I wish I was a mermaid and was friends with all the fish

So, I'm alive? I mean, I just made it through my first semester full-time teaching and reports and NAPLAN and parent-teacher interviews, so I'm only mostly sure, but I appear to be all in one piece. But I'm on holidays now! For like two whole weeks! And I'm well aware that I haven't posted here (or anywhere) since ... February? And I honestly haven't been around much either, because this last term especially has been SUPER CRAZY and I haven't managed to do much except work and keep up some vague semblance of a social life, but hopefully things will quiet down a little now and I'll be able to change that. (Signing up for rarepairfest was possibly a little optimistic, given I've written almost nothing all year, but I miss actually participating in fandom, dammit, and I've got two weeks to get a head start at least.)

ANYWAY. An update with actual content will likely come soon, because WORK OMG, but in the meantime, hi! I missed you all! <3

ETA: ALSO I WATCHED THE FLASH PILOT COME TALK TO ME ABOUT IT IF YOU LOVED IT BECAUSE I LOVED IT <3 <3

YOU GUYS SOMEBODY WROTE AN NYR FIC FOR ME. FIVE FICS FOR YULETIDE!!!! I am super definitely going to have to write an NYR this year (and maybe the recipient will even comment on it, unlike the past two NYR fics I've written, I live in eternal optimism!).

You Better Watch Out (6275 words) by xmarisolx
Fandom: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Ray Holt, Jake Peralta, Amy Santiago, Charles Boyle, Rosa Diaz, Scully (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Hitchcock (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), Terry Jeffords, Gina Linetti
Summary: When Holt replaces Peralta’s annual Twelve Days of Christmas Santa Roundup with the Nine-Nine’s first Secret Santa, it leads to a round of the precinct’s trademark shenanigans.

BUT ANYWAY BACK TO ME MY GIFT. IT'S BROOKLYN NINE-NINE ENSEMBLE HOLIDAY FIC AND IT'S AMAZING AND IT HAS EVERYTHING I LOVE BEST IN THERE, GO READ IT OKAY.

Also, since lots of other people have shared theirs, my resolutions/goals for 2014:

1. GET BROOKLYN NINE-NINE ICONS.

( No, seriously )

Happy birthday kindness_says and pirateygoodness!



True story: I sometimes forget that not everything is a phone. Pretty regularly, I'll be looking for something (most recently my earmuffs) and think, "I know, I'll just call it." And that seems like a really good idea until I remember that you can't actually call something if it's not a phone.

Basically what I'm saying is, why isn't everything a phone? I'M COLD AND I JUST WANT MY EARMUFFS OKAY.

WAIT DO OTHER COUNTRIES NOT HAVE FAIRY BREAD? SERIOUSLY IF YOU HAVE NOT GROWN UP WITH THIS AMAZINGNESS IDEK WHAT TO SAY TO YOU, HOW HAVE YOU EVEN LIVED. (Things I love about being a teacher #27: I have eaten fairy bread recently.)

In other news, I went to work and then ran errands on my way home AND still went to the gym before dinner, I would like my Adult Human achievement badge now kthxbai.

Also am celebrating Valentine's Day by buying comics and watching D.E.B.S. and Princess Protection Program and drinking, like, a lot, it is super amazing.

re: My last post, today I actually googled "how to take care of basil." And then I watered it! Because that's a thing you're supposed to do! (But not too much.) And it's been sitting by the window getting lots of sun, so hopefully it's happy. This will be the year I finally learn to take care of plants! And grow my own mint and lettuce and such, because that sounds delicious.

I am surprisingly not hungover today. Bonus!

So far three quarters of the people I wrote yuletide fics for have commented, so I'm counting it as a win for now. And they all seemed pretty happy with what I wrote? Which, considering they were mostly treats, and there were a couple where I took some liberties with the requests because, treats, is a relief.

Anyway! I ended up writing eight fics for yuletide - my assignment, one ad hoc pinch hit, and six treats. So, feel free to guess what I wrote, and if you do, I might write/make you something? In the meantime, I'll be going back to reading my way through the archive <3

So, remember back when I said I wasn't going to disappear for months at a time again? Yeah, that didn't work out so much. And I can't promise it won't happen again, but I'm going to make an effort to at least keep up with my friends list (I managed to get up to ?skip=1000 before LJ wouldn't let me go back any further, and there were still unread posts before that). Basically, I miss fandom like crazy. But, stuff I have been doing lately:

+ Grad school. This is, like, 95% of my life lately. Ugh.

+ Volunteer jobs (x2). Super fun, but between these and school and having an actual social life, I really haven't had time for anything else.

+ Trying to finish existing fic commitments. My apocabigbang fic is finished and sent in and ready to post (yay!); helpbrazil2011 not so much, but I'm working on it. Ugh, major guilt.

+ Watching Victorious. Guys, I think Beck/Jade is my new OTP, they are so amazing. If anybody out there actually watches this, come squee with me.

That's about it. Yeah, my life is super boring. But now I'm (finally!) on break, so I have about a week to get things done before I'm swamped again. I can do this! Right?

+ Okay, so: I totally signed up for festivids. This may turn out to be a terrible idea, I DON'T KNOW, but everybody who participated in it last year seemed super enthusiastic about doing it again this year, and I have no willpower whatsoever. Plus, maybe this way I will actually get the motivation I need to actually finish something? And the deadline isn't until January, when I'll be on holidays, so the timing works out, at least.

