Fanfic wrap-up meme 2021
Jan. 24th, 2022 08:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elen_nareLet's see what I wrote this year!
Stats
List of Completed Fic
Dream Come True - High Rollers Aerois (3656 words, E, Quill/Lucius)
Back on the Stormchaser - High Rollers Aerois (802 words, G, Oriya & Greylano)
What It's Like - High Rollers Aerois (1734 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
Place your head on my beating heart - High Rollers Aerois (1357 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
Revelations - High Rollers Aerois (4053 words, T, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
I'd wipe away all of your tears - High Rollers Aerois (1313 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
The Rose That Blooms Forever - High Rollers Aerois (3269 words, G, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
A Better Solution - High Rollers Aerois (7811 words, G, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
Traveller, traveller, tramping by - Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker) (689 words, G, Traveller’s Joy fairy)
(The Morning After) The Night Before - High Rollers Aerois (3639 words, T, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
On the Mountainside - Swallows and Amazons (960 words, G, John/Nancy)
A Magical Mishap (or, Nephews and Nieces; the Aunts and Uncles remix) - Chronicles of Narnia (1349 words, G, Polly & Digory & Aunt Letty)
The grave preceded me - High Rollers Curse of Strahd (410 words, T, Rose)
Mothers - Swallows and Amazons (14 words, G, poetry)
Seat of his Trousers - Swallows and Amazons (500 words, G, Roger & Peggy)
Doubt Truth to be a Liar - High Rollers Aerois (13973 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
The Case of the Switched Suitcases - The Red House Mystery (3540 words, G, Bill/Antony)
Total number: 17
Total word count: 49069, for an average of 2886.4 words per fic - I did not expect it to be so much higher than last year! It’s mainly “Doubt Truth to be a Liar”, that one really ran away from me - my longest solo fic ever, beating the previous one by about 600 words.
Ship/character breakdown:
According to AO3:
Relationships
The Character breakdown is always iffier, but:
The squishy magic duo of Quill and Lucius continue to be very beloved by me <3 And Aridan has shot up the character list as a direct consequence of being shipped with them… because why angst over who to ship Lucius with, when he has two hands and a big heart?
Specifics:
Best/worst title?
Lots of quotes, of course… “Doubt Truth to be a Liar” (from Hamlet - “Doubt truth to be a liar; / But never doubt I love”) and “Traveller, traveller, tramping by” (from Cicely M. Barker’s Traveller’s Joy poem) are probably my favourites of those. Outside of quotes, I also quite like “A Better Solution”, because that is the thread that runs through the whole story. Worst… maybe “Revelations” or "On the Mountainside", those are kind of bland? “I'd wipe away all of your tears” does have the “from My Immortal” cringe factor :P but it works so well!
Best summary?
"As so many things did, it all began with Polly and Digory quarrelling." The tale of how Aunt Letty acquired two new apprentices. - A Magical Mishap (or, Nephews and Nieces; the Aunts and Uncles remix) (also a partial quote from the fic).
Lucius admits to the group that he's never kissed anyone. Quill has a brilliant idea. - What It's Like.
Best first line?
A lot of them are more setting the scene and not super interesting out of context…
Normally, Lucius derives a not-insignificant amount of happiness and comfort from his fancy clothes, from being one of, if not the, best dressed in the room. - Revelations
As so many things did, it all began with Polly and Digory quarrelling. - A Magical Mishap
Or if I may have two:
“I’m very sorry, but I'm afraid I, um, have a prior commitment!” Lucius said, and caught Quill’s eye with a pleading look. “I'm engaged to Quill.” - Doubt Truth to be a Liar
Best last line?
And if she did, Traveller’s Joy would still be there, ready to give her shelter again and listen to her stories, as she did for every wanderer who chose to rest a moment beneath her bower. - Traveller, traveller, tramping by
She’s not losing anyone else. - The grave preceded me (I am so sorry, Rose)
I don’t much care where we go, as long as we go together. - The Case of the Switched Suitcases
Or if I may have two lines:
“Oh, Lucius,” Quill said again, pulling away at last and smiling at him. “You’ve just answered so many questions I hadn’t even realised I was asking.” - I'd wipe away all of your tears (This may need a touch of canon context - Quill was charged by his god to “ask the right questions”, it’s a distinct theme in his character and arc.)
