anti-anti-entropy

So, here's my Dear Author letter for ALL CAPS Exchange. You may notice a strange similarity to the ones I've written in past years. That is all in your head. There is at least one important difference.

( Dear Author Letter 3: Dear Author Letter IN SPAAAAAACE )

Please feel free to cruise my tumblr and livejournal tags for any other insight. I have anonymous comments on my lj and anonymous asks enabled on my tumblr, if you need to check in with me. I promise, I will probably be happy with whatever you write. Thanks again!

So, here's my Dear Author letter for ALL CAPS Exchange.

( Hey! Hi! Hello. How YOU doing? )

Well, I think I've typed up way too much probably, but hopefully some of it's helpful! Please feel free to cruise my tumblr and livejournal tags for any other insight. I promise, I will probably be happy with whatever you write, and I will crow about it endlessly.

I suspect I might not be able to post an entry tomorrow because I'll be driving around somewhere in assfuck nowhere Virginia, doing a picturesque holiday activity I don't actually remember agreeing to do, but we can only wait. In the mean time, here is one of those pseudo-fics you end up half-outlining and half-writing in gmail chats with a lot of emoticons sprinkled in-- I have so many of these fuckers buried in my archived conversations.

( This is from the last Winter Olympics, when I was venting my spleen about how hockey turned out there )

I think I am officially at the time of month where I desperately want to watch all the Muppet Christmas specials, from the Muppet Christmas Carol to the one where they go to Fozzie's mom's house, meet the Fraggles, and the Swedish Chef tries to cook Big Bird. And then follow it up with A Nightmare Before Christmas. 'Tis the season, and all that. Too bad all my damn DVDs are still packed away down in the basement.

Another trope meme prompt that grew rampantly out of comment-length. More FF7 fic.

( Say Yes to the Dress )

I have all my windows open because the weather has gone cooler; it's that glorious time of year when I need neither heat nor air conditioning, and the air smells wonderful. However, at night there's some kind of tree frog or creature that makes this low, guttural, throat-rattle sort of croaking that sounds exactly like the noise you hear in horror films or survival video games right before the protagonist gets messily wasted by the monster du jour. And it seems to be happy hanging out extremely close to my window screen and making this noise in random, unexpected intervals.

It is playing merry hell on my nerves, let me tell you.

Anyway, I'm a little drunk right now for various reasons, so I thought I'd just chuck all sixteen pages of Olympic conversations onto livejournal now before I think better of it. I had to get it down from forty pages. Mostly about swimming, but with forays into other sports, and there's a lot of inexplicable Bode Miller. Also raccoons.

( For the record, it has been over a month and I am still hearing the NBC dun-dun-da-dun-dun-dun-dun music in my head. )

Well, that's done, that's all done now. Okay, I am susceptible and this meme looks fun. Pick a trope from this list and provide a fandom/pairing and I’ll tell you something about the story I’d write for that combination (i.e. write a snippet from the story or write not!fic or tell you the title and summary for the story I would write)

I, uh, have at least two stories in two different fandoms that are deliberately nothing BUT tropes, so if you hit those fandoms, you may just get chunks of those.

1. genderswap
2. bodyswap
3. drunk!fic
4. huddling for warmth
5. pretending to be married
6. secretly a virgin
7. amnesia
8. cross-dressing
9. forced to share a bed
10. truth or dare
11. historical AU
12. accidental-baby-acquisition
13. apocalypse fic
14. telepathy
15. High School/College AU

November 1. This is a special day, to be sure. A day we prepare for in advance, a day of careful strategy. A day that requires both planning and passion, a day where we get off to a running start but always in careful view of the long game, a day where we focus upon something delicious and crack-like.

Oh yes, my loves, it is the day of Half Price Remaindered Holiday Candy Harvest.

The day after Halloween, most bountiful of free-candy days, and the most expansive as well! Christmas and Easter have their appeal, though both of those holidays tend to have more distinct themes to their candy. If you disdain peppermint or jellybeans or marshmallow-based creatures, you may have a difficult time with the bounties of these holidays. But Halloween is wonderfully all-inclusive—even if you run the possibility of someone giving you those weird circus peanuts candies, you can be sure there's probably also going to be a good deal of Reeses peanut butter cups, and Milky Ways, and fun-size packets of just about everything from M&Ms to Skittles.

