#end of the year wrap up

[manogirl]

Random 2023 BL Awards I made up

Best use of music in a BL:

I was going to just blanket statement say Only Friends, and then I was thinking, wait, was anything more touching than Khaotung sobbing his way through "The Moon Represents My Heart" in Moonlight Chicken...and then I decided that the best use of music was the use of Conan Gray's "The Story" in The Eighth Sense. It was an absolute banger of a use of diegetic music, and every time I hear the song now I think about that absolute monster kiss.

Best Boys and I don't mean acting (no arguments taken):

Ohm Pawat. Mix Sahaphap. Book Kasidet. Boss Chaikamon. Khaotung Thanawat. Barcode Tinnasit.

My personal Blorbos:

Force Jiratchapong. Jisub Lim. Off Jumpol. Boun Noppanut. Pond Naravit.

Please can they have a lead role?:

WinnySatang. Neo Trai. Fluke Pusit.

Soon to grace our screens again (HOORAY!):

BosstonJo. YinWar. ZeeNuNew. PondPhuwin. GeminiFourth. BossNoeul. BounPrem.

Shows that absolutely need to stick the landing in 2024:

Last Twilight. Cherry Magic TH. Pit Babe. The Sign. Twins.

MVP:

Mark Pakin. Obviously.

Thing I've spent the most time speculating about:

What IF Boun and Max Nattapol just did one little kiss in Red Peafowl? Just one! That's all I want. (That's a lie. I totally want more.)

The Bright Vachirawit and Win Metawin award for "wouldn't touch BL again with a ten-foot pole":

Nanon Korapat.

Best cameo:

OBVIOUSLY Kaiseki Dear to Me is one big excellent cameo, but my personal faves in that show are Aaron Lai and Hank Wang. Second place goes to Max Nattapol in Love Senior, the crappy little GL that I can't drop.

Best BL to music star:

Sorry to the GMMTV men but it's so clearly Jeff Satur. What a rockstar.

2022 BL I still rewatch constantly:

Love in the Air. Only the PayuRain story.

Fave OST from a BL (and I don't like many):

"Healing", from My School President.

Best Director:

Pace Jojo Tichakorn, it's gotta be Aof Noppharnach, still.

Number of old + new BLs I watched in 2023:

56, including My Dear Gangster Oppa and Bake Me Please, which will finish before January.

[linaxart]

2023 TOG fanart wrap up!

[2021 wrap-up] [2022 wrap-up]

That time of the year again! This one was a weird one and I feel like generally I was way behind the numbers I reached previous years but lets see:

This year I drew 62 TOG fanarts out of 96 digital pieces. On closer inspection:

I featured the characters 87 times:

Joe: 34

Nicky: 23

Nile: 11

Andy: 8

Booker: 9

Quỳnh: 7

By ship/grouping:

Joe/Nicky: 14

Family*: 4

Andromache/Quỳnh: 3

Andy/Achilles, Joe/Booker/Nile, Nile/Moose: 1 each

*fanarts where platonic relationships were the focus/the whole gang was featured

Solo character drawings:

Joe: 19

Nicky: 5

Andy: 1

Quỳnh: 3

Booker: 2

Others section:

Originals: 7

Suburra: 5

Diabolik: 4

Grishaverse: 3

Kenzarelli: 1

So, in total it's a little less than last year, and less varied, not surprising given the lack of new material (the sequels WHEN???) and that my inspiration has been on and off this year due to life and again, no new material :(

Thank you thank you thank you to everyone who's been interested in my art, who has rebblogged it or left a kind comment, they all mean a lot and feed my wonky inspiration well <3 thank you too to my fellow artists on @theartguard still chugging and drawing and keeping each other inspired and motivated despite it all <3<3<3

[cr-noble-writes]

12 and 24? 😊

12. favorite character to write about this year

Jackson Shepard, by far. I didn't write about him as much as I did about other people this year, but he grabbed me in a choke hold, and I've very much enjoyed writing him. I can't wait to write more of him, to be honest.

24. favorite fic you read this year

Oh gosh. I've read so many good ones, I am honestly not sure I could narrow it down to just one. I think, if I can only have one favorite, its going to be Pheonix by @mallaidhsomo. It's just so god damn good, and I am madly in love with Sidney Shepard haha

Thank you for the ask! The questions came from this post!

[oscarwrites]

12/31/22 Update

Hi!