General questions:
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Hmmm… more wordcount, less individual fics, maybe? Comparing to what I intended to do, once again I did some![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fan_flashworks prompts, one of the 50x500 Swallows and Amazons, and nothing for 100fandoms . But I did do two of thisbluespirit ’s prompts, and also filled a couple of prompts from other people I’d had for absolute ages!
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
I hadn’t expected to fall into Quill/Lucius/Aridan shipping, but I’ve had lots of fun with them! I also wasn’t expecting to write Polly & Digory - I haven’t done much Narnia fic, and only Pevensie-era before - but the fic I remixed really inspired me.
What's your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I had a lot of fun with “Doubt Truth to be a Liar” (and its seven chapters of mutual pining idiots with only the barest veneer of plot). It was really nice to get back to John and Nancy with “On the Mountainside”, too! And I enjoyed working out the relationship dynamics in “A Better Solution”.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
“Doubt Truth to be a Liar" with 7 comment threads, or “What It’s Like” and "I’d wipe away all of your tears" with 29 kudos each (between them, the first wins out on comment threads 4-0).Quill and Lucius pining for each other and finally figuring it out was my popularity niche in 2021, clearly!
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
“Mothers” is definitely at the bottom with 3 kudos and no comments, but it is also just a teeny tiny poem! Taking that one out, either "I’d wipe away all of your tears" with 0 comments (but at the top by kudos, and I got nice messages in discord), or “The Case of the Switched Suitcases” with 5 kudos (but also 3 lovely comments, and it is a tiny-even-for-Yuletide fandom)… None feel especially underappreciated, really.
Story that could have been better?
I’m pretty happy with all of them, honestly… Maybe “The grave preceded me”? There is just so much sadness and grief in Barovia, maybe I could have delved deeper? And there’s some “similar situations/different choices” character comparisons I felt it should have been possible to do more with, but couldn’t really express.
Sexiest story?
So after years and years of being a 99.99% G-rated fic writer, I once again wrote an E-rated story! Quill and Lucius this time, with “Dream Come True” - inspired by another writer’s fic of Lucius having a… very E-rated dream about Quill, and my realisation that Quill would totally end up finding out about it, since a. Lucius is the worst at keeping secrets, b. Quill has godlike perceptiveness, and c. Quill also has a magic eye that can show him the answer to any question he asks.
Honourable mention to “(The Morning After) The Night Before”, which has not one but two fade-to-black moments, and “Revelations” which opens on a… fade-from-black? Is that a thing? Quill, Lucius, and Aridan are cuddling in bed and have definitely been doing more than that right before the story starts.
Saddest story?
Spoilers for both High Rollers Aerois and Curse of Strahd to follow!
Definitely “The grave preceded me”... Curse of Strahd was a brutal campaign with a lot of death - this is set right after Xiros and Xiiki die, while Rose (who’s the POV character) is still deeply grieving her friend Shadow who was the first PC to die. Runner up is “I'd wipe away all of your tears”, with Quill grieving his god who sacrificed himself to save him.
Most fun?
Maybe “Revelations” - Lucius’s twin sister Edea is very snarky in that one. Or “The Case of the Switched Suitcases” with Bill and Antony’s ridiculous chatter.
Story with single sweetest moment?
As ever, there is plenty of competition for this one! Probably “The Rose That Blooms Forever”, that’s just pure romantic fluff all the way through. The end of “Place your head on my beating heart” is also pretty sweet… or on a gen note, Roger and Peggy trying to bring everyone at least a moment of happiness during WWII in “Seat of his Trousers”.
Hardest story to write?
Probably “A Better Solution”, that took a lot of working out the POVs so it all fitted together and flowed naturally - I ended up calling onbluealoe for beta help and reassurance <3 Or “Doubt Truth to be a Liar”, working out how to do the alternating POVs so they were in the order I wanted. And with “Traveller, traveller, tramping by” it took me a bit to really get into it and work out what I was doing with the story.
