transition without telling anyone beforehand or asking for their permission, that was one layer of it. when i started taking my writing more seriously than ever, that was another. but this year, i’ve pulled the trigger on so many things i’d always wanted but never thought i’d get around to — teaching myself to read traditional characters and fixing my posture and trying new things, over and over and over again.
in a particular way of looking at it, yes, it was always that easy. i just had to make my decision, and make the effort. the sheer abundance of everything that is potentially available to me, contingent only on whether or not i go for it, is more than a little exciting.
but the full truth is that it doesn’t completely work like that. that there are things outside of my control, that even when there aren’t it is actually so fucking hard. i am a person like everyone else and sometimes i am so tired of the hours i spend every day just so i can crawl my way towards the future, five characters or twenty reps or one more “yes” at a time. but at least my brain and my body are areas where i can notice my efforts paying off, no matter how slow. when it comes to my place in the world, i have no idea.
this is my roundabout way of saying: holy fuck i have no idea how to talk to people.
and like — that is hyperbole, at least a little bit. i am very fortunate to have a wide and lovely network of friends and family already, but with all the things i have tried and gone to and pushed myself out of my comfort zone for this year, i am starting to get the feeling that i am actually very bad at forming new connections.
which, yes! that difficulty is part of it, inherently! it’s this symbiotic relationship of “you try things until something sticks” <-> “you need to stick with something before lasting connections can happen”. and figuring out how to get in in the first place is what i guess your life is all about but god damn guys. sometimes i feel like i’m running head-first into zoo exhibit glass that no one else is surrounded by but me.
(doesn’t really help that, in general, community is such a nebulous thing — it requires an almost lightning-bottle combination of things [place, interest, purpose, so on] not only to exist but to continue existing, and yet it is so common and so natural. it’s what everyone wants and needs for a richness in life and yet what we increasingly get told comes secondary to profit/success/etc.)
so there is no real moral here and i guess i just have to keep trying. OR… βοΈ all of this is indicative of the fact that i am overthinking this way way way too much and that is the issue in and of itself.
but re: goals. that’s what all the commenting and dreamwidthing is about, along with the real-world things i have to keep putting myself out there for. the steps are there for me to take, both online and offline, and like with so much else in this year going into next, the main step is just for me to do it. and i already know it’s possible.
*deep breath (optional, say it with me)* i want to try! i want to live! i want to be involved! i want to be real and not care how embarrassing it is! i want to love people, and to be loved in return! i want, and i will! i want, and i will!
happy new year. thank you, and good night.