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What a great idea for a first challenge--it's all too easy to write your intro and then leave it on your profile just like that forever, no matter how many things have changed!

My profile is up to date. I mention there that I don't have a show right now that's totally sucked me in and has me writing tons of fic for it. That said, I saw some truly awesome shows in 2022 that I'd like to make record of here, and so people can get a feel for the kinds of things I enjoy, including Link Click, Legacies, Raven of the Inner Palace, Shadows House, 86, Sumo Do Sumo Don't, ID: Invaded, Vivy Fluorite Eye's Song, Cyberpunk 2077, Blue Period, Akudama Drive, Moriarty the Patriot (I even wrote a nice, unpopular fic for that one, Evildoers), SpyxFamily, Bluelock, Andor, and Russian Doll Season 1. And how could I forget the greatness that is Prison School?? ;-p Truly, we were blessed with so much fantastic stuff to watch this year!

My heart lies in original fiction, so that's where most of my energy has gone creatively in the past year, but I did write some fic and make a vid this year:

FIC:

Evildoers, the aforementioned Moriarty the Patriot fic, which is a crossover with Elementary. Man, Moriarty the Patriot is a great show! Sooo, so good. It does, however, ship William Moriarty with Sherlock, which I am Here For! But in my fic, William instead despises and desperately wants to kill Sherlock, so I can see why anyone expecting any Sherliam vibes present in the show might be disappointed. Still, I love the fic, and I'm so glad I wrote it.

Beads Everywhere, No Thread, which I talk about in detail in this post. Here's the summary: Dean thinks Sam's a pretty normal kid. But when Sam begins to lose his connection to reality at age ten, Dean will do anything to get him back. Anything.

As I nearly always manage to do, much to my delight, I was also able to pick up a pinch hit for the SPN Summergen exchange. I'm betting this was the final year for that exchange, arguably the most venerable in all of SPN fandom. I've proudly participated every year since 2013! And even helped run it one year. It's one of the things I've most looked forward to every summer, so I'll participate as long as it runs, but if this was the final year, it ended on a high. I loved the prompt: "What if the sitcom bit in 'Changing Channels' had gone for a full (sitcom) episode?" It's an idea I've toyed with myself here and there, and this was the perfect excuse to finally write it. I confess one of my talents--try not to get jealous, here--is to be able to effortlessly come up with Three's-Company-esque innuendo, so that was the direction I took it. The commenters got what I was going for, and much fun was had by all. :-D Supernatural, The Sitcom.

Finally, I picked up a pinch hit for SPN ReverseBang, too. I should have included Travelers on my list of shows I enjoyed this year, because I did! But as it was far from my first viewing, I figured it didn't belong on my 2022-specific list. WHAT A SHOW. God, I wish that show would come back, and that I could write for it!! I HAVE LITERALLY SEASONS' WORTH OF IDEAS. COME ON GUYS. SOMEONE, FUND THIS WONDERFUL SHOW, LET IT CARRY ON! Anyway, so the artist I worked with was kind enough to let me write a SPN/Travelers crossover, and man, it was fun to write some Travelers fic; I might have to do more of it. PHILIP!! My baby!! You can read it here if you like: Savior to Savior, where Sam and Dean are hunting the Travelers! And the Travelers are surveiling them back. And something approaching a friendship between the two parties occurs ... temporarily.

VID:

"Midnight", song by Coldplay, images from Your Name. I was having a rough time when I made and cross-posted it here. I'd badly sprained my wrist (hence why I turned to making a vid! Because that was something I could do one-handed) and really wanted a response to this thing that I'd created and didn't expect one, and then everyone over at

anime_manga was so kind! I met some lovely people who became the core of my reading page here! I've tried to get more involved here ever since, but couldn't really find my way in, so that is part of why I'm doing the Snowflake Challenge. Also, that it just sounds super fun! I did it once on lj way back when, but to do it here on dw where it originates is already pretty amazing--I can't believe how much participation I'm seeing! So I'm happy it's underway and to be participating. Hurray, Snowflake Challenge!

I dreamt I got a hair cut from Stephen Colbert in a broken-down old greenhouse in a post apocalyptic world.

One not-fun thing that's happened with my original work is that though at first I received only four- and five-star ratings, lately three of my books have fallen below four stars overall, two on Goodreads and one on Amazon, and I'm afraid people who might actually like those books will no longer give them a chance -- or give any of my books a chance.

The first of my books to fall below four stars was Restraint. It had five stars -- people really liked it -- then out of nowhere, someone gave it a one-star rating (just a rating without a review). This was when antis were at their height. The book is about a teen male prostitute. He's eighteen when the book begins, but the book does reference that he's been at it since he was fourteen. On Kindle, you can tell when someone's read your book. They might just buy it, or if you've made it part of Kindle Unlimited (which I always do), you get paid according to how many pages they read, and you can see how many have been read recently of any given book. There had been no action on that book in years, neither purchases nor page reads (yes, I'm very popular lol), and then out of nowhere comes this one-star rating, so I don't know what else to assume except that they read the description (and maybe one of the two reviews on Goodreads, which inaccurately says he's seventeen at the start of the book), decided any book on such a topic is Pure Evil, and gave it the one-star rating.

But the thing is, my book doesn't treat it as a cool, sexy thing that he's a prostitute; he has a troubled past and suffers from addiction. It's angst and pathos; he's meant to be a tragic character (though I can never resist writing as happy an ending as may be). The book is the story of his journey through it. There are inevitably a lot of sex scenes, but it's about as inexplicit as a book that goes along with a prostitute on dozens of his appointments can be, because I'm just not comfortable writing explicit stuff (thus, writing a book about a prostitute that's fifty percent sex scenes was a challenge, I can tell you, lol). ( spoiler ) So even Mr. or Ms. One Star, had they bothered to read the book, probably would have been satisfied with where things ended up.

The next to go below four stars was The Book of Jonah, and ... yeah, I knew that one was going to be controversial, to say the least. A teen throuple, one of whom proves to be a prophet, with a story that delves deeply into mental illness, religion, bullying, suicide ... okay. I get it. I expected that with that one, and even Restraint, since it's also about a very controversial topic.

