Fic Year in Review Meme 2018
Jan. 4th, 2019 11:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedarlingoneI wrote this year! :D Or, well, 2018. You know what I mean.
So in May 2017 I wound up joining a D&D group I'm still playing with; we're on our second campaign now, but for our first campaign, it was a little bit short notice and I was still hoping my previous campaign would start back up so I didn't want to reuse Etayne, so I was like "shit shit shit I need a character", panicked slightly, and wound up building tiefling monk Wes Janson. (Who wound up having no ranged capability because monk class, but was extremely fun all round, even if he was still being played by me and therefore stayed pretty firmly in XO mode most of the time.) At some point I'll probably do a post about memorable moments from that campaign, but right now my point is that while doing character research I ran across a mention of Rogue Podron, a Star Wars book club podcast that was reading through the X-wing books a few chapters at a time. They're entertaining as fuck, even if they didn't appreciate Starfighters of Adumar properly, and they did weekly listener questions (I wound up drawing Wedge, Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie as mermen at one point, which may tell you something about the general tone of the podcast).
So last January one of their listener questions tripped some kind of switch in my brain, and for the first time in several years I found myself writing a story that didn't have to be dragged out word by word like pulling teeth. From there I discovered the Rogue Squadron Discord server, meaning I had an actual active fandom with other people in it for the first time since... possibly 2010-2011. O_O
That's where I metthe_dour_one; our first interaction was us staying up all night discussing Hobbie Klivian's backstory (such as it is, there's barely anything), and we kind of haven't stopped. :D She asked me to take a look at the Wedge and Wes characterization in a Poe story she was writing (still unpublished), and I came that fucking close to saying I had enough on my plate already. But my beta reader vanity won out, and thank fuck it did. We talked about her story, and my then-current story, and then we accidentally RPed a post-Distna dialogue scene together and went "...we could flesh this out into a real story", and 54,000 words later that one's still in rewrites. ^_^
I used to write drabbles, okay. I've written a novel this year, and multiple porn fics, and I've inspired fics and betaed fics and... it's been a year.
*****
Stats
List of Finished Fic:
(all fics X-wing fandom)
* Selling Out (Han, Wedge, Wes, Corran)
* there's just no percentage in remembering the past (aro Wes angstfic, Adumar)
* Homecoming (OT4 post-Distna porn)
* Center of Our World (OT4 post-Distna snuggles)
* Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps (Wes/Hobbie post-Adumar mutual pining)
* A Kiss... As a Lie (college AU Wes/Hobbie mutual pining, Mirax)
* Life, Death, Life (Wes five times grieving - in progress)
* Waiting (Wes&Wedge post-Hoth)
* Summertime (Wes/Hobbie old married couple porn)
* Shadow of Death (zombie AU, Wes deathfic)
And two that I/we wrote last year and posted this year:
* An Outlet (Wes/Tycho watersports porn, WHY)
* Escapees (Wes/Hobbie meet-cute)
Total number: 12
Total word count: 25,054
Ship/character breakdown:
* Wes Janson (12)
* Hobbie Klivian (7)
* Wedge Antilles (5)
* Tycho Celchu (5)
* Han Solo (1)
* Inyri Forge (1)
* Corran Horn (1)
* Mirax Terrik (1)
* Jek Porkins (1)
* Wes/Hobbie (4)
* OT4 (2)
* Wes/Tycho (1)
Specifics:
Best/worst title? - Oh, I hate pretty much all my titles. I've started letting Leia (the_dour_one) name my fics. Of the ones I named, I'm pretty proud of "Shadow of Death". I actually like the title of "A Kiss... As a Lie", but I feel a little funny about it because it's literally just the prompt I wrote it to.
