singedsun

Day Nine

In your own space, create a fanwork.

I have a fanmix for Marcus/Tomas from The Exorcist here (on YT - songs, not videos).

It's a lot of ballad-y alt rock for the most part.

Day Ten

In your own space, talk about one of your fandom firsts. This could be your first fandom, your first fandom friend, the first fanwork you created, the first fanwork you interacted with... The options are endless!

First fanwork - as I mentioned in Day 1, my first fanfic was for Firefly. It just felt like something I needed to write and I showed it to my boyfriend at the time and that was it. Sat in a notebook until I started writing other things.

I'm not sure it was my first fandom necessarily. If I had known about fandom as a teenager and had access to the internet, I probably would've been DEEP into Saved by the Bell fandom. It was hands-down my favorite show for most of my elementary and high school years.

My first fan community maybe oddly wasn't for any sort of media work, it was for a person - an artist. Somehow when I originally got on the internet, I found the artist Linda Bergkvist. She is a Swedish digital artist and at the time I was very very new to digital art and she was extremely talented at it. She went by 'enayla' online and had a forum of her own called Ebony Keep. (You can also still find some of her work here at DeviantArt.) I frequented and then eventually modded that forum for several years (pre-livejournal years) but it's where I met my very first online friends. Some of whom I still know and see in person from time to time.

Ebony Keep was an online home to me and when Linda was quite literally bullied offline for good the forum did eventually shut down. I will always always be mad at a part of the internet for that and these days, the sort of work she did is the type of work that wins awards. Truly ahead of her time. (If you like Linda's art style, you can look up Lauren K Cannon 'navate' who picked up her style and then took off with it.)

I don't know how many other people from Ebony Keep still write or do art, but occasionally I see one of them around online and it's a lovely bit of nostalgia. [Socar Myles, Laura Siadak, Levi Simpson, Darla Ecklund, Naomi Nowak, Julie Lichty]

Day Five

Talk about what has improved in your life thanks to fandom.

I met many good friends through fandom over the last twenty or so years. I've honed my writing ability both with and without collaborators. I've visited cool conventions with friends. I've met amazing writers I adore through fandom or fandom friends. I've also been able to introduce real life friends to things I love, fandom things we might not have enjoyed otherwise. Mostly I think as I've mentioned before, just having a community of any shared experience, is life changing on its own. It's a little like always have someone to sit with at lunch. It makes a difference.

Day Six

Share your favourite piece of original canon.

I've already talked about how much I love Dragon Age. It is probably the fandom I've ever best connected with. But that's a big series with a lot of bits and there's not one specific thing that stands out to me. I just like it. However, I just recently got a Dracula tattoo, so maybe let me talk about the part of that finally drove me to get a tattoo.

So, I've read the book a few times but last year a series of passages stuck out to me and so suddenly, like it took over my body in that moment and I had to sketch it out because I was so taken with it. It comes from a conversation in the book between Van Helsing and Dr. Seward. If you know the story, it takes place after Lucy's funeral. The group is returning via train and Arthur (Lucy's betrothed) makes a comment about the transfusions they were giving her and equates it with marriage. (Which given that all the men gave her blood would make her a polygamist.) Van Helsing is seized with 'hysterics' and barely contains himself until he and Dr. Seward make it to their train car. And of course, as you might in a sad moment and someone starts laughing, Jack looks at him like he's nuts. He asks Van Helsing what the fuck is going on with him, this is a sad thing and you're laughing? This is Van Helsing's reply:

“Keep it always with you that laughter who knock at your door and say, 'May I come in?' is not the true laughter. No! he is a king, and he come when and how he like. He ask no person; he choose no time of suitability. He say, 'I am here.' ... Oh, friend John, it is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall - all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. And believe me, friend John, that he is good to come, and kind. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come; and, like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again; and we bear to go on with our labour, what it may be.”

While this whole passage is fantastic, as Van Helsing is essentially reminding Jack that hey, sometimes life is weird and daunting and you feel weird about it. If laughter comes, let it come. To me though, the idea of King Laugh, laughter as and anthropomorphized being, who's arrived to make you feel laughter so strongly you can't ignore it. Like it's a tiny escape from life to be burdened with such laughter, that really stuck out to me.

