yelp

I started watching Ooku on a whim and got through it over the holiday. (It's only 10 episodes!) It's about an alternate history of Japan where a plague wiped out most men and continues to keep the population gender-imbalanced, and women began to take over their roles in society. The story centers on the Ooku, the male harem of a female shogun.

( mild spoilers below )

I just wrote a promo post for this for ficinabox, so I thought why not make a Fandom 50 out of it? What I didn't say over there was omg, I finally found it. I found another Hiruma/Senku/Haru that wasn't written by Inagaki. It's Hiruma #4, architect Hiruma!

( Cut for images )

I'm only a few episodes into this show so far but really love it and would recommend. I went into it knowing nothing except that some of my friends liked it, so I had fun discovering the unusual storyline for myself, but I don't think knowing the general idea would have hindered my enjoyment.

( cut for length and early spoilers )

The most recent movie I watched on Netflix was "10 Cloverfield Lane", which is not one I would have chosen for myself, but enjoyed nonetheless in a nail-biting way. (Is my fandom50 just going to turn into all Netflix reviews? Ah well.) It begins with the protagonist, Michelle, waking in an underground bunker with a man named Howard, who claims to have saved her life—and that some kind of disaster has made the world aboveground uninhabitable, so he can't let her leave. She'll have to stay down here with him for the foreseeable future.

Throughout the movie, both Michelle and we the audience are trying to figure out whether Howard is telling the truth, in whole or in part. Even as Michelle begins to uncover some dark secrets, we still wonder how much of the situation is true and how much is manufactured. Even in the end, I still have questions about his actual version of events, but being left without solid answers is the intended effect, I think. (To top things off, I've never seen the "Cloverfield" movie, so I came into this even more clueless—nor did I know whether it was at all related to this one despite the similar name.)

( cut for length )

Better late than never!

This year, I posted 35k words on AO3. This is about half of what I posted last year, so it seems my resolution to do fewer exchanges (especially Triple Crown ones) is working. But I think I forgot to do the other half, where I work more on non-exchange writing instead? (And that's really the most important part!)

I'm definitely seeing a trend of low activity for most of the year and then reviving to participate in winter exchanges. I started out this year by wrapping up my 2023 exchange season: a Fandom Trees "pinch hit" and two fics for Bulletproof. In the summer, I made some progress on an ongoing WIP (hallelujah!), and noticed this put me over 500k words posted on my account (in 4 years!), so took a couple prompts on Tumblr to celebrate. Besides that, I wrote nothing until it came time for my winter exchange season again with FIAB, Eyeshield 21 Winter Gift Exchange, Yuletide, and soon Bulletproof once more.

It's unfortunate because winter was again my busiest and most stressful time of year professionally, personally, medically. With more writing gaps, I also felt quite rusty coming into both my WIP in the summer and then FIAB in the winter. Being busy and rusty meant I wasn't able to participate to the full extent I wanted in my exchanges. I got a bunch of FIAB swaps, but they were all in the same fandom (Genshin) which I didn't expect and found discouraging. I actually ended up defaulting on 2 of my 4 swaps, but fortunately the exchange rules were generous enough to allow earning back my wordcount by writing more of my original assignment - which worked out because that was turning out to be a monster anyhow. I also didn't have my normal level of commenting energy - I left 40 comments in the FIAB collection and 16 in Yuletide - and there were several treats I wanted to write but didn't get close.

Overall, though, I feel good about the extent of my exchange participation. I think I've narrowed down to my few favorite exchanges and the amount feels reasonable, if unfortunately clustered in the worst time of year for it. Perhaps this means next year I can aim to work more on personal projects throughout the year, and quarantine exchanges to the winter alone!

( stats and meme questions )

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Hello! I'm yelp on AO3. Thank you for taking a look at my letter this year. I tried to include some prompts, but please feel free to go where inspiration takes you! I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( DNWs )
( Eyeshield 21 )
( Zenless Zone Zero )
( Yamada-kun to Lv999 no Koi wo Suru )
( Alice in Borderland )

I posted a new chapter of my Dr. Stone longfic! The previous chapter was posted on August 14… of last year. So almost a reasonable interval between updates, plus an extra year!

How it happened was, I got a random urge to reread this story of mine, and enjoyed it to a frankly narcissistic extent. By the end I was kicking myself wishing I’d written more. Thankfully, I had some of chapter 6 drafted, some outlined, and the rest came somewhat reluctantly together.

Looking back, I’m surprised that I started writing this thing in (late) 2021, and I’m still so into this ship and this premise. That’s almost three years off and on, for only 6 chapters, 16k words of story. (Looking back, I had another 1.5 year hiatus in there too.) It’s both very flaky and very consistent of me, I guess. 2021 feels like a very different time in the world and in my life, and I also just took half a year off from writing fic, so I’m not sure I was able to maintain a consistent tone and style. I wonder, if I do a reread three years later, if I’ll notice a marked change between chapters.

While I was working on this new chapter, I rewatched a lovely scene between these two characters for inspo. (Linking the English dub because that’s what popped up on YouTube and I’m impressed with the quality of the voice acting.) Maybe I’m overscrutinizing dynamics that aren’t even there (as usual), but this exactly how I hope to portray them in my story. (Maybe this is part of what inspired the story in the first place, back in 2021? Unclear.)

( mild spoilers cut )

Jeez, I could write a whole manifesto on these two characters. Not like a legit one about how compatible they are, but just my reading way too much into every little interaction they have on screen. I guess that's what fic is for. On to the next chapter, hopefully, before I lose my momentum!

This year, I posted 74k words on AO3. This is again about 15k words short of what I posted last year (which was 15k words short of the year before that), and again more than I had planned!

I only posted 14 works this year, for an average of 5.3k words per work (compared to 27 last year, for an average of 3.3k per work). In some ways my fics were more homogenous than usual: 100% M/M or Gen, and 100% M or T rating. This has always been my most comfortable zone, so it might just be a consequence of fewer works posted resulting in fewer outliers.

One of my goals for this year was to finish my WIPs, but I ended the year with one more WIP than what I started with. I’m happy I was able to add two chapters to one of my pre-existing WIPs, but my third remains untouched since 2021, yikes! Perhaps 2024 will be the year.

I participated in fewer exchanges this year than before: only 5 distinct exchanges, and FFFX and HA are from the previous round of Triple Crown, so I almost don't count them as new exchanges I decided to participate in, but a continuation of previous momentum. I don't plan to join again in 2024; looking back on what I've produced for exchanges, I'm least happy with my longer fic. I think it's just too much investment for a single exchange work, when my level of satisfaction in my work is very hit and miss - both in terms of how well I managed to create the story I was envisioning, and how well I managed to live up to my recipient's requests. I think a better strategy is to write several shorter things, rather than invest into one super long thing - eggs and baskets and all that. Looking at the results from this year, the 10k+ ones definitely fell into the too-long category. The 6.8k one I felt reasonably good about. But I think a good goal would be to keep my future exchange work to the 2-5k range.

The rest of this post is just several roundup posts in a trenchcoat, so I'll put it behind cuts...

( stats )

( zines )

( EOY exchanges )

( meme questions )

Dear Yuletide Author,

Hello! I'm yelp on AO3. I hope that some of these ramblings may help inspire a story, but I'm also more than happy to receive whatever you want to write about these characters! I also have a general likes/dislikes post here.

( DNWs )

( Yamada-kun to Lv999 no Koi wo Suru )

( 20th Century Boys )

( Eyeshield 21 )

( Alice in Borderland )