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Author's Notes: Year in Review
Today marks my official fandom anniversary, as close as I can tell. I’m not sure exactly when I first dipped my toes into the fanfic/fanart pool (I watched the anime and read the manga up to date sometime during the summer of ’07, then started searching out fanart, which lead to fanfic, which lead to Christmas ’07 as a Tales from the House of the Moon timesink, which lead to even more reading of ‘major fandom works’), but I do know that on March 11, 2008 I signed up for an account at Media Miner and posted the first three chapters of Every Heart, with no small amount of trepidation.
The rest, as they say, is history…
Why yes, I did this last year as well! I like being able to cross-reference my work in umpteen million different ways, haha.
Stats:
Story Stats
Total words written (as accounted for in MS Word): 153,398
Pairings written: Inu/Kag, Mir/San, Sess/Kag, InuPapa/Izayoi, Nark/Kik, Sess/Kagura
Total stories written (started, in progress, or completed): 31
• Total number of drabbles (100-500 words): 11
• Total number of oneshots (500+ words): 16
• Total number of completed multichapter fics: 0
• Total number of WIP multichapter fics: 1
• Total number of series completed: 0
• Total number of WIP serials: 3
Total number of fiction archives used (not counting LJ): 3
Total number of hits/reviews:
• MM.org
• FF.net
• deviantART
Most reviewed stories (title: number of reviews, compiled across all archives)
• Collected Works (catch-all collection, various pairings): 173
• Fleeting (Sess/Kag): 160
• Fragments (Mir/San): 61
Fandom Recognition
Total number of awards won (fandom-wide, pairing-centric, and/or in contest communities at LJ): 46
Breakdown:
• 1st Place: 25
• 2nd Place: 10
• 3rd Place: 10
• Other: 2 [IYFG Hidden Treasure,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
mirsan_fics Mod's Choice]
• Other nominations: 15
Categories nominated into (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best Angst (Feudal Association)
• Best AU/AR (Dokuga, Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Canon Universe (Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Characterization (Dokuga, Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Crossover (IYFG)
• Best Darkfic/Horror (IYFG)
• Best Drama (IYFG)
• Best Lemon (Eikyuu Kosai, Feudal Association, IYFG)
• Best Oneshot (Dokuga, IYFG)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Romance – Other (Feudal Association, IYFG)
• Best Serial (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Songfic/Poemfic (IYFG)
• Best Short-Short/Drabble (IYFG, Eikyuu Kosai)
Categories placed (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best Angst (3rd Place – June 2009 – Feudal Association)
• Best AU/AR (3rd Place – 2nd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 2nd Place – 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Characterization (3rd Place – 2nd Quarter 2009 – Dokuga)
• Best Drama (2nd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Lemon (2nd Place – January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai; 2nd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (2nd Place – January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Romance – Other (3rd Place – March 2009 – Feudal Association)
• Best Serial (3rd Place – 2nd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 2nd Place – 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG )
• Best Songfic/Poemfic (2nd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 3rd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Short-Short/Drabble (3rd Place – 1st Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 3rd Place – January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
Categories won (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best AU/AR (January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Characterization (July 2009 – Eikyuu Kosai; 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Crossover (1st Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Lemon (January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (September 2009 – Feudal Association; 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Romance – Other (3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Serial (January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Songfic/Poemfic (2nd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
Most lauded fic (won/placed with the most awards):
• Fragments: 9 placements in 9 nominations, 6 of them 1st Place
Other multi-nominated fics:
• Allegiance: 3 placements in 5 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
• Fleeting: 4 placements in 9 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
• Nihon Idol: 2 placements in 3 nominations, 2 of them 1st Place
• One Winter’s Evening: 2 placements in 3 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
• Dream Lover: 2 placements in 2 nominations
• Illicit: 1 placement in 2 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
Total number of LJ contests to which I made at least one submission: 4
Awards from LJ contest communities:
•dokuga_contest - 2 [ (2) Third Place]
•ebony_silks - 9 [(9) First Place | (2) Second Place]
•iyfic_contest - 0
•mirsan_fics - 7 [(4) First Place | (2) Second Place | (1) Mod’s Choice]
Challenges started/ongoing: 5 (two prompt tables forun_love_you, LJ drabble meme, By Request, mirsanficart Summer Love Challenge, Mirosanta 2009)
Challenges completed: 2 (LJ drabble meme, Mirosanta 2009)
Longest completed multichapter fic: Every Heart, 76,363 words
Longest current WIP: Fleeting, 75,740
2009 Goals ~ how did I do?
Here’s the list of goals I made at the end of last year's post, as points I wanted to accomplish this year…so, did I succeed, fail, or go off in a completely different direction?
• Finish the many projects I’ve inadvertently started (another thing I never wanted to do – have multiple WIPs!)
