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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 Inuyasha anime and read the manga up to date sometime during the summer, 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…
2009 in review | 2010 in review
Stats:
Story Stats
Total words written (as accounted for in MS Word): 160,661
Total words written by fandom:
• Baby-sitters Club: 14,601
• General Hospital: 9,643
• Inuyasha: 23,372
• Jonathan Creek: 1,000
• Kids Incorporated: 112,045
Total stories written (started, in progress, or completed): 20
• Total number of drabbles (100-500 words): 1
• Total number of oneshots (500+ words): 14
• Total number of completed multichapter fics: 0
• Total number of WIP multichapter fics: 1
• Total number of series completed: 1
• Total number of WIP serials: 3
Total number of fiction archives used (not counting LJ): 5
Total number of hits/reviews:
• FF.net
• MM.org
• A03
• deviantART
Most reviewed stories [title (pairing): number of reviews, compiled across all archives]
• Collected Works (various): 172
• Fleeting (Sess/Kag): 139
• Fragments (Mir/San): 76
[IY] Fandom Recognition
Total number of awards won (fandom-wide, pairing-centric, and/or in contest communities at LJ): 12
Breakdown:
• 1st Place: 4
• 2nd Place: 3
• 3rd Place: 5
• Other nominations: 2
Categories nominated into (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best AU/AR (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Characterization (IYFG)
• Best Comedy (IYFG)
• Best Lemon (Eikyuu Kosai, Feudal Association, IYFG)
• Best Multichapter Work (Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Original Character (IYFG)
• Best Romance - Miroku/Sango (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
Categories placed (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best AU/AR (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Characterization (IYFG)
• Best Lemon (Feudal Association)
• Best Romance - Miroku/Sango (Eikyuu Kosai)
Categories won (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best Lemon (2nd Quarter 2010 - IYFG; July 2010 - Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Original Character (3rd Quarter 2010 – IYFG)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (January 2011 - Eikyuu Kosai)
Most lauded fic (won/placed with the most awards):
• Fragments: 5 placements in 6 nominations, 2 of them 1st Place
Total number of LJ contests to which I made at least one submission: 1
Awards from LJ contest communities:
•![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
iyissekiwa - 1 [ (1) Second Place]
Challenges started/ongoing: 5 (un_love_you prompt table, babysitters100 prompt table, 1sentence prompt table, 7snogs prompt table, fandom_stocking 2010 holiday exchange)
Challenges completed: 3 (1sentence prompt table, 7snogs prompt table, fandom_stocking 2010 holiday exchange)
Longest completed multichapter fic: Every Heart, 76,363 words
Longest current WIP: Fleeting, 75,740
2010 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?
• 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.
And once again I failed pretty hardcore at this, although I came awfully close with Fragments. The fact that I didn't write that much for the IY fandom in general probably contributed to this.
• 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.
I'm really happy to say I more than accomplished this goal =) I absolutely love leaving and replying to reviews/comments, and I've made quite a few lovely friends via such efforts this year.
• Continue to keep my LJ communities afloat in whatever ways I can (it’s easy when you have awesometastic co-mods :D)
When your awesome-tastic co-mods desert you, suddenly running half a dozen LJ comms gets really tiresome, really fast. I actually gave up quite a bit of administrative duty as the year drew to a close, and I think I'm better off because of it (though the urge to form and run communities still runs pretty high in me, LOL.)
• Be recognized for my characterization of Sesshoumaru
Didn't happen, and it probably never will *shrug*
But what are your thoughts on yaoi?
Probably the biggest thing that happened this year was that I branched out in a big way from my “original” fandom, and it’s probably not a surprise why I did that. My third year in fandom started quite the way 2010 started in general: with tragedy.
I pretty much lost my last shred of patience with IY fandom following the results of the ‘Best of 2009’ awards from the IYFG, and – along with it – my last shred of sanity. RL was very chaotic and stressful (suffice to say, more people I cherish died in 2010 than in the entirety of my quarter-century existence before that), and I didn’t need fandom bullshit/drama on top of all that. I kinda flamed out, and began seeking another source of refuge and escape. Inspired by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
psyco_chick32’s jaunt into her childhood fandom, I began looking for mine, wondering if I could actually create fannish works for something besides IY, which had been my sole focus for nearly two years.
What I found was Kids Inc, a show that was the center of most of my childhood play-acting, that spawned the longest sustained crush I’ve ever had on anyone in my life, and that fueled my still-burning-strong love of amazing music. All fandom preferences can be traced back here, in some form or fashion, and it was pretty amazing to map out that journey.
I absolutely reveled in the canon material, hemmed and hawed and shared it with a few patient friends who humored me, and eventually developed the idea for Stacy in Bloom. It was a period of total mania, where I couldn’t get enough and absolutely everything was influencing me – it was a shitton of fun, and with the encouragement of a couple of those friends, I began posting my first non-IY fanfic with absolutely no expectations.
It was a weird time. It was the first time in a long time that I’d really written a story just for me, one that I didn’t really even consider sharing until I was a couple of chapters in and feeling that ol’ itch for feedback. Kids Inc fandom at the time didn’t exist – there were no stories on FF.net, the fansites were pretty much dead, and there wasn’t much in the way of new postings to YouTube (in fact, quite a bit of material was being *pulled* from YouTube D :) I had no way of knowing if anybody would read it, but I was so in love with the story itself that I put it up anyway. Why the hell not?
