I Know What You Did Last Year...Another Random Meme
As some of you may know, Moth2Fic recently posted a meme. I thought Moth2Fic's answers were illuminating, so I thought I would have a bash myself.
Moth2fic headed the meme with a jolly banner, so - since I don't have a jolly banner - I thought I would include some of Minori_k's lovely artwork because an AO3 'known issue' is currently preventing it being displayed on AO3 - and we all love Minori_k's work (clicking on all the pics will give you a larger view).
Have I been consistent in my main writing over the past year?
Only in that I haven't written anything. Well hardly anything. I've fiddled with a few WIP, worked on revising something I have been promising myself forever to move, and written two short stories (not yet posted - and I have doubts one of them will be for the foreseeable) and a third I'm about to put up on AO3, plus some random drabbles. (Never really been successful at drabbles, but I think something must have clicked, because some of them turned out quite well.)
So, since the answer is so dismal, let's have a bit of fun from Minori_k:
Total works October 2019 to October 2020
Well, none. All of the above are still sitting on my hard drive. That's an even more dismal answer.
Let's have some holiday lads to cheer ourselves up, courtesy of Minori_k:
What’s your first and second most common work rating?
Ooo - now that's interesting. It's not something I've ever thought about. Had to look that up.
So, including non-written works, according to AO3 I have posted 42 works and according to FF.net I have posted 22. I have a few on Lj, which aren't archived anywhere - but it's only a handful, so we'll ignore those for the purposes of this meme.
The AO3 breakdown is apparently:
15 rated 'G' - (General Audiences)
11 rated 'T' - (Teens and up)
14 rated 'M' - (Mature)
2 Not Rated - (Proceed at your own peril discretion)
And for FF.net the breakdown is:
3 rated 'K+' - (Aged 9+)
15 rated 'T' - (Aged 13+)
4 rated 'M' - (Aged 16+)
So there we have it. Now let's have some art. Minori_k representing (from the above analysis) what is apparently my target demographic:
How many fics have you written in each relationship category?
Ooo - again - who counts?
This is more difficult to get a handle on because there's what I wrote and what other folk infer; but if we go with what I saw in my head, and allow for the fact that a story can contain more than one relationship type, and discounting flirtations, and including non-written works, repeating the exercise above...
AO3 = 42 works
F/F - none
M/M - 21
Bessie goggles - 22
M/F - 11
FF.net = 22 works
F/F - none
M/M - 2
Bessie goggles - 18
M/F - 11
And there we have it, apparently, I love my Bessie Mate goggles - probably not a surprise...
But as I'm not averse to more romantically inclined parings, let's have some lovely loving from Minori_k:
What are your top four fandoms by number?
Ooo - more Data, if you'll excuse the pun.
Taking the parameters already set:
AO3 = 42 works
Pros = 27 works
MFU TV = 15 works
FF.net = 22 works
Pros = 7 works
MFU TV = 8 works
ST:TOS = 7 works
So, my 'top four' fandoms are: Pros; MFU TV and Star Trek:The Original Series - in that order. At least they are creatively, and I guess I'd put them up there full stop, given how long I've loved them - but I love Dr Who, the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, Pre-Raphaelite art (I even managed to combine Pros and Pre-Raphaelite art in a single day out) and heaps of other things I may or may not have tagged on my Lj - so it's not the quantum.
Let's have some Next Gen Star Trek courtesy of Minori_k:
Who are your top seven characters?
Well, according to the above analysis, by default, that would have to be: Bodie and Doyle; Illya and Napoleon; and Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
Have some of Minori_k's lads helping me think about it:
And top six relationships?
Well, that very much depends how you define 'relationships'. We have already ascertained that I love my Bessie Mates goggles. On top of that I consider all non-canon slash to be a form of AU. I consider it a mark of progress that I have to say 'non-canon slash' because we now have canon slash - not poor, needs rescuing, shot-in-the-first-reel slash - but prominent recurring characters like Dumbledore and Captain Jack whose variant sexualities form only a part of who they are and is largely incidental to the part they play in driving the plot.
