Fanfic Year in Review 2025
8 January 2026 03:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeApparently I missed doing this altogether in 2024, so I'm afraid "The Remorse of Others" will never get a mention...
A Sword Outwears Its Sheath (3400 words)
Fandom: Three Musketeers (book)/Twenty Years After (book)
Characters: Athos, Madame de Chevreuse, Grimaud
Summary: Porthos has found the wealth he wanted, Aramis has rediscovered his vocation, and d'Artagnan is no longer in a position to fraternise with the musketeers under his command. Athos has found himself questioning his own future of late, but it takes a chance encounter to bring clarity to his thoughts... and an unexpected solace, of a sort.
If I Should Die (2500 words)
Fandom: Twenty Years After (book)
Characters: Athos, Aramis (and offscreen mentions of everyone else)
Summary: At dawn on the day of the English king’s execution, Athos takes precautions for the future and contemplates those to whom his life is bound — both by love and hate.
Song of the Musketeers (300 words)
I'm not entirely sure this one counts -- I'm certainly not counting all the other translations that have occupied a lot of my creative energies this year :-D
Fandom: Three Musketeers (book)
Characters: Athos, Porthos, Aramis, d'Artagnan
Summary: A singable filk/translation of the folk rock song by the band Korol' i Shut
Ashes (12500 words)
Fandom: The Yellow Poppy
Characters: Roland, Marthe, de Brencourt, Gaston, Valentine
Summary: "Where Roland’s sword had failed utterly, de Brencourt, despite everything, had brought them all off to safety as well as could be managed": AU in which the rescue plans succeeded. Two years later, Roland has an unexpected encounter, and an inspiration.
Think Only This of Me (5300 words)
Fandom: Twenty Years After (book)
Characters: Porthos, d'Artagnan, Raoul, Athos (offscreen), Aramis (offscreen)
Summary: Athos gave his life to save Charles Stuart. A grieving d'Artagnan must deal with the consequences. And there are some things, at least, that Porthos sees more clearly than any of them.
Little Gentlemen (9800 words)
Fandom: Twenty Years After (book), Little Men (Louisa Alcott)
Characters: Raoul, Athos, d'Artagnan, Aramis and Porthos off-screen, OC protagonist
Summary: A starving street musician is sent by a kindly benefactor to find refuge in a stately home now inhabited by a crowd of boys: a crackfic crossover in which Louisa May Alcott's "Little Men" meets the world of Dumas' "Twenty Years After", and Athos finds his true vocation in the upbringing of the young.
Six.
About 30,000 words.
Roland/Marthe and Gaston/Valentine (and the unrequited past affections of Artus de Brencourt) appear in "Ashes" -- and that's about it, given that Athos and Madame de Chevreuse have (as in canon) no relationship to speak of beyond the exchange of a few annoyed words...
The worst is probably "Ashes" -- not that there is anything in particular wrong with it, but it is the shortest and dullest. "Song of the Musketeers" isn't exactly inspired, but (a) I wasn't responsible for it and (b) I have to admit that it does sound more interesting...
As the best I'd probably go for "Think Only This of Me", principally because someone in Writers Anonymous actually praised it as evocative without even having read the story! But they are all pretty good, albeit simply consisting of apt quotations.
I think my favourite is again marginally "Think Only This of Me" over "If I Should Die", but they are both good.
The worst is probably "Little Gentlemen", if one discounts the purely factual "Song of the Musketeers". I probably really shouldn't be counting that one in here.
A very strong field this year that makes it almost impossible to choose between them: the opening couplet of "Song of the Musketeers", good as it is, might perhaps be said to be the 'worst' on the grounds that it is a somewhat loose translation of the original, which really couldn't be written word for word.
*Maybe* the best is "Anyone would think," Marthe observed pertly, "that nobody in London had ever seen a Frenchwoman before" from "Ashes"...
Unusually, those strike me as less strong overall; perhaps the weakest in isolation is Only Venya bore his head a little higher than before from "Little Gentlemen", with my favourite being There returned to him fleetingly and without regret the memory of a light-hearted lady in the dark from "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath".
Far more than I would have predicted -- I only managed one single fic in 2024!
