singedsun

Day Twelve

Create a Rec Countdown.

5 Books I loved in 2024

• Lights On by Navessa Allen (Dark Romance)
• We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer (Weird House Horror)
• Magnolia Parks by Jessa Hastings (Modern Romance)
• Sing Backwards and Weep by Mark Lanegan (A memoir, PNW punk scene)
• The Space Between Worlds by Michaiah Johnson (Multiverse Sci-Fi)

4 Bands/Musicians I am currently obsessed with

• Boys Go To Jupiter (pop/disco) - Start with "Virginia"
• Sofia Isella (angry woman pop) - Start with "The Doll People"
• Maddie Zahm (pop) - Start with "If It's Not God"
• Matt Berry (of WWDITS fame - 60s pop by way of Orville Peck) - Start with "Silver Rings"

3 TV Shows I'm currently watching

• Elementary 2012 (rewatch) on Hulu
• Hysteria (an 80s Satanic Panic themed story with Bruce Campbell & Nolan North) on Peacock
• Nobody Asked (Mythbusters but with comedians) on Dropout

2 Games I'm playing

• Dragon Age: Veilguard (DRAGONS RPG)
• State of Decay 2: Juggernaut edition (Zombie post-apocalyptic solo base builder)

1 Fic I recently loved

• Home is Not a Place by bioloyg (a Sam/Evan fic from Dimension 20's Misfits and Magic)

Day Fourteen

In your own space, create your own fandom challenge.

In the comments, or in your own space, I'd love for people to share fics they love that have less than 10 comments or kudos (or something relatively low for the fandom/characters). I love to boost fics with a small reach and others should get the chance to experience them!

Window Shopping by gwendolyngrace (a Marvelous Mrs. Maisel - Lenny/Midge in SPACE)
An Understanding of Empty Hearts by tossawary (Dracula - scooby gang at tea)
Oh, The Grand Old Sargent of York by dwemma (Darren's actor change magically explained)

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.

I am not big on resolutions or goal setting at the new year, it's so hard to know what the year will bring and I hate the idea of getting halfway through the year and realizing something isn't possible because of circumstances that might be beyond my control. I keep a bullet journal (and have been keeping something like it since before 'bullet journals' were a thing) and use it pretty much daily. When there's something I want to work toward, I tend to brain dump a lot of little stage tasks that I know will help me get there.

For instance, I've been wanting to do a living room purge and rearrange for awhile now. Though money and circumstance have made that a little difficult. But in my bullet journal I have a task/brain dump page for all the little things that could be done. Like picking out a new sofa style even if I can't buy it yet. Or moving the television, which will facilitate space to move the old sofa where I'd like the new one when we can get it. Throwing away/Donating or Selling old media to make room and have less to move. That kind of thing. I don't work under the assumption that'll all happen in a month, let alone this year.

I also have a career goal of working my way into management. I've been a team lead several times, but every time I get there some circumstance, reorganization or timing issue gets in my way at the place I'm working. This isn't in my control and if I like the job (or place of my job) enough, I'll stay until something forces me to move on: contracts, environment, mergers. The goal still exists and I can still work with it in mind, talk to my manager to make those intentions known and watch for management positions, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get there. And that's okay to me, as long as I'm not drowning in stress or toxicity where I'm working (like I was last year) I don't mind staying where I am if all other conditions are workable.

Literally the only "goals" I make for myself are nice wants, nothing that I know at the end of the year I'll feel like I should have done. I do my best (my very virgo best) to live outside of the "shoulds" because it's not good for my mental health. My wants are usually daily things like: keeping a gratitude log, doing a duolingo lesson, a mimo lesson, a reiki session/practice or lesson, reading a little (no specific page or word count goal) & writing (if I can - again without a specific daily goal of words). None of these will I be mad at myself if I miss a day, none of these I "track" except for to put them in my bullet journal as daily tasks (so I'm not totaling up how many days I did the thing in a month or for the year). It's just for me, just for the day, and there's no stakes attached. Things like putting on moisturizer and chilling out before bed with an ASMR video... these things aren't even things I put as "to dos" they're just habits I want to do as much as I do brushing my teeth or taking my meds. So they don't get tracked at all.

