fannish year in review 2014

[kaydeefalls]

Since I'm already halfway through January, I may as well give up on waiting for the Steve/Bucky fic to be finished before I do my yearly writing/vidding roundup. I'm still giving myself credit for those 30k words of WIP in my total word count, though. I fucking earned those for 2014. And actually, if you add that in, I actually did write about 15k more words in 2014 than in 2013, even though I posted fewer fics total.

On the plus side, BANNER YEAR FOR VIDS. This is the first year I've produced more vids than fics. By which I mean TWICE AS MANY. Weird.


Fics: 5
Vids: 10
Fandoms: 6 (not counting fusion fandoms)
Word count: 75,902 (including not-quite-finished WIP)

By fandom:
MCU: 7
X-Men: 3
Pacific Rim: 2
Cloud Atlas: 1
Cracked After Hours: 1
Doctor Who: 1



Fics:
somebody hears you. (you know that.), MCU, Bucky/Steve
ampersand, MCU, Bucky/Steve
Queen's Gambit, XMFC/Inception, ensemble (fucking FINALLY; ~22k added this year)
Tabula Rasa, X-Men, Charles/Erik
9 Strangely Arousing Things In Doctor Who, Cracked After Hours, ensemble

Vids:
But I'm Hopeful Yet, Pacific Rim, Mako/Raleigh
Keep Your Picture Clear, Pacific Rim, Newt + Hermann
Soon Love Soon, Cloud Atlas, ensemble
The Hymn of Acxiom, MCU, Bucky
How Far We've Come, MCU, Steve
We Will Dance, MCU, Natasha
Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk, MCU, Steve + Peggy, Bucky
Clear the Area, MCU, Sam/Steve
Human, X-Men, Raven
Minute to Minute, Doctor Who, Danny/Clara

Leitmotif of the year:
Um. Like last year, I guess there's a lot of finding/defining yourself -- or, well, examining yourself and realizing just how lost you've become, and figuring out a way to move forward from there. CA:TWS really took over my brain this year, so, yeah, Steve and Bucky, man. It's all about the need to reclaim one's own identity. That spilled over into all of my X-Men fanworks this year, too, with Raven in particular in both Queen's Gambit and Human.

What's the fanwork that makes you happiest?
9 Strangely Arousing Things In Doctor Who, hands down. Pure cracky fun to write. Fun fact: there are lots of things in Doctor Who that look like penises.

My favorite fanworks this year:
The Hymn of Acxiom and somebody hears you. (you know that.) as a duet. One's a vid and one's a fic, but they're really companion pieces exploring the same theme, with the vid reflecting on what has been and the fic looking forward to what Bucky can become next.

My best fanworks this year:
I'm crap at judging these things, but probably The Hymn of Acxiom, again. It's my favorite vid in a very long time.

Most popular fanwork:
By AO3 kudos, ampersand, oddly enough. Don't get me wrong, I quite like that one, and I liked exploring the parts of Bucky that always were destined to become the Winter Soldier, long before he fell from the train. I just wasn't expecting the popularity -- it has the second highest kudos count of anything I've ever posted on AO3. (Then again, kudos are weird, and I am constantly baffled that my XMFC reversebang fic is my most popular fic ever, given how hard that fic was to write and how few good feelings I have about it in general.)

Fanwork most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
As always, I believe the stuff that gets ignored generally deserves it. I'm a little sad that Minute to Minute never really found an audience, but that's pretty indicative of the most recent series of Doctor Who (and of Clara and Danny) as a whole. Nobody seems to get too excited about those characters.

Most fun fanwork:
9 Strangely Arousing Things In Doctor Who. Duh. I love Cracked After Hours SO MUCH, guys, why isn't everybody as obsessed with this ridiculous geeky webseries as I am?

Sexiest fanwork:
I don't write much smut. Probably the Steve/Bucky WIP. IDK.

Fanwork with single sexiest moment:
...oh, right, there's an actual Hank/Alex sex scene in the last chapter of Queen's Gambit. I keep forgetting about that. Probably because I don't really ship them, so it didn't feel particularly sexy to write. But yay blowjobs?

