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kestrelofinkMy 2025 writing Wrapped looks... well...
Preamble
In truth, 2025 was an odd writing year for me. Between my RPF and non-RPF ao3 accounts, ao3 stats says that this is the year with fewest publications since 2017—I wasn't even a fully realised human back then—and one of the oddest too.
Prior to this, I wrote exclusively for LOONA, and TWICE when called to do so by a ficfest prompt. All of my inspiration to write for LOONA kind of dried up, with my last two fics both being ficfest entries, and both in the first yearly quarter. In truth, the last fic that came from my mind wholly made for the LOONA girls was probably La Cuna from September of 2024. It's been a slow process of falling out of love with LOONA, not so much because of anything LOONA has done so much as what they haven't—it's been a long time since the girls have all been in the same spot, and with the varying success and schedules of the groups and girls, it just... the old content isn't enough to hold me anymore.
And so my writing wallowed. The drought has honestly been kind of terrible for my writing morale, and I picked up a fair amount of rust in my writing. The craftsmanship I took so much pride in gathered dust and my attempts to brush it off came off clunky, unpracticed, unsatisfying.
It's tempting to say that getting into tripleS reignited my writing. But that's not really true.
What reignited my desire to write was reading again. In... June I read RF Kuang's Babel, September I read the sci-fi seminal work Neuromancer, October I read Kuang's Katabasis, and in November I reread the Traitor Baru Cormorant, one of my favourite 'gotcha' plots of all time. As of today, I have Watership Down sitting on my desk waiting for me to stop reading himejoshi fanfiction about kpop idols of all possibilities, and start reading it.
To be clear, I never stopped reading fanfiction through this period. This year was marked by a remarkable consumption of fanfiction of all kinds, primarily within season 2 of Arcane, Kpop Demon Hunters, and the University of Connecticut's Women's Basketball Team (for which I reignited a truly insane obsession over—I've been a fan since 2014 when Caroline Doty was a senior, do NOT come at me with bandwagon fan accusations—just in time for their national championship campaign). And there was no shortage of good fics.
And this is not a knock on fanfiction, but in my instance, it was...
I needed other works to inspire me to write again. I needed something that didn't rely on pre-established characterisations to remember how good it feels to get lost in a character's own self-spiraling. I needed plot that did novel and new things, that subverted tropes and expectations and treated me as a critical reader with my own reading agency and a desire to engage with the material.
Again, it's not that fanfiction didn't do that.
It's that fanfiction wasn't enough to teach me to be a better writer and bring my writing back to life from its recursive shell of itself.
And I probably needed a new cast of characters to learn and write about too. Enter: tripleS.
Well done to my partner and my friends for getting me into them. I never swore I wouldn't, but I certainly didn't make any attempts to learn until I got desperate. And listen, Kotone gets a lot of credit here for being the reason I tried them at all, but as Haerin (author of the official tripleS fanfiction) posted:
So, you know, at least that's a universal experience writing for them I guess. Let's get to the stuff you clicked on this read more to actually see though:
The Recap
Kingdom Lights (LOONA) for eelegy
A Fandom Trumps Hate ficfest entry, I got a chance to write one of my favourite genres of fic of all time: sports. If you know me, you know I'm a jock who spends like, somewhere between 3-8 hours in the gym a week, plus at least one game of The In-Season Sport usually on the weekends. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I find sport quite challenging to write about in fiction. I think readers don't often understand that so much of sport is automatic; I'm rarely processing what's going on out loud in my head, I'm seeing and I'm reacting because that's the only way to be fast enough to keep up and be competitive in the game. And realistically, the adrenaline goes so hard I often am missing chunks of the game from my memory because I'm focused on the now, not remembering it for later. And so for me, writing sport is a whole lot of white noise and things vaguely happening; it's much easier to write spectatorship.
And so when I got eelegy's prompt, I knew that to write a sports-centric fic, I had to do something interesting with the perspective to tell the story of what's happening on the field without getting lost in my own athlete brain—especially when I don't play lacrosse despite my deep deep love for it—and tell the actual story instead.
Hence, mixing in my new favourite way to tell a story: mixed media/formatting. It's not the first time I've done something like this (see: Deus Ex, We Don't Need to Put a Label on It Do We Now), but this might be one of the better integrations and effective uses of it in storytelling I've done.
I did enjoy writing this fic quite a bit, even if the posting time was squarely because I needed to make the deadline because I have a bad habit of editing forever and never loving the final product...