Well, I didn’t finish any of them, but I made good progress on all of them. – I should have at least one finished this year, plus the one I started when I said I wasn’t going to, LOL :P
• Write more Mir/San
I definitely accomplished this goal, even putting myself in “debt” by starting another WIP before any of my others were finished. Writing Mir/San was one of the highlights of the year, for sure.
• Catch up on the never-ending list of epics I’ve yet to read
Didn’t even make a dent – too much good stuff was coming out that I could follow in real time, which is always preferable. My TBR list, if anything got longer as the year went on and I added more authors and their backlists to the pile.
• Help the awards guilds in any and all positive ways I can
Ahahahahaha. That resolve lasted all of a quarter or two. Instead of raging against the established machine, I got in on the ground floor of my own, helping run/moderate the Mir/San fandom awards in the model of how I think a fandom awards guild *should* be run
• Continue to contribute to contest communities that have supported me
This certainly ebbed and flowed as the year went on. As I stand now, I’m not a member of any of the contests I started off on LJ with…
• Pimp my favorite authors’ work as much as possible (we’re a nice clique, LOL)
Definitely did my time on the pimp stroll, and had a lot of fun doing it =)
• Win an award for characterization (and serial, if it survives any of the awards groups)
Amazingly enough, I did manage to win a characterization award! Two, in fact! Though both was for just about the last characters I ever expected to be recognized for. I placed twice for ‘Best Serial,’ which was also fun, considering both of the fics that placed in those categories were actual serials (even if the fics that won during those quarters were not…) I also won Best Multichapter at EK, which is comparable, I think.
…so, all in all, it appears I accomplished a good deal of what I’d hoped to, which is always nice to see. And the ones I failed at, well – at least I failed in positive ways!!
But what are your thoughts on yaoi?
This was a year defined by the good, the bad, and the ugly. No longer a n00b, not quite a BNF (or the writer of BNF(ic)s), but stuck somewhere in between. It wasn’t a perfect year – I’m the first to admit I’ve made some mistakes – but on the whole, I’d say I’m pretty pleased with it. Sometimes you have to be hurt to know your own strength, and goodness knows I went through my share of wank through the greater part of ’09.
The good: Topping my list of “good things” was definitely the rollercoaster that was working on my fandom opus, Fleeting. I got a good portion of it done, for better or worse, and I’ve learned a helluva lot in the process. For awhile, it was at the top of the world…and then it wasn’t. This is so much my baby, that at times it’s been hard to separate myself from it. Through it all though – the good, the bad, the frustrating – I’ve never stopped loving it. I love the whole process: the research, the planning, the writing, the fantasizing. It’s the fic that’s always hit me in the gut, the heart, and in the brain, and if for no other reason than that, it will always be my most very favorite project I’ve ever done. In some ways, I’m excited to finish it, but in others, I’ll be sad when it’s done. It’s definitely a story I never would’ve written if not for the magical happenstance of the pairing and the prompt table colliding in the midst of a very fruitful period in my writing career.
A close second to that would be discovering – and being wholeheartedly embraced by – the Mir/San fans. Never in my wildest dreams, especially not after the very trying times I had dealing with Inu/Kag and Sess/Kag fans, did I ever expect the sort of welcome I received when I started tinkering with Fragments. Not only was it amazing, in and of itself, but it was also exactly what I’d been searching for, the sort of receptive, thoughtful, and vocal audience I’d been hoping to find ever since I started posting my stories for the world to see. I’ve said many times that I wish I could entice my Mir/San fans into reading the rest of my work, or that I wish greater fandom was more like them, and I still do. But as excited as I’ve been to be among them, I’ve also been humbled. Every one of the fans who read my work and who also write? Are amazing, in their own regard. I love being able to fangirl with them over their stories, or someone else’s stories. Everyone on board this ship that I’ve come in contact with has been incredibly thoughtful, mature, and open-minded, which means there’s hardly any wank or drama, and if there is? We can talk about it like adults and settle our differences. Variety is the spice of life, and all that :)
Being with the Mir/San fans has also allowed me to gain some wonderful new friends, be they from my review boards, on LJ, or both. Again I can only stand back in amazement sometimes that these people – whose work I’ve idolized for years in some cases – are talking to me, much less even acknowledging my existence! Wow. I feel very privileged to count these fellow readers, writers, and fans as my friends.
I also received my first piece of fanart ever, which was an incredibly exciting thing. To know I’ve conveyed a scene so well that someone else feels inspired to draw it? Is incredible. I really don’t know that there’s a higher compliment that paying forward creativity.