I worked on and posted that fanfic exclusively for a couple of months. I’d really been hoping to write and finish it all in one go, but the storyline that tumbled out just became increasingly complex (and I wanted to explore it all, haha) and I wanted to do more and more with it, and I even already had some inklings for off-shoot oneshots. It was the first time my head-canon had ever been so strong, and in the absence of shipwars and canon wars, anything went. I was sorta blazing a trail, and I’d built up a very small following (five people? Three of which were folks nice enough to read even though they much preferred my IY stuff, LOL), and life was good.
Until I got a hankering to write some smut.
Don’t get me wrong, I love KI, and my OTP is my original OTP, but because of all the feelings associated with the fandom, the story, and the characters, especially the hard crush of nostalgia that was rolling over me on a daily basis, it was very, very hard for me to use them in a more adult setting. Besides, I was missing the community and camaraderie of the IY fandom, and my IY friends, and I wanted to continue making headway in my stories over there, even if I didn’t necessarily miss or care about the fierce competition or the wankery.
So, in June, I wrote Kindred Desire, the posting of which sparked a whole lot of unnecessary drama and destroyed a friendship with someone I considered a very close RL friend. It sucked, and it hurt, and sometimes I still feel a little bitter about how it all went down, but if anything, it convinced me that my time with IY as the center of the universe was over.
That’s not to say I didn’t continue to write IY fic – in fact, I wrote 23K+ words of it, including four chapters of my Mir/San serial, Fragments, a humorous/snark piece inspired by reading funny reviews of terrible romance novels, and continued revision on an old piece featuring my favorite character (which still hasn’t seen the light of day, but which eventually will, I hope). I was really surprised when I compiled the word-count stats for this post that I’d written so much IY fic, because I spent comparatively little of my year doing it – mainly in a big burst between June and August, and then another little bit at the beginning and end of winter.
In fact, it was yet more drama from the crazycakes corner of the IY fandom that drove me away from it for another long stretch. In August, Dokuga decided to get its troll on, and I laughed all the way to the bank – the KI bank, that is, composing and posting my absolute favorite story of the year, break/even. That is nearly 10,000 words of pure bliss, right there. Even now, when I go back to re-read it, I just get goosebumps. In spite of all the shit that was being flung my way, I managed to write very nearly the perfect story, to my own standards. It’s amazing to me, going back to read this piece, because I see so very little of what was going on IRL reflected in it (and usually I can read my stories like personal diaries). I attribute it to the power KI has over me, LOL. When I decided to take a break from IY at the beginning of the year, I also decided to change my general attitude and be more positive – no easy task, if you know me and my cynical, snarky nature :P but, all in all, I think I’ve done pretty well.
September brought another step out of the box for me, in the form of writing for soap opera fandoms. Since I was going on such a huge nostalgia trip, I started devouring lots of things from my childhood and tween years – and one thing I loved back in the day was Days of Our Lives and the ’90s version of the teen scene. Kirsten Storms is still one of my absolute favorite actresses, and I’d watched her occasionally on General Hospital, a habit I’d picked up in college and renewed after my college reunion earlier in the summer. When I found out the actor who played her boyfriend on Days was about to start playing her boyfriend on GH, I ate it up with a spoon, mainlining their character interactions over the last couple of years, and Storms’ character in general, since she’d taken over the role in 2005.
Maxie is a character unlike any other that’s ever sparked my interest, and I knew she’d be a challenge to work with, even though I loved, loved, loved her antagonistic relationship with Matt. (I also loved the early part of her relationship with Spinelli, back when he was still a refreshing quirky character and not merely a sad caricature of himself.) I wrote a couples of pieces and posted them up, but it seemed my muse was always destined to come back to the 80s cheesiness of KI. It made me happy, and I needed happy in a really big way.
September/October brought the meta to the table, as I filled out the 30 day shipping meme , which was a lot of fun and brought out a lot of different interests in my f-list. It was seriously cool to see how many ships I had in common with other people (stuff we’d never talked about!), and how many of my personal ships followed a pattern beyond just being centered in my late 80s/early 90s nostalgia. I opened myself up to some other possibilities and decided to run with them.
In November, I dipped my toe into the BSC fandom for the first time, writing-wise – I’d read fanfic on and off for years, drawn like a curious moth to a flame by some of the amazing (and amazingly hideous) fanfic this series had produced. I was absolutely ecstatic whenozqueen formed the babysitters100 community, and it was just the spark I needed not only to write for a new challenge, but to write a story that had long been buried in the back of my mind – a longer Charlie/Janine fic told from Janine’s POV, which hit strikingly close to home as I worked on it.
