Kantayra can tie Ra. Can't I, Ra?

My goal to actually post on Monday this week is a success! And I don't have too much else to report, other than setting this week's goals, but there are a few things:

• Exchanges due in May/June (hurtcomfortex, pickmeupexchange, idproquo, seasonsofdrabbles, diegetic_exchange, fandom5k + mystery pinch-hits and treats): Still at 12/12, but I edited the thing I needed to, so now this batch is just waiting for various reveals, assuming I don't pick up any super-late pinch hits. (I think there's only one that I even know the fandoms for at this point, though, so I may be safe?) idproquo just revealed last night, but I haven't had a chance to read my fic yet. I'll report back on that next week, which is one of my weekly goals!


• Exchanges due in July/August (caseficexchange, nonconex, justmarriedexchange + future stuff): I'm still at 0/3. justmarriedexchange assignments haven't come out yet, but should over the next couple of days. I'm very excited to see what I get, since there were a lot of really tasty requests. Does it count as gaming if you game for, like, 5 people all at once? 🤣 My goal this week is to get at least 2 more scenes written for my long-fic, and then to solidify my plan for at least one of the other two assignments.


• Potentials for July/August: seasonsofdrabbles for sure, but that's not up for a while. Currently watching nominations for raremaleslashex & littleblackdressex. You know, I would've sworn that I didn't currently have any LBD characters, but kudos to the person who nominated MCU Loki who is, indeed, a LBD and needs to get fucked by everyone, ASAP. I still doubt I'll be able to sign up for either of these, but pinch hits/treats are a definite possibility. Further out on my radar are rarepairexchange & iddyiddybangbang. Also, the big hubbub right now is around battleshipex which I'm pretty sure I'm not doing. It sounds way too competitive and social for my tastes, but I'm sort of watching it just to see if maybe it's not as opposite my natural inclinations as my initial suspicions.


• I've got another of my May/June reveals: For the Kill Your Double Flash Exchange, I grabbed a pinch hit for which I wrote One, Two, Infinity: Shen Wei/Zhao Yunlan/every single other incarnation of Zhao Yunlan (yes, literally) for Guardian - priest. As long as there continue to be horny prompts for these two, I will write them! 😝


• Nothing to see on Femslash Salad Bar...


• I never get a chance to watch anything over the weekend, so no updates on BNHA, but I'll be starting up again today!


• I read tons of Noblesse this weekend! I think I have two arcs left? Rai's doing better now, thankfully. He's not allowed to die. Neither is Frankenstein. The two of them must be weird together forever. Is it wrong that I go 'ho-hum' through the battle scenes to get to the scenes where nothing is happening but characters drinking tea? I think not!


• I realized that I haven't had a hard-copy book to read for a while, which is weird, but I really want to finish Noblesse before I pick something new up. My current inclination is Heaven Official's Blessing by MXTX, which I know nothing about other than that it's long and MXTX wrote it, which is pretty good recommendation for me!


• Figure skating has been kicking my butt lately. I've been super busy at work, so I have very little brain, and I'm trying to learn a new footwork program and a new synchro program, while not forgetting my current freestyle program in the process. It does not help that my coach has completely changed my footwork program 3 times now. It's just not sticking! Oh well, eventually it has to, right?


• Also, I finally signed up to pinchhitbingo, just to see if I've got bingo. And...I think I do? I will talk more about this next week, once I've had time to analyze my board more carefully.

Goals for this week: 1) Get 2 more scenes written for long-fic. 2) Get my idea into shape for one of my other assignments. 3) Read/comment on idproquo. 4) Watch more BNHA. 5) Read more Noblesse! (I want to say 'finish', but practically I don't think I have quite enough time to do that this week. Hopefully next week.)

Look at me, awake in the evening. It's almost my bedtime since I woke up at 4am for skating this morning, but oh well! I was not as accomplished as my ambitions last week, but I got enough done. Here's where everything stands at the moment:

• Exchanges due in May/June (hurtcomfortex, pickmeupexchange, idproquo, caseficexchange, seasonsofdrabbles, diegetic_exchange, fandom5k + mystery pinch-hits and treats): I've now finished 10/12 fics in this batch. I was going to snag 2 pinch hits last week, but I only got around to one, and someone else grabbed the other one, which I am okay with. I did get all the editing done I needed to, so that's good. Of the two remaining long fics, I wanted to get at least 4 scenes complete in the first, and 3 in second. I got a little over 3 in the first, and made no progress in the second, so that's still at 1.5. I'm feeling like I need to slow down and rest a little, so my goal for this week is to write as much on the first as I can. I don't think I'll get it 100% done, but I want to feel like I'm close. And depending how remaining PHs go in several exchanges that currently have delays, I might have some other fics that need final editing for reveals. But that's all I'm going for this week!


• Upcoming exchanges: No new assignments - I did pass on narumitsuday; I just didn't vibe with the way sign-ups work for single-fandom exchanges. I'm considering justmarriedexchange, nonconex, raremaleslashex, littleblackdressex, and rarepairexchange. The first two maybe I would sign up for if a request caught my eye. For the two rare ones, in order for me to get rare pairings, I'd have to nominate rare fandoms and then pick what would be the juggernauts in those essentially, which doesn't seem in keeping with the spirit of the thing - I'll think about it, though. I have absolutely no LBD characters, so I won't sign up for that one I'm almost positive; however, that does seem like something with interesting pinch-hit potential, so I'll think about that. There's also iddyiddybangbang starting in July, and I have to think about whether I want to dust off an old drawer-fic I have that's maybe 75% done for that - I'm noodling on it. I do know that seasonsofdrabbles is going to be back in late July-August, so I know for sure I'll do that. My guess is, though, that I'm going to be focusing on pinch hits more for a bit. New sign-ups aren't particularly calling to me at the moment.


