Category Archives: Stream of Thought

Fandom WIP Status Update

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I’m feeling crappy so I’m going to write a list rather than accomplish anything. I know that’s not helpful but ehhh.

Fics Ready to Post:
– The Tragic Tail (Sanctuary MerMay, waiting on illustration drawing)
– and the Guardian’s Dilemma (Librarians prompt month, posting July 5th)
– and the Brighter Side of Life (Librarians prompt month, posting July 10th)
– and the Outsiders (Librarians prompt month, posting July 23rd)

WIP Fics:

and the Sins of Atlantis
Crossover between The Librarians and Sanctuary (with a side of Stargate lore). Including 11 of the prompts for Librarians prompt month. Current status: 23, 638 words written. It’s probably about half done. Tentative due date July 2nd, although chapter one doesn’t include that prompt so I’m not certain about whether I should post then or not.

Gentlemen of Blood
Sanctuary fic. An AU look at the Adam Worth affair in 1909 because “he has people everywhere” had such energy I needed to run with it. Current status: 6,365 words written. Nowhere near done. It has just begun really. I would like to finish this by the end of the month, as technically it’s for the June WriYe challenge, but we’ll see. So long as I get 15k done on it, then I win the challenge.

Untitled DOSA oneshot
For Librarians prompt month (due July 26th). This has been planned and I’ve started it. If I can stop making this list, and actually do something, I might even finish this today. I’m not intending it to be that long (famous last words I know).

Untitled Finding/not finding Flynn oneshot
Also for Librarians prompt month (due July 14th). This is going to be one of those either/or fics with two chapters. First one is what happened in canon, and the consequences of them not looking for him, and the second chapter is the AU but what if they did? This has been planned but not started.

Time Will Tell
Sanctuary soulmate AU. This has been planned and I’ve written the opening scenes but I don’t have anything more than that. I’m hoping I’ll get to work on this next month but it depends on and the Sins of Atlantis/Gentlemen of Blood as I will finish those first.

Shadow Play
I bet you thought I forgot this one. This was on the list long before any of the others. It’s my technically canon-compliant colour between the lines fanfic for Sanctuary season four. I have a lot of notes but no real plan, and one written scene at the moment. I think this is one that will happen when I eventually stop adding other things to the list. It’s just too easier to keep pushing this one on. One day TM.

WIP Art

Flynn + LiT bonding Pencil drawing
For Librarians prompt month. Due July 9th. Started when I didn’t have a computer and I’ve got so discouraged I haven’t poked at it in weeks. I need to just focus and finish this. Aiming to do that next week.

The Tragic Tail illustration
Digital drawing. I’ve done the basic line art, I now just need to colour and blend. Ideally I’d like to do this next week too but we’ll see. The Librarians art has actual deadlines, this has been drifting for a while now, so it could go a bit longer if necessary. I don’t like that, so hopefully that’ll push me to dig deep and get it done.

Cassandra and Lamia drawing
For Librarians prompt month (to accompany the fic and the Outsiders due on July 23rd) I started this on the iPad in Procreate and it did not go well. I think I’ll start from scratch on the PC. I’m intending to do the other two drawings first (or at least the Flynn + LiT bonding one) so this won’t be tackled until the start of next month.

WIP Gifsets
– Sanctuary OT3 gifset I started pre-losing PC
– Librarians OT3 gifset (Librarians prompt month, due July 25th)
– graphics to accompany and the Guardian’s Dilemma (due July 5th)
– graphics to accompany and the Brighter Side of Life (due July 10th)
– graphics for and the Sins of Atlantis (due sometime July)
– graphics for Gentlemen of Blood
– graphics for Untitled DOSA oneshot (due July 26th)
– graphics for Untitled Finding/not finding Flynn (due July 14th)

So TLDR I haven’t posted stuff in forever but stuff is in progress and I will be dropping a fair bit next month.