Fanwork with single sweetest moment:
I don't tend to create shipper vids, so the Danny/Clara in Minute to Minute feels more saccharine than my usual. There are a couple of gently cute moments in the final chapters of Queen's Gambit, as well.

Hardest fanwork to make:
Obviously any unfinished WIP tops that list, so yeah, I've been struggling with this dratted Steve/Bucky fic since June and there's absolutely no good reason it should be taking me this long. But one last shoutout to Queen's Gambit and all THREE YEARS it took me to write. I do NOT miss having that hanging over my head, let me tell you.

Easiest fanwork to make:
somebody hears you. (you know that.) was written very quickly and easily, for some reason -- I guess I just had a lot of Bucky feels and needed to get them out RIGHT THAT INSTANT. Ditto to many of the vids this year -- they all happened pretty quickly.

Fanwork that made you cry:
Clipping Cloud Atlas for Soon Love Soon may have made me a little misty. I love all those intertwined stories quite a lot.

"Holy crap, that's wrong even for you" fanwork:
Tabula Rasa! I've never touched non-con before (even though it was fairly tame and non-sexual), so that skeeved me out a bit while writing it, and also I had to stop at several points and walk away from my laptop berating myself for being such an asshole. Dollhouse fusions, man. There's a lot of fucked-up-edness implied, even if you don't get too explicit.

Fanwork that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:
Watching Pacific Rim, I never cared much about Newt or Hermann. Then Keep Your Picture Clear happened. I still don't like them best, but man, there's some fascinating shit going on in Newt's head.

Biggest disappointment:
The Steve/Bucky WIP isn't anywhere near as awesome as I would like it to be, and while I've spent a lot of time and effort reworking large chunks of it, I'm kind of accepting that it just...is what it is. Not that I think it's bad! I'm just not sure how to level it up to awesome.

Biggest surprise:
After years of enjoying the MCU without ever getting particularly fannish about it -- and with Cap probably my least favorite character -- the strength of my reaction to CA:TWS was MOST UNEXPECTED. Um, obviously Steve is my favorite now, and I feel very silly for overlooking him before. So, yeah -- especially given that DoFP came out this year, which I'd expected to launch me ever deeper into the X-Men fandom, the sudden switch to the other Marvel superhero fandom was not something I saw coming. No regrets, though!

Most telling fanwork:
...eh. Nothing much this year, I don't think. Although 9 Strangely Arousing Things In Doctor Who probably reveals more about the running commentary in my brain than I should feel comfortable with. If Michael and Katie had a baby, it would be me, is all I'm saying.

Favorite opening:
The comics are the worst. - from ampersand, being the line I wrote with absolutely no idea what sort of fic it belonged to, but I knew Bucky hating the comics would be super important.
And for vids, both Clear the Area and How Far We've Come have very satisfying openings. ("Knock knock" with Steve knocking on Sam's door, and "hello hello hello" as Steve slowly wakes up in the 21st century.)

Favorite closing:
Honestly? Every single fic I wrote this year. I have a thing for endings, what can I say. I like ending somebody hears you. (you know that.) with: Bucky closes his eyes and leans back against the thin pillow, his whole body relaxing for the first time in he doesn't know how long. "All right," he says. "All right." Because it's kind of an ambiguous ending on the surface, since nothing seems to be resolved, except that this is the first time in the entire fic he's thought of himself as Bucky, so actually, it's kind of a huge deal.
Vidding -- Clear the Area, again, and also We Will Dance. Ending on Natasha's smirk is always satisfying.

Favorite moment anywhere:
The moment in Tabula Rasa where you realize that it's not really a fluffy 5 Things fic. I planted a couple of different possible clues in that fic, and from the comments, it hit different people at different spots, and that pleases me greatly.
And it's a little thing, but I really like the lyric line in The Hymn of Acxiom "moments you long forgot / keep them all", with the Winter Soldier struggling to remember the man on the bridge juxtaposed with Bucky at the Stark Expo turning around to realize that Steve is missing.

