Thoughts on the Journey

I've been meaning to do an update but work and the weather plus allergies have been draining me of a lot of energy. In good news, thanks to the Rogue One fandom on Tumblr, I'm now in a chat with other rebelcaptain writers and its wonderful to have people to connect with on writing. And also its a nice reminder that oh yes, I can meet new people and it works. Its lovely to have people who send prompts and go I like your work, also for times of let's all write together.

Job stuff has been a mix of good and tiring where it seems like lately all my substituting jobs have left me feeling worn out and slightly doubting. There are good moments mixed in but its the end of the year and I'm usually in on odd days like half days or this week when some of the teachers are away. So kids are more likely to push and some of them, I feel like I have the same conversation every time I sub and they never listen. I know that the teachers do appreciate what I do and I'm probably doing better than I think.

Also last month one of my fact checking checks was late which was annoying but they fixed it as quickly as they could. I'm now in the midst of a big fact checking job that required negotiating more time. Its a length of book that I've done before but I really feel like when I started out, I had longer for these books. And its been a while since I did one this long, so I'm readjusting. I think it will be okay, the start is always hard until I really get going. Now I'm at that point of finding the best resources and feeling like the deadline is too close. Once I get into my day-to-day schedule for it instead of the past few days where I taught two days, had an interview with a staffing agency alongside starting out, it should go better.

One thing I really wanted to write up was how I've been getting into watching The Expanse and The Terror which has sent me to reading books. I read the first book that The Expanse is based on and then watched the first season which I missed. I liked the way the Roci crew worked better in the book as in the show, a choice was made that adds an element of harshness and cruelty to the world that doesn't fully make sense. A major part of the first book is a whole Noir story that has a mystery that connects a lot of threads but I didn't like the PoV character. He was such a stock character who gets unhealthily obsessed with the character who actually is in the prologue and one of the best pieces of writing. In the show, there's an entire episode that tells her story from her point of view but that also kind of showed up how weak the other side of the story actually was. I know that its useful for setting some things up but there was an entire point of view character that was ignored. I'd say that the first season and first book aren't the strongest of the series, I started watching in the second season and didn't feel lost. Though an odd benefit of that was it had me craving good playing with Noir tropes so I'm rereading the Vimes' books.

For The Terror, I've been reading nonfiction books, one that's very much a brief survey of the searches and then an in depth relating of an investigation of remains from the ships. That's called Frozen in Time and kind of interesting about what does it take to search out there. The other which I'm really liking is called Ice Ghosts and goes much more in depth in terms of how the searches were sent out and also deeply into the First Nations in the area, who have a personal history. At some point, I might go read the book as I do like Simmons' books but at times he can go on too long.

I just posted this on my Tumblr and I'm putting it here too. Though for here, instead of asks, suggestions for posts or anything you're curious would be great along with prompts.

I need help keeping my mind busy as my sister’s in the midst of a major surgery. Please send asks or prompts from any memes floating around or any ideas you have. At the moment, the easiest canon for me to write is Rogue One but try me with any others that I’ve mentioned. Thank you.

ETA: My sister is out of surgery and resting, it all seems to have gone well.

I made it safely after a long train ride halfway across the US and I'm now comfortable in my hotel room. Earlier I had a walk around the convention center neighborhood which as nice after sitting for so long. There was one horrible moment when my first train was running late and I thought that I'd miss my second but didn't. I'm looking forward to the conference which I know will keep me busy and I'm going to try and not bring too many books back with me, I can only carry so many.

Now for an interesting meme from in_the_blue: You know that meme that goes around sometimes where you post your five favorite kinks and then five favorite couples, and it's like a wish into the universe to see if anybody will write it for you? Let's make it a little more interactive.

Comment here if you want to play, and I will give you 3-6 couples that I associate with you, and you make an entry in your journal talking about those couples and fics that you wish the universe would write for you.