Hero's Journey (LOONA) for shyshyshiloh
Which is sort of what this fic fell victim to. Written for Moonlight Party 2024, I got a prompt for small towns and sports, which sort of carries a bit of a theme here. My big challenge with this one was that my brain was in a writing rut—this was pre- reading books and being inspired, and pre- discovering tripleS, so I'm deep in the I Have No Inspiration phase—and had a really hard time churning out anything I was even vaguely impressed by here.
I ended up being inspired by a youtube video on Cyberpunk 2077's Night City and why it's an excellent design, actually, and that's sort of how we got the young hero preparing herself to enter Bastion City, a place that will chew you up and spit you back out once you're all juiced out.
I liked the idea of 2jin being historically tied to each other and severed by the ruthlessness of Bastion City, and how the city has two faces which smile differently on you.
In many ways, this fic also sort of signaled my end of really writing dedicated works for LOONA, outside of ficfests and prompts from friends. I'd done my time in Bastion City, and all the shine had sort of rubbed off, it was time to look for something new. I wouldn't say I ever ended up like Hyunjin, jaded and killjoy in that way, but it was time. I'll never forget Bastion City, even though it'll probably forget me. That's okay, that's how these things go.
En Stasis (tripleS)
Hey, want to take a guess which tripleS pairing grabbed me by my throat and refused to let go?
Jjinchinz (38) is sort of lab-made to make me go cuckoo-bananas. Childhood friends who become most unabashedly themselves around each other, the Performance they put on with their public-facing idol selves and their really interesting contrasts in disposition and gender presentation, the Jealousy, ah it's all so good.
This is easily the fic I'm most proud of this year. It's representative of about a month of studying the girls before I figured them out enough to write something meaningful, as well as a turning point into finding writing fun again. It certainly didn't come as smoothly as some of the fics of yesteryear, but I'll take it. Especially since it brought me joy again as a writer.
I Just Think It's So Interesting that Yubin's made a fuss about Jiwoo being too greasy with her oppa-virus moment and then immediately drops a veritable megacache of fuckboy-esque material, but never claims the 'oppa' title for herself. Gong Yubin, please stop gatekeeping your girl, and please never stop performing your Gender!
Anyways. Kpop girls and gender has always been fun, but the variety of presentation within tripleS is so so so good.
And if I may make a recommendation: metronome by haorua is an excellent fic on tripleS gender that digs into the Jiyeon and Sohyun contrasts and is DELICIOUS.
Also while I'm here, please watch this video of Jiwoo being adorable and just like me (pissed at ads) but also not like me at all (doesn't have AdBlocker).
And don't mistake me as being a Jiwoo akgae, because I'm also obsessed with this silly otter
Control [privately released] (LOONA, tripleS) for [anonymous]
This fic was interesting to write in part because it required me to dig deep into the headspace of Kotone, someone I didn't understand that well and I spent a lot of time trying to track down core ideals and her raison d'etre to drive this fic. I'm extremely taken by her earnestness and dedication to what she does, it's clear she loves being an idol and it's her #1 priority, and that has both benefited her, and clearly taken its toll. That drive to be excellent is so compelling, as is the utter gut punch of realising that your everything isn't enough, makes for some really good character work. Writing this wasn't easy, but I did very much enjoy the challenge of trying something new.
Note to self though, next time maybe don't delay writing until 5 days before the deadline just because you're sure you have an idea of what to write and surely the deadline isn't that close! Famous last words.
Tiger Teeth (tripleS) for eelegy
This fic really rides the line of crack-fic, I think. This came from a random prompt eelegy mentioned wanting to have someone write. Little did he know, I'm a little freak when it comes to dental health and hygiene, AND I've gotten dental imprints taken multiple times in multiple ways (including a very phallic-looking 3d printer wand inserted in my mouth). Really goes to show you should just air your freak out because someone there might just match it.
Kaede remains a hard character for my brain to wrap itself around, despite my limitless adoration for her. She's interesting in that she clearly has an On phase when she's an idol, verses who she is when the cameras are off. That in itself is whatever, but she's interesting in that she has directly acknowledged this fact on multiple occasions, and her groupmates openly tease her about it too. Kae-chan vs Yamada-kun my beloved...
The Yooyeon casting was just sort of. Who is pretty and someone I'd trust as a dentist?
