#Spotify Wrapped Universe event 2024

[stunningstarlets]

Victoria Justice - on her way to Spotify's Wrapped Universe Event 05/12/2024 on Instagram & TikTok 07/12/2024

[mittensmorgul]

2023 in Mittens Fic

It's once again time for the annual accounting of things I have written! I think this year's total fic count, at 4, is my lowest ever, but I still managed more words than my two lowest years (peak pandemic, i loathe you still).

For reference, past year end summaries can be found here:

2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | the closest thing I have to a 2015 wrap up post is the lil bit of text at the bottom of 2016′s post… even though my two most popular fics were from 2015 lololol

So I guess my main writing goal for 2024, since I know I will never surpass my 2015 totals, is to just do better than I did in 2023. Here's to more fic!

I managed a Pinefest fic, a fic I started for DCBB but didn't finish by the draft deadline and posted on my own, an annual destielversary fic, and an annual holiday fic. I think that's the bare minimum of what I try to aim for in a year, so even if I'm personally disappointed I didn't get anything else written in addition to that bare minimum, I'm glad I was at least able to hit that goal. Across this year's four posted fics, there's a total of 110,875 words.

Also, again slightly cheating, but since I've mentioned it for the past two years, I'm still making the @spngeorg podcast! In case the millions of words of meta I've written over the years aren't enough, and you want to hear me yell out loud about the show, you can start from the beginning on Spotify or wherever you enjoy podcasts! Or if that sounds daunting, since I just uploaded Episode 138, 7.12 Time After Time, which makes the backlog a lot to catch up on honestly, you're also welcome to just jump in now. Everyone please come yell with me! I swear, if you do start from the beginning, that I get dramatically better at this whole thing as we go on... at least, I think I have. If nothing else, episodes are far more manageably shorter now that I've developed a system. Only took 2 1/2 years, but here we are... :'D

With that business out of the way, let's break down those numbers! Presented in the order they posted:

Dear Western Red Cedar #2409 (63,433 words rated M) Written for @deancaspinefest with gorgeous art by @alexiescherryslurpy, and inspired by this tumblr post that had been plaguing my imagination for several years. It's a two person love triangle with Forest Ranger and secret bestselling author Dean and small town librarian Cas. Heck I want to go reread it just thinking about it now... this is a happy place fic for me.

one working part (40,051 words, rated E) I started this for DCBB, but failed to make the draft deadline, then finished it before posting began anyway... another canon finale fix-it fic, but this one is heavily It's A Wonderful Life flavored and based on a conversation I had with @greywrenn last year. This story picks up at the beginning of 15.19, and then slowly veers more and more from canon, running alongside canon and making rude hand gestures at canon along the way, because they all deserved to have nicer things than canon gave them.

all the time in the world (1,289 words, rated T) This is my annual Destielversary story, short and sweet. It's set immediately after the events of One Working Part, but you don't have to have read that to enjoy this one. Just know Cas is back with Dean, and they've got the rest of their lives stretched out in front of them.

Christmas, Present (6,102 words, rated T) My annual holiday fluff fic, this time set in an AU, since most of my past holiday fic has been canon universe. A Dean/Cas college AU, with Matchmaker Charlie who just wants her friends to be happy already!

And that's my year in fic (unless I manage to post something else in the next 33 hours or so, and lol no that ain't happening...)! As per usual, I've already written more than half of this year's word total for the 2024 Pinefest, which will post in March... or april... heck when is my posting date even... it's coming soon anyway! But it's all written! :'D

Once again, I've still got so many more stories I want to write. Even the To Be Written list has grown again. My idea list long ago surpassed SABLE status, and yet now there's even more on it...

It's five pages, and two thousand words longer than it was last year. this just gets worse every year :'D

But that means I'll never run out of things to write, and that's always something to celebrate!

Thanks again to everyone who’s read, kudos’ed, commented, reblogged, liked, rec’ed, and enjoyed anything I’ve written in the last year. I love you all. <3 See you in 2024!

[mcsquared789]

2023 Wrap-Up

NOTE: This was previously published on AO3.

Now that we're at the end of 2023, I've been reflecting on how much I've done. I've just kind of fully accepted that this is pretty much going to be a multi-year long project, so I thought: hey, why not do a sort-of Spotify Wrapped on my own series? I would critically go through everything I had written this year, as well as tease what I have planned for the next year, and then put it in a seperate chapter in this fic so you could see how much overall progress I've made.

So that's what we're going to do! Before I continue, I will just add (for further context) that the changelog will always be continually updated with progress and additional reports — whereas these will be uploaded once and never touched again. If you're reading this much later, I will not be updating anything else in this chapter other than describing the writing process for what I've written. This means that what I write later on, as well as any promises I make, may not be accurate to what I've said here. Keep that in mind.