She gave me:

Tumnus & Lucy: This is a tricky one for me as I don't think there's anything I crave hugely about these two. There's so much great fic and sometimes weird fic out there about them. I'm always happy to see more of them learning and sharing together about their different worlds and especially history. I would love to see more of Tumnus' backstory and how Lucy reacts to it because he clearly feels complicated about what he did during the Witch's reign. Also I'd wonder more about how Lucy's experiences before Narnia play a part in their friendship.

Charles & Erik: These two are another with a lot of fic out there about them, but the kind that makes me happy is when they're confronting how honestly messed up their lives can be. They're both good at their various solutions and fantastic chemistry, but its the tough stuff in between of their relationship that I want more of. This would fill a hole for me from the movies because they skipped over a lot of years and pushed too quickly, missing out a lot of chances to see Charles and Erik working together. I wanted to know if they tried to communicate after Cuba or not, all the messy parts. How did the others react to them since one reason I love the X-Men is that no matter the iteration, they're a family and that kind of relationship effects everyone.

Charles & Raven: I think my tumblr tag for these two best captures the kind of fic I want; best messed up siblings. I want to read about them going to school, being in New York, how do they fit in with other kids, when did Raven tell Charles to never read her mind? I've actually started a few fics along these lines but haven't finished them yet but I adore their relationship. In First Class, its clear that they have a history, worries, in-jokes and I want to see how they got there.

It turns out my answers were longer than I expected but I like this meme. Maybe after the conference when I'm hanging out next week, I might even get some fic writing done.

My week is off to a good start, I have plans for my interview tomorrow and am about to buy some new luggage for my trip at the end of the month. Think good thoughts for me tomorrow at 1 pm. Today's question for snowflake_challenge is one that I find interesting.

Day 5

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity?

Fandom's always been there for me even though I didn't truly understand what it was that I was connecting to until college.

As a little girl, I fell in love with Paul Creswick's Robin Hood, the N.C. Wyeth illustrations pulled me into a different world. Robin Hood is still that touchstone story for me, I get annoyed at retellings I don't like, but love talking about what works and what doesn't. At the same time and earlier, I was reading through and having read to me the Narnia books. There was a day camp I went to where a part of every day was being read to. This wonderful man named King who had a deep voice and a beard read the Narnia books, that was where I learned the love of sharing books with others. Also at this same time, I was watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, which combined with Robin Hood inspired my first works of fanfic. Will Scarlett ending up on the Enterprise and being friends with Wesley Crusher through weird magic. I used to write in the back of my school notebooks, have the notebook open, flip to the back and write stories there then turn to the notes when I needed to take them. In a box, I still have these old school notebooks and later all the journals people gave me full of words.

At the age of twelve, I went to this wonderful summer program, Longacre where another world of interacting and creating opened up to me through playing Dungeons & Dragons. My first character and still the only one I've ever played in D&D was a half-elf bard and I made up a backstory for her that my GM liked so much, she started at level 5. That GM taught me that its possible to step into a world with words and that dice and all are beside the point, he also lent me R.A. Salvatore books to show me how rich the D&D world was. I was also taking theater classes and thinking about the importance of background, how even if you don't hear the details, every character has their backstory.

By the time I started doing LARPing and entered the World of Darkness, the idea of being able to write a history for my character was natural. The World of Darkness showed me a wider way of interacting as there were rulebooks, novels, pins, all this wonderful stuff that came along with this world. Then the internet was there and I could see other fans, I once even tried RPing in the offical Star Trek chatroom like set ups.

In college, I found Harry Potter and then an amazing friend showed me how to find fanfiction and I had that moment of oh, this is home. In the midst of writing papers, I would spend time on the Sugarquill while I ran my own Changeling: the Dreaming LARP and tabletop game. In my creative writing classes, I tried to slip the fantasy of Changeling: the Dreaming into my work. It only partly worked, Fangirl perfectly captured how some teachers don't get fantasy or fanfiction.

