Due to the INSANE increase in anon spam on LJ, I've turned off anon-commenting, at least temporarily. I'm sorry, internet! If you are trying to get in contact with me and you don't have an LJ account, there's always twitter and email (fourteenacross(at)gmail.com).

Also, my secret_mutant letter is here for anyone looking to make me mutant-y things for that exchange!

Welp, every time this year I said "I will post more on LJ!" I....failed to post more on LJ. So I'm not even going to pretend anymore. But I have done these memes every year for 10+ years, so I'm still doing them.

I'm not doing the writing one yet because I NAIVELY HOPE to finish at least a first draft of the Hamilton Ghosthunters fic by next weekend. I DOUBT this will happen, but I'm off for the next three and a half days, so...who knows. I KNOW EVERYTHING THAT HAS TO GO INTO IT STILL. It's just...30k words of things that have to go into it.

(Oh my god, my last entry was ONE WEEK before Hamilton dropped. AKA ANOTHER LIFETIME AGO, BECAUSE WHO CAN REMEMBER LIFE BEFORE HAMILTON? Uh, so, if you live under a rock, Lin-Manuel Miranda's hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton finally made it to Broadway and the cast recording dropped on September 21 and it has basically been my life ever since? With a diversion into Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, so it has definitely been like 2004 up in this joint. Remember the, like, ten years when theatre was MY LIFE? A lot of those old impulses and feelings are coming back.

So, I figured Hamilton wouldn't necessarily be a writing fandom for me because...that's ridiculous. And then pearl_o ruined her own life by pointing out a Hamilton/ghost busting prompt as a joke and then as a joke I thought, "Hahaha, well, if I WAS going to write it...."

And now 76k+ words of it exist. Along with additional words about the wider universe. It is all I think about. I don't know what's wrong with me. I also have an OT3 for the first time since 2005? And, with a closed canon and all, this one won't exist for one excited summer hiatus and then immediately get jossed? And I love all these shitheads like they're my children? I DON'T KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENED TO MY LIFE.

Anyway.)

Memes. Here are two memes.

( Fandom in 2015Collapse )

***

( General 2015Collapse )

Stealing this meme from Renata and Carrie and pretending that it means I will get back into LJing regularly!! I can dream!!


So what have you been up to? / Major life changes? Same old same old?

Mostly same old, same old. Still in my shitty job that drives me crazy and depresses me like mad. Still living in the Boston suburbs with mcwonthelottery. Still reading shitty books to podcast with bessiemaemucho and good books to pass the rest of the time. Still writing ridiculous AUs with pearl_o.

DragonCon just happened and....it was overall probably really good, but it ended on a very, very down note that sort of colored the rest of the weekend. But we did a nice thing for Kelly Sue and she loved it and I got to hug (and grope) many, many friends, so. Good overall.

What fandom are you in/do you spend most of your time in?

Still mostly X-Men movies for creative output--I'm pretty exclusively writing fic in that world still. For consumption related purposes, Gravity Falls and Over the Garden Wall, which I re-watched on the way to con and fell in love with all over again. It's out on DVD and streaming on Hulu now, and my goal is to make everyone watch it.


Where do you hang out online?

Mostly Twitter, where I'm @fourteenacross. I do have a tumblr that I occasionally, occasionally post things to, but I don't read there any longer. Tumblr and I seriously do not get along.


What are you reading?

I'm finishing up New Moon for the podcast--this is...a pretty boring book. For funsies, I'm reading a book of MR James ghost stories and Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. I've gotta read a couple more grown-up books in order to have six to rank for the WBS end of year episodes /o\

What are you watching?
All my shows either just ended or have been on hiatus for summer. Hannibal is sadly over forever, which is tragic because it was so, so great.

Uh, but as for what I'm actually watching, it's Gravity Falls on its excruciatingly slow Disney schedule, Another Period and Steven Universe, which we're sort of absently watching on Hulu, and my The X-Files rewatch, which keeps stalling out when I get to boring episodes.


What are you making?

