This is about as honest of a post I'll ever make on Livejournal. I'm leaving it public, because I think it's important for me to say this and lay it open and have it known.

I've forgotten how to love doing what I love.

That's the significant part, and that's what's been eating at me these past few months and nearly ruining my ability to create.

( Read more... )

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Back to Part One.

( But you wanna know a secret? )


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I said it would be back up, and here it is, as promised.

I'd urge you to read this fic even if you already read All In, because I've made a lot of pretty significant changes, and I'm interested to hear what people make of them. Or what people make of the fic in general, really; at the end of the day, I just like talking to people. (It's a little bit like the theatrical cut versus director's cut of Blade Runner, or Brazil, except less dystopian and also you know I am not Ridley Scott or Terry Gilliam and have not yet achieved THAT level of craftsmanship.)

Title: Running Out of Alibis
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters/Pairings: Roughly in order of appearance: America, Canada, Cuba, Russia, England, France, Taiwan, China, Lithuania, Poland, GDR!Prussia, Hungary, and Turkey.
Rating: PG-13, for language and nuclear brinksmanship.
Timestamp: October 22 - 28, 1962. Yes, it's about what you think it is.
Summary: America and Russia might be on the brink of nuclear war, whether or not they want it -- and the rest of the world tries to figure out what, if anything, they can do.
Also, there is a fanmix at the end.

( Hey, I didn't make the world, okay? I just have to live in it. )

On to Part Two.

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Indirectly halcyonjazz's fault, or: what comes of comparing the similarities between The Da Vinci Code and Twilight, two pop-cultural phenomenons that, frankly, kinda suck. And with the release of The Lost Symbol and the movie adaptation of New Moon, it's almost timely!

You have been warned.



Killer albinos? Killer vampires? Both with very pale skin? Is there a connection? And is it hidden in the works of famed Renaissance artist Michelangelo, who lived in Italy -- WHERE PART OF NEW MOON TAKES PLACE?
...yeah I got nothin'.

First: I am feeling considerably better today, I think. Thanks for the good thoughts, guys. ♥ I have a lot on my plate coming up oh god grad school aaaaaaah, but maybe I can handle it. *knock wood*

Second: So this is something that Mith and I have been curious about and have been discussing since we first started writing and posting Things of A Significant Length (here defined as "fic too big to fit in one Eljay post"). From what I've seen since I made LJ my primary fannish home, the section of fandom located here really does seem to favor shorter fics -- the code supports them better, and even the way people seem to structure their time on Livejournal suggests that it's easier for them to find the time to digest and comment on shorter things. This is usually okay for me, at least, because I don't often write fic that breaks the LJ post limit, but I'm starting to as of late, and I'm kind of wondering how to deal with that: how to make sure I can tell the stories I want to in a way that's accessible to people who might want to read them. I believe there was a similar poll on metafandom a while back, but that was about novel-length (150k words +) fics, and I'm wondering if -- novella-length fic? Let's call it that -- is subject to similar constraints.

And because I am a poll junkie, I offer options! Clickable options, even!

...I admit that part of this is selfish; there's a fic brewing in the back of my head that probably actually will break 20-30k or so if I manage to do what I want to with it, and well, I'm not quite sure what to do with it yet. Therefore!

CORRECTION: The second "twice a week" option under the fourth question should actually be "once a month." Oops. Eljay will not let me edit the poll itself, but I thought I should let y'all know.

Poll #1487584 reading habits!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 69

When I read longer fanworks (10,000 words+/too big for one LJ post), I:

If you answered "depends" (or even if you didn't), how long does a fic have to be before you want to see it chaptered?

I like reading longer fics in chunks of:

Ideally, new chapters of larger fanworks (assuming the chapters are the ideal length for you to read) should be posted:

This poll is lacking in ticky-box questions.

Now to get back to work. You know. That thing.

I'm taking All In down for a while, I think -- I spoke too soon about being satisfied with it. So I'm going to revise it and then repost it. Don't know how I'm going to break it up, whether I'll do it all at once or try spreading it out over multiple days or something, but I'll figure that out when I see what I'm left with, I guess.

...really, I'm just not in a very good place mentally right now, and having a story up that I don't feel quite right about is only exacerbating everything that's wrong with my head. (Neither are triggering homework assignments, but that's another story.)

