Remix Revival fics are live. Someone remixed my old Mickey Smith fic from ten years ago--it's a sweet tribute to Mickey and to past Mickey x Rose and present/future Mickey x Martha. The nostalgia factor! The Mickey Smith love! I should re-up my paid account here so I can access my Mickey userpic...

It's funny: the fic I remixed is also about ten years old, at least according to its post date on AO3. (Given some other factors, I'd guess that the original story is older than that. AO3 has only been around for ten years, for one thing.) Fandom and fanwork as yet undisclosed. I will say that my remix story is the only one posted in that fandom this year, but that's not much of a hint; the remix crowd is only in the seventies this year and a lot of fandoms have one unique remix offering.

It was a stretch, trying to remix a fanfic and still do, well, everything else. I'm overdue to tackle Mount Clean Laundry, for instance.

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A few weeks ago I fell into a YouTube rabbit hole and ended up watching a video about opulence--and getting a helpful explanation about one aspect of Donald Trump's appeal. (Basically, by indulging in opulence / acting like the nouveau riche rather than behaving as an heir to wealth, Trump is more relatable to some in his audience.) Anyway, the whole video is a wild journey with YouTuber Natalie Wynn, aka ContraPoints. I've only recently discovered her channel. Language warning for her vids--I wouldn't play them aloud at work. Also, Wynn delves a bit into her own journey as a trans woman, so it could be a sensitive topic for some. Finally, this video is a year old, so a few of the people she name-checks have acquired various scandals in the meantime.

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The garden! I collected some tomato seeds from some tasty cherry tomatoes and I actually have baby plants! The race is on: will I get tomatoes from them before it gets too cold for tomato plants to be productive? As for non-food plants, last weekend I moved some irises from one side of the flower bed to the expanded edge; this weekend I plan to add some daffodil, crocus, and iris bulbs in the rest of the expansion.

I’m halfway through my third watch of Hamilton on Disney Plus, which makes my subscription this month more than worth the price.

I’m halfway through my first watch of season one of The Mandalorian and have come to a realization. Well, multiple realizations: ( cut for spoilers? I guess? Is there anyone who hasn't watched season one yet who actually still intends to and cares about spoilers? )

So. I have three episodes left. I may skip episode 6, just based on what I read about it. Nothing against the idea other than it doesn’t sound as interesting as the two-part finale. Feel free to weigh in if you have an opinion about episode six.

As long as I’m talking about Star Wars, here’s a quote from a recent article. I can’t speak to the Clone Wars content, not having watched the show, but the analysis of the sequel trilogy film directors and their visions was spot-on, in my opinion. ( the relevant quote is three paragraphs long so I'm cutting it )

Most of the article praises The Clone Wars, which led me to wondering if I should try to watch that in my remaining... uh, four days before I cancel my subscription to Disney Plus--which answers the question for me. That answer being No. Chances are good that I'll plonk down the money for a subscription again when D+ offers that Falcon and Winter Soldier show (dunno what the actual title is) and I can try The Clone Wars then.

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I was looking back at my request for prompts to write a couple of last-minute fics before the due date for sign-ups for the multi-fandom remix and I'm very amused at myself for even thinking I could accomplish such a thing. Me writing fic is always an iffy proposition: the level of emotional investment required is usually pretty high, and I rarely have that kind of fannish intensity. Especially not about a decade-old show. (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles started airing in 2008; I didn't start watching until 2009, when it had already been cancelled.)

I've received my assignment for the big remix. My remixee and I have just one shared fandom from what I offered to write / they offered to have remixed. And it's a fandom that I threw onto the sign-up sheet as a whim--something I've never really written. Fortunately we seem to have similar tastes in a not-really-canon pairing for that media source. This does mean digging up the source material to reexamine it, and it is MORE than a decade old at this point; an early-ish (pre-livejournal) fannish favorite of mine. Here's to hoping it holds up okay.

As for needing a fannish investment to write fanfic, well, that's the fun in remixing. There's a foundation already laid and materials set out; I just have to determine how to make a building out of them.

