What I've been up to: March
So it turns out that once I stop having some specific thing I'm supposed to post about every day I... stop posting. But I thought it might be nice to check in over here at the journals; I still haven't really gotten the hang of actually interacting with people fannishly on twitter/Tumblr, so I might as well stick around here and talk to my fellow internet dinosaurs. ♥
So, things I've been up to since I posted last:
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verity was in town visiting me this weekend, which was mostly low-key (our biggest adventures were visiting what we both just referred to as "the cosplay restaurant", my workplace, and American Science & Surplus, where I found a surprising number of things I needed for $2 or less. So many random interesting things! It was super amazingly lovely being able to walk around my town hand-in-hand with my girlfriend, and just... having her around, being part of my life, is surprising and amazing and wonderful.
And now it is Monday and she is not here. That part is terrible. Why are distances between places a thing? Who decided that was a good idea?
Oh, God, this show. I haven't been watching the current season, because it sounded like a lot of DNW, increasingly so as things went along (I got REALLY UPSET about the whole concept of Stiles being possessed and the nogitsune being the big bad while in possession of Stiles's body and it just... no), but verity (and tumblr) have kept me up to date on events, so I got to join in the rest of the fandom's upset over Allison's death--and last week, when Kate Argent returned, I had some kind of baffling-in-retrospect hour-long breakdown, complete with crying, over a show I hadn't even watched because I was that freaked out about one of my least-favorite villains coming back to haunt my most-favorite characters.
verity talked me down from that, and by the next morning I'd kind of come to terms with Kate being around--and was plotting fic that responded to this new arc for her--and had also tentatively decided that it's time to actually watch the recently-ended season, especially since apparently I only get three months off before there is more canon happening and making my life terrible again.
Um. I have a complicated relationship with this show. But now I am probably going to be watching it again, so I can go around having all the emotional reactions people had to things when they first happened weeks or months ago! Because apparently if I can't have a show with a closed canon I will just sort of manufacture my own as best I can.
I have gotten to the point where it feels like everything I'm writing is this weird snarl of confused... stuff. I am somehow managing to feel stuck on five different stories right now, including the Aral-flees-to-Beta-Colony-with-four-year-old-Gregor Vorkosigan Saga AU that I started as comfy idfic because I was feeling stuck on other Vorkosigan fic. (BUT HOW DO ARAL AND GREGOR GET TO BETA COLONY, THERE ARE SOME SERIOUS LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS TO SOLVE HERE.)
(ALSO HOW CAN I POSSIBLY WRITE AN ARAL/JOLE STORY FOR THE VOR GAME THAT ISN'T AT LEAST HALF THE LENGTH OF THE ACTUAL NOVEL.)
(ALSO WHY WILL MY SOULBONDED CHARACTERS NOT ACT LIKE THEY'RE SINCERELY INTERESTED IN BONING. THIS IS BECAUSE I SAID I COULD WRITE IT IN UNDER THIRTY THOUSAND WORDS, ISN'T IT. THIS IS ME BEING PUNISHED FOR HUBRIS.)
(ALSO OH GOD THIS GENERATION KILL BABYFIC EPILOGUE THING IS SERIOUSLY GOING TO BE ANOTHER THIRTY THOUSAND WORDS, ISN'T IT. OH GOD.)
(DON'T EVEN TALK TO ME ABOUT TEEN WOLF HOOKERFIC AND SAD TEENAGED RUNAWAY STILES COPING WITH THANKSGIVING. I MEAN, MAYBE DO TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT. AT LEAST I ALREADY KNOW THAT STORY'S GOING TO BE ENDLESS.)
Ahem. So. Writing! It is a challenge lately. O.o
I've been learning to embrace "nah, not into it," as a reaction to books. I mean, I don't have a problem with closing a fic tab when I realize that the story is just not holding my attention, but I still have at least some vestiges of this impulse that I Must Finish a book once I start it.
Which is to say, I'm a quarter of the way into Deborah Harkness's Shadow of Night, the sequel to A Discovery of Witches, and I'm just not really digging it. I expected to--I was genuinely excited about it when I finished the first book--but it's tipping over the precipice of Creepy Vampire Romance Is Creepy and Not Romantic that the first book spent a lot of time balancing on. I sort of suspect that this is a thing the author is aware of--the main character certainly seems to be--and that another shoe will drop somewhere along the line and this level of creepiness will be dealt with, but... I don't think I care enough to keep reading at this point. It's not fun, and I'm really not up for leisure reading that isn't fun these days.
