Playing with words

Challenge #9: Fandom Wrap Challenge

What are your top five fandoms for 2021 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?
1. The Queen's Gambit (by a landslide)
2. Ted Lasso
3. MCU
4. Game of Thrones
5. Shadow and Bone

( Cutting the rest! )

Films- watched more kids movies than usual because the kiddos were home too. Also re-watched a lot of old faves for comfort.
( 2020 movies  )


TV- watched less than I would have expected, but that is mostly because the kids were home a lot more, I think, so obviously what was on the main screen had to be kid-friendly

( TV in 2020 )

Books- link to book post here


Music- still soundtrack heavy and TAYLOR BLESSED US SO MUCH THIS YEAR. <3

( 2020 music )


Fic recs- I'm just linking to my bookmarks- I've been all over different fandoms this year. Some that wowed me were in The Old Guard fandom, and there are some amazing GoT ones. My biggest !!! was being told that astolat is actually Naomi Novik. Which OF COURSE SHE IS NO WONDER THE WORLDBUILDING AND CHARACTERIZATION AND TIMELINE DETAILS IN HER FIC WERE PERFECTION.

My own stuff:
Fic/Meta -16 fics this year, 15 of them complete, one of which was a previously abandoned fic! 6 of them have a POC (or two) as the main characters, and two are femmeslash because I know I tend to write het (or slash) for white mains but I really don't want to write just one kind of story? Wrote about 30000 more words than last year, and for far more fandoms than usual. Also participated in March Meta Matters challenge, uploading 16 meta to AO3 for the first time. I think I'll do it again this year, but since it'll only be new meta there should be less of an inbox flood to my subscribers.

( 2020 Ao3 stats page under here )

I'm particularly proud of Metamorphosis because it had/still has no audience and I wrote ten thousand words of fic anyway just so that it could exist. Also Love is a Wild Thing was an experiment- combining prompts from Gendrya week in August to make a single, cohesive post-canon fic. I actually like it better than my previous post-canon fics too, which might explain why I feel like I'm kind of done with Gendrya fandom? Check and Mate was my surprise hit- it's doing better than all my Gendrya fics combined, and since people were already following me for Gendrya content, it's kind of wild. It was one of those fics I wrote in a fever of inspiration like Smitten and Deep Tie Knot and I think it also gives that feeling of post-canon catharsis that people are looking for when they go trawling for fic? It also goes counter to a lot of (misogynistic) fandom assumptions, so it's gratifying that people seem to like it so much.

GIFsets- I think I've come pretty far in my skill at making these even over the past year. Even though I had no idea tumblr had changed the max size from 3MB to 10MB until my last set of the year I managed some pretty things! Biggest jump in quality was when I stopped skipping frames and just went with a shorter but smoother GIF- it might not be terribly noticeable to anybody but GIFmakers, but well. I'm one of those. LOL Got better at playing with brushes and transparency and layers this year too.

Proudest of these:
long story short x The Queen's Gambit (I hadn't done delayed subs for forever. Also included a Matrix reference that has whooshed over people's heads BUT IT'S FREAKING THERE. How perfect is this song for Beth's journey in TQG?!)
cowboy like me x Beth/Benny (TQG) (OK, I should have done another transition sequence back in the second GIF but I was so pleased I'd remembered how to do it at all that I plain forgot. THIS SONG FITS THEM PERFECTLY.)
asoiafnet underrated characters: Meera Reed (Time consuming to put two GIFs in one, but so pretty! Also brushes are fun and that last scene took so much coloring to not be dark, you have no idea)
asoiafnet underrated characters: Missandei of Naath (I don't know why the source on the first is so blurry even though it's 720px, but it's pretty despite that.)



I realized that I'd completely forgotten to link my holiday wishes list! If you have one and I've missed it, please link me too! :D Happy to send out green tea Pocky and washi tape etc.


Fannish plans for the next year: A Beth Harmon GIFset, finish An Exchange of Kings and a NYR fic for Yuletide (I defaulted on my PH. My first default ever but I just couldn't think story and didn't want to half ass it.) and as usual:




I'm sure we're all eager to put this year in the rearview- wishing you all a healthy and Happy New Year! (良いお年を）

So I know I've been very quiet here this past year, but I didn't stop reading during that time. I've tried to read more books by WOC and queer authors because honestly, I'm just tired of stories where the white guy ends up the center of the narrative and redeeming himself no matter how shitty and abusive he was. 