And just the second qualifier alone is sort of enough to narrow down to Yooyeon, who I am convinced could decide to pursue the culinary arts under a different name the moment her contract expires, and she would make a solid name for herself out of sheer willpower. At this point, being an idol is a sidequest in her life story and I really can't say enough how much I love that for her.
Mostly to say: I'd trust Yooyeon to not breathe in the carcinogenic-if-inhaled alginate powder, and to get a decent enough impression of my teeth so as to save my jaw from being dislocated a second time; once is more than enough.
Takeaways
I'm not good at resolutions, if I'm being honest. I think the last time I really made a resolution, it was 2024, I think to do a single pull-up... and I made it just in the nick of time. I haven't done it since—the pressure of failure even if it's for an audience of one is hard to reckon with and probably is something I should go to therapy about—and so resolutions are kind of a moot thing for me.
What I am good at, is striving towards self-improvement, because if I'm not getting better all the time What Is The Point (future therapist, PLEASE do not read this page I'm begging you spare me my dignity).
And so I think these are my takeaways from writing in 2025:
- I write badly on a timeline. The best, most satisfying fic ideas come naturally to me, and sometimes that takes a million years. That doesn't make ficfests unfun, just a different challenge, and I shouldn't expect the same level of perfection as in a non-timelined fic that I post where I can edit into oblivion.
- I need to read in order to write. I need new ideas, I need character studies that show me something new, I need novel material. And sometimes fanfiction doesn't cut it. It's going to be challenging now that I'm also using my daily transit time to pick up a language for the Love Of The Game, but I do want to read a book every two months or so.
- Dreamwidth is actually a fairly fun place to put down stream of consciousness writing, and I think any way to engage with writers again is a good thing. It's too easy (and I'm guilty of this too) to treat writers and fics as a commodity instead of a shared idea that requires engagement to maintain. Be too distanced, and you'll see what happened to LOONA happen to fic writers. I'm going to make it a personal goal to engage with my favourite writers more often too. Especially in the tripleS fic space where I'm down to make some new friends.
Conclusion
Did you know that I'm known for being really verbose and long-winded? I sure hope you do by now, this stream of consciousness post is crazy long, and took two hours to write, oops.
I hope you have a good holiday, and the new year brings you plenty of joy. And if you too are a writer, may your words come freely and the joy from creation even freer.
Preamble
In truth, 2025 was an odd writing year for me. Between my RPF and non-RPF ao3 accounts, ao3 stats says that this is the year with fewest publications since 2017—I wasn't even a fully realised human back then—and one of the oddest too.
Prior to this, I wrote exclusively for LOONA, and TWICE when called to do so by a ficfest prompt. All of my inspiration to write for LOONA kind of dried up, with my last two fics both being ficfest entries, and both in the first yearly quarter. In truth, the last fic that came from my mind wholly made for the LOONA girls was probably La Cuna from September of 2024. It's been a slow process of falling out of love with LOONA, not so much because of anything LOONA has done so much as what they haven't—it's been a long time since the girls have all been in the same spot, and with the varying success and schedules of the groups and girls, it just... the old content isn't enough to hold me anymore.
And so my writing wallowed. The drought has honestly been kind of terrible for my writing morale, and I picked up a fair amount of rust in my writing. The craftsmanship I took so much pride in gathered dust and my attempts to brush it off came off clunky, unpracticed, unsatisfying.
It's tempting to say that getting into tripleS reignited my writing. But that's not really true.
What reignited my desire to write was reading again. In... June I read RF Kuang's Babel, September I read the sci-fi seminal work Neuromancer, October I read Kuang's Katabasis, and in November I reread the Traitor Baru Cormorant, one of my favourite 'gotcha' plots of all time. As of today, I have Watership Down sitting on my desk waiting for me to stop reading himejoshi fanfiction about kpop idols of all possibilities, and start reading it.
To be clear, I never stopped reading fanfiction through this period. This year was marked by a remarkable consumption of fanfiction of all kinds, primarily within season 2 of Arcane, Kpop Demon Hunters, and the University of Connecticut's Women's Basketball Team (for which I reignited a truly insane obsession over—I've been a fan since 2014 when Caroline Doty was a senior, do NOT come at me with bandwagon fan accusations—just in time for their national championship campaign). And there was no shortage of good fics.
And this is not a knock on fanfiction, but in my instance, it was...
I needed other works to inspire me to write again. I needed something that didn't rely on pre-established characterisations to remember how good it feels to get lost in a character's own self-spiraling. I needed plot that did novel and new things, that subverted tropes and expectations and treated me as a critical reader with my own reading agency and a desire to engage with the material.