• Did you think that I'd finish Femslash Salad Bar since maybe I have a bit of downtime? Ha, you fool! You have learned NOTHING about me from my posts! :P


• I got cut off from my source from My Hero Academia, presumably because S7 is about to come out so it's monetizing time. So I arranged for a back-up source instead, but that meant that I didn't have a chance to watch anything for a week. I'm back at it as of today, though. Still midway through S2.


• I finished Guardian by priest! I enjoyed it! Although I did like the more mundane every-day cases and weirdness at SID than the huge earth-shattering apocalyptic stuff. The ending was fine and satisfying, though, and I enjoyed the bonus stories. I can't tell, though... Did the original not have porn in it, or did that get cut for the English translation? I'm guessing it wasn't in the original, but was a little surprised by that, given how aggressively horny the writing was. Oh well, that's what fanfic is for!


• I've started reading Noblesse, the manhwa, because it popped up as a long-standing pinch-hit, and I thought, "Maybe that's short, and I can swing it!" LOL, it is not short, and I will miss that PH (sorry, requester!), but I'm REALLY loving the story and characters so far! It's a lot of fun and doesn't take itself too seriously, which I approve of. It's funny, the site I'm reading it on has comments from people who are presumably teenage kids complaining that it's too slow and there's not enough battle scenes, and I'm just like "seen every battle scene ever written, SO FUCKING BORING, oh hey, here's a whole arc where this character misses the entire battle because he doesn't understand how doors work, OMG, BEST THING EVAH! 🤩" So, yes, I hope it doesn't change its vibe too much, because the way it is now is definitely where my mind's at.

Goals for this week: 1) Make some good progress on 1 of the my 2 long fics, to the point where the end is in sight. 2) If anything comes up for reveals this week, do the final editing pass for that. 3) More BNHA. 4) More Noblesse.

The holiday weekend was far too frenetic for my tastes -- medical incident with both my mom and dad :/ -- plus I also managed to injure my eye while gardening, although thankfully not too bad: just a nasty scrape from a branch. So, not as relaxing as I'd hoped, although I did at least get enough sleep that my brain no longer feels like it's about to explode from too much information from work. Spring allergy season is also coming to an end, which I suspect is the cause of my increasing amounts of energy.

Without further ado:

• Exchanges due in May/June (hurtcomfortex, pickmeupexchange, idproquo, caseficexchange, seasonsofdrabbles, diegetic_exchange, fandom5k + mystery pinch-hits and treats): I'm now at 6/9 (I've picked some things up!) and I got through everything with the most pressing deadlines, woo-hoo! I have at least a start on the remaining 3, and I want to get at least one of those done before next week (so, like, tonight lol) and make some continued progress on the other two, which will both be longer fics. And also I have some spare time to grab pinch hits and write treats? What's up with that? :P (It does make me sad, though, that seasonsofdrabbles is over because if that were in creation period right now, I'd write a million treats for it. Oh well, I'm sure at some point it will align with my schedule!)


• The last of March/April has revealed as has the aforementioned seasonsofdrabbles. Here's what I wrote:
  
  • Letter 126, from ‘The Complete Writings of Edwin Courcey, Volume 6: The Early Letters’, 7th Revised Edition on the 50th Anniversary of Its Original Publication for unsent_letters_exchange, Robin Blyth/Edwin Courcey for The Last Binding Series by Freya Marske: This was my main assignment and SO MUCH FUN! I started off with the "I can't wait to be home" innuendo and then built the whole thing backwards around that. I knew pretty early on that I wanted super srs academic commentary on Edwin's blatant bottoming joke, and spent a whole bunch of time cribbing formatting from various books of published historical letters (all ancient Egyptian since that is every non-fiction book I own, lol) and got the format for 'academic preface' + 'letter content' pretty quickly. I started introducing the footnotes incidentally at first, since that matched the academic style, but I had zero clue what I was doing or even whether I would keep them until I thought up the 'One Pill Makes You Small' insult, and then I knew I HAD to keep them! And I had a fun time building up all the petty academic rivalries in the citations, too. (100% based on real-life academic pettiness. SO MUCH PETTINESS! 🤣) I also figured out early on that the footnotes helped break up the exposition, plus let me fill in the fates of other characters: I got to make Maudie a professor! ❤️ Anyway, I loved these books when I first read them (especially the first book and especially Robin/Edwin) but I'd never had any direction on fic-writing for them, so I was so excited when I got this assignment! I loved revisiting them!
  
  
  • Now and Forever also for unsent_letters_exchange, Nell/Theo(-ish) for 'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson. I'd read this book back in February off of a recommendation for 'cool haunted-house stuff' and knew I wanted to do something for it, so I offered it for this exchange and then snatched it right up when I saw this come up for pinch hit! I knew I wanted to try my hand at creepy psychological horror, and I loved the letters+journal format for revealing that. This is one of those fics that pretty much wrote themselves (as spookily appropriate as that is in this case :P), and I really liked the way it turned out.
  
  
  • Dearest Beloved for unsent_letters_exchange, Hannibal/Will. This was the second pinch hit I picked up and one I was afraid I wasn't going to have time to get to, but I did! I think there were several weeks where I was hoping every day that no one would pick this up before I knew whether I could commit to it. I really loved the prompt of Hannibal leaving Will guiding letters at crime scenes, but it is super intimidating trying to write letters in Hannibal's, er...unique voice. Once I solidified the frame story around the letters, though, it all started to flow together, and I really enjoyed getting to write Will with a very dark POV (and yet also strangely murderously sappy). They are both such horrible people, and I love them together so much!
  
