Babblings of a Muppet-Loving Freak

This year I wrote 27 fics or chapters total, several crossovers, one triple crossover. That's more than last year's total of 22 but nowhere near 2022 bizarre 87.

Fandoms
Marvel (including the series Loki) 20
Harry Potter 7
Lord of the Rings 1
Wuthering Heights 1
The Tempest 1
Midsummer Night's Dream 1

February
The Most Important Meal of the Day - Frostiron - Loki, sent to Earth to clean up his mess, is begrudgingly working with his brother and the rest of the Avengers and making every effort to annoy them as much as possible. So why has he started leaving Tony breakfast in his lab every morning?

March
Visiting Time's End - mentions of Lokius - I am not letting them leave him out there alone for eternity, damn it!

April
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 1 - Marvel, in Team Bonding at Tony's Place - As a Christmas present, Peter received an invitation from Frigga to visit Asgard. However, nothing in Peter's life ever goes quite according to plan.
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 2
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 3
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 4
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 5

May
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 6
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 7
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 8
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 9

June
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 10
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 11
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 12
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 13

July
A Traitor in the House of Odin Chapter 14
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Pony - Marvel, Lord of the Rings, and Wuthering Heights - When one of Gandalf's spells calls out to Loki, he intervenes on behalf of Sam's friend, Bill the pony. Now he just needs to find a safe spot to board him. (I have threatened to write this story for years.)
Les pensées mélancoliques - Harry Potter - Après la fin de la guerre, Fleur regarde la mer et se laisse réfléchir. (My first fic in French)
Boring Can Be Sexy - Marvel, Sifki - Thor and Loki have been dispatched as ambassadors to a world noted for its mind-numbing levels of boredom, with Sif and Volstagg as their bodyguards. Loki decides to liven things up with a little bet. Written for Sifki week.

August
Shadowed Lives: Year One Chap. 24 - Harry Potter, pre-relationship Dramione - Draco Malfoy, like any wizarding boy about to start his first year at Hogwarts, was excited and nervous, wondering what the future will hold for him. He ends up learning far more than he ever could have guessed, changing his life forever.
Shadowed Lives: Year One Chap. 25
Shadowed Lives: Year One Chap. 26
Shadowed Lives: Year One Chap. 27

September
Shadowed Lives: Year One Chap. 28
Shadowed Lives: Year One Chap. 29 - And so Draco's first year at Hogwarts ends. I started it in 2008. Just happy it's actually complete.

December
See You Later . . . - Marvel, Loki series reference - Sif has just returned from a mission and is exhausted when Loki shows up at her door with a highly unusual problem.
Mortal Immortality - The Tempest, Midsummer Night's Dream - Ariel decides it is time to tell his tale of the island, the witch, the wizard, and his own folly.

I hit a wall and hit it hard in September, or really in August. I had written Shadowed Lives in a burst earlier and then posted it bit by bit, but any inspiration I had completely dried up. I couldn't write anything until Yuletide and Mischief & Mistletoe came around, and even then I had a hard time of it. I'm hoping that's not so much a problem this year.

I did like finishing writing something completely before I started posting it by chapter. I'm also beyond thrilled to have finished Shadowed Lives (not that anybody was still reading it, but I feel better). I may or may not write year two, but if I do, I'm finishing it before I start posting it.

I do have some ideas bouncing around my head: Marvel, four other pieces of Worlds of Chaos including possibly a fairly long one again, several crossovers, etc. My problem is a complete lack of time, getting motivated, and exhaustion. But I miss writing more.

Okay. This year has been highly unusual. Like, off the charts. Not only is this the first time in a long time that I had no dead spots, I also completed several multi-chapter works, participated in two ficathons and pinch hit in one of them, and did an entire Advent calendar from Dec. 1-25 without missing a day (I did pull up "Sleeping Loony," which I wrote a long time ago but never posted to AO3 before, to fill in some spaces).

The upshot is I wrote ::drumroll:: 87 fics (not including one post on here on my head canon of Loki, but charting chapters of works separately). I have never written anywhere close to that in a year before. In 2009 I wrote 44, and 2008 was 40. Those were the next two highest, and I was double that. Yikes.

( And they are... )

So, what changed? I'm honestly not sure. I think letting myself play with new fandoms helped. Three of these were for ficathons. Two others were inspired by other works (and "Sunset and Sunrise" spawned a fic by someone else, the first time that's happened that I know of other than one person using the format of MFTAM for a different fandom). I did comedy, angst, parody, romance, and sort of let things be flexible rather than rigid. I have more ideas that I can go back too, which I'm trying to remember to write down.

I also found I like to finish an entire multi-part fic before I start posting it. I might go through and edit it as I post, but I like the idea that it's basically done before I put it out there. I did that with "Hearts and Lies," "Incomplete Erasure," and "Apples and Eternal Love." I did it the other way with "Game Night" and "Christmas Special Night." Both can work, but those are more free-form rather than plotty, similar to MFTAM.

I've also come to the conclusion FF.net is just this side of dead, but in a weird way. People do read there, but comments are really sparse. AO3 does have kudos (though only 1 per fic, regardless of number of chapters), so that helps some, but it does seem like people don't do feedback much anymore. I tend to think Tumblr's format had something to do with this.

