Writing and Other Updates

[singedsun]

I have NEVER in all my years of fandom signed up for something like equityauction. I've never done the fandom auction thing before, I'm really wondering if there's something I'd be able to write this. But the last year or so has been stretching my own writing for fandom muscles. So maybe it's something I SHOULD do. Of course I don't write a lot of "popular" fandoms, which is why I haven't done these in the past. IDK

People who have done fandom auctions before, how have they gone for you. Have you sold stories, how'd it go, did you get strange requests or requests you felt like you couldn't write? Did you not sell anything at all? Mostly I'm curious about the answers to this. Have you offered and just never sold anything?

I haven't done much writing at all recently. I finished my jukebox_fest story, but that's about all I've done. I did start my intoabar story, but it's not done yet. I have plans though to finish it this week. I FINALLY have some time off Thursday/Friday and the following Monday of the week. Time off I desperately need, but also time off to write and play the new The Last of Us game when it comes out on Friday. I'm hoping I can pick it up that day from somewhere close by, like our Target. I don't pre-order games anymore, they never get here on time for me to start playing the day it comes out. Which I badly want to do without supporting a place like GameStop. ANYWAY.

I've almost finished (finally) my playthrough on Assassin's Creed Odyssey at 130+ hours. I adore this game so much that I kind of want to be completionist about it, which is not normally like me. But the game will continue to randomly generate quests for you in areas when you go back to them, and it's hard to turn those down when they're quick and dumb fun. I've also only got like two major story bits left to go, which I know I could knock out quickly if I really wanted to. Then it's just a matter of exploring and other quests and seeing what kind of trophies I can unlock.

As I mentioned in my New Music Friday post, I've also put my desktop computer back together in my new office location upstairs. I'm really enjoying it thus far, and I think it'll help me get back to writing most of all. I was really getting tired of writing in my cramped vanity space on my very small laptop. While I was on the bad tophiramate med for my migraines, I developed some severe nerve responses in my shoulders and upper arms which progressed into my forearms just as I was coming back down off of it. The new set up which lets me spread out at my desk has really helped eliminate it completely but I know my former work layout was definitely contributing to that pain.

Anyway, I'm also now in a room where the whole wall is basically a green screen. It's just the color we painting the walls forever ago when we were first preparing to have foster kids in the house. We wanted something fun and bright and this grass green color seemed perfect. Little did we know that people would be spending all that money on green screen curtains just a few years later as streaming really took off. We were just ahead of our time. :D

I've also got some more horror movie round-ups coming soon. My tolerance for bad horror movies is very high at this point. And I've watched some real stinkers through this process. Prime has a great source of both good and bad, but I might also expand to some of the Blumhouse movies on Hulu that I haven't yet watched. I've appreciated their quality before, better than some of these Prime ones.

Comments

[enemytosleep]

I did a fandom auction once on LJ and the story never got written/posted! xD

The TL;DR version goes:
-they also won an auction for a fanartist that I am very close with, and they asked us to team up
-they essentially requested the same exact story I had already written earlier that year
-they had such specific requests that each outline/draft I sent them got rejected
-they clearly wanted a very plotty, lengthy fic, which became stressful with all the above
-they, after a few months of this, made several public posts about leaving that particular fandom

It was frustrating for me, though it was my first time taking fic requests so I suppose that's to be expected.

I would say be very specific on DNW and fic lengths so that someone isn't requesting a chapter fic. I would also perhaps treat it more like a fic exchange where they provide some pairings and prompts with their DNW's in a letter. I think the biggest mistake I made was that I let them be too involved in the creation process for a $20 donation, and in the end nothing ever got done (the artist did a few sketches that got thrown out when the purchaser vetoed the matching story drafts).

[singedsun]

That sounds like a rough situation. I've done some commission work before so I know that people can be very peculiar about exactly what they want when they have something specific in mind. Good advice for setting limits/boundaries.

Thanks.

[enemytosleep]

Yeah, I've done plenty of fic exchanges and fests and have had very positive experiences there, but I think I let the money factor get too in the way, and in the end that led to the project dying (yes, it's great that they donated $20 to a charity of choice, but it's still fanfic so it should still be fun for all involved).

[senmut]

I have been doing Fandom Auctions since probably 2009? I think the first was in that year of LJ to DW migration, anyway.

Generally positive experience. I tend to accept far more detail from the winner for the story, and have only have one seem to fall flat with the winner (though with that one in grad school I could never tell if it was the fic or life that actually caused the flat)

[graygradient]

i've never done anything with a fandom auction, but best of luck!

are you also interested in ac: valhalla for when it comes out? i don't play them, but the friends i have that do play are excited.

[singedsun]

I'm very interested in Valhalla when it comes out. I've thoroughly enjoyed my now 130+ hour adventure into Odyssey. It was the first AC game I'd played in probably 8 or 9 years? And it's really been a lot of fun to explore when you literally have all of Greece at your feet. Given that they have gone with the male or female player character again for Valhalla, I'm willing to give it a shot when it comes out. It's made Odyssey so much more fun for me having a female player character.

[misura]

I signed up for a fandom auction last year with two offers: one was won by a person I 'knew' from exchanges (we'd never interacted much outside of AO3 comments, but they knew the sort of stuff I wrote and basically prompted for 'more of this rarepair, please') and the other was won by a person who'd e-mailed me about what they wanted before bidding.

(In my offer, I'd said something like 'please feel free to contact me to ask about specific fandoms/ships/prompts' which may have helped. I'll also second enemytosleep's advise, because yikes. Theirs does not sound like a fun experience.)