meta - 2010 in review (the fanfiction edition)
This year was very prolific for fanfiction. I will be posting an overall review over on my rl journal before the new year, if you are interested in that sort of thing. For now, however, I will simply focus on fanfiction. :)
Divided by type, and then fandom.
Super-shorts: (12)
Anime fandoms
Full Metal Alchemist (1)
Death Note (1)
TV fandoms
Glee (1)
Jpop fandoms
Johnny's & Associates (9)
I define super-shorts are vignettes that are shorter than 1000 words. In general, I try to avoid labeling anything shorter than 1000 words as a one-shot (hence my use of the term super-short), and I also disagree with calling everything and everything a drabble. A drabble is exactly 100 words, many thanks.
I'm more satisfied with my super-shorts this year than I am most years. I consider super-shorts to be more cracky, and it shows in the content. I consider Mother Knows Best to be one of my triumphs, in complete honesty. Blending something like Death Note and Johnny's & Associates is not something that I normally would do, but when you think about it, it just makes so much sense.
I'm also pleased with The Asian Community (Glee), because I always feel a distinct lack of sense when the writers for Glee try to address issues like that. I like how I tried to bring up real life issues in only 360 words, though the writing itself suffers from my usual 3 in the morning problems.
Going West (J&A), is probably one of my failures. The entire story is built around a very convoluted pun, and the pun just doesn't work. There's too many layers to it, and it shows in the writing; trying to express the pun just failed, and I had to resort to an end-note, which is just shoddy writing.
Academic Decisions was one of my best received super-shorts, and I liked it a lot. It was built around, again, a very silly punch line, but I think what made this story less effective was the sheer amount of punchlines it had. I should have ended the story a good two-to-three lines earlier, but since I wasn't handling the characters well, I ended up pulling it out for too long. It was still effective. Social Networking probably is my best received super-short, though it's NEWS and I really can't write NEWS to save my life. I don't like this as much, mostly because I don't actually feel comfortable writing NEWS. From the comments, it seems like I did something right, though. I feel it hinged more on ridiculous commentary regarding facebook than characterization, which is effective, in its way, but doesn't add much to fandom and the fandom community considering the sheer number of "facebook" and "twitter" fics in there.
One-shots: (10)
Johnny's & Associates (10)
I believe Girl Talk was my best received fic, and I really wouldn't be too surprised if this is how fandom recognizes me. Girl Talk was inspired by a Hikaru no Go fanfiction I read many many years ago (I keep thinking it may be aishuu who wrote it, but I have no clue, since it doesn't seem to be the case from her lj), which switched the genders of everybody, which really makes the whole world a lot more fun. And trust me, making everybody in J&A was fun. It was also a headache. I like it though, Girl Talk is the type of story I've wanted to write since forever, a very deliberate gender-switch that did exactly that. I wish I knew more about the bands to write all of them, but unfortunately, I didn't at that time, and I still don't, so Girl Talk stands as it is, a primarily KAT-TUN, NEWS, and Arashi fic.
The fic I actually honestly like the most is Like Crystal, which I wrote for the squick-fic exchange. More about this fic should be written and posted in a separate meta commentary, I consider Like Crystal to be one of my most elegant works. The imagery in there is so understated, but elegantly done. The title itself holds symbolic meaning regarding the whole fic, and the chronological version, Life Like Crystal, reflects a lot of what the crystal imagery was supposed to reflect (which is why I discarded that title rather quickly--I was going for literature with Like Crystal, and Life Like Crystal is just too blatant.
Beyond that, I'm excessively proud of is The Choices We Make, and the rest of hitman!AU. For a 3-4 hour write, The Choices We Make was what I considered my best J&A fic until I wrote Like Crystal. Choices uses the circular style very well, and I adore how effective the open-ended ending was. :D I spent about 10 minutes alone contemplating the tense of the last line, and switched it from choose to chose about 10 times (and back again). Suffice to say, my only regret with Choices is that I can never actually continue the story because of its ending. (If anybody is interested, I actually know how the scene plays out, and it's probably not what you expect).
