#2017 review

[teanmoon]

Bow Romper - For Toddlers

Merry Christmas @simlaughlove from your Secret Santa at @plumbobteasociety

Base game compatible

For toddlers

30 colors

Keep this mesh free

Please do not claim as your own

Download

[whynotwebcomic]

MY DEAR SPAWN! May you get whatever you wish for in 2018! You deserve the best ♥️

[letstrysomefanfic]

so google posted the most searched peoples and things of 2017 and...

our boy made it.

but the best part...

HE MAINLY TRENDED NOT BECAUSE OF SPIDER-MAN, BUT CUZ OF LIP SYNC BATTLE

tHIS i c o n i c moment

i’m crying

[esotheria-sims]

My 10 favorite pictures of 2017

Oh boy, my game and playing aesthetic have been all over the place this past year: from tropical jungles to shabby attics and beach houses, from urban cityscapes to medieval castles and supernaturals… I migrated my old hood to a new map and spent weeks cleaning out my Downloads folder, only to scrap everything and do the whole thing from scratch after my PC reinstall… And now, I am stuck with an insanely time-consuming BACC hood that will see the day of light who knows when. But hey, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way - it’s been a really interesting year sims-wise, and I hope that the one ahead will be just as engaging (only hopefully with fewer bad surprises - I could definitely do without reinstalling my game again, or losing my screenshot folder. xD).

 So here’s to another year of simming adventures, and here’s to all of you in the community who have made the experience all the more worthwhile. ^______^

(Thank you for the tag, @mdpthatsme! ❤)

[pondera]

2017, that was the year that...

I planned to compose a long, wordy and almost certainly highly pretentious recap of the year. Only to realise at the last minute that I’d be doing it for all the wrong reasons and I’d much rather try to write something more digestible.

So instead, 2017 was the year that...

I ran 1,231.2 miles.

I finally admitted to myself that these events from ages ago had partly broken me and have impacted upon my ability to be present in any relationship.

I committed to the Hansons Marathon Plan whilst attempting to finish writing my Phd Thesis.

I finally handed in a completed PhD Thesis just before...

I went to Rome to run my first marathon.

I successfully defended my thesis, subject to minor corrections, during my Viva.

I left my ‘job’ of looking after students living on campus after four years.

I though it would be a good idea to run my second marathon and commit to the Hansons Plan for the second time in a year.

I went to Amsterdam to run my second marathon and was amazed that @pascal73 turned up and cheered others and myself on.

I ran under my target time of 3h 30m for the marathon distance.

I handed in my corrected PhD Thesis.

I officially had the title of Doctor conferred upon me.

It has been a year when I’ve achieved quite a few things but those achievements have also meant that a lot of stuff has now come to an end. That’s left me with a sense of displacement and no real sense of what comes next.

I may have run 1,231.2 miles but there is an eerie sense that I am exactly where I began. I find my self in the same surroundings with many of the same people. The only thing that is changed is the perspective from which I look at things. Perhaps, hopefully even, that is enough to count as progress for now.

[musicalravencreates]

My 2017

Yeah yeah everyone's doing this. But fuck it. I did so much this year I'm happy with. I finally moved out of my parents house and started living as male full time (including getting a legal name change huzzah). I got a new job that i manage with and a new church i adore. I went and saw both Game Grumps live and NSP and TWRP live. I started dating the wonderful Charlie, who I'm always happy to annoy with my bad humour. And I put out so many new fics and grew more as an author and a podficcer.

I had finally made a tumblr again this year and already I've been accepted into this amazing community of people. I just want to thank you all for being there for me and being my friends. I couldn't have survived some of my lows without you guys and I really appreciate the support and love you guys give me.

@vziii @grumpstuff @thewordzombie @s0ng-0f-st0rmss @writergrump @ninja-girl-emily @samanthaauburn @poppedparaz @game-of-grump @okgrumps @theseusinthemaze @zoozleplug @dontcareajot @darklordzorkaporp 💕💕💕

[avrilscutecrap]

2017 REVIEW !

[demenior]

End of the Year Fic Review

Stats:

List of Fics Posted:

Castle of Glass (17823 words) [Gen, non-main character relationships]

Royally Screwed (44222 words) [NSFW, Shiro/Prince Rahjim]

Killer Queen (8994 words) [NSFW, Allura/Shiro/Coran]

Paint a Smile on and Colour Me In (13865 words) [NSFW, Shiro/Prince Rahjim]

The Dog Days (Have Just Begun) (14995 words) [Gen, Shiro/Ulaz]

In Need (2629 words) [NSFW, Shiro/Ulaz]

In Loving Memory (1680 words) [Gen, Shiro/Ulaz]

Endlessly (10128 words) [Gen, Shiro/Ulaz]

A Crisis in Your Eyes (6401 words) [Gen, Shiro/Ulaz]

I'll Find You (11583 words) [Gen, no pairings]