  
  • Until Proven Guilty for seasonsofdrabbles, Columbo & Dog. My assignment and the one drabble I wrote for this round! I'd written Columbo previously in my Columbo & Garak fic a while back and I do love writing Columbo, but I would have a hard time coming up with a whole case fic, so I was delighted to offer this for a short-minimum exchange. And, in a way, I sort of did come up with a whole case fic, although Dog - alas - is not the cleverest of villains! (He is, however, the only one Columbo would let off the hook. :P)
  
  
• Upcoming exchanges: I am eying narumitsuday aggressively since it is physically impossible for that one not to have any recipients I could write for. :P I'm also keeping a hopeful eye on justmarriedexchange and a tentative one on nonconex: for the latter I don't think I could swing a whole sign-up, but I'll be checking for interesting PHs/requests to treat. I also don't think I have enough rare pairs for rarepairexchange (I have eclectic fandom tastes, but my pairings within those fandoms tend to be bog-standard) but that's another possibly for PHs/treats. Honestly though, I suspect most of the rest of my May/June docket will be taken up grabbing PHs from exchanges currently running. I went through the list the other day, and there were, like, 20 that appealed to me, so...yeah.


• Femslash Salad Bar - Nope, nothing to see here! I'm going to leave it on my list, but I suspect I'll do amnesty/make-up for next February to finally finish this one off.


• My Hero Academia has improved, although I still wouldn't say I'm a fan/fannish about it. I'm a few episodes into S2 now, and at least the story has gotten more compelling, if not yet the characters. It's now moved up in my esteem to "solid evening TV-watching entertainment" though, and there's nothing else I'm watching, so I am happy with that. Good grief, though, it's been a long time since I watched an anime and the fan-service is so dreadful! Like, there's a character who dresses and acts like a baby and his whole thing is that he cops feels on all the female characters' boobs (which, of course, are huge overflowing water-balloon style in skimpy outfits). And, like...ugh. Why did anyone need to include this? It's not funny, it's not hot, it's stupid and juvenile and alienating. But, y'know...fan-service! 🙄


• I finished The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison! And I loved it! It's such a compelling but kind-hearted book, and I love that shit, and I love Maia and also so many of the side characters. I'm going to buy a hard copy of this one, because I need to reread it many times. I know the author has a 3-novella side series set in the same universe, and I've put those in my queue, but it'll be a while before they come in. Really just lovely, though, a real treat!


• I'm through the first volume of Guardian by priest and possibly the 2nd and 3rd volumes are ready for me to pick up at the library? (I honestly cannot tell: the library site is having fun issues today. First log-in wasn't working at all, then I got email spam that books I'd already returned were ready for pick-up, then I finally could log in but the only page that would load was the 'in-transit' holds page, and...yeah. I will pop by in person tomorrow to see WTF is actually on my holds shelf. 😝) The first volume was tons of fun, though, and we got the reveal that Shen Wei is the Soul-Executing Emissary (which was pretty obvious from the moment we first met the Soul-Executing Emissary). But the sheer level of horniness between him and Zhao Yunlan is fantastic, and they've obviously known each other for hundreds of years although Zhao Yunlan can't remember it, so looking forward to seeing where that's going, and just the MOTWs are really solid too. Fun series!


• I got my schedule for my next big figure-skating competition in July, and it's pretty good! I'll only have to miss a little bit of work. My coach is putting together a new footwork program for me for this, so lots of learning there. I bought some new kneepads because my old ones are worn out, and we've been playing with different knee slides for the new program, and after 10 knee slides in one practice, I'm inevitably going to come down a little too hard at least once and then have unsightly bruises for the next week. 🤣 Knee slides are super fun, though! And once I've narrowed down which one I'm doing, I'll have time to practice that to the point where I don't need pads anymore. (I may still wear them, though, just to be safe, because the footwork competition is before the free-skate competition, and I do NOT want to run my free-skate program with bruised knees, ouch!)


• I have vaguely nebulous thoughts about doing a thing where I watch a different, random old movie each week, and write a short response fic to each one. Inspired by the fact that there were a couple of neat prompts for old movies in yuletide/ ficinabox/ candyheartsex where I went "huh, never thought of writing for THAT before!" and then I really enjoyed it. So that got me thinking that it might be fun to rewatch my old faves with a specific eye toward trying to get a fic/ficlet/drabble out it. Of course, this would be something I'd have to make time for on my own, which I'm not quite ready for yet, but I'm noodling on it. I think it would make a nifty community/prompt challenge but, alas, I have zero readers so I'm not the best person to run it. Still thinking, though.

Goals for this week: Finish 1 May/June assignment. Make some progress on the 2 remaining long-fics. Pick up at least 1 more PH.

Work's been crazy this week, so no time for a full update but:

- Only got 1 assignment written last week. I wanted 2, and I need to get at least 1 (ideally 2) done this week to not be flailing wildly.
- Overall count is now 3/7 (with fandom5k added to May/June list).
- I did finish SVSSS! And loved it!
- I've started Guardian by priest now. Intriguing so far, but I'm only 3 chapters in.
- I've made very little progress in BNHA, and it continues to be very predictable.

That is all for now.

