it's a magical world

My wife has officially been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. *jazz hands*

Trying to stay positive, because at least this finally explains the whack-a-mole of weird symptoms she's been experiencing for literal years now. And while it's not curable, it's also not terminal, so. Just something to figure out how best to live with. But yeah.

On the plus side, my own surgery on Friday went fine and I'm basically recovered apart from some minor lingering soreness, so I can resume the role of the physically able partner in this relationship. And I'd already taken this whole week off work for recovery per the doctor's recommendation, so now I can just use it as a mental health staycation instead, I guess.

Since these are purely navel-gazing anyway, fuck it, I'm gonna do a 2023 fic roundup for all three damn fics I wrote. Because I like being able to come back and revisit these years later, and see where I've been.

This year I wrote and posted: 3 fics and 1 vid. Which is still better than some years, to be honest.

( fanfic yearly roundup, purely for my own mental health )

Still alive! Today marks the end of the only full two-week-long vacation I've taken since, uh, 2008 (and not counting unemployment, which is NEVER a vacation). I am so not ready to go back to work tomorrow, even if just from the comfort of my own apartment. Like, the only thing getting me through my own intense burnout of the past few months was the promise of two weeks on a beach, and now that I've had that -- and it was lovely, don't get me wrong! -- I'm just. I don't know. It was very relaxing and badly needed, but now I feel like I have nothing else to look forward to, and that's CRUSHING.

Capitalism, yay.

I still feel deeply burned out and unmotivated, though slightly less exhausted. But here we go.

At least I'm being better compensated for it now? I finally got a (significant) promotion, after several years of steadily increasing responsibilities at work with no corresponding acknowledgement that my job had changed pretty much 100%, but now I have a fancy new title and noticeable raise, so. That's something. Pressure's on to prove I'm worth it, of course, but it helps that it's just...realigning my job description and title to what I'm ACTUALLY doing these days. Ugh, I am such an Adult (TM) now, I hate everything.

Fandom-wise, I hit a hard wall after five back-to-back exchange fics & vid, and basically created absolutely nothing for two solid months, which is both a symptom of and ongoing contributor to my depression. The vacation didn't kick that, exactly, but I have managed to start writing again in fits and starts, and am now actually making progress on the Poe/Finn WIP I abandoned almost two years ago. Might even finish the fucker at some point this year. Who knows? It's nice to dream.

I REALLY miss writing TOG in general and Joe/Nicky in particular, but haven't been able to latch onto any inspiration on that front, sigh. If you have any prompts looking for a good home, feel free to throw them at me. Maybe something will stick. Maybe not. I could use the push either way.

I did watch and very much enjoy Our Flag Means Death, along with everyone else, but didn't click with it in terms of fannishness. Like, from a Normal Person perspective, I am extremely enthusiastic about the show and have been trying to convince everyone I know in real life to watch it as well. But from a Fandom perspective, I'm...already kind of sick of it on tumblr? Thrilled that so many people love it, though! You do you! I just...that kind of comedy is fun for me to watch but extremely off-putting to read or write, for some ineffable reason. I've read a couple of popular fics and failed to drum up any enthusiasm for them. (A large part of this is the runaway hit ship, Ed/Stede, which I definitely support in terms of the show itself but have ZERO interest in reading fic about, because I just...kind of can't stand Stede as a character and do not want to spend any more time with him, ugh. He's a great foil for Blackbeard! And I never want to think about him in any kind of sexual situation.)

If Olu/Jim were the main fannish pairing, I might be more into it. And Lucius is probably my fave character overall. But god help me, I am 100% on Mary Bonnet's side when it comes to Stede, which is: please have a lovely life far, far away from me. I could watch Taika Waititi as Ed all fucking day, though, he is a delight.

Also, I'm already seeing a lot of all-too-familiar Discourse (TM) in the OFMD tumblr fandom, and I already dealt with the not-so-thinly-veiled racism in Old Guard fandom, guys. I'm not putting myself through that shit again. TOG is still worth it, for me, because I love the characters so deeply and have managed to find my own little happy place within the fandom at large; OFMD has neither of those draws for me. Godspeed, baby OFMD fandom. I genuinely wish you the best, but I'm gonna duck and cover for this one.