Best/worst summary? - Well, favorite anyway is Mirax's evil grin gets eviller. "Make out with Hobbie. For one minute.", from "A Kiss... As a Lie". Least favorite, which is saying something because again I loathe most of my summaries, is definitely Prompt from a cuddlefic meme: "OT4, just waking up". Post-Distna quarantine., from "Center of Our World". Talk about low effort? ;P
Best first line? - Man, I don't think I can pick. I think it's either I'm not jealous. Really I'm not., from "there's just no percentage in remembering the past", or "Give me my knife and I'll do it myself," I say evenly, meeting Wedge's gaze., from "Shadow of Death", but there are a lot of good ones. Finding the right first line is pretty much always how I start actually writing a fic.
Best last line? - That one's definitely from "Center of Our World", "I'm not dead," he said, breaking the kiss, his heart pounding raggedly. "And neither are you."
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? - Jesus christ, I didn't expect to write at all. I've been struggling to write anything for years. I think between all the unpublished shit I must have written at least 100k this year, maybe a lot more. (It's hard to get an exact breakdown because Leia and I do co-written RP fics so much, but counting all our shared fics toward my wordcount rather than splitting them, definitely over 100k.)
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? - Thaaaat would be the Wes/Tycho watersports. XD It's an extreme rarepair to start with, and then... well,drabblewriter / Katie was like "I've been thinking about this scatfic prompt but I don't know", and I was like "so I'll write this watersports fic I've been thinking about if you write the scat fic", and then we did. Sometimes things just happen.
What's your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. - Good damn question. Happiest is a relative term when you write as much angst and emo!whump as I have this year, but I'm really damn proud of "Shadow of Death" and "Waiting". On the other hand, "Center of Our World" is a lovely happy little cuddlefic.
Okay, NOW your most popular story. - By hits? "Selling Out" by a long shot, nearly 400 hits total, because Rogue Podron linked it. By kudos, "Selling Out" is tied with "Homecoming", my first-ever porn fic. By comment threads, "Selling Out" again.
Story most underappreciated by the universe? - "Summertime", definitely. I wanted it to be a fluffy little comfort read, but it seems to have fallen pretty flat. I like it, I think it's good, but for whatever reason it's right down at the bottom of my stats this year, whichever way I sort them.
Story that could have been better? - "Selling Out". The prompt was for Corran Horn, and I don't think I wrote him very well. And you kind of have to be familiar with Rogue Podron to get a lot of it. It did what it was meant to do, but its popularity is artificially inflated because it was written to a prompt from a (relatively) popular podcast.
Sexiest story? - I refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer may tend to incriminate me? ^_^ Okay, I actually think it's "A Kiss... As a Lie", which has no actual junk-touching but I'm really proud of how hot that kiss turned out. But "An Outlet" is up there. So is "Homecoming". I feel like "Summertime" maybe could have been a little better paced? I have a theory, though, which is that when it comes to fanfic porn, the most important thing is to focus on the feelings. I think this is why anonymous-sex kink tropes never quite seem to hit the mark, at least for me. So I've been working on that theory in planning and writing my porn fics, and I think "A Kiss... As a Lie" is the one where I really got the feelings super solid throughout.
Saddest story? - Ooh. Can I pick? I may not be able to pick just one. "Shadow of Death" packs a kick. I think it may very slightly edge out "there's just no percentage in remembering the past".
Most fun? - To write or to read? Honestly, I'd give that to "Escapees". We knocked it out in a few evenings of not!ficcing at each other, then I polished it up in a couple evenings recently, and it's this adorable little Wes/Hobbie meet-cute that I'd been wanting to write for ages. I think it works really well.
Story with single sweetest moment? - See, for me that was the ending of "Summertime", and I'm a little bitter that the universe doesn't seem to have recognized it.
Wes wrapped his arms around Hobbie and hugged him close. "You're the best, Hobbs," he said.
Hobbie reached up and ran his hand through Wes's hair. "I love you too, idiot."
A laugh rumbled deep in Wes's chest. "I'm *your* idiot," he said placidly.
Hobbie had to kiss Wes again for that. "Yes you are," he told him between kisses. "All mine. Every single bit of you."
