So because I'm super terrible at doing things with no deadline I've been contemplating making myself weekly schedule of all the things I want to do and keep failing to get to. It's funny because when I was a kid somebody told my parents I needed more structure, apparently it's true, except that with externally imposed structures it's too easy for me to see the arbitrariness and refute them. I apparently need internally imposed arbitrary structures, I guess. The current iteration of weekly schedule I'm contemplating looks something like:

Sunday: relax, read fanfic
Monday: bake or batch cook (to be replaced by jobhunting after I have done the schedule a week and am okay with the idea of the schedule) (cooking tends to happen on its own, I do get sufficient satisfaction from it to compel myself to do it without a scheduled day)
Tuesday: writing
Wednesday: vidding
Thursday: quilting
Friday: alternate between mending day and cleaning the bathroom top to bottom
Saturday: Knitting for me (there was a knitting for other people item on Friday, but knitting for other people tends to happen without the schedule because those have holiday deadlines mostly, and this list is for items that I want to do but I'm not getting done)

So I looked at the list today to see what I was going to be doing and trying to figure out writing freaked me out and I wanted to switch the days around to do quilting today or something. I think it's okay to alter the schedule for like, workflow reasons? Like I am considering making Saturday the relaxing day and putting a doing something item on Sunday because Saturday my roommates are home from work and I am likely to hang out with them and not do Things, versus on Sunday they are at work and some of these items I feel more comfortable doing without other people around. However I don't think it's okay to change the schedule because on a particular day I don't want to do to thing that's on schedule because if I give into that I will just constantly move the things that I don't want to do into the future and they won't get done and it will thus defeat the purpose of the entire concept.

So even though it's not what I originally meant by writing (I was thinking narrative fiction, probably fanfiction, maybe eventually in the future pro writing, scripts for things I want to produce, when that concept terrifies me less) I decided that writing this entry that's all meta about writing would be my stab at writing for the day. Yay success.

Part of the reason writing narrative fiction caused me to freak out was that I can't pick which story to write. And then part of it is I have notes for different stories, disorganized, stashed in years' worth chat logs, and occasionally I start the project of sorting through chat logs for all the stories or a specific story but it's such a gargantuan project and it doesn't feel like actually writing, prose is not produced. I think it's okay to write a story out of order (although I've never really done so) so I'm going to try to give myself permission to, if I find a scene notated in a chat log that grabs me, translate it into the narrative prose on the spot without finishing the gargantuan project of sorting all the chat logs because I can't finish that project first and then start writing, even though I feel like that's the right order to do things, because doing that just puts off writing indefinitely.

The other thing I want to do today is pick a limited set of all the stories I'm interested in writing, with and eye to limiting how many years of chat logs I need to sort through to get my data. My most recent plotbunny-generating fandoms are Teen Wolf and Cherryh's Foreigner series, and my participation in Teen Wolf extends back a sufficient number of years that I'm not willing to put all of my plotbunnies for that show on this limited list, there's too many, there's too much volume of chat log to go through.

So the stories I'm willing to look at and work on are:

–Wolf wife, a sort of fairytale deconstruction I was working on at the end of last year/beginning of this year which I actually wrote a few thousand words of narrative prose for and planned out to the actual ending. That's only about two months of logs to look through and the existing readable prose might encourage me to write more.
–Bren-daja, an AU of the Foreigner series in which the protagonist is female instead of male, featuring menstruation in science fiction, cross cultural discussions of queerness with aliens, and chocolate smuggling. I don't believe I wrote any narrative prose on this but it's a plotbunny I had this year so all the chat logs should be like January through May, and I think I outlined it all the way to the conclusion as well.
–The Yes Story, a magical allegory on consent and also one manifestation of an archetype of a story I have had plotbunnies for across multiple fandoms, and also a wallow in whumping and hurt/comfort for when I have depressive moments and need something external to be sad about (this happened last month when I was having my downswing, I started thinking about this story and poked chat logs, and had the funny realization that it was much less distressing to focus on the terribleness of Stiles under a curse than to feel like everything in my life was terrible. Especially when I had crying for no reason days. Crying over a story feels much less broken than crying for no reason because depression. So I don't want to focus on this story all the time but I sort of want it to be there when I need it, and to be on this list of stuff I can poke.) These logs go back to April 2013 so that's a longer chunk of data and will be intermixed with other stories like Magic Rituals that I might also get distracted by, but at least this one is also outlined beginning to end. (It actually came into the world fairly fully formed, the first scene I thought very much about was the end when Stiles and Lydia are burning the body and breaking the curse. I was driving from LA to Phoenix and that scene playing in my head was sort of an odd companion, yet still better than when I let my brain wander down dark depressive holes, which it can do when I'm on a long drive alone at night--I need to keep a better collection of audiobooks and radio plays and maybe podcasts for that drive, they're the best distraction from the inside of my own brain.)