My one-shots reflect my different interests, though I haven't actually done that many exploratory ones yet. Your Heart's Jewel, a super-short, is one of my more exploratory pieces, going into a character's psyche, and I haven't quite done that with my one-shots yet. I suppose A Helping Hand (Pikame) falls into that category, but on a technical basis, A Helping Hand is just shoddy writing. The tone doesn't carry through properly, the sentence structure is iffy at best... it's just poor writing.
I feel that this year, I've developed a defter hand with one-shots. I know that my later one-shots are reflecting my experience from my short-fiction class (editing ~20 short stories, about 6 a week for 4 weeks, works wonders on your writing ability. Not to mention the many lectures on writing craft and getting your own stories workshopped by 4-24 people...). I've continued on my policy of less-is-more, and I think that I am actually mostly proud of my writing now. Of course, I imagine that will change soon enough.
I've done some things with tense this year. I've focused a lot more on exploring technical aspects of writing instead of concentrating solely on plot and characterization, and I think that's showing in my writing. Of course, exploring post-modernism is just a sign that I have been spending too much time in classes, and need to take a break from literature.
'Verses/Multi-part: (2.5?)
It's a bit iffy to say how many 'verses I've made, since I haven't truly completed anything. Not mention the myriad of 'verses that are left uncompleted and meandering on my computer...
UCSD!AU is arguably one of my more complete 'verses. It's entire premise resulted from me, at about 1-2 AM, going: "I wonder what KAT-TUN would be if they were chemists." Then I went: "Nakamaru is Gen Chem, because he doesn't specialize, because he's always the "normal" one. And then I went, "NO. HE'S COMPUTATIONAL MUAHAHAHA" (I'm not entirely certain of my coherency when it's late at night). Then Kame declared that he was pre-med, and Ueda didn't know how Nakamaru was a computatonal chemist because he hated technology, and the world just spun into place. The 'verse isn't complete because I'm always writing in it. It gives me a chance to geek out, but it's also haunting to see physical, written evidence that this is what it means to be a chemistry student. It just reaffirms my faith in my future goals when I think of this 'verse.
On a technical basis, UCSD!AU is nothing special. It is something special that the first story posted was The Progression of Familiarity. While this wasn't the first story I wrote for J&A, this is the first story I posted online. It stands to reason that the reason this was posted was for muu-chan. who is the reason I am even in fandom. So yes, shower your praise and hatred upon her, she who still owes me about 3 years worth of birthday presents while I have always delivered faithfully.
Simply put, while I may have scribbled foolishness about the Lactones and KAT-TUN, plotted out DAVE!verse AU, begun veela!fic, and wrote a large amount of technician!verse, UCSD!verse is the world that I made my debut into J&A fandom with. And damned if I'm not excessively proud of that fact.
Music of the Spheres is reiicharu's fault. This is a fact, and if she tries to convince you otherwise, it is a lie. Music of the Spheres is my technical second 'verse, and it's woefully incomplete. I truly like this 'verse because it's not AU. Now, considering the developments in schedules and whatnot, it is. But when it was first conceived, it was designed, and still is designed, to fit perfectly in 20110-2011.
Music of the Spheres starts with Ri, a chemist doing organic synthesis in Japan, who happens to get run over by Yamapi. Essentially, it's an original character fic, but the entire time that we were writing it, we were making sure that we took all the problems that people have with original character fic, and subverted them. I spent a good amount of time finding out what exactly defined an original character fic, and deliberately tried to subvert those very themes and motifs. Our first action to subvert the genre was in our choice of perspectives for our first stories.
MotS is my first true attempt at co-creating a world, and I'm glad I started it with Rei, even though really, I don't know why I'm writing MotS, it was supposed to be a gift for me, but I ended up just... reading it, fooling around in the world, and complaining that really, I would date Taguchi before Yamapi, because at least Taguchi was tall, hot, and didn't have fish eyes. (This is actually the origin of Twinkle Twinkle. Rei told me that there was no way she could write a Ri-Taguchi encounter without making it ridiculous. I said BRB fic and started typing the conbini scene straight into the gchat bar.) I like it. I find co-creating a world easier than co-writing, because I tend to write non-linearly (example: the last scene in Twinkle Twinkle was written very early. In fact, a lot of scenes in MotS are written out-of-order), which is a problem when you are writing with somebody else, but I'm good at writing bits and pieces and slotting them together later.