So that's where I'm at for the moment. Mostly okay, brain weasels not helping matters, but I'll get through it.

Time to cringe my way through the next snowflake_challenge.


Challenge #7: Promote/Rec/Sing the Praises of Yourself!

In RL, I may no longer be an active stage manager for the most part, but dangnabbit, I can still manage a stage excellently when called upon to do so.

I'm a very quick learner, and good at keeping buckets of info in my head at all times. This is part of what makes me a pretty good stage manager, and tends to be useful at work in general. It also comes in handy for trivia, as long as the trivia is related to things I actually find interesting and not, like, sports or popular music.

Switching over to fandom: well, I do genuinely like my own fics and vids? I mean, I very much write for myself at this point, so as long as I continue entertaining myself, it's just bonus awesomeness when other people enjoy it, too.

Reccing myself awkwardly:

Boden's Mate (X-Men/Inception, primarily Erik/Charles) is probably what I'm best known for, and I'm still really proud of it. Look, plot! I like plot.

she's the one that they call old whatsername (Star Trek Reboot, girl!Kirk/Spock) is my personal favorite thing I've ever written. And while I have next to nothing in common with Kirk in any incarnation, if you want to know how my brain works and what my internal narrator sounds like, that's the fic to read. (Or, um, any scenes narrated by Alex in the Boden's Mate 'verse, for that matter.)

In terms of vidding, The Hymn of Acxiom (MCU, Bucky) is my personal favorite vid. The lyrics are just so eerie and well-suited to the Winter Soldier.

I also think Die Young (Buffy, ensemble) is one of my better vids. Because, like -- that's it. That's the show.

And lastly, what the hell, I spent pretty much all of 2019 working on The Conspirator's Gift (X-Men, Charles/Erik), and if I can't rec my own obscure medieval mystery AU, who else will?

Slowly but surely...

snowflake_challenge Challenge #2: In your own space, talk about your fannish history.

I feel like I talk about this too much! Except for how I haven't posted regularly in like four years. So let's see if I can get this into some kind of order. ( there is too much. let me sum up. )

And then a bunch of our friends showed up at our wedding in Harry Potter cosplay and it was awesome.

Ok, so I've basically been on an extended fandom hiatus lately. Haven't written or vidded anything in months (though I occasionally poke at a couple of WIPs), am reading fic primarily from my old fandoms rather than anything current (Star Trek reboot and Merlin have both been prominently featured in my reading list lately), only check DW/LJ once a week and Tumblr even less frequently. Between work, Gay Geeks, and navigating a new relationship, my real life has been...busy. (Yes, the girlfriend thing is official, and she's even spent a weekend with my parents now. So there's that. Getting serious happens a lot quicker when you've already been friends for a couple of years, apparently.)

Still not sure when I'm gonna get back in the swing of things. (I'd really thought that the Man From UNCLE movie would kick me back into gear, because it hit a lot of my fannish buttons in truly delightful ways, but apparently not.) But hey, with the fall comes the beginning of the TV season, so, y'know, maybe it's time. Doctor Who is not doing it for me much, still, though I <3 Missy. However, I just watched the season premieres of both Sleepy Hollow and Agents of SHIELD, and I am SO INTO THEM.

Sleepy Hollow - ( very minor spoilers )

SHIELD - ( again, spoilers )

So that's where I'm at. I do miss writing, but I feel like I drain all my creative energies at work, and there's just nothing left when I get home. It's frustrating, because work is not the kind of creative that leaves me feeling fulfilled in any way, but...there it goes. While I was struggling a bit last fall, too, I don't think it's a coincidence that I started this job in January and haven't posted a single fic since. I just need to find a new balance, I guess.

It totally snowed in NYC! Just not, y'know, anywhere near as much as it was supposed to. But I've been working from home all day, so I'm good. Except that I've run out of work to do, sort of? I mean, the phone has been quiet, as have the various e-mail inboxes I monitor, and my boss is still stuck at the home office in North Carolina, so he hasn't really been giving me anything to work on. I'm still not fully trained, but there's no one here to train me right now, y'know? So I'm just...holding down the fort and fretting because I'm sure there's something I SHOULD be doing, but I don't know what that something is.

Working from home is nice, though. Pajama pants all the way. And I'm much less stressed now than I was last week, mainly because all the stressful things have been taken off my plate entirely and given to people whose job they actually are. So that's good.

