My fanfiction personality (sorta) + Fic year in review

[ninety6tears]

Your result for The Fan Fiction Personality Test...

The True Fan

OOC is blasphemy, canon is everything.

Once you fall in love with a movie, book or TV series, you are loyal like an old dog. You take fanfiction quite serious and use it as a substitute after the canon ran out.

You are probably a walking dictionary of your favourite fandom and you are picky about what you write and read. The closer to the "real thing" fanfiction is, the more you like it.

You rather explore a character in all depth, see new sides and learn more about them than creating new characters or mix up the situations they are in.

Take The Fan Fiction Personality Test at OkCupid

...Yeah, I don't know. That probably applies more to the standards I aspire to writing than what I'm willing to read. Pretty much the only thing that bugs the crap out of me is OOC stuff, and even that I can certainly tolerate in an AU when aberrations from canon make more sense. My rule of thumb seems to be that if I can envision some experimental thinking process that led to changing the canon in order to fuel the story itself rather than the end result of the story, it's the good kind of OOC or inaccuracy. I get pretty obsessed with the subtleties of cause and effect that can be explored in fanfiction, which is probably why I am firmly fixated on reboot Trek which is in itself a canon alternate universe.
Not to mention that being meticulously strict about canon with a collaboratively created universe seems kind of silly to me.

And...



The 2009 list (including my WIPs that are like 90% done so that I don't feel pathetic):

- Rising Sign (Star Trek/Battlestar Galactica; gen; Jim/Kara, McCoy/Kara)
- Speech Bubbles (Star Trek; gen; Kirk & Spock)
- Vulcans Don't Play Basketball [WIP] (Star Trek; Kirk/Uhura, sort of pre-Spock/Kirk/Uhura)
- Losing My Favorite Game [WIP] (Kirk/Uhura, Kirk/Spock)
- We're Not Friends [WIP] (Battlestar Galactica; Kare/Lee)
- Where am I from? [WIP] (Battlestar Galactica; gen; Kara/Zak, Kara/Lee)
- The Last Sleep [pending big bang]; (New Moon; gen; Jacob/Bella)
- a couple other prompt fills: "the basement" (Jacob/Leah); "stay" (Kirk/Spock).

My favorite story this year (of my own):
"Vulcans Don't Play Basketball." Not the part I've already posted, which is now going to just be the prologue. I feel like I've been freaking out over wanting to continue this fic for forever, and I am this close to posting it and OMG...

My best story this year:
I feel the most proud of "Speech Bubbles." I might be prouder of "The Last Sleep" if it wasn't inherently a shameful creation. LOL.

My not-best story this year:
I had a lot of fun on "Rising Sign," but I have yet to go back and read it from beginning to end to see if it actually has a good flow. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the humor/angst whiplash is even worse than I imagined, having never set out to make it a particularly dramatic fic, but it just went there closer to the end. I also never posted "Stay" in my journal cause I'm just generally very uncertain about it.

Most successful story:
I was very pleasantly surprised by the reaction to "Speech Bubbles." It was gen and had a super-cracky premise and was inspired by a Boston Legal episode. I expected all of two people to read it, but I got a good amount of comments.

Story most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:
LOL, I guess "Rising Sign" since it didn't get that many readers. But I had some exceptionally sweet readers on that one...It was definitely quality over quantity in terms of the FB.

Most fun story:
"Basketball," though it also really depressed me at some points. Oh hell, "Speech Bubbles" was fun too. It was funny trying to recreate a kind of Sideways vibe of "Man, this vacation is lame," and working in the BL references amused me.

Sexiest story:
I guess "We're Not Friends."

Hardest story to write:
"Rising Sign" got pretty hard towards the end. There are scenes in there that got rewritten completely a couple times. Second place goes to "Where am I From?" cause apparently I can't write Bill Adama for shit.

Writing technique or style you’ve done well:
No clue. Well, I pushed myself to do something in first person ("Favorite Game") for the first time since, uh, QAF fandom, which was a LONG time ago. But I'm not sure how successful it is yet.

Something you’d like to work on in the future:
I'd like to tackle more gen stuff, though that's just a matter of hoping the ideas come to me. And my sentences are too long, my descriptors are a little busy, all that usual shit.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?
I always hope rather than think I'll write a certian amount and I would always like to get around to posting more, so I don't know. But if you'd told me I was going to be writing super shippy Trek stuff last year, I would've said, "What!?...Well, not before I finish my BSG WIPs." Heh. Heh.

Did you take any writing risks this year?
I had a couple characters act like assholes, I'm in the process of characterizing Spock the way almost nobody's going to like, I wrote crossover for the first time, I wrote a ship I didn't completely get the appeal of at first, etc.

Do you have any goals for the New Year?

Just keeping on. Right now I'm mainly focusing on my fic for operation80 and will have to get back into WNF for pilotsbigbang. It would be great if I could manage to participate as an author in startrekbigbang this year, but it depends on whether my AU idea in question can produce a long enough fic and around the right time.

Comments

[jolinar-rosha.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with your views for reading fanfic (wouldn't know about writing it). I can accept OOC-ness if it's handled in a way justified by the premises of the story. Sometimes it's even good to read.

on another point, hey, you've written a Jacob/Bella fic? interesting... ;-)

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

you've written a Jacob/Bella fic? interesting... I have! How peculiar! (LOL) It's an AU which is a bit on the depressing side :/ It's been forever since I was all that active in Twilight fandom and had worked on the story but since there was a big bang event coming up I thought, oh, what the hell...

[jolinar-rosha.livejournal.com]

well, once it's posted, I think I'll give it a try. :-)

[13empress.livejournal.com]

NO matter how AU it is, I always believe that some elements of a character that I should be familiar with from the canon should be there. Even if it's been translated into a different form of expression.
Re 'Rising Sign' I've still to actually watch Galactica - I know I know why haven't I but been busy, life rah, you know, so YEAH I guess the difficulty with crossovers is to have people know about the other verse just enough to get it when they're reading - trust me this is an issue.

I really admire that you took writing risks. Me too. They are necessary sometimes to keep the joy of writing. We can't just write for other people afterall :)

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think what I like the most about AUs is when they explore what facets of a character are just naturally ingrained in them versus what would be different about them if they had gone through different circumstances. Spock is a very alluring character to approach in that way, but it's a big challenge to deal with who he is as a person besides logical and Vulcan, and some fics tend to take him too far in one direction or another IMO.
Haha, you should definitely watch Galactica, though I'm hardly one to talk, being very behind on current TV shows. It is kind of hard to get readers with crossover, but I do run into people who will read it when they're only familiar with one of the universes, which kind of surprises me.
We can't just write for other people afterall But of course. I love getting feedback as much as the next person, but it hardly affects if or what I choose to write.

[flowrs4ophelia.livejournal.com]

Oh shut up, THE LAST SLEEP IS YOUR BEST FIC THIS YEAR.

[ninety6tears.livejournal.com]

...Eh, I'll have to think about it.

...(dammit, it probably is.)