It’s more of an end-of-the-year update than a weekly update, to be honest. I’m still on a writing break for now and didn’t do much this week beyond editing the last bonus for Patreon. Seasonal depression is kicking my ass and my energy levels are down the drain. I hope I’ll get better after the move, but I suspect it’ll take some time to settle into the new place.

I remember being pretty down last year as well, when I did my end-of-the-year wrap-up and I wish I could be more upbeat this time but I guess it has to do with the season and the dreadful lack of sunlight lol. At least I’m moving to a sunnier region (in theory) so maybe it’ll help?

Like last year, I’ll share with you my word count tracking doc. I’ve tweaked it a bit to better fit my needs and I’ll probably tweak it again next year. Here’s the link.

The last graph is a bit different than last year because I was curious to see how my work was spread across all stories. It seems that I’ve been working on 8YR the most consistently and as a result, it has the highest word count with 102k words. Although Better Off isn’t that far behind with 99k words. Gonzague is easily last with 29k, which is understandable since it wasn’t a priority this year.

In total, I wrote 232k words this year which is a little more than the previous year (197k). I’d like to think that means my efforts to work consistently are paying off, but I don’t want to look at it as a record to beat and set unreasonable expectations for myself next year.

Of course, I would like to be able to write more in the future, but I also need to come to terms that I might never be as productive as some other people. Which is a very hard thing to do when it feels like your output is a big factor in making your games successful. But no matter all the workarounds and tricks and tools I can try and use to be more productive, my difficulties aren’t likely to ever go away so the only real option is to make peace with them I suppose.

(It would help a great deal if the world was a more flexible and forgiving one, but that’s not something I’ll get into here lol.)

I hope you all had a good year and if not, I’ve got my fingers crossed for a better 2023. Thank you to everyone who has stuck around, read my stories, interacted with me, and supported me on Patreon or Ko-Fi. I’ll see you next year. <3

[princessofbookaholics]

END OF THE YEAR BOOK TAG 2022

It’s just me answering a bunch of bookish questions to recap this year. Some answers might just be a continuation of my Mid Year Book Tag so that I don’t repeat the books I mentioned there. Here’s the recap:

1. How many books did you read this year?

I read 203 books this year 🥳

2. What genres did you read?

94 romance books

53 mystery/thrillers

16 contemporaries

14 fantasy books

11 graphic novel/manga

8 non-fiction books

3 anthologies

2 historical fiction books

1 poetry book

1 classic

3. What age ranges did you read?

151 adult books

24 new adult

23 young adult

5 middle grade

4. How many books got each rating?

35 five star books (includes 3 rereads)

87 four star books

64 three star books

17 two star books

5. Best book you’ve read this year

I made a post with all my 5 star reads of the year so I'm not choosing one!

6. Have you completed any series this year?

I read Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz which concluded the duology and It Starts With Us by Colleen Hoover and binge read these series:

7. Biggest disappointment (for the second half of the year)

I expected too much, again

8. Biggest surprise (for the second half of the year)

I didn’t expect to enjoy them as much as I did:

9. Underrated gems (for the second half of the year)

These books deserve more love:

10. Beautiful book covers (for the second half of the year)

11. New favorite authors you discovered

Romance authors: Mariana Zapata, Maya Hughes, Talia Hibbert, Tessa Bailey, Angie Hockman, Ava Wilder, Lauren Asher, Allison Ashley, Meghan Quinn, B. K. Borison, Kandi Steiner (can you tell I read too much romance?)

Mystery/Thriller authors: Stacy Willingham, Laura Dave, Jennifer Hillier, Robyn Harding

Fantasy authors: Fonda Lee, Rachel Griffin, Amanda Foody

Contemporary authors: Akemi Dawn Bowman, Emiko Jean

12. Favorite new releases of the year

I had a hard time with 2022 releases by my favorite authors since they were disappointing but new authors win this round!

13. Books that lived up to the hype

You guys shouted at everyone to read these, and you were right, they are amazing

14. Books that did not live up to the hype

These just weren’t for me

15. Longest and shortest book you read this year

Longest Book: Jade Legacy by Fonda Lee (713 pages)

Shortest Book: The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (63 pages)

16. Did you accomplish your reading goals this year?

Read 100 books (done)

Complete 5 book series (done)

Read a non-fiction every month (8/12 books done) the romance genre took over my life

TBR Buster Challenge 2022 (23/25 books done) I kinda gave up on this

17. Reading plans for next year

Read 100 books

Complete 5 book series

[nimata-beroya]

End of Year Wrap Up

I was tagged by my bestie @takadasaiko Thanks dearie!

