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[lakeeffectgirl]

This year I wrote and posted: 34 things across a somewhat random spread of fandoms. (Technically 35 but AO3 counts the first chapter of the jar!Venom story as 2021, so we'll stick with those stats.)

Total wordcount: 105,294 \o/

Overall Thoughts: My goals for last year, per this same questionnaire, were "break 100k again, finish the IT Richie/Eddie road trip story, write more Star Wars things, more OUATIH things, and more GK things", and I suppose I managed all of it - although only one Once Upon a Time in Hollywood story and one Generation Kill story.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?: Well, clearly no one could have predicted the way this year ended up, so this one is difficult to answer. I think my mental health would have suffered had I not been able to write as much as I did. There was definitely a stretch where reading/writing Venom fic was the only thing keeping some corona-blahs at bay, and I definitely did not expect to actually write 50k for NaNo this year but focusing on writing meant I could tune out the state of the world a little. I was privileged to be able to do so, and it helped.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January?: Ha, I definitely did not expect to whack out a bunch of Venom fic in the back half of the year. I can't even remember why I decided to hop back into reading it - I wrote three treats for Yuletide in 2018 in twenty-four hours and then didn't feel motivated to write it again until I'd gone through the entire fandom tag and had run out of fics where Venom is mostly a goo-blob (and if I wanted more, I had to write it myself)...

This year's theme and the story that demonstrates it most: ...and then it got weird, lol - instead of just Eddie and the goo-blob cuddling, weird sexytimes entered the picture and this year's theme went from "possibly inappropriate Star Wars sexytimes" to "this is not what the rest of Venom fandom writes sexytimes", aka the one where Eddie puts the symbiote through the pasta roller because they ask him to. (It must have been what some folks also wanted to read, since it's gotten the most hits of this year's Venom stories).

What's your own favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest? I really love something better, the IT Ch2 road trip story.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I did more exchanges this year than I normally would - Chocolate Box, Fandom5k, Hurt/Comfort Exchange, and Yuletide, and managed treats for all of them (except F5k) plus one for the Wingfic Exchange - even though signing up for anything with a deadline felt risky.

My best story of this year: IDK, I enjoyed writing everything I did this year but none of them really stand out as an example of something I felt elevated my writing technique. I feel like everything this year was more comfort-fic-y and less some sort of technical challenge. Which is just fine for 2020.

My most popular story of this year: IDK how, but my most popular story for the year was this Anakin/Ahsoka frottage fic that I wrote in like a day. It's gotten the most hits of any of my fic for 2020, by far.

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion: This year's thing no one read was admittedly an off-the-board Star Wars threesome-ish story, but after reading Ahsoka novel I felt she needed some gentleness/a hug and the only person really around to do so was Bail Organa, so Breha needed to appear as well.

My least favorite story this year: Oh man, the impostor syndrome was real this year for all the Star Wars stuff. I was determined to write a bunch of SW fic, but there is so much good fic that I felt most of mine was just faking it. But if I really didn't like something, I wouldn't have finished or posted it.

Most fun story to write: I'm posting it as a WIP but out of a million has definitely been the most fun to write.

Story with the sweetest moment / Story with the single sexiest moment / Most "Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Sweetest moment: IDK, I like the bit where Obi-Wan is cleaning the dust and dirt from Cody's face in a sound is still a sound around no one

Sexiest moment: ?????? someone else answer this for me, LOL
Holy crap, that's wrong even for you: pasta roller

Most overdue: Twenty-odd years after seeing all the SW prequels movies in the theater, I finally wrote Obi-Wan/Anakin. And it took me a year, but I did finish the IT Chapter 2 road trip fix-it!

Most eye roll-worthy title: Ha, everything I titled my Yuletide fics. I love them all! But the titles are so pretentious.

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters: Ehhh, I don't know? I don't really write the sort of stuff that would lead me to these sorts of revelations, I don't think.

Hardest story to write: The Top Gun bodyguard AU was easy up until it was incredibly difficult - once I had to figure out who was actually trying to get rid of Mav and then write this person getting caught, I stalled out terribly. That's part of why something that should have been a treat for Yuletide 2019 ended up being a treat for 2020; thankfully the participant usually requests Top Gun and I could gift it to them this year (yay!).

Biggest Disappointment: Nah, nothing was really a disappointment. I do sort of wish the Ahsoka/Organas story had reached a bit of a wider audience, but I think SW fandom is more the type where people just look for the pairings they like, and it appears I was the first person to post this pairing. It feels wild to be the first story for a SW pairing on AO3! But mostly it means no one finds it.

Biggest Surprise: As tends to happen to me, the biggest surprise was that a thing I wrote in one afternoon for a YT treat ended up being the most popular of this year's YT offerings - spring and beyond, for Enola Holmes.

Fic-writing goals for the coming year: I'd like to break 100k again, post the rest of the Very Long Venom story that I wrote most of for NaNo (which will get me a good portion of the way towards 100k), finish some lingering WIPs, and maybe find another fandom in which to write weird fic.

Comments

[frausorge]

Congrats on achieving all your goals, especially this (last?) year!