HAHA. Um, pearl_o and I started texting about a random AU in mid-July and now, mid-September, we've written over 100k words of it. The first 84k story, Math Reasons is already up and we're finishing the last two scenes of the sequel right now. Then we'll probably try to decide what in that world we'll tackle next, given we've planned out the next three years of their lives in pretty exacting detail.

I had to skip X-Men Remix this year because it overlapped significantly with DragonCon and DragonCon prep and I decided to BE A GROWN-UP and not try to overexert myself doing everything. And it kind of sucked, but I had marked a couple things I wanted to try and remix if I had the time (HAHAHAHAHAHAHA oh past Kaitlyn, you sweet summer child) that I might attempt later this month once I get my sea legs back.

I'm in the planning stages of this year's Halloween party. I think it's going to be Over the Garden Wall themed, so I'm planning making my costume (I wanted to be a Pottsfield resident, but that would be a very hot costume, so I went with the slightly easier/cheaper to make and cooler Wirt costume.) and the decorations, which I'm hoping to do without buying any more Halloween decorations (although I am going to buy a roll of black butcher paper.).

Also, Secret Mutant sign-ups start in two weeks, so it's time to start thinking about THAT too.


What are you squeeing about today?

Over the Garden Wall, the "Math Reasons" AU, holding a baby bunny for most of last night, Halloween...the usual things.


If you could rope old fandom friends into a new fandom, it would be...

Now that OtGW is streaming on Hulu, I'm really coming down hard on trying to convince everyone to watch it. It's less than 2.5 hours long! It's seasonally appropriate! It's really brilliant and beautiful! It just won an Emmy!


I should really watch/read/dive into _______ and then come talk to you about it!

Like bessiemaemucho and likeadeuce, I'm not sure if this means what *I* want people to talk to *me* about or what I want to catch up on?

I don't know if there's anything I wish I was more up on? Is that terrible? I know everyone is super into the Man from U.N.C.L.E. movie, but I really have no desire to see it. Uhhhhh....oh, I still really want to watch Jane the Virgin, but Hulu took off all but the most recent five episodes, so idk when that will happen. I still need to get caught up on Doctor Who and...hm...idk.

As for what I want YOU to get into and talk to me about, let's start a Nora Roberts book club and get into Nora Roberts together!

(I'm only half-joking.)

(j/k I'm not at all joking comment if you want to do an online Nora Roberts book club.)

What else is on your mind?
1) I don't want to go to either of the meetings I have to go to today.
2) You should listen to the new Worst Bestseller which goes up at noon. It's Dianetics. It's literally the worst, most painful book I've read.
3) My Halloween party is going to be Saturday, October 24, and you should come.
4) Like, every single one of my weeks from now until November is books, so idk when I'm going to sleep.

Maybe!

So, my ladybros and I have one bedspace available in our DragonCon room(s)! We're going to be at a walkable overflow hotel. There are two rooms, one of which will be exclusively female, and it will probably roughly shake out into a "loud" room and a "quiet" room in the evenings.

Friends, if you or anyone you know is looking for a place to stay, we would be happy to have you! Really really happy!! Please!! Let me talk you into attending DragonCon!! It is really fun I swear!! Many guests from many popular fandoms attend! There's always something exciting going on! Probably my friends and I will get drunk and sing showtunes at you! But also, if you don't want us to do that, we will let you be and you can do your own thing and not interact with us at all!

Basically, I'm kind of desperate to cover this last spot this late in the game, so............let me know if you're interested.

Hi, internet. Boy, I'm shit at LJ, huh?

I'm tired and cranky and fighting with Photoshop, so I thought I'd bring back a meme to do in between throwing tantrums about fonts:

I currently have 207 works archived at AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 207 (the first thing I posted there), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it.

Play if you want!

I still have a million things to update about, but REMIX REVEALS HAPPENED. I meant to read all the X-related ones and do a rec post before reveals, but I have been SUPER busy lately and didn't even manage to read any of the Remix Madness stories that weren't for me, SO.

First off, the AMAZINGLY STEALTHY littledust wrote kids who go to school (the drop the dime remix) and KEPT IT A SECRET FOR WEEKS by WRITING AN ENTIRE ADDITIONAL DECOY STORY. Oh my god. I mean. Oh my god. If any of the five people reading this don't know, littledust and I are RL FRIENDS and have hung out MULTIPLE TIMES OVER THIS PERIOD. STEALTHY.

