the_genderman

What's this, a post? From me? Yeah. It's Year in Review time. I probably will stay pretty inactive over here, simply due to putting my energy elsewhere, but hey.

2020 Fic Review

General Fic Stats: 38 fics and one stand-alone art piece (assuming I counted correctly, plus five collaborations where I did art and am listed as a co-creator), for a total of 130,962 words. 16,804 hits and 1512 kudos shared among them.

Favorite Fic: Under His Skin (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Kylo/Hux, T)
Ooh gosh, that's a difficult one, so many to choose from. I think I've got to nominate "Under His Skin" because it was very silly, fun to write, and really pushed me into meeting more people in the Kylux fandom.

Funniest Fic: Slenderman Eggs and Ham (Slenderman computer games, Green Eggs and Ham... fandom?, Slenderman/Reader, T)
Does this one really count? I posted it in 2020, but I originally wrote it back in 2012. It certainly is silly.

Cutest Fic: Licensed to... Something (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Kylo/Hux, T)
I didn't really write a lot of stuff that could count as "cute" in 2020? I think this is the closest y'all are getting. Fluffy license plate thievery.

Kinkiest Fic: If It’s Possible to Die of Embarrassment, At Least You’re Already in the ER Waiting Room (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Kylo/Hux, E)
Hhhh, I don't know. I'm nominating this one simply for the tag "improper use of peanut butter" (offscreen).

Saddest Fic: All the Lives We Leave Behind (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Logan Lucky, Hux/Clyde Logan, E)
A rather rare adjacents pair, this one ended up kinda depressing, but very in character.

Most Popular Fic: High Tide, Night Sky (MCU, Steve/Bucky, E)
I'm judging popularity by kudos here (but it also has the most hits of the fics I wrote this year). The fic at the top of my stats list for 2020 is way more popular, in both hits and kudos, but I'm only listed as co-creator as the bang artist, for that one.

Least Popular Fic: When the Flood Calls (MCU, Howard Stark/Hank Pym, M)
Counting by kudos, this was not a very popular fic, but eh. Rarepair.

Most Cringe-Worthy Fic: Content warning! Dead Dove! Making Amends to the Dead (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Kylo/Hux, E)
Cringeworthy because, holy Dead Dove, Batman! Read and heed the tags! Not cringeworthy as I cringe at my writing ability, but the subject matter is... not nice.

Most Challenging Fic: Certain as the Sun (MCU, Sam/Steve, T)
Pretty much anything longer than 10k or with more than two, maybe three characters is Challenging, for me. I am not naturally a longfic writer and wrangling too many characters at once is Hard. I can do it, but it involves a lot of wailing and scrolling back and forth hoping I didn't introduce giant plot holes or stuff like that.

Honorable Mention: We're Shadows in the Rain (Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Kylo/Hux, E)
My first Star Wars fic to cross 1000 hits. This one was just over-all a good experience. Also, weird Force tentacles.

General Reflections: This was a year in flux. As the year began, I was still thoroughly ensconced in the MCU. Maybe feeling a little thin, but over-all fine. I had a couple bangs I was in, the Kink Bingo, I was branching out, trying new pairings. I was also kind of lying to myself that "There is no war in Ba Sing Se" and I wasn't drifting, no sir. I needed a change in scenery. The change came in July, when I wrote my first Star Wars fic. Maybe it was just something about 2020 that made me go "fuck it, we're shipping evil now." And thus began my descent into Kylux. And I rather like it here. As the unofficial (?) shipper "motto" goes, "Weird ship, weird people." Yes. Of my 39 works in 2020, 19 are Marvel, 19 are at least partially Star Wars, and 1 is Slenderman. According to my 2019 Year in Review DW post, I had more fics and more words written, but a lot fewer hits and kudos, but it's been A Year. And I'm also pretty happy in my little villainship corner, so whatevs, they're just numbers.

