This is my life

Here is this year's post!

And as I am terrible at regular posting, as we all know, I am going to attempt to do this but no promises! Especially since go-live is on June 26th and I expect to be running around like a chicken with my head cut off for the next two to three weeks.

Let's get on with it! Today's question is: What show or movie original cast would you like to see reunite for an update - where the intervening time has passed and we're getting a view of where they are now along with glimpses on how they got there?

Boy oh boy this is tough. My go to is generally Leverage, but they did actually do this themselves, so that's off the table. My next thought was a show that was thoroughly satisfying when it ended, so: The Good Place. But honestly, the end of that show was pretty much perfect? So I don't think that would work either.

My current fandoms are current, so I'm already reading all of the "what happened after?" fics, and the cast hasn't been separated long enough to have a big impact. That said, I would *love* to see The Untamed reunion at the 20 year mark or so. I love all those goobers and would like to see them together again.

Next up is old shows. Are there old shows I'd like to see where they might go with a current cast? Nothing is coming to mind. Supernatural JUST ended lol, don't need that. SGA? I guess. I'm not really invested anymore. :(

The Losers might be good. I love all those guys and it was set just before Chris Evans became Cap so could be some interesting stuff there. I want the sequel that was promised, damn it.

This is super hard for me, why is that? All right - college/high school shows. Buffy, maybe? Considering what the actors are doing these days, could be fun. Unfortunately James Marsters and David Boreanaz have definitely aged, so that would take some explaining. X Files? They did a reunion for that and I think it was disappointing (I don't honestly remember).

What this is telling me is that I truly prefer fic for this sort of thing so I can imagine it for myself, lol.

Day 10
In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) Tell us what makes it work for you, and why it appeals to you so much. Talk about what you like to see in fanworks featuring that theme most. Feel free to include recs and examples!

My favorite trope is found family/team. But, because I tend to gravitate toward canons where that is a theme, it tends to be a theme in almost all the fanworks I like to consume (or at least a vast majority). So that said, I think my next favorite trope is fake dating/marriage. I could literally read hundreds of thousands of these. I probably have. Below are some of my very favorites.

Stargate: Atlantis
Ordinary Life by astolat and Speranza. McShep, 20,043 words, explicit.
THIS FIC, Y'ALL. This is one of my top 3 SGA fics of all time. Pieces of it come up all the time in my daily live. Port Salut cheese will always remind me of this. Seeing Raytheon anything will mean I say "I know who Raytheon are," in zoetrope's accent. Like, I just love everything about this fucking fic. And the podfic by zoetrope

No Refunds or Exchanges by astolat. McShep, 10,659 words, explicit.
Shit, I just realized I totally used this title for an SPN fic I wrote, heh. Whoops. Anyway, this is amaaaaaazing and I like it a lot because in it, Rodney is just a decent human being with principles and it's kinda nice. I mean, I like a lot of other things about it, but the Rodney with a moral compass is nice. Also you can tell how old it is by Rodney's full name on the marriage certificate, heh.

The Losers
This Side of Paradise by thefourthvine. Jensen/Cougar, 17,031 words, explicit.
This is a Yuletide fic, and it's so fun. I think mostly because Jensen is so certain Cougar is straight.

Imaginary Boyfriend by me! Cougar/Jensen, 4,713 words, teen.
Stealth crossover with Criminal Minds, White Collar, Psych, and Leverage. Based on an ad I saw for Imaginary Boyfriends. This was such a blast to write.

Supernatural
Come on baby, let me know by Lenore. Wincest, 6,572 words, explicit.
I'll just leave you with this summary: They don't just have to pretend to be gay. They have to be the gayest!

Fake It Til You Make It by me! (Yep, TWO self-recs!) Wincestiel, 33,467 words, explicit (but for violence and warnings - PLEASE NOTE THE WARNINGS - not sex).
This one started as a fun romp and turned into a "I want to fix everything about Sam and Dean ever." It was fun and then cathartic to write, so there's that. Plus there's a gay cruise.

OMG, thank you so much, my friend, for making a fanwork just for me. I love many, many things about The Losers, and exchanges, and this exchange in particular.

So first off, I would love absolutely ANYTHING you would like to make. Fic, art, podfic, meta, gifs, icons, interpretive dance, and macaroni castles. I love literally EVERYTHING that you might make that is in any way considered a fanwork and involves The Losers.