The lovely post-X3 Erik introspective piece in the garden was by Red and it was BEAUTIFUL. Work a Miracle (the You're So Fond Remix), a Ianto/Jack spin on a mixed media fic of mine about Gwen's honeymoon was by coricomile, and the other four stories I got were by my buds whom I immediately guessed based on pairing (Moral Fools (A Midsummer Night's Remix) by bessiemaemucho), crossover choice (Restaurant Proximity Associates (The JJ's Diner Remix) by metonymy). background details (Snail Mail (The Bone Wars Mix) by littledust), or because they texted me and told me (apple season (year after year remix) by pearl_o).

NOW, onto the reveals!! I wrote five stories overall, totaling 31,088 words, because I have a sickness.

A Nice Boy (the Family Matters Edition) - Erik/Charles, Edie, Jakob, Ruth - Modern Powered AU - 20k, Teen
My main assignment was for pearl_o who I talk to all day every day about everything, but especially writing, so my immediate reaction to my assignment was not, "Yay! I love Erica's stories! This will be great!" but rather, "THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE HOW DO I KEEP IT A SECRET MAYBE IF I FAKE MY OWN DEATH." I also write her at least one remix every year, so that sort of cut down on available material. Thankfully, Pearl has a zillion great stories, so I narrowed it down to five and then two and then got to work on 20k words on family and history and love and connection and brunch.
This is a story about Erik learning to love (his family) again ten years after surviving eighteen months in a mutant experimentation facility that was billed as an elite mutant "academy" to desperate parents. There's a nice slow-burn romance between Erik and Charles, who's writing a book on the facilities a decade later, but the main conflict is Erik allowing himself to open up to his parents and sister after a decade of distancing himself out of self-defense. I could probably write about my thoughts on this fic for hours, but I'll stop here and just say that I quite like it, and many, MANY thanks to bessiemaemucho and littledust for an AMAZING beta job and to greeneyes73180 for letting me write the bulk of it in her apartment on my vacation to Atlanta.

( four remix madness stories!Collapse )

Hello, internet!

I have important things to update about, mostly HeroesCon, but it was IMPORTANT that I take this opportunity to rec the amazing stories I got for Remix (for a value of "got" where I recognize that Remix is not technically a gift exchange, but loved the results so much that I am looking at them as gifts)!! Gosh, I 100% lucked out this year. I got TWO stories in the Remix Collection, which, I'm not 100% sure how that worked but I'm not complaining, and then FOUR stories in Madness and all six of them were AMAZING.

kids who go to school (the drop the dime remix) (7499 words) by Anonymous
Charles/Erik, Wanda, Pietro, Jean, Raven - General Audiences
Additional Tags: Post-Beach, Darwin is Alive, Kid Fic, Canon Disabled Character, Families of Choice, Parenthood
Pietro, Wanda, Erik, and the lessons they learn.
OH MY GOD. This story is...really good. It's a really beautiful insight into what's going through Wanda, Pietro, and Erik's minds during the course of the original story and then again once they're settling in at the school and aaaahhhhhh oh god. The kids are written SO well and there is a scene where Erik teaches Wanda how to use her powers that literally made me cry. WHAT A WONDERFUL GIFT. Gosh, I love this.

in the garden (1205 words) by Anonymous
Charles/Erik - Pre-DoFP - Teen
Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Old Age, Absence, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Pre-Days of Future Past Timeline, Remix, Darkest Timeline
There's little left for Erik to do against the constant threat of the Sentinels. Wandering one day in an city long-abandoned, he finds himself in a familiar park.
This is a really sweet remix of a story I posted just recently, where Charles and Erik visit the spot of their first kiss as an old married couple in the shiny new timeline. This reimagines it as Erik making the journey alone in the post-X3, pre-Charles' resurrection original timeline and it's so, so sad and wonderful.