New Born (7084 words) [Gen, no pairings]

Lay To Waste (41303 words) [Gen, no pairings]

Keep Them Galra Rollin (Rawhide) (1377 words) [Gen, no pairings]

Dirty Talk (4596 words) [NSFW, Shiro/Prince Rahjim]

as the lion loves the lamb (3986 words) [Gen, no pairings]

Satisfied (6350 words) [NSFW, Shiro/Ulaz]

Sunset in Reverse (41544 words) [Gen, no pairings]

My Body's Got You Pleading (49007 words) [NSFW, Shiro/Ulaz, Shiro/the entire BoM]

Total number: 18 Total word count: 287567

Ship/character breakdown: Ship breakdown:

Uliro - 7 Fics Shiro/OC - 4 Fics No Ship - 7 Fics Rahjiro - 4 Fics (I’m counting KQ)

Gen vs NSFW Breakdown (for my own curiosity):

Gen - 11 fics NSFW - 7 fics

While I wrote a huge amount of NSFW this year... general/not NSFW won out!

Characters that had the main focus:

is this really a question we need to ask

SPECIFICS:

Best/worst title? Best title:  Lay to Waste or Sunset in Reverse.  L2W is from the Linkin Park song ‘In Pieces’. 

‘there’s truth in your lies / doubt in your faith / what you build you lay to waste’ 

and it’s just such a haunting, mournful and foreboding sentence that it gives me chills. It’s powerful and I love it. Plus, paired with the tagline that was added to Shiro’s character profile (’when you have skeletons in your closet, you hope they stay dead’) it fits the theme of the story, in that everything Shiro knows and believes about himself is beginning to crumble as his past catches up to him. SiR does exactly what the fic intends to do: take something dark and turn it around. It evokes hope. The title is the same as the song by Crash Parallel (a super unknown Canadian band), though the song and the fic aren’t quite thematically similar.

(Special shoutout to Royally Screwed because I was having the time of my life and it’s hilarious)

Worst title:  In Loving Memory or Dirty Talk. They’re boring.

Best/worst first line?

I’m not a big believer in ‘Incredible First Lines’ as I believe you should always start as close to the action as possible, so a lot of my beginnings feel abrupt. That being said, there’s this gem that no one noticed the HUGE joke.

Lay to Waste:  

Hidden away in the recesses of the Kaskada System, deep in the thick jungles of an unoccupied moon, is a glimmer of hope.

[Kaskada...... as in.... Cascada.... as in.... every time we touch]

Best/worst last line?

I’m a firm believer in wham lines to end stories, so I have a lot that were good contenders, but as the lion loves the lamb takes the cake:

The Black Lion calls at his heels, I love you.

Keith wonders how long it will be until it loves him enough to consume him.

I love you for being mine.

GENERAL QUESTIONS:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted? Holy shit I’ve never written this much in my LIFE.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year? Voltron. Uliro didn’t exist until this year, really. Not to mention the whole Shiro/OC thing. I’ve always purposefully avoided OC’s, and then I went and hooked them up with the main character!! For 100k!!!!!!!! What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest. Lay to Waste is me finally continuing the Switch the Beat series, which is my favorite concept I’ve ever created for fandom. I got to expand the world of the series, I got to work with an AMAZING artist (shoutout to @gitwrecked ) and I got to set the series in motion. Lots of scenes in L2W are scenes I’ve been dreaming about writing for months leading up to actually putting them to paper.

as the lion loves the lamb was a WILD ride in playing with a completely different style. I like everything linear, sufficiently explained (almost to the point of beating the dead horse) and as the lion is the exact opposite of that. While most of my ‘horror’ writing is blatant, this fic was an experiment in creating a mood, and I think I did really well by that.

Okay, NOW your most popular story. By kudos: Royally Screwed By comments: My Body’s Got You Pleading Story most underappreciated by the universe? Crisis in Your Eyes for the content- the whole idea of Shiro realizing Ulaz is someone morally repulsive to him, but still being in love with him??? Ahhh, i love it.

or, Endlessly. It’s my only fic outside of the Switch series that features my Galra redesign, and so it’s really grossly self-indulgent. But the redesign is close to my heart, and I think it adds a really interesting angle to Shiro and Ulaz’s relationship to be such starkly different species.  Story that could have been better? New Born. I hammered it out so fast I barely thought, but I think I could have made things a little tighter to be more ambiguous for [the surviving] Shiro AND the reader. Sexiest story? it’s a toss-up between Royally Screwed and My Body’s Got You Pleading. 40k of Shiro getting wrecked by 1 alien with 4 arms, or 40k of Shiro getting wrecked by 15 different Galra?? It’s up to you. Saddest story? I think a lot of my fics are inherently tragic, even if they’re not sad sad. One tearjerker is In Loving Memory, so there’s that. 