According to Goodreads I finished 52 books this year, and I'm currently reading The Alice Network by Kate Quinn, which is due in 4 days so it miiight end up being 53? (ETA: Finished it and loved it to bits too!) LOL I have no idea why I've gravitated so much to historical fiction so much this year, but some other stand outs were definitely The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (I ugly cried. SO BEAUTIFUL AND POWERFUL.) and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr which also broke my heart but was absolutely wonderful. I might ask for Yuletide fix-it fic for it next year. 

Sci-Fi and Fantasy:
I really liked King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo, which is set in her Grisha Universe and set after her incredible Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom, but follows the POV of Nina, Nikolai and Zoya instead. Nina's grief was so visceral and real in the first part of the book. It felt so realistic, how it still felt so huge and endless to her that her getting over it mid-book and then getting a new love interest right away was actually jarring instead of triumphant. IDK, Nina is still one of my faves, but I disliked this particular choice. I'm shipping Nikolai/Zoya now too. Really love getting Zoya POV, as she was such an antagonist in the original Grisha books. 
Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi was fantastic and I can't wait for the next! 
The Wicked Deep by Shea Ernshaw was good and absolutely haunting. (What a great twist! I loved figuring it out!)
Also liked the worldbuilding and style of Heartless by Melissa Meyer but not how the story ended. Am waiting to see how she's re-told other fairy tales before I make a judgement call. Blood of Elves (The Witcher) by Andrzej Sapkowski was decent too, but now that there is a Netflix show I doubt I will ever get off the waitlist for the next.
I also read The Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller and adored both. I am going to buy paper versions so I can re-read and flip through for my favorite parts again. The other stand out this year that I want a real version of is The Girl who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill. Just such a beautiful coming of age tale.
I finished all of Mercedes Lackey's Hunter series in a few days and I really enjoyed it- wish her publisher had liked it more too. Also likely to be a Yuletide wishlist item. Also finished Sarah J Maas' Court of Thorns and Roses series and I sort of wished she had stopped at book 3, which was definitely the best of the bunch. Great love scenes. I really liked how her main protagonist changed lovers from the first book to the third. Good for her. I've read a couple interesting, action packed books by Ilona Andrews too, but since it seems I started both in the middle/end of the series (Innkeeper Chronicles, Hidden Legacy) I'm currently waitlisted for the originals. Legend by Marie Lu was a good beginning but my interest petered out mid-series when she split up her protagonists. Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan was pretty good. Incredible worldbuilding and man, the stakes are so high now! I should get the next book soon.

Some books that were highly recced but that I didn't love: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern, The Weight of Feathers by Anne-Marie McLemore and Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter. Also really didn't like The Captive Prince by C.S. Pacat. I think it's supposed to be an anti-hero/redemption sort of situation, but honestly, I can't ship it when when one party is actively abusing the other.

Currently on my Libby bookshelf: Gideon the Ninth, Water Logic, Magic Bites, Uprooted, Clean Sweep. Which is a lot, but I have at least another week off, so I have faith in my ability to devour a good book in a few hours. It's just that if I really love the universe and characters, the story swirls around in my head so much after!


YA Fiction/Romance: To All the Boys I've Loved Before series by Jenny Han was wonderful! The Netflix movie was fabulous too, and I can't wait for the next one! The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang was pretty good too. Year One by Nora Roberts was kind of laughably bad by the end? Josh and Hazel's Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren was cute and I read some more of their co-authored books, but this was the best of the lot. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell didn't wow me, but it was good. Crazy Rich Asians series by Kevin Kwan started out strong but all the adults behaving terribly just sort of annoyed me by the end. On the Come Up by Angie Thomas was excellent! I love her teenage POV and dialogue- I think it's as good as or slight better than The Hate You Give.

Non-Fiction: Becoming by Michelle Obama was my definite favorite. To Shake the Sleeping Self by Jedidiah Jenkins and At Home in the World by Tsh Oxenreider were the two travel memoirs I finished this year- both good, but not groundbreaking? Packing for Mars and Bonk by Mary Roach were both interesting, funny and as usual, kind of gross. Also greatly enjoyed What if? by Randall Munroe (of xkcd). I mostly finished Here We Are, a book of feminist essays by Kelly Jensen, but I had to write Yuletide right when it and a whole bunch of other books were due, so I just had to let them all go back to the library, but I just checked and I could take it right back out now, so this might get finished. The NF book I really want to take out again that I didn't even open is The Notorious RBG.

Any recs for me, oh f-list? Which books blew you away this year?