2020 in fandom

So, 2020. How to sum it up.

We're gonna have to retire the expression "avoid it like the plague" because it turns out humans do not do that

— Jenny Nicholson (@JennyENicholson) June 12, 2020

I somehow managed to get some fandom-related things written, at least.

Fic
Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years? (BtVS, Willow/Tara)
The ritual to raise Buffy called on Osiris, ancient god of resurrection and also the judge of the dead. Since that time, Willow keeps seeing a man in the corner of her eye; tall, dark and handsome with a goatee, and followed by a snake not unlike the one that materialized in the ritual...
Dreamwidth
AO3

First Time For Anywhere (20 different Buffyverse crossovers: Monty Python's Flying Circus, Frozen, Rick & Morty, Planet Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jeeves & Wooster, West Wing, Wynonna Earp, Calvin & Hobbes, Orphan Black, Terminator, Dracula 2020, Brooklyn 99, Macbeth, Doctor Who, The Muppet Show, Good Omens, The Good Place, Untitled Goose Game, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker)
Write 20 crossover drabbles of Buffyverse characters doing something for the first time, they said. It'll be easy, they said. In no way will it lead to some very weird fandom collisions, they said, with a slight quiver of the lip.  
Dreamwidth
AO3

3 Sentence Ficathon Fills (Jessica Jones, BtVS, Welcome To Night Vale, Black Books/Good Omens, Knives Out, Doctor Who/H2G2, Gideon the Ninth, Person of Interest, Doomsday Book/Doctor Who)
My fills for last year's Three Sentence Ficathon. A new one is supposed to be coming up soon, I can't wait.
Dreamwidth
AO3

Twists And Turns (BtVS, Spike/Drusilla)
There are rules for how to fight the undead. Being magical (or worse, metaphorical) some of them are bound to work better than others. And sometimes, as Spike and Dru are about to learn the hard way, technological advances bring some of the old ones back into play.
Dreamwidth
AO3

Civilization (Angel, Darla/The Master)
In our reality, the Roanoke colony in Virginia disappeared mysteriously at some point between 1588 and 1590, and the first successful English colony in Virginia was only established in 1607. In the Buffyverse, that colony appears strangely well-established in 1609. There's an obvious explanation for this, that includes the girl who would become Darla.
Dreamwidth
AO3

Dental Plan! (BtVS, Buffy + Spike)
You know how all myths are true? Well, one legendary being is running around Sunnydale attacking vampires and leaving them... less than they were. You'd think this would be more helpful than it is. But Spike isn't too keen to be a part of it, and this town may not be big enough for two vampire hunters.  
Dreamwidth
AO3

Player Piano (BtVS, Dawn)
When Dawn was six years old, her dad got her a music box. No biggie, it's just a music box, just a childhood toy she's kept for all these years, a tune she occasionally hums. Just a small part of the pool of memories and quirks that make a person. And obviously she should have more important stuff on her mind after Sunnydale turned into a giant crater. So why does the world suddenly seem so quiet?
Dreamwidth
AO3

Five People Whose Loan Applications Were Approved At Sunnydale Securities Bank (And One Whose Wasn't) (BtVS)
So how does Sunnydale… work, exactly? Well, it's a long and complex story of corruption and denial, but let's check in with one of the cogs that make the wheels spin. Remember the loan officer who turned Buffy down in "Flooded"...? Here's his Sunnydale story in six installments, occasionally interacting with the main storyline.
Dreamwidth
AO3

Christmas in Hell (Buffyverse, various)
Five times people spent Christmas in various Hells.
Dreamwidth
AO3

Meta
Best of the tens? Listing, ranking and discussing the best TV series of the 2010s.

And the meme on what I wrote:
Favorite work:
Probably Player Piano. I've written moody pieces about Dawn trying to figure out what it means to essentially be an in-story fictional character before and I'll hopefully do it again, but I like how the horror element worked for this.

Work I'm most proud of:
That I actually managed to write 20 crossover drabbles in 20 days. Especially with how fickle my muse has been for the last few years.

Most underappreciated work:
Civilization, for my money. Yes, it's probably one of those pre-canon fics that might be more of a research project than a writing project, but I always like to imagine how different history might be in the Buffyverse, and it's always fun to play with just how old some of these characters are; if Darla has literally seen the entirety of modern western history, let's use that a bit.

Most overappreciated work:
I'll gladly admit that not all of those 20 crossover drabbles are successful.

Favorite title:
Dental Plan! Yes, Simpsons references are so 1991, but...

Least favorite title:
Civilization is somehow both slightly pretentious and completely meaningless, title-wise.

Most unsuitable/funniest working title:
You'll get no extra points for guessing that Dental Plan! was originally titled Buffy vs The Tooth Fairy. 

Weirdest thing I researched for a writing project:
The average reward for a baby tooth placed under a pillow in the US in the late 1980s.

Project I had the most fun researching for:
Definitely Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years. I went hard on Egyptian mythology primers for a week there.

Project that was the most difficult to research:
Civilization wasn't really hard to research as such since it's all alternate history of an event that's mostly speculation to begin with, but it was hard to know how much to include in the fic itself, figure out what would be different if this is how it went, and to figure out a way to make it flow naturally. (Plus also, as in all good fanfic research projects, to decide just where to just make shit up.)

Project that was the most difficult to write:
Player Piano and Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years both went through a lot of different incarnations before they found their final form. I like to think it's the right ones.

Project that's been a WIP for ages:
The idea behind Civilization is one I've had for ages but kept chickening out on because I couldn't figure out a good way to write about pre-Darla Darla and not just have it come out "And that little girl grew up to be..."

Work I want to write one day, but haven't started:
The Spike/Boris Karloff Pratt family reunion thing. I said that a year ago too. Maybe this year?

Genre I wrote most often this year:
Drabble series, it turns out.

Genre I thought I'd never write, but did:
Writing quippy Buffyverse/Shakespeare dialogue in iambic pentameter in First Time For Anywhere was a new experience.

Perfect word and the context I used it in:
"Heads." See previous question.

Favorite opening line:
Reading them all back, I didn't really have any really good first-sentence hooks. But "The worst part, Angel thinks around the 23rd year or so of eternal torment, is that Hell is so... boring." sums up 2020 pretty nicely, I think.

Favorite ending line:
"She looks up at the cheap reading lamp in the motel room and switches it off; the second the current is broken, it ceases to be a lamp and the room goes completely dark."
Everyone who's read it seems to have a different interpretation of what happens here, and that's the way I likes it.