So the other day Steve tweaked me about something, and I said, whoa, wait, what?

For the longest time, Ivan Vorpatril has been the only character in my head who's had enough independence to have his own opinions, and notice and respond to me, and it was largely a function of what his personality is--he's a slinker, so what I noticed was he kept trying to slink off and hide from me. That and the intelligence.

The Steve in my head has apparently woken up enough to have... similar independence. And I didn't notice for the longest time because he didn't try to slink off--but that's not who he is. He's nice! He's a sweetie. Unlike Ivan, he doesn't hate me. So I didn't notice that his compliance wasn't the moldable plasticity of the ordinary kind of character I shape until he got comfortable enough to drop his sense of humor on me. It's subtle! Kind of wry. Usually self-deprecating. Except if he knows you well enough he'll nudge you the way he'd nudge himself. (See also: "Don't do anything stupid until I get back" "How can I? You're taking all the stupid with you.")

Seriously, most of my characters don't talk back! And Steve doesn't really do backtalk, but, he's decided he's hung out in my head long enough to start teasing me for my foibles. So that's apparently a thing now.

*laugh* I was talking to niqaeli about it and the differences between how the Steve in my head and the Ivan in my head behave towards me, and we rapidly concluded that no shit Ivan runs for the hills when he can and Steve doesn't feel the need--we do hilariously awful things to Ivan because we delight in watching him squirm, whereas we do cute, fun things to Steve because he grins like a loon and it's fantastic. This icon, this icon is TOTALLY the world I keep writing for Steve. The future is awesome! I keep introducing him to interesting people. Some of them are robots! Or centaurs! Or his soulmate! Why exactly would he run away?

Somewhere in my head Ivan is sulking, because there's a new chewtoy as independent as he is, who has somehow drawn a better lot in plot bunnies and has no interest in coming to hide in a corner with him.

fan_eunice did a "tell me about your WIPs!" post and I um, may have written an astonishing amount about Miss Hornblower, who I still do not expect to actually write out, but I figured I'd post this amazingly long comment here for interest and archival or something.

I am currently watching Hornblower (short fandom introduction if you don't know it: Age of Sail emomoppet attains admiralty, to own surprise. Series of books covers his whole career, series of like 8 A&E movies covers midshipman to some of his captaincy, and he is played by the pretty Ioan Gruffudd, with Jamie Bamber and/or Paul McGann for a sidekick) for comfort and I've woken up three-year-old bunnies about Miss Hornblower.

Miss Hornblower is a very rash thing Hornblower did to get his men out of a scrape when he was, oh, approximately an acting lieutenant. I have read entirely too much about Regency women's clothing (the style was high-waisted dresses, essentially empire waist, which meant nobody was really corseting, there was no emphasis on distorting the actual waist. Women's most restrictive undergarment was the short stays, which usually didn't even have bone and people I'm reading keep comparing them to the corsets in HOW MIRACULOUSLY UNLIKE THEY ARE when as far as I can tell what short stays actually were, were bras. In the pre-elastic underthings era. I mean, yes, you had to have some way to fit it on, so there were like 3-4 holes worth of laces, but honestly tightening the laces on short stays? in nooooo way like doing it on a corset. LUCKY HORATIO, I DID NOT WANT TO WRITE CORSETING ANYWAY). Anyway I think his men are slight a-croggle at his get-up and he is like "How is this different from other forms of subterfuge we have employed" (because Hornblower has on at least one occasion taken a French ship by sneaking up on some French soldiers and stealing their uniforms; and on another occasion on a ship they'd had captured "forgot" to take down the French flag until after he'd shot up three French ships attacking his captain's ship--neither of which are strictly fair play) and Styles--probably Styles, the films have Matthews and Styles as men who serve under him for the whole series, which is more character continuity than the more realistic books had--Styles says that is perhaps a bit different! And Hornblower snaps that it is only his dignity on the line so perhaps they can shut up and let him get on rescuing them.