All was flowing along fairly smoothly until December, when I uprooted myself for the sake of my sanity (and my job), and spent the next month plus moving and settling and trying to find a new routine. By the end of the year, I’d also dropped a lot of my administrative duties for IY fandom, which helped immensely, because work was picking up steam and I wanted to focus on some of my other stories and ideas and fandoms. I did manage to churn out a few things forfandom_stocking, which I posted in January, including a new IY oneshot and a Jonathan Creek fic, something I always wanted to write but never felt like I could, because I was intimidated by the quirkiness of Jonathan’s character…
Then came February, and the drama that threatened my happy place, when Michael Glickman decided to make me the target of his disgusting trolling of the KI fandom. Until this point I’d only met a few fellow fans, and much like BSC fandom, they were all cool and chill and willing to squee, but apparently I attract the crazy no matter where I go. First there was Glickman, then there was Dawne, and finally I was able to utilize the biggest lesson I’d learned from dealing with IY fandom: I don’t have to deal with this drama. Haters gonna hate, wankers gonna wank, and I can let them get to me or I can laugh and tell them to kiss my ass. I opted for choice number two, and here I am – happy again on the other side :)
February also saw the first piece of holiday fic that I’d written in over a year, in the form of a very sweet serial for Valentine’s Day (and my second favorite piece of the year). I nearly overloaded on the fluff, so I needed some angst to balance it out – and, surprisingly, found an outlet in IY. For the first time since I started fandom-hopping, I started to feel fairly confident in my ability to move from one thing to another, without losing lots of time and energy in the switch.
All in all, it was a very fruitful and productive year. It wasn’t without its share of drama, wank, and general WTFery (from all corners), but I learned a lot about myself and the place I’d like to occupy in this giant community we call fandom. I’m still trying to balance it all, but I think I have a better handle on it than I did when I started. I might have found a different center, but I still feel fairly comfortable roaming around in every sandbox I tried out over the last year.
Good points are abundant, and are not limited to just these: (1) I made a lot of amazing friends. When I started posting SiB, I was out on a limb by myself, and I really struggled with the concept of being a fandom of one. I loved my story, and it didn’t really bother me that seemingly nobody was reading it, but I missed having people to talk to and squee with and discuss stupid shippy stuff with. That’s why finding the awesome BSC fan community was such a boon for me, and by the turn of 2011, I’d made friends in all of my new, tiny fandoms. My f-list is pretty darn diverse, but I hope everyone feels welcome here =)
(2) I expanded my horizons. I was darn scared to start writing for a series other than IY, even when I saw so many of my IY friends branching off, sometimes in directions I didn’t like. I nearly burned a lot of bridges when I left like I did, but I’m grateful to have salvaged the friendships I have, and I’m happy to support those people now, even if that means I do it from afar. I want all of my friends to be happy, and I finally realized that we didn’t have to love all of the same things in order for that to happen.
I branched out and I found awesome things. I made awesome things (it’s so weird to see some of my head-canon becoming fanon over in KI) and I read awesome things, and I had awesome discussions with awesome people. I even managed to friend people I’ve fangirlled for years, which is always a thrill!
(3) I dropped the toxic parts of IY fandom, in order that I still might participate there. I’ve always loathed the fiercely competitive nature of IY fandom, and I can honestly say I do not miss the endless cycles of awards and pressure and crazy reviews and weekly contest comms and all the wank. I don’t miss having to lock more journal entries than I left public, I don’t miss keeping tabs on all the bullshit that went down, or the people that hated me, or whatever. I don’t miss having to keep track of all the axes that were being ground (between friends and enemies), what I could say to who, and who to give a very wide berth whenever our paths crossed. Going from feeling entitled to silly awards to being grateful for every single little comment any of my stories generated did wonders for my fandom outlook. I learned to really appreciate readers and reviewers and everyone who could take this fannish experience with a grain of salt.
I still do things for IY, but I’m no longer running a contest or moderating an awards guild or worrying about keeping up with a TBR list three miles long. I enjoy compiling the newsletter and keeping up with my friends’ stories, and that’s enough for me, I think. Hell, I even wrote an entry for a contest community for the first time in nearly two years, so I know I can never say never! :P
Plus, I still love my IY WIPs, and I want to finish them all. It’s been a long time, and it may still take some time yet for my negative experiences in fandom to wear off so I can continue writing the characters I love in the situations I’ve devised for them. Not until I discovered that not all fandoms are as fractured and toxic as IY did I realize that I could still accomplish what I wanted over there, self-appointed fandom gatekeepers and BNFs be damned.
Bad points, I try not to dwell on, but I do regret the way some bridges were burned. I know I share some blame for the way things went down this year (and judging by my karma, I’m still being punished for that), but for the most part, I really tried to step away from the shit that brought me down. I had enough stress, anxiety, and depression going on in RL, that I tried to treat virtual life as my escapist happy place…and for the most part, it worked.
I’m incredibly appreciative of all the experiences I’ve had – good, bad, and otherwise – and hope things continue to look up. I’m grateful to those people from IY who stuck by me, those fellow KI fans who’ve given my story a chance, and new friends from GH and BSC and wherever else we’ve met, for just being cool and welcoming and fun.
There’s a ton of storytelling left in me, and I’m looking forward to the chance to share it with you all!
Personal favorite stories: (listed in chronological order)
• “break/even” (posted 08/21/10)
• “Kiss Me” (posted 02/08/11 - 02/14/11)
Goals for the next 12 months:
I'm maintaining the generally-lofty "finish more WIPs than I start", even though I perinally fail at this, but this time, I decided to give myself some more concrete goals...
