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 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 continue exist quietly, busy and kind of slightly but not completely burnt out. I have a major project at work that launches labor day weekend, and every day between now and then is full of things I likely will not finish in time. *shrugs* I've learned to just put it on a list rank by importance and do my best. When I'm not working, I've been spending a lot of time reading. Matt and I went to CONvergence in Minneapolis last weekend - a little be to at the con, and a little just to be away from home - and I read like three books while we were there between panels and movies and whatnot. I've finished two more in the week since we've been back. My goal on Goodreads was 40 books for this year and the next book I finish will get me there.

Books I've finished recently:
Go Hunt Me by Kelly deVos -  A group of high school seniors somehow raise enough movie and the help of a famous actress to travel to Transylvanian to shoot a movie ad Dracula's castle. This is written like a slasher almost, the premise of shooting a movie goes away almost immediately. The main character is weird and I really hated most everything about this book. Do not recommend. 1/5

Alien: Out of Shadow by Tim Lebbon (canonical post Alien book) - I did the audiobook for this one and it was great. Felt like an Alien story and the woman who read for Ripley sounded very much like Sigourney Weaver. Didn't really connect with all the new people we're introduced to (and you know, lose shortly after). 3.5/5

Beneath the Stairs by Jennifer Fawcett - idk what this book was trying to be but it wasn't very scary, and the story felt underbaked. 3/5

The Darkwater Bride by Marty Ross - this was an Audible original, and it was awful but short so I did finish it. It's an extremely misogynistic tale about a Scottish woman who travels to London to investigate her father's death and she finds out he was not a good person... and also there might be a ghost to blame? 2/5

Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo - a kind of haunting modern supernatural & also dark acadamia novel about a college student who inherits everything from his best friend/kind of foster sibling/maybe something more, after this friend dies. He gets embedded with his dead friend's friends, shenanigans and spooky things ensue as the main character tries to unravel what happened to his friend. I really like this one by the end, but the MC is not likeable for a good portion of the beginning. It's GAY. 4/5

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé - a like new adult dark acadamia about two black students a prestigious private school. Someone starts spilling secrets about these two students who don't really know or interact at all until their lives begin to unravel as more secrets are outed. This is Very Gay and has a lot of classism & racism commentary baked in. Also very good, quick read. 4/5

A Magic Steeped in Poison by Judy I. Lin - a fantastical story about a woman who travels to the heart of the Empire to compete in a competition to become the tea magician (and advisor of sorts) to the Empress. But our MC wants to win to help save her sister who has been infected by something in a batch of poisoned tea. The magic system in this is very cool, the story obviously has a lot of Chinese & Japanese influences. There's also a bit of a love story and there are queer characters. Also the covers for this book and it's sequel are GORGEOUS. 4/5

All's Well by Mona Awad - I have no idea what to say about this book. It's written like a magical realism horror novel. The MC is the theater director in the college where she teaches, she's in debilitating chronic pain, and also her mind isn't ...all there. There's a Shakespearan backdrop as she prepares the school's production of All's Well, and also plenty of hints at MacBeth as well. It's a very strange story, with a very unreliable and unlikeable main character. I'm going to let this one ruminate a bit longer.

I think I'm going to try and participate in Jordaline's "Spooky Smart Bitch" read-a-thon in September, hopefully find some good horror to read before spook season really starts. 

I'm also currently trying to participate in the Story Collective's Fanfiction Challenge for August. It's a free to participate and the discord for all their lessons and events is always a good time. Have I written anything yet? Great question...no I have not. But I'm going to start something at the very least. 

Lastly - I know I've not been keeping up with New Music posts. But, listen... I just want to listen to "Engravings" by Ethan Bortnick on repeat right now. It's SO VERY GOOD. (OH OH! Did you know that Rhett from Good Mythical Morning's (Rhett & Link)? Rhett has put out a country EP under the name James and the Shame. If you like country, and religious deconstruction, the songs are a great listen. Like "Believe Me" is greal and he did "Where We're Going" with his wife and it's lovely. Consider those your unofficial belated music items (for now).

I hope you're all doing well, I'll be in the comments and trying to catch up on things here this week. If I've missed something exciting, please let me know! 

Act I: Pentacles

I did something a little different for the layout of this one on the page I'm building for these. I like it, though I'm not sure I'll do them like this for every single one. I like breaking up the structure. This one took me a little longer, just to see if I could better structure the story aspects. So they've been written and rewritten a few times.

Content Warnings in the images for fire, swords and more covered faces.

