Amy Ponds of the 99% (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
allchildren) wrote2009-12-25 09:46 pm
allchildren) wrote2009-12-25 09:46 pm
Entry tags:
the "not a complete waste of fannish space" survey
Three go-rounds with Dreamwidth's native posting was quite enough for me; I don't know how people compose anything in web boxes. Now testing out iJournal!
Anyhoo, now that I'm all Yuletided and DID NOT EVEN DEFAULT or anything, it's retrospective time! Here are the fics I wrote in 2009:
Hand Against Hand, And - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John (/Cameron)
Perfection is Possible - TSCC, Weaver family
Four Consequences of the Unexpected and Unlikely Friendship Between James T. Kirk and Nyota Uhura - Star Trek XI, Jim & Nyota & Spock
Of Punishing Light (the hell in their mouths remix) - Battlestar Galactica, Kara/Lee
A Brief Discourse on the Benefits of Gravity - STXI, Joanna McCoy
Rain Shadow - STXI, Amanda Grayson
Before/After/Before - STXI, Jocelyn & Joanna
Meliboea - STXI, Winona Kirk
Yuletide
01. Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I wrote nine, though only three exceed 1k words. This sounds sad, but actually I exceeded my productivity expectations -- I didn't manage 1k on any single piece in 2008 and spent a lot of both the past two years feeling I had lost my words. And two of the three story-length fics were extremely difficult for me, so I'm pretty proud that I completed them.
02. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
Um, Star Trek? Lulz. Also my Yuletide fandom, which I had never even heard of until I got the assignment email, but I was uninspired by the fandom we matched on, so. Really, though, the second the half of this year was all about the utter shock of Star Trek returning to my life after a dozen years of never thinking about it (which followed the first dozen years in which it was deeply formative to my cultural sensibilities). It was particularly unexpected for updated versions of the TOS cast -- and peripheral characters who live more in the licensed material, like Joanna -- to dominate my imagination because even as a child I never wanted anything to do with TOS, had no use for tie-ins, and prior to actually seeing the movie I felt extremely cranky-to-ambivalent about its existence.
03. What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I think Rain Shadow. Though it's short, there is a great deal of emotion behind the writing of it, and I think that translated onto the page to a degree. Sometimes I think I'd like to write a much longer Amanda piece, but it would be building on the foundation I put here, cuz I'm really happy that I hit all the points I did -- the ear covering (tris smash), the philosophies, the pain that tempers joy but does not override it. I love the family history I invented for her -- it means a lot to me for Amanda to be a secular space Jew and it makes her attraction to the Vulcan way of life make so much more sense to me.
feelings ;_;
04. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Well, Of Punishing Light contains my first unqualifiedly pornish porn, so yeah. Obviously, writing something that's supposed to be sexy is fraught from many angles. Are you hitting people's kinks? Who knows! How much are you revealing about your own, and how much are you willing to reveal? Yikes! Besides which, a good sex scene requires description of physical actions (and I always feel that's a weak point of my writing even when just talking about a dude walking across a room) as well as ~sensations~ and, you know, emotions. By the time I finished (and I can't emphasize enough how tortured the writing process for this short story really was) it was of course the furthest thing from sexy to my own eye, but I guess I learned to trust my instincts there since other people reportedly thought it worked, and I even conveyed the particular element I wanted (I was going for "pungent"). And/or I learned that people will be nice and lie about it.
05. Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Sure, the stuff I tried to do but couldn't manage this year:
- SCC_Reloaded fic (currently six months late)
- Jim/Bones comedy of remarriage fic
- Future history of California by way of STXI
- Jimmy T. Fuck Destiny remix
Less specifically, I'd like to write more for WNW and maybe do some DS9 fic! Jadziaaaaa & Ben & mirrorverse & space politics ♥___♥
06. From my past year of writing, what was...
My Best Story:
Consensus would undoubtedly point to Four Consequences, and insofar as it functions as a story (goes places, entertains people) it is the best. I think the best writing has to be in Of Punishing Light, though, because I worked so fucking hard on it and was really not ready to let it go until it was the absolute best I could make it. Rain Shadow might win but I feel its shortness is a mark against it because when I reread it I really do wish it were longer.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:
Definitely Meliboea. Maybe it was just timing, as I posted it to like the third page of comments when the first WNW drabblefest was winding down, but I really like the mythological elements I added to Winona's life and not many people seemed very excited about it.