But then there's X, which, goddamnit, is the one book I had that I believed was above reproach, if only because it's so beautifully written. I think people have decided it's supposed to be an M/M novel, because it involves a gay romance, but I didn't write it with that in mind; to me it was just romantic literary fiction that happened to revolve around a gay couple. I know M/M is a huge genre on Kindle right now, and the fact that it's a romantic story about a gay couple plus the (awesome, wonderful!!) first review someone did leave also gave that impression, but it doesn't contain what people are looking for in M/M; there's all but no sex, and what little is there is very inexplicit. It just wouldn't have been relevant to the story I was trying to tell to put more sex in there.

I can't help but think there's a little bit of "This book ain't that great" in response to the glowing review that one reviewer left (the only reviewer who ever really "got" one of my books, except for my friend who kindly wrote a review for most of my books on Goodreads), a backlash. Also, on Goodreads people do challenges to do things like "read a book that starts with every letter of the alphabet." Books that start with the letter X are hard to find, so I think that's how most people are finding it (that's how that one reviewer says she found it), and if you're just reading a book to check a box, yeah, there's no reason to think you'll like it, so that could be why so many of them are rating it three stars. But I guess I'll never really know, since they don't bother to leave a review! Maybe you don't like the story, but come on, it's a good book! Also though, again, I know some of the people leaving those ratings aren't actually reading it, and people who haven't actually read a book, I've found, do tend to give it three stars. (Whyyyy rate a book you haven't read???)

I feel a bit better just for having gotten all this off my chest, but it is still very very frustrating. I know sometimes I do write about controversial or challenging topics. For some reason, those are the books that more people seem interested in?? I really don't care if someone hates one of my books. Go ahead, leave a review, and say WHY you hated it. Because when I want to buy something, I always read the lowest reviews, because they give as much insight into whether you actually want to buy this thing as the five-star ones. One person's poison is another person's pleasure. But just rating it down, especially for an author who has so few ratings or reviews to begin with, does no one any good (except maybe the person who gave me the one-star review; I'm guessing that gave them a lot of satisfaction >:-#).

Like, how do you get original fiction to the people who want to see it?? I know how to do it with fanfic: put it on AO3! They search for what they want to see and they'll find your work. Even if you're writing genre fiction, there are groups where you can advertise, although people seem distrustful of anyone who's selling something, afraid their intentions are impure. But it's just really hard to make that connection for literary fiction. I would be most grateful for any ideas anyone has.

I haven't been around for a while. I lost the thread here; I couldn't figure out what to talk about or what to say.

I think I have indeed finally found it, and that is, in addition to all the other things I like to blog about (fandom, anime, YouTube, gardening), to talk about my original fiction. In my writers group, I've spent most of the time working on figuring out how to let the people who might like my work know it exists! I don't usually write genre fiction, so though I feel like I write the type of fiction that was far and away the most common in my youth, nowadays it's hard to figure out where are the people who still read that, especially my specific brand of it.

I finally realized that the best thing I can do is blog about my work! For the first time ever. I was raised to be quiet and humble, but damnit, I made all these beautiful works I'm so proud of, and I want to talk about them! In fandom spaces, since my original fiction is very like my fanfic, inasmuch as I've always loved fandom tropes, and all that stuff is the same kind of thing I write about in my original fiction.

Because that's another problem with finding its audience: I've gotten the impression that some of it is hard to find a way into, so I've thought maybe talking about my inspirations and intentions here might help. Also, I have a looooot to say about my original fiction that I've never written anywhere!

Also, I've really missed blogging and participating in a fandom space. I've thought often of that long list of excellent shows in my sticky post that I got to watch that year, as anime has been in a dreadful isekai-only drought ever since. (Is this Sword Art Online's fault?? Did every anime studio instantly book nothing but isekai shows when it was so popular, and only now have most of them finally been released so they can start making other kinds of shows?) Every time a batch of new anime came out, I thought surely the nothing-but-isekai phase would have to finally be over, but after years of that, this time I gave up ... and suddenly there's a bunch of good new shows! Can A Boy-Girl Friendship Survive? is pretty good. Witch Watch is fun. We've got a new season of Windbreaker, a My Hero prequel, a new season of Andor that I'm equal parts anticipating and dreading, Our Love Has Always Been 10 Centimeters Apart and Mob Psycho 100 are older shows I just discovered and am quite enjoying, and To Be Hero X, which so far is AMAZING!!! Finally, some good stuff to watch!! What a relief. Because we'd resorted to rewatching old favorites when we simply could not find anything new to enjoy, and I was getting scared tastes had changed so much that there would never be anything new that appealed to me ever again. It's still really hard to find anything live-action we enjoy. I'd love to hear any recommendations you might have.

I loved season one of Clarkson's Farm. I knew nothing about Jeremy Clarkson at the time (we looked him up and discovered he was famous for hosting Top Gear and being a driver--not things I had any particular knowledge of--and also for hosting Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the British version--also not something I would know anything about), and I greatly enjoyed the show. I've mentioned before that I'm obsessed with all things farming, from rooftop gardens to homesteads to largescale monoculture commercial agriculture, so this show was right up my alley, especially as it's beautifully filmed and produced and aimed at the layperson, with Clarkson learning about farming from scratch right along with the viewer.

I had thus naturally been extremely excited for season two, which just came out, and which I just finished watching last night. After I read some of his comments about Meghan Markle, I wondered if I'd still be able to enjoy the show. I mean, he doesn't exactly present himself as Mr. Likable anyway. He thinks on his feet and is naturally funny. He can also be charming with effort. But he's often rude, demanding, and difficult. He relishes giving people a hard time while trying to weasel out of any kind of responsibility himself.

He's not the easiest guy to watch or root for even if you don't know about his rabid nationalism, but there are many other characters on the show and a lot more going on than just him, including his young (23 as season 2 was being filmed, 21 during the filming of the first season--!!) but mind-bogglingly experienced farmer Kaleb, his sexy farm-business manager (... I guess would be his title) Charlie Ireland, his stone-wall-builder (which I guess is a thing in rural Britain?) Gerald who is hilariously incomprehensible in nearly everything he utters--basically he's the British Boomhauer--and Clarkson's girlfriend Lisa, who came across as a doormat devoid of personality in season one but this time around was lots of fun--wry and funny.

