2023 Year-end Recap

Total number of completed stories: 5

Total word count: 21,049

Fandoms written in: Zelda (1), The Old Guard (1), and Marvel/Hawkeye Comics (3)

2023 was rough! Just… awful start, and then things started to get better for a while, and then it turned into a gauntlet of just… more stuff. I’m tired. Hats off to everyone who slogged through—I don’t care if you did well or handled it with grace, we all deserve a nice nap and our favorite cookie fresh from the oven. But I did manage to get a few stories in:

Most popular: Turn Up The Heat (Marvel/Hawkeye) with 149 kudos! It’s a silly meet-cute AU with Bucky panicking and sneaking into a fitness class to avoid someone… only to belatedly realize his hiding spot is a hot yoga class! Misery ensues, but the instructor is all kinds of attractive… heck, I love meet-cutes. They’re just so silly and fun and optimistic.

Personal favorite: I wrote Lambent at Dawn (Zelda) after many evenings with Tears of the Kingdom and then reading this absolutely fantastic fic reimagining the triforce trio. The idea of Zelda, Link, and Gandorf actually getting a chance to have a happy ending really stuck with me, and I drew a soft snuggly picture about it, and then wrote the short story to accompany it. It was probably the creative highlight of this year for me, I felt really inspired and motivated while making both.

Most challenging: Mission: Christmas (Marvel/Hawkeye, E). I signed up for the Winterhawk Wonderland Gift Exchange feeling cautiously optimistic. Gift events are such a cool way to bring a creative community together, and I wanted to be a part of that! But it turned out to be a real struggle. I managed to drag out a 10k story shortly before deadline, decided I hated it, started a new document using my first story as a rough reference, gave up, started drawing an image instead, remembered that drawing is hard, went back to the new document, then back to drawing… just a rollercoaster of insecurity and doubt! And even though I struggle with writing explicit scenes, and I could have skipped it, I insisted on including that too. Looking back, why? Stubbornness, maybe? But I got it done, and a generous beta helped me out despite the last-minute timing during the holidays. Now that I have some space from it, and after reading some of the really kind comments, I can say I am happy I saw it through to the end.

Looking forward: 

I don’t want to jinx 2024, so I’ll just say I’m looking forward to the new year. I want to start writing more, and get back to drawing. If I’m really ambitious, I’d like to watch Our Flag Means Death Season 2 and find the energy to get back into The Old Guard fandom (so creative, but often with darker themes that I have not been emotionally prepared to handle this year).

I Don’t Sail These Seas, But…

You ever stumble into fandoms you don’t actually know? I found a lot of sad characters getting happily ever afters with Untamed (where the tragic backstory that tears two fated lovers apart - before they inevitably reunite - is just so ridiculous, but like, in a chocolate sundae with extra toppings sort of way), along with Batfam (the most generous heaping of found family comfort that I have been soaking up like a sponge). 

@cookiemom6067 recorded a podcast my Old Guard meet-cute You Flew Into My Heart!

This is the first time someone has podficced my work, and I’m so delighted! When I put up a blanket permission, it was more because I liked the idea - creators inviting other creators in, increasing accessibility - than actually thinking someone would want to dedicate so much time to reading one of my stories aloud. So this was a wonderful surprise and I had so much fun listening! Thank you @cookiemom6067 !

Listen here!

Header pose traced over this photo by sevendeman.

Ahhhhh, look at this masterpiece! Fantasy AU, my beloved, you’ve never looked so good. Their poses are a great snapshot of that moment right before sh*t is gonna go down and their outfits are so cool! They’re gonna get up to so much nonsense. <3 Thank you @claraxbarton !

What happens when a disgraced archer and a renegade mage get into a bar brawl, thwart an assassination attempt and there’s only one bed?

For @yuliares

Happy @winterhawkwonderland

For Dawn, who had the absolutely brilliant idea of mashing together The Old Guard and Castle in the Sky!