IRON MAN | MAY-JUNE

I started this project with the very first fic, Iron Man — but it's a bit misleading to say that I only started working on this in May. Half of it had actually been prewritten out somewhere else on a Word document, back when this was strictly a personal project and I had just wanted to give writing a try. Specifically practicing, by translating a movie to a novel: a reasonable exercise. It was off and on for a while, but when I finally decided to pull the trigger and bring this to AO3... your incredible support encouraged me to finish it. Therefore, here we are.

But what encouraged me to go to AO3 and start this, anyway? Well, I found out about the platform in no small part thanks to ColeyDoesThings — great channel by the way, subscribe to them if you love fanfiction. But I never really got the appeal of fanfiction and what I could do until I found myself inadvertently writing it, and soon realized that I could do whatever I wanted while writing about things I really care about, which really made something click for me and unleashed a creative spark that had been dormant in forgotten and abandoned projects. A winning combination indeed, that also was spurred on by how diabolically shit the MCU had mostly been this year. (By the way, I'm glad that they're cutting back a lot in 2024. We really need a break, guys.)

But spite wasn't enough — back in March, I had no plans to do anything like this. I really decided to commit to this for my own sanity after I watched the best thing they put out so far this year — GOTG3, of course — and was reminded of the best parts of the overall universe. I then decided that I had to rectify the love I had of it with its overall current state. So I sat down with Scrivener and finally was able to finish this fic: now a much easier task after having written and rewritten the first chapters of it over and over, and also having to adhere to some sort of schedule to finish my work instead of continually perfecting it again and again. The deadline and your expectations, allowed me to bring this over the finish line and deliver the ending.

There were a lot of setbacks. I found it difficult to balance the pacing with the events of this fic — because unlike a lot of other stories in this project, I had to condense a series of months into just about 20 chapters. As well, I also really struggled to make the side characters Pepper and Rhodey important in this... because this was really just about Tony, and I wasn't sure how I was going to change things up yet. I did finally manage to expand their roles in the sequel, however.

Overall, it was a good start. And doing the epilogue (the part when Nick Fury teased the wider universe) finally brought into sharp relief the ambition of the project I was about to undertake, and made me really excited about what I would be able to write next, what characters I would be able to bring together, how much I could actually write of what I wanted to see. Although there was a speed bump...

THE INCREDIBLE HULK | JULY-NOVEMBER

Jesus Christ, this took four months? Ugggh.

Okay, so if Iron Man proved my ability to do this... then this fic had to prove I was capable of expanding on things that wasn't there. This and Iron Man 2 were the only movies I hadn't watched prior to doing this, and this was about as drastically different to anything else in the MCU as it could get. Thus, I think I really struggled with writing it, while also figuring out what to do with Bruce Banner and these characters I admittedly didn't know very well — so the streak I was on had clearly vanished, and I fell behind further with each chapter.

(To be fair: I did take a long holiday in September that stopped me from working on this for a while. So really, it took three months. Still inexcusable.)

That's not to say this was terrible, though! On the contrary, it allowed me to distinguish this fic from Iron Man heavily by including body horror, heavy themes and overall a much darker tone. It really set the stage, I think, of the different genres and themes I may be able to write and change up during this project — and that really excites me for the future. If these two series already feel so different from each other, then how different could they be from Thor? Or Captain America? Or Guardians of the Galaxy? In that regard, I cannot wait to find out. This then will also set the tone for the other fics in the Hulk series, which will have to be wholly original.

It also introduced me to Betty and Thaddeus Ross (at least in a more nuanced way from what we saw of him in Civil War), as well as Emil Blonsky. I now have different ideas for what to do with them going forward that I've already established, as well as bringing in other characters from the comics that will join this universe along with them. So next year, I'll hopefully then see if I can make them work in the universe by expanding on from where their stories end, referring to comics and other adaptations to represent them in these fics the best I can. I'm thinking specifically of Samuel Sterns, Nadia Dornova and pre-transformed, non-fourth wall breaking Jennifer Walters. (This will also then set the stage for whether I can do the same with other characters I plan to add later, like Clea Strange.)

Although I have somewhat of a plan now, I will say that if I can guess what the hardest fics will be to work on in the future... it will definitely be the Hulk series, and the repercussions they will bring to New York and the universe itself. But I'll just end this by saying that I'm still really excited for them and what they'll add, and I can't wait to focus on them soon after I finish Phase 1. In fact, I've cheekily teased in Hulk already what Bruce's fate looks like in Phase 2! Let me know if you think you caught it.

NOVEMBER | THE CONSULTANT

I decided to start doing shortfics, because I needed something to switch focus to during longer projects — and where better to start than that one short film that came out in 2010, that focuses on the end of The Incredible Hulk? 

This was my first attempt at a short story, and I feel that it was a good one: but it will probably not fully represent my ability to write them. For one, this will probably be one of the only fics that connects directly to another fic I've already written: others will probably take place in the intervening periods between one fic and another, like Sanctuary. (See the slate.) As well, this features characters that do not have as big of a role to play in this universe — sorry, Coulson fans. I have yet to see what it's like to write one featuring a character that I intend to also star (or co-star) in a novel length fic.

