Thoughts on the Journey

Yesterday I finally saw The Winter Soldier and wow that movie, I need to see it again.

( Thoughts with some spoilers are under here. )

I need to see it again and I'm coming to love the soundtracks of Henry Jackman, his music just works. He did the soundtrack for X-Men: First Class and I heard him interviewed on an NPR show about movie soundtracks.

My jet lag is getting better and its wonderful to not have anything huge coming up in the near future other than family visiting for Easter. I keep looking back at the last month and a half where I did three weeks of fact-checking, to DC for the job then out to LA for an interview and it makes sense that not a lot of other things have been happening. But all that traveling has my words coming again. I'm hoping to write some queer fest fics and today I wrote a librarian blog: Busy days: Fact-checking and the school librarian as goalie.

Oh and ages ago, I put up a prompt meme with a 100 prompts. Its still open as writing for other people always works well for me.

This morning I was again woken by a hopeful phone call from a school, this time on the east coast. I will find something. Also moving is proceeding forward as my bank account goes down due to bills but I'll figure it out. The heat finally broke here as a major thunderstorm swept through and then left the sky looking beautiful.

( Clouds )

I just got home after getting my hair cut and I'm feeling rather like I did when I got it caught in Ann Arbor a few years ago. It feels a little too short and not exactly the shape I was expecting though this time its not as short. The guy who cut it was really nice and talked non-stop, which I think might have been the problem as I didn't get a sense of all that he was doing. The language of hair is confusing since I like layers and a bit of a bob cut, but somehow hair dressers keep taking my gesturing at my chin as what the longest layer should be not more what I want the shorter. I think I should have gone with my original idea of finding a picture of Claudia Donovan's hair and going, like that, her sort of cute bob just not asymetrical, more like what she has this season. I like having my face framed, its odd not to. But I'm overthinking it, there's a picture under the cut and it will grow out.

( Short hair )

Its raining outside and more bad news is coming out of Boston. Following along with what Ashie did, I'm sharing some cute as I open myself up to prompts. Big images under the cut of cute animals from the Detroit Zoo.

( Lazy lioness and an arctic fox )

Leave me prompts here and I'll do my best to answer them with some one or two sentence fics.

Also I'd like to offer up a suggestion of a theme for fic today of comfort or togetherness, because damn it, the world may be awful but people are wonderful.

This weekend has been wonderfully quiet for me. I just came back from Ann Arbor, where I was able to finish my last holiday shopping for my family, have a great meal with Rick and get The Hobbit soundtrack, the deluxe version with all the bells and whistles. I'm starting to realize that in one week, I will have finished the first half of my first year as a middle/high school librarian and that for all the things I still have to do, this job is working. Its complicated but all the tricky parts can be worked with and will get better with time. I need to hold onto that when the kids are getting rowdy or I'm not sure anyone's hearing me, I'm making this work.

The big stuff left for the holidays is getting paper and printing out my holiday cards and sending them. That also means finding where I packed the connector cord for my computer to my printer, its not too deep in, but I don't know where it is. If I can get them printed out before I leave then I can send them from my parents place. They won't be sent until after Christmas but that's why they're holiday cards. I'm also hoping to get writing on holiday fics, the ideas are swirling around in my head but I haven't been able to pin them down yet. I'm still open to prompts here as I love writing for everyone. Last week was focusing on my Yuletide, which is written, betaed and posted. I've never been this early before its odd and nice.

As its been floating around, I thought I'd also do the Yuletide meme. This is my fourth year doing Yuletide, I started during my first year of graduate school. I love being a part of it and its inspired me to do other exchanges, as well as learning a lot about how I write.

2009: They are Mine. Sandman with Bast, Daniel and references to Dream. My first year I wasn't sure how best to do offers and did too many Anys, so ended up with a request for I think Aphrodite/Pandora slash that made me boggle. I had recently read a wonderful anthology of short stories based around Sandman called The Sandman: Book of Dreams and my person had a request for a story about Bast. I think I wrote this story a day or two days before the deadline.

2010: By the Fire. Old Kingdom set during Lirael and a missing moment conversation between Yrael and Kibeth. This year I was better about only offering what I thought I could write. This is one of my favorite fics that I've written for Yuletide, because I feel like I captured the characters. Though this was another one that I wrote closer to the deadline, I was getting better about writing long stories but they're not easy for me. One reason I signed up to Yuletide was to get over a mental block I had about word lengths due to not finishing my masters in Wellington.

2011: On the way back. Hexwood centered on Vierran and Mordion. For this story, I ended up doing more writing ahead of time but it was a challenging one as its a tricky canon. In the end I think I posted it the day before the due date if not on it as I was driving home.

Its interesting to look at my offers as I've started using Yuletide as a challenge for myself in offering to write for fandoms that I like but don't normally write. Thanks to Yuletide, I've lost a good bit of my fear for writing in new fandoms and word lengths. I still have moments of eep, what am I doing but its better. This year mine is actually turned in early, its my longest one yet and in a new fandom.

I love a good ficathon, because they always end up inspiring me. The one below inspired me into some Thor/Sif. I plan on going back to this ficathon during my break.

The Waiting Sky Thor, Thor/Sif, AU where Thor is the brooding heir to the Asgard hotel empire and Sif on Security-PG-13 for nudity and implied sex. The image in the prompt provided a lot of the ideas for the fic. Now also posted at archive of our own.