I did screenshot traces to get things going, and then modified from there! Andy would make a truly excellent sky pirate, I think.

Drawing for the @theartguard ‘Draw This In Your Style’ challenge featuring Nile! Don’t carry a chainsaw like this unless you, too, are immortal.

So excited to see what everyone shares! Event runs through July 31 ‘23 if you wanna join the fun!

Three people fated to always find another, across multiple lives and worlds? Maybe they deserve a nice soft morning of cuddles. As a treat.

800 > word ficlet on AO3

Look it’s some of the art I made in 2022!

Nice.

2022 Year-end Writing Recap

Total number of completed stories: 20

Total word count: 87,869

Fandoms written in: The Old Guard (9), Good Omens, BBC Sherlock (4), Our Flag Means Death (2), Inception, Marvel/Hawkeye Comics, and the video games Strange Horticulture and Mystia’s Izakaya.

Looking back on this year is kind of wild! I got a tablet so I could do digital drawings, which has been a lot of fun to play with. And even with all the time I spent drawing, I still did a ton of writing!

Most popular: This Cooktop was meant to Cook for You (The Old Guard) with 378 kudos! A cute, feel-good diner AU where chef Nicky makes sure Joe can keep Halal. Also, the amazing @loftec crafted a teeny tiny physical book version of this story!? It’s difficult to express the sheer delight this brings me.

Personal favorite: Finished just in time for Halloween, Our Flag Means (un)Death (Our Flag Means Death) is a very silly Necromancer AU of that pirate show that I suddenly found sailing onto my Tumblr dashboard. I’m glad I decided to hop aboard, because writing this was a hoot.

Notable: The Knit King (The Old Guard) is my longest story yet with 29.5k words! It took joining the WIP Big Bang event to finish it, and even with 12k words going in, it was a struggle. I was lucky enough to have a great beta (thank you xJane!) and to pair with the artist Kingstoken, who made this delightful cover art!

The premise is crack (What if there was a God of Knitting! Make it Nicky!), but I wrote it serious—and it turned into a fantasy story I hope people find cozy and sweet.

Most challenging: I started 2022 mid-way through writing Let The Full Moon In (The Old Guard) for a gift exchange. It is by far the most explicit story I’ve ever written, and working on it was very stressful! It was like shaking up and cracking open a can of really unnecessary internalized embarrassment. I definitely considered scrapping it and going a PG-13 route multiple times. I was very fortunate to have an amazing beta who helped workshop the kink and smooth everything out (keeping track of limbs in sex scenes is so confusing!?), and I’m really glad to have tackled this story and proud of how it turned out!

Looking forward: 

The very tail end of 2022 was kind of awful, and I’m just starting to crawl out of the hole starting with March. It’s been really frustrating to go from regular creative outlets (drawing! writing! etc!) that bring me joy and then find myself too depressed to engage with them. I’ve been reminding myself that my value as a person is not tied to my output of creative works, and that hard times are just times that I am fortunate enough to know are temporary.

In terms of community, I’m not always online consistently (especially not recently), but I have 3 solid Discord groups full of wonderful people, and I’m dipping my toe in the Winterhawk hot tub, which seems like a nice crowd. The start of this year has been rough, but I look forward to everything to come.

Happy CSH Gift Exchange, @vexbatch! For you I bring this art offering of modern Andromaquỳnh, wherein Andy wakes up early to work out, and her girlfriend Quynh prefers to sleep in. Lured by the smell of the most perfect coffee, Quynh will roll out of bed to steal share a morning cup... and maybe tempt Andy back to bed…

Quynh’s tattoos are based on the amazing work of Kyle Statcher (aka Thiefhands), a tattoo artist in Portland, OR.

That’s the happy ending, but it started like this…

Andy, burned out and disillusioned with corporate bullshit, abandons the city and buys a coffee shop in a tourist town. There, she meets the tattoo artist Booker, and they quickly bond over their shared disregard for the world over drinks. But when bright, optimistic Nile moves into town, she convinces Andy to start teaching her kickboxing in the coffee shop basement, and then Booker’s coworker Nicky gets involved, which drags in his boyfriend Joe, and Andy finds herself with… friends? Best not to think about it. Also best not to think about the stunning new florist across the street. What she has is good, and Andy’s long since lost hope for anything more.