Most Fun:
Again, Four Consequences would win by a wide margin if you put it to a vote, but for a dark horse I'd also nominate A Brief Discourse on the Benefits of Gravity. Joanna McCoy, fuckup and space lesbian = good times, for me anyway.
Most Disappointing:
My Yuletide, unfortunately! Actually, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out in the end, and my recipient seemed to really like it which makes me very happy (especially since it's such a rare fandom I don't actually expect anybody else to even comment, not that they could currently). But the process was such a fiasco (90% my own fault) that I ended up pretty disappointed with myself for making it so unnecessarily difficult.
Most Sexy:
Of Punishing Light I WOULD HAVE TO SAY.
Hardest to Write:
Again, Of Punishing Light! Oh, the cards that were stacked against me on this one. When we decided to do a pxremix I almost jokingly asked Tropie, who made the assignments, to NOT GIVE ME CLAIRA because a) she's such a great writer that remixing something of hers seems like asking to look bad in comparison, and b) virtually every fic of hers that I would be able to remix is for BSG, which I quit watching in February 2006. Then once I was assigned Claira, I had to accept that I could only remix Burning Driftwood -- which removed from all other factors was a crazy idea just on the basis that it's basically PWP. Also, Burning Driftwood is Lee POV, which prompted me to write my remix Kara POV -- and even in the height of my BSG fandom involvement, before I got really irritated with Kara, I always found her POV almost impossible to write whereas Lee was much easier.
Of course, those inherent difficulties just kind of faded into the neverending nightmare of actually writing the thing, which began with a single quick draft that I gradually replaced damn near every single sentence of, individually, sometimes several times, while struggling with whether I could fit Zak into the story at all (no), why the sex kept veering out of "angsty w/ powerplay" into "violent dubious consent", and where and how to end the damn thing.
Most Unintentionally Telling:
Probably Rain Shadow again. I didn't realize when I wrote it how much of myself I was putting into Amanda, but... I did.
Also none of the questions really applied to Hand Against Hand, And, but I like that one a lot too! SCC was the best, man. If you'd forgotten.
Anyhoo, now that I'm all Yuletided and DID NOT EVEN DEFAULT or anything, it's retrospective time! Here are the fics I wrote in 2009:
Hand Against Hand, And - Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, John (/Cameron)
Perfection is Possible - TSCC, Weaver family
Four Consequences of the Unexpected and Unlikely Friendship Between James T. Kirk and Nyota Uhura - Star Trek XI, Jim & Nyota & Spock
Of Punishing Light (the hell in their mouths remix) - Battlestar Galactica, Kara/Lee
A Brief Discourse on the Benefits of Gravity - STXI, Joanna McCoy
Rain Shadow - STXI, Amanda Grayson
Before/After/Before - STXI, Jocelyn & Joanna
Meliboea - STXI, Winona Kirk
Yuletide
01. Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I wrote nine, though only three exceed 1k words. This sounds sad, but actually I exceeded my productivity expectations -- I didn't manage 1k on any single piece in 2008 and spent a lot of both the past two years feeling I had lost my words. And two of the three story-length fics were extremely difficult for me, so I'm pretty proud that I completed them.
02. What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?
Um, Star Trek? Lulz. Also my Yuletide fandom, which I had never even heard of until I got the assignment email, but I was uninspired by the fandom we matched on, so. Really, though, the second the half of this year was all about the utter shock of Star Trek returning to my life after a dozen years of never thinking about it (which followed the first dozen years in which it was deeply formative to my cultural sensibilities). It was particularly unexpected for updated versions of the TOS cast -- and peripheral characters who live more in the licensed material, like Joanna -- to dominate my imagination because even as a child I never wanted anything to do with TOS, had no use for tie-ins, and prior to actually seeing the movie I felt extremely cranky-to-ambivalent about its existence.