( Four more under the cut - Three X-Men, one TorchwoodCollapse )

Hello, internet. As the subject says, let's start with some quick life updates:

• My birthday was almost two weeks ago and it was lovely ♥ Nicole, Christine, and Caitlin came into town for a couple days and we hung out and played Drawful and drank. On Sunday, I had a very nice party at a bar in town. I'd reserved the upstairs room and we ate a ton of breakfast food and drank about $250 worth of cocktails and chatted and it was awesome. I think about 20 people ended up coming? After breakfast, we went back to Cardigan Central and played more Drawful and consumed cake and I am very lucky to have such wonderful friends ♥ Thanks to everyone who came out and made it such a beautiful start to a new year.
  
• There's some job-search related drama that I'm too tired to go into.
  
• We've had a couple weeks of really excellent weather that appears to be on its way out so summer can settle in for good. I am generally opposed to this.
  
• On Saturday morning I leave to spend a week with Sarah and Katie in Atlanta before HeroesCon, then there is actual HeroesCon the next weekend!
  
• The weekend after THAT I'm seeing The Weepies on Friday and Ingrid Michaelson on Saturday.
  
• I have a very busy August lined up with a trip to New York, Boston Comic Con, and I think at least one other concert and party.
  
• And then DragonCon the first full weekend in September, obviously.
  
• But let's not wish the summer away just yet.

Mostly, though, I'm updating because I want to talk about teevee.

I'm currently watching the return of Hannibal and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, which are both excellent as always. But mostly I wanted to write this entry to talk about Sense8, the latest Netflix show. We watched it this week. Spoilers through the end below the cut (and I imagine in the comments).

( spoilers!!Collapse )

ANYWAY, THOSE ARE MY THOUGHTS. Anyone else watching this?

***

Okay, I have actual real work to do today, so I need to GET ON THAT before I leave in two hours.

WELP I have a million things to update about (well, like, four or five including television), but instead of a real update, how about a meme I stole from likeadeuce?

Pull seven lines from the seventh page of your WIP.

I have four current active WsiP, but one of them is remix and one of them is the garbage fake boyfriends story I'm still trying to fix, so here is one of the others. Working title "shoreverse driving," probable actual title "our cracking bones make noise."

"I was diagnosed with Post-traumatic stress disorder," he says, and chances another glance over at Erik. Erik hasn't reacted to the words. "And I'm mostly--it was bad, especially right after, but it was years ago now, and I'm mostly fine. But sometimes, when I'm tired or stressed out, when I have a lot on my mind or when I'm thinking about it too much or--I don't bloody know, when Mercury is in retrograde, out of nowhere, I'll--have an attack."

Erik is still unmoving, staring out at the road as they move through the quiet streets and finally turn into Charles' complex.

"That's what happened tonight," Charles says, perhaps unnecessarily. "That's how it goes. I--I get in my car to drive at night and I'm back there. And I panic. I can't help it, and I can't--usually I call my sister or my best friend or even a taxi, but it was so late and Moira is at the FBI academy in Virginia and Raven is away at school."


And, hey, what the hell, here seven-ish lines from the other non-secret, non-garbage one:

He's been hurt before--tortured, even. And while he's endured the destruction of his psyche and spirit, it's hard to think of a time when his body received this much damage all at once. Even Shaw, quick to do anything he thought might bring forth Erik's powers, was careful not to hurt him so badly that he couldn't move about on his own after a few hours' rest.

He doesn't know what he did to bring out the vindictiveness in the idiots he was tracking, but if he ever sees any of them again, they won't survive the encounter.

Eventually, he has to concede to McCoy's assessment--he's injured badly and there's no way he can leave and recuperate on his own. He'll need medical supplies and a safehouse, and even if he were to retreat to a country where he can anonymously beg medical treatment from a less than reputable source, he doubts he'd be able to make it past the doors of the mansion on his own. It's best to rest here--McCoy is a competent physician, he won't need to hide his abilities, and though he and Charles may be on opposite sides of this revolution, he still trusts Charles more than anyone else.

eta: Looking at these side-by-side, it's interesting that these bits make them seem like h/c stories, when, actually, the first one is sort of hurt/comfort to start, but mostly developing relationship stuff and the second one is more hurt/stewing in feelings and personal revelations and finally, 20k later, make-outs.