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I had a lot of fun writing the chaos of “Revelations”, and Bill and Antony bantering in “The Case of the Switched Suitcases”. “What It’s Like” also flowed really easily.
Most overdue story?
“Seat of his Trousers” - I had been given the first line as a prompt at least a couple of years ago.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
The scariest one was probably the E-rated one again… I guess I learnt that (IMO at least) sex scenes need to make sense for the characters? There’s a world of difference between Quill and Lucius making love, all shy and caring and trying to make each other happy, and Yesper and Xiros having snarky antagonistic sex. (Off-topic, but that’s also a testament to Trott and Tom’s RP skills - that they created such incredibly different characters with such a completely different dynamic between them!)
I also did a couple of “alternating POV” fics, I learnt it can be trickier than it seems to get the sections to play out evenly! (That was not the only, or even main, reason the chapter called “Actual plot I guess??” got scrapped from “Doubt Truth to be a Liar” - I only had about a paragraph of content for it, that just made more sense joined onto the next chapter - but it was definitely an additional nail in the coffin.)
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Maybe "comfort"? There's a lot of people being comforted by lovers/friends/family throughout… I think I'll go with “I'd wipe away all of your tears” for that.
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
It would be nice to match 2021’s productivity, but we’ll see if I manage it! Do more of thefan_flashworks challenges /thisbluespirit ’s prompts / the 50x500 swallows and Amazons ones? Actually finish and post some of the floating WIPs I have scattered around?
Stats
List of Completed Fic
Dream Come True - High Rollers Aerois (3656 words, E, Quill/Lucius)
Back on the Stormchaser - High Rollers Aerois (802 words, G, Oriya & Greylano)
What It's Like - High Rollers Aerois (1734 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
Place your head on my beating heart - High Rollers Aerois (1357 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
Revelations - High Rollers Aerois (4053 words, T, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
I'd wipe away all of your tears - High Rollers Aerois (1313 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
The Rose That Blooms Forever - High Rollers Aerois (3269 words, G, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
A Better Solution - High Rollers Aerois (7811 words, G, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
Traveller, traveller, tramping by - Flower Fairies - Cicely Mary Barker) (689 words, G, Traveller’s Joy fairy)
(The Morning After) The Night Before - High Rollers Aerois (3639 words, T, Quill/Lucius/Aridan)
On the Mountainside - Swallows and Amazons (960 words, G, John/Nancy)
A Magical Mishap (or, Nephews and Nieces; the Aunts and Uncles remix) - Chronicles of Narnia (1349 words, G, Polly & Digory & Aunt Letty)
The grave preceded me - High Rollers Curse of Strahd (410 words, T, Rose)
Mothers - Swallows and Amazons (14 words, G, poetry)
Seat of his Trousers - Swallows and Amazons (500 words, G, Roger & Peggy)
Doubt Truth to be a Liar - High Rollers Aerois (13973 words, G, Quill/Lucius)
The Case of the Switched Suitcases - The Red House Mystery (3540 words, G, Bill/Antony)
Total number: 17
Total word count: 49069, for an average of 2886.4 words per fic - I did not expect it to be so much higher than last year! It’s mainly “Doubt Truth to be a Liar”, that one really ran away from me - my longest solo fic ever, beating the previous one by about 600 words.
Ship/character breakdown:
According to AO3:
Relationships
- Qillek "Quill" Ad Khollar/Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto (5)
- Qillek "Quill" Ad Khollar/Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto/Aridan Irisen-Pelony Starsorrow (4)
- Nancy Blackett/John Walker (1)
- Bill Beverley/Antony Gillingham (1)
- Qillek "Quill" Ad Khollar & Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto (1)
- Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto & Fayeth (1)
The Character breakdown is always iffier, but:
- Lucius Virion-Elluin Elenasto (9)
- Qillek "Quill" Ad Khollar (9)
- Aridan Irisen-Pelony Starsorrow (5)
- Nova V'Ger (2)
- Aila (High Rollers) (2)
- Edea Elenasto (2)
- Sentry (High Rollers) (2)
- Fayeth (High Rollers) (2)
- Nancy Blackett (1)
- Roger Walker (1)
The squishy magic duo of Quill and Lucius continue to be very beloved by me <3 And Aridan has shot up the character list as a direct consequence of being shipped with them… because why angst over who to ship Lucius with, when he has two hands and a big heart?
