#I started off watching arrow but I was sorta disappointed by the fic spread and so

[readingwriter92]

That sigh of relief when you watch a new show and are super hooked and there are fics

[elrhiarhodan]

2016 - A Year in Fanworks

By the Numbers (2015 numbers in parentheses) Stories: 82 (49) Words: 466,385 (288,525) Monthly Average: 38,865 (24,044) Daily Average: 1,278 (790) Longest: 162,000 for a story that I don't want to announce here (more about that below) Shortest: A variety of Tumblr prompt fills at 100 to 300 words each To compare, my 2015 Review | 2014 Review | 2013 Review | 2012 Review | 2011 Review | 2010 Review Total number of words since 2010: 2,554,295 The rest of this exercise in navel-gazing is under the cuts. 

The List of 2016 Stories January – 7 The Slow Hand of Time The Slow Burn of Anger Beneath the Words The Slow Dance of Madness First Time, Forever Like a Line in the Sand A Knotted Cord Untying February – 6 A transparent house that you and I built Recompense A Sticky Situation Bitter Hearts Well, This Could Have Gone Better You Are Not Alone In This March – 2 The New S.T.A.R. Labs Harrison Wells Eats Snacks April – 5 Early Days of a Better Nation Message From the Dead The Scent of Speed The Silence Between the Birdsong So On We Go May – 34 A Smile in the Darkness Windows To the Soul A Dark and Unwilling Desire Mine In His Pants The Act of Creation Running to a Standstill Sweeter Than Candy on a Stick A Most Improbable Miracle As Brothers We Will Stand It's a Thin Line (Between Love and Hate) Crazy from the Heat In the Winter Newton's Second Law Time On My Hands Still Alive The Braille of a Blind Affection (memories pursue me) And The Storm Watch Brews (a concert of kings) When it Comes to the Bennett Family Legacy, Size Matters The Value of Experimentation Sons of the Silent Age Blood-Stained Hands, Blood-Stained Heroes Whatever You Desire Hour Follows Hour (like water follows water) A Stolen Gift Hour of the Slack and Escape Interlude, With Adults Eternity's Sunrise The Edge of the Coin Join the Club Her Barry, His Barry I Like You, Too Love's As Short as Summer Nights The Race of Their Lives June – 4 In the Silence of the Night (innocence is here) The Best Laid Plans We Stumble, We Falter (but we're no different from anyone) In the Kingdom of the Blind July - 2 Allsorts Ani L'Dodi, v'Dodi Li August – 4 I Never Dreamed That I'd Love Somebody Like You (The Wicked Game Remix) Pleasure and Prerogative A Well-Earned Punishment The Central City Examiner - Society Pages (The Marriage Bargain) September – 3 Show Me What You're Good At (and you're good at everything) Tugging at the Darkness We Two Are One October – 3 You Only Kiss Twice You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies Dreamers With Empty Hands November – 4 New Tricks Birdsong Before the Dawn I'll Come Running You'll Find Magic Wherever You Look December – 7 We Followed an Unlikely Star Call Out My Name Whatever May Come, Whatever May Go (don't give up) Cast Your Fate To the Wind Don't Let it Bring You Down What's in a Name The Slow Bite of Desire Overview As usual, for 2016, I have included stories published on my journal and AO3 from January 1, 2016 until December 31, 2016. It includes stories that were works in progress/unpublished in 2015 (or earlier) and published in 2016, and doesn’t include any comment fic or other works that were not published as stand-alones on my journal or AO3, or any unpublished works in progress, or any completed but unpublished works. Ruminations 2015 was a low point for word count (my lowest full-year total) and there were a lot of contributing factors. When I did my analysis last year, I attributed much of it to my workload and big writing projects. In retrospect, there was another factor I was not willing to consider. I was, to be honest, burning out on White Collar. Six years, two million words of fan fiction spread over nearly 700 stories - it's not surprising I felt like the story well was running dry. (And yes, I know that 288k is still a very respectable number of words, but it was a low point for me and kind of felt like a failure.) So, what was different for 2016? Well - a bright and shiny new fandom! Last year, during the time I took off for the winter holidays, I discovered The Flash. I'd tried watching The Arrow on Netflix a few times, but couldn't really get into it. The Flash was a completely different kettle of fish and it had something that was like catnip for me: a curious relationship between the young hero and a very shady older mentor. In describing it to my White Collar friends, I said it pulled me in the way the Neal/Alder