we're all stories in the end

I read this blog post by Emma Newman today: When just write is not enough, which talks about how fear and anxiety can stop you from creating.

Ah, I thought. That sounds about right. At some point a few years ago, writing went from fun to scary. I'm scared that if I write something and post it, people who I like and admire will secretly think it's not very good and judge me accordingly. I don't even know, brains are terrible, I'm pretty sure that all my friends don't secretly think I'm a horrible writer and think less of me as a person. Oddly, this doesn't seem to affect my vidding at all, just fiction.

So that's been a helpful realisation today! How I go from here to actually writing again I'm not sure, but it's a good step. (A couple of wonderfully kind comments recently on the AO3 have certainly helped too, and if anyone felt moved to tell me something they like about something I've written, it would not go amiss.)

So I've been reading away on Dreamwidth as ever but apparently haven't updated in nearly a month? Let's fix that, as our work email server has just crashed (ahaha our IT is so bad, oh, charity sector life).

i. I have been at the new job for three months now! I really like it, but it's definitely taking away a lot more time and energy from doing fannish stuff than the last one, which is annoying. I have all these feels and no time to put them anywhere!

ii. What fannish time I do have at the moment is mostly spent getting ready for Vidukon! I'm excited, we've got some great stuff lined up this year. It's great we're managing to make it an annual thing and I hope it continues. Viiiids. All being well, I should have two premiering vids there and also possibly a shiny new remaster of one of my old cam vids, which would be lovely. (psst it's not too late to get an attending or supporting membership -- which includes nifty streaming options!)

iii. Vidding projects are going well (though as ever I have more things I want to make than time to make them) but writing continues to ... not. Looking back, I've not managed to post much in the last couple of years. And actually, pretty much what it seems to be is that I haven't been able to write much since the end of Ponds-era Doctor Who. Many many WIPs stashed away in various fandoms, very little ability to finish any of them. Not to mention the 50k Ponds fic of doom that has been rigorously beta'd and really just needs a final go through but I'm worried it's not very good and that no one will really care when I post it anyway.

... WRITING IS HARD. How do words. I would love to be able to actually write any of the dozen MCU fic ideas I have buzzing around, but I can't manage more than about 500 words on anything.

iv. Fannish pursuits of the moment - saw Cap 2 again, still love it with all my heart like they made it just for meeeee. <3 Also in that category, I've caught the first season of Orphan Black, though I haven't started s2 yet. IT IS PERFECT AND BEAUTIFUL.

Also perfect and beautiful: Brooklyn Nine-Nine! happydork and I are making our way through the season and it's so totally delightful. I horribly overidentify with Santiago ('yes sir, I will make better mouth') and Captain Holt is honestly one of the most glorious queer characters I've had the pleasure of watching in ages. *draws sparkly hearts*

v. Anyone on HabitRPG? Having tried it for a little while now it seems to be working quite well for me, and it would be fun to have some buddies on there to do quests with etc. My username is syntaxed.

Oh my god, my inability to finish anything lately is just getting upsetting. /o\ Here, have a meme, as seen all over the place.

AO3 Works Stats

Categories:

Gen (84)
M/M (47)
F/M (29)
Multi (27)
F/F (25)

I'm actually surprised F/F is the lowest here. And the order would look very different if you took just my more recent output - I've only written about half a dozen M/M stories in the last couple of years. (Though I can see Welcome To Night Vale changing that!)

Fandoms:

Doctor Who (62)
Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling (60)
Torchwood (23)
Merlin (TV) (22)
The Avengers (2012) (12)

There was a while there I thought HP would forever be the top, but no more!

Characters:

Amy Pond (26)
Rory Williams (24)
Sirius Black (17)
Eleventh Doctor (16)
Gwen (Merlin) (14)

It looks like I didn't tag a lot of my HP ship fic with characters as well, otherwise I imagine this would look different. Still feels fairly accurate though!

Pairings:

Sirius Black/Remus Lupin (24)
Amy Pond/Rory Williams (17)
Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones (11)
Lily Evans Potter/James Potter (8)
Gwen/Morgana (Merlin) (7)

Additional Tags:

Episode Tag (19)
One of My Favorites (16)
Community: kink_bingo (12)
Fanvids (9)
Podfic Available (5)

Most Hits:
Disintegration (The Next Chapter Remix) (Doctor Who)

Most Kudos:
Stealing Time (Doctor Who)

Most Bookmarks:
Progress Reports, Pancakes, and Paper Planes (Avengers)

Most Comments:
Stealing Time (Doctor Who)

It is indicative of my headspace atm and how busy I am that I STILL haven't watched this week's Doctor Who. Um, soon? Probably? In the meantime, hi, have some memes!

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So that AO3 hitcount meme's going around again and I don't think I've actually done it before? So here goes, skipping comment fic:

( by hits )

( by kudos )

While I was looking to see if I'd done this before, I also came across the following and I would like to see it do the rounds again:

If you were asked to pick one scene, one shot, one detail, one moment of some kind out of all the things I've made and say "This, this, for whatever reason, I remember, this is something that struck home with me, that I wanted to keep," what would it be?

