daysofawesome | Member Posts

The next Firewhiskey Fic event for the altered-states creation of fanworks along with lots of sociability amongst fellow participants will take place from Friday, February 13th to Sunday, February 15th. If you'd like to spend some time creating fanworks while either imbibing or doing the 420 in an environment of online partying with the FWF fen, join the comm at Firewhiskey Fic on Dreamwidth. No signups, no stress, no sobriety.

More info will be posted the week before the event.

Current Mood: ready to party
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

ride_4ever

Thank you kindly to the fen who sent me holiday cards in December and early January:

noxelementalist,

james,

dine,

adafrog,

aurumcalendula,

spikesgirl58,

elayna,

lauramcewan,

sidleypkhermit, and

brumeier.

If you sent me a card and you aren't listed here, that's a postal fail. If you are listed here and didn't get a card from me, that's another postal fail.

Current Mood: still moderately festive
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

ride_4ever

What I did for More Joy Day: wrote a Guardian ficlet Zhen Hun Bibliomancy Tanka for

amedia; made a donation to Fraser.org, an organization that supports mental health, emotional health, and disability care (made as a memorial donation in memory of

andeincascade and I notified Ande's family about it); sent a letter of appreciation to my primary-care doctor of many years who retired last month; sent letters of solidarity to neighbors who have "No Kings in America" signs in their front yard; sent an ILU letter and fannish bookmark to a fan who -- the day before More Joy Day -- posted the comment "tell someone you love them today".

What I received for More Joy Day: a due South x Venom crossover fic The Pause That Reinvigorates by

petra and a penpal-type letter in the postal mail from

oldtoadwoman. (The letter did not say it was FOR More Joy Day, but it arrived ON More Joy Day, so I'm "counting" it.)

Current Mood: joyful
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

jadelennox

IMO vigils and protests shouldn’t cost spoons.

Also when you’re already deep in spoon deficit spending it’s probably not an ideal time to go to the spoon loan shark. They charge a lot.

Anyway my heart will always be here for protest medics who can be trusted to have instant cold packs. ❤️‍🔥

(I’m going to leave comments open on this post, which contains no requests for advice. I trust none of you will make me regret it.)

ainsley

Five things about today:

1) I am very happy to have Josh Charles back on my TV
2) some days it's a very good thing to not have a chance to check the interwebs during the workday
3) morning walks are a LOT easier when it's warmish and sunny than when the temperature unequivocally says winter
4) my watch is telling me I'm asleep and I'm not sure it's wrong
5) apparently a song that I've loved for 40 years is about being gay and I didn't know lolol

jadelennox

finally watching season 2 of the live action Ronia the Robber's Daughter from 2024 and my kingdom for someone who will talk about the cinematography with me the way people are breaking down the Heated Rivalry longing gazes.

Also Ronia singing the wolf song and me being surprised about pronunciation of "Du varg, du varg" and then me realizing it's the exact same way anglos always mispronounce Greta Thunberg's name.

kass

Dear Purimgifts Author,

Thank you so much for writing me a story! I love all of these things and I know that whatever you write for me, I will love it too.

In general I am a big fan of: chosen family, happy endings, competence, characters being awesome, theology, snark and banter, kindness. I'm happy with anything that feels right to you given the characters at hand. If you want to cross a given fandom over with Megillat Esther, or with Tanakh in general, that is always my jam. (But you don't have to if you don't want to.)

Write something that makes you happy, and it will make me happy.

Please, no betrayal or unquenchable angst or people being awful to each other or grisly death or anything like that. There's enough of that in RL. Thank you kindly.

In closing: yay Purim! Yay you! Thank you so much!

Kass

( My requests: Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal, Parks and Rec, The Naturalist Society by Carrie Vaughn, Murderbot, The Diplomat, Stardew Valley )

ride_4ever

For those who are wondering why the Multifandom Multimedia Microbang is called "Be A Goldfish," here's the explanation from the comm's Admin

devinwolfi:

When we started this event earlier this year, it was a Ted Lasso fandom exclusive event. We always had every intention to go multifandom later, this just gave us the opportunity to beta test it on a smaller group. In that series, a recurring line is to "be a goldfish," (based on the now disproved idea that goldfish have 3-10 second memories), meaning to let go of past hurts, move on, brave the new day, and try new things, all of which we hope to embody and encourage throughout this event. We've found that smaller works and folks who leave comments tend to get less attention, but those small works and comments are by no means less important to the fandom ecosystem so we wanted to give them, and the fans who share them, the support and attention they deserve. We also know that it's very easy to get bogged down by expectation, past experiences, and the pressure of trying to be "successful" in fandom and be paralyzed by it all to the point of inaction. We want to give people the space to try new things and develop new fannish skills without feeling like they have to commit to big projects.