Wes cupped the back of Hobbie's head with one hand, deepening their kisses. "I love you," he murmured, the words tangling between his tongue and Hobbie's. "You're mine too."
Hardest story to write? - Well, I'm still working on "Life, Death, Life". And "Homecoming" was kind of terrifying because it was my very first porn, and you so often hear people talking about "oh haha you can totally tell this porn was written by a virgin", and yyyyeah. ;P *still kind of sensitive about being into my thirties and never having dated*
Easiest/most fun story to write? - I'm gonna say "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps". That one was neat because we were just like "we wanna write. write what? who knows? maybe this?" and then we did. from initial concept to complete draft in one evening. a quick beta to untangle some of the longer paragraphs where we got a bit netizen-style having five concurrent conversations at once, and then posted.
Most overdue story? - None of these had deadlines, but I'd been trying to get "there's just no percentage in remembering the past" to actually word since at least 2013 or maybe 2011 and it finally did. (Working title was "Wes is bitter and lonely in a stairwell". I was also very bitter and lonely in whenever-it-was that I originally started trying to write it. I'm much less bitter and lonely now. Maybe that was what it needed.)
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? - ahahaha I took nothing but writing risks this year. I wrote a novel front to back! I wrote multiple porns! I wrote extremely kinky porns! I wrote with a co-author! I wrote Wes Janson, whose personality I never thought I had any handle on before. I wrote to a prompt for the first time in a very long time, I wrote a visibly disabled character, I wrote in a fucking zombie AU (blame Katie again)...
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: Er. Porn? Angst? Writing with Leia? Writing angsty porn with Leia? (Haven't published any of that yet. Um, I don't know that this year really had a theme. Maybe "Selling Out", because it all started with the podron, after all.
What are your fic writing goals for next year? - Finish and post Afterimage (the 54k post-Distna novel). Finish and post some more of Leia's stories. Finish and post "Spy vs Spy", the first-started of our co-written porns, which has been half-finished for way too damn long while we try to figure out exactly what to do with it. (7k before I even got Wes's shirt off. That one's got a lot going on.)
So in May 2017 I wound up joining a D&D group I'm still playing with; we're on our second campaign now, but for our first campaign, it was a little bit short notice and I was still hoping my previous campaign would start back up so I didn't want to reuse Etayne, so I was like "shit shit shit I need a character", panicked slightly, and wound up building tiefling monk Wes Janson. (Who wound up having no ranged capability because monk class, but was extremely fun all round, even if he was still being played by me and therefore stayed pretty firmly in XO mode most of the time.) At some point I'll probably do a post about memorable moments from that campaign, but right now my point is that while doing character research I ran across a mention of Rogue Podron, a Star Wars book club podcast that was reading through the X-wing books a few chapters at a time. They're entertaining as fuck, even if they didn't appreciate Starfighters of Adumar properly, and they did weekly listener questions (I wound up drawing Wedge, Tycho, Wes, and Hobbie as mermen at one point, which may tell you something about the general tone of the podcast).
So last January one of their listener questions tripped some kind of switch in my brain, and for the first time in several years I found myself writing a story that didn't have to be dragged out word by word like pulling teeth. From there I discovered the Rogue Squadron Discord server, meaning I had an actual active fandom with other people in it for the first time since... possibly 2010-2011. O_O
That's where I met
the_dour_one; our first interaction was us staying up all night discussing Hobbie Klivian's backstory (such as it is, there's barely anything), and we kind of haven't stopped. :D She asked me to take a look at the Wedge and Wes characterization in a Poe story she was writing (still unpublished), and I came that fucking close to saying I had enough on my plate already. But my beta reader vanity won out, and thank fuck it did. We talked about her story, and my then-current story, and then we accidentally RPed a post-Distna dialogue scene together and went "...we could flesh this out into a real story", and 54,000 words later that one's still in rewrites. ^_^I used to write drabbles, okay. I've written a novel this year, and multiple porn fics, and I've inspired fics and betaed fics and... it's been a year.
