Bit of looking back
Dec. 31st, 2014 10:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
loki_of_sassgaardLike several other people, despite the general crapness of 2014, I did have a pretty good year of it fandom and writing wise. Unfortunately, the general crapness did affect some of my fandom participation, and there was a period of time where I had almost zero creative output for several months. But even so, I wound up doing better than expected.
I made a personal pledge to write 365,000 words for the year. I managed 246,662 , after getting some serious haul on the last few days, and double-checking my junk folder and finding a few things I forgot to count. I wrote (and posted) 15 stories total, three of which for exchanges (with many more half-started projects written and unposted). I signed up for four exchanges, and did artwork for one. I intended to participate in a few more, and even had to drop out of modding a few unexpectedly, which is something I still regret.
This year was also a fairly high output year for artwork. Unusually high, actually. I'm not the sort of artist who can just sketch something out and be happy with it, so my output is always bleak. This year, I completed ten pieces, and branched into acrylic paint as a primary medium.
Compared to 2013, and despite everything, I somehow managed this year to double the amount of fics posted, and triple my word count. I also finished eight more pieces of artwork over 2013.
Three of my fics are still in WIP purgatory, though one is more or less complete, and just needs a good thrashing about with the editing stick before I post the remaining four chapters. The other two are going to remain in WIP purgatory forever, at the rate they keep going. For anybody who just can't wait, or mostly for me, because I want to at least put it down somewhere, here are my plans for these three fics:
Tarbell Course in Magic, vol 1
This is one of the stranger fics I think I've ever written. It's a mundane AU of a superhero canon where the villain winds up being more evil in this than he is in any other more-or-less-canon-compliant fic I've ever written for this fandom. Loki operates on pure spite and malice in this, with no care for collateral damage in the people he hurts in his path to hurt Thor.
Suffice to say, Darcy figures him out. He's a little too cocky, and she's smarter than he gives her credit for. Without Darcy, Loki's plans aren't exactly dead in the water, but he winds up back to square one, where he's too busy trying to keep his show to harass Thor. They do eventually meet up, where we get a pretty good barroom brawl between the two of them, before we learn Thor's side of the story, and get insight on what Loki's problem is. I am sorry to say it, but Darcy/Loki isn't endgame, unless you tilt your head and squint. Loki's done too much to keep her trust, and letting her "get the girl" at the end would be entirely too uncomfortable. Villains don't get the girl, and Loki is one hell of a villain in this. They do, however, when they're very lucky and willing to admit that they've been an asshole, get some level of reconciliation, and their assistant back.
As for whether Thor/Jane is endgame, it's entirely open. I leave it to the reader to decide. Thor doesn't deserve Jane either, but he's also not the complete sleaze Loki is, so it seems slightly more likely to happen down the road.
Despite the title, there will not be a sequel. The title itself is a joke, because as Darcy stated in an earlier chapter, most people only ever buy the first volume and never advance further.
How to Train Your Norse Trickster God
Between Tarbell and this one, I've got evil, asshole Loki coming out my ears at this point. There is nothing friendly about this Loki, but at least it can be said that he's (mostly) acting out of self-preservation, than any need to destroy someone for some made up reason. But he's definitely not nice. He takes advantage of Darcy in every way, and has an ever-growing body count as they make their way to Tórshavn.
The posting break I took over Christmas was timed to this fic. Crashing the car starts the beginning of a new direction their relationship is taking, in which Darcy falls straight down the Stockholm rabbit hole, with little hope to return. Next chapter basically places her in a fuck or die scenario, which only further damages her state of mind. She becomes so codependent on Loki, going beyond making excuses for his abuse to seeing it a necessary function to their survival. Their itinerary takes them up to Churchill, MB, to Baffin Island, Greenland, and Iceland, before getting to the Faroes (and not, as Darcy keeps saying, Norway). They still have a very long way to go, and the only way for Darcy to survive this trip is to just start letting Loki get his way.
Like Tarbell, Darcy/Loki is not endgame. This story bridges the gap between Thor and the Avengers, giving Loki a personal reason to bring his war to Midgard. Once they reach Tórshavn, he leaves Darcy for dead and makes his escape. She's picked up by SHIELD and taken back home, though perhaps not to be treated as well as she could be. But this is SHIELD, the agency which so spectacularly drops the ball with Selvig as well, so what she gets from them would be about what you might expect.
There may be a sequel for this one. I have parts of one sort of written out, but it has no real plot or direction.
Midgard Legends
The only Loki who's actually likeable. Too bad his life kind of sucks the most right now.
I have three deaths planned for this fic. Four, going by military records, but the last one doesn't even count since we never see it. Steve, Bucky, Howlett, and Loki are all declared KIA. They all get better. Loki doesn't even find out he's been declared KIA until much later down the road, so it's not even important now.