From that same friend after college, I was told about milliways_bar and learned that I could actually roleplay my favorite fandom characters. I began with Will Scarlett and now play ten characters. Milliways brought me friends who shared where they wrote and suddenly I was sharing my own fanfiction, first on my LJ, then later on Ao3 and participating in Yuletide, Narnia Fic Exchange, Ineedmyfics and ficathons.

My user name ceitfianna was created my sophomore year of college, my partner at the time had an LJ invite code. I thought it might be a good way to keep in touch while studying abroad in Greece. Ceit is the Scots Gaelic spelling for my first name, Kate, and one of the few languages I've found where I can find my name as it is. I'm a plain Kate, where its not short for anything. Fianna is the name of a mythic tribe of warriors in Ancient Ireland and a werewolf tribe from Werewolf: the Apocalypse. I honestly don't recall exactly why I decided to combine them, but its stuck and is how I'm known on LJ, DW and Twitter.

On Archive of our Own, my name FiKate is a reference to my AIM screenname which was the name of a character from a Werewolf: The Apocalypse game that only lasted one summer; Fiona. In Milliways, a huge amount of interaction happens in a chat room and since my screenname is Fiona, I was dubbed Fi. Yet there are Milliways' people who call me Kate and when I was creating my Archive of our Own name, I thought that I would combine them.

My Tumblr name on the other hand is something different as I didn't know how much it would connect to other areas of my life. Its atthelamppost as I'm currently feeling at a crossroads while I try to figure out a way to do what I love and be paid for it. Its inspired by Narnia, which is one of my oldest fandoms and one that I'm still a bit weird about. I haven't read The Last Battle, because when I was about eleven or twelve, I decided I didn't want the series to end. I'm 33 and still haven't read even though a little while ago, my father read through the entire series for the first time. Maybe I will someday. I've also considered getting a tattoo of the lamppost as an iconic image for me.

The last name I have online is for my librarian/professional blog, that I really need to update which is called nurturingstories. This is because I consider myself a storyteller and a good teacher and librarian is all about stories. We all have our own stories and children's stories need to be nurtured to allow them to grow.

Well, all my words decided to come out today in a librarian post as well as a fic.

First off a big signal boost to Marvel Femslash Prompt Fest because its a great idea.

Then in tougher news, I wrote End of the Year: Changed for good over on my professional librarian blog. This wasn't easy to write but I needed to put on that blog about looking for a job before I can start doing the sorts of posts I want. The next ones will be about school culture and what I learned.

The other piece that I wrote today was Last Midnight, a smutty Charles/Erik piece for one of my Tumblr followers. She was having a very hard night and this was something I could do and I'm happy with it. It reminded me of how there's a lot still to write with Charles and Erik. It contains quite explicit sex as she wanted smutty.

Tomorrow I hope to order myself some business cards as I found a design that really works for me and start the next stage of my life as I look for a job. I feel like since Wednesday, I've been in what my mother calls decompression as I shift from one experience to the next. And ten days from today, I will be on a train to Chicago for the ALA conference.

Also there was FicFriday, need to include those as well.
( Twitter Fic )

More things are getting done today. I feel quite accomplished as I created a gmail account that's tied to my actual name for sending to jobs. I'm working on what else I might want to send to it. One reason I don't want to disentangle all the threads of my personal and professional life is I don't think its possible and I want to teach about how this is becoming the norm. How online our hobbies and all of our connections work together and help us. From my current job, I know what a difference it makes to a kid to say, oh you're talking about Doctor Who or let me argue Marvel movies with you or I get Twitter. I want to harness that but its still a learning experience.

Along the same lines, I'm realizing it might be a good idea to finally get myself a tumblr so that I can follow everyone. This will be purely for the pretties and I'm trying to figure out a good name. I have no idea but want something I haven't had before.

I needed today as well to get my head in order, the sun even decided to come out after it rained and even briefly snowed.

Please leave suggestions a tumblr name.