(I'm proposing we leave aside the continuing affront that is mainstream media's shabby treatment of women of any orientation.)
So, having already crunched the data on what I actually create, I thought it might be more profitable to consider why I create it.
The data shows I write in this order: Bessie goggles; M/M; M/F and not at all for F/F.
Bessie goggles is easy, that's what I see in the shows and a relationship I value highly in real life. There is an old adage that runs something along the lines of 'family is who you're stuck with, friends are who you pick'. It's also said that 'blood is thicker than water', so when a friend becomes like blood - that is not a thing to be sneezed at.
Additionally, if you think about it, most of the people who mean the most to us, be they children, parents, siblings, friends - are not people we sleep with. So your relationship to your sexual partner is actually rather perverse in the grand scheme of things. In addition to which, there is a long tradition of viewing love without lust as a purer form.
On the other hand, lust was designed to ensure the survival of the species. Children have to come from somewhere. This has often been used as an argument for suppressing the natural sexualities of people whose orientation precludes conception. In a world full of orphanages we still don't value the childless. I would argue that our perceptions have been skewed by male dominated societies that have put more value on property than life. The wish to ensure lineage, and therefore inheritance, by a dominant sex that can never be sure of the provenance of its offspring has trumped numerous human rights. Women always know if the child they gave birth to is their own - their inheritance is assured, irrespective of the identity of the father. So while I don't subscribe to the view that all the evils of humankind stem from the patriarchy, evil is not gender specific, I do wonder how a more feminine history would have panned out - and whether sexuality would still have been valued over parenting skills. It's clear nature selects for differing orientations, because no amount of human suppression has eradicated them. Studies of existing hunter-gatherer societies (considered by people far more qualified than I to be the earliest form of human society) suggest that such societies approach raising children in a much more communal fashion, the survival of offspring seemingly more important than the acquisition of material wealth. Although we can't run away with that idea, because studying a society is not the same as living in it, and because millions of years of societal evolution stand between modern existence of any stripe and our early ancestors, it is easy to imagine that such a society might develop a culture wherein being an extra pair of hands would be more important than who you preferred to sleep with. And it's certainly true that from what we know of the Romans and the Greeks, some of the earliest 'modern' societies, they appear to have had a wider view of the natural breadth of human sexuality.
So, while I value the Bessie Mate relationships I see as canon, I very much don't subscribe to the pernicious, small-minded (female driven, if you understand the history) view put forward by 'Clause 28' of a 'pretended family relationship'. Caring is what binds a family - not what nurturing parents enjoy in bed. I rank Clause 28 alongside the expulsion of the Jews and the persecution of Catholics long after they had ceased to be an existential threat in the list of evils my country has perpetrated. The difference being, history is no excuse for Clause 28. Clause 28 was perpetrated by women who benefited from the privileges bestowed by a secular, fully enfranchised, democracy and was enacted for no other purpose than to deny a section of that society its rights by reason of their sexuality. It was a primitive bit of legislation that sprang from the same superstitious wellspring as the Witchfinder General and was a real wake up call to a whole generation with regard to how shallow the roots of our modern rights are. The only good thing about it is that I believe that shock accelerated the public's acceptance of equal marriage. Dame Jill Knight is living proof that not all the evils of the world are male in origin.
So, although I don't see it myself, I guess I write M/M partly because I have been influenced by the vision of those who do see the slash in canon; partly because I have enjoyed the works those creators create and see the value in it; partly because I enjoy experimenting; partly because I'm still angry about Clause 28; partly because of the conversations I've had about the marginalisation of non-heterosexual relationships in general and in popular drama in particular; and partly because, although the Greco-Roman past had its own evils, I wish we had inherited some of its tolerances.
So what about heterosexual relationships? This is much simpler - heterosexual relationships tend to crop up in my M/M fic because, in order to square it with my view of canon, I tend to envision the characters as bi rather than gay. My characters therefore may have an epiphany about their attraction to their partner, simply because the Lubitschesque trope of failing to spot what's right under your nose appeals to me, but rarely about their sexuality. This is because I don't believe that sexuality is learned; I've not met or learned about anybody who was 'confused' over their sexuality, I've only ever met or learned about people who were bewildered by what society was teaching them about it. As for when I'm wearing my Bessie googles, it's just canon compliant, simple as that.