After that, I... have to admit that it's late, and I'm tired, and I want to post something for you (because I am excite!) but I am too tired to list out my (many) fandom loves. So I'll just say: if you are a person who generates your ideas easily and have something you've always wanted to create? CONSIDER THIS PERMISSION TO GO NUTS! I would LOVE to get anything like that for a gift.

If you are someone that prefers a bit of direction, I will (lazily, omg, I'm so sorry /o\) point you at my dear creator letters tag and the make this for me tag, where I outline lots of things I have always wanted. Feel free to pick and choose and mix and match and throw it all in a blender if you like.

Again, THANK YOU SO MUCH! I hope you are as excited for this exchange as I am! <3

Yeah, it's coming. Gimme a minute. <3

Okay, so, I'm late. And... having done the assignments already, I know who you are. (sorry!)

So I'm going to keep this sleek and trimmed down, and hopefully give you good ideas. If not - here is my dear creator letters tag and my make this for me tag. I'm super easy, and there has got to be SOMETHING in there that sparks an idea! Also, hit me up in chat and I'll spew things at you until something sticks.

But here, a few prompts and ideas:

1. Losers AUs. Give me the Losers at Hogwarts or on the bridge of the Enterprise or as a Leverage-like team! The Losers with superpowers, the Losers on a tall ship, the losers as pirates or ninjas or cats. Or hedgies or bunnies or elephants! HUNTERS (a la Supernatural) or angels or monsters that fight crime. GIVE ME ALL THE AUs!

2. Canon forks. Roque doesn't betray them! Cougar doesn't die (comics 'verse)! Aisha slots right in as part of the team! The snuke goes off!

3. Ridiculous cute fluff! Cougar takes care of Jensen when he's sick! Clay warms Roque up when he's cold! They all surround Pooch when he misses his wife! Aisha cooks for them all after a tough mission!

4. Cheesy, cheesy tropes! Jensen has amnesia! Cougar and Jensen have to go undercover as gay! Cougar, Roque, and Aisha accidentally adopt a kid! Aisha has an evil twin! Cougar goes through Groundhog Day until Jensen falls in love with him! THE TEAM ARE ALL SOULMATES!!!!

Hopefully that is something to work with. If not, poke me, and I will come up with more. <333

DUUUUUUUUUUUDE. This is the best idea EVER. 300 words or a sketch not on lined paper. Plus the ability to write treats. Sign-ups through January 7th.

( I'm soooooooooooo easy. )

Thank you for all your comments about spoiler etiquette. I admit, I don't expect anything over on tumblr - I'm going to swear off it for months at a time next season, I think. But yeah, I was talking about Dreamwidth. A lot of uncut reaction posts as I was scrolling back my flist. All good now, I've seen it, so no more spoilers for me.

gifwhes 8 is up! And times like this, I wish I asked my sister, because she loves making dioramas etc.

Item 8. IMAGE or GIF. An artistic representation of the famed Elopus incident, in diorama form.

READ THE RULES AND DON’T CROSS THE STREET WITHOUT LOOKING BOTH WAYS. ok?? submit by tagging #gifwhes and #gishwhes and #item 8.

the deadline is going to be thursday 5/7 at 5pm PT!!!

And! ante_up_losers is doing a big bang again! We're looking a little light on teams, so if this is something you might be interested in, maybe poke your head around the party post? We could use help with a banner for the 2015 big bang, too, and maybe a kick in the advertising over on tumblr?

In your own space, talk about your fannish origin story. How did you come to fandom, why did you choose your fannish name, do you have more than one secret identity? Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I'm still trying to figure out how, exactly, I found my way to fandom. I started fanwriting when I was five. (I wrote a story that was basically: Fonzie does an Evil Kneivel type trick on his motorcycle, and SLAMS INTO A BRICK WALL AND DIES! I was five. Writing tragedy and deathfic. What the hell.) Also - I shared this story with my mother, who looked at me funny but didn't make me do anything like see a child psychologist or anything, so I kept writing stories. Mostly in my head after that, and mostly self-inserts into Star Wars and the like.

Teenagerhood was bizarre. I would've been hugely multifannish, if there'd been an internet back then (I think) and then I might have figured out that I was actually in love with KITT, not David Hasslehoff.

Weirdly, once I went to college, I seem to have turned off my fannish interest. I think I just didn't have time. Music school is fucking all-consuming, yo.