• Finish Fragments. I'm one chapter away from being done, dammit, so if this doesn't happen I'm really going to be disappointed in myself.
• Finish (and begin posting) Object Lesson, my longer Charlie/Janine story that originated my stepping into BSC fandom in the first place.
• Finish Stacy in Bloom - admittedly, this is going to be a challenge, especially considering how long and sprawling the story has become, but I'd really like to start working on the other parts of this universe I already have mapped out. I'm really, really excited about this entire project, in general, and I'd love to have another successful year in this fandom! =)
• Write more General Hospital fic. This is a muse that's been set aside for the last six months or so, because the show has been really stupid and unwatchable. But, apparently my pairing has gotten some play recently (and the clippers I'm subscribed to on YouTube have just been totally ignoring it *sadface*), and I have a half-written oneshot in the depths of my notebook that really needs to be finished and posted. I like these characters, and it's been interesting to play in soap opera fandom waters. I want to get back to this.
• Continue to support my "small" fandoms as much as possible. Tiny fandoms have become my home away from home, and I love finding and encouraging my fellow fans and writers! There's nothing like having a really positive fandom experience, and I want to continue contributing to that as best I can.
• Continue leaving the sorts of reviews I'd like to receive myself. In my mind, there's no better way to get in touch with other fanwriters than by reading their work, and letting them know how much you appreciate their effort. It's not about writing a technically perfect story, but weaving a great tale that celebrates the characters of your fandom. Like I said above, I really enjoy leaving and replying to comments, so I intend to keep doing it, even if I sometimes attract the crazy :P
And, since I enjoy making traditions out of things, 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…
2009 in review | 2010 in review
Stats:
Story Stats
Total words written (as accounted for in MS Word): 160,661
Total words written by fandom:
• Baby-sitters Club: 14,601
• General Hospital: 9,643
• Inuyasha: 23,372
• Jonathan Creek: 1,000
• Kids Incorporated: 112,045
Total stories written (started, in progress, or completed): 20
• Total number of drabbles (100-500 words): 1
• Total number of oneshots (500+ words): 14
• Total number of completed multichapter fics: 0
• Total number of WIP multichapter fics: 1
• Total number of series completed: 1
• Total number of WIP serials: 3
Total number of fiction archives used (not counting LJ): 5
Total number of hits/reviews:
• FF.net
• MM.org
• A03
• deviantART
Most reviewed stories [title (pairing): number of reviews, compiled across all archives]
• Collected Works (various): 172
• Fleeting (Sess/Kag): 139
• Fragments (Mir/San): 76
[IY] Fandom Recognition
Total number of awards won (fandom-wide, pairing-centric, and/or in contest communities at LJ): 12
Breakdown:
• 1st Place: 4
• 2nd Place: 3
• 3rd Place: 5
• Other nominations: 2
Categories nominated into (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best AU/AR (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Characterization (IYFG)
• Best Comedy (IYFG)
• Best Lemon (Eikyuu Kosai, Feudal Association, IYFG)
• Best Multichapter Work (Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Original Character (IYFG)
• Best Romance - Miroku/Sango (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
Categories placed (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best AU/AR (Eikyuu Kosai, IYFG)
• Best Characterization (IYFG)
• Best Lemon (Feudal Association)
• Best Romance - Miroku/Sango (Eikyuu Kosai)
Categories won (fandom-wide or pairing-centric):
• Best Lemon (2nd Quarter 2010 - IYFG; July 2010 - Eikyuu Kosai)
• Best Original Character (3rd Quarter 2010 – IYFG)
• Best Romance – Miroku/Sango (January 2011 - Eikyuu Kosai)
Most lauded fic (won/placed with the most awards):
• Fragments: 5 placements in 6 nominations, 2 of them 1st Place
Total number of LJ contests to which I made at least one submission: 1
Awards from LJ contest communities:
•
iyissekiwa - 1 [ (1) Second Place]Challenges started/ongoing: 5 (
un_love_you prompt table, babysitters100 prompt table, 1sentence prompt table, 7snogs prompt table, fandom_stocking 2010 holiday exchange)Challenges completed: 3 (
1sentence prompt table, 7snogs prompt table, fandom_stocking 2010 holiday exchange)Longest completed multichapter fic: Every Heart, 76,363 words
Longest current WIP: Fleeting, 75,740
2010 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?
• 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.
And once again I failed pretty hardcore at this, although I came awfully close with Fragments. The fact that I didn't write that much for the IY fandom in general probably contributed to this.
• 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.
I'm really happy to say I more than accomplished this goal =) I absolutely love leaving and replying to reviews/comments, and I've made quite a few lovely friends via such efforts this year.
• Continue to keep my LJ communities afloat in whatever ways I can (it’s easy when you have awesometastic co-mods :D)
When your awesome-tastic co-mods desert you, suddenly running half a dozen LJ comms gets really tiresome, really fast. I actually gave up quite a bit of administrative duty as the year drew to a close, and I think I'm better off because of it (though the urge to form and run communities still runs pretty high in me, LOL.)
• Be recognized for my characterization of Sesshoumaru
Didn't happen, and it probably never will *shrug*
But what are your thoughts on yaoi?
