#i'm not going full deep end with podfics

[kessielrg]

-'Podfic available' the fic tags say

-Opens fic up because podfic isn't linked in description

-Skims through story, no mention of podfic or link to it in author's notes

-???? So is there a podfic available or not?! Am I the one using the tag wrong?!?

[quietwingsinthesky]

For the fanfic asks, 18 and 19?

Hi Stel!

[questions are here]

18. oh, gosh. hard choice. hard choice. uhm. I always gush about how much I loved writing 'it would have buried you' so I feel like I should give the spotlight to one of my other favorites, which is Another Night (it doesn't get easy). It's full of lines that I fucking love, and I have no idea where they came from or why they ended up in a FNAF fic of all things, but. specifically right now, I'm thinking of the line, "Your father, the walking blasphemy, can see you now." which is really just. the culmination of the whole fic's point for being, really. And I really loved narrating that line too, alskdjalskjd i dont know if you can tell listening to the podfic, I savored that damn thing.

19. Okay okay small teaser let's see what I've got here. hm. So there's another prompt I'm working on in bits and pieces asking for something between Sam and Lucifer, specifically during the era where Lucifer is possessing Castiel, which. Fascinating challenge to me (<- dislikes casifer greatly) and I am up for it. So here's a little bit of it.

tw for lucifer being a creepy dude and doing shit he should not be doing to sam while he's asleep. nothing terrible but he is being. So Weird.

Sam is smarter than this. He should know he's not safe here, not even in this hole in the ground. Does he really sleep here, night after night, without anything protecting him? Lucifer strokes Sam's cheek, feels his sleeping exhales against this vessel's wrist. Not anymore. Lucifer has taken care of everything. Sam's room is warded against any being that might wish him harm, and all of it is scratched so subtly into the walls by Castiel's guided nails that he won't even notice the difference.

That's alright. He doesn't have to know that Lucifer is watching over him. He never knew about Azazel's gang guiding him, not until their jobs were long over and he had been shaped into Lucifer's true vessel. Those demons even made the perfect present for him when he accepted Lucifer into his heart and bloodied hands.

Someday, Sam is going to understand that Lucifer doesn’t give so much to just anyone.

He has another gift for Sam, beyond the protective wards on the walls and his company behind Castiel's face. He kisses Sam's forehead and lets grace curl inside his mind, locking him into the deep slumber Lucifer walked in on. Sam's face is so relaxed when he's asleep. Gently, Lucifer's thumb glides down the side of his face to his lips. They part with barely a hint of pressure. Lucifer smiles.

His wings rise around him and Sam, light sent dancing over his true vessel's skin. (Beneath them, Castiel's worn-out rags of bone and feather drag along the floor, forgotten.) Lucifer reaches between his feathers, seeking. Grace sparks under his fingers, and the sensation is calming. He's almost tempted to sit here a while over Sam's prone body and preen, letting the loose feathers glide down to rest over Sam. Another time, maybe. For now, he has purpose, and he takes hold of a feather still intimately connected to his own power. It's a living part of him, and he pulls it out. The pain is awful. Lucifer bows over Sam, stifling a scream against his neck.

Sam doesn't wake. Lucifer rubs Castiel's throat. This vessel doesn't fit right. Even its vocal cords vibrate wrong. He hates it, and with Sam so close, right there, one word away from letting Lucifer taste the euphoria of being inside him again... But he is so stubborn. Lucifer wouldn't love him otherwise.

For now, he takes the feather between his fingers, sparking and glowing and connected to him, even though it’s been cut off. He can feel it. He can track it.

He wouldn't have to do this if Castiel hadn't tried to hide Sam from him. As if he was allowed to write runes into Sam's ribs without Lucifer's permission. Lucifer can't even erase them. Loathe as he is to admit it, they're effective at keeping every other angel away from his vessel, too.

Here's a simpler solution. He opens Sam's mouth wider, and he drops the small feather inside.

[procrastinatorproject]

Picard Positivity: Dr Agnes P Jurati

I'm still working on the essay I meant to finish for Agnes's positivity day. I'm closer than I've ever come before, so this might actually happen!

In the meantime, however, I'm going to engage in a little bit of shameless self-promotion.

I loved Agnes from the moment we first saw her on screen. She's an academic, she's a quirky nerd, I really like her sense of humour, and she keeps laughing and finding moments of joy and connection even when she is in the depths of despair. I cannot tell you how much love I have for her, and it only got deeper as the season went on.