The answer to that one is very obvious: this time last year I had absolutely no idea that, thanks to a rather sniffy online review of "The Three Musketeers" (which in itself apparently only ended up being shown to me because YouTube had randomly shown me a songvid for the BBC Musketeers previously), I would end up becoming an ardent fan of a cult Soviet TV serial and an assorted group of Russian actors, watching literally hundreds of TV programmes in Russian (I have about 60 interviews alone saved for reference, not counting all the videos I watched for entertainment and didn't save), writing serious poetry again, watching a 50-part Japanese anime dubbed into French, reading two lengthy Dumas novels in the original French, and yet, by some strange quirk of my imagination, apparently being drawn to write multiple fanfics *not* about the famous "Three Musketeers" or even about the said Soviet serial, but for some reason about the much less popular novel "Twenty Years After" instead :-D
(I suspect the Soviet Musketeers *did* have something to do with it, in that the struggles and lengthy recap process involved in watching an unsubtitled adaptation caused me to examine and analyse the source material in far more detail than I would normally have done, which is what generally leads to fanfiction ideas in my case: speculation about canon.)
Again, hard to say; the silly Musketeers song made me happy simply by existing, but not due to being in my translation :-D
In a very strong field, "If I should Die" *possibly* came closest to what I'd originally hoped for in the writing of it, but as always there is very little to choose between any of those three Athos-fics in terms of outcome or general satisfaction. (It's just sad that the fandom in general apparently doesn't agree...)
In terms of kudos, "If I Should Die" with 9 kudos and 3 bookmarks (so I don't know what I'm complaining about above) -- even if, like the others, it has only spam comment.
"Ashes", unsurprisingly, being in a non-existent fandom. Although "Little Gentlemen" has even fewer hits and doesn't have that excuse, being a crossover between two general parent fandoms that do at least have some ongoing traffic -- but I haven't finished uploading it yet (there isn't really much incentive), and it might possibly pick up some more approval in the chapter where the OCs are less apparent; it will probably get another four or so hits per upload, which will take it up somewhere close to "Ashes", which has 24 views on three chapters.
What hurts more is that, rereading, I'm no longer sure "Ashes" is anything as effective as I thought it was when I was writing it, fandom or no fandom...
"Ashes"; it feels slow and wordy, rather than succeeding in evoking Broster's elusive style :-(
That would obviously have to be the 'mature'-rated "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath", even though it is only very, very slightly more explicit than things I've written before, with the difference coming down to a single sentence!
"Think Only This of Me": everybody (except Aramis) cries, and Aramis suffers a great deal. Oh, and Athos gets killed, of course :-p
But that in and of itself doesn't feel sad: as Porthos says, Athos has won. The sadness is for the others who are still alive and devastated.
The bouncy "Song of the Musketeers" :-)
(Admittedly it is probably the only one that can be described in the least as 'fun'...)
Off-hand I'm not sure any of them are particularly 'sweet' in that sense. Possibly Jakob as the youngest of the boys in "Little Gentlemen"... or Athos sending farewell embraces by proxy in "If I Should Die", depending on how you look at things!
I really struggled with "Ashes", including completely rewriting the opening of the first chapter :-(
I really don't remember any of them being much easier than the rest; again, the 'three Athos-stories' all feel in retrospect as if they flowed relatively easily, although I remember, for example, having to go back to fix the weather in "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath"...
I did become conscious of Athos' apparent fatalistic death-wish in "Twenty Years After", which isn't really explained in canon, since earlier on he tells d'Artagnan, apparently quite sincerely, that he is now the happiest of men. It seems to be something to do with Mordaunt, and once he has been forced into killing Mordaunt in person his fatalism abates (although he still tells Aramis, on their way to the battle of Charenton, that he will never draw sword again unless forced into it, and indeed goes through the battle without striking a blow).
"Ashes", which due to the aforementioned rewrite took almost a year for me to upload three chapters.
Well, I embarked on a series of translated lyrics, which is a major challenge in terms of both versifying and translation, and discovered that I could indeed still write serious poetry, and moreover do so using somebody else's choice of metre and rhyme-scheme :-)
Looking back at what I wrote in 2024... "Get Arctic Raoul published, I suppose, though I don't really have a lot of faith in my ability to get that done" and "I'd like to finish that translation" (of Gefangene der Angst, although I'm not sure mixing German and Russian is necessarily a good idea...)