FEEL FREE TO STEAL THIS. Or just to come chat about your WsiP! :D

So, I'm in an editing phase and it's TERRIBLE editing is FOR SQUARES, but it also means I'm not writing new stuff as much for a bunch of different reasons.

SO. PROMPTS.

I'm gonna steal my favorite Tumblr meme and CO-OPT IT for this purpose:
1) Leave me a comment with an AU and a prompt.
1a) It could be a pre-established AU, like shore-verse or Old Retired Dudes or it could be a random AU like "bakery!" or "high school."
2) I will attempt to write you at least a three-sentence fic.
3) ????
4) Profit.

The usual restrictions apply--there are no guarantees, I might not get to all of them, I might not be inspired by all of them, etc. Feel free to prompt multiple things, with the understanding that I may just do one or none or all or whatever, depending on how the mood strikes me.

X-Men movieverse stuff (and maybe Sam/Steve) is gonna have the best chance of being filled, but if you know I'm into another pairing/fandom/etc, feel free to throw it out there and we'll see what happens!

Wooooo let's do this!

I opened up LJ and this popped up as a restored draft. I...have no idea how this was supposed to end. I think I wrote it in the middle of the night on Saturday.

***

I came up with one more fic I want to see post AoU!

(Like, right now, while I was trying to sleep.)

( tiny spoilersCollapse )

***

AND THAT'S WHERE IT STOPPED? So, who even knows, but I still like the idea of it, and it's not like anyone reads LJ anymore, so here you go, internet--the beginning of a story about ~*~something~*~, free to a good home!

This post is largely positive, and while I can definitely see how people would be disappointed/want something else/more from it, I'd prefer you didn't come into the comments to pick a fight about how my opinion is wrong. Which is not to say you shouldn't dislike the movie or want to discuss it, just try not to harsh my squee. I promise I won't try to squee your harsh!

(Generally, you guys are good about this, but I'm kind of still burned from the always-angry-outrage-culture of Tumblr and a little gunshy about posting opinions, I guess.)

( spoilers!Collapse )


Anyway, those are my thoughts on the Avengers. Please feel free to discuss.

Hello, LiveJournal! It's Friday, finally.

Things are slightly better since last time we spoke. I am not as whole-body depressed as I was.

( mental health update, tw: suicidal ideationCollapse )

***

OTHER STUFF:

Media

• I watched the first seven episodes of Daredevil. It's enjoyable! I don't love it, but the characters are interesting enough that I'll watch the rest. Mostly I desperately want Jessica Jones.
  
• Lumberjanes continues to be the best comic I'm reading.
  
• We watched all of Key and Peele and it was hilarious. I'm glad we found another sketch comedy show to watch obsessively.
  
• My X-Files rewatch continues after a short break. I'm almost done with season four.
  
• The new Star Wars trailer completely won me over ♥
  
• I watched most of Fresh Off the Boat inadvertently and it was very sweet!
  
• I've listened to a lot of podcasts.
  
• I saw The Decemberists! It was a really frigging great show and I'm so glad I decided to go ♥
  
• The Weepies and Dar both have new albums out soon, which is prob good on the writing front as well! :D :D :D
  
• And I am seeing BOTH OF THEM in the next few months, and also Vienna Teng and Postmodern Jukebox and Stephin Merritt and Ingrid Michaelson! Lots of good music happening around Boston!

Life

• My parents did indeed come up for Easter and I bought a new car.
  
• It was scary and the car dealership still hasn't cashed their fucking check.
  
• I'm still getting used to its newness and the ways it's different from my old car.
  
• Becca came home, although she's going away again this weekend.
  
• The podcast continues to be great. I have made a lot of awesome twitter friends because of it and we're starting to get recurring guests and fans and stuff!
  
• IT IS FINALLY WARM. I'm finally through with leggings and tights most days and back to wearing heels and flats instead of boots! (Well, generally. I have a tiny, awkwardly placed blister on my left foot, so I've been wearing oxfords and flats all week, including at conferences where I usually wear heels.)
  
• I'm writing a couple things, but kind of aimlessly? I def need a project but I'm not sure what. One of them might turn into a project and the other one is a shore verse fic that I'm sure I'll become obsessed with if I can find a solid arc for it.
  
