2023 recap
Dec. 23rd, 2023 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rockyroadsterIt's close to the end of the year, so probably the best time to recap on the year, right?
I actually got back into writing this year big-time. Which is nice. I moved into a house, did a bunch of renovations, generally grew as a person and whatever. Even for the winter my mental health has been pretty alright. I think as a person I've become a lot better at ignoring things that bother me. I used to be a lot more of a reactive type. Which is not a bad trait to have, but it means that I eat up ragebait and get ill-tempered and ruin my own day sometimes. I still slip up. I don't mean to say I want to be a toxic positivity 'never criticize anything ever' sort, more that I think it's good to just know when to say something isn't your problem?
It sucks, because sometimes the ragebait/reactions get a lot more interaction. There's a post I made in the heat of the moment on my simblr that I sometimes want to delete about people being lame about female premades. I still think it's true, it's just kind of annoying that the whole "getting momentarily upset and declaring a Stance" post is one that gets a lot of notes. I think simblr in itself is an odd place for me to be in because I had been a sims fan for decades before ever trying to join a proper community about it. Which is also why I get very surprised when people read/enjoy my fanfics for it, because I feel like my writing tends to be... not shippy? Even for a ship fic. I don't really consider Tiny Creatures to be a ship fic. Like, there is a relationship and it does serve as a major thing in the final quarter, but for me it's definitely not the point. I don't know how to phrase it without sounding like an ass. It doesn't help that I'm not really into a lot of the popular fanon. Not that I think it's bad, I just don't care too much about it after a point. Fandom will Fandom.
Tiny Creatures is definitely the thing I put the most writing into. 60+ chapters, 90k words (not counting rewrites and cut content - this thing was a beast). I don't really regret anything I wrote into it. I almost regret making it a shipfic in a way, but that's more from how I know it will always get seen as a yaoi and not as me rambling for 90 thousand words about grief and mental illness and finding a place in the world as someone who isn't very normal. Being a teenager and struggling to handle normal teen life with things that are supernatural. A little bit of me reclaiming nostalgia because I really did not have a good time as a teenager. That is fandom being fandom and AO3 being built primarily for the culture of fans wanting to read about characters kissing each other, though. Which I do like the relationship in it. I think it's a fun couple and I gladly will write more about them. I think my very specific and personal interpretations of the characters have a very nice dynamic. Maybe potentially codependent. I also don't mean to snub on anyone who does like shipping fluff or say that people need to read my fic, because I am 100% of the stance that it is definitely not for anyone and I'm the target audience for it. I have written chunks of a sequel to it from Beau's POV, which is sort of where the one-shot came from, but I may never publish that one because it gets a lot more rough in ways that people may simply find unrelatable. Or maybe that is why it'd be good to publish it sometime? Who knows.
I want to get back into writing my Oblivion fanfiction, plus another that has been a disjointed pile of notes for years. I might go back and refresh my AWL fanfic. I ran into the issue of not really having my footing for it. I have worked a little on another sims 2 fanfiction with veronaville, but I also have trouble motivating for it. I've become burnt out on suburban melodrama and teenagers. I also have scrapped together some of my Nervous Subject headcanons but I will be honest and say it is so far from popular fanon of that character that I probably won't do much with it. People really like him and his character. I like writing fic of less popular characters because I can fool around with characterization as much as I want and people won't try to go "actually he wouldn't do/say that" because the popular characterization wouldn't. I can give Alex Goth OCD and make him socially inept and weird and a little bit stuffy because there isn't really a solid characterization of him. I don't know. I digress.
Either way, it's cool that it's almost 2024.
I actually got back into writing this year big-time. Which is nice. I moved into a house, did a bunch of renovations, generally grew as a person and whatever. Even for the winter my mental health has been pretty alright. I think as a person I've become a lot better at ignoring things that bother me. I used to be a lot more of a reactive type. Which is not a bad trait to have, but it means that I eat up ragebait and get ill-tempered and ruin my own day sometimes. I still slip up. I don't mean to say I want to be a toxic positivity 'never criticize anything ever' sort, more that I think it's good to just know when to say something isn't your problem?
It sucks, because sometimes the ragebait/reactions get a lot more interaction. There's a post I made in the heat of the moment on my simblr that I sometimes want to delete about people being lame about female premades. I still think it's true, it's just kind of annoying that the whole "getting momentarily upset and declaring a Stance" post is one that gets a lot of notes. I think simblr in itself is an odd place for me to be in because I had been a sims fan for decades before ever trying to join a proper community about it. Which is also why I get very surprised when people read/enjoy my fanfics for it, because I feel like my writing tends to be... not shippy? Even for a ship fic. I don't really consider Tiny Creatures to be a ship fic. Like, there is a relationship and it does serve as a major thing in the final quarter, but for me it's definitely not the point. I don't know how to phrase it without sounding like an ass. It doesn't help that I'm not really into a lot of the popular fanon. Not that I think it's bad, I just don't care too much about it after a point. Fandom will Fandom.
Tiny Creatures is definitely the thing I put the most writing into. 60+ chapters, 90k words (not counting rewrites and cut content - this thing was a beast). I don't really regret anything I wrote into it. I almost regret making it a shipfic in a way, but that's more from how I know it will always get seen as a yaoi and not as me rambling for 90 thousand words about grief and mental illness and finding a place in the world as someone who isn't very normal. Being a teenager and struggling to handle normal teen life with things that are supernatural. A little bit of me reclaiming nostalgia because I really did not have a good time as a teenager. That is fandom being fandom and AO3 being built primarily for the culture of fans wanting to read about characters kissing each other, though. Which I do like the relationship in it. I think it's a fun couple and I gladly will write more about them. I think my very specific and personal interpretations of the characters have a very nice dynamic. Maybe potentially codependent. I also don't mean to snub on anyone who does like shipping fluff or say that people need to read my fic, because I am 100% of the stance that it is definitely not for anyone and I'm the target audience for it. I have written chunks of a sequel to it from Beau's POV, which is sort of where the one-shot came from, but I may never publish that one because it gets a lot more rough in ways that people may simply find unrelatable. Or maybe that is why it'd be good to publish it sometime? Who knows.
I want to get back into writing my Oblivion fanfiction, plus another that has been a disjointed pile of notes for years. I might go back and refresh my AWL fanfic. I ran into the issue of not really having my footing for it. I have worked a little on another sims 2 fanfiction with veronaville, but I also have trouble motivating for it. I've become burnt out on suburban melodrama and teenagers. I also have scrapped together some of my Nervous Subject headcanons but I will be honest and say it is so far from popular fanon of that character that I probably won't do much with it. People really like him and his character. I like writing fic of less popular characters because I can fool around with characterization as much as I want and people won't try to go "actually he wouldn't do/say that" because the popular characterization wouldn't. I can give Alex Goth OCD and make him socially inept and weird and a little bit stuffy because there isn't really a solid characterization of him. I don't know. I digress.
Either way, it's cool that it's almost 2024.