2022 Fanfic Year-End Summary-Type Thing
10/1/23 06:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
neveralarchAstonishingly, getting this one out earlier than last year!
I posted 86,869 words of fanfic last year, which is a little lower than what I normally do... but tbh I had a lot of health problems this year so it's kind of astonishing that I got anything written at all. Victory can be defined in many ways haha.
This breaks down into 17 stories: 1 story/1,588 words of Yuletide, 14 stories/75,882 words of Transformers, and 2 stories/9,399 words of SVSSS. I am still mired within TF fandom, I think because every time I start to run out of ideas for one character, there 1500 other characters in 16 other continuities that I can pick up. Happy to stay on this train a while longer.
Yearly questions and answers under the cut. Note that a lot of the fics linked are NSFW/adult.
Best/worst title?
Once again I have mined that masterpiece of modern music which is The Bad Touch by the Bloodhound Gang for The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and Bucket (TF First Aid/Vortex). This song was on CONSTANTLY at parties when I was in college so it just has this... goofy tipsy gritty feel that I love assigning to my fic. Also the implication of Love hovering at the beginning of that lyric is VERY cute. Overall I'm pretty happy with my titles this year :)
Summoning (Bartimaeus Trilogy) is definitely born of 'oh god it's the deadline what do I put as the title.' It WORKS but it's not. Uniquely compelling.
Best/worst summary?
There are a lot of... 'let me just tell you what this is' summaries. I think I've been writing a lot of stuff without much plot but with a lot of kink, so I want people to be able to glance at it, know what it is, and decide if they want to click on it. But tbh the plottier stuff is like this too...
Anyway, I'm very proud of this part of the summary to A Practical Arrangement (TF Starmin arranged marriage): AKA Dominus sells his brother toOne Direction some guy he met at a party, Minimus is a romantic heroine who just wants to BE BIG and FILL OUT FORMS, and Starscream is doing Anastasia only he's the exiled nobility AND the conman AND the murderous revolutionaries.
Like yeah. That's the fic.
I don't think there are any summaries I'm unhappy with... Serviceable is GOOD even if it's not inspiring. This is the year where Everything is Fine.
Best/worst first line?
I really like starting with a short line that drops you right in the middle of a scene, so I often can't pick out a 'good' first line... This one from Personal Massager (TF Megatron/Starscream and Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker) is good just because it's very fun to read and tells you exactly what kind of nonsense you're in for:
"Well," said Hook, disconnecting his medical cable, "I can see the problem. Your internal carburetic distributor is responding to affective distress by creating a surplus of energy without adequate means of discharge."
Also this from Tender Loathing Care (TF Jazz/Ratchet):
"You," snarled Ratchet, as he stormed into the mess hall. "I don't know how you got out without tripping your spark monitor, but you are going back right now."
I love angry Ratchet :)
I think most of the first lines are (once again) serviceable, but I remember struggling a little with A Practical Arrangement and I never quite got it the way I want it:
The music swirled around Minimus as glittering shards of light swept over his frame.
It's an image I could see very easily but I couldn't figure out how to convey it in words.
Best/worst last line?
REALLY happy with my last lines this year, I feel like I was very focused on the goal of ending exactly when it's most fun and not getting caught up in trying to 'wrap things up' or 'come to a natural ending.' That's the one bit of writing advice that's always stuck in my head (from Diana Wynne Jones, I think).
The last line in Tender Loathing Care defines ROMANCE:
"You're my least-favorite doc," said Jazz, fondly. He was gonna ruin Ratchet's life now he knew he'd been slacking. "C'mere and let me bite you again."
Another Jazz line from Soot Tracks (TF First Aid/Vortex/Springer) does a great job of conveying exactly what kind of guy Jazz is in this:
Jazz grinned. "All right. Don't worry, I'll find out. Now, about our boy Springer—"
This (NSFW) line from Oil in the Seams (TF Megatron-centric) is just. I love Optimus in Banners.
