2013 in review
yes, i know, 2014 is well underway, but the end of the year is busy and i'm too Irish to do a year-in-review thing until the year is actually over, anyway, so...! first of all, some stats... since i've been on AO3 for a while now, here we go...
Total 2012 2013
works 76 16 60
series 2 0 2
author subscriptions 41 x 41
kudos 2,798 288 2,510
comment threads 274 23 251
bookmarks 367 34 333
subscriptions 20 0 20
word count 323,307 82,862 240,445
hits 6,0947 5,083 55,864
these numbers look pretty damned good to me. i know i'm nowhere near, like, the most popular or anything. i tend to get about 5% kudos for hits (that is, 5% of the people counted for hits push the kudos button...) and i don't know nor do i care if that's good. it's my baseline and that's all i need to know (seriously, i already drive myself nuts with these numbers...) so, when a fic does better, it really makes me happy.
since i've been on AO3 for over a complete year now, apparently, some thoughts on AO3...
overall, i guess i like it. it's... i mean, i was in fandom back when fandom was yahoo groups mailing lists. i've posted to message boards. i briefly used ff.net. and of course, livejournal. the benefits to livejournal was that you tended to form relationships with the people who read and commented to you a lot. i guess there's some form of community on AO3, but i'm not really... aware of how it works. honestly, much like tumblr, i'm not really aware of people's usernames until i've seen them a lot, so it all feels really impersonal, but... that's not so bad. i still fill out the post form going from bottom to top, because for whatever reason, it feels really disconcertingly out of order to me...
and the stats. the stats... are a blessing and a curse and a curse. it's fun, in a way, to watch the numbers grow... but sometimes, it's too much numbers, and it's just... and then there's the stories posted that don't make the numbers grow, and... yeah. also, kudos vs. comments... i've gotten used to (esp since i'm using tumblr enough that i sometimes look for the "heart" on livejournal posts...) people who only leave kudos. i've accepted it, i guess. but comments are still the lifeblood of this fanficcer.
about the stats... the one quibble i still have with AO3, really, is... sometimes, you can see who bookmarks your stories, and sometimes you can't. that's a personal setting, and i can't really understand why someone wouldn't want an author to know they liked their story enough to bookmark it, but i guess it's global, like... either your bookmarks are available for all to see or none, so. still, it's a bit irksome. more than that, though... you can't see who is subscribing to your stories, and you can't see who has subscribed to you, that is, author subscriptions. it just seems a little weird. why can't you see that? why keep that hidden?
also, why do people subscribe to stories that are... like, not in progress? a whole, complete story? is that another way people bookmark things, essentially?
mysterious...
for me, at least, it'll never be as intimate as posting to livejournal, but there are advantages to lack of intimacy, too, so i think i'm all aboard the AO3 train. (and, i guess, if anyone needs a code, i can probably get one or ask someone who does...)
also, it's bad, but i don't read fanfic much anymore. the fact that you can see people's stats on their stories... just drives me nuts. i can't handle it. =/ my psyche is still fragile and wayyyy too prone to paralyzing fits of depression. i'd like to wean myself off that sort of self-defeating thought process, but. in the meantime, as protection... oh, and i think there's probably a setting to fix that so like you can't see people's numbers? but then maybe you couldn't see your own? and then, there's still my unhealthy brain, thinking stupid things like... like i have a really hard time with other people's headcanons not like... no, people are free to think whatever they like about their characters, but i end up feeling like if people don't agree with MY way of looking at things, it's an attack on my way of looking at things, or...
i can't really explain it well, but long story short, i'm too mentally broken to deal with life, so i sit in the corner and hope that i can make some connections with some people who might see things the way i do, too. siiighs.
i don't have this problem with hikago, though. i've been in that fandom long enough, i guess, that i'm comfortable there. i'm not really... comfortable in fandom in general. =/ still working on that...
onto some questions! gotten from somewhere! well, any kind of questions will do...
