I figured out what needs to happen to get me writing things again! What needs to happen is I need to wake up at 3am two days in a row for no reason.

I've been falling asleep at a normal time but waking up super early for a while now, and every time I do something to fix it (extra/heavy blanket, cutting off music for a certain time before bed, etc) it works for a little while before it starts over again. It's happened regardless of if there's anything in particular I'm stressing out about too, though it may be some kind of background stress due to *gestures vaguely at everything*.

It may have something to do with the fact that when I set my own bedtime I tend to stay up late; Fiance, meanwhile, goes to bed around 10:30pm pretty consistently. So maybe I'm waking up early because I'm not staying up as late as I used to? But he's had that habit since he moved in with me and the problem is newer than that.

I just hope I'm not becoming A Morning Person. I've never been A Morning Person! I don't want to be one! Morning People have, like, life plans and FitBits and stickers on their car about running marathons.

The writing's been nice, though. I should remember to do that first when I wake up early, instead of staring at the ceiling being annoyed.

One of the things I've been doing on Tumblr is the Six Sentence Sunday from AO3 Comment Of The Day. From their description:
Six Sentence Sunday is a writing thing where, on Sunday, you post six sentences from an unfinished work. It can be a new fic, a new chapter of a WIP, or even something you’re not sure you’ll ever post.

Choose an excerpt from any section (and it doesn’t have to be six sentences) and post it, letting people know what it belongs to or indicating that it’s something you’re working on.

I'll be backdating and posting previous Six Sentence Sundays from Tumblr (though possibly not tonight because it's late), but I wanted to at least start posting them here too. That way I'll get back in the habit of posting here and keep up my writing! Everybody* wins!

(*It's me. I'm everybody.)

Six Sentence Sunday for this week is below the cut. Voltron Legendary Defender fandom, Shiro/Allura/Lance, nothing nsfw at the moment.

( Snippet behind the cut. )

more voltron, gen this time, au-ish backstory stuff about honerva and the black lion.

( Behind the cut again! )

I've been drawing and writing rather than posting anything. Oh, and surviving in the wonderful world of retail and its many cold germs.

...I had a cold three weeks ago, I've got another one now, and in between I had an eye infection, okay, I'm kind of pissed off.


So, in regards to the writing, would anyone be willing to beta a first draft of the first chapter of the Big Huge Crazy AU? I'd kind of like to finish at least two chapters before I start posting so this doesn't become a deadfic (although I did some writing on the second chapter of No Victims Only Volunteers today! I really really did!), but a lot of it was either freewritten or practically dragged out of my brain with a winch and cable, so I need to be sure it makes sense and I didn't muddle up my tenses again.

It's probably going to be about 2000 words when the first chapter's finished, TFA, post-S3, gen but dark. Would anyone be willing to beta?


Ugh, I hate head colds so much. *crawls through piles of tissues*

I had a cleverer title but I forgot it.[Poll #1792990]

2. If I named a fic (or a chapter of a fic) "Faaip de Oiad", how many people, approximately, would know what I was talking about?

I do on occasion hate the small reference pools fandom can inspire.

(It's Enochian for "voice of God", and a track on the Tool album Lateralus that samples a hoax caller to the Art Bell radio show. You can hear it here!)

Anyway I'd been tossing it around as a name for the Holy War AU on the occasion that I ever actually write the damn thing which looks increasingly unlikely, but there was one time back in middle school when I suggested a friend name one of her fis something in Italian and she ended up getting no readers because everyone thought the fic was in Italian. But I suppose if you don't know the reference, "Faaip de Oiad" just sounds like a nonsense phrase.

3. Hot damn does Homestuck make me want to start drawing again. I mean, Transformers makes me want to draw again too, but I have an excuse for being bad at it because they're all robots and I've never drawn robots before. (Except that most of the fanart I want to draw is of the humans trololo) And now all the characters here are humanoid, or at least most of them are, and as such I've got no excuse.

I feel like I almost need to go back to drawing because writing has become so listless and chore-like lately, like "Nobody likes what you write and you write boring crap nobody cares about and in a few years it'll all be useless because this isn't getting you a career or doing anything productive with your time bluh bluh", that kind of feeling. Drawing is still by that criterion a waste of time, but at least it's a waste of time that more people seem to be responsive to and thus more willing to give my sad ass validation. What with Tumblr and the fandoms I'm in being cartoons/comics (and thus imitable in artwork, whereas real-life people are harder to do fanart for), I seem to be in a more and more visually-oriented corner of fandom and sometimes I can't help feeling like I'm being left behind.

