Author Archives: Sam

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Ok it’s been four days.

I’ve been working on my OT3 Christmas illustration. I have the pose down now. I’m currently toying with the lineart. I think this is where it starts to go wrong usually as I rush it (despite me always taking far too long on every drawing I do). I’ve been studying this art I really admire, looking for tips on how to do it better. We’ll see. I have a couple of weeks before I want to post.

I know I said last January that this year was the year of Killjoys (for my calendar) and that next year would be Warehouse 13 (aka mostly Bering and Wells) but I’m just too mad on Sanctuary right now. So I’ve been putting together quotes and pictures for it. It is taking longer than normal as I’m getting all the pics myself rather than accepting whatever google throws back.

So yeah 4 days and it’s still been a very Sanctuary week 🙂 aaaand now I have another fic idea. It came to me as a crossover (with CSI) but I don’t know whether I’ll write it like that. It’s mostly James and John centric in a fluffy future where the OT3 are happy together.

It’s New Moon Madness on the 14th (WriYe) I think so I could wait until then to start, or I could just start heh. I don’t want to resist. If I have the idea why not have fun with it? Let me indulge this Sanctuary passion while it feels good 🙂

WriYe: Year in Review

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The blog circle on WriYe has been absent since March but quite frankly it’s been that kind of year. I just went back and read my 2020 January post detailing my plans for the year… oh we had no idea did we?

A real gem here: “It’s going to a brand new decade. I really hope it’s better than the last one.”

2020 is almost over (yay!). In a very unpredictable and unstable year, sum up your year of writing.
Did you meet your goals? Did you survive? Barely hung on?

Right my goals were as follows:
“150k target. I want to be consistent with my writing. 4thewords – I intend to use it everyday next year. My aim is to maintain the 444 word streak on the site to make incremental progress everyday. I want a couple of drafts by the end of the year – I want to feel like I made progress ultimately!

In 2020 I intend to move forward with my writing, with the goal to being in a position to start publishing in 2021, and I also want to leap forward with my drawing if I can and do a drawing a month and complete the ‘How to Draw the Marvel Way’ course that I was given ages ago.”

Did I meet them?

Bwhahahaha yeah no. Not even close, not even a little bit.

My 4thewords streak is technically intact but that’s only down to rampant cheating. I’m not sure how many days I actually wrote for but it’s possibly in the region of about 50, if that and only then if I include planning days probably.

I have zero novel drafts. In fact I have zero progress on any original work whatsoever. You see what happened is (well I’m going to quote myself again). I wrote in that 2020 January post: “I know how rusty I am and that everything I write to begin with is going to be even more shit than normal. However I’m not going to get past that and write anything ever potentially decent if I don’t forge on.” but unfortunately panic doesn’t understand logic.

Even before 2020 took a turn for the crazy I wasn’t doing well. I spent a good chunk of January planning out an original novel and I was all set to start, I sat down and kept having panic attacks. I think I wrote 500 words and hated them all. I couldn’t get over how awful I felt it was and I just felt like I would never be good enough.

I haven’t done a single drawing this year. I’m working on one now (in December) but that will be my only 2020 drawing. I didn’t touch the course. I basically achieved NONE of my goals.

Give us your biggest triumph and what you are most proud of!

Well I survived the year. So there’s that.

I’m going to end WriYe with about 70k and that’s entirely down to November. I did the Sanctuary fanfic and I smashed it. Almost 67k and The End. That is my singular success story this year. I suppose that proves that I can write, just in a limited fashion. It wasn’t original work so I managed to bypass the paralyzing panic/fear that stops me from writing normally.

I’m glad I managed to write something, even if it was fanfic, because something is better than nothing. I mean I said that in my NaNo post, “this might as well happen” because nothing else was happening. It was fun writing that in November. I liked writing again. I liked completing the quests on 4thewords. I want to do more of it but I’m just not sure what right now. I need to have a think.

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Watched Star Trek Discovery 3×03 tonight.

I know I should have proper thoughts and I kinda do but my overwhelming thought is to laugh because Christopher Heyerdahl guest-starred. (I think it’s a rule he has to be in all sci-fi to be honest) and I just really enjoyed the thought that Titan was the new Sanctuary, and that John made it to the 32nd century.

What can I say. If I can make it Sanctuary then I will 🙂

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Tried to start the christmas drawing today and sweet merlin could I have picked a more complicated pose?

It’s not going well.

Kinda want to quit already 🙁

I just have the image in my head and that’s what I want but it’s not what’s coming out on paper (it looks so bad).

Usually I make up a reference in Poser but I think I’ve forgotten how to use it again, or it’s had an update – or both. Either way I gave up really quickly with it. So instead I went old school and pulled my wooden mannequin out. Trouble is a) I only have one and this is a three-person scene and b) the proportions are kinda weird and c) doesn’t rotate at the hips how people do.

I’m now crawling google to see if I can find some kind of photo reference to at least help me out a bit. This is whole new territory for me to be honest as usually I only work with very specific references. If I don’t have something I can basically copy then not happening, so this trying to draw from instinct I guess, is new.

Ehhh I’ll try again tomorrow. I guess I have my daily quota of frustration and I’ve reached it.

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I finished that little fluffy wedding oneshot yay! 🙂

Opened AO3 as I had an idea for a title but I had a vague thought I’d used it before (it’s ok I hadn’t) and then I noticed the date I last posted … Dec 23rd 2018!

Almost two years.

