End of year fic roundup

[amathela]

Everybody seems to have already posted theirs, and I keep looking at my calendar, thinking ... but there's still four days left in 2007, I can write fic in four days. Which I did. But now the year is officially over, so here is my end-of-year fic roundup post.

Number of fics written in 2007: 101. Huh.

Fandoms written: Arrested Development, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, Harry Potter, Heroes, Roswell, She's The Man, Stargate Atlantis, and Veronica Mars (plus Angel, Dead Like Me, Farscape, Gossip Girl, Grey's Anatomy, Mean Girls, Reaper, and Supernatural via crossovers).

My best story this year: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Veronica Mars, Lamb/Veronica). Definitely. I love this story to bits, even if I did write it, and I was overjoyed that it got such a positive response. Also, it's second person, which I actually think works perfectly for the story, and I wouldn't change it for the world.

Favorite story this year: I want to say Kiss Kiss Bang Bang again, but I'd just be repeating myself. Other than that, I think The Pursuit Of Lorelai (Gilmore Girls, Finn/Lorelai) comes a close second, and I'm also quite fond of Your Ex-Lover Is Dead (Grey's Anatomy/Supernatural, John/Izzie).

Most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion: Nothing Else (Battlestar Galactica, Helo/Sharon, Lee/Kara). Okay, so it's not your usual BSG fare (it's horror fic), and the main pairing isn't the most popular, so I can understand why not a lot of people read it. Also, it fits into canon in the sort of way that's not at all. But I genuinely like it - I think it's atmospheric, with an awesomely ambiguous ending that could be read in a bunch of different ways, and so, yeah. The universe may not love it, but I do.

Most fun story: To write? Probably Reset (BSG, Ensemble), which started out wanting to be crack but ended up as something completely different, though What Goes Down (VM, Lamb/Veronica) deserves a special mention - I'd never before spent so much time (in this case, three weeks, but still) in a single fanfic universe I'd created; it was an experience completely unlike writing one-shots, and something I'd love to do again. To read? Possibly Indian Summer (Heroes, West/Claire, Peter/Claire), which sends me to a happy, giggly place.

Sexiest story: How To Be A Bluth (Arrested Development, Michael/Lindsay), mostly for the line: trying to remember what the hell you were supposed to call the bathroom on a boat, because anything was better than thinking about the way his fingers curled around the back of her neck, which I find inexplicably hot. And We Could Do The Tango (AD, Michael/Lindsay) probably deserves an honorable mention, because hey, wall!sex.

"Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story: I've written incest, slash/femmeslash, threesomes, and (femme)slashy incestuous threesomes, but I think the fic that stands out for me the most (probably because it doesn't fit any of the aforementioned categories) is Popular Mechanics For Lovers (VM, Dick/Veronica), even through I secretly really love the pairing. Otherwise, White (VM, Logan/Veronica) is possibly - incest aside - the most morally dubious fic; ostensibly a simple 'shippy fic, but one with some serious date rape undertones, and I'm not sure if the apparent whitewashing at the end makes it more or less so.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: I've written a lot of fics that have put forth a different perspective on a character, but I'm not sure that any have actually changed how I view that character. That said, This Year's Girl (VM, Dick/Madison) was an interesting look at Madison Sinclair without the name or the zip code, and Lines (Harry Potter, Umbridge) made me feel (however fleeting) sympathy for Dolores Umbridge.

Hardest story to do: I Know I Know I Know (VM, Lilly/Hannah) was probably the hardest in terms of logistics. Not only did the two people involved in the pairing never meet in canon, but one character died over two years before the other was introduced, and her death is what was (indirectly) responsible for that introduction. So I had to do a little canon-bending to get it to fit, but it was a gift, so I really wanted to write that pairing. Plus, I'm pretty sure it's the one pairing I can say I'm the only person to have ever written, which is cool.

Biggest surprise: Riverside Inn (VM, Lamb/Veronica) was surprising just for the fact that I wrote it - Veronica Mars is hardly a fandom where horror fic seems an obvious choice, and I don't usually even like horror, so it was surprising that I wrote it, and that I enjoyed it as much as I did - so much so that I wrote a similar fic in Nothing Else (BSG, Helo/Sharon, Lee/Kara). But What Goes Down (VM, Lamb/Veronica) was probably the biggest surprise; it was the first series/WIP I'd ever written, and everything about it surprised me - how much I loved writing it, how many people followed it, how quickly it was finished. And that people are still asking after the sequel (which I've started, but haven't posted).

Most revealing story: About me? I have no idea. About a character? Probably Girls Not In Bars, and the Girls In Bars Remix (VM, Lamb). Lamb is incredibly misogynistic in the fics - way past the point of being charming, and not something that's often highlighted, since people who feel Lamb is genuinely a bad person don't tend to write about him. It was, I thought, an incredibly unflattering (however accurate) portrayal of him, and it allowed me to get under his skin in a different way than usual.

A story I want remembered: It's a toss-up between And Your Mother Too (Four Funerals And A Wedding) (VM, Lamb & Veronica) and Reset (BSG, Ensemble). Both are longer and plottier than most of the fics I've written, so I'm quite proud of them, and I'd love them to be the kind of fics people can go back and reread years later.

Writing goals for 2008: To write longer fics - I wrote a lot this year, but just over a third of my fics were over 1000 words, so I'd like to change that. I've joined 12in2008, and pledged to write twelve fics of 2500 words or more in 2008 (this year, I wrote ten). Also, to at least try and publish a piece of original fiction - any length or genre, and it doesn't have to be successful, but I want to try.


Also:

Number of fics written from the POV of a female character: 55 - just over half my total fics this year.

Number of fics featuring a character of colour: 21. Not awesome, but respectable (maybe?).

Number of fics written from the POV of a character of colour: 11. But I'm participating in the next round of choc_fic, and I hope to get those numbers up in 2008.


And for my own amusement, since I don't really think too much about POV in my fics (I usually just start writing).

Character POVs represented in fic:

15 fics - Veronica Mars

10 fics - Peter Petrelli

9 fics - Sharon Valerii

8 fics - Karl "Helo" Agathon, Nathan Petrelli

6 fics - Claire Bennet

5 fics - Don Lamb, John Sheppard

4 fics - Lindsay Bluth, Lilly Kane

3 fics - Logan Echolls, Lorelai Gilmore, Harry Potter

2 fics - Lee Adama, Rory Gilmore, Neville Longbottom, Kara Thrace, Ginny Weasley

1 fic - William Adama, Sam Anders, Dick Casablancas, Teyla Emmagan, Isabel Evans, Kaylee Frye, Felix Gaeta, Paris Geller, Gregory The Smarmy, Cally Henderson, Duncan Kane, George Lass, Olivia Lennox, Rodney McKay, Draco Malfoy, Hiro Nakamura, James Potter, Mal Reynolds, Niki Sanders, Madison Sinclair, Izzie Stevens, Buffy Summers, Rose Tyler, Dolores Umbridge, Fred Weasley, Ron Weasley


Also: my shiny new header and icons, made just for me by azngal_icons!! I now have Ben and Claudia John and Aeryn on my livejournal, which is just so much awesome. <3 <3