The Secretary Will Disavow Any Knowledge

AKB 73: 300 words

Appetite: 259 words

Sometimes my youngest cat likes to plant herself right in front of the door of our apartment. My guess on the matter is that she thinks by doing so, she can prevent us from leaving. Which is both cute and sad.

The last few days have been bad writing days; I'm hoping this is a trend that does NOT continue. You know, I look forward so much to November--NaNo and Thanksgiving--and, at the same time, I always forget how incredibly STRESSFUL November is, invariably. Not even just with those two polestars; it's like November is some kind of freaky magnet for misfortune and frustration, the full moon month of the year.

Anyway. I don't know whether it's because I'm deliberately and consciously trying to work on more than one project at a time or a fundamental fault elsewhere, but I feel like I'm struggling with everything I write so much. The analogy I gave merepersiflage yesterday was trying to follow a bad radio signal, one that keeps fading in and out between curtains of static. There was a brief period of a few paragraphs where I had the voice for Gabe (Appetite) and it felt good and right and then it was gone again and now I can't quite get it back. I know what's supposed to be happening now, but when it comes to actually writing it out, it's an epic battle.

And I'm not really competitive in most arenas, but it's sometimes doubly hard when I'm entering word counts for mini_nanowrimo and I see that people have written 2 or 4 (or more) thousand words that day, while I was grudging out my 500. And some of it is jealousy and some of it is regret because there was a time when *I* could do that and some of it is a nagging sense of failure.

Which I AM trying not to dwell on, believe it or not.

I am starting to wonder if I'm ever going to have the time and ability to do a regular NaNo again, though, as long as I'm tied to mini_nanowrimo. It's a great idea and I very much don't want to see it fail, but it is also INCREDIBLY time-consuming (even with my co-mods taking up an incredible amount of work, omg, thank you, y'all!) and I do sometimes feel resentful that it's taking up so much of my very slender, very precious free time, when I could be using it to write myself. While my writing 'ambitions' (and I use that word laughingly) are erratic and ever-changing and don't necessarily involve publication, I am very jealous and protective of that time. Whether for fun or money, writing is such an important avocation to me. I can't and won't give it up.

I made pot roast last night. I'm picking at the carcass today. You know you have made some damn fine beef if it tastes just as good COLD the next day. NOM NOM NOM.

Well, I did it. I signed up for yuletide. And though I was tempted to sign up for more fandoms and more characters (and there was some last minute switching around), I stuck to my plan. So that happened.

I had another woeful moment today when I saw an advert for a holiday exchange ficathon for a fandom that I'm tangentially interested in and realized that my pairing of choice is so wacky that it seems unfair to ask anyone to write it and, simultaenously, I have nearly zero interest in writing the preferred pairing(s) in the fandom. This pairing rare-pairs crap is hard, yo! Most of the time I don't care so much because I'm writing whatever makes me happy and so it doesn't matter what anyone else ships, but when I want to be all join-y and stuff, it's vexing. My heyoka nature in a nutshell. But, one less ficathon to tear my hair out about, right?

Tangential to THAT, I feel like there's enough interest that I'm going to go ahead with the JDM ficathon. I don't have any more details than "Yeah, let's do that!" but I figure I have all of December, at least, to figure that out. So...more news when I have it!

As you can see, I finished the AKB chapter. Wrote 1400+ words on that, once I hit my groove, which was kind of awesome. The problem with writing in existing files is that I never have any good grasp of how much I've written until I finish and do the math.

Didn't work on anything else, for obvious reasons. And I have yet to do any writing today, which is making me feel like the biggest slacker in the world. I'll have to rectify that posthaste.

I'm not heavily into black teas other than chai anymore, but I have an ongoing fondness for Bigelow's Constant Comment, especially in the fall. I've looked at other orange pekoe teas and I've yet to find one that smells or tastes so sweetly delicious. I've been known to just sit and smell the teabags a while before steeping them, because I love the smell that much. *sips*

I've been extended on the job again, pretty much through the end of November. I'm choosing to take the high road with it--more money, staying close to my pals, knowing where I'll be at Thanksgiving--but I confess to a certain ongoing amusement that I've tried to quit this job twice and yet they still WILL NOT LET ME GO. I also sing Hotel California a lot.