Current Mood: fishy
Current Location: near the lake they call Michigan

ainsley

( a mixed bag of a day; includes rambling about social anxiety )

marina

This was supposed to be a Heated Rivalry Part 2 post but I had the good sense to realize I won't have the time to finish writing it in the 20 minutes I have until I have to go to bed, so, it shall remain on my mental to-do list. Have this random things post instead.

( work stuff )

*

A have a friend who's a big Critical Roll fan, so thanks to her I watched the Vox Machina show with very detailed commentary and handholding through the parts I found boring and disappointing (all the straight romance).

That friend is currently busy taking care of a newborn, but she did strongly recommend I watch The Mighty Nein, the next campaign from the same bunch to be turned into an animated show, and I have to say her predictions were spot on because I absolutely loved ( spoilers )

*

Man I have a birthday this week and it's been... rough. I have a lot of baggage around my birthday, probably will for the rest of my life, but in past years I managed to really develop good coping mechanisms and techniques. And this year, for various reasons, it's just all crumbled to nothing.

This whole week is gonna be at my peak terrible mental health. Cried to

roga on the phone about logistics, like a totally normal person. Unable to answer any questions from relatives about what I want to do this weekend. Stressing out everyone and getting stressed out myself in return. Just really good times. If you happen to be one of the people who has no baggage around celebrating your birthday (I know these people exist! I have met them!) please send those vibes my way.

eirenical

...is a little late? Oops? On the upside, since it's late, I can properly include my Yuletide fic, so that's nice. It's been a slow writing year, but considering how badly my health tanked in April, I'm honestly surprised I wrote anything at all. So, I'm going to try to be grateful for that and proud of what I've written and let that be that. ^_^

As usual, links go to tumblr posts with full warnings whenever possible; the one exception is "i am not eurydice" because I apparently never made a post for that? Oops? I'll fix that eventually, but for now, it links directly to AO3.

I'm also counting the ongoing WiPs just by the words written this year, so that has also lowered the word count, slightly.

Key: ! = Rape/Dub/Noncon elements \| $ = Grievous Bodily Harm \| M=mature \| E=explicit
Date		Title	Fandom	Words
1/11		Coming Down	MLCB	1,136
3/31		Taking Care	Guardian	1,697
7/5		Fortune Favors the Stubborn	MLCB	4,677
8/17		I am not eurydice	DMBJ	3,237
11/26	E	Sect Negotiations	MLCB	9,012
12/17		Tired of Waiting	DMBJ	4,319
			Subtotal	24,078
Tumblr Fic
1/9		3 sentence fic: Li Lianhua & Portrait	MLCB	156
9/28		3 sentence fic: Pingxie & Rain/Houseplant	DMBJ	152
9/28		3 sentence fic: Li Lianhua & Cameras	MLCB	89
			Subtotal	397
WiPs
2/9		Older Than She Looks	MLCB	1,325
3/7		difanghua ballet au	MLCB	3,179
11/30		pegging au sequel	MLCB	757
total new	E	storytelling au	MLCB	5,351	(total 45,564)
total new		LLH birthday fic	MLCB	2,890	(total 4,455)
			Subtotal	13,502

			Total	37,977

Current Mood: accomplished

ainsley

Today started off really well! Woke up and decided, hey, that fic recced on bsky looks good, I should read that! Then I watched a vid! All before I even got up to feed the cat!

Then I saw the news, and that's enough said about that.

I had some good fic-writing thoughts while I was on my walk, and hoped to have a chance to something up, but alas. I did check off all the major items on my to-do list today (and one of them was re-starting a huge project that I've been procrastinating for decades while the project scope snowballed) and found a book online I thought I'd have to travel to see (a family tree/history put together by a distant cousin).