I'll try to finish up the AU bits soon, too; I'm sorry those have been taking so long.

I'll be okay, I think. I just need time to sort some things out.

Dear Yuletide Santa,

First, thanks so much for participating in this challenge! I know the fandoms I offered are a pretty disparate bunch, and at least two of them are hard to gain familiarity with in the month-and-a-bit left for Yuletide (though Inglourious Basterds is only about two-and-a-half hours long, at least), but trust me, I'll be happy to see any of these requests filled.

My prompts were formatted a little unusually, I know, and by no means do you have to answer every question I posed in them (there were a lot of questions!); feel free to pick whichever one or ones resonated with you most, and go from there. The questions I asked were the ones I was left with while reading/watching the canons in questions, and since I primarily write and read fic to fill in the gaps, so to speak, I wanted to see them addressed on some level. (Any level, really. And yes, porn is a perfectly valid level -- I'm not necessarily looking for High Art here, I'm looking for the story that you want to write, based on what I've given as groundwork.) This Yuletide, I'm not interested in a specific kind of story so much as I'm interested in a story that'll take what the canon's done and use that as a launching point to build on it, or challenge it, or play with it, or whatever you feel is appropriate. You can answer the questions however you'd like to -- I don't necessarily have the answers to them myself, but I'm confident that you'll find out something interesting in the asking, and that whatever you find out will be the grounds for a story I'd like to read.

...good lord I sound didactic, don't I. Eheh.

That being said, there are things I'm drawn to in fic. The list I have over here is still valid. To summarize: I love CONFLICT and CONSEQUENCES, whatever forms they might take; I love seeing how the macro- affects the micro-; I love struggle and recovery and things that don't come easily and things that don't work out as planned and things that must be dealt with and strength that comes from unexpected places. I'm comfortable with any and all ratings and quite a few pairings, too, as long as you make me believe the sex/violence/etc. within the context of the story. Genrewise, I like everything from romance to horror to humor, as long as there's conflict in it somewhere. (So non-sequitur-derived humor and fluff/sap don't really do it for me.) Happy endings are fine, unhappy endings are fine, endings that are a little bit of both are fine, as long as the characters have earned them through their actions and through the consequences of those actions.

( More about my fandoms and the prompts: Inglourious Basterds, Animorphs, A Song of Ice and Fire. MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALL. )

"I just want to see the process" summarizes all of my requests this Yuletide, I think. I don't know what that process is, necessarily, or what it looks like, but I'm trusting that you will, and I can't wait to see what you come up with.

- Puel

Wow, it's been ages since I've played any sort of writing game in my journal. I remember when I used to do them all the time! I admittedly had less people reading my journal then, but. This one should be both doable and fun, though.

Give me the premise for a crossover (example: Germany gets lost in the middle of a fairytale and runs into Fakir), a fusion (example: Hetalia and Temeraire fusion: the American revolution -- with dragons!), or an AU (example: the Hetalia boyband AU: America's just dissolved his contract with The Greater Commonwealth and told the press that he's starting a solo career!). I will write you one to three sentences* of fic based on that premise.

* = number subject to change depending on just how much I like the idea. Number does not include me babbling derpily about what such an AU would be like, which I will most likely do.

ETA: If you ask for a crossover or a fusion, can you give me a little more of a premise than "Fandom X/Fandom Y crossover/fusion"? It's easier for me to work with prompts when they have a bit more direction to them. (A suggestive sentence or two for the AUs also does wonders!)

Good fandoms: Hetalia! Star Trek XI, Temeraire, and Princess Tutu are probably okay, too. Other ones I will say yea or nay to at my discretion. You can also ask for original projects or AUs of existing AUs, and I will heart at you madly if you do so. Like this: ♥

This should be fun. (I have missed playing around with the things I write, really. Plus, coming up with ridiculous AUs is how you know I REALLY love a canon.)

I have become addicted to polls lately, and thus.

Poll #1481835
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 99

You refer to me as/by:

Out of curiosity, how do you think Puel's pronounced?

Look! It's a ticky-box question!

also, if you are one of the people who knows my real name and refers to me by it, don't mention what my real name is in the comments, please? I don't think anyone will, but I try to keep my Internet identity vaguely separate from my real-life one.