I was glad to discover I still found it quite enjoyable to watch. Trying to understand the person behind the nasty words about Markle actually added another layer of interest to the show. Clarkson also got himself booted off Top Gear for punching a producer, calling him 'lazy' and 'Irish' as he did ... although Clarkson's girlfriend is also Irish. I read an entire article about how it's "impossible to imagine" this guy who dodders about his farm and frets deeply over slaughtering his animals punching someone. ... I didn't find it impossible.
( Spoilers behind the cut. )
All in all, even if your only feeling about Clarkson is an eagerness to see him suffer, you might enjoy the show just for that, because he does a lot of it. In season one, wonderful, competent Kaleb seemed to feel helpless to Clarkson's whims and cruelties; this season, he doesn't take a thing Clarkson says seriously, and frequently yells at him for his various fuckups (Clarkson dreads seeing him coming when he's done something stupid, knowing he's about to get another dressing down). Charlie Ireland also seems happier and more comfortable this season ... and even braver, more noble, and if possible, more decent and dutiful than in season one. I LOVE that guy! Gerald is as much a delight as ever. Clarkson isn't always a jerk; he gamely tries hard to understand Gerald, and politely responds in noncommittal way when Gerald is done talking so as not to let on that he didn't understand a word. (It's also quite cute that Kaleb seems to have no trouble understanding Gerald at all ... although they have the same last name and come from the same small town, so they might be related.)

If you were a fan of James Herriott's books (as I very much was, from childhood), there are similar feels to be found here, particularly when Clarkson's cows are giving birth, which brings a tear to everyone's eye, even the vet's. Since Herriott worked in England, and some aspects of raising farm animals haven't changed since he was a vet there, in some ways it's like seeing Herriott's books playing out on the screen. The politics of farming in England are frequently addressed, and are fascinating (and horrifying--all of his farmer neighbors are struggling to stay afloat after Brexit was set to soon greatly reduce farming subsidies there--which subsidies were the only reason Clarkson was able to make any money at all from his farm in season one, despite having a thousand acres and producing a variety of things there).

The ending is a little rushed and forced and awkward, some plotlines are brushed off or abandoned, but damn if I don't wish this show had a hundred seasons, so I could binge them all. I've seen some great shows and YouTube channels about farming, but Clarkson's Farm is the best one I've found, so if farming, rural life in England, or anything I mentioned in my review are of interest to you, too, I highly recommend it.

I've finally finished watching Elementary. Although there are times when our cup runneth over in terms of great things to watch, right now is the opposite--in fact, we only went back to Elementary because we didn't have anything else to watch! The show seemed to be in a holding pattern for seasons 4 and 5, basically just a police procedural, seemingly waiting until the show was coming to an end to really get back into character development and telling great stories again, but wow, it went out with a bang! Seasons 1, 6 and 7 were fantastic.

I'm so glad they finally addressed all of Sherlock and Joan's criminal ways. Part of what made it hard to watch is that they were difficult characters to root for. A lot of the depressingly realistic we-look-out-for-our-own-and-screw-everyone-else cop culture was hard to watch, too. But it was undeniably a quality show, in terms of acting and production values, even if the writing became increasingly "Notice me, Reddit-senpai!" The final few seasons of Elementary were exactly when I was on Reddit. It was funny to see all the same stories that were big there play out in the show, which touted all the same viewpoints that were most popular on Reddit; it gave me a behind-the-scenes perspective, which added another level of entertainment.

It may be weird to write not just one but two fics for a show I ... didn't actually like that much except for the first and last two seasons! But you spend that much time with those characters, and you see Sherlock suffering so much and not growing at all for so long, you just kinda want to help, you know??

Which made me think about series that develop a huge fanbase, and how they all seem to be based around something that goes on for a long time so that you do have that chance to really get to know those characters and get invested in them: Twilight, Harry Potter, LOTR, Supernatural, Vampire Diaries. It seems like there's nothing like that right now that's original that's really gripped anyone's attention, which may be why fandom is in a lull these days. I watched some truly incredible shows last year ... but most of them were twelve episodes long.

Nelsan Ellis was an actor I greatly love and admire, and I was disappointed in how they wasted the opportunity to have him on the show (his last credit, I believe) by having him play the most cookie-cutter gangster-with-a-heart-of-gold imaginable. I felt like the show was pretty racist, anyway--for at least the first five seasons, you would be hard-pressed to find a Black character who wasn't either a criminal themselves, or related to one. I'm not a fan of police procedurals (although I enjoy Sherlock stuff, and the Sherlock aspect won out in this case), so I didn't love that aspect of the show, either. The writers room was clearly a boys club. But the direction and production were always top-notch, and if you have actors of that caliber elevating the material, even a so-so script can be turned into something quite watchable. They seemed to have the end of the show all plotted out practically from the beginning--a rare and wonderful thing, especially on network t.v.--so for it to come together so beautifully at the end--even bringing back the most intriguing characters and plots from earlier seasons--was most satisfying viewing.

So, to sum up ... it was nice to be able to really spend some time with characters in a long, quality show for a while. My viewing options right now are limited enough that I'm really missing not having that go-to. I loved getting to know some actors I didn't know before who I'll be excited to see in other things from now on (John Noble, Jon Michael Hill), and catching up with other actors I've always liked (Jonny Lee Miller, Aidan Quinn--and, uh ... is every actor on this show named Jon/John/Jonny?!?). And I love and am proud of my fics that came out of it. My drive to write seems to be dwindling, so they may be among the last fics I ever write, which kinda sucks, since I wasn't crazy about the show, but I am crazy about the fics, so at least I have that, lol!

Needless to say, if anyone has any recommendations for nice long, quality shows I could get into, I'd be most grateful.

I had a dream last night that I joined One Direction. Not only can I not be called a fan; I've never heard a One Direction song. I do have tremendous respect for Harry Styles as a human being, though. We were all sitting there waiting to be interviewed by the press and I was relieved when no one asked me anything, lol. I love dreams.

Hm, well, even statistically speaking, it looks like dreamwidth really IS the best place for fandom.

I happened across this page on feedly.com, which appears to automatically aggregate information--in this case, the "Best Fandom Blogs and Websites." In addition to results from AO3 and a few from lj, as well as a couple of independent blogs, 8 of the top 20 results were from dreamwidth! Woot!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really love dreamwidth as a platform. It offers just about everything I could want from a fandom blog site. Between that and knowing the folks in charge are firmly dedicated to providing a place to host fannish content, dw is feeling like a really nice place to have made my fandom home.