Total number of completed works

6 in total: Welcome to Yavin IV (Part of Road to Lira San series); Running Out of Air, Something in the Dark, Ramaanla, and The Tables are Turned (as part of Whumptober); and High Above the Ground (for Foxiyo Week).

Total number of WIPs worked on this year

3 new works plus 1 old one. The Enemy Within (from Road to Lira San series); How to Save a Life (for Whumptober); and Deconstructed Reality (Kalluzeb minibang) are the new ones. I also updated Sandawuni Va Umtidagir (Unbreakable Bond) that it was first published in 2020.

WIPs neglected this year

The only one that I truly neglected and was first published in 2022 was Deconstructed Reality, but I have Rough Awakening from the previous year that is even more neglected. Oops 😅

Fandoms I've written in

1 (Counting Star Wars as a whole, or 4 sub fandoms)

Total word count

37,083 words published (+ over 15k words written for unpublished new works/updates)

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you expected?

*sighs* A lot less 😞 I thought 2022 was going to be the year of my comeback to writing, big time! It was not.

Did you take any writing risks this year?

I think I did in 2 instances. I started writing for my own OCs in a massive project that will expand to at least 4 multichaptered fics, if not more (Yikes 😬), and I did a little experiment with changing the type of narrator in one of my Whumptober fics.

Do you have any goals for the new year?

My goal is updating the WIPs I neglected last year and continue on the ones are still halfway in the story, and write and publish the 2 first installments of my "Insurrection" series, and work on the third, which is the longest on the series. If I can manage, I'll post that as well if I finish writing it.

Biggest disappointment?

The lack of inspiration brought up by the writer's block that hit me a large part of the year. I thought I was going to write a lot more, since I got my new laptop at the beginning of 2022, but it never happened.

Biggest surprise? 

How the idea of participating in febuwhump (which I never actually did) with a single multichap fic, stringing up all the prompts together, turned into the "Insurrection" series. How 28 whump prompts turned into not less than 4 long fics, I don't know. I guess it was my head adding plot points after plot points. This project seems daunting but I'm determined to pull it off.

Most popular story of the year?

Welcome to Yavin IV, definitely. It's the one that has more hits, likes, and bookmarks of all the works I published in 2022. Although, Deconstructed Reality is the most commented and with more subscriptions, but being for a mini-bang, that it was expected.

What's your own favorite story of the year? 

Oof! That's hard to decide. There's always something special in each of my fics, for a reason or another. I can't choose, so all of them 😆

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion

I think it might be The Tables Are Turned. If I compare its stats with that of the rest of my Kalluzeb fics, it has a noticeable less engagement from readers. I think that since I hinted at kink stuff very mildly in it (and tagged it as such), people were scared off. It's a shame, because the kink stuff I mentioned in the story is so mild, and it's not even smut, which is probably what people think they'll find inside. To be honest, I knew this could happen. I knew that by tagging BDSM in it, some people would run. It's a risk I took because I'd rather tag correctly and not having as many comments than not tagging and receive hate comments for not doing so. I do my part in facilitating that everyone can curate their experience to their liking.

Other story of mine that I could say it's underappreciated is High Above the Ground, which has about the same stats than The Tables are Turned, but being a fic for a rarepair, it's not exactly surprising that has less than 200 kudos.

Most fun story to write

Again, The Tables are Turned. I had so much fun writing it, because for the first time I put the good guys as whumpers and the bad guy as whumpee. It was hilarious to me having an imperial officer sweating in fear.

Most unintentionally telling story

Maybe High Above the Ground. It turned out to be very differently than what I first had in mind when I started writing it. I love the result though ☺️ even if nobody else thinks so.

My favorite part of fandom this year

That I became more confident in writing in this fandom, mostly because I've expanded my lore knowledge watching old shows I haven't watched before and getting very slowly into both canon and legend books. Also I made more good new friends.

Tagging anyone who wants to do this!!!

[readtilyoudie]

2022 Wrap-up

Total # of books finished: 680

The goal for 2022: Well, I obviously wasn’t planning on reading that much XD It’s all because I got back into manga.

The goal for 2023: No goal! I just want to enjoy reading again. <---I’m stealing this from Jo. 

Favorite book from this year: Favorite new book: Kiss Him, Not me (for manga) and The gentle Art of Fortune Hunting by KJ Charles. Favorite reread: Gentle Rogue by Johanna Lindsey (though I’m sure there’s more for both...)