In less godawful-pun-y news, Yuletide is open for signups this year; there are already over a thousand participants, and signups are open until the twelfth. Daaaaay-um. Also, hetaliasunshine's bonus round is open, and there are a few prompts on there that look really tasty. I don't think you have to have participated in the challenge proper to do the bonus round, so take a look and see if there's anything you like!

Finally, I'm trying to think up a few more ideas for Undone Sundays over at saying_yes_2010 -- I have activities planned for the next two or three, but I'd really like to know what sort of posts/challenges/discussions/etc. you guys would like to do or see, since I'm not just running this for my own entertainment.
...and as an aside, even if my real-life organizational skills tend to be, well, abysmal, I think I really like organizing events that I feel passionate about. I can be organized when I'm invested! Considering the kinds of Master's programs I'm looking at, this is very good news.

i. Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone. The rest of my birthday also turned out very well, and it is nice to have money again, sort of!

ii. I finished Princess Tutu. That will get its own actual reaction post later, but suffice to say: alksdjhfal/kjdsfadsSQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE and I might have to revise that whole not-writing-fic-for-it thing because Fakir's o_0 face is just too precious.

iii. Via Linden: a gallery of images of women in World War II and the kinds of work they did, Allies-centric. I kind of want to icon some of these, because damn do these girls look cool, and seeing all the kinds of jobs that women took during the war -- and excelled at -- is pretty awesome.

iv. Ficrec time! Linden has France/Russia clothesporn and Enlightenment, and since she basically writes (one of) the best France(s) ever, y'all should read it. Mith's working on No Such Place, and if you guys need me to tell you why my girlfriend combining Hetalia with every Arthurian legend she can get her hands on is awesome, you haven't been reading me enough.
...and hopefully I will have fic to post soon, too. Kinda alternating back and forth between the Cuban Missile Crisis thing and, uh, the England/America motorcycle porn. I have no idea why everyone thinks I'm an intellectual. sob.

v. Yuletide's coming up soon! So who's participating? What fandoms are you offering, and what do you think you'll be requesting? I know I'm going to offer a ton of Shakespeare and Gaiman fandoms like I do every year, because those kinds of stories(-about-stories) sound good on my voice and I like the two things I've written for American Gods and The Tempest respectively. I'm definitely offering Temeraire this year, too, and probably Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age series, Wicked Gentlemen, Inglorious Basterds, Mad Men, The Scarlet Pimpernel, 1776, and if I were further along in Outlander I'd probably offer that, too. So the trend this year seems to be at-least-kind-of-historical fandoms, sometimes with hints of the supernatural, often with hints of the gay. I feel as though this is a good summary of the kinds of things I write in general.

vi. November is also the month of NaNo, and I'm not quiiiiiiiiite doing it this year, per se. See, Mith and I have developed a Thing. And it is a very lovely Thing, set on an alternate Earth during a time period analogous to the Age of Sail, and features lots of swashbuckling (rebellions! naval battles! daring escapes and rescues!), politicking (culture clash! identity politics!), crazyfacing (lasting consequences of actions and learning to live with them! conversations with otters!), and gay (because every Dashing Young Hero needs a silver fox!). It is a project I intend to talk about a lot, but as it's original work and I'm not sure what its ultimate fate is going to be, it's a project I'm going to talk about on a filter. Some of you are getting put on the filter whether you want to or not. For the rest of y'all, either let me know in a comment/PM if you want in or fill out the poll below:
Poll #1480039 sweet rabbit
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

I would like to be on the filter!

(Note that most of the discussion will be on my journal and not Mith's, since I actually filter and friendslock stuff sometimes.)

I think that covers it. Hooray for Mondays!

Your Puel has gained a level!
20-->21

Your Puel is now able to equip Item: Alcohol!

(Birthday weekend has been fantabulous -- had a lovely party at a bar downtown on Friday, which my parents footed the tab for, huzzah, and went to see a free staged reading of Dracula: The Journal of Jonathan Harker last night. And this morning there are Miths and Lindens and protagonist bars with cranberry and chocolate and lots of other good things besides. ♥)

So I do think I've recovered from the latest crippling bout of self-doubt, mostly.