Wow, it has been a decade--the magic number on this post--since the last time I wrote a remix fic?! Wait, not quite. It was 2011. By the way, the only remix challenges I've done previously were for one single media source, which provided a much larger safety net. Navigating the sign-up sheet for the multi-fandom remix prompted a list of mental queries, such as: What is the WORST pairing I can imagine for this fandom, and am I prepared to write it if we match for this fandom? (In the case of Star Wars sequel trilogy fandom, my answer was no, absolutely not. Heh.)

Asking for a random survey of what to write next has led me to start writing neither the thing that got the most votes nor the thing that I voted on myself. It's also the thing that is least likely to get, uh, any kind of reaction from anyone else. Yay, me?

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Anyway. Book report time! Rose Lerner's True Pretenses is a romance novel in which my favorite bits have very little to do with romance. Both hero and heroine are older siblings who basically raised a much younger brother; those relationships add a lot to the leads' characterization. I sort of want the exact same thing again? But different? Heh.

Didn't finish The Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson. It's a YA adventure/romance with a runaway princess, a hired assassin, and a future king on the chase for his escaping bride-to-be. All of which sounds like fun! Too bad it really didn't work for me. Also, this is the first book in a series, so skipping to the end (as I did) isn't going to give a satisfactory conclusion to it.

The cover looks really great. Ah well.

Currently reading Paladin's Grace, by T. Kingfisher, which is... okay, imagine someone writing a romance/adventure novel set in Pratchett's Discworld. I'm enjoying this one so far.

Oh, Star Wars fandom. There's nothing quite so awful, is there? Yet again, there's ongoing drama with fangroups A through Z... which is why I'm reluctantly admitting to outlining a possible idea for post-The Rise of Skywalker fanfic. If I manage to coax it into existence, it will satisfy me and probably no one else.

Unfortunately, that fanfic idea is centered around Finn. I say unfortunately because that means it won't really fit the upcoming halfamoon celebration, which focuses on female characters. I'm bringing up the topic because hey, halfamoon is almost here! Here are this year's prompts. Yes, the prompts are available early.

Hm. Maybe I can coax something Gaby-related into existence before the end of February. I have a couple of long-unfinished fanworks about her...

Somewhat related to this: via goodbyebird, The Bodies of the Girls Who Made Me: Fanfic and the Modern World is Seanan McGuire's commentary on fanfiction and writing as a (white) woman in a world that focuses more on a (narrowly defined) male perspective.

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FYI, I'm not going to cross-post entries at livejournal anymore. I'm not planning on deleting that account; I was co-moderator for multiple communities there. Everything on my own livejournal has now been mirrored here (comments too); there's no reason to keep adding to posts there.

Reminder to self: finish snagging those last few icons from LJ and upload 'em here.

So if you're reading fanfic, do you have any preference: past tense or present tense? I've been writing in present tense for a while now, but I'm wondering what y'all prefer to read.

I waited until its second weekend to try watching Captain Marvel, but the Saturday morning showings were almost sold out. Next weekend, I guess. I've already learned one spoiler by accident; fingers crossed that I can avoid more spoilers for another week.

I've been thinking about engagement with media and how fandom specifically has made me a) more thoughtful about some of my choices and b) more aware of my own biases. I have an anecdote about point B. Back when Person of Interest was in its first season, an episode aired with a cute and charming guest star of the week, April L. Hernandez. She played the role of Andrea Gutierrez, a scrappy young lawyer, and for a noticeable chunk of the episode, I didn't enjoy her character at all. I couldn't pinpoint why that was, at least not at first.

It was weird. The "title" I was given once on LiveJournal was "Patron saint of neglected female characters". I'm not used to just disliking female characters for no reason. So after I got a copy of the episode, I watched again and tried to figure out what was going on, given that the actress was capable and the writing competent, and my irrational dislike was definitely something, well, irrational.

Here's what I posted about the episode way back when:

[...] Andrea Gutierrez. Local girl, had some trouble as a teen, now a lawyer, in debt for her schooling, cute as a button... and doing that thing that irritates me without fail. What thing? That combo of teetering in too-high heels, carrying too many bags, and then she buys a cup of coffee to carry on top of all that. Meh. It happens way too much on TV and in the movies.

