Shipping meme seen in a few places, including yalumesse, sweetsorcery, and rionaleonhart:

1. List three shipping tropes you love 2. List three shipping tropes you don't love 3. One emotional aspect of a ship that always gets you 4. One physical aspect of a ship that always gets you 5. Multiship or monoship? 6. Rare pairs or mainstream? 7. Polyamory or monogamy? 8. If the ship is physical, reversible or not? 9. Do you always have romantic ships for fandoms? 10. How important is the sexual part (if any) of your ship? 11. Opinion on platonic ships? 12. List 3 ships you currently love 13. List 5 OTPs from past fandoms 14. Opinion on the importance of marriage? 15. Opinion on OC kids?

Answers under the cut.

( Shipping meme answers! )

A meme from sovay, in which I asked for and received three things to talk about "that I may or may not know or care about." I was given:

1. Sunglasses

... are becoming increasingly necessary as I get older, but are also a bit of a pain because I wear glasses with a very strong prescription, SIGH. I've never gotten myself a pair of prescription sunglasses because for years my prescription changed so fast that it wasn't worth paying for. Normally I just wear the over-the-top kind. At this point my prescription has settled down so I probably could, but the last time I changed my glasses I decided to try that coating where it darkens automatically in sunlight.

So far, I hate it. I hate it most of all because it's responsive to UV light, and since UV light is blocked by glass, therefore the time when I need sunglasses most of all -- when I'm driving -- it's completely useless. The rest of the time, it makes bright sunny days look mildly overcast, and since I'm sensitive to daylight levels in a seasonal-affective-disorder kind of way ... yeah. Well, it was something I felt I should try once in my life. I think maybe automatic sunglasses you can't take off would work better in a place where the sunlight is brighter and less attenuated than it is this far north. The only time when it actually feels useful is in the very middle of the day on extremely bright sunny days, especially when I'm somewhere with a lot of pavement or rocks where the light is very bright. And we just don't get a whole lot of that here.

2. Midsummer

A very big deal at 65 degrees of latitude! It's not an official holiday because Alaska is culturally attached to a nation where it isn't a big deal, but we have a solstice festival in town (basically a street fair) and a number of associated activities -- there's a 10K race at midnight (the Midnight Sun Run), a midnight baseball game, and stuff like that. Basically, it's light all night, so why not? It stops getting dark in early May and doesn't start again 'til late July. We aren't quite far enough north for the sun to actually stay up all night (you need to be at the Arctic Circle for that, and we're not quite there - 66.33 vs. 64.8), but at this point it's definitely light enough to read a book outside at midnight*, and instead of darkness we get a few hours of pink sunset/sunrise sky. Our official sunset/sunrise times right now are 12:30 a.m. and 3 a.m., although the sun actually sets a bit earlier at my house because we're north of town in a valley.

*If you don't mind losing a pint or two of blood; the mosquitoes are terrible this year.

3. Pecans

My parents are from Oklahoma, and my grandmother had a pecan tree in the yard. Every year at Christmas they would send us a large bag of pecans from their tree. I'm not sure if this is why, but I absolutely love pecans to this day, and pecan pie is one of my favorite desserts. One of my regrets now that she's gone is that I'm not sure if we ever properly thanked her for them, especially now that I'm aware of the work that must have gone into collecting and shelling them.

(Either that or they always bought pecans at the store and claimed they were from their personal pecan tree. I guess I'll never know now.)

If you would also like three random things to talk about, just let me know!

Seen at snickfic! You can sort yourself here.

The incredibly (well, mostly) unsurprising results:

1 Found Families
2 Amnesia Fic
2 Hurt/Comfort
4 And They Were Roommates!
5 Vampires/Werewolves AU
6 Daemons
6 Polyamory
6 'Groundhog Day'/Karmic Time Loop
6 Snowed-In Cabin/Isolated Together For Extended Period of Time
10 Body Swapping

( Continues under the cut )

Saw a couple people doing this on DW, and it's a perennial favorite on Tumblr, but I've never tried it. So, let's!

Give me a character & I’ll answer the following about them!

