it's a magical world

Time for the annual gazing of the navel. These always feel silly in years I don't post many fic, but the habit is soothing. And I did meet my personal goal of 100k+ words posted! Just in, you know, only four fics.

Still. Better than last year. I'll take it.

This year I wrote and posted: 4 fics and 1 vid. Yay.

( fanfic yearly roundup, because why not )

It is belatedly time for the end-of-year writing roundup, because what is my own journal for if not intense navel-gazing? I like being able to look back on these, it soothes me.

This year I wrote and posted: 10 fics and 1 vid, mostly The Old Guard but with a few one-off fandoms.

( fanfic yearly roundup! )

Should I be working on any of my exchange fics/vid right now? Probably! Am I doing an A03 stats meme to distract myself instead? You betcha!

Snagged this one from muccamukk. General idea is you go to your AO3 stats page and then average out the totals by your total number of works (mean, not median). Definitely shows a more diverse slate of fics than always picking your top 5 or whatnot. And my brain really likes playing with stats in this way, so.

I fiddled with the word count only, since of my 209 works on AO3, 31 are fanvids (which have 0 words) and I'm making the executive decision that those shouldn't count. Still counting them toward hits/kudos/etc, though.

(One thing I find fascinating is the ration of bookmarks to comments - like, obvs people are more likely to kudos than comment, but I hadn't realized how MUCH more likely they are to bookmark than comment.)

( stats meme! )

JUMPING RIGHT ON AHEAD with snowflake_challenge

Challenge #8: Rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create.

Aw yeah, this is MUCH better than self-promoting. I'm just gonna dive into my AO3 bookmarks and pick out a few of the fics that I go back to reread over and over and over again. (I rarely bookmark, mostly because it doesn't usually occur to me and not because there shouldn't be lots of other excellent fics on this list, but if you want a super eclectic assortment of awesome fic in a wide variety of fandoms, this is what I've got.)

Um, clearly good characterization is my bulletproof kink, because that's pretty much the only thing these all have in common. That, and longer/plottier fic, as a general rule.

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER, by which I mean in reverse order of when I happened to bookmark them:

Ordinary Numbers by BootsnBlossoms & Kryptaria
James Bond (movies), James Bond/Q
Summary: More than anything, Mike Taylor wanted to be ordinary. Being a genius, he learned early in life, meant people expected too much. A career at the MI6 Help Desk seemed the perfect way to guarantee a lifetime of obscurity, until he got a very unusual tech support call.
Why I like it: it's just very clever! Tech support!Q is delightfully snarky. The slow burn of their weird friendship-into-relationship-without-actually-meeting fills me with joy. And when the AU element finally transitions into canon, it's an excellent payoff. I reread this every time I'm in a 00Q mood, so, like...several times a year.

The Buried Treasure Racket by Dorinda
The Sting, Henry Gondorff/Johnny Hooker
Summary: After the events of the movie, Henry and Johnny take it on the lam, and run smack into a few complications and a few revelations.
Why I like it: YES I AM RECCING A FIC FOR THE STING. I do what I want. Look, this is one of my all-time favorite movies, and I absolutely request it every single goddamn year for Yuletide, because boy howdy, if this movie had come out in the past ten years, slash fandom would've been ALL OVER IT. And this is hands down the best Henry/Johnny fic I've ever read. The characters are spot-on, the con they run is exquisitely clever, and obvs the romance is A+. This is the sequel we deserved. (And if you haven't seen The Sting, GO WATCH IT NOW. RIGHT NOW. Charming, clever con artist movie with peak Robert Redford & Paul Newman.)

26 Pieces by Lanning
Sherlock (BBC), Sherlock/John
Summary: Mycroft gives Sherlock the apparently simple task of solving a puzzle box containing a stolen microchip. It isn't simple.
Why I like it: Ah, the golden era of Sherlock fic, when we only had one series to go by and the actual show hadn't tanked spectacularly yet. This is a fun little mystery with excellent characterization, and a great use of the hurt/comfort trope (which is one of my faves when done right). A bit more torture than I usually prefer, but handled well and never feels like whump for the sake of whump, and I just...really like the way they write these characters.