The fic I was thinking about is a hockey story I've wanted to write as a second chances romance for more than a decade, but thought it was too big for my skill level. My skill level won't grow if I don't write it, and I'm mostly just writing it for me, anyway. These days my brain doesn't want it to be second chances, and therefore it's no longer a romance, but I'm kind of interested in poking to see what it does want to be.

Definitely did too much, but the choices continue to be not overdoing and never making progress or staying within my known limits, which hasn't been working out well.

beatrice_otter

ficinabox revealed the authors, er, several weeks ago. But I was too caught up with

yuletide to remember to post what I wrote! So here it is. I had great fun writing this crossover between Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice, where Charlotte gets a better life than canon. As I was pondering how to logically get Brandon and Charlotte to meet even though they live so far apart, it occurred to me that Sir John Middleton and Sir William Lucas are very similar people and would probably get along amazingly well. (The other easy way to do it would be to set it earlier in both canons, when William Lucas (not yet Sir William) is a prosperous tradesman, probably with business connections in London, and Colonel Brandon has just been handed custody of his dead beloved's child and is trying to figure out frantically what to do with her, before he has to go back to his regiment in India or wherever. I can easily see him marrying then to give her a mother, and if he somehow became acquainted with the Lucases while in London, might find Charlotte just the ticket.)

( Thoughts on the Lucas finances )

Title: A Summer in Devonshire
Fandom: Sense & Sensibility/Pride & Prejudice
Characters: Colonel Brandon/Charlotte Lucas
Author: Beatrice_Otter
Written for: hiddencait in Fic In A Box 2025
Summary: Sir John Middleton was happy to invite his friend Sir William Lucas and family to stay at Barton for the summer. Charlotte is happy to travel, and to meet new people.

( Author's note: travel distances and clothing details. )
***

Sir William Lucas had never aspired to visit St. James' Court, nor indeed to become a knight; he had been content with his life as a respectable (and prosperous) tradesman. When such an opportunity had been granted him, all unexpectedly, he had been so overcome with all the honor of it that he had not been able to savor the pleasures thereof. Given his humble antecedents and employment, very few in that place took any notice of him, and those who did cared more to practice their superiority than form any connection. It was an experience more pleasurable in the telling, for he spent many congenial hours describing the grandeur of the court and its people to his acquaintances in Meryton, as he and Lady Lucas took their place as one of four-and-twenty families of good breeding in the neighborhood.

It also spurred his desire to trade his business for an estate more suitable to his new dignity, for being Sir William of any estate (however small) would occasion less comment than Sir William, tradesman of a small market town.

( That being accomplished, he settled in quite happily to being a landed gentleman, and would never have stirred from Meryton again if Lady Lucas had not possessed the ambition her husband lacked )

On AO3. On Squidgeworld. On tumblr. On Pillowfort.

ainsley

Just finished watching Heated Rivalry and am having a lot of feelings, as one does. Not entirely sure what some of the feelings are, just yet, but I think I'll spend some time this weekend poking at them to see if they're amenable to identifying themselves. It's so wonderful that this beautiful brilliant show exists and is creating so much joy at a time when it's so needed.

Right before this, we watched The Pitt, which felt like it was starting to rearrange me as a person in a really good way, and this might be a little, as well.

It's been so long since I've had a fannish conversation, so long since I've had a fandom, that I almost don't even know what to say about anything (not sure I ever did! mostly i just showed up and stuck around). Hopefully there will be plenty of conversations about both of them so I can join in sometimes :)

rivkat

Annalee Newitz, Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind: ( history and present )

Luke Kemp, Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse: ( not what I hoped )

Justin F. Jackson, The Work of Empire: War, Occupation, and the Making of American Colonialism in Cuba and the Philippines: ( so shockingly, racist! )

Elliott West, Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion: ( this too )

Nicole Eustace, Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America: ( um ... )

Charles S. Maier, The Project-State and Its Rivals: A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: ( history as forces )

Mary Louise Roberts, What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France:( it's complicated? but also racist; rape and rape myths )

Caroline Fraser, Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers: ( Helter Smelter (her joke, not mine) )

Ada Palmer, Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age: ( lots'o'quotes )

Elliott Kalan, Joke Farming: How to Write Comedy and Other Nonsense: ( good instructions )