Probably the biggest thing that happened this year was that I branched out in a big way from my “original” fandom, and it’s probably not a surprise why I did that. My third year in fandom started quite the way 2010 started in general: with tragedy.
I pretty much lost my last shred of patience with IY fandom following the results of the ‘Best of 2009’ awards from the IYFG, and – along with it – my last shred of sanity. RL was very chaotic and stressful (suffice to say, more people I cherish died in 2010 than in the entirety of my quarter-century existence before that), and I didn’t need fandom bullshit/drama on top of all that. I kinda flamed out, and began seeking another source of refuge and escape. Inspired by
psyco_chick32’s jaunt into her childhood fandom, I began looking for mine, wondering if I could actually create fannish works for something besides IY, which had been my sole focus for nearly two years.What I found was Kids Inc, a show that was the center of most of my childhood play-acting, that spawned the longest sustained crush I’ve ever had on anyone in my life, and that fueled my still-burning-strong love of amazing music. All fandom preferences can be traced back here, in some form or fashion, and it was pretty amazing to map out that journey.
I absolutely reveled in the canon material, hemmed and hawed and shared it with a few patient friends who humored me, and eventually developed the idea for Stacy in Bloom. It was a period of total mania, where I couldn’t get enough and absolutely everything was influencing me – it was a shitton of fun, and with the encouragement of a couple of those friends, I began posting my first non-IY fanfic with absolutely no expectations.
It was a weird time. It was the first time in a long time that I’d really written a story just for me, one that I didn’t really even consider sharing until I was a couple of chapters in and feeling that ol’ itch for feedback. Kids Inc fandom at the time didn’t exist – there were no stories on FF.net, the fansites were pretty much dead, and there wasn’t much in the way of new postings to YouTube (in fact, quite a bit of material was being *pulled* from YouTube D :) I had no way of knowing if anybody would read it, but I was so in love with the story itself that I put it up anyway. Why the hell not?
I worked on and posted that fanfic exclusively for a couple of months. I’d really been hoping to write and finish it all in one go, but the storyline that tumbled out just became increasingly complex (and I wanted to explore it all, haha) and I wanted to do more and more with it, and I even already had some inklings for off-shoot oneshots. It was the first time my head-canon had ever been so strong, and in the absence of shipwars and canon wars, anything went. I was sorta blazing a trail, and I’d built up a very small following (five people? Three of which were folks nice enough to read even though they much preferred my IY stuff, LOL), and life was good.
Until I got a hankering to write some smut.
Don’t get me wrong, I love KI, and my OTP is my original OTP, but because of all the feelings associated with the fandom, the story, and the characters, especially the hard crush of nostalgia that was rolling over me on a daily basis, it was very, very hard for me to use them in a more adult setting. Besides, I was missing the community and camaraderie of the IY fandom, and my IY friends, and I wanted to continue making headway in my stories over there, even if I didn’t necessarily miss or care about the fierce competition or the wankery.
So, in June, I wrote Kindred Desire, the posting of which sparked a whole lot of unnecessary drama and destroyed a friendship with someone I considered a very close RL friend. It sucked, and it hurt, and sometimes I still feel a little bitter about how it all went down, but if anything, it convinced me that my time with IY as the center of the universe was over.
That’s not to say I didn’t continue to write IY fic – in fact, I wrote 23K+ words of it, including four chapters of my Mir/San serial, Fragments, a humorous/snark piece inspired by reading funny reviews of terrible romance novels, and continued revision on an old piece featuring my favorite character (which still hasn’t seen the light of day, but which eventually will, I hope). I was really surprised when I compiled the word-count stats for this post that I’d written so much IY fic, because I spent comparatively little of my year doing it – mainly in a big burst between June and August, and then another little bit at the beginning and end of winter.
In fact, it was yet more drama from the crazycakes corner of the IY fandom that drove me away from it for another long stretch. In August, Dokuga decided to get its troll on, and I laughed all the way to the bank – the KI bank, that is, composing and posting my absolute favorite story of the year, break/even. That is nearly 10,000 words of pure bliss, right there. Even now, when I go back to re-read it, I just get goosebumps. In spite of all the shit that was being flung my way, I managed to write very nearly the perfect story, to my own standards. It’s amazing to me, going back to read this piece, because I see so very little of what was going on IRL reflected in it (and usually I can read my stories like personal diaries). I attribute it to the power KI has over me, LOL. When I decided to take a break from IY at the beginning of the year, I also decided to change my general attitude and be more positive – no easy task, if you know me and my cynical, snarky nature :P but, all in all, I think I’ve done pretty well.
September brought another step out of the box for me, in the form of writing for soap opera fandoms. Since I was going on such a huge nostalgia trip, I started devouring lots of things from my childhood and tween years – and one thing I loved back in the day was Days of Our Lives and the ’90s version of the teen scene. Kirsten Storms is still one of my absolute favorite actresses, and I’d watched her occasionally on General Hospital, a habit I’d picked up in college and renewed after my college reunion earlier in the summer. When I found out the actor who played her boyfriend on Days was about to start playing her boyfriend on GH, I ate it up with a spoon, mainlining their character interactions over the last couple of years, and Storms’ character in general, since she’d taken over the role in 2005.