Last night, The Husband and I got to see Cate Blanchett in Streetcar Named Desire, the combination of two of my favorite things. I don't even know what to say about it. Other than the ache in my knees that is the punishment for being tall and going to the theater, it was an absolutely perfect evening. It was one of those times when you forget where you are and you forget that you're watching something and you forget that these people are only pretending and you get entirely swept up in story. I'm no conoisseur by any means, but I am an avid fan of theater and to be able to see a favorite play put on live AND to be able to see a favorite actor perform it (AND to be there with The Husband, who'd never seen ANY version of Streetcar and didn't even know what it was about...)... It was magical. Absolutely magical. If all the performances weren't sold out, I would've absolutely gone again, later in the run. *sighs*

( On the writing front )

So I think I've decided that I'm NOT going to do prettylightsfic because while I think I could write RPF in other fandoms than SPN, I don't know those fandoms or actors as "intimately" as I know the SPN ones and I know me. I'll end up doing all this research to try and get it "right" and I just don't feel like investing that kind of work in fandoms I'm not nearly as interested in. And I just feel guilty only offering SPN fandom. Besides, 99% of the fandom is J2 and while I CAN write it, and I enjoy reading it, writing it doesn't turn my crank the way it used to. So why set myself up to write something I won't really enjoy?

OTOH, I'm wondering if there's enough of us, yet, who might be interested in a JDM ficathon. Not NOW, obviously; I'd probably want to wait until all the winter fests are past, but... Yeah. A JDM-centric ficathon. Het, slash...hell, I'd even take JDM gen. Just JDM and SOMEBODY. A human shaped person. Anybody maybe interested in that? Sometime in January, maybe?

So, I've decided that I'm definitely not doing the official NaNo this year. It makes me really sad--much sadder than I would expect, actually--and mentally, I keep trying to figure out a way to make it work, but I know it's the smart thing to do. I haven't been writing anywhere near 1000 words a day, let alone the 1666 a day I'd need to make it. I have no idea what's going on with us (me & The Husband) in the month of November; I'll be out of work and he might be too (we're okay; it's the nature of the biz. Our project is coming to a close) or we could be moving somewhere else again for a new project. Who knows? Not us. Also, I'll be running the mini_nanowrimo community again this year (with one less mod) and it was just hell last year trying to do "official" nano and do all the modly type stuff and not live in armpit deep filth, so...I'm better off. But I'm still sad.

Which, in a roundabout way, is my way of saying, "Hey! mini_nanowrimo is open for business again!" The goal of mini-nano is to just write something every day. You can commit to as little as 100 words a day, for 30 days. It's open to all fandoms, pairings, and genres, including those red-headed stepchildren, RPF and original fiction. *g*

The really awful thing is that I'm contemplating the apocabigbang, even though a) I have all the previously mentioned problems, b) I have no idea and c) my track record with ficathons lately has been absolute suck. Clearly the lure of the apocalypse is strong. Like a riptide, one might say. I've recently been reading the collection of short stories, Wasteland and contemplating whether I finally have the mental/emotional fortitude to pick up The Road, as well as catching up on eps of The Colony, so clearly my mind is in an apocalyptic place. Unfortunately, this hasn't produced much creative spark. Ah, well.

I usually try and dedicate my NaNo time to a specific project. Even though I'm going mini, rather than maxi, I think I'm going to do the same this year and see if I can make some tracks on Appetite. It won't go away, lingering around my door and mooching for scraps and I think that's a sign of something. I'm feeling wobbly about it, but I also think I may have found a way to get past my giant stumbling block with it. It's a bit of a cheat, but only in my head.

While I'm rambling, I'd like to again rec nilchance's AKB spin off, That Middle Road. There's a lot of borrowing back and forth between our stories and a lot of behind the scenes collaboration about characterization between us, and...frankly, it's just a story that makes me very happy. If you're curious about AKB Jeremy Sisto, or AKB Misha, there's a lot more answers there than I'll probably be able to get to in the main arc.

In terms of other stories that simply make me happy, devilc is writing her own AKB epic over on IJ, regarding Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) and Chris Kane. She just put out a new piece and I don't think I breathed once while reading it. She really captures the jagged, restless, dangerous aspect of Kane's personality and I'm flat out fascinated by her Homme. The overall series doesn't have a name; each chapter has it's own, but they're all tagged here. It's so incredibly good and I think it deserves a hundred more times the attention than it's getting. I know IJ can be a turnoff, but it's really worth the trip over.