Those of you who know me know that I procrastinate like hell. Not because I'm averse to doing work, but because I'm a perfectionist to the highest degree, and the task of sitting down/standing up/assuming whatever position is necessary and working on something becomes overwhelming because I work myself into a state of mind where whatever I do SHOULD be perfect on the first go-round. And I'm paralyzed by the fact that I never think I'm as brilliant as I should be, and that I view my paralysis as proof that I'm not committed enough or dedicated enough or good enough, because I should be good enough to get it right, goldangit. And I worry that everyone will see me as a fraud and a failure, and at times that keeps me from even trying -- better not to try than to be told that all my worst fears about myself are true, that I am wrong and I am worthless and I can't do anything of value.

It's fucked up. I'm aware of this, and when I step back I can point out all the flaws in this line of reasoning. It's still how I think, and breaking myself of the habit is ... really, really hard. Especially in all of my creative work.

What it comes down to, I think, is that I just need to get up and do it. I don't need to stop midway through and edit myself, I don't need to try to monitor every little thing at once and make sure everything I'm doing is absolutely perfect, I don't need to block off my impulses because what if they're the wrong ones. I need to get it out there and live through it, and I can go back and refine through practice and revision, but if I don't put anything out there, I WON'T get better.

So I'm going to try to do that. I'm going to try to sit down and write something every day, even if it's not the next Great American Novel or whatever. I just need to set these kinds of good habits for myself so I stop worrying about what it is that I'm doing and just start doing, instead. And I know that my resolutions tend to fail in the face of my considerable neuroses, but I'm really going to try and keep this one.

...and hey, even writing that makes me feel better. ♥

(PS: Speaking of "I always miss the really obvious stuff," WHERE HAS PRINCESS TUTU BEEN ALL MY LIFE AND WHY DID I NOT PICK IT UP SOONER. Between that and Mad Men, I am sort of in a These Shows Give Me Everything I Want Out Of TV-induced state of mediabliss.)

(I really hope y'all aren't sick of hearing about this by now.)

Will finish up the DVD-commentary meme when I'm not backstage, but for now:

saying_yes_2010

For all your Saying Yes! needs! Please join; this is where the main action's going to take place, and where I'm going to host Undone Sundays, too. I didn't originally anticipate this having its own community, but I never thought the idea would take off the way it did, so there you go!

And pimp the community around, through a link or through everyone's favorite cheerful little banner:

<center><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/saying_yes_2010/"><img src="http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/1098/sayingyes.gif" border="0"></a></center>

I'm going to be promoting the hell out of this, too, but your help is always appreciated. ♥

Thank you everyone for your interest and contribution so far, and I think we can make this pretty awesome!

(and if you guys can think of any communities where I could do some more advertising, please do tell me. I am trying to pimp the SHIT out of this thing.)

You know what? I'm feeling pretty good right now.

The show I'm in just opened, and I've finally hit a point where I feel good about the performance, mostly because I realized when the director told me to suck it up and do the work and that I should be less concerned with trying to please her or fight with her, she -- was completely right. (You think I'd have learned that lesson by now! But no, overthinking is an ingrained habit with me.) I think I know what I'm going to write the getting-into-grad-school paper on, and it's a topic I'll do really well. I'm planning a Big Old Party for my twenty-first birthday (which is coming up on November first, yay!) at a lovely Irish pub downtown. Mith and Linden will be staying in my apartment that weekend, and Dad's letting the three of us borrow one of the cars. Saying Yes! is turning into something that's exceeding my wildest expectations, and everything about it just thrills me. And I have stories to tell again -- fannish ones (Cuban Missile Crisis fic! About international reactions and not UST! Russia and China squabbling! Will be finished by 28th of October for Symbolic Purposes [TM]!) and original stories. Oh god, the original stories. I'd really forgotten how much I love to worldbuild, and how much fun I have creating place, not just trying to recapture it. It's a good direction for my writing, too; it frees me from over-reliance on a historical narrative and lets me find my own stories and my own voice.

Definitely a good place to be, I think. So good, it calls for a meme!

Pick a paragraph (or any passage less than 500 words) from any fanfic I've written, and comment to this post with that selection. I will then give you a DVD commentary on that snippet: what I was thinking when I wrote it, why I wrote it in the first place, what's going on in the character's heads, why I chose certain words, what this moment means in the context of the rest of the fic, lots of awful puns, and anything else that you'd expect to find on a DVD commentary track.