Stats
List of Completed Fics
A Sword Outwears Its Sheath (3400 words)
Fandom: Three Musketeers (book)/Twenty Years After (book)
Characters: Athos, Madame de Chevreuse, Grimaud
Summary: Porthos has found the wealth he wanted, Aramis has rediscovered his vocation, and d'Artagnan is no longer in a position to fraternise with the musketeers under his command. Athos has found himself questioning his own future of late, but it takes a chance encounter to bring clarity to his thoughts... and an unexpected solace, of a sort.
If I Should Die (2500 words)
Fandom: Twenty Years After (book)
Characters: Athos, Aramis (and offscreen mentions of everyone else)
Summary: At dawn on the day of the English king’s execution, Athos takes precautions for the future and contemplates those to whom his life is bound — both by love and hate.
Song of the Musketeers (300 words)
I'm not entirely sure this one counts -- I'm certainly not counting all the other translations that have occupied a lot of my creative energies this year :-D
Fandom: Three Musketeers (book)
Characters: Athos, Porthos, Aramis, d'Artagnan
Summary: A singable filk/translation of the folk rock song by the band Korol' i Shut
Ashes (12500 words)
Fandom: The Yellow Poppy
Characters: Roland, Marthe, de Brencourt, Gaston, Valentine
Summary: "Where Roland’s sword had failed utterly, de Brencourt, despite everything, had brought them all off to safety as well as could be managed": AU in which the rescue plans succeeded. Two years later, Roland has an unexpected encounter, and an inspiration.
Think Only This of Me (5300 words)
Fandom: Twenty Years After (book)
Characters: Porthos, d'Artagnan, Raoul, Athos (offscreen), Aramis (offscreen)
Summary: Athos gave his life to save Charles Stuart. A grieving d'Artagnan must deal with the consequences. And there are some things, at least, that Porthos sees more clearly than any of them.
Little Gentlemen (9800 words)
Fandom: Twenty Years After (book), Little Men (Louisa Alcott)
Characters: Raoul, Athos, d'Artagnan, Aramis and Porthos off-screen, OC protagonist
Summary: A starving street musician is sent by a kindly benefactor to find refuge in a stately home now inhabited by a crowd of boys: a crackfic crossover in which Louisa May Alcott's "Little Men" meets the world of Dumas' "Twenty Years After", and Athos finds his true vocation in the upbringing of the young.
Total number
Six.
Total word count
About 30,000 words.
Ship/character breakdown
Roland/Marthe and Gaston/Valentine (and the unrequited past affections of Artus de Brencourt) appear in "Ashes" -- and that's about it, given that Athos and Madame de Chevreuse have (as in canon) no relationship to speak of beyond the exchange of a few annoyed words...
Specifics
Best/worst title?
The worst is probably "Ashes" -- not that there is anything in particular wrong with it, but it is the shortest and dullest. "Song of the Musketeers" isn't exactly inspired, but (a) I wasn't responsible for it and (b) I have to admit that it does sound more interesting...
As the best I'd probably go for "Think Only This of Me", principally because someone in Writers Anonymous actually praised it as evocative without even having read the story! But they are all pretty good, albeit simply consisting of apt quotations.
Best/worst summary
I think my favourite is again marginally "Think Only This of Me" over "If I Should Die", but they are both good.
The worst is probably "Little Gentlemen", if one discounts the purely factual "Song of the Musketeers". I probably really shouldn't be counting that one in here.
Best/worst first line
A very strong field this year that makes it almost impossible to choose between them: the opening couplet of "Song of the Musketeers", good as it is, might perhaps be said to be the 'worst' on the grounds that it is a somewhat loose translation of the original, which really couldn't be written word for word.
*Maybe* the best is "Anyone would think," Marthe observed pertly, "that nobody in London had ever seen a Frenchwoman before" from "Ashes"...
Best/worst last line
Unusually, those strike me as less strong overall; perhaps the weakest in isolation is Only Venya bore his head a little higher than before from "Little Gentlemen", with my favourite being There returned to him fleetingly and without regret the memory of a light-hearted lady in the dark from "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath".
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?
Far more than I would have predicted -- I only managed one single fic in 2024!
What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?
