Arctic Light

Well, this is a fest that sounds like exactly my kind of thing and probably relevant to some of your interests as well: Cuddles for Comfort 2017. (Tumblr post for reblogging purposes.) There are no signups and it's not an exchange. You just write cuddlefic - gen, ship, or any point in between - and post it to the collection.

Speaking of cuddles, hugs, and similar things: the current status of the hug fest I mentioned awhile back is - waiting until I have time to run it. I suggested it when I did because I was going to be down for a week or so due to surgery; I do think postponing it was the right decision (I certainly wrote a lot more for Fandom Stocking than I would've been able to if I'd been running a commentfic fest at the same time) but now all of that is over and done, I'm in the "scrambling to catch up" phase of my professional life. So the hug fest is on hold until I have both time and inclination to put together something like that. Watch this space for details, and write cuddle fic in the meantime. :D

SSR Confidential, the Agent Carter fic exchange, will definitely run again in 2017. I'm planning a similar schedule to last year (signups in March, fic due in June). I'll post an updated schedule and rules to ssrconfidential/ ssrconfidential probably sometime in early February.

Things I'm currently signed up for: I picked up a pinch hit for Chocolate Box (deadline Feb. 7) and I'm also signed up for a Harrison Wells ficathon thing that's due next week for Flash fandom, which is turning out to be SO HARD TO WRITE, omg.

Flash is the hardest fandom to write in, s2g. I was complaining at sheron about this earlier, and I think it has to do with several factors, one of which is that the whole experience of writing for the show feels to me a lot more like writing for old-school shounen anime fandoms than for most of the more down-to-earth live-action western fandoms I've been working in lately, and I've moved out of that headspace almost completely. Not to mention that the amount of continuity and continual plot/cast change between episodes makes it very difficult to find a place to make a fic fit, especially a plotty one. (I suspect I would probably be having this problem in Agent Carter, too, if it weren't a closed canon - I think the only reason why I've been able to write as much for it as I have is because there aren't new episodes. Almost everything I've written for it has been set between seasons, not during seasons, for that exact reason.) So Flash has that problem combined with, as Sheron pointed out, the problem that the characters are largely static - with a few exceptions*, they don't really change, in the same way characters on an episodic TV show usually don't ... except it's not an episodic show, and plotwise, the status quo changes constantly. It's just a really hard combination of factors to pull off fic for.

*Such as Harry. I think this is what makes Harry's arc stand out so much, because he really does change a lot as a character, and then he leaves the show once his arc is complete. As opposed to, say, Barry or Joe or Iris, who are basically the same people in mid-season three that they were at the start of season one.

(SO excited for Flash and Legends of Tomorrow to come back next week, though. *bounces* I really missed having a show to look forward to every week.)

... so I went and signed up for avengersfest, since Agent Carter is an option. I'm not entirely sure what the state of the fest is right now, because ... there was a notice two days ago that the mod was going to be closing signups? And then signups don't seem to have been closed? So maybe you can still sign up but I'm not sure. (I mean, this isn't meant to be mod-pokery, it's just that I hadn't mentioned this because I didn't think you could still sign up, but it's possible that you might be able to.)

I've mostly managed to talk myself out of signing up for genex, a gen relationship exchange. (Signups close July 23.) On the one hand - gen relationship exchange! That is totally my thing! But the dates are really NOT the best considering my current travel plans; it's bad enough I'm going to need to turn in my Avengers Fest assignment by Sept. 10, but Genex fics are due on Sept. 3, which would give me just a couple of weeks to write both of them when I get back in August. Genex also requires at least 3 different fandoms requested and 4 offered, and while I can do it, I'm not sure how enthusiastically I can do it.

(Plus there's my rather conflicted relationship with gen, of late. I feel like it's probably ridiculous to spend too much time fretting over whether writing gen is ethical, or I should say whether writing the kind of smarmy friendship stuff I like to write is ethical ... but I do worry about it, and while I am absolutely not going to beat myself up for writing a little idfic from time to time, I probably don't need to sign up for a ficathon that's going to encourage me to write even more of it.)

