elrhiarhodan

Unless you've completely eschewed all electronic conveniences, it's almost impossible to avoid becoming subservient to the Power and Might of The Streak.

Your Fitbit does this to you. So does your Apple Watch. And your iPad. And your Kindle. If you do the NYT Crossword Puzzle, you're it's victim. And let's not forget to mention DuoLingo, the biggest StreakMaster of them all.

Somehow, we are now all chasing that tiny bit of serotonin from the notification that we've now added one more day to our Streak, and we're willing to sacrifice our physical and mental well-being to keep the Streak going.

A few years ago, I had a 550+ day streak going on completing the NY Times Crossword puzzle. I had been thinking about breaking that streak for months, resenting the need to keep on going, but I couldn't stop myself. I ended up accidentally missing a day and when I realized what happened, I dropped into a funk so deep I couldn't do the puzzle for weeks. I've never been able to get the rhythm back and the longest streak I've had since has been 130 days.

Similarly, I had a 370+ day Move streak on my Apple Watch - just over a year. I had to break it when I got the flu. I would get up and walk up and down the stairs but nothing I did would get me even close the the minimal goal I'd set and with a 103-degree fever, I finally gave up. I'm still not feel great three weeks later and although I try my best to get my ass moving, it's still hard. Last night, after spending the day wishing I could just crawl into bed and stay there, I gave up. It was 8:30, I was in tears (yeah, a grown-ass woman crying over a sore throat and body aches), and I was 85% to my daily goal, but I just had to give up.

You know what? Fuck the streak.

I do manage to ignore the daily reading goals from the Books app on my iPad. That's meaningless to me. I do a lot of reading that doesn't get calculated.

But the new monster is DuoLingo. Friends are quick to tell me about their streaks. I don't want to hear it. I've just started. I'm trying to re-learn Latin. Why? Because I suspect that Yoda was once a Roman Censor - it's the whole "subject-object-verb" thing.

I know I shouldn't let the fucking owl badger me. I suspect I'll be like everyone else and get glued to my phone for an hour or so every night. Better than surfing "Am I the Asshole" on Reddit for the schadenfreude.

Anyone out there feel the same way? What's your longest streak? Or better, what do you do to avoid the Tyranny of The Streak?

Just putting it out here.

I haven't had this much fun on the Internet since the height of White Collar fandom, when my LJ account was just hoppin'

Not that activity here is anything like it was back then, but I am just having so much fun. Talking to old friends, making new friends, doing the work to build up starwars100, thinking about the next journal entry.

Yeah, a lot of it is due to Fandom Snowflake. The mods there are doing, as the saying goes, the work of the Almighty, bless Her curls. But I know I'm staying here, and going to continue this rebirth. Because honestly, the serotonin is too fucking addictive.

And have a pretty picture, just because...

Over on the Tumblr, minoanmiss asked me to give a Director's Commentary on my White Collar historical A/U, A Favor For Gloriana, a Peter/Neal series set late in the reign of Queen Elizabeth Tudor, and mostly based on the 1998 Cate Blanchett movie.

Thank you, my dear, for asking.

A Favor for Gloriana is, I am positive (without checking), my first adult effort in writing historical fiction and is certainly my first historical AU. I’d just started writing fan fiction (White Collar was my first fandom that I realized was a fandom) and I fell into it hard, playing with all the tropes. I was writing wingfic, case fic, vampire fic, so much smut, and I was also signing up for every challenge that came my way.

I did not remember off hand which challenge initiated the Gloriana’verse and so I had the weird pleasure of going back to the original entry on DW because I don’t think I put any author’s notes in the AO3 post:

These are the first two chapters of a work in progress - it has been in progress since May, 2010 [3 months after I started writing fan fic - Elr, 2/25/23] - and I got slightly heartsick at the thought of this languishing any longer. The first chapter was written for Small Fandom Fest, but never saw the light of day. The second chapter was started as a fill for my dear friend rabidchild67’s Five Acts Meme, where she requested a shaving scene. I do promise to finish this (eventually), but the story, as written, can stand on its own.

I am pretty sure that the original prompt in Small Fandom Fest had been left by my friend, Daria234.

So a few bits and pieces of things still floating around in my head about this 'verse.