And our dried Peeps jerky and syrupy, preserved Cadbury eggs from Easter have no doubt run low by now, so you should hie yourself to a CVS or Walmart or whatever, and grab all the bags of candy that have pumpkins and vampires and obvious holiday themed packaging, because they are cheap and will sustain you over the next month until the next great Christmas Harvest.

Also, you know, it's the start of NaNoWriMo, All Saint's Day, and the day before Election Day 2010. So, uh, get your writing on (all inclusive), get your Holy Day of Obligation on (Catholics!), and get your vote on (Americans!). I can't stress that last one enough.

( Sports are in next entry. This is reserved for a writing meme, in honor of NaNo. Several amusing excerpts from various books below the cut. )

A quiet Halloween this year, not so much with getting drunk and lost in New York. It was fun to give out candy to the kids who came by, though I had to hold back a visible wince when one tiny trick-or-treater told me he was dressed as Anakin Skywalker, and did not know who Luke was. Also, I survived my first dinner party with the neighbors. Nice folks. They still think Louise and I are a couple, so rather than deal with tedious and/or awkward explanations, I have decided to simply throw my lot in and encourage things in the other direction. Since I'm lucky enough to be getting several visitors over the next couple of months, I've decided to fan the rumor mill and to make the neighbors think I'm hosting, like, poly-amorous lesbian orgies. At least that should make the next HOA meeting more interesting.

So, one week down where I've managed to post every day. Three weeks to go. This is kind of fun, though I worry that I'm just annoying the shit out of people. Generally, I suppress that worry. But it's always there, you know? I'm guessing it stems back to reading about myself unfavorably in someone else's journal a long time ago; it's why I don't go in for anonymemes. I already know people who don't like me; why would I want to find out even more? Then I'd just end up sulking on AIM and being dour around people I really do like and who like me back, until I man up and get over it. Why bother with any of that? Feh.

Anyway, have some more unfinished writing bits.

( Swimming: Untitled, Ian Thorpe is a pushy mofo )

( Utena: What the Thunder Said, Where Mikage has horribly awkward sex )

( FF7: Camera Obscura, Sephiroth is in your home, touching your stuff )

I passed my goal for the first week. I have a goal of something in particular to complete for the second week, which will be harder to fulfill. Also, there appears to be a deer in our backyard again. Hello, deer. If you eat the hostas again, I can't guarantee your safety.

Sweet merciful Jeebus, it's flidgetjerome's birthday!

( Celebrate the world's coolest Tiny Human! )

Music post coming soon, so all the songs from the previous one will come down shortly. I'm trying to get a lot done before the big work conference next week; New Orleans, here I come. In the meantime--

( Zodiac the movie, strange paparazzi pictures, and Oz commentary transcription )

Dear aspiring writers of the world,

It is within your right to use the words "[color] orbs" to describe the eyes of your lovingly written snugglebunny, even if it would be much better to just say "eyes." However, you do not get to also use the word "orbs" while describing testicles, especially not when one usage occurs within two paragraphs of the other. Please pick one anatomical point to gift this word to, in order to avoid future confusion and reading whiplash.

Yrs,
Humble Reader

PS: In particular, please don't do this when the color of said eye orbs is cerulean, azure, sapphire, or any other blue shade. This is counterproductive to your PWP when accidentally applied to testicles.

To you poor bastards who are about to do NaNoWriMo, I salute you.

While I'm not doing NaNo, I am determined to finish at least three stories in November. One of them because I have to on a deadline, and two of them for good measure because they damn well should have been done by now. Tomorrow being the start of November, shit, that means tomorrow-- today-- is a Holy Day of Obligation. I'll have to duck into a mass service at some point. Maybe pray for the state of politics in America or something, I don't know.

( The evening, and also some fannish things )

And now, because I want to be pretentious, have some commentary on that last swimfic story. It is very silly and hardly useful and mostly composed of comments like, "Well, it seemed like a good idea at three in the morning before deadline."

( 'Must we demystify everything? Shut up.' )

I need some sleep. Too much candy.