It's 2021! I don't know if it's going to be better or worse than 2020 (or the same), but it's a good opportunity to take a breath and gather some resolve.

Good things that happened in 2020:

* I moved into a house with findmeinthealps and neery, and it's working out really well.
* I'm quite satisfied with my fanworks output this year: six vids, two longfics, and three shorter fics. Total wordcount posted is 108k.
* I am so happy to have discovered c-drama. For the first time in years (pretty much since fandom moved to Tumblr), I feel like I'm actually participating in fandom, rather than circling it like a satellite failing to make connections.
* I watched Nirvana in Fire. That show is so incredible.
* I made a bunch of new friends in the c-drama and vidding community.
* Virtual cons have made it through the proof of concept phase with flying colors! Perhaps there will be more opportunities to attend cons in the future without having to pay for transatlantic flights.

Things I want to do differently in 2021:

* I'm really hoping to be able to get some more exercise. I used to bike to work, but with HO, that's not happening anymore. I have no innate drive to move around, it doesn't bring me any joy or satisfaction, but I'm noticing that the not moving much at all isn't good for me.
* Get my hair cut short. I've been wanting to do it for years, and there's a weird blockage in my brain about it, and it may be tangled up with some sort of gender thing, and I'm tired of dithering around, so as soon as hair dressers are open again, I'll be putting that on my near-future agenda.
* Travel. I miss it so much. They're going to take forever with the vaccine, so I'm not holding out too much hope, but ... I can't help holding out a little bit of hope. I was daydreaming about fucking airports the other day, as in "aw, remember Singapore airport, what a nice and relaxing place". /o\

Year in Fandom Meme, nabbed from tinny

( Cut for length )

I posted my Guardian fic! As you probably saw, since I linked it here on my DW, too.

I don't know what the policy is anymore in DW based fandoms. Do I crosspost it to comms? I don't see people posting fic to comms that much, so I'm not sure that's a thing that's still done. I'm also only following sid_guardian and brush_and_lantern ... I haven't had a chance yet to go and see if there's others I should follow.

As of now, I don't have any comments yet :sob:. Waiting for the first comment is always such torture. I will say that the first chapter is a little hard to comment on--it's mostly just Zhao Yunlan being extremely sad, without much happening. I also expect that a lot of people in this fandom will want to wait until I've posted the entire thing before they start reading.

Oh well. I'll keep waiting for that first comment. It'll have to come eventually!

Does Guardian fandom have a Discord?

I signed up for Yuletide in the end. Got my assignment, which I am reasonably happy about. I've seen a few prompts I'm considering writing treats for. I really love the Yuletide app, it's so handy!

I've also seen a festivids requests that gave me an idea, but god vidding involves clipping and I just. I hate it so much, it's easily the worst thing of all the fannish hobbies I've tried out. So we'll see if that will go anywhere. I will say that I love the idea a lot.

The AO3 is ten years old! Happy belated birthday to the best site on the internet. The AO3 and the OTW are the one thing that reliably gets me teary when I read about the site's and the community's accomplishments--nothing else does that to me.

I checked my account creation date. Apparently I created mine on November 13, 2009 ... one day before the archive officially opened its doors? I'll take it.

My AO3 stats as of today are:

( STATS because stats are fun. )

I posted to the AO3 yearly except for a big ol' gap Dec 2011 to Nov 2015. I'm glad I came back.

I did the ultimate trope showdown!

1 Enemies to Friends to Lovers
2 They Break Up (but then They Get Back Together)
3 Seemingly Unrequited Pining
4 Hurt/Comfort
5 Snowed-In Cabin/Isolated Together For Extended Period of Time
6 Pride and Prejudice AU
7 Amnesia Fic
( Read more... )

No real surprises there. All the tropes with people being hella antagonistic but also horny for each other and possibly in love go up top, middle ground is where all the fluff ends up, and everything supernatural-y comes after. Kind of surprised that "Actually Unrequited Pining" isn't higher up in the list, but then, I do like a happy ending. :D

So everyone is migrating back to Dreamwidth, which means that I remembered that I have one, too. I hate that I'm such a flake about social media attendance--I do this on all platforms at this point, though, so maybe I just need to accept I'm not going to make more than three posts a year. Sorry, readers. :/

Anyway. How has everyone been? I have a couple new people in my circle--come in and say hi!