1. When I originally saw the movie Elizabeth, I was more than mildly disappointed. As a student of Renaissance history, and a devourer of both novels and scholarly biographies of Elizabeth Tudor, I was pissed off at how much the movie got wrong for so little reason. Like the coda at the end, that Elizabeth and Dudley were "never alone again". That may be, but they make it seem as if Elizabeth’s reasons were because she was now "married to England", not because Robert Dudley had secretly married Lettice Knowles, one of Elizabeth’s cousins and a lady in waiting. I’ve never watched the sequel. Not even Cate Blanchett in boob armor was an enticement.

2. Dudley was actually quite the profligate when it came to marriage. After Lettice Knowles died, he married one of Francis Walsingham’s daughters, and Walsingham was rather fond of Dudley. You wouldn’t know that from Elizabeth, where the great spy master was ready to send Dudley to the headsman’s axe.

3. It is historically accurate that Elizabeth Tudor would have kept a married lady in waiting from her husband. Her ladies, regardless of their marital state, were expected to be as pure and 'virginal' as the queen herself. Lettice Knowles secret marriage to Dudley was an act of treason, and nearly cost her her life.

4. I have a few bits and pieces of unfinished stories: An idea where a Senator Pratt character sets up Peter in a political assassination plot, and Neal needs to rescue him. Mozzie shows up with concrete evidence about the Norfolk plot, but he’s so clearly insane, no one will listen to him (alas, Willie Garson, may your memory forever be a blessing). Peter and Elizabeth meet at court, there is forgiveness, but no true happily ever after for them - he eventually agrees to an annulment. Neal becomes a miniaturist of some renown, although his name is now lost to history. Somewhere in my office, I have a Moleskine filled with notes for WC stories, I'm fairly certain I know which box it's in, but it requires some serious deconstruction - that part of my office is like a puzzle and I'm not up to taking it apart right now.

5. Gloriana by the numbers is eight stories and about 34k. Which today, for me, is barely getting started. I've got a few Kingsman and Star Wars WIPs that are three times that length. And lets not talk about the Flash epic that's over 200k ::sob::

6. And I just discovered, buried amongst the dozens of WIP files (most are just snippets that are barely a few dozen words long), an unfinished piece of Gloriana fic, nearly 5k, called simply "Beloved". What should I do with it? Please don't say finish it, because I'm having a hard enough time writing for my actual fandoms these days. Should I post it as is and piss people off? Or just let it languish, forever unfinished?

Ugh. No, it's not the politics. It's personal.

( CW for COVID )

About three weeks ago, I downloaded the reddit app on my phone so I could read Am I the Asshole posts, and for the first time in my life, I got sucked into a social media sinkhole. Now, I never created a reddit account (and thus never commented) but reading about all these people’s awful lives was so incredibly addictive. Wives dealing with abusive and controlling and boundary-defying mother-in-laws, stepchildren ignored or emotionally abused by their parent’s new partner and stepsiblings, significant others (okay, almost always the boyfriend) taking weaponized incompetence to ICBM-levels, bridezilllas thinking nothing of asking invitees (not even members of their bridal party) to cut or color their hair so they wouldn’t be outshone on their special day, and a million other examples of the petty terribleness of humanity.

At first, it was amusing - the schadenfreude was strong, but after a while, it was just sad. And then depressing. I felt my mental health take a deep nosedive.

This morning, I deleted the app from my devices and erased the reddit bookmark from my browser. The world is shitty enough without drowning in other people’s petty bad choices.

(reposted from my tumblr)

Today, I did something I haven't done in quite a while. I went out for a meal and ate in the restaurant - which wasn't crowded and there was plenty of space between the tables. As I'm waiting for my lunch to arrive, a woman walks past - well dressed, except for the piece of toilet paper clinging to the bottom of her shoe.

I pull up my mask, stop her, and whisper that she's got a bit of a problem. She doesn't seem to understand and I repeat myself, point to her shoe and she still seems puzzled. I point again, and she finally spots the long strand of TP clinging to the sole of her high heeled boots.

She picks it off, and in thanks, she drops it on my table!

WHAT THE EVER-LOVING FUCK?!?!?!?!

I tell her my table isn't a garbage can and to take that with her. She sniffs, but takes it and goes back to her seat.

So much for being a Good Sam.

At least the busboy saw what happened and rushed over to clean the table and give me fresh utensils and napkin (not even necessary).

It's been a long fucking while...

Has much happened? Checks life? Yeah.

Do I want to go into it? Nope.

What I'm here to report is that I've fallen into a new fandom. Gods, one I've never, ever expected.

Star Wars.

( Putting this under a cut for my foul mouth, attitude and length and general word-vomit... )

Just as I don't own any works by Georgette Heyer or H.P. Lovecraft or Sylvia Plath, I don't want any J.K. Rowling in my home, which has been and always will be a safe space for transgender people.