Incomplete fics
Other 'verses include:
Question of Nobuta 'verse (J&A), which is in progress, almost complete, and will probably begin posting late January, if I manage to polish it up fast enough. Question of Nobuta will probably be (what I call) my Masterwork in J&A fandom. It's exploratory, it's a dystopia, and it'll actually follow a 1 part a week posting theme thanks to the plot!
DAVE!verse (J&A), which is roughly sketched out, and was mostly scraped because the world has vast similarities to QoN 'verse. DAVE!verse comes from an original story I wrote December of last year, an exploration in writing a science fiction that dealt with progressing technology and artificial intelligence without falling into a dystopia. I highly doubt I will ever complete the work I started on DAVE!verse due to the fact that I'm not nearly as comfortable with astrophysics and astrochemistry as I would like to be to write it. I have trouble remembering the lagrangian points and their position relative to the sun and the earth to write a space colony world story comfortably... and I don't think looking it up every other second would work for my writing style.
technician!verse (J&A) is barely J&A. It's entirely original character centric, and it cobbles together my limited knowledge of what sound technicians do with excessive listening and analysis of music shows and concerts to form a fun story about Matsuda, sound technician for J&A, just starting to make his way in the harsh entertainment industry, and Nagaoka, his female childhood friend. And they don't like each other, of course. Then there's Chiharu-san, the old make-up artist who isn't sure what these new kids are doing anymore, and Shimamura, Matsuda's grunt assistant. It's a horribly inaccurate view of sound technicians, and backstage work, because believe it or not, my entire experience with backstage work and sound is a 30 minute lesson so I could help run sound checks for jazz band, and listening to my friends in theatre talk about it. This story also probably will never be finished, but I have a fond spot in my heart for Nagaoka looking over Matsuda's contract for KAT-TUN concert's sound.
Le Chatlier's Principle (Whistle!). I wonder if I can really call this fanfiction, when it draws so heavily on outside interpretation and AU influences, but it's a magical AU of Whistle!, which I always wonder how to write, because it's about soccer and I cannot write soccer for the life of me.
Incomplete one-shots
veela!fic (J&A). In a nutshell, I will quote from January of this year: "i am writing sparkly veela transformation kamepi fic for kat's birthday. because she asked, and i always write what she asks me to write because i'm a sucker for being given prompts that are cracktastic and also because it's je and they sparkle." Suffice to say, the story is about veela. And kamepi. And I actually might attempt to finish this fic next year because it involves KAT-TUN and NEWS making macaroni bird houses, can things get more cracky than that? On a technical basis, however, this story is complete and utter shit, and when I do post it, it will probably be cross-posted in a batch so I can make sure that something decent is in the cross-post instead.
technician!fic (J&A). In which KAT-TUN work in a company that uses technology. I am not entirely certain what the purpose of this fic was, but it was amusing, and I might just finish it.
berdache!fic (J&A). This is the story that probably I would have claimed to be a masterwork if it weren't for Question of Nobuta. berdache!fic, which has no title yet, is an exploration in the difference between gender and sex. It's tricky to write, breaks traditional fandom stereotypes, and generally makes me feel exhausted just working on a sentence. It's a story where every word is important, so it's slow writing.
Overall Conclusions
I tend to be more exploratory in my super-shorts. I'm also much less careful with word choice and whatnot when it comes to writing my super-shorts, unless I'm writing a drabble or a variation along the drabble length, in which case word-choice becomes very important. I can definitely see improvement in my one-shorts, though I'm not as stably prolific regarding longer pieces. I'm happy with my writing this year regarding fanfiction. I've made a lot of leaps regarding style and content, and I think that it really reflects in the pieces I've written.
I do need to analyze my writing more though. Expect a bit more meta commentary for my fics in the future. Starting with meta for Like Crystal to be posted before February, if I remember.