What scrape he is rescuing them from is still rather nebulous in my head. I am just a-squee at Hornblower in a dress. I am thinking it is an intrigue of some sort, rather than an out-and-out military action. And then their captain, Pellew, shows up--and then, I wrote a lot about this at the time, it went approximately like so.

But then there's more. Because Pellew keeps "corresponding" with Miss Hornblower by handing his young officer missives to send to his "sister." Somewhere I have a note about Hornblower having invented internet anonymity via pink stationery. Just. Facepalm. It is... sort of... an... unacknowledged, unconsummated affaire de coeur? That somehow never gets past the bounds of impropriety because in the back of his head Hornblower is always semi-chaperoning his "sister," watching Pellew for behavior he would, you know, have to insist Pellew desist or do the honorable thing if there actually were a sister. I mean, this is complicated by the fact that as well as Miss Hornblower not actually being a woman or having an existence beyond the few hours Horatio spends in character now and again, Pellew is married. With children close to Horatio's age. (It never comes up in the films and I don't know if it does in the books but Sir Pellew is a real historical figure. Who named his son and heir "Pownoll Bastard Pellew" and damned if I wouldn't like an explanation for THAT. I imagine either the dates of his naval service conflict with dates of pregnancy, or it was a very odd comment on the character of his own mentor, Philemon Pownoll, after whom he presumably named his son.)

But I have this whole thing built in my head where only three or four intensely loyal people are in on Horatio's occasional bouts of drag when they are in a port where plausible deniability can be applied to Miss Hornblower dining with Pellew. Until Horatio is getting married (a thing that was more or less a disaster in canon, not least because he was pretty damn married to Bush, his XO) and Miss Hornblower tries to have an encoded conversation with Pellew about 'her' impending wedding and how she can no longer have dinners with admirals and Pellew can't get a direct answer about how Miss Hornblower feels about her fiancé(e) (because does Hornblower love Maria? or have just a vast sense of duty? it is unclear and kind of failboat) and Pellew is understandably CONCERNED and trying to ask if there is some reason (Miss) Hornblower is COMPELLED to wed without breaking the illusion of talking to the sister and not his officer and Hornblower just gets even more upset about it, because my god here they are admitting to INAPPROPRIATE FEELINGS FOR ONE ANOTHER, OBLIQUELY AND BY IMPLICATION, IT IS SO TERRIBLE.

Hornblower's angst is sort of epic and tragic and ridiculous. *nails hand to forehead*

I am sort of torn about whether this entry is primarily notes for myself so I don't lose track of things I want to write, or at least partially for other people and/or my feedback addiction. It sort of affects whether I filter it or not, you know.

Current plotbunny batch:

Captain America somehow woke up all the Iron Man plot bunnies. And then added some more. So I have Mistress Pepper and Tony who is a nightmare running around my head, as well as Tony who built Pepper as a robot and Steve who is like "The future is so awesome! Who else is a robot?" But I also have new ones.

( the goddamn lunar base )

Further plotbunnies: Subsequently we rapidly arrive in the region of all niqaeli's fault.

( The Lady and the Captain )

( Captain America's Clone )

Also I might be making a Losers vid. To Lady Gaga. Maybe.

Fuck all, I guess I'll go ahead and post this for people to read. It amused me to get written out. I did say I'd write things out more when I had more cope.

I'm visiting stariceling for the weekend and have gotten her hooked on both Leverage and Echo Bazaar (go me). In any case, watching the first season of Leverage in a gulp has reminded me of the two main romantic sets I want enormously that no one has written for me:

Parker/Maggie. Parker likes to smell Maggie. And pet her. And after hanging out with the gang for more than five minutes Maggie realizes a) that Parker isn't being creepy per se, she just doesn't have very normal social functioning and b) it will fuck with Nate's head so much, not to mention the rest of them, honestly, going "Parker? And sex? How?!??" if Maggie goes along with, nay, even returns or escalates, the sniffing and petting.

