The Pointless, Yet Poignant, Crisis of a Co-Ed

Yuletide has come and gone for another year. I'm going to be a while longer slogging through the backlog of posted fic, though, because the Dread God Real Life has been very active lately, but here, have my reveal and a few recs.

I wrote Automotive Testing Procedures in the Young Wizards fandom. I'm pretty sure it was an easy guess for anyone who cared to take a swing at it, since my affection for Kit and Ronan and penchant for pretentious titles are dead giveaway tells in Young Wizards. I also received fic in Young Wizards, Remaking, a wonderful little slice of Tom/Carl that was exactly what I was hoping for when I asked someone to write me the fic their heart desired.

( Other fic I liked included: )

1. Kaleidoscope authors have finally been revealed, which means that I get to tell you all that I wrote Experiments in Writer's Block in Y tu mama tambien fandom for venturous! This was not an easy story to write; I came up with the central concept of "writer's block" early in the process, and it proved ominously prescient. That said, I am actually pretty happy with it, and I've gotten some really lovely feedback for it. If you enjoy young men dooming themselves to unhappiness through their own emotional barriers, I recommend you give it a shot. If not, well, I don't blame you.

2. Yuletide assignments are out! My letter, which I didn't post until a few days after assignments went out (oops) is here, with prompts in Young Wizards, The Night Circus, Newsflesh, and Fidelio, should you care to peruse it. The Fannish Exchange Gods, perhaps in compensation for the horrors they visited upon me during Kaleidoscope, have given me an excellent excuse to write a story that's been dying to be written by someone in this fandom for a long time. My only fear is Length; I don't think this one is going to stay short.

3. My Adventures in Tag Wrangling continue apace: I now wrangle Twilight. All of it. Because I have read two of the books (sober) and have seen all of the movies so far (shit-faced drunk) and that's more qualification than I have to wrangle some of my fandoms, and because no one else was taking them. This, apparently, is what the OTW does: makes you make it easier for people to read things in a fandom you completely hate, because you actually do believe that everyone has a right to write and read the Werewolf/Vampire/Spineless Self-Insert Character threesome of their heart. Fandom, what have you done to me.

Oh my god, y'all. My hair has gone white overnight, my visage is gnarled and twisted, and my friends and relations no longer know my face, but my Kaleidoscope fic is done. Or rather, abandoned, because it works okay-ish and lacks major grammatical and stylistic errors and doesn't completely suck and at five hours until the fics go live (not are due, mind you, but go live), I feel that I have wrung every drop of blood from that particular stone. Writing this aged me. It isn't even like it was particularly long. I was just incredibly stressed out over figuring out what my recipient wanted, exactly, and reconciling my best guesses about that to a very, very tightly closed canon. I know for a fact that I was waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy overthinking the whole thing, but I have never freaked out over a challenge like this before. My brain has been reduced to .gifs.

( A challenge, as told in .gifs. Warning for abuse of bandwidth. )

Now, to go sign up for Yuletide so I can do it all again in a month.

A friend of mine has a cousin - young, dresses oddly, likes Doctor Who - who's going through a bit of a rough patch. We're trying to collect advice for her - other than the generic "it'll be better in college" - here.

If you could take a moment to tell someone what you wish someone had told you when you were thirteen, it'd be appreciated.

ETA: A number of people have expressed an interest in seeing other people's responses, so I've set up a Tumblr here. The anonymity of all responses will be preserved.

1. On reflection, signing up for every unclaimed K-Pop fandom on my first day as an AO3 tag wrangler may have been a tad over-ambitious. Whatever, I'm like 60% through the backlog of confusion and crossover pairings, with only the Super Junior Mountain Of Too Many Band Members left to climb. RAMMING SPEED.

2. I am uncertain whether I should enlist in yagkyas or not. On the one hand, I promised myself that if I got to the minimum word count in my Kaleidoscope story by the end of enlistment, I'd do it. On the other hand, while I have the minimum, the story's not actually done. On Shiva's third hand, I really like writing Ray Person, but on this fourth hand I just found by the side of the road, I'm completely incapable of writing Brad/Nate, which is the dominant pairing in the Generation Kill fandom by a long shot. Help! I need more hands! Or fewer, whichever one helps me to resolve shit.

3. Ask the Audience: how self-indulgent are you allowed to get with something that you're writing for someone else before you're no longer allowed to give it to them? Only I promised fic to someone a while back, and it seems to be turning into a Lord King Bad Fic despite my best intentions.