I have all the books in hard cover, and don't even want to give them to Goodwill and as much as my soul cringes as throwing books in the garbage, I feel that is the only place for them.

I cannot divorce the art from the creator, and having those books in my guestroom feels very wrong.

Today is a strange day - I am unmoored from any kind of fannish obligations.

From April 22 to May 22, I did a meme here - Thirty Days of Song - that required some serious navel-gazing and a commitment for daily posting (Oh, Dreamwidth, will you ever implement a scheduled post function?). Additionally, I committed to the Merry Month of Masturbation (mmom), which is now over. Although I posted for 29 out of 31 days, I actually wrote 30 fics (I wrote the first one a day early), which is something of a success. I just didn't have it in me to beat off two more stroke fics.

So it's weird - I don't have anything I'm required (by my own self-imposed sense of completeness) to post today, and yet I feel compelled to do a bit of a wrap-up on MMOM.

Now, if you know me, I'm an all-in kind of person - bingos have to be blackouts, month-long challenges have to be done EVERY DAY. And of course, that kind of thinking can lead to epic failure. I have learned to manage the MMOM challenge by writing 300 word ficlets - and they have to be exactly three hundred words. Not 301 or 299. They have to be 300 words.

Also, while the fics can be interconnected (most of the stories this year were for a Hartwin series I called "Happily Married Spies"), the stories have to be complete, with a beginning, middle and end. That wasn't easy at it used to be, not when I've become accustomed to writing sprawling epics that don't get to the meat of the plot until I've passed the 15k mark.

All in all, I'm pleased with this year's results. Like most ficlets, they don't get a lot of hits or kudos or comments (although one ficlet I wrote for The Witcher got over a hundred kudos and I don't understand why), but I really don't write these for an audience. It's more that I write them to see if I can actually do the challenge (one year, I took the wordcount restriction off and managed all thirty-one fics and many of them were over 3k. I don't think I wrote anything for the next two months).

This year, I had additional motivation. I have been writing, but I haven't been publishing. I don't publish incomplete stories and I have about 500k worth of WiPs, some active, some not, and I wanted to get my name back out there. And more than that, I've been having some serious trouble with my writing - too many words spoiling the story-telling. Having the 300-word handcuffs really helped me pare down my writing style to what is essential.

It was a good exercise, but I'm glad it's done and happy that I'll be able to get back to the stories in progress - and the new ones percolating in my brain.

Since I didn't post the individual MMOM ficlets here on my journal (just on the MMOM community), here is a list of the stories below the cut, in case you're interested.

( Don't Be Afraid To Touch Your Meat )

I'm thinking that it's a way for my brain to cope with the larger tragedies that are consuming the world and filling me with existential dread.

The story...

The days of me buying the latest and greatest of everything Apple have long since passed - I'm a homeowner now and my mortgage comes first. But there was a time when I would get a new iPod every year or so, and pass on the older ones to friends and family. As the iPhone became more and more capable and I was able to put my music library in the cloud, the little iPod became something of a relic. But it still has its uses - like in my car, which is kitted out with a direct connection between the audio system and an iPod (cutting edge in 2013).

Last night, I was listening to some Billy Joel and right in the middle of My Life, the song cut out and skipped to Always a Woman. Then I remembered that this was a faulty track and has been a faulty track since I'd ripped the CD back in 2002. A few years ago, I had borrowed my sister's copy of the album and ripped it, so I could have the undamaged track, but I'd never updated my iPod. I don't carry it around - it's locked into the glovebox and I have to actually remember that I want to update it, which is usually just a passing thought that doesn't last when I'm in my garage.

Except that yesterday evening, I did remember to take it with me and bring it into my office. All would have been well except I could not locate the old 30-pin USB cord to connect it to my computer. I thought it was in the drawer next to my desk, but it wasn't. I thought I had a spare in my travel kit, but nope - I took it out when I stopped traveling with an iPod.

I couldn't find one for love or money and it pissed me off big time. So much so that I tossed and turned for an hour and woke up thinking of all the places I could have one, because I did not want to but a new cord, even if I could spend less than $7 for one.

The sad thing is that now that I think about it, I remember tossing the one I had in my desk drawer away, thinking that I didn't need to keep it for posterity (I had clearly forgotten about the iPod in my car).

But good news, I did find one. At one point, I had so many of these cords that I had never taken a new one out of a box - the one from the very last iPod I bought. I knew there was a reason why I kept all of my Apple packaging.

