here's the thing:

A year for sure! I think I had a lot of personal nonsense draining my energy this year which meant a lower creative output but I definitely didn't do nothing! I crocheted a fair amount of hats, got a lot better at knitting, and did ballet. I still need to do a retrospective recap of 2021 and 2022, I have all the data for that! This one I don't have all my podfic data for yet so it'll be updated when I finish entering another thirty or so items into my spreadsheet. Scream.

Highlights!

• 7920 fiction words written!
• 1489 words of this were fic!
• x hours y minutes of podfic recorded!
• 28,882 words across academia and job

This is again the least amount of fiction words written in a year since I started keeping records, and a little less than last year. But this year was a lot and I understand why the number is what it is.

This brings my lifetime wordcount to 867,457 fiction words in my lifetime and 254,777 academic words, for a lifetime word total of 1,122,234. This feels like a too big number. Stuff REALLY adds up when you keep track of it! Which is, of course, the purpose of keeping records like this.

I also got another tattoo, bringing my total up to five! Number! Go! Up!

I read 118 books in 2020, which you know... fair. I also read a fuckton of fanfic, but I don't really track that in any meaningful way. Here's some bookmarked fics I really enjoyed though!

• The Woods of Change by Merfilly is a Earth's Children oneshot that scratched an itch I've had for a while re: where that series left off with Durc.
• As Sweet As The Sound by skatzaa was a Yuletide gift for me and a DELIGHT of a fanfic for Fire by Kristin Cashore.
• The Waynes, Damsels In Distress by hitthedeck which I liked so much I arranged a multivoice podfic of it here.
• So Says The Sword by komodobits, a Supernatural (I know, I know) fic that almost makes the show look like it has a theme.
• a turn of the earth by microcomets is another Supernatural fic that's like wow, if you put it like this the show could have been good, who thought?
• r/supernatural by renrub is... transcendent.
• Replay by Unforgotten is an XMen fic that's the funniest possible time travel concept where everyone is a nightmare all the time. Thank you.
• blessed with a wilder mind by opinionhaver69 is a Gideon fic that nails the voice and made me cry because oops, too relatable!
• Salvage by MuffinLance, an ATLA fic where Zuko get kidnapped and then adopted. It's almost done!
• No Fixed Point by bendingsignpost has a concept that still haunts me and is SO good. It's Sherlock, which also haunts me. I swore never again-
• A Christmas Wedding by vorpalsword contains (platonic) nightmare Donna and Ten. Beautiful.
• Pocket Watch Boy by Mhalachai is a Torchwood sort of fix it but mostly just fun and good.

In terms of actual books I read this year, like I said that's a lot of em. I'd rate Murderbot absolute top of the list, that series is one of my new all-time favourites. KJ Charles gets honourable mention because I read a whole stack of her books this year and as a rule enjoyed them quite a lot. The books that hit me the hardest were Gideon and Harrow by Tamsyn Muir, for whatever reason they hammered on every button I have pretty much which was really odd since they're long high-stakes mysteries and I hate those. I read and reread lots of Seanan McGuire (very enjoyable) and some Jennifer Lynn Barnes (mostly readable). My non-fiction pick of the year would definitely be Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. That's about the year!

Voila! I survived the plague. That means I did things. This post is about bringing everything up to date so in the future I can look back and go "huh" or if anyone else wants to dig into stuff.

You probably know me from tumblr as writerproblem193 or ao3 as ThatAloneOne. This place is behind the scenes stuff and journalling. The journalling is mostly access locked, but only so it doesn't go floating around the internet at random.

Specific roundups:

• Writing
• Reading
• Audio

I tag stuff mostly consistently, and tend to clean tags up over time so stuff should be pretty findable.

This is a post in progress, stay tuned!

 This year has actually been a super big year for Listening To Things™. Lots of new music! But also, podcasts. I've been very into podcasts this year. 

The Shrieking Shack is my fave, I think. It's a Harry Potter podcast where they literally go through the books chapter by chapter to see Is It Good? Or Is It Bad? The results will surprise you! I mean, probably they won't if you've seen what JKR is like on twitter but. It's a very good podcast, and the Patreon bonus content extra episodes are also very good. I can never think about Harry Styles without screaming ever again. 

Behind the Bastards is a pretty recent addition to my podcast roster, but it's been loads of fun. Half because there's episodes like "The Goat Testicle Implanting Doctor Who Invented Talk Radio", but also half because there's really considered discussions of what makes people suck. And also like... Here's how I've tried to advertise it to the more conservative people in my life: the facts are unbiased, the delivery is biased. By this I mean it's heavily sourced but the host also tries to convince the audience to key someone's car or buy bolt cutters every once in a while. 

420 Day Fiancé is just... nonsense. Two people discuss a bad reality show (90 Day Fiancé) while stoned. Good for background nonsense. Still haven't watched the show it's based on and probably never will. 

The Adventure Zone is also something that I've listened to a lot of this year. I've done a tiny bit of a relisten to parts of Balance, and obviously Amnesty finished off this year. I did have some issues with the plot of Amnesty re: one of the character arcs but... that criticism is really, REALLY rooted in my own personal preferences in storytelling. So. I've written fic for this fandom and made cross stitch merch so that's probably more telling of how much I enjoyed it. 

