#throwback fics

At the end (we’re still together)

In lack of any new fic from me, here’s a throwback one of my earliest fics of Gale caring for John when he arrives in the POW camp.

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Bucky struggled to stay standing, moving one foot in front of the other to get to the next gate of the Stalag. Just a few more steps. He could make it that far, after everything.

His head spun, and though he was sure he had a concussion it was the relief that swamped him with dizziness. Buck is here. He’s alive. He’s here. The vision in his right eye had been blurry for days and his ribs screamed with each breath. The exhaustion of the running, the fear, the horror of the past several days dragged his feet down but he couldn’t stop the huge grin splitting his bloody face. Buck is here.

I was tagged by the lovely @maggiemayhemnj - thanks, Miss Mayhem! This is a fun one!!

HOW TO PLAY:

Tagged writers: pick a number & assign it to each fic of yours, WIP or completed, as long as it’s been posted. YOUR FIC SHOULD BE OLDER THAN 6 MONTHS (hence, throwbacks). Post your numbers with the title “Throwback Thursday Ask Game” without revealing which fics you’ve selected.

Followers/Friends/Feral Cats: pick a number to message the author as well as a request or question about the fic. (Example: “Fic number 4: what is your favorite line?” Or “Fic 6: share a snip from a scrapped scene!”)

The fun in this is that you won’t know what fic you’re getting until you’ve been answered. Maybe you’ll be reminded of a fic you loved and forgot about, or maybe you’ll discover a fic you overlooked. And meanwhile, us fic writers will get to drown in the nostalgia or find inspiration to write on!  Let's have fun, and please be kind!

For my fics, if you'd like to play, choose a number between 1-22. I left out shorter drabbles from my list and consolidated one-shots within the same story universe.

Looking back at the data from 3 years, I wanted to honor and reflect on the top 3 fics from each year (2020, 2021, and 2022)! A note for 2022: I am highlighting the fics with the most notes at the current moment. I have fics that I’ve not posted yet and older fics will have an edge up on newer fics simply because of how time works.  

2020

Safety (Namjoon x Reader) 

Summery: You can’t lie to your soulmate. It was a fact that many people knew, including you. You just didn’t expect to find your soulmate during your night shift at the MSN book store you work at. You also didn’t expect them to be the Kim Namjoon, an up-and-coming star.

Angst, Fluff

I think something that struck me about this fic is it was my first time writing a soulmate au. I really enjoyed it and found the story something that I easily fell into. Just as I hope readers were, I found myself rooting for the reader in the climax and anxious with them as the show started! I’ve been meaning to write another soulmate au but I’ve simply not had time yet. Mayhaps next year I will try to!

Midnight Musings (Jungkook x Reader)

Summery: You just moved to Korea for a teaching job and on your first night, you decided to visit a local cafe. You even took a photo to commemorate the move! That photo actually lead to something very unexpected happening though.

Fluff, smut, a touch of angst

One of my first smuts! 2020 was truly a year of exploration for me! I think it was my first year trying mxm and branching out into got7 fics! I must admit, I don’t think I will write smut much more because though I am sex indifferent, the idea of sex really... I don’t enjoy it. It just sort of is something. I laughed all while writing this fic and my other smut. It was a fun experience and I greatly admire all smut writers but it isn’t something for me as a hobby writer.

Slow Mornings (Jungkook x reader)

Summery: You decide to make Jungkook breakfast in bed.

Fluff

Honestly. I was shocked by this looking back. I don’t often think of drabbles as stuff that really leads to much but please don’t underestimate the power of drabbles for getting eyes on your blog! It was a fun and short fic and I think it makes me want to get back into doing some drabbles! I’ve been thinking of how I want to start of 2023 and playing around with the idea of a drabble series. Maybe... if you all have drabble requests, I could take those instead!

2020 was truly a year of exploration for me. I had a lot of fun with all the stuff I wrote! It is quite fun to look back and see what range of stuff I did! Interestingly, the notes on these fics haven’t changed tons since I took note of them in 2020 but that’s ok. These stories hold a special place in my heart. Especially safety! 