One avenue of writing I never expected to explore was writing explicit lemons. If you had told me a year ago I’d write more explicit scenes than I could shake a stick at, and win multiple awards for lemonfic? I probably would’ve laughed in your face. That’s how I got into Mir/San fandom, in fact, by wanting to write a lemonfic to meet themirsanficart Summer Love Lemon Challenge. I wanted some practice because I was anticipating some explicit citrus for the end of the Fleeting, but even then…I’ve done more than I ever expected. I’m not in fandom for the porn, so it tickles me that I seem to write just as much explicit stuff as I do ‘tame’ stuff. Exploring ideas for potential lemonfics has also steered me into writing more ‘adult’ stories with ‘adult’ themes, interactions, complications, and I’ve found I vastly prefer this to the rather tiresome sort of drama that happens when the characters are younger. I’ve written my high school AU, and I have no real intention of ever revisiting that particular world ever again, LOL (Nihon Idol excepted, of course).
I also stepped up into fandom in a big way, especially here on LJ. I helped create or revive several communities, which has been a lot of fun (if not a lot of responsibility). It gave me another creative outlet to explore – bannering, which is actually a lot of fun – and meant I automatically had access to wonderful fic, right at my fingertips. The quality of work coming out ofiy_themes is amazing, for one. Getting in on the ground floor of helping with Eikyuu Kosai? Was (and continues to be) amazing.
And speaking of awards guilds...just when I was beginning to give up hope of ever participating in a hopelessly wanky system without losing my sanity, I seem to have become one of the darlings, especially at the IYFG. During the third quarter alone, I won four categories and placed in two others. WTF? Of course, winning an IYFG award doesn’t mean the same thing in 2009 as it did in, say, 2005, but still. It was enough to blow my mind. And to follow that up with another slew of awards during the next quarter? Being in contention for five Best of 2009 polls? So much success, and so suddenly, has made me incredibly wary and a little paranoid. Without actually hearing from this supposed fanbase that I’ve built, I’m left to wonder if someone is just gaming the system for their own amusement.
Of course, that could have something to do with…
The bad: The bad was mostly the ways in which my RL intersected with my fandom life. I had a lot more time to write while I was in graduate school, because of the free/unstructured time that comes with writing a thesis, but alas, that was not to last. And thus began a long chain of events that caused me to step back from fandom for a bit (even when I wanted so desperately to cling to it) and devote some of my headspace to other things going on in my life, beyond my stories:
• I left Europe at the end of August and spent a great deal of time in a deep depression because of it;
• I spent a few months desperately searching for a job in a shitty economy while my degree status hung in limbo;
• I found and accepted a job that suddenly sucks up a lot of my time, between an actual 8-hour work day and a two-hour commute;
• I was displaced because of renovations to my room for the last two months of 2009;
• I spent the first two months of this year sitting vigil for my grandfather, who eventually did die in mid-February
In the midst of all of this, I’d taken on a lot of backend, administrative work in the fandom (running various communities, making banners, compiling the newsletter – which meant keeping up with all the awards guilds), which is harder to shuffle around because of my now-loaded schedule and concurrent grief. I probably became burned out on administrative stuff way before it began to affect my creative output, but I persevered, mostly because I promised others I would. Being organized and efficient is something that comes naturally to me, so in a lot of ways, this was an easy, brainless way to keep up with the goings-on of fandom. Unfortunately, it played a big role in what has become my “fandom ambivalence” – I see so much of what goes on behind the scenes that 85% of the fandom is totally oblivious to, and I can’t help but become a little cynical, a little jaded. Things I used to covet now feel worthless, and I can’t help but kick myself a little for wanting them so badly. It really is all a popularity contest, and if you can’t keep up? Well, there are two or three others who are ready to stand up in your place, should you fade.
Ambivalence might seem like bitterness to some folks, but I’d say to be bitter, you’d have to care about it in the first place. A lot of the things I dismiss? I really don’t care about.
That’s not to say I don’t care at all, obviously…or else I’d never have the events to even mention in the next section.
The ugly: I don’t think I could say I had a sophomore slump of a year. Even with a lowered total output of work, it appears the masses found it to be, for the most part, of good quality. Which is another reason why I find it so amazing (impressive? pathetic?) that I managed to alienate myself from huge swathes of potential readers, by parting ways with two of the biggest pairing ship sites on the internets, and leaving a whole slew of pairing-centric LJ communities. For someone who got into this at least partly for the romantic aspects of fannish work, this is taking Doing It Wrong to the nth degree.
It all started, amusingly enough, when I was asked to help with an LJ community, one that gave me my first shot at making banners (back before I really knew what I was doing with software more advanced than MS Paint). I should’ve known better, I suppose, wary as I was of the ‘owner’ of the group, but I managed to step in it anyway. There was a good outcome to the mess (in the formation ofiy_themes), but at the same time, the people I was in disagreement with linked up with some other rather wanky sections of fandom, which ultimately led to me leaving Eternal Destiny in order to get the target off my back.
