Over Analysing It

Sanctuary Bingo!

05 Jan 2011 No Comments

by Nikkiin writing Tags: bingo, fanart, fanfic, i'm an idiot, sanctuary, sanctuary bingo

So, yeah, in a fit of insanity, I’ve decided to sign up for the Sanctuary Bingo.  Cuz clearly the flash fic comm wasn’t enough for me.  Oh god what am I doing I can’t focus on one fandom for more than a few months at a time and I’m so crap about writing fic anyway ahhhhh!  But, wait, art is allowed!  I… I can do art!

So, yeah, I have until July 1st to bingo this scorecard.  And any others that I may request.

Thomas Edison?

He’s going to be so much fucking fun. Tesla vs Edison!!!

And, for myself, this is the list of easy ones: Disney, ozone beatle, the main lab, gen, Edison, Ford, 1990′s, Bigfoot (abnormal), lizard creatures, WWI, The Cabal, Helen’s room, For King and Country, Will’s office, fluff and shape shifters.

And, awww, Twain and Steinbeck?  I’m so not a fan of Twain and, for Steinbeck, I’ve only read Of Mice and Men.  Gunna have to use the modern cast for those prompts.

[Sanctuary Fic] Coffee

03 Jan 2011 1 Comment

by Nikkiin writing Tags: barney, fanfic, gen, helen magnus, humour, james watson, one-shot, sanctuary

Fandom: Sanctuary
Characters: Helen, James, Barney
Genre: Gen, humour
Word Count: ~750
Rating:  G
Prompt: First Times
Summary:  Exhausted from days of straight research, Helen tries coffee.  It goes as well as could be expected.
Notes/Thanks: Thanks must be given to @puffandruffle on twitter for promptly answering my question as to where that scene with Will and Henry (though it was actually Ashley) watching the video with the protégé before Will was.  Say what you will about twitter, but it, and hashtags, make for an excellent source of ungoogleable information.  Written for the Sanctuary flashfic comm and, as I’m just using this comm as a writing exercise (ostensibly to write the Sanctuary characters I’m not as obsessed over, which I clearly just failed at), this is completely unbeta’d.  Feel free to point out anything wrong with it! Other than the lack of proper spacing between the first and second paragraphs – I have no fucking clue what’s up with my blog.

---

For over a century, Helen Magnus proudly avoided coffee.  She was quite derisive of the dark drink too, and was rather vocal about her distaste, initially much to the annoyance of her second protégé.  He was quite happily addicted to the swill and, in response to Helen’s unsubtle barbs, his intake had vastly increased.  He quickly took pleasure in tormenting his occasionally stuffy boss by going about the Sanctuary with a large coffee mug perpetually in hand and gleefully kept at for more than twenty years.  It had led to frequent debate between the two with Helen provoking Barney by stating that the smell of the bitter liquid was enough to give her a headache, and he would quickly reply with a snarky one liner and then the two would be off.

James, long used to their squabbling, simply blocked it out.  In two decades he had not heard a new argument from either party and, after unsuccessfully attempting to join in the first time he caught them bickering, he just sighed and carried on.  Clearly it was just one of their things and the detective was not one to begrudge Barney for staking that claim on Helen; he and her had an intimidating amount of shared history and quirks as it was.  From day one, it had been difficult, if not impossible, for outsiders to squirm their way into The Five’s circle and James was impressed at how deeply Barney had integrated himself into their lives.  Especially since it started with something as mundane, and loathed, as coffee.

So the time James and Barney caught Helen in the kitchen with a coffee mug at her lips came as a great surprise to all parties.

More

I could make a CITY. A city full of fantards.

01 Jan 2011 No Comments

by Nikkiin misc, writing Tags: fanfiction.net, numbers, reflections of an ex-cashier, stats

It’s strange, but I’ve never really associated the hit count on my FF.Net stats page to people.  I’m not sure why, but the numbers were just numbers to me.  Actually, it probably goes back to my stint as a cashier – I always got comments about how I managed to deal with such a large quantity of money day in, day out.  As in, what’s it like to be so close to a couple of grand all day.  It’s pretty obvious that the people asking never worked with cash – for one, on an eight hour shift, I’d probably touch fifty grand in bills – way more than a ‘couple of grand’ and, for two, the money isn’t money.  It was just bits of paper that went in my till.  Sometimes it was really disgusting bits of paper (oh god money should not come out of underwear), but paper all the same.  It wasn’t mine, even if there was more cash in my till than I’d make in a year.  I’ve just sorta blocked out large numbers and shoved it in the ‘meh, whatever, you can’t have it anyway’ folder of my brain.

Until today.  For some reason, I just realised that the 2187 hits for What Kate Wrote meant that people have clicked into the fic 2187 times (unless FF.Net is reporting the stats wrong again, in which case there are more views).  I highly doubt, however, that 2187 people have read the fic, though.  FF.Net isn’t kind enough to give statistics on how long people stay on a page so I can’t really calculate the total number of readers.  I can’t even give a wild estimate, because, while I would read the stuff I wrote, I’m pretty biased. That, and I would never post anything of  a subpar quality, hence the reason why I’m still sitting on a Sanctuary fic that needs a proper ending.

Nevertheless, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that, over the past seven (nearing eight) years (holy fuck eight years?! That’s a third of my life!) of posting fic to FF.Net, I’ve had at least five thousand people reading my fic.

Five.  Thousand.

That’s enough to make a city in Saskatchewan.

That’s half of the number of enrolled students at the University of Regina.

In reflection… that’s actually a rather large number of people.

Huh.