*****
Stats
List of Finished Fic:
(all fics X-wing fandom)
* Selling Out (Han, Wedge, Wes, Corran)
* there's just no percentage in remembering the past (aro Wes angstfic, Adumar)
* Homecoming (OT4 post-Distna porn)
* Center of Our World (OT4 post-Distna snuggles)
* Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps (Wes/Hobbie post-Adumar mutual pining)
* A Kiss... As a Lie (college AU Wes/Hobbie mutual pining, Mirax)
* Life, Death, Life (Wes five times grieving - in progress)
* Waiting (Wes&Wedge post-Hoth)
* Summertime (Wes/Hobbie old married couple porn)
* Shadow of Death (zombie AU, Wes deathfic)
And two that I/we wrote last year and posted this year:
* An Outlet (Wes/Tycho watersports porn, WHY)
* Escapees (Wes/Hobbie meet-cute)
Total number: 12
Total word count: 25,054
Ship/character breakdown:
* Wes Janson (12)
* Hobbie Klivian (7)
* Wedge Antilles (5)
* Tycho Celchu (5)
* Han Solo (1)
* Inyri Forge (1)
* Corran Horn (1)
* Mirax Terrik (1)
* Jek Porkins (1)
* Wes/Hobbie (4)
* OT4 (2)
* Wes/Tycho (1)
Specifics:
Best/worst title? - Oh, I hate pretty much all my titles. I've started letting Leia (the_dour_one) name my fics. Of the ones I named, I'm pretty proud of "Shadow of Death". I actually like the title of "A Kiss... As a Lie", but I feel a little funny about it because it's literally just the prompt I wrote it to.
Best/worst summary? - Well, favorite anyway is Mirax's evil grin gets eviller. "Make out with Hobbie. For one minute.", from "A Kiss... As a Lie". Least favorite, which is saying something because again I loathe most of my summaries, is definitely Prompt from a cuddlefic meme: "OT4, just waking up". Post-Distna quarantine., from "Center of Our World". Talk about low effort? ;P
Best first line? - Man, I don't think I can pick. I think it's either I'm not jealous. Really I'm not., from "there's just no percentage in remembering the past", or "Give me my knife and I'll do it myself," I say evenly, meeting Wedge's gaze., from "Shadow of Death", but there are a lot of good ones. Finding the right first line is pretty much always how I start actually writing a fic.
Best last line? - That one's definitely from "Center of Our World", "I'm not dead," he said, breaking the kiss, his heart pounding raggedly. "And neither are you."
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? - Jesus christ, I didn't expect to write at all. I've been struggling to write anything for years. I think between all the unpublished shit I must have written at least 100k this year, maybe a lot more. (It's hard to get an exact breakdown because Leia and I do co-written RP fics so much, but counting all our shared fics toward my wordcount rather than splitting them, definitely over 100k.)
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? - Thaaaat would be the Wes/Tycho watersports. XD It's an extreme rarepair to start with, and then... well,
drabblewriter / Katie was like "I've been thinking about this scatfic prompt but I don't know", and I was like "so I'll write this watersports fic I've been thinking about if you write the scat fic", and then we did. Sometimes things just happen.What's your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. - Good damn question. Happiest is a relative term when you write as much angst and emo!whump as I have this year, but I'm really damn proud of "Shadow of Death" and "Waiting". On the other hand, "Center of Our World" is a lovely happy little cuddlefic.
Okay, NOW your most popular story. - By hits? "Selling Out" by a long shot, nearly 400 hits total, because Rogue Podron linked it. By kudos, "Selling Out" is tied with "Homecoming", my first-ever porn fic. By comment threads, "Selling Out" again.
Story most underappreciated by the universe? - "Summertime", definitely. I wanted it to be a fluffy little comfort read, but it seems to have fallen pretty flat. I like it, I think it's good, but for whatever reason it's right down at the bottom of my stats this year, whichever way I sort them.