Specifics:
Best/worst title?
Lots of quotes, of course… “Doubt Truth to be a Liar” (from Hamlet - “Doubt truth to be a liar; / But never doubt I love”) and “Traveller, traveller, tramping by” (from Cicely M. Barker’s Traveller’s Joy poem) are probably my favourites of those. Outside of quotes, I also quite like “A Better Solution”, because that is the thread that runs through the whole story. Worst… maybe “Revelations” or "On the Mountainside", those are kind of bland? “I'd wipe away all of your tears” does have the “from My Immortal” cringe factor :P but it works so well!
Best summary?
"As so many things did, it all began with Polly and Digory quarrelling." The tale of how Aunt Letty acquired two new apprentices. - A Magical Mishap (or, Nephews and Nieces; the Aunts and Uncles remix) (also a partial quote from the fic).
Lucius admits to the group that he's never kissed anyone. Quill has a brilliant idea. - What It's Like.
Best first line?
A lot of them are more setting the scene and not super interesting out of context…
Normally, Lucius derives a not-insignificant amount of happiness and comfort from his fancy clothes, from being one of, if not the, best dressed in the room. - Revelations
As so many things did, it all began with Polly and Digory quarrelling. - A Magical Mishap
Or if I may have two:
“I’m very sorry, but I'm afraid I, um, have a prior commitment!” Lucius said, and caught Quill’s eye with a pleading look. “I'm engaged to Quill.” - Doubt Truth to be a Liar
Best last line?
And if she did, Traveller’s Joy would still be there, ready to give her shelter again and listen to her stories, as she did for every wanderer who chose to rest a moment beneath her bower. - Traveller, traveller, tramping by
She’s not losing anyone else. - The grave preceded me (I am so sorry, Rose)
I don’t much care where we go, as long as we go together. - The Case of the Switched Suitcases
Or if I may have two lines:
“Oh, Lucius,” Quill said again, pulling away at last and smiling at him. “You’ve just answered so many questions I hadn’t even realised I was asking.” - I'd wipe away all of your tears (This may need a touch of canon context - Quill was charged by his god to “ask the right questions”, it’s a distinct theme in his character and arc.)
General questions:
Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?
Hmmm… more wordcount, less individual fics, maybe? Comparing to what I intended to do, once again I did some
fan_flashworks prompts, one of the 50x500 Swallows and Amazons, and nothing for 100fandoms . But I did do two of thisbluespirit ’s prompts, and also filled a couple of prompts from other people I’d had for absolute ages!What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
I hadn’t expected to fall into Quill/Lucius/Aridan shipping, but I’ve had lots of fun with them! I also wasn’t expecting to write Polly & Digory - I haven’t done much Narnia fic, and only Pevensie-era before - but the fic I remixed really inspired me.
What's your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
I had a lot of fun with “Doubt Truth to be a Liar” (and its seven chapters of mutual pining idiots with only the barest veneer of plot). It was really nice to get back to John and Nancy with “On the Mountainside”, too! And I enjoyed working out the relationship dynamics in “A Better Solution”.
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
“Doubt Truth to be a Liar" with 7 comment threads, or “What It’s Like” and "I’d wipe away all of your tears" with 29 kudos each (between them, the first wins out on comment threads 4-0).Quill and Lucius pining for each other and finally figuring it out was my popularity niche in 2021, clearly!
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
“Mothers” is definitely at the bottom with 3 kudos and no comments, but it is also just a teeny tiny poem! Taking that one out, either "I’d wipe away all of your tears" with 0 comments (but at the top by kudos, and I got nice messages in discord), or “The Case of the Switched Suitcases” with 5 kudos (but also 3 lovely comments, and it is a tiny-even-for-Yuletide fandom)… None feel especially underappreciated, really.