Fic tag, if you need it. I kind of never get tired of nattering on about my writing, so have at it! The commentary might not always reach soaring heights of literary criticism or whatever, but hopefully it'll be an interesting read either way.

saying_yes_2010



So after checking over everyone's responses, and looking at my own schedule of availability and realizing that I have a take-home midterm that I need to finish up on the 26th, I think I've got a game plan in place for Saying Yes!

Mark your calendars, kids, because Saying Yes! will run from January 4 - January 18th, 2010.

Depending on how things go, I might extend the challenge period until the 25th, but that's a decision I can hold off on for now.

That makes the challenge a little over two months off, but I'm still excited about the ideas behind it and I want to keep thinking and talking about sex-positivity, so I'm introducing a new mini-feature to this journal: UNDONE SUNDAYS. Every other Sunday*, I'll make a post in this journal that's somehow related to Saying Yes! and its aims, and that'll let you guys jump in on the discussion, too. Whether it's sharing links to sex-positive websites/blogs/writing/fic/organizations/toy stores/etc., holding flashficathons or round-robin writing events, or simply swapping stories, there's going to be something fun to do. Participating in these posts is hardly mandatory, but they'll be there for anyone who's online and feels like joining in.

*I might end up picking another day for these posts, but lots of people seem to be around on Sundays, and thus.

As always, feel free to pass the link around; I'll probably whip up a banner or two soon with the actual date on it somewhere, but until now, y'all can use this if you'd like:

<center><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/saying_yes_2010/"><img src="http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/1098/sayingyes.gif" border="0"></a></center>

Thanks again -- I'm so excited for this, you all!

UPDATE: Saying Yes! will run from January 4 - January 18th, 2010.
saying_yes_2010



Okay, I'm getting into the meat of the logistics for this thing, and I need your input now more than ever -- this challenge won't work if people don't participate, so please fill out the poll! It'll help tremendously with scheduling.

...besides, there are lots of ticky boxes.

Poll #1473507 more timing!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 57

I'd be up for a round of Saying Yes! if you ran it from...

How many weeks would you like Saying Yes! to run for?

Should Saying Yes! have more than one round (possibly one October 26 - November 9, with another timeslot in January)?

Someday I will run out of clever options for the ticky box question.

And if you want to pimp Saying Yes! around, please do so. You can even have a fun banner ad, if you'd like!

<center><a href="http://community.livejournal.com/saying_yes_2010/"><img src="http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/1098/sayingyes.gif" border="0"></a></center>

ETA: The January timeslot becomes more enticing when I realize I can use the tagline, "Start the New Year with a bang!"
You may throw shoes at me now.

So this is the first challengefic I've written in ages that I'm actually quite proud of. You know, as much as I like putting the boys through the wringer sometimes a lot, I like it when they earn their happiness, too. ♥ Hopefully my recipient gets some joy out of this one, too.

also I still can't make the two of them hook up any sooner than 2013. Er. boooooys why so silly.

Title: The Copenhagen Protocol
Author: puella_nerdii
Characters/Pairings: America/England, with guest appearances by Denmark, the Nordics, the Netherlands, and Canada
Rating: PG-13, for England's mouth and America's mind.
Notes: Written for haro, for the following prompt at hetaliasunshine: I'd like some established relationship fic between these two. America is actually a pretty smart guy but his head is in the clouds and often it doesn't really show -- so England tries to help America take his job as a nation more seriously and improve his image with the rest of the world. Can contain references to current events, e.g. the US's current administration trying to fix international diplomatic relations. Humor and fluff appreciated, but also some seriousness please!
Summary: England helps America with an emergency rewrite of a speech -- but finds that America's learned quite a bit these last few years.

( England’s less optimistic, but saying that England’s less optimistic is like saying that the pope’s Catholic, or that Romano yells at anyone who uses that particular comparison within earshot. )

UPDATE: Saying Yes! will run from January 4 - January 18th, 2010.
saying_yes_2010



So I'm thrilled at the enormity of the response Saying Yes! has gotten so far, and it looks like I'm going to be running it soon! It also looks like I'm going to go with prompt-tree format, because I think that'll give participants the most flexibility -- people can seek out (and create) highly structured prompts/requests, or they can choose to go at it without too many guidelines. Everybody wins!