I think New Born or A Crisis in Your Eyes are HUGE tragedies on the big scale. One is about a person losing all sense of their place in the world, the other is about being in love with someone you can’t accept, and the story leaves right as Shiro’s entering that moral debate with himself.

Sunset in Reverse isn’t finished yet, but it’s SUPER sad if only because we’re seeing the outcome of a Shiro who wasn’t saved and instead had to endure years of torture and pain. I think it’s empathetic-ly sad, because we feel sad based on how Shiro in this story cannot react to anything in a healthy, ‘normal’ kind of way, and we hurt just imagining how he got that way.

Most fun? ROYALLY SCREWED. Rahjim is such a delight, and the response and feedback were so much fun!!! I’ve never enjoyed writing a fic so much in my LIFE.

To be fair My Body is also a really fun story. Story with single sweetest moment? oh my gooodddd, um, there’s A Lot.

Royally Screwed - The intimate emotional moments between Rahjim and Shiro kill me. Especially at the end, the morning after, when they’re walking around holding hands and enjoying being physically close because it’s contrasted sharply with how just a few hours ago they were complete strangers. That moment when Shiro says ‘i love you’ back to Rahjim :’)

My Body’s Got You Pleading - Ulaz’s Proposal at the end of the fic.

Sunset in Reverse - Chapter 1 where Champion discovers his soft blanket and cries over seeing stars again. It’s kind of bittersweet because he was abused so long that this sort of thing brings him to tears, but he’s just so happily overwhelmed by how soft the blanket is that it’s an image that stays with me.

Dog Days (Have Just Begun) - This exchange:

“Khazav, then,” Ulaz says.

Shiro mumbles the name. It sounds nice.

“Is that a boy or girl name?” he asks, keeping his eyes closed.

“Why do humans gender everything?” Ulaz responds, and Shiro shrugs weakly.

“It’s neither,” Ulaz offers, after a moment.

“Then it’s a girl's name,” Shiro decides, and he’s practically asleep so he’s beyond incoherent when he mumbles, “looks like we have a baby girl.”

Hardest story to write? as the lion, is only because it was different. but it came out pretty smoothly. i keep hitting motivation blocks for Killer Queen. Sunset in Reverse is one I find difficult to write, only because it requires so many rewrites and edits to make sure each chapter is up to standard.

Easiest/most fun story to write? Royally Screwed. It flowed out of me. Rahjim and Shiro’s journey was a delight to the point it almost felt obsessive. I just loved having the two of them joking around, laughing and then feeling good too. It was absolute indulgence for me and I just wrote exactly what I wanted Shiro to go through in order to eventually open up and trust someone, and I got to have fun creating a guy like Rahjim who could encourage that openness in Shiro.

[My Body was fun for similar reasons. I love Shiro sleeping w Lorge Aliens, so it was all pure self indulgence]

Lay to Waste was incredibly easy too, as I had 80% of the fic outlined and written in my head by the time I started writing. L2W was written in just under 2 weeks. 

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters? A Crisis In Your Eyes was really fun to explore Ulaz as a character.

I’ll Find You was the first time I’ve really gotten into Pidge’s head, which was an experience after spending so long writing Shiro. 

Most overdue story? Killer Queen.... it’s a smut story and they haven’t even had sex yet.....

Also Paint a Smile On, as it’s a prompt fic from when I hit 700. I’ve only filled one.... and I’m so embarrassed... 

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them? I started writing NSFW fics this year!!! As in, nsfw for sex. As a reader, I’ve always enjoyed my smut fics, but never thought I’d write them cause I thought I had nothing to add to the collection of smut fics. Apparently I was wrong, haha.

Not to mention I wrote several OC-heavy stories this year. I came into fandom during the Mary Sue Witch Hunts, and defs internalized that main-character-OC’s Are Bad, and that you NEVER, EVER pair an OC w a main character. I broke both of those rules this year, and I’ve never had such amazing responses!

Rahjim is by and above a breakout character for my writing. He has fans, fanart, and may possibly start showing up in fics that I myself am not writing!!!

Stylistically: like I said before, as the lion loves the lamb was a big style experiment. Sunset in Reverse is also very different because it’s very much NOT action focused, as most of my stories are. It’s what’s happening after the action.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Less 50k monsters. More short fics. Catch up on all the prompts I said I’d do.

Overall I’d be happy writing the same amount, but I want to clip through my stories faster. I feel like I drag out a lot of my ideas, which is how I plan a 5k story and end up with 50k. I’m still working on finding the happy medium so I can tell all the stories I want to tell, with less strain on me. Half of my fics this year were over 10k, which has resulted in a LOT of wips on the go. I don’t like that.

I’ve got a few deadline events right off the bat at the end of february, and then I want to get another Switch series story out. Or maybe 2. 

Tagging:

@queenvallkyrie @krakendra @sassafrassrex uuuhhhhhh any other fic writers out there who wanna do this!!!!