2021

Taking it Slow (Namjoon x Reader)

Summery: Reading with Namjoon

Fluff

I had a lot of fun writing this piece. I started as half a page free write. Then I made it the length of a full page. Then I wrote it up on a google document and tried to double its length once again. I enjoyed it a ton and writing this piece made me feel quite calm! It was an attempt of mine to spark some creativity and while I found some creativity with writing this piece, I didn’t find much that carried over. 

A Spark in the Commons (Yugyeom x Reader)

Summery: You help an anxious deer shifter in the shifter union commons and a friendship buds.

Fluff

This might’ve been one of my first posted Got7 fics! What are my thoughts on it... 1) I am happy I started writing Got7! I really love them a ton and I am glad that I finally branched out again! I had leaned into BTS after starting to write for Seventeen. 7 is much less than 13 and only recently have I started branching out again! 2) I am... not the biggest fan of this fic. I’ve been open about my struggles with writing in 2021 so it isn’t personal to the event or anything like that... but I was using events to push me to write and while I am glad I wrote this and glad people enjoy it, I do not have a strong bond to it. 

Drawing Blood (Taehyung x Reader)

Summary: An attempt to get over a two year crush on your friend (and a suspected vampire) leads to interesting discoveries.

Fluff, Angst

I uh... remember making the graphic more than I remember writing this fic. TO BE FAIR! I WROTE 24 FICS IN 2021. TO NOT REMEMBER A FEW HAPPENS (plus I think because it was posted on sssc, I didn’t get the notifications of interest and thus had to check it rather than seeing it on my notif bar). That being said, I did have some fun writing this fic and when I look back, I am really curious about the world I was writing in. I think if I could go back and do this fic again, I would. I’d expand on it and add another plot that really highlighted the vampirism rather than just had it be a characteristic. It is 3.8k afterall. I wonder what more depth I could add to it if it became 8k! This fic was a gift for a dear friend of mine, @voiceswithoutlips. Potentially it could be something that I further expand on with Kas’s help!

A year of distance between me and 2021, I still don’t fully know how I feel about the year. There are stuff that I do hold dearly, but I really do think I was nearing or at burnout. I was tired and fried and I think it shows in my writing some. I wasn’t fried for the whole time but I was for a while. I think as well... I hold a lot of guilt for the year. As mentioned a few times on my blog, part of why I took time off from school early 2021 was because of a surgery and mental health struggles... last time I had a major surgery though, my writing surged forth like a protective barrier and this time... it got hurt with me. Again, I had fun and I look back on some of my stuff fondly but I also look back at stuff and wonder “when did I write this??” and I see the hurt and scared person I was. I see how I was struggling to cope and wishing desperately that my writing would be a safe space for me again while somewhere in me, I knew it wasn’t. 

2022

Heated Blanket (Jungkook x Reader)

Summery: After finals, you choose to take a nap. Your favorite heated blanket comes to join you.

Fluff

I posted this fic before I really started changing my writing habits... or at the very least, I wrote it before that happened. It was hard to write this fic on many layers. I was low motivation and energy, I was recovering from the first inflammation of my nerves, and I was battling the feeling of needing to do more. This fic was a gift to a good friend of mine ( @ditttiii) and I am really glad I managed to write something for her! It’s a fun little drabble!

A Story From a Different Time (Taehyung x Reader)

Summery:  Love. Love is such a wonder. Your love story is especially wondrous to your grandkids who love love as much as you and hang on to every word as you relive the time in your life as a teacher when you met a soft hearted tattoo artist.