The Sparrowkeet Series by audreyii_fic
Avatar: the Last Airbender, Katara/Zuko
Summary: Ba Sing Se has fallen and Katara has been captured by the Fire Nation; a more adult take on the potential progression of S3. AU series of interconnected one-shots. Zutara.
Why I like it: This fic proves that ANY trope can be golden in the hands of a good writer. She tags it as "mildly dubious consent", which I agree with, and it's also underage (Katara is 15, Zuko 17, as per canon). Normally neither of these aspects appeal to me. This fic is the exception. Every single character feels 100% true to their canon characterization plus, you know, what actual teenagers are like (as opposed to the sanitized Nickelodeon children's TV version). Her Sokka voice, in particular, is hilarious and dead-on. And while the first fic in this series has sexual content (though not terribly explicit, IMO), honestly, the majority is about how all of these characters grow and evolve as people with the AU turn from the end of S2, and I honestly think the way she handles Aang's character arc through the final showdown with Ozai is smarter and more resonant than how the show handled it.

Time To Grow by zarah5
X-Men: First Class, Charles/Erik
Summary: In which you'll find chess dates which aren't dates (or maybe Charles is wrong about that). -- Based on First Class, this turns (slightly) AU during the beach scene.
Why I like it: The definitive XMFC fix-it fic. Gorgeous characterization, particularly of Charles. Just...so, so good. This is how I want to believe the movie ended.


Gonna stop there. There are so, so many more good fics out there. I should do a real reclist one of these days.

Wait, you mean I actually have to write my Yuletide fic? Huh.

I still have 3 days 8 hours 2 minutes, so I'm great, really.

(I signed up for more holiday challenges than I should have. By which I mean three. That was definitely more than I should have. But pulling several all-nighters managed to make a Secret Mutant fic happen by deadline, so, you know, one down. And Festivids isn't due until mid-January, that's YONKS AND YONKS of time.)

X-Men medieval AU fic is just shy of 80k words and it is a COMPLETE DRAFT Y'ALL.

*faceplants*

I was averaging about 10k words per week there for the month of August, what the everloving fuck. And then of course it took me two weeks just to write the last damn scene. But it is COMPLETE. I do not say that it is done, because my most excellent betas get to pick it apart some more now, and I already know I've got some serious revising to do in the earlier chapters. But still. \o/

Related to this, I have a genuine question for my fellow readers of longfic. I'm at the point where I vastly prefer reading longer fics, because I love having some actual plot mixed in with my ship of choice (and also, if I'm enjoying a story, I want to be able to really settle into it). I'm less fond of reading active WIPs, because I've been burned too many times by unfinished stories, and even when I know a fic is complete, I'll generally wait until the entirety has been posted before I dive in so that I can enjoy it at my own pace rather than the author's. However! I have also noticed that many readers seem to prefer for longer fics to be posted chapter by chapter, and it does seem to help build up interest in a fic -- if nothing else, it keeps bumping the fic back up to the top of the recent AO3 results list.

So I'm curious. Which method of posting fic do you, as a reader, prefer? All at once, or chapter by chapter? Or something else entirely?

Well, I've written a full chapter of the Charles/Erik medieval mystery AU, god help me, and it's just shy of 9k words so far. Because you know what's smart, when you haven't been writing fic for years, is to try to write some kind of novella-length epic.

I did sign up for a Big Bang challenge, just because I perform better with deadlines and peer pressure. But I'm doing that weird flailing-into-the-void thing that happens when you're working on a longer fic (and emphatically not posting as I go, because I have Learned My Lesson about that due to how it took me three years to finish that one fic). Writing is hard, guys. I feel like I used to be better at this.

...yeah, I'm just here to whinge about it, really. But also sort of celebrate? Because 9k words, and that's still 9k words more than I've written on anything else in like four years. So, progress, I guess.

I seem to have accidentally started plotting out a fusion/pastiche AU that literally no one has ever wanted, but what the hell. If I actually manage to finish and post a fic that isn't Yuletide for the first time in almost four years, it will be worth it even if no one but my wife will ever read it.

This post brought to you by the Brother Cadfael series, which I've been gradually rereading in its entirety for the past few months and, apparently, I'm now gonna Cherik it like it's 2011. Because what the X-Men fandom needs is a medieval mystery AU, obviously.

*facepalm*

I did mention that I wouldn't manage to post every day, right?

3 – For each of the fandoms from day two, what were your favorite characters to write?

Now I remember why I haven't continued this meme in a while! Because it took so freaking long to list the fandoms on day 2, and now I gotta do that shit all over again! Sigh.