Also: Parker/Sophie/BASE-jumping. The show has frankly given me just enough to whet my appetite and no enough to say, make a vid just of them leaping of buildings together.

Furthermore, I am astounded that no one is writing the trainwreck I want from Dresden Files fic. Actually, I'm kind of astounded no one is writing certain trainwrecks I thought might actually have some traction in Dresden Files fandom, but perhaps the ao3.org community is too mature for the kind of hilarious badfic drama I want, which is sad, because frankly the thing that sucked me into Dresden Files canon in the first place is the hilarious badfic drama, which has eventually transcended to Lord King Bad Fic, and why would you want your actual fanfic to be more serious and considered than your source material? I ask you. Perhaps I should go check Pit of Voles. *checks* Damn it, that was a bust. There were only 8 stories out of 588 that even listed Molly as a (main? how does that work now?) character. Wow, okay, you guys, I WENT TO PIT OF VOLES FOR MY BADFIC NEEDS and it disappointed. What is the world coming to?

People. I want Molly/Thomas. I think it is hilarious, terrible, and doomed, but I also think that her reaction to ( I think this was in Changes? Look, I read all the books in about 5 minutes, they run together a little. )

Side note: Harry's head exploding repeatedly is an important feature of most of the fic I want. FYI.

I have this theory that "true love" is kind of a misnomer for what troubles White Court vamps, because it pisses me off that Thomas is all blithely "oh yeah most people never know true love, especially rich bitches" re working as a stylist. I think it's actually "I would die for you/you would die for me" that triggers the problem, and most people, you know, people not living in close vicinity to Harry Dresden, live their lives without getting into life-or-death situations and finding out if they ever really would. But so: ( back to the Changes spoilers )


*laugh* When I was failing to unpack all of this DEEP REASONING and just told grey_bard that Thomas/Molly leads to Molly/Justine, she said, "Not Thomas/Molly/Justine? Because the true Thomas OTP is Thomas/Thomas's angst?" WHICH IS TOTALLY TRUE. Thomas/Thomas's angst is so pure. *cackle*

I would also talk about niqaeli and my plotbunnies about Molly's detailed plan, with many activities, for her and Ramirez popping each other's cherries, or about how we want Molly to out Harry as bisexual to himself and break his brain repeatedly, or how I think it would be awesome to return the favor and break Molly's brain for once when Harry finds himself in a threesome with Michael and Charity--

I would talk about all of these things in more detail but I am sure I have already said enough to make me deeply unpopular in Dresden Files fandom based on what fic is actually getting written, so I'll save my breath. Also I'm hungry.

I maintain that I am still gafiated despite spewing my thoughts and desires at dreamwidth, therefore I reserve the right to ignore any and all comments, especially if they annoy me. Or I might just get bitchy. Fair warning.

Nearly had a screaming meltdown on--late Friday night, early Saturday morning? I think? I've been at niqaeli's since then, aside from a brief run by my house for textbooks. I should probably think about going home. I have a small spot of homework to do in the next twelve hours, and I'm thinking about sleeping.

I want to be creative. I fired up Final Cut but that didn't really go anywhere; I opened up googledocs and thought about writing Sanctuary fic--I'm all caught up and have this ridiculously detailed plotbunny in my head about the intersection of the sexcapades of Helen Magnus and Vampire Nikola Tesla (with other people) that I'm actually kind of ashamed of, oh my god, the things that live in my head, I don't even.

But what came out was more Echo Bazaar fic. I'm sort of... I don't even know, this fic can't decide whether it wants to be game-play fic or narrative fic. At least it's settled on first-person for the narrative sections.