So what about F/F? Which I don't write. Well that's even more simple. I don't find most F/F pairings convincing, most of them seem shoehorned together to me. Possibly because of the Bechdel-Wallace test. Even in modern canon, it's far less common to get the same female relationship building that slash grows out of in fic. I have seen Janice Rand and Christine Chapel paired, and I found that convincing. Maybe because, even though they have little interaction in the eps, I felt the writer held to their canon characterisations. So, you may ask, given that I am variously active in the ST:TOS verse, why isn't my 'oeuvre' littered with Rand/Chapel? Well, for the same reason it's not littered with mpreg. I have to be able to 'see' something to do it. A quirk of my brain that applies in real life too. So, while I can 'watch' the Rand/Chapel and mpreg of others, I can't 'see' it in my own head to create it. Same goes for elf fic - which is probably more of a blessing...
So, in celebration of those with less limited imaginations, let's have some lads in alternative guise courtesy of Minori_k:
And mirroring Moth2fic's reflections on word count...
So, in all, given that this meme is ostensibly about what I've written in the last year, I've written maybe 7,000 words in total across a mixture of completed, but as yet un-posted, works and WIP - and maybe a few hundred more in musings to my own Lj and posts to other comms.
How do I feel about that? I'm not sure. I'm glad to be writing anything again. Being creative always makes me feel happy, I wrote stuff long before I had any hope of its being read. I'm disappointed I haven't written more, because you can't grow as a writer unless you write. It's a bit like gymnastics in that respect - no one goes straight into a flick flack. And I'm sorry not to have shared more of what I have written, because it's a bit like not bringing a bottle to a party.
I'm also sorry not to have read more, because the greatest gift you can give a writer is reading them. An unread story is a sorry thing indeed. And in that same vein, because I have not read, not to have commented. Even a kudos lets a writer know they're on the right track.
So in celebration of all those who have continued to create and share when I could not here's a seasonal Halloween offering from the works of the sorely missed Minori_k:
Moth2fic headed the meme with a jolly banner, so - since I don't have a jolly banner - I thought I would include some of Minori_k's lovely artwork because an AO3 'known issue' is currently preventing it being displayed on AO3 - and we all love Minori_k's work (clicking on all the pics will give you a larger view).
Have I been consistent in my main writing over the past year?
Only in that I haven't written anything. Well hardly anything. I've fiddled with a few WIP, worked on revising something I have been promising myself forever to move, and written two short stories (not yet posted - and I have doubts one of them will be for the foreseeable) and a third I'm about to put up on AO3, plus some random drabbles. (Never really been successful at drabbles, but I think something must have clicked, because some of them turned out quite well.)
So, since the answer is so dismal, let's have a bit of fun from Minori_k:
Total works October 2019 to October 2020
Well, none. All of the above are still sitting on my hard drive. That's an even more dismal answer.
Let's have some holiday lads to cheer ourselves up, courtesy of Minori_k:
What’s your first and second most common work rating?
Ooo - now that's interesting. It's not something I've ever thought about. Had to look that up.
So, including non-written works, according to AO3 I have posted 42 works and according to FF.net I have posted 22. I have a few on Lj, which aren't archived anywhere - but it's only a handful, so we'll ignore those for the purposes of this meme.
The AO3 breakdown is apparently:
15 rated 'G' - (General Audiences)
11 rated 'T' - (Teens and up)
14 rated 'M' - (Mature)
2 Not Rated - (Proceed at your own peril discretion)
And for FF.net the breakdown is:
3 rated 'K+' - (Aged 9+)
15 rated 'T' - (Aged 13+)
4 rated 'M' - (Aged 16+)
So there we have it. Now let's have some art. Minori_k representing (from the above analysis) what is apparently my target demographic:
How many fics have you written in each relationship category?
Ooo - again - who counts?
This is more difficult to get a handle on because there's what I wrote and what other folk infer; but if we go with what I saw in my head, and allow for the fact that a story can contain more than one relationship type, and discounting flirtations, and including non-written works, repeating the exercise above...
