Jess's Journal

We have reached That Point in the Yuletide experience - the point at which I realize it's just NOT POSSIBLE to get the story I want to write done in time, why didn't I get more done SOONER, and why did I sign up in the FIRST PLACE, why don't I ever REMEMBER how STRESSFUL it all is, etc etc! GOOD TIMES!

And so I do the most productive thing at such a moment: avoid Yueltide! Right now I'm watching some stuff I've got backlogged on my DVR and filling out the anonymous holiday love meme, because I'm a total sap and I LOVE stuff like that. My sap-o-meter is usually set pretty high, but now I feel like it's up at a Spinal Tap-esque 11 because of the holiday season. I mean, yesterday I straight-up told a coworker he should consider starting a gratitude journal, and earlier this week I got choked up singing along to Dan Fogelberg's Same Old Lang Syne.

And even though my fannish participation has fallen off in the last couple of years, I threw my name in there too, because I can rarely resist memes.

My thread is here.

Title: Flying Solo
Fandom/Pairing: Parks and Recreation, Ann/Leslie
Rating: PG
Summary: Ann figures out why things never worked out with Mark.
Spoilers: Takes place after the second season finale.
Length: 10,200 words
Notes: Thanks to lavender_basil for the awesome beta!


(  'Ann, what's up?' Andy says, and it's not what he says but how he says it. The tone of his voice, the set of his shoulders - all of it radiates the same disappointed wariness Ann felt every time he showed up unexpectedly after their breakup.  )

Greetings LiveJournal! I've been even worse about posting in this journal than I usually am, but one of the surest things to get me out of hiding is the post-bits-from-wips meme, which I've noticed floating around LJ lately. I'm a big fan of it, mostly because I'm so terrible at finishing stories and this gives me a reason to post bits of them without going through the annoying hard work of actually finishing them.

Here are quick bits from the two wips I've been kicking around for the last year or so.

( Untitled Star Trek Reboot fic, Kirk/Spock )

( Untitled SPN fic, Dean/Castiel )

My holidays were kind of crazy, so I didn't get a chance to pull together a recs list or post this earlier the way I usually like to. I got a great Fringe story for Yuletide, Team Building Exercise by brodeurbunny30. The story is a lovely glimpse of Olivia taking the time to reach out to Peter, and it really captures a lot of things I love about Fringe - the connections being built between the characters as they try to deal with the madness around them. I'm sorry I didn't post this sooner, because the story really did make me super happy and I loved it!

As for me, I wrote Fundamentals of Chemistry, a Community story that I'll probably put up here in an LJ post later. The person I wrote for requested something Annie/Troy-ish, because she liked the unrequited, long-time pining thing (and I have to say I'm a sucker for that, too!). The story was fun to write, and I'm grateful for all the kind comments I received.

I have to say, the new editing feature on the Yuletide archive is AWESOME because I was able to go in and fix the many typos I found after uploading (in the past I would just stare at them in self-loathing during the time after uploading, debating internally whether the awful typo was worth bothering the mods with, etc). However, I am still awaiting the Awesome Title Feature, because I continue to struggle with finding titles with my story and find this one exceptionally generic and blah. Oh well! Maybe better titles will be a resolution for 2010.

Happy New Year, all!

It's Yuletide time again! I am again debating whether or not to sign up, especially since I have been extra-unproductive in terms of fic this year. For the last three years or so, I've consistently produced a whopping three (3) stories a year, but this year I've only written one. I've been trying to get another finished, but it's not really happening. I feel like my fic self has left the building!

But the thing is, who can resist the siren's call of Yuletide?

SPEAKING of Yuletide - I can't believe I forgot to post about this sooner! I've participated in Yuletide for three years and every year I put in Broken Trail as one of my requests, and every year out of the approx. 7,895,763 people who participate in Yuletide, only 2 or 3 people offer to write in that fandom. Mainly because it's an AMC miniseries starring Robert Duvall and Lowell from Wings as cowboys who run into some Chinese women who had been sold into prostitution and need to be rescued - it's not exactly a hot fannish source. I think the only people who watched it were myself and 70% of the senior citizens in America.

But every year I put in a little request because in my (repeated) viewings of the miniseries (not all of which were my fault, because it runs practically twice a week on AMC now that they've lost most of their movie properties to TCM), I fell in love with the love story between Cowboy Lowell and Sun Fu, one of the ladies he rescues. It's totally one of those things where basically the most they do is send awkward looks each others' way, and one time she TOUCHES his CHEEK, and okay it's not much, but I CAN'T HELP IT. I LOVED THEM. I SAT THROUGH FOUR HOURS OF THAT WESTERN BASICALLY FOR EIGHT MINUTES OF FOOTAGE BETWEEN THEM.

And so every year I put in a request for a story about the two of them, and was never that surprised when it wasn't the request that got filled, because so few offered it. I was all geared up to request it again, BUT THEN.

BUT THEN.

I got a comment from someone who asked if it would be okay if they wrote a NYR Yuletide story to fill my request. WOULD THAT BE OKAY? YES IT WOULD!

And then the person wrote the story! AND THE STORY IS LOVELY!

Courtesy of Stephen Foster

Tom & Sun Fu share a moment one evening after they arrive at the Moncrieffe Ranch.

It's a lovely missing moment from the mini-series. What I wanted most when I made the request each of the three years was to have a glimpse at another moment between these two characters, and this story presented a lovely one. It was such a wonderful surprise to have it arrive in the middle of the year, too! Thank you so much, Gaslight!

I'm experiencing one of those periods where I'm sure I'll never finish another story EVER AGAIN, which I go through every so often, but this time it intersected with a meme I saw pop up on my flist, which I am going to try:

The first TEN people to comment in this post get to request a drabble (100 words) of any pairing/character of their choosing from me. You're under no obligation to post this back to your LJ if you request something, as the rules have stated. Also, a prompt would be super-helpful in addition to the pairing/character request, if that's possible, since I've been feeling about as creative as a potted plant lately.

Warning part I: I only have access to my LJ and the e-mail account associated with it at night, and the stupid 'M' key is semi-busted on my laptop, so it might take me a bit to respond and get the drabbles written.

Warning part II: I've never written drabbles, so there's a good chance these will be horrible!

And now after that enticing marketing campaign, a list of fandoms I think I could write in, which is kind of a random hodgepodge of shows I've been watching lately and shows I have always loved and repeatedly offer for Yuletide but am never assigned:

30 Rock
American Dreams
Chuck
Fringe
Keen Eddie
The Mentalist
Newsradio
The Office (US)
Psych
Terminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles

In other news: there is no other news.

A few days ago, the LJ community himym_awards announced the winners for their Legendary Awards, and I was lucky enough to win two of them! Thanks so much to everyone who voted and for the maintainers of the community for all the hard work that went into the awards.

Both awards were for Five Things Robin Scherbatsky Doesn't Do, and the awards were Best in Show and Best Robin - I haven't ever won an award for my fic before, so it was pretty exciting!

They also created lovely banners for both awards, which I'll place beneath a cut tag because I spent many long years using dialup:

( Pretty Banners! )

Speaking of HIMYM, how great was last night's episode? I've actually been kind of drifting away from the