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darkrosaleen) wrote2025-02-06 12:37 am
darkrosaleen) wrote2025-02-06 12:37 am
Entry tags:
2024 in Fandom
I told myself yearly recaps aren't late as long as they're posted in January. Oops.
I posted 23 fics to AO3 in 2024, which is the most fics I've posted in a single year since I started tracking my metrics in 2020. I think it's because I consumed a ton of different media and had an excess of creative energy, brain power, and free time, most of which feels totally out of my control.
I wrote for 11 different fandoms in 2024, 6 for the first time. The fandom I wrote the most is a tie between The Terror and Challengers, followed closely by another tie between Saltburn and Original Works.
FAVORITE MEDIA
I only watched a few TV shows last year, but my favorite by far was Interview With The Vampire. I didn't finish any books, but I got about 200 pages into a reread of Dune and I'm really enjoying it. I've made a personal goal to read more this year; we'll see how that pans out.
The movies in this section are in alphabetical order, because I'm too lazy to rank my favorites.
Favorite 10 movies of 2024
Anora
Babygirl
Challengers
Dune Part 2
The Fall Guy
Lisa Frankenstein
Longlegs
Nosferatu (2024)
The Substance
Wicked Part 1
Favorite 10 movies I watched for the first time in 2024 that came out earlier
An American Werewolf in London
Bell, Book and Candle
Bones and All
The Green Knight
The Lighthouse
Nosferatu (1979)
Poor Things
Re-Animator
Shadow of the Vampire
Twister
FICS POSTED IN 2024
I've kept thorough records of all the fic I posted this year in my quarterly fandom recaps and I don't feel like typing all the HTML again, so here's an AO3 link to everything I posted last calendar year.
END OF YEAR FANDOM MEME
Leitmotif(s) of the year
This is hard to answer because I wrote a lot of pretty diverse fic last year. Some common themes I noticed: erotic focus on unerotic parts of the body, really enthusiastic bottoms, and romantic or sexualized corpses.
My most popular story
Most bookmarks and most kudos is Human Behavior, while most comments and most hits is Rest on the Flight into Egypt. I think both fics are pretty good (I considered putting "Flight into Egypt" as my best work), but I think their overwhelming popularity comes down to timing, as both fics were posted within a few months of their films' US theatrical releases. All four of my summer Challengers fics being in the top three in at least one category backs that up.
My best story
if you sleep always like this is short, but it deals with grief and love and legacy and dead bodies. The ice mummies of the Franklin Expedition have been giving me a lot of complex emotions since I was a child, and I put a lot of those emotions into this fic. I also played around with fridge horror by making the POV character a crewman on the long walk south, having no idea that he and everyone on the expedition would die anonymously and his dead brother's body would be perfectly preserved for historians centuries in the future.
My most self-indulgent story
In last year's fandom recap, under Biggest Disappointment, I mentioned an abandoned WIP that was "extremely hot porn for an extremely niche kink written in second person, which no one other than me wants." Insides is not that fic, but it's the same extremely niche kink, also in second person, for a much smaller fandom that even fewer people want. But someone prompted heartbeat kink + stethoscopes in Rare Kink Buffet, so I wrote the horniest Bones and All stethoscope fic I could manage. I figured cardiophilia was halfway between vanilla sex and horny cannibalism.
Runner up is i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart), which is ridiculously gothic memento mori/erotic death/romantic heart fic that I had way too much fun writing. I started 2024 wanting to write some truly deranged Saltburn kink fic, and I think I pulled it off.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion
2024 was the tenth anniversary of both Trick or Treat Exchange and Hozier's debut album, both of which were a huge part of my 2014 and were hugely influential to the fannish person I am today. So I was disappointed when Someone That Dug, a Trick or Treat 2024 fic for the 2014 Hozier song that launched a thousand lowercase fic titles, was at the bottom of most of my metrics. I took some creative risks with that fic (more dead body feelings and second person POV), and I'm proud of the result.
Story the universe appreciated way more than I expected it to
Rest on the Flight into Egypt has a very respectable 7 comment threads, but it got a whopping 36 comments from Jessica/Paul shippers having enthusiastic discussions about the ship in my comment section. I never would've guessed that a het parent/child incest ship for a M/M dominated fandom had that kind of buzz, especially a ship that I wrote in 2022 to little fanfare.