Title: An Impossible Life
Fandom: Elementary
Word Count: 8,600
Rating: R
Characters: Sherlock, Moriarty, Watson, Morland, Gregson
Pairing: Sherlock/Moriarty
Warnings: BDSM, dom/sub, drugging and kidnapping, chained up, imprisonment, choking, erotic asphyxiation, autassassinophilia, bruising, scratching, praise, hurt/comfort, aftercare, suicidal ideation, healing, bottom Sherlock

Summary: Realizing Jamie Moriarty has escaped from her prison, Sherlock hunts her down and imprisons her himself. Chained up in a remote location, she's still somehow in complete control of the situation ... and of Sherlock. It is not possible for him to have a healthy, functional relationship with a murderous sociopath and he knows it well, but the fact remains, he has only ever been in love with her, and he always will be.

“Watson is the only person I can live with,” he said, looking out the window, missing Watson, their life together in the brownstone, the only real life he’d ever managed to cobble together. Well, it was Watson who cobbled it together. He just got to live in it there, with her. “But you’re the only person I can’t live without.”

Snowflake Challenge #10: In your own space, create a fanwork.

Well, the timing worked out perfectly for this particular challenge, as I just finished this Sherlock fic I've been working on the past few days.

The warnings are a doozy, eh?? Especially since I don't write anything remotely porny almost ever! (Although this one is more ... philosophical porn? Literary porn? Something like that.) I have a few fics that include sex, never particularly explicit, but gen is my thing. Sometimes, however, the story I want to tell has to include it, and in the case of this fic, some dark, dirty sex is the basis of what I felt, after watching Elementary for so-far 5+ seasons, might be the only thing that could cure poor Sherlock, or at least make him feel better in any measure. Plus, the whole Moriarty plot was sooo good. Would that the show had been seasons and seasons of just that! I looked it up and saw the actress doesn’t return to the show by the end, meaning I guess there won’t be any more Sherlock/Moriarty, sigh ... so I made some myself. Sherlock is always having BDSM sex with strangers in canon; I figured why not make it something that might actually touch him at his core and heal him a little?

Like many, Cowboy Bebop was my gateway anime. I watched (and loved) Voltron as a kid, but otherwise, I'd never had any interest in anime. Then one night, I turned to Adult Swim early in the hilarious forgotten-refrigerator episode, "Toys in the Attic." Intrigued, I watched to the end. All I could think when it was over was, "That was actually ... incredibly good." Wondering if the rest of the show could possibly live up to the quality of that episode, I hungered to watch it every night ... and an anime fan was born.

I was delighted to learn there would be a live-action version of it last year. I've long been a huge fan of John Cho, and the excitement and dedication of everyone involved got me excited to see what they'd do with it, because though technology has caught up to the point that I knew they could manage the effects and that they'd look really good, there are a lot of things about Cowboy Bebop I figured would be difficult to bring to the screen: the world-building would have to be done quite carefully and would require incredible amounts of work to get the sets right, even if the scripts were perfect (both of which, in the end, were pretty perfect). Many of the characters, if they were played exactly as they appear in the anime, would risk coming off caricaturish, particularly Faye and Ed. Ed is 13 in the anime, and a grade-A weirdo; kids are hard to cast. And what do you do with a genius dog?

I was ASTONISHED by all they accomplished with the live-action version (and so bummed to learn a second season would not be greenlit, though I guess it wasn't popular enough to justify what must have been extravagant production costs). The sets--magnifique!! The scripts--incredible. I loved the way they stayed totally true to the feel of the anime while telling several new stories, or showing different aspects of them. The bitter rivalry between Spike and Vicious has always been mysterious; it was awesome to get to see them together, how they were best buds, and how that fell apart. It was excellent to see Faye get to be more than a femme fatale and Julia get to be more than a beautiful woman at the heart of a love triangle. I was crazy about Cho's Spike. Spike has layers he works hard to hide; he'd have been an easy character to misunderstand and a difficult character to play with all his depths, but Cho did it perfectly. Mustafa Shakir played Jet so much as he appears in the anime, it made the transition to live action effortless with that particular character. (He even got the voice perfect!) I LOVED what they did with Faye. She was a completely different character than the (rather sexist, if cool) one who appears in the anime, but it worked. And Ein was just a (very smart) dog; I thought they did that exactly right.

The only thing that struck me as completely wrong about the casting was Vicious. He's obviously a good actor and he really put his all into it, but I thought he was terribly miscast (and ugh, the hair!). There were crazy cool things that could have been done with the character, since so little was defined about him in the anime. But Vicious's character is, at his heart, cold, ruthless, cool, terrifying. Keeping these qualities at the core of the character the script or the actor developed still would have allowed a tremendous amount of leeway in developing a personality for him, quirks, uniquenesses. Instead, we got this tantrum-throwing manchild obsessed with daddy's approval who is, yes, ruthless, but hardly the virtually unbeatable horrifically competent opponent of the anime. From the first, he's far less terrifying than annoying. I liked him a little better when he and Spike were chumming around together in their syndicate days--they did have good chemistry, and played those parts well--but ... WHYYY??

And then ... Ed. I expect every fan of the anime was eagerly awaiting her arrival from the beginning--I know I was. I thought it was a great idea to introduce her in the final scene, to show us what might be in store for season 2 (which I still believed then might be a possibility) and I was so excited to see how she would be portrayed, and then ... oh, no. Ohhh, no. Where even potentially caricaturish characters were hammered into something believably human by the writers and actors in the process of making the first season, Ed came off in that one scene as, if nothing else, fixating only on the caricaturish aspects. It was an imitation of the anime character that in no way resembled an actual human being. I was afraid that would happen with Ed, because Ed is like no one else, but it was even worse in the execution than I feared.

Though Ed is presented in the anime as a sort of magical, impossible genius unfettered by the bonds of human existence, at her core, she is basically a kid who (like everyone else on the Bebop) would rather not think about reality or her feelings, is annoying and self-indulgent and doesn't listen well, and is addicted to the internet. In the process, she's become incredibly good at it, as any other intelligent kid trying to lose themselves in their hobby rather than face reality might do. If only the live-action version's creators kept in mind these core qualities rather than zeroing in on her vocal tiks and her perpetual appearance of good cheer and her hair color, they could have done super interesting things with that character, too. For that matter, they could still change direction with the character, if there could be a season 2. Gahhh, season 2!! More Bebop, in any form, would be such a wonderful thing. Aside from Ed and Vicious, I felt like season one of the live-action of Cowboy Bebop was essentially perfect.

In your own space, tell us about 3 creative/fannish resources, spaces, or communities you use or enjoy. (One or two is fine, especially if you're in a smaller fandom or like many people at the moment, fannishly adrift right now) Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Fandom is a fantastic place, and something that brought many of us together. Fandom is also a huge place made up of amazing and creative people doing incredible things. Anything goes, writing, podficcing, artwork, beta reading, commenting, general squee and so much more. It all combines to help make fandom the brilliant thing that it is.

The problem is, sometimes it's hard to find the places which enable you to indulge your passions. Hopefully, this challenge will help that. So, for example, tell us about a stock image place you enjoy, or a favourite archive. Is there a rec list you keep going back to, an online space where you enjoy a chat or a podcast series that always makes your day?

And of course, these places can be beyond fandom, that recipe site that's your go-to. The step-by-step instructions you saved to make your own cheese. Do you garden and have a favourite blog that's taught you how to grow amazing tomatoes?

Wikis, websites, videos, software, games, books, people, communities... anything! Share those places that you love, and hopefully others will love them too.

I'm glad they gave the gardening example, because in fact I am ~~obsessed with~~ quite interested in gardening, and Dreamwidth and AO3 are really my only fandom places these days, except myanimelist! This got me thinking on three of the YouTube channels I utilize as resources or simply enjoy. The first and the last are gardening focused, and the middle is about Japan.

Mossy Bottom: If you're thinking this one is at all risque and talking about bottoms, rest easy--that couldn't be farther from what this gentle, thoughtful channel is like. Daniel is a homesteader in Ireland who keeps pigs, ducks, rabbits, some beautiful cats, and a most lovable dog named Moss. He loves all his creatures, and they plainly adore him. He mostly explores what it means to be a homesteader, how he makes a living off the land and related projects (such as his YouTube channel!), and gardening, but he also has videos on local legends, books that influenced him, and his personal philosophy. Seeing a new upload from his channel is always a treat!

Abroad in Japan: Chris Broad is a Brit who's lived in Japan for over ten years, and he vlogs entertainingly and informatively on Japan, which I know is a subject of great interest to many of us who watch anime. Apparently he's the top English-speaking vlogger who makes videos on Japan now, so you may well have heard of him. I've been watching his channel since well before he was famous, and frankly, I quite prefer his older videos. He has great interest in, and talent for, filmmaking, and has made a number of short films of stunning quality. He complains about what it takes to be a successful YouTuber (especially click-baity titles he despises, but utilizes), and about how his higher quality videos get fewer views, and like ... man, I write fic I know will be unpopular, and who cares? I figure, if one is doing all right financially as a YouTuber, then why not intersperse the money-making videos with those that are personally and creatively satisfying for the creator? That does not seem to be his approach, so I haven't enjoyed his videos as much in the past year or so. I still watch them and they're still sometimes enjoyable, but his old videos are fantastic, so if you're interested in checking him out, I recommend you start there. He's hilarious, with a dry, sarcastic, irreverent sense of humor, and has interesting thoughts on Japanese culture.

Li ZiQi: There's a very good chance you've heard of Li ZiQi, since she holds a Guinness World Record for "The most subscribers for a Chinese language channel on YouTube." She hasn't uploaded in a long time now, but the videos that are available are nevertheless sublimely beautiful, informative on life in rural China, and very inspiring for people interested in homesteading, gardening, and cooking. Now, particularly in the very beginning, her videos weren't especially realistic. (Dyeing a dress with purple grape skins--while wearing pristine pale drapey clothes, no less!--comes to mind ....) She defends this by saying her goal was less realism and more to inspire, and boy does it do that, but also, it's gotten more accurate and realistic as it's gone on, and she covers how to make just about anything from scratch. If you ever had a fantasy of a bucolic life in a beautiful place, living off a lush piece of land all your own and handmaking everything yourself (not that I've ever had such a fantasy! no sirree), boy is this the channel for you.

If you got the opportunity to add one thing to the canon of any of your fandoms, what would that be? Maybe there’s a character who didn’t get much of a backstory/storyline and you’d like to do something with them, maybe a show was axed too soon and you had thoughts on what could happen in a subsequent season, maybe there’s a new episode you’d like to have added.

This is exactly what fanfic is for! Or actually, for me, original fiction. I loved Edward's insufferable arrogance and Alice's terrifying monstrosity (or at least, that was how I took that character), so I zeroed in on those qualities and wrote a series that included two vampire characters fitting those descriptions, casting off basically everything else about Twilight (except what I also read as BDSM death porn). In the wonderful anime Nana, I was most interested in one minor character named Shin, who's a prostitute, so I ended up writing an entire novel about a teen male prostitute that was partially inspired by that character, as I was most dissatisfied with the lack of information given at the end of the show about him and what was to become of him.

That said, most of the time, I just wish for more seasons of a show (as long as the creators are inspired; I've seen far too many shows that went on after the writers were completely out of ideas, argh). A friend and I were joking about the anime Free! She said she didn't think it needed to go on for three seasons. I countered that I thought it should have 100 seasons, so that every person in the audience at that apparently life-altering-for-every-witness relay race they had in elementary school would have their own season. That's my general feeling for every show I love. If it's still good, by god, I just wish it would keep going until the creators feel done. More art in the world! More beauty!! That's what it's all about, as far as I'm concerned.

This has been my favorite challenge so far. I've been greatly enjoying going through everyone's posts and reading their rants. You learn more about someone when you see them be real and talk about something they care about that isn't all sunshine and roses.

Happily, in the rants of others, many of my own rants were already addressed, some quite eloquently. Many, many people are talking about the fandom police and bullying in the guise of 'moral purity.' There is much I could say about how stupid and annoying all that is, and how it ruins the very thing that makes fandom so wonderful, but I'll pick something else--but closely related--to vent about.

"Freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences." We've seen that phrase going around the internet for years now, usually gleefully uttered by someone shamelessly visiting "consequences" in the form of bullying upon someone for saying something the bully "disapproves" of.

Now, my degree is in journalism, and I'm a writer who tends to write potentially controversial things (in my original work, anyway), so freedom of speech is very, very dear to my heart. I grew up in a time and a place where freedom of speech was taken quite seriously. (I'm Gen X.) "Piss Christ" was on the wall of the fine art hallway in my high school. Art was understood to be something one could expect to be challenging and offensive. I never heard of anyone complaining to the school library or a teacher about an offensive book being available or being taught in class. I mean, it probably happened at some point, but the complainer would have been regarded as a crackpot and no one was going to make any changes based on the complaint, because school was for teaching things and libraries were repositories for books, and one's personal feelings about these books were not taken into account. We weren't expected to enjoy the books we were taught, or even necessarily to understand them, but by god, we were going to be exposed to the art that had been deemed classic so that we could get a full education, and all of those classics were challenging or potentially offensive in some way. I understood that that was, and is, largely what makes great art great: it challenges us--US. Not "other," "dumber," or "less enlightened" people, but everyone, including myself.