Lotrips - all I ever cared about were the hobbits (and occasionally Orli). I honestly don't remember having a particular favorite one of them to write. Probably Dom, because he was my favorite in general. Dom was fun. Elijah was mostly fun to write from other characters' POVs, because let's face it, he was basically an overgrown puppy at that point.

X-Men - I tend to prefer Erik POV overall. His perspective is sharp and clean and straightforward. It's a lot harder for me to get into Charles's head. In the Boden's Mate verse, though, Alex was far and away my favorite to write.

HP - Remus, always. Always and always. I enjoyed writing Sirius a lot in the Marauders era (and just the Marauders in general), but I wouldn't touch post-Azkaban Sirius POV with a ten-foot pole. I'm fairly certain that every single post-POA fic I wrote was Remus POV instead (with one glaring exception being The Love Song of Sirius Black, which was something else entirely, but even then I shied away from confronting his experience in Azkaban).

Doctor Who / Torchwood - Um, Ianto, obviously. ;) Although the time or two I wrote John Hart was SUPER FUN.

LotR - eh. I guess Merry or Pippin. I only cared about the hobbits, again.

History Boys - SCRIPPS! I might over-identify with Scripps slightly. Except for the religion thing. There I'm more of a Posner.

House - Well, House. Because it's very freeing to write from the POV of someone who has zero fucks to give.

MCU - Bucky in terms of POV, but in terms of side characters, toss-up between Sam and Tony. Because dialogue.

I'm not gonna bother with the rest, I didn't write enough to play favorites.

( the rest of the days )

All right, fuck this noise, I want to get back into a fannish mindset. After posting about my lack of fannishness on Friday night, I promptly opened my Steve/Bucky WIP of Doom and stayed up until 2am revising & completing it. Which makes it the first fic I've completed in 2015. SIGH. But still! That's in beta now, and I don't actually want it to be the ONLY fic I complete in 2015, so I need to start thinking about fic again. With that in mind, stealing the "30 Days of Fanfic" meme from escritoireazul (and probably other people as well).

I won't actually post every day, but I'll get through it eventually.

1 – How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?
X-Files! I was thirteen and obsessed with the show, and found an AOL chatroom devoted entirely to X-Files discussion. (Yeah, it's dated, but at least it wasn't an IRC chat!) Finally, a community of fans just as obsessive as I was! At some point, someone there must've linked to fanfic, and the idea of CONTINUING THE STORY hit alllll of my little thirteen-year-old buttons. I started reading anything I could find, particularly once I figured out what MSR meant. (Mulder/Scully Romance, FYI.) My bitty shipper heart grew three sizes that day. The show itself was awesome, but there were people out there writing the stories the show never actually told! Where Mulder and Scully finally, like, kissed! Very exciting. And since I'd been writing short stories since I was a small child, it wasn't much of a leap to writing my own fanfic, too.

My first fic was a character study of Agent Pendrell, oddly enough. Go figure.

( all the days )

Hello, internet. I seem to have forgotten how to fandom. Apparently I haven't posted in a month? I also haven't been...fandoming at all, lately. I try to check DW/LJ every other day, and tumblr once or twice a week, but I'm just not feeling it right now. Work is pretty good, but it's draining, and I'm obscenely busy with the Gay Geeks in my downtime, and the combination leaves very little energy left over for fandom. I miss it. Or I guess I miss wanting to participate in it. The MCU fandom's response to Age of Ultron really soured me, and since that was my primary fandom, I've kind of disconnected entirely. I've had writer's block for months and I can't even muster up any vidding mojo lately, so 2015 has been kind of a dead year for me fannishly. Oh, well, this too shall pass.

azewewish tagged me in a WIP meme, though, so here we go: Pull seven lines from the seventh page of your WIP, then you're supposed to tag seven other writers.

The only WIP I have that's longer than 7 pages is of course the shitty Steve/Bucky fic of perpetual unfinishedness, so here you go. I'm fudging a little, since halfway through page 7 is a scene break, so I'll do the 7 lines leading up to it:

Steve slumps down into the chair. The shield drops to the floor at his side with a faint clang. He props his head up in his hands and stares at the video feed of Bucky's room. After a few long minutes, he feels a hand on his shoulder.

"Have you called Sam?" Natasha asks him in a low tone. "You should call Sam."

He shakes his head slowly, not taking his eyes off Bucky. "I'm not gonna bother him at this hour."