There are some other stories that I've gotten to read pre-posting and I really cannot wait for them to be posted so I can rec them to high heaven. But alas. *twiddles thumbs restlessly*

Okay, time to get some adult-type things done. Otherwise I'll never be ready in time for Wincon.

WINCON, BABY!

I'm still having such a hard time reconnecting with LJ. But, at the same time, I have no idea where my time is going. Gods know I haven't really been writing. I think I'm going to try and challenge myself to post something every day in May, see how that goes. What I'd really like to do is resume my daily writing status posts. They were probably boring as hell to everyone else, but I think I could stand to start keeping track of what the heck I'm doing...or not doing.

Writing is not a happy place for me right now. I'm struggling, it feels like I've been struggling for months, if not a year or more and I don't know what I can do--or if there's anything TO be done--to get me back to where I used to be. I've had people advise me to get used to what I can do now, and to not be so hard on myself, but at one level, that feels like giving up. And, at another, more important level, I was happy when I was writing so much more. At this moment, I write primarily for my own pleasure but some measure of that pleasure comes from being able to get all of this stuff OUT OF MY HEAD and the less I write and the slower I write, the more it backs up and the more hopeless I feel at ever being able to express a fraction of what I have rattling around. Giving up on the idea that I can get back to being a productive writer again sounds too much like "Give up on being happy" and that's just such a horribly disheartening proposition. I've always hated the notion that my best years or my best times are behind me; I've always wanted to be the kind of person whose life has only gotten better and richer as I've gone on. I don't want to wallow in my so-called glory days, but I also don't particularly want a future where I've no such joys to look forward to. And I don't have the faintest idea how to reconcile that.

Being sick and the miserable heat here haven't helped my mood much. The sickness is finally, mostly, gone, thank goodness and the heat broke last night. I know that, at least, will return and viciously, from all accounts, but I'm enjoying the respite. I don't think well in the heat and that only makes it harder to write, or live, or do much of anything except lie as flat as I can and be miserable. Between the two (heat and sickness) I've fallen behind on things; things I want to do for myself (like finish putting the apartment together...I'm SO CLOSE) and things I've promised to do for friends. I suppose I'd better get traction now, today, while the going is good.

Speaking of the good, I've finally found a cafe in Frederick that meets my modest but exacting standards. It's locally owned, which pleases me, has an eclectic and comfortable decor (which is an unexpected plus) and has outlets for me to be able to plug in my laptop and work for hours at a time. I need to figure out what to do about parking (everything close to the cafe is metered parking; I have to figure out where's the nearest long-term parking) but that's small potatoes compared to the joy of finding someplace where I can not only tolerably hang out, but where I think I'll actively ENJOY hanging out. I'm hippy-dippy boho enough that I've always wanted to have a cafe scene to call mine. It's kind of funny that I never found that in Chicago, which is lousy with cafes, but there it is.

I've seen a handful of new movies and rewatched some old favorites with beanside and nilchance. I think I'm finally pretty much caught up on TV except for the last SPN episode, which is awaiting me even now. When I can't write (which is often) I've been playing the Sims. Sim!Sam Winchester is still a giant whore, gods love him, but he doesn't even come close to Sim!Dean for number of children sired. I'm also slowly reading The Lies of Locke Lamora which was recced to me by any number of people. I really kind of miss the days when I'd sit and read a book like this in a single sitting. Of course these days, I spend that same amount of time trying to write something of my own. Trade offs, I guess.

...and now I'm cold. I think I'm gonna go put on a sweater. (GLEE!)

I have emailed my spn_remix off to the mod! Of course, that's really the only thing I've accomplished today. Whatever plague The Fiancee brought home is digging itself deeper. I slept most of the day and every time I wake up, I just feel worse. I think eating dinner may have been a major miscalculation on my part. *grumbles*

Remarkably enough, I don't have much navel gazing to do this time around. The idea for the remix came almost immediately, there was no heavy Kink-PT drama in the writing and I'm actually very satisfied with the way it turned out. My biggest source of durm und strang is that I want to unveil it NOW, because I'm so uncharacteristically happy with how it turned out. But I can be patient. Especially if I spend the rest of this week sleeping the way I did today.

