Year in Review Meme
Jan. 5th, 2010 08:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alixtiiSTATS (completed fics only, not counting The Fires of Love and Wrath, and using the not-so reliable counter at AoOO)
Total Stories: 25
Total Words: 47,984
Mean Average Words Per Story: 1,919
Median: 1,015
Shortest Story: 200
Longest: 13,304
Fandoms written in: Arcadia, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, BtVS comicsverse, Dollhouse, Ender's Game, Firefly, Marvel Movieverse (Iron Man/XMM), Merlin, The Parent Trap, RPF, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Veronica Mars
Fandoms I had never written in before: Dollhouse, Iron Man, Merlin, Sarah Connor Chronicles
Your main fandom of the year: In my heart, Buffy always come first. In terms of fic, though, it was a very good year for Sarah Connor Chronicles: six fics, three of them John/Savannah. Buffy still made a good showing as a very close second with five fics written, though.
Your favorite film watched this year: Push. Precognitive Dakota Fanning FTW.
Your favorite book read this year: Assuming that I can't count, say,synecdochic's Broken Wings 'verse as a book, the main physical books I remember reading this year and enjoying were light and fluffy ones, like Twilight and Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price. I'm not sure what that says about me.
Your favorite album or song to listen to this year: For some reason, Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"--which I've been listening to since before I was born--has really spoken to me this past year.
Your favorite TV show of the year: It's hard to believe that it was just earlier this year that new Sarah Connor Chronicles was coming out on our televisions; I was all ready to answer with Dollhouse or Sanctuary before I caught myself. Also I've realized that I don't think of British TV as television; Torchwood and Sarah Jane were both very good this year, although not Sarah Connor levels of excellence.
Your favorite LJ community of the year?
Half the time I forget to even check my LJ flist, even with the filter there filtering out the people I follow on DW, and the DW comms I'm subscribed to aren't exactly heavy traffic. So I'd have to say![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
femslash_today or yuletide_admin, both of which I have syndicated to my DW.
Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
I'd say Sanctuary, except I don't think I've actually read any of the fic yet; I just sort of know it exists, somewhere. So Glee!, I guess--some of the femslash I've read is pretty darn hot, and even when it replicates the *ism in the source material I somehow don't find that as frustrating as I do with the show itself (which I've given up on).
Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year: I think I'd also have to say Glee for this one. A fandom where you don't like the catnon all that much makes it very hard to be fannish.
Your TV boyfriend of the year: I find it hard to imagine anyone other than the Tenth Doctor winning this title, even though he wasn't particularly likeable in 2009. If you ask me this (or, rather, if I ask me this) next year I'll probably have to say Ten again, on the technicality that "End of Time, Part II" will air in 2010. In 2011? I don't even know, but it's a bit early to plan that far in advance anyway.
Your TV girlfriend of the year: Since grownup!Savannah only exists in my head, I'll have to say Kate Freelander from Sanctuary.
Your biggest squee moment of the year: Stargate SG-1 Season 8 on Hulu. (Best. Stargate. Season. Ever.)
The most missed of your old fandoms: Define "old"; my Buffy output in 2009 puts the lie to any idea I might have any such thing as former fandoms, even if I do miss the even greater output I was capable of whenfemslash_minis was going strong. Most missed of old canons would be Sarah Connor; even if the separation has only been a few months if feels a lot longer than that.
The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to: Hmm. Star Trek XI, of course, though I don't imagine being all that fannish. And a few other movie fandoms: Bend It with Beckham, Repo! The Genetic Opera (I already own both of those, so I really don't have any excuse for not having watched them), Whip It!, etc.
Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year: "End of Time, Part II," and any other Who-related content (SJA, TW) that might come out in 2010 jumps out at me. "Epitaph Two," of course (Felicia!). Season 4 of The Guild (more Felicia!).
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More. Nothing to match the type of output I had when I was in undergrad, but after the drastic downturn of last year, it's nice to be up even a little bit and know I haven't gone completely dry.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2007?
When 2009 started, John/Cameron was my Sarah Connor Chronicles OTP--and it was strange, because it was my first pairing which really was an OTP, where I wouldn't be able to enjoy other pairings. Then I began to think about Savannah leading the Resistance, and by the end of April John/Savannah had become my new OTP. Fic began to flow after that, in my "Psalm 23" 'verse.
