itsadrizzit | Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 9

Day 9

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

Ahhhh self-rec day. It's weird because it used to be that i would say "I don't know that I have three things that I am extraordinarily proud of, but like...this year I created content on a larger scale than years past so I actually HAVE three things.

To be fair, though, one of them ends up as a simultaneous self-rec and rec of a related work because I see the two as inextricably linked at this point.

Also, I was telling myself I should talk about something that WASN'T football RPF, but you know what, ehhhhhh I like what i like and I do the work I do. I made a lot of podfic this year in a lot of fandoms I don't usually record in and they are lovely and had I not done all this work writing my own fics for football rpf I would probably be exceedingly proud of them, but they were just sort of.....a thing I did and have no real sentimental attachment to, which is unusual when it comes to my fanworks. It's a bit of a mentality shift. I could also talk about ALL my football rpf fics this year because I'm proud of all of them. I might. I might not. Is it gauche to just say READ EVERYTHING I EVER DID? Maybe, but it's my journal, so...

So, here are the works and then I'll elaborate under the cut:

Loose Ends [Podfic] - football rpf (Dele/Eric Dier)
We're Less Than Half as Close as I Want to Be - football rpf (Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen)
Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More - football rpf (Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen)
Five Times Christian Eriksen Helped his Teammates with Their Problems - football rpf

Yes, yes. Lack of diversity. I know what I like and I like what I do. It's also all from this year. I have quite a few older podfics that I like, but this year was all about me getting back into writing and I'm pretty comfortable with where I am as a podficcer, but where I am as a writer has grown by leaps and bounds this year and still has so far to go, so I'm going to talk about all these things

1. Loose Ends [Podfic] - football rpf (Dele/Eric Dier)
Summary: Eric Dier, an aristocrat flirting with disaster, has found himself suspended from his family's firm due to his inability to control his drinking. Dele Alli is back in London, in between music gigs and battling with family affairs that he'd rather avoid, thank you very much. Both of them meet in a bar in London on a Tuesday, and the story starts from there.

It's funny giving the summary of this, like, I didn't write it. I read someone else's words. This is not, by any means, to diminish the role of podfic as a fanwork, as you'll see from my talking about this work. So. It's a bit interesting because this was my Podfic Big Bang project for this year.

podficbigbang is a podfic challenge where you make a podfic of at least 10,000 words between April and October. The thing of it is, 10,000 words is actually a pretty short podfic for me, all things considered. Originally, I was planning to try to find something more in the 100,000 word level for PBB because that would actually challenge me, but I was struggling to find a story that I wanted to record, that had blanket permission, that was long enough, and that I wasn't already working on (I have a 100k+ podfic in progress, but I'd already posted parts 1 - 3 so it didn't count). In my searching, I re-discovered this fic. I'd read it before, I remembered, and enjoyed it, but I didn't remember much about it other than I thought it was interesting. So I started reading it again. At this point it was probably late May or early June (and I was also working on a

pod_together project which you'll hear about later).

I pulled this fic up on my phone to read on the bus home from work. It's a touch over 20k, so it qualified for the challenge, but wasn't really going to be a stretch for me in terms of pressing myself to get it done in the timeframe, so I didn't really think it would be a candidate, since if I was going to do the challenge I wanted to do something that would challenge me. But I like the author and I like the pairing and I like AUs so I thought I'd read it anyway and fine, whatever. I read the first five chapters on the bus home, then I immediately walked into my house, put my things down, pulled out my laptop, and recorded the first seven chapters before dinner. Straight away. Just sat down (not remembering anything about this story or what happened in it because my memory is trash) and recorded it. I was in love. I knew this was the thing I wanted to do even if it wouldn't push the bounds of the challenge.

Subsequently, before recording more, I finished reading the story. And it impacted me. I don't even know why. To this day, I can't articulate what it makes me feel or why it makes me feel those things or any of it. I just know these people seemed so real, even the OCs that were created as support characters were REAL PEOPLE. They had real problems, no matter how utterly asinine and ridiculous said problems were, and they had real interactions and real life. The story just felt so alive to me.

So that's my relationship to this fic. Now let me tell you why you should listen to the podfic.