Optimus slowly moved his head from side to side in something that could either be a nod or a shake of the head. “Do you think,” he said, “that Megatron would really—Do you think he would fit in my aft port?”
aaaand I'm gonna cut myself off there or else I'll be listing half of my fics.
On the other hand, whenever I end with people just falling asleep together it feels a little like a failure. So this, from Straight to Video (TF Brainstorm/Chromedome/Rewind):
Rewind wraps his arms as far as they can go around Chromedome’s sides, squeezing them tight. Slowly, their sparks settle into a light sync.
They’ll clean up in a minute.
and this from True Love (SVSSS Mobei Jun/Shang Qinghua):
But tonight, it was good enough just to have him back.
are not terrible, but represent missed opportunities haha.
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
There was definitely a moment when I thought I could make it to 100k again, but I ended up hitting a rhythm of more or less one thing a month. I'm happy with that.
Last year my goal was to edit and post the 25TL podfic which... I didn't do... and to get two abandoned wips I'd adopted posted. I got one of them out! Stress Test (TF Megastar), which was most of the way written by Neery until I came in quite a while later and filled in the gaps.
I also wanted to write one or two plottier stories, and I think I accomplished that with my Big Bang (A Practical Arrangement), and with the Springer series that kinda snuck up on me. By and large success.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
AO3 again, but we got Quadrille (TF Jazz-centric) out as a free zine on itch.io :)
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I really had no great investment in Springer (especially G1 springer), but I wanted to play with First Aid/Springer fanon in Sentient Beings (TF First Aid/Springer/Vortex) and I just totally suckered myself into caring about Springer and giving him an emotional arc. That's really bearing more fruit right now as I get my big Springer fic out into the world, but it started in 2022.
Also I fell super hard for SVSSS all of a sudden after literal years spent avoiding any and all information about MXTX novels. I've read... so many volumes of her work now.... Anyway I did write a couple SVSSS fics (True Love and The Author's Just Rewards (Airplane-centric wip)) which I think is the first time I've managed to sustain interest in a fandom besides TF in a while.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I think The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and a Bucket is probably my fave. It's just a very fun story, great ridiculous premise, and full of moments where I just took the story and jerked it off the rails.
I'm pretty happy with a lot of my fic but... Man sometimes the pendulum swings hard on me. Last year I was regularly rereading and enjoying my own fic, and this year there's a bunch of them where I like them but. I do not want to look. Mop and Bucket somehow managed to escape that.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
It's True Love by pretty much every metric haha. This just shows the difference a big fandom makes, even if you're showing up late with a side pairing.
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
Tbh my fics have settled into a very even amount of appreciation, I think because I've been in TF fandom long enough that everyone who wants to read my fic is already subscribed. I mean this in a good way! It's really nice to be able to post very wacky pwps like Straight to Video and immediately get nice feedback.
I will say that The Author's Just Rewards has way more subscriptions than comments, which I think has to do with how uhhhh trashy it is.
Story that could have been better?
There's definitely a version of Summoning that's like 5000 words longer with an Adventure, but unfortunately I had Springer brain. I'm pretty happy with the compact concept I managed to pull together.
The main one is Author's Just Rewards - I got very into the concept, decided to just throw out a couple chapters, and then got distracted. I still have the full plot outline! I do plan to write more! But I wish I'd maintained that energy for a few weeks and just knocked it out.
Sexiest story?
Man this is another head empty 'what is the horniest way to do this' year. I think... Straight to Video. That's the one where I was the most focused and interested in the sex, rather than thinking about THEMES (Ganymede at the Pawnshop (TF Jazz/Rung), Oil in the Seams) or LAUGHS (The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and a Bucket, Personal Massager)
Most fun story?
I mean. Definitely The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and a Bucket. But Personal Massager was also REALLY fun to write, I love dumb G1 Megastar. Also despite having to write a big thing to a deadline, I had a great time working with my artist on A Practical Arrangement and getting to go on and on about Starmin :)
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Oh, yeah, the Springer series for sure. It got me thinking about Springer as someone with tremendous emotional vulnerability who just wants someone to Be With in a way that grounds the rest of his life (and gets really twisted around by First Aid). But this is also like... me making up my own version of Springer, haha. I make no claims about what any of the canon Springers are like.