Today's my last day at home before I'm gone for a week and a half, then back for a couple of days, then gone again for almost three weeks. I feel as if I should be using my last day at home more usefully, but aside from proofing Kismet book files (AMAZON, PLZ STOP MAKING ME RE-UPLOAD THESE STUPID ENORMOUS FILES XD) I don't really have anything left to do urgently, and I kinda just want to chill online and maybe write another h/c bingo square.

I made a thing!

starwarsflashmeme is a new flashfic community based on mcuflashmeme (which is also new; you should check it out!). Invented by dira, flashmemes are a blend of kinkmemes and old-style flashfic communities -- each week there will be a new prompt, and everyone has a week to post commentfic of any length in the comments to the entry, in response to the prompt. Your fic can also be posted on tumblr, AO3, etc, and linked from the comments. Art fills, or other media, are also great.

The first week's prompt is Strange New World.

Come! Write! Enjoy! :D!

And feel free to link to it and spread the word.

The Avengersfest stories are up, and anonymous for the rest of the week. I haven't had time to do more than read my gift story, but it looks like there's a nice wide spread of pairings and characters. The story I wrote is incredibly obvious, I suspect, especially to people who've read my SGA stuff, which it closely resembles (in fact, I think I wrote at least two stories in SGA with this exact plot). I have some things I want to say about the process of writing it, though, which obviously I can't say yet!

And I was gifted a great outside-POV, post-Winter Soldier story, which I really enjoyed:

Not Doing This Alone (8254 words) by Anonymous
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Original Character(s), Clint Barton & Original Character(s), Natasha Romanov & Original Character(s), Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes & Steve Rogers
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Original Characters, Clint Barton, Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: POV Outsider, POV Original Character, Homelessness, Brooklyn, Recovery, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, steve/bucky if you squint - Freeform
Summary: Unless you don’t got nowhere else to go, you don’t come down Blake Street way. It’s cold and there’s no shelter, ‘cept for what condemned lots provide. Got worse after the aliens though. One of them sled thingies crashed straight through the front of 37. Don’t matter all that much, ‘cos no one ‘cept homeless have lived there for years, but weird rotting alien bodies and that sled thing brought Feds and Blake Street ain’t the place anyone wants Feds. Full of people just making do, ‘cept Feds think that’s illegal. Fuckin’ Feds.

insmallpackages has their wish-granting post up! I did not make a wish here, but I'm thinking about browsing through and seeing if there are any I'd like to grant. :D It's not all fannish stuff -- it's also things like holiday music mixes and recipes and whatnot.

fandom_stocking is back for another year! :D I'm dinking around with signing up; not sure if I'm going to do it, but if I do, it'll probably be for Dresden Files and Once Upon a Time. (Which I still haven't finished watching, but I plan to do that in the next week or so; I have quite a bit of art to do, and it's a good background accompaniment to that.)

Fannishly, I seem to have fallen headlong back into Dresden Files. The nice thing about being gone for a while, and then coming back, is that even in a small fandom there's lovely new fic to read! And I found one that I really loved: The Box by TurtleTotem. Set between "Dead Beat" and "Proven Guilty", it takes a look at a little-explored corner of canon: the fact that Thomas was the only survivor of all the male children in his family. This fic shines a light on those long-dead brothers and on the way that having lived through something like that impacts his relationship with the one brother he has left.

I also found a fantastic Dresden Files fanartist ... who appears to have deleted their gallery. ;_; I wouldn't have known about them if I hadn't run across a few of their pictures reblogged on Tumblr. If you look up "mika merrylark" on Google Image Search, you'll see some of it -- they do an absolutely gorgeous Harry and Thomas. I wish there was a legitimate place to link to them online (and see the rest of their art!) but they don't seem to be around anymore.

I just saw this and it looks awesome: Fall Fandom Free-For-All. You leave a list of requests for fic/vids/art, and in return promise to answer at least one request from someone else's list. I think I'm going to play. :D I just need to figure out what to ask for.