You should listen to the podfic because I took a 20k project that was supposed to be "not that challenging, but this fic made me feel alive in a way i hadn't in years" and I made it A. PROJECT.

In chatting with the author,

kaixo , (we're friends) she was listening to some of my other podfic and had asked me if it was common or if I had considered putting things like music and sound effects into my podfic. I said it had been somewhat common in certain fandoms (Welcome to Night Vale), but not generally common practice. But we got to talking and she mentioned that she thought this story could handle it, and I agreed. One of the main characters is a DJ and has several scenes where he's out at clubs playing sets, and just about every chapter has some sort of atmosphere that kaixo does a fabulous job describing to the point that you can feel them, and would be easy to embellish. So I did. I took on the project of putting in background effects and especially, MAKING MUSIC LOOPS. I have a fairly extensive music collection and I had asked kaixo for some thoughts on what she was thinking about the music she mentions in each scene and I worked in her suggestions around my thoughts and basically created some loops of music that feature in the club scenes as well as adding sound effects like street noise or the noise of the ocean or characters stacking crockery on the table or dropping cutlery onto plates. It really takes a story that is already alive with sensory details and is painting a picture of these people's lives that's so vivid you feel like you're there and it brings you a step closer to that world. And honestly, I didn't think I'd finish it in time, so I guess it turned out to be a challenge after all!

Also! There is no actual football, so this is really accessible even if you don't know football or the characters since it's an AU where they are just real people and not football players.

2. We're Less Than Half as Close as I Want to Be - football rpf (Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen)
Summary: Christian mails Vincent a gift. Vincent has no idea why or what it's supposed to mean.

This is BY FAR the shortest thing I wrote this year. It is also BY FAR the thing that took the least amount of time. Both of these are why I am proud of it.

I participated in the Football Winter Challenge 2017 this year. I had originally intended on writing a cute, sweet fic about this pairing where they were re-united for Christmas and there was love and warmth and happiness (see the next entry), but it got away from me and turned into something bigger and deeper. I wasn't sure I was going to get it done and I was really struggling through it. Simultaneously I was recording A LOT of podfic for the Informal Twitter Podfic Exchange. Yet somehow, on 2 December (with the podfics due on 18 December) I got this idea for a fic I wanted to write for the Dutch holiday Sinterklaas. It's a problematic holiday, but it's a part of my heritage and I wanted to honour that. So, I got an idea. The holiday is the evening of 5 December. It was 2 December (at night). But I wanted to do it. I knew I had to try. This fic was written on 3 December, edited on 4 December, and posted on 5 December and it is one of the few things I've written in which I managed to tell a complete story in fewer than 5000 words. PLUS, I'm super proud of the way I did the description and the fact that this is a fic in which the two main characters are a continent apart, yet they still manage to interact. You get this glimpse/snapshot into their real lives and how they are existing and just living life apart yet still trying to make things work. It's a sweet moment and it's concise yet the descriptions (something I struggle with) are vivid and I'm SO PROUD of what I could accomplish with this fic.

3. Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More - football rpf (Christian Eriksen/Vincent Janssen)
Summary: Christian and Vincent both unintentionally give one another the exact Christmas gift they need. Or...Vincent is deep in his feelings and searching for a place to belong, Christian is trying to move on with his life even though he's not sure he wants to, and Toby's the friend we all need who tries to keep everyone from getting hurt by their bad decisions.

This fic definitely goes under the "thing you made that you think deserves more love". Okay. It's Christmas fic and I posted it AFTER Christmas, so I'm sort of not surprised it didn't get a lot of attention. it's also the longest thing I wrote this year (27k), but I LOVE IT. This is the fic I alluded to in my last post and in a way is the follow-up to the fic I recced in part 2 (We're Less Than Half as Close as I Want to Be), although the two do stand alone. This fic was.....a journey. I wrote a lot of it in a fit of writing over the Thanksgiving holiday in which I did very little for three straight days but write, write, write, write, write and I only ended up halfway done. Then I hit a wall both mentally and physically and I stepped back for a bit to work on podfic and the other fic. Then I came back to it mid-December, started revising what I had written, learned it wasn't NEARLY as bad as I thought it was and was, in fact, quite good once I cleaned it up...then hit the same wall. I stressed over it, I worried over it, I pushed myself. I wanted to get it done by Christmas. It kept going from this nice, cute, happy "we're together on Christmas" fic to something darker where people were feeling displaced and alone and there were fights and people having it out and people not talking about feelings and a lot of general Christmas angst, which is real. It's real, but I think it was too close for me. My friend