Biggest disappointment
I'm really bummed that I didn't publish any Raven Cycle fic this year, after rereading the books last fall and finding a new flush of fannish enthusiasm for the (almost) first fandom I published on my AO3 account, just in time for that account's tenth anniversary. I still have a few works in progress, and maybe I'll publish them someday, but they won't have the same impact.
Biggest pleasant surprise
It was a very unexpected, wonderful surprise that I wrote eight fics in Battleship and felt like I contributed meaningfully to my team, even if we lost. I'm competitive enough that Battleship isn't fun for me if I don't contribute to the gameplay, and this year my contributions stacked up.
Hardest story to write
I've been brainstorming a "Like Real People Do" fic about a troubled human/bog mummy romance since 2018, but I decided to start from scratch with a new version of the story when I matched on that fandom for Trick or Treat. Someone That Dug is the fourth version of that story I came up with, and it took a lot of trial and error to get it into a shape I was happy with.
Easiest story to write
Gigantic (a Big, Big Love) is a simple story about a horny teenage girl getting fingered by her huge boyfriend, except her boyfriend is a rotting Victorian corpse. This was really fun to write and probably my funniest fic of the year.
Sexiest Story
She Wanted Him, He Wanted Me. Dirty talk is hot, dirty talking your boyfriend through a bisexual bottom awakening is hotter, and Patrick/Tashi is the hottest ship I got into last year by a long mile.
Most fucked up story
In 2024 I wrote pseudo-necrophilia, organ theft, cannibalism fantasies, and multiple scenes of people cuddling with mummies, but I don't think any of that beats Rest on the Flight into Egypt's erotic incestuous adult breastfeeding in littlespace with added blasphemy.
Truest story
Point of Performance. I have nothing in common with Patrick Zweig except for a couple traits that could be interpreted as ADHD, and messy living spaces is one of them.
Favorite title
Titling your fic after a renaissance art motif is pretty pretentious, but Rest on the Flight into Egypt was too perfect for religiously-flavored Jessica/Paul erotic breastfeeding on their first cold night in Sietch Tabr. This is a popular art motif because it's a beautiful, humanizing scene of the Virgin Mary as a humble mother feeding her baby, and I enjoyed subverting that with incestuous mommy kink and Dune's cynical religious manipulation.
Favorite opening line
if you sleep always like this: In the wee hours of the morning, when darkness finally falls over the top of the world, Tom's brother visits him.
Someone That Dug: The first light I see in two thousand years is the cold yellow fire you hold in your hand, shining down into my grave.
I really love both these lines, and these fics are thematically similar/exchange gifts for the same person/creatively in conversation with each other, so I'm awarding the category to both. Creepy, tender mummy cuddling takes the win.
Favorite closing line
Human Behavior: When Oliver finally claimed Saltburn for himself, he was the strong, beautiful stag he was always meant to be.
I love a closing line that ties into the themes of the opening paragraph, and I love an unreliable narrator whose self-delusion is only revealed at the very end (which applies to the movie itself in more ways than one, some more successful than others). I also love the final scene of Saltburn, and this fic was a fun exercise of reinterpreting scenes and characters from the movie in a universe where lonely people slowly and involuntarily transform into animals.
Pairing/genre/fandom that I wrote that I never would have predicted last January
I avoided posting a heartbeat kink fic in 2023 because it felt too niche and embarrassing, so I'm surprised I posted three heartbeat fics in 2024 (don't ask me why AO3 canonized "Cardiophilia" as a parent tag of "Heartbeat Kink," because I've always seen those two terms used interchangeably).
Fandom I read/wrote that isn't reflected in my posted works
I read a lot of Interview With The Vampire fic in the fall, but my creativity had burned out by that point, so I started writing two fics and didn't finish either one. I appreciate the fandom's commitment to sexualizing seventy-year-old Daniel Molloy, and I hope he gets some hot young vampire dick in future seasons. Season three might come out this year, and I'd like to reread the first few books before then.
