2016 wordcount

426654 words to 95 fanfics that got updated or published (not counting the ones that have been written but haven't yet seen the light of day).

Dats a lotta words...

more Yuletide recs 2016

Unmasked (Mulan)
Looking at the Disney movie from Shang's perspective.

One thing I particularly liked about this one is that they don't take the modern American conservative view of homosexuality and transport it to Ancient China.

Non-Christian warrior societies were generally much more lenient about male sexuality than we think - although the definition of 'homosexual' as we understand it wasn't valid. In Tang Dynasty China, one of the prospective heirs to the throne was known for his preference for men - but the issue with his succession wasn't his attraction to men, but his extravagance. And his preference would not have affected his need to beget heirs - he would have had a wife and possibly concubines on which to beget children, because marriage was a question of titles, lands, politics, and money - the personal aspect didn't come into it.

Shang doesn't assign the shame or embarrassment that we might to a male soldier who is attracted to another man; he's a little surprised at it because it's never been his 'thing', but he's well aware of his responsibilities to his name and his line and his ancestry. And he still loves and is attracted to Ping, even before he realises she's Mulan.


10 Things I Hate About Reunions (10 Things I Hate About You)

For great hilarity with the texts between Kat and Bianca, and the way she encounters Pat and their reunion and catch up and all the stuff in between.


linguistic assignations (Languages - Anthropormorphic)

I'm not sure I entirely get all the references, but it's fascinating nevertheless.


Revisions To A 'Dear Writer' Letter, Yuletide 2035 (The Martian)

I just... This is brilliant. I can't describe it any better. But this is perfect.

tie-in novels and novelisations

I made a post on Tumblr about this, I'll be briefer here.

Authors of tie-in novels and novelisations of movies have less ability to define and determine the sexuality of canon characters than fans think they do. Kindly don't bitch them out for being 'wishy washy' on character sexuality.

When an organisation (like MGM or LucasArts) hires an author to write a novel based on characters they own, they may be extremely picky about how those characters are depicted. And if the author steps out of the company line on this front, then the company will shear off the author's toes to keep their right to define the characters as they please.

Major characters - particularly those from movies and TV shows - are prone to heternormalisation, even if dynamics suggest otherwise to fans.

Yes, it would really great to have confirmed representation of the things we see in canon that aren't heteronormative; but in tie-ins and novelisations in particular, that decision is very frequently not up to the individual author.

my Yuletide fics

One assignment, one PH, one treat. All got excellent receptions before reveals, with the recips all commenting, and kudos and comments arriving independent of the recips.

FANDOM: Order of the Air Series - Melissa Scott & Jo Graham
TITLE: Voices For The Voiceless for mari4212
SUMMARY: Stasi and Douglas have a conversation about the war, about people, and about right and wrong.
RATING: PG-13
TAGS: No Archive Warnings Apply, Stasi Rostov & Douglas Sorley, Douglas Sorley (Order of the Air), Stasi Rostov, parenting, Growing Up
( AUTHOR'S NOTES: )

All in all, I'm very happy with how this one turned out. A little bittersweet, but also with hope.

It's the most well-received one among the target audience - the ratio of kudos to hits is the best of the three.


FANDOM: Ghostbusters (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe
TITLE: Heroes and Fans for Bodldops
SUMMARY: Patty had a moment when she thought, They’ve separated us! And then she had a moment when she thought, It’s a trap! And then she had a moment when she thought, Get a grip on yourself, Patty! This ain’t no weirdo mad scientist – this is Tony Stark!
RATING: G
TAGS: No Archive Warnings Apply, Jillian Holtzmann & Patty Tolan, Patty Tolan & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Jillian Holtzmann, Patty Tolan, Maria Hill, James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Tony Stark, Friendship, Crossover, Post-Movie(s), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Misses Clause Challenge
( AUTHOR'S NOTES: )

Hit-wise, this is the most popular story out of the three, thanks to the megafandom crossover.


FANDOM: Ancient Egyptian Religion
TITLE: Older Than The Deserts for Delen
SUMMARY: Then, he was bright and unyielding, burning and nurturing both, the source of light and joy. Ra, they called him, and Khepri – the holy scarab that pushes the sun through the sky, and Atum – the final burning blaze before the darkness and the long journey through the night to the reborn dawn. Now, he is known in scrolls and in books, but no longer worshipped, no longer adored.
RATING: G
TAGS: ancient gods in a modern world
( AUTHOR'S NOTES: )

This one was surprisingly well-taken; I expected only the recip would read it, let alone kudos or comment, but quite a few people have enjoyed it.

--

I have at least one reasonably-sized treat that didn't get completed due to time and brain. It's on the New Year's Resolution pile for Yuletide, which I have every year and somehow fail to ever complete...

Snowflake Challenge 2017

snowflake_challenge is running again in 2017, and I'm one of the people helping run it.

Basically, I'm doing the tumblr stuff. If you'd like to reblog it (the other mods/helpers should also be reblogging it), we would appreciate the promotion!

The introduction to the snowflake challenge is here at tumblr and here at DW.

Day 1 however, is self-reccing:

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

I'm going with three in 2016, which was a fairly prolific year - some 89 fics, although not all of them are complete. I'll try for three different fandoms.


1. MCU: Carter's Eleven

So, take one heist movie line, rewrite it to fit a seminal action movie in the MCU, and change all the major hero characters to women, led by Peggy Carter with Maria Hill as the enabler of it all.

I had so much fun conceiving this story and writing it. The original title was "Alexander Pierce's No Good Very Bad Extremely Shitty Day" but I felt that assigned rather too much notice to him. "Carter's Eleven" embodied the situation rather more accurately and matched the tone of the story, which is both lighthearted and serious both.


2. Persuasion - Jane Austen: any port in a storm but only one place to call home

This was written for a fic exchange, and while we get a lot of Anne's thoughts on Frederick in the book, we only get the summation of Frederick's thoughts on Anne at the point of his declaration. But even in the text, everything we see of Frederick in Bath is that of a man drowning in tides he can't control - first Louisa Musgrove, then Mr. Elliot, then the fear that she can't possibly want him... I wanted to tease that out, bring it a little more to the fore.


3. Star Wars - The Force Awakens: Interconnected Loops Of The Universe

I feel that this story didn't quite achieve the...completeness? that I wanted to depict, although I suppose it's really just a sliver of the huge universe that is seen in Star Wars. Maz Kanata is not a character I'd have thought to find myself writing - she's very much a cipher - and so I had to do a bit of reading up on her history to get a feel for who she is and what she might want.

But the thing that really kicked this story off was a wiki entry that listed one of Maz's hobbies as knitting. And being the crafty person that I am, that was something I just couldn't let pass by!