The iPod's now merrily syncing away, a quaint bit of 2008 tech that still works just fine.

Remember these?

In your own space, talk about your fannish history. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

My fannish history, at least the start of it, is pretty well documented on my journal, but I've never gone into a deep dive of my the rest of my fannish history.

I'd been peripherally aware of "fandom" for a long time, since high school. There were the Star Trek nerds and I think a few of them would pass around 'zines and giggle about Kirk and Spock (I was naive and didn't quite understand what they found so funny, at least not until I read the novelization of ST: The Movie). I also knew about 'zines from the back pages of the early Darkover novels (and yes, I have absolutely disowned any affection from MZB's body of work), where fans of the series were invited to subscribe to a printed newsletter and write stories in the Darkover universe (and where a lucky few every year were chosen to get published in an official collection). I do remember asking my mom (I was in high school) if I could get this with my allowance and baby sitting money (a check or money order was required) and she didn't think it was a good use of my money. I probably could have signed up for it when I got a checking account in college, but Darkover slipped off my radar (thank goodness?).

I didn't really hang out with a fannish crowd in college - I had a rather insane academic schedule, so free time was limited. Then came law school and career building and my interests went in different ways. When I read for pleasure, it was mostly romance novels. I didn't watch a lot of television, and I don't recall ever getting totally gripped by movies. Yeah, there were a few things I jonesed over, but nothing ever really grabbed me (okay, The Pretender tugged at me hard).

Until Farscape.

God, did I love that show. I lived for it, breathed for it. I haunted the show's official website waiting for news about new episodes. But oddly enough, I didn't find a fandom community (although I bought almost all the official Farscape magazines). It never even occurred to me to look!

After Farscape, nothing pulled at me like that. Not until White Collar and a strange confluence of illness and a post in a slash writer's blog about Peter/Neal smut on LiveJournal (see the first ever post on my Journal) that I truly discovered fandom.

I find it hysterical that in my first post, I wrote:

I'm not sure I'm cut out for writing fic...I do write and write well (if I may say so myself), but one of the things that makes my writing good is an intensive and obsessive attention to research and detail - and I just do not know if I can turn that off enough to write with the dramatic intensity I would want. But you see, I have these plot bunnies coupling in my head - they don't let me sleep - so I may just have to try.

God, I sounded like such a fucking twat. The thing is, I write for a living, basically, and I've achieved amazing things, professionally, with my words. That doesn't mean I would be any good with creative writing, though. But you never know until you try.

It took me another month before I started my first story. Wait, no - that's not true. It might have been a week. I'd posted a prompt on the WC Kink Meme and no on filled it, so I started to fill it myself (prompts and fills were author!anon for the kink reasons). My first story, under my own LJ handle, was published on March 9, 2010. I was SO proud of that little piece of shit, and remained so for years. I am almost afraid to re-read it - it was preachy and meta and I'm pretty sure it will push all of my humiliation squicks big time.

But regardless of quality, it got me started. And the White Collar fandom was just so lovely and kind and welcoming. That first year, I wrote so much. According to the spreadsheet I've been keeping since the beginning, I'd written 176 stories, although a bunch of them were multi-chaptered things and a lot were ficlets and drabbles, but still, the wordcount for my first year was pretty impressive - 266k.

Over the years, I discovered that I am intensely mono-fannish. There are a few drabbles and ficlets for other fandoms - one or two West Wing stories, a handful of Sherlock things, a few MCU ficlets, but the only time I left the White Collar universe for something longer than 500 words was for Inspector Lewis. I might have strayed more permanently, but I had so many close friends in WC and there was no active fandom for Lewis in the same way that I never really gave it my all.

Perhaps the most beautiful thing about White Collar was the community I found. I think it helped that the show was New York based and there was a strong community here on the East Coast. People would get together very regularly, and even the more far-away fans would come in for a visit (one year, I hosted a gathering and there were representatives from France and Poland). When the show ended, it took a few years for the fandom to fade away, despite everyone's best efforts to stay close. It happens - the fandom was the glue and people do move on, but I really do miss that community. And as I've said elsewhere (my FSC Day One post), I am unutterably grateful for the connections that remain.

My first post-White Collar fandom was The Flash. It was also the fandom that pushed me nearly full-time onto Tumblr. Nothing was really the same, though. Tumblr, as a medium, is image based and seems to cater to people's worst impulses. The Flash, as a comic-based show, also attracted a much younger (age and emotional) set of fans who I had little in common with. I didn't stay too long and left when the show took a turn I didn't like. I'm fond of saying that it was cancelled fifteen minutes before the end of the second season. But one very good thing came out of it - I formed a close and dear friendship (ironically, my friend actually lost interest in The Flash before I did).