And yet every time I even try drawing it all ends up looking stiff and stilted and unrealistic and I get frustrated and scribble over it and YOU GUYS MAKE IT LOOK SO FUCKING EASY I CAN'T EVEN. *pouts*

Any...advice, I guess, on how to get better? Or at least not feel like crap about being bad at it and post it anyway?

4. What makes up for my lack of drawing skills is the fact that over the weekend I have made some incredibly kickass jewelry and I am gonna post pictures in the next couple of days and you are all going to be wildly jealous or something.

5.  Fandom seems determined to make me want things I thought I didn't even like. Oh, you don't like enemy ships/FoeYay? Surprise, Doctor/Master! Now you do*. Oh, you say that doesn't count because they were so polite to each other when they were Three and Delgado? Have some TF Prime Optimus/Megatron. Changed your mind? Oh, and you know how you were talking about not liking doomed and unhappy ships? I brought you some Animated!Optimus/Sentinel/Elita. Now you do.

What's that? Pseudo-incest doesn't bother you but biological incest ships aren't your bag? Surprise Dave/Rose motherfucker.

I am almost afraid to state out loud that I don't like furry or vore or other fringe stuff because I'm terrified of fandom somehow twisting itself around to prove me wrong and I don't want to like them.

*Of course, if I'm really looking back into my fannish history, even before I got into Doctor Who I still shipped CSI: Miami Horatio/Stetler really hard. But then again, Miami was kind of weird.

...you don't get to judge me, okay.

6. So, lets say a hypothetical fan who was definitely not me was writing a Transformers fic with the original thirteen Primes in them. And when she started writing it, there were only a few Primes named, and while there was talk of there being one female Prime she wasn't actually named yet. So this fan picked a new name for her Prime (Volta) and went about her fannish day without ever actually writing this damn fic.

Fast forward maybe a year or so. The list of Primes is much more complete, and the name of the one lady, Solus, is now public knowledge. And it's pretty official that she's the only girl.

Does the hypothetical writer who is in no way me:

a) Change the name from Volta to Solus, even though that requires a little more canonical justification?
b) say "fuck it" and keep the "second" female Prime because screw that, let's have us More Ladies?

7. Ravens, what are you doing, how do you blow a lead like that? :(

8. Aaaand I didn't do my homework again. Bleh. Do it tomorrow. I had a busy busy week last week and I have earned the right to goof off this weekend.

In fairness it's because I'm doing laundry and had run out of undergarments.

Anyway, another meme going around the flist, because I like saying nice things to people:

Post a comment, and I will reply with a reason why I think you're great. In return, you might like to post this same meme on your blog and comment for other people. Circle of positivity!

Also, you know a canon really has a dearth of women when you're trying to do a "Five Girls [X Character] Hasn't Kissed"-type scenario and you can only think of three people to pair her up with. And two of them aren't even in the same series.

Yes, I wanted to do something like that for my next Miko fic. Don't worry, it's all wholesome and nonsexual and stuff. Of course, now that I'm in my twenties it feels wrong and perverse writing a sixteen-year-old in a romance of any sort, even if in most of the ficlets she's aged-up. I know that people have boyfriends and girlfriends when they're even younger than sixteen, but, still.

Thus far, I have her paired up with Sierra, Sari, and Mikaela, the last two in future or post-robocalyptic scenarios, but after that I'm fresh out of ideas short of a Doctor Who crossover. Looks like a picspam instead.

So you know how I've been blithering about The Silver Lining, the fan sequel to the King's Quest series, a.k.a. my nerdy little PC-gaming childhood. 

A bit of backstory: At the end of King's Quest 6, Prince Alexander (the player character, a prince who was kidnapped at a young age and was only recently returned to his real family) gets married to Cassima, a princess he rescued over the course of the game (because this is, indeed, an amalgamation of fairy tales). At the end of King's Quest 7, Rosella married (sort of) the prince Edgar.

During The Silver Lining (during which Alexander and Rosella are, at some point, in peril), King Graham (Alexander and Rosella's father) talks with Edgar about Alexander. Edgar recounts wandering out on the beach at night and finding Alexander going for a swim, spotting scarring on his back.

Edgar: I turned to leave, but he asked me to stay.
The Let's Player: Oh, I don't like where this is going...
Me: Yeah, that kind of does sound like the start of a slash fic.