We had a bit of a family emergency on Saturday, and now I'm back to running all my parents' errands for them, so that's a thing. :/ Nowhere near as serious as last time, thank god, and at least I'm still able to stay living at my place this time! I...do not want to have to temporarily move back in again, now that my life's mostly back to normal. I do not recommend letting one's parents get old: it is a ton of work and stress! o.O

And, as much as I'd like to blame my lack of progress this week on all that, I usually don't get much writing done on the weekend anyway, so it would be a total lie to do so. I didn't write a word last week, lol, but I did do tons of editing and reading, so that's mostly what this post will be:

• Exchanges due in March/April (the_mane_event, kinkluckydip, smut4smut, wickedloveex, worldbuilding_exchange, unsent_letters_exchange + mystery things I am pinch-hitting or treating for): KLD, S4S, Wicked Love, and Worldbuilding all revealed last week, so that's where all my editing time went. I'll need to edit for Unsent Letters this week, so that's my goal for this one. And also to read S4S, since I haven't gotten the chance yet. The Mane Event has also done author reveals: I wrote an Eve/Villanelle fic Fan Each Other's Panting Breast.


• My gifts continue to be fantastic:
  
  
  • the drop - AMAZING Ace Attorney worldbuilding of the online reaction to the leak that The Pink Princess sequel to Steel Samurai is coming out, with incredible integration of artwork, and bonus non-so-secret appearances by Maya and Edgeworth (Cody's username is just his actual name, so I'm not counting that even as "not-so-secret", lol)! ❤️
  
  
  • Trading blows - Third Doctor/Delgado!Master sexy swordfighting for Kink Lucky Dip! It is very hot and they are such weirdoes when they get together! ❤️
  
  
  • The Roomba Accidentally Saw Outside - Delightful Athena Cykes/Simon Blackquill porn from Ace Attorney, where a robot makes them do it, written for Kink Lucky Dip! Super funny! ❤️
  
  
  • Love or something like that. - Will/Hannibal having a beautifully dysfunctional lover's spat for Wicked Love (with canon-appropriate appropriate body-count as a result)! ❤️
  
  
  • I haven't had a change to read my 2 fics for S4S yet since that just revealed last night while I was in synchro practice, and I pretty much crashed after I got home. I will do those next week, but both the summaries look fantastic! (Two Phoenix/Edgeworth smut fics? Seriously, how am I so blessed? 🥺)
  
  
• Exchanges due in May/June (hurtcomfortex, pickmeupexchange, idproquo, caseficexchange, seasonsofdrabbles + mystery pinch-hits and treats): I'm 0/5 on these. I'm waiting on Case Fic assignments right now, but I gamed for one, so unless something went horribly wrong, I know what I'm writing. It would be nice to get 1-2 of those done this week, so I don't have to go into panic mode. Just sayin'...


• Potential other exchanges to add to my docket for May/June:
  
  
  • Pretty much sure I'm in for: diegetic_exchange.
  
  
  • Things I'm iffy on but will sign up if there are cool requests: prisoner_exchange (surprisingly no sign-ups for any of my fandoms yet, so I might sit this one out), saturdaymorningex (there's one prompt I like, but I'm not sure if it's enough for me to sign up or just treat)
  
  
  • Things that are still in nominations phase, but I'm keeping an eye on: summerofhorrorexchange, justunrequitedex, ahorseofcourseexchange, fandom5k, monstersmashexchange
  
  
• Femslash Salad Bar - Still nothing new to see here, folks!


• The Untamed: I'm now through episode 46, so only 4 left! 🥺 I am not ready for this to end! Seriously, I think I would watch a series of WWX and LWJ wandering around rescuing apprentices indefinitely. We're finally getting to JGY being exposed for all the horrid shit he's done, although there's a good deal of focus on how the actual problem is fickle gossipy people scapegoating whoever is most convenient at any given moment. It's all good stuff. Also, finally JC found out that he's had WWX's golden core all this time; I was starting to worry that was never going to happen, lol. Much angst, very pretty, I will miss this show so much when it's done. 😭


• Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir: Finished it, and really enjoyed it! I will confess that I'm mostly in it for the plot, although the characters are fine enough too, just not any that I'm SUPER fannish about. Dunno whether I'll ever feel compelled to write something for this one. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I have Harrow the Ninth in my library queue, but it'll take a little while for me to get to the top, which I'm okay with. This universe is sort of stressful, so I think I need a bit of a breather before the next one. Very curious to see where this is going...IN SPACE!


• Piranesi by Susanna Clarke: And then, because my library queue is cursed, this came up right when I was halfway through Gideon the Ninth, so I read this last week too. It's actually a very quick read and quite spellbinding. The narration style was super cool as were the reveals. I thoroughly enjoyed it, although not in a fanfic-writing manner, I don't think. And the final solution was a bit meh, that the House is some kind of outsider world. But I really loved the immersion in the narrator's POV and all the unreliable stuff and all the twists on how the Other betrayed him and 16 was actually on his side. Definitely worth a read!


• Scum Villain's Self-Saving System by MXTX: And now I'm officially back to this and hoping that I'll be able to finish before my library queue attacks again, lol. I'm in Ch4 of the first volume right now (Luo Binghe's demon just got unsealed). I do love SQQ's narration, especially with all the call-outs to fandom culture, and I just about died laughing when Luo Binghe's plot armor saved them by causing the ceiling beam to fall down. And also I am entirely amused that buttsex is the only cure for SQQ's poisoning: absolutely A+ plot development. So this continues to be fun and funny, and I'm getting more invested in the characters and plot all the time!

Goals for this week: 1) Read S4S! 2) Finish edits for Unsent Letters. 3) Try to get 1-2 of my May/June assignments written. 4) Finish The Untamed! 😭 5) Read more SVSSS.

Yeah, I got almost nothing done last week. The competition left me way more tired than I anticipated, and then I had a huge work presentation on Thursday which basically ate up my mental energy all week, and then Friday I took off to walk around the arboretum with my mom and look at ephemerals, so I didn't get much written. But, y'know, I built in a buffer for that, so it should be okay.