Some new favorite authors: A bunch of new manga artist? LOL. I wouldn’t mind trying another of KJ Charles stuff, but a lot of the stuff I read and liked was rereads. 

Best book buy this year: Most of my manga series...? I feel like I’ve hardly bought actual books this year, and the few I have bought physical copies- One I didn’t like, and I haven’t gotten to the other.

How I would describe my 2022 reading journey: I tried to read the monthly book and at least one other for the month, but I think that hardly worked out, and the end of the year was just...not good for reading. 

What I learned about myself this year: I take FOREVER to get through a series. I mean, that I didn’t know that, but I have a bad habit of putting things off for any number of reasons. 

An expectation for 2023: If anything, I want to get back to basics. Reading at least one romance novel a month...or every other month. I also really need to finish the Darren Shan Saga

Some books I’m looking forward to reading: The rest of the Scarlett Scott series, also finishing up the Malory/Anderson family series. I also have soooo many anthology books I bought over the last year that I need to start. 

[desert-dyke]

I read a lot this year. How much? Watch this viddy to find out + ending slideshow of every book I read with its rating

[acourtofpaperandink]

2023 End of Year Wrap Up

2023 Review Wrap-up  Top of our TBR: (The books we didn’t get to this year but still really want to.) BookGirl: So I thought I read all of the books on my most anticipated list for 2023 but apparently I missed and totally forgot about Fallen City by Adrienne Young, The Third Daughter by Adrienne Tooley, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang. That said I don’t even remember why they were on…

[jessryno]

2023 End of Year Wrap Up

2023 Review Wrap-up  Top of our TBR: (The books we didn’t get to this year but still really want to.) BookGirl: So I thought I read all of the books on my most anticipated list for 2023 but apparently I missed and totally forgot about Fallen City by Adrienne Young, The Third Daughter by Adrienne Tooley, To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X Chang. That said I don’t even remember why they were on…

[crescentfool]

reunion 🌸

[chinese--satellite]

"we've always been friends, we always will be friends. but friends is a big word."

[linaxart]

2022 TOG fanart wrap-up

[2021 wrap-up]

There's still a little to go from 2022, which was a year with very tall highs and very deep lows for me, but I really wanted to do this so here we go! This year I drew 125 digital pieces, of which 75 were TOG fanarts, that's 3 more than 2021. On closer inspection:

I featured the characters 127 times:

Joe: 37

Nicky: 27

Nile: 24

Andy: 16

Booker: 12

Quỳnh: 11

Lykon: 1

By ship/grouping:

Joe/Nicky: 20

Family*: 9

Booker/Nile: 6

Andromache/Quỳnh: 4

*fanarts where platonic relationships were the focus/the whole gang was featured

Solo character drawings:

Nile & Joe: 11 each

Andy & Nicky: 6 each

Quỳnh: 5

Booker & Lykon: 1 each

Kenzarelli section:

Eva Kant: 6

Diabolik: 4

Majid: 3

Eva/Diabolik: 3

Eva/Diabolik/Majid: 2

The net amount is close to last year's, which feels odd given how busy I've been compared to 2021, but overall my drawings diversified a little more in characters, which I really like to see (also 2021 was the Yusuf Bingo and I went insane).

Once again I want to say thank you to everyone who has reblogged and left tags on my art, who commented on servers (specially the lovely people in @theartguard who made this year extra special), and whoever spared an encouraging word, it's been a rough year for digital artists and fanartists, so each one meant a lot and kept me motivated through everything, gracias totales &lt;3

I have no idea what 2023 will look like and what the sequel will bring like but I hope to see y'all back here in 365 days, happy new year!

[cr-noble-writes]

#13, #14 & #21 from the fanfic end of the year asks <3

13. favorite writing song/artist/album of this year

I don't have a favorite song/artist/album of the year for writing, but I do have a favored playlist for writing this year, mostly because I've spent the last few months writing Jackson. So here's my Jackson Shepard playlist!

14. a fic you didn’t expect to write

Verisimilitude- mostly I didn't expect to write this because its very rare that I write things that are just straight up smut haha. But also, I fully didn't expect Jackson to have my brain in a chokehold for several months this year.

21. most memorable comment/review

This comment from @swaps55 on Vicissitude. It's always nice when people who weren't necessarily privy to why I made a particular writing choice pick up on why I made that choice.

Thank you for the ask!! The questions came from this post

[soltiana]

a long awaited (???) sequel to this post, stamp but 98-style, eps 8-12

[gunsatthaphan]

happy new year from the gmmtv squad lol ✌🏻🎊🎆