But this fic was really good, I feel, for helping me practice condensing a story into as few words as I can. The length of these shortfics will wildly vary depending on how much I need to go into detail, but for this I was able to tell everything while expanding on it in just under 3k words! Very nice. And as well as continuing to flesh out Coulson, I also was able to establish a bit about Jasper Sitwell in some ways that I am very proud of: as a hint, it just means I feel confident in writing stories that both work for readers who are not familiar with the fandom and those who are. If you know, you know.

DECEMBER—? | IRON MAN: WAR MACHINE

That brings us to my current fic, the sequel to Iron Man! There have been a lot of factors in this that has helped make this such a breeze compared to Hulk, and they all have to do with how I've written it. For one, I've developed of writing chapters long before I publish them — which has made this fic go by very quickly, but has given me time to catch errors and edit sections I'm not super happy with. For another, the amount of different perspectives in this has allowed every chapter in turn to stay fresh! With all their different challenges and considerations for how I have to write the characters: from Tony, to Vanko, to Rhodey, to Pepper... and soon, a bit of another character we have not properly heard from yet.

(I might as well add that this is the first fic where I've added proper flashbacks — and I think they've really worked in helping me explain character motivations and decisions! Expect more of them from Tony and Rhodey in the rest of the fic, especially for a particularly heartbreaking chapter to come soon... yeah, that will not be fun to write.)

Basically, this is the beginning of what I've truly envisioned will come out of this series, and I'm really loving it! Planning and remaining consistent has been a boon for me to be able to finish over half of this fic in just a month, and has made me really confident that I'll be able to finish the rest by the end of January (hopefully). As well, this is a story with a really complicated and non-straightforward plot compared to its predecessor — so I'm so happy that I've been able to find ways to manage all these characters during this really busy period in the timeline of the MCU, along with other stories that are happening around the same as this one. And I hope to recapture that interconnectivity in future fics — especially the Avengers fics, that I predict will be very, very long.

And with the fun I'm having with it, it's also a good sign for how I feel I'll be able to tackle 2024. 7 months have gone by since I started doing this, which is not really a full year... but now that there's a good chance I'll be taking myself through 2024 like this, I feel confident that I will be able to release much more high-quality fics now without losing momentum, on top of balancing out my real-life priorities. With that said, I suppose we should talk about that will look like?

THE FUTURE

Okay, so I only have one goal for this project next year, that will be more complicated than you think: and that's just to finish Phase 1.

I say that flippantly, but I don't know how long that'll take. Not counting the fic I'm in the middle of, I have two new series to start, three more shortfics I'll be doing, one novella that will be mostly original and one big giant fic at the end that I still don't entirely know what will be like, nor how long it'll turn out to be. Those are a lot of concerns that I need to address early on, so I can then get writing — eh?

If I do have a rough outline, I will say that I think January is going to consist of me finishing War Machine, and February will consist of me completing the entirety of Widowmaker. From there, it's just a steady race to complete one fic at a time, at a reasonable pace, so that you get all these characters and I do as much good with them as I can leading up to The Avengers. This will be made more complicated by the return to work outside of this, which I'm absolutely 100% sure will slow things down at some point — so to that end, all I ask is that you understand when I need to step away for a little bit. I will let you know well in advance like I did last year, so I don't experience too much pressure to deliver.

Of course, the crux of becoming an AO3 author with all these promises I'm making is that I will be definitely getting a lot more attention, and a lot more readers who will be waiting for updates — and that thought both excites and warms me greatly, but also terrifies me a little! Still, if you are reading this and are well invested at this point, you have my eternal gratitude for sticking around and seeing what I'll do next. I started this because I wanted to do it and make these fics happen, but as time moves us further from what spurred me on to do this originally... I no longer just do it because I want to, but also because I know there will be more of you who like, share and engage with my work, and will continue to do so. That is what keeps me going.

So yeah... I'm not gonna stop any time soon. There will be days where it will feel harder to write than others, but every day I get in the chair and get lost in what I'm doing brings me closer to what I'm capable of. Thank you all once again for supporting me this year and brightening up my 2023, and I hope you all love what I'm doing next year! I hope I like it too. *u*

If you have any questions you want to ask about how things went this year that I didn't think of to put here, or have any suggestions for the next year... ask me. I'll answer them to the best of my ability — consider it a cost beneficial transaction that will help the both of us!

And of course, a Happy New Year to you all as well! I'll see you in 2024.

— (M)

[stunningstarlets]

Victoria Justice - on her way to Spotify's Wrapped Universe Event 05/12/2024 on Instagram & TikTok 07/12/2024

[stunningstarlets]

Victoria Justice - at Spotify's Wrapped Universe Event 05/12/2024 on Instagram 07/12/2024