I, as an auDHDer, who often has time feeling vulnerable and just feeling my feelings, need the reminder. Sometimes you have to feel the feeling that's coming to you whether it's joy or sadness. AND I'd prefer the laughter. 

Similarly there's a joke from Pete Holmes about being an easy or a hard laugh who says: 

"I'm an easy laugh. I don't know why people always make fun of people who are easy laughs. ... Worse than that people are proud of being hard laughs. ... What are you Nosferatu? Let some sunlight on your goddamn soul."

So I got a tattoo last week that says, "KING LAUGH" and I'm very happy with it.

I am planning to make my return here to DW. My social media landscape has been/is shrinking. I'm on tumblr daily but rarely post myself, I spent almost every day on TikTok but never posted anything myself, and I'm planning to delete both FB & IG in the coming days after the Zuck of it all. (I am on BlueSky and will try to post on there, but I've rarely been comfortable posting anything about me regularly anywhere but here and LJ back in ye olden days.

snowflake_challenge is as good a time as any to reintroduce myself.

So, Day One:

Update your fandom information.

In talking to a friend of mine the other night, we stumbled on a slip of tongue fusion that I'm sure, someone somewhere must've written already, but like if they haven't and people still have momentum for this fandom... please take this idea and make it a thing. We were talking about Fleabag, as this friend had rewatched the show while they were sick as a comfort watch and we got off on quite the tangent about how great Andrew Scott is as The Priest. However at one point in that chat they accidentally called him Moriarty instead of The Priest (they're a huge Sherlock fan) and OMG the possibilities. EITHER with Moriarty pretending to be a Priest to hide from Sherlock (wonderful thought) OR with the Fleabag format but with Sherlock as Fleabag. I mean the potential. And this is coming from someone who isn't really a Sherlock fan (not the Bendehoop Cucucumber version anyway, give me RDJ & Jude Law please). BUT STILL 🤯 Andrew Scott's flirty sneaky Moriarty is the best choice.

Honestly, I have A LOT of mental exercise fun in throwing random concepts together like this even if it's never something I would write (or maybe even read if someone did write it). Some of my very very very earliest fanfiction was retellings of things like Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood and things like that where it's SO EASY to exchange characters into a situation and find a reason for them to exist in this other universe and just figure out how their personality would fit.

In that same vein, it's one of the reasons I like things like the intoabar challenge, because it's all about taking characters from disparate fandoms and smashing them together under a very simple conceit, which is that they are both in a bar. I've done it twice and I think I want to try and do it again this year when it comes around, because I love it so much.

I'm not super interested in a lot of your typical AU formats - your coffee shops, your (high/univerity/magic) schools, whatever. They're not for me, but I can see why people like them. That said, one of the things I do like kind of mashing up (and this will come as no surprise to people who know me here) is that I love to take the premise of a song - something with a strong story preferred, and mashing it up with characters I find easy to write. I think that's also part of why I like fanmixes so much. To bring this full circle in fact, when I wrote a Fleabag story a few years ago for Yuletide, I kept the Priest's speech on love (that he gives in the finale) and sort of wove it through his whole thought process in this future moment when he see's Fleabag again some time in the future. I didn't call them out as speech bits... but it was import to me in the premise of the story that I felt like I was pulling those speech themes into the fic. An interesting adventure in writing for sure.

Less on the topic but I find kind of related is something that used to come up (for me anyway) during old fandom Alphabet challenges where I tried to figure out how on earth two very disconnected characters in a big character rich fandom (like Dragon Age) for example might get together and how they'd get along. It was part of the reason I created the whole ALL CHARACTERS ALL THE TIME pairing/prompt generator for Dragon Age. Like how can I just click a button and have a randomized pairing that I have to fit together somehow. Again, a fun brain exercise.

Nominations opened today for jukebox_fest

I missed out last year due to weird timing so I'm looking forward to this year. You all know I love music so very much so it took me a bit of time to figure out which songs I wanted to nominate. Then I had to somehow whittle that list down to seven songs only. That was a difficult task and I reached WAAAAAAY back to young me to find songs that I love very deeply. At least of them I've written to already, but I really want someone else's take too.

Anyway, if people would be interested in seeing what I'm nominating, I'll drop the songs with YT links below: ( jukebox nominations )
Also if anyone else plans to participate and has extra nomination places, I would totally be grateful for the chance to throw some other songs at you to nominate.