As the boys make their way through Norway, we start to get a little bit more development for the mystery that is Loki. As some people are beginning to notice in the comments, Loki is not what he seems. There's something else going on with him, and not even Odin knows the true extent of things. I've had this planned since the very beginning, and part of the set-up has been contradicted by TDW, while the rest was miraculously made canon. This one's big enough that I do want to put it in text, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone still trying to puzzle it out. [Spoiler: So, with the Dark Elves being super fair in the movie, it may become a bit less apparent that Loki is himself half Dark Elf. (If you're a Dark Elf, why are you white?) Not even Odin can unravel his spells, and Eir noted way back a long time ago that Loki is older than Thor, and possibly not even aging properly. Were he full-blooded Frost Giant, his horns would have cut around the time he was about 16/17. At the beginning of Those Who Hunt Monsters, Thor even mentioned that all the Dark Elves were killed in the war, so when Odin said the same thing in TDW, I could have flown to the moon. But, just like in the movie, that's not as true as Odin thinks it is. They're still out there somewhere, and "scrawny" little Loki is one of them. Of course, for this to work, the Dark Elves will definitely be of comics persuasion, because otherwise the rest of my world building just kind of fell right out the window.]
This is something that Loki doesn't even find out in this story, but the next one. Until then, he just gets to puzzle over unexpected changes as he basically goes through a late puberty on the battlefield. Remember when Bucky said that Loki isn't even old enough to shave? Yeah, that's a thing that happens.
Also, the near-ending of this fic has changed about eight times. The basics are still all more or less the same, but what happens to Loki when they reach the well is something I'm still not sure about. I need him to receive a prophecy relating to Baldur, but it's taken me ages to figure out how best to frame it. Originally, he was only allowed to return to Asgard three times before Bad Things happen, but that limits both my and Loki's freedom between the end of this fic and when he returns to Midgard. Especially since I have a story planned between the two where he and Thor go back to Jötunheimr. So that's out. I've got a few ideas floating around, which basically all amount to the same thing: once Loki goes back to Midgard during the events of IM1, he cannot return to Asgard. He needs to be stuck on Midgard for some time, before being forced to go home, and he goes to Midgard while throwing another temper tantrum after he finds out the above spoilered text.
I have so much planned for this AU universe, and part of my goal for 2015 is to finish this fic and get at least the next one up as well. Originally, this AU was intended to see how much I could have Loki meddle with the MCU, but I don't think I can get much farther than maybe the Avengers before too much changes and it stops being able to follow along. And the Avengers is a big maybe, considering Loki's role in it. I have an idea for how it might be done, but we'll see how that goes.
I made a personal pledge to write 365,000 words for the year. I managed 246,662 , after getting some serious haul on the last few days, and double-checking my junk folder and finding a few things I forgot to count. I wrote (and posted) 15 stories total, three of which for exchanges (with many more half-started projects written and unposted). I signed up for four exchanges, and did artwork for one. I intended to participate in a few more, and even had to drop out of modding a few unexpectedly, which is something I still regret.
This year was also a fairly high output year for artwork. Unusually high, actually. I'm not the sort of artist who can just sketch something out and be happy with it, so my output is always bleak. This year, I completed ten pieces, and branched into acrylic paint as a primary medium.
Compared to 2013, and despite everything, I somehow managed this year to double the amount of fics posted, and triple my word count. I also finished eight more pieces of artwork over 2013.
Three of my fics are still in WIP purgatory, though one is more or less complete, and just needs a good thrashing about with the editing stick before I post the remaining four chapters. The other two are going to remain in WIP purgatory forever, at the rate they keep going. For anybody who just can't wait, or mostly for me, because I want to at least put it down somewhere, here are my plans for these three fics:
Tarbell Course in Magic, vol 1
This is one of the stranger fics I think I've ever written. It's a mundane AU of a superhero canon where the villain winds up being more evil in this than he is in any other more-or-less-canon-compliant fic I've ever written for this fandom. Loki operates on pure spite and malice in this, with no care for collateral damage in the people he hurts in his path to hurt Thor.
Suffice to say, Darcy figures him out. He's a little too cocky, and she's smarter than he gives her credit for. Without Darcy, Loki's plans aren't exactly dead in the water, but he winds up back to square one, where he's too busy trying to keep his show to harass Thor. They do eventually meet up, where we get a pretty good barroom brawl between the two of them, before we learn Thor's side of the story, and get insight on what Loki's problem is. I am sorry to say it, but Darcy/Loki isn't endgame, unless you tilt your head and squint. Loki's done too much to keep her trust, and letting her "get the girl" at the end would be entirely too uncomfortable. Villains don't get the girl, and Loki is one hell of a villain in this. They do, however, when they're very lucky and willing to admit that they've been an asshole, get some level of reconciliation, and their assistant back.