Things I've been messing around with the past couple weeks:

1) Distributed Fandom
( Read more... )

2) Possible New Job
( Read more... )

3) New Fandom~
( Read more... )

There's other stuff going on, of course, like Christmas and the new season of The Good Place and the fact that I still need to clean my apartment, ahem. I also bought a domain and want to set up a proper website for myself again, because the demise of Tumblr reminded me that you can't trust them to host your art or gifs (or vids, for that matter). What's your experience with this, fandom folk--would you set up a Wordpress backend or just code it from scratch? Both has its own appeal. I shall ponder.

Anyway, happy holidays everyone, and if you feel like it, let me know what you've been up to. :D

I'm writing The Thick of It fic and it involves a lot of research, so I'm going to keep track of my links in this post. If you're interested in 1980s Scotland and/or Catholicism, some of this might actually be interesting to you!

( Links Under the Cut. )

... as indicated in the title?

I'm so fed up with Tumblr, so I'm trying a renewed attempt at returning to LJ. :D?

Who's still active here? My reading list has a few recent updates, so it doesn't seem to be a complete wasteland ... what is everyone up to?

/awkwardly offers cookies and tea

( Edited to add some more stuff. )

Hello. Does anyone still hang out in these parts of fandom?

*blows the dust off and tries to remember how to work DW*

choukoumei has prints and posters left over from selling her art at a convention, and is trying to find buyers for them. She's nna on deviantArt, and draws in the style you can see in the pictures below.

    
Link to the blog post about the sale is here, which contains links to gallery images of all prints and posters on sale. I can't really tell which fandoms most of them are from, since they're animated fandoms, which I have very little involvement with, but they're pretty! I love how nna works with color and shapes. And there are two Doctor Who prints, one of which I'm probably going to snag a copy of. They're very reasonably priced, including both US and international shipping, so go and check it out and buy some pretty things!

Oh, and if you feel like signal boosting this signal boost, feel more than free to link to this entry, or to nna's sale page on deviantArt.

I've been sort of tempted by Inception fandom for a while. I always look at it and go . . . you. Could be fun. I like the dream stuff, and I like that really, all extractors would have to be slightly suicidal, considering they've been trained to assume that killing yourself gets you out of trouble.

I've not read much fic, though. Actually, I think I've only read one or two of recrudescence's stories, and that's it. The thing is, Arthur/Eames, while interesting enough, isn't the pairing that makes me clasp my hands together in delight. No, surprisingly enough, it's Arthur/Ariadne. Yes, I know. Het! What! But . . . that one brief moment where Arthur kisses her, and she's all "that didn't work as a distraction!" and he's all, yeah, well, but I got to kiss you. :3 IT'S THE CUTEST THING EVER. Oh Arthur, how are you so awkward.

I also love the age difference. Arthur would never take her seriously, and she would get so frustrated with him. And I like her, too. Granted, in the movie, there's not much to the character--she mostly does whatever the plot requires her to do. But that means she does a lot of things that normal 19-year-olds wouldn't do. They'd be too insecure, or too inexperienced. Ariadne, though, has that sweeping superhero flair that you usually find in male characters--it's dampened a bit in the movie because she always succeeds in her improbable undertakings, but that's what fic is for, right? She's sort of a mini-Cobb, but without the dead spouse angst and the self-important tragic-ness. And I think pairing that with Arthur would be interesting. And funny. And sexy. And awkward.

But it being the only remotely probable het pairing in Inception (disregarding Mal, that is), I'm worried that Arthur/Ariadne is where all the crazies hang out. Also . . . I don't know. I haven't written anything proper in ages. I should just sit down and write--I actually have an idea for an Arthur/Ariadne fic, so there is inspiration--but, well. I dunno. FANDOM. I've not properly been in a fandom for almost a year now. I think the longer I put it off, the harder it'll be to get back into one eventually.