But leaving Eternal Destiny and the crazy Inu/Kag shippers behind was a cakewalk in comparison to what happened at Dokuga.
I feel like I was chewed up and spit out by the Sess/Kag shipper machine that is Dokuga. I was never really accepted there, with my view of the pairing, but for some strange, misguided reason, I valued their system. Maybe because the first long fic I ever read was Tales from the House of the Moon, and I didn’t know any other way for Sess/Kag fans to be other than how they reacted to that story. I thought all Sess/Kag fiction was held to that standard (among others). I wanted to find a base there, because Sesshoumaru is the character I feel most passionate about, and I enjoyed exploiting the same sort of dynamics that Resmiranda explored in her stories. I never expected praise, validation, or awards, but I wanted their attention, at the very least. And it is to my ever-loving frustration and deep, derisive bitterness that I never received the appreciation I thought was due for my work.
Just like the crazy Inu/Kag fans, they shipped fanon over canon, they preferred childish, immature setups and AUs requiring such suspension of disbelief as to be absolutely untenable for fanficcing. But, worse than that – worse than bad characterization, complete ignorance of the manga, worshipping self-proclaimed “real authors” who were mostly trying to peddle their vanity-published wares – was the underlying wankery, the misogyny, the lies and secrets that site was built on. I cannot abide any place that glorifies rape, that sings the praises of authors who want to set romance-writers back three decades, that turns my favorite character into an untenable monster, just because that’s what they want him to be. I left that site after the administrators decided they’d rather shield a troll with the most fucked up psychological theories about rape, sexuality, and “true love” I’ve seen for awhile, than listen to reason, and I haven’t looked back since. Excising Dokuga and its cesspool from my fandom life was the best thing I think I’ve ever done, and I only wish I’d done it sooner.
So what do I regret? That I became entangled with people from that site who, against all odds, proclaimed to love my work, but the second I took a stand and left the site, they turned their backs on said stories. I pour a lot of myself into my work, especially Fleeting, and I thought the people who were following that story were doing it out of something beyond blind loyalty to a pairing ship. To find out I was wrong cut me to the core, and it still haunts me today. It’s brought on an ugly side to my desire and need for brutal honesty, in that – this is how I process getting past something I once held in high esteem: I have to hate it in order to minimalize it and let it go. So, to those of you who have put up with my whining, I thank you – and I apologize. Nobody should be subjected to that.
For a long time, I felt adrift in fandom, until I managed to right my ship by moving on into Mir/San. I still feel that way sometimes, and I’m taking steps to actively avoid the negativity that’s brought me to this point in the first place. To that end, I’m really trying to focus on the stories I enjoy reading, and leaving the sort of reviews I enjoy receiving, the rest of it be damned. I don’t have time for this shit anymore (literally or figuratively), and I’m tired of playing nice just to have people want to be my friend or being unafraid to comment on my work. I’m blunt. I’m honest. I’m brutal, at times. All I ask is that others treat me in the same regard.
*sigh* So really, it seems, this was as much a learning experience for me as anything else – in that I’m finally willing to admit what I need and want to get out of this experience to make it worth the time and effort I pour into it. If you read my work? Tell me, in some way – even a simple comment of, “Hey, this is good, here’s what I liked about it” means way more to me than winning awards ever will. Comments help me grow, help me know what I’ve done wrong and what I’ve done right, help me know which of my ideas can be shared with a wider audience, and which need to be locked down to a list of a precious few, if they are shared at all. That’s why we share our stories, after all – because we want to know how others receive them.
Personal favorite stories: (listed in chronological order)
• “Distress” (April 16, 2009)
• “A Desperate Choice” (June 12, 2009)
• “Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces” (October 22, 2009)
• “A Most Favorable Arrangement” (January 29, 2010)
Goals for the next 12 months:
• Once again at the top of my list is finishing the projects I’ve already started. At least two of them – Fleeting and Fragments – have ends in sight, which, if my muses sustain, should be finished by the time my third anniversary rolls around
• My 12-month goal for 2010 has been to focus more on giving the sort of review I enjoy receiving, and I’ve been doing more of that lately and have found it incredibly rewarding. That, plus using the review reply system at the archives and on LJ, gives me a much richer feedback experience than I used to have – and since I’ve never been one to rake in the reviews, this means I can enjoy the ones I do receive, and I can connect more with authors whose work I enjoy.
• Continue to keep my LJ communities afloat in whatever ways I can (it’s easy when you have awesometastic co-mods :D)
• Be recognized for my characterization of Sesshoumaru (of all the awards I’ve ever sekritly wanted to win, this has always been at the top of my list *shame*)
And, to end this post on a good note, I'd like to revive a little metawriting meme, since metawriting is what I'm all about on this journal, LOL :P
Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.