For more statistics, 1.52% of the hits on my fic result in reviews.  As the frequency of reviews drops far more rapidly than the hits, I’m disqualifying the oldest of the new fic (the Eleventh Hour fic that brought me out of retirement) from the rest of the analysis since it is at least twice as old as the rest of the fics.  If I included it, it’d have the lowest review/hit percentage at 0.61%.  With out it, my most viewed fic, the sorta smutty (what? Most of the smut I’ve read has pages and pages of sex and, really, it’s actually kinda boring) What Kate Wrote has my worst percentage at 0.71%.  Apparently people don’t like to own up to the fact that they’re reading smut.  My best is my least reviewed (Pancakes) at 2.48%, but that’s really fucking biased since all three reviewers are my friends.  So, yeah, how about we ignore that and move to the next best percentage, my Sanctuary fic Helen’s Heart at 2.01% (and 4 reviews).

I’m really not sure what these numbers mean and, honestly, they can’t mean anything – I only have six data points and, well, you can’t infer anything from six samples.  The solution is clear – I must keep writing fic to collect data and then do something with it.  God knows what, but I’m sure I’ll come up with some use.

Is writing fic for numbers a stupid reason?  Probably.  But, hey, this isn’t a narcissistic reason – I couldn’t give a crap if anyone reads or reviews my fic; it’s all about the writing and the back pats are just the icing – so I suppose that puts me above the rest of the number hungry crowd.  I just like numbers because numbers are pretty.

Pretty, pretty numbers.

If you can’t find it, why don’t you write it?

16 Dec 2010 7 Comments

by Nikkiin writing Tags: fandom, fanfic, fuck you anon

The title seems like a fairly innocuous and even an encouraging question, eh?  And, hell, maybe some people mean it like that – I mean, you’ve clearly found a void in fandom so you may as will fill it, right?

Yeah, no.  Fuck you anon.  Or non-anon.  Basically, fuck you to anyone who says that.

Why?

Because wanting to read a certain type of fic does not mean in the slightest that you want to write it.  The other day I was bitching about the lack of sick but not pregnant fics on the internet but it’s not like I actually wanted to write it.  I have no inspiration to (though Beckett with food poisoning and the guys thinking that her biker boyfriend knocked her up would be kind of funny).  But I was rather happy when @wabbit89 wrote a fic in which T’Pol was rather under the weather.  Cuz, yeah, I wanted to read, not write.

And there is a huge difference between the two.  Especially the motivation behind why one writes rather than reads.

When I write, it’s because I have (or at least very strongly want) to.  The story won’t leave my head so, dammit, I just force it out onto paper/MS Word/my iPod.  I need an entire idea and the sense that the story is going to go somewhere, not just a trope to fill/subvert.  Not to mention the sense of satisfaction I get from writing a fic is a completely different emotion from the enjoyment I get from just reading one.  I enjoy both activities, but only one of them requires me to use my brain.

When I read, it’s because… well, I always read.  My default state of being is reading.  Hell, even while watching tv (NCIS, currently), I’m reading.  That’s part of the reason why I absolutely detest streaming video – too much of it is flash based and you can’t really fullscreen a flash video on one monitor and read on your second – it just bumps out.

In short, writing is time consuming.  Reading is not.  I can read a 1500 word fic in two minutes for chrissake.  You know how long it’d take me to write that?  Two, maybe three, hours – that’s seventy-five times as long.  Sure, it might take me an hour during NaNoWriMo, but I don’t do any research, editing or, hell, even thinking during a word war!  There is a complete and utter difference in time commitment between reading and writing.

So yeah, the next time you go to say that, just do us all a favour and stfu.  If you’re trollin’, you’re not being particularly ground breaking – get some new material.

(Oh look, I wrote an entry without Sanctuary as one of the tags!  Damn, broke my three post streak.)

[Sanctuary Fic] Helen’s Heart

12 Dec 2010 3 Comments

by Nikkiin writing Tags: angst, fanfic, helen magnus, helen/james, james watson, john druitt, john/helen, one-shot, romance, sanctuary

Fandom: Sanctuary
Category: John/Helen, Helen/James, angst, romance
Spoilers: 3×08 – For King and Country
Word Count:  ~1300
Rating: PG
Summary: Despite it all, Helen never stopped loving John.
A/N: Thanks is owed to jackwabbit for the beta.  Without her, there would have been some rather… interesting… sentence structures.  Nevertheless, this was written (and posted) under the influence of a dreadful cold and complete exhaustion, so I’m not sure if it is up to my usual standards.

---

The first time Helen saw John after she shot him came as a complete surprise – none of the other four members of The Five had expected him to show up at the incredibly pompous (even more pompous than The Five themselves in their heyday) Oxford reunion.  After all, Helen, James and Nikola had only agreed to attend at the last moment – and on a whim at that.  Back then, there was still a thrill to be found in the indiscreet stares and whispers from those who were once their peers.  The Five, apart from John, who was somehow charming despite his brute strength and intimidating demeanour, were always outcasts from society.  In their school days, they were all reviled for various and petty reasons and had formed their own elite clique in response.

Now, well over a decade later, they were still a source of fascination and had even inspired the respect and awe they had so coveted in the past.  They basked in it, pleased beyond measure that they were the centre of attention, even if it was only supposition on how they had managed to not age a day since they last set foot in Oxford.

To the other attendees, the surprise of the night was that Montague John Druitt was alive.  They had all read that he had been found drowned in the Thames and some had even attended his funeral.  To his friends, the fact that he had survived Helen’s bullet didn’t come with that much of a shock – while there was a copious amount of blood on the scene, James had determined that none of the blood splatter possessed the right trajectory to have come from John.  Helen, being a physician, had privately double checked James’ conclusions by analysing the blood for the manufactured genetic abnormality that The Five shared.  It had come up clean – there were no traces of John’s blood mixed in with Molly’s.

More