It does raise the question of fannish appropriation for me, though. Sometimes when I've remixed stories--and as is the case here--I've written something that I'd actually like to springboard off of into a further story or stories. But then the proprietary issues get a little weird. Some authors don't mind when people play in or riff off their universes. Other writers are horrified by the idea (which...seems a LITTLE funny, considering what we do and our Issues with authors that make a big stink about fanfic...but that's certainly their prerogative and I'm not comfortable fucking with someone else's comfort zone, even when its not mine). And for me, at least, it's a slightly different proposition when someone wants to riff off your story or write in your universe (like the DELIGHTFUL darkrosetiger is doing with A Kept Boy--go read!) versus saying, "Hey, I remixed your story and I'd like to create a new universe from it. How do ya feel about that?"

It's possible I'm splitting the hair too fine, I don't know. When I remixed kellifer_fic's story for kamikazeremix, I actually ended up discarding my first story idea because it would change the pairings in the story in a way that I didn't feel was in the spirit of the challenge (even though Kel had offered permission for her writer to do that). But the idea still pinged me and I periodically think about trying to write something similar that isn't quite so much Kel's story...but I suspect it would just end up being too much of a rip-off and so I end up discarding it again.

I probably won't do anything further with my spn_remix story, either and it's not as though I'm lacking for universes to play in, gods know. But with the steady erosion of my various 'lines',its interesting to note those that still remain and what they're made of.

And now, for something completely different...

I tried to watch Shelter. And I was LOVING IT. And...Netflix's copy crapped out halfway through and wouldn't play. I requested a new copy. I WILL PERSEVERE.

And while we're on the topic, sort of, those of you who liked Latter Days will ADORE this original story that stoney321 wrote: And It Came To Pass. You all know me and long fics. So when I actually buckle down and read one, it's something special. This is a beautiful 7 part story about two Mormon boys that fall in love. But more than that, it's a genuine coming of age story for her protagonist, Brandon; a story that's as much about growing up and finding yourself and figuring out what you want as it is about the HEA. I cannot recommend it highly enough. Seriously.

I ran across a pimp for the community queer_as_tv on my flist and toddled over to check it out. It's clearly very fledgling; it was started by bayamiod as part of her grad school project, but it looks like it could be an interesting place to discuss the representation of LGBT characters and issues in television. Mayhap you'd like to check it out too?

So, as I mentioned yesterday, I had to ship my BABY off to Dell for repair. The LCD screen backlight hadn't been working for a while (I've been using an external monitor for months) and now, the power cord/connector was doing funny things. So in the meantime, I'm stuck using my mini-laptop, Pearl--which is good for short stints on the computer, but difficult for more intensive use--or borrowing The Fiance's laptop...which has it's own problems. Including the loss of all my handy, helpful programs. I begged and pleaded with him to let me download Semagic, so I can multi-post, which is a BIG help, but I'm gonna have to ask for y'all patience as I wait patiently (on the widow's walk) for my baby to come home.

The upshot (?) of this is that I've given in and started using Pandora's streaming radio (which my poor old baby couldn't really handle) so that I don't muck up The Fiance's decidedly different musical library with my monstrous musical collection and I'm kind of delighted with all the new music that's coming at me. I find I go through different moods with music; times when I'm tired with everything I have and crave lots and lots of new input, new sounds, new artists...and times that I'm tired of not hearing anything familiar and comfortable, and I pull all my old, favorite music around me like a big, snuggly blanket. Clearly I'm in acquisition phase. However, I don't really have the means to go out and legitimately acquire a lot of new music. Especially when I may ony want a song or two from a given artist. (My general rule of thumb is that I have to like at least TWO songs before I'll let myself buy the album; I've been burned before. A LOT.) Now, I thought about outright begging for music, but I was also thinking that it would be kind of cool if there was a community out there for some kind of musical exchange. Where you could post saying, "Hey, does anyone have any Bebel Gilberto they could upload for a fangirl?" and I could say, "HEY! *I'VE* got some!" and upload it, and then maybe I post looking for some obscure Nine Inch Nails or Tori Amos b-side and someone else has it and we all walk away happy. So...Is there anything like that out there? Or...if not, would anybody else be interested in joining a comm like that? If ther was one? Which...clearly could not exist, because that would be BAD. But if there was??

ION, I've been reading Twilight. I'd like to say under duress, because both shotofjack and pyroblaze18 have pushed it at me (though, to be fair, not in an "OMG, YOU'LL LOVE THIS!!" way) and shotofjack went so far as to come up with a copy of Twilight that was just about free, thus sparing me the horror of putting money into SMeyer's pocket. I have...thoughts. And they're not happy, sparkly ones. But I think that's fodder for another post. I will say, though, that I'm becoming more and more creeped out by this trope of men who are HUNDREDS OF YEARS OLD still not getting past the maturity level of having relationships with a teenage girl. That's not romantic, it's pedophilia.