The rest, as they say, is history…
Why yes, I did this last year as well! I like being able to cross-reference my work in umpteen million different ways, haha.
Stats:
Story Stats
Total words written (as accounted for in MS Word): 153,398
Pairings written: Inu/Kag, Mir/San, Sess/Kag, InuPapa/Izayoi, Nark/Kik, Sess/Kagura
Total stories written (started, in progress, or completed): 31
• Total number of drabbles (100-500 words): 11
• Total number of oneshots (500+ words): 16
• Total number of completed multichapter fics: 0
• Total number of WIP multichapter fics: 1
• Total number of series completed: 0
• Total number of WIP serials: 3
Total number of fiction archives used (not counting LJ): 3
Total number of hits/reviews:
• MM.org
• FF.net
• deviantART
Most reviewed stories (title: number of reviews, compiled across all archives)
• Collected Works (catch-all collection, various pairings): 173
• Fleeting (Sess/Kag): 160
• Fragments (Mir/San): 61
Fandom Recognition
Total number of awards won (fandom-wide, pairing-centric, and/or in contest communities at LJ): 46
Breakdown:
• 1st Place: 25
• 2nd Place: 10
• 3rd Place: 10
• Other: 2 [IYFG Hidden Treasure,
mirsan_fics Mod's Choice]• Other nominations: 15
Categories nominated into (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best Angst (Feudal Association)
• Best AU/AR (Dokuga, Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Canon Universe (Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Characterization (Dokuga, Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Crossover (IYFG)
• Best Darkfic/Horror (IYFG)
• Best Drama (IYFG)
• Best Lemon (Eikyuu Kosai, Feudal Association, IYFG)
• Best Oneshot (Dokuga, IYFG)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Romance – Other (Feudal Association, IYFG)
• Best Serial (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Songfic/Poemfic (IYFG)
• Best Short-Short/Drabble (IYFG, Eikyuu Kosai)
Categories placed (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best Angst (3rd Place – June 2009 – Feudal Association)
• Best AU/AR (3rd Place – 2nd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 2nd Place – 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Characterization (3rd Place – 2nd Quarter 2009 – Dokuga)
• Best Drama (2nd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Lemon (2nd Place – January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai; 2nd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (2nd Place – January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Romance – Other (3rd Place – March 2009 – Feudal Association)
• Best Serial (3rd Place – 2nd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 2nd Place – 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG )
• Best Songfic/Poemfic (2nd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 3rd Place – 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Short-Short/Drabble (3rd Place – 1st Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 3rd Place – January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
Categories won (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best AU/AR (January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Characterization (July 2009 – Eikyuu Kosai; 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Crossover (1st Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Lemon (January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (September 2009 – Feudal Association; 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Romance – Other (3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 4th Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
• Best Serial (January 2010 – Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Songfic/Poemfic (2nd Quarter 2009 – IYFG; 3rd Quarter 2009 – IYFG)
Most lauded fic (won/placed with the most awards):
• Fragments: 9 placements in 9 nominations, 6 of them 1st Place
Other multi-nominated fics:
• Allegiance: 3 placements in 5 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
• Fleeting: 4 placements in 9 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
• Nihon Idol: 2 placements in 3 nominations, 2 of them 1st Place
• One Winter’s Evening: 2 placements in 3 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
• Dream Lover: 2 placements in 2 nominations
• Illicit: 1 placement in 2 nominations, 1 of them 1st Place
Total number of LJ contests to which I made at least one submission: 4
Awards from LJ contest communities:
•
dokuga_contest - 2 [ (2) Third Place]•
ebony_silks - 9 [(9) First Place | (2) Second Place]•
iyfic_contest - 0•
mirsan_fics - 7 [(4) First Place | (2) Second Place | (1) Mod’s Choice]Challenges started/ongoing: 5 (two prompt tables for
un_love_you, LJ drabble meme, By Request, mirsanficart Summer Love Challenge, Mirosanta 2009)Challenges completed: 2 (LJ drabble meme, Mirosanta 2009)
Longest completed multichapter fic: Every Heart, 76,363 words
Longest current WIP: Fleeting, 75,740
2009 Goals ~ how did I do?
Here’s the list of goals I made at the end of last year's post, as points I wanted to accomplish this year…so, did I succeed, fail, or go off in a completely different direction?
• Finish the many projects I’ve inadvertently started (another thing I never wanted to do – have multiple WIPs!)
Well, I didn’t finish any of them, but I made good progress on all of them. – I should have at least one finished this year, plus the one I started when I said I wasn’t going to, LOL :P
• Write more Mir/San
I definitely accomplished this goal, even putting myself in “debt” by starting another WIP before any of my others were finished. Writing Mir/San was one of the highlights of the year, for sure.
