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

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.

Imagined night out: Go out to bar, drink too much, discuss Proust with black-turtleneck-clad young things, wake up next morning to find you've got a t-shirt from a frequent drinkers' club and a phone with new texts from a contact listed as "Jeremy Pub 3/10 IGNORE," who you apparently gave your number to, because why not.

Actual night out: Go out to bar, drink too much, get into argument about wind energy prospects in Texas and electricity wastage per mile, go to different bar, salsa dance with middle-aged Latinos, go to food truck, snag delicious Korean BBQ/Mexican fusion tacos, wake up next morning to find you've got a t-shirt from a frequent drinkers' club and a fannish e-mail account with new comments on a Sunbeam/Rainbow dubcon comment fic, which you apparently wrote, because why not.

Ladies and gentlemen: my life choices.

Also, Kaleidoscope assignments have been sent out! The winter gift exchange season has officially commenced! My assigned prompt was, well, pretty non-existent; I'm really hoping my recipient posts a Dear Doer of Darkness letter that gives a wee bit more guidance. But I am excited, nonetheless! TINY FANDOM, HO!