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The first prompt of that Teslen appreciation week is “Teslen Throughout History”which made me remember the Sanctuary MerMay fic I still haven’t posted. It’s written (I finished it in May) but I’m planning on an illustration for it. I was without the PC for 3 weeks and so I haven’t made any progress obviously in that time.

Anyway, The Tragic Tail is Helen/James ship, with some references to her past with John. However, the only real interaction with the Helen of 1912 is with Nikola. It’s Nikola who holds her when she first breaks down from the horror of what happened. It’s Nikola who sees when the ‘last Titanic survivor’ dies and calls Helen so she can talk with someone who understands. Ever since I wrote it my intent has been to tag it with something like “Nikola is a good friend” because he really was.

My observation of shippers generally (I’ve been writing fanfic for over 20 years now) is that generally “opposition ships” are ignored, or maligned, generally torn down to make ‘your ship’ seem the undisputed best. I’m trying to think if I’ve ever been guilty of that and I think if I have, it’s only when the “opposition ship” was a complete NoTP that I had a real antipathy for. Generally speaking I’m ship and let ship. If I dislike something it’s on it’s own merits (or rather negatives), not just because it’s the opposition to something I like.

I’m not threatened by Teslen. I ship Helen/John/James as an OT3 because it just screamed at me. There was not much choice involved. I saw Revelations and boom – I was done for. But I have eyes and so I can’t deny Nikola’s importance, nor would I ever want to do that.

I freely admit in season 4 the show seemed to be leaning to making Helen/Nikola canon. I can definitely see how their friendship could turn romantic. I don’t object to the pairing, I just don’t see it as a ‘great love’ I guess. To me their interaction seems far more platonic. They are very close, I would definitely say Helen treats Nikola like family. However exasperated she gets with him, there’s always a bit of fondness there and they will always be friends. I’ve always seen Nikola’s flirting with her to be more like banter as there never seems to be any expectation of it going beyond flirting.

I kinda headcanon actually that Nikola started being outrageous soon after The Five met as a way of testing her. Helen never took offense because she liked that she wasn’t being treated like a porcelain doll. I think Helen would always have bristled at being treated like a delicate lady. So Nikola being outrageous, without any intent to go further, was just like a way of affirming her independence.

Man I’m not sure what this rambling is. Thoughts on Teslen I guess. I still don’t know if I will actually do anything for appreciation week. Maybe I’ll do a series of headcanon/meta posts about their friendship. Maybe I’ll make a gifset or two. I don’t know.

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It’s been three and a half years and I still miss Marvel Heroes.

I loved that game and it got shutdown, went offline and there is zero access. I will never get to play it again. When I bought the game, I bought access for the length it was online. There was nothing permanent about it.

I dislike that. I like to hold onto things and revisit them. The nature of the world with subscriptions rather than owning, means things are transitory. That’s sad.

Because it leads me back to the fact that I miss Marvel Heroes and I can’t do anything about it.

I’m watching Loki and I remember playing Loki in the game, and casting the illusions and teleporting between them. I remember playing Iron Man and my favourite button was the circular move he did at the end of Iron Man 2 which cut everything down. Taskmaster was my favourite to play I think, that had such a good mix of abilities, including a Captain America bouncing shield one. I play a paladin in Warcraft and that has Avengers shield. Clearly that’s my thing.

I’m installing the Assassin’s Creed games again on the new PC. It made me think about the movie I watched recently, and how cool it was that I saw so much I recognised from the games. When I like a TV show/movie, I like to be close to it, crawl inside and become part of it. I suppose that’s part of the attraction of fanfic. I’m creating in the world so I’m imagining it, getting closer to what I love. Not sure that makes sense.

I have a couple of options for Star Wars at the moment. There is Jedi Fallen Order which I own, though the Origin integration does worry me. There’s Swtor which one day will shut down. There are Marvel games but none hit the spot quite like Marvel Heroes did 🙁

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Coming to you live…

FROM THE NEW COMPUTER!!!