The thing is, I didn't realize that this was something that irritated me until I made myself investigate the WHY behind my dislike. I was fortunate enough to know my own thinking and preferences well enough to figure out that there was something else to my lack of enjoyment--something to explain that moment of "I just don't like her."

As soon as I figured it out, I got over my dislike of Andrea Gutierrez. Why would I hold it against the character when the writers made that choice for her? And while I still don't like that specific writing shortcut (I've seen this in multiple shows and films), I can recognize that it's a me thing. The writers aren't trying to make me dislike the character; they're using a worn-out trope that I apparently hate. And now I can look past that.

This is the cool thing about engaging in media and fandom. You can poke at your own biases and preferences and decide things like a) I'm not going to let this specific weird bias become a reason to hate on character X, and b) that's a writing trope that I'm never gonna use because I dislike it so much.

I finally got around to removing some of you from my livejournal reading list. I do still check my LJ reading page from time to time; it was getting a bit annoying, seeing the same post twice. So. I think I have everyone I followed there on my reading circle here--well, everyone who migrated over here at some point--as well as some newer people to follow.

Having updated my reading page here and found new people to follow, now it's time for me to ignore y'all for a few days and finish my Man from U.N.C.L.E. gift exchange fanfic. I think I'm going to use the leechblock extension and block both tumblr and dreamwidth until I'm done. Or at least done enough; I need to have a solid draft posted by the 15th. I can still fiddle with it until Dec. 25.


If I'm new to you (hi, new followers!): I watched The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015 movie, not the old TV series) on a plane this summer and fell in fannish love with Gaby Teller, and with Gaby x Illya Kuryakin. Which led to writing fanfic for the first time in years. So you'll see me post about that from time to time, until the next fannish obsession comes along.

Almost time for yet another trip to visit siblings and nephews and nieces, who are scattered across the US. This will become exponentially more difficult when the nephews and nieces are old enough to live on their own. (That's starting to happen, but it's still in the early stages.)

As for other summer activities such as books, movies, etc., a lot of that has come to a temporary halt, since I'm now reading my way through three years of fanfiction for The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (The movie from 2015 that I mentioned seeing recently, not the TV series from the 60s.) I bought the movie on blu-ray, I've lost count of the number of times I've rewatched it (hm, maybe 4?), and of course - OF COURSE - the muse has announced that I'm writing fanfic. For the first time in several years. I co-wrote a story in 2015, but the last thing I wrote alone and finished was in January 2014. So it's been a while.

I've never written fic for a movie before. It seemed too frustrating, having such a limited source for characterization. But apparently the muse doesn't care about that.

I think what amuses me most is that while the most endearing part of the movie for me was the budding romance between Illya and Gaby, the idea insisting on being written is angsty genfic about Gaby's childhood in post-war East Berlin.

Other stuff: this summer is one of few in memory with no mid-summer workshops. I'll have plenty to go to in a few weeks, but all of the conferences that I might have attended were scheduled for dates where I had other plans. (Also, I had a week-long workshop last summer, which keeps me certified in one area for a few more years.)

Question: is there a writing website you know of with short-term rewards? I've used Written? Kitten in the past, but the site currently doesn't function well. (I wrote at least 600 words today on the site, which should have rewarded me with six pictures of kittens, but alas! only one appeared...)

Okay, here's the meme about TV shows I watched (or didn't watch) in 2012: ( back here )

Since I only have one more fanfic I'm going to write this year--at least, that's all I have planned--here's my version of the fanfic meme. In 2012 I wrote fifteen stories in three fandoms. Person of Interest was the main fandom, but I also wrote a crossover with Doctor Who and one final Battlestar Galactica fic (a remix). This isn't counting tiny fics posted in the comments or on Tumblr. Total word count is around 71,000 75,000. That's more than the three previous years combined, I believe.

( fic-writing meme, using my own categories )

My mostly-complete fic index, which you can use to find stories I wrote and then leave extravagant praise on them.