Anyway. I will go and see if I can find some fandom comms. And I might rewatch the movie. I'd have to do that before I write anything, anyway. And I just went and found some icons. Babysteps.

( Because I felt like it. )

The first pic is my favorite, though.

I put up an offer of up to two pairs of TARDIS wristwarmers at help_japan. Go bid on them! You know you want an awesome pair of TARDIS wristwarmers. :D?

Here's the link to the offer. It comes with pictures!

And now, for what is not a rant about uni colleagues--international women's day! Which was yesterday, in my time zone, but who's keeping tabs. I've seen a lot of great posts on the reading list, seen the M-and-Bond video posted about three or four times--it made me like Craig even more, as Bond, because I doubt Brosnan would have made this work as well--and was once again reminded that no, being vocal about feminist issues is not being silly or making a big problem out of something that isn't, in fact, a problem. (I don't think that. Usually. But if you're always getting singled out and patted on the head for being the adorable feminist lesbian, you do now and again wonder if you are actually being as unreasonable as people make you out to be. And that even though I'm not even an activist. I just speak my mind now and again.)

Anyway. I had a bit of a frustrating international women's day--see the previous post--but I'm hoping tomorrow will be better. I am going to a tiny middle-of-nowhere town with earlwyn to look at the teddy bear of a polar explorer from earlwyn's polar explorer fandom. (It's Titus. I even remembered the guy's name this time.) I'm getting kind of swamped with uni things here at the moment, so getting out of town for a day will be pleasant.

How's everyone? Sorry for not really being around; as I said. Life was keeping me busy.

• make PowerPoint for Tuesday's presentation about cultural imperialism.
• make other group members send me notes about their presentation parts and review them. (How do you get to Year 3 without knowing what cultural imperialism is? Fuck's sake.)
• finish final project script till Wednesday.
• do stuff for my two studio classes. Not sure what stuff. Find out what stuff.
• write and send out Christmas cards. (If you want one, leave your address here.)
• type up a metric fuckton of tags, both RP related ones as well as mun journal tags.
• go over emails from lawyers and email them back.
• stop procrastinating. STOP. PROCRASTINATING.

Is there anyone on my f-list who has one of those brains that don't switch into non-thinking procrastination mode whenever stuff piles up that needs doing? If so, I'd like to rent your brain for two or three days. Please to be emailing me a quote.

In other news, I saw Harry Potter last night. Wasn't bad. I hope they'll spend the entire next movie on Dumbledore/Grindelwald. My HP OTP. :3

I need a new fandom. Come on, guys, there's gotta be something out there. Doctor Who, well, I was never really into the fandom, and now that the show's started sucking, I don't really feel like hanging around. (Entirely subjective, that statement, of course.) But I miss sharing fannish glee and following fandom comms and, well. Just the entire fandom experience. Any recommendations?

So. Comics.

( Cut for random rant. )

Anyway. I guess I'm asking if any of you have ever heard of/come across anything like this? I mean, I know there are a lot of people who just don't read comics for their own personal reasons, but that's not what I mean. I literally don't get them; I've tried, and it's not happening.

It's a time-honored fandom tradition to connect your favorite songs to your favorite pairings, whether the two fit together or not. I do it all the time; it's rare that I listen to a new song without trying to somehow fit it into my fandom shipper world. I always feel that these associations are best kept to oneself--pretty much any song can be interpreted from any pairing's perspective, and a lot of the time, the connection is so obscure that it becomes redundant to anyone but the individual making it.

However. (You knew there was one coming, didn't you?) Over the years, I've come across a handful of songs that, I feel, actually do fit a certain pairing or character in more than an entirely subjective way. Songs like that usually end up on my list of "vids I should make at some point". Vids, however, are a lot of work, and I'm lazy, so you're not getting vids, you're just getting the songs, and my thoughts on why they remind me of the character or pairing I listed them under.