Writing risks and lessons learned
The riskiest exchange gift I gave last year wasn't dark or kinky, but it made the requested ship an open relationship and featured a prominent offscreen ship between half the requested pairing and multiple OCs. Battleship norms are looser than traditional exchanges, and the recipient requested "Polyamory" as a freeform tag, but I still worried that I'd crossed an unspoken line, and I can only imagine the bloodbath of wank if I asked FFA's exchange thread whether this was an appropriate gift. But the recip left a really nice comment, so I think the risk paid off.
As far as lessons: I'm capable of writing a fuckton of pretty good fic when I have a lot of creative juice, so I should pay attention to my juice levels and not beat myself up for fallow periods. The more media I consume, the more likely I am to find my next favorite character or ship. Weird, kinky, experimental shit makes me happy and I should keep writing it, and if no one in the exchange scene wants my weird shit (whether that's nonmonogamy or second person POV or adult breastfeeding), I should write it for my own damn self.
FANDOM GOALS
2024 Fandom Goals + Progress
Post a Raven Cycle fic for this account's tenth birthday - failed, and the window for tenth anniversary gifts has definitely closed by now :(
Post one of my unfinished treats from 2023 - failed
Write something that challenges me as a writer - succeeded, I tackled some complex imagery and metaphors and experimental writing styles
Write something that challenges me as a kinkster - failed by a slim margin, none of the kinks I wrote last year were truly off brand
Write something that shamelessly indulges my id - succeeded multiple times!
Sign up for no more than 2 exchanges (including pinch hits), and write for no more than 4 exchanges - failed spectacularly by signing up to 6 events and writing for 11
Do NOT sign up for Battleship - LOL
Clean up my Birthday Bash badfic sock and post a fanmix there - partial success, I renamed the account to something less jokey but haven't posted anything there yet
Post quarterly fandom updates on DW - succeeded
Post three works outside of an exchange - failed
2025 Fandom goals
Don't participate in bangs/fests/exchanges until July 1 or I've posted 2 fics outside an event, whichever comes first (not counting my in-progress treat for Candy Hearts)
Post 4 fics outside of bangs/fests/exchanges
Post 3 unfinished fics from the past two years
Post one work to AO3 that isn't fic
Post my Stranger Things post-canon Will/Mike/Eleven fic before the final season comes out and josses everything
I posted 23 fics to AO3 in 2024, which is the most fics I've posted in a single year since I started tracking my metrics in 2020. I think it's because I consumed a ton of different media and had an excess of creative energy, brain power, and free time, most of which feels totally out of my control.
I wrote for 11 different fandoms in 2024, 6 for the first time. The fandom I wrote the most is a tie between The Terror and Challengers, followed closely by another tie between Saltburn and Original Works.
FAVORITE MEDIA
I only watched a few TV shows last year, but my favorite by far was Interview With The Vampire. I didn't finish any books, but I got about 200 pages into a reread of Dune and I'm really enjoying it. I've made a personal goal to read more this year; we'll see how that pans out.
The movies in this section are in alphabetical order, because I'm too lazy to rank my favorites.
Favorite 10 movies of 2024
Anora
Babygirl
Challengers
Dune Part 2
The Fall Guy
Lisa Frankenstein
Longlegs
Nosferatu (2024)
The Substance
Wicked Part 1
Favorite 10 movies I watched for the first time in 2024 that came out earlier
An American Werewolf in London
Bell, Book and Candle
Bones and All
The Green Knight
The Lighthouse
Nosferatu (1979)
Poor Things
Re-Animator
Shadow of the Vampire
Twister
FICS POSTED IN 2024
I've kept thorough records of all the fic I posted this year in my quarterly fandom recaps and I don't feel like typing all the HTML again, so here's an AO3 link to everything I posted last calendar year.
END OF YEAR FANDOM MEME
Leitmotif(s) of the year
This is hard to answer because I wrote a lot of pretty diverse fic last year. Some common themes I noticed: erotic focus on unerotic parts of the body, really enthusiastic bottoms, and romantic or sexualized corpses.
My most popular story
Most bookmarks and most kudos is Human Behavior, while most comments and most hits is Rest on the Flight into Egypt. I think both fics are pretty good (I considered putting "Flight into Egypt" as my best work), but I think their overwhelming popularity comes down to timing, as both fics were posted within a few months of their films' US theatrical releases. All four of my summer Challengers fics being in the top three in at least one category backs that up.