Despite her occasional nervousness and awkwardness, Dr Agnes P Jurati is actually incredibly strong, in her own way, and is a character who will Get Shit Done. I feel like that is a side of her that doesn't often get showcased, including by myself, and one of my goals for the next time I have the brainspace for more consistent writing is to give Agnes some stories in which she can really shine. I'm very curious to see what they do with her in season 2, I think there could be some very fascinating developments ahead.

But for now, here are a few of my takes on different aspects of Agnes Jurati, cyberneticist of my heart.

I wrote the majority of this one in one evening, when I was in a really bad place myself, thinking about trauma and dealing with regrets. One of the dynamics I absolutely adore in Picard fanfiction and that always helps me in these situations, is Emil (Sirena's EMH) acting as therapist for people, especially Agnes. Probably my absolute favourite fic in that context is Hisselpenny's Applied Ethics for Theoretical Cyberneticists, which inspired the story above.

Corset of Thorns a bit of a deep dive into Agnes's relationship with Bruce Maddox and her coming to terms with the fact that it was a really bad, no good idea. It's by far the angstiest and probably one of the most... poetic? things I've ever written. Please do take the content warnings seriously.

But even if you're not in the mood for angst, the notes at the end of the fic have a little rec list for Agnes-fic that I cannot praise highly enough, so go check that out if you're looking for something to read today!

I've been in academia for a good portion of my life now, and I like to think about academia in a Star Trek context (hence my wrighting a full-blown in-universe anthropological article that I will one day finish...). At one point last year, it occurred to me that the fact that Agnes more or less states she has never been off world has some interesting implications for her academic career and how academic conferences work in the Star Trek universe.

I come down pretty hard on the canon in this one, but I still like the bits of worldbuilding this fic, which started its life as a tumblr post, includes.

As a final offering, I have another bit of meta, this time about Agnes's relationship with Cris Rios. When a friend asked me if I could explain why I think their relationship works, I ended up writing an essay that I thought other people might enjoy as well, so I decided to share it.

The title is a reference to Your Light on Me, one of @regionalpancake's gorgeous drabbles from her Downtime collection, which explores the same themes I do just much more poetically and succinctly. And after I finished writing, I realized @smhalltheurlsaretaken had written a fic that essentially made the same argument I make here, except in beautiful prose in Love Comes Softly. (Which the multi-talented @thelaithlyworm turned into brilliant Podfic.)

[solesurvivorpaigeargot]

I absolutely LOVE Sketchy Saturdays and I always look forward to them!! As for my question(s)? What made you decide to start doing it(I'm glad you do but I was just curious!)?

Hoooo boi the Sketchy Saturday Origin Story: I suppose there's two versions.

The short version reads " Moving stress, deployment depression, and isolation VS. my utter determination to DO SOMETHING whilst trapped in my home " -- Sketchy Saturday was the result of that title fight, so I guess the fandom won in the end? XD

The long version, however... Well, buckle up, cause this is gonna be a ride.

It may surprise y'all to know that two years I was eyeballs-deep in the South Park fandom. The blog still exists; my mainblog, JustCallMeButtlord, built to interact with the audience of my fanfictions-- the New Kid Stories, called NKS for short [gonna be porting those to Ao3 soon, just gotta figure out what robo-reader I'm gonna use to make a quick n dirty podfic out of the series as well as help me hunt down typos my eyes galze over]. The first 'season' of stories had ended, 8 completed fics, and I was puttering about with a bonus holiday story that was several months out of season. Not that I CARED because I was on GUAM where seasons don't exist and my time blindness gets even worse becasue without seasons changing it feels like time never progrsses even after being on the island for three cocksucking years.

I don't hate Guam, I am just not built for constant heat. I am a snow creature; I like below-freezing temperatures so I can layer up in fuzzy, fluffy things and drink hot drinks and cuddle loved ones and/or furry animals. It's a lovely island, I adored my first week there... I just wasn't made to live there.

HIlariously, NKS started out of the stress of moving to Guam. Two years and 8 fics later, the place we were renting was no longer within our price range and my hubby and I were forced to move onto base. Under the leader whom I refuse to name, military pay was given a precentage raise... but it was ripped out of bonuses and OCONUS pay. OCONUS is what a military member is paid when they're stationed Outisde the CONtinental United States. This usually means overseas bases like Japan, but it also means Hawaii, aaaaaand... GUAM. So that percentage pay increase for the military at large meant belt-tightening for every service member abroad, and we were forced to move onto base.

In case y'all haven't noticed by now, I'm a raging socialist with some issued with authority. I DO NOT LIKE EXISTING ON BASE. I do not like existing in a place where the national anthem plays twice a day, every day, at 6 AM and then again whenever the hell sundown is that day. And there's an unspoken rule no one tells you that when it plays you're supposed to stop what you're doing, face the nearest set of speakers playing the song, and stare in that direction with your hand over your heart until its over. That, if you're driving, you have to put on your emergency flashers and pull over. No one tells you this. NO ONE TELLS YOU THIS.

