2022-12-20

lirazel: A close up shot of a woman's hands as she writes with a quill pen ([film] scribbling)
2022-12-20 11:39 am

AO3 Wrapped

Yuletide is done!!! Well, it's sent to betas, and I am sure there's still work to be done on it, but I am pretty happy with what I created and so relieved to have it done.

And now I can actually take a moment to look back on my Year in Fanfiction! It's possible given how inspired I have been lately that I'll write one more thing before the end of the year, but I think it unlikely, so I'm going ahead and doing this.

This was a surprisingly fruitful year for me as a fanfiction writer.

I wrote:

+94,671 words!!!!

+ over 11 fics

+ in 7 different fandoms: [Mystery Fandom for Yuletide], West Side Story (1961), the Benjamin January series, Six of Crows, The Eagle of the Ninth, Spinning Silver, and The Untamed/MDZS.

+ 4 of them were for exchanges! I participated in Chocolate Box, the Hurt Comfort Exchange, the Just Married Exchange, and Yuletide.

+ I wrote the most words and fics for The Untamed/MDZS by far

+ 4 were new-to-me fandoms! ([Myster Fandom], WSS, SoC, and tEotN)

+ The first half of the year was mostly for exchange fics or fics that were written in response to finishing a book

+ The second half of the year was super CQL/MDZS-leaning, with only my Yuletide fic being an outlier.

+ My biggest accomplishment was actually writing the Madam Lan fic and being really happy with it. That one had been on my mind since I first watched the show, and it feels so good to have actually completed it. The fact that I managed a short follow-up surprised me! I really didn't think I'd ever write that one!

+ My second biggest accomplishment was actually writing Jiang Cheng fic, which I never thought I would do. I did, and I feel like I wrote him well.

+ The one that got the most attention from readers was the fic that was ostensibly about a Wangxian arranged marriage but that was really about the Yunmeng siblings breaking out of a cycle of abuse and drawing firm boundaries with their parents (and also about LWJ being super in love with his husband)

+ I am reasonably proud to very proud of all of them! I don't think I wrote any duds this year!

+ All but two were shippy. Of the two that weren't explicitly shippy, one was gen in the truest sense and one could be pre-shippy if you want to read it that way. That latter one and one other were for an OT3 instead of a pairing. (I am very me.) I wrote m/m and f/m but no femslash this year (boo!).

+ Some prevalent themes: solidarity (between women, between siblings), people asserting their own agency, intimate hairbrushing/braiding, hurt/comfort (as per usual), mutual pining (ditto), getting used to marriage (3 whole fics! were about this!), learning by doing more generally, and twu wub.

+ I accomplished my goal of getting The Untamed/MDZS as one of the fandoms that are listed on my AO3 dashboard before you hit the "expand fandoms list" button. Lol! Maybe one day I'll be able to knock Harry Potter down a peg on that list! I'd only have to write four more!



I'm just really happy with my output this year, both qualitatively and quantitatively. I really had no idea I'd write so very many words, and it makes me hopeful that next year I can, you know, write a damn novel.

I do want to focus more on original writing next year (more about that later), but I am sure I'll be writing at least some fic in 2023. I hope I love it as much as I have loved what I wrote this year!