Meanwhile I picked up Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems in search of the attributed but untitled poem of hers I keep seeing on tumblr. So far most of the poems I've read have been about trying to write. One of them, "Work, Sometimes," is about being at her desk trying to write on a beautiful rainy spring day, and ends:
Given the above about how writing is going lately, that struck a chord. ♥
I've also been reading fic, as ever:thingswithwings's Leverage OT3 kink stories, Old Dog & New Tricks, are the most delightful thing I've read lately, and now I want to rewatch Leverage from the beginning and catch up on the seasons I missed, because &canon ot3;!
I have also succumbed to the lure of Sid/Geno fic, which is delightful in the way where it's a pretty active fandom that I have no interest in writing in, so I can just read and read all the lovely fic and then go back to whatever I was doing. It does have the odd side effect of making it really hard to actually hate Sidney Crosby, which as a hockey fan who has disliked him to varying degrees for various reasons since 2005 is... disconcerting. But I will do a lot of things for a steady supply of OTP fic, including that.
Which reminds me thatverity showed me a nine-minute Merlin vid to "I Would Do Anything for Love," and I had astolat and cesperanza's vid to the same song running through my head the whole time, because apparently watching a nine-minute Merlin vid is a thing that I will totally do for love. ♥ ♥ ♥
So that's me, lately. What are you all up to?
So, things I've been up to since I posted last:
verity was in town visiting me this weekend, which was mostly low-key (our biggest adventures were visiting what we both just referred to as "the cosplay restaurant", my workplace, and American Science & Surplus, where I found a surprising number of things I needed for $2 or less. So many random interesting things! It was super amazingly lovely being able to walk around my town hand-in-hand with my girlfriend, and just... having her around, being part of my life, is surprising and amazing and wonderful. And now it is Monday and she is not here. That part is terrible. Why are distances between places a thing? Who decided that was a good idea?
Oh, God, this show. I haven't been watching the current season, because it sounded like a lot of DNW, increasingly so as things went along (I got REALLY UPSET about the whole concept of Stiles being possessed and the nogitsune being the big bad while in possession of Stiles's body and it just... no), but verity (and tumblr) have kept me up to date on events, so I got to join in the rest of the fandom's upset over Allison's death--and last week, when Kate Argent returned, I had some kind of baffling-in-retrospect hour-long breakdown, complete with crying, over a show I hadn't even watched because I was that freaked out about one of my least-favorite villains coming back to haunt my most-favorite characters.
verity talked me down from that, and by the next morning I'd kind of come to terms with Kate being around--and was plotting fic that responded to this new arc for her--and had also tentatively decided that it's time to actually watch the recently-ended season, especially since apparently I only get three months off before there is more canon happening and making my life terrible again. Um. I have a complicated relationship with this show. But now I am probably going to be watching it again, so I can go around having all the emotional reactions people had to things when they first happened weeks or months ago! Because apparently if I can't have a show with a closed canon I will just sort of manufacture my own as best I can.
I have gotten to the point where it feels like everything I'm writing is this weird snarl of confused... stuff. I am somehow managing to feel stuck on five different stories right now, including the Aral-flees-to-Beta-Colony-with-four-year-old-Gregor Vorkosigan Saga AU that I started as comfy idfic because I was feeling stuck on other Vorkosigan fic. (BUT HOW DO ARAL AND GREGOR GET TO BETA COLONY, THERE ARE SOME SERIOUS LOGISTICAL PROBLEMS TO SOLVE HERE.)
(ALSO HOW CAN I POSSIBLY WRITE AN ARAL/JOLE STORY FOR THE VOR GAME THAT ISN'T AT LEAST HALF THE LENGTH OF THE ACTUAL NOVEL.)
(ALSO WHY WILL MY SOULBONDED CHARACTERS NOT ACT LIKE THEY'RE SINCERELY INTERESTED IN BONING. THIS IS BECAUSE I SAID I COULD WRITE IT IN UNDER THIRTY THOUSAND WORDS, ISN'T IT. THIS IS ME BEING PUNISHED FOR HUBRIS.)
(ALSO OH GOD THIS GENERATION KILL BABYFIC EPILOGUE THING IS SERIOUSLY GOING TO BE ANOTHER THIRTY THOUSAND WORDS, ISN'T IT. OH GOD.)
(DON'T EVEN TALK TO ME ABOUT TEEN WOLF HOOKERFIC AND SAD TEENAGED RUNAWAY STILES COPING WITH THANKSGIVING. I MEAN, MAYBE DO TALK TO ME ABOUT THAT. AT LEAST I ALREADY KNOW THAT STORY'S GOING TO BE ENDLESS.)