Quynh takes one look at the hot, motorcycle-riding woman with biceps for days across the street - pretending not to stare, pretending (poorly) to give a fuck about latte art, pretending there isn’t some kind of fight club in her basement - and decides she needs to sweep her off her feet. Violently and romantically.

I got the sweetest of gifts for Valentine’s Day! <3 There’s art AND a fic, and they’re both amazing.

Valentine by @flawlessassholes

“Andy wanted chocolate,” Quỳnh says by way of greeting. “But I don’t understand. Is there a difference between the red chocolate and the regular kind? Where did the regular kind go?”

Nile’s used to the way red and pink overtake stores immediately following Christmas, but this is the first time since she became immortal—since Quỳnh rejoined them—that they’ve been in North America.

Which means that this is Quỳnh’s first experience with a Hallmark Valentine’s Day. Or maybe even Valentine’s Day in general.

The team gets really into celebrating Valentine's Day. Nile is less than enthused until she gets a sweet surprise.

Created for @yusufs-stew-of-romance and @yuliares for the CSH Winter Exchange! I hope y’all enjoy and happy Valentine’s Day! 💘💝

I’ve stumbled into Winterhawk, and @jedusaur’s delightful fic Snuggly Like the Wolf (AO3), inspired by this amazing comic from @warandpeas, has brought me much joy - I highly recommend you check out both and give them some love!

See below the cut for individual panels. Also posted to AO3.

I am thrilled to have contributed this frame to the @theartguard GIF project!

Check out all full GIF and each of the 14 amazing artists:

Highly recommend Jane’s advent series of short stories! She’s put in a ton of work and creativity, and they are a delight! And this one in particular is such fun. <3

Day 11

Woof and vamp lovers unite! 

It would be one thing, Nicky ponders, to be asked to share a hotel room – and a bed – with a co-worker. It becomes a completely different thing when he considers that he is a vampire and said co-worker is a werewolf.

Moonlight shared is up - with extra artwork by @yuliares​ !

NaNoWriMo 2022

[ID: Screenshot of NaNoWriMo Progess Bar - 39,808 total, with 29,808 written and 10k from art bounties]

This year was my first NaNoWriMo! I didn’t want to completely abandon drawing for writing, so I gave myself a 1k bounty for all art drawn during the month, regardless of quality.

I’m super happy with how it went - it pushed me to just jump all in and commit to just making stuff.

Worked on 15 different stories and finished 7 of them

Learned I can’t not double back and edit as I go

Drew 10 different art pieces

Finally updated my avatar from a random, stolen internet photo

Tapped 10 fandoms (including OFMD, Old Guard, Good Omens, BBC Sherlock, and my first dip into Inception and Marvel!)

Shout out to the CSH NaNo crew for keeping the energy going throughout the month, and the Art Guard for the fantastic monthly prompt of drawing art for fics we’ve enjoyed!

A scene from this beautiful fic by @astrabear, which is so lovely and bittersweet and cathartic, especially as I think about family and age and thankfulness this season. If you can handle the feels, this is a gem.

I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die (The Old Guard) by astraea215

Team as family, post-canon, heartfelt, mortality and grief

I drew this thinking about the sass potential from Lucius after not drowning and THEN I discovered that Mermay is a thing, so that’s something to look forward to in six months. Learning new things every day!

So delighted to have gotten to play with @seanchaidh7 ‘s beautiful Immortal Family tarot series! I LOVE these art pieces - they each have their own unique details, so definitely take a closer look!

I AM LIVING for this 3D rendering @yuliares made for the Immortal Family tarot series I created. LOOK AT THEM ❤️. I am so honoured they are so beautiful. Thank you so much for creating this 🥰