Well, if any of y'all MCU fans are also Pokemon fans, you may be familiar with the similarities between N's story and Bucky's story. So, I thought, huh, what if I write a fusion fic? And it wouldn't be completely just retelling Black and White with MCU characters, since I'd be making the MCU characters gym leaders because I can't write kids worth diddly. So, who would each gym leader be? A potential list and some commentary. Choices are based on Pokemon type used, not the original Unova gym leader's personality.

Striaton City - Grass/Fire/Water - Loki, because it would be very Loki to be like "Wouldn't you like to know what type I'm going to use? It's a surprise, kids."
Nacrene City - Normal - Clint, but mostly because I couldn't figure out who to use and eh, 616 disaster Clint.
Castelia City - Bug - Natasha. I'm gonna give her a Joltik because it's a zappy spider.
Nimbasa City - Electric- Tony. Thor makes more sense, but I feel like he might be too busy keeping Loki in hand.
Driftveil City - Ground - Rhodey. It's the next city over from Nimbasa, he has a type advantage over Tony, and Excadrill is part steel type.
Mistralton City - Flying - Sam. This was a given, yes?
Icirrus City - Ice - Steve. Because I have a terrible sense of humor, I'm making Steve an ice-type gym leader.
Opelucid City - Dragon - Shuri (and/or T'Challa, I haven't decided if I'm using only one gym leader, or if I'm taking into account that Black and White versions had different leaders depending on which game you chose). Strongest gym leader in the game, who became a gym leader very young due to her immense talent, who becomes the Champion in the sequels? Sounds like Shuri to me.

Elite Four:
Ghost - Ava Starr, simply because Ghost, and I couldn't not.
Dark - Doctor Strange
Psychic - Wanda
Fighting - Either Bruce of Okoye, I can't decide. Okoye is a far more disciplined fighter, but the Hulk is like, smashy smashy fighting type.

Champion - Carol

Ah, the beginning of entering a new fandom. Or, I suppose, re-entering a fandom I was in twenty years ago. Things are super different now, it won't just be a bunch of middle schoolers with a link cable and maybe an AOL chatroom, if you've gone to the right person's house and their parents let you do that kind of thing. I don't have a group, but that's ok. I'm going back to an old comfort. Of course, there's been a lot more Pokemon since I first started playing the games. I've played all 8 generations, but haven't seriously drawn for them since probably second gen. I wrote one short ficlet for gen 5 many years ago, but I think I deleted it off of wherever it was posted. It was Cilan/Burgh. It was also cringey.

So. Where do I want to start? Gen 2 because that's like a soft fuzzy comfortable blanket (and also in the gen 4 Johto remakes have what I consider canon* trans rep in Will and Bugsy)? Gen 5 because of that tiny little fic foray? Both? May consider race-bending some of the Unova Gymleaders and Elite Four because if the region is based off of NYC, it's probably not going to be ~80% white. (Pokemon, though I love it, has its faults. As does much of the popular media we consume.) Johto is based off of some region of Japan, can't remember off the top of my head which, so if it's a bit heterogeneous, there is that reason. May still consider some tweaking?



* NPC Pokemon trainers tend to have teams whose sexes/genders match theirs, unless of course they're species with skewed sex ratios like the starters or Eeveelutions or any of the all male/all female/all genderless species. In Gen 2 Gold and Silver, Will and Bugsy had male Pokemon (except, obviously, for Will's Jynx). In Gen 4 HeartGold and SoulSilver, their teams had been changed to all (primarily?) female Pokemon, even from 50-50 ratio species. Which says to me that they're trans (because they've trained their Pokemon since they were kids (or, Bugsy still is a kid) and caught/were given Pokemon that matched their gender assigned at birth. And if you've trained a Pokemon for years of your life, enough to become a Gymleader or join the Elite Four, you're not going to swap them out on a whim just because they don't match the standard gender convention).

