We Can't Rewind, We've Gone Too Far

My generation has been accused of so much corporate murder that it's nice to read an article about how the Greatest Generation killed hats.

So my medium-term plan is to go to college to become an electrical technician (we're calling this Project Tesla). In order to do this I need to take grade 12 math, since I skipped it the first time round because it was optional and I was really into literature and also for reasons we won't go into I missed a lot of junior high math so I didn't have the necessary background to do well in math in high school.

I started doing that in an online course last week. I was worried about this because I do not trust my ability to self-motivate, but so far I've done at least an hour of math every single day for over a week now.

And earlier today I had a lot of free-floating anxiety and then I went, "Okay, I'm going to do my math homework." And I did. And then I felt better.

It's reasonable: I focused on something specific with no emotions attached for a fixed length of time--but it's so far from what I expect of myself.

And Mom's in Italy right now and I have been calmly cooking and doing the laundry and picking up the mail and so on. While working and also seeing people. For that matter, I have a medium-term life plan right now.

It's not perfect--the next two weeks are going to be busy and work keeps changing my schedule on me and it's concerning. But I can look at the pros and cons of, say, going to the climate protest tomorrow morning, and be reasonably confident in what effect it will have on me and that I can deal with that effect.

This is because I am properly medicated and had useful therapy earlier this year. But it's so weird.

Fresh Pict (276 words) by Violsva
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Marvel, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton
Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Clint Barton
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Ancient Britain, Clint Showing Off, Mandatory Fun Day
Summary:

The visiting archer catches Bucky's eye.

I have signed up for Remix Madness.

shipoween and trickortreatex are things that exist. And only have 300 word minimums. Hmm.

My brain is currently very happy to come up with detailed plot outlines but is not coughing up any actual prose. This is very odd.

Also I am dissatisfied with my dialogue, so I would appreciate recs for writers who do that well.

Oh! Also I went to this! (This.) Which was far too short but otherwise very neat. Knumpify thinks that her findings don't apply to large swathes of the internet where he mostly hangs out, though.

Before that I went climbing (excellent) and fucked up my back (less excellent).

"Oh God," muttered Ford, slumped against a bulkhead and started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentient life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.
...
Ford carried on counting quietly. This is about the most aggressive thing you can do to a computer, the equivalent of going up to a human being and saying "Blood ... blood ... blood ... blood ..."

--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

violsva: Okay, this fic summary mentions someone working in a coffee shop having a favourite "costumer", but it's also tagged steampunk so I can't tell if that's a typo or not
consultingpiskies: Bahahaha
consultingpiskies: Does anyone have a favorite costumer?
violsva: Actors, theatre critics, cosplay fans...
consultingpiskies: I would assume it's a spelling error until proven otherwise
consultingpiskies: Though maybe it's a fic trying to contain all the tropes
violsva: Renn faire people, film HR managers, fabric store employees...
violsva: I glanced at it and it also calls the coffee shop worker a barrister so I'm going with typo

Meanwhile, I knew job searching would destroy my writing ability for the duration, but ugh.

So I don't know if it's the phrasing or that I'm finally ready to hear it or what; I suspect the latter.

But all of that "face your fears" "do one thing every day that scares you" "the only way to conquer fear is to face it" etc. never made any sense to me.

And then today I saw this tumblr post (ETA) and suddenly it did.

tbh a lot of my advice boils down to “hey you know that terrible horrible looming thing you’re doing your best to avoid and distract and escape as much as possible but no matter what you do it just keeps looming and looming and ruining your life”

“just, fuckign, run straight at it screaming.”

( Read more... )

UPDATE: Pixies noped out slightly after I did (though to a different room, so we didn't realize); my assumptions about people's reactions to me, having been formed by teenage trauma, are unduly pessimistic and I always forget this; am still unsocial but more comfortable.

Top Fics by Kudos by Year Meme

Last year AO3 announced that they were going to be importing FictionAlley's archives, but that doesn't seem to have happened yet, so I don't have to decide if I want to publicly claim my juvenilia or not.

2012: The Adventure of the Resourceful Widow, ACD: My first fic on AO3. I remember exactly where I was when I came up with the idea for this.

2013: Possible, ACD: For the ACD kinkmeme.

2014: Let Me, ACD: Overwhelmingly my most popular fic of all time.

Also this year I put a couple Omegaverse fics on AO3 which were written and posted on the BBC Sherlock kinkmeme in the two prior years and are technically much higher in kudos count than the ones linked above.

I think 2013-14 is when AO3 norms kind of settled on their current state, and of course the site's userbase has been steadily increasing over time.

2015: Witness and Testimony, ACD: My second most popular fic of all time.

2016: In Confidence, BBC Sherlock: I did not write much longfic in 2016.

2017: One Turf Shall Serve, ACD: For ACD Holmesfest.

2018: I've only just met an old, old friend, MCU: As a demonstration of my writing/conceptualization speed, this fic was a direct response to the 2016 American election.

2019 (so far): Tinsel Show, MCU-ish

...which I suggested to consultingpiskies and she is now keeping me awake with:

Find a fandom where the top two tagged characters are not romantically shipped with each other (or at least, don't appear in the top ten ships together).

Hard mode: a fandom which is not Yuletide eligible.