+ I also submitted my yuletide nominations (Miss Match, Make It or Break It, Wizards of Waverly Place, Diplomatic Immunity, Doom, and RPF - The Office), but I'm still not sure exactly what I'm going to request. There's so much other stuff I want to read fic for, but I only get four requests, how am I supposed to narrow it down? Right now, I'm thinking:

Miss Match - because I request it every year, and even though I'll probably never get it, I can't bring myself to give up and use the slot for something else. It could happen!

Make It or Break It - Sasha/Payson! This is definitely one of my requests.

The Office RPF - BJ/Mindy. This is a maybe; I asked for it two years ago, and got not one but two amazing fics, so I feel like maybe I shouldn't ask for it again, but I really love these two a crazy amount, so.

??

Stuff currently vying for request #4: Valentine (damn it, forgot about this one - I may have to redo my nominations!), Wizards of Waverly Place, Princess Protection Program, Sonny With a Chance, Diplomatic Immunity (I really want this! There is literally no fic! But I might be in the same position with this request as I am with Miss Match, ie. nobody else has seen it or cares enough to write fic; I'm always worried when I have to nominate something from scratch), Doom, Push, Tin Man, Covert Affairs, Better Off Ted, Greek ... how the hell do I do this every year? At least I won't have any shortage of fandoms to offer, I suppose. And there are probably a dozen things I'm forgetting, and in January I'll be going, 'damn it, why didn't I ask for [insert fandom here]?'

+ We've started moving our stuff into the new house, it's very exciting! Except I've been neglecting homework in favour of packing, and I can't do that much longer, since the end of the semester is rapidly approaching.

+ And I just finished reading Mockingjay! I started The Hunger Games ... um, a few days ago? And finished the trilogy in three days, it was kind of like a mini-addiction. I do have thoughts, but most of them have been summed up elsewhere; overall, I was not in love with Mockingjay, but I still love the series a whole lot.

Guess who got her first semester results today? Or, well, most of them - in a completely unsurprising turn of events, our math lecturer has not fulfilled her basic job requirements and submitted our results, so they're not up yet. But! I did pretty well in my other subjects - surprisingly well in some of them, I must have done better on my final assessments than I expected - so I'm happy. And math can bite me.

(Also, I feel like I can relax a little now that I know I'm doing well - not slack off, but, well, I'd really like not to disappear from fandom for an entire semester again, so.)

ALSO, DO YOU KNOW WHAT I MISSED? WRITING! I have made actual, significant progress on my help_haiti fic, and, apparently I am writing Tin Man fic now too? Roughly a metric ton of it so far, including a big dumb space AU (yay!); I have no idea where it came from, but I'm okay with that. Because writing is fun! Somehow I forgot this.

Writing Progress, Week One Of My Glorious Month Of Freedom:

getyourwordsout

( Individual projects )

So, I still need to get started on my femslash10 assignment, but I'm looking forward to that, so it should be easy enough. Also, I'm trying not to guilt myself too badly about the help_haiti fic, even though I do feel terrible about it, because I know if I don't let myself write anything else until it's finished, all that's going to happen is that it's going to sit there mocking me and nothing will get written at all. Right now, instead, I'm using as self-bribery fodder, and that's working pretty well. Sometimes I have to trick myself into getting stuff done, whatever.

My first term as a grad student is over! Which means I'm officially on holidays - at least for the next week and a half. \0/

So, what did I miss? It feels like I haven't been properly connected to fandom in forever, I've missed you guys. I have a massive backlog of fics, and I'm ridiculously behind on my TV watching - apparently the Greek season finale was on yesterday? I've only seen up to episode 13, so clearly this needs to be fixed ASAP.

In more exciting news, I finished my first ever big bang, yay! I wrote Never Kill A Boy On The First Date (Wizards of Waverly Place, Justin/Alex) for apocabigbang, and I got three fantastic pieces of art for it - If The Apocalypse Comes ... (I'm Feeling Pretty Psyched) (fanmix) by tortugax, an untitled fanmix by roseclaw, and some amazing graphics by dhfreak. I am completely overwhelmed by their collective awesomeness. <3

Now, I have to go look at my to-do list ... which is like a mile and a half long, eek! I know I have gift fics to finish, my bsg_remix, and maybe chaos_thon, but I'm honestly not sure if I'll be able to finish that in time. And a couple of assessments that are due the first week back, and homework I'm not fully caught up on, and resource folios, and reflections ...

Fic is coming first, I think ;)

Had a safe flight, am alive and well. Also, it is cold here. Would somebody please tell New Zealand that it's the middle of summer?

(Today it hailed. A lot.)

I'm tempted to sign up for au_bigbang. I could do the knight!Demi/princess!Selena fic? I'm still on the fence about it, though. The fact that all fics have to be posted directly to the community seems a little counterintuitive for a big bang - I'll have to remember to stop watching the community before the posting period.

Somebody should run a Disney big bang, I would be all over that.

Also, I found Diplomatic Immunity on DVD, yay! I should do a pimp post later, since it's awesome and you guys should be watching it. I should also be writing, so ... maybe I'll go do that?