• (I'm always obsessed with shoreverse. If I'm awake, I'm probably thinking about shore verse somewhere in my mind. pearl_o is, thankfully, also at least slightly obsessed with it, which is great because she lets me just text her incessantly about it sometimes.)
  
• I'm starting to get self-conscious about the fact that I haven't posted anything on AO3 in 2015. I've finished close to 60k worth of fic between ficlet february, the fake boyfriends story I'm not going to post for a while, the Raven Cycle ficlet, and some other stuff, but for various reasons I haven't "publicly" posted any of it on AO3. idk why I'm so anxious about that, but I imagine it has to do with my obsessive need to track and label everything and how blank the beginning of my "Writing Year In Review" meme will look in December.
  
• I'm finally forcing myself to start planning my 30th birthday party. I normally LOVE party planning, but depression + anxiety + indecision has me dragging my feet about this. If you are reading this and we are pals (or at least have hung out in person before and/or mutually follow each other) and want an invitation, let me know!

Work!
...is still the worst and stressful and the worst.

***

I think that is all that is happening with me! I have a lot of stuff to do in the next few months--writing and work stuff and birthday stuff and costume making (con season is almost here!) and stuff like that--but I'm trying to be optimistic about it!

How are you?

Let's see.

• Becca gets back from London today, thank god. I'm A WRECK and hopefully having her around again will at least soothe some of that.
  
• I'm also BROKE because I did a whole lot of fun and excellent things with friends this week! But they were expensive!
  
• On Thursday night, I had dinner with barbed_whispers at a random pub near DTX which we will never return to after seeing mice just running willy nilly around the dining area.
  
• On Saturday, I took a convoluted public transit route to get to Harvard, where I had brunch at Beat Hotel (not an actual hotel) with Lisa, KL, Lindsay, and both Kelseys. It was really good, even if I was initially skeptical of the salad that came with all the savory dishes. (Eggs and salad? Really?)
  
• After brunch, we took another bus to Union Sq and hung out at Hub for a few hours.
  
• (I don't know why I'm making this a bulleted list instead of a narrative.)
  
• Everyone else trickled out, but I hung around until the end of Jesse's shift and then took the bus with him back towards home.
  
• Saturday night and Sunday I was by myself. I watched a lot of X-Files.
  
• Actually, that's mostly what I've been doing while Becca was away. I think I was at the beginning of S3 last week and now I'm halfway through S4. It's really strange to go back and see some of these things from an adult perspective and from an additional-twenty-years-of-entertainment perspective.
  
• Also, with the subtitles on. I've been quoting some stuff wrong for YEARS.
  
• Monday I saw It Follows with KL, Lindsay, and Kelsey. It was good and engaging--I didn't check the time even once--but the ending was...anticlimactic? Unsatisfying? Something like that.
  
• Last night, I saw Home (the The True Meaning of Smekday-adjacent movie) and it was....good? It was very, very different from the book. Basically the only book bit that stays in tact is "girl befriends alien and looks for lost mother in flying car" bit. The movie was enjoyable, but I did spend most of it thinking about how much MORE I would have enjoyed a film of the actual events of the book.
  
• For various reasons that I'll moan about below, I was super late getting home, so I didn't have a chance to clean up before Becca gets back today :\

***

This weekend, my parents are coming to town to help me buy a new(-to-me) car, which I have never done before. I'm pretty scared/stressed/insane about it, thanks for asking. I know that doesn't sound like me, being totally unhinged over a new experience, but, you know.

Part of that is def the money thing--between going out a million times this month and when my bills and everything fell, I'm broker than usual, so the idea of writing a $7,000 check is making me slightly sick. I feel like I've been spectacularly failing adulthood recently, and I don't know how much of that is because of my own stupidity and how much of it is my brain making me THINK I'm stupid.

(I've actually been having a lot of thoughts about adulthood lately, after something Jesse said to me on Saturday, but I think that's a post in and of itself.)

I mean, I'm excited to have a car again. Definitely. The last few days have proven how frigging hard it is to get around without one. But ~*~change is scary~*~, etc. Ugh.