My best story this year: A lot of time and effort went into writing Some Thing to Watch Over Me, in really thinking through what Cameron and Riley would do and how the arc would unfold, not to mention just plain writing what was my longest story since Divine Interventions, and I'd like to think it shows.
Most fun story: Deck of Cards, wherein the characters fight over what makes a good Alice adaptation, and Summer Glau ends up naked in somebody's bed.
Sexiest story: Beside the Still Waters. M/F/F threesome with a side of dirtybadwrong UST.
Story with single sexiest moment: Glories Stream's public sex on a celestial beach.
Kinkiest story: The sex in Beside the Still Waters is certainly far from vanilla, without falling into the sphere of the unhealthy, like The Whipping Girl does.
Sweetest story: Not a lot of sweet this year. I think Confirmation Hearings wins with its banter between old friends and family members in a moment of victory. The only story in the mix with is unequivocally happy.
Saddest story: Silence.
Most horrific story: The Whipping Girl, probably.
Story with the best premise: The Psalm 23 'verse, collectively.
Best Use of Language: I love the Merlin voice in Camp Camelot because it's my voice to a tee, in a way that none of the voices of any of the other characters I write are (though some close), and it totally works for him.
"My issues, let me show you them": Unfulfilled.
Most unintentionally revealing story: Beside the Still Waters's teen!Savannah scenes, maybe? Or just the rough sex of The Whipping Girl.
"Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: Substitution Rule, in which we learn the sisters regularly rape each other's boyfriends (and girlfriends?) by impersonating each other. Thing is, I think they'd totally do it (although they probably wouldn't think of it as rape, and I'm not sure how to break the news to them without seeming preachy).
Story that shifted my perception of the characters: Some Thing to Watch Over Me, without question. I started it because Riley was messing up my OTP; by the end of it, I felt like I had come to terms with her character.
Favorite OC: Well, there's the hapless boyfriend in Substitution Rule. The eponymouse characters in Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. could also be counted as original characters of a sort, although obviously they're fashioned on a specific template.
Favorite portrayals of: Savannah in Beside the Still Waters.
Favorite opening lines: From Some Thing to Watch Over Me: "Cameron is programmed to terminate."
Favorite closing lines: From Substitution Rule: "'I love you,' he whispers to her sister who isn't there, to Hallie who's busy working Annie's shift at the video store." So wrong.
Other favorite lines: "He should have known this question would come, sooner or later--indeed, if he was honest, there had been a part of him which had been dreading it the last seven years. But he hadn't expected it like this, not proffered with Savannah sitting half-naked on his bed, or phrased so bluntly or so obscenely" from Unfulfilled;
Favorite philosophical statement I've written this year: "And screw anyone who's offended by the two of you fucking out in the open on a public beach, because this is supposed to be Paradise and there's nothing to be ashamed of here, just two bodies created in the fucking divine image doing what they fucking were designed to do (and excuse your language, but really--who the fuck do they think they are?), so any saint who has a problem with it can go and tell God to God's smiling face that they find Heaven less than perfect" from Glories Stream for the explicitly lesbian imago dei, for the affirmation that God created women in the divine image in order to have sex with other women.
Hardest/Easiest story to write: The stories that got written this year were the stories I couldn't not write; I can't point to any that were difficult to write. (This may be in part due to just how many of them were notebooked.) Which is not to say they were equally labor-intensive; obviously a lot more effort and sweat went into the 13,000-word fic Substitution Rule than the double drabble Substitution Rule. Or even Beside the Still Waters, where betaanonymous_sibyl and I had several productive conversations on the gender dynamics, why the the threesome was happening, and what needed to be more clearly communicated to the reader (especially since it was written before Though I Walk Through the Shadow, which fills in a lot of that backstory, was published). But they were all labors of love--or at least I only remember the good parts.
Story I didn't write but will at some point, I swear: Everything I answered for this questionlast year two years three years ago, verbatim. (This is getting embarassing--although I have actually gotten a decent portion of To Live in Hearts notebooked. Although it looks like it's probably just going to be "To Live in Hearts" at this point.) Also, John and teen!Savannah's first time(s).
