fanworks in 2011

[such_heights]

2011 fic & vids roundup!

Stories posted: 22
Words written: 38,000 (not including various ficlets that I didn't bother giving proper headers, so there's probably another couple of thousand words of Ponds fluff in various places, and including not yet revealed Yuletide fic.)
Vids posted: 15

The ArchAndroid: 1
Avatar: the Last Airbender: 4
Community: 1
Crossovers/multifandom: 3
Doctor Who: 23
Finding Nemo: 1
Harry Potter: 1
Merlin: 1
Tangled: 1
~mystery yuletide fandom~: 1

Gen: 19
f/m: 8
f/f: 4
m/m: 2
poly: 3
~mystery yuletide story category~: 1


So that's the most monofannish I've been in a while! My numbers for Merlin and Who were fairly even last year, and now I've dropped Merlin and it seems that Doctor Who got all my excess creativity. So basically the Ponds were my main fandom this year, which we already knew. From last year's end of year roundup:

What's next for 2011: -- More stories about Amy Pond, just because.

Mission accomplished! I definitely failed my other goals, which included finishing a couple of long-standing WIPs and being more diverse in my fanworks. That didn't really happen, because Amy Pond, but at least I tried a couple of new fandoms, of which Community in particular I hope to return to!

Full list of fanworks this year:

January:

Fic:
with you for the rest of your life (Merlin/Firefly fusion, Gwen & Morgana)
in the woods (Doctor Who/Harry Potter, Team Eleven, Trio)

Vids:
Five Years' Time (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory)

February:

Fic:
Something Built To Last (Avatar:tLA, Toph)
The Good Life (Avatar:tLA, Katara/Toph)

Vids:
Tightrope (multifandom)
Float On (Finding Nemo, Dory)
Around Us (Avatar:tLA, ensemble)
Bad Romance (Avatar:tLA, Azula/Mai/Ty Lee)

March:

Fic:
Out for a Spin (Doctor Who, Amy/Eleven/Rory)

April:

Vids:
Blue Caravan (Doctor Who, Amy/Eleven, Amy/Rory)

May:

Fic:
Disintegration (The Next Chapter Remix) (Doctor Who, River)
Departures (The Slow Recovery Remix) (Doctor Who, Martha, Jack)
inhale, exhale (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory)
fly me to the moon (Doctor Who, Canton/David)

Vid:
Strict Machine (Doctor Who, River)
Antebellum (Merlin, Gwen/Morgana)

June:

Fic:
we are strange in our worlds (Doctor Who, Amy/Eleven/Rory)

Vids:
Suzanne (Doctor Who, Doctor/TARDIS)
Howl, with purplefringe (Doctor Who, Amy, Rory, River)

July

Vids:
Brighter Than Sunflowers (Doctor Who, Amy, Eleven, Vincent)

August:

Fic:
Dress Up (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory)
The Next Adventure (Doctor Who, Christina/River)
only my hands to guide me (Doctor Who, Amy, River)
The Penny Drops (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory)

September:

Fic:
that was just a dream (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory, River)

October:

Fic:
the time is out of joint (Doctor Who, Amy, River)
Women in Western Political Thought (Doctor Who, Amy/Rory)
here (in your arms) (Doctor Who, Amy, Eleven, Rory)

Vids:
Glósóli, with purplefringe (Doctor Who, ensemble)

November:

Fic:
These Dreams Are Forever (The ArchAndroid, Cindi Mayweather)

Vids:
Don't Stop, Just Dance (Community, ensemble)

December:

Fic:
Weekend in the City (Doctor Who, Amy, Rory, River)
From Yorkshire, With Love (Harry Potter, Remus/Sirius)
to-be-revealed Yuletide story

Vids:
Love is Cool, with purplefringe (Doctor Who, Team Eleven)
Maximus Overture (Tangled, Maximus, Eugene)

Questions! I have merged the fic meme and the vid meme into a fanwork meme, hurray!

2010 fic year in review
2010 vidding year in review

Leitmotif of the year:

Amy Pond? I mean, yes, but I think also a theme of this year in my fic has been self-discovery and self-acceptance, whether that's Cindi discovering her powers in These Dreams Are Forever, the Gaang finding themselves in Around Us, or Amy processing the things that have happened to her in the various DW episode-related stories I wrote.

My favorite fanworks this year:

I rewatch Five Years' Time and Love is Cool all the time because they are made of happy fluffy squee and make me grin. I also really loved writing only my hands to guide me.

My best fanworks this year:

I think most of my best work this year was in vidding, really. I am very proud of both Blue Caravan and Suzanne - the latter especially was a real challenge in places and I'm happy that it turned out well.

