EXCHANGE INTERFACE

Seen with flamebyrd and theladyscribe:

I have 854 works posted on AO3, and that's not actually the complete set. I have a lot of pre-2008 fic that has never made it onto AO3 (SG1, Justice League, Angel, Buffy, SGA) and which I simply don't have the time or inclination to transfer over. (Not to mention no wish to spam my poor subscribers.)

( Some summary numbers )

Oh, well that's no surprise. Equally tied first is:

1 Fake Dating/Fake Marriage Accidentally Turns Into Feelings
1 Soulmate Identifying Marks (Tattoo, Red Thread of Fate, etc)
1 Seemingly Unrequited Pining
( ALL THE TROPES (well, not all, but quite a few) )

I wrote a crossovering pinch hit. See if you can pick it.

(I didn't get a gift because I didn't sign up and they don't have a gift option for pinch-hitters-who-aren't-participants.)

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I've been out of work since the start of October, and pretty much absent from DW since then. If life crises have happened and I wasn't there for you, I'm sorry. *hugs*

Basically, my work contract finished on the 28th September, but the client that I was with before that hasn't asked for me back (or the company I was contracting to the client with has filled it with one of their employees), so I'm doing rather less than I feel I should (but more than I'd get done if I was at work.

Writing has been singularly awful - well, one week I managed about 10K, but it's been pretty much zilch since then.

Gardening things are going okay but not spectacular. I keep putting off netting some of the fruit trees, and the result is almost certainly going to be NO FRUIT.

Also, I did some soil tests and the lead levels in one of the beds concerned me - particularly since I've been having neural/sensation issues in the hand and foot for a while now. But I'm getting some more testing done, and I might have to move operations to the frontyard, which makes gardening a rather public event, but might be good for community?

On Saturday afternoon, I drove over a bolt and bust one of my wheels, luckily I was able to pull in somewhere to change the tyre to the spare, but I need to get it to an automechanic this morning ASAP.

Things to do this week:
1. write for a couple of hours each day
2. put together a compost bin/heap/thing
3. sew up exclusion bags to protect fruit and put them on the branches
4. finish a quilt top
5. sew together a dress for the parties on the weekend

And I really have to bury the part of me that keeps saying "if you'd done some of this last week instead of lazing about for the entirety of the week, then you wouldn't have to do it all this week!"

(That may be true, oh sanctimonious brainweasel of mine, but it is not helpful and I am going to drop an ACME tonne weight on you. Bye-bye!)

Monday morning after a pre-season hockey game. Not everything hurts (although the big toe joint is a bit iffy).

I played pretty well, and it was a surprisingly nice opposing team - the teams in the pre-season are usually rather bitchy, but they were on their best behaviour. Ooh, and I scored the one goal in the game! (Okay, I touched it, several opponents touched it, it slid in behind the goalie. I'll take it.)

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I'm kicking myself over an email I sent. I'm not sure that my chosen means of mentally dealing with it ("the people who received it don't think well of me in the first place, so it can't get any worse") is helpful, but it's all I have.

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The last chapter of sedoretu has been like pulling teeth. But Natasha finally spit her piece out. Bucky is halfway through. And then it's just Maria, who's hard to work around with the feelings, but I'll get her there.

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The thing I'm working on right now is weird. I was given example code in an existing program and asked to make it work for another program.

1. The example code has a syntax error.

2. Even once the syntax error is cleared, the example code is requesting something, getting back a response, and parsing the response, but the answer we're parsing doesn't seem to change whether the response says "yes, this is valid" or "no it's not valid".

3. The response that we're getting back does not provide the information that we were looking for in submitting the request.

And now I have to ask the guy (senior analyst, tech lead) who put the code in what he thinks it does, and how he tested it. And, let's be frank: this is unlikely to end well.

--

Why is it Monday? Ugh.

( many words, so stuff, write )

My YT fics are doing pretty well - one better than the other. They're in the same fandom for two different people, which is also a fandom I've written in before although not for YT. The really enjoyable thing is how multiple people have mentioned a certain ambiguity I echoed from the original canon. That was very much the idea - to leave that question up in the air, which is half the charm of the canon in the first place (the other being the very distinct characters).

So I've just posted 800 fics to AO3 according to my Works page. However, the number is probably closer to 805 - I have a handful of fics in Anonymous comms, and a few which are as yet unrevealed.