analise010 told me to give it up and not worry about it, but I knew I needed to keep going and I couldn't just walk away from it. She did give me the great advice that I needed to pull back and not try to make the fic solve my problems. and that, I realised, was the key. That I was trying to make this fic help me make sense of things and I was forcing some scenes that the fic didn't need. So I took some time, rearranged, shifted some POVs and brought it around to this great arc where there's still angst and loneliness and pining and pain, but ultimately it's this hopeful story about made families and love and the way that even though there's tension among friends/family at the holidays, you still all genuinely care about one another and you all come together in love and support.

It's named after a Relient K song which has the following chorus, and after all the hours and the agonising and the stress, I really think it hits these feelings spot on:

So look at me now

It's finally Christmas and I'm home

Head indoors to get out of this weather

And I don't know how but the closest friends I've ever known are all inside

Singing together

It's definitely not my best writing, but I do think it is some of my best storytelling and I wish it had gotten more attention.

4. Five Times Christian Eriksen Helped his Teammates with Their Problems - football RPF
Summary:Christian Eriksen has a lot of love for his Hotspur teammates, even if it does get him caught up in their antics and drama. In which Chris just wants to ignore his feelings, Dele and Dier need to talk it out, Son Heung-min is a ridiculous human being, and everyone sends far too many text messages.

Honestly....this isn't that good. It's not well written at all. It's tropey AF, but it's a five times fic so it's sort of supposed to be. But it's not my best work.

That said, it got me back into writing and it brought me closer to the community and it let me work with some amazing podficcers and it SET UP ALL MY WRITING THAT CAME AFTER and I will be forever grateful to it and I honestly think you all should listen to the podfic because the podfic erases a lot of the writing errors and just takes you on a fun, mutli-voiced journey through a sort of silly, lighthearted story where poor Christian gets sucked into everyone's lives and ends up having feelings of his own that he never meant to have.

This project happened at the same time I was working on my podfic big bang. I was getting back into writing after a three year hiatus AND I was switching fandoms into football rpf where I knew a lot about football and the people and the source material, such as it is, but not much about actually writing in this fandom. And I'd been struggling. This pod-together project had come about on a whim of myself and others talking about some things and I said "we should write a fic about this" and it was a whole lot of half-formed ideas from me who hadn't written in three years and an English major who doesn't understand the mechanics of writing decent fiction and is really just all about what is the crackiest idea I can come up with I just want it to be funny. IT. WAS. HARD. I had to drag myself to do it. We had check in after check in and I just kept responding like......yeah I don't know if I'm going to make this deadline.

And one Friday afternoon in mid-June some how, some way, something in my life just clicked. I still can't explain it, but it was like the person I am who had been hiding underneath looking for a purpose in life for years (completely unbeknownst to my conscious self) just exploded out of me to the surface and I felt invincible. i sat down and I wrote and it was like a weird writing fever. The words were terrible, but I wrote them. I had to force myself to stop writing and sleep and even then all I wanted to do was talk about the writing. The next day I woke up and wrote for ELEVEN STRAIGHT HOURS, only stopping twice for a quick meal break, and I HAD TO DRAG MYSELF AWAY. I don't know that it was this fic, but I don't know that it wasn't. I just know that things coincided and I felt alive in a way I hadn't known I was missing. So I love this. And I love my co-podficcers, and I think you should listen to this even if you know nothing about football fandom because you sort of don't need to know much about these people or about football in order to get what's happening here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

So the moral of this post is... Itsadrizzit is the most Extra? ♥

Current music Relient K??? GIRL.

I'm the most extra person you will ever know!

(Don't judge my Relient K...)

These aren't my fandom, at all, but I love the story of how you wrote #4 on the list. Those moments where everything comes together and just flows? Yes. Just the best feeling. Ever. <3

Thank you!!!