"I'm calling Sam," she says firmly. "You are staying put until he gets here, and then he is going to explain to you in terms you can understand why it's a really terrible idea for you to go charging in on Barnes right now. In the meantime…" She pauses, then slides a pad of paper and a pen across the desk to him. "We have a guard stationed down on his level. If you'd like to write him a note, I can ask him to leave it somewhere Barnes will see it when he wakes up."

Steve stares at the pad in front of him. What could he possibly write? His mind feels as blank as the paper. "I just want him to know I'm here, if he -- just that I'm here. Could you just…" A thought occurs, and he reaches down to grip his shield. "Can you put this in the room with him?"

Bucky had saved the shield from the Potomac himself, unprompted. He'd carried it with him for a month before their paths crossed again, and he'd been holding it tightly when Steve found him mid-breakdown. The shield obviously meant something to him. It's a better message than any words Steve could possibly write down.

Natasha hesitates, then accepts the shield from him. He doesn't think she's ever actually held it before. "Okay," she says. "I can do that."

Tagging anyone who has a WIP they'd like to share with the class.

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.

( by the numbers )

( fannish year in review )

( bonus WIP snippets: Steve/Bucky + X-Men/Firefly fusion )

I am strangely unstressed about Yuletide, despite the fact that the deadline is in less than twenty hours and my fic is not yet complete. Maybe it's because I had a good writing session last night, and I know I don't have much further to go, and anyway the whole thing is gonna be very short (which for me means less than 3000 words). So...yeah, I'll finish that tonight. It'll probably go unbetaed, but for this particular fic, that doesn't bother me. (I've rarely had much luck with Yuletide betas, anyway.) Incidentally, though -- is there no IRC chat this year? Or has it just moved to a site I don't know about?

Had a good second interview for the "interesting" job today. It still pays too little, and the work would either be really interesting or really stressful, but I got a REALLY good vibe re: office culture, which is pretty important to me after the toxic nature of the kids theater. They're going to bring me into the office Monday to shadow the current person in the position and see if it feels like a good fit, which is kinda weird but also kind of awesome in terms of making a smart choice about the job. (I'm not sure if any other candidates are doing this as well, or if I'm their top choice.) So...that. I'm more optimistic than I was expecting, at least. And while the starting pay is low, it's still within my budget, and there's definitely opportunity for growth (and bonuses). Plus they're very flexible/reasonable about the possibility of me picking up stage management gigs on the side, which would not be the case with the other job I interviewed for (due to potential conflict of interest).

Plus I just got offered a show in April for a theater group I've worked with before and loved, and they actually pay okay, so if I can juggle the schedules, that would be nice.

In other news -- December posting meme!

ranalore asked: What makes for a good viddable song?

I am firmly of the opinion that ANY song is viddable...with the right vidder. So there are certain sorts of songs that I do well with, and some that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. But that doesn't mean those songs wouldn't make awesome vids! Just that I'm not the right person to make them. BUT ANYWAY. I'm generally drawn to lyrics/lyricality first and foremost; I prefer songs that really tell a story, either through the lyrics or through the music. I don't like highly repetitive songs, which is why I very rarely vid pop songs, unless I can twist them into meta commentary -- i.e. Die Young taken literally for a Buffy vid. I love Vienna Teng and Tom McRae (maybe a little too much), because the lyrics are sharp and smart, the music is often surprising, and the choruses tend to shift musically with each repetition. But really, it's mainly that a song needs to click in my head as belonging to a certain fandom/character/idea. Often it's a single lyric that sells me -- for Human, which had been in the back of my head for a while as a potential sci-fi/fantasy vid, the lines "And so long to devotion / you taught me everything I know / wave goodbye, wish me well / you've gotta let me go" were SO OBVIOUSLY about the Raven/Charles relationship that I basically just hopped around impatiently until good DoFP source became available and I could vid it. More rarely, I have a strong idea for a vid and then basically shop around for a song that matches; for example, I knew I wanted to make a creepy Wishverse (Buffy) vid, but it took some searching before I latched onto the theme from Rosemary's Baby as the right music.

I have been making an effort to vary my music selection for vidding lately, because while I COULD easily vid every single Vienna Teng and Tom McRae song, that doesn't mean I SHOULD. But my personal musical tastes are fairly limited, in terms of what I actually listen to on a regular basis, so it's kind of an ongoing process finding new material to work with. I'm not really a music fan -- by which I mean, I LIKE music, obviously, but I'm not fannish about it, and I don't seek out new artists or care at all about bands or ever attend concerts. So maybe it's kind of weird that I get so obsessive about vidding. I dunno.