The writers for kamikazeremix have revealed themselves. So if you're one of Those People who were waiting to see who wrote what, now's the time to go and forage and see what amazing goodies there are. I haven't had a chance to do more than skim all the stories as they went through the moderation queue but I have to say that I'm really proud (even though I had SO LITTLE to do with it) of how really amazing all the stories turned out. This was my first modding experience and, with a few notable exceptions (omg, TAGS), it was a real pleasure to co-mod. And it was the first collaborative thing girlguidejones and I have done together and I was THRILLED BEYOND BELIEF to find that she's just as much a pleasure to work with as she is to socialize with. We were so in sync through the whole thing, it was kind of scary.

The remix I wrote (which was COMPLETELY OBVIOUS, imo, that it was me) was The Narrow Passage (Vertiginous Remix), which I will eventually repost here in my own LJ and archive on my site. I wrote obliquely about it beforehand--how ultimately, I wasn't entirely satisfied with the end product--and I have some thoughts that I'd like to get down now that I'm exposed. So that will be a little later.

One of the really great things about kamikazeremix is that it exposed me to a lot of authors and/or stories that I'd never read before. My terrible secret is that I actually read very little fanfic. Not because I don't love it (because I do) but because I'm often wrapped up in writing my own stories and that eats up a lot of my "free" time. So it was really good for me to be in a position where I HAD to read and be exposed to a lot of things I'd either missed or wouldn't have seen otherwise. It feels completely absurd to call myself an old fandom hag in SPN, but in some sense of the word, it's true. A lot of the writers I started out with are no longer even in the fandom, having fucked off to some other fandom or even their RLs and, as I've been consumed in my own pursuits, I haven't done a great job at 'replacing' them with new(er) writers.

All of which is the long way of saying that I wasn't familiar with subterrain's work before the remix challenge. It was girlguidejones's suggestion that we give her my story Halo (In Reverse) to remix and I really could NOT be more pleased with the result. this dark shroud hides a face beneath it (Underside Remix). I've seriously run out of superlatives for this story...but it deserves every one of them I could give it. I wanted to see Halo remixed because I think it's a story that people very much associate with ME--a signature piece, if you will--and I felt (rightly or wrongly) like people were afraid to mess with it. What I wasn't thinking about is what a difficult story it is for someone to play with, given its unrelenting darkness and the fact that it's not a particularly "sexy" story, in any given sense of the word. To find someone who was willing to take the story on and run with it in such a seamless, gorgeous fashion is a real gift.

OMGYAY! People are already signing up for kamikazeremix! This is most pleasing in mine eyes. There's still SIX MORE DAYS after today to sign up and PLENTY OF ROOM. Don't be shy! Be Kamikaze!

I keep meaning to do a big post on the state of my fannishness and I have consistently failed. So. Let's see if we can do this in bullet points:

• kamikazeremix!


• Saw Wanted. Loved it.


• Saw Iron Man again. Loved it still.


• Saw Hellboy 2. OMG LOVED IT.


• Saw Hancock. Had issues (that may make it into a post), but still loved it.


• Watched Flashpoint. OMG SO BORING.


• Watched Wanted. Slow, but I'll give it a second try.


• Watched Baby Borrowers. I blame shotofjack for this one. I don't know whether to be amused or horrified, quite honestly.


• Watched Shear Genius. I blame trollprincess, who has been my gateway drug for reality shows in general. I don't think I understand entirely, but I'm still watching.


• Watched Pretty Handsome. WHY WAS THIS NOT PICKED UP?


• Watched Leverage. OMG CAN'T FREAKING WAIT.


• Watched True Blood. Um. Hmm. I'm reserving judgement. It's intriguing.


• Have yet to watch Fringe, US Life on Mars (meh), or the last 4 episodes of Doctor Who


• Am about to swear out an APB for my errant muse, who doesn't seem to be in any of his usual haunts.


• kamikazeremix!

See, the thing is (and yes, I do ROUTINELY start conversations like this, just ask denyce) when it really comes down to it, I think I'm most interested in continuing/developing relationships.