Story that could have been better? - "Selling Out". The prompt was for Corran Horn, and I don't think I wrote him very well. And you kind of have to be familiar with Rogue Podron to get a lot of it. It did what it was meant to do, but its popularity is artificially inflated because it was written to a prompt from a (relatively) popular podcast.
Sexiest story? - I refuse to answer on the grounds that the answer may tend to incriminate me? ^_^ Okay, I actually think it's "A Kiss... As a Lie", which has no actual junk-touching but I'm really proud of how hot that kiss turned out. But "An Outlet" is up there. So is "Homecoming". I feel like "Summertime" maybe could have been a little better paced? I have a theory, though, which is that when it comes to fanfic porn, the most important thing is to focus on the feelings. I think this is why anonymous-sex kink tropes never quite seem to hit the mark, at least for me. So I've been working on that theory in planning and writing my porn fics, and I think "A Kiss... As a Lie" is the one where I really got the feelings super solid throughout.
Saddest story? - Ooh. Can I pick? I may not be able to pick just one. "Shadow of Death" packs a kick. I think it may very slightly edge out "there's just no percentage in remembering the past".
Most fun? - To write or to read? Honestly, I'd give that to "Escapees". We knocked it out in a few evenings of not!ficcing at each other, then I polished it up in a couple evenings recently, and it's this adorable little Wes/Hobbie meet-cute that I'd been wanting to write for ages. I think it works really well.
Story with single sweetest moment? - See, for me that was the ending of "Summertime", and I'm a little bitter that the universe doesn't seem to have recognized it.
Wes wrapped his arms around Hobbie and hugged him close. "You're the best, Hobbs," he said.
Hobbie reached up and ran his hand through Wes's hair. "I love you too, idiot."
A laugh rumbled deep in Wes's chest. "I'm *your* idiot," he said placidly.
Hobbie had to kiss Wes again for that. "Yes you are," he told him between kisses. "All mine. Every single bit of you."
Wes cupped the back of Hobbie's head with one hand, deepening their kisses. "I love you," he murmured, the words tangling between his tongue and Hobbie's. "You're mine too."
Hardest story to write? - Well, I'm still working on "Life, Death, Life". And "Homecoming" was kind of terrifying because it was my very first porn, and you so often hear people talking about "oh haha you can totally tell this porn was written by a virgin", and yyyyeah. ;P *still kind of sensitive about being into my thirties and never having dated*
Easiest/most fun story to write? - I'm gonna say "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps". That one was neat because we were just like "we wanna write. write what? who knows? maybe this?" and then we did. from initial concept to complete draft in one evening. a quick beta to untangle some of the longer paragraphs where we got a bit netizen-style having five concurrent conversations at once, and then posted.
Most overdue story? - None of these had deadlines, but I'd been trying to get "there's just no percentage in remembering the past" to actually word since at least 2013 or maybe 2011 and it finally did. (Working title was "Wes is bitter and lonely in a stairwell". I was also very bitter and lonely in whenever-it-was that I originally started trying to write it. I'm much less bitter and lonely now. Maybe that was what it needed.)
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? - ahahaha I took nothing but writing risks this year. I wrote a novel front to back! I wrote multiple porns! I wrote extremely kinky porns! I wrote with a co-author! I wrote Wes Janson, whose personality I never thought I had any handle on before. I wrote to a prompt for the first time in a very long time, I wrote a visibly disabled character, I wrote in a fucking zombie AU (blame Katie again)...
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: Er. Porn? Angst? Writing with Leia? Writing angsty porn with Leia? (Haven't published any of that yet. Um, I don't know that this year really had a theme. Maybe "Selling Out", because it all started with the podron, after all.
What are your fic writing goals for next year? - Finish and post Afterimage (the 54k post-Distna novel). Finish and post some more of Leia's stories. Finish and post "Spy vs Spy", the first-started of our co-written porns, which has been half-finished for way too damn long while we try to figure out exactly what to do with it. (7k before I even got Wes's shirt off. That one's got a lot going on.)
