duckmonster | Reading

Challenge #8

Talk about your creative process.

I... actually do have a creative process? Weird. I've never really thought too hard about it, but here it is:

Have an idea. Where do ideas come from? I do not know. The aether. Wherever. Mostly I think of a situation and go lmao it would be so funny if that happened. "Funny" stands in for many, many different emotions, though. Not necessarily funny things.

Go for a long drive. No, longer than that. No, even longer. Minimum amount of drive time I need for an idea to percolate enough to write is around 2h. For a short idea/short portion of a longer idea. The longer the idea in general, the longer the drive needs to be. I just need something where I can turn off my brain, and just ruminate, yanno? Nothing else does that for me.

(Optional) Talk out the idea with a friend. Sometimes if I can't go on a drive this works. Sometimes it doesn't. But this is sooooort of my version of creating an outline. Just a very wordy outline with input from another person. Otherwise, at this point in my life, I do no planning. Just vibes.

Hope that the idea is sticky enough to still be around when I feel like writing again.

Eventually my hobbyfocus (get it? get it??) circles back around to writing. So I sit down and write as fast as possible to get as much as possible out of my head before my focus shifts to, idk, knitting.

And then, of course, my actual writing process is um. Literally turn off thinking/editing brain, sit down for a writing session on my "work" laptop for an hour or so, pound out somewhere between 500 and 3,000 words, walk away for a while. Rinse, repeat. I am not very complicated.

Snowflake Challenge: A flatlay of a snowflake shaped shortbread cake, a mug with coffee, and a string of holiday lights on top of a rustic napkin.

Current Mood: blah
Current Location: the recliner in my living room
Current Music: FINALLY SOLVED? Revisiting the Dyatlov Pass Mystery by Watcher (youtube)

the_wanlorn

Challenge #7

LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

Thanks! I hate it!

Okay, if this were like five years ago I literally would not be able to do this. But you know what? I'm turning 40 this year and I am pretty fucking great. Other people might not see that, but who cares because I know it as a truth.

So. First thing: I am great at writing banter. I love that I am great at writing banter. Short, long, whatever. Look at this shit: [link to GYWO comment], [link to another GYWO comment] [realizing no one can see those links if they're not also doing GYWO]

( Okay fine, have two examples under here. )

Second thing I like about myself: I'm a fucking amazing knitter. You want it, I can knit it. Cables, lace, whatever.

( Have a selection of my projects over the years )

Third thing: my body is pretty great. It's doing it's best, and even though it's best is sometimes not great, I still love it. I'm reaching the point where I'm not healing from injuries as well, but that's okay too because again, it's doing its best. So, yeah. No pictures or anything for this one.

two log cabins with snow on the roofs in a wintery forest the text snowflake challenge january 1 - 31 in white cursive text

Current Mood: happy
Current Location: the recliner in my living room
Current Music: Better Call Saul s05e06

the_wanlorn

Challenge #6

Top 10 Challenge.

I can't even think of ten things that I eat regularly??? Never even mind fandom things??? Shit.

Top 10 Reasons to Watch Debris (and Write Me Fic)

I love it, which, really, should be all you need to know because my taste is impeccable.

It's bad scifi, but in the fun kind of way.

There is so much chemistry between Bryan and Finola.

There are so many secrets.

Nothing is explained. Like ever. It is ripe for fic explaining things.

The episodes are so totally out of order. I refuse to believe anything else. You, too, can join me in this conspiracy theory and try to sort out a reasonable order.

I can watch it while I'm high. Most TV shows and movies and youtube and everything, when I'm high, I get intensely aware that everyone is acting. Like it ruins my suspension of disbelief so bad. There are two (2) shows I can rewatch when I'm high without my suspension of disbelief being ruined, and one of them is Debris.

The ending is so open. So so so open. It is primed for another season or like. So much fic speculating where they were going.

Multiverse shenanigans. Just, I can not describe them without major spoilers, but you will know it when you see it and you, too, will be like muchsthescream.jpg.

The story of the penguin and the soldier. It will make you insane. You will listen to it and it will forever change your brain pathways. It will live rent-free in your head for all time.

Okay uh that was easier than I thought.

Current Mood: bored
Current Location: the recliner in my living room
Current Music: Better Call Saul s04e08

the_wanlorn

Challenge #5

In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it and include a link to your wishlist if you feel comfortable doing so.

Oh boy oh boy, a wishlist! I am so good at those! My brain does not immediately go blank when asked to compose one!