• Catch up on the never-ending list of epics I’ve yet to read
Didn’t even make a dent – too much good stuff was coming out that I could follow in real time, which is always preferable. My TBR list, if anything got longer as the year went on and I added more authors and their backlists to the pile.
• Help the awards guilds in any and all positive ways I can
Ahahahahaha. That resolve lasted all of a quarter or two. Instead of raging against the established machine, I got in on the ground floor of my own, helping run/moderate the Mir/San fandom awards in the model of how I think a fandom awards guild *should* be run
• Continue to contribute to contest communities that have supported me
This certainly ebbed and flowed as the year went on. As I stand now, I’m not a member of any of the contests I started off on LJ with…
• Pimp my favorite authors’ work as much as possible (we’re a nice clique, LOL)
Definitely did my time on the pimp stroll, and had a lot of fun doing it =)
• Win an award for characterization (and serial, if it survives any of the awards groups)
Amazingly enough, I did manage to win a characterization award! Two, in fact! Though both was for just about the last characters I ever expected to be recognized for. I placed twice for ‘Best Serial,’ which was also fun, considering both of the fics that placed in those categories were actual serials (even if the fics that won during those quarters were not…) I also won Best Multichapter at EK, which is comparable, I think.
…so, all in all, it appears I accomplished a good deal of what I’d hoped to, which is always nice to see. And the ones I failed at, well – at least I failed in positive ways!!
But what are your thoughts on yaoi?
This was a year defined by the good, the bad, and the ugly. No longer a n00b, not quite a BNF (or the writer of BNF(ic)s), but stuck somewhere in between. It wasn’t a perfect year – I’m the first to admit I’ve made some mistakes – but on the whole, I’d say I’m pretty pleased with it. Sometimes you have to be hurt to know your own strength, and goodness knows I went through my share of wank through the greater part of ’09.
The good: Topping my list of “good things” was definitely the rollercoaster that was working on my fandom opus, Fleeting. I got a good portion of it done, for better or worse, and I’ve learned a helluva lot in the process. For awhile, it was at the top of the world…and then it wasn’t. This is so much my baby, that at times it’s been hard to separate myself from it. Through it all though – the good, the bad, the frustrating – I’ve never stopped loving it. I love the whole process: the research, the planning, the writing, the fantasizing. It’s the fic that’s always hit me in the gut, the heart, and in the brain, and if for no other reason than that, it will always be my most very favorite project I’ve ever done. In some ways, I’m excited to finish it, but in others, I’ll be sad when it’s done. It’s definitely a story I never would’ve written if not for the magical happenstance of the pairing and the prompt table colliding in the midst of a very fruitful period in my writing career.
A close second to that would be discovering – and being wholeheartedly embraced by – the Mir/San fans. Never in my wildest dreams, especially not after the very trying times I had dealing with Inu/Kag and Sess/Kag fans, did I ever expect the sort of welcome I received when I started tinkering with Fragments. Not only was it amazing, in and of itself, but it was also exactly what I’d been searching for, the sort of receptive, thoughtful, and vocal audience I’d been hoping to find ever since I started posting my stories for the world to see. I’ve said many times that I wish I could entice my Mir/San fans into reading the rest of my work, or that I wish greater fandom was more like them, and I still do. But as excited as I’ve been to be among them, I’ve also been humbled. Every one of the fans who read my work and who also write? Are amazing, in their own regard. I love being able to fangirl with them over their stories, or someone else’s stories. Everyone on board this ship that I’ve come in contact with has been incredibly thoughtful, mature, and open-minded, which means there’s hardly any wank or drama, and if there is? We can talk about it like adults and settle our differences. Variety is the spice of life, and all that :)
Being with the Mir/San fans has also allowed me to gain some wonderful new friends, be they from my review boards, on LJ, or both. Again I can only stand back in amazement sometimes that these people – whose work I’ve idolized for years in some cases – are talking to me, much less even acknowledging my existence! Wow. I feel very privileged to count these fellow readers, writers, and fans as my friends.
I also received my first piece of fanart ever, which was an incredibly exciting thing. To know I’ve conveyed a scene so well that someone else feels inspired to draw it? Is incredible. I really don’t know that there’s a higher compliment that paying forward creativity.