( bit of what I wrote tonight )

I really want to have some art in the story, it feels wrong not to have art in Echo Bazaar fic. I sent a message to someone asking if I could use some of the beautiful stuff I've seen go by on my droll (*waves*), I sort of flailed and dorked around incoherently a lot so you know, hopefully I don't come off as completely illiterate. *facepalm*

My festivid is a hit. I am refraining heroically from answering comments, which are awesome. (I also keep seeing my gift, the awesome Marion from Indiana Jones vid, on recs lists, which brings me glee.) niqaeli is collecting an entry of quotes from the vid mines that I wouldn't let her post at the time because they're spoilery, but the schedule on festivids is so stretched out that we're reaching the point of losing context. "Why was [char] a vampire?" I found myself asking regarding one of the quotes that was hilarious at the time. I remembered eventually. It's spoilery.

Today I discovered a new portmanteau for niqaeli's favorite SPN pairing: Casquatch. We died and died of laughter.

Last week we went to see Red at the dollar theater--that being the flick where aging ex-spies (Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich, Helen Mirren) are on somebody's hit list and being pursued by up-and-coming spy (Karl Urban). We found it hilarious and adorable. It almost but not quite passed Bechdel. I'm not sure I would find it as charming on second viewing because ( violence against women )

Watched the last two episodes of White Collar. My memory for the one last week is full of holes. Oh wait, it's coming back to me. Burke's Seven. Right. Did you know niqaeli and I have a pet theory that El totally was a con and Peter figured her out in a way he couldn't arrest her for (among other things I like this theory for decreepifying the surveillance photo courtship: it was legitimate case surveillance!) and either she knew Neal and lets Neal think Peter doesn't know this for hilarity or Neal has only recently discovered her shadowy past and recognizes her reputation and is all OMG HOW WHAT YOU WERE SO AWESOME I DON'T EVEN. Anyway, with that theory, most El scenes get an extra twenty points of sweeeeeet.

So the most recent episode had the potential to joss the vid I'm working on, and I've been expecting to be jossed since--okay, no, I was expecting to be jossed last November but I've since given up on it (my attitude at this point is SHOW, PROVE ME WRONG! JOSS ME!)--but far from jossing me, this episode provided more fodder for the vid. ( my thoughts on this week's episode )

In other news, Ivan quietly went under and waited out Yuletide and Festivids and this week resurfaced. Bits of three of my four active Vorkosigan novellas of last year are once again taking over my brain (and the fourth is waiting for Bel to come out of hibernation). And I haven't even reread the books again or read any fic lately (except for dira's this evening, which made me cry at the sweet, and I would link but I'm on bit and I can't be bothered to deal with the annoying screenness to hunt down the URL ETA http://dira.dreamwidth.org/561801.html /ETA). So I decided to try for 300 words a day all year on one of those four plot bunnies, which at this point in the year would give me 100K by December 31, and hopefully enough pieces to string together a whole postable story or two and a lot of hilarious outtakes. Those of you on my WIP filter will get to watch me muddle through out of order!

Work: my hours are getting cut stupid low sigh.
School: I have another nominee for the "film class from hell" tag.
Cope: Hahaha what is that. At least I am still to some extent getting shit done?

The "you went to bed early? that's a punishable offense" edition.

I think I am doing better. I got up early, went to class, though I didn't make anything up, and I wrote--I can't get any of the Glee crap out of my head, which is too bad as I am starting to annoy my nearest and dearest retelling them bits, but I wrote down some of Amita in space (on a hunch; the empty page was staring at me and wouldn't take ink for the stories of in-many-ways-normative white dudes, so I started writing Amita and got like, four pages down and only stopped for time). It's been a while since I wrote, this is good. Also I made a cheesecake and used up four of our multitude of apples (two more for the topping when I get around to it).

And that was my day. I am back to putting "going to class" in my list of accomplishments, which sucks, but I hadn't been doing it and I did it, which is good.

And: quiz due by 2:30 on Friday. Very doable.

...Mac Ramsey just recognized Neal Caffrey in a boutique and practically vaulted a sales counter to come say hi.

Trying to figure out if this is time displacement "everything is now" fic or if I need to ask what the Once a Thief crew have been doing for the last dozen years.

I really wanted to write tonight, get a little of Don and Amita arguing in my head down on ether, and instead I both crashed and burned out on wtf.

In other news: Navi Rawat is hot. Discuss.