AO3 = 42 works
F/F - none
M/M - 21
Bessie goggles - 22
M/F - 11
FF.net = 22 works
F/F - none
M/M - 2
Bessie goggles - 18
M/F - 11
And there we have it, apparently, I love my Bessie Mate goggles - probably not a surprise...
But as I'm not averse to more romantically inclined parings, let's have some lovely loving from Minori_k:
What are your top four fandoms by number?
Ooo - more Data, if you'll excuse the pun.
Taking the parameters already set:
AO3 = 42 works
Pros = 27 works
MFU TV = 15 works
FF.net = 22 works
Pros = 7 works
MFU TV = 8 works
ST:TOS = 7 works
So, my 'top four' fandoms are: Pros; MFU TV and Star Trek:The Original Series - in that order. At least they are creatively, and I guess I'd put them up there full stop, given how long I've loved them - but I love Dr Who, the legends of King Arthur and Robin Hood, Pre-Raphaelite art (I even managed to combine Pros and Pre-Raphaelite art in a single day out) and heaps of other things I may or may not have tagged on my Lj - so it's not the quantum.
Let's have some Next Gen Star Trek courtesy of Minori_k:
Who are your top seven characters?
Well, according to the above analysis, by default, that would have to be: Bodie and Doyle; Illya and Napoleon; and Kirk, Spock and McCoy.
Have some of Minori_k's lads helping me think about it:
And top six relationships?
Well, that very much depends how you define 'relationships'. We have already ascertained that I love my Bessie Mates goggles. On top of that I consider all non-canon slash to be a form of AU. I consider it a mark of progress that I have to say 'non-canon slash' because we now have canon slash - not poor, needs rescuing, shot-in-the-first-reel slash - but prominent recurring characters like Dumbledore and Captain Jack whose variant sexualities form only a part of who they are and is largely incidental to the part they play in driving the plot.
(I'm proposing we leave aside the continuing affront that is mainstream media's shabby treatment of women of any orientation.)
So, having already crunched the data on what I actually create, I thought it might be more profitable to consider why I create it.
The data shows I write in this order: Bessie goggles; M/M; M/F and not at all for F/F.
Bessie goggles is easy, that's what I see in the shows and a relationship I value highly in real life. There is an old adage that runs something along the lines of 'family is who you're stuck with, friends are who you pick'. It's also said that 'blood is thicker than water', so when a friend becomes like blood - that is not a thing to be sneezed at.
Additionally, if you think about it, most of the people who mean the most to us, be they children, parents, siblings, friends - are not people we sleep with. So your relationship to your sexual partner is actually rather perverse in the grand scheme of things. In addition to which, there is a long tradition of viewing love without lust as a purer form.
On the other hand, lust was designed to ensure the survival of the species. Children have to come from somewhere. This has often been used as an argument for suppressing the natural sexualities of people whose orientation precludes conception. In a world full of orphanages we still don't value the childless. I would argue that our perceptions have been skewed by male dominated societies that have put more value on property than life. The wish to ensure lineage, and therefore inheritance, by a dominant sex that can never be sure of the provenance of its offspring has trumped numerous human rights. Women always know if the child they gave birth to is their own - their inheritance is assured, irrespective of the identity of the father. So while I don't subscribe to the view that all the evils of humankind stem from the patriarchy, evil is not gender specific, I do wonder how a more feminine history would have panned out - and whether sexuality would still have been valued over parenting skills. It's clear nature selects for differing orientations, because no amount of human suppression has eradicated them. Studies of existing hunter-gatherer societies (considered by people far more qualified than I to be the earliest form of human society) suggest that such societies approach raising children in a much more communal fashion, the survival of offspring seemingly more important than the acquisition of material wealth. Although we can't run away with that idea, because studying a society is not the same as living in it, and because millions of years of societal evolution stand between modern existence of any stripe and our early ancestors, it is easy to imagine that such a society might develop a culture wherein being an extra pair of hands would be more important than who you preferred to sleep with. And it's certainly true that from what we know of the Romans and the Greeks, some of the earliest 'modern' societies, they appear to have had a wider view of the natural breadth of human sexuality.