What story do you want to have written? The grand story of how John gets back from the "Born to Run" future and ends up in the timeline I've codenamed "Girls in Their Summer Clothes."
Most underappreciated/overappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: None of my non-Yuletide fic this year turned out to be wildly popular, or even as popular as I hoped, but I'm okay with that. Just writing those stories turned out to be fairly satisfying in itself, plus I get to go back and re-read them.
Biggest Disappointment: Looking back on 2009, I can't really say that there are any disappointments when it comes to what I've written. I'm pretty satisfied with the bunch.
Biggest surprise: I wrote an AU! Not just the "what if x happened" variety, but the "what if they're all hospital nurses" variety, only in Camp Camelot they're all summer camp counselors. (And in Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. they're on a space station, but it seems a more natural translation to make with fairy tales, somehow, where there's not as solid a canon in the first place anyhow.)
The fic which was jossed in a way you really didn't expect: Some Thing to Watch Over Me. I didn't expect the Riley/Cameron or the big threesome at the end to become canon, obviously, but a lot of what I wrote in the fic at the time seemed like the only way things could turn out. Turns out, there was a more tragic option.
The fic which was jossed in a way you did expect, unfortunately: How I ----ed Your Father. In the real world, Sarah Connor didn't run for five seasons and Dollhouse for seven. Drat.
Most "OHMIGOD HEY *I* WROTE THAT" fanon-turned-canon moment: Summer Glau going on Dollhouse after Sarah Connor was canceled in How I ----ed Your Father. Okay, not a particularly hard thing to predict.
A story I want remembered: Some Thing to Watch Over Me. Just because I spent so muich time on the thing.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: Desperation, and the way it drives people to cling to each other: Peter and Val, John and (both versions of) Savannah, Buffy and Satsu, Reinette and Lucy, even Thomasina and Septimus. None of the relationships are particularly healthy, but sometimes all my characters have is each other, and they don't know what else to do. Seen in this light, Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. was a fitting culmination of my year in fic.
My favorite story this year (of my own): Besides the Still Waters. It has both the hot, explicit pool sex of the John/Savannah/Allison threesome in the "Born to Run" future, and the more uncertain relationship of John and teen!Savannah in 2016, so it contains everything I love about the pairing. Guh.
Total Stories: 25
Total Words: 47,984
Mean Average Words Per Story: 1,919
Median: 1,015
Shortest Story: 200
Longest: 13,304
Fandoms written in: Arcadia, Doctor Who, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, BtVS comicsverse, Dollhouse, Ender's Game, Firefly, Marvel Movieverse (Iron Man/XMM), Merlin, The Parent Trap, RPF, Sarah Connor Chronicles, Veronica Mars
Fandoms I had never written in before: Dollhouse, Iron Man, Merlin, Sarah Connor Chronicles
Your main fandom of the year: In my heart, Buffy always come first. In terms of fic, though, it was a very good year for Sarah Connor Chronicles: six fics, three of them John/Savannah. Buffy still made a good showing as a very close second with five fics written, though.
Your favorite film watched this year: Push. Precognitive Dakota Fanning FTW.
Your favorite book read this year: Assuming that I can't count, say,
synecdochic's Broken Wings 'verse as a book, the main physical books I remember reading this year and enjoying were light and fluffy ones, like Twilight and Wen Spencer's A Brother's Price. I'm not sure what that says about me. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year: For some reason, Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit"--which I've been listening to since before I was born--has really spoken to me this past year.
Your favorite TV show of the year: It's hard to believe that it was just earlier this year that new Sarah Connor Chronicles was coming out on our televisions; I was all ready to answer with Dollhouse or Sanctuary before I caught myself. Also I've realized that I don't think of British TV as television; Torchwood and Sarah Jane were both very good this year, although not Sarah Connor levels of excellence.
Your favorite LJ community of the year?
Half the time I forget to even check my LJ flist, even with the filter there filtering out the people I follow on DW, and the DW comms I'm subscribed to aren't exactly heavy traffic. So I'd have to say
femslash_today or yuletide_admin, both of which I have syndicated to my DW. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?