On the whole, it's been a heck of a year fic-wise. This one went pretty well.

ETA: Oh, and also, since he seems to be my muse at the moment, here's the not-really-a-fic, Weird Headcanons for Loki.

In 2019, I had 7 fics, which was pretty bad. This year I pulled 9, 7 of which were written in December. A word about this.

My job went insane in 2020. At a conservative estimate, my workload tripled. When I wasn't taking training, working, or handling computer problems, I was dealing with lockdown in other ways. Once my time freed up a little in December, I was stunned that I suddenly wrote rather a lot, though mostly in Yuletide-based fandoms I had never touched before. Here's 2020.

The Nightin(What Way Is This Logical?)gale - Harry Potter - Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series

Fortune's Fool - Romeo and Juliet - Tybalt fic

Once upon a Time - Thomas Kinkaid's "Christmas Cottage" (painting) - horror fic; no seriously

The Race Goes On - Ben-Hur (1959 film) - Messalah fic

Kitty Kisses: A Sestina in Praise of Courtly Cat Love - The Kiss (painting) - Inna Ruda

The Obvious Secret - Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - post-movie fic

The Women Speak - The Yellow Wallpaper - poetry

A House for the Mouse - Ladyhawke - post-film Philippe Christmas fic

Janice's Morning - The Muppet Show - Janice and Animal friendship fic

ETA: I just realized this is the only time every fic I've written in a year has been in a separate fandom. Huh.

This was a weird year for me as far as writing fic goes.

( Very odd spacing )

So 12 fics total, half of them written during about six weeks in November/December. A lot of these were fandoms I haven't written before.
Fandom breakdown:
6 Harry Potter (All in Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad except for a crossover)
1 Animaniacs
1 Much Ado about Nothing
1 Sleeping Beauty (1959)
1 The Godfather
1 Mary Poppins
1 The Handmaid's Tale
1 The Pied Piper of Hamelin

Also, a dead spot of four full months, and another month.
Out of nineteen years writing fic, this was on the low side, 5 with totals lower, and one tying back in 2001. It's also significantly less than the 29 I wrote in 2017.

We'll see what 2019 holds.

January and February, nothing

March
Fic: The Bremen Town Musi(ck! Completely sick!)cians - HP, Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series
Harry Potter and Religious Imagery - HP meta

April and May, nothing

June
Fic: The Ant and the Grasshopper(haps your lot need therapy) - HP, Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series

July
Fic: Shadowed Lives, Chapter 19, Cold Heart - HP

August
Fic: Shadowed Lives Chapter 20, Knocking on the Wrong Doors - HP
Fic: Shadowed Lives Chap. 21: Quidditch Confrontation - HP
Fic: Alad(Insane!)din, Night 1 (Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad) - HP, Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series

September
Fic: Alad(Insane!)din, Night 2 - HP, Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series
Fic: The Corporal and the Nurse Parts 1-10 - Downton Abbey
Fic: The Corporal and the Nurse Parts 11-20 - Downton Abbey
Fic: The Corporal and the Nurse Parts 21-30 - Downton Abbey
Fic: The Corporal and the Nurse Parts 31-40 - Downton Abbey

October
Fic: Alad(Insane!)din, Night 3 - HP, Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series
Fic: The Corporal and the Nurse Parts 41-50 - Downton Abbey
Fic: The Corporal and the Nurse Parts 51-60, Final Part - Downton Abbey
Fic: Shadowed Lives Chap. 22 Christmas Holidays Are No Picnic - HP

November, technically nothing, but actually writing Yuletide

December (all Yuletide)
The Other Road, Parts 1-7 - "I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) - Meat Loaf, video
The Other Road, Parts 8-10 - Meat Loaf
Chapter 21: The Time Between - Read All about It
Parallel - The Great Gatsby

So, by the usual reckoning, that would be 20 fics, though a few of them are multiple parts of the same fic. That's the highest total in quite a while, all the way back to 2009. There were two sections of significant dead spots, Jan-Feb and April-May.

Fandoms were
Harry Potter - 10
Downton Abbey - 6
"I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That) - Meat Loaf, video - 2 (10 chapters total)
Read All about It - 1
The Great Gatsby - 1

Overall, not bad.

I'm not going to lie. I had a pathetic year in writing. I wrote a grand total of 5 actual fics.

Coffee Talk - Avengers - Steve and Thor bond over coffee and feeling wildly out of place.

The Twelve Dancin(cerely Madder Than Hares)g Princesses - Harry Potter - Another in the Muggle Fairy Tales Are Mad series, and a fairly long one at that.

The Pied Piper of H(ow Do You People Sleep?)amelin - Harry Potter - A not as long Muggle Fairy Tale.

Then there were my Yuletide fics:

Lions - Godfather - A look at Connie's life, especially her relationship with Sonny.

Do What You Wanna Do - Fraggle Rock - Boober confronts a problem while doing his beloved laundry.

Seriously, that is it. I've got a large portion of another Muggle Fairy Tale done that I actually promised one reader would be done by Christmas, and I'm writing a shorter crossover fic in new territory. If I finish those two, I'll have completed fully a third of my total output for 2013 already. Ugh.