Now, that's not to say that I don't really, deeply love a good first-time story too. But, when it comes down to exploring particular characters, I'm far more likely to write a 25 story arc of their burgeoning relationship than 25 separate first time stories. That's not a value judgment. There are many times that I wish that I could…hold universes more lightly, write more one-shot stories, get less wrapped up in writing what comes next. It just doesn't seem to be how I'm wired. I finish a story and, almost immediately, La Muse, Kink, kicks in with suggestions of how I can go on from there.

I think there are pluses and minuses to both approaches. I had a brief flirtation with CSI fanfic and came across a writer who almost solely wrote my preferred pairing (which, of course, is a rare one). I devoured most of her fic in a couple days and while it mainly quieted the craving, reading them all that way in a single gulp pointed up the weakness of writing nothing but first-time stories…which is that, in the end, they were all basically the same. You take the same characters in the same canon and especially when they're written by the same author (because we all have our fictional ruts and kinks) and the stories acquire a certain uniformity that's both obvious and, after a while…kind of boring. At least for me. Because I always want to know what happens next.

On the other hand, writing an ongoing relationship arc becomes a lot like writing a television show itself. At a certain point, you risk losing your audience to boredom and you're embroiled in your storyline to a point where it's difficult to acquire new readers because the story has become too insulated. Certainly, I don't often post pieces of Heartverse or my other long term universes to the communities anymore because I worry that it's no longer accessible to the casual reader.

There are things that I do to try and counteract that drift; it's very important to me to make each story in the longer arc stand alone as much as possible and I try to put down enough contextual clues to make the previous history obvious…but the problem can't completely be erased. And if your reader is anything like me (a completist), they're still going to want to start at the beginning and work their way through and that can be problematic with something like Heartverse that has a couple hundred stories to it.

The other problem to primarily writing ongoing relationships is more personal. After having finished a "large" project, I'm generally not ready to pick up another big project right away. I need a little down time—which for me, equates to doing some dabbling, rather that not writing at all. Or, alternatively, I frequently do writing exercises, where I make myself write for a given period of time (usually about 15m) and see what comes out of me. When I'm at a point with all my ongoing universes where the "next" story would be a long one and anything short that I write would spoil one of those future stories (I'm having this problem with Die Hard AS WE SPEAK) then I find it difficult to write anything fast and frothy. And I'm usually loathe to create something new from whole cloth, because….well. We've already talked about Kink's abusive relationship with me. It just leads to more universes that I can't keep up with.

…which is just a long way of saying, "I'm in the in-between, I want to write something short and fast and I have no idea what to actually write that would be short and sweet. I know, my life is SO HARD. *sighs*

So, as you all know, I'm sick. Which means that, instead of getting any writing done or anything remotely useful, I lurked a lot and drifted around various links posted by various people. And now I repost them all here, for your possible reading pleasure.

From anonymous_sibyl: Your Friends Are Not Watching The Same Show you Are (And That's Okay) This is SO TRUE, and one of the main reasons I skip episode reactions, because I inevitably end up with the "OMG, someone on the internet is WRONG" reaction and have to step away for my own peace of mind. And yes, I AM watching the "Don't Fuck With the Teaboy Show", thank you kindly.

sparkeymonster posted about the Adipositivity Project, which I'd never heard of and thought was a wonderful idea...until she pointed out that, of 157 images, only two are (apparently) women of color. For an artist based in NYC, I find that rather reprehensible. So...fat is in, as long as it's white fat?

Here, dragonladyk wrote a GREAT "rant" about the reasons why the Criminal Minds episodes "Lucky" and "Penelope" REALLY didn't work for me and why (though I think they're cute and all) the pairing of Penelope/Kevin doesn't quite work for me.

A bunch of people on my flist have just seen Cloverfield. Despite my issues with the movie, I am fascinated by the mythos of it and this site is not discouraging me in that at all. Other people have sex dreams about CW stars. I have the dreams where Slusho fucks us all up to a point where societal, familial and social connections break down into a kind of hive mind. And then you wonder why I write the things I do.

catdancerz emailed me this story, prompting me to go find the link myself. 'Sex Pest' Seal Attacks Penguin, the sad story of a sexually frustrated seal's effort to get some satisfaction from a poor unsuspecting King Penguin. On the one hand...HILARIOUS. On the other hand, anyone want to guess that sometime soon, someone will use this to argue that rape is a biological imperative? And catdancerz? The answer is NO. I'm bent, but I'm not yet ready to write Penguin!Winchesters fic yet. :D

And then finally, a little fic. turnonmyheels recced this story: I Nothing But To Please His Fantasy, which I can say without reservation is the Torchwood story I have been WAITING for someone to write. It's dark, it's brutal, and it's so freaking plausible, it should be canon. It's Jack/John, during the time loop and it's one of the best uses of second person I've ever seen, pro or amateur. Seriously.