Kingsman came next, and only because in late 2016, a friend from my White Collar days was visiting and she's casually mentioned that she's gotten sucked into Kingsman fanfic. I'd heard of the movie but hadn't seen it, but had made a mental note of it. In mid 2017, I found the DVD on the sale rack at Target and thought, why not?

I watched the movie on a Saturday afternoon and spent all night reading fic. It took a few weeks, but I got my start with a series of cross-over ficlets with White Collar. It seemed like a natural fit that Neal Caffrey had once been a Kingsman recruit, and that explained so much of his unbelievable skills. These little fics (most were under 3k) whetted my appetite, but I'd been working on a long Flash AU that had absolutely nothing to do with the show, and kept on writing it for another few months, only taking a break with the cross-over stories. But I slowly started turning my Tumblr away from The Flash and towards Kingsman and it's cast. I didn't actually start writing Kingsman full-time until after the second (and terrible) movie came out, and I wrote a fix-it for my ship. Of course, that started the ball rolling and been pretty much Kingsman-committed ever since. It helps that I have made good friends there, too. That is what keeps me going, after all.

I probably should mention that when it comes to fannish activities, I am a stereotypical Aries. I like to run things or help run things. Almost since the very beginning, I would host prompt-fests on my journal (and some of those produced some pretty amazing stories). I also ran, or helped run many communities, like White Collar 100 with ladygray99, the White Collar Big Bang, the White Collar Reverse Bang, and White Collar Pairings. That urge continued with The Flash, except that that fandom had no presence on LJ/DW and little interest in being here.

But the need to organize and promote didn't die, and as a result of one of last year's FSC posts where I'd mentioned that I'd like to start a Reverse Bang for Kingsman, my dear friend anarchycox hopped on board and helped me get the ball rolling (and she has been the most awesome co-mod ever).

Right now, the Kingsman fandom is very quiet. I don't think it's going to die out, the prequel "The King's Man" will be out in the fall and that looks promising. And Taron Egerton has all but confirmed that the third Eggsy movie is getting under way very soon.

I do confess that at the moment, I'm delicately flirting with the Endeavour fandom, which is the prequel to Inspector Morse and Lewis, but I don't see myself going there full time. There is a Discord, but I don't find it an easy way to be a fan - the way I want to be fannish. So, while I will continue to enjoy canon and create as the mood strikes, I don't think I'll ever consider myself part of those shows' fandom.

(Takes a breath, re-reads) Holy crap, I have gone on far too long, seriously. Seriously.

If I have to sum up my fannish history, I'll say this - the best kind of fandoms are ones that give me a strong sense of community. If I don't find a way to connect with at least one other person, the fandom brings me no real joy. I've been lucky, though; I've found people who have reached out or answered my outreach, and we've forged connections beyond our fannish interests. I may talk with these people daily or weekly, or sometimes months will go by between connections, but these relationships sustain me and bring me joy.

Thank you.

EDIT This entry originally had a cut-tag, but scrolling through other posts for Day 2, I am astonished (!) to see that my 1600 or so words is somewhat brief. This is an amazing topic and I love how many people are taking the time to commit their fannish histories to words. Thank you to everyone for sharing.

It's August (gasp!) and it's time for another update for the "I Need To Be Committed - Writing Edition" saga.

It goes without saying that I'd gotten myself into a bit of a pickle, signing up for too many challenges and exchanges and instead of developing short stories that just go a little beyond the minimum, I decided to write epics for all of them.

Kingsman Reverse Bang:

Story for MMmouse15 Artwork - Shooting Star - Writing Completed, Posted Complete - 52k
Story for AnarchyCox Artwork - Booked and Bespoked - A Mills & Boon Romance - Posted Complete - 31K

Just Married Exchange: Posted Complete but the covers haven't come off the challenge so I can't reveal it here - Due by July 28 - 21k

Pining Exchange: Abandoned original idea, since it would probably need about 80k to do justice to. Started the story on July 31, finished this morning. Story complete, due by August 10 - 15k (still needs a title)

Slashorific: For the prompt "I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane" - Hartwin - Currently, just 200 words. My challenge is to write something less than 5k. Mod had been kind enough to give me an extension until August 15.