Here's where I am:

• Exchanges due in March/April: the_mane_event, kinkluckydip, smut4smut, wickedloveex, worldbuilding_exchange, unsent_letters_exchange + unnamed things I am pinch-hitting or treating for. First of all, I'm dividing up these bullets by due date now, since that's the way I think of them. I'm now at 12/13 on these, and the 13 is a treat so it doesn't need to get done, but I really want it to. I need to do some edits on these this week, including at least 1 that needs a hard edit. So my goals are: finish the last treat + do the hard edit.


• Exchanges due in May/June: hurtcomfortex, pickmeupexchange, idproquo, caseficexchange (still in sign-ups): I'm currently at 0/4 on these (and more will crop up inevitably, with incoming exchanges + additional PHs/treats I decide on). My goals on this are: finish 1 assignment + complete sign-up for caseficexchange.


• Other exchanges that are on my radar and I might pick up for May/June: seasonsofdrabbles, prisoner_exchange, diegetic_exchange, sakuraexchange, whumpex, saturdaymorningex. There's zero reason for me not to do drabbles. Prisoner, I think, is a shoo-in given that Hannibal & Ace Attorney are two of my big fandoms. Diegetic has potential, but I need to think on it more. Sakura, Whump, and Saturday Morning are going to depend a lot on other people's requests: if I see cool requests, I'll jump in.


• Femslash Salad Bar: Nope, didn't get anything done on this (shockingly)!


• The Untamed: I'm now through episode 34! Finally back in the present day. Also, Jin Ling has a FLOOFY DOG and I want to floof it! 🥺


• So, fun story: Back before Christmas, I threw a bunch of "trapped together in a location" murder mysteries on my library queue, and one had a ginormous queue and I finally made it to the front on Friday, which was the worst timing possible, of course. But I did get Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson and read that this weekend. It was actually my favorite of all the books I read in this category. The set-up was super fun, and the characters were great. The larger mystery was less fun than reading how everyone killed someone in some way, but still entertaining enough for a weekend.


• I also have Scum Villain's Self-Saving System by MXTX now and am starting to read that! I'm only, like, 4 pages in, though, so nothing exciting to say so far, other than it seems funny.


• Spring ephemerals! We saw tons of snow trilliums and pasque flowers at the arboretum, hooray! Plus pussy willows, which are FLUFFY. We also went to our local waterfall on Sunday, and the skunk cabbages and bloodroots were both blooming there. And we've now got hepatica blooming in our yard (plus tons of wild ginger coming up). It looks like the next two weeks will be the big ephemeral explosion here. Very happy to see everyone back!

Goals for this week: 1) Finish March/April treat, 2) Edits for March/April fic, 3) 1 fic done out of May/June set, 4) Sign up for caseficexchange, 5) Finish Unit One (need to return that to library), 6) Watch more of The Untamed, 7) Start reading SVSSS.

Hey, I just realized that it's April 1, so I should've included these in my round-up post Monday. Oh welp!

As of end of March, I'm at 90K words, which is pretty insane. 😲 With some of the exchange fics I haven't finished/posted yet, I may even have 100K already, but will surely get that in April. Should I raise my yearly goal to 200K? IDEK!

Also, I double-checked several times to make sure that I had not miscounted, but it looks like I've currently published 39 works on AO3 this year (which doesn't count the ones that are currently unrevealed or in anon-period in various exchanges), which is also...wow. A lot. Way more than I would've guessed.

Go me, I guess? I seriously don't know how this happened, lol.

I had a nice freak-out mid-week that I wasn't getting anything done, and I would never write again, and I should just default on everything. This is what happens when I have several assignments open and less than a month before the deadline. 🙄 Admittedly, it did not help that two exchanges I signed up for (the_mane_event & kinkluckydip) did not have my usual month+ buffer between when assignments were sent out and when they were due. Admittedly, this is totally a me problem. That's entirely reasonable for those exchanges, which have a 500- and 300-word minimum, respectively. And, if I were capable of holding my fics to low numbers like those, I would be good. But 300-500 is actually a very tricky number of words to manage: you either have to gloss over actual events (which I hate to do) or only have one image/theme/line and write only the bare minimum into that. It's less than a full scene, for sure. However, this still doesn't merit my weird freak-out, because even if I took 5K words for those (which I wasn't that bad with, fortunately, lol), I still had plenty of time. But I panic whenever I am not way ahead of schedule. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I do not know how people who write up to the deadline survive.

Anyway, I actually did pretty well with my overall goal! Here we go:

• the_mane_event, kinkluckydip, smut4smut, wickedloveex, worldbuilding_exchange, unsent_letters_exchange, hurtcomfortex + unnamed things I am pinch-hitting or treating for: Ye Olde Liste of things that I currently have outstanding assignments for, in the order in which those assignments are due. As of last week, I had completed 5/11 (although this week added 1 more assignment for hurtcomfortex, which made it 5/12), and I wanted to get 3-4 done last week. I also succeeded in my goal of not claiming any additional pinch hits while I still had too many outstanding assignments. So, as of today, I have completed 8/12, which is A+, and I also did a good job of prioritizing the ones with earlier deadlines. There's only 1 outstanding with a deadline less than a month away (and one of the things I've completed is a valid treat for that recipient, so I can always swap the main gift and the treat if I don't finish the main in time - but I will). So that removes a lot of my panic. My goal for this week is to finish at least 1 of those (to total 9/12) and get a solid idea for the one of those where I don't really know quite what I'm writing yet: I know the fandom, obviously, but the details are vaguely nebulous.