1. What’s your first and second most common work ratings? Any surprises?
General Audiences (317)
Teen And Up Audiences (291)

Nope. No surprises there. I write a reasonable amount of smut (comparative to my output) - Explicit rating has 95 fics, and Mature hs 92, although I suspect 'Mature' is mostly for torture and edgy situations. Weirdly, 5 fics aren't rated at all. Now I'm curious about those...

2. What’s your most common archive warning? Least common? Do you consider yourself an adventurous writer?
No Archive Warnings Apply (677) is the highest while Rape/Non-Con (13) and Major Character Death (13) are tied for the lowest.

I don't think 'adventurous' is defined by the ability to write things with warnings on it. I mean, anyone can be a shock jock if they just want to push boundaries. Writing things that challenge characterisation, that make people think of situations in new ways, that add new perspectives to situations that might not have otherwise been done before - that's my idea of 'adventurous'.

3. How many fics have you written in each relationship category? Is this more accidental, or do you have preferences?
F/M (433)
Gen (402)
M/M (13)
Multi (12)
F/F (10)

I'm het and gen pretty much all the way. It's both a preference, and a deliberate choice to write respectful relationships between men and women as a model - to pave the way forward, so to speak.

4. What are your top 4 fandoms by numbers? Are you still active in any of them, and do you tend to migrate a lot?
Stargate Atlantis (266)
Marvel Cinematic Universe (222)
The Avengers (Marvel Movies) (88)
Pacific Rim (Movies) (65)

Still active in MCU/Avengers, but that's about it.

I started tagging things with 'The Avengers' before the MCU tag really got on. If I merge The Avengers and the fandom in fifth position (Captain America movies) into the MCU tag, then the next fandom down is Stargate SG1 with 47 fics on AO3. I'm sure I have more elsehwere as yet unposted, though.

5. What are your top character tags? Does this match how you feel about the characters, or are you puzzled?
Teyla Emmagan (223)
John Sheppard (207)
Maria Hill (206)
Steve Rogers (167)

Yeah, that's pretty much par for the course, I think. The only reason Maria slowed down was because she wasn't in Civil War and doesn't seem to be in the next Avengers movies, so I haven't had quite as much impetus to write her. Mostly AUs at this point. Ah well, a couple more fics, and she'll have surpassed John.

6. What are your top 2 most used additional tags, and your bottom 2? What would happen if you combined all 4 of these into a fic?
Top 2:
Friendship (173)
Angst (121)

Bottom 2:
Love (37)
Vignette (36)

And combining all four together is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel. Then again, the Vignette tag (which I use for something short - usually <1000 words) could prove challenging.

7. How many WIPs do you have currently running on AO3? Any you don’t plan on finishing?
According to the AO3 count, I have 18 incomplete works (Complete count = 782, Total works count = 800). However a search for 'Work In Progress' as an additional tag only nets 5 stories - all of them big MCU epics. *sigh*

downright complicated: or the MCU sedoretu fic. I'm waiting on the next chapter to come back from the beta and kind of dreading it, TBH.

Always On Your Side: or the one where Maria and Pepper make off with Bucky from the CIA facility in Berlin.

A Practical Acquaintance With Bees: or the story of Maria and the Winter Soldier where the next, unwritten, unplanned chapter goes seriously off-canon...

Sokovia, Suburbia, and the Senate: or the one where Steve comes to stay with Maria's family and learns a lot about himself and Maria at the same time.

The Right Hand Knows Not: or the original idea for a Practical Acquaintance With Bees, which, again, got too epic to handle (and got seriously derailed by TWS).

I pulled the sedoretu fic out of the WIP Big Bang. They were having trouble finding anyone to make art for me, and it's not going to get any better. Plus, the story isn't exactly speeding along. If I get it done by the end of the year, I think I'll be pretty impressed with myself.

The Wonder Woman movie produced a few plotbunnies, but they're neither particularly long ideas nor terribly brilliant. I'd kind of like to get back into writing Batman/Wonder Woman again, though, and that might become possible as the JL movie looms loomingly.

I don't think I can commit to anything in the next two weeks, though. I have a quilt that needs to be completed and handed in by the 14th, and I haven't even finished all the blocks. Plus, my life has gotten a wee smidge out of control lately with work and socialising and everything.

The sedoretu is coming along. I may have to skip Maria's "wait, wtf" scene with T'Challa, because I don't actually have enough space in this section. I'm trying to make each 'chapter' of the story ~3500 words, but so far we're at 1900 and I've just managed to introduce the complication. And Bucky has interrupted it as per the plan.