Maxie is a character unlike any other that’s ever sparked my interest, and I knew she’d be a challenge to work with, even though I loved, loved, loved her antagonistic relationship with Matt. (I also loved the early part of her relationship with Spinelli, back when he was still a refreshing quirky character and not merely a sad caricature of himself.) I wrote a couples of pieces and posted them up, but it seemed my muse was always destined to come back to the 80s cheesiness of KI. It made me happy, and I needed happy in a really big way.
September/October brought the meta to the table, as I filled out the 30 day shipping meme , which was a lot of fun and brought out a lot of different interests in my f-list. It was seriously cool to see how many ships I had in common with other people (stuff we’d never talked about!), and how many of my personal ships followed a pattern beyond just being centered in my late 80s/early 90s nostalgia. I opened myself up to some other possibilities and decided to run with them.
In November, I dipped my toe into the BSC fandom for the first time, writing-wise – I’d read fanfic on and off for years, drawn like a curious moth to a flame by some of the amazing (and amazingly hideous) fanfic this series had produced. I was absolutely ecstatic when
ozqueen formed the babysitters100 community, and it was just the spark I needed not only to write for a new challenge, but to write a story that had long been buried in the back of my mind – a longer Charlie/Janine fic told from Janine’s POV, which hit strikingly close to home as I worked on it.All was flowing along fairly smoothly until December, when I uprooted myself for the sake of my sanity (and my job), and spent the next month plus moving and settling and trying to find a new routine. By the end of the year, I’d also dropped a lot of my administrative duties for IY fandom, which helped immensely, because work was picking up steam and I wanted to focus on some of my other stories and ideas and fandoms. I did manage to churn out a few things for
fandom_stocking, which I posted in January, including a new IY oneshot and a Jonathan Creek fic, something I always wanted to write but never felt like I could, because I was intimidated by the quirkiness of Jonathan’s character…Then came February, and the drama that threatened my happy place, when Michael Glickman decided to make me the target of his disgusting trolling of the KI fandom. Until this point I’d only met a few fellow fans, and much like BSC fandom, they were all cool and chill and willing to squee, but apparently I attract the crazy no matter where I go. First there was Glickman, then there was Dawne, and finally I was able to utilize the biggest lesson I’d learned from dealing with IY fandom: I don’t have to deal with this drama. Haters gonna hate, wankers gonna wank, and I can let them get to me or I can laugh and tell them to kiss my ass. I opted for choice number two, and here I am – happy again on the other side :)
February also saw the first piece of holiday fic that I’d written in over a year, in the form of a very sweet serial for Valentine’s Day (and my second favorite piece of the year). I nearly overloaded on the fluff, so I needed some angst to balance it out – and, surprisingly, found an outlet in IY. For the first time since I started fandom-hopping, I started to feel fairly confident in my ability to move from one thing to another, without losing lots of time and energy in the switch.
All in all, it was a very fruitful and productive year. It wasn’t without its share of drama, wank, and general WTFery (from all corners), but I learned a lot about myself and the place I’d like to occupy in this giant community we call fandom. I’m still trying to balance it all, but I think I have a better handle on it than I did when I started. I might have found a different center, but I still feel fairly comfortable roaming around in every sandbox I tried out over the last year.
Good points are abundant, and are not limited to just these: (1) I made a lot of amazing friends. When I started posting SiB, I was out on a limb by myself, and I really struggled with the concept of being a fandom of one. I loved my story, and it didn’t really bother me that seemingly nobody was reading it, but I missed having people to talk to and squee with and discuss stupid shippy stuff with. That’s why finding the awesome BSC fan community was such a boon for me, and by the turn of 2011, I’d made friends in all of my new, tiny fandoms. My f-list is pretty darn diverse, but I hope everyone feels welcome here =)
(2) I expanded my horizons. I was darn scared to start writing for a series other than IY, even when I saw so many of my IY friends branching off, sometimes in directions I didn’t like. I nearly burned a lot of bridges when I left like I did, but I’m grateful to have salvaged the friendships I have, and I’m happy to support those people now, even if that means I do it from afar. I want all of my friends to be happy, and I finally realized that we didn’t have to love all of the same things in order for that to happen.
I branched out and I found awesome things. I made awesome things (it’s so weird to see some of my head-canon becoming fanon over in KI) and I read awesome things, and I had awesome discussions with awesome people. I even managed to friend people I’ve fangirlled for years, which is always a thrill!
(3) I dropped the toxic parts of IY fandom, in order that I still might participate there. I’ve always loathed the fiercely competitive nature of IY fandom, and I can honestly say I do not miss the endless cycles of awards and pressure and crazy reviews and weekly contest comms and all the wank. I don’t miss having to lock more journal entries than I left public, I don’t miss keeping tabs on all the bullshit that went down, or the people that hated me, or whatever. I don’t miss having to keep track of all the axes that were being ground (between friends and enemies), what I could say to who, and who to give a very wide berth whenever our paths crossed. Going from feeling entitled to silly awards to being grateful for every single little comment any of my stories generated did wonders for my fandom outlook. I learned to really appreciate readers and reviewers and everyone who could take this fannish experience with a grain of salt.