I'd say Sanctuary, except I don't think I've actually read any of the fic yet; I just sort of know it exists, somewhere. So Glee!, I guess--some of the femslash I've read is pretty darn hot, and even when it replicates the *ism in the source material I somehow don't find that as frustrating as I do with the show itself (which I've given up on).
Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year: I think I'd also have to say Glee for this one. A fandom where you don't like the catnon all that much makes it very hard to be fannish.
Your TV boyfriend of the year: I find it hard to imagine anyone other than the Tenth Doctor winning this title, even though he wasn't particularly likeable in 2009. If you ask me this (or, rather, if I ask me this) next year I'll probably have to say Ten again, on the technicality that "End of Time, Part II" will air in 2010. In 2011? I don't even know, but it's a bit early to plan that far in advance anyway.
Your TV girlfriend of the year: Since grownup!Savannah only exists in my head, I'll have to say Kate Freelander from Sanctuary.
Your biggest squee moment of the year: Stargate SG-1 Season 8 on Hulu. (Best. Stargate. Season. Ever.)
The most missed of your old fandoms: Define "old"; my Buffy output in 2009 puts the lie to any idea I might have any such thing as former fandoms, even if I do miss the even greater output I was capable of when
femslash_minis was going strong. Most missed of old canons would be Sarah Connor; even if the separation has only been a few months if feels a lot longer than that. The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to: Hmm. Star Trek XI, of course, though I don't imagine being all that fannish. And a few other movie fandoms: Bend It with Beckham, Repo! The Genetic Opera (I already own both of those, so I really don't have any excuse for not having watched them), Whip It!, etc.
Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year: "End of Time, Part II," and any other Who-related content (SJA, TW) that might come out in 2010 jumps out at me. "Epitaph Two," of course (Felicia!). Season 4 of The Guild (more Felicia!).
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
More. Nothing to match the type of output I had when I was in undergrad, but after the drastic downturn of last year, it's nice to be up even a little bit and know I haven't gone completely dry.
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2007?
When 2009 started, John/Cameron was my Sarah Connor Chronicles OTP--and it was strange, because it was my first pairing which really was an OTP, where I wouldn't be able to enjoy other pairings. Then I began to think about Savannah leading the Resistance, and by the end of April John/Savannah had become my new OTP. Fic began to flow after that, in my "Psalm 23" 'verse.
My best story this year: A lot of time and effort went into writing Some Thing to Watch Over Me, in really thinking through what Cameron and Riley would do and how the arc would unfold, not to mention just plain writing what was my longest story since Divine Interventions, and I'd like to think it shows.
Most fun story: Deck of Cards, wherein the characters fight over what makes a good Alice adaptation, and Summer Glau ends up naked in somebody's bed.
Sexiest story: Beside the Still Waters. M/F/F threesome with a side of dirtybadwrong UST.
Story with single sexiest moment: Glories Stream's public sex on a celestial beach.
Kinkiest story: The sex in Beside the Still Waters is certainly far from vanilla, without falling into the sphere of the unhealthy, like The Whipping Girl does.
Sweetest story: Not a lot of sweet this year. I think Confirmation Hearings wins with its banter between old friends and family members in a moment of victory. The only story in the mix with is unequivocally happy.
Saddest story: Silence.
Most horrific story: The Whipping Girl, probably.
Story with the best premise: The Psalm 23 'verse, collectively.
Best Use of Language: I love the Merlin voice in Camp Camelot because it's my voice to a tee, in a way that none of the voices of any of the other characters I write are (though some close), and it totally works for him.
"My issues, let me show you them": Unfulfilled.
Most unintentionally revealing story: Beside the Still Waters's teen!Savannah scenes, maybe? Or just the rough sex of The Whipping Girl.
"Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: Substitution Rule, in which we learn the sisters regularly rape each other's boyfriends (and girlfriends?) by impersonating each other. Thing is, I think they'd totally do it (although they probably wouldn't think of it as rape, and I'm not sure how to break the news to them without seeming preachy).
Story that shifted my perception of the characters: Some Thing to Watch Over Me, without question. I started it because Riley was messing up my OTP; by the end of it, I felt like I had come to terms with her character.
Favorite OC: Well, there's the hapless boyfriend in Substitution Rule. The eponymouse characters in Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. could also be counted as original characters of a sort, although obviously they're fashioned on a specific template.
