Mid-Year Fic Round-Up
It is not the end of the year! Why am I doing a fanfic round-up?
…because I have thus far written about 226,536 words of fic this year. I shit you not. I'm not even like. Done. I. What. No. Also, um, this is since June. All but 800 words of it. So 4 months I guess. Yeeeep.
Clearly the problem is my rekindled love affair with Blake's 7, but let's go to a chart to deal with HOW BAD THIS IS:
Stats:
List of Completed Fics:
Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
The Magic Teapot [VHS] (776 words)
Blake's 7
STUFF I HAVE FINISHED/MOSTLY FINISHED BUT NOT POSTED YET:
A/B (O) I & II (20,000)
15fic (20,000)
Objectively (300)
Total number: 17 fics thus far
Total word count: 30222 + 36770 + 8621 + 5320 + 6474 + 20899 + 3401 + 11063 + 2763 + 3959 + 6044 + GP&P (50,000) + A/B (O) I & II (20,000) + 15fic (20,000) + Objectively (300)
135,536 complete and posted B7 fic + about 90,300 not yet posted B7 fic + 800 word SH crack = 226,536 words of fic this year so far
…there are also some part-finished things, amounting to maybe… 10k? idk. Sigh.
Ship/character breakdown: …look I could tell you that everything is Blake/Avon and that you sometimes get ensembles out of me but even then it's still shippy bullshit, or you could just understand that is how my sad OTP ass rolls, bc presumably we have in some way interacted before.
Specifics:
Best/worst title?
Rojer gave us a PAIN. Man we wracked on that one. I'm happy with it now though. Who knows, re: worst. Dance Dance Revolution is funny but misleading. I've done pretty well with titles this year I think, but expect to fuck up on the still-unposted ones.
I don't have a fav really, but I will leave this place before I crumple and just explain why I think they're all funny.
Best/worst summary? MAN I have sucked at summaries this year.
Best: I don't LOVE it, but GP&P?
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single person must be in want of a partner. On Gauda Prime, the conviction had hardened into fact."
Roj Blake leads the Freedom Party from Gauda Prime, an agricultural commune with a harmless fetish for public assemblies and gossip. Kerr Avon, a free trader with an incredible ship, a fabulous supercomputer and no tact whatsoever, manages to get on Blake's bad side almost immediately.
Worst:
Rojer: "Taking down the Federation might actually be easier than sorting out what's going on with Rojer's parents."
and
"As if…": "A series of short fics running through permutations of the soulmate-mark trope for this pairing."
So Rojer is functionally impossible to summarize. It's a kidfic. Ish. It's also military SF and politics--it's a novella about fighting and winning a war. It's also about a relationship that spans decades, with a LONG period before it's consummated, and then a substantial chunk dealing with the pairing characters' deaths and what happens after. Rojer, the title character, is the pairing characters' son and one of their political successors, and when we last see him he's like, 60, with adult children. So like, good. fucking. luck. Rojer is a better fic than this summary indicates, I think, but it's fucking DIFFICULT to be like--look um, buy in, trust me, this fic is a lot of goddamn things.
"As if" is functionally fucked bc it's 21 short stories that form a thematically united collection, and maybe I should have acknowledged this up-thread when thinking about the number of stories I'd written so far, but OH WELL.
Best/worst first line?
Best/worst last line?
I never know this/don't care as much as Katy does.
General questions:
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? ahahahahahah
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? siiiigh
What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Rojer's probably the best. I slightly resent it for being better than I can regularly produce on command? I like my unwritten ideas more than I like my fic, a lot of the time.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Oh man *nothing* this is such a quiet fandom, the most popular, “as if we were fools by heavenly compulsion”, only has 300 odd hits. It's so frigging fandom-dependent, isn't it? "Gentle Antidote" is just goodish, but Yuletide, so huge. Meanwhile in megafandoms… But I think Rojer, currently #2, will probably win out over time by virtue of being sort of like some old favs in this fandom. It is the most Judith Proctor or Suzan Lovettish thing I've done?
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
The stuff I posted yesterday--no, um, I like DDR better than other people do, but I think Last of the Chants is probably v good (I can't really tell) and not huge bc people fear crossovers.
Story that could have been better?
Anabasis. It's a bit of a fandom cliche, though I didn't quite know at the time--oh I knew PGP was a thing, I'd have to have never touched the fandom, just not afterlife stories. But Anabasis took me like two hours so who caaaares? It's not at all bad! It's just not amazing, and could be stronger on both ship and ensemble lines--and also I was fairly young, then, in my fandom writing.
Sexiest story?
Katy really liked the m/f B/A in Damosel Passing Fair, Religious Ecstasy has decent sex, and horrifyingly A/B (O) is fairly decent in this regard (the fuck was I thinking). I know Molly liked the m/f in the unpublished Knox's Rules. There's not actual sex in the underage fic, just a lot of loaded pining--that's weird (I should explain--there's an underage!fic because I essentially played Awkward Chicken with Paul Darrow's Avon novels, which is an awful idea--to win is to lose, and the only way to win is not to play).
Saddest story?
Omg Baron. Listen let me spoil this for you. A mundane AU where Avon's husband Blake dies nastily in a car accident. Obsessed with the children's safety, wretchedly alone/needy, unable to grieve properly and desperately in love with his dead husband/their kids/the remnants of their life together, Avon shuts down and starts poisoning their children (Munchausen's by proxy). In the end he gets called on it by his daughter and agrees to try and get better, acknowledging that in most of the ways that matter he never can, and that his vaunted pride and self-control have been thoroughly trashed. For me one of the worst parts is in the better bit, when he realizes he won't be able to make food for the children anymore because he can't trust himself, and will maybe never again be able to--that he'll have to have his daughter check to make sure he's not tampered with the seals etc. In a canon and fandom that tortures this character no-end, this still feels really painful and humiliating and yet, to me at least, a *super-plausible* mundane place to go with… well a man who, in space opera canon, is obsessed with personal safety and nevertheless thinks it's reasonable to let himself be tortured for five days to avenge his dead girlfriend, not even getting into his Thing With Blake.
Special mention for Rojer, which made at least 3 people cry. Once I got to watch. O_O Yaaaaay.
Most fun?
Strings Attached is cracky and joke-heavy with corset sex. There's Carnell, who's super-fun.
Story with single sweetest moment? appealed to elviaprose and she suggested: "I’d say either GP&P, Rojer, or possibly the Corset one, actually XP. I don’t know if it’s “sweet”-but the thing Carnell says about them remembering to be nice to each other is really lovely. Post Mortem is sweet but it doesn’t have a “moment”."
Maybe that bit in Detection where they lay down on all the papers about avon's fraud and Blake's torture sessions. Or Shiny Things, the close? Or Last of the Chants? (Though Molly argues we never get that moment in there--maybe bc we have the parts still to go). It's a weird call.
Hardest story to write?
I remember I was SO not feeling it for GP&P. Everything is weird bc I've been SUPER depressed during this period, and funneling my lack of feeling productive/frustration with academia into this in big, obvious ways. So there's been some groping in the dark: one day I could feel what was working, the next I was emotionally-numb and so essentially working blind, reliant on later editing and experience to push through. GP&P was the initial idea I had AGES ago for what one could do with this fandom, and it's long, a novel, and a bit plotty, and I'm still nooooot happy with its tone and characterization--whether I like it shifts with every read-through, and thanks to the zine editing process, there were a LOT.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I REALLY enjoyed writing Last of the Chants. Several of these essentially spilled out in a night--Religious, Damosel, More Human, Anabasis, Baron, Strings, Post-Mortem.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters? Well, it's a new fandom for me, so many! I feel like the gender swap ones, Damosel (f!Blake/m!Avon), Knox's Rules (f!Avon/m!Blake) (unfinished) and How to Spend It (plotted out, f/f), make me think more about fandom readings/expectations and canon and what's essential to the characters. As If probably helped just by being 21 shorts, so like, forcing me to raffle through permutations/possibilities and practice. Last's plotted sequel has helped a bit bc it has two versions of a character, Avon proper and Aven, from the nice magical Edwardianish Chrestomanci universe, and working with a radically AU version of anyone makes you think about what's essential to them--more so if you ALSO have to handle them-them. Overall I've gotten WAY more comfortable with the whole cast an an ensemble, and tend to read their canon relationships as nicer than I used to.
Most overdue story?
For the zine, GP&P.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? Gosh, what have I not done. Unusual lengths, a theme'd collection, a new fandom, more and better gender-swapping than I have ever done, new wacky tropes I don't even like, v new story-structures for me. What did I learn, though--I think mostly I've been working into a different canon? Like I've had a LOT to do, with that.
What are your fic writing goals for next year? My problem rn is that I am FAT with ideas and bizarrely compelled to write them and worried they'll go if they don't? I need to like--get a GRIP, jesus.
…because I have thus far written about 226,536 words of fic this year. I shit you not. I'm not even like. Done. I. What. No. Also, um, this is since June. All but 800 words of it. So 4 months I guess. Yeeeep.
Clearly the problem is my rekindled love affair with Blake's 7, but let's go to a chart to deal with HOW BAD THIS IS:
Stats:
List of Completed Fics:
Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
The Magic Teapot [VHS] (776 words)
Blake's 7
- “as if we were fools by heavenly compulsion” (30222 words)
- Rojer (36770 words)
- Religious Ecstasy (8621 words)
- Damosel Passing Fair (5320 words)
- More Human Than I Am (6474 words)
- The Last of the Chants (20899 words) (Chrestomanci crossover)
- Anabasis (3401 words)
- Dance Dance Revolution (11063 words) (Steven Universe crossover)
- Post-Mortem (2763 words)
- Baron (3959 words)
- Strings Attached (6044 words)
- Gauda Prime and Prejudice (7123 words) (not finished posting, a zine fic, like 50k total) (Austen fusion)
STUFF I HAVE FINISHED/MOSTLY FINISHED BUT NOT POSTED YET:
A/B (O) I & II (20,000)
15fic (20,000)
Objectively (300)
Total number: 17 fics thus far
Total word count: 30222 + 36770 + 8621 + 5320 + 6474 + 20899 + 3401 + 11063 + 2763 + 3959 + 6044 + GP&P (50,000) + A/B (O) I & II (20,000) + 15fic (20,000) + Objectively (300)
135,536 complete and posted B7 fic + about 90,300 not yet posted B7 fic + 800 word SH crack = 226,536 words of fic this year so far
…there are also some part-finished things, amounting to maybe… 10k? idk. Sigh.
Ship/character breakdown: …look I could tell you that everything is Blake/Avon and that you sometimes get ensembles out of me but even then it's still shippy bullshit, or you could just understand that is how my sad OTP ass rolls, bc presumably we have in some way interacted before.
Specifics:
Best/worst title?
Rojer gave us a PAIN. Man we wracked on that one. I'm happy with it now though. Who knows, re: worst. Dance Dance Revolution is funny but misleading. I've done pretty well with titles this year I think, but expect to fuck up on the still-unposted ones.
I don't have a fav really, but I will leave this place before I crumple and just explain why I think they're all funny.
Best/worst summary? MAN I have sucked at summaries this year.
Best: I don't LOVE it, but GP&P?
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single person must be in want of a partner. On Gauda Prime, the conviction had hardened into fact."
Roj Blake leads the Freedom Party from Gauda Prime, an agricultural commune with a harmless fetish for public assemblies and gossip. Kerr Avon, a free trader with an incredible ship, a fabulous supercomputer and no tact whatsoever, manages to get on Blake's bad side almost immediately.
Worst:
Rojer: "Taking down the Federation might actually be easier than sorting out what's going on with Rojer's parents."
and
"As if…": "A series of short fics running through permutations of the soulmate-mark trope for this pairing."
So Rojer is functionally impossible to summarize. It's a kidfic. Ish. It's also military SF and politics--it's a novella about fighting and winning a war. It's also about a relationship that spans decades, with a LONG period before it's consummated, and then a substantial chunk dealing with the pairing characters' deaths and what happens after. Rojer, the title character, is the pairing characters' son and one of their political successors, and when we last see him he's like, 60, with adult children. So like, good. fucking. luck. Rojer is a better fic than this summary indicates, I think, but it's fucking DIFFICULT to be like--look um, buy in, trust me, this fic is a lot of goddamn things.
"As if" is functionally fucked bc it's 21 short stories that form a thematically united collection, and maybe I should have acknowledged this up-thread when thinking about the number of stories I'd written so far, but OH WELL.
Best/worst first line?
Best/worst last line?
I never know this/don't care as much as Katy does.
General questions:
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? ahahahahahah
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? siiiigh
What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Rojer's probably the best. I slightly resent it for being better than I can regularly produce on command? I like my unwritten ideas more than I like my fic, a lot of the time.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Oh man *nothing* this is such a quiet fandom, the most popular, “as if we were fools by heavenly compulsion”, only has 300 odd hits. It's so frigging fandom-dependent, isn't it? "Gentle Antidote" is just goodish, but Yuletide, so huge. Meanwhile in megafandoms… But I think Rojer, currently #2, will probably win out over time by virtue of being sort of like some old favs in this fandom. It is the most Judith Proctor or Suzan Lovettish thing I've done?
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
The stuff I posted yesterday--no, um, I like DDR better than other people do, but I think Last of the Chants is probably v good (I can't really tell) and not huge bc people fear crossovers.
Story that could have been better?
Anabasis. It's a bit of a fandom cliche, though I didn't quite know at the time--oh I knew PGP was a thing, I'd have to have never touched the fandom, just not afterlife stories. But Anabasis took me like two hours so who caaaares? It's not at all bad! It's just not amazing, and could be stronger on both ship and ensemble lines--and also I was fairly young, then, in my fandom writing.
Sexiest story?
Katy really liked the m/f B/A in Damosel Passing Fair, Religious Ecstasy has decent sex, and horrifyingly A/B (O) is fairly decent in this regard (the fuck was I thinking). I know Molly liked the m/f in the unpublished Knox's Rules. There's not actual sex in the underage fic, just a lot of loaded pining--that's weird (I should explain--there's an underage!fic because I essentially played Awkward Chicken with Paul Darrow's Avon novels, which is an awful idea--to win is to lose, and the only way to win is not to play).
Saddest story?
Omg Baron. Listen let me spoil this for you. A mundane AU where Avon's husband Blake dies nastily in a car accident. Obsessed with the children's safety, wretchedly alone/needy, unable to grieve properly and desperately in love with his dead husband/their kids/the remnants of their life together, Avon shuts down and starts poisoning their children (Munchausen's by proxy). In the end he gets called on it by his daughter and agrees to try and get better, acknowledging that in most of the ways that matter he never can, and that his vaunted pride and self-control have been thoroughly trashed. For me one of the worst parts is in the better bit, when he realizes he won't be able to make food for the children anymore because he can't trust himself, and will maybe never again be able to--that he'll have to have his daughter check to make sure he's not tampered with the seals etc. In a canon and fandom that tortures this character no-end, this still feels really painful and humiliating and yet, to me at least, a *super-plausible* mundane place to go with… well a man who, in space opera canon, is obsessed with personal safety and nevertheless thinks it's reasonable to let himself be tortured for five days to avenge his dead girlfriend, not even getting into his Thing With Blake.
Special mention for Rojer, which made at least 3 people cry. Once I got to watch. O_O Yaaaaay.
Most fun?
Strings Attached is cracky and joke-heavy with corset sex. There's Carnell, who's super-fun.
Story with single sweetest moment? appealed to elviaprose and she suggested: "I’d say either GP&P, Rojer, or possibly the Corset one, actually XP. I don’t know if it’s “sweet”-but the thing Carnell says about them remembering to be nice to each other is really lovely. Post Mortem is sweet but it doesn’t have a “moment”."
Maybe that bit in Detection where they lay down on all the papers about avon's fraud and Blake's torture sessions. Or Shiny Things, the close? Or Last of the Chants? (Though Molly argues we never get that moment in there--maybe bc we have the parts still to go). It's a weird call.
Hardest story to write?
I remember I was SO not feeling it for GP&P. Everything is weird bc I've been SUPER depressed during this period, and funneling my lack of feeling productive/frustration with academia into this in big, obvious ways. So there's been some groping in the dark: one day I could feel what was working, the next I was emotionally-numb and so essentially working blind, reliant on later editing and experience to push through. GP&P was the initial idea I had AGES ago for what one could do with this fandom, and it's long, a novel, and a bit plotty, and I'm still nooooot happy with its tone and characterization--whether I like it shifts with every read-through, and thanks to the zine editing process, there were a LOT.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I REALLY enjoyed writing Last of the Chants. Several of these essentially spilled out in a night--Religious, Damosel, More Human, Anabasis, Baron, Strings, Post-Mortem.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters? Well, it's a new fandom for me, so many! I feel like the gender swap ones, Damosel (f!Blake/m!Avon), Knox's Rules (f!Avon/m!Blake) (unfinished) and How to Spend It (plotted out, f/f), make me think more about fandom readings/expectations and canon and what's essential to the characters. As If probably helped just by being 21 shorts, so like, forcing me to raffle through permutations/possibilities and practice. Last's plotted sequel has helped a bit bc it has two versions of a character, Avon proper and Aven, from the nice magical Edwardianish Chrestomanci universe, and working with a radically AU version of anyone makes you think about what's essential to them--more so if you ALSO have to handle them-them. Overall I've gotten WAY more comfortable with the whole cast an an ensemble, and tend to read their canon relationships as nicer than I used to.
Most overdue story?
For the zine, GP&P.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? Gosh, what have I not done. Unusual lengths, a theme'd collection, a new fandom, more and better gender-swapping than I have ever done, new wacky tropes I don't even like, v new story-structures for me. What did I learn, though--I think mostly I've been working into a different canon? Like I've had a LOT to do, with that.
What are your fic writing goals for next year? My problem rn is that I am FAT with ideas and bizarrely compelled to write them and worried they'll go if they don't? I need to like--get a GRIP, jesus.