...

...aw, fuck.

I do wish I could occasionally turn off the shipping googles, because this is exactly the kind of sweet, quiet scene I love between characters, but I can't help thinking that if they weren't in-laws and I didn't adore both their canon spouses so much I'd be all over this.

That said, once I got over that little inconvenience, oh my god was I feeling the sweet hum of nostalgia during that scene. I mean, the characters were vivid and well-voice-acted in the games themselves, but we never got this kind of backstory directly (it was always implied through narration), and it's just so wonderful having all these characters back and a whole new story and new dialogue and new adventures and everything, oh I love this game so much.

---

In other Horrible Person news, you know you've reached some kind of nadir in your writing 'career' when you have to worry that you've unintentionally ripped off Human Centipede.

...not in the most obvious way, though. I'm not nearly that depraved yet. One day I'll write something normal, doo dee doo.

---

Keepin' writing, keepin' writing. I kind of wasted today watching videos and doing a little bit of e-mailing, which is sort of terrible of me as well since I've got crap I'm meant to be doing.

[Poll #1735683]

Would anyone be willing to sit for a while and listen to me blather on about the entirety of what I have so far of the Big Huge Crazy TFA Postwar AU, and maybe help me brainstorm a little?

Yeah I know such an exciting prospect. Don't all look so enthused.

Also hey there, TF:Prime fandom seems to have exploded or something. Were I a more cynical person I would insinuate that ( minor minor spoilers for most recent episode of TF Prime ). Also Breakdown is voiced by Jayne and this will never not amuse me. Let's just get the whole Firefly cast in here, then, why not. Yes, including Nathan Fillion. He can be a TFP Sentinel Prime.

Three more fragments before bed:

1. Does having a specific song associated with a pairing I like make me weird and obsessed? Because there's one in particular that's become so linked to this one pairing and even hearing it makes me want to write lots of fic - maybe even songfic if I ever felt like abandoning my dignity.

2. So, That Guy With The Glasses fandom, is there in fact any Phelous fic out there or am I going to have to write it myself? I know it's probably just my pet interest in crappy horror movies but I am growing more and more fond of him the more of his videos I watch. Surely there's some fic to be had in his continuity-proof resurrections and his "Phelous Who" crossovers, yeah?

3. I know I'm supposed to be blogging about interdisciplinary nonfiction and fancy intellectual stuff like that, but really I'd be much more enthusiastic about blogging if I could do endless critical readings of B-horror movies, pop sci-fi, and metafiction, and how they reflect and affect our culture and thought. It's like the honestly intellectual portion of my brain has shrivelled up and died since college. ;__;

Some days I have to keep myself from just saying "fuck it" and posting my lengthy Thoughts On Metropolis/Takashi Miike movies/the adaptation of Lovecraftian mythos into every single pop-SFF universe ever on my nascent blog. This will not help you get a career, dear.

And now bed.

I went out today just to get out of the house. I took my notebook with me in case I ended up writing something.

I stopped by the winebar in the shopping center near my house and ordered a glass of white zinfandel, because it was actually cheaper than a coffee and I figured if I was going to get a drink anyway I might as well give my money to a local business instead of adding to Starbucks' Take Over The World Fund.

Half a glass later I was two pages into an Actual For-Real Fanfic for the first time in what feels like ages. Granted it's none of the fics I'm supposed to be working on, but I wrote a thing, huzzah.

So, apparently, what I needed to do the whole time I was blocked and frustrated was get drunk buzzed. How charmingly simple.

Let's not talk about how a glass of white zinfandel is enough to get me buzzed, because yes I am that much of a lightweight.

Also a couple of the regulars there jokingly heckled me for drinking zin instead of "real" wine. They seemed suitably impressed when I told them I'd been drinking spicy Spanish reds since I was sixteen. ;) They also seemed jokingly surprised that I wasn't sixteen myself, but whatever, that happens a lot.

So what about you, flist? Do you find it easier to write when drunk/stoned/high/under the influence of your intoxicant of choice? Or does that make things harder? 

ANYWAY. Should be a little thing for tf_rare_pairing  later tonight or tomorrow, depending on how long it takes me to write a conclusion and edit the drunk out of it. Also I just think I should notify you that the best thing about rolling chairs is that you can use them to dance and pretend you are in a music video. And you probably think this is yet more of me being boozy but no, I do this when I'm cold sober, I just have to wait until no one else is at home.