I really also see a distinct lack of fabulousness that comes with Star Driver. This must be remedied, though it's debatable. I actually feel no urge to write fanfiction for Star Driver.
Divided by type, and then fandom.
Super-shorts: (12)
Anime fandoms
Full Metal Alchemist (1)
Death Note (1)
TV fandoms
Glee (1)
Jpop fandoms
Johnny's & Associates (9)
I define super-shorts are vignettes that are shorter than 1000 words. In general, I try to avoid labeling anything shorter than 1000 words as a one-shot (hence my use of the term super-short), and I also disagree with calling everything and everything a drabble. A drabble is exactly 100 words, many thanks.
I'm more satisfied with my super-shorts this year than I am most years. I consider super-shorts to be more cracky, and it shows in the content. I consider Mother Knows Best to be one of my triumphs, in complete honesty. Blending something like Death Note and Johnny's & Associates is not something that I normally would do, but when you think about it, it just makes so much sense.
I'm also pleased with The Asian Community (Glee), because I always feel a distinct lack of sense when the writers for Glee try to address issues like that. I like how I tried to bring up real life issues in only 360 words, though the writing itself suffers from my usual 3 in the morning problems.
Going West (J&A), is probably one of my failures. The entire story is built around a very convoluted pun, and the pun just doesn't work. There's too many layers to it, and it shows in the writing; trying to express the pun just failed, and I had to resort to an end-note, which is just shoddy writing.
Academic Decisions was one of my best received super-shorts, and I liked it a lot. It was built around, again, a very silly punch line, but I think what made this story less effective was the sheer amount of punchlines it had. I should have ended the story a good two-to-three lines earlier, but since I wasn't handling the characters well, I ended up pulling it out for too long. It was still effective. Social Networking probably is my best received super-short, though it's NEWS and I really can't write NEWS to save my life. I don't like this as much, mostly because I don't actually feel comfortable writing NEWS. From the comments, it seems like I did something right, though. I feel it hinged more on ridiculous commentary regarding facebook than characterization, which is effective, in its way, but doesn't add much to fandom and the fandom community considering the sheer number of "facebook" and "twitter" fics in there.
One-shots: (10)
Johnny's & Associates (10)
I believe Girl Talk was my best received fic, and I really wouldn't be too surprised if this is how fandom recognizes me. Girl Talk was inspired by a Hikaru no Go fanfiction I read many many years ago (I keep thinking it may be aishuu who wrote it, but I have no clue, since it doesn't seem to be the case from her lj), which switched the genders of everybody, which really makes the whole world a lot more fun. And trust me, making everybody in J&A was fun. It was also a headache. I like it though, Girl Talk is the type of story I've wanted to write since forever, a very deliberate gender-switch that did exactly that. I wish I knew more about the bands to write all of them, but unfortunately, I didn't at that time, and I still don't, so Girl Talk stands as it is, a primarily KAT-TUN, NEWS, and Arashi fic.
The fic I actually honestly like the most is Like Crystal, which I wrote for the squick-fic exchange. More about this fic should be written and posted in a separate meta commentary, I consider Like Crystal to be one of my most elegant works. The imagery in there is so understated, but elegantly done. The title itself holds symbolic meaning regarding the whole fic, and the chronological version, Life Like Crystal, reflects a lot of what the crystal imagery was supposed to reflect (which is why I discarded that title rather quickly--I was going for literature with Like Crystal, and Life Like Crystal is just too blatant.
Beyond that, I'm excessively proud of is The Choices We Make, and the rest of hitman!AU. For a 3-4 hour write, The Choices We Make was what I considered my best J&A fic until I wrote Like Crystal. Choices uses the circular style very well, and I adore how effective the open-ended ending was. :D I spent about 10 minutes alone contemplating the tense of the last line, and switched it from choose to chose about 10 times (and back again). Suffice to say, my only regret with Choices is that I can never actually continue the story because of its ending. (If anybody is interested, I actually know how the scene plays out, and it's probably not what you expect).