Which is terrifyingly quiet. Like are you working, are the fans on? I don’t know, I’m scared.

I keep leaning down to touch it and it’s not warm to the touch so I guess it’s ok. If I get right down next to it I can hear a very faint hum.

Anyway this is actually less fun than I thought as I’m having to set everything up and install everything, and fail at remembering so many passwords.

I have added 85 posts to my queue and I’m just relieved I didn’t like more in the last 3 weeks. That took long enough.

I have appointments tomorrow (boo!) but Friday I’m taking off and doing something. I don’t know what yet, maybe a bit of everything I’ve missed. So I need to crack on and keep installing.

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I just looked back to see when I last rambled about my fic.

It was 5 days ago, which isn’t very long, but over 18k which kinda is 😛

and the Sins of Atlantis is going to be a 50k job or nearabouts. I suspected as much but there’s always the hope that it might not. It’s currently getting on for 24k and there’s a fair bit of story left. There are in the alternate reality now, they were split up when they got there, been reunited and had a pow-wow and are splitting up again. Next up is a scavenger hunt for the key to the protections for the library.

I wrote more Gentlemen of Blood today as I suddenly realised with the crossover fic exploding, I was running the risk of not finishing this one within the month (and it’s for the June WriYe challenge). I have a rather horrible feeling that this could potentially be a 50k job too but again hope springs eternal. The scene I wrote today was basically dealing with the aftermath of the opening scene (where the PM was shot). The next scene is The Five bickering, James sniping at John about some recent deaths (which is going to become very relevant in the scene after).

It’s definitely going to be a race to finish both this month. If I can continue at this pace then maybe it’s doable but this pace is sort of part-influenced by not having a PC 😂 less options means less distractions in a way.

I have some hope it’s doable. I pulled it off in March when I managed to finish Fall of Camelot. Have to see. 🤞

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galactic-pirates:

I’m going to make a little bet with myself.

On Monday I bet I will get another “we haven’t forgotten but have done nothing” email from the PC company.

Now if I’m wrong I’ll be really happy, and if I’m right I get to feel satisfied at being right. So win win 🙂 well not really but I’m trying to look for the upside here.

Oh I didn’t actually update this directly.

I did not in fact get that email. I instead got a “we are building your PC email” – I did post about that – and so I was wrong and I was happy about that fact.

So having been told it was now finally in progress I settled into wait for what I was warned could potentially be “several days of stress testing”. Instead I got another email today saying that it had been dispatched!

DISPATCHED!!!!!!!!

I don’t have a delivery date. Could be tomorrow but is more likely Thursday or Friday (haven’t had the tracking info from the courier yet) but it’s on its way!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂

Tomorrow marks three weeks since I lost it. So glad it’s finally nearly over 🙂

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logicheartsoul:

ao3commentoftheday:

ao3commentoftheday:

tumblr mobile won’t let me upload a voice recording, so I guess you’re all spared hearing about my thoughts that people (some of them at least) aren’t actually desperate for comments. What they’re actually missing is community. 

screw it. I put it up on drive. I’ll try to figure out tomorrow if it actually makes sense or not- and I’ll transcribe it if no one else beats me to it

community.m4a

GOOGLE DOCS 

TRANSCRIPTION:

It’s not about comments, it’s about community. I’m lying here at 1:36 in the morning and I can’t sleep and that keeps going around and around in my head. It’s not comments, it’s community. I dunno if this is an epiphany or I’m an insomniac and I’m not making any sense. 

But I’ve been running this blog for three and a half years now and seeing the things that spark joy in authors, and seeing the insecurities, and seeing people saying, “I need comments, I want comments, I have to have comments, if I don’t have comments then I just feel like I need to give up” – and I try and understand as best as I can but I don’t think I actually get there. And I think the reason why that is, is because I’ve always had some form of community.