grabbed me. I got hit by the plot bunnies in early January and started writing. The words poured out of me like water and the faucet still hasn't turned off. Of the eighty-two stories, sixty-five were for The Flash, eleven were for White Collar and five were Flash RPS. And for the first time in three years, I did the full complement of MMOM – 31 stories in 31 days, and unlike prior years, I deliberately didn't try to limit myself to 300-word ficlets. Some of those stories were quite meaty (please pardon the pun!), and my efforts for the Merry Month of Masturbation contributed significantly to my total word-count for the year. Although I only wrote eleven White Collar stories and did not participate in this year's Big Bang, that isn't to say that I'm not writing White Collar anymore - far from it. I'm just a lot more selective about my stories. I'm continuing established 'verses like Wonder(ful) Years and Dragon'verse, and I hope to get bunnied for Gloriana, too. It's a heady thing - having a new fandom. If there's one regret - it's that there's no real presence for The Flash on LJ - it's pretty much all on that shiny shithole known as Tumblr. I don't think I'll ever quite get used to that. The Year End Meme Questions… And now to answer the questions that everyone asks themselves… 1. Favorite. Oh, that's really kind of hard. I recently did an Ask the Author meme, and I'd picked The Slow Dance of Madness as the favorite, but in retrospect, I have to reconsider. I think I'm going to have to say A transparent house that you and I built, which I wrote for the poetry_fiction challenge. But that's not quite right either. I really do want to tout the massive story I wrote and published (in sorta-secret) and I discuss more in a bit, but that's not fair. Maybe the whole Dominance Hierarchy series, which started out as a bit of tumblr prompt fun and became something far too lyrical? 2. Best. Since I can't really keep signal boosting a story that no one can yet read, I'm going to have to say that As Brothers We Will Stand is my best story of the year. It was a long and plotty epic that started out from a simple premise – what if Barry hadn't been able to rescue Harry from Zoom at the end of S2.14 – Escape From Earth-2. It was supposed to be short and smutty but got legs and lots and lots of moving pieces. I'm proud of how everything tied together and nothing was left hanging to explain in a sequel or timestamp. I'm particularly proud of the sex scenes – which is not something I ordinarily tout about my fic. This was (believe it or not), the first time I wrote three men in a bed, and I'm seriously pleased with how it all worked out. 3. Most Fun. Easy to pick - Harrison Wells Eats Snacks. I'd been binge-listening to the M.A.T.E.S. podcast (Mike and Tom Eat Snacks) and that infected my brain. And I should make honorable mention to both The New S.T.A.R. Labs (Harry needs to make some money and decides to invent over-engineered sex toys) and You'll Find Magic Wherever You Look (Cisco invents a new gun, Harry is transfigured, and much angsty cuteness ensues). 4. Most Under-appreciated. One of my early Flash stories got very little love, and I can understand why. A Knotted Cord Untying was a fusion between The Flash and Ed (the light romantic comedy from the late '90s that made Tom Cavanagh a star). I resurrected the original Harrison Wells and his wife, Tess Morgan, and set them in Stuckeyville. I thought I'd done a clever job of integrating the two worlds, but the fandom voted with their silence (and someone I respected made an off-hand comment about not really liking these types of fusions, that they 'never really work anyway' and so my writer's soul kind of died a little at that). 5. Sexiest. Like I said above, I wrote all thirty-one days of MMOM, and that's a lot of smut. And almost all of my Flash fic is shippy and sexy (looking at the list of stories, out of the sixty-two, I think that maybe three are purely gen). So picking the sexiest will be hard. But I think I'm going to have to say that it's a tie between The Slow Dance of Madness, which has the most creative sex scene I've ever written, I Never Dreamed That I'd Love Somebody Like You (the Wicked Game remix), which is a sex pollen story, and the entirety of the Dominance Hierarchy series, which is really all about smut (until you get to the third story, then it's smut and heartbreak). 