As for whether Thor/Jane is endgame, it's entirely open. I leave it to the reader to decide. Thor doesn't deserve Jane either, but he's also not the complete sleaze Loki is, so it seems slightly more likely to happen down the road.
Despite the title, there will not be a sequel. The title itself is a joke, because as Darcy stated in an earlier chapter, most people only ever buy the first volume and never advance further.
How to Train Your Norse Trickster God
Between Tarbell and this one, I've got evil, asshole Loki coming out my ears at this point. There is nothing friendly about this Loki, but at least it can be said that he's (mostly) acting out of self-preservation, than any need to destroy someone for some made up reason. But he's definitely not nice. He takes advantage of Darcy in every way, and has an ever-growing body count as they make their way to Tórshavn.
The posting break I took over Christmas was timed to this fic. Crashing the car starts the beginning of a new direction their relationship is taking, in which Darcy falls straight down the Stockholm rabbit hole, with little hope to return. Next chapter basically places her in a fuck or die scenario, which only further damages her state of mind. She becomes so codependent on Loki, going beyond making excuses for his abuse to seeing it a necessary function to their survival. Their itinerary takes them up to Churchill, MB, to Baffin Island, Greenland, and Iceland, before getting to the Faroes (and not, as Darcy keeps saying, Norway). They still have a very long way to go, and the only way for Darcy to survive this trip is to just start letting Loki get his way.
Like Tarbell, Darcy/Loki is not endgame. This story bridges the gap between Thor and the Avengers, giving Loki a personal reason to bring his war to Midgard. Once they reach Tórshavn, he leaves Darcy for dead and makes his escape. She's picked up by SHIELD and taken back home, though perhaps not to be treated as well as she could be. But this is SHIELD, the agency which so spectacularly drops the ball with Selvig as well, so what she gets from them would be about what you might expect.
There may be a sequel for this one. I have parts of one sort of written out, but it has no real plot or direction.
Midgard Legends
The only Loki who's actually likeable. Too bad his life kind of sucks the most right now.
I have three deaths planned for this fic. Four, going by military records, but the last one doesn't even count since we never see it. Steve, Bucky, Howlett, and Loki are all declared KIA. They all get better. Loki doesn't even find out he's been declared KIA until much later down the road, so it's not even important now.
As the boys make their way through Norway, we start to get a little bit more development for the mystery that is Loki. As some people are beginning to notice in the comments, Loki is not what he seems. There's something else going on with him, and not even Odin knows the true extent of things. I've had this planned since the very beginning, and part of the set-up has been contradicted by TDW, while the rest was miraculously made canon. This one's big enough that I do want to put it in text, but I don't want to ruin it for anyone still trying to puzzle it out. [Spoiler: So, with the Dark Elves being super fair in the movie, it may become a bit less apparent that Loki is himself half Dark Elf. (If you're a Dark Elf, why are you white?) Not even Odin can unravel his spells, and Eir noted way back a long time ago that Loki is older than Thor, and possibly not even aging properly. Were he full-blooded Frost Giant, his horns would have cut around the time he was about 16/17. At the beginning of Those Who Hunt Monsters, Thor even mentioned that all the Dark Elves were killed in the war, so when Odin said the same thing in TDW, I could have flown to the moon. But, just like in the movie, that's not as true as Odin thinks it is. They're still out there somewhere, and "scrawny" little Loki is one of them. Of course, for this to work, the Dark Elves will definitely be of comics persuasion, because otherwise the rest of my world building just kind of fell right out the window.]
This is something that Loki doesn't even find out in this story, but the next one. Until then, he just gets to puzzle over unexpected changes as he basically goes through a late puberty on the battlefield. Remember when Bucky said that Loki isn't even old enough to shave? Yeah, that's a thing that happens.
Also, the near-ending of this fic has changed about eight times. The basics are still all more or less the same, but what happens to Loki when they reach the well is something I'm still not sure about. I need him to receive a prophecy relating to Baldur, but it's taken me ages to figure out how best to frame it. Originally, he was only allowed to return to Asgard three times before Bad Things happen, but that limits both my and Loki's freedom between the end of this fic and when he returns to Midgard. Especially since I have a story planned between the two where he and Thor go back to Jötunheimr. So that's out. I've got a few ideas floating around, which basically all amount to the same thing: once Loki goes back to Midgard during the events of IM1, he cannot return to Asgard. He needs to be stuck on Midgard for some time, before being forced to go home, and he goes to Midgard while throwing another temper tantrum after he finds out the above spoilered text.
I have so much planned for this AU universe, and part of my goal for 2015 is to finish this fic and get at least the next one up as well. Originally, this AU was intended to see how much I could have Loki meddle with the MCU, but I don't think I can get much farther than maybe the Avengers before too much changes and it stops being able to follow along. And the Avengers is a big maybe, considering Loki's role in it. I have an idea for how it might be done, but we'll see how that goes.