***

( blah blah blahCollapse )

Hello, friends!

One of my jobs at my…job…is organizing a fundraising walk for my company. It’s in support of the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) which is a great cause aligned with both my personal intersets and my work stuff.

As I am the ~*~team captain~*~ I like to try and raise a respectable amount of money! This year, if you donate to me, I will make you a thing! Either I will write you a ficlet or I will color you a coloring sheet which I will then MAIL TO YOU for framing in a place of honor and/or hanging on the fridge with a magnet. Just send me a message once you donate and I will promise to try and have your ~*~gift~*~ done before the date of the walk, May 16th.

Last year at the walk, we saw a dog that looked like he was drawn by Rob Liefeld. I also promise that if you donate to me, I will try and find that dog again this year and take better pictures.



You can donate by clicking here!

Thanks, friends! I appreciate it! :D

I was pretty sick this morning getting ready for work, so I ended up staying home, which always feels like a lost day when my boss is out of the office. Oh well. I def couldn't have managed the hour or so between leaving my house and getting to work without being sick again, so it was for the best :\

Anyway, here's a meme I stole from kaydeefalls:

Comment with the title of one of my fics and a number (or more than one of either) and I'll witter egomanically about:

1) how I came up with the idea
2) something I deleted
3) my favorite bit
4) something I struggled to write
5) what the writing process was like
6) how I thought people would respond
7) how people actually responded
8) something I wish I’d done differently
9) something I think I did right

Fic is at AO3!

Good morning, internet. I'm tired :(

Today is the first day of my Kyleigh-less work existence and I can already tell it's going to be rough. Luckily, my boss is also out for two weeks/a week and a half (she's one of those people who takes two weeks off but is available "if you need her" and then comes back into the office early for some not actually important emergency, so who knows how long she'll really be gone), so at least there's some quiet here to dull the ache.

I got my car to the car place a week ago Friday, so I have about two weeks left, at least, until I get it back. I did manage to join ZipCar, though, so I'll have something with which to pick pearl_o up from the airport TOMORROW (!!!!!!!) because that's when she gets here. TOMORROW. Oh man. I have...a lot to do, still. I was supposed to clean this weekend, but I just didn't have the energy, so I foresee a lot of cleaning tonight. And going to bed early, because I'm wrecked from staying up until eleven last night.

(I've been wrecked in general lately. I was holding out this vague hope that my body just had to adjust to daylight savings time, but nope. The graphs on my sleep tracker app assure me that I'm sleeping like shit and that's why I feel so wrecked.)

So yeah, it's basically business as usual around here.

***

TEEVEE.

• Let's see--Becca and I have been watching Futurama from the beginning, on and off. We're up to the third season, I think? So that's been fun. I've seen most of that first four years often enough that I can basically recite it, so it's not too distracting when I'm trying to do other things.
  
  
• Becca's been slowly getting all of US Shameless on BluRay and I've been watching those with her. It's very different from the UK one, especially tonally, and I can't help but constantly compare the two in my head. I've been enjoying it, though.
  
  
• Yesterday Becca put on Broad City and we watched most of that and it's not bad.
  
  
• Much like the rest of Netflix-loving America, we mainlined all of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt over two days last week and I looooooooooooooove it ♥ A couple sketchy racial things aside, it is SOOOOOOOOO good and so funny and so delightful! I was basically out of The Office by the time Ellie Kemper was on board, but she is GREAT as Kimmy and the supporting cast is great and the music is SO CATCHY. I have had every stupid made up song stuck in my head on loop for DAYS, especially the theme song. But gosh, I really loved it. A++.
  
  
• Hooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooly shit, Gravity Falls O_O

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***

I thought I had other things to report on, but perhaps not. There's a new Worst Bestsellers up later today, about Flowers in the Attic, if purple prose and sibling incest is your thing. Check the website around noon EST.

And now I will go back to trying to write this fake boyfriends story.

Hello, internet.

SO. The last few days have been pretty eventful.