Favorite title:
Tabula Rasa gives away the twist of the fic in the very title! I like the double meaning of it -- "blank slate," which makes sense for a 5 Things of different meet-cute AUs (starting from scratch every time), but if you're familiar with Dollhouse...yeah.

Looking back, did you create more fanworks than you thought you would this year, fewer than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Fewer fics, more vids. But my only real goal for 2014 was to finally finish Queen's Gambit, so, y'know, mission accomplished, I guess.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you create for that you would never have predicted in January 2014?
Have I mentioned how blindsided I was by all the MCU feels?

What's next for 2015:
Finish the dratted Steve/Bucky fic. I did finish my Festivid tonight, thankfully, so now I'm finally through with all the seasonal challenge deadlines, and I can go back to it properly. I've also got a very rough draft of another vid that needs serious overhaul, and a few vid bunnies lurking in the back of my head. Fic-wise, I've got an X-Men WIP that could use some love, and another Bucky fic patiently waiting its turn. We'll see. I have a feeling I won't be much more productive in 2015 than I was in 2014, but you never know.


And since I always end this meme with snippets from any of my active WIPs -- look! It's a piece of the fucking Steve/Bucky WIP. Albeit without Bucky present.

"So here's the thing," Tony tells Steve, in that too-casual tone that immediately makes every muscle in Steve's body tense up. "Your comrade-in-ice has a HYDRA tracking device wired into his robot arm. But in a good way!" he adds, when Steve apparently does not look appropriately pleased by this revelation.

"What exactly is good about that?" Steve demands. "And hold on a minute -- they allowed you in to see Bucky?"

"'Allowed' is such a strong word," Tony says. "But seriously -- robot arm, hello, did you really think I wasn't gonna be all over that? And, hey, tracker! Which I found! So it all worked out for the best, right?"

He directs that last bit to Hill, very pointedly. She ignores him. "It's a good thing because now we know how they found Barnes in Nebraska," she tells Steve.

"Great. Really sets my mind at ease. Can you take it out of him?"

"Technically, yes," Tony says. "But I'm not going to."

Steve's temper is starting to boil over again, but Thor grips his shoulder in unspoken warning. He grits his teeth and keeps a lid on it, barely. "You mind explaining why not?"

Tony's eyes dart to Hill again. "Well, for starters, I can't disconnect it without disabling it entirely, and knowing HYDRA, that'll probably trigger something even more unpleasant -- not sure what exactly, hard to study it properly in that underequipped airplane hangar. Now, if you wanna relocate the Capsicle Mark 2 to my lab--"

"But in the meantime, as long as that tracker stays in him, HYDRA knows how to find him," Hill interrupts. "Which means we can find them."

It only takes about half a second for the implication to sink in. "No. No, absolutely not, I won't allow it. And I know you're not telling me he agreed to this--"

"Steve," Natasha says quietly. "Bucky's the one who suggested it."

Steve shakes his head. "This is ridiculous. HYDRA's been on the run since the helicarriers were destroyed. We've been rooting out splinter cells for months now. What could we possibly gain--"

"Those guys are small fry," Hill says. "But even within HYDRA, the Winter Soldier was a closely guarded secret. There was no intel on him in any of the files Natasha plastered across the internet. So if someone's specifically tracking him now, we need to know who they are. And we need to eliminate them."

"You're saying this is some kinda HYDRA VIP?" Sam asks. "I thought we already took care of the important ones."

Hill gives him a wry smile. "Cut off one head, and two more take its place. After Pierce's death, two of his lieutenants rose to particular prominence. One was known as the Clairvoyant -- he's since been dealt with. The other calls himself Crossbones. He's the one who's trying to recapture Barnes."

"'Crossbones'? Really?" Tony scoffs. "What kind of wannabe supervillain picks a lame name like that?"

Behind his back, Clint rolls his eyes and mouths "Iron Man", air quotes and all.