Hardest story to write?
Well, Author's Just Rewards isn't finished yet so...
Coming in to fill in some of the blanks in Stress Test was also kind of difficult, in that I wasn't involved with plotting it out originally so I was playing catch up the whole time. Overall, though, I feel like I've gotten better at pacing myself so that even with the fics with deadlines, I started far enough back and budgeted enough time that I could get to the end just by slowly chipping away at it without feeling like it was hard or I was rushed. Hopefully I can maintain this!
Easiest story to write?
Definitely Sentient Beings, which I wrote all in one sitting on a day off. I accomplished nothing else. Straight to Video was kind of like this too except it took TWO days and I had to spend a bit of time figuring out how to frame it first. That kind of strong pwp concept is very easy for me to just plow through. (This is also what I said last year lmao)
Most overdue story?
Oil in the Seams was the first full-length Banners fic in like... almost two years, wow. It was fun to pick that world back up, bask in the warmth of all those happy relationships, and then totally ruin Megatron's life haha. And finally pick up on some of those MegOp threads we'd been dropping into fics for fun!
WIP check-in: Banners Chromedome/Rewind/Dominus that I got started to work on with Dez and then we kinda blanked on it. A .txt file with an outline of a MDZS Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji CNC fic but no actual writing. The 25TL podfic that I have made no appreciable progress on. Whoops!
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Nnnno. No, I was just. In my weird writing wheelhouse this year. I did do something kind of interesting with Straight to Video because it has 'live' and 'video' components running simultaneously, but once I figured out how to do it I felt very confident about it. Just out here writing weird robot sex.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Hmmm it would be nice to stretch myself in some way. Maybe tackle gender again, because it feels very rewarding but it's SO hard to write about. Discover some new kink that no one's ever had before, haha. Have funnn
(EDIT AND POST THE 25TL PODFIC)
I posted 86,869 words of fanfic last year, which is a little lower than what I normally do... but tbh I had a lot of health problems this year so it's kind of astonishing that I got anything written at all. Victory can be defined in many ways haha.
This breaks down into 17 stories: 1 story/1,588 words of Yuletide, 14 stories/75,882 words of Transformers, and 2 stories/9,399 words of SVSSS. I am still mired within TF fandom, I think because every time I start to run out of ideas for one character, there 1500 other characters in 16 other continuities that I can pick up. Happy to stay on this train a while longer.
Yearly questions and answers under the cut. Note that a lot of the fics linked are NSFW/adult.
Best/worst title?
Once again I have mined that masterpiece of modern music which is The Bad Touch by the Bloodhound Gang for The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and Bucket (TF First Aid/Vortex). This song was on CONSTANTLY at parties when I was in college so it just has this... goofy tipsy gritty feel that I love assigning to my fic. Also the implication of Love hovering at the beginning of that lyric is VERY cute. Overall I'm pretty happy with my titles this year :)
Summoning (Bartimaeus Trilogy) is definitely born of 'oh god it's the deadline what do I put as the title.' It WORKS but it's not. Uniquely compelling.
Best/worst summary?
There are a lot of... 'let me just tell you what this is' summaries. I think I've been writing a lot of stuff without much plot but with a lot of kink, so I want people to be able to glance at it, know what it is, and decide if they want to click on it. But tbh the plottier stuff is like this too...
Anyway, I'm very proud of this part of the summary to A Practical Arrangement (TF Starmin arranged marriage): AKA Dominus sells his brother to
Like yeah. That's the fic.
I don't think there are any summaries I'm unhappy with... Serviceable is GOOD even if it's not inspiring. This is the year where Everything is Fine.
Best/worst first line?