( This is my layout with more cards from The Somnia Tarot by Nicolas Bruno )

My draw for Act II was: 2, 12 & 5

TWO
"Your eyes are drawn to a statue. What is this statue of? Which emotions does it stir in you?"
THE LOVERS :: The walk to town is uphill until the path along the coast falls away into a cliff with nothing but an distant crash of waves against rocks far below. The entrance is flanked by two standing stones and a path that feels like a way to somewhere warm and comforting. I pass a plinth outside the church with a sculpture of clasped hands wound together by vines. I approach, further investigating the structure and rounded edges of leaves and fingers and thumb clasped over thumb. My own hands stretch and curl, a ghostly echo of former warmth passing over my palm. Fatigue has settled into my shoulders and the growing void in my stomach reminds me of the cold both inside and out.

TWELVE
"Someone asks for directions and you're able to correctly point the way. Where was this person trying to go? Why do you know the route so well?"
THE WORLD :: Before I have gone much farther, a woman waves her arms in big rounded gestures in front of me. I stop long enough to see the concern in the lines of her face. She's speaking but it's muffled as if fighting through a curtain against the wind. Something about her dark dress and shining buttons, her exaggerated movements make me uneasy. I turn and point back toward the church, as I spot the circle and small chain around her neck. The place is visible and if she'd ignored me to walk a little further, she would've found it on her own. It must be the right answer; she takes off running in its direction.

FIVE
"Someone on the street recognizes you. How do they react when they see you?"
JUSTICE :: I find myself in a small row of houses, well lived in from the looks of them, a quiet road with fewer people passing by. Something rattles a window as I pass, the vibration turning my attention just in time for me to catch a glimpse of someone on the other side. They're bent in pain, mouth open. A scream tears free from the woman, it's a guttural sound that rips through me despite the wall between us. Horrified eyes stare back at me through the window.

---

Hope you enjoyed. If you'd like to participate in this weird writing exercise, check out my first post here.

I happened on a whim to pick up a fic request for The Exorcist TV show (which I love but had never written for). It was supposed to be about 10k words and I figured with the short time I had I could still probably make that work. I had about two-ish weeks to write it (and then an extra week or two for edits and beta) and yet I managed to completely overestimate the amount of story I had and the words I could write it in. So this story ended up being the fastest twenty thousand words I've EVER written and even with that short time frame I felt like it was also the easiest story I've ever written. Like Nanowrimo words have nothing on this thing.

I also haven't written anything quite so ambitious in a really long time so be able to do this in a short time frame felt really great.
Anyway I'm pretty proud of it. 

There's Nothing Here But Light (20652 words) by thesunsaid
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Exorcist (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Marcus Keane/Tomas Ortega
Characters: Marcus Keane, Tomas Ortega
Additional Tags: the slowest of slow burns, big tent revivals, Bible verses, Exorcisms, casefic, Post-Canon
Summary: It's nine months after Seattle. Tomas and Marcus are on the road again, without Mouse, and definitely not discussing what transpired in Seattle. Marcus watches for any crack in Tomas' armor while they help a local priest check in on old friends who may need help. A big tent revival and an aging evangelist forces them to confront the past.

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.

The final bit of Futurescapes is this weekend, it's the three day workshop portion to get critique on our writing from our breakout groups and then help with pitches and synopsis for querying novels. We had three classes in the last week/end: mystery, fantasy and sci-fi and they were so helpful to get my brain moving on my novel again. Also, the mentor for the group I'm in is Christian Heidicker who writes middlegrade horror like "Scary Stories for Young Foxes". He wasn't my first choice, but he was definitely on the short list for me of mentors I was hoping to get. My story is definitely adult, not middlegrade, but I was hoping I'd get someone into horror at least, and he is.

Christian, during the story structure class I had with him last month recommended a new book by George Saunders called "A Swim in a Pond in the Rain" which is a study of Russian lit short stories (Tolstoy, Chekov, Gogol) and how they can be examined to learn how to set scenes, study structure and generally apply those lessons to your own writing. I don't often enjoy "craft" books... but this one is different. I'm LOVING it and I think anyone who likes to read would probably enjoy it, even if writing isn't your thing, it's just amusing and interesting and it's got such an easy tone to it. Saunders was a Russian lit professor at Syracuse, so he's got a lot to say about the seven stories he picked and it's all good, thoughtful stuff.

Our critique groups are broken down to seven people, plus a mentor, and we were instructed to introduce ourselves to each and share our excerpts with other but not to actually provide any feedback until class time. I haven't had any kind of directed art critique since I was in art school (a LONG time ago) so I'm a little nervous it.