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
more. so much more. so very much more. *cries with joy* at the beginning of the year, i would never have imagined that i would have written so much. 60 stories!! at the beginning of the year, K had already reignited my imagination to a degree, but Free! makes up 30 of those stories, so... thank god for Free!
writing is definitely related to my ability to cling to mental well-being, so i really am grateful for Free! and its inspiration. on the other hand, posting a lot exposes some of my mental weaknesses, too, which... actually is probably related to why i retreated so much from fandom participation for so long... but it's worth it.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2012?
i would NEVER have guessed that i'd be such a hardcore ot3'er. any kind of ot3. i'd written threesomes before, but i'd never really had a threesome that i felt like... truly belonged together as a unit, truly balanced each perfectly when it was all three. and of course, i was EXTREMELY hesitant to even watch Free!, and i went 4 episodes thinking there was no need to invest myself into writing for it, because the fanservice was thick enough on its own. and then i fell hard for makoto, so.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
ummmm... the Vows we Break actually holds a special place in my heart, because i'd never even considered a big bang before, i was confused about how a challenge of that nature even worked on AO3 (and, er, i still am, basically...) and for the longest time, even though i had an idea for it, i didn't think i would finish, and then i had a HUGE burst of writing, and then i slowed down again, so the fact that i WAS able to finish on time was a miracle. and, it's essentially original fiction (ahahaha) since it's largely oc's and a character that was never actually seen in hikago. so it was a risk and i deeply appreciate every hit and kudos and comment and everything. and, as it turned out, it was my most popular hikago fic from 2013, so. score!
there's also False Start, a tiny look into the future which became the seed for the Happy Household Club, which... can't possibly fail to be near to my heart since it occupies so much of my mind and my writing, ha.
there's probably more than one K story i should consider, too, but i'm going to go with Welcome Home, because my love for Totsuka (and Mikoto/Totsuka) grows with time, despite the fact that he was dead before the anime even started. ^_^;;; i just needed both totsuka and mikoto to have a chance to say goodbye, so.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
"most popular" could be defined by a few different statistics... hits, kudos, comments, bookmarks... as for hits, there's actually no contest. 2x3 has 2000+ more hits than its next closest competitor. it's no big mystery, right? my most popular-by-hits fic in K is Feasting, also by a hefty margin. and what do these two have in common? sex. for Feasting, sex featuring a very popular pairing. 2x3 has bondage play, too. you want de hits? you use de sex! *coughs*
going by kudos, it changes for Free!... then, it's Isolation Exercises, the longest of my Free! stories (because in a way, it's four stories smooshed together because they complete a thematic arc...) people appreciate it when you put in the work. i guess after reading something longer, people are more likely to hit that button? if it's short, they feel less obligated? i dunno.
going by comments, Isolation Exercises is still #1, but 2x3 slips way down the list, and other stories move up. i guess smut doesn't lead to as much conversation. ^_^;;; for K, Chaos v Order goes to the top, which is probably because there's usually either Mikoto/Munakata or Mikoto/Totsuka, not juggling both. (tho, hard for me to say, i don't read that much fanfiction, sadly...) whoooo can say?
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
i really don't know how to answer this... pretty much everything i've written for Free! had gotten way more notice and appreciation than i could have ever expected, so. (not that i don't still obsess over my stats every time i post, and wonder why such-and-such isn't doing better than what'sits but...) i wouldn't describe any of my hikago fics as underappreciated, i dunno. *shrugs* mmmmmm.
i wouldn't call over drinks underappreciated, but the fandom certainly is. Uchouten Kazoku was definitely, definitely one of the best animes of 2013, possibly THE best, and it's such a rich and gorgeous world... and there are only 3 fics on AO3. =/ love the tanuki, people!!
Story that could have been better?
*laughs* almost certainly all of them. the Vows we Break got finished in a hurry... i can't even remember all the things i meant to do with it that i ran out of time for... let's not even touch blind go fics and how they were all probably written right up against the deadline... and... just...
does anyone ever write something and then look back and think, Yes, that's as good a job as ever could be done with this idea. i win. because...
no, every single last one of 'em coulda been better. sorry.