Again, it's not that fanfiction didn't do that.
It's that fanfiction wasn't enough to teach me to be a better writer and bring my writing back to life from its recursive shell of itself.
And I probably needed a new cast of characters to learn and write about too. Enter: tripleS.
Well done to my partner and my friends for getting me into them. I never swore I wouldn't, but I certainly didn't make any attempts to learn until I got desperate. And listen, Kotone gets a lot of credit here for being the reason I tried them at all, but as Haerin (author of the official tripleS fanfiction) posted:
So, you know, at least that's a universal experience writing for them I guess. Let's get to the stuff you clicked on this read more to actually see though:
The Recap
Kingdom Lights (LOONA) for eelegy
A Fandom Trumps Hate ficfest entry, I got a chance to write one of my favourite genres of fic of all time: sports. If you know me, you know I'm a jock who spends like, somewhere between 3-8 hours in the gym a week, plus at least one game of The In-Season Sport usually on the weekends. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, I find sport quite challenging to write about in fiction. I think readers don't often understand that so much of sport is automatic; I'm rarely processing what's going on out loud in my head, I'm seeing and I'm reacting because that's the only way to be fast enough to keep up and be competitive in the game. And realistically, the adrenaline goes so hard I often am missing chunks of the game from my memory because I'm focused on the now, not remembering it for later. And so for me, writing sport is a whole lot of white noise and things vaguely happening; it's much easier to write spectatorship.
And so when I got eelegy's prompt, I knew that to write a sports-centric fic, I had to do something interesting with the perspective to tell the story of what's happening on the field without getting lost in my own athlete brain—especially when I don't play lacrosse despite my deep deep love for it—and tell the actual story instead.
Hence, mixing in my new favourite way to tell a story: mixed media/formatting. It's not the first time I've done something like this (see: Deus Ex, We Don't Need to Put a Label on It Do We Now), but this might be one of the better integrations and effective uses of it in storytelling I've done.
I did enjoy writing this fic quite a bit, even if the posting time was squarely because I needed to make the deadline because I have a bad habit of editing forever and never loving the final product...
Hero's Journey (LOONA) for shyshyshiloh
Which is sort of what this fic fell victim to. Written for Moonlight Party 2024, I got a prompt for small towns and sports, which sort of carries a bit of a theme here. My big challenge with this one was that my brain was in a writing rut—this was pre- reading books and being inspired, and pre- discovering tripleS, so I'm deep in the I Have No Inspiration phase—and had a really hard time churning out anything I was even vaguely impressed by here.
I ended up being inspired by a youtube video on Cyberpunk 2077's Night City and why it's an excellent design, actually, and that's sort of how we got the young hero preparing herself to enter Bastion City, a place that will chew you up and spit you back out once you're all juiced out.
I liked the idea of 2jin being historically tied to each other and severed by the ruthlessness of Bastion City, and how the city has two faces which smile differently on you.
In many ways, this fic also sort of signaled my end of really writing dedicated works for LOONA, outside of ficfests and prompts from friends. I'd done my time in Bastion City, and all the shine had sort of rubbed off, it was time to look for something new. I wouldn't say I ever ended up like Hyunjin, jaded and killjoy in that way, but it was time. I'll never forget Bastion City, even though it'll probably forget me. That's okay, that's how these things go.
En Stasis (tripleS)
Hey, want to take a guess which tripleS pairing grabbed me by my throat and refused to let go?
Jjinchinz (38) is sort of lab-made to make me go cuckoo-bananas. Childhood friends who become most unabashedly themselves around each other, the Performance they put on with their public-facing idol selves and their really interesting contrasts in disposition and gender presentation, the Jealousy, ah it's all so good.
This is easily the fic I'm most proud of this year. It's representative of about a month of studying the girls before I figured them out enough to write something meaningful, as well as a turning point into finding writing fun again. It certainly didn't come as smoothly as some of the fics of yesteryear, but I'll take it. Especially since it brought me joy again as a writer.
I Just Think It's So Interesting that Yubin's made a fuss about Jiwoo being too greasy with her oppa-virus moment and then immediately drops a veritable megacache of fuckboy-esque material, but never claims the 'oppa' title for herself. Gong Yubin, please stop gatekeeping your girl, and please never stop performing your Gender!