And then, before we had secured a place on base but we had set a move out date for the rental house, the Pandemic happened. While we were between homes. The base is talking full lockdown, Guam authorities want to shut down the island but businesses are terrified of not getting the tourist season business, we don't even know if we'll be allowed to move on to base.

Surprise, I stopped writing for a while... but I picked Fallout 4 back up again. I had been forced into the series years earlier by a toxic relationship, but the game itself hadn't been bad-- just the way I'd been forced to play it by someone who was firmly not in my life anymore. When confronted with character creation, I wasn't sure whom I wanted to make... but decided to go back to an old character. A VERY old character, whom I hadn't thought of since I'd finished ME3 at least 4 years prior, and a character I first conceived of when I was 14-ish... which is now about 15 years ago.

Paige.

I've talked before about how well Paige's story maps onto Fo4, but this was before I knew that. I knew the opening, her losing her kid, and that fit with her-- but something clicked while I was playing and the part of my brain that likes to create started wandering off. Soon enough I've got a couple chapters of a ficlet that I'm TOTALLY just writing as a personal one-shot to de-stress, no way I'm publishing this, I don't wanna get distracted from NKS, I got a whole 'nother season to write! Who cares if no one is reading it anymore because South Park Fandom doesn't like continuous plots.... right?

I was burnt out as hell, the move was looming, the Pandemic was getting worse and everything was getting scarier.

Then the news came through that hubby would be deploying again.

He wasn't supposed to, but the Navy decided the safest place for their sailors was the middle of the ocean, so if you WERENT in quarantine you were going on the boat and you were living there. Didn't matter if your spouse would be alone, unpacking a whole home by themselves.

I had a friend on base. We hung out. I met with my DND group on weekends; we all lived on base now, so we could meet up in like five minutes... and then restrictions tightened. You could be fined up to 5 grand for gathering in groups greater than 5, even outdoors, and detained if suspected of going to a home that wasn't yours. I still met 2 of my friends once a week for walks; get outside, be active, talk to other humans, but besides that? I was locked up alone in a new house in a place that I did NOT like existing in.... with a fresh new hyperfixation developing.

I think it was about a week into the new house that I made the new blog. At first I tried to run it side by side with the South Park stuff, but it wasn't long before all my attention was here... aaaand it also wasn't long before I was confronted with a lot of my own despair; of lockdown, of isolation, of watching a broken system crumble and not being able to DO anything about it, and I started to kinda lose my shit. I fuss-- I can't leave things alone, and I couldn't leave this feeling alone; of being fully and entirely helpless and hopeless.

And then I sketched a thing for a friend, and it made them happy. They were having a rough time, too, and I put something together because I couldn't think of anything else. And it helped. It lifted them up, and it lifted me up, too. Someone else had recently reblogged one of those pallet challenges that floats around Tumblr, and I decided FUCK IT LET'S DO THIS THING AND CALL IT SKETCHY SATURDAY!

Little secret, the very first Sketchy Saturday request? Was me. I was so scared no one would noticed the event, I sent myself the very first request, back when the event still took anons. Soon as that first picture was up:

BANG, suddenly four more; some people off anon. I met people that day, talked to them after the very first Sketchy weekend was over, chatted about the games and characters and art and writing and just... felt human for the first time in a really long while.

I figured I'd hold on to Sketchy Saturday until the deployment was over-- once hubby was back, I'd decide whether I was keeping it or not... but he came back, and I was still super into it, and he was supportive, sooooo I kept going! And then we did Sketchy Secret Santa, and people loved it, and my volunteers are excited about being Sketchy Elves and Secret Helpers and just OH MY GOD I DID A THING GUYS. I DID A THING-- that was just me all December and January long lmafo.

AND JANUARY! Because AH HECK, WE MOVING AGAIN! Because hubby finally got orders, and OH MY GOD we're going back to WA... but it's still a move half-way around the globe, and I was SURE I'd have to shut down the event for a month while we got our shit in order and NOPE, because here come the volunteers from Sketchy Secret Santa, and they wanna fill in all month long! Like... I didn't even ask for that shit, guys. They offered it so the event wouldn't have to take a gap.

Jesus I'm getting teary just remembering it.

So yeah. Sketchy Saturday is here because I got really lonely and stressed out while Fallout 4 provided me with some... catharsis for my situation, and then a pandemic happened.

And then y'all happened, and I'm still here. :D