Laughter Through Tears

alias_sqbr made a whole list of fandom things to do during the plague.

This Pride & Prejudice comment fic written in response to one of them looks interesting.

allbingo is having a food fest for the month of March, and they have several fun public cards.

fan_flashworks prompt for the week is circle.

I've been fulfilling my radio needs here because listening to YouTube brings up too many news video suggestions.

I've been sinking into writing lots of fanfic, which is a thing that happens sometimes when I'm going through a rough patch. My peak points of writing fic in three of my last four fandoms corresponded to periods of depression, health problems, crap jobs, low grades, etc.

But this time, this time I was supposed to channel it into writing original fiction. And for a while it was even working. I had developed a cast of characters that I liked, I had clear growth arcs for them all. I had even outlined about two thirds of the plot, in great detail.

Now I'm jammed, and I feel like shit about everything most days. So I'm back to fanfic.

I mean, there's an arc and everything, and fuck knows I have an entire supporting cats outlined in my mind...

But this wasn't the plan.

Yesterday was a bad day and for some reason that meant today was a bad day, too. I had a plan and everything. Maybe I can still muster the energy to, IDK, fold laundry or something. To give myself more of a feeling that I did something today, other than wallowing in self-pity. And washing my hair.

About six years ago, I spent six or seven months writing an "epic" multi-chapter fanfic anonymously on an LJ prompt meme. I was sunk so deep into it. I was obsessed with it. I was madly in love with it.

I never finished it.

I was writing other stories in the same fandom at the time, the fandom that ate my life (another recurring story for me). I got caught up in other things so that thinking about updating the story had me unbelievably anxious. I spent a long time after (what turned out to be) my final update scheming and guilting myself about how I would eventually finish it. Some time after I ghosted on the fandom altogether, I spent a fair amount of time telling myself that I would clean up what existed of it and post it to my AO3 with a final note saying I was out of the fandom and it would never be complete.

Today yesterday I was going through some outlining guides for writers and trying to take notes about how my different stories fit into the mold or don't. Part of my ongoing attempt to create some sort of writing style for myself that I can apply reliably to writing long-form. I was going to note this fic for its planned resolution (which I never reached, but still had an outline for), and I realized I had completely forgotten its name. For a while I had kept the document I was writing it in on-hand, and in my Dropbox, but my desktop of the time died and the doc is now buried somewhere in my backup drive.

I did finally locate it and add that note. And that fic is still to this day one of my most successful attempts at longfic. Which is rather tragic I suppose. Since then I've ghosted on at least two more major fandoms. And I have made peace with my tendency to leave stories unfinished, although I still try hard not to let it happen.

Yesterday I lost a whole day's worth of chores and writing time, because I woke up with both a migraine and the most appalling neck pain. I keep trying to sleep on my back, which is supposedly much healthier, but the most I seem to manage is sleeping on my side with my legs folded. Today I'm much better overall, but turning my head to the left is still a little chancy.

The Einat award deadline came and went and once again I did not manage to produce a coherent, complete story I could consider entering. Writing in Hebrew has become so difficult. Of course, July was a pretty frenetic month, and August so far not much easier. My Jerusalem apartment for example is not yet fully put together, and I insisted with my family to put off celebrating my birthday by a month because my mind is collapsing under the weight of too many considering.

7KPP the game continues to be a massive time-sink, although I have hit my first snag in the new fandom honeymoon phase. Naturally, this was mostly due to my own issues and projections, and has very little to do with other people's actual behavior. But yet, I have to navigate this feeling of reality seeping into my fluffy pink cotton candy clouds of fangirl euphoria. On the bright side, the Kickstarter and Greenlight campaigns both seem to be doing uncommonly well. And in September the alpha updates ought to start becoming regularly available.

When the alpha first hits I will probably drop off the radar for a day or two. I'm not going to resist this, it seems futile, and as much as I refuse to call myself a gamer I am susceptible to the same psychological traps. I have already fallen down the fanfic rabbit hole after all. This does not, however, seem like a fandom primed for porn. Curiously enough, since there are arranged marriages and virtue considerations and all that celibacy stuff tends to inspire more porn rather than less.

Modesty is a form of kink, after all. Isn't that why Venus always uses one hand to hide herself in all the Renaissance paintings?