Like I knew I hadn’t done much writing but wow. I hadn’t realised it had been radio silent for quite that long. To be fair I think 2020 just didn’t exist, I mean it did because it sucked, but did anyone manage anything really? Singularly most awful of years.

Now I just need to decide when I post this fluffy nonsense.

I think I need to preface it with a “yes I did research.” “yes I might have done too much research as in places I feel like some parts are a bit of an information dump” but also “this is probably not accurate” because I’m fairly certain there was more to the wedding service than the vows but oh well.

So do I post this fluffy nonsense before or after my epic slow burn reconciliation fic? During I’m thinking during. So I drop a few chapters and then drop this oneshot and then drop a few more chapters.

Anyway, now I need a new thing to write. I’m not quite sure what. I’m a tiny bit tempted to continue this fluffy AU. I have headcanons for it, building on some of the canon holes I filled in Our Darkest Hour. Only they are pretty much just headcanons, I’m not sure how I’d spin it into any kind of fic.

I will think on it 🙂

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Ok I split Our Darkest Hour into 14 chapters in the end.

The christmas flashback is in chapter four. So I’m currently pondering. If I post twice a week then that chapter would go up a week before christmas. Hmm.

Also I was doing a ramble plan for this wedding oneshot and I started on this long thing about John’s dad – guy was never mentioned on the show. How do I have headcanon’s about him???

Anyway, I think the detail I’m struggling most with at the moment is who Helen would have as attendants. Given she didn’t have much use for gendered nonsense I’ve always figured she didn’t really have any female friends. Her dad was an only child. Perhaps her mum had family? That could work.

I particularly like the detail about Victorian weddings which say that the best man has to go ahead to “look after the luggage” for the couple’s honeymoon and is the only one that knows where they are going. So helpful for James seeing as he’ll be going with them bwahaha 🙂

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Ok I’ve spent the last couple of days revising Our Darkest Hour.

and I just spent the evening making a promo gifset for fun. I didn’t much like the cover I made in the end and I thought this was cooler.

Now I just need to decide whether I drop the whole 61k thing in one go like a boss, or post it one chapter at a time for a while. I mean nobody is probably going to read it anyway so it’s just what I feel like doing.

Maybe I should split it up into chapters first and see how many I have. When I’ve done long fics in the past I usually try and make chapters a similar kind of length, average them 3.5k-4.5k. Which *does math* on an average of 4k would be 15 chapters. I could post a couple of times a week for a couple of months I guess.

I was considering doing an illustration of the fluffy christmas flashback. Although I’m thinking of writing the fluffy wedding oneshot this weekend and an illustration of that would also be cool. Shhh nobody tell me I suck at drawing (I know I do) and my imagination definitely far outstrips my ability buuuut it could still be fun I don’t know.

Anyway I should decide if I’m going to commit to a boatload of drawing because if I am, then I should probably sync up when the drawing will be ready to post with the fic. Considering I haven’t done any drawing this year that could take a while.

Help this ship is taking me over haha.

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I haven’t updated my theme since tumblr broke and auto-removed my last one what 2 years ago? I figured I would because I felt like it.

SWEET MERLIN TUMBLR IS FUCKING ANNOYING!!!!!

It let me save the theme but now it won’t let me save it again. It insists there’s http assets being referenced. It won’t let me update a single damn thing. So I can’t correct the links on the sidebar

image

I have tried everything I can think of but the second I open it to edit it won’t let me save it again, even if I do nothing. HOW IS IT WRONG IF I DON’T CHANGE ANYTHING?!?!?!

Tearing my damn hair out. This is beyond frustrating. I just wanted to link to my own tumblr – internal fucking links! But no something is just wrong.

I hate everything.

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galactic-pirates:

Ugh I was wondering why my new gifset wasn’t showing in the tags. Tumblr doesn’t like the first gif apparently :/ 

hmm what to do about it? I don’t know.

You know what I’m not going to fix it.

Mostly because I can’t work out how to without picking a completely different scene or making it look awful. Tumblr just doesn’t like the shoulder curve. I checked to see if I could appeal but it’s not a flagged post (it’s just an invisible one).

It’s annoying that it’s not in the tags but hey I’m doing this for fun. I like to share, and obviously I hope it’ll make someone smile, but I’m not going to bang my head against a brick wall for it.

Seriously though tumblr it’s a shoulder. What is your problem?

The NaNo Report: THE END

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THE END! THE END! THE END!

Seriously!

/dies

I had to write 5 scenes to get there. I wrote more today than I have any other single day this month, more than I have in any single day this year and probably for quite a while before that too. It was a mammoth effort but I wanted to do it so bad because I wanted to reach THE END this month.

AND I DID!

/dies

Haha.

What comes next? Oh merlin I don’t know. I have to do other things tomorrow really as I did nothing but write today. I don’t want to take too big a break from writing though because I want to try and keep any momentum I might have gained. So I want to revise this story and post it, and then maybe work on another one. Perhaps that fluffy wedding day oneshot I threatened.

Phew. I made it. I can hardly believe it but I did. And I owe it all to Sanctuary and my beloved Nikola Tesla, Helen Magnus, James Watson and John Druitt. My favourite character and my ship. I’m all about The Five 🙂

Words Written: 6,106 (why I’m dead)
Current Total: 66,804 (and THE END!!) 

#now that’s over maybe I’ll have time to make some of those gifsets I want to do#and also you know maybe watch the show some more#because clearly it’s inspirational and I should get ideas for more fic haha