Most popular fanworks:

My most popular story this year was fly me to the moon, I'm pretty sure, which makes me happy because Canton Everett Delaware III is in fact amazing. :D

Vids-wise, I had the most feedback on Suzanne, which was wonderful, but I was perhaps most taken aback by the response to Blue Caravan. It was my first time premiering at a vid at a premieres show at a con rather than a dance party, and I was terrified, but a lot of people were extremely kind to me about it on the night. It ended up being the creative high point of my year, really.

Most fun fanwork:

Writing Amy/Eleven/Rory is so much fun omg, I had a great time with all of those. Also purplefringe and I vidding Love is Cool was pretty much the best, I hurt from laughing by the end of the day.

Sexiest fanwork:

Out for a Spin. Nnnnngh. I mean, the extent to which that story is successful is reader-dependent, though people seemed to like it, but getting a canon excuse to write Amy/Amy doppleganger sex was pretty delightful.

Fanwork with single sexiest moment:

Amy crossdressing as the Raggedy Doctor in Dress Up. Also the end of Strict Machine, with River shooting everything/punching the Doctor/kissing the Doctor.

Fanwork with single sweetest moment:

I'm fond of the 'everyone pet Rory' section in Love is Cool, and relatedly, the cuddle pile at the end of here (in your arms).

Hardest fanwork to make:

Suzanne, for having to go through lots of source I wasn't familiar with and make it fit together. Totally worth it though! I also found These Dreams Are Forever difficult to get my teeth into because writing fic based on a concept album with a pretty loose canon is quite difficult, as it turns out!

Easiest fanwork to make:

All the things I've vidded with purplefringe have been a joy, because two heads are better than one! She's the brainy meta one and I'm the one who fiddles with technical stuff and knows where every Who clip ever is and insists on MOAR HUGS.

Fanwork that made you cry:

Ugh, I was a MESS making Antebellum. GWEN. MORGANA. WHYYYY YOU COULD HAVE IT ALLLLLL ;_;

Ahem. Yes. It was sort of my farewell to the ship, at least in canon? And by framing the disintegration of their friendship as a central story it was both really distressing and sort of satisfying in a bleak kind of way.

But yeah. There were lots of feelings whilst making that.

Fanwork that shifted my own perceptions of the characters:

only my hands to guide me was an exercise in processing the first half of season six of Doctor Who and what it would all mean for Amy. So in plotting it and talking about it a lot and finally writing it I feel like I got more of a handle on Amy's feelings about family. Although the story itself got Moffat'd, if you will, I feel like most of the character content in there remains true, particularly how Amy relates to adult River.

Most telling fanwork:

Women in Western Political Thought, for fairly obvious reasons. I pretty much gave Amy and Rory my university life.

Favorite opening:

I really like the opening of Glósóli, with all of the children. <3

Favorite closing:

The last beat of 'Blue Caravan', and also:

Amy rolls over so she can kiss him again, open-mouthed and lazy, her tie still on and trailing once again over Rory's chest. "For you, babe, the Doctor is always in," she says with a wink.
-- Dress Up

Favorite moment anywhere:

Hmmm. I love Amy starting to draw in only my hands to guide me, and Rory's section of the vid in Howl, and Christina ogling River being hot and mechanical in The Next Adventure, and the astronomy lab scene in fly me to the moon, and Toph writing to Katara in The Good Life, and idk! I liked my stuff this year!

Favorite title:

From Yorkshire, With Love amuses me.

What fanwork do you wish you had made?

I wish I'd finished some of the big projects that I said I was going to finish! It is the same every year.

Things I learned:

Lots of technical vidding stuff, particularly to do with colouring and brightening clips, which has been really useful. As it turns out, getting into posting graphics on tumblr and making icons etc has taught me things I can apply in vidding as well, which is great. Almost every vid I made this year had something in it I'd never done before, whether working with animated source or old black and white footage, or collaborating, or using text and still images. Lots more to learn, but I'm happy with the progress I've made.

In terms of the fic I wrote, most of it was probably treading water at least a little? I'm happy with the things that I've posted, but short character studies and episode codas are pretty typical for me, so only a couple of stories really stretched me at all. But only my hands to guide me is the longest story I've posted in a while, which I was pleased with. With DW being on hiatus for most of next year, though, that'll give me more of a chance to focus on some bigger projects - I suppose Community and potentially Korra are the two shows I can see inspiring me to write episode-related fic, but we'll see.

More generally, I think I got a little better at just making the stuff I want to make and not worrying too much about everyone else thinks, though I do continue to feel bad for becoming so monofannish all of sudden. Thank you for sticking around, people who don't care about the Ponds! May we have fandoms in common again soon.