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life
hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang
hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff
best quality:
worst quality:
ship them with:
brotp them with:
needs to stay away from:
misc. thoughts:

Via veleda_k:

Give me a character, and I'll tell you:

First impression
Impression now
Favorite moment
Idea for a story
Unpopular opinion
Favorite relationship
Favorite headcanon

The usual disclaimer applies: I have a tendency to start these and not finish them, so don't take it personally if your comment isn't answered! Characters from any fandom I'm at least sort of familiar with are welcome.

(The original meme was "one or more characters", but I'm capping it at one per comment to make it easier on myself.)

Ugghhhh, I have a cold and I feel TERRIBLE. It is just a cold (I can tell because, for one thing, I'm starving; I've been eating everything that isn't nailed down) but I will be glad when we get the feeling-lousy part of this process out of the way.

Since I can't concentrate on writing because I currently have the attention span of a distressed moth, I decided to do the "30 days of fanfic questions" meme that's been going around (recently seen at yalumesse, for example). It looked fun, and last winter when I did the December questions meme THAT I NEVER ANSWERED ANY OF BECAUSE I'M AN AWFUL HUMAN BEING, someone asked me how I got into fandom, and several of these questions address that, so you'll finally get your answer, person whose question I am so sorry I never answered!


1: How did you first get into writing fanfic, and what was the first fandom you wrote for? What do you think it was about that fandom that pulled you in?

The first fandom I wrote for -- that I finished stories for, rather than just writing scraps here and there -- was the anime Trigun. The two things that drew me in were the worldbuilding (which was really lovely and fascinating, and set my imagination on fire) and the desire to fix certain aspects of the anime's ending.

I was quite a bit older than most people are when they start writing fanfic. I think I was around 24 or 25. I had run across the concept of it when I got online in college, and then I got interested in Stargate SG-1 and read a bunch of fanfic for that (this was circa 1999 or so), and when I moved to Illinois I was lonely and miserable and unemployed and ... watching a whole lot of anime. Which was how I got into Trigun, and got completely fascinated by this weird and wonderful post-apocalyptic desert planet, and interested in unraveling all the dangling mysteries that the anime never really resolved. So I ended up channeling most of my free time and homesickness into this massive long post-series AU with tons of OCs, basically ALL the dead characters resurrected in increasingly unlikely ways, kids of main characters, long-lost relatives ... it was huge and sprawling and cracktastic and amazing, glorious fun. I wrote it as a WiP, posted biweekly updates all the way to the end, and eventually spun off an illustrated version because people kept sending me fanart. The non-illustrated version is on AO3 if you're curious.

ETA: Although, thinking about it, that's just fanfic qua fanfic; I've always made up stories about the stuff I read or watched, just for fun, but never really thought of writing it down before the Internet, though I did write spec scripts occasionally in high school. I took it all very seriously! I was going to be an AUTHOR! (hahahaha, and look how that turned out, she says from just shy of 40. /bitterlaugh) But I would make up EXTENSIVE alternate seasons, sequel seasons of canceled shows, and so forth to entertain myself -- I had, for example, a whole sequel series for Quantum Leap that was all about Sam's daughter going back in time to look for him, and the adventures she had along the way.

( Full list of questions )

Since there are some new people following me from the friending meme, as well as a number of new people having added me over the months since I got into MCU fandom, I figured an introductory post would be in order.

- Most people added me on the basis of MCU/Steve-and-Bucky stuff, and I am still into that; I just haven't been posting about it. I've gone kind of lurky. But I'm definitely not out of the fandom yet! I've also fallen back into White Collar somewhat with the new season airing (it was my main fandom for about three years) and I'm just getting back into Invisible Man, early-2000s sci-fi show, for which I'm about to put up an episode discussion post in a minute.

- About me: writer, artist, lives in Alaska. I have a sci-fi webcomic (there's an update tumblr, kismetcity, where I also reblog stuff related to science, astronomy, or other things in the same general line as the comic). I try to keep my fannish stuff at least plausibly-deniably separate, though I'm generally more careful about not talking about the fannish stuff on the realname side than vice versa.

- I don't post much stuff locked. Usually when I do, there's a reason -- original-writing brainstorming I don't want to share with the world, personal stuff involving other people, random whining, that kind of thing. But most of it's public.

- I also don't have notifications of friending/subscribing/etc turned on, so I usually will not notice if someone new is following me. I never mind new people dropping in to comment on posts. You don't feel like you need to introduce yourself or anything (although you certainly can). If you see something interesting you'd like to comment on, please go ahead!