I would, however, like to know when exactly I should run this thing, as a lot of people are saying they'd participate as long as they aren't insanely busy at the time. So! Tell me what dates look good for y'all, and don't be shy. Saying Yes! will probably run for about two weeks, so keep that in mind.

Poll #1470805 dates!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

What times look good for you? (Be as general or as specific as you'd like.)

Would you have been upset if I'd left out the ticky box?

I am so excited, you guys. So excited. ♥

There's a love meme going around; I've got a thread and y'all should get one, too.

UPDATE: Saying Yes! will run from January 4 - January 18th, 2010.
saying_yes_2010



ETA: Hi to everyone who's found this poll since I first put it up -- and thank you so much to everyone who's signal-boosted this. I'm honestly touched to see the extent of the positive response this project's received, and I'm hopeful about the eventual outcome of this challenge. I have a poll up here about timing, and I encourage you to fill it out. The most likely dates right now are looking like October 26 - November 9, but this timeframe isn't set in stone, and if there's another time period that works better for a lot of you, I'd like to know what that is.
more edits: New bit of census-taking up here; please do fill it out! There are lots of ticky boxes, too.


So in conversation with lindensphinx and others, and after reading far too much Not Very Good porn in an attempt to give a few new things a try, and after facepalming at the recent wave of rape-and-torture-yay! that seems to be sweeping Hetalia fandom, I've decided that I'd really like to run a fic/art-bit-a-thon centered on sex-positivity.

Uh, wait, Puel, you say. How is a sex-positive ficathon different from like every other kinkmeme/kink-fic-community ever?

Simply put, this one's all about CHARACTERS, not about the authors. The point of this is to showcase characters who like sex, enjoy sex, and want sex -- characters fully capable of giving informed consent, and giving it enthusiastically. It's about characters who don't view sex or any of its aspects as something demeaning or shameful and don't pass similar value judgments on their partners' choices. There are a lot of stories out there, both fanfic and published, where characters enjoy sex despite themselves, and where a character who takes on a certain role or performs certain behaviors during sex is thought of as weaker or lesser. Sex and sex roles become imposed rather than sought out, and desire is passive, the result of things done to a character rather than things a character actively seeks out and wants.

And you know? I'm kind of fucking sick of it.

I want more stories and art where being the submissive partner during sex is FUN and not demeaning. I want more stories and art where characters shout "Yes!" instead of "No!" I want more stories and art where characters get up to all kinds of kinky crazy fun, and are never made to feel shamed for their desires.

(The stories for such a fic/art-bit-a-thon needn't be conflict-free, of course, and I think you can still have fraught and tense and dark fic that uses sex to explore more serious themes while keeping the story an overall sex-positive one. In such a story, I'd say that sex itself shouldn't be the problem; the conflict isn't in whether or not the characters want, but in how they're going to get what they want. Does that make sense?
Good examples of conflicted-but-still-sex-positive: different comfort levels with a kink but a mutual desire to experiment; questions of relationship identity (friends-with-benefits? lovers? one time thing?) within mutual desire; LOGISTICAL hurdles like xenokink, first time with a specific sex, sex despite injury.)

There are three formats I'm thinking about trying out for this thing:
Requests, in which prompters ask for up to ten things they'd like to see written/drawn, and participants reply in comments with fills for those requests.
Prompt Tree, explanation here, in which someone leaves a comment with a character's name and the fandom that character is from in parentheses, and other people leave nested comments featuring a character (or characters) they'd like to pair the first up with or more specific prompts either for the character or the pairing; people can leave fic or art at any point in the tree.
Mix-and-Match, in which I generate a whole bunch of lists -- of quotes, songs, thematic elements, colors, settings, genres, species of parrots, etc. -- and participants choose as many elements as they'd like from the lists to help them create an appropriate fic or work of art.

I might consider other formats, but I'm leery of anything that would require a lot of work on my part. I want this largely to run itself -- I'll provide start and end dates, y'all provide the rest.