So, while I value the Bessie Mate relationships I see as canon, I very much don't subscribe to the pernicious, small-minded (female driven, if you understand the history) view put forward by 'Clause 28' of a 'pretended family relationship'. Caring is what binds a family - not what nurturing parents enjoy in bed. I rank Clause 28 alongside the expulsion of the Jews and the persecution of Catholics long after they had ceased to be an existential threat in the list of evils my country has perpetrated. The difference being, history is no excuse for Clause 28. Clause 28 was perpetrated by women who benefited from the privileges bestowed by a secular, fully enfranchised, democracy and was enacted for no other purpose than to deny a section of that society its rights by reason of their sexuality. It was a primitive bit of legislation that sprang from the same superstitious wellspring as the Witchfinder General and was a real wake up call to a whole generation with regard to how shallow the roots of our modern rights are. The only good thing about it is that I believe that shock accelerated the public's acceptance of equal marriage. Dame Jill Knight is living proof that not all the evils of the world are male in origin.
So, although I don't see it myself, I guess I write M/M partly because I have been influenced by the vision of those who do see the slash in canon; partly because I have enjoyed the works those creators create and see the value in it; partly because I enjoy experimenting; partly because I'm still angry about Clause 28; partly because of the conversations I've had about the marginalisation of non-heterosexual relationships in general and in popular drama in particular; and partly because, although the Greco-Roman past had its own evils, I wish we had inherited some of its tolerances.
So what about heterosexual relationships? This is much simpler - heterosexual relationships tend to crop up in my M/M fic because, in order to square it with my view of canon, I tend to envision the characters as bi rather than gay. My characters therefore may have an epiphany about their attraction to their partner, simply because the Lubitschesque trope of failing to spot what's right under your nose appeals to me, but rarely about their sexuality. This is because I don't believe that sexuality is learned; I've not met or learned about anybody who was 'confused' over their sexuality, I've only ever met or learned about people who were bewildered by what society was teaching them about it. As for when I'm wearing my Bessie googles, it's just canon compliant, simple as that.
So what about F/F? Which I don't write. Well that's even more simple. I don't find most F/F pairings convincing, most of them seem shoehorned together to me. Possibly because of the Bechdel-Wallace test. Even in modern canon, it's far less common to get the same female relationship building that slash grows out of in fic. I have seen Janice Rand and Christine Chapel paired, and I found that convincing. Maybe because, even though they have little interaction in the eps, I felt the writer held to their canon characterisations. So, you may ask, given that I am variously active in the ST:TOS verse, why isn't my 'oeuvre' littered with Rand/Chapel? Well, for the same reason it's not littered with mpreg. I have to be able to 'see' something to do it. A quirk of my brain that applies in real life too. So, while I can 'watch' the Rand/Chapel and mpreg of others, I can't 'see' it in my own head to create it. Same goes for elf fic - which is probably more of a blessing...
So, in celebration of those with less limited imaginations, let's have some lads in alternative guise courtesy of Minori_k:
And mirroring Moth2fic's reflections on word count...
So, in all, given that this meme is ostensibly about what I've written in the last year, I've written maybe 7,000 words in total across a mixture of completed, but as yet un-posted, works and WIP - and maybe a few hundred more in musings to my own Lj and posts to other comms.
How do I feel about that? I'm not sure. I'm glad to be writing anything again. Being creative always makes me feel happy, I wrote stuff long before I had any hope of its being read. I'm disappointed I haven't written more, because you can't grow as a writer unless you write. It's a bit like gymnastics in that respect - no one goes straight into a flick flack. And I'm sorry not to have shared more of what I have written, because it's a bit like not bringing a bottle to a party.
I'm also sorry not to have read more, because the greatest gift you can give a writer is reading them. An unread story is a sorry thing indeed. And in that same vein, because I have not read, not to have commented. Even a kudos lets a writer know they're on the right track.
So in celebration of all those who have continued to create and share when I could not here's a seasonal Halloween offering from the works of the sorely missed Minori_k: