Pen's Nest

I've been reading comments to this post on Why Evolution Is True, and thinking my own thoughts.

Before you go to read them for yourself, tell me—do you think there is life elsewhere in the Universe? Or are we on Earth all there is? And, why?

( My own answers )

I've managed to do a round-up of the year's writing every December so far, probably because every December I've been trying to find ways not to write my SeSa story, so here is this year's edition.

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

Less, definitely. I'll start with last year's SeSa fic, Collaboration, which obviously couldn't be included in the December '08 edition of this meme; after that there was only one little snippet, a follow up to the long-ago Justin Junior, until I got to my Dragon Challenge story for this year, in June—and even that was hard work as inspiration was a long time coming. After which, things seemed to pick up a bit and I produced a Remix story, a couple of Trickyfish vampire fics, an Epic Poem and some shortish bits of fun at the end of the year. The substantial exception was my rpf_big_bang story which clocked in at just under 34,000 words, almost exactly half the year's output of some 66,000 words, well down on 2008. I remember being extremely frustrated at the beginning of the year that I just could not seem to write anything. So many times I went through the prompts on fic_requests and realised I had no inspiration. Gah. At least I managed to fill a couple towards the end of the year.


What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted in January 2008?
Lance Bass/Adam Lambert!


What's your favorite story of the year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you happiest?
Has to be Bouquet. I really fell in love with this pairing as I was writing the story, and there will be more of it. Also, I have been very lucky with my artists for big bang fics, and got a gorgeous illustration by samibee for this one.


Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
Risks, no, I don't think so.


From my past year of writing, what was...

Best story
Bouquet.

Story Most Underappreciated by the Universe
Jolly Hockey Sticks, my poor little unloved Girls Boarding School AU with Adventure and Stuff. Written for the Poptober Challenge, and pretty much unread, I think. *haz woe*

Most fun
Oh. Probably the Outtakes from Bouquet, which were trouble-free to write as they were so much fun they just flowed out; although The Song of Chris Kirkpatrick was also a lot of fun to do.


Most disappointing
I... don't think I was particularly disappointed in any of my stories this year. Possibly I wasn't being very ambitious. A bit disappointed in the participation in the Dragon Challenge, though—half that of the previous year, and as far as I could tell, not a lot of feedback from readers. Bad readers!


Most sexy
Possibly Bite, even though the actual sex in the story gets short shrift!


Story With a Single Sexy Moment
Erm. Don't think I really did this.


Hardest to Write
Bouquet, I expect, because I *really* wanted it to be right, and the rewriting was a bit harrowing.


"Holy crap, that's wrong, even for you" story:
Madame Louella Pearlman's Academy for Young Ladies, probably! Though I wouldn't ever have expected myself to write, deliberately, a sexy vampire bite story.


Most Unintentionally Telling
Um.... nah.


Do you have any fanfic or profic goals for the New Year?

I *still* have two more parts of the Chronicles to finish. I'm procrastinating with them because they're likely to take a while.

I'm really quite close to finishing my fanfic100 challenge, only perhaps ten stories left to be written.

I would definitely like to dispose of a bunch of prompts from fic_requests, it seems such a shame to let the community drift but I have found it difficult to work on these this year. For some reason I seem to be finding it harder to write short fics than I did when I started writing popslash.

I went to a funeral on Friday. A friend, younger than I, dead from cancer of the colon.

But you know, it was the best funeral I've attended in a very long time, possibly ever. It was a humanist ceremony, and it focused very clearly on the person it was about. Talked about her life, what she'd done, how she'd affected the people who knew her. Much more clearly than any of the all-too-many religious (specifically, Christian, but of different denominations) funerals I've been to in the last few years.
( Brief and possibly offensive musing )
It seems to be a trend nowadays that people don't dress in sub-fusc for funerals, at least, not always. We wore bright things on Friday, and at my father's funeral, and at my grandma's. I like it.

Back in the dark ages when I was a poor student, I somehow ended up going out for dinner in London with a bunch of other students and some people who worked in a casino. At the end of the dinner, the guy who was somehow in charge divvied up the bill and told us how much everybody owed. It was scary, because I'd ordered what I could afford and didn't have much in my purse at the time. (Student behaviour would have been that eveyone paid for what they'd had.)

I was reminded of this by a year-old comment I found while following a bunch of links this morning.

...your ability (and mine) to say "it shouldn't be that way, so I'll behave as if it isn't" is the *definition* of privilege. Deciding that we'll just treat everyone as if they had privileges *that they don't get* doesn't end in equality, it never does no matter how much we try it. It leads to racism. Foolishly, I didn't note who said this, but she said it very well.

When you have a healthy income, treating income-free students as your exact equals isn't exactly the right way to go. When you have the advantages of being white (and in my case, middle class and well educated and well off too), treating not-white people as exact equals isn't exactly the right way to go. It's an assumption with far too many flaws.

My apologies to any PoCs reading this - the analogy isn't very good, but it makes sense in my head.

Visited my Dad today. He's rather weak, having disturbed nights and digestive problems.

On the way home I pondered Stuff, as I usually do, driving back from Lincoln on my own. And I realised that the most important thing I've learned since I discovered popslash is this:

There are always more Words.

That's right. Back in the days before LJ, when I wrote for zines and subsequently for the startrek newsgroup, I used to hoard my 'clever phrases', because I knew that once I'd used them I wouldn't have anything else to say. I wrote fourteen Trek fics of some kind.

But I was wrong. Something like a hundred pop fics later, it turns out, that I don't need hoarded words, because there are always plenty more. I can be profligate, and I won't run out! I wrote two MTYG stories of respectable length, neither of which I'd had any notion of writing until I had to write them, and the words came. You could even say I wrote *five* MTYG stories this year, what with the three written for the MTYG testing, and *all* of them came fresh, I didn't use up any of my storynotions. The words come. It starts off as a struggle (I remember posting a wail of I don't wanna dismay), but they come.

There are always more words. Yay!


Admittedly, this says nothing about the *quality* of the words in question, but that's another story. Or possibly another edit. Just as I'm too lazy to write much without a deadline, I'm too lazy to do real editing work on most of my fics. Bad Pen.


Afterthought: this joyful assertion probably heralds months of writer's block!

I'm going to be re-doing my website at, um, some point, Real Soon Now. Anyway, it just occurs to me, I'd quite like to have a links page to connect to other people's fanfic (websites, that is, not LJs). Not recs, probably, just a 'here they are' to lead to people who are still writing in the popslash fandom.

Is there any reason why this would be a bad idea?

If you like the scheme, leave me a link to your website.

My thoughts on The FanLib Thing (if you don't know what that is, see metafandom).

There's a market for mackerel. So the fishing folks are sticking bait onto their hooks - they think it's tasty bait, but whatever, mackerel are pretty undiscriminating, frankly they'll throw themselves onto bare hooks if they're brightly coloured - and lowering them to catch mackerel.

Then, they sell the mackerel.

We fan fiction writers should stop thinking of ourselves as FanLib's market. We are not their market. We are their mackerel.

Fortunately, there are other fish in the sea. I think I'll be a bass. Heh.

Firstly, I have been infected by that Remix meme, so if you correctly identify which one I wrote, I will write you a ficlet to request. Everyone has been saying that they think their story is Really Obvious, and I think my story is Really Obvious, too, but then again, I haven't guessed anyone else's so far... (Oh, turloughishere is Not Allowed to guess as she received a honking great clue a while ago.)

I invented an interesting variation on the theme of shepherd's pie yesterday: instead of the traditional lamb mince, I used lentils, leek, carrots, parsnip and shallots, and a prepacked Chicken Jalfrezi for excitement (because I'm too lazy to figure out which spices would really work). Worked very well, though I have promised a Proper One for supper today (which will include the excess lentillage, because they're there).

Beast and I did our customary strot yesterday even though he was taking a day off (usually it is a break from work), and normally spends his days off glued to World of Warcraft. We frequently talk of matters profound (ish), which is nice. Yesterday's topic was hand-holding. He began it, apropos of nothing, by mentioning that he'd heard/read recently of a culture in which it is normal for men to hold hands.

When we go out for our walks, we hold hands. I sometimes hold hands with Bun, too (though it's awkward because she is taller than I, but I am Mum, and it's difficult to figure out whose hand should be in front), but not, as a rule, with Boy, not any more. Do males in our (UK/US at any rate) society ever hold hands with anyone they aren't sleeping with? (Obvious exemption for small children.) I mean, I expect that gay couples hold hands if they are in an environment where it feels safe to do so, and the male half of most straight couples would hold his woman's hand.

Come to that, what about women? I'd... probably link arms with my sister or my best friend, rather than hold hands. My husband absolutely would not hold his brother's hand. Do people hold hands with friends at all? If not, why on earth don't we? Is holding hands really such an intimate thing to do? Now I'm thinking about it again, I think it must be, otherwise we wouldn't be so reluctant to do it. But, why?

I love metafandom, but sometimes my meanderings along its byways leave me bewildered. All this fuss about labelling a story... So many people demanding 'warnings' for such things as background pairings and mpreg. Such delicate souls. Why, I have achieved squick by means of teddybear abuse and unexpected Kevin, not to mention lava lamps, but my friends do not, I think, desert me. However, it does seem to be a topic that arouses unexpected passions in the mildest fannish breast, so I wonder.

My personal habit is to post fics in my own LJ pretty much randomly. If I've written a story, you'll usually get a sentence indicating that it was written for such-and-such a reason. If you are wise in the ways of LiveJournal, you may notice that an occasional story is tagged 'wtf', and you will approach with caution (or glee). I don't in general announce the pairing (anyway, sometimes the pairing is a surprise, and the surprise is part of the story) or the rating. I write with the expectation that if you've friended me, you will have figured out that I perpetrate popslash, including Lampfic, and will treat any LJ-cut entries with appropriate caution.

I don't think the lack of a label on popslash has ever deterred me from at leat *opening* the story. Would you, personally, be *more* inclined to read if I went the whole labelling route, and headed up stories with appropriate categorisation? Do you do that yourself? Do you care, either way?

Incidentally, I run a double index on my website, with pairings and degree-of-sex announcements on the Alternative Index, for those who are looking for something specific and don't care to be startled by, say, Kevin. I'm contemplating revising this to present the stories by pairing, given the startling *quantity* of the things. How do you like stories to be presented, if you're reading on a website? Any advice would be welcome.

Well, now. turps33 was wondering where the pop meta is... I dunno that I'm up to starting off any topics that fit the definition she and withdiamonds have suggested, but I have been doing some vague musings about writing, and possibly someone else might like to muse along with me? If we stick to popslash, we'll all know who we're talking about.
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