My best story
if you sleep always like this is short, but it deals with grief and love and legacy and dead bodies. The ice mummies of the Franklin Expedition have been giving me a lot of complex emotions since I was a child, and I put a lot of those emotions into this fic. I also played around with fridge horror by making the POV character a crewman on the long walk south, having no idea that he and everyone on the expedition would die anonymously and his dead brother's body would be perfectly preserved for historians centuries in the future.
My most self-indulgent story
In last year's fandom recap, under Biggest Disappointment, I mentioned an abandoned WIP that was "extremely hot porn for an extremely niche kink written in second person, which no one other than me wants." Insides is not that fic, but it's the same extremely niche kink, also in second person, for a much smaller fandom that even fewer people want. But someone prompted heartbeat kink + stethoscopes in Rare Kink Buffet, so I wrote the horniest Bones and All stethoscope fic I could manage. I figured cardiophilia was halfway between vanilla sex and horny cannibalism.
Runner up is i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart), which is ridiculously gothic memento mori/erotic death/romantic heart fic that I had way too much fun writing. I started 2024 wanting to write some truly deranged Saltburn kink fic, and I think I pulled it off.
Story most underappreciated by the universe, in my opinion
2024 was the tenth anniversary of both Trick or Treat Exchange and Hozier's debut album, both of which were a huge part of my 2014 and were hugely influential to the fannish person I am today. So I was disappointed when Someone That Dug, a Trick or Treat 2024 fic for the 2014 Hozier song that launched a thousand lowercase fic titles, was at the bottom of most of my metrics. I took some creative risks with that fic (more dead body feelings and second person POV), and I'm proud of the result.
Story the universe appreciated way more than I expected it to
Rest on the Flight into Egypt has a very respectable 7 comment threads, but it got a whopping 36 comments from Jessica/Paul shippers having enthusiastic discussions about the ship in my comment section. I never would've guessed that a het parent/child incest ship for a M/M dominated fandom had that kind of buzz, especially a ship that I wrote in 2022 to little fanfare.
Biggest disappointment
I'm really bummed that I didn't publish any Raven Cycle fic this year, after rereading the books last fall and finding a new flush of fannish enthusiasm for the (almost) first fandom I published on my AO3 account, just in time for that account's tenth anniversary. I still have a few works in progress, and maybe I'll publish them someday, but they won't have the same impact.
Biggest pleasant surprise
It was a very unexpected, wonderful surprise that I wrote eight fics in Battleship and felt like I contributed meaningfully to my team, even if we lost. I'm competitive enough that Battleship isn't fun for me if I don't contribute to the gameplay, and this year my contributions stacked up.
Hardest story to write
I've been brainstorming a "Like Real People Do" fic about a troubled human/bog mummy romance since 2018, but I decided to start from scratch with a new version of the story when I matched on that fandom for Trick or Treat. Someone That Dug is the fourth version of that story I came up with, and it took a lot of trial and error to get it into a shape I was happy with.
Easiest story to write
Gigantic (a Big, Big Love) is a simple story about a horny teenage girl getting fingered by her huge boyfriend, except her boyfriend is a rotting Victorian corpse. This was really fun to write and probably my funniest fic of the year.
Sexiest Story
She Wanted Him, He Wanted Me. Dirty talk is hot, dirty talking your boyfriend through a bisexual bottom awakening is hotter, and Patrick/Tashi is the hottest ship I got into last year by a long mile.
Most fucked up story
In 2024 I wrote pseudo-necrophilia, organ theft, cannibalism fantasies, and multiple scenes of people cuddling with mummies, but I don't think any of that beats Rest on the Flight into Egypt's erotic incestuous adult breastfeeding in littlespace with added blasphemy.
Truest story
Point of Performance. I have nothing in common with Patrick Zweig except for a couple traits that could be interpreted as ADHD, and messy living spaces is one of them.
Favorite title
Titling your fic after a renaissance art motif is pretty pretentious, but Rest on the Flight into Egypt was too perfect for religiously-flavored Jessica/Paul erotic breastfeeding on their first cold night in Sietch Tabr. This is a popular art motif because it's a beautiful, humanizing scene of the Virgin Mary as a humble mother feeding her baby, and I enjoyed subverting that with incestuous mommy kink and Dune's cynical religious manipulation.