Ahem. So. Writing! It is a challenge lately. O.o
I've been learning to embrace "nah, not into it," as a reaction to books. I mean, I don't have a problem with closing a fic tab when I realize that the story is just not holding my attention, but I still have at least some vestiges of this impulse that I Must Finish a book once I start it.
Which is to say, I'm a quarter of the way into Deborah Harkness's Shadow of Night, the sequel to A Discovery of Witches, and I'm just not really digging it. I expected to--I was genuinely excited about it when I finished the first book--but it's tipping over the precipice of Creepy Vampire Romance Is Creepy and Not Romantic that the first book spent a lot of time balancing on. I sort of suspect that this is a thing the author is aware of--the main character certainly seems to be--and that another shoe will drop somewhere along the line and this level of creepiness will be dealt with, but... I don't think I care enough to keep reading at this point. It's not fun, and I'm really not up for leisure reading that isn't fun these days.
Meanwhile I picked up Mary Oliver's New and Selected Poems in search of the attributed but untitled poem of hers I keep seeing on tumblr. So far most of the poems I've read have been about trying to write. One of them, "Work, Sometimes," is about being at her desk trying to write on a beautiful rainy spring day, and ends:
You have had days like this, no doubt. And wasn't it
wonderful, finally, to leave the room? Ah, what a
moment!
As for myself, I swung the door open. And there was
the wordless, singing world. And I ran for my life.
Given the above about how writing is going lately, that struck a chord. ♥
I've also been reading fic, as ever:
thingswithwings's Leverage OT3 kink stories, Old Dog & New Tricks, are the most delightful thing I've read lately, and now I want to rewatch Leverage from the beginning and catch up on the seasons I missed, because &canon ot3;!I have also succumbed to the lure of Sid/Geno fic, which is delightful in the way where it's a pretty active fandom that I have no interest in writing in, so I can just read and read all the lovely fic and then go back to whatever I was doing. It does have the odd side effect of making it really hard to actually hate Sidney Crosby, which as a hockey fan who has disliked him to varying degrees for various reasons since 2005 is... disconcerting. But I will do a lot of things for a steady supply of OTP fic, including that.
Which reminds me that
verity showed me a nine-minute Merlin vid to "I Would Do Anything for Love," and I had astolat and cesperanza's vid to the same song running through my head the whole time, because apparently watching a nine-minute Merlin vid is a thing that I will totally do for love. ♥ ♥ ♥So that's me, lately. What are you all up to?
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I mean, yes, also we have this Teen Wolf fandom suicide pact thing where neither of us can leave the fandom without the other. That is our Thelma and Louise right there.
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On the bright side, Oregon Tech is flying me across the country this week because they might want to hire me as a professor. Life is weird.
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Linear time is SO INCONVENIENT, honestly. That and the need for sleep are basically my two great nemeses in getting all the writing done I'd like to. :)
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I haven't watched more than a few eps of the entirety of season 3 of Teen Wolf. I just ... whenever I try to watch I feel like I'm just getting sadder over what happens with the characters that I do like. So now I'm just not watching TW and instead watching TW-fandom on Tunblr and reading fic. Much better for my sanity.
Bookmarked the Leverage fic, I just recently watched the final season on one of the streamed sites and :D :D but I haven't read much fic yet so. Definitely saving that one.
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And, yeah, Tumblr and fic are definitely a valid way to choose to experience TW, because this show, idek.
LEVERAGE, THOUGH. LEVERAGE DOES NOT FAIL US. :D
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Thanks so much for updating.
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And yay girlfriend, boo distance.
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This week, anyway. *g*
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Hee! Well, except for the Oilers and Tyler Seguin, that's pretty much where fandom is concentrated anyway, it seems like, so it's not like those preferences have you missing much fic....
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I haven't been to AS&S in years; I loved their tent sales, because goodness know I needed MORE gadgety stuff.
I am firmly convinced TW the show is doing its best to turn into the experience equivalent of Kate Argent: malevolently, psychotically sadistic, reveling in all the fans' pain, laughing maniacally as it rolls around in its id. Yet I can't stop from watching. *sigh*
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Yeah, the cosplay was a lot of fun, although I am terrible at posing/making Stiles-y faces. :D
And AS&S was amazing! I thought I was just going to follow verity around and humor her interest in it, but it was fantastic.
Ahhh Teen Wolf. Yeah. They basically have all of fandom tied up to a cage while they wave a cattle prod at us, don't they? And yet, just like Derek, we don't quite actually want to leave... ♥
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