I've noticed in the past that I basically suck at doing DVD commentaries on my own fic, for a rather specific reason: when I'm writing, I tend to approach it from a "narrate what's happening" standpoint (I kind of "see" or "feel" the story happening, I guess), and afterwards, that's what I remember -- the things that happened in the story, not my own thought process that went into it. In general, the main times that I remember a good bit of the creative process were on the stories where things got borked enough that I had to do a lot of unborking, like the White Collar horse-farm AU where I had to block out the ending using toys and rewrite it multiple times, because I had SO FLIPPING MANY CHARACTERS running around that I kept losing track of where they were.

But I've seen a couple people doing a variation of DVD-meme commentary where they ask for a specific scene, and then talk about what's happening in the scene -- what's going on in the characters' heads, what non-viewpoint characters are up to, what might happen in the parts of the scene that aren't shown. And that, I think I could do!

So - give me a scene from one of my stories, and also let me know if there's anything specific that you want to know ("what was Neal really up to", "why did [x] do [y]", "what happens after the last scene in this story") or I can just talk about the scene in general, probably from more of an in-universe than a meta perspective (but it depends on the fic). If it's one that I really don't have ANY thoughts on, I'll have you pick another one ...

My fanfic on AO3.

It doesn't just have to be fanfic - feel free to ask about a scene from my original work, if you'd prefer! (A non-comprehensive list of my non-fanfic stuff: Hunter's Moon - Sun-Cutter - Freebird - Homespun)

I am running on 2 hours' sleep and currently annoyed at certain RL happenings (not anything big, just health-appointment-related snafus), so I am going to do a meme which I stole from frith_in_thorns's tumblr.

Comment with a letter/question and I'll answer it!
(wow, some of these are really ridiculous ...)

A: Your current OTP.
B: A pairing you initially didn’t consider but someone changed your mind.
C: A pairing you wish you shipped, but just can't.
D: What was the first thing you ever contributed to a fandom?
E: Have you added anything stupid/cracky/hilarious to your fandom, if so, what?
F: What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it?
G: What was your first fandom?
H: Do you prefer real-life TV shows or animated TV shows?
I: Has tumblr caused you to stop liking any fandoms, if so, which and why?
J: Name a fandom you didn’t care/think about until you saw it all over tumblr.
K: How do you feel about the other people in your current fandom(s).
L: Your favorite fanartist/author gives you one request, what do you ask for?
M: A person who got you into a fandom and what fandom they pulled you in to.
N: Your favorite fandom (for the people; not the thing you fangirl over).
O: Choose a song at random, what ship does it remind you of?
P: Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).
Q: A ship you’ve abandoned and why.
R: A pairing you ship that you don’t think anyone else ships.
S: What's a headcanon you have?
T: What are your favorite male/male ships or female/female ships?
U: What are your favorite male/female ships?
V: Do you have any 3-way ships? If so, what?
W: 5 favorite characters from 5 different fandoms.
X: 3 OTPs from 3 different fandoms.
Y: A fandom you’re in but have no ships from.
Z: What's a ship that you want to ship publicly, but everyone on tumblr hates it so you keep your mouth shut about it?

Closing meme now, 'cause I have to get ready for class!

Quick note before I get into this: podcath made podfic of my CA2 story Strawberries in Wintertime. You can find the podfic here!

Anyway, attackfish tagged me in a Q&A meme! The rules are thus:

Rules:
Rule 1: always post the rules
Rule 2: answer the questions the person who tagged you asked and make 10 new ones
Rule 3: tag 10 new people and link them
Rule 4: let them know you’ve tagged them

I'm not going to do the last 2 steps because I don't like tagging people, so I'll just post new questions at the end and you can answer them if you want.

1. Favorite place.
So hard to answer! I think it's kind of a toss-up between the place I grew up, and the place I live now. We have 11 rural acres and I absolutely love being here. But I grew up rural in a different part of the state, and after living there for 18 years, it's deeply ingrained in me. I try to get back a couple times a year to revisit all my old favorite parts of the property and do some hiking.