• goreswap: OMG, my gift for this one is amazing! 🤩 It is the Alana/Margot (from Hannibal) fic of my dreams that I knew I wanted to exist but I had nothing but mental blanks on my end so I couldn't write it. But this is just beautiful: Ethanol! I have to say I've been really lucking out on gifts lately. Very curious to find out who the author is because I want to check out what else they've written.


• Things I'm pretty sure I'm skipping: fluffityfluffexchange (already did not sign-up), fangfrenzyficexchange, pickmeupexchange, bitesizedfandomsex. None of them are themes that work particularly well with my pairings, but I will keep an eye out for interesting pinch hits - especially with Bite-Sized, since I don't have enough to generate requests on this one, but there's nice potential for picking up new fandoms if something catches my eye.


• Things I'm excited to sign up for, in the not-so-distant future:
  
  
  • idproquo: I have a number of nominations in, and might add some Original Work ones too before nominations close. I am basically using this one as my brain dump for "horny ideas that I love, but I am no longer the best person to write these ideas, so please someone else write them!" I'll probably game my offers for this one, because with smut I really need to have the full scene in my head before I nab a request. I'll be very excited to see what prompts come up!
  
  
  • everythingisfemslashex: I'm excited for this one because it gives me a chance not only to request my current femslash faves, but also to request genderbending of my m/m couples, and I would love to read other people's takes on that too!
  
  
  • caseficexchange: This is a brand new exchange and also the exchange of my dreams! 🤩 It will be so hard and so scary, but I really want to improve my skills with case fic, and I have a gazillion half-formed ideas for mysteries/solutions which I will never write on my own because my lazy slacker brain needs to have a fire lit under it. So, so many ideas for prompts, and also so many ideas for offers! (And when I have stupid panics that I'm not good enough to write case fic, I am making myself come back and read this post, lol.)


• Femslash Salad Bar: I didn't get to this last week, although I did have mental breakthroughs on how to get past the place where 2 of my fics are stuck. I would still like to finish one of these this week. My goal was to get 1 done per month, and I haven't managed that yet for March, for shame! 😞 Although, after my Gore Swap gift, I'm super hyped-up about Alana/Margot again, and that's one of the fics that I mentally fixed, so here's hoping that's my inspirational motivation!


• Checking out new fandoms: I started doing this last week and had one hit and one complete miss:
  
  
  • The hit is The Untamed! Unsurprisingly I - like every other human being on the planet - LOVE this show! I'm only 9 episodes in, but it's so pretty, and they're so gay, and the plot is so engrossing. I'm not sure if I'll write fic for it (the sheer amount of background knowledge needed is intimidating, lol), but it definitely gives me more to read for, and I'm having tons of fun watching it. Would recommend!
  
  
  • Bounced hard off The Foxhole Court (first in the All for the Game series) by Nora Sakavic. Like, two chapters, and I was gone. I had thought it looked promising because I love sports/tournament anime. And I was wary about the gangster/yakuza elements, since I generally dislike those, but I love Hannibal despite generally disliking serial killers and I enjoyed Slam Dunk despite it having a fair amount of yakuza stuff. But, no, this was trying way too hard to be edgy. After I stopped reading the first night to go to bed, I had the thought "You know what? I'll bet next they steal some alcohol and also someone punches someone else in the face. And they mention cigarettes a gazillion more times, because they are edgy emo kids who SMOKE, okay? Smoking is totally a personality!" And then I started reading again the next morning, and within the next chapter: 1) they were stealing alcohol, 2) they punched each other in the face, and 3) cigarettes got mentioned 3 times. So, uh...yeah. Not a good fit. (I heard after the fact that the author possibly was originally a Weiss Kreuz fic author? And, while I enjoy a lot of published authors who started with fanfic, Weiss Kreuz is another of those things that I bounced very hard off of, so I think this was just not meant for me.)
  
  
  • I've cued up a few other things in my library hold list. Hopefully, some of those will fit my tastes better.

I am keeping my goals modest for the next two weeks. I have a huge competition coming up the first week of April, so that's my entire brain gone. Plus, the week after that, I have some big presentations to deliver at work, so I have to reserve some coherency for that. So I'm giving myself a bit of a break this week, since I don't need to push right now, and then the week after that will be a complete write-off, and then maybe once my work presentations are over the week after that, I'll start to have some spare time again and will pick things back up to a more normal pace.

Goals for next week: 1) Complete 1 exchange assignment, 2) Think through my plot for 1 exchange assignment, 3) Complete 1 fic for Femslash Salad Bar, 4) Watch more of The Untamed!

I now officially no longer feel like a weirdo for claiming to have written 72K words this year, when my actual AO3 account has way less than that, because tons of exchanges revealed over the last week+. Here's stuff I wrote and my various incoherent thoughts on it:

• I don't think I ever talked about what I wrote for the Lunar New Year Wood Snake exchange. Anyone who has ever read my Doctor Who stuff will be in no way surprised to discover that I wrote the Eighth Doctor/Goo!Snake Master fic, Serpentime. It really was one of those things where I was like, "well, if you're going to create a whole fest that caters to one of my weirdest pairings..." Anyway, I am happy to report that Goo Snake is as fun to write as ever! GOO SNAKE! 🐍


• I grabbed a lul_soulmatesex Pinch Hit and wrote a Phoenix/Edgeworth fic, Turnabout Psycholock. This is a classic example of why I love pinch-hitting. I would've had difficulty coming up with a full sign-up for this exchange, but I loved seeing "ooh, super-cool prompt!" and being able to dive in.


• I also did a Pinch Hit for rarefemslashexchange a while back for How to Survive Camping, titled the man with the skull cap is now the woman with the skull cap. and probably also my wife?. Apparently it went over like a ton of bricks, but I had fun trying to emulate the original's style and I enjoy it, so there's that!


