marsdragon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
marsdragon) wrote2022-12-31 09:38 am
marsdragon) wrote2022-12-31 09:38 am
2022 look-back post
I haven't done one of these before, but maybe that's a reason to start. This will focus on fic, because I don't keep good enough track of my yarn projects to remember what I did in 2022 (they all turned out pretty well, though).
17 Mar 2022
Millenium Queen of the Comet Kingdom
Original Work
Written for Quillori in Worldbuilding Exchange 2022.
This is probably the fic I had the most fun with this entire year. I don't usually write OW, but I had a great time making up a pulp solar system complete with shameless rip-offs of my favorite authors. The idea started from "Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years would make a great pulp title", then expanded from there. The idea of a kingdom on a comet was trying to work out how to make the queen last for a thousand years, and also the Comet Kingdom from Space Battleship Yamato. (the alien made of flexible reflective crystal is ripping off Claire from Galaxy Express 999. I really like Matsumoto, okay?) The idea of an ancient dead race of Martians being replaced by colonizing Terrans is pretty blatantly a rip-off of Ray Bradbury's Mars stories, the main character was intended to be something like a Leigh Brackett hero, and the idea of a first-person narrative was ripped off A Gun for Dinosaur, for all L. Sprague de Camp would probably hate how goofy and unscientific the entire thing is.
The whole serf knights/surf knights pun was because I was reading a history of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, which did have a class of unfree knights. I was already ripping the idea of Venus as a water planet off any number of pulp authors (Bradbury and Brackett again, mostly), saw the opportunity, and went for it. I'm not sorry.
Anyway I loved writing this and I'm proud of how it turned out. I kind of want to keep writing original sci-fi works of what I want to read (pulpy nonsense), but I probably won't get around to it on my own.
14 Apr 2022
Snow on the Ashes of Victory
Psychic Force
I started this probably around 2018 with a vague idea, then just kept fiddling with it for years trying to beat it into shape. Kind of like The Price of Vengeance, and like that fic I'm not really satisfied with how it turned out. The original idea was that Burn went off five years ago by 2012 and when he comes back he's irrevocably changed and there's nothing that can be done. Can't change the past, can't go home again...very standard MarsDragon themes. I also wanted to get an outside viewpoint, and Burn's parents probably think he's dead in 2012. After all, he goes off after Keith, Keith has since become a terrorist, then NOA HQ explodes and Burn just doesn't call home...what are they supposed to think? Even with a cover-up, Burn is going to drop out of all contact for two years. And what do they think of what happened to Keith? They knew him before he went all Magneto too.
So there's a lot of themes, but I didn't know how to bring them all together right and it just sat there for years. Eventually I forced myself to finish it. I still think the idea of outsider viewpoints in PF is good, just...not this iteration. I'll keep working on it!
16 Apr 2022
Last Light
Fighting General Daimos
Written for Be The First 2022
I'm not 100% satisfied with this, mostly the sex, but overall I'm happy with it. God, Nagahama, you can't just drop bait like that and never mention Eizam again after he dies! That's crap! I desperately wanted Eizam to die at least thinking he won, and to get to actually kiss Richter. The nub of this fic is Eizam kissing Richter, everything else is secondary.
Anyway, that's pretty much it. I watched Daimos and loved it, but had to fix that one bit that annoyed me. Very straightforward. Go watch Daimos.
What surprises me is that from the old Daimos doujins I find on Yahoo Auctions, the main ship was Kazuya/Richter and Richter/Eizam is rare. Sometimes I feel a deep kinship with my fellow fans across time and space, sometimes I have no idea what they were thinking. Just like other fans these days!
Thinking about it, I keep writing Be The First fics for Robot Romance shows. For 2023, I've been thinking I should continue the streak with a Combattler fic, or maybe a Daltanious one now that it got good in the last 7 episodes. It both charms me and feels appropriate that I should be the one to write the first English-language fics for all these shows over 40 years after they aired. (now this will curse me and I'll never write the Combattler fic)
07 Jul 2022
Everything Went Numb
Suikoden I
Written for Sexy_Mothman_Tarsi in Nonconathon 2022
I haven't missed a Nonconathon yet and I don't plan to in the future. I generally know I'm going to get either Rose (my recip for the past three years) or possibly venonat and this time it was venonat. I'd kind of been expecting it. Next year it will be Rose again.
This is mostly a smashing-together of stuff out of the prompt, but I think it turned out all right overall. There's a lot of bits I like, though this took a lot of editing to get it banged into shape (originally the biting was before the kissing but I didn't think Tir would be cool with getting vampire bit). Tir didn't really have much to do here, did he? Oops.
