Year-end Fandom Meme

[kiraly]

 Probably should have done this before the new year rolled in, but eh, I didn't see it until just now so I'm doing it now. (I know I hardly ever post on here but it seemed like fun)

1. YOUR MAIN FANDOM OF THE YEAR?

Based on discord/Tumblr participation: The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner (this is also probably the highest in terms of fanwork output, though I think I did more original works than anything for a fandom)
Based on hours spent: Dungeons and Dragons, but that falls into a weird place between fandom and original work so I don't know if it counts.
Based on fics read: yeahhhh I don't even want to know how many Haikyuu fics I've read this year, but there are just...so many, it's easy to find something my brain will accept as comfort food.

 

2. YOUR FAVOURITE FILM YOU WATCHED THIS YEAR?

It took me WAY longer than it should have to even think of a movie I'd watched this year that wasn't an old favorite (movie nights in the QT movie server are fun, but I mostly show up for them when I've already seen whatever we're watching). But then I remembered that Elleth and I watched Single All The Way last week and it was very funny and cute...sometimes it's just nice to watch a silly, trope-filled Christmas movie with a ridiculous cast of characters and a gay romance.  

 

3. YOUR FAVOURITE BOOK READ THIS YEAR?

I adored Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, the long-awaited sequel to The Goblin Emperor! I loved it so much that I actually read it twice before I had to return it to the library. 
Runners-up include Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells, Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell (though I actually read a version of this before it was pro-published, I'm counting it because the new version is MUCH more polished), and The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon. My attention span has been abysmal this year so I read WAY more fanfic than original fiction.
 

4. YOUR FAVOURITE ALBUM OR SONG TO LISTEN TO THIS YEAR?

My music taste underwent a bizarre journey over the past year, partly due to working from home and partly due to finding new song recs on fandom playlists. I can think of at least five songs that grabbed ahold of me at various points and refused to let go, which are: Achilles Come Down by Gang of Youths, Constellations by The Oh Hellos, The Moon Will Sing by The Crane Wives, The Last Time by Juniper Vale, and Trouble by Valerie Broussard.

 

5. YOUR FAVOURITE TV SHOW OF THE YEAR?

I remain terrible at keeping up with TV shows OR even starting to watch them if I know there's a lot of episodes to get through, but I did end up watching a fair amount of anime in fits and starts. Of those, I really fell hard for Run With the Wind, which is only one season but is actually the perfect length. (Additional shoutout to Natsume and the Book of Friends, which I managed to watch all six seasons of over the course of several months, but it is NOT the perfect length because I could keep watching it forever).

 

6. YOUR BEST NEW FANDOM DISCOVERY OF THE YEAR?

This is...a very small fandom, probably, but Tumblr user meg-moira wrote a beautiful story called Eindred and the Witch based on a prompt from the writing-prompts blog, and I fell so in love with the characters. It actually pushed me to do more with digital art again, AND actually write more original stories myself. She was serializing new installments of that story for a while but is now working on turning the whole thing into a novel. So that's exciting!

 

7. YOUR BIGGEST FANDOM DISAPPOINTMENT OF THE YEAR?

Agree with what yuuago said about the whole Minna Sundberg chick tract thing. Like, it shouldn't be a big "oh NO" moment when I hear someone has converted to my religion but...sometimes you know just enough about a person's flaws (and more than enough about a religion's flaws due to, you know, being inside it) to know exactly what version of things that person is going to gravitate toward. Big yikes all around.

 

8/9. YOUR FANDOM BOYFRIEND/GIRLFRIEND OF THE YEAR?

Uhhhhhhh I honestly don't have answers for either of these questions because I don't really know what this MEANS? So I've decided to remove the gender-coded relationship tags and am going with Murderbot as my "Mutual Administrative Assistant" of the year.

 

10. YOUR BIGGEST SQUEE MOMENT OF THE YEAR?

I have two! One was the moment I was working on the sequel to the Mx. Machine Manners fic and got the question from Miki's POV. (Miki! My heart!) In general, the whole experience of collaborating with four other writers who wrote GREAT questions and then getting to answer them as a SecUnit-turned-advice columnist was SO much fun.

The second was getting to watch people's reactions to my entry for the King's Wedding Night song contest in the Queen's Thief discord, AND winning two of the three voting categories ("funniest" and "best writing"). I now have a reputation for being the queen of earworms, but if I had to have that song stuck in my head for five months while I figured out how to write it, everyone else can suffer with me now.

 

11. THE MOST MISSED OF YOUR OLD FANDOMS?

I really miss feeling like I want to engage with Stand Still Stay Silent and related works. I had already been drifting away because it's been hard to engage with the subject matter ever since we had a real-life pandemic to deal with, but the culmination of the stuff going on with the creator just got to be too much. I really would like to at least finish the Hogwarts AU I was writing (problematic creator double whammy, there) so maybe someday my heart will point to it again, who knows.