ETA: Also, it looks like most people are requesting things in big fandoms and there's obviously nothing at all wrong with that, but it seems like this is the sort of challenge that might be tailor-made for getting something in a very small/rare fandom or for a really rare pairing, should you have one that you've been craving fic/vid/art for. Especially since multiple requests are allowed, so you can spread your requests between the "common" fandoms and the not-so-common ones. :D *ponders her rare fandoms*

ETA2: My requests are here. *is utterly shameless*

It isn't the appearance of Christmas decorations in the stores that signals we're getting all too close to the holiday season ... it's the appearance of signup posts for the Yule/Christmas/Secret Santa ficathons. *g*

hlh_shortcuts (Highlander) is taking signups through Sept. 30.

sga_santa is taking signups 'til Oct. 9.

sheppard_hc just opened signups for their gift fic exchange ('til Sept. 29).

I signed up for hlh_shortcuts (I'm so multifannish, just look at me these days) but I think that's the only one I'll be doing ... well, that and yuletart whenever their signups open, because that was hella fun last year.

I think I already floated the idea of doing a White Collar gift-fic exchange if one doesn't already exist (didn't I?), but in two days I'm leaving for the Internetless Wilds and I won't be back 'til sometime in the first or second week of October, so I wouldn't be able to do anything with it until then. Still, I'm quite open to the idea of running such a thing -- I'll muse about it while I'm gone and see how things develop when I get back.

And I still have to write my girlsavesboyfic story.

At Writercon, we talked about various ways of getting people more involved in SGA fandom now that there's no new canon. I'd tossed around several ideas for that, but once I got back home there were a number of things that interfered, including a resurgence of my own disillusionment and feeling of alienation from the fandom, and getting very busy with the first few weeks of school.

But! I have an idea! What about kicking off 2010 with "100 Days of Episode Tags"? (Actually it would be a little less than 100 since it would probably work best to group 2-part episodes together. But whatever.) I'm thinking low-pressure/no-pressure -- people sign up to take an episode and do (at their own discretion) a fic or art or vid, wallpaper, etc for it (with super-easy minimum word count on the fic, like 500 words or something). People post their offering on their scheduled day. No penalties if you're late or can't make it. First come first served on the episodes, with the option of taking multiple eps, and also the possibility of having more than one person sign up for an ep (but only after they're all gone, or we'll have like 10 people writing for some!). Any pairing, any rating. Just take an episode(s) and do something happy for that episode on your scheduled day(s).

And yes, I am volunteering to mod. *g*

[Poll #1462215]

galpalficathon is currently taking prompts (you can leave prompts even if you don't want to write) and spook_me is taking signups for Halloween stories. (I wrote for that one a couple of years ago - I wrote Ghost in the Machine, and it ended up being 48,000 words and didn't get finished until the following July, which kinda made me leery of signing up for another one *g*). Also, Ramadan began yesterday/today, and eid_fic is open for stories about Muslim characters in movies/TV/books.

It's full-on fall now -- yellow leaves, crispy days, occasional frosts. I love fall -- I love the way it looks and smells and feels, and I love how I get endearingly domestic at this time of year. It makes me want to harvest stuff (which is just too bad, since I was a total bum about the garden this year ^_^) and knit stuff and bake stuff. I've been spending way too much money at the farmer's market and getting all kinds of tasty things. (I'm particularly fond of little colorful potatoes, for some reason. Purple and red potatoes delight me. Consequently, we've been eating a lot of potatoes lately.)

Soooo ... I PM'd the mod of sgahcchallenges to suggest an h/c fic exchange to give the fandom something happy to think about. She's too busy to run one right now, but one thing led to another and I, uh, said I'd do it. :D

Go here for details. I decided to make this thing short and sweet - stories are due Oct. 1 - because we'll be getting into the winter ficathon season soon, and also, tipper_green had an idea for another, neat-sounding ficathon-type thing, but that one has to do directly with the end of the show and it didn't really seem like a good idea to launch until the fandom's had time to adjust to the cancellation news. This is just a happy little thing to give us h/c fen something cheerful to focus on in the month of September.

Also, I didn't want to exclude pairing-fic from this, but figured I'd probably be letting myself in for an exponentially increasing headache in trying to match not only requests but also pairing preferences, so - this one's gen.

Details at http://community.livejournal.com/sgahcchallenges/11649.html.