I do track my written words throughout the year and I have a spreadsheet that auto-build charts for me by month and by project. But that's track the number of words written when I do write - with a GYWO out goal of 75k in a year because I know that's reasonable for me to achieve. Like using Goodreads to set a 40 books to read this year goal. They're low stakes, nothing in my life depends on those and they're not specific to 2022 anymore than any other year.

At this age in my life, I know what I'm capable of in a year (generally speaking) and I'm usually content to maintain and add to, if possible. I know in my last post I mentioned my media tracking, a thing I am big on doing -- but it's not for a purpose. It's literally meaningless, I just enjoy doing it.

I guess my issue is just that for me, I don't need an end date on my goal setting. They're all nice to haves, or interesting to do, and if I reach them... great! and if I don't, I don't.

With all that said, I did yesterday in my practice write down like the most general "goals" for this year. [As an aside, my mother in law gave me a Spell a Day journal for Christmas and my aim is to check it every day for things I could potentially enjoy working. January 1sts, obviously, was about goals and setting intentions for achievement. With that in mind I did set some goal intentions, but like I said in the most general/generic way possible.]

Also, I do choose a word every year as my overall intention. For 2022, it's SHINE. For me, "Shine" is just about putting my best foot forward, in work, in writing, in personal growth. My word for 2021 was "Growth" and I certainly did a lot of that. So for 2022 I want to use that to just be a little bit of a more content me, a happier me in a way that's outwardly noticeable to others.

So here's what I have for 2022:

1. To work towards a manager position at my new job (there's some training I might be able to take, and my manager left just a few days ago and I've been asked if it's something I'm interested in -- I said I was). I am very new to this job so if it doesn't happen in 2022 I can at least make some progress towards putting myself forward for a job like that.
2. I want to complete a NaNo month again. I had to forgo November about halfway through last year due to the job change, so I'd like to try one of the months (April, June or November) this year and make the 50k.
   For writing in general, my goal is only to write more than last year -- which in turn goes toward my 75k GYWO goal (I hit 76k last year.) 200k was definitely too big a reach for me.
3. I want to see the grandsons at least twice next year - either in Florida or have them here since very shortly the divorce paperwork will be settled and they'll be free to visit. Twice is doable given my vacation time at the new job and travel availability.

And that's really it for the year. Not that there aren't other things I want to do... pay off some bills, maybe get a new car, the living room thing I mentioned. But those aren't "GOALS" for me. If I go another whole year without making a dent in those... or I make a dent but don't finish the whole thing? That's fine by me.

Hey friends. So, in this Day #9 of the Snowflake Challenge (which I am definitely behind on) we're supposed to rec a fandom people might not know about. Okay and here's the thing. I WOULD LOVE to tell you all about the Dracula TV show from 2013. Especially now in these days of Moffat & Gatiss attempt that swung and missed pretty big. If you want a dramatically written, beautifully lit, cinematicly shot version of Dracula with very pretty people and very little substance, this TV show has you covered BIG TIME. It's no masterpiece, but it's beautiful and very gay and deserves more than what it was given. I wrote more about it here though, and so I recommend you go back and read that. It also has my second favorite TV show people don't seem to know about, Being Erica. Which is also on my always asks for Yuletide. So, give those a shot.



BUT if you're looking for something a little different, let me offer you this very interesting comic which is likely about to be everyone's buzzy horror/fantasy Netflix show.

LOCKE & KEY

You might have seen that this is about to become a Netflix series, and boy howdy am I excited for it. Locke and Key is a comic series from 2008-2010 written by Joe Hill (Stephen King's son and horror writer of a variety of things including Into the Tall Grass and Nos4a2) and illustrated by Gabriel Rodriguez (which earned him an Eisner Award nomination). The series came out in six acts (mini-series), each containing six issues. The first act was called Welcome to Lovecraft. You can buy the entire collection now as an omnibus. The whole six-act series is also available as an audiobook from Audible, performed like a radio play with foley work and a variety of voice actors (including Tatiana Maslany & Kate Mulgrew). I listened to it last year and I thought it was really, really well done. The upcoming Netflix series isn't it's first attempt at live action though. There was a movie deal early on, which got dropped and then FOX picked up the series and shot a pilot. When that was cancelled Hulu tried to pick it up and now it's in the hands of Netflix with Joe Hill rightfully on as writer/producer.