 

12. THE FANDOM YOU HAVEN'T TRIED YET, BUT WANT TO?

There are so many things that people think I should read/watch that I simply haven't gotten to (or started and didn't finish...so sorry to all my friends who are into Critical Role, I simply lack the attention span). I would love to write something for the Goblin Emperor fandom, but ooof the writing level is intimidating! Still thinking about it, though.

 

13. YOUR BIGGEST FAN ANTICIPATIONS FOR THE COMING YEAR?

Gosh, I honestly can't think of any? I feel like most of the authors whose stuff I grab onto as soon as I know about it don't have releases scheduled for this year, the earliest are coming in 2023. Who knows, maybe I'll get a nice surprise!

This was a fun questionnaire but I feel like it misses a lot of the things I actually spent a long time on during 2021, which were original stories and DnD characters. Maybe I can do a separate post about those sometime if people are interested?

Comments

[seerofrage]

Ooh, are there any particular Haikyuu!! fic you've especially enjoyed? O:

(Also fwiw, I'd be interested in reading about your original + DnD endeavors!)

[kiraly]

Haha, oh gosh...well, first, big caveat that the way I started reading Haikyuu!! fic is sort of backwards...basically sometimes if I don't know what fandom I want to read for, I start going through a trope tag like Coffee Shop AU or something and just filter out things I don't want to see until I find something. So at some point I was going through...Sharing A Bed was the first one, I think? And came across a Kuroo/Kenma fic, and I couldn't totally remember who Kuroo was at first (I have watched the anime through once but not read any of the manga) but I knew I liked Kenma so I was like "sure, okay" and then fell headfirst into their "childhood friends-to-lovers" dynamic and just...kept reading more.

And then at some point I was doing the same with "Fake/Pretend Relationship" and found a LOT of fics for Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, and in a similar way could barely remember who they were but was like "eh I'm familiar with the canon at least" and now I really love their dynamic...or at least the one fandom assigns them. At this point I've just sort of given in and accepted that the fandom has given me ships even though I didn't come away from canon with any. Oops!
(Also I think at some point in the beginning there I was reading a lot of Sawamura Daichi/Sugawara Koushi fic...maybe that's actually how I first encountered the Kuroo/Kenma ship? Not sure, I just keep pinballing between pairings, it's ridiculous).

Anyway, all that is to say that I have no idea what your taste in Haikyuu!! fics or ships is, and I've done a pretty terrible job of actually bookmarking any in particular, but I will dig through my history and find a random assortment for you:

all the things that we could be by obiter
Pairing is Akaashi Keiji/Bokuto Koutarou, around 6k words. Basically Bokuto keeps getting dumped by the captains of other sports teams and the volleyball team keeps getting into fistfights to defend his honor, so Akaashi decides to step in and prevent it from happening again. This one is very silly but cute.

ATSU101: how to fall in love with your fake boyfriend by solyn
Pairing is Miya Atsumu/Sakusa Kiyoomi, around 187k so it's a long one. It's a college AU (but they're still volleyball players) in which Atsumu and Kiyoomi fake date and get...way too into it. Has possibly my favorite *actual* getting-together scene I've seen (unless I'm mixing this up with a different fake-dating college AU but I don't think so). Also features Atsumu and Kenma being roommates with some background Kuroken going on I think. Oh! Also this one is rated M but there is really nothing graphic that goes on.

Okay I was trying to find some specific Kuroo/Kenma fic but that's a deep dive into my history and then I realized I could just point you to AO3 user todxrxki who has written a TON of Kuroken fic and I think I have enjoyed pretty much all of it. Lots of fake dating and childhood friendship going on in these, from what I remember.

Uh anyway this got long so if there are any particular elements or pairings you'd like to see in a Haikyuu!! fic let me know and I'll see if I can dig up something I've read, that might be easier. ^__^;

[seerofrage]

I've dipped a tiny bit into HQ!! fic but have otherwise been kind of daunted by just how much there is, haha, so these are some really great starting points, thank you!! I have such a fondness for Kuroken, and the author you linked has so much omg, I'm very excited to dig through those in particular, haha. <3

Thanks again! :D

[kiraly]

Haha yeah there is so much! If I hadn't come into it backwards I would not have known where to start. I also have such fondness for Kuroken, it has just been a little while since I binged a bunch of those fics so I can't remember specific titles. (But lucky me, that author has some new ones since I last looked at their page, yessss)

[yuuago]

An original-focused version of this would be neat.

Aha, you've reminded me that I still need to read Witness for the Dead! I keep hearing that it's really good.