Yes, it was absolutely the best feeling. It was just this beautiful rush of creativity and energy and it unlocked something in me I didn't know I'd hidden away and it just felt beautiful and magical and free and I felt invincible. I'd like to get back there again someday. It was nice.

Also, I was telling myself I should talk about something that WASN'T football RPF, but you know what, ehhhhhh I like what i like and I do the work I do.

Word. If you don't like/aren't proud of your own work/ can blow your own trumpet, who's going to, right?

But you really spewed/haemorrhaged/gushed (?) out a LOT of words in 2017.

I think your word count in one's year's fic for you is like... equalled to about three years worth of mine. I'm dead impressed.

Your Five Times Fic isn't as bad as you think it is.

Yes, your latter stories are a lot stronger in that after that initial podfic, you know what you wanted to write about and the themes you wanted to focus on (moving from Christian and EVERYONE else to your main rare pairing). Now, you have a handle on what you want to do, so you're reacting to the clarity in the latter stages what you want to do when it comes to your newer fics, but it's stronger than you think.

With regards to fic 3- to be fair, the fest that hosted it was really small.
On top of that, it's a super rare pairing written for a team that hasn't had much of a look in (in terms of Football RPF) until relatively recently.¹ .

It might be one of those fics that will be revisited over time (because Christmas comes every year). And sometimes, the fics that you consider your best fics are the ones that get passed over, and the ones that you go, "Ugh, seriously, you guys?" are the ones that are like... reader catnip. Take it from me, you just don't know what hits people in the feels and moves them to comment (and personalities are a big draw).

Actually, I liked the fic Stay In My Eyeline, because you really had Christian dynamic to the point of out of character recklessness, and the Belgian contingent going, "Uhhh, nope." As well as the sadness around Oranje just failing. However, at the end, Christian was just glad to be there despite everything, knowing that when he returned to London, he'd be wrecked by the whole journey around it, but didn't care (to Toby's off-screen consternation, I'm sure). It was really emotional, but everything was handled quite well.

Hah. I think I've said enough about no. 1 from my side, really. But I do like what you did with it, and some parts I truly love. Especially, Chapter 6 and 7, the music scenes and how you tied it into the mood of the narrative, as well as the outro in chapter 16. It's really a piece of work that feels alive and tangible, and I'm glad that I got to experience it, the mood reminded me of the soaps I'd listen to on the radio growing up.

¹ _{Let's put it this way, when I posted a Vertonghen /Adebayor fic way back in 2015 I got excited fangirling over posting a gen fic of this pairing. The fic itself was PRETTY dour, but the person who fangirled in question was the only one writing about Hotspur fic. It was AU, and about BAE (not the most... popular of players towards the end of his career). A lot of ppl didn't start writing about Tottenham Hotspur in earnest until 2016. So you have your work cut out with this lot}

Edited (what is punctuation? ) 2018-01-10 10:27 (UTC)

Haemorrhaged is a good word for my word count last year.

This year, on the other hand....

But that's not what we're here for.

I'm glad you like Stay in My Eyeline. I also like it and I honestly didn't expect it to come out as well as it did since it was just self-indulgent ridiculousness I wanted to write for myself, but it's quite a good story, really. I did like actually getting to show Christian's feelings for once because, since I usually write from Vincent's POV, you rarely get to see that he, too, has this inner turmoil about things and is still the sort to make a terrible decision when it comes to these things, although, yeah, it's a bit out of character, but I hopefully managed to rationalise it well enough to make it feel like a realistic thing (him making this decision).

I'm not overly worried about the hit count/engagement on Merry Christmas, Here's to Many More. I am happy with the way it all came together at the end and that's ultimately what matters to me.

The Five Times fic is fine. I just find myself wanting to tighten up the writing every time I read it now, which I literally can't do because it exists as a podfic, so I think I just need to let it exist and only listen to the podfic until I can move past these baser instincts to edit. It came together, certainly, and helped me find the story I really wanted to tell, so it is important in that regards.

Thanks for the thoughts on this, as always.

This year, on the other hand....

Isn't this year for catching up on the podfics you wish to finish recording as well as working on your AU? Not all fandom years are going to be like last year. You had things you needed to get out that year, whereas this year might just be for consolidating. Besides, you need to refill that writing well, you drew a lot of water from that last year.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Day 9

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