Anyways. Kpop girls and gender has always been fun, but the variety of presentation within tripleS is so so so good.
And if I may make a recommendation: metronome by haorua is an excellent fic on tripleS gender that digs into the Jiyeon and Sohyun contrasts and is DELICIOUS.
Also while I'm here, please watch this video of Jiwoo being adorable and just like me (pissed at ads) but also not like me at all (doesn't have AdBlocker).
And don't mistake me as being a Jiwoo akgae, because I'm also obsessed with this silly otter
Control [privately released] (LOONA, tripleS) for [anonymous]
This fic was interesting to write in part because it required me to dig deep into the headspace of Kotone, someone I didn't understand that well and I spent a lot of time trying to track down core ideals and her raison d'etre to drive this fic. I'm extremely taken by her earnestness and dedication to what she does, it's clear she loves being an idol and it's her #1 priority, and that has both benefited her, and clearly taken its toll. That drive to be excellent is so compelling, as is the utter gut punch of realising that your everything isn't enough, makes for some really good character work. Writing this wasn't easy, but I did very much enjoy the challenge of trying something new.
Note to self though, next time maybe don't delay writing until 5 days before the deadline just because you're sure you have an idea of what to write and surely the deadline isn't that close! Famous last words.
Tiger Teeth (tripleS) for eelegy
This fic really rides the line of crack-fic, I think. This came from a random prompt eelegy mentioned wanting to have someone write. Little did he know, I'm a little freak when it comes to dental health and hygiene, AND I've gotten dental imprints taken multiple times in multiple ways (including a very phallic-looking 3d printer wand inserted in my mouth). Really goes to show you should just air your freak out because someone there might just match it.
Kaede remains a hard character for my brain to wrap itself around, despite my limitless adoration for her. She's interesting in that she clearly has an On phase when she's an idol, verses who she is when the cameras are off. That in itself is whatever, but she's interesting in that she has directly acknowledged this fact on multiple occasions, and her groupmates openly tease her about it too. Kae-chan vs Yamada-kun my beloved...
The Yooyeon casting was just sort of. Who is pretty and someone I'd trust as a dentist?
And just the second qualifier alone is sort of enough to narrow down to Yooyeon, who I am convinced could decide to pursue the culinary arts under a different name the moment her contract expires, and she would make a solid name for herself out of sheer willpower. At this point, being an idol is a sidequest in her life story and I really can't say enough how much I love that for her.
Mostly to say: I'd trust Yooyeon to not breathe in the carcinogenic-if-inhaled alginate powder, and to get a decent enough impression of my teeth so as to save my jaw from being dislocated a second time; once is more than enough.
Takeaways
I'm not good at resolutions, if I'm being honest. I think the last time I really made a resolution, it was 2024, I think to do a single pull-up... and I made it just in the nick of time. I haven't done it since—the pressure of failure even if it's for an audience of one is hard to reckon with and probably is something I should go to therapy about—and so resolutions are kind of a moot thing for me.
What I am good at, is striving towards self-improvement, because if I'm not getting better all the time What Is The Point (future therapist, PLEASE do not read this page I'm begging you spare me my dignity).
And so I think these are my takeaways from writing in 2025:
- I write badly on a timeline. The best, most satisfying fic ideas come naturally to me, and sometimes that takes a million years. That doesn't make ficfests unfun, just a different challenge, and I shouldn't expect the same level of perfection as in a non-timelined fic that I post where I can edit into oblivion.
- I need to read in order to write. I need new ideas, I need character studies that show me something new, I need novel material. And sometimes fanfiction doesn't cut it. It's going to be challenging now that I'm also using my daily transit time to pick up a language for the Love Of The Game, but I do want to read a book every two months or so.
- Dreamwidth is actually a fairly fun place to put down stream of consciousness writing, and I think any way to engage with writers again is a good thing. It's too easy (and I'm guilty of this too) to treat writers and fics as a commodity instead of a shared idea that requires engagement to maintain. Be too distanced, and you'll see what happened to LOONA happen to fic writers. I'm going to make it a personal goal to engage with my favourite writers more often too. Especially in the tripleS fic space where I'm down to make some new friends.
Conclusion
Did you know that I'm known for being really verbose and long-winded? I sure hope you do by now, this stream of consciousness post is crazy long, and took two hours to write, oops.
I hope you have a good holiday, and the new year brings you plenty of joy. And if you too are a writer, may your words come freely and the joy from creation even freer.