Okay, a selfish thing I want: art for each chapter of my & my friend's Lucifer hitman!au. I'm slowly working on commissioning it, and I've got I think three? Four? Chapters done. But slowly is the key word here and man is it expensive to commission art and like. Actually pay the artist fairly!

A less selfish wish: More! Debris! Fic! Give me more Debris fic! Long fic! Plotty fic! I am d e s p e r a t e for more Debris fic, especially fic that continues the story. Give me all the post-canon fic in the world. I just. I loved that show so much. The story of the penguin and the soldier makes me insane. I forget about the back half of the season all the time because that two-parter felt like a finale. I am convinced the episodes are out of order and if I just watch it enough times I can put them in an order that makes the developing relationship between Bryan and Finola make sense. I start rewatching every time I get high because that is all my high brain thinks about. It aired in March 2021 and I am still obsessed, almost five years later. Please god someone write me fic.

A third thing. Hmmm. I would like fandom to go back to feeling more interactive. It feels like before AO3 kudos became a thing, and we didn't have hit counters, that more people commented on fic even if they were just tiny short comments. It feels like people replied to day-in-the-life posts/tweets/whatever more. It feels like there were more conversations and less shouting into the void, regardless of whether it was you as the OP or you replying to someone else.

And I'm using "feels" deliberately here because it probably isn't true!! It probably isn't true. Fandom is bigger than ever, so it really can't be true, I don't think. But it sure does feel true! And, in the end, that is what is important to me. Feelings may not be facts but I think in lowstakes situations like this it's okay if they are.

Snowflake Challenge: A warmly light quaint street of shops at night with heavy snow falling.

Current Mood: sad
Current Location: the recliner in my living room
Current Music: Better Call Saul s03e10

the_wanlorn

Challenge #4: Rec The Contents Of Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

You know, I didn't think I had anything to rec for this. And I don't, really, I spend my time on AO3, bsky, mastodon (blorbo.social is the instance I'm on), and ravelry.

HOWEVER.

Two things to rec:

If you are into porny fandom bingo games and either Playboyy or Heated Rivalry, BOY HAVE I GOT A SITE FOR YOU. My friend admins it, but I built Fandom Bingo for him. I don't know about plans for future bingo games, but the two that are up there are great.

(Uh. If it's broken. Please let me know. I think I fixed all the bugs, but who knows. It's a website. There will always be bugs.)

SECOND:

Hey remember geocities? And then the whole thing was cruelly shut down and we lost tons of fan websites? WELL. There's this thing called neocities now and I have a webbed site there where I am slowly uploading my fic. Slowly. So very slowly. It's only got a handful at the moment, mostly A-Team (2010) but whatever. It's growing. Slowly.

Oh, and THIRD:

I haven't joined it yet but there's a fic webring that exists. So, yanno. Have fun with that everyone!

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: the library
Current Music: the heat pump because it's fucking cold outside so it's on constantly

the_wanlorn

Challenge #3: Write a love letter to fandom. It might be to fandom in general, to a particular fandom, favourite character, anything at all.

I! Am! So! Behind!

Okay this is probably more a love-letter to having friends than it is to fandom as a whole because, uh, you know how some large percentage of anything is garbage? That is true about fandom-as-a-whole, too.

But this is not about that. This is about finding your people.

It is (unfortunately?) not an exaggeration to say that without fandom, I would have like. No friends. I have met every single friend I have through fandom in one way or another. I am, after all, essentially a recluse in real life. And, I mean, once you're out of school how do you even make friends as an adult? Who knows.

(I mean, you leave the house and do things with groups of strangers, and then sometimes strangers turn into friends. But I digress.)

This is, perhaps, curmudgeonly of me, but I find great swathes of fandom intensely annoying and/or angry-making. What can I say! People have wrong opinions and put them out there on the internet for everyone to see!

The cool thing about having friends, though, is you can use them to curate your experience. Between blocking at the drop of a hat and mostly only following friends, I have gone from an Angry Youth, getting all het up about things, to a Normal Emotions Adult, who does not see things to get het up at.

The other cool as shit thing about friends is that you can convince them to join your fandoms and then you don't have to interact with people outside of your friend gr-

Oh my god. Am I also a recluse online??? Fuck. What the fuck. I need to think about this. Post aborted for today. wtf.

Current Mood: shocked
Current Location: the recliner in my living room
Current Music: Better Call Saul s01e06