Sexiest story?
ummmm. well, 2x3 was all sex, so there's that... i think Isolation Exercise contained double penetration? i think pillowtalk was pretty sexy because it was all dialogue, so like... in their voices? and there was phone sex... i-i don't really know how to answer this question...
Story with single sweetest moment?
mmm, i have no idea. there's probably a fair amount of sweetness in a lot of things i write. esp Free! and hikago, because they aren't really universes overly dipped in angst, anyway. *shrugs*
Saddest story?
ah, well, Welcome Home is two ghosts saying goodbye to all the people they love. then, there's also of the mind, where Fushimi almost dies and it ends wrongly. Touching is sad because of the thwarted love between Weismann and his Lieutenant. ...and of course, those are all K... ^_^;;;
Hardest story to write?
ummm, that's kinda a hard question, but i think Welcome Home, maybe, because the scene with Kusanagi was damned near physically painful to write. =/ no matter how much you think about a thing, when you're writing the scene, it's like you're in it, and that's when it realllllly hit home that Kusanagi had lost the two people in the world he was closest to, and was now left all alone (except he still had all the responsibilities of all three of them...) *sighs* i fear for Kusanagi in the movie, i mean, we all know he's not going to be "ok"...
Easiest story to write?
also hard to answer... maybe Seven Moments? because i could write that stuff nonstop. sweet little moments of the boys? that's what Happy Household Club is all about!
Most overdue story?
overdue? next year i can answer that question when i finally finish *coughswritecoughs* the anniversary fic for Rattlesnakes. but, in lieu of that, the rope to bind you was based on sunnie prodding me to write fic based on Dacia's gift art, but i think it was like six months or something after the art was posted that i finally got around to it... =p
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
risks... well, i started a fic series which then spawned another fic series, but i don't know if i've specifically learned something from that... i've tried to do some series in the past and failed, but i've been greatly helped in keeping Happy Household Club going by setting that Wednesday WaterDay deadline in my head... that's been a bloody miracle to my writing... um...
the Vows we Break is the first really long, multichaptered, novel-ish thing i've written in a while, but it's not the first time i've done it, and i've probably done it a lot better in the past. no, wait, i know i've done it a lot better in the past. damn you, past!me, for setting the bar so high!! just kidding... but not really...
i illustrated this is not a fairytale, probably, but the only "risky" aspect of that is that i actually can't draw. at. all. in fact, that was seriously the upper limit of my drawing ability, and it was no good at all (it's ok, it wasn't supposed to be) so there's nothing to learn from that...
i did a shitton of html formatting for Brainstorming, changed how i wanted to format it halfway through, and then realized i'd far, far exceeded AO3's ability to handle html and i had to re-re-reformat it so it would show up on AO3 something like how i wanted it to look, and it never worked well. seriously, PLEASE go read that fic on my site, THERE it looks right, it looks effin' gorgeous, it doesn't look at all good on AO3. ~_~ from that i learned... if you're going to do a shitton of html/formatting, figure out how you want it to look FIRST, because it's a pain in the ass to redo it. and sadly, nothing can help the fact that AO3 just doesn't allow that much fancy formatting, so. =X
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
write. write a LOT. write constantly. write better. write as close to everyday as my feeble system can handle.
specifically... i have my trope bingo card to finish... a blackout by the end of the year!! and at least a line before the non-amnesty deadline so i can "win" not that that really means anything... i have a project with a person which i'm excited about (but also a little nervous because i've never done this before)... and that.. iwatobiartficswhatever team thing... which i'm already kinda regretting but hopefully it'll be ok...
no, it really comes down to... write a lot. write constantly. write more. write better. and... try to focus more on positive things, and spend less time hung up (and wrung out) on stupid negative things that don't even matter... *siiiiighs*
^_~
i'mma gonna post something on tumblr, too, about how i'm adjusting to tumblr. and here it is... my thoughts on tumblr
Total 2012 2013
works 76 16 60
series 2 0 2
author subscriptions 41 x 41
kudos 2,798 288 2,510
comment threads 274 23 251
bookmarks 367 34 333
subscriptions 20 0 20
word count 323,307 82,862 240,445
hits 6,0947 5,083 55,864
these numbers look pretty damned good to me. i know i'm nowhere near, like, the most popular or anything. i tend to get about 5% kudos for hits (that is, 5% of the people counted for hits push the kudos button...) and i don't know nor do i care if that's good. it's my baseline and that's all i need to know (seriously, i already drive myself nuts with these numbers...) so, when a fic does better, it really makes me happy.
since i've been on AO3 for over a complete year now, apparently, some thoughts on AO3...
overall, i guess i like it. it's... i mean, i was in fandom back when fandom was yahoo groups mailing lists. i've posted to message boards. i briefly used ff.net. and of course, livejournal. the benefits to livejournal was that you tended to form relationships with the people who read and commented to you a lot. i guess there's some form of community on AO3, but i'm not really... aware of how it works. honestly, much like tumblr, i'm not really aware of people's usernames until i've seen them a lot, so it all feels really impersonal, but... that's not so bad. i still fill out the post form going from bottom to top, because for whatever reason, it feels really disconcertingly out of order to me...
and the stats. the stats... are a blessing and a curse and a curse. it's fun, in a way, to watch the numbers grow... but sometimes, it's too much numbers, and it's just... and then there's the stories posted that don't make the numbers grow, and... yeah. also, kudos vs. comments... i've gotten used to (esp since i'm using tumblr enough that i sometimes look for the "heart" on livejournal posts...) people who only leave kudos. i've accepted it, i guess. but comments are still the lifeblood of this fanficcer.
about the stats... the one quibble i still have with AO3, really, is... sometimes, you can see who bookmarks your stories, and sometimes you can't. that's a personal setting, and i can't really understand why someone wouldn't want an author to know they liked their story enough to bookmark it, but i guess it's global, like... either your bookmarks are available for all to see or none, so. still, it's a bit irksome. more than that, though... you can't see who is subscribing to your stories, and you can't see who has subscribed to you, that is, author subscriptions. it just seems a little weird. why can't you see that? why keep that hidden?
also, why do people subscribe to stories that are... like, not in progress? a whole, complete story? is that another way people bookmark things, essentially?
mysterious...
for me, at least, it'll never be as intimate as posting to livejournal, but there are advantages to lack of intimacy, too, so i think i'm all aboard the AO3 train. (and, i guess, if anyone needs a code, i can probably get one or ask someone who does...)
also, it's bad, but i don't read fanfic much anymore. the fact that you can see people's stats on their stories... just drives me nuts. i can't handle it. =/ my psyche is still fragile and wayyyy too prone to paralyzing fits of depression. i'd like to wean myself off that sort of self-defeating thought process, but. in the meantime, as protection... oh, and i think there's probably a setting to fix that so like you can't see people's numbers? but then maybe you couldn't see your own? and then, there's still my unhealthy brain, thinking stupid things like... like i have a really hard time with other people's headcanons not like... no, people are free to think whatever they like about their characters, but i end up feeling like if people don't agree with MY way of looking at things, it's an attack on my way of looking at things, or...
i can't really explain it well, but long story short, i'm too mentally broken to deal with life, so i sit in the corner and hope that i can make some connections with some people who might see things the way i do, too. siiighs.
i don't have this problem with hikago, though. i've been in that fandom long enough, i guess, that i'm comfortable there. i'm not really... comfortable in fandom in general. =/ still working on that...
onto some questions! gotten from somewhere! well, any kind of questions will do...
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
more. so much more. so very much more. *cries with joy* at the beginning of the year, i would never have imagined that i would have written so much. 60 stories!! at the beginning of the year, K had already reignited my imagination to a degree, but Free! makes up 30 of those stories, so... thank god for Free!
writing is definitely related to my ability to cling to mental well-being, so i really am grateful for Free! and its inspiration. on the other hand, posting a lot exposes some of my mental weaknesses, too, which... actually is probably related to why i retreated so much from fandom participation for so long... but it's worth it.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2012?
i would NEVER have guessed that i'd be such a hardcore ot3'er. any kind of ot3. i'd written threesomes before, but i'd never really had a threesome that i felt like... truly belonged together as a unit, truly balanced each perfectly when it was all three. and of course, i was EXTREMELY hesitant to even watch Free!, and i went 4 episodes thinking there was no need to invest myself into writing for it, because the fanservice was thick enough on its own. and then i fell hard for makoto, so.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
ummmm... the Vows we Break actually holds a special place in my heart, because i'd never even considered a big bang before, i was confused about how a challenge of that nature even worked on AO3 (and, er, i still am, basically...) and for the longest time, even though i had an idea for it, i didn't think i would finish, and then i had a HUGE burst of writing, and then i slowed down again, so the fact that i WAS able to finish on time was a miracle. and, it's essentially original fiction (ahahaha) since it's largely oc's and a character that was never actually seen in hikago. so it was a risk and i deeply appreciate every hit and kudos and comment and everything. and, as it turned out, it was my most popular hikago fic from 2013, so. score!
there's also False Start, a tiny look into the future which became the seed for the Happy Household Club, which... can't possibly fail to be near to my heart since it occupies so much of my mind and my writing, ha.
there's probably more than one K story i should consider, too, but i'm going to go with Welcome Home, because my love for Totsuka (and Mikoto/Totsuka) grows with time, despite the fact that he was dead before the anime even started. ^_^;;; i just needed both totsuka and mikoto to have a chance to say goodbye, so.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
"most popular" could be defined by a few different statistics... hits, kudos, comments, bookmarks... as for hits, there's actually no contest. 2x3 has 2000+ more hits than its next closest competitor. it's no big mystery, right? my most popular-by-hits fic in K is Feasting, also by a hefty margin. and what do these two have in common? sex. for Feasting, sex featuring a very popular pairing. 2x3 has bondage play, too. you want de hits? you use de sex! *coughs*
going by kudos, it changes for Free!... then, it's Isolation Exercises, the longest of my Free! stories (because in a way, it's four stories smooshed together because they complete a thematic arc...) people appreciate it when you put in the work. i guess after reading something longer, people are more likely to hit that button? if it's short, they feel less obligated? i dunno.
going by comments, Isolation Exercises is still #1, but 2x3 slips way down the list, and other stories move up. i guess smut doesn't lead to as much conversation. ^_^;;; for K, Chaos v Order goes to the top, which is probably because there's usually either Mikoto/Munakata or Mikoto/Totsuka, not juggling both. (tho, hard for me to say, i don't read that much fanfiction, sadly...) whoooo can say?
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
i really don't know how to answer this... pretty much everything i've written for Free! had gotten way more notice and appreciation than i could have ever expected, so. (not that i don't still obsess over my stats every time i post, and wonder why such-and-such isn't doing better than what'sits but...) i wouldn't describe any of my hikago fics as underappreciated, i dunno. *shrugs* mmmmmm.
i wouldn't call over drinks underappreciated, but the fandom certainly is. Uchouten Kazoku was definitely, definitely one of the best animes of 2013, possibly THE best, and it's such a rich and gorgeous world... and there are only 3 fics on AO3. =/ love the tanuki, people!!
Story that could have been better?
*laughs* almost certainly all of them. the Vows we Break got finished in a hurry... i can't even remember all the things i meant to do with it that i ran out of time for... let's not even touch blind go fics and how they were all probably written right up against the deadline... and... just...
does anyone ever write something and then look back and think, Yes, that's as good a job as ever could be done with this idea. i win. because...
no, every single last one of 'em coulda been better. sorry.
