Omnibus Smutmas Wrap-up (OSW).

[pauraque_bk]

Four whole months after sign-ups were announced, it's all over. The names have been revealed and merry_smutmas 2005 is at an end. (Well, smutmas_elves is still posting, but if you don't count that...) I don't know about the rest of you, but this has been a huge part of my fandom life for a third of a year, and I'm sorry to see it go. So. Much. Fun! I prostrate myself at the feet of gmth and her helpers in abject gratitude. ♥

My lovely gift was written by pansydarkbloom. Nice to meet you! :D You did a terrific job.

Noooobody figured out which fic I wrote, even when I gave hints. Perhaps because it was a pairing I'd never written before. Stealthy! I wrote:

The little death (NC-17, Viktor/Cedric) for dracopottamus. My "long-suffering beta" was _hannelore.

Last year I wasn't entirely happy with what I wrote, and was determined to do much better this year. I don't know dracopottamus, but I felt very lucky to get her request, which matched up well with my own interests. I didn't originally intend to take her up on her offer of picking a different pairing; I was going to do Krum/Oliver, since I've always liked Krum but had never written him before. I didn't have any real sense of Oliver, though, and I'm not extremely good at inventing situations where characters meet up though they've never interacted in canon. So I took a chance and asked dracopottamus (anonymously, of course) if she would like Krum/Cedric. She said she would.

This was right after requests had gone out. I was determined not to procrastinate this time. I started an outline right away, and when that was in shape, set myself a goal: I would write at least 1000 words of the story every week until I had a complete draft. I usually write really slowly, so that was a lot for me, especially given that I would be doing the GoF re-read at the same time, as well as working 35 hours a week (as I was then).

I came pretty close to meeting my goal, and I'm proud of that. By the end, when I was editing, I had to put GoF aside for a while (and I do intend to resume that this month), but I worked on Smutmas every week, and it grew and grew AND GREW. 6800 words isn't a lot for some writers, but it was the longest fic I'd ever written by a wide margin. I also continued to write other fics. I probably typed more in those two months than I have in some years.

I ended up quite happy I'd been given the go-ahead to write Cedric, because pretty much any Cedric-fic has to be about his inevitable plot-related death, and the requests for light BDSM and orgasm control were frankly perfect for that. I got to play with themes of anticipation and inevitability and surrender, and feel like I was actually saying something about the characters and the world, not just writing contextless smut.

Of course there was plenty of angst and woe and is-this-good-enough and why-is-this-sentence-so-irretrievably-crappy and can-I-go-home-yet, through which _hannelore held my hand. She did a stellar job, and I owe her beta duty forever and ever.

The fic was very nearly done by the time I saw the GoF movie, but it did give me a nice little push as I was finishing up. :D

I was very, very pleased with how my entry went over. A lot of people liked it, and most importantly dracopottamus liked it, and I feel really good about that.


Of course, the other extra fun part was the reccing! And the finding out who I unknowingly recced! As follows.

I didn't put the ratings and pairings on these, or what I said about them. If you want that stuff, go to the actual rec posts. Suffice it to say they're all smutty and may not be worksafe.

I:

With Worldly Hands by anise_anise

More Gifts to Come by ponderosa121

II:

Eating In by stellahobbit

Choiceless by rosesanguina

Boxing Day by yeats

Dreams May by sioniann (wow, I should have been able to guess this one.)

Schoolboy Daydreaming by glockgal

III:

Life in the Rain by pansydarkbloom

Sanguine, a Serpent Knotted Sable by amanuensis1 (well, duh. easiest fic to guess, by far.)

The Shrivelfig Bandit & Other Stories by ou_topos

IV:

Carrion by fluffyllama

By the Light of the Moon by emmagrant01

Aniseed & Smoke by melpemone

Lead Me Through The Darkness by lizardspots

V:

The Hollow Wall by nimori

The Turning of the Tide by atdelphi

Lick by vikingcarrot

Of seventeen, eleven were already on my friends list, and several of these were already among my favorite authors/artists. The only ones I can say I've literally never heard of are yeats and pansydarkbloom. I should have been a lot better at guessing! But it seems that what I enjoyed blindly reflected my usual preferences pretty well, which is always nice to know. :)


Lastly, bethbethbeth has a couple posts of Smutmas meta, one comparing 2004 to 2005, and one comparing Smutmas to its het counterpart.


Bring on Smutmas 2006!