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Meme: Fanfic Year In Review

Jan 02, 2017 20:37


Stats:
List of Completed Fics (According to AO3) Total number: 45 Total word count: 84055
Or, to put it another way, 'The Solar System consists of the Sun, Jupiter and assorted debris.' Only three fics exceeded 2000 words this year, and one of those was actually a collection of 70 drabbles.
Ship/character breakdown:
I started doing this, but for someone who flits from one character / pairing to another like a butterfly, it turned out to be a grinding nuisance to tot up the figures. It looks as if Mina/Lucy is the winning ship for this year; then there are a lot of ones like Jamie/Victoria, Jamie/Sam and Tegan/Nyssa with a couple of ficlets each.

Specifics:
Best/worst title?
I'm rather fond of 'No, Miss Oswald, I Expect You To Die' because for anyone who's ever seen Goldfinger it gives the whole situation in only eight words. I also liked the pun in 'Out for the Count', though it has the problem that while Lucy was outed by the Count, she's out for darling Mina.

My choice for worst is Keep Up The Pretence, against some pretty stiff competition. Must remember to do more with pretentious Latin titles in the future.
Best/worst summary?
I quite like the summary on Countess of Confusion, Duchess of Disorder.

Worst is probably Snap, where I didn't actually write a summary and just pulled a line from the fic.
Best/worst first line?
How can I resist Enemy Action? "I do not pigging believe this," Lucie said, trying to scrape lemon drizzle cake off her blouse with her free hand.

The first line of Countess of Confusion, Duchess of Disorder is clunky, simply because I called my protagonist Clarissa, Countess of Carlisle and sent her to Calcorton Hall. That is an awful lot of Cs to get one's mental voice around.
Best/worst last line?
Its last line is the whole point of Good, so I hope it can carry the rest of the drabble.

Worst is Helpmate, I think, because the ficlet doesn't so much end as stop.
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?
I don't think I made any predictions, but this is about what I was expecting. I'd hoped to do more, but my output collapsed after August for one reason and another.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
I didn't expect to write Dorcas/Rachel, not having encountered the characters at that point. And I certainly didn't anticipate writing Mina Harker/Ace Rimmer (what a guy!).
What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I'm quite relieved to have got The Rags of Time off my to-do list and onto the Archive.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
Disassembly garnered enough kudos to make it into the top 10 of all my fics. Doctor Who / Girl Genius crossovers appear to be quite popular; The Squires' Tale from last year is 15th in the same rankings (It reached that position from having had a mention in the 'most underappreciated' section last year, having been posted on the last day of the year).

On the other hand, Out for the Count had the most hits by a large margin.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
The only fics that didn't get any kudos on AO3 or specific comments on LJ are Family Resemblance (Wylder's Hand is obviously a tiny and very lonely fandom) and Snap (I've noted before that Lucie/Karen is pretty darn specialised too).
Story that could have been better?
Oh, most if not all of them, I expect.
Sexiest story?
By the Book - Victoria Waterfield is seen wearing skimpy purple 21st-century underwear! (Not that Jamie dares to look for more than a fraction of a second).
Saddest story?
I think possibly the Six & Peri Cyberpunk bit of Ten Sideways Glimpses, where Six has to break it to Peri that she's a data ghost.
Most fun?
I'm taking this as 'most fun to read', and that's surely up to my readers. Quite possibly 'Making the Bed', from my point of view.
Story with single sweetest moment?
Against strong competition from Out for the Count, I'm inclining to Tegan's insistence on learning Nyssa's language in Language Transparency.
Hardest story to write?
As usual, the long Zoë-fic (The Rags of Time in this case) took a lot of sorting out. Particularly because of the time travel aspect.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
The drabble collection, 'Ten Sideways Glimpses'.
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
I don't think so, or not to any great extent.
Most overdue story?
Once again, it's the long Zoë-fic, since I was planning it as far back as 2013. But, again, it met the heroinebigbang deadline.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I signed up twice for heroinebigbang (round 4A and round 4B). But only the first fic got written; the second ran into my RL issues around the end of August and hasn't been looked at since.
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
Write some. Maybe. If I can think of something reasonable to write. (I've got a little Mina/Lucy bunny that may bear fruit, if you'll pardon the mixed metaphor. And there are always more fun UC prompts than I can do justice to).
How did you do on last year's goals?
As I predicted, I wrote much less than I did in 2015. I did manage to revive a couple of dormant WIPs, but that still leaves plenty more.

This entry was originally posted at http://john-amend-all.dreamwidth.org/143465.html, with
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fanfic, year in review

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