2011 end-of-year fic meme!
Courtesy of therumjournals! <3
Stories listed by fandom, chronologically.
Star Trek RPF
(Just Like) Starting Over (6488 words) (for 2010 yuletide challenge.)
Dutchbag with leupagus (part of Dr. and Mrs. Princess Whitelaw (~8900 words)
The LA Chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club (9022 words)
Filmmaking for Assholes (38K) (for rpf_big_bang)
Star Trek
This Year (part of So Far Gone) (9.9K)
Ctrl Alt Delete (9465 words) (for the Universal Constant zine)
Combinations (part of So Far Gone) (7464 words)
Niche RPF
Margin Calling (5329 words)
Those Guys (idek)
PLUS:
Three yuletide fics that, uh, man. Those come at a weird time, so I've included my 2010 Yuletide offering as a 2011 fic. DAMMIT, THOUGH, because my Yuletide fics were in three completely new (for me) fandoms! Ugh, you'll see on January 1.
WORD COUNT: 94,568(ish). Wow?
Overall thoughts: Hahaha, WELL. Okay, I posted almost 100K of writing this year! Holy fucking shit. I'm sure it was more last year, but 2010 was a stressful year, what with finishing grad school, starting a new job, moving, and generally going for some adulthood brass rings. I wasn't constantly ripping my hair out over academia/job insecurity/financial strain, so there was less of a need to stay home every night and write my problems away. When I did do that, it was for some sustained project and not just LA LA LA GONNA WRITE ABOUT BUTTS BECAUSE I CAAAAAAN. Also, I shifted into working on my original stuff a bit more, but the past two months have been chaotic and not much writing has gotten done at all outside of email chains with my mean girls.
My best story of this year: UMM. Shit. Think I'm going with (Just Like) Starting Over, just because the banter in that flows insanely well and I don't know how much was espresso and how much was pure deadline-induced panic.
My favourite story of this year: Hands down: Margin Calling, because Elizabeth Banks was so ridiculously, amazingly fun to write. She's going to pop up in more of my RPF, make no mistake. (If you still don't know who she is: EFFIE TRINKET. IMDb page. You have loved her in something. It's impossible not to.) Anyway, I LOVED WRITING THAT STORY. I LOVED WRITING HER VOICE. I LOVED WRITING HER CONVERSATIONS WITH ZQ, PAUL BETTANY, GROFFLES, AND JTF. I JUST. UGH.
Also: Ctrl Alt Delete. The structure was fun and I loved the idea of exploring grief in that piece, particularly between reboot Kirk and Spock who had simultaneously too much and not enough history/potential for it? Definitely a favorite for plot, execution, and the touches that came to mind when differentiating between the two narrators' internal voices -- particularly Spock's, who had to read as scientific (and much, much smarter than me), but also had to be be infused with the suppressed emotion he was trying to deal with.
Story of mine most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Hands down: Margin Calling, and it's a little disheartening that my 2010 most underappreciated story was the Uhura POV chapter of So Far Gone -- overall, the female POV stories don't get as much feedback, and this one even more so because it was a niche RPF thing and fandom was completely butthurt about the appearance of JGroff on the scene. It's okay, though; I will hold this story close to me forever and love it all the more. It's the little story that could with an unpopular pairing and female kind-of-unknown's POV.
Most popular story: (Just Like) Starting Over and This Year.
Story with the single sexiest moment: I think that goes for Ctrl Alt Delete -- when a sex scene ends with the words "you broke me, you bought me"? Yeaaaah.
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: I think, in some way, pretty much everything I wrote in 2011? BECAUSE, even though nominally everything above is Kirk/Spock and Chris/Zach, they're… well, I think oliveoyl says it best:
zlot: are you trying to alienate your whole readership
me: UM. :D?
zlot: "gary mitchell is a main character!"
zlot: "a whole chapter on uhura fucking males!"
zlot: "KIRK AND SPOCK: NOT MEANT TO BE?"
me: these are the best tabloid headlines ever
So, yes! It's kind of a tie between the Kirk/Spock at the expense of utterly breaking McCoy's heart in This Year with the Spones+Jim follow up of Combinations and the Pinto and JTF/ZQ ship-sinking Margin Calling and rocks-fall-everyone-dies death fic Ctrl Alt Delete.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Definitely Combinations aka "the one where McCoy realizes he and Spock are kind of perfect for each other and they have to navigate their way around a relationship with Jim, who has all the finesse of a blue whale in the Department of Mysteries." It took MONTHS to write, and I think I went through at least 15K worth of drafts trying to figure out how it would work before just burning it all down and starting from scratch. The language is very curt to fit McCoy's POV and the whole thing, well. Required a lot of thought.
Hardest story to write/Biggest Disappointment: Filmmaking for Assholes, my first big bang. Not my first foray into something 20-30K+, but I had so much time to work on it that I wrote about 30K in 4-5 weeks and then rewrote that until October and there's still big chunks that I think could be better. Hardly surprising, though, but the whole thing is so talky and ridiculous -- if I had to do it over again, I'm not sure I'd go with that idea because so much of it is meta humor and just plain meta. HOWEVER. HOWEVER! It presented Chris and Zach as friends better than any other story I wrote this year, and normal/functional Zach/Groffles, which made me proud.
Favorite OC: Not a lot of OCs this year! So the prize, possibly by default, goes to Ally from the Choverlord's section of Filmmaking for Assholes.
Biggest Surprise: Those Guys. WHAT WAS THIS? GOD. WHAT? WHAT? Also, Dutchbag with leupagus because 95% of the fun was making up future Hollywood stories like Chris Evans preying on Abigail Breslin when she was finally of-age and Abigail Breslin's public, horrible breakup with Dakota Fanning. You know, the usual for us.
Also: did not expect J.J. Abrams to be my favorite character to write ever.
Most Unintentionally Telling Story: Margin Calling is basically an ode to how much I want to be Elizabeth Banks (or just rich, beautiful and always armed with a glass of wine in my hand). (Guys, she swam with whale sharks in 2011. #futurewife)
2012 Ambitions: More original fiction! Different pairings! Publish things! Make time for writing! Write more! Write write write!
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere I Would Choose to Have Illustrated: Ohhhh mannnnn. The art for Those Guys is the best I got this year, hands down. It still makes me laugh!
1. Margin Calling -- Paul Bettany carrying Elizabeth Banks through a hotel/arrival lobby at Sundance this January while she looks over his shoulder and watches Groffles drunkenly/adorably paw at Zach.
2. (Just Like) Starting Over -- Zach and Chris crammed into the captain's chair together from the last scene while everyone else is hiding behind their tablets.
3. Some text-filled wonder featuring J.J. Abrams and a diet coke or nine from either (Just Like) Starting Over or Filmmaking for Assholes.
4. Ctrl Alt Delete -- the first kiss from the third section. Or Jim and Spock holding hands across a chess board at the end of the first section.
And now I need to sleep off these beers and maybe eat some of this magic bread.
Stories listed by fandom, chronologically.
Star Trek RPF
(Just Like) Starting Over (6488 words) (for 2010 yuletide challenge.)
Dutchbag with leupagus (part of Dr. and Mrs. Princess Whitelaw (~8900 words)
The LA Chapter of the Ex-Boyfriends of Zachary Quinto Club (9022 words)
Filmmaking for Assholes (38K) (for rpf_big_bang)
Star Trek
This Year (part of So Far Gone) (9.9K)
Ctrl Alt Delete (9465 words) (for the Universal Constant zine)
Combinations (part of So Far Gone) (7464 words)
Niche RPF
Margin Calling (5329 words)
Those Guys (idek)
PLUS:
Three yuletide fics that, uh, man. Those come at a weird time, so I've included my 2010 Yuletide offering as a 2011 fic. DAMMIT, THOUGH, because my Yuletide fics were in three completely new (for me) fandoms! Ugh, you'll see on January 1.
WORD COUNT: 94,568(ish). Wow?
Overall thoughts: Hahaha, WELL. Okay, I posted almost 100K of writing this year! Holy fucking shit. I'm sure it was more last year, but 2010 was a stressful year, what with finishing grad school, starting a new job, moving, and generally going for some adulthood brass rings. I wasn't constantly ripping my hair out over academia/job insecurity/financial strain, so there was less of a need to stay home every night and write my problems away. When I did do that, it was for some sustained project and not just LA LA LA GONNA WRITE ABOUT BUTTS BECAUSE I CAAAAAAN. Also, I shifted into working on my original stuff a bit more, but the past two months have been chaotic and not much writing has gotten done at all outside of email chains with my mean girls.
My best story of this year: UMM. Shit. Think I'm going with (Just Like) Starting Over, just because the banter in that flows insanely well and I don't know how much was espresso and how much was pure deadline-induced panic.
My favourite story of this year: Hands down: Margin Calling, because Elizabeth Banks was so ridiculously, amazingly fun to write. She's going to pop up in more of my RPF, make no mistake. (If you still don't know who she is: EFFIE TRINKET. IMDb page. You have loved her in something. It's impossible not to.) Anyway, I LOVED WRITING THAT STORY. I LOVED WRITING HER VOICE. I LOVED WRITING HER CONVERSATIONS WITH ZQ, PAUL BETTANY, GROFFLES, AND JTF. I JUST. UGH.
Also: Ctrl Alt Delete. The structure was fun and I loved the idea of exploring grief in that piece, particularly between reboot Kirk and Spock who had simultaneously too much and not enough history/potential for it? Definitely a favorite for plot, execution, and the touches that came to mind when differentiating between the two narrators' internal voices -- particularly Spock's, who had to read as scientific (and much, much smarter than me), but also had to be be infused with the suppressed emotion he was trying to deal with.
Story of mine most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Hands down: Margin Calling, and it's a little disheartening that my 2010 most underappreciated story was the Uhura POV chapter of So Far Gone -- overall, the female POV stories don't get as much feedback, and this one even more so because it was a niche RPF thing and fandom was completely butthurt about the appearance of JGroff on the scene. It's okay, though; I will hold this story close to me forever and love it all the more. It's the little story that could with an unpopular pairing and female kind-of-unknown's POV.
Most popular story: (Just Like) Starting Over and This Year.
Story with the single sexiest moment: I think that goes for Ctrl Alt Delete -- when a sex scene ends with the words "you broke me, you bought me"? Yeaaaah.
Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: I think, in some way, pretty much everything I wrote in 2011? BECAUSE, even though nominally everything above is Kirk/Spock and Chris/Zach, they're… well, I think oliveoyl says it best:
zlot: are you trying to alienate your whole readership
me: UM. :D?
zlot: "gary mitchell is a main character!"
zlot: "a whole chapter on uhura fucking males!"
zlot: "KIRK AND SPOCK: NOT MEANT TO BE?"
me: these are the best tabloid headlines ever
So, yes! It's kind of a tie between the Kirk/Spock at the expense of utterly breaking McCoy's heart in This Year with the Spones+Jim follow up of Combinations and the Pinto and JTF/ZQ ship-sinking Margin Calling and rocks-fall-everyone-dies death fic Ctrl Alt Delete.
Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Definitely Combinations aka "the one where McCoy realizes he and Spock are kind of perfect for each other and they have to navigate their way around a relationship with Jim, who has all the finesse of a blue whale in the Department of Mysteries." It took MONTHS to write, and I think I went through at least 15K worth of drafts trying to figure out how it would work before just burning it all down and starting from scratch. The language is very curt to fit McCoy's POV and the whole thing, well. Required a lot of thought.
Hardest story to write/Biggest Disappointment: Filmmaking for Assholes, my first big bang. Not my first foray into something 20-30K+, but I had so much time to work on it that I wrote about 30K in 4-5 weeks and then rewrote that until October and there's still big chunks that I think could be better. Hardly surprising, though, but the whole thing is so talky and ridiculous -- if I had to do it over again, I'm not sure I'd go with that idea because so much of it is meta humor and just plain meta. HOWEVER. HOWEVER! It presented Chris and Zach as friends better than any other story I wrote this year, and normal/functional Zach/Groffles, which made me proud.
Favorite OC: Not a lot of OCs this year! So the prize, possibly by default, goes to Ally from the Choverlord's section of Filmmaking for Assholes.
Biggest Surprise: Those Guys. WHAT WAS THIS? GOD. WHAT? WHAT? Also, Dutchbag with leupagus because 95% of the fun was making up future Hollywood stories like Chris Evans preying on Abigail Breslin when she was finally of-age and Abigail Breslin's public, horrible breakup with Dakota Fanning. You know, the usual for us.
Also: did not expect J.J. Abrams to be my favorite character to write ever.
Most Unintentionally Telling Story: Margin Calling is basically an ode to how much I want to be Elizabeth Banks (or just rich, beautiful and always armed with a glass of wine in my hand). (Guys, she swam with whale sharks in 2011. #futurewife)
2012 Ambitions: More original fiction! Different pairings! Publish things! Make time for writing! Write more! Write write write!
Top 5 Scenes from Anywhere I Would Choose to Have Illustrated: Ohhhh mannnnn. The art for Those Guys is the best I got this year, hands down. It still makes me laugh!
1. Margin Calling -- Paul Bettany carrying Elizabeth Banks through a hotel/arrival lobby at Sundance this January while she looks over his shoulder and watches Groffles drunkenly/adorably paw at Zach.
2. (Just Like) Starting Over -- Zach and Chris crammed into the captain's chair together from the last scene while everyone else is hiding behind their tablets.
3. Some text-filled wonder featuring J.J. Abrams and a diet coke or nine from either (Just Like) Starting Over or Filmmaking for Assholes.
4. Ctrl Alt Delete -- the first kiss from the third section. Or Jim and Spock holding hands across a chess board at the end of the first section.
And now I need to sleep off these beers and maybe eat some of this magic bread.