• I missed sign-ups for fffx but went a little crazy with Pinch Hitting. I actually liked doing PHs for this one because I could wait until I was 90% done and guaranteed to finish before snapping them up. 😝
  
  • I took the full 10K PH for Hannibal/Will, Seven Stages, which was another fic of me playing around with post-Fall 'what ifs'. I had fun with the imagery in this one; it did make me a little sad, though, because if I had good enough artist's skills, it would've made a fantastic comic, but that is, alas, not part of my skill set.
  
  
  • And then I was all happy and done, when a second PH popped up for Doctor Who, and I started on that secretly hoping someone would grab the other half because I could tell my fic wasn't a full 10K, and - yay - someone did, so I did a half/5K PH for the Third Doctor/Delgado!Master, Tea for Two. It's funny: when I first started writing DW, I preferred writing NuWho, but now I think maybe I enjoy writing Classic Who more? I don't know: I definitely go back and forth in my favoritism. (It also doesn't help that I don't have Disney+, so I'm behind in NuWho now, which makes me anxious.)

As for what I wrote last week:

• I have outstanding assignments for: worldbuilding_exchange, wickedloveex, and smut4smut, and my goal last week was to complete 1-2 fics. And that's exactly what I did! I have 1 complete, and 1 80% complete, except it's the smut4smut one and the 20% that's still outstanding is the smut part, so that's super important, oops! My goal this week is to finish up that fic, and try to fit in another 1/2 fic here, because there will be an incoming higher priority...


• unsent_letters_exchange & the_mane_event assignments should be coming my way today! The latter is due early, so it's going to jump the queue for what gets written next. Hoping to get that done this week. And, unless something crazy changes with sign-ups post-close, I know which assignment I'm getting for that one. Unsent Letters will be a big mystery, though, since I love the theme of that one so much that I offered broadly and with intention to review canon if I need to.


• Femslash Salad Bar: I had a goal to get one of my 3 outstanding fics done for this last week, but failed to do so. I'm setting it as a goal again this week.


• I'm skipping Rare Kink Buffet entirely. Only one of my fandoms was requested, and I wasn't excited about the prompts. I do have a much higher barrier for fests than I do for exchanges, which seems backwards, but that's the way my mind works. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


• fangfrenzyficexchange, fluffityfluffexchange, and kinkluckydip are all things in nominating stage that I'm sorta watching, but suspect I might not do. Fanged Frenzy had someone nominate some of my fandoms, so maybe I'd consider that one - if not to sign-up, then for PHs or treats. The others I'm still not sure on. Later in March, idproquo & everythingisfemslashex are starting nominations, too, so those might take up my April docket instead.

In other news, my synchro team had our competition this week, which took up my entire day Sunday, since the venue was about a 2-hour drive away. It went well! But I am looking forward to a couple weeks' break before I have the big freestyle competition the first week of April.

I also have some pointless thoughts on why I didn't like the Francis Dolarhyde arc in Hannibal:
( What makes a good villain? )

Goals This Week: 1) Finish the exchange fic I've done all but the smut scene for. 2) Write my fic for the_mane_event. 2) Get started on one of my remaining exchange assignments. 4) Get one of my 3 outstanding Femslash Salad Bar fics done.

We'll see how that goes. I've noticed that, with all my other obligations, I have the remaining brainpower to get roughly 5K written per week. So, assuming that pattern is accurate, I may fall a bit short. On the other hand, I actually have time to do stuff this week, so that can only help, even if it's just for resting up my brain for next week!

Whoa boy. Last week was an absolute orgy of reading my way through the candyheartsex collection, and commenting on everything that I liked. And there was a lot of amazing fic and art, across so many different fandoms! I really love the big multi-fandom exchanges because they give me a set time to explore reading in other fandoms I miss or otherwise skip over. So, yes, I highly recommend that everyone check out the collection (and those from previous years as well!).

Author reveals have passed, so I can now stop vagueing about what I wrote! 😊 At the end of the day, I did, in fact, write 14 fics, although not 14 treats like I wanted. 😝 My initial assignment was Ace Attorney Phoenix/Edgeworth fic for Odalyn Good for the Soul, and then I picked up one Pinch Hit for psychomachia for The Shadow (1994) A Thousand Cuts. Overall, my breakdown was:

• Ace Attorney: 7 fics, 4 Phoenix/Edgeworth, 1 Edgeworth & Franziska & Pess, 1 Edgeworth & Pess, and 1 Franziska & Sebastian


• Hannibal (TV): 2 fics, both Hannibal/Will


• Whyborne & Griffin: 2 fics, one Whyborne/Griffin and the other Guinivere & Whyborne


• The Shadow (1994): 2 fics, both Lamont Cranston/Shiwan Khan


• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine & Columbo crossover: 1 fic, Garak & Columbo

All are now up on my AO3, for anyone interested.

Some reflections: candyheartsex is the exchange that actually brought my attention back to exchanges overall last year, where I caught it right before reveals and snuck in a couple of Ace Attorney treats, but not as many as I wanted. I made a mental note then that it was a lot of fun, and I wanted to do it 4realz this year. As expected, the Ace Attorney prompts this year were amazing, and one thing I really like about them is that I get to hear what other characters people want to see interacting. It gives me plot bunnies I wouldn't have thought of otherwise. The couple of treats I didn't get to were also for AA, for some ships I'd never really thought much about before, so I didn't get to those as quickly (and those recips also weren't on the treatless list, so they were lower priority 🤣). Next year, though, maybe I'll have my ideas more together and be able to expand my range more.