I recently posted both my Yuletide wrap-up (gifts given/received with a bonus list of recs) and my Critmas Exchange wrap-up (fics given/received). I also want to link my list of recs from last year too.

However, I do come bearing new recs. Because I've noticed most people are reccing fics which is totally okay and the form most of us probably are into most often, I thought maybe I'd do recs for a piece of art, a fanmix/playlist and a video (and probably also a fic, just to be thorough).



I want to start first with a vid for Anne with an E, which I'll tuck behind a cut for spoiler reasons. If you haven't finished the last season of Anne with an E, I'd recommend waiting to watch this.

( i think we should run. Anne and Gilbert )

I don't think I've shared this fanmix before. It's a playlist for The Adventure Zone: Dust campaign and it's very good. You can listen to it on Spotify here or through the embedded playlist below behind the cut.

( TAZ Dust by emilycea13 )

Something I don't think I've talked much about her is that I collect Tarot decks. I have about twenty, and there's probably one close by me no matter what room of the house I'm in. In recent episodes of Critical Role, we got a really good description of one of the cards in the deck of a character that's no longer with the group. savalirwood made an excellent version of this card that I'm in love with. It reminds me of a deck I have, the True Black Tarot which is all black and gold.

🌙 moon and mirror
__________________________#criticalrolefanart #CriticalRoleArt #CriticalRoleSpoilers #CriticalRole #mollymauk

— ryn (@savalirwood) January 11, 2020

Fic bonus round is a rec from the Critmas Exchange of an AU where it's Vex, not her brother, who ends up with Keyleth. Which is completely my jam.

grown accustomed to her face (4319 words) by celaenos
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Critical Role (Web Series)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Keyleth/Vex'ahlia (Critical Role)
Characters: Vex'ahlia (Critical Role), Keyleth (Critical Role), Vax'ildan (Critical Role), Vox Machina
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Critmas Exchange, One Shot, Holiday Fic Exchange, nature gals being pals and also making out
Summary:

She laughs, one of her nervous, awkward ones that has Vex’s lips twitching upwards into a fond smile. She watches as Keyleth tucks some of her hair behind her ear and looks up at the sky, feet kicking back and forth aimlessly as she reaches up to pet Trinket, and Vex sucks in a sharp breath.

Oh.

In my post about my fandom history, I talked a little about how I've gotten out of the habit of over-involvement in a lot of old fandom behavior. I wish I could say that's just a reaction from leaving LJ/DW for a long time. But that's not true since in that time I joined several communities and forums that I spent an inordinate amount of time running, organizing or participating. After closing my last forum a year and a half ago, I've gotten very used to the idea of not running a place again -- no matter how often that impulse creeps in. I'm happy with the majority of that impulse sitting on my shoulders as the DM for my weekly D&D game.

That said, in the year since I've started posting on DW again after being away from this style of posting for so long, I've found great fun in both snowflake_challenge and sunshine_challenge posting.



And again as I mentioned in the fandom history post, one of the fandom constants for me has been yuletide each year. This year I also participated in both justmarriedexcange & into_a_bar which provided fun challenges for writing Critical Role characters in a new way. In addition there was also critmas_exchange which was good fun (and I'll post more about after reveals on the 8th). I sometimes wish there was more Dragon Age content on DW since most of the old communities seem dead, but I was happy to find and participate in the black_emporium exchange.

Since returning to DW in late 2018, I've found several new friends from the the_great_tumblr_purge and addme_fandom communities, in addition to these other challenges. Those two, in addition to things like fandomcalendar are good regular follows.

I'm assuming most of you that are into fandom type things or fic-writing of any sort are familiar with Yuletide, but the new vintage promo images are really great and I couldn't help myself. Plus, I know several of you are newly back to fandom in general or have been thinking about Yuletide this year, so consider this a good reason to go check out it out.



I have finished Gideon the Ninth and feel as though I may never again read something so perfectly written for me. I mean, when I read Wicked Saints earlier this year I felt like it'd reached into my little goth heart and found the high fantasy novel that I'd never hoped to ask for. I feel like Gideon the Ninth has done the same thing but for SFF. Gideon the Ninth would be at home in the Warhammer 40K universe in a world where none of the Warhammer lore mattered and if the characters weren't all grumpy old men. (That's only slightly unfair to the WH universe, but not much.)