"He's done a good job of keeping his actual identity under wraps," Hill says. "But there are only a few likely candidates -- very few people knew about the Winter Soldier's existence, and most of them were killed during the battle of the Triskelion. And Crossbones isn't a scientist. He's a soldier, and worse, he's a true believer. And he's trying to consolidate power. If he regains control of the Winter Soldier--"

"He won't," Steve says, with all the authority and command of Captain America in his voice. "Because we're not using Bucky as bait."

...

They are, in fact, using Bucky as bait.

And while we're at it, I'm hoping that once I'm done with that fucker, I can go back to the next fic in the X-Men/Firefly fusion I started a year ago, so here's a snippet of that for good luck.

They left Whitefall within forty-eight hours of their arrival. None were sorry to say goodbye to the dusty moon.

"That little yee yan of a humanitarian mission cost us nearly two weeks' fuel reserves, and we got nothing out of it," Raven groused as she kicked her feet up onto her half of the console. Fortunately, she wasn't currently the one piloting their ship. Armando just rolled his eyes as he set their course for Persephone.

Charles shrugged, leaning back against the gently curving hull. "I wouldn't say that," Charles said. "And if I'd tried to haggle coin out of Patience, we'd likely have a few more gunshot holes in Cerebro's belly, and Erik does so hate it when we scratch up her finish."

Raven snorted. "He's the Kinetic. If he's too lazy to deflect the bullets before they hit us, it's his own damn problem."

(The Alliance soldiers had been shooting at Erik, not Charles. Erik was the one who'd just so visibly killed Sebastian Shaw, the one who'd ripped their missiles to shreds. Erik had thought Charles was out of the way. He'd swatted those bullets away without even considering where they might go.)

"You ought to point that out to him next time we're caught in a firefight," Charles said dryly. "I'm sure he'll appreciate your perspective."

Raven wrinkled her nose. "And spend the next seventy-two hours on engine room duty? Thanks, but no thanks." She shoved herself out of her co-pilot's chair and headed for the hatch. "I'm gonna go rustle up some grub. Whitefall cuisine's worse than space protein."

"I think Alex managed to scrounge up some actual vegetables," Armando remarked. "But you might have to fight him for 'em."

"I can take him," Raven promised, and darted away down the passage.

Blessed silence reigned for several moments. Charles sank gratefully into the vacated chair and did his best to ignore the ensuing scuffle in the kitchen. Armando was a good person to just sit and be with. Even his mind was quiet -- a cool, soothing murmur of calculations and steady calm. He was by far the most even-keeled member of Charles's crew.

As Armando settled his course calculations and programmed them into the autopilot, Charles could sense the curiosity slowly bubbling up through his consciousness. He cut in before Armando had the chance to formulate his own question. "How is Alex holding up?"

It wasn't merely intended as a distraction. While Charles maintained a constant telepathic awareness of his crew, he didn't deliberately pry when he could avoid it -- and anyway, Reading someone wasn't the same as knowing them. Given the nature of their relationship, Armando could offer him a unique perspective on Alex's state of mind.

"Well enough, I s'pose," Armando said, settling back in his chair. "Impatient, though. Now that we know where his brother's being locked up--"

"We know who has locked him up," Charles corrected. "Not precisely where."

"Don't think Alex is mighty keen on making that distinction. He wants his little brother back, and he knows I got the knowledge he needs up in here." Armando tapped his own temple. "So he's wondering why we're drifting through the black 'stead of going straight after Stryker."

"All roads lead to Rome," Charles murmured, mostly to himself.

Armando shot him a sidelong glance. "So what did you get out of Patience?"

"Enough," Charles replied. "More than she thinks, at any rate."

"Do you trick people into forgetting you're a Reader a-purpose, or are folk really that dumb?"

"I'm quite capable of deflecting suspicion when necessary, but it's rarely an issue." Charles shrugged. "Readers aren't terribly common, and most mutants classified as such are empaths rather than full-fledged telepaths. And everyone knows low-level telepaths need physical contact to Read a person properly."

"And yet we got two Level 5s on this very ship," Armando marveled, mockingly. "What a rare treasure!"