The answer to that one is very obvious: this time last year I had absolutely no idea that, thanks to a rather sniffy online review of "The Three Musketeers" (which in itself apparently only ended up being shown to me because YouTube had randomly shown me a songvid for the BBC Musketeers previously), I would end up becoming an ardent fan of a cult Soviet TV serial and an assorted group of Russian actors, watching literally hundreds of TV programmes in Russian (I have about 60 interviews alone saved for reference, not counting all the videos I watched for entertainment and didn't save), writing serious poetry again, watching a 50-part Japanese anime dubbed into French, reading two lengthy Dumas novels in the original French, and yet, by some strange quirk of my imagination, apparently being drawn to write multiple fanfics *not* about the famous "Three Musketeers" or even about the said Soviet serial, but for some reason about the much less popular novel "Twenty Years After" instead :-D
(I suspect the Soviet Musketeers *did* have something to do with it, in that the struggles and lengthy recap process involved in watching an unsubtitled adaptation caused me to examine and analyse the source material in far more detail than I would normally have done, which is what generally leads to fanfiction ideas in my case: speculation about canon.)
What's your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.
Again, hard to say; the silly Musketeers song made me happy simply by existing, but not due to being in my translation :-D
In a very strong field, "If I should Die" *possibly* came closest to what I'd originally hoped for in the writing of it, but as always there is very little to choose between any of those three Athos-fics in terms of outcome or general satisfaction. (It's just sad that the fandom in general apparently doesn't agree...)
Okay, NOW your most popular story.
In terms of kudos, "If I Should Die" with 9 kudos and 3 bookmarks (so I don't know what I'm complaining about above) -- even if, like the others, it has only spam comment.
Story most underappreciated by the universe?
"Ashes", unsurprisingly, being in a non-existent fandom. Although "Little Gentlemen" has even fewer hits and doesn't have that excuse, being a crossover between two general parent fandoms that do at least have some ongoing traffic -- but I haven't finished uploading it yet (there isn't really much incentive), and it might possibly pick up some more approval in the chapter where the OCs are less apparent; it will probably get another four or so hits per upload, which will take it up somewhere close to "Ashes", which has 24 views on three chapters.
What hurts more is that, rereading, I'm no longer sure "Ashes" is anything as effective as I thought it was when I was writing it, fandom or no fandom...
Story that could have been better?
"Ashes"; it feels slow and wordy, rather than succeeding in evoking Broster's elusive style :-(
Sexiest story?
That would obviously have to be the 'mature'-rated "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath", even though it is only very, very slightly more explicit than things I've written before, with the difference coming down to a single sentence!
Saddest story?
"Think Only This of Me": everybody (except Aramis) cries, and Aramis suffers a great deal. Oh, and Athos gets killed, of course :-p
But that in and of itself doesn't feel sad: as Porthos says, Athos has won. The sadness is for the others who are still alive and devastated.
Most fun?
The bouncy "Song of the Musketeers" :-)
(Admittedly it is probably the only one that can be described in the least as 'fun'...)
Story with single sweetest moment?
Off-hand I'm not sure any of them are particularly 'sweet' in that sense. Possibly Jakob as the youngest of the boys in "Little Gentlemen"... or Athos sending farewell embraces by proxy in "If I Should Die", depending on how you look at things!
Hardest story to write?
I really struggled with "Ashes", including completely rewriting the opening of the first chapter :-(
Easiest/most fun story to write?
I really don't remember any of them being much easier than the rest; again, the 'three Athos-stories' all feel in retrospect as if they flowed relatively easily, although I remember, for example, having to go back to fix the weather in "A Sword Outwears Its Sheath"...
Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?
I did become conscious of Athos' apparent fatalistic death-wish in "Twenty Years After", which isn't really explained in canon, since earlier on he tells d'Artagnan, apparently quite sincerely, that he is now the happiest of men. It seems to be something to do with Mordaunt, and once he has been forced into killing Mordaunt in person his fatalism abates (although he still tells Aramis, on their way to the battle of Charenton, that he will never draw sword again unless forced into it, and indeed goes through the battle without striking a blow).
Most overdue story?
"Ashes", which due to the aforementioned rewrite took almost a year for me to upload three chapters.
Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Well, I embarked on a series of translated lyrics, which is a major challenge in terms of both versifying and translation, and discovered that I could indeed still write serious poetry, and moreover do so using somebody else's choice of metre and rhyme-scheme :-)
What are your fic writing goals for next year?
Looking back at what I wrote in 2024... "Get Arctic Raoul published, I suppose, though I don't really have a lot of faith in my ability to get that done" and "I'd like to finish that translation" (of Gefangene der Angst, although I'm not sure mixing German and Russian is necessarily a good idea...)