My music library this year is up to 23.56GB, 656 albums, or 9.7 days of listening depending on how you want to count it. My phone only has 12GB of my music on it which is honestly such a huge fucking sacrifice. One day I'll have a phone with enough storage that I can have all my bullshit on it. Here's some music recs from this year though! And by this year I mean, I discovered them this year, not that they came out this year. 

• The Counterweight (Deluxe) by Thea Gilmore. Album.
• Jackboot Jump by Hozier. Single.
• Blue Wing by Tracy Grammer. Single.
• Resentment by Kesha et al. Single. 
• Hadestown. Musical / Album.
• Hey Ho by Tracy Grammer.
• I'm Too Sensitive For This Shit by Hayley Kiyoko. Album. 
• Inland Territory by Vienna Teng. Album. 
• Turn by Great Big Sea. Album. 
• Lease of Life by Errors. Album. 
• Blue Caravan by Vienna Teng. Single.
• Washing Machine Heart by Mitski. Single. 
• Small World Turning by Thea Gilmore. Album. 
• A Different Kind of Human by Aurora. Album. 
• GIRL by Maren Morris. Album. 
• Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves. Album. 
• Left Here by Roisin Gordon. Single.

I can't really quantify my music or podcast taste, only that either it grabs me by the neck and shakes me or it doesn't. I know that's not helpful. Oh well. That's life.

I saw someone on tumblr do a similar post and monkey see, monkey do. So here's what I've written this year!

According to AO3, where pretty much all my stuff has gone, I've written 26693 words. I'm trying to think of what isn't included in that, but there's not too much. Most of what isn't posted on AO3 or isn't posted on that account is just, terrible porn. Anyway.

Original work I'll talk about first! Most of it is Ladiesbingo. Or at least, the stories are the ones I wrote for Ladiesbingo. You can find them in my ladiesbingo tag here on dreamwidth, or in this work on AO3. The stories are all around 1k or under and they cover topics from ghosts to "what if Orpheus/Eurydice but modern and friendship", zombie horse girl communism, and gentle love magic. My goal for a while now has been to get back to writing original stuff so I'm glad I took a shot at it this year.

Also kind of original was The Princess and the Pea-Curse, a gay 'n magic-ier take on the Princess and the Pea for the fairy tale exchange. I like it!

In terms of porn, I set up a pseud for some Tiger's Curse nonsense. I'll quarantine any other absolute nonsense that involves dicks on it in the future. I really am proud of the story, no matter how... oh boy... it is in a lot of ways. The idea itched at me until I wrote it and now the idea has left me alone. Fuck yeah. You can read it here if you like, but it's extremely lore heavy and sappy so ymmv. 2356 words though!

The other porn is a noir parody, two stories so far. Together they clock in at 1322 words which really. Is too many. Fucking save me. Save me from the fucking. And no, I won't post links or anything. You'll have to write your own. 

And huh, I only wrote for two fandoms this year! The Adventure Zone: Amnesty, and Star Trek. Though I guess I did write for Star Trek: Discovery and also Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

Only half the TAZ stuff is up, cause the second (longer) story is for a candlenights exchange. Story one is this, which is a short story about all my feelings on revelations in the finale and how they would probably lead to eerie snuggling. The second story is... god I can't say anything about it. Only that I really like it and also talking about it with a friend made me laugh very hard.

Star Trek! I actually only wrote one Discovery fic, a 2k Michael/Tilly uh. Porn fic. I wrote a lot of porn this year didn't I. It's a first, I guess. Gotta get the practice in somewhere! It's called supernova and its less porny than it sounds, it's more about that good good emotional connection.

DS9 and KiraDax is where the real fic was this year, in no small part to my lovely KiraDax discord server. I haven't been as active as I'd like lately because more people keep joining and they all talk so much now which is overwhelming but I love it there. Anyway, Spotted Kissing On The Promenade is my new compilation fic for any KiraDax prompts I get through Tumblr or elsewhere I guess. I did two fics for the biweekly prompt challenge on the server. This one is about nature ghosts and is honestly one of my fave fics I've written. And this one also has some little worldbuilding. Then when my grandfather said something homophobic earlier this year I wrote this fic who's True Name™ is "they get super ultra extra duper married".

Finally this year, my big project at 13k was Counterbalance. I wrote the intro in June 2018 or something and finally picked it back up and finished it this year for a Big Bang. It morphed from a story about "lol fuck the government" to me pouring out my feelings about love and trauma and communication and community. Which seems like a lot for 13k, but it took months to write. I don't know. I'm so, so proud of it. Here's the post I wrote about writing it, if you wanted to know more.

Stories not in original wordcount: 2356 Tiger's Cursed, 1322 Noir Porn, 1549 Candlenights. Which is 5227 words, which takes my total 2019 to 31920 words. Given that I felt I wrote """nothing""" this year that's pretty kickass. In 2018 I wrote 48k words, and in 2017 it was 89k. Which is a trend downwards but I've been going to uni and also dealing with *waves hand at all mental stuff*. So I'm proud of where I am and where I've been.