It's a strange feeling, but now that I've finished the fic for Pining, I have no immediate (like within the current calendar page) obligations to write something for someone based on their prompt/likes/dislikes. The Slashorific prompt is a community thing, with no other obligations, and I've kind of challenged myself to keep it under 5k. My buddy and partner in crime, anarchycox, doesn't think I can do it.

Other obligations:

Fandom Trumps Hate: Hartwin with supernatural elements - No official due date, but to be completed by the end of the calendar year - 0 Words Currently

"Achievement Unlocked Round" Story for AnarchyCox Artwork - Due by November 1 (date changed because pinch hits for primary round stories are still posting) - 0 Words Currently (may not write)

Kingsman Fairy Tales: Retelling of The Golem - Due by July 7 December somethingorother - 0 Words Currently

Other things carried forward:

There's another Kingsman thing floating around and I might have agreed to write two stories for it. It's called "Royal and Oiled" - based on a prompt on Tumblr about a king making his military advisor/guardian/teacher his boytoy. That has very gentle due dates.

There's also plans for an AO3 challenge exchange for Kingsman AUs, which will have a 5k initial wordcount on story turn in and then authors have six more months to complete if they want to write an extended story. Anarchy and I are still working on the deets, but that will probably be a 2020 thing.

On the health front, knees are better (thank you cutting edge drugs). I am still coughing, although the bronchitis is supposed to be over. Doc says bad post nasal drip is responsible for the hacking and the perpetual sore throat.

At the end of May, I posted the insane number of stories I've committed myself to for the rest of the year - challenges that have definite due dates.

Figured it's time to update:

Kingsman Reverse Bang:

Story for MMmouse15 Artwork - Shooting Star - Writing Completed, still posting - 49k
Story for AnarchyCox Artwork - Booked and Bespoked - A Mills & Boon Romance - Posted Complete - 31K

"Achievement Unlocked Round" Story for AnarchyCox Artwork - Due by October 1 (starts posting July 2) - 0 Words Currently (may not write)

Kingsman Fairy Tales: Retelling of The Golem - Due by July 7 December somethingorother - 0 Words Currently

Just Married Exchange: Idea in development - Due by July 28 - 0 Words Currently

Slashorific I completely forgot I signed up for this! Prompt: "I'm Leaving On a Jet Plane" - Peter, Paul and Mary - Hartwin - 0 Words Currently May do artwork instead - Due by July 31

Pining Exchange: Assigned, have notes on an idea - Due by August 10 - 0 Words Currently

Fandom Trumps Hate: Hartwin with supernatural elements - No official due date, but to be completed by November 1 - 0 Words Currently

There's another Kingsman thing floating around and I might have agreed to write two stories for it. It's called "Royal and Oiled" - based on a prompt on Tumblr about a king making his military advisor/guardian/teacher his boytoy. That has very gentle due dates.

There's also plans for an AO3 challenge exchange for Kingsman AUs, which will have a 5k initial wordcount on story turn in and then authors have six more months to complete if they want to write an extended story. Anarchy and I are still working on the deets, but that will probably be a 2020 thing.

Yes, I definitely need my head examined.

And oh, I have bronchitis.

::headdesk::

They'd be grandparents by now.

Okay, so that was sort of random. Sorry (not).

( Context: )

A lot of people who think they know a lot about music say that Billy Joel is second-rate, that he's nothing compared to Bruce Springsteen. Those people can go squat for all I care. Bruce and Billy might be contemporaries, but they are completely different kinds of musicians. Bruce is a rocker, Billy is a song man. One rages against the world, the other mourns the human condition.

Thus endth the lesson.

Saturdays are not usually writing days. I'm usually out and about on Saturdays, usually with my beady peeps at the local bead store where we sit and bead and gossip and poke our fingers with very sharp needles.

But I have the sicknez. Fucking bronchitis that's kept me home all week, and while I'm exhausted from the coughing and the snotting, being in a horizontal state isn't good. It's bad enough coughing up a lung sitting up at my desk, it's really kind of deadly to be doing it in bed (yup, deadly - last night I almost aspirated bile as I coughed so hard I started getting the dry heaves).

Anyway, onto more cheerful things. My darling tjs_whatnot ran an all-day writing sprint that was low stress and for me, high return. Put many words down on my Chocolate Box fic. I started the day around 22k, it's now almost 25k.

Yeah, yeah, Chocolate Box is supposed to be a low-threshold challenge. My recipient's list of requests is like reading my own and I've been having a blast writing it. I just hope (1) that I can finish it by the 7th and (2) that they like it.