One avenue of writing I never expected to explore was writing explicit lemons. If you had told me a year ago I’d write more explicit scenes than I could shake a stick at, and win multiple awards for lemonfic? I probably would’ve laughed in your face. That’s how I got into Mir/San fandom, in fact, by wanting to write a lemonfic to meet the
mirsanficart Summer Love Lemon Challenge. I wanted some practice because I was anticipating some explicit citrus for the end of the Fleeting, but even then…I’ve done more than I ever expected. I’m not in fandom for the porn, so it tickles me that I seem to write just as much explicit stuff as I do ‘tame’ stuff. Exploring ideas for potential lemonfics has also steered me into writing more ‘adult’ stories with ‘adult’ themes, interactions, complications, and I’ve found I vastly prefer this to the rather tiresome sort of drama that happens when the characters are younger. I’ve written my high school AU, and I have no real intention of ever revisiting that particular world ever again, LOL (Nihon Idol excepted, of course).I also stepped up into fandom in a big way, especially here on LJ. I helped create or revive several communities, which has been a lot of fun (if not a lot of responsibility). It gave me another creative outlet to explore – bannering, which is actually a lot of fun – and meant I automatically had access to wonderful fic, right at my fingertips. The quality of work coming out of
iy_themes is amazing, for one. Getting in on the ground floor of helping with Eikyuu Kosai? Was (and continues to be) amazing. And speaking of awards guilds...just when I was beginning to give up hope of ever participating in a hopelessly wanky system without losing my sanity, I seem to have become one of the darlings, especially at the IYFG. During the third quarter alone, I won four categories and placed in two others. WTF? Of course, winning an IYFG award doesn’t mean the same thing in 2009 as it did in, say, 2005, but still. It was enough to blow my mind. And to follow that up with another slew of awards during the next quarter? Being in contention for five Best of 2009 polls? So much success, and so suddenly, has made me incredibly wary and a little paranoid. Without actually hearing from this supposed fanbase that I’ve built, I’m left to wonder if someone is just gaming the system for their own amusement.
Of course, that could have something to do with…
The bad: The bad was mostly the ways in which my RL intersected with my fandom life. I had a lot more time to write while I was in graduate school, because of the free/unstructured time that comes with writing a thesis, but alas, that was not to last. And thus began a long chain of events that caused me to step back from fandom for a bit (even when I wanted so desperately to cling to it) and devote some of my headspace to other things going on in my life, beyond my stories:
• I left Europe at the end of August and spent a great deal of time in a deep depression because of it;
• I spent a few months desperately searching for a job in a shitty economy while my degree status hung in limbo;
• I found and accepted a job that suddenly sucks up a lot of my time, between an actual 8-hour work day and a two-hour commute;
• I was displaced because of renovations to my room for the last two months of 2009;
• I spent the first two months of this year sitting vigil for my grandfather, who eventually did die in mid-February
In the midst of all of this, I’d taken on a lot of backend, administrative work in the fandom (running various communities, making banners, compiling the newsletter – which meant keeping up with all the awards guilds), which is harder to shuffle around because of my now-loaded schedule and concurrent grief. I probably became burned out on administrative stuff way before it began to affect my creative output, but I persevered, mostly because I promised others I would. Being organized and efficient is something that comes naturally to me, so in a lot of ways, this was an easy, brainless way to keep up with the goings-on of fandom. Unfortunately, it played a big role in what has become my “fandom ambivalence” – I see so much of what goes on behind the scenes that 85% of the fandom is totally oblivious to, and I can’t help but become a little cynical, a little jaded. Things I used to covet now feel worthless, and I can’t help but kick myself a little for wanting them so badly. It really is all a popularity contest, and if you can’t keep up? Well, there are two or three others who are ready to stand up in your place, should you fade.
Ambivalence might seem like bitterness to some folks, but I’d say to be bitter, you’d have to care about it in the first place. A lot of the things I dismiss? I really don’t care about.
That’s not to say I don’t care at all, obviously…or else I’d never have the events to even mention in the next section.
The ugly: I don’t think I could say I had a sophomore slump of a year. Even with a lowered total output of work, it appears the masses found it to be, for the most part, of good quality. Which is another reason why I find it so amazing (impressive? pathetic?) that I managed to alienate myself from huge swathes of potential readers, by parting ways with two of the biggest pairing ship sites on the internets, and leaving a whole slew of pairing-centric LJ communities. For someone who got into this at least partly for the romantic aspects of fannish work, this is taking Doing It Wrong to the nth degree.
It all started, amusingly enough, when I was asked to help with an LJ community, one that gave me my first shot at making banners (back before I really knew what I was doing with software more advanced than MS Paint). I should’ve known better, I suppose, wary as I was of the ‘owner’ of the group, but I managed to step in it anyway. There was a good outcome to the mess (in the formation of
iy_themes), but at the same time, the people I was in disagreement with linked up with some other rather wanky sections of fandom, which ultimately led to me leaving Eternal Destiny in order to get the target off my back.But leaving Eternal Destiny and the crazy Inu/Kag shippers behind was a cakewalk in comparison to what happened at Dokuga.