What's next for 2012:

FINISH SOME DAMN FIC WIPS. Here, have some extracts, as a motivation for myself. Disclaimer disclaimer, first draft, forgive mistakes, etc.

---

The Merlin canon AU that veers off from the end of S1, so that Gaius dies and Nimueh lives:

Every parent knew that the hardest part about having children was having to let them go, but Hunith didn't think that there was any other parent who had to let their child go quite like this. Somehow, she had to trust her son to make the kinds of decisions and wield a kind of power that she could barely comprehend.

All she knew for certain was that she would be there to pick up the pieces, for his every success and every failure, always. She only hoped it would be enough.

She was glad to see Merlin's friends again - they were filled with that idealistic, relentless energy peculiar to the young, and she thought they would be good for him. Gwen, particularly, was a source of great comfort to them both. Hunith had been grieved to hear of Gwen's father's death - and particularly the circumstances, which were horrific and all too reminiscent of the events that had led her to meet Merlin's father.

Still, they were good for each other, those two. They cheered each other up, whether through complaining about their respective employers or through childish, simple things like going out to pick flowers. Hunith didn't act on her urge to bundle Gwen up into her arms and express her gratitude that way, but she found other ways to look after this brave, unassuming girl.

---

The Gwen/Morgana high school AU where they put on a production of Twelfth Night:

The first Friday after they'd started rehearsals was the same as ever. Gwen and Morgana hung around in their classroom after school, talking to Arthur and Merlin before Merlin had to go and catch his bus and Arthur got a call from his father saying he'd finally wrapped up down in the headmaster's office.

They headed out of school, Gwen pausing to unlock her bike and swing both of their bags into the basket before wheeling it alongside her as they walked back to Morgana's flat. Morgause would be down at the local pub having drinks with all the other 'hip' teachers - mostly consisting of the drama department, English and religious studies, and a couple of the younger physics teachers.

Gwen's backpack was full of library books on this occasion, as she'd pretty much checked out everything the library had to offer on the Suffragettes in an attempt to get ahead on her Politics coursework for the term. She could tell Morgana was sort of laughing at her as she chatted happily about the research she'd started doing, but she didn't care. She was a geek and proud of it. Besides, it wasn't like Morgana didn't get excited sometimes about being able to read books in French and Spanish, even if the books in question were Harry Potter half the time.

When they got back to the flat, Gwen kicked her shoes off and deposited their bags in the hallway while Morgana put the kettle on. She fetched their scripts and brought them through to the kitchen.

"Want to run some lines?" she asked.

They hadn't got to any of Viola and Olivia's scenes yet, having spent most of the week doing background character work and workshopping the different ways to approach Shakespearian dialogue. Nimueh had spent half an hour at lunchtime today with Arthur and some of the other boys who had been cast as courtiers, going over Orsino's famous opening speech. Gwen would start work on Viola's first scene on Sunday, when they had their big all-afternoon rehearsal, and she was excited already.

---

Ladies in Space! Aka the massively multifandom one.

"Hmm," said River. "So, just to be clear. You want me to flight out to a far-flung region of space where the military's top fighter pilots have been disappearing off the face of the universe in order to somehow succeed where they failed and find out what's happening out there? And you want me to rope other people into coming with me?"

"That is more or less the size of it, yes." Roslin took off her glasses and smiled at River. "This is strictly voluntary, I am not ordering you. But I am asking you."

River bit her lip. "You know me far better than I'm strictly comfortable with, Madam President."

Roslin's eyes twinkled a little. "I have the utmost confidence in your abilities. I've seen them first hand, after all. You are one of the few people I know who is even capable of pulling this off."

"Who else would you suggest, then? Supposing I were to go on this extremely high-risk mission."

Roslin took out a manila folder from her briefcase. "These are a few of the other people who I thought might be of use to you. Hypothetically speaking."

River took the folder, working to conceal her interest. She couldn't deny a fervent curiosity in these anomalies at the edge of space, and she suspected she was going to say yes to Roslin's request. But she'd always been one for keeping her cards close to her chest where possible. She opened the folder, and her eyes widened at the list of candidates. All of them were people she knew at least by reputation. Some of them were people she'd worked with in the past, people she trusted and would likely call on again even without Roslin's prompting. And some of them were people she suspected she'd have a much harder time persuading to come aboard.

She pulled out the page on Zoe Alleyne, raising an eyebrow. "You know, the last time Alleyne and I met, she did promise to kill me."

"Zoe's a fine soldier," Roslin replied. "And not one to hold a grudge, not if she's provided with reasonable incentives. You will of course be well paid if you do decide to take this job on."