When I joined my last fandom, I knew a couple of people who were interested in it on tumblr, but I threw my first fic out there not knowing what I’d get. The fandom was still small at the time, and…the show was on hiatus, and there wasn’t a lot of fic going on AO3, and so…when I put my fic out there, I actually got a response and it was pretty cool. And because I got online in the 90’s, when people commented to me, I commented back in a conversational tone, and because the fandom was full of people of a similar age to me
– who also got on the internet in the 90’s – they also responded in a conversational tone. And next thing you know, we’re making friends, we’re following each other on tumblr, we’re having a grand ol’ time.

And so…for me, when I go into a stats spiral, it’s more about comparing myself against myself, and “why am I not doing better with this story than this other story”, and “why do people like that story? That was just a joke. This one that’s serious, nobody is paying attention to and why is that”? But it’s not so much about people and the comments or the lack of comments, it’s more about me and, you know, trying to understand my own writing and you know, what works and what doesn’t and relying on other people won’t tell me that and I know that.

And then I remembered the one time when I actually was upset that I didn’t get comments. And it was…I had organized this fandom event type of thing – not really an event – I was doing this thing, and anyone who wanted to participate or support me or encourage me was welcome to do so. I wanted to do a thing. I did…I, um, called it a ficathon, it was a March Madness kind of thing, where 64 prompts went in, and 1 prompt came out. And I was writing 64 fics at the same time and people were voting on them and it was great. And when we got to the final fic, and I wrote it and posted it on AO3, after – I dunno, a month? – of fanfare – I was getting 50 votes a day on these things, so like people were reading. I didn’t get comments. I barely had hits or kudos and it was a huge let down. And it wasn’t about the comments, even though I remember I wrote some kind of post and put it on tumblr that I was upset and whatever, and I remember writing about comments and kudos and hits.

But that wasn’t why I was upset. I was upset because I had created a thing for my community and it felt like my community ignored it. It wasn’t the case and everything was fine, and you know, I had posted it on a Tuesday afternoon or something stupid and nobody saw it. It was, you know. I…probably overreacted, I dunno. But that was how I was feeling at the time. It was an intense disappointment for me.

But it wasn’t about the numbers, it was about the relationship and the community.

And when I read some of the asks that I get or the tags on posts – oh my god, the tags on posts – when I see these things so often, it feels like what people want isn’t a comment, it’s a connection. They want people to talk to about their writing. They want people to talk to about stories or about the canon, the characters they love, they want to have a conversation. And for whatever reason, the way social media is set up, we expect that conversation to happen in a certain way or we don’t realize it can happen in a different way, and…I dunno. AO3 isn’t even social media. But it looks like it in a lot of ways. And so I think…I dunno, people look for community in their comment section. And it’s hard to build a community there. 

If you have friends on tumblr, or twitter, or discord, or wherever else, if you have relationships with people outside of your fic, at least for me, the comments are less necessary but also, the comments come because – I mean, god knows, I was not the best writer in my fandom by a long stretch – but I knew a lot of people. And I liked them and they liked me, and I think that really helped make people want to read my stories. Because again, it’s that community piece. I’m looking for connections with them and they’re looking for connections too. And if they know me as a person, and they see a story with my name on it, they might think, “Oh, I really like Pi! I’m going to click in and see what her story’s about.”

And so, it’s…it comes down to community. Like am I crazy here? Am I wrong? I mean, obviously this isn’t the case for everybody, not everyone is looking for this community, but…yeah. That’s…just…it feels like it comes down to that. For me. That’s the piece that’s missing. That’s the piece that people crave, the thing they’re looking for. It’s not about the comments, it’s not about the numbers, it’s about connections and relationships. And that’s the part that’s missing.

You aren’t crazy.

Writing is a lonely gig, or art, creating in general really. It’s hours of unseen effort that is consumed in a relative instant.

We put ourselves into what we create. By that what I’m meaning is all that time and effort, we put a portion of our lives into it. What I make matters to me a) because I care about the subject material but also b) because I cared enough to spend all that time on this story/art/whatever.