( Lots of YouTube videos under the cut. )

Long entry is long! Hope you found it at least a little bit interesting. Feel free to link me to your favorite character/pairing songs in the comments! :)

comment on LJ

First of all--the auction at help_haiti is closing today, midday eastern time, so if you still want to bid on me, here's the thread. (One fic between 500 and 1,000 words for a prompt and pairing of your choice. Starting bid was $10; so far, there's been one bid of $10.)

Second of all, sorry for dropping off the face of LJ so suddenly. Scary enormous amounts of uni work were keeping me busy. The snow fucked with the filming and production schedules of our assignments, so I had to finish two pretty major filming assignments and a 2,500 word essay within about a week. BUT I GOT IT ALL DONE. I handed in the three assignments today at 2:30, and can now go back to being a lazy student with nothing to do aside from fucking around on the intertubes.

Which brings me to point three--DOCTOR WHO REWATCH. If you're still interested in participating, go to dontwanttogo and join now! It would also be good to watch the community for updates, because I won't be linking each update on my journal here. So, go forth and join dontwanttogo!

Fourth of all, mango is tasty. Om nom nom.

comment on LJ

Help_Haiti -- it's a comm where fandom members are auctioning off fanworks in order to collect money for the earthquake victims in Haiti.

My thread is here. I'm offering one fic between 500 and 1,000 words for a prompt and pairing of your choice. I'll write for any fandom, provided I have at least marginal knowledge of the characters. The auction closes on January 20.

Go for it. This is your chance to make me write fluffy Dean/Sam crossdressing fic.

comment on LJ

HELLO LIVEJOURNAL. I LIVE.

God, I seem to be saying that a lot lately. I don't know what's up. Or, well, I do. I miss having a fandom. I miss having a fandom. I mean, yes, there's Who, but there hasn't been any new canon in forever, and somehow, Who has become more a role play thing for me. I love futzing around with the characters, and I still adore the show to itty bitty tiny little pieces, but it's not really a fandom in which I want to write or read fic or get involved in discussions. Especially not right now during the super-wanky summer hiatus. I have need of a new fandom, something I can get excited about and that can inspire me to write one or two 12,000 words stories. But there's NOTHING. No awesome new shows, no awesome old shows that I haven't watched already. *pokes the ether* C'mon, universe. Make a new fandom show up. Or I will end up getting into SPN.

Nothing new on my part. Still working (LAST WEEK THANK GOD), and I'm starting to miss England. Time to go back, methinks. Even if it's only for a couple of weeks, because I'll be off to the States on Aug 31. THE UNITED FUCKING STATES OF AMERICA. I haven't been since 2001. I hadn't realized how much I miss it until I booked the flight and was all I CAN GO RIGHT NOW Y/Y?. Lol, I'm a dork.

There may not be any internet at the flat when I get back to the UK. There were some fuck-ups with the BT landline, and unless I can get O2 to switch the connection to the new landline within the week, I won't have the 'nets at the flat in England. SO DAMN ANNOYING. I asked the O2 lady if my BT landline was connected and working, and she was all, WHY SHORE NO PROBLEM. Right, lady. Not so much. O2 had better switch that connection really quickly, or there will be geek-rage. Geek-without-internet-rage.

Who canon is the most bizarre, strange and wonderful thing ever. From the Doctor Who Wiki:

Gallifrey was duplicated eight times, both to confound its enemies and as a place of refuge. Gallifrey was still destroyed by Faction Paradox during the Second War in Heaven. It was recreated and then destroyed a second time by the Doctor in the Last Great Time War.

WTF Who canon. Make up your mind. Doctor: "Gallifrey was destroyed." -- Master: "What, again?"

And the description of Gallifreyan landscape . . . from the planet's surface, it boasted an orange sky and trees with silver leaves. These reflected the morning sunlight, making it look like the forests were on fire. There were also green forests, golden fields and red deserts. AND THERE WAS A GIANT WHITE RABBIT. NORLY.

Still, reading about Gallifrey still always makes me go all nostalgic. Did I mention that I was a dork?

I'm joining Ars Arcanum with my canon!Doctor muse or_timelords. Let's see if this will work out better than last time I tried joining a comm. >_>

comment on LJ