#that’s how I’m still working on four (4) oneshot continuations since 2020

[davidmann95]

Comics this week (11/25/2020)?

Anonymous said: This week's floppies?

Anonymous said: This week’s comics?

Anonymous said: Have you read Red Hood #51 yet? It’s one of the best stories Jason has been in since Under the Red Hood and I don’t think I can go back to his normal stories after this

Anonymous said: God damn the Other History of the DC Universe has a pretty brutal call out of Superman, yet as a Superman fan I wasn’t offended or put off by it at all. Ridley specifically narrowed in on one of the key flaws of Superman, his need for public love and approval. What did you think of the portrayal of Supes?

Anonymous said: Thoughts on "The Other History of the DC Universe" and why it's already one of the greatest comics of all time?

Anonymous said: Thoughts on "Other History"?

X-Men #15: Heck yeah, Quiet Council discussing protocol, this is what I come to Jonathan Hickman’s X-Men for, and Cyclops getting his Captain America in Hickvengers moment.

X of Swords: Destruction: Look this rules and I guess I understood the Arakko story by the end but not the Otherworld/Captain Britain stuff, and it’s the former that’s gonna matter to Hick-Men going forward. But I don’t care if it put a ‘_ of 22′ counter across the top, if a crossover is for real going to demand you buy 22 comics in 3 months for you to see the entire core story you need to be screaming that from the rooftops with every single interview that it’s genuinely the whole thing that’s essential, because editorial claiming that you should totally get everything aside that’s not how crossovers have actually worked since the 90s no matter how many checklists and reading orders may be provided. This whole thing really sorta felt like the Infinity of this run, good stuff but ultimately Hickman serving a master beyond telling his own story - in this case trying to provide a forcible on-ramp from Marvel’s hottest book to all the ancillary related stuff.

Shang-Chi #3: This continues to be a really solid little mini with some poignant bits.

Power Pack #1: Haven’t read much if anything with them in it before, but as good as I could have hoped of Ryan North’s first post-Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Marvel gig.

Fantastic Four: Antithesis #4: Fine, but it would have been so much funnier if Waid’s last Marvel work before finally returning to DC had been that cancelled Squadron Supreme two-shot.

Daredevil #24: God so goooooood. And next issue’s next week?!

The Department of Truth #3: Imagine going literally any duration back in time, handing this to someone who’d read and even enjoyed his work, and explaining “THAT’S the level James Tynion is going to end up operating on”.

BANG!: My shop got the TPB this week of the recent mini by Kindt and Torres, and this is a top-notch reimagining of assorted 80s action/pseudo-pulp archetypes into something modern and strange and delightful, that while technically concluding somewhat tidily if the sales aren’t there is set up to go on for as long as the creative team has ideas for it. It taps into that America’s Best Comics/Planetary/Adventureman energy for a slightly different branch of genre storytelling, and even if like me it’s not an iteration you grew up with it’s definitely worth your money and attention.

Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Multiverse Who Laughs: It’s fine, whatever, just a buncha little Dark Multiverse stories...except for the last story, where the Twilight Zone-esque shocker final twist is that being black in America and thereby constantly experiencing the constant low-grade terror of the background radiation of systemic racism essentially acts as a vaccine against Scarecrow’s fear toxin, which...okay??? It’s written by a black man so it’s not as if I think it’s offensive, but particularly given that given the rules of the Dark Multiverse one of the three characters in there had to have imagined this possibility, and that then The Batman Who Laughs must’ve seen it and gone “Hell yes, all about this, definitely one of the 52 scariest of all possible universe”, it’s a serious candidate for weirdest comic of the year.

Legion of Superheroes #11: This is an excellent kickoff to a 3 or 4-issue arc so I have absolutely no idea how it’s going to reach some kind of season finale next month.

Action Comics #1027: Romita Jr.’s deteriorating by the day but I did like his take on the Phantom Zone, and I feel like this while taking it a bit farther than I’d prefer still convincingly sells the idea of Superman just being absolutely fed up after a truly awful day.

Justice League Dark #28: So is this the end of the run, Future State notwithstanding? Shocking how coherently it held together through the transition in writers, and I really hope it says and so does Ram V to take it in a direction wholly his own.