6. Holy Crap, That’s Wrong Even for You. The past few years, this category has been filled by something in my Transformations genre, something usually unbelievably cracky. But not this year, because this year, I wrote some seriously smutty smut, including a story that involves daddy-kink and fantasy incest. Yeah, VERY VERY wrong. Hour Follows Hour (like water follows water). Read at your own peril. And it's het. 7. Hardest to Write. I don't know if any story was particularly difficult to write this year. Words flowed like water. I was stymied a bit when I was writing my White Collar Pairings story The Best Laid Plans – I couldn't seem to find a focus for it, but when I did – it simply exploded out of me (pun NOT intended). I also had some trouble getting started on one of my Fic-Can-Ukah stories, the long anticipated wedding story for The Wonder(ful) Years - We Followed an Unlikely Star, if just because I'd written the engagement and the honeymoon, as well as so many references to the actual wedding that I struggled to find something fresh to say. 8. Biggest Disappointment. I can't think of a single story I'd want to rewrite. 9. Biggest Surprise. Okay, now I get to talk a little about the epic story that was published in a place that no one will find it. It's called Truth out of a Lie and it wasn't supposed to be 162k words. It wasn't even supposed to be half that length. Or a third. It was, at its inception, supposed to be about 40k and when I started writing it, I wondered if I was overestimating myself. I had one square left on my Gen Bingo card to make a blackout and instead of taking the easy way out, a conversation with my enabler in chief made me flip the script and take an unexpected path. Another surprise was just how easy it was to write – the story simply poured out of me. I started writing on June 22 and finished the story in chief on October 28 – about 154k. There were two scenes I needed to write and in the writing, I realized I wanted to make some significant character changes, which entailed another whole chunk of words. That was also something I've never done – gone back and shifted a major plot point. And so, what's it about? It's the origin story for a series I created during MMOM - EoBarry Revealed - where Eobard and Barry are happily married, immortal speedsters. It's a close canon A/U – which means it tracks with canon events through seasons One and Two, but some important things are different. Basically, Eobard is about eight-five percent less murderous. So, when is this really going to get published in my space (it's already published in a comm not to be named, but is available if you're diligent, but please don't – it's not beta'd and likely full of mistakes and gaping plotholes)? Soon. My beta-reader is faced with a rather Herculean task of editing this monster and that takes time. I'm also very strict about not publishing a story until it's done and if my beta reader has to go back and make recommendations in the early part of the story after reading the end, I'll be screwed if I've already started publishing. When it is ready, it will get two chapters a week and there are 36 or 40 chapters (I really don't remember at this point). But they will come without fail. 10. Riskiest. I am going to have to say my first Flash fanfic, The Slow Hand of Time. It was a big risk because I was writing for a brand new fandom and I hadn't consumed all of the available canon. I just got smacked in the face with EoBarry feels and had to write it. Looking Forward… Any Story You’d Like to Rewrite: Nope. I'm pretty satisfied with my writing in 2016. How Will New Canon Change Your Writing: No more new canon for White Collar, which still makes me very sad. But new canon for The Flash starts arriving at the end of the month. I'm definitely looking forward to it, but I don't know if it will affect my writing. I'm basically EoBarry trash right now, and unless EoWells makes another appearance, I'll be writing A/Us until the end of time. Goals for 2017: None. Just write what I enjoy writing. Avoid challenges that make me anxious. And that’s the 2016 Year in Review. Acknowledgements, most heartfelt As always, I must thank my dearest sinfulslasher, who keeps enabling me in the hopes that someday I'll write that Neal/Satchmo story for her. And also, my bestie, theatregirl7299 who picks me up and dusts me off when I fall down. And I must acknowledge my delightful new friend – @timeforalongstory, who rolls around with me in the EoBarry trashcan like no one else, who enables me to write the wildest headcanon and keeps me going with the most amazing feedback. THANK YOU!!!!!!!!! And to everyone who reads my stories, thank you, thank you and thank you again – my appreciation for you is boundless. I haven't been so good at responding to feedback as I want to be, but please know that I cherish every kind thought and word you leave for me.