My characters beckon. Right now they seem interested in discussing the progression of multiple assassination attempts, and how exactly that is meant to lead to a sexual quasi-romantic relationship. So, that's what I'm going to try writing.

Today I spent a lot of time reading in bed, replied to some comments on fic, posted/crossposted some fic, wiped down part of the kitchen counter, swept the living room floor, and wrote my words.

I also watched the first episode(s) of The Librarians, which a friend billed to me as "American Dr. Who, except with less of the stuff you hate (and I love)." That seems mostly accurate. Noah Wyle is aggressively channeling Matt Smith, which I'm okay with. Eccentric white dudes still take front and center, and they have that male-genius-female-caretaker act going on. But then again, they name it explicitly way at the start, which is interesting to me.

One of the fics I posted is one that I wrote over months and angsted over a lot. Also, it will probably be my last Dragon Age fic, at least for a while. Maybe a long while. The fandom cycle continues, but at least the disenchantment didn't culminate in a total disappearing act. In better fandom news, purimgifts is going pretty well, if not as prompt and early as I'd've liked.

Some of that dust from sweeping got down my throat. Just means I need to sweep more diligently and not allow it to build up like that.

It's reading Friday, because I was too tired to post anything earlier this week.

I may have forgotten to mention that I started reading Captive Prince. I finished the second volume this week, reading at breakneck speed whenever I wasn't at work or too tired to focus. Now I'm taking a break to read the fourth (final?) Rain Wilds book from Robin Hobb. This series is much patchier and more uneven than anything else I've read by her.

But dragons, right? The main relationship arc in the book is clearly between keeper and dragon, and it's fantastic and fascinating to me. Unlike the human male ~love interests~ which are as terrible as that set of words implies. I dreamed some sort of weird dragon keeper meta last night (or early this morning) but sadly didn't think to fix the details in my mind.

This makes me want to write a dragon A/U, but one that's totally different in the emotional dynamics than what I had been contemplating so far.

I sniffed around my AO3 stats page and found very few surprises, except that four people subscribed to my fics, and all of them were completed ones. What did entertain me was trying to suss out the hits-to-kudos ratio and where it was lowest. There could be all sorts of causes for a low ratio, but the main contributers are, I think, small fandoms and rarepairs. Also, some fandoms are just more awesome like that (c.f. Cinders).

Naturally, this is not an accurate science, especially since AO3 doesn't generate this stat. I started from the fics with the lowest hit count as the immediate suspects. ( Hits/Kudos Ratio )

My second-least-hit fic of 2013 has the highest ratio, and the only single digit figure. As I said, I attribute this more to an unusually low hit count due to backdating.

Predictions: ( Not much will change. )

I am equal parts terrified that I will get a job and go back to working full-time soon, and horrified that I might not get a job for a long time and spend weeks or months at home free to write fic and watch TV. If I get to used to staying at home I don't know how I'll stay motivated in the depressing race to find a job, but I know that no matter how much I might miss all this free time, if I stay unemployed for too long I'll start going bonkers. (That's a technical medical term.)

I could easily fill this time, for weeks or months on end. That's probably the worst part of this situation, how trivially easy it would be to give up and let it go on indefinitely.

In this time of great stress and confusion, I draw a lot of comfort from reading kink_bingo rules posts.

The dermatologist said he can't confirm psoriasis, though I am unsure of what practical implications this has. On a less cheerful note, I almost certainly have a cavity. Next on the agenda is a big dental x-ray... along with a zillion other chores I can't seem to keep track of.

Mostly I just want to blog forever, as though that would somehow magically force my thoughts into order. As though the chaos isn't a quality that is inherent to my life in particular and more generally to the human condition. At least I hope it is, otherwise I have been cheating no one but myself.

Self-teaching has become more difficult since my concentration is all over the place. I used to be so much better than this. Hard to motivate myself when all I really what is... to slink back into bed? To put everything out of my mind? Not to think?

Tonight I see the psychiatrist. A late appointment. I am crossing all the appendages.

Friending meme! To be clear, I love the pants off Tumblr, I have nothing against it and I've been having a hell of a time, there. But, I would like to enrich my DW circle so that I can use Tumblr as it is best used and post my long, elaborate (and possibly controversial) metas to a journal setting, where they work best.

ETA: My comment for the curious.