2013: A Year in Fandom and Fic

[amoama]

There have been lots of new things I've flirted with or dived into this year that have been wonderful and rewarding and heartbreaking. Things like: the Vorkosigan saga and the Farseer Trilogy, Bomb Girls, Welcome to Night Vale, The Lost Prince, Vikings, The Good Wife, Les Mis, Southland and Wentworth.

Some things have stayed constant in my affections: Generation Kill, Dance Academy, The Hunger Games.

And some things fell a little from grace – mostly, Teen Wolf. (oh character continuity, oh belaboured backstory and unexplained siblings, oh wasted plot tangents – you were supposed to be a silly show that gloried in your ridiculousness but then packed a harder punch than expected but it all seems to be thrown away).

There was one brief evening when I thought I was going to write the perfect Rush foot-fetish epic, but oh sadly, come morning, it wasn't to be.

I love the tangents that fandom can prompt me onto. A throw-away post from riverlight about enjoying a day reading toomuchplor's inception rpf led me to read the author's Steinway!verse and completely fall in love. I read all 29 fics (179k+ words) twice through and became intent on learning more about piano and chamber music because the fic just filled me with love and understanding of the depth of feeling that can be expressed through music. For me Steinway!verse was kind of like a 2013 version of goshemily's Warped Tour story, Faith in Fast Cars, filling me with the same desire to completely immerse myself in that world of music, except with more Gilbert and Sullivan. Stories about music, when written by someone with such a deep knowledge of the genre, are just so completely rewarding and intoxicating. <333

Other awesome fic I loved this year included: surexit's secret garden marriage negotiation fic, Dira's Vorkosigan The World That You Need series and of course, her eagerly awaited GK wolfbrother epic that concluded wonderfully, Kalliste's GK Brad genderbend fic To Shame The Devil, and Ark's Les Mis Hacker AU. Also, riverlight's short but incredibly gorgeous Southland fic, Make Noise, has a lot of hours of marathoning to answer for!

Last year in my fic review post I declared I wanted to "write more women/femslash and more rare pairings/characters and to think more carefully about my writing process". I think I came pretty close to achieving these aims!

I wrote 4 femslash stories, two Kareen Vorbarra stories for the Vorkosigan Saga, Anna/Ruby for Supernatural, and one Bomb Girls comment fic. I participated in femslashex and a girlgay ficathon.

Initially I didn't think I would have done as well as previous years on the rare pair front but in fact I think more qualify than I thought – Kareen Vorbarra/Alys Vorpatril is pretty rare I think (AO3 has 3) and Kareen/Drou isn't all that more common. As A Lodger Mind You remains the only Betty/Reggie fic on AO3 and the less than 100 Bahorel/Jean Prouvaire fics looks pretty underrepresented next to the 4000+ Enjolras/Grantaire tag. Mostly though my success in this area comes more in my exchange requests and getting, not one, but two, Eric Kocher-centred fics for Yagkyas this year! Whoop, whoop, Kocher/Bryan OTP. <333

I wouldn't say I've nailed down a writing process but I'm taking a short story course at the London School of Journalism and I've also really enjoyed the GK Fic Finishing Fest over at combat_jack and wrisomifu this year and learning from other people's ways of working. I've also had some lovely comments on my fic this year and have really tried to take on board what made the parts people highlighted that they liked work and do more of that! And I've had some really great betas. To everyone whose edited something of mine this year, thank you so, so much!!

I'm also really proud that I managed to write my first original fic this year. Untether was for smut_fest and I loved the safety and structure of working to their prompts while creating my own characters. It was an intimidating challenge and although there's still lots of room for improvement it felt like a great start and I'm really pleased I did it. I did swear afterwards, never again, but I already took a look at next year's themes and I'm kinda tempted again now!

Podfic really saved me again at certain points this year. (hello, insomnia). My podfic year was made by the recording of tevere's Sixteen Days in September by many of my favourite podficcers. Meanwhile, fandomfan continues her quest to podfic goddesshood, her 2 latest Skyfall podfics are both sensationally gorgeous to listen to. And podcath did me the honour of recording Everything Looks Different After the War, which I have to admit, I love it ridiculously.

I continued with my fanmixing at the regular rate of one a month. I loved mixing for a fic written by someone else, and enjoyed making mixes for Vikings, Shameless, Farseer Trilogy and Bryan/Kocher – my babies!! My favourite this year was the Female Disney Villains mix because it just ended up having such great attitude to it, but I'm really sad that my Coach Finstock mix got no love! Poor Finstock!!

I attended my first con, Nine Worlds, and had a great, if slightly lonely, time! Socialising, what is that?! But I would definitely go back! I loved all the panels, I felt like I was really expanding my interests and awareness of fandom at large.

I suppose that will do for now, although really I could talk about how much I love fandom all day and all night. <333

Comments

[riverlight]

So glad Generation Kill is still on your list of abiding favorites. :D

And thanks for the rec of Make Noise! I'm so glad you liked it!

[amoama]

Yes Yagkyas has made me all warm and cuddly again about those lean, mean, killing machines. #notoverit

[riverlight]

#neveroverit. *g*