Mostly I'm so looking forward to having two days off this week to attend the conference (even if it is virtual) I really, really need that time off.

We have our house back to ourselves for a little while. My friend, after making sure she's safe, has gone up to stay with her parents until the end of the month. I'll admit it's been so nice having another person around after spending almost all of last year at home where it's just Matt and I. Also, it was so nice having other dogs in the house too so ours had friend to play with. A and her now ex-fiancé were always the ones to watch our dogs when we went out of town so they're all very good friends at this point. I think our two boys were very sad to see her and her dogs go. They spent every night running around like crazy puppies even though only one of them is actually a puppy anymore.

The timing worked out though. Saturday I had my first Futurescapes class. Class is sort of a misnomer, it was really an all day event with three lessons. It was sci-fi day starting with Mary Robinette Kowal, then Dan Wells, and last S.J. Kincaid. Of the three, I think MRK's was probably the most interesting (for me). She talked about sci-fi character and world-building. Dan's lesson was interesting, but more interaction than instruction and tbh it felt a little more like padding/filler than actual class content. His lesson was about SFF character obstacles and flaws and where we see those things cropping up in sci-fi media. The last one with S.J. Kincaid was a two-parter, the first half was about query writing and timing in the market. She let us read over some of her queries both before and after being published and told us how they were received (or not) in the style in which she wrote them. For the second half we talked about action scenes and how to set up and pay off character emotions even in a physical fight.

I had my second class today with Kathryn Purdie & Nephele Tempest, both of which were lessons regarding writing characters and deep character POV. Both of these were really good, I made a ton of notes from both days but I think there were more notes from the two lessons today. We've got homework assignments from both days so far, thought I'm not sure exactly what will be happening with those. I've got another class tomorrow about story structure and then the last one is this weekend on publishing. That'll be the last of them until the workshop in March. There was a class on worldbuilding with Fran Wilde that sold out before I even got in, but if you signed up for all the classes they sent out the link to that. So at some point between now and March I've got that to watch too. We're supposed to bring about three thousand words to work on to the workshop, so aside from any other homework, I need to polish up what I'm working on from my project to have ready.

I will say it's nice to be able not to take days off work to attend this, since they're able to stagger all the classes out and send us the recordings if we can't make it. As long as I don't have meetings, I can listen in and take notes and still work during the week when these are happening. So it's worked out really well.

Since everything else since Christmas has been a pile of trash, I've decided I'm only going to be picking up books that I've left "currently reading" in Goodreads for the last... idk YEARS? I picked up a book about Sylvia Plath that I started three years ago when I was in the hospital after having gallbladder out. I never picked it back up when I got home, so I was only like three chapters into it. The book Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953 by Elizabeth Winder is about the summer internship at Mademoiselle magazine in 1953. It's not my usual reading style, but it was really interesting. There were twenty women in that summer internship and many of them are still alive to be interviewed and of course, remembered Sylvia and the whole experience well enough.

I've also picked up Buddy Walker's Stunt Water book of poetry which someone gave me four years ago and I apparently just forgot about it? When we put up the bookshelves again last fall, I found it in a bag of books that I'd all just stopped reading a chapter or two in.

I'm also reading Silk and Silver by Andrew Shields, which is a Blades in the Dark book. It's also written by the husband of a friend of mine, who has written a number of things for the Blades in the Dark TTRPG now and I have been sitting on all three of his books in the series for far too long now.

There are like another 12 books on my "currently reading" stash and I think only one of them is not something I have a copy of myself. So at least for the next month or two I've got plenty of things to put my hands on when I want to read, or have time to read, or am sitting around in places with nothing else to do but wait and stare at my phone. I'm tired of doomscrolling, so ebooks it is. Of course, I did just pre-order three new books coming out between May and June, so this is a good incentive to make sure I get things crossed off before then.

A while back I posted about using Notion. I've been poking at it more and I downloaded my entire Goodreads archive and uploaded it there so I could play a bit more. It's been very useful to be able to make multiple lists out of the same data and in a more interactive way than just building an excel spreadsheet. I do love a good spreadsheet, but this just does more for me. Also, little fiddly things like this tend to be real good on my brain when I'm stressed out. Just the right kind of hyperfocus activity that lets me relax after dealing with friends, family and work stresses right now.

Oh and while I was going through photos of my grandpa, I managed to find the Glamour Shots I had done when I was fifteen going on fifty. I loaded a couple up to twitter because they are just the most 90's things I've ever seen from the hair to the clothes to the hat. Clearly I was channeling some latent goth fashion I wouldn't discover until I was in my twenties.
( pictures )