Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-12-10 07:48 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2022-12-10 07:48 pm
Entry tags:
Far Across The Distance And Spaces Between Us.
It is once again time for the end-of-year fic meme!
Number of fics written in 2022: nineteen. (EDIT: Actually twenty, now that I've posted To a Flame!) You can find them on my AO3 account:![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Riona. (Except my sole Taskmaster fic, which I posted to my secondary account rionaleonhart. I originally created this account just for backdated older fanfiction, but it's where all my RPF lives, so it seemed the most appropriate place for my unexpected venture back into real-person fandom.)
Fandoms: The Book of Mormon, Do Revenge, Doctor Who, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XV, Full Moon wo Sagashite, Horizon Forbidden West, How to Get Away with Murder, Life Is Strange, Life Is Strange: True Colors, Persona 5, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Taskmaster, Zanki Zero: Last Beginning. Nine videogame fandoms, two television fandoms, two anime fandoms, one film fandom, one real-person fandom, one stage musical. Mostly fandoms I'd written for already, although I ventured into a few new ones. (EDIT: With the addition of Life Is Strange 2, it's now ten videogame fandoms.)
Two crossovers: Across the Distance (Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy X) and Negi Ramen Blasts Off (a Pokémon fusion for Full Moon wo Sagashite). (EDIT: To a Flame (Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2) brings this number up to three.)
Best title: I don't really have any standout titles, but I like Empty Space as a title for my Revolutionary Girl Utena Miki/Kozue fic; I think it feels tonally fitting.
Worst title: Very unfortunately, Across the Distance (Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy X) is the second fic I've named after the same line from Celine Dion's 'My Heart Will Go On'. (The first was my 2021 Persona 4 fic Between Us.) Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon) is also pretty bad.
Best first line: Squall chokes back to consciousness, his eyes flying open, a thousand things rushing into his mind at once. (Truth, Final Fantasy VIII)
Worst first line: A sound. Footsteps, breaking into a run. (Wasteland, Final Fantasy VIII) - it's not horrendous, but I think I launched slightly too abruptly into this fic and I should have included at least a few lines before Zell showed up. It's strange that both my best and my worst first lines are very abrupt openings to Final Fantasy VIII fics, but the opening of Truth is supposed to be abrupt and overwhelming. Being abrupt doesn't really fit the tone of Wasteland: the slow but inescapable realisation that there's no way out.
Best last line: “Plus he’s got a nice ass,” Jack says. (Three Sides, Doctor Who) - I make no apologies. I also like 'They’re touching each other with blood on their hands, yes. But they’re still touching each other, and that’s better than murder, at least.' (Handprints, How to Get Away with Murder)
Worst last line: Actually, looking through my last lines this year, I'm okay with all of them!
Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Maybe slightly less? At the moment, I expect about 50,000 words of fanfiction a year; I wrote 42,000 in 2022. I also wrote over 16,000 words of fiction for the project I mentioned in this access-locked post, though.
(EDIT: To a Flame brings the wordcount up to 47,000, pretty much exactly hitting expectations.)
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Writing Doctor Who fanfiction for the first time in a decade (Three Sides) was a bit of a surprise, but it's nothing compared to my bewilderment at writing for Taskmaster (If No One Moves, archive-locked). I genuinely thought I'd never write RPF again! Somehow I have learnt nothing from my extensive track record of going 'I'm definitely not going to write this' and then writing it.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I spent a while combing through my fics from the year, desperately hoping my answer would not be the Taskmaster fic, but I'm afraid it's the Taskmaster fic (If No One Moves, archive-locked). Greg and Alex's on-screen dynamic is just so weird, and I had a blast working with it.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
By a long way, it's Material Evidence (Do Revenge), with 533 kudos. Do Revenge had a short-lived but intense fandom; it only has 88 works on AO3, but evidently a fair few people were interested in reading fanfiction for it, possibly because Drea and Eleanor had incredible chemistry and yet failed to make out in canon.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon) got a grand total of nineteen hits and four kudos, but Full Moon wo Sagashite is a long-dormant fandom, so I wasn't really expecting it to have much of an audience. Sometimes you have to write things solely for yourself!
Honestly, since posting my Last of Us Part II fic In Fainter Ink in 2020, I've realised any reception that's not 'four different people commented on this fic to say how much they hated it' is a good reception.
Story that could have been better?
I'm a little dissatisfied with Debts (Final Fantasy XV), but maybe it's unfair of me to hold it to high standards when it was just a quick fic for a fun little promptfest. I might just be uneasy that it's one of the most-kudosed things I wrote this year, even though most of the other things I wrote were more polished. Maybe I should just accept the fact that people seemed to enjoy it.
Sexiest story?
Probably Handprints (How to Get Away with Murder), specifically the part that draws parallels between the sex and the murder/body disposal the characters previously carried out together, because apparently that's what I'm into.
Saddest story?
I think it's got to be Truth (Final Fantasy VIII), in which Squall and Rinoa grapple with the deaths of their friends and the potential end of the world.