I got back into it around 1999 - with, of all things, The Mummy. I found a Brendan Fraser fangroup and wrote some fiction. (RPS! Though I didn't actually want to have sex with Brendan, so I wrote us doing Tai Chi together. I wish this still existed in the world.)

From there, I moved into Buffy, where I joined a mailing list and started reading fanfiction - including slash! I was a Buffy/Spike shipper, but I found some Spike/Xander fic which made me do a Castiel-style headtilt, and then Spike/Angel (or Angelus) fanfic that made me go: OMG YES THIS ALL OF THIS FOREVER WHAT IS THIS EVEN?!!?!?!? D:

And then The Mummy 2 came out, and I started writing a script for The Mummy 3. (Mine would've been SO MUCH BETTER than the one they actually made.) I wrote other stuff, too, mostly self-insert (and my self-insert was always the best friend or maternal figure or helper person because I really did want to be besties with these people, not have sex with them).

Then Lord of the Rings happened, and I found a group of super-awesome folks to get involved with (and got initiated into LJ), started writing even more self-insert stories (still thinking they were basically original fiction at this point, ahahaha oh, no), and then. And then! gayalithiel came onto the scene and we started writing a sprawling vampire universe populated with our favorite actors. Vampire Greg. (Long story for another time.) And seriously, we wrote SO MUCH. I was so heavily into that universe. I still look back and think I could turn it into something really cool - we had some really neat ideas and did just buttloads of research and background work. Maybe someday.

And then - I finally broke the fanfiction barrier. 10 years ago, this past Christmas eve. I posted my very first fanfic, and Alexander (2004) FPS/RPS thing for the girl who would become my ex-girlfriend. I wrote a fair number of shorts in that fandom, most dedicated to her, and then everything there fell apart and my writing mojo completely dried up.

Thankfully, I got out of the bad situation, and writing came back, slowly but surely. And when my future wife introduced me to SGA, I never looked back. I have 290 works on the AO3, and 134 of them are SGA. We moved to DW pretty much the second it opened its doors, and it's become my fannish home. I'm still trying to wrangle other platforms, and I think I've pretty much come up with this (subject to change):

kate: my fannish and personal home; where my friends are; where I post about squeeful things and RL things and just about everything
kisahawklin: where all the fic is kept
kisahawklin: I keep this only for the few friends and fests only on LJ. Someday it may become obsolete, but not yet.
kisahawklin: pretty much exclusively for SPN tweeting and watching the cast live-tweet shows
kisahawklin: I get the appeal, now. Mostly for SPN and definitely for all things visual. Still learning my way around there.

And... that's that, I guess? There should probably be a note up there about falling into the incredible Losers fandom, and moving into Supernatural, but I think I've covered those enough before. YAY FANDOM! :D :D :D :D

ETA: I always seem to start blathering and then miss parts of the question! Kisa Hawklin is the name of my first D&D character and has been my online moniker since I got online, back in 1993. I do have two pseudonyms, and I challenge anyone to figure out who they are. One is almost 11 years old and the other is at least 5. Both have works posted at the AO3. (Some of my favorites, actually. I may eventually pull the 11 year old pseud into kisahawklin, but we'll see.) I doubt anyone would ever guess them, though (and have at - good luck with that!).

In case you want to play along!

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Well, this is good timing, because I was writing that fake boyfriends party fic right up until the stroke of midnight, and I'm damn proud of it. Also, the damn Wincestiel big bang I just wrote, and my Losers piece from last year's ante_up_losers exchange.

The Winchesters' Big Gay New Year's Eve Party (6445 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Castiel & Sam Winchester, Charlie Bradbury & Dean Winchester, Charlie Bradbury & Sam Winchester, Josephine Barnes/Krissy Chambers
Characters: Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester, Castiel, Charlie Bradbury, Jody Mills, Linda Tran, Donna Hanscum, Kevin Tran, Garth Fitzgerald IV, Aaron Bass, Krissy Chambers, Josephine Barnes
Additional Tags: New Year's Eve, Party, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Summary: Pretty much exactly what it says on the tin.

The Three Body Problem (36834 words)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester/Sam Winchester
Characters: Castiel, Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester
Additional Tags: Castiel in the Bunker, Oblivious Dean, Big Bang Challenge, Romantic Comedy
Summary: Cas asks the Winchesters on a date. Yes, both of them.

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor (1667 words)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Carlos "Cougar" Alvarez/Jake Jensen
Additional Tags: Team, POV Outsider
Summary: Don't mess with Jensen's family.