NOVEMBER NANO FAILURE FICATHON!
Because writing a novel is hard but writing brief pornography is delightful.

I slept wonderfully late today, it was just what I needed. Last week was weird, because I didn't have school on Monday, Tuesday was long as were the rest of the days. Yesterday though was pretty amazing.

I'm helping to run a roleplaying club at school, the first meeting was after school. It went well, we got a decent turnout and there will be more as we publicize it more. The senior who did a lot of the organization is going to need a bit of handling as he's someone who has so many ideas and knows stuff, that he wants to share, but he has a way of talking over people. While the other kids are so far pretty quiet but I think I can bring them out. Since most of them have never played before, I'm going to run a one shot game next week to give them a feel for D&D, my plan is to really make it about the feel of the game not as much the rules. Then after the start of October, there will be the expo for clubs and that should get more people. I hope to have either multiple games or board games, I want this to be really open. The student who did some organizing hasn't quite grasped yet how easily RP stuff can feel like just this group of people type of thing.

I also had one of those rather strange revelations of I have a lot more experience than I realized. Various games kept being mentioned and I went oh, played that, know that, which impressed and surprised the students. Also the girl who sat down, which made me so happy got all smiley when I mentioned that I wrote fanfic and used Ao3. I love the fact that I can bring this part of myself into my job even if not everyone understands it, but I can be a mentor. After school, I dropped off the rental application for the place I really want and if it all works, I hope to move in at the start of October. That would be great as all my sweaters are in storage and the weather's turned cold.

This past Friday was also the return of FicFriday, which I always love. And I'm still collecting ideas on the tropes' meme I need to actually write down more of the ideas I have for the amnesiac fic before I lose them.

( TwitterFic )

I'm having a wonderful birthday so far. I slept in a little later than I meant to before driving to Jackson to hang out with dodger_sister, who wrote me a Charles/Erik story called Burned in all the Best Ways as a present and gave me a comic retelling of the Hades and Persephone story. andrealyn, this fic had parts that made me think of threading with you and how Charles and Erik get under each other's skin. We watched The Faculty, ate delicious hoagies and cupcakes and had a lazy day.

I talked to my parents and one of my brothers and family called to sing me happy birthday, even one of their dogs was getting into it and barking in the background.

Tomorrow I'm going to treat myself to a massage and other fun things, then Sunday, brunch with the_croupier. I'm considering this weekend also posting Charles in celebrating getting his degree as that should be fun. All the plot stuff for that cast is coming together and I love it, soon we can play in recruiting time and have mutants in the Bar together.

My parents told me there's a package in the mail for me and my day has been full of well wishes. Life is feeling wonderful and I plan on stretching my celebrating out.

Today I also ended up writing quite a lot of FridayFics on Twitter, which I'm going to copy and paste here. At some point I'll put them up on Ao3, but or now, this is the best way for me to keep track of them. I think I've caught everything but there are always so many great prompts and fills.

( In which I write and tweet a lot. )

Today's been quiet and not too bad after I had trouble getting to sleep last night due to a fic keeping me up, but its getting near to be ready to post.

In the meantime I'm going to post my FridayFic so I don't lose track of them. I kind of wrote a lot more than I realized today, wow so I'm cutting it to not take over any flists.

( 140CharFiction )

I'm still worn out but my mood has improved since my last entry. Filling Friday fics really does that for me and just filling prompts in general. Also I had a wonderful conversation with my friend that I've known since we were toddlers and talking to her always makes me feel better. I adore writing for you guys since you inspire and push me in directions I don't expect. Slowly, I'm still filling prompts from last week's DE and would love more. The request is mainly because filling the Twitter prompts improved my day so much and I want to keep writing.

Leave me characters plus setting, lyric, poem, whatever you'd like and I'll write you something.

Now for what I've written on Twitter tonight.

For @minkhollow42 Moist pulls off a complicated scheme

He was afraid to move or do anything too quickly. If he seemed too eager, the bank would suspect but no, here came his money.

For @stephmuji Charles/Iris-their first fight

You're not a warrior, Charles," She said as she watched him leave. "I have to be one for mutantkind." "Stop being a foolish man!"

For @chanter1944 Sariel and Demeter, dancing in the rain

The rain shimmered on Carnivale as Sariel danced with Demeter. Around them, it smelled of life, liquor and the joy of abandon.

For @thisisyourfault

Dem, make it grow

Kore sighed at the seed, "It doesn't like me." "It knows you. Just show it." The seed waited as Kore showed it how to live.

Charles, the thrill of discovery

"I can still hear you," He laughed on the far edge of the manor park as a bird glared at him. Inside Raven grinned, "Dork."

For @wanderlustlover

Charles & Jean - the day he knew the truths behind all her silence

He held her hand, feeling the power and loss of her, "Jean, did I hope too much." She kissed his forehead and said, "Never"

Will & Marian - The price we willingly pay

Another scar, more blood for the soil, but it meant a child wouldn't starve this eve. Dreams put away for the sake of home.

Jane - To choose

It had never been as simple as yes or no. All her yeses to him wouldn't shift the shape of the world. So she chose words.

For @afullmargin How about the character of your choice: Making a bad day better? This turned into Charles and Raven.

He and Raven had argued all day until he said, "Enough, we're going dancing." She laughed in disbelief before smiling with him.