I feel like I was chewed up and spit out by the Sess/Kag shipper machine that is Dokuga. I was never really accepted there, with my view of the pairing, but for some strange, misguided reason, I valued their system. Maybe because the first long fic I ever read was Tales from the House of the Moon, and I didn’t know any other way for Sess/Kag fans to be other than how they reacted to that story. I thought all Sess/Kag fiction was held to that standard (among others). I wanted to find a base there, because Sesshoumaru is the character I feel most passionate about, and I enjoyed exploiting the same sort of dynamics that Resmiranda explored in her stories. I never expected praise, validation, or awards, but I wanted their attention, at the very least. And it is to my ever-loving frustration and deep, derisive bitterness that I never received the appreciation I thought was due for my work.
Just like the crazy Inu/Kag fans, they shipped fanon over canon, they preferred childish, immature setups and AUs requiring such suspension of disbelief as to be absolutely untenable for fanficcing. But, worse than that – worse than bad characterization, complete ignorance of the manga, worshipping self-proclaimed “real authors” who were mostly trying to peddle their vanity-published wares – was the underlying wankery, the misogyny, the lies and secrets that site was built on. I cannot abide any place that glorifies rape, that sings the praises of authors who want to set romance-writers back three decades, that turns my favorite character into an untenable monster, just because that’s what they want him to be. I left that site after the administrators decided they’d rather shield a troll with the most fucked up psychological theories about rape, sexuality, and “true love” I’ve seen for awhile, than listen to reason, and I haven’t looked back since. Excising Dokuga and its cesspool from my fandom life was the best thing I think I’ve ever done, and I only wish I’d done it sooner.
So what do I regret? That I became entangled with people from that site who, against all odds, proclaimed to love my work, but the second I took a stand and left the site, they turned their backs on said stories. I pour a lot of myself into my work, especially Fleeting, and I thought the people who were following that story were doing it out of something beyond blind loyalty to a pairing ship. To find out I was wrong cut me to the core, and it still haunts me today. It’s brought on an ugly side to my desire and need for brutal honesty, in that – this is how I process getting past something I once held in high esteem: I have to hate it in order to minimalize it and let it go. So, to those of you who have put up with my whining, I thank you – and I apologize. Nobody should be subjected to that.
For a long time, I felt adrift in fandom, until I managed to right my ship by moving on into Mir/San. I still feel that way sometimes, and I’m taking steps to actively avoid the negativity that’s brought me to this point in the first place. To that end, I’m really trying to focus on the stories I enjoy reading, and leaving the sort of reviews I enjoy receiving, the rest of it be damned. I don’t have time for this shit anymore (literally or figuratively), and I’m tired of playing nice just to have people want to be my friend or being unafraid to comment on my work. I’m blunt. I’m honest. I’m brutal, at times. All I ask is that others treat me in the same regard.
*sigh* So really, it seems, this was as much a learning experience for me as anything else – in that I’m finally willing to admit what I need and want to get out of this experience to make it worth the time and effort I pour into it. If you read my work? Tell me, in some way – even a simple comment of, “Hey, this is good, here’s what I liked about it” means way more to me than winning awards ever will. Comments help me grow, help me know what I’ve done wrong and what I’ve done right, help me know which of my ideas can be shared with a wider audience, and which need to be locked down to a list of a precious few, if they are shared at all. That’s why we share our stories, after all – because we want to know how others receive them.
Personal favorite stories: (listed in chronological order)
• “Distress” (April 16, 2009)
• “A Desperate Choice” (June 12, 2009)
• “Finding Beauty in Negative Spaces” (October 22, 2009)
• “A Most Favorable Arrangement” (January 29, 2010)
Goals for the next 12 months:
• Once again at the top of my list is finishing the projects I’ve already started. At least two of them – Fleeting and Fragments – have ends in sight, which, if my muses sustain, should be finished by the time my third anniversary rolls around
• My 12-month goal for 2010 has been to focus more on giving the sort of review I enjoy receiving, and I’ve been doing more of that lately and have found it incredibly rewarding. That, plus using the review reply system at the archives and on LJ, gives me a much richer feedback experience than I used to have – and since I’ve never been one to rake in the reviews, this means I can enjoy the ones I do receive, and I can connect more with authors whose work I enjoy.
• Continue to keep my LJ communities afloat in whatever ways I can (it’s easy when you have awesometastic co-mods :D)
• Be recognized for my characterization of Sesshoumaru (of all the awards I’ve ever sekritly wanted to win, this has always been at the top of my list *shame*)
And, to end this post on a good note, I'd like to revive a little metawriting meme, since metawriting is what I'm all about on this journal, LOL :P
Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.
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and analisn't that hard, since its how I just am, you know?You keep the fandom alive and thriving.
Well I don't know about that (the fandom would be in its final, gasping stages of life if that were so), but I'm glad its enough to keep you interested =)