Wonder Woman #767: Substantially improved now that it’s not working off the completely bizarre and increasingly uncomfortable ‘buddy-cop’ premise.

Red Hood #51: GOOD NOW?! I checked it out because of the rec above and because I was curious how someone would try and salvage the concept post-Lobdell, and while it obviously isn’t literally by him, Shawn Martinbrough and Tony Akins are for all the world doing a Christopher Priest Relaunch with this tonally and aesthetically; I think it’s even a direct sequel to Priest’s Batman: The Hill oneshot from decades ago. I sure hope this isn’t a two-issue filler run with the book either cancelled or reshuffled after Future State, because this has all the makings of an excellent crime comic.

Suicide Squad #11: I’ll probably check out Taylor’s Revolutionaries book once that happens, so I guess mission accomplished. Fine little run.

The Other History of the DC Universe #1: I heard someone on Twitter say this is the best thing that’s come out of superhero comics since HoXPoX, and I don’t know if I’m on that level with it but that is absolutely a fair conclusion. I’ll be honest, I had measured expectations here from having seen some of Ridley’s past comics work - I figured it’d be a perfectly solid book with a few standout moments, but instead it throws out all the haymakers in the world and emerges as one of my favorite comics of 2020, even given we’re only seeing the one issue this year. I can only judge so much because it feels like a lot of what we see in this debut is going to be completely reframed through the perspectives of other characters in subsequent entries, but standalone this is a brutal, intimate, brilliant character study set against the backdrop of a hazy dreamscape vision of the history of DC reformatted as needed to fit the concerns in play here (though the dates presented are so specific I wonder if aspects of this are leftovers of the original version of 5G), and probably as close as we’re going to see to a ‘trilogy capper’ to The Golden Age and New Frontier. That’s why the take on Superman here works, as much a product of the worst of his mass-consciousness image as the Superman of DKR but meshed with a profound understanding of what makes him tick as a character that makes the inherently compromised version on display here palatable, and a believable extrapolation of the Silver/Bronze Age’s version of him when that’s the era this series is thus far working as a contrast to. And god, the art. I always liked him fine enough, but even with finishes by Andrea Cucchi and colors by Jose Villarrubia I never could have imagined Giuseppe Camuncoli putting out the likes of this, and Steve Wands’s lettering is doing at least equal legwork in defining the look of the book. There have been several impressive titles out of Black Label at this point - Last Knight on Earth, Rorschach, Strange Adventures, and especially Harleen - but nothing else has come close to demonstrating the potential power of the imprint as a vehicle for creators taking this iconography and doing something radical and unrestrained and phenomenal with it.

#Week's Comics #Opinion

[veilder]

In order to usher in a new year, I thought it might be nice to do a little “year in review” sorta thing for my AO3? For posterity, lol. I only started publishing my fanfiction in January of 2019 but I’ve made it this sort of tradition to take a screenshot of my AO3 stats every year. And since I have two years under my belt now, I now have something to compare, lol! 😁

Let’s start out with my year totals:

So, here you see what my stats look like sorted by year? (And also that drastic change where AO3 shifted from blue to red, omg.) However!! This is not entirely accurate! It makes it look like I wrote a lot more this year than last. Which... I mean, I did, but it wasn’t by nearly that big of a margin.

Here is my current total:

As you can, the numbers don’t quite match up. That’s because AO3 only seems to total their years by story, not by chapter. The longest thing I’ve ever written clocks in at about 52k words. I started writing it in 2019, but I didn’t finish it til 2020. Hence the entire total is added to my 2020 word count. You can see it here when I filter by year:

A lot less than my 2019 year-end pic, right? 29,124 words less, in fa1ct. Literally the greatest majority of the fic was written in 2019 and I’m here to complain about how AO3 totals this stuff, lol.

But I digress: when we get down to the actual numbers, I published 77,991 words in 2019. Which is absolutely nuts to think about, omg, especially coming from posting nothing at all. However, I went ahead and blew that number away this year with my whopping 87,208 total!! Almost 10k more than last year! And that’s taking into account that I have been so heavily burnt out since the end of August, too, and haven’t posted a thing since September 1st. So like... Wow. I really didn’t expect it to be that much? Not in this, The Year of Unspeakable Traumas. 

Now, with word count out of the way, I wanna highlight a few more things!