My one-shots reflect my different interests, though I haven't actually done that many exploratory ones yet. Your Heart's Jewel, a super-short, is one of my more exploratory pieces, going into a character's psyche, and I haven't quite done that with my one-shots yet. I suppose A Helping Hand (Pikame) falls into that category, but on a technical basis, A Helping Hand is just shoddy writing. The tone doesn't carry through properly, the sentence structure is iffy at best... it's just poor writing.
I feel that this year, I've developed a defter hand with one-shots. I know that my later one-shots are reflecting my experience from my short-fiction class (editing ~20 short stories, about 6 a week for 4 weeks, works wonders on your writing ability. Not to mention the many lectures on writing craft and getting your own stories workshopped by 4-24 people...). I've continued on my policy of less-is-more, and I think that I am actually mostly proud of my writing now. Of course, I imagine that will change soon enough.
I've done some things with tense this year. I've focused a lot more on exploring technical aspects of writing instead of concentrating solely on plot and characterization, and I think that's showing in my writing. Of course, exploring post-modernism is just a sign that I have been spending too much time in classes, and need to take a break from literature.
'Verses/Multi-part: (2.5?)
It's a bit iffy to say how many 'verses I've made, since I haven't truly completed anything. Not mention the myriad of 'verses that are left uncompleted and meandering on my computer...
UCSD!AU is arguably one of my more complete 'verses. It's entire premise resulted from me, at about 1-2 AM, going: "I wonder what KAT-TUN would be if they were chemists." Then I went: "Nakamaru is Gen Chem, because he doesn't specialize, because he's always the "normal" one. And then I went, "NO. HE'S COMPUTATIONAL MUAHAHAHA" (I'm not entirely certain of my coherency when it's late at night). Then Kame declared that he was pre-med, and Ueda didn't know how Nakamaru was a computatonal chemist because he hated technology, and the world just spun into place. The 'verse isn't complete because I'm always writing in it. It gives me a chance to geek out, but it's also haunting to see physical, written evidence that this is what it means to be a chemistry student. It just reaffirms my faith in my future goals when I think of this 'verse.
On a technical basis, UCSD!AU is nothing special. It is something special that the first story posted was The Progression of Familiarity. While this wasn't the first story I wrote for J&A, this is the first story I posted online. It stands to reason that the reason this was posted was for muu-chan. who is the reason I am even in fandom. So yes, shower your praise and hatred upon her, she who still owes me about 3 years worth of birthday presents while I have always delivered faithfully.
Simply put, while I may have scribbled foolishness about the Lactones and KAT-TUN, plotted out DAVE!verse AU, begun veela!fic, and wrote a large amount of technician!verse, UCSD!verse is the world that I made my debut into J&A fandom with. And damned if I'm not excessively proud of that fact.
Music of the Spheres is reiicharu's fault. This is a fact, and if she tries to convince you otherwise, it is a lie. Music of the Spheres is my technical second 'verse, and it's woefully incomplete. I truly like this 'verse because it's not AU. Now, considering the developments in schedules and whatnot, it is. But when it was first conceived, it was designed, and still is designed, to fit perfectly in 20110-2011.
Music of the Spheres starts with Ri, a chemist doing organic synthesis in Japan, who happens to get run over by Yamapi. Essentially, it's an original character fic, but the entire time that we were writing it, we were making sure that we took all the problems that people have with original character fic, and subverted them. I spent a good amount of time finding out what exactly defined an original character fic, and deliberately tried to subvert those very themes and motifs. Our first action to subvert the genre was in our choice of perspectives for our first stories.
MotS is my first true attempt at co-creating a world, and I'm glad I started it with Rei, even though really, I don't know why I'm writing MotS, it was supposed to be a gift for me, but I ended up just... reading it, fooling around in the world, and complaining that really, I would date Taguchi before Yamapi, because at least Taguchi was tall, hot, and didn't have fish eyes. (This is actually the origin of Twinkle Twinkle. Rei told me that there was no way she could write a Ri-Taguchi encounter without making it ridiculous. I said BRB fic and started typing the conbini scene straight into the gchat bar.) I like it. I find co-creating a world easier than co-writing, because I tend to write non-linearly (example: the last scene in Twinkle Twinkle was written very early. In fact, a lot of scenes in MotS are written out-of-order), which is a problem when you are writing with somebody else, but I'm good at writing bits and pieces and slotting them together later.