Story that could have been better?
I’m pretty happy with all of them, honestly… Maybe “The grave preceded me”? There is just so much sadness and grief in Barovia, maybe I could have delved deeper? And there’s some “similar situations/different choices” character comparisons I felt it should have been possible to do more with, but couldn’t really express.
Sexiest story?
So after years and years of being a 99.99% G-rated fic writer, I once again wrote an E-rated story! Quill and Lucius this time, with “Dream Come True” - inspired by another writer’s fic of Lucius having a… very E-rated dream about Quill, and my realisation that Quill would totally end up finding out about it, since a. Lucius is the worst at keeping secrets, b. Quill has godlike perceptiveness, and c. Quill also has a magic eye that can show him the answer to any question he asks.
Honourable mention to “(The Morning After) The Night Before”, which has not one but two fade-to-black moments, and “Revelations” which opens on a… fade-from-black? Is that a thing? Quill, Lucius, and Aridan are cuddling in bed and have definitely been doing more than that right before the story starts.
Saddest story?
Spoilers for both High Rollers Aerois and Curse of Strahd to follow!
Definitely “The grave preceded me”... Curse of Strahd was a brutal campaign with a lot of death - this is set right after Xiros and Xiiki die, while Rose (who’s the POV character) is still deeply grieving her friend Shadow who was the first PC to die. Runner up is “I'd wipe away all of your tears”, with Quill grieving his god who sacrificed himself to save him.
Most fun?
Maybe “Revelations” - Lucius’s twin sister Edea is very snarky in that one. Or “The Case of the Switched Suitcases” with Bill and Antony’s ridiculous chatter.
Story with single sweetest moment?
As ever, there is plenty of competition for this one! Probably “The Rose That Blooms Forever”, that’s just pure romantic fluff all the way through. The end of “Place your head on my beating heart” is also pretty sweet… or on a gen note, Roger and Peggy trying to bring everyone at least a moment of happiness during WWII in “Seat of his Trousers”.
Hardest story to write?
Probably “A Better Solution”, that took a lot of working out the POVs so it all fitted together and flowed naturally - I ended up calling on
bluealoe for beta help and reassurance <3 Or “Doubt Truth to be a Liar”, working out how to do the alternating POVs so they were in the order I wanted. And with “Traveller, traveller, tramping by” it took me a bit to really get into it and work out what I was doing with the story.Easiest/most fun story to write?
I had a lot of fun writing the chaos of “Revelations”, and Bill and Antony bantering in “The Case of the Switched Suitcases”. “What It’s Like” also flowed really easily.
Most overdue story?
“Seat of his Trousers” - I had been given the first line as a prompt at least a couple of years ago.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
The scariest one was probably the E-rated one again… I guess I learnt that (IMO at least) sex scenes need to make sense for the characters? There’s a world of difference between Quill and Lucius making love, all shy and caring and trying to make each other happy, and Yesper and Xiros having snarky antagonistic sex. (Off-topic, but that’s also a testament to Trott and Tom’s RP skills - that they created such incredibly different characters with such a completely different dynamic between them!)
I also did a couple of “alternating POV” fics, I learnt it can be trickier than it seems to get the sections to play out evenly! (That was not the only, or even main, reason the chapter called “Actual plot I guess??” got scrapped from “Doubt Truth to be a Liar” - I only had about a paragraph of content for it, that just made more sense joined onto the next chapter - but it was definitely an additional nail in the coffin.)
This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most:
Maybe "comfort"? There's a lot of people being comforted by lovers/friends/family throughout… I think I'll go with “I'd wipe away all of your tears” for that.
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
It would be nice to match 2021’s productivity, but we’ll see if I manage it! Do more of the
fan_flashworks challenges /thisbluespirit ’s prompts / the 50x500 swallows and Amazons ones? Actually finish and post some of the floating WIPs I have scattered around?