Well, isn't that the hope and fear for every exchange?

So, I've finally purged my LiveJournal f-list. If you know me from there and got the disconnect email from LJ, don't worry, I haven't made any changes to my circle here.

Okay, not 100% accurate. I also cleaned out all of the useless OpenID memberships here on DW (all of the LJ flisters who got OpenID'd when I imported my LJ), and if your journal hasn't been updated in a number of weeks that is now in the three digit range (i.e., more than two full years), I've dropped your access here, too. And in that case, you're certainly not seeing this post.

To all of my lovely new friends, welcome and a hearty handshake (is the Blazing Saddles reference too obscure?)

To all of my lovely old friends, it's seriously good to be back amongst the adults.

I've cleaned up the long list of "sticky" posts at the head of my journal. For years, I'd been using it as a place to park bingo cards, MMOM master lists, Fic-Can-Ukah lists and other sundry items I'd wanted to find easily. Many of those were private (and thus not impacting anyone scrolling through my journal) but a lot weren't. The MMoM Masterlists have been consolidated, as have the Fic-Can-Ukah lists (and those do need to be updated).

Will probably do a lot more maintenance on my journal - I'm pretty certain there are a lot of duplicate entries. And I still need to go through my posts and relink all of the images since the public folder on Dropbox is going away. Thank you kanarek13 for the instructions on how to easily fix that.

Can't believe the weekend's almost over. Also can't believe it was over 80 degrees today and I put the AC on.

Happy Easter to everyone who celebrated. A zissen Pesach for those who are still celebrating.

Catching up here, but if you're not overly interested in the minutiae of Erl's life, ( feel free to move along )

An electric pressure cooker. Or more precisely, an Instant Pot.

( Foodish rambles under the cut )

I've been busy, not just with the words, but with the beads and the needle and thread. Thought I'd share some recent efforts:



( Individual photos under the cut )

House Wonderful has hardwired fire and smoke detectors. Which are wonderful, except that they have battery backups. Which generally isn't a problem, except for those of us who have balance issues and live alone.

First time they needed to be changed, my wonderful contractor, who's 6'9" came over and didn't even need a ladder to change the batteries.

The next time, though, I vowed I'd do it myself. I went out and bought a good quality step ladder with a utility tray so I didn't need to juggle new and old batteries.

Except for my bedroom, which has cove ceilings and the smoke detector is right over my bed.

Changing this is a PITFA, since it means I have to push the bed all the way out of the way, get on the next to top step of the step ladder and still need to extend out my mostly non-working arms (I need shoulder surgery for both). So I tend to let it go until it's absolutely necessary - like when the low-battery warning starts beeping at 3 AM.

So I changed it today. My arms ache. But I feel very adult. I should, I am - after all - over 50.

Everyone has their hot-button things, the stuff that drives them batshit nuts. Mine is sound. I can't stand extraneous noise - it makes me twitchy-crazy unhappy, anxious, angry, pissy. You name a negative emotion, random noise does that to me.

Which is why I avoid shopping in malls (piped in music), shopping during Christmas season, why I will offer to drive so I can keep control over the radio (preferably off). It's also why I don't like going over to friends' houses when I know that a spouse will have their radio or television blaring.

I think it's from childhood, when my mother couldn't stand being in a room without the television on, or in the car without the radio on. She couldn't stand the silence.

Today should have been a lovely day - the weather was pleasing, I had no plans other that the usual - morning cleaning, then writing and beading or vegging.

Except my neighbor was having yard work done. Major work - like pulling out stumps and grading and dumping yards and yards of top soil, putting in a gravel driveway. ALL DAY LONG. From 9 AM to a little before the timestamp of this post (6:30 PM-ish).

The noise from the machines and the trucks drove me up the goddamn wall. It was random and loud - the worst possible combination. And inescapable, unless I left the house.

Which I did, only to go to the bookstore, which was playing horrible music. And the grocery store, which was playing WORSE music.

I have a headache and I'm exhausted. This is MY SATURDAY.

And it was fucking ruined.

Ugh... can't believe it's been a week since I've been back from Tucson. Feels like a month. In addition to all the pretties I brought back, I've also got the Tucson crud.

The crud is not quite a cold - YET - just a persistent headache, postural vertigo (don't bend over, don't look up), massively clogged sinuses, and a general crappy feeling.

But it's the weekend, and it's a long one. And it's going to be clear and cold and I have no place to go and nothing I have to do, so it may just work out that I'll have a near perfect weekend (for an introvert). I'll say "goodnight" to my colleagues this evening and the next words I'll speak will be "good morning" on Tuesday.

