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

I have replotted, outlined, and started writing the climax on fic A. Yay!

Also I have found the writing equivalent of this phenomenon:

Author's Note: Hey, sorry for the huge delay on this chapter!

Work Header: Published: 2015-07-13 Completed: 2015-08-11 Words: 41612 Chapters: 4/4

This is a post I found in my tumblr drafts from last September.

Extremely fragmentary thoughts on Emma Donoghue’s Passions Between Women: British Lesbian Culture 1668 - 1801

Donoghue mentions that the decrease of references to “female husband” cases in newspapers at the end of the 18th century is taken by some scholars as evidence that the practice died out. She doubts this very much, and indeed Alison Oram’s “Her Husband was a Woman!”, published about a decade after this book, focuses on similar cases reported in British newspapers in the early twentieth century, so I think it highly unlikely that there were no examples whatsoever in the century in between.

“On 14 December 1728 the Universal Spectator commented that every culture differentiated the sexes by dress for the sake of ‘decency’, and specifically ‘in order to prevent Multitudes of Irregularities, which otherwise would continually be occasion’d’.” (p. 90)

This seems to indicate a view that in the same clothes it would be impossible to differentiate the sexes - I am reminded of someone (but can’t remember who) pointing out that in Early Modern society the body was much less knowable than it is considered today, with even the poorest wearing at least two layers of clothes at all times, and shaping garments being normal, and clothes that hid or highlighted or enhanced certain features being usual for men as well as women.

“The radical sects formed in the seventeenth century, in particular, often allowed women to pull their friendships with each other to the centre of their lives. Quaker women such as Katherine Evans and Sarah Cheevers left husbands and children to travel and be imprisoned together.” (p. 151) (I don’t have anything to say here, just! Historic Quaker lesbians! Yay!)

“Nor is a study of erotica thankless work” (p. 183) – I’m just going to leave that sentence fragment there.

I keep feeling like I could be done this fic (which we will call fic A, because there is never just one WIP) by the end of the month if I just decided to work at it (and maybe set up a goal tracker), but Life is in the process of happening and it's going to keep happening, so I can't just decide to spend a month on that. And in the meantime (mostly to distract from the aforementioned Life) I have started half a dozen WIPs, some of which are also at the "one week of concentrated effort and they'll be done" stage, but it's always much more tempting to just start another damn WIP instead of finishing them. And concentration may be a slight problem, now that I think about it.

And there's at least three other WIPs from before fic A that I could also be focusing on.

And I still think they're mostly really good ideas! So it's not that I don't want to work on them. Except that I am in one of those states where I am convinced that my present writing is much worse than it used to be. Despite the suspicion that in a month or so I will think my writing now was so much better than that future writing will be.

There is also the problem that right now I feel like anything I post needs some kind of Reason To Exist. God knows what reason would actually count as sufficient for the brainweasels, though.

The really annoying thing is that if I posted chapter-by-chapter I have like three fics I could post the first chapter of (and on Fic A it's more like the first 3+ chapters) with minimal editing. Except that I do not write linearly and any of these first chapters could change at any moment. And anyway I do not want to do that without a schedule, and cannot keep to a schedule. And while fic A's structure is pretty clear by now I don't actually know how long the others are (or whether they even need chapters).

But that means I have thousands and thousands of words of unposted fic burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket. Of my brain. Whatever that means.

ETA: And I just sewed buttons on a knitting project instead of writing, so that tells you how much is coming out of the word mines today.

Have Clint and Natasha since they're in my head.

“Clint, this bra is the opposite of sexy.”

“It’s black!”

“It’s a three year old sports bra, Clint.”

“In black.”

“That is not all it takes to make a bra sexy.”

“No,” Clint said, smirking, “all it takes to make a bra sexy is putting it on you.”

For be_compromised

Title: Five Times Natasha Inappropriately Checked Out Her Neighbour (and One Time He Inappropriately Checked Out Her)
Rating: T
Universe: Marvel
Character(s): Natasha Romanov, Clint Barton
Summary: For the prompt: You’re the neighbour that keeps their curtains open, even when changing, and I can’t talk to you without blushing.
Warnings/Enticements: Accidental Voyeurism (ish), Fluff, Blushing
Word Count: 1123

On AO3

[Multifandom friendship fest]

Also, hurtcomfortex nominations are open.

( Actually let's cut this. ) It's been so much nicer inside my head since I drifted away from Tumblr.

So consultingpiskies and I are watching the new Carmen Sandiego, and EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD TOO.

Passing observations:

Episode 7, which we just finished, is so femslashy. omg.

The Chief of ACME is Nick Fury's sister. That's not a headcanon, that's just fact. I bet their holiday dinners are full of shoptalk and griping about their subordinates.

I am a nerd, but I love the little totally-natural-dialogue teaching-kids-geography digressions. They're adorable.

However, the theme music is wrong.

In the spirit of Shitpost February I just realized that I could knit a cushion cover like this or this.

consultingpiskies is dubious but this is going to be GREAT.