Favorite portrayals of: Savannah in Beside the Still Waters.
Favorite opening lines: From Some Thing to Watch Over Me: "Cameron is programmed to terminate."
Favorite closing lines: From Substitution Rule: "'I love you,' he whispers to her sister who isn't there, to Hallie who's busy working Annie's shift at the video store." So wrong.
Other favorite lines: "He should have known this question would come, sooner or later--indeed, if he was honest, there had been a part of him which had been dreading it the last seven years. But he hadn't expected it like this, not proffered with Savannah sitting half-naked on his bed, or phrased so bluntly or so obscenely" from Unfulfilled;
Favorite philosophical statement I've written this year: "And screw anyone who's offended by the two of you fucking out in the open on a public beach, because this is supposed to be Paradise and there's nothing to be ashamed of here, just two bodies created in the fucking divine image doing what they fucking were designed to do (and excuse your language, but really--who the fuck do they think they are?), so any saint who has a problem with it can go and tell God to God's smiling face that they find Heaven less than perfect" from Glories Stream for the explicitly lesbian imago dei, for the affirmation that God created women in the divine image in order to have sex with other women.
Hardest/Easiest story to write: The stories that got written this year were the stories I couldn't not write; I can't point to any that were difficult to write. (This may be in part due to just how many of them were notebooked.) Which is not to say they were equally labor-intensive; obviously a lot more effort and sweat went into the 13,000-word fic Substitution Rule than the double drabble Substitution Rule. Or even Beside the Still Waters, where beta
anonymous_sibyl and I had several productive conversations on the gender dynamics, why the the threesome was happening, and what needed to be more clearly communicated to the reader (especially since it was written before Though I Walk Through the Shadow, which fills in a lot of that backstory, was published). But they were all labors of love--or at least I only remember the good parts. Story I didn't write but will at some point, I swear: Everything I answered for this question
What story do you want to have written? The grand story of how John gets back from the "Born to Run" future and ends up in the timeline I've codenamed "Girls in Their Summer Clothes."
Most underappreciated/overappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: None of my non-Yuletide fic this year turned out to be wildly popular, or even as popular as I hoped, but I'm okay with that. Just writing those stories turned out to be fairly satisfying in itself, plus I get to go back and re-read them.
Biggest Disappointment: Looking back on 2009, I can't really say that there are any disappointments when it comes to what I've written. I'm pretty satisfied with the bunch.
Biggest surprise: I wrote an AU! Not just the "what if x happened" variety, but the "what if they're all hospital nurses" variety, only in Camp Camelot they're all summer camp counselors. (And in Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. they're on a space station, but it seems a more natural translation to make with fairy tales, somehow, where there's not as solid a canon in the first place anyhow.)
The fic which was jossed in a way you really didn't expect: Some Thing to Watch Over Me. I didn't expect the Riley/Cameron or the big threesome at the end to become canon, obviously, but a lot of what I wrote in the fic at the time seemed like the only way things could turn out. Turns out, there was a more tragic option.
The fic which was jossed in a way you did expect, unfortunately: How I ----ed Your Father. In the real world, Sarah Connor didn't run for five seasons and Dollhouse for seven. Drat.
Most "OHMIGOD HEY *I* WROTE THAT" fanon-turned-canon moment: Summer Glau going on Dollhouse after Sarah Connor was canceled in How I ----ed Your Father. Okay, not a particularly hard thing to predict.
A story I want remembered: Some Thing to Watch Over Me. Just because I spent so muich time on the thing.
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: Desperation, and the way it drives people to cling to each other: Peter and Val, John and (both versions of) Savannah, Buffy and Satsu, Reinette and Lucy, even Thomasina and Septimus. None of the relationships are particularly healthy, but sometimes all my characters have is each other, and they don't know what else to do. Seen in this light, Beleza and the B.E.A.S.T. was a fitting culmination of my year in fic.
My favorite story this year (of my own): Besides the Still Waters. It has both the hot, explicit pool sex of the John/Savannah/Allison threesome in the "Born to Run" future, and the more uncertain relationship of John and teen!Savannah in 2016, so it contains everything I love about the pairing. Guh.