Fluff, hint of angst

This fic was a year in the making! I started it sometime last year (maybe October? Or early November?) and had some bones of it created. That being said, I wasn’t happy with it. Throughout this year, I’ve worked on it bit by bit and tried hard to get it out in time for @taegularities birthday! Seeing it already able to make it to the top three was a shock because it’s only been a month or so (then again, most of my fics this year get like 10 notes or less so...). I am fairly happy with the writing process and how this fic came about! It’s full of tons of references and nods to Rid and I also got to write a fic that passes the Bechdel test this year (if you’ve not heard of it, essentially to pass it you need a woman talking to another woman about something other than a guy)! Having fics that pass the Bechdel test when I have women in my story is something I want to do more of (similarly, I want more representation of disabilities, sexuality, and of people all around the gender... cloud? I know spectrum is commonly used but like... it’s not really a spectrum so idk what to call it otherwise).

Let You Fly (Jimin x Namjoon)

Summery: Namjoon and Jimin have been together for only 7 months and it’s been near perfect. The two fit together wonderfully. All changes when Namjoon’s dream job offer slides itself into his inbox. He’d been eyeing the position in Japan for years… It wouldn’t be fair to Jimin to pack up his bags and join Namjoon, but it wouldn’t be fair to Namjoon to try to force him to stay. Instead, Jimin must let him fly.

Angst, hint of fluff

THIS FIC! I AM SO HAPPY THAT THIS FIC IS ONE ON THIS LIST! It’s based off of a song (Seven Months by Sunshine State) and I had so much fun writing this fic. This was written shortly after I realized something must change. I was very intentionally working on trying different things and I feel like it really paid off for this fic. I got immersed in it, made a playlist, made a graphic for it, did character interviews, and tried doing a teaser. Most of it’s notes came from BWC’s bookclub and honestly, I am so content with that because it came with people giving me their thoughts on it. It’s a brainchild of mine and I am so honored to have people share their thoughts on it and to have people read it!

It’s not lost on me that all the fics that are on my top 3 for 2022 are ones that were gifts or bookclub fics. Why do I think this is? Well... a multitude of reasons. 1) I posted half as much as I had in 2021 and 2020 (24 and 28 respectively in comparison to the 14 I posted this year). And almost half of what I posted (6 fics) were for my series A Fae’s Brew to Take You Away. Something I started 3/4 years ago and let collect cobwebs for two of those years. It gets less than 10 notes and half of the notes are just nets rebloging. Please know, I am ok with that. I am not complaining. I just want to finish this series. 2) Aside from ASFDT and Heated Blanket, all I wrote was MxM which doesn’t do well on tumblr. 3) I post infrequently. 14 fics is roughly 1 every month. I know I didn’t post that regularly though. And on tumblr, there’s an expectation to churn from readers. It’s social media. You’re rewarded for more posting. 4) I don’t get a lot of traction to my blog. I sit contently at 750 some followers and many of my fics don’t reach the top page (or if they do it’s only for a short time). 

That being said, keeping in mind the few notes and the traction being from other writers reblogging, I am really happy with the stuff that I’ve posted. I finished writing AFBTTYA so hopefully I will be able to edit and get to a point where I am posting something from it every month all next year! In the past few months, the amount I am writing has increased. I am feeling creative with what I am writing! I think that this devopment may take a bit of time to shine through on my blog because with series, I am trying to finish it before I start posting. I am trying to widdle away my 30+ wip list. I am still in school. I still have nerve inflammation. But I think this year has been a year of me trying to better my relationship with my writing. It will take time and I still struggle (just yesterday, after writing 3.5k the day prior, I got anxious about not writing that much again) but I am learning better coping strategies. In some ways, the low notes help because I can really work to untangle my love of writing and want to post from those notes which will hopefully help me keep that boundary if I get higher notes. 

 A boy away from home and familiarity, without the easy confidence of youth and camaraderie towards his fellows; a boy unable to connect, to understand such complex social interactions, a boy with such powers of knowing and yet not knowing the melee that surrounded him daily. He became misunderstood, mocked and ultimately ignored and so assigned himself protection, a carapace of aloofness; an armour to reject before becoming rejected, an aspiration to care less.

And he almost succeeded; he fooled others and very nearly fooled himself, until she came along.

She saw the armour and elected to ignore it because she saw him, and it was irresistible.

Extract from The Eternal Sunshine of a Detective's Mind by Emma_Lynch on AO3 and Fanfiction.net