For anyone interested, my mom is doing better. She's responded to antibiotics and they're going to release her from the hospital. Thank you for the concerned texts and emails. I'm grateful this wasn't more serious, but with an immune-compromised person, even little stuff is just kind of...terrifying. *sighs*

In happier news, the reveal for Remix is on Saturday (tomorrow) and I will be able to unmask myself and repost my stories here. I am a proprietary little cuss and I always like having all my things in one place. *laughs* I have to admit to some amusement/consternation that my pinch hits seemed better received than the remix I was assigned, but I still think I did solid work on all of them and I did get really lovely feedback on all of them, so it's all good. And not a single one of you even TRIED to guess which remixes were mine. *single emo tear*

In truly EXCELLENT news, nilchance has written another piece of our conjoined Vet!Dean universe: Until Morning, which follows Amends to the Dead and Prometheus (Up From Ashes). The Winchester boys and kittens is such a lovely, happy place. Go. Read. I'm sure you'll agree.

And then finally, an open letter to Adrian Pasdar and Milo Ventimiglia:

I WISH I COULD QUIT YOU.

Everytime I think I'm out...they pull me back in again.

denorios and my dear, beloved luridmuse, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

To the anonymouse who gave me LJ paid time…thank you so much! It was unexpected and a lovely surprise.

mickeym: You sent me a lovely vgift days ago and I don't think I ever thanked you for it. Please forgive me and thank you! Every time I go to my profile page, it makes me happy.

My Remix is posted! I'm so excited. The week between the posting date and the unveiling is such torture. I haven't talked a lot about Remix this year, which feels kind of unlike me, though I haven't gone back and checked how much blathering I do about remix in the normal run of things.

( In which I ramble about Remix. )

I recently picked up the show Criminal Minds. I feel like I've progressed as a fangirl, because I watched six episodes and then went looking for fic. I just finished the first season and am about to start the second. I don't know how ficcish I feel about it yet, but I'm having a good time. I feel like I'm gravitating toward Hotchner, because hes the kind of uber-responsible-but-damaged character I love. My first impression of Reid was "Oh, I bet he's the fandom bicycle" and, in typical fashion, I didn't want to like him, but he's worming his way in. What can I say? I'm a sucker for his tense little mouth. Plus he does the hands on the face thing while kissing and...yeah. I'm easy like that.

Does anyone know where to find prompt tables that are not specifically fandom related? Like…most of the ones I know of, you have to declare a specific fandom or pairing and I just want a table of twenty-five (or so) prompts. I realize I could make up my own, but I've had a couple people also ask me about it and I just don't know if there's anything like that out there. If not, someone who is not me should make that community. *beams*

It's no secret that writing is my pleasure, my joy. I'm pretty vocal about that.

Sometimes I feel guilty about the rambling that I do after some stories, recounting anecdotes about how the story came to be or things that happened in the writing, my thoughts about the story itself. It feels self-indulgent and, sometimes but not always, self-involved.

But in some sense, that's exactly what it is and why it's there. This journal started out as my writing journal. A place for me to think and talk about craft. To perhaps hone it. Though I love every fragment of feedback I have been given, I would write these stories anyway. Though I've written stories for ficathons and requests, the truth is that I write what I like. I wouldn't write a story that I didn't enjoy writing. And I frequently write things that I expect no one to read…though I'm as frequently pleasantly surprised. *g*

So when I write these self-indulgences at the end of a given story, it's less about you, Dear Reader, than it is about me being able to come back to that story and see where I was then, what my mind was doing. Being able to see the fingerprints and the seams. The craft marks.

Again, not to in any way denigrate the lovely feedback I've been given, the energy of my writing usually goes in one direction. From inside of me, out. I write because I want to, but I also write because I have to, haunted by these stories as thoroughly as any ghost. That sounds like a negative, I'm sure…and sometimes it is. There are few things more frustrating than having this story on the tip of my brain (as it were) and being unable to disgorge it onto paper or screen.

But when it's good…oh, saints and lepers, it is really fucking good. And like any good junkie, I will break the face off of any person that tries to take that from me. There are many things in this world I can live without. Story, creating story, storytelling…is not one of them.

