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Writing is a lonely prospect these days. I remember when LiveJournal made it easy to feel like there was a community around writing for a fandom or a ship, even if it was small. It tended to lead to greater creativity because it didn't feel like screaming into a void.

These days, I'm tempted to post my stuff here, but I feel like most people who read my blog as very general fellow bloggers, so I wonder if I should make a little quarantine community for it to separate the fandomy posting of fic from the general rambling about life and stuff. But then I wonder if that's just keeping any eyeballs from the fic that would've otherwise been on it.

This was a conversation people were having on reddit earlier, too, to which I contributed.

Taken from sodium_amytal

Rules: Bold your fic preferences because why not, gotta choose one.

Slow burn or love at first sight
Fake dating or secret dating
Enemies to lovers or best friends to lovers
Oh no there’s only one bed or long distance with correspondence
Fantasy au or modern au
Smut or fluff
Mutual pining or domestic bliss
Alternate universe or future fic
One shot or multi-chapter
Kid fic or road trip fic
Reincarnation or character death
Arranged marriage or accidental marriage
High school romance or middle aged romance
Time travel or isolated together
Neighbors or roommates oh my god they were roommates
Sci-fi au or magic au
Bodyswap or genderbend
Angst or crack
Apocalyptic or mundane

I need some more icons. Specifically, I need a Doctor Who one, but it is way too difficult to choose just one character or pairing? I guess I would pick Clara if I had to choose the companion I projected onto the most, but I don't necessarily LIKE her more than everyone else. And I am sort of in an early New Who mood. But that is making me feel all kinds of weird. Will come back to that in a second.

Japan is 13 hours ahead of Eastern Time right now (eff daylight savings idk what anything is), which meant that I thought that I might still stand a chance of churning out some shitty ficlets that wouldn't even resemble short fics so much as disembodied paragraphs to finish up my trope_bingo card. But then I awakened at like 3:30 in the morning, feeling like it might kill me but still feeling compelled. Then on a prayer I checked the community, and there was a surprise extension of one week due to the host thinking they may not have reliable internet access to close up the round.

I am happy and even more determined to give it a good go. I am definitely mostly staying home this weekend.

I went back to Osaka to see my friends again, even though I really did not want to spend the money. I am glad I went. I ended up being able to provide some moral support during another crisis they were having about being able to stay together here in Japan. Since this is in public, I won't go into too many details, but even though it was expensive it felt like I "should" have been there.

However, I am DEFINITELY staying home for a while when I am not at work. My schedule this semester has been so flippin' weird. We will have only had four weeks out of twelve where we actually attended five days, and we have already had one. I am off this coming Monday again, and then it is three full weeks after that plus two days? Then I am done. Which is wild.

I still do not know what I am going to be doing for a job come January... Anyone who wants to help me brainstorm about that is free. I really want to find a teaching job in the States, but that seems just really difficult to swing given that I can't just up and move without a guarantee of a safe and reasonable place to live. That is one reason it kind of seems like EFL is the only viable option even though it sorta sucks to be on the other side of the world from everyone.

Anyway, I am really pleased that I got the extension on the bingo card.

My Good Omens feelings are still going strong, but given my best friend's sudden resurgent interest in it, I have finally been revisiting the beginning of New Who. And it makes me happy, but it also gives me this lingering, weird sense of melancholy. I am not quite sure why, but thinking about it and other fandoms I was into even as few as four or five years ago primarily makes me feel a bit like I wasted a lot of time. I feel like I used to have more robust and creative ideas that I should have gotten down rather than being pulled along by life. It makes me feel wrung out, and I feel like I see the reflection of a person that I used to be when I revisit these things. And I guess I get nervous that my gained "maturity" isn't ever gonna help me way that lost energy could have if I had used it in time. Also, I feel like that I have always been a reasonably "critical" fan, but in today's climate, I feel like I am just waiting for someone to pounce on me or my interests. It feels like fandom has become a reason to bully people, and it makes me cringe inside. I hope that I can stick to this little blogging experience and keep my head down and make some personal friendships that aren't based on agreeing with the groupthink consensus.

Speaking of groupthink, this is an entirely different thing but this playlist is great if you want a way to make sense of the way your internet friends end up getting radicalized by the Alt Right and how your seemingly kind but conservative family members seem to just kind of blindly abide fascism even if they would never outright agree with fascists:

"The Alt-Right Playbook: Introduction" (Watch on YouTube)

link to full playlist

I will probably comment about this later, but the video "How to Radicalize a Normie" is something that I would like to bring up with people who judge me for wanting Grant Ward to be redeemed. Yeah, it was not necessarily any one person's JOB to redeem him, but the show touted this whole rhetoric of how they were all about getting to people in time, and yet there was always this whispered subtitle ("except Grant Ward").

Finished my fic for trickortreatex ages early! I hope that it works for my recipient. I didn't really have anything in common with them in terms of ship vibes, but it's a single character matching fic. I tried to write something that was gen but hit on emotional stuff they seemed into with a bit of a darker vibe given the trick or treat theme.