This is very strongly a horror series, with a lot of twists and turns. At it's core, it's about three kids (Tyler, Kinsey & Bode Locke) who move back to the boyhood home of their father after he passes away, leaving them the family estate, Keyhouse. It's an oddly large house in the backwoods of Massachusetts and the kids are not excited about living there. However, the kids learn that mysteries abound in this new strange house as they discover strange keys which open much more than just doors.

I don't want to say too much about the plot other than there's a lot of large puzzle pieces to how the story comes together. It's not exactly linear or chronological. It's deeply engaging though and it'll keep you on the edge of your seat. Bode Locke, the youngest of the Locke siblings will absolutely steal your heart and he's probably the best and the worst of them at all times.

If you're looking for shipping potential, you'll find it, especially as you meet Dodge who befriends Tyler and Kinsey at school. He spends a good deal of time at the Locke home and shares a lot of their exploits in looking for keys and discovering exactly how they work. There are others, but I really don't want to give all the characters away. Mostly though, this is a group piece, it's a family story and that's where 99% of the charm in this story comes from.

Yes, as the name of the first act might suggest, there is a (small) affiliation with the Lovecraftian mythos but it is very small and barely worth mentioning. If you're looking for a horror series, something with a touch of the fantastic, this is definitely worth checking out. While the characters at the center of the story are mostly children/teens, the subject lines can be very adult.

CW: blood, violence, death, depression



If you have a paid subscription with Comixology, the series is part of the Unlimited collection to read for free, here. If you're on Audible, the entire series is here in a 13 hour audio drama. Or find the comics wherever your local shops are, most good shops carry the collection for at least Welcome to Lovecraft. I'm sure a lot of places will be digging their copies out to sell as soon as the Netflix show airs too.

Watch on YouTube

I just came back from seeing Legend on a traditional movie screen at the Alamo in KC and that movie (is not greatest ever but) still holds up. I love everything about it, Tim Curry as Darkness, Tom Cruises baby face and no-pants forest boy, Mia Sara's gorgeous princess. It's heavenly.

Driving home from that though and taking about these things that I think still hold up, these pieces of nostalgia that don't loose strength for me, made me think about this post. Mostly because the dude that introduced the movie to us didn't seem to care about it. He knew stats about the movie, but he made a joke about Lili being stupid and Tom Cruise writing this movie off and the other, better, cooler things Ridley Scott has done. Didn't let it harsh my cool movie buzz, because very few things in life could ruin Legend for me in any way. But it did finally remind me of something I'm good at.

I'm not great about bragging on myself overall, especially not too other people. Like, year end reviews are always hard to write. But I've learned that the best way to get myself to write with them is to start with a good opener. For the last six or seven years I've started my year end self-reviews with some variation on "I'm great", "What I do for the team (besides being awesome)" that kind of thing. It sets the mood, maybe provides a laugh if I include a meme. Over the years, I've learned to regularly and as honestly as possible say nice things about myself.

I have had great benefit in the power of positivity, gratitude and what is called the 'wonder woman pose' (the physicality of the hands on hips, legs apart, head held high pose). I say that to say while I'm not very good about picking specific things that I can do well and saying "look at me", I AM good at building myself and other people up. I've done emcee work before, telling the audience "I don't know what version of the movie we're seeing" and "I always thought the princess was kind of dumb" and "yeah, this is the size audience I expected for this movie", is not the way to enamor your audience to you. The movie is cool and your audience is special because they already understand it's value. Except, I know I'm good at doing that for myself and the people around me as often as I can.



All of that said. I think I'm pretty good judge of character, especially face-to-face with people. For me, it's kind of a survivorship quality, when you grow up with certain adults in your life, learning who you can be vulnerable with and who you have to guard against is pretty important at a young age.

Maybe that's why I feel so strongly about character piece writing when I do fanfiction. I like getting into characters heads and exploring specific scenes and why certain choices were or weren't made. I like the intimacy of those scenes too, you have to be able to pick apart the person to put together internal character dialogue that feels right. I might not get it every time, but I think it's probably what I write most consistently and hopefully other people agree it's good.

Honestly, character motivation and dialogue. Two things I'm good at in life and hopefully just as good at (or better) in writing.