Favorite opening line
if you sleep always like this: In the wee hours of the morning, when darkness finally falls over the top of the world, Tom's brother visits him.
Someone That Dug: The first light I see in two thousand years is the cold yellow fire you hold in your hand, shining down into my grave.
I really love both these lines, and these fics are thematically similar/exchange gifts for the same person/creatively in conversation with each other, so I'm awarding the category to both. Creepy, tender mummy cuddling takes the win.
Favorite closing line
Human Behavior: When Oliver finally claimed Saltburn for himself, he was the strong, beautiful stag he was always meant to be.
I love a closing line that ties into the themes of the opening paragraph, and I love an unreliable narrator whose self-delusion is only revealed at the very end (which applies to the movie itself in more ways than one, some more successful than others). I also love the final scene of Saltburn, and this fic was a fun exercise of reinterpreting scenes and characters from the movie in a universe where lonely people slowly and involuntarily transform into animals.
Pairing/genre/fandom that I wrote that I never would have predicted last January
I avoided posting a heartbeat kink fic in 2023 because it felt too niche and embarrassing, so I'm surprised I posted three heartbeat fics in 2024 (don't ask me why AO3 canonized "Cardiophilia" as a parent tag of "Heartbeat Kink," because I've always seen those two terms used interchangeably).
Fandom I read/wrote that isn't reflected in my posted works
I read a lot of Interview With The Vampire fic in the fall, but my creativity had burned out by that point, so I started writing two fics and didn't finish either one. I appreciate the fandom's commitment to sexualizing seventy-year-old Daniel Molloy, and I hope he gets some hot young vampire dick in future seasons. Season three might come out this year, and I'd like to reread the first few books before then.
Writing risks and lessons learned
The riskiest exchange gift I gave last year wasn't dark or kinky, but it made the requested ship an open relationship and featured a prominent offscreen ship between half the requested pairing and multiple OCs. Battleship norms are looser than traditional exchanges, and the recipient requested "Polyamory" as a freeform tag, but I still worried that I'd crossed an unspoken line, and I can only imagine the bloodbath of wank if I asked FFA's exchange thread whether this was an appropriate gift. But the recip left a really nice comment, so I think the risk paid off.
As far as lessons: I'm capable of writing a fuckton of pretty good fic when I have a lot of creative juice, so I should pay attention to my juice levels and not beat myself up for fallow periods. The more media I consume, the more likely I am to find my next favorite character or ship. Weird, kinky, experimental shit makes me happy and I should keep writing it, and if no one in the exchange scene wants my weird shit (whether that's nonmonogamy or second person POV or adult breastfeeding), I should write it for my own damn self.
FANDOM GOALS
2024 Fandom Goals + Progress
Post a Raven Cycle fic for this account's tenth birthday - failed, and the window for tenth anniversary gifts has definitely closed by now :(
Post one of my unfinished treats from 2023 - failed
Write something that challenges me as a writer - succeeded, I tackled some complex imagery and metaphors and experimental writing styles
Write something that challenges me as a kinkster - failed by a slim margin, none of the kinks I wrote last year were truly off brand
Write something that shamelessly indulges my id - succeeded multiple times!
Sign up for no more than 2 exchanges (including pinch hits), and write for no more than 4 exchanges - failed spectacularly by signing up to 6 events and writing for 11
Do NOT sign up for Battleship - LOL
Clean up my Birthday Bash badfic sock and post a fanmix there - partial success, I renamed the account to something less jokey but haven't posted anything there yet
Post quarterly fandom updates on DW - succeeded
Post three works outside of an exchange - failed
2025 Fandom goals
Don't participate in bangs/fests/exchanges until July 1 or I've posted 2 fics outside an event, whichever comes first (not counting my in-progress treat for Candy Hearts)
Post 4 fics outside of bangs/fests/exchanges
Post 3 unfinished fics from the past two years
Post one work to AO3 that isn't fic
Post my Stranger Things post-canon Will/Mike/Eleven fic before the final season comes out and josses everything