Um, also my Gay Geeks group, which puts on a live performance of the Buffy musical episode every summer, is branching out and doing Rocky Horror this spring. And I seem to have been cast as Janet? IDK, I was not expecting that. So...that's happening soon. Wacky fun.

I'm gonna give my Festivid one last good edit as soon as I "clock out" today, and then that'll be good to go. And then maybe I can tackle the Steve/Bucky fic of doom. Who knows! I'm sure as hell not leaving the apartment today. It may not have been much of a storm, but everything is slush, and I am not a fan.

I've been...absurdly social over the past week, and it's draining the hell out of me. I really badly need a day of down time that's just for me. Which...maybe I will get on Friday, sort of, which is the best I can hope for. I mean, social is good! I like having friends and doing stuff! I've just very much Hit My Limit, and then tomorrow is of course New Year's Eve, and then high school friends tend to gather on the 1st, so I have at least two more days of this stuff. It doesn't help that I've had a very irritating cold since Christmas, which drains what little remains of my energy, and I'm starting to stress out about starting the new job next week. (They've sent me a TON of orientation docs/videos, which is awesome and helpful, but also...stressful.) I haven't gotten any writing or vidding done all week, which frustrates me to no end. I've never been this slow getting my Festivid together, and I had really really really REALLY wanted to finish the goddamn fucking Steve/Bucky fic before 2015. DAMMIT. (I mean, I had really wanted to finish it by, like, October. But that clearly didn't happen.) I'm gonna delay doing my usual end-of-year fannish meme until the fucker is done and posted, because without it, my fic productivity for the year is SHIT. That's 30k words that damn well counts toward my 2014 total. And I don't have much more to write. It just got interrupted by Secret Mutant and Yuletide. FEH.

I did finish a draft of not-my-Festivid last week, which will hopefully be ready to post this weekend, so that's...something.

And obviously I'm bumping the remainder of the December meme over to January, but I'm hardly the only one behind on those. :)

Right. I will write a scene tonight. I WILL write a scene tonight. For fuck's sake.

I am strangely unstressed about Yuletide, despite the fact that the deadline is in less than twenty hours and my fic is not yet complete. Maybe it's because I had a good writing session last night, and I know I don't have much further to go, and anyway the whole thing is gonna be very short (which for me means less than 3000 words). So...yeah, I'll finish that tonight. It'll probably go unbetaed, but for this particular fic, that doesn't bother me. (I've rarely had much luck with Yuletide betas, anyway.) Incidentally, though -- is there no IRC chat this year? Or has it just moved to a site I don't know about?

Had a good second interview for the "interesting" job today. It still pays too little, and the work would either be really interesting or really stressful, but I got a REALLY good vibe re: office culture, which is pretty important to me after the toxic nature of the kids theater. They're going to bring me into the office Monday to shadow the current person in the position and see if it feels like a good fit, which is kinda weird but also kind of awesome in terms of making a smart choice about the job. (I'm not sure if any other candidates are doing this as well, or if I'm their top choice.) So...that. I'm more optimistic than I was expecting, at least. And while the starting pay is low, it's still within my budget, and there's definitely opportunity for growth (and bonuses). Plus they're very flexible/reasonable about the possibility of me picking up stage management gigs on the side, which would not be the case with the other job I interviewed for (due to potential conflict of interest).

Plus I just got offered a show in April for a theater group I've worked with before and loved, and they actually pay okay, so if I can juggle the schedules, that would be nice.

In other news -- December posting meme!

ranalore asked: What makes for a good viddable song?

I am firmly of the opinion that ANY song is viddable...with the right vidder. So there are certain sorts of songs that I do well with, and some that I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. But that doesn't mean those songs wouldn't make awesome vids! Just that I'm not the right person to make them. BUT ANYWAY. I'm generally drawn to lyrics/lyricality first and foremost; I prefer songs that really tell a story, either through the lyrics or through the music. I don't like highly repetitive songs, which is why I very rarely vid pop songs, unless I can twist them into meta commentary -- i.e. Die Young taken literally for a Buffy vid. I love Vienna Teng and Tom McRae (maybe a little too much), because the lyrics are sharp and smart, the music is often surprising, and the choruses tend to shift musically with each repetition. But really, it's mainly that a song needs to click in my head as belonging to a certain fandom/character/idea. Often it's a single lyric that sells me -- for Human, which had been in the back of my head for a while as a potential sci-fi/fantasy vid, the lines "And so long to devotion / you taught me everything I know / wave goodbye, wish me well / you've gotta let me go" were SO OBVIOUSLY about the Raven/Charles relationship that I basically just hopped around impatiently until good DoFP source became available and I could vid it. More rarely, I have a strong idea for a vid and then basically shop around for a song that matches; for example, I knew I wanted to make a creepy Wishverse (Buffy) vid, but it took some searching before I latched onto the theme from Rosemary's Baby as the right music.

I have been making an effort to vary my music selection for vidding lately, because while I COULD easily vid every single Vienna Teng and Tom McRae song, that doesn't mean I SHOULD. But my personal musical tastes are fairly limited, in terms of what I actually listen to on a regular basis, so it's kind of an ongoing process finding new material to work with. I'm not really a music fan -- by which I mean, I LIKE music, obviously, but I'm not fannish about it, and I don't seek out new artists or care at all about bands or ever attend concerts. So maybe it's kind of weird that I get so obsessive about vidding. I dunno.

Sat down with the intention of continuing my overhaul of the Steve/Bucky fic, wound up spending four hours working on Yuletide instead. Which was unexpected, but certainly not a bad thing! It is about time to start thinking about that one, anyway. So now I have a solid outline, about 600 words written, and some...other stuff. I'm a little worried that I'm not gonna be delivering precisely what my recipient wanted, but at least I'm enjoying myself. (I offered to write any characters in the [very small] fandom; predictably, the request detail was slash between two characters I don't ship. So I'm sticking to heavy subtext and hoping that will satisfy. But mimicking the style of the canon is a LOT of fun.)

Meanwhile, time to start working on the December meme backlog.

azewewish asked: Talk to me about New York - your favorite neighborhoods, your favorite bodegas, your favorite little out of the way places and what makes it so special to you.

Oh, NYC, what is it about you? It's difficult for me to be objective about this place because it's my hometown. Despite the fact that I left for almost ten years with absolutely no intention of moving back, but we know how that story ended, so here I am again.

I grew up in Greenwich Village, and that will likely always be my favorite neighborhood. It's just a bit funky and weird, and the streets totally stop making sense (that's the part of lower Manhattan where the grid kind of throws up its hands in defeat), but it's all brownstones and narrow tree-lined streets that become cobblestoned as you get further west, and little indie shops and restaurants and gay bars, and it makes me really happy. If you like showtunes, check out Marie's Crisis, the very queer Broadway-themed piano bar where everybody sings along (and everyone knows all the damn words to La Vie Boheme and One Day More and Suddenly Seymour); it's more fun on weeknights, when it's less packed. I also have a fondness for Stonewall, partly because of the history and partly because it's one of the genuinely inclusive LGBTQ bars (as opposed to most NYC gay bars, which are like 95% gay men and bachelorette parties, and very few lesbians). And, yeah, whatever, I still love the cupcakes at the original Magnolia Bakery on Bleecker Street the best.

But I also think everyone should really explore the city, because it's so big and diverse and has something for everyone, if you look. So many tourists only ever see Times Square/Midtown/maybe the Statue of Liberty and then complain about how crowded and dirty and ugly the city is; yes, because THOSE ARE THE CROWDED AND DIRTY AND UGLY PARTS that all resident New Yorkers avoid like the plague. Do take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry; it's totally free and gives you great views of the harbor and Statue of Liberty; there's also a ferry to Governor's Island, which is a great picnic spot in the summer. Walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, it's very pedestrian friendly and there are fun neighborhoods on both ends; plus a great little park under the bridge on the Brooklyn side. Manhattan's Chinatown is okay, but there are way better Chinatowns out in Brooklyn (around Sunset Park/Bay Ridge; cheapest and most delicious dim sum) and Queens (Flushing, where there are ALL THE DUMPLINGS). Right now I live up in Washington Heights, near the George Washington Bridge; visit the little red lighthouse under the bridge, it's adorable, or wander around Fort Tryon Park and check out the Cloisters for gorgeous medieval art. Astoria, the most easily accessible neighborhood in Queens, is a great place to live and hang out if you're in your twenties or thirties -- tons of restaurants and bars. On the touristy end of the spectrum, yes, I genuinely love Central Park, especially the boat pond and Belvedere Castle and the Ramble; while you never quite forget you're in the middle of a city, you can definitely ignore it for a while. Also, the one tourist trap I will willingly shell out cash for is the Circle Line boat tour, which does a full circuit of Manhattan island and delves into some fascinating history.

My favorite little spot is the South Cove down in Battery Park, which is lit only by blue lanterns at night. I like sitting by the water there late at night when there's almost no one else around -- it's very pretty and peaceful.

I know NYC isn't for everyone -- it's very fast-paced and busy and yes, the cost of living is appalling -- but I thrive on that constant thrum of energy. I love that it's the city that never sleeps, that the subway runs 24/7, that there's always a bodega open somewhere nearby. I love that you don't need (and certainly don't WANT) a car to get around. I love that it's big and diverse enough that whoever you are, whatever you're looking for, you can find your niche here and thrive in it (if you're willing to put a little effort into looking). And it's home.

So due to theladyscribe's fantastic DW friending meme, I seem to have acquired some new friends. Hello, new friends! Probably this means I should do some kind of re-intro post. Which, being a lazy bum, I'm mostly copying and pasting from an intro post thing I did about a year ago. Whatever.

So I'm kaydeefalls, and you can find me using that name on AO3, Tumblr, and LJ as well. I've been going by that pseud for more than half my life at this point, and see no reason to ever change it. (Yes, there is still X-Files fanfic by my thirteen-year-old self lurking somewhere in the depths of the internet under this name, and for the record, I apologize.) I do my best to keep my real name completely divorced from my fandom identity, primarily for professional reasons (like 99% of the people I interact with on a regular basis know I write fanfic, I really don't give two fucks about keeping that secret, but that doesn't mean I want my coworkers reading my old Jack/Ianto porn) -- but honestly, I've been kaydee for so long at this point that I instinctively respond to that name as easily as my real name.

I'm multi-fannish by nature, though I tend to particularly fixate on one or two fandoms at a time. X-Files was my first fandom, Mulder/Scully my first OTP, and we have a forever love. The first fandom most people probably knew me from was LotR RPS, and that will likely always be the first fandom that tops the list on my AO3 dash because I was really freaking prolific in it. I also spent a good long while in the Remus/Sirius corner of the Harry Potter fandom. I've been fairly active in Doctor Who (and Torchwood for a while) as well, although I've been less enamored of the show lately. X-Men movieverse is my longest-running active fandom, since I got into it when X2 came out and never entirely left; First Class pulled me back in with a vengeance. But these days I'm primarily obsessed with the MCU, thanks to Winter Soldier. I also write up weekly recaps for Sleepy Hollow for another blog (under my real name), which I crosspost here. And I've been participating in Yuletide every year since its inception, so there's that. These days I seem to be far more prolific at vidding than writing. Not sure why.

Outside of fandom, I'm a professional theater stage manager, currently living and working in NYC (which also happens to be my hometown). In the past ten years, I've also lived in Washington DC, Chicago, Dublin, and a tiny town on a very tall mountain in Colorado. Theater folk tend toward the nomadic existence. Working in theater means that my schedule is weird and varies widely from month to month (or week to week), which is why sometimes I'm writing/vidding constantly and then sometimes I fall off the face of the internet for weeks (...months...) on end. I'm starting to consider a career shift, but I'm not sure to what, and I still love theater an awful lot.

I'm also a queer Jewish woman, for the record. I tend to shorthand ID as lesbian, because that's quick and easy to understand, but I believe sexuality is an ever-evolving spectrum (at least for me), and "queer" encompasses that concept better, for me. I'm like 95% atheist as well, but definitely ID as Jewish because it's an important part of my cultural heritage. Politically, I'm very liberal.

And...yeah! There are still plenty of dates open in the December posting meme, if you want to hear my blather about anything in particular.

So...haven't been posting much RL stuff lately. Or at all. ( work stuff, or, unemployment, yay! )

In the interest of staying positive, though, I put together a Kaylee (from Firefly) costume for Halloween, which I was quite pleased with! ( Shiny, cap'n! )