This was how I assumed freedom of speech would always be regarded ... unless conservatives had their way, but even they usually had the decency to respect our hallowed First Amendment back in the day. I was always very proud to be a liberal, not least because liberals were the ones who most often trotted out the wonderful Beatrice Evelyn Hall quote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." When I saw people say it then, they meant it. A profound respect for another person's right to say whatever they believed lay at the core of all the values that led to a free society. If what that person said offended you, you listened, then proceeded to respond with a counterargument or, if you concluded the other person was too stupid, crazy, or evil to be worth debating, you shook your head and moved on ....

... Which has somehow become regarded as impossible in modern society?? People seem convinced they not only have to fight to defend their own opinion--and go low--but to force the other person to their knees--force them to admit not only that they were wrong, but to change their very thinking--or at least force them to claim they have. We've all seen celebrities claiming to have seen the light after having their livelihoods or their popularity threatened after saying something unpopular. The response is usually to scoff over how transparently insincere the celebrity's apology is, when ... really? You actually expected them to change how they think? The assumption seems to be that if someone is educated on how "wrong" their thinking is, then they better change it to "right" thinking (quite an authoritarian perspective), and occasionally, there is a lack of education that brings about a change, but in reality, people believe what they believe for reasons that make sense to them and no amount of harsh "reprogramming" will change it.

As we all know well. We all have unpopular opinions we know we'd get skewered for were we to say them publicly, since public opinion is constantly shifting and seldom aligns perfectly with our own views. Every person has a unique personality, combined with a unique upbringing and set of experiences. For better or for worse, people decide things about the world, and it would take a lot to make them see it differently. It's incredibly satisfying to educate someone or debate someone so successfully that one can actually change their minds, but a) it is rare, for a wide variety of reasons--pride being way up there, and b) diversity is supposed to be a liberal value ... right? All kinds of diversity ... including diversity of thought.

"Infinite diversity in infinite combinations," amiright? This is how the world was made, and to try to force it to be otherwise causes incalculable harm and suffering. When did folks forget that there will always be people whose beliefs piss one off and that's just the way it is? It can be annoying, but it's better than tearing other people to pieces.

It was undeniably a great disappointment for me to see liberals (well, I'd call them "so-called liberals") being at least as bad about punishing and bullying people for their free speech as the most rabid conservatives--what with "cancel culture" et al. I could rant infinitely about all the evil and cruelty I've seen committed by the people I've always thought of as "my people." So much cruelty! In the name of "moral superiority." Horrific. This shit's gotta stop.

Ahh, a perfect opportunity to gush about my current favorite show, Travelers. I don't rewatch things much, but I'm on my fifth watch-through now. It may seem crazy to watch a show about the end of the world for comfort, but it is comfort-viewing for me.

Where do I begin to talk about what makes it so great?? Well, let's just get this out of the way: great acting, great directing, great writing, great production. An intriguing original soundtrack. Some good eye candy: Philip for emos like me, Trevor for people who are more into jocks, and, you know, it's t.v.; pretty much everyone is attractive.

For Stargate fans, Travelers is the other show Brad Wright created, and apparently there's a lot of crossover of people from Stargate, including Amanda Tapping, who acts and directs, and one of the main characters, David, played by Patrick Gilmore, who IMDb tells me played Dr. Dale Volker (WHAT an actor!), along with the AMAZING Jennifer Spence (who played Dr. Lisa Park), who also has two major roles in Travelers (many of the actors get to play multiple characters). She's equally fantastic in both roles on Travelers. Seriously, all the acting is great, and the writing loves fandom tropes as much as fandom does.

One of the many things I love about Travelers is that clearly there's a lot of lore that's well hammered out by the creators that's never directly mentioned in the script. It was super fun writing fic for it, because even after this many viewings, I learned a lot about the characters from writing the fic (a crossover with Supernatural; you can read it here). They are well-rounded people who sometimes do the unexpected, but clearly they have reasons for behaving as they do. I love that it's a show that assumes its audience is intelligent enough to read between the lines and fill in the gaps for themselves.

I got lucky when I found the show in that I was completely unspoiled. The pilot is cleverly constructed, throwing you into the action without explanation, with a surprise ending that's easily spoiled if you've watched any of the promos. My friend and I were simply looking for a new show on Netflix, it was promoted there, we tried it, and were instantly hooked. But we did know the general premise, which shouldn't spoil anything in particular: Four centuries in the future, humanity has been almost completely wiped out. However, they've developed technology allowing them to supplant the consciousness of someone living in this century with their own, so they're utilizing that technology to try to avert the disasters that essentially brought an end to humanity.

There are just a few glimpses of what things looked like in their century; everything else takes place in the present, which provides many opportunities for social commentary ... and some of what they presciently warned about has already come to pass, including shortages and a pandemic. For all that, it's not annoyingly preachy; it's far more focused on the characters and telling a story than giving dire warnings about the future ... but they're there.

I will say that after so many viewings, the third season is the only one I find a bit wanting. Tapping directs a bunch of episodes, and ... sorry guys, I'm just not a fan of either her acting or her directing. Her directing gets the job done and nothing more, whereas other directors made creative choices that added to the atmosphere and pervasive dread and strangeness of the show. Also, she picked the most hideous locations--disappointing, in a show that is frequently so beautiful, as it celebrates the beauty we have all around us in this century, absent from the century the Travelers come from. That said, the writing and acting in season three are just as good as always, with a perfect ending. It's a dark show, run through with tragedy, and the ending hits the perfect notes to be both satisfying and true to itself.

That's all structure, though; what I adore most about the show is its heart. Also, some of the actors put on subtle performances that communicate far more than is in the script. Philip, in particular, played by Reilly Dolman, exudes a sense of determination warring with soft despair and resignation that imo embodies the spirit of the show and holds the whole thing together--but all the main actors contribute something specific, indelible, and irreplaceable in providing believable world-building.

Be forewarned: season one is pretty dark and angsty ... but buckle in, because that's the fun season! It's all downhill from there.