I still do things for IY, but I’m no longer running a contest or moderating an awards guild or worrying about keeping up with a TBR list three miles long. I enjoy compiling the newsletter and keeping up with my friends’ stories, and that’s enough for me, I think. Hell, I even wrote an entry for a contest community for the first time in nearly two years, so I know I can never say never! :P
Plus, I still love my IY WIPs, and I want to finish them all. It’s been a long time, and it may still take some time yet for my negative experiences in fandom to wear off so I can continue writing the characters I love in the situations I’ve devised for them. Not until I discovered that not all fandoms are as fractured and toxic as IY did I realize that I could still accomplish what I wanted over there, self-appointed fandom gatekeepers and BNFs be damned.
Bad points, I try not to dwell on, but I do regret the way some bridges were burned. I know I share some blame for the way things went down this year (and judging by my karma, I’m still being punished for that), but for the most part, I really tried to step away from the shit that brought me down. I had enough stress, anxiety, and depression going on in RL, that I tried to treat virtual life as my escapist happy place…and for the most part, it worked.
I’m incredibly appreciative of all the experiences I’ve had – good, bad, and otherwise – and hope things continue to look up. I’m grateful to those people from IY who stuck by me, those fellow KI fans who’ve given my story a chance, and new friends from GH and BSC and wherever else we’ve met, for just being cool and welcoming and fun.
There’s a ton of storytelling left in me, and I’m looking forward to the chance to share it with you all!
Personal favorite stories: (listed in chronological order)
• “break/even” (posted 08/21/10)
• “Kiss Me” (posted 02/08/11 - 02/14/11)
Goals for the next 12 months:
I'm maintaining the generally-lofty "finish more WIPs than I start", even though I perinally fail at this, but this time, I decided to give myself some more concrete goals...
• Finish Fragments. I'm one chapter away from being done, dammit, so if this doesn't happen I'm really going to be disappointed in myself.
• Finish (and begin posting) Object Lesson, my longer Charlie/Janine story that originated my stepping into BSC fandom in the first place.
• Finish Stacy in Bloom - admittedly, this is going to be a challenge, especially considering how long and sprawling the story has become, but I'd really like to start working on the other parts of this universe I already have mapped out. I'm really, really excited about this entire project, in general, and I'd love to have another successful year in this fandom! =)
• Write more General Hospital fic. This is a muse that's been set aside for the last six months or so, because the show has been really stupid and unwatchable. But, apparently my pairing has gotten some play recently (and the clippers I'm subscribed to on YouTube have just been totally ignoring it *sadface*), and I have a half-written oneshot in the depths of my notebook that really needs to be finished and posted. I like these characters, and it's been interesting to play in soap opera fandom waters. I want to get back to this.
• Continue to support my "small" fandoms as much as possible. Tiny fandoms have become my home away from home, and I love finding and encouraging my fellow fans and writers! There's nothing like having a really positive fandom experience, and I want to continue contributing to that as best I can.
• Continue leaving the sorts of reviews I'd like to receive myself. In my mind, there's no better way to get in touch with other fanwriters than by reading their work, and letting them know how much you appreciate their effort. It's not about writing a technically perfect story, but weaving a great tale that celebrates the characters of your fandom. Like I said above, I really enjoy leaving and replying to comments, so I intend to keep doing it, even if I sometimes attract the crazy :P
And, since I enjoy making traditions out of things, 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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I think GH would be a nice change from my other projects, too. I've just been reluctant to work on this oneshot because it's going to require some serious ass-in-the-chair research in the form of clip-watching, but it's not like that's a bad thing, LOL.
I'm so glad we met via
I'm so glad you've been able to take what you like in your fandoms and get away from the negative aspects.
It's been a long, hard, painful lesson, but it's one that was well worth learning. I enjoy writing fanfic too much to give it up now, and I've finally learned how to really write for myself above all others :)
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Thanks! I'm rolling into year four of active fandom, and barring anything catastrophic happening, I think I'm here for the long haul.
Fandom has been a difficult journey for you, hasn't it?
That's a really good way to put it =) IY was the first fandom I joined, even though I'd been writing for years and years and years, so its my only real yardstick for measuring online fandom. I knew what it was before I got into it, but I didn't know just how deep the rabbit hole got until I was caught up in the drama and wank and pressure, a never-ending cycle of constantly looking over my shoulder and trying to decide who I could trust. I turned into the very thing I loathed, and it took some major shit happening IRL for me to see that. It wasn't until I stepped away from IY fandom more or less completely that I realize just what a cesspool it had become.
Even now, when I see newer folks lamenting the state of fandom, how it's hard to win attention for your stories if you're not a BNF, how pairing-centric circles have become gatekeepers, and the endless contest communities and awards guilds...it just makes me sad. I've felt that pain and frustration and anger, and I wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially since it seems so unique to IY. Maybe because its a gateway fandom, I don't know - but somewhere along the line, it became just as important to be competitive as it did to write good stories, and *shrug* that's not the way I roll.
And it's not just the competition between authors and artists and awards guilds - readers and reviewers can be a really judgmental bunch. When I see authors apologizing for not updating fast enough, I just want to hug them. This isn't a job, it's a hobby, and its supposed to be fun.
