[image description: text against a black background reading “2021 was a year that existed. Let’s talk about fanfiction.]
Damn. 2021 sure did exist, huh.
Well, let’s talk about something else.
My 2021 Fanfiction Year In Review
Going by my ao3 stats, I posted five total fics during the year of 2021. Which seems like it would be worse than 2020, when I wrote 22 fics. But this year, I also wrote over 300,000 words.
I took a break from the mcu to violently obsess over cherik and gamquick instead, writing four X-Men fics, and only one ironstrange fic.
A Treatise on Evolution and Extinction (X-Men Movieverse), X-Men, 238,489 words, Mature)
I Wanna Hold Your Hand (X-Men Comicverse & All New X-Factor, 59,965 words)
The Man Next Door (X-Men Movieverse, 1,879 words)
don't go slow (X-Men Movieverse, 1,348 words)
The Ghost In The Sanctum (MCU, 1,189 words)
I didn’t expect to write this much long fic, but that’s because ATEE was about 50-80k words longer than expected, and IWHYH was about 30k longer. So clearly I just have a problem shutting up.
One thing I enjoyed about 2021 was that I started writing more fic that I knew less people were gonna care about and that I knew were really just for me and one or two other people. Before, I felt this well of anxiety if I wrote anything that the people who usually read my fics (ie, mcu/ironstrange fans) didn’t care about. And then in 2021, I remembered that fanfiction is a hobby and neither I nor my fics exist for other people.
So yeah, I really enjoyed everything I did write this year! I think A Treatise on Evolution and Extinction is one of the best things I’ve written technically, and I Wanna Hold Your Hand was such a fun, smutty, surprisingly emotional passion project. As for my other two x-men fics ... well, you’ll get an explanation soon.
For this year, I don’t want to be too restrictive in my goals (especially since I’m graduating this semester and I have no idea what’s happening after that ha ha ... ha), but I do have a lot planned. Obviously my From The Top update is coming, and I’m having a lot of fun working on that. The rest though, I think I’ll let be a surprise. For you and me.