I was quite pleased, but unsurprised, to find it included on Reddit in a list of excellent shows most people have never heard of--and other commenters were also unsurprised; it's just that good. Light scifi, heavy angst. If that's your kind of thing, I highly recommend you check it out.

Travelers can be found on Netflix, probably forever, since they produced it!

I discovered his music through the awesome anime ID:INVADED, and these two songs have been playing on repeat in my head ever since I saw it:

Watch on YouTube

"Other Side" is the end theme for the anime. "Butterfly" is an insert song in the awesome final two-part episode that pulls the whole story together. ID:INVADED got darker and more violent than is my usual taste (it's about a special team who hunt down serial killers using newly developed technology, after all, and it doesn't shrink from going into either the killers' activities nor their psychology), but the final episode made it so worth it. The characters are fantastic, too, the mystery is compelling, and the script is tight. Great voice acting, too.

I found it on Crunchyroll. If anyone else has seen it and liked it, too, I'd love to chat about it.

I joined lj shortly after its inception, and was there in some form for over a decade. In that time, eagerly trying to get better at social media, I watched closely and noticed some patterns, things that worked and things that didn't, and made note of them.

Eventually, I made my own comm, applying what I'd learned, and it seemed to work well--that comm enjoyed a lot of engagement and fun in its heyday. In conversation with

vriddy on another thread, I realized I never wrote down any of these thoughts or observations anywhere. Since I went to all the trouble of thinking these thoughts, and they worked pretty well in practice, I went ahead and wrote them down here. I'm sure I forgot a few things, but I tried to remember all the ideas I applied to my own comm. In any case, I hope these observations might be helpful for someone here in creating or making changes to their own dreamwidth community. Please feel free to add any other observations or ideas for how to successfully run a dreamwidth community in the comments.

( Read more... )

That's all I can think of (as if this post isn't long enough!). This was fun--I went back to my old comm for reference for this post and had a good time remembering all the fun we had there. Fandom community is such an important, beautiful thing. I'm really hoping to find that here, too--I like what I've experienced of it so far.

May anyone who sees this have great success with your comms.

Fandom: Your Name (Kimi no Na wa)
Title: Midnight
Vidder:

brightly_lit
Song: Midnight, by Coldplay
Characters/Pairing: Miyamizu Mitsuha/Tachibana Taki
Rating: PG
Duration: 4:54
Summary: AMV for Your Name, to Midnight by Coldplay.

I just love making AMVs. Here's another one--this one for the gorgeous anime movie Your Name. I'm having to type this one-handed because I sprained my wrist, ugh. And I have such a Moriarty the Patriot/Elementary fic I want to write, too!

Watch on YouTube

I've always loved and been happily haunted by this song. Ghost Stories is one of my favorite Coldplay albums of all, if not my very favorite, and Midnight is probably my favorite song on it. It's so delightfully creepy and haunting, I wanted to make a creepy, haunting vid to go along with it. Not that Your Name is a creepy movie, but pretty much anything can be edited to feel creepy, imo. I hope I succeeded with that.

If there's anything I could change about making AMVs, it would be to figure out how to improve the video quality. Fortunately the video quality on Your Name is so inherently high, even my vids come out looking pretty good! One of the joys of making vids for this particular anime. But regardless, if anyone has any tips on improving video quality, I'd love to hear them!

Anyway ... I know people get sad when they think they might be about to lose lj (I do, too, even though I haven't been there in years, but I like to check in now and then using a friend's account), but I also get happy to see some more people come to dreamwidth, so welcome to those people who've started hanging around here more! I'm happy you're here.

Wow, I haven't seen this much activity on dw in ... ever?? And it's so nice! I personally haven't found a better blogging platform (never did take to Tumblr myself, only used it to look at/reblog pretty pictures, and haven't been there in months) than dw (I checked out pillowfort, which looks promising, but by all reports it's not ready for prime time). I can't deny that I would LOVE it if this is where people came to roost after all the Tumblr dust settles. Man, I'd love that. I miss getting to participate more in fandom.

I know some people find dw hard to use, but I started on lj way back in its old days, when it was pretty much just like this (but worse, with fewer features--yet fresh and new with no ads and a brand new platform and idea, borrowed from ever since for every other blogging platform), so it seems comfortingly familiar to me. Don't worry--keep at it and it'll get easier presently. I'm more than willing to help if you need it.

Anyway, love y'all. Hope to see some old friends becoming a more frequent/permanent presence here, and make some new ones as well!

Now for my second RBB art post!

I had a little more time to do my second painting. Trying to think from the perspective of an author, I realized authors like to have a story suggested in the image, which I ... kinda didn't do with my first one. The idea of Sam lighting a lighthouse flame grabbed me and wouldn't let me go.

The most difficult part of this whole process was trying to find reference pictures. Fortunately, I was able to find a view-from-inside-a-lighthouse picture that worked. There was also one (just one! At least, that I was able to find) picture of an old-timey fire-based lighthouse reflector (they are very cool! Kind of like an inside-out disco ball).

When I was trying to come up with a good reference photo for Sam, I knew it had to come from "Born-Again Identity"--not only one of my favorite eps ever, but also perfect for the vision I had for Sam for the painting: thin, tragic, helpless, lonely. Going through page after page of stills on Home of the Nutty, I finally found this one, that was ideal for my purposes--he was even raising his arm toward the camera, so I could use that for him lighting the flame!

I'd like to be able to claim that the color palette was my plan from the beginning. I've never actually worked in a limited palette before, but I learned a lot about paint in this process, including that apparently large tubes of acrylic paint burst over time! BOTH my large black and white tubes had busted their plastic caps off, and the black had dried under the opening! I did manage to get to some usable paint eventually, with the help of a screw, but not in time to make this painting, so I used the darkest colors I had that weren't dried--blue and purple--and tried to make them as dark as possible, mixed together.

I ended up loving the effect! I've seen fans using limited palettes as a personal challenge, and I've seen various anime that, for instance, never use black, using some other color for shadows and eyelashes and such, and I always thought it looked cool, but I've always tended toward realism in my pictures, which I'm realizing has really limited me, and so painting this like this freed me in some way. I'd like to play a lot more with limited palettes.

The boat was the hardest part! I painted it last. I looked at countless pictures of boats, trying to find one at the angle I needed it to be (from somewhat above, and heading toward the camera). I learned more about what different kinds of boats are called than I ever really wanted to, and I had to paint the damn thing several times, but I finally got it tolerably clear what I was trying to paint, I hope.