I have a few bundles of firewood, plenty of food - although I kind of want to make soup, so I may stop at the grocery store tonight for some chicken and fresh veggies.

On the Tumblr front - god, some of those people are ASSHOLES!!!!!!!!! Not all of them, just some of them. LJ and DW are like higher realms of civility and courtesy and kindness. Basically, I got my first flame - because someone took offense to a tag I used. Let's see if I can explain it without sounding a little crazy...

In The Flash, the lead character - Barry - has been in love with his foster sister for years (since he was 11). I find that romantic pairing pushes at my incest squick (which I mentioned in the Tumblr post). In last week's ep, Barry gets to go to an alternate Earth, where he meets his doppelganger and discovers that he's actually married to his childhood crush, but they were never foster siblings. I found the relationship lovely and very sweet and it could be an OTP for me. Therefore, I tagged the post with the 'ship tag.

And someone blew up in my face about that, because the original pairing is NOT incest - Barry was never adopted, etc. etc. etc. and that she's sick and tired of seeing this tag on posts that call her 'ship incestuous, blah-blah-blah.

On LJ, or at least in the WC fandom, if something similar had happened, I'd get a PM with a polite request not to use the tag, or something similar. But on Tumblr, it's all word vomit and trollish behavior. I can understand why there's really very little original thought there.

In happier news, the first pics of Matt filming the pilot for The Last Tycoon are out. He's wearing a hat! But where are those curls. No more floofy hair? And he looks so baby-faced. Hard to believe he'll be 39 this year. But since he's really a space alien, why am I not surprised?



I can't wait for this - although it likely won't air until the summer, and it's only a pilot. But it pushes so very many buttons for me.

1 - Work is chapping my ass. Busy and constantly in crisis mode. Not necessarily a bad thing, but at the end of the day, I am TIRED.

2 - Can't believe it's the end of October already. Seriously, what the hell happened to 2015?

3 - theatregirl7299 and I are going to run wcpairings this year. Not sure when sign-ups will begin, but probably in early December.

4 - I'm doing Fic-Can-Ukah again this year, my annual exercise in self-destructive behavior. 8 Nights, 8 Stories. The post with the prompts and signups goes live on Saturday at Noon, Eastern Daylight Time. I promise to write the first eight prompts, and hope to write a lot more than that.

5 - Also doing WC HC Advent. Thanks to the lovely kanarek13, I have the story all plotted out.

6 - Still working on my WC BB, which is due on the 15th. It's north of 42k and I think I might be able to get it done under 55k.

7 - Wanna write a spooky story for Halloween. Have a WC/AHS story brewing, and hope to write and publish it on Saturday. It's a weird one.

8 - The DC Meetup was so wonderful. I miss everyone and want to do it again. Next weekend. Okay?

( Bonus Bomer, courtesy of Kanarek )

Return and Rebuild the Desolate Places is FINISHED!!!!!!!!!!

Honestly, I didn't think this moment would ever happen, but I was going to do everything possible to make it so. When I put the story on hiatus again in early December, I'd planned on writing the rest of it during my vacation between Christmas and New Years, but that didn't happen. The muse - at least for this story - kind of packed her bags and went on walkabout.

I don't know if it was Promptfest, or the ficlets I wrote for Purimgifts, or the silly little WC100 drabbles, but something came unstuck. The muse came back, and she brought me presents.

I've always known how I wanted the story to end, but between canon and my own changed feelings, it was hard to find the path to that ending. But I knew that I had to do it, I had to finish this story that so many people have read and taken the time to let me know how much they've enjoyed it.

With that important goal in mind, I opened up the file a week ago Wednesday and just started writing. The floodgates opened and the words just poured out. About 21k in a week, including the nearly 7k I wrote on Wednesday. I finished the epilogue yesterday afternoon and have sent the story to my awesome, devoted and all-around fantastic human being and beta reader, sinfulslasher.

When she finishes her work on it and I go back over it, I will start posting the new chapters, week by week. There are five more chapters, plus the epilogue. But in the interim, since this will be a lengthy process and I can't promise when that will be completed (hopefully in a few weeks, but maybe a month or more), I'm going to start putting the chapters up on AO3 - probably two chapters a day, Monday - Friday, until the AO3 version is current.

I am relieved that it's done, and more importantly, I am very happy how the rest of the story came out. I hope everyone who's been following it will be just as happy.

Thank you.