2011 fic & vids roundup!

( stats )

( Full list of fanworks this year: )

( meme questions )

( fic WIP extracts )

( year in fic )

And now some questions from musesfool, arbitrarily edited where I can't be bothered to answer specific questions!

( meme questions )

Hm - was going to do a fic round up post, but in all honesty I'm not thrilled with my writing output this year. I feel it's mostly marked by the things I didn't write - the big bangs I signed up for, that Late Bloom sequel, all the other bits of WIPs sitting on my computer. Alas.

But briefly, I think Remember Me As A Time Of Day (Merlin, Gwen/Morgana) is my best story, and And Tomorrow (Torchwood, Jack/Ianto, CoE fix-it) is my personal favourite for what are probably obvious reasons. I'm also fond of Someone Else's Shoes (Torchwood, Tosh, Gwen) and Something Old, Something New (Merlin, Arthur/Merlin, Arthur/Gwen, Gwen/Morgana).

I do feel like doing the vid round up meme, though - vidding was good this year! Also, it means I can procrastinate on festvidding some more.

( vid round up )

That words meme that's been flying around! I have now collected three sets.

From shaggydogstail, ages ago: ( Writing, Doctor, philosophy, women, fun )

bodlon gave me: ( change, flight, stability, Torchwood, strangers )

And lefaym gave me: ( Fix-it, Femslash, Merlin, vidding, geekiness )

(Things I will some day post about: how Psych is my new happy place by featuring adorable girl geeks and boy geeks and hitting me in all the best friend OTP shippy places I did not know I had missed. Also, I have reached the end of Series 2 of Battlestar Galactica and I think als;dkj frak me is really all I've got until I've watched 3x01 at least.)


Today, let us talk about AU fic. By which I don't mean the canon AU variety -- what if Sirius didn't go to Azkaban, what if Romana survived the Time War -- but rather the sorts of AUs where John is a rainbow or Rodney is an android or Gwen's the lead singer for the Europop disco band Torchwood* or Dean's a spaceship mechanic or Arthur's the Prince of Wales.

*admittedly that one only exists in my head, though the rest are real stories. But seriously, Torchwood the trashy synthesiser band! There's nothing not to love about that. Somebody should write it for me.

See, these latter sorts of AUs aren't especially ones I'm used to, because they don't exist very much in Doctor Who or Harry Potter, though I can think of a few Remus/Sirius non-magical AUs in this vein. I think that different canons give rise to hugely different amounts of these sorts of stories - the best example is probably the fact there are tons and tons of Supernatural RPS AUs, but far fewer AU stories involving the canon characters. Jared and Jensen are essentially themselves in a whole variety of situations that would be fun to read about, and the same goes for the SGA team or the members of any of the bandom bands. On the other hand, it seems like the Doctor isn't really the Doctor if he doesn't have the TARDIS, that Harry Potter isn't really himself if he's not a wizard. The canon universe plays a much more central role in some fandoms than it does in others.

Personally, I particularly like AUs in RPF fandoms because it adds an additional degree of fictionalisation that makes it easier for me to read, and I can't not love all of the SGA AUs, which between them offer everything you could possibly wish for.

As you may have guessed, this post was inspired in part by rageprufrock's Drastically Redefining Protocol [Merlin; Merlin/Arthur; NC-17; ~46K]. Because, okay, I'd put Merlin firmly in the category where I wasn't especially interested in non-canon AUs, particularly modern day ones. And then I realised that here we have a story that makes me infinitely happy on two levels - first, Arthur is still a bit of a royal prat, Merlin is still a bit magic, Morgana is still a bit prophetic, Gwen is still a lot awesome. Second, if there were a young and famously handsome Prince of Wales in the UK right now who became openly in a gay relationship? This is exactly how it would go, down to the last ONTD screencap, and the verisimilitude is almost alarming at times. Forget the fact I would so, so happily read original fiction on just this premise if it was done this well, it was a sad moment after I finished the story and realised it didn't actually happen.

So you should go read that, it's wonderful. You should also talk to me about the AU scenarios you like and don't like, what you think these things need to work. I may or may not be considering going AU for thelittlebang, you see. Which, knowing me, will probably involve a) space, b) robots, c) an apocalypse of some description, or d) a combination of the above.

... Yeah, I've really got to wonder how I managed not to watch BSG for so long.

I taught myself how to make videos this year! It was very thrilling.

( the year that was: vids )

( meme questions! )

---

Fic round up! (Distinctly longer.)

( the year that was: stories )

Statistics etc:

Word count: roughly 100,000.
Story count: 44
Fandoms: 8 [HP: 15, TW: 14, Who: 6, HDM: 2, SGA: 2, Crossovers: 1, Good Omens: 1, Skins: 1, Firefly: 1, Merlin: 1]
Genres: 18 m/m, 17 gen, 4 m/f, 3 f/f, 2 mixed.
Most written pairing: Remus/Sirius at 8 stories, with Jack/Ianto a close second. You're all shocked, I can tell.
Most written character: Jack Harkness clocks in with appearances in 14 stories. Heh.

( meme questions! )