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So mostly I'm just a walking ball of anxiety and stress over those two things. Add to that the winter from hell that's making me super unreasonable--I ragequit casual tumblr check-ins twice in the past week because people (from places north of the Mason-Dixon that regularly get snow) were complaining about their minor amounts of snow like it was the end of the world and I was two seconds away from cursing them out. Walking from the bus stop to work is insanely dangerous because of all the snow and the lack of clear sidewalks. (Walking from home to the bus stop is less bad because the streets I walk on are all not very busy, so when I have to walk in the street it's not too bad.) Everything just feels like the ABSOLUTE WORST, and I know I'm not engaging with my friends, my online community, etc as much as usual because of it, which just makes everyone worse.

Everything is terrible. I probably should have led with that. I'm limping through to the hope that someday it won't be like this any longer. Ugh. :(

Gosh, so, I guess I wrote 25 stories in 25 27 days!

I had been toying with the idea of doing a month long writing exercise since last year. I think the initial idea was to outline one continuous story in 25 chapters and write one a day over the course of a month just to see what it's like. In that version, I only posted it on LJ (because no one reads LJ anymore), mostly to see what it's like to have a "live" WiP. There are many, many reasons I don't post WsiP, but there's also something interesting about stories moving organically like that in real time? idk. Anyway, I obvs didn't end up doing that, because by the time I got to 2015, I was kind of struggling to come up with a project to work on at all, let alone something that could be sustained like that. So Ficlet February happened instead.

I made a couple rules for myself:
1) I had to work on something for each of the twenty-five days and it had to be "complete." (ie: a full ficlet, not an excerpt of something larger)
2) It didn't have to be good. It wasn't going on AO3. The point was getting stuff on paper--this was all drafting.
3) If I "didn't want" to write, I had to push through and at least try something.
4) If I was truly stalled to the point of being actually upset, I could quit.

I ended up using the blow-off days when people were visiting--the day cygnaut first arrived and the day my friends Ivy and Scott were in town and I had plans to go see Scott speak and then go out to dinner after the event. I wrote every other day. Some of it is garbage. (One of them I didn't even crosspost to tumblr from LJ because it was that bad.) Some of it has good concepts that could be good stories once they're edited it. Some of it I actually really liked!

Lots of thanks to pearl_o for letting me whine to her/bounce ideas off of her/etc all month. A couple people followed along every day which was exciting and unexpected! So thanks also to mrkinch and kernezelda for actually reading all of that, some of which was not that great!

Okay, all that aside, here are some lists:

Five Favorite
These are my five favorites! I really liked how they came out, even though I only wrote them in a couple hours:
1. day two: "five minutes away" - Charles contemplates his happiness in bed with Erik.
2. day 11: "what are you looking for?" - Kate steals Clint's mug from his apartment. Two months later, Charles serves him out of it at the mansion. (This one might not objectively be good but I LOVE IT.)
3. day 16: "ask questions later" - Charles is having a pretty shitty night until Erik kisses him and asks him to play along.
4. day 19: "lost in a city" - Old Charles and Erik return to their roots. This one is my favorite ♥
5. day 23: "something from a song" - Erik is invited to Storm's college graduation party, and is unsure of what to expect.
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The last one!

This will probably be late (but still in February!) for the same reason the other two late ones were late--I had friends visiting from out of town and decided to spend the day with them instead. I did, however, figure out a plan so I could at least get this started before I leave.

I'm going to write a full post as kind of a wrap up about all of this month and stuff but...it's been pretty cool and I'm glad I did it. This one was left over from February 13. I was trying to write a Raven Cycle friendship fic but I stalled out, so...Charles/Erik. Sorry, I'm predictable. Anyway, I thought it was kind of ~*~fitting~*~ to end with this one. Circular or some shit. Whatever. THANKS FOR READING ALONG, GUYS. Wrap-up tomorrow!

***

Ficlet February 25: "a meeting, a beginning"

It's funny how clandestine the meeting feels, given the setting. It's a beautiful spring day. The sun is shining, people are strolling along the paths in the park, children are playing. The air smells fresh and wonderful and full of promise.

Charles doesn't let any of that distract him, though. He can't let himself be lulled into complacency by a beautiful day or a serene landscape or by anything by might come out of Erik's mouth once he arrives.

That last one, mostly

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