I'm great at a fanmix, I love music in general - I'm fucking great at music trivia (especially 80s and 90s stuff). But I don't think fanmixes are just songs you threw against the wall and hoped they stuck, and they're not necessarily just the songs you wrote to while you wrote a thing. I treat them like albums, looking at themes and ideas that merge the music with it's art. If I'd known that like music supervisor/soundtrack person was a job I could've had when I was little... that's like a dream job for me.

I don't post a lot of single pieces of fanfiction here, but I did recently wrap-up my Yuletide and Critmas of 2019 posts. I'm pretty proud of all six of the pieces I wrote - three for each exchange. So not for nothing, but the Yuletide stuff were all new fandoms for me. And this was my first Critmas exchange. So not bad overall to write six pieces and be pretty happy with all six.

I've also learned in the last week, I'm apparently very good at activating the 'get shit done' mode of my brain when I need to be the adult in the room. Having never dealt with some of that before, it's been kind of eye-opening for me. But also good to know that if I need to be the person with the chill-vibes who can get things done quick and quiet, I sure can be.

I always welcome new friends, whether you just show up as a subscription one day because you think we have some stuff in common (or want to) or you find me somewhere and make an introduction. The internet over the last twenty years has netted me some of my best and most lasting friendships and you can never have too many.

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.

For the last few years I swapped regularly writing just about everything with an extremely limited amount of RP I was doing on the board I ran. My creative drive sort of shriveled up in the last two years of running that place. It wasn't the board itself or even the RP, it was a toxic friendship combined with some real life emotionally draining things combined to just make me struggle for even a little bit of creativity. As much as RP invigorated my writing when I was doing it with just one or two partners six or seven years ago, the situation I was in on the board with this friend/co-admin just took the wind out of me. It wasn't just her though, I went through a few years where it seemed like every fandom friend I made just ghosted me, even ones I'd known for years. Kind of a blow to the ego, especially if you're writing/rping with them right up until it happens.

With this transition back to DW I've felt like I've caught back up with the person I was more than seven years ago. Back then I wanted to write and create and be involved with fandoms on more than just a lurker basis. I ran challenges and communities and swaps and felt like I could pick up anything and write it. Removing the toxic/bad stuff and coming here where people are talking and active has helped me connect a bit more. In the interim, Discord and the couple of D&D games I've picked up have also really helped with that.

Honestly I'm not sure what my actual writing process is right now. Mostly it's as simple as putting on some music videos from YouTube or firing up a playlist on Google Play, then just concentrating on what I want to write.

I was inspired after Yuletide to pick up a weird (for me) fic idea off someone's requests that I want to finish writing as a treat this year. What I've been doing with that is just trying to pick off a few sentences at a time. It's mostly dialogue at the moment so it's easy to just pick up and write a little bit every day.

I'm not setting a daily word goal or a sentence goal, just a goal to write every day. I did sign up for getyourwordsout at the 75k level to set myself a yearly goal. I remember from the last time I did it in 2013 or 2014 that I made my goal as long as I just agreed to write something every day. That's my plan again this year. (I've adapted the spreadsheet I used in 2014 for this year and am going to try and use that for keeping track of things.) I say I'm not setting daily goals but my spreadsheet does track them. There's color-coding to show me word count totals. I just don't think about it when I'm sitting down to write... I track it after and feel good if I've made a dent in my word count for the year.

I write in a variety of places. I use Google Drive and OneNote mostly. I find OneNote useful as sort of a monthly diary/tracker kind of thing (in addition to the bullet journal I take with me everywhere). If only OneNote had a word counter in it, I'd use it way more. So I kind of switch back and forth between OneNote (where I can build in a lot of subpages that are easily arrangeable) and Google Docs for like back-up/storage. I tend to think of OneNote as temporary housing for stuff, even though I have notebacks back to 2013.

When writing bigger projects, I'm a pantser. I dislike outlines, they make me feel constricted and I always hate seeing the conclusion of a thing before I've actually written it. I'm slowly trying to shake myself of that, trying to find a middle ground between plotting and pantsing longer stories. I feel like I'm putting a lot on this year to improve my writing and my writing habits. But I also feel like I've been stagnant so long I'm due for some growth.