you don't quite know your muse

Working on a comprehensive link list. Fics are listed newest to oldest under each canon name.

( Battlestar Galactica )

( LOST )

( Cowboy Bebop )

( Dragon Age )

( Lost in Translation )

( Fairly Legal )

( A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones )

( Shakespeare )

Hello!

I have some commenting to catch up on, but first I'm breaking radio silence here to note that my favorite in_the_blue and I are running I Need My Fics again this summer. It's our fifth year running this exchange, our second running it on AO3, and we always have a lot of fun with it. We don't promote it much outside of our circles, but somehow it's managed to grow slowly but steadily almost every year. Fandom nominations are going on this week, and sign-ups start on the 28th. If you're interested you can check out our schedule on LJ or DW, and you can see the nominations so far here.

In other news, I had a new baking adventure last week, inspired by a how-to for Kirby macarons. (This is Kirby, if you're wondering.) I'd never tried to make macarons before and they're definitely tricky but my first batch turned out pretty well! ( You can see my trial Kirby under the cut! )

My anniversary is this week. On a partially related note, tonight we drove four hours to see this.

( Giant rubber duck. )

only to excess (a mix for Kara Thrace, hotshot Viper pilot and part-time harbinger of death, who burns her own body and lives to tell about it)

Track list with links to lyrics under the cut.

( snip )

I don't think I mentioned it in my journal when we opened sign-ups for ineedmyfics, but we did! And they'll be closing on Saturday night! It's looking like our number of participants is staying in the same ballpark, so I don't know that the move to AO3 particularly helped or hurt in that regard. Hosting there does mean less work for us when stories go up, though, so we'll be especially grateful at that point in the process.

Elsewhere, if anyone's curious, I did a meme and some nice people gave me the excuse to answer about Saul Tigh and Sansa Stark.

I feel like my LJ friends list has been kind of quiet lately. (It's always pretty quiet on DW, but I know fewer people there and have been thinking about going out of my way to remedy that.) Anyone up to something good?

I'm going to do the AO3 meme going around because I could use a little creative positive thinking.

I have 21 works archived at AO3. Pick a number from 1 (the most recent) to 21 (the first thing I posted there), and I'll tell you three things I currently like about it.

Honestly I haven't even taken half my fics from my master list over to AO3, so if there's something I've written -- especially in a community somewhere -- that you remember and would like to pick then feel free to just mention it. Whatever! Meme rules were made to be vaguely adhered to.

So sometimes high emotions are great for helping me write. But sometimes -- like lately -- it's been mostly anxiety, which is apparently not at all good for my writing. This week I've started feeling back to normal, but it's taking some effort to feel creative again. I know what I'm doing with my Remix story but I barely have anything written on it, so I'm hoping to get back to that this weekend.

But last week I made a BSG landscape/starscape picspam for tumblr, and for fun I made some icons from it.



( more under the cut )

And since it's still poetry month, here's ( When the Vegetarian Kisses the Carnivore, by DeAnne Lyn Smith )

Hope everybody has a great weekend. I may spend part of mine caving in and having a celebrity crush Netflix marathon.

A few months ago on twitter I threatened to make a picspam of BSG characters with exaggerated frowns. Some of you were enthusiastic about the idea, so here's a link to part one.

I've been watching a few new-to-me shows on Netflix over the past few months. One is Luther. It's more difficult and arguably more triggery to watch than, say, something from the Law & Order franchise because you usually see more of what the criminals are up to before they get caught, but I thought the acting was really good. The cast has great chemistry, I think, and I found it pretty compelling from one episode to the next. It was one of those rare instances where I didn't dislike any main characters.

Mike and I also watched House of Cards. He's even harder to hook on a show than I am, but we enjoyed watching it together. It's imperfect and there are times when I think it's trying too hard, but I like the casting a lot. Kevin Spacey is playing the kind of role I've always thought he played best -- in it for himself, dry wit -- and I love Robin Wright as his equally capable wife. I'm not a huge fan of confessionals to the camera and HoC uses them, but it's not actually a documentary-style show and doesn't use camera confessionals every few minutes.

And I started watching Dollhouse. We're not huge Joss Whedon geeks. Especially Mike, so I didn't even ask if he wanted to give the show a shot with me. The early episodes were kind of a mixed bag, and it definitely took half the first season to hit its stride. I'm maybe halfway through season two now, and usually I lean more toward liking it than disliking it. At its best it's thought-provoking and builds interesting character relationships and deals in some serious shades of gray, but at its worst it's made me wince and roll my eyes and wonder if it could possibly be more anvil-icious. I'm not really into the main character, and Tahmoh's character hasn't done a whole lot for me, either. The other characters are the show's strength, in my opinion: Adelle and Topher and Sierra and Victor and Boyd. And Claire, who became my Dollhouse character of choice.

In other news, I'm slowly working my way through A Dance With Dragons, getting started on Remix, and thinking about the Epics Big Bang because getting myself to finish a project -- any project -- of 10k words or more is high on my list of things to do this year.

So now I'm home and fed and warm and decompressing from the nonstop family time of the past few days and the unusually extreme case of last-minute Yuletide panic/editing I had this year.

Despite the fact that this was my most obscure Yuletide ever, I managed to get five fics out of it. What's more, they're all awesome. I don't feel remotely like I'm exaggerating. All five stories -- four in the regular collection and one treat -- are well-written and feel like they've really been tailored to what I asked for in my letter. One of the Skyrim stories had a note that said the author made a point of finding the character's camp in-game just to be able to write my story. Another author mentioned remembering some previous generosity I'd shown at some point, so I'm guessing it's someone I wrote something for in an earlier Yuletide?

While the process may be imperfect, I lovelovelove the spirit of the exchange and enjoy trying to write a story tailored to someone else's request and then turning around to read what someone wrote for me. I always enjoy reading my stories, but this year, guys, I feel so very moved by the collective effort that was put out for me. I'm more than a little surprised and more than a little grateful.

So allow me to pimp my gift fics, in order of notification in my inbox:
Negative Spaces (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, rated G) - I think there's absolutely nothing about this post-canon look at Mary Svevo that isn't beautiful. It's been filled to the brim with sweet, sweet characterization!

Under the Winter Sky (Skyrim, rated G) - Stunningly visual, this story provides a friendship between Angi and the Dragonborn that's really charmed the hell out of me on each read. Fantastic from start to finish!

Cupboard of the Heart (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, rated T) - These richly characterized slices of Mary's backstory and snippets of her throughout her canon journey will break your heart. But it'll do it so gorgeously you won't mind.

Balance and Composure (Skyrim, rated M) - Giving believable dimension to a (very) minor video game character isn't easy, but you wouldn't guess it from this fic. An excellent eye for Skyrim's details brings the world to life.

Target Practice (Skyrim, rated G) - Being treat-sized doesn't stop this fic from giving Angi really beautiful characterization. A total delight to read!

Thank you so much, writers! I love every single one of these stories.