03. What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
I think Rain Shadow. Though it's short, there is a great deal of emotion behind the writing of it, and I think that translated onto the page to a degree. Sometimes I think I'd like to write a much longer Amanda piece, but it would be building on the foundation I put here, cuz I'm really happy that I hit all the points I did -- the ear covering (tris smash), the philosophies, the pain that tempers joy but does not override it. I love the family history I invented for her -- it means a lot to me for Amanda to be a secular space Jew and it makes her attraction to the Vulcan way of life make so much more sense to me.
feelings ;_;
04. Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Well, Of Punishing Light contains my first unqualifiedly pornish porn, so yeah. Obviously, writing something that's supposed to be sexy is fraught from many angles. Are you hitting people's kinks? Who knows! How much are you revealing about your own, and how much are you willing to reveal? Yikes! Besides which, a good sex scene requires description of physical actions (and I always feel that's a weak point of my writing even when just talking about a dude walking across a room) as well as ~sensations~ and, you know, emotions. By the time I finished (and I can't emphasize enough how tortured the writing process for this short story really was) it was of course the furthest thing from sexy to my own eye, but I guess I learned to trust my instincts there since other people reportedly thought it worked, and I even conveyed the particular element I wanted (I was going for "pungent"). And/or I learned that people will be nice and lie about it.
05. Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?
Sure, the stuff I tried to do but couldn't manage this year:
- SCC_Reloaded fic (currently six months late)
- Jim/Bones comedy of remarriage fic
- Future history of California by way of STXI
- Jimmy T. Fuck Destiny remix
Less specifically, I'd like to write more for WNW and maybe do some DS9 fic! Jadziaaaaa & Ben & mirrorverse & space politics ♥___♥
06. From my past year of writing, what was...
My Best Story:
Consensus would undoubtedly point to Four Consequences, and insofar as it functions as a story (goes places, entertains people) it is the best. I think the best writing has to be in Of Punishing Light, though, because I worked so fucking hard on it and was really not ready to let it go until it was the absolute best I could make it. Rain Shadow might win but I feel its shortness is a mark against it because when I reread it I really do wish it were longer.
Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe:
Definitely Meliboea. Maybe it was just timing, as I posted it to like the third page of comments when the first WNW drabblefest was winding down, but I really like the mythological elements I added to Winona's life and not many people seemed very excited about it.
Most Fun:
Again, Four Consequences would win by a wide margin if you put it to a vote, but for a dark horse I'd also nominate A Brief Discourse on the Benefits of Gravity. Joanna McCoy, fuckup and space lesbian = good times, for me anyway.
Most Disappointing:
My Yuletide, unfortunately! Actually, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out in the end, and my recipient seemed to really like it which makes me very happy (especially since it's such a rare fandom I don't actually expect anybody else to even comment, not that they could currently). But the process was such a fiasco (90% my own fault) that I ended up pretty disappointed with myself for making it so unnecessarily difficult.
Most Sexy:
Of Punishing Light I WOULD HAVE TO SAY.
Hardest to Write:
Again, Of Punishing Light! Oh, the cards that were stacked against me on this one. When we decided to do a pxremix I almost jokingly asked Tropie, who made the assignments, to NOT GIVE ME CLAIRA because a) she's such a great writer that remixing something of hers seems like asking to look bad in comparison, and b) virtually every fic of hers that I would be able to remix is for BSG, which I quit watching in February 2006. Then once I was assigned Claira, I had to accept that I could only remix Burning Driftwood -- which removed from all other factors was a crazy idea just on the basis that it's basically PWP. Also, Burning Driftwood is Lee POV, which prompted me to write my remix Kara POV -- and even in the height of my BSG fandom involvement, before I got really irritated with Kara, I always found her POV almost impossible to write whereas Lee was much easier.
Of course, those inherent difficulties just kind of faded into the neverending nightmare of actually writing the thing, which began with a single quick draft that I gradually replaced damn near every single sentence of, individually, sometimes several times, while struggling with whether I could fit Zak into the story at all (no), why the sex kept veering out of "angsty w/ powerplay" into "violent dubious consent", and where and how to end the damn thing.
Most Unintentionally Telling:
Probably Rain Shadow again. I didn't realize when I wrote it how much of myself I was putting into Amanda, but... I did.
Also none of the questions really applied to Hand Against Hand, And, but I like that one a lot too! SCC was the best, man. If you'd forgotten.