Now we need to have the conversation about Bucky and Steve, Maria and Steve, and Sharon and Steve, and then I was hoping there'd be room for T'Challa and Maria, but I'm doubtful.

After that, Natasha gives her opinion on EVERYTHING and starts trying to staunch the bleeding (metaphorically, not actually).

I guess this story is at the usual stage of "HIT THE PANIC BUTTONS, ALL RELEVANT PLOTBUNNIES TO THEIR STATIONS" given my life busyness right now and the due date for the wipbigbang which is Mid-June (right around the same time as my quilts for the show are due; JOY).

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I took a PH for a fic exchange that I can't specify because specifying it will instantly out me as the author (as though the story itself won't).

Why did I do this? Because...I don't even know why, only that I've made my situation a lot more complicated right when I don't need to.

Self? You suck.

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Two fic exchange reveals (as though it wasn't immediately obvious).

worldbuildingex

TITLE: All The Daughters Of My Father's House
SUMMARY: Lyra and Jyn Erso bouncing around a universe where the shadow of the Empire is growing longer.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Lyra Erso, Jyn Erso, Saw Gerrera, Chirrut Imwe/Baze Malbus
TAGS: Alternate Universe (canon divergence), Jedha, Lyra survives, Mother Bear, Celebrations on
RATINGS: Gen
NOTES: My assignment asked for "rogue one: give me those ladies *grabby hands* i’m super interested in the structure of the rebel alliance as well as seeing women in positions of power/getting to tell their stories *cough*lyra*cough*. alternatively, my gay azn fathers. (tell me about the jedi temple! and chirrut’s relationship with it! and chirrut/baze ofc)". There were two more chapters planned, where Lyra goes to the Rebel Alliance and tries to keep Jyn from becoming a child soldier, but I didn't get to them. The worldbuilding for Alderaan academical structures was just a little more than my brain could take at the time.

It wasn't particularly well received, but then, it's not a particularly stellar story, IMO.

My smutswap was immediately identifiable:

TITLE: Trust Tease
SUMMARY: Going slow, going deep, playing games with someone you trust with your body and your vulnerabilities.
CHARACTERS/PAIRINGS: Maria Hill/Steve Rogers, Thor (cameo)
TAGS: Smut, Oral Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Fucked Raw, Sex
RATINGS: NC-17
NOTES: I had sunspot on my treats list anyway, because I never get assigned the Maria/Steve prompts...and lo and behold, I got assigned to them! So I wrote smut. It's very vanilla smut at this point, although they discuss/negotiate kink for later times, and I was planning to write the later times, only again, the due date defeated me.

I got a bit of flak on this one for forgetting that it was smut and labelling it 'G', which then had a whole bunch of people clicking on the story to check that I hadn't signed up for a smut swap and then written non-smut. However, I found it somewhat amusing that someone on FFA apparently gathered their courage, closed their eyes, and searched for oral sex in the story - OMG THE HET SEX IT BURNS MY EYEN!

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Otherwise, April was spent in Camp NaNo trying to write original fiction - back to the Shadowkids again. I have the structure, I just have to concentrate enough to write it, dammit.

So May: write fic, make quilts, seek job, get winter garden in, score goals for hockey, cook for self...

I'm enjoying the time off; time to quilt, to write, to plant my garden. However, my sister is getting tense about not having any income (hers, in particular, but mine also).

I have gotten a lot of quilting done! Including making a pussy hat block:



It's only 5.5" unfinished - 5" square finished - but is going to be in the corners of the Sydney Mod SQuaD (Sewists, Quilters, and Dressmakers) Group quilt for the year, photos of which I will have up later. It was a round robin, and I did the centre medallion, and half of the outermost border.

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Jaw is not getting better. It's not getting worse, so far as I can tell, but it's not getting better. I haven't spoken to the oral surgeon just yet; we're going with some osteopath work first. *shrugs*

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On Friday, I'm doing nails for a dozen women from a far north set of islands who have come down to Sydney for the Mardi Gras. Apparently they're trans, and a friend asked me if I was interested/willing to help with giving them manicures. Sure thing!

I should really do my own nails before then; they've been natural for a few days after repeated manicures and polishes, just giving them a bit of time to recover (but not too much, otherwise they split).

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Writing; very little inspiration to write. Will have to get back into the 20 minutes every hour writing that produced some of my longer works.

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I have not been posting about politics; things are getting bad here, too. I really have to broach the matter of getting a group together to the friend I'm sitting and sewing with this morning. Even some protest will let our (conservative) member know that we don't like what his party is doing.