1. Kudos: Personally, I find kudos to be probably the most accurate statistic when looking at how well-received a fic is. Because it’s such an easy button for someone to press and I think it’s safe to say that most people who like a work will do so. Now, again, AO3 tabulates these by year of publication, not year the kudos is given. This is why there’s such a discrepancy between my 2019 year-end screenshot and the current one. A 392 kudos difference, lol! But also! That means that my older fics are still being read and kudosed, which is fantastic! However, this also means that, as I’ve written more this year and gotten far less kudos for those works, my overall percentage is down. 

2. Bookmarks: I love bookmarks. I personally use them a bit like a favorites list, though I know a lot of folks actually use them as, y’know... a bookmark, lol. For keeping track of ongoing fics. I still really love the spike in them I had this year, though! Again, tabulated by publication date, not year they’re given, so I’ve gained an extra 90 bookmarks for 2019′s fics! Again, that still puts them over 2020′s so far, but it wouldn’t if we were just going by end dates! So I think that’s pretty great!

3. Subscriptions: I really like this stat, lol. Because it’s a lot more accurate than the others just purely going by year, right? And it’s been a good year for me for subs! Considering I only had 56 subs at the end of 2019 and I have 141 now, that’s an 85 sub margin! I will put this down to me being a bit more established in my fandom this year. And also having more accessible and longer multi-chapter fics. (Even though my longest fic has about the same chapter lengths as the ones I’ve been working on this year, it’s also very niche, lol.) I’ve also gained 10 new user subs, which dang, thank you! 😮 4. Overall: So, my most popular fic for two years running continues to be The Nearness of You. I appreciate the support for this fic so much, especially considering it was both my first multi-chapter fic and my first foray into romance, lol. However, this year has also had some good contenders? It continues to blow my mind, the reception that my oneshot, A Simple Equation, has gotten. That fic is now third in my rankings for kudos, which is nuts! And coming up right behind it is my longest work for the year, we’re just two lost souls (swimming in a fish bowl). Absolute madness! 

It’s crazy to me to see how much I’ve done according to these stats. I’ve actually accomplished a lot more this year than I thought, even though I only have four fics posted for it (and one of them is incomplete... >_>). But moving forward into 2021, I still have so many things I wanna accomplish! Maybe I’m jinxing myself here, lol, but for this coming year I’d like to:

1. Finish writing Reflections. I can’t believe I’ve left it on a cliffhanger for so long. 😫 2. Write more platonic/family stuff. Even though I always try to include platonic relationships in my shipfics, I wanna do more that’s focused purely on that again. 3. Finish my dang coffeeshop fic so I can start posting it! It’s been half-written for ages, omg! 4. More rarepairs! Because I love them! And I have so many ideas!! 

So yeah. This has actually been very fun? It’s nice to just take a moment to look back at things and see how you’ve grown. Hopefully, I’ll have even more to look at next year, lol! 

But most, thanks to all of my readers for giving me the opportunity to even analyze these stats. It certainly wouldn’t have been as interesting or fulfilling without you all. I appreciate every comment and bookmark and kudos you gave this year, never doubt it! 😊

And to anyone who actually managed to get through this trainwreck of a self review, feel free to post your own looks at what you’ve been up to in 2020! I’d love to see your own progress! Feel free to tag me if you do! 😁

#writing #fanfiction #ao3 #about me #long post #fic stats #this is purely self-indulgent #it's all a bit nuts isn't it? #wow #o_O

[ncfan-1]

fic meme!

tagged by @anghraine

Name:

ncfan

Most popular multi-chapter fic:

Well, if we’re going by hits or by comments, that’ll be Our Path is Crooked, but True. By kudos, it’s Of Rings and Knighthood and Their Associated Misunderstandings.

Favorite story you’ve written so far:

I would have a hard time saying; I’ve written so many so far, and honestly, I plan to keep on writing fic until I drop dead, so by this time next year, I’ll probably have a new favorite. For right now, that’s probably The Sacred and Profane.

Fic you were nervous to post:

I have tried to leave my nervousness behind me, since it seemed to be that in 2020 of all years, I should really just stop giving a damn if my readers are going to be offended by what I post. I do recall some nervousness regarding Our Path is Crooked, but True, since Ingrid and Edelgard are both divisive characters, and Crimson Flower is a divisive route. But the reception from my readers was so positive that any nervousness I felt evaporated pretty quickly.