Most fun?
Both Material Evidence (Do Revenge) and If No One Moves (Taskmaster, archive-locked) are about fucked-up relationships with a lot of conflict and a lot of chemistry, making them extremely fun to work with.
Story with single sweetest moment?
Redrawing the Map (The Book of Mormon) includes Elder Cunningham writing a commandment into his holy text with the specific aim of making Elder McKinley feel better, which I suppose is pretty sweet?
Most fucked-up story?
Empty Space (Revolutionary Girl Utena) is about Miki struggling with uncertainty over whether he banged his own twin sister or not, which is admittedly pretty fucked up.
Hardest story to write?
Possibly Bound Together (Zanki Zero: Last Beginning). I'll be honest: it's hard to get seven people into a situation where they might plausibly bang, and I'm still not entirely sure I managed it.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I had a great time writing Something Incredible (The Book of Mormon), in which God starts talking to Kevin and Kevin can't handle it. I love watching Kevin get overwhelmed in canon, so it was a lot of fun to come up with a concept calculated to overwhelm him.
Did any stories shift your perception of the characters?
Writing from the perspective of the mostly-silent Persona 5 protagonist in Puppetry was a really interesting experience! I think it helped to define his character more clearly in my head.
It was also interesting to write about Ted Faro in The End (Horizon Forbidden West). Like everyone else, I walked away from Horizon Zero Dawn going 'Ted Faro is unequivocally the worst and I hate him', but then Horizon Forbidden West made him interesting to me! Sympathising with him as I wrote this fic was a very weird experience.
Most overdue story?
I started writing Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon) nine years ago, although I never got more than a couple of hundred words in. After finishing a Full Moon rewatch and getting reinvested, I finally blew the dust off it and ended up with a 6,000-word fic.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I really struggle with writing sex scenes, even non-explicit ones, and it always feels like a risk to try. I'm glad I made the effort with Handprints (How to Get Away with Murder). The characters discussed having an orgy in canon; someone had to write it! I hope, in the future, I can continue tackling ideas even if they touch on areas where I lack confidence as a writer.
Empty Space (Revolutionary Girl Utena) was also the first incest fic I've written in over a decade, and, now that large sections of fandom are strangely puritanical about what it's okay to depict in fiction, I wondered whether anyone would give me a hard time about it. But it was fine! Although I suppose any Utena fan who's opposed to fictional depictions of incest is in the wrong fandom.
It's the fifth time I've done this meme, and I always enjoy it! It's a nice way to reflect on the year.
Number of fics written in 2022: nineteen. (EDIT: Actually twenty, now that I've posted To a Flame!) You can find them on my AO3 account:
Fandoms: The Book of Mormon, Do Revenge, Doctor Who, Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy XV, Full Moon wo Sagashite, Horizon Forbidden West, How to Get Away with Murder, Life Is Strange, Life Is Strange: True Colors, Persona 5, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Taskmaster, Zanki Zero: Last Beginning. Nine videogame fandoms, two television fandoms, two anime fandoms, one film fandom, one real-person fandom, one stage musical. Mostly fandoms I'd written for already, although I ventured into a few new ones. (EDIT: With the addition of Life Is Strange 2, it's now ten videogame fandoms.)
Two crossovers: Across the Distance (Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy X) and Negi Ramen Blasts Off (a Pokémon fusion for Full Moon wo Sagashite). (EDIT: To a Flame (Life Is Strange/Life Is Strange 2) brings this number up to three.)
Best title: I don't really have any standout titles, but I like Empty Space as a title for my Revolutionary Girl Utena Miki/Kozue fic; I think it feels tonally fitting.
Worst title: Very unfortunately, Across the Distance (Final Fantasy VII/Final Fantasy X) is the second fic I've named after the same line from Celine Dion's 'My Heart Will Go On'. (The first was my 2021 Persona 4 fic Between Us.) Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon) is also pretty bad.
Best first line: Squall chokes back to consciousness, his eyes flying open, a thousand things rushing into his mind at once. (Truth, Final Fantasy VIII)
Worst first line: A sound. Footsteps, breaking into a run. (Wasteland, Final Fantasy VIII) - it's not horrendous, but I think I launched slightly too abruptly into this fic and I should have included at least a few lines before Zell showed up. It's strange that both my best and my worst first lines are very abrupt openings to Final Fantasy VIII fics, but the opening of Truth is supposed to be abrupt and overwhelming. Being abrupt doesn't really fit the tone of Wasteland: the slow but inescapable realisation that there's no way out.
Best last line: “Plus he’s got a nice ass,” Jack says. (Three Sides, Doctor Who) - I make no apologies. I also like 'They’re touching each other with blood on their hands, yes. But they’re still touching each other, and that’s better than murder, at least.' (Handprints, How to Get Away with Murder)
Worst last line: Actually, looking through my last lines this year, I'm okay with all of them!
Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Maybe slightly less? At the moment, I expect about 50,000 words of fanfiction a year; I wrote 42,000 in 2022. I also wrote over 16,000 words of fiction for the project I mentioned in this access-locked post, though.
(EDIT: To a Flame brings the wordcount up to 47,000, pretty much exactly hitting expectations.)
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
Writing Doctor Who fanfiction for the first time in a decade (Three Sides) was a bit of a surprise, but it's nothing compared to my bewilderment at writing for Taskmaster (If No One Moves, archive-locked). I genuinely thought I'd never write RPF again! Somehow I have learnt nothing from my extensive track record of going 'I'm definitely not going to write this' and then writing it.
What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I spent a while combing through my fics from the year, desperately hoping my answer would not be the Taskmaster fic, but I'm afraid it's the Taskmaster fic (If No One Moves, archive-locked). Greg and Alex's on-screen dynamic is just so weird, and I had a blast working with it.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
By a long way, it's Material Evidence (Do Revenge), with 533 kudos. Do Revenge had a short-lived but intense fandom; it only has 88 works on AO3, but evidently a fair few people were interested in reading fanfiction for it, possibly because Drea and Eleanor had incredible chemistry and yet failed to make out in canon.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon) got a grand total of nineteen hits and four kudos, but Full Moon wo Sagashite is a long-dormant fandom, so I wasn't really expecting it to have much of an audience. Sometimes you have to write things solely for yourself!
Honestly, since posting my Last of Us Part II fic In Fainter Ink in 2020, I've realised any reception that's not 'four different people commented on this fic to say how much they hated it' is a good reception.
Story that could have been better?
I'm a little dissatisfied with Debts (Final Fantasy XV), but maybe it's unfair of me to hold it to high standards when it was just a quick fic for a fun little promptfest. I might just be uneasy that it's one of the most-kudosed things I wrote this year, even though most of the other things I wrote were more polished. Maybe I should just accept the fact that people seemed to enjoy it.
Sexiest story?
Probably Handprints (How to Get Away with Murder), specifically the part that draws parallels between the sex and the murder/body disposal the characters previously carried out together, because apparently that's what I'm into.
Saddest story?
I think it's got to be Truth (Final Fantasy VIII), in which Squall and Rinoa grapple with the deaths of their friends and the potential end of the world.
Most fun?
Both Material Evidence (Do Revenge) and If No One Moves (Taskmaster, archive-locked) are about fucked-up relationships with a lot of conflict and a lot of chemistry, making them extremely fun to work with.
Story with single sweetest moment?
Redrawing the Map (The Book of Mormon) includes Elder Cunningham writing a commandment into his holy text with the specific aim of making Elder McKinley feel better, which I suppose is pretty sweet?
Most fucked-up story?
Empty Space (Revolutionary Girl Utena) is about Miki struggling with uncertainty over whether he banged his own twin sister or not, which is admittedly pretty fucked up.
Hardest story to write?
Possibly Bound Together (Zanki Zero: Last Beginning). I'll be honest: it's hard to get seven people into a situation where they might plausibly bang, and I'm still not entirely sure I managed it.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I had a great time writing Something Incredible (The Book of Mormon), in which God starts talking to Kevin and Kevin can't handle it. I love watching Kevin get overwhelmed in canon, so it was a lot of fun to come up with a concept calculated to overwhelm him.
Did any stories shift your perception of the characters?
Writing from the perspective of the mostly-silent Persona 5 protagonist in Puppetry was a really interesting experience! I think it helped to define his character more clearly in my head.
It was also interesting to write about Ted Faro in The End (Horizon Forbidden West). Like everyone else, I walked away from Horizon Zero Dawn going 'Ted Faro is unequivocally the worst and I hate him', but then Horizon Forbidden West made him interesting to me! Sympathising with him as I wrote this fic was a very weird experience.
Most overdue story?
I started writing Negi Ramen Blasts Off (Full Moon wo Sagashite/Pokémon) nine years ago, although I never got more than a couple of hundred words in. After finishing a Full Moon rewatch and getting reinvested, I finally blew the dust off it and ended up with a 6,000-word fic.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
I really struggle with writing sex scenes, even non-explicit ones, and it always feels like a risk to try. I'm glad I made the effort with Handprints (How to Get Away with Murder). The characters discussed having an orgy in canon; someone had to write it! I hope, in the future, I can continue tackling ideas even if they touch on areas where I lack confidence as a writer.
Empty Space (Revolutionary Girl Utena) was also the first incest fic I've written in over a decade, and, now that large sections of fandom are strangely puritanical about what it's okay to depict in fiction, I wondered whether anyone would give me a hard time about it. But it was fine! Although I suppose any Utena fan who's opposed to fictional depictions of incest is in the wrong fandom.
It's the fifth time I've done this meme, and I always enjoy it! It's a nice way to reflect on the year.
no subject
I did once see an Utena fan on Tumblr who had 'Proshippers fuck off' in their bio and had reblogged multiple posts about how writing fanfiction about incest is bad, and I've been puzzling over it ever since.