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thing 1: Happy new year!
A little late, but who's counting? Hope everyone had a decent night - I went to a party at a friend's house, which was perfectly reasonable and definitely an improvement on how I saw in 2012 (drinking gin by myself and singing very loudly along to Kylie Minogue songs).
My resolutions are pretty much the same as they always are: work harder, be braver. They're reusable resolutions partially because they're quite open-ended (one can always do more), and partially because my life is basically one long doomed struggle against my own laziness and cowardice. I won't set the bar too outlandishly high, but if I can continue to improve my cooking and my musical skills, and write more than I did last year - and possibly find a hobby which gets me out of the house and socialising? - I will consider that a win.
In 2012 I was beset by a lot of minor incidents of bad luck but was in a better state mentally than I've been for a long time; 2013, I suspect, is going to be very hard work and involve a lot of panicking over paperwork, but it'll all come out good in the end. Probably. Or if it doesn't, at least being deported will make for an interesting anecdote one day.
thing 2: Yuletide reveals!
So, I wrote two things this year.
My assigned fic was The Election (The Clangers), which is both one of the shortest fics I've written, and one of the most difficult. I'm pleased with it, overall, and it was a lovely canon to revisit, but I've learned my lesson - when one's fic tends to be rambling and dialogue-heavy, it is not a good idea to volunteer to write for a canon that has ten-minute episodes and characters that don't speak in actual words.
I also wrote The Land Beyond The Shelves (Black Books), because I read a prompt involving Bernard Black meeting fairies and couldn't help myself. It was written in two days and mostly on public transport, which probably shows, but hell, I had fun.
thing 3: EVERYTHING IS DWARVES AND NOTHING HURTS
So after watching The Hobbit I re-read the book while at my parents' for Christmas. Then I managed to dig out my old paperback copy of LOTR. My Tumblr dash is full of screencaps and gifs of the cast being magnificent, and I spent most of the dead days between Christmas and New Year reading the kinkmeme.
And oh god, I'm in love. It's both stirring up lots of nostalgia for my childhood and early teens, and also giving me that lovely shiny new fandom feeling I haven't felt in a long, long time. It's a bit bizarre and daunting, as large fandoms always are, but I'm happy to just lurk around on the edges and dabble here and there. It's befitting that The Hobbit fandom, like the film itself, seems a whole lot sillier and less serious-business than LOTR fandom (though then again, the very first fic I ever read was a copy of The Very Secret Diaries that a friend printed out and passed around our class, and that's about as far from srs bsness as it's possible to get), and I'm rather amused by some of the recurring themes - I can take or leave the inevitable incest and mpreg, but I love all the speculative takes on dwarvish gender politics, and I'm really tickled by how preoccupied with hairstyling the fandom seems to be. For years now I've been joking about people writing fics where guys sit around braiding one another's hair, and now I encounter a fandom where that is not only genuinely the case, it actually makes a fair bit of sense!
I've got a couple of short fics in the works now, and more ideas gathering together into coherent plots - rest assured, I still consider the war miniseries to be my fandom home, but it's nice to have something new(ish) to get fired up about. It's gonna be a long damn wait until part 2.
A little late, but who's counting? Hope everyone had a decent night - I went to a party at a friend's house, which was perfectly reasonable and definitely an improvement on how I saw in 2012 (drinking gin by myself and singing very loudly along to Kylie Minogue songs).
My resolutions are pretty much the same as they always are: work harder, be braver. They're reusable resolutions partially because they're quite open-ended (one can always do more), and partially because my life is basically one long doomed struggle against my own laziness and cowardice. I won't set the bar too outlandishly high, but if I can continue to improve my cooking and my musical skills, and write more than I did last year - and possibly find a hobby which gets me out of the house and socialising? - I will consider that a win.
In 2012 I was beset by a lot of minor incidents of bad luck but was in a better state mentally than I've been for a long time; 2013, I suspect, is going to be very hard work and involve a lot of panicking over paperwork, but it'll all come out good in the end. Probably. Or if it doesn't, at least being deported will make for an interesting anecdote one day.
thing 2: Yuletide reveals!
So, I wrote two things this year.
My assigned fic was The Election (The Clangers), which is both one of the shortest fics I've written, and one of the most difficult. I'm pleased with it, overall, and it was a lovely canon to revisit, but I've learned my lesson - when one's fic tends to be rambling and dialogue-heavy, it is not a good idea to volunteer to write for a canon that has ten-minute episodes and characters that don't speak in actual words.
I also wrote The Land Beyond The Shelves (Black Books), because I read a prompt involving Bernard Black meeting fairies and couldn't help myself. It was written in two days and mostly on public transport, which probably shows, but hell, I had fun.
thing 3: EVERYTHING IS DWARVES AND NOTHING HURTS
So after watching The Hobbit I re-read the book while at my parents' for Christmas. Then I managed to dig out my old paperback copy of LOTR. My Tumblr dash is full of screencaps and gifs of the cast being magnificent, and I spent most of the dead days between Christmas and New Year reading the kinkmeme.
And oh god, I'm in love. It's both stirring up lots of nostalgia for my childhood and early teens, and also giving me that lovely shiny new fandom feeling I haven't felt in a long, long time. It's a bit bizarre and daunting, as large fandoms always are, but I'm happy to just lurk around on the edges and dabble here and there. It's befitting that The Hobbit fandom, like the film itself, seems a whole lot sillier and less serious-business than LOTR fandom (though then again, the very first fic I ever read was a copy of The Very Secret Diaries that a friend printed out and passed around our class, and that's about as far from srs bsness as it's possible to get), and I'm rather amused by some of the recurring themes - I can take or leave the inevitable incest and mpreg, but I love all the speculative takes on dwarvish gender politics, and I'm really tickled by how preoccupied with hairstyling the fandom seems to be. For years now I've been joking about people writing fics where guys sit around braiding one another's hair, and now I encounter a fandom where that is not only genuinely the case, it actually makes a fair bit of sense!
I've got a couple of short fics in the works now, and more ideas gathering together into coherent plots - rest assured, I still consider the war miniseries to be my fandom home, but it's nice to have something new(ish) to get fired up about. It's gonna be a long damn wait until part 2.