I said in my last comment regarding rarepairs and comments/kudos that it can feel a bit like screaming into the void sometimes. I said basically (TLDR) that I enjoyed writing those stories, drawing that art etc. so everything else is like the icing on the cake.

But that screaming into the void feeling does bite. It’s lonely. I know I can be a bit overly enthusiastic/too much and can probably wear out even the biggest of fans. But still I would love to have someone to bounce off. I was in a bigger fandom once (Rumbelle) and my fondest memories of that was the conversations I had on occasion with other fans. We’d dissect something that happened, or we’d have this long reblog chain swapping fic ideas back and forth. It didn’t happen often, like maybe a handful of times in a couple of years.

(I mean it wasn’t all good. I have terrible social anxiety even on the internet and so a lot of the interaction ended with me going round and round in my head for hours, about how dumb I was and how everyone wished I would shut up and go away. Community can be a double edged sword.)

But when it was good, it was really good. I miss the enthusiasm of other fans. I miss being able to talk to someone about what I love and get a response (rambling essentially to myself isn’t the same). Kudos and comments are cool but I’m not looking for compliments. Don’t get me wrong it’s nice but yeah I miss the shared enthusing over the ship and show.

I have tried a bit for my current obsession (the rare OT3). There’s a gen discord for the show. But as previously mentioned I can be a bit “full on” which is likely off-putting. So community not so successful for me. Means I totally get what you are saying though, as it would be nice.

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Oh thank fuck my PC has reached the “building and stress testing” stage. That hopefully means it might be dispatched by the end of the week!

Fingers crossed quick.

When I didn’t have an email this morning I decided to give them one more day and ask tomorrow, as that would be a generous “two weeks post order”. But I’m a weak coward that hates bothering people so I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’m so relieved I don’t have to.

Phew. On our way – finally!

I can’t freaking wait. I miss having a PC something fierce. I suppose people that only have tablets are used to it, and I do know I am super lucky that I have one. But it’s what you are used to I guess and I am used to a desktop.

Ok now I can mentally plot what I will do when it arrives 🤔 a little bit of daydreaming never hurt, although the anticipation might haha. I’m just plagued with indecision.

Do I dive back into writing my novel? (As I’ll be able to open all the necessary documents). OR do I dive into finishing that gifset I started and am desperate to finish? OR do I finish my MerMay illustration so I can post the story? OR do I take a day off and play all the video games?

I mean totally all of the above at some point but something has to be first. Gah! How to choose? /headdesk (I suck at choosing). I mean obviously the first thing will be setting it up and installing everything but you know after that.

Decisions, decisions…

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So a Rebels appreciation week has happened while I have been computer-less. I might have contributed if I had been allowed but alas.

I have now liked soooooo many posts ready to reblog as soon as I can get on the PC and tag. Incoming Rebels spam 🙂

It’s appropriate too as I have been doing a Rebels rewatch lately. I’m mid season two, so Ahsoka has turned up and gosh I love them all so much. Like I know it’s probably sacrilege or something but Ghost crew are my absolute Star Wars faves. Clone Wars era is close second, Original Trilogy third and then the Sequels (Finn, Poe, BB-8!).

I’m a little bitter that my Lego dark ages happened during Rebels run as I missed out on all the sets. The minifigs are extortionate to buy secondhand 🙁 I did at least manage to BrickLink enough pieces to build a Ghost under heavy repair (not everything colour matched).

I painted Chopper (and R2 and BB-8) when I did some painting for my birthday last month. I can’t remember if I shared that on here? It’s on my Instagram. I’ll check when I’m on a PC if I remember.

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I’m going to make a little bet with myself.

On Monday I bet I will get another “we haven’t forgotten but have done nothing” email from the PC company.

Now if I’m wrong I’ll be really happy, and if I’m right I get to feel satisfied at being right. So win win 🙂 well not really but I’m trying to look for the upside here.