In other news, I've been having a bit of a crisis of identity for a few months now, like, do I still have a place in Marvel fandom? Honestly, I don't know. I still like my handful of fave characters, but I haven't written much for them in a long while. I tried to branch out into other parts of the MCU, other characters, and I did get some ficlets written that I like well enough, but the pull isn't there anymore. I'm in a couple bangs still, signed up as an artist because I'm still clinging, but also drawing without having to figure out the entire story behind it all myself feels less insurmountable.

Am I leaving entirely? Probably not, but I don't see myself really getting active again. I still have WIPs and ideas on my to-write list that I'd like to write, but there's no timeline on any of them. I'm just feeling unmoored, not sure if I have places I can get excited over my fic and have people also get excited over them, too. There's one discord server that maybe I can find people who will get hyped over my ideas enough to get me over my complete lack of spoons, but it also feels like either everyone in there already knows each other (and if so, breaking into a tight friend-group is near impossible for someone like me), or else they're like, Tony fans, and not likely to get exited about either my Stucky or SamSteve ideas.

Basically, if I'm gonna be in a fandom where I don't know anyone (or the people who I kinda-sorta know, don't talk to me for the most part), then I might as well become a Pokemon blog. (Or, well, it's a distinct possibility I might shift (back) into Pokemon fic and art. There will probably be a "hybrid" stage where I'm posting about both. Or it'll just be my normal talking-to-myself with very little fandom stuff, but I'm in a different fandom.)

I'm not dead, I'm trying to get back into long-form posting (at least a little bit), maybe make more non-bang art I can share here. I've got plans for a "How the MCU destroyed Tony Stark's characterization using only movie sources," but that, I feel, requires a rewatch of at least Iron Man 3 so I can get refamiliarized with his end-of-trilogy character arc. And yeah, I know Endgame ruined Steve's characterization, but there's been enough said about that, and it's only one movie, not a creeping "if we put RDJ in all of our movies, we can pull in all that sweet sweet cash."

Well, in less depressing news, I have Animal Crossing New Horizons now, and that's the only thing I'm going to talk about for a while now. It's cute and I love it.

I feel like I probably ought to start using my DW again, but like, I don't have all that much to talk about right now except COVID-19 and how much I'm not getting written, which both of those are kinda depressing. Once I finish my fics for the MCU Kink Bingo Rough 4, I'll link them all here, but that doesn't finish up until the end of April, and I think I may have at least one more fic in me before then?

But, in other news, I have a lump of bread dough hopefully rising on my kitchen counter. I've never made yeast bread before, so I have no experience to draw from. It'll go in the crock pot some time tomorrow morning and I'll be able to report back on how/if it worked by the afternoon. Probably.

I have received my MCU Kink Bingo card today and I'll need to print it out and figure out who fits in each square, whether it'll be art or fic, but I think it's got a couple squares that can get me started on Mantis/Nebula so I can get a feel for them in small stuff before I write my big stuff for them (and write them both as humans. I tend to start off semi-canon, get a feel for the characters, any ship, before branching out).

Sometimes I think about going back, lurking, trying to find a place for myself again, except that They're there. Sometimes I wonder if maybe They've grown as people, what if They aren't going to just sit back and let Their friends run roughshod slinging TERF rhetoric and generally being assholes anymore. Maybe They'll call out their friends' bad behavior. Maybe. But if They haven't, then all I'll be doing is just dredging up bad memories for no payoff at all.

I suppose I should probably do an update this month. Been so long DW logged me out.

Still haven't written anything since October. Not setting any kind of timeline. While I'm at work, I have ideas and kinda want to write, but when I'm home, I'm just tired, and what's the point?

Taking part in the Marvel Rarepair Bang. Got some fic claims I'm excited to art for. My art submission wasn't claimed, but maybe a pinch hitter will want it later. If not, I might try to write something for it after the bang finishes up. Might not, though. Probably still won't be writing again yet at that point.

I assume the SamSteve Small Gifts thing is still happening? I'm doing fine with it, but I'm not sure if we're just between check-ins or I've just been so out of it I completely missed any news.

Hoping to art for a small new bang coming soonish, stay tuned. Or not.