I really like starting with a short line that drops you right in the middle of a scene, so I often can't pick out a 'good' first line... This one from Personal Massager (TF Megatron/Starscream and Skywarp/Starscream/Thundercracker) is good just because it's very fun to read and tells you exactly what kind of nonsense you're in for:
"Well," said Hook, disconnecting his medical cable, "I can see the problem. Your internal carburetic distributor is responding to affective distress by creating a surplus of energy without adequate means of discharge."
Also this from Tender Loathing Care (TF Jazz/Ratchet):
"You," snarled Ratchet, as he stormed into the mess hall. "I don't know how you got out without tripping your spark monitor, but you are going back right now."
I love angry Ratchet :)
I think most of the first lines are (once again) serviceable, but I remember struggling a little with A Practical Arrangement and I never quite got it the way I want it:
The music swirled around Minimus as glittering shards of light swept over his frame.
It's an image I could see very easily but I couldn't figure out how to convey it in words.
Best/worst last line?
REALLY happy with my last lines this year, I feel like I was very focused on the goal of ending exactly when it's most fun and not getting caught up in trying to 'wrap things up' or 'come to a natural ending.' That's the one bit of writing advice that's always stuck in my head (from Diana Wynne Jones, I think).
The last line in Tender Loathing Care defines ROMANCE:
"You're my least-favorite doc," said Jazz, fondly. He was gonna ruin Ratchet's life now he knew he'd been slacking. "C'mere and let me bite you again."
Another Jazz line from Soot Tracks (TF First Aid/Vortex/Springer) does a great job of conveying exactly what kind of guy Jazz is in this:
Jazz grinned. "All right. Don't worry, I'll find out. Now, about our boy Springer—"
This (NSFW) line from Oil in the Seams (TF Megatron-centric) is just. I love Optimus in Banners.
Optimus slowly moved his head from side to side in something that could either be a nod or a shake of the head. “Do you think,” he said, “that Megatron would really—Do you think he would fit in my aft port?”
aaaand I'm gonna cut myself off there or else I'll be listing half of my fics.
On the other hand, whenever I end with people just falling asleep together it feels a little like a failure. So this, from Straight to Video (TF Brainstorm/Chromedome/Rewind):
Rewind wraps his arms as far as they can go around Chromedome’s sides, squeezing them tight. Slowly, their sparks settle into a light sync.
They’ll clean up in a minute.
and this from True Love (SVSSS Mobei Jun/Shang Qinghua):
But tonight, it was good enough just to have him back.
are not terrible, but represent missed opportunities haha.
Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
There was definitely a moment when I thought I could make it to 100k again, but I ended up hitting a rhythm of more or less one thing a month. I'm happy with that.
Last year my goal was to edit and post the 25TL podfic which... I didn't do... and to get two abandoned wips I'd adopted posted. I got one of them out! Stress Test (TF Megastar), which was most of the way written by Neery until I came in quite a while later and filled in the gaps.
I also wanted to write one or two plottier stories, and I think I accomplished that with my Big Bang (A Practical Arrangement), and with the Springer series that kinda snuck up on me. By and large success.
Where did you publish/archive your stories?
AO3 again, but we got Quadrille (TF Jazz-centric) out as a free zine on itch.io :)
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
I really had no great investment in Springer (especially G1 springer), but I wanted to play with First Aid/Springer fanon in Sentient Beings (TF First Aid/Springer/Vortex) and I just totally suckered myself into caring about Springer and giving him an emotional arc. That's really bearing more fruit right now as I get my big Springer fic out into the world, but it started in 2022.
Also I fell super hard for SVSSS all of a sudden after literal years spent avoiding any and all information about MXTX novels. I've read... so many volumes of her work now.... Anyway I did write a couple SVSSS fics (True Love and The Author's Just Rewards (Airplane-centric wip)) which I think is the first time I've managed to sustain interest in a fandom besides TF in a while.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I think The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and a Bucket is probably my fave. It's just a very fun story, great ridiculous premise, and full of moments where I just took the story and jerked it off the rails.