In case you want to play along!

12/2/14 ETA: I promise, I will write this up! I am veeeeeeeeeery busy, but I will find the time in the next couple of days to get to this. PROMISE. In the meantime, if you want to get the gist of things I like (everything, really), you can check out my dear creator letters tag, there's three Losers letters in there and a host of other fandom/fest ones too.

12/8/14 ETA: Okay, here it is! I am writing my letter. Right now. I'm sorry I'm a horrible recipient.

BUT! You are a WONDERFUL fanwork giver, and I know this because you are making something for me! :D :D :D And I promise to cherish it forever and ever because OMG YOU ARE MAKING SOMETHING FOR ME.

So my number one rule of fannish exchanges is that I want them to be as guilt-free and awesome as possible. So if you have some Losers vid you are just dying to make, or you've been ruminating on meta about Cougar's hat, or you have a fic where the Losers are all snack foods.... HAVE AT IT. I would love any of those things and anything else that might come out of your brain.

That said, I do like to provide fodder for the inspiration mill, so if you want a little something more to go on, or just want to read to see if something sparks your interest, my rambling requests/likes/dislikes/whatever-the-hell-this-is is below.

Okay! Let's start with characters/pairings. I love all teams, ever. I love team with Roque, team with Aisha, team with both, whatever! My OTP is Cougar/Jensen, OT3 Aisha/Clay/Roque, OT4 Cougar/Jensen/Pooch/Jolene. I love Pooch/Jolene, too, of course, and enjoy Aisha/just about everyone, especially femslash. I love her especially in crossovers because I feel like she fits in everywhere. For characters, I love them all, but mostly my boys - Cougar, Jensen, and Pooch, and then Roque and Aisha, and, I'm sorry, JDM, but Clay just comes in last for me. If you love Clay - show me why? I'm always willing to be convinced!

Then there's genres and tropes and stuff? This is hard for me because seriously, I love everything. I love deathfic, fluff, cuddling and snuggling and hardcore non-con. Whatever you like, I like it too! Seriously, I read it all, and I am direly in need of two things lately: emotional release and sappy sweetness. I am good with either, both, whatever you want to give me, just go big.

I'm not an artist, so I don't have a lot to say about art except that I love all kinds of art from chibis to black and white sketches to watercolors to whatever. I love it all. I can't art to save my life so I will likely just stare at it for along time and be super super jealous. And then remember you made it for me and be all happy again!

I love crafts so much! I am not kidding when I ask for a macaroni castle - I really do want one, really, really. And then the harlequin romance that goes along with it. I've been promised tiny chainmail Losers from my wife if anyone does actually make a macaroni castle.

I also love the abstract and bizarre - the weirder it is, the more I love it! I've gotten drum solos before (brilliant), and the taort deck and board game are two of my very favorite Losers big bangs. I love love love off-the-wall fanworks, so knit me that tea cozy, go on!

I adore meta and vids and recs of all stripes, icons and podfic (oh, man, I freaking LOVE podfic), and whatever it is you create, I am sure to love it.

In fic, yeah. I'm just so easy. I love words, and I love The Losers, and you put the two together and I am seriously in heaven.

A few prompts, if you need (but remember rule #1 up there! GUILT FREE!):

+ An AU where the team is the Leverage team. You can mix them up any way you want, but seriously, HOW AWESOME WOULD THAT BE. Art of this would be AMAZING, as would fic, or a rambly voice post outlining how each character fits their role of grifter, hitter, hacker, thief, and mastermind.

+ Time lapse-sort of art where one of the team is going through a werecat change.

+ The team (or just Jensen, or Cougar and Jensen, or whoever!) in that moment, way before the soccer game, when Jensen sees his sister and niece again.

+ A lullaby for Pooch and Jolene's baby.

+ The epic tale of Cougar and Jensen, babysitters.

Hopefully that provides some inspiration - I love these guys, and I love fanworks, and I LOVE YOU. Thanks so much for making me something! :D :D :D


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melannen posted Ten Simple Ways To Get More Attention For Your Fanwork that is all really solid advice. If you're looking to get more kudos/comments/attention, her advice is good, and presented with a sense of humor. I'd add one more, actually - if you want more kudos/comments, write porn. My clicking around tells me that Explicit ratings get more hits than General Audiences - and the Gen stories that end up high in the kudos/comments sorting are exceptionally well written while the Explicit ones are middling to good (with the occasional one hitting it out of the park). If it's a long story, add a sex scene to get more readers (this is my cynical side talking - I don't actually do this myself, but I am willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that it would make a significant difference in your hits/kudos/comments).