Incomplete fics
Other 'verses include:
Question of Nobuta 'verse (J&A), which is in progress, almost complete, and will probably begin posting late January, if I manage to polish it up fast enough. Question of Nobuta will probably be (what I call) my Masterwork in J&A fandom. It's exploratory, it's a dystopia, and it'll actually follow a 1 part a week posting theme thanks to the plot!
DAVE!verse (J&A), which is roughly sketched out, and was mostly scraped because the world has vast similarities to QoN 'verse. DAVE!verse comes from an original story I wrote December of last year, an exploration in writing a science fiction that dealt with progressing technology and artificial intelligence without falling into a dystopia. I highly doubt I will ever complete the work I started on DAVE!verse due to the fact that I'm not nearly as comfortable with astrophysics and astrochemistry as I would like to be to write it. I have trouble remembering the lagrangian points and their position relative to the sun and the earth to write a space colony world story comfortably... and I don't think looking it up every other second would work for my writing style.
technician!verse (J&A) is barely J&A. It's entirely original character centric, and it cobbles together my limited knowledge of what sound technicians do with excessive listening and analysis of music shows and concerts to form a fun story about Matsuda, sound technician for J&A, just starting to make his way in the harsh entertainment industry, and Nagaoka, his female childhood friend. And they don't like each other, of course. Then there's Chiharu-san, the old make-up artist who isn't sure what these new kids are doing anymore, and Shimamura, Matsuda's grunt assistant. It's a horribly inaccurate view of sound technicians, and backstage work, because believe it or not, my entire experience with backstage work and sound is a 30 minute lesson so I could help run sound checks for jazz band, and listening to my friends in theatre talk about it. This story also probably will never be finished, but I have a fond spot in my heart for Nagaoka looking over Matsuda's contract for KAT-TUN concert's sound.
Le Chatlier's Principle (Whistle!). I wonder if I can really call this fanfiction, when it draws so heavily on outside interpretation and AU influences, but it's a magical AU of Whistle!, which I always wonder how to write, because it's about soccer and I cannot write soccer for the life of me.
Incomplete one-shots
veela!fic (J&A). In a nutshell, I will quote from January of this year: "i am writing sparkly veela transformation kamepi fic for kat's birthday. because she asked, and i always write what she asks me to write because i'm a sucker for being given prompts that are cracktastic and also because it's je and they sparkle." Suffice to say, the story is about veela. And kamepi. And I actually might attempt to finish this fic next year because it involves KAT-TUN and NEWS making macaroni bird houses, can things get more cracky than that? On a technical basis, however, this story is complete and utter shit, and when I do post it, it will probably be cross-posted in a batch so I can make sure that something decent is in the cross-post instead.
technician!fic (J&A). In which KAT-TUN work in a company that uses technology. I am not entirely certain what the purpose of this fic was, but it was amusing, and I might just finish it.
berdache!fic (J&A). This is the story that probably I would have claimed to be a masterwork if it weren't for Question of Nobuta. berdache!fic, which has no title yet, is an exploration in the difference between gender and sex. It's tricky to write, breaks traditional fandom stereotypes, and generally makes me feel exhausted just working on a sentence. It's a story where every word is important, so it's slow writing.
Overall Conclusions
I tend to be more exploratory in my super-shorts. I'm also much less careful with word choice and whatnot when it comes to writing my super-shorts, unless I'm writing a drabble or a variation along the drabble length, in which case word-choice becomes very important. I can definitely see improvement in my one-shorts, though I'm not as stably prolific regarding longer pieces. I'm happy with my writing this year regarding fanfiction. I've made a lot of leaps regarding style and content, and I think that it really reflects in the pieces I've written.
I do need to analyze my writing more though. Expect a bit more meta commentary for my fics in the future. Starting with meta for Like Crystal to be posted before February, if I remember.
I really also see a distinct lack of fabulousness that comes with Star Driver. This must be remedied, though it's debatable. I actually feel no urge to write fanfiction for Star Driver.