I'm pretty happy with a lot of my fic but... Man sometimes the pendulum swings hard on me. Last year I was regularly rereading and enjoying my own fic, and this year there's a bunch of them where I like them but. I do not want to look. Mop and Bucket somehow managed to escape that.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
It's True Love by pretty much every metric haha. This just shows the difference a big fandom makes, even if you're showing up late with a side pairing.
Story most under appreciated by the universe?
Tbh my fics have settled into a very even amount of appreciation, I think because I've been in TF fandom long enough that everyone who wants to read my fic is already subscribed. I mean this in a good way! It's really nice to be able to post very wacky pwps like Straight to Video and immediately get nice feedback.
I will say that The Author's Just Rewards has way more subscriptions than comments, which I think has to do with how uhhhh trashy it is.
Story that could have been better?
There's definitely a version of Summoning that's like 5000 words longer with an Adventure, but unfortunately I had Springer brain. I'm pretty happy with the compact concept I managed to pull together.
The main one is Author's Just Rewards - I got very into the concept, decided to just throw out a couple chapters, and then got distracted. I still have the full plot outline! I do plan to write more! But I wish I'd maintained that energy for a few weeks and just knocked it out.
Sexiest story?
Man this is another head empty 'what is the horniest way to do this' year. I think... Straight to Video. That's the one where I was the most focused and interested in the sex, rather than thinking about THEMES (Ganymede at the Pawnshop (TF Jazz/Rung), Oil in the Seams) or LAUGHS (The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and a Bucket, Personal Massager)
Most fun story?
I mean. Definitely The Kind You Clean Up with a Mop and a Bucket. But Personal Massager was also REALLY fun to write, I love dumb G1 Megastar. Also despite having to write a big thing to a deadline, I had a great time working with my artist on A Practical Arrangement and getting to go on and on about Starmin :)
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
Oh, yeah, the Springer series for sure. It got me thinking about Springer as someone with tremendous emotional vulnerability who just wants someone to Be With in a way that grounds the rest of his life (and gets really twisted around by First Aid). But this is also like... me making up my own version of Springer, haha. I make no claims about what any of the canon Springers are like.
Hardest story to write?
Well, Author's Just Rewards isn't finished yet so...
Coming in to fill in some of the blanks in Stress Test was also kind of difficult, in that I wasn't involved with plotting it out originally so I was playing catch up the whole time. Overall, though, I feel like I've gotten better at pacing myself so that even with the fics with deadlines, I started far enough back and budgeted enough time that I could get to the end just by slowly chipping away at it without feeling like it was hard or I was rushed. Hopefully I can maintain this!
Easiest story to write?
Definitely Sentient Beings, which I wrote all in one sitting on a day off. I accomplished nothing else. Straight to Video was kind of like this too except it took TWO days and I had to spend a bit of time figuring out how to frame it first. That kind of strong pwp concept is very easy for me to just plow through. (This is also what I said last year lmao)
Most overdue story?
Oil in the Seams was the first full-length Banners fic in like... almost two years, wow. It was fun to pick that world back up, bask in the warmth of all those happy relationships, and then totally ruin Megatron's life haha. And finally pick up on some of those MegOp threads we'd been dropping into fics for fun!
WIP check-in: Banners Chromedome/Rewind/Dominus that I got started to work on with Dez and then we kinda blanked on it. A .txt file with an outline of a MDZS Wei Wuxian/Lan Wangji CNC fic but no actual writing. The 25TL podfic that I have made no appreciable progress on. Whoops!
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Nnnno. No, I was just. In my weird writing wheelhouse this year. I did do something kind of interesting with Straight to Video because it has 'live' and 'video' components running simultaneously, but once I figured out how to do it I felt very confident about it. Just out here writing weird robot sex.
Do you have any fanfic goals for the New Year?
Hmmm it would be nice to stretch myself in some way. Maybe tackle gender again, because it feels very rewarding but it's SO hard to write about. Discover some new kink that no one's ever had before, haha. Have funnn
(EDIT AND POST THE 25TL PODFIC)
Re: Go you!
Date: 2023-01-12 11:07 pm (UTC)