I knew I needed to treat all the Hannibal and Whyborne & Griffin prompts that weren't mine, because those recips clearly deserve it for having such excellent taste. 😊 I am really loving all the ideas for Hannibal I get from exchange prompts; I would have written waaaaaaaaay less for this fandom (possibly none) without them, because all my Hannigram thoughts were just sort of sitting in the back of my head, half-baked, before. The challenges/deadlines are really forcing me to get them out. As for Whyborne & Griffin, this is a fandom where I have a super hard time coming up with ideas on my own. My general thoughts are just, "That was lovely. More, please!" But I don't have any clear conception of what that "more" should entail. So other people's requests are an absolute lifesaver for me!

On The Shadow... Okay, this is one of the things I love best about exchanges: I have watched that movie probably every year since it came out. That DVD (and, yes, I still have a DVD!) is well-worn, lol. I love it to pieces, and I love the sexy enemy tension between The Shadow and Khan. But did I ever think to write anything for it? No, because apparently my brain misses super-obvious things like this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I never even thought to look for it in the tag set. Then I saw it come up as a pinch hit and had a moment of "holy shit, why have I never written that before?!?!" So, yes, that is why I need and love exchanges.

Similarly, Garak and Columbo meeting? I just happened to glance at the crossover prompts, IDEK why because I am usually not a crossovers fan, and I saw that one, and I immediately burst out laughing. Because they are perfect together! The professional liar and the professional lie-detector machine! It was one of those rare fics that just leapt into my head fully-formed, and the hardest part was writing down the words as fast as they were sparring with each other in my brain. I actually finished that fic before sign-ups even closed. And I had to keep checking AO3 that no one had written it before, because in retrospect it seemed so obvious! Anyway, I am delighted to have gotten to write it.

Anyway, that was candyheartsex, absolutely fantastic, A++ would recommend, can't wait for next year!

Now for something completely different...

• I am waaaaaay behind on Femslash Salad Bar. I have 1.5 fics written on my computer (but the completed one is not posted yet, natch!). I had hoped to write a lot this weekend, but I had terrible headaches from Friday afternoon all through Saturday, so I couldn't even look at a computer screen. In theory, if I write 1 + a bit stories per day (and also post them 😱), I'll still finish by February 28th. So, yeah, that's my race this week. Wish me luck!


• worldbuilding_exchange: I have an assignment, and a lovely one at that! Unfortunately, I have too many ideas for what I want to write for it, so I need to let those all percolate for a minute. My rough guess is that I'm going to have at least 2 fics come out of this, though. I just don't see any way to combine 2 of these prompts at the moment, and I can't leave one hanging, either! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


• wickedloveex: I have an assignment here, too! And, good lord, was that an adventure. I had a potential recip when I signed up, and lots of other people had nominated fandoms/pairings I liked, so I figured this would be a straightforward match. Then, the one matchable recip deleted their request, and I had an "oh crap!" moment. But then I got the horrible headache and couldn't check my computer when sign-ups closed. I fully expected to wake up the next morning and discover that I was one of the unmatchables and would need to delete my sign-up. However, I was not! Three potential recips signed up super last minute, so I actually didn't even know who I was going to get! And I'd also thought that I was going to be an Initial Pinch Hit, for sure, but people jumped in to offer some of my requests last-minute there, too. So, it did turn out wonderfully. It was just a complete rollercoaster (and, honestly, I'm kind of grateful I had the headache during the most nerve-wracking hours of that, so I missed the stress). But happy ending!


• smut4smut: I have signed up and already have multiple matches here, so no drama llamas, lol. This one will be fun, I think. I'm curious to see what I get for my assignment.


• hurtcomfortex: I'm all ready to sign up for this one. Sign-ups open Saturday, woo-hoo!


• unsent_letters_exchange: I put my nominations in. Although I need to think if there are any other fandoms I want. I have until Wednesday to noodle on this.


• the_mane_event: Here's a new one that popped up, but is relevant to my interests! It's focused on all things hair. And given that 1) Hannibal had amazingly hot chest and belly hair, and 2) I have two separate ships where one half my OTP caused the other half to go permanently bald (Charles/Erik from X-Men and Clark/Lex for Smallville), it would really be silly of me to sit this one out. I will put my nominations in this week, as a treat once I get some of my Femslash Salad Bar fics posted (motivation!).


• I'm still on the fence about whether to sign up for the Tiny Beans Flash Exchange, for cat-themed fics. Sign-ups close Tuesday, and fics are due Saturday, so that's cutting it close with my other obligations. On the other hand: KITTY! I think that I'm going to see where I get with Femslash Salad Bar by EOD today, and if I'm cruising, then I'll let myself sign up for kitties, but if not, I will bow out.


• By the way, I figured out what I'm doing about Femslash Big Bang. I'm not big on Tumblr events, or even the more social parts of big bangs. And part of what I would've developed for this, I'm also covering with Femslash Salad Bar. So my thought is: write as much of my fic as possible for Femslash Salad Bar. Do not do Femslash Big Bang. However, I will still have some gaps in my series after Femslash Salad Bar is over, so I will stick to the Femslash Big Bang schedule just on my own, to get all of those done. This just saves me a lot of hassle, so I think it is a good plan.

And finally: I finished S3 of Killing Eve, and I really liked it! I think the back half of S2 just dragged for me because I was not into the Aaron Peel plotline, and that took up SOOOO much screentime. I am going to watch S4, and I fully expect to be frustrated because I do not like major character death, lol. However, I will try to get the bulk of my writing for Eve/Villanelle done before that episode! And then, hopefully, get inspired for lots of fix-it fics. 😝