And so I will confess to the self-indulgent pleasure of writing about and thinking about the craft of writing. I will give myself these little road markers to visit, when I wend this way again. I will allow myself to be involved with myself in this way, and I don't feel bad about it at all.

This is what I'm here for.

I've been trying all day to frame my thoughts about Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. I saw the movie The Golden Compass some time ago (my thoughts are here) and came away from it with a vague sense of dissatisfaction and a number of questions. After the urgings of you lot to give the books a try, I purchased them. To be fair, I haven't read the third book yet, only The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife (or whatever you Brits call them). Even so, I think I can state definitively:

I don't like them.

On the one hand, I want to excuse it by saying it's a YA book, but I think it's a disservice to YA to suggest that, just because a book is for a younger audience it doesn't have to be well written, and, having read any number of YA books, even in my adulthood, it would be just untrue for me to dismiss an entire genre because of what I see as the failings of this one author. I mean, I think Madeline L'Engle's books still hold up remarkably well whether being read by a child or an adult and I know that there are concepts that went over my head as a Wee Young Thing that I only came to understand in my (theoretical) maturity. Though less world-shaking to me, I think the Harry Potter's books are another example of books that are superficially YA but stand up pretty well to adult scrutiny. I don't feel the same about the Dark Materials books.

( And here is why: spoilers for The Golden Compass and The Subtle Knife. )</blockquote>
In any case, I still plan to read through to the end. If nothing else, Pullman has a grasp of what Stephen King calls the gimme; the desire to know what happens next regardless of what you think about the actual prose. I think I'm very susceptible to the gimme; I find myself reading all manner of stories I don't really enjoy because I'm interested to see the entirety of the structure. I want to see the nuts and bolts but I also want to see the finishing touches. Plus, I'm just fucking stubborn. So. There is that.

In other randomness, I caught the first series of an old BBC show called The Book Group. Strangely enough, it stars Anne Dudek, who played Amber the heinous bitch on House this season. I was rather disappointed at the open-endedness of the series, but overall, I found it really interesting and I hope to find a way to see the second series. I was amused, though, when ( cut for spoiler )

I think at this point La Muse has been gone long enough for me to put out a Missing Persons Report, his good-bye letter 1200 words of fic for a story I'm not even working on. *cries* The thing is, I get so completely out of sorts when I'm not writing. I'm not writing. I am out of sorts. I miss Kink. He's a bastard, but he's my bastard. If you see him, please send him home. Quickly.

Okay. I have stuff.

Nice Boy by kellifer_fic. RPF. Jared Padalecki/Milo Ventimiglia.

A while ago I wrote a synopsis for a story that has a ONE LINE mention of Jared and Milo having lots of angry sex at the point in time that Jared was being shoved phased out of GG. And Kink (gods love him) must have put some mojo on that idea, because it sparked something beautiful in kellifer_fic's brain. And broke her RPS cherry when she wrote a beautiful little sniplet here. Well, then I begged and groveled for more and as she is a KIND AND GIVING SOUL, Kel wrote me more. It's delightfully funny (confused!Jared! HelpfullyDouchey!Chad! Evil!Milo!), VERY hot and...oddly sweet. Well worth the read.

(AND IF YOU TELL HER SO, MAYBE KEL WILL WRITE MORE!!)


Speaking of kind and giving souls, romantical wrote Conceit for me. BSG. Zak Adama/Helo. Laura writes the best Crazy!Zak out there and some of the scorchingist porn ever. She and inlovewithnight also write some of the best Maggie (Racetrack) out there. So with the combination of Zak, Helo, Maggie and WARGAMES (not to mention the porn!), romanticalgirl couldn't have written anything better for me if... Well. I don't have an if. It's awesome. And you should read it.

I asked halfshellvenus for schmoopy boys and "warmth", she wrote me the beautiful Until You Feel It, a sweet drabble that could be Sam/Dean or Sam & Dean...which is as it should be. :D


I have missed a ton of birthdays (as I am wont to do) and I have periodic pangs of guilt about it, I'd like to wish VERY BELATED birthdays to __tiana__, meret, jdsampson, coniraya, inalasahl, viciouswishes, lunardreamed, my very own fleshlycherry (Ch-ch-Cherry!) and a current happy birthday to blazeorfade and way2busymom! Please accept my very best wishes for love and happiness!