Day 1. Discuss something old
Day 2. Discuss something new
Day 3. Discuss something made for someone else
Day 4. Discuss something made just for yourself
Day 5. Discuss something for a large fandom/pairing/character
Day 6. Discuss something for a small fandom/pairing/character
Day 7. Discuss something you're just really proud of

This should be totally easy! Most of the 133 SGA fics I've written are McShep (73 of them, actually, which is.... somewhere between half and two-thirds - not as many as I thought), and they are the juggernaut pairing. I've written Alexander/Hephaestion in the Alexander fandom (all 29 of my fics are that pairing), Cougar/Jensen in The Losers (22 of my 37 fics), and a little Destiel in Supernatural (only 4 of my 38 fics). So basically, I could talk about roughly half of the stories I've written.

The sad thing is, if I had finished it, Impromptu would be the thing that goes here. God, so much time and love has gone in that fic and every time I realize I'm not going to finish it, I just want to cry.

But of those juggernaut pairing fics, let's go with my most popular (continue with the theme, I suppose), which is different depending on whether I sort by hits (Truth, Justice, and the Lantean Way (McShep)), comments (The Astrophysicist Job (McShep)), or kudos/bookmarks.

I'll go with kudos/bookmarks because it seems like that's a truer reading of the popularity - the comments on The Astrophysicist Job are all basically "more!" (which is fair, really) and the hits on Truth, Justice, and the Lantean Way are because it was a big bang and it has chapters (and it's only 4th on that list - the other three aren't in huge fandoms and/or don't have huge pairings). They're solid, and both in my top 10, but the one that's actually the most popular is a Losers fic.

the antechamber of another world is a Cougar/Jensen fic set in a steampunk world. I'm ridiculously proud of it, I cannot tell you how much - I'd never done steampunk before I and I was scared shitless writing it, as I am not super-familiar with steampunk. I really enjoyed creating the world, though, and I just really enjoy the story. The fic itself should be longer, but I'm finding that one of the things I can do pretty well is find a way to taper off my novel-length stories at a satisfyingly happy stopping point, even if it's not the true ending of the story. This is one of those. A lot of my Losers fics are like that, sadly. A lot of my fics are like that, actually, because I have too many ideas and they're all too big for their britches. Life was easier when I only got one plot bunny at a time.

Fandom Snowflake Challenge

In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

2012 2013

So I have a tradition of using this for my sga_santa and Yuletide reveals, but I didn't do either of those this year. I would use my two pieces for spn_j2_xmas, but I'm not really feeling it (probably because I still don't have a comment from my recipient on one of them). So this year I'm just going to pick out some of my personal favorites.

I really like most of my podfic, but Strangers on a Six Train (SGA, John/Rodney, PG-13, ~1 hr) is still one of my very very favorites - I like the sound effect I used, and I'm really pleased with my reading, and it was my very first one ever (and of course it was for podfic big bang, ha!). It's just a really great story that I had a lot of fun reading.

I don't always like my writing when I'm trying something new (genre, style, POV, whatever), but the antechamber of another world (Losers, Cougar/Jensen, R, 11,876 words) is my first steampunk-esque fic, and while it's not perfect, I really like it a lot.

Variations on a Theme of John Sheppard and its sequels (SGA, John/Rodney, NC-17, 32,130 words) are probably my favorite SGA fics. I had such a great time writing them, I liked where they went in the end, and generally I find them the most satisfying of all the stories I've written in that fandom.

Someone who will remain nameless (until she gives permission for me to put her name up) and I are going to do the 10 in 10 challenge that astolat's... hosting? It was her idea, anyway, and I'm totally going to do it because the words haven't been coming and you know how it is after a while where you just need anything to get you moving again? And I have two massive fanworks I need to finish with deadlines, so I'm doing this. Anyone else wanna join me? I'm going to write some new stuff, finish a WIP, or maybe more, if I can find some nearly-finished stuff in my folders. And I’m going to try and write some of my Wincestiel BB and my other ginormous fic too, should this all go the way it’s supposed to.

( So anyway, here are my current ideas for things I think I can maybe do in a single day. To be updated when I can look in my WIP folder back at the hotel. )

So who’s with me?! Come on, you know you want to!