#i dont think this needs any more tags. doing charts and spreadsheets for fun

[triptrippy]

if you are the kind of person who loves looking at stats and figures for fan characters i have awesome newwwws

[tracybirds]

It's New Year's Eve!!

I just wanted to take a little time to reflect on the year and celebrate it and say a ginormous thank you to everyone who has taken the time to drop by around here!! It's been a blast getting to share the Thunderbirds love and I love writing for TAG so much!!

This year had some major highs and lows for me which we're not going to dwell on, because the most important and fun thing is the spreadsheet I set up at the beginning of the year has had it's final update and I have numbers and graphs to happily geek out about!!! Naturally there's some skew - particularly with anything pertaining to AO3 since fics published earlier have had more time in circulation but still, I think it's made for a pretty good overview :D

Numbers and sappy feelings and reflections and things under the cut (there's even some pretty pie charts)

I published 45 separate works this year - many were short ficlets and subsequently gathered into the Thunderbirds Snippets collection which was the "fic" that overall had the most engagement (pretty impressive when you consider the collection only has AO3 stats!). This came to a total of 43,456 published words for complete stories (plus a whole slew for wips! At least another 20,000 is languishing in other documents :D We'll see those come out to play soonish, I'm sure)

As is usual for me, the overwhelming majority of fic this year was short oneshot stories. In fact I didn't finish any multichapter stories this year! Just didn't have the time for that kind of commitment for most of the year :D I also relied a lot on people giving me prompts and I'm endlessly grateful to them (especially @janetm74 and @katblu42 who sent me prompts nearly every time I asked!). I would have spent a lot more time feeling sorry for myself and languishing in writer's block without them bolstering me along <3

As you can see, I did make a fic genre graph, but I'll be honest - this is something I need to tweak for next year because I don't feel the genres well reflect what I actually wrote. This is partially because I only made space for each fic to have one genre, and partially because I dont think the genres I picked well described the writing I did. But looking it over, there's a clear emphasis on family dynamics and the ups and downs that go along with them and I do think that's my favourite part of writing.

When looking over the characters that called to me the most this year - Virgil's our clear winner! Which I think is hilarious because I feel like I wrote with a large Scott emphasis at the start of the year and a large John emphasis towards the end. But the numbers don't lie!! I think partially guiding this is that I wrote a lot more drabbles for Virgil (and Gordon.... lots of them two together!), but Scott and John got more substantial stories on the whole. Maybe. I'd need to check the raw data :D

In terms of people - I am totally blown away by how generous people have been reading my work <3 I see you and it's an absolutely humbling thing to see the same names cropping up over and over again, returning to read my stories which I don't often have a lot of confidence in (fake it 'til you make it, right?). Somehow getting an overview of the whole year only reinforces that and across AO3 and Tumblr I have nearly 4000 thank yous to say; one for every like, kudos, comment, hit, reblog, reply, whatever <3 Many many of which are being given to the same people over and over again, you guys literally rock hardcore and when I think about that number I'm literally so overwhelmed. It's easy to post something that only gets a couple of notes or kudos or whatever and feel discouraged, but when you look at the whole picture? Unreal <3

Now for the fun part; I've gone and taken all that data and figured out what my top 5 most popular fics of the year have been (excluding the snippet/prompt collections :D) so here goes!

Consequences [tumblr] | [AO3]

Cave In [tumblr] | [AO3]

But Not Forgotten [tumblr] | [AO3]

Roommates [tumblr] | [AO3]

The First Time [tumblr] | [AO3] and Hard Places [tumblr] | [AO3] (tied!)

Hey did you know typing [ tumblr ] did that? New things learnt every day lol...

Amazingly, these didn't line up with MY favourites nearly at all! So I've listed my personal top 5 stories below <3

Capture Comfort [tumblr] | [AO3]

The Scare Floor [tumblr] | [AO3]

Consequences [tumblr] | [AO3]

"Prompt Generator #5" [tumblr] | [AO3]

Different Universes [tumblr] | [AO3]

I'm not much for goal setting; it reminds me too much of school and sitting in stupid form classes with zero ideas as to what to say because apparently writing "I want to do my best and enjoy myself" wasn't a good enough goal. So instead I have some ~~intentions~~ that I'd like to carry into 2023 <3

Get better at replying to comments >///< I don't mean to ignore people and I know most of you know that but I do think replying to comments is! an important aspect of community building in fandom and I've neglected my part in that :P I love you all I swear and there's a lot of people I'd like to get to know better <3

Deep breaths here because this one does scare me - I want to write and finish Where Parallel Lines Meet. The scope of this fic scares me but I do love it and I know that it's going to push me a lot. It's going to be great though <3

ARCHIVE AS I GO LIKE WHY DO I NOT DO THAT (it's the titles rip)

This one isn't writing - I just want to rewatch Thunderbirds :D

Finally I've got some specific people to thank. You've all been amazing and kind to me this year and I'm giving you all the giant-est hug. You're also all incredible storytellers and writers and artists in your own right and I am genuinely so thankful to know you all <3

@gumnut-logic - I know I say this constantly but I LOVE getting to geek out about all sorts of different things and I have to say thank you for reading over so many of my fics and picking me up when I think that they're terrible <3 You're the bestest friend and I'm very lucky to have met you :D

@katblu42 - I love your very cheery chats that we've gotten to have, lots of laughter and fun and you always have such sensible advice it's great. Thank you for diving in and not missing a beat when I get randomly dramatic about whatever I'm writing because even when I've completely failed to explain the context you always seem to know exactly what's what :D

@janetm74 - you've been such an incredible cheerleader and every time (because you've done it multiple times!!) that you go through my AO3 and read stuff and comment in quick succession is always so exciting and overwhelming because what the heck?? Remember those 4000 thank yous I have to give - I'm pretty sure at least a thousand of them are yours <3 Thank you as well for sending me all the fun space things you think I'll enjoy and also for egging me on when I'm spouting off silly ideas in response :D I'll need to give them all a proper go someday!!

@gaviiadastra, @the-original-sineater, @godsliltippy, @mariashades, @amistrio - I've so enjoyed getting to know you all this year - you're all amazing writers and totally inspiring and very kind to boot :D I love how unique you all are and how you all bring such amazing ideas to life and I have to say thank you for both chatting with me but also for sharing all your wonderful work <3

@squiddokiddo thank you for be a very consistent source of encouragement and fountain of kindness when I'm having down days in my personal life. You didn't know me at all but that never stopped you from reaching out and checking in and given that this year was beyond shitty in many various different ways it meant the world in ways that I didn't always know how to express <3

oh and there's so many more people - I've had the good fortune to make some amazing friends and I love you all very much.

I don't think I'll get the current chapter I'm working on done today, so this will likely be my final post of the year (although lol I'm sure I'll still be mucking around on my main) and I KNOW this is sappy and you're not meant to put emotion into the data, but it's pretty damn difficult when the numbers are made up out of friendship and people reaching out from across the globe to say "hey, me too <3"

So see you all in 2023!! I can't wait :D