Finding other places that are less competitive really did wonders for my perspective on fandom. I know I've lost friends and readers and whathaveyou, but honestly? I don't care. I haven't even glanced at my stats pages until I made this post. I had no idea what my review counts were, beyond what's posted to FF.net. I'd lost meticulous track of the awards months ago, and people stop nominating my stuff. And you know what? That's okay. I've debated pulling my work from contention completely from the awards guilds, but in the end, I just can't bring myself to care enough to do that. If I wasn't keeping up with the newsletter, I'd let all that fall by the wayside completely.
I am amazed at your experience; and it's why I respect you and your opinion so much. Hardship and adversity suck, but at least you learn from it.
*blush* Well, thanks =) My big mouth tends to get me in trouble more often than not, so I'm glad I don't offend everyone who comes across this journal :P
The only way to get through to the other side is to survive it, in whatever way possible, even if that means changing lanes mid-stream and redefining friendships.
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Yeah, I'm about a week behind on GH, I think. They're sitting on my DVR, but I've been sick and I've read some pretty depressing spoilers, so I didn't have the energy to watch them yet. Maybe this weekend lol. I do remember there was a Matt/Maxie scene last week I think? He was very cutely protective of her (and Robin).
I think GH would be a nice change from my other projects, too. I've just been reluctant to work on this oneshot because it's going to require some serious ass-in-the-chair research in the form of clip-watching, but it's not like that's a bad thing, LOL.
If only all research could be watching soap clips on YT... That would be like my ideal research paper/academic job lol.
It's been a long, hard, painful lesson, but it's one that was well worth learning. I enjoy writing fanfic too much to give it up now, and I've finally learned how to really write for myself above all others :)
Yes! That is the kind of attitude to have. I'm pretty good with that in regards to fandom (except when people "dislike" my videos on YT, which makes me cry), now I just need to transfer that lesson to my RL.
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And I know it'd be better on a banner, but I totally appreciate your characterization of Sesshoumaru. :)
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A neat look, and here's hoping your next year is a bit less drama-filled.
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I've just been following along at
I do remember there was a Matt/Maxie scene last week I think? He was very cutely protective of her (and Robin).
*squee*!! I need to find this. (And also - I can't believe they are STILL dealing with the Lisa storyline! *bangs head against wall*)
If only all research could be watching soap clips on YT... That would be like my ideal research paper/academic job lol.
True, true :D I just really have to feeling up to it, to hunt down all the clips and find people who post them consistently. I'm not well-enough-versed in this fandom to know where to go for my fix, LOL.
except when people "dislike" my videos on YT, which makes me cry
I can understand that - it sucks when people actively hate on something you've put so much work into, and even moreso when it's so passive-aggressive :( At least with other parts of fandom you don't know if people dislike your stuff...
It's something I struggle with still, but in RL I'm very much a loner, so others' opinions of me don't matter. I'm not much of a "joiner", LOL.
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I'm willing to bet if you sat down and counted up all your words, you'd have more than I do =) And, of course, stuff like reviews and awards and all that sort of thing, you already blow me out of the water, LOL :P
I was surprised to see just how much KI I'd written (and IY, too - it certainly didn't feel like 23K), but at the same time, I wasn't, if that makes sense...I'm mostly just glad it was such a positive experience :)
I'm glad that you've overcome so much of that and have gotten to a better place in fandom.
It's a journey I'm still undertaking, but yeah: finding my happy place again really did wonders for it all - better attitude, happier muse, willingness to move out of my comfort zone and experiment a little more. It's been something of a lonely journey, making me wonder if I'm just destined to be a loner in all aspects of my life, but it's been worth it, I suppose :)
And I know it'd be better on a banner, but I totally appreciate your characterization of Sesshoumaru. :)
LOL! Thanks =) I've accepted my fate in regards to IY fandom. I'm going to finish my stories (I promise!), but it's going to take some more time. Every time someone decides to put on their wanky pants, it just sets me back a little bit further, you know? It's hard to let things go when people are constantly bringing it back to your doorstep.
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Yeah. Things happen so gradually that sometimes you don't realize just how much you've done until you sit down and calculate it. I'll tell ya, though, it was kind of a pain. As you well know, giving up the slavish obsession with stats makes for a far happier writing experience, LOL! :P
I've been debating doing something like this, but I just can't bring up the energy to wade back into the drama that surrounded me branching out, LOL.
*nods* I understand. If anything, I think you've had a better "transition" experience, or at least that's the way it looks from here. You went from one big fandom to another, and you have lots of very active side fandoms (like Castle). I'm really, really happy that you've found so many new friends, and that you've enjoyed your childhood nostalgia as much as I have! =)
These posts are something I do for myself, kinda like a memory box or record book. I like to look back on my journey and see how much, if anything, has changed. I think I grew up a lot this year. Thanks for keeping me around, considering how much I've put you through these last few years.
A neat look, and here's hoping your next year is a bit less drama-filled.
I wish the same for you, and many happy returns on your own plot bunnies! =)
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I hope you will be able to finish your IY stories to give everyone closure.
I will, I promise - and, hopefully the wait will be worth the while =)
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I wish someone would post more of her relationship with Jesse, because I am intrigued, LOL. I'm just getting up to the point where she's started to get tangled up with Lucky, and already I'm feeling the hankering for fanvids, LOL! This is a good sign, no doubt :D
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