All of this is Soul Eater's fault, in one way or another. The real enemy is the True Runes, the real enemy is always the True Runes.
The title is from a ska song, like I always do for Nonconathon. It makes coming up with titles a lot easier.
23 Jul 2022
Perfect World
Psychic Force
I wrote this for myself in Nonconathon, but I already gave myself a treat last year and it felt cheap to do it two times in a row. A joke is never as funny the second time round. It actually kind of bums me out that I was able to write a treat every year for the first three years of Nonconathon, but then I totally fell off the wagon in 2020 and only wrote for myself the next two years. There's a goal for 2023, make sure to write a good treat in Nonconathon.
Anyway no one else was ever going to write me Psychic Force noncon and I can never quite give up on "if MarsDragon does not do it, who will?" I had a great time with this fic, and my one regret is not enough rambling about political philosophy. (they're both wrong, but Wong is smarter and more experienced than Keith about these things) I'm proud of this, especially the escape sequence at the end - I was looking forward to writing that the whole time.
Psychic dampeners aren't technically canon, but they're a logical extension of psychic amplifiers and they feel like the sort of thing Wong would at least put a few resources into. Though since the amplifiers are related to developing artificial psychics, maybe not...? Still, it seems like a good idea to have some way to neuter all those random superpowered assholes that are running around without having to personally kill all of them. Either way they're a long-standing fan idea so I borrowed it.
I have some vague ideas for follow-ups (this finally makes Keith admit his ideas were dumb and reconcile with Burn, then a ten-years-later sequel to that) but come on, you know those are never getting written. Besides, sequels would require having Wong lose, and Wong can't lose. The rules of the Psychic Force universe would never allow it.
10 Sep 2022
Time
Psychic Force
I finally made good on my years-long promise to write about the rest of the Psychic Force cast! Of course the first one was Wong, because he's been one of my favorites for years. I used to try to main him (don't think I knew about the tier list, my other main was Patty), and I'm pretty sure my fondness for long dark hair directly flows back to Wong in the OVA. He looks so good with it down-!
Like I said in the author's notes, I started translating character profiles and found out about Wong's secret angsty past. I can't believe I have so many Psychic Force comics and doujins and never even heard about this before! Doesn't anyone else care? I spent an entire day reveling in everyone having a tragic backstory before realising that Wong's is literally being a bastard, and then I couldn't stop laughing. I had to do something with it, and this fic resulted.
I write this quickly and then polished it relentlessly, and I'm really happy with how it came out. I like the balance between kid-Wong being kind of innocent and still going to be the sort of man he's going to grow up to be. And his family is exactly the sort of people that would create that man. But be nice to Mama Wong here, she's having a real rough time. It ain't easy having your affair found out, then your lover possibly committing suicide/being killed by your asshole husband, and then your kid asking a lot of awkward and inappropriate questions.
Anyway I had plans to write backstory fics for way more characters, and even have the one for Might mostly written, but I got real busy with vacations, exchanges, and having to re-write my translation site at the end of the year. It's too bad, because writing a lot of Psychic Force 2012 fic in 2022 felt right. But 2023 is good too.
30 Oct 2022
Final Round: Nightmare
Fatal Fury
Written for badassbutterfly1987 in Trick or Treat 2022
Badassbutterfly wrote me a good little FF fic for nonconathon, and I realised I hadn't written enough SNK fic in 2022. Two birds with one stone.
I didn't actually participate in ToT this year, because I wasn't really feeling it and my original plan was to be in France during signups. That didn't work out, but I didn't sign up anyway. But I did want to treat, and I eventually came up with a good idea. The recip seems to like Geese a bit softer than I usually like him, but I did my best. I do like the idea of ghost Geese hanging out and haunting the cast after he's dead. Actually, that originally showed up in The Price of Vengeance too, I just edited it out later. Like I said, that fic's a mess. I also had the idea of Geese haunting Billy floating around too, so it was nice to finally hammer that into shape.
Kain trying to recruit Billy is another idea I had floating around for awhile (it's in the Billy/Duck chapter of Round One, Fight) and the MoW2 promo art seems to at least have Billy hanging around in MOW time. I'm real excited to see what's going to happen with him.
17 Dec 2022
Yuletide Fic
I guess I'll have to edit this in after author reveals. I'll say I'm not quite as proud of it as the rest - I think I could've done a better job but deadlines. Oh well.
In 2023, I hope to write more Psychic Force backstory fics and finally make good on my long-standing promises to write about the rest of the cast. I also want to write at least one thing off my fic idea list. I'll be participating in Worldbuilding (the sequel), Nonconathon, and Yuletide like usual, and we'll see how I feel about Trick or Treat when it happens. I also like to write a treat for Nonconathon.