Sound good? Awesome! Please fill out the poll. :3

Poll #1469669 sex-positive ficbitathon thing!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 178

If I were to run a low-key sex-positive ficbit-a-thon/art-a-thon, would you be interested in participating?

What format sounds good?

You knew this was coming.

And if you've got any other questions/comments/concerns, do shoot them my way.

ETA: Because I forgot to put this in the poll (derp), those of you responding "Sure, as long as I don't have a zillion other things to do at the time," do feel free to tell me what times would be good for you.
Son of ETA: ...and because I am shameless, if you'd like to pimp out this poll or give this idea a plug somewhere, be my guest. The more the merrier, after all!

So you guys have all heard of Epic Mickey by now, right? And how it's making me REALLY want a Wii even though I haven't picked up a videogame in possibly over a year?

In a similar vein, an illustrator named Jeffrey Thomas did a series of illustrations of the Disney princesses. Except, well, different. And by different I mean the series is called "Twisted Princess" and OH MY GOD ARIEL WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR HAND and seriously y'all need to check out some of the details he snuck into these because they will give you the best kinds of chills.

It will badtouch your childhood. And it will make you like it.

...I want to cosplay that version of Belle so badly. You guys have no idea.

So for various reasons, I wrote little over the month of September. I complained about this -- often -- but didn't really have the impetus to write anything, for whatever reason. And there are many of them: school, theatre, anxiety about the future, my becoming overly dependent on research to the point where it cripples my ability to sit down and write because I feel like I need to factcheck every damn sentence.

On Thursday, I was doing the usual Writer Whinge to Mith when she got fed up and told me, "You have ten minutes. I want 100 words of America sucking Lithuania off. Go. In this window. Now."

Me: "I -- what -- but -- RESEARCH -- yesma'am."

These are the results. And you know what? I feel pretty good about them. Hopefully you guys like them, too. ♥

(all under 1000 words, all varying degrees of Not Worksafe, feel free to skip the ones for pairings you are less wild about, etc.)


( America/Lithuania, blowjobs in the kitchen: 'Lithuania grips America's shoulder until his fingers feel like they're about to splinter' )

( Russia/America, temperatureplay and the Civil War: 'What about my hands?' )

( Russia/Lithuania, uh. Reverse somnophilia? Really weird badtouch? I don't know, guys: 'I had a bad dream.' )

( Russia/England, the things he's repressing: 'You wish to continue, yes?' )

( Prussia/Austria/Hungary, how Prussia finally lost his virginity: 'The thing about Prussia's dreams is that they aren't usually like this.' )

( Prussia/Austria/Hungary, two hundredish years later: 'We are NOT having sex in your brother's basement.' )

( England/America, fun with toys: 'That's nine.' )

.

1_4_the_books is open and running!

I am so excited, you guys, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.

♥ ♥ ♥

Boy, '09 sure seems like the year of PrivilegeFail in fandom, doesn't it? This time, however, there's fail coming in from both sides there are arguments put forth by both camps that I'm uncomfortable with.

Brief background: The Lambda Literary Foundation revises/clarifies/what-have-you their mission statement, which results in a revision of the criteria by which they grant their awards for best LGBT works; hereafter, they're only granting the awards to self-identified LGBT authors.

The Internet, predictably, explodes, largely because straight authors have been eligible for, and have won, Lambda Awards in the past and are now crying discrimination and oppression and all the rest.

( This isn't about establishing a hierarchy of talent or skill, it's about giving queer writers the tools they need to succeed in an industry that, let's face it, is not quite as friendly towards us as you'd hope. )

In conclusion: I like my thoughtful queer fiction. I like my scorchin' m/m romance. I like them for different reasons. They are often written for different reasons. One is not better than the other, but they are different, and it makes sense to grant each a different kind of recognition.

More con footage: America and England's Very Special Relationship.

...what. I like kissing my girlfriend. I also like kissing my girlfriend when she is in costume. Everyone wins!

Also, attention all 1_4_the_books members, current and prospective!

TENTATIVE START DATE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 2

Check this post for more details, including what to do if you haven't yet completed Part Two of your application.

And we do encourage you guys to do that. And to apply, period -- we've got a great cast so far, and I'm really excited to see what everyone will do, but we could always use more people! Seriously, the mods are Mith and me, we are not scary. Presumably if you are reading this post, you know that much.