Both my claims were a bit emotionally fraught--in this case, though there was no claim in the comments of the claim post, the info with my picture was struck through, indicating it had been claimed. I wrote to the mods to discover someone had claimed it by e-mail!

My author immediately had the idea of crossing over SPN with an Ursula Le Guin story called "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas." She asked if it would be cool if that was the direction she took, I went and read and story, and said by all means, go for it. Le Guin has been a major influence on me as a writer from the time I read the Earthsea Trilogy in high school--I cannot more highly recommend it if you haven't read it. It's like a series of novels written as poetry, particularly the first one.

"Omelas" is free to read online, and though it's certainly an intriguing concept, the best part of it to me is that it's yet another class from that gift to the world that was Le Guin in how to write, a demonstration of her unparalleled skill. She breaks every rule of "good writing" in that story, yet somehow every time she does, it works perfectly. Some parts of the fic are direct quotes from the short story.

My author sent me the first few sections of the story, and as I tried to come up with an idea for another piece, soon another idea gripped me that I couldn't shake: tall Sam, a taller lighthouse stretching up before him both forbidding and maybe, just maybe, emancipatory, surrounded by grassy sand that's at once beautiful and serene and also like the endless desert he seems to be trying to cross in the story before he finds it, bleaching sunlight to contrast with the creepy but to-him-probably comforting darkness of the first piece.

Again, the hardest part (especially for this one, since I didn't have to paint any faces) was finding reference pictures. It's ridiculously hard to find a picture of Sam from the back! Or any guy from the back! Except a few bodybuilders flexing, and I was looking for a skinny young Sam. So I finally made do with a picture of him from the front so I could try to get his proportions and the slope of his shoulders right, and my knowledge of anatomy. (His waist sits lower on his body than one might think!)

I love the way the second picture uses the same palette as the first, but hopefully gives off exactly the opposite vibe (except maybe also creepy): bright day as opposed to dark night, pastels as opposed to deep dark blues and purples, light in excess rather than this one flame Sam nurtures into being, everything else light while Sam is dark.

For me, the art was all about the lighthouse. I loved envisioning Sam in there, lonely but safe. My original prompt was "Dressed in rags and all alone, Sam lights a lighthouse flame. He may have always been here, doing this. Behind him on the sea, a small boat approaches." My author took it quite a different direction, but in my mind, the story my art tells is of Sam tending a lighthouse alone for a very long time, and finally someone coming to find him and bring him comfort and solace. Maybe they all even go on living there together! Lighthouses are so cool.

So that's that! Thanks to my author for turning me on to a new Le Guin piece I'd never heard of before! You were nice to work with, and a very talented writer. You can check out her fic here.

It was really cool to finally participate in fandom as an artist! I always admired the artists from afar. They seemed almost untouchable. Now I see we're all the same, writers, artists, everyone.

I hope you liked the art!

I've found it really hard to write fic for a long time now (or to write anything). I also paint, though not nearly as much as I write, or wrote. Well, rather I should say, I painted a lot and had lessons and everything when I was young, and I continued to paint through my twenties, and for some reason, all the art supplies I was ever given and most of the teaching I received was all about watercolor.

Don't get me wrong--I love watercolor, but there came a time in my twenties when I became dissatisfied with what I could do with it, especially in terms of intensity of color. I tried oils, and didn't like 'em, so I more or less gave up painting entirely ... until four years ago, when one of the people I was seeing about my health problems insisted I should start painting again, that he thought it would be really good for me. Something I'd come across around the same time made me think of trying out acrylics. I found a cheap little starter set at the art-supply store, so I tried them--and loved them. Talk about intensity of color--you get all you want. And it has none of the annoying qualities of oils.

All to say, I've done a fair bit of painting over the last four years. I've always seen RBB from afar and longed to be one of the cool kids who participate, but the one time I participated as a writer was not a good experience; it just didn't seem to be for me. Then this year, on a whim, I decided to gather up my courage and participate as an artist! ... but not until the day before artist sign-ups closed! So I quickly painted this Cas and got myself in there! (Now that I know how it works, I see that I have all year to do my pieces for next time! :-D) Here it is, full size:

As for the metallic aspect (the gold, and the metallic purple in his wings), that was actually inspired by a painter I knew as a child, a friend of my mom's. I don't think she ever got any recognition for her work whatsoever, which is a terrible shame, because it was amazing--it seemed like sort of a combination of Southwestern American and Madhubani styles (probably not deliberately; I think it was just her being herself), with lots of hot pink, and also plenty of gold paint.

My grandmother was also an artist (with far more recognition, though not famous or anything--it was she whence came all these art supplies as a child--I still have some of that stuff! Really high-quality paints and watercolor paper, which--as they advertise--really apparently never degrade!), and all my training was very traditional. Metallics wouldn't have even been considered in the traditions I was taught in, so once I started painting again, and saw that acrylic paints had a plethora of metallics and cool stuff like that, of course I wanted to incorporate it in some of my work, with my usual 'screw you' to the conventional. And, of course, something glittery and outside-of-the-norm is perfect for dear Cas.

Anyway, one thing that had never occurred to me about the artist side of RBB is that it's kind of like ... being picked for sports teams, you know? All respect to the amazing mods, and I can't think of a better way they could do it (and of course they usually participate as artists, so they're subject to the same ego blows potentially), but the way it's set up, it's not just possible but kind of likely that you won't be your writer's first choice, and though you tell yourself it shouldn't matter, the reality is it's hard to get past. Therefore I was really lucky with my author, when after this piece wasn't getting picked, and wasn't getting picked, she jumped in as soon as they opened it up to everyone (not just people who'd signed up as authors) and grabbed it, telling me she felt lucky to get it, since she forgot to sign up this year and really wanted it. Maybe she was just being nice, but anyway, it made me feel all better--thank you, verucasalt123!! She's been an absolute delight to work with, and I love the sweet, sexy) story. <3 <3 I hope you all do, too!

And then I made a little flickering gif (with the excellent and ever-helpful septembers_coda's assistance) for the banner (I loved the title verucasalt123 chose for her fic, and the way it goes with the title for my art :-) ). I've got no idea why the gif is so small when the photo isn't, but I like how it turned out. Thanks, s_c!

Phew, my first RBB/experience doing fanart under my belt! I'm glad I finally found the courage to try it. I hope you like the art, and go check out the fic!

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