Prosfic Bingo: M is for Mistletoe and Wine, I is for I Know I'm Not Forgiven, Z is for Zigzag

And now, my final bingo post of the year!

I've been intending for months to read A Mercenary's Tale by Fictionwriter for this round's letter M. The New Year is coming up fast, though, and I haven't been finding a lot of energy for reading, so instead I'm going with Mistletoe and Wine by O. Yardly, one of the fics recommended as part of the Prosfic Rec Advent Calendar. This is a nice fic. It combines a slightly unusual getting-together narrative with a large dose of holiday cuteness. 5,670 words. B/D slash.

I Know I'm Not Forgiven by jat_sapphire is also a good fic. It has an absorbing plot and good atmosphere to accompany the supernatural elements of the story. I did have some trouble following the characters' emotions, but as I've said before, I think that's a TinTurtle thing and not the fault of any particular story. 10,378 words. B/D slash.

Z is another letter for which I had a different fic picked out than I ended up reading. I was impatient to finish my bingo card, so I opted for a short one: Zigzag by HG. The text of this fic incorporates the titles of all of the stories O. Yardly had published at the time it was written. Trying to spot those was fun and the other elements of the story were enjoyable enough, too. This even turned out to be an unlabeled Christmas fic, so it was appropriate for this week. 1,806 words. B/D slash.

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Bingo! (Pros Round Two)

I've finished my second round of Prosfic bingo. I read 27 stories (including two for the letter S) that totaled 463,432 words. Today, the five I would most recommend are:

Till a Bullet Stopped His Song by Callisto
The Keeper of Secrets by Jackie Thomas
Calibre by JGL
Reconsiderations by PFL / msmoat
Special Men by sineala

I also admire Decrescendo by erushi, but with some hesitation, as discussed (with spoilers) in this post and its comments. If not for that it would have been among the five top recs.

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Fic Bingo Restrospective

It's time to look back on the year in fic bingo. Fic bingo has been a good thing for me this year, helping motivate me to read fanfic, which I find a healthy activity.

In five rounds of fic bingo, I read 130 fics in 22 fandoms. These included 53 Professionals fics, 25 Man from U.N.C.L.E. fics, 10 Harry Potter fics, and 9 Sherlock Holmes fics, in addition to fics from other fandoms as diverse as The Merchant of Venice and The A-Team. The total word count of all the fics I read for fic bingo was 1,752,223 words.

Based on my memories, my twelve favorites (because I couldn't quite narrow it down to ten) among the fics I read this year were:

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A New Game: The Million-Word Fanfic Challenge

Now that I've finished my final fic bingo card of the year, I am ready to introduce the new game that I will be playing in 2023.

I enjoyed fic bingo. I liked being challenged to read fics I would not have otherwise in order to cover all the letters, and I liked sharing my feelings about what I read. Yet there were a few things that I disliked. The principle one was that fic bingo discouraged me from reading fics, particularly long ones, that started with a letter already filled on my bingo card. Another was that it made me less likely to read short fics, because I wanted to boost the total words for each bingo round. A third, minor one is that I was discouraged from reading fics starting with numerals. (I also found that I spent too much time choosing and tweaking the images to represent each fic on my bingo card, but that is not an inherent flaw in fic bingo, but rather in how I chose to play it.)

My new game, the Million-Word Fanfic Challenge, is designed to correct these issues while preserving the good features of fic bingo. In this game, the object is to read one million words of fanfic across all fandoms while fulfilling minimum word counts for each letter. The minimums only add up to 375,000 words, however, so there is lots of room to read extra fics for any letter.

I hope some others might enjoy playing this game, too. Feel free to share this post with anyone you think might be interested. Happy New Year!

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