How you choose your titles

Ahahaha, don’t call me out like this. It’s usually either a line from a poem, or some phrase I thought was terribly clever, but turned out not to be very clever at all.

Do you outline?

For my multi-chapter fics, sometimes. Like, I will definitely do it if I’m going into the fic knowing that it’s going to be a long one and complex enough that I need written notes to keep track of plot development and character arc developments, but if I know it’s not going to be that long or that complicated, or if I don’t think it’s going to be long and complicated when I get into it (like, Saudade turned out to be 22 chapters and 200,000 words long, but I didn’t think it was going to be anywhere near that long when I started writing it, so I didn’t bother with an outline), I don’t bother.

For oneshots, no. I can’t remember the last time I wrote a oneshot complex enough that I needed written notes to keep hold of everything I need to keep hold of.

Complete fics:

That is not as simple a question as you might think. Fanfiction.net was my first fic writing platform, and there was a lot of stuff that I didn’t bother migrating to AO3 when I migrated to AO3, but there was still a lot of overlap, too. My AO3 fic count as of this date (12/22/2020) is 619. My Fanfiction.net fic count is 1,411.

In progress:

Posted WIPs that I have active plans to continue at this time: On the Ragged Shore. All of the chapters are written, I just have to get off of my ass long enough to finish proofreading them.

Posted WIPs that I have given up on: Alas, Face to Face. I poured so much time and effort into it, but even though I knew it wasn’t likely to get much attention, I still became really, really discouraged by the disconnect between the amount of effort I poured into it, and the amount of attention and feedback it got. This fic is the one that made me start my rule that I wouldn’t post a WIP until I had finished writing all chapters, barring certain circumstances.

Exchange fics due soon/unrevealed: None.

WIPs that live in my fanfic folder and are incomplete and who knows when they’ll be finished:

I have four of those at present.

1. Under Observation, which has an incomplete outline, eight finished chapters, and the ninth chapter in progress. Basically, just watch me write a ridiculously long adaptation of that one episode of TMA where that guy turned out to be full of eyeballs, for my crackship that has two fics on AO3, and watch me wriggle in frustration as the fact that Clara’s dead means that I can only skirt around the edges of my Vast-aligned Clara head canon.

2. In the Hollow of Your Heart, which has a complete timeline and an incomplete outline, and no chapters written. It’s a retelling of the Silver Snow route of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, made to scratch these specific itches: Sylveth written the way I want to see Sylveth written; a version of Silver Snow that properly capitalizes on the apocalyptic feel the route sort of had, but didn’t really fulfill (the godless land! The fall of civilization! They had so much, and didn’t do nearly enough with it); emotionally traumatizing zombies; more focus on the Nabateans, especially Flayn. This one’s going to be daunting, because I have outlined, so far *checks notes* fifty-five chapters, and I’d say there’s probably going to be about another fifteen to twenty of them.

3. Shall These Bones Live?, the Fourth Age Finduilas x Maeglin fic which nobody asked for, but since it’s still my crackotp, I want to write anyways. I’ve got a document with characterization and world-building notes that I’m still working on, no outline, and no chapters written. Of the first three fics on this list, it’s actually the one that took root in my mind first, by the way.

4. A secret project. Basically, I want to write a fic remix of another fic, but I’m still waiting to hear back from the writer of the original fic on whether or not they’ll grant me permission. The only way I could find to contact them that wasn’t a comment section was through the PM function on their Fanfiction.net account, which there’s been no activity on in over a year. Yeah.

Coming soon/not yet started:

None that I can think of.

Do you accept prompts:

Not as such. When Legendarium Ladies April rolls around, I like to do as many of their prompts as I can fit in, but it’s rare for any other prompt events to move me the way this one does, and I don’t accept prompts from individual users.

Upcoming story you are most excited to write:

Shall These Bones Live?, if I can ever finish that notes sheet and start outlining it. Also, if I ever hear back from the writer of the fic I want to remix, I’d be a little nervous to do the remix (I’ve never done a fic remix before), but also excited.

Tagging, if you want to do it: @chidorinnnnn, @qserasera, @avelera, and anyone else who happens to see this.

#Fic meme #Writing meme