Sexiest story?
ummmm. well, 2x3 was all sex, so there's that... i think Isolation Exercise contained double penetration? i think pillowtalk was pretty sexy because it was all dialogue, so like... in their voices? and there was phone sex... i-i don't really know how to answer this question...
Story with single sweetest moment?
mmm, i have no idea. there's probably a fair amount of sweetness in a lot of things i write. esp Free! and hikago, because they aren't really universes overly dipped in angst, anyway. *shrugs*
Saddest story?
ah, well, Welcome Home is two ghosts saying goodbye to all the people they love. then, there's also of the mind, where Fushimi almost dies and it ends wrongly. Touching is sad because of the thwarted love between Weismann and his Lieutenant. ...and of course, those are all K... ^_^;;;
Hardest story to write?
ummm, that's kinda a hard question, but i think Welcome Home, maybe, because the scene with Kusanagi was damned near physically painful to write. =/ no matter how much you think about a thing, when you're writing the scene, it's like you're in it, and that's when it realllllly hit home that Kusanagi had lost the two people in the world he was closest to, and was now left all alone (except he still had all the responsibilities of all three of them...) *sighs* i fear for Kusanagi in the movie, i mean, we all know he's not going to be "ok"...
Easiest story to write?
also hard to answer... maybe Seven Moments? because i could write that stuff nonstop. sweet little moments of the boys? that's what Happy Household Club is all about!
Most overdue story?
overdue? next year i can answer that question when i finally finish *coughswritecoughs* the anniversary fic for Rattlesnakes. but, in lieu of that, the rope to bind you was based on sunnie prodding me to write fic based on Dacia's gift art, but i think it was like six months or something after the art was posted that i finally got around to it... =p
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
risks... well, i started a fic series which then spawned another fic series, but i don't know if i've specifically learned something from that... i've tried to do some series in the past and failed, but i've been greatly helped in keeping Happy Household Club going by setting that Wednesday WaterDay deadline in my head... that's been a bloody miracle to my writing... um...
the Vows we Break is the first really long, multichaptered, novel-ish thing i've written in a while, but it's not the first time i've done it, and i've probably done it a lot better in the past. no, wait, i know i've done it a lot better in the past. damn you, past!me, for setting the bar so high!! just kidding... but not really...
i illustrated this is not a fairytale, probably, but the only "risky" aspect of that is that i actually can't draw. at. all. in fact, that was seriously the upper limit of my drawing ability, and it was no good at all (it's ok, it wasn't supposed to be) so there's nothing to learn from that...
i did a shitton of html formatting for Brainstorming, changed how i wanted to format it halfway through, and then realized i'd far, far exceeded AO3's ability to handle html and i had to re-re-reformat it so it would show up on AO3 something like how i wanted it to look, and it never worked well. seriously, PLEASE go read that fic on my site, THERE it looks right, it looks effin' gorgeous, it doesn't look at all good on AO3. ~_~ from that i learned... if you're going to do a shitton of html/formatting, figure out how you want it to look FIRST, because it's a pain in the ass to redo it. and sadly, nothing can help the fact that AO3 just doesn't allow that much fancy formatting, so. =X
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
write. write a LOT. write constantly. write better. write as close to everyday as my feeble system can handle.
specifically... i have my trope bingo card to finish... a blackout by the end of the year!! and at least a line before the non-amnesty deadline so i can "win" not that that really means anything... i have a project with a person which i'm excited about (but also a little nervous because i've never done this before)... and that.. iwatobiartficswhatever team thing... which i'm already kinda regretting but hopefully it'll be ok...
no, it really comes down to... write a lot. write constantly. write more. write better. and... try to focus more on positive things, and spend less time hung up (and wrung out) on stupid negative things that don't even matter... *siiiiighs*
^_~
i'mma gonna post something on tumblr, too, about how i'm adjusting to tumblr. and here it is... my thoughts on tumblr