2. Favorite fanwork you made.
But there are so many. /o\ It's gotta be something from Stargate Atlantis fandom, though, because I stretched myself SO much in that fandom, and made some things I'm really proud of. I think if I could just pick one thing I'm most happy about, it would have to be Postcards to Jeannie, in which Teyla and Jeannie exchange postcards between galaxies. It was really a lot of fun to make, and it's probably the most popular fanwork I've ever made; I got literally hundreds of comments on it, which was amazing (especially for a gen, image-heavy story).

3. Classical novel you wish you never read.
Do sci-fi classics count? Because Martian Time-Slip is a horrendous pile of dreck and for some reason I read all the way to the end in the hopes of finding out why it has a reputation as a great sci-fi novel. I would like those hours of my life back, please.

4. First fandom.
.... I think this depends on how you define "fandom". Some of my earliest memories are of playing Batman & Robin, and other superheroes, with my sister. A few years later, we both made Star Trek comics together. As a teenager I would probably have done fannish things with Elfquest if I had known it was an option -- if there had been any sort of Holt in my area, I would have been ALL OVER THAT, but as it was, I just drew a lot of elves and fantasized about having a wolf of my very own. There were also a number of TV shows and rock bands that I was into in that happy-obsessive, putting-pictures-all-over-the-walls teenage way. Then as a young adult, I got involved with comics discussion boards and made a lot of friends that way, but I never wrote fanfic for it. (Actually I still find it very difficult to think about comics in a fanfic kind of way, because I got to know so many comics pro writers/artists during those years.)

I think I'd say my first fandom in the sense that I do fandom now (writing fanfic, discussing canon with people, making fanart, etc) was for the anime Trigun in about 2000-2001. My Trigun fic was the first fanfic I ever wrote, and I ran a Yahoo discussion group (sadly deleted several years later when it became inundated with spam and was too much trouble to keep up with, since I and everyone else had long since moved on).

But I was also doing comics fandom at the same time. It's not really an easy thing to sit down and go, "Yes, this was the first and only."

5. Do you collect anything? If so, what?
Not really. I collected movie tie-in Legos for a while (Star Wars, Harry Potter, etc), but I ended up giving them all to my nephew because I felt a bit weird about putting them on a shelf when they're meant to be played with. About the closest thing I have right now are those Schleich animal toys, which technically I buy as art props (especially for the drawing classes I teach) but I tend to gravitate toward the ones I really like: ice-age creatures, dinosaurs, and Arctic animals.

6. Favorite book/movie/tv show/whatever you never managed to be fannish for.
Oh .... hmmm. There's actually a bunch of stuff I really adore but never grabbed me in a fannish way. Discworld is the first one that comes to mind, at least in terms of something I love, have been avidly following for a long time (I read my first Discworld novel when I still lived at home, in the early '90s sometime), but have never had any desire to read/write fanfic for.

7. Favorite season of the year
Autumn. I sincerely love autumn; I love everything about it except the fact that it's followed by winter, but everyone has a flaw.

8. Mountains, or ocean?
Mountains. I grew up near mountains and I can't get enough of them. I like the ocean too, but I get seasick and if I had to choose ... mountains. For sure.

9. Has there ever been a book/movie/tv show/whatever that was so bad you couldn't stop watching?
Yes, although I'm having some trouble thinking of a good example off the top of my head. Most things have at least some redeeming value. Oh wait, I did think of one: when I was a teenager, I used to watch the soap opera All My Children. A year or two ago, I found that a whole bunch of clips of the storylines from that era had been uploaded to Youtube, and I ended up watching TONS of it in a "best parts version" sort of way, laughing at the melodrama and cheesy acting and utterly ridiculous ~dramatic~ music while obsessively loading more clips in tabs.

10. Ice cream, cake, or pie?
Ooh. Can I have all three? Ice cream if I can have things in it; I like my ice cream loaded with chips and nuts and brownie bits. Otherwise, probably cake. Now I'm hungry.

MY QUESTIONS (answer if you like, don't feel like you have to)
1. You're getting caught up with an old friend you haven't seen in awhile. Go out, or stay in?
2. Favorite color?
3. Are you allergic to anything?
4. What's the best gift you ever gave someone?
5. What's the worst gift you ever received?
6. Your family's most ridiculous or embarrassing tradition
7. Favorite dinosaur? (Or if you aren't into dinosaurs, favorite bird?)
8. A book or movie you'd like to change the ending of
9. A writer or artist you think more people should know about
10. A book, movie or TV show you didn't expect to like but actually did