No promises about any of this, of course. You should know not to rely on me by now.
17 Mar 2022
Millenium Queen of the Comet Kingdom
Original Work
Written for Quillori in Worldbuilding Exchange 2022.
This is probably the fic I had the most fun with this entire year. I don't usually write OW, but I had a great time making up a pulp solar system complete with shameless rip-offs of my favorite authors. The idea started from "Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years would make a great pulp title", then expanded from there. The idea of a kingdom on a comet was trying to work out how to make the queen last for a thousand years, and also the Comet Kingdom from Space Battleship Yamato. (the alien made of flexible reflective crystal is ripping off Claire from Galaxy Express 999. I really like Matsumoto, okay?) The idea of an ancient dead race of Martians being replaced by colonizing Terrans is pretty blatantly a rip-off of Ray Bradbury's Mars stories, the main character was intended to be something like a Leigh Brackett hero, and the idea of a first-person narrative was ripped off A Gun for Dinosaur, for all L. Sprague de Camp would probably hate how goofy and unscientific the entire thing is.
The whole serf knights/surf knights pun was because I was reading a history of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, which did have a class of unfree knights. I was already ripping the idea of Venus as a water planet off any number of pulp authors (Bradbury and Brackett again, mostly), saw the opportunity, and went for it. I'm not sorry.
Anyway I loved writing this and I'm proud of how it turned out. I kind of want to keep writing original sci-fi works of what I want to read (pulpy nonsense), but I probably won't get around to it on my own.
14 Apr 2022
Snow on the Ashes of Victory
Psychic Force
I started this probably around 2018 with a vague idea, then just kept fiddling with it for years trying to beat it into shape. Kind of like The Price of Vengeance, and like that fic I'm not really satisfied with how it turned out. The original idea was that Burn went off five years ago by 2012 and when he comes back he's irrevocably changed and there's nothing that can be done. Can't change the past, can't go home again...very standard MarsDragon themes. I also wanted to get an outside viewpoint, and Burn's parents probably think he's dead in 2012. After all, he goes off after Keith, Keith has since become a terrorist, then NOA HQ explodes and Burn just doesn't call home...what are they supposed to think? Even with a cover-up, Burn is going to drop out of all contact for two years. And what do they think of what happened to Keith? They knew him before he went all Magneto too.
So there's a lot of themes, but I didn't know how to bring them all together right and it just sat there for years. Eventually I forced myself to finish it. I still think the idea of outsider viewpoints in PF is good, just...not this iteration. I'll keep working on it!
16 Apr 2022
Last Light
Fighting General Daimos
Written for Be The First 2022
I'm not 100% satisfied with this, mostly the sex, but overall I'm happy with it. God, Nagahama, you can't just drop bait like that and never mention Eizam again after he dies! That's crap! I desperately wanted Eizam to die at least thinking he won, and to get to actually kiss Richter. The nub of this fic is Eizam kissing Richter, everything else is secondary.
Anyway, that's pretty much it. I watched Daimos and loved it, but had to fix that one bit that annoyed me. Very straightforward. Go watch Daimos.
What surprises me is that from the old Daimos doujins I find on Yahoo Auctions, the main ship was Kazuya/Richter and Richter/Eizam is rare. Sometimes I feel a deep kinship with my fellow fans across time and space, sometimes I have no idea what they were thinking. Just like other fans these days!
Thinking about it, I keep writing Be The First fics for Robot Romance shows. For 2023, I've been thinking I should continue the streak with a Combattler fic, or maybe a Daltanious one now that it got good in the last 7 episodes. It both charms me and feels appropriate that I should be the one to write the first English-language fics for all these shows over 40 years after they aired. (now this will curse me and I'll never write the Combattler fic)
07 Jul 2022
Everything Went Numb
Suikoden I
Written for Sexy_Mothman_Tarsi in Nonconathon 2022
I haven't missed a Nonconathon yet and I don't plan to in the future. I generally know I'm going to get either Rose (my recip for the past three years) or possibly venonat and this time it was venonat. I'd kind of been expecting it. Next year it will be Rose again.
This is mostly a smashing-together of stuff out of the prompt, but I think it turned out all right overall. There's a lot of bits I like, though this took a lot of editing to get it banged into shape (originally the biting was before the kissing but I didn't think Tir would be cool with getting vampire bit). Tir didn't really have much to do here, did he? Oops.
All of this is Soul Eater's fault, in one way or another. The real enemy is the True Runes, the real enemy is always the True Runes.
The title is from a ska song, like I always do for Nonconathon. It makes coming up with titles a lot easier.
23 Jul 2022
Perfect World
Psychic Force
I wrote this for myself in Nonconathon, but I already gave myself a treat last year and it felt cheap to do it two times in a row. A joke is never as funny the second time round. It actually kind of bums me out that I was able to write a treat every year for the first three years of Nonconathon, but then I totally fell off the wagon in 2020 and only wrote for myself the next two years. There's a goal for 2023, make sure to write a good treat in Nonconathon.
Anyway no one else was ever going to write me Psychic Force noncon and I can never quite give up on "if MarsDragon does not do it, who will?" I had a great time with this fic, and my one regret is not enough rambling about political philosophy. (they're both wrong, but Wong is smarter and more experienced than Keith about these things) I'm proud of this, especially the escape sequence at the end - I was looking forward to writing that the whole time.
Psychic dampeners aren't technically canon, but they're a logical extension of psychic amplifiers and they feel like the sort of thing Wong would at least put a few resources into. Though since the amplifiers are related to developing artificial psychics, maybe not...? Still, it seems like a good idea to have some way to neuter all those random superpowered assholes that are running around without having to personally kill all of them. Either way they're a long-standing fan idea so I borrowed it.
I have some vague ideas for follow-ups (this finally makes Keith admit his ideas were dumb and reconcile with Burn, then a ten-years-later sequel to that) but come on, you know those are never getting written. Besides, sequels would require having Wong lose, and Wong can't lose. The rules of the Psychic Force universe would never allow it.
10 Sep 2022
Time
Psychic Force
I finally made good on my years-long promise to write about the rest of the Psychic Force cast! Of course the first one was Wong, because he's been one of my favorites for years. I used to try to main him (don't think I knew about the tier list, my other main was Patty), and I'm pretty sure my fondness for long dark hair directly flows back to Wong in the OVA. He looks so good with it down-!
Like I said in the author's notes, I started translating character profiles and found out about Wong's secret angsty past. I can't believe I have so many Psychic Force comics and doujins and never even heard about this before! Doesn't anyone else care? I spent an entire day reveling in everyone having a tragic backstory before realising that Wong's is literally being a bastard, and then I couldn't stop laughing. I had to do something with it, and this fic resulted.
I write this quickly and then polished it relentlessly, and I'm really happy with how it came out. I like the balance between kid-Wong being kind of innocent and still going to be the sort of man he's going to grow up to be. And his family is exactly the sort of people that would create that man. But be nice to Mama Wong here, she's having a real rough time. It ain't easy having your affair found out, then your lover possibly committing suicide/being killed by your asshole husband, and then your kid asking a lot of awkward and inappropriate questions.
Anyway I had plans to write backstory fics for way more characters, and even have the one for Might mostly written, but I got real busy with vacations, exchanges, and having to re-write my translation site at the end of the year. It's too bad, because writing a lot of Psychic Force 2012 fic in 2022 felt right. But 2023 is good too.
30 Oct 2022
Final Round: Nightmare
Fatal Fury
Written for badassbutterfly1987 in Trick or Treat 2022
Badassbutterfly wrote me a good little FF fic for nonconathon, and I realised I hadn't written enough SNK fic in 2022. Two birds with one stone.
I didn't actually participate in ToT this year, because I wasn't really feeling it and my original plan was to be in France during signups. That didn't work out, but I didn't sign up anyway. But I did want to treat, and I eventually came up with a good idea. The recip seems to like Geese a bit softer than I usually like him, but I did my best. I do like the idea of ghost Geese hanging out and haunting the cast after he's dead. Actually, that originally showed up in The Price of Vengeance too, I just edited it out later. Like I said, that fic's a mess. I also had the idea of Geese haunting Billy floating around too, so it was nice to finally hammer that into shape.
Kain trying to recruit Billy is another idea I had floating around for awhile (it's in the Billy/Duck chapter of Round One, Fight) and the MoW2 promo art seems to at least have Billy hanging around in MOW time. I'm real excited to see what's going to happen with him.
17 Dec 2022
Yuletide Fic
I guess I'll have to edit this in after author reveals. I'll say I'm not quite as proud of it as the rest - I think I could've done a better job but deadlines. Oh well.
In 2023, I hope to write more Psychic Force backstory fics and finally make good on my long-standing promises to write about the rest of the cast. I also want to write at least one thing off my fic idea list. I'll be participating in Worldbuilding (the sequel), Nonconathon, and Yuletide like usual, and we'll see how I feel about Trick or Treat when it happens. I also like to write a treat for Nonconathon.
No promises about any of this, of course. You should know not to rely on me by now.