I've also finished watching the last season of Hap & Leonard. I read that they're not making a fourth season which honestly, it's probably okay. I mean, it'd be nice to go out on a bit of a sweeter note than the third season did, but I can see why it's not getting more attention. It's a hard show to be writing in a climate like ours and while the show tried it's best to address some really sensitive subjects, there's no getting around how bad really not necessary a show like that is. There are plenty of ways to write really lovely male friendship stories without setting them in so depressing a setting. That said, I enjoyed it for what it was, most especially James Purefoy and Michael Kenneth Williams work as Hap & Leonard. They were great.

Accidentally, I started watching Speechless on Hulu yesterday afternoon and now I'm over halfway done with the first season. I don't keep up with many sitcoms - Brooklyn 99, Superstore The Good Place being the only two I where I actually watch new episodes almost as soon as they air. I got out of the practice when we stopped watching cable. But, after finishing last week's episode of Superstore Hulu's auto-play feature started playing the first episode of Speechless when I got up to get a drink. I'd seen some gifs/screenshots of it on Tumblr, touting it's inclusivity, but I hadn't ever seen any of it for myself. And none of the stuff I'd seen for it ever included the fact that Minnie Driver (whom I love) plays the mom. So, Minnie Driver got my attention then I realized John Ross Bowie is the dad (whom I also love) and then I just sort of fell in love with the whole thing. I think I read that the series is done now? which is really too bad. I'm sorry I'm so late to it.

Matt and I had to wait a couple of hours while our cat Finn was at the groomers this afternoon, so we spent an hour and a half at the bookstore. I picked up the new Felicia Day book, which was on the 20% table. I'm about 60 pages into it. It's a quick read because there's a lot of places for activities (which I'm not doing). It's all about unlocking your creativity and releasing anxiety about making new things, which isn't something I need specifically but I think it'll be good for Matt to look at after I go back to work on Tuesday. I told him I'd finish reading it and then hand it over for him to actually mark up as he does the activities. I started reading Wayward Son last night and got a few chapters in, but I'm going to put it off so I can finish this as quickly as possible.

For Challenge #2 sunshine_challenge

In my first post here, I mentioned that I'd shut down my old DW account which made in the LJ exodus days. For about 18 years everywhere I went online was under the username cherith (my now private LJ is still under that name and my IG account is still under cherithe (when cherith was taken). I'd chosen that name... long before I was going online. I'd grown up in a very strict fundamental Baptist upbringing and I used to read a lot of the Strong's Concordance which is basically a research tool for Bible students to find the original Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic used in the Bible. I found Cherith during research of Elijah the Prophet in 1 Kings. God tells Elijah to go to Cherith, which is like a ravine or a brook, during a long drought so Elijah would have access to water. In the lesson I was researching Cherith is described less as a location but as a passage of time where Elijah was cut off from the world, similar to the way God cut off other of his favorites in order to make them reliant on him. Regardless of my beliefs (I've never bought into Christianity even when I lived deep, deep in it for a long time) I liked the name, Cherith. I held onto it and when I needed a name online, it was the one I reached for.

Last year, after some fallout with some friends I needed a fresh start. Something different, something where those people couldn't/wouldn't find me or seek me out. At the time, I'd created a Pinterest account under the name storminme related to a poem that I love by Andrea Gibson. I have a line from their poem "I Sing the Body Electric (but Only When My Power's Out) tattoed on my arm. Andrea wrote the poem about their fight with a chronic illness and as someone with Fibromyalgia and who has been through some pretty emotionally rough spots, it resonates a lot with me. Specifically this part:

I said to the sun
tell me about the Big Bang
The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'

My tattoo says, "it hurts to become", as a reminder that sometimes we go through some real awful shit and if we can make it through that, we can make it through anything. Our past mistakes and challenges make us who we are for good or bad. I find sometimes it helps when I'm going through a rough patch to look at my arm and remember what I've made it through so far.

There was a second part to coming up with singedsun too. Those people I was trying to avoid, they renamed something we were working on together "and so we burned". And I don't know the combination of me seeing Andrea perform this poem I love so much, in person, twice last year and this idea that these people were cognizant of what they were doing, purposefully burning bridges with me. The name singedsun felt appropriate. So most of the place I hang out regularly, DW and Tumblr and Twitter all became that name. Honestly, I love it and I plan to keep it awhile. I miss using Cherith, I'd hung on to it for SO VERY LONG and sometimes I think about changing it back. What it's done for me though, feeling free of old ties, and allowing me a space to kind of come back to fandom in a way I'd gotten away from has made me really happy.

As pronouns I use she/her though I tend to dress and keep my hair pretty androgynous. I'm bi, though I'm not out to my parents and don't ever plan to be unless I feel it's necessary. Because of my religious upbringing I didn't really realize what I was, or what those feelings were until I started dating in my 20s. And I wasn't even really able to admit that feeling to myself or my friends until after I had a serious boyfriend who loved me regardless. We've been married almost 14 years, adopted a daughter, have two grandsons and coming out to my conservative family feels like unnecessary drama. The people in my life who need to know, know.

As for my fannish identity, for what it is, I joined a lot of writing communities in my early days on LJ in the early aughts. Most of my writing was original fiction in those spaces, but through them, I found some really great fan communities/challenges and participated as an artist in a few big bangs because I love to put together a fanmix. I joined a gaming community and through it I met a friend who eventually created a gaming news and reviews website for women and I joined as a writer, and eventually became the Editor in Chief there. It's gone now, I left in about 2010 due to some real life changes (like adopting a teenager and losing my full time job). But about the same time I got really, really into the Dragon Age series and starting RPing in that universe on a few sites. It didn't take long for that to translate into fic writing. My AO3 account at the time was sparse - mostly based on fairytales from community prompts and like the one Buffy and one Firefly fic I'd written. Quickly, it filled up with Dragon Age fics. They're not all good or finished, but there's definitely a lot of them. I've done Yuletide about every year since 2009 and while DA isn't my main "fandom" anymore (I'm not sure I have a main one right now) it's definitely the one where my heart most lives.

You'll find here, aside from my rambling entries on life and fandom, a good deal of music and YT videos because that's where I spend a lot of time these days. Music and concerts are my vice, I don't drink or smoke so my expendable income, what it is, goes to concert tickets. Now that my daughter is married and has kids of her own and it's just me and my husband at home, I watch a lot of TV too. When Yuletide comes around, I'm likely to hang my hat on a variety of fannish offerings from recent television or movies in addition to whatever odd things strikes my fancy. Though, you can pry my request for Lucy/Mina from the 2013 Dracula TV show out of my cold, undead fingers.

Anyway that's me. A lot about me, too much maybe. Questions or chats always welcome.

Day Five of wipweek

So strangely, the few times I've attempted a crossover type story or a distinct AU, I've usually finished it. Below is an excerpt from one Modern AU I worked on for awhile. I've attempted some Modern AUs with Bethany Hawke as if Kirkwall was a new city she and her siblings were trying to navigate on their own. I didn't get far in this one. This bit of dialogue is between Bethany and an original character of mine, a fortune-teller I've written in a few different settings.

“So. I’m sort of new? In town?” she began, voice lilting as she searched for the right question. “And kind of on my own for a little while. I’ve been wondering about the future. I need to make a decision about something and I’m not sure.. what to do.”

“You’re looking for a nudge in the right direction?” Silar asked.

Bethany shrugged almost apologetic. “Yes.” She met Silar’s gaze, brow knit in worry. “Is that- do you do that?”

She gave Bethany a toothy grin. “If you like.” Fortune-telling was only one of many of Silar’s talents, but it was the one immediately in question. With a nod she indicated the tools on the table. “I can use any, or all of these. Do you know anything about them?”

“The cards, I’ve heard that people use them- but that’s a Diamondback deck, not-”

She chuckled. “I use whatever I can lay my hands on. Diamondback is as much a gamble as any other part of life.” Tilting her head she added, “Seemed appropriate.”

Bonus Question: What is your most used AO3 tag?
Other than the times I've written and tagged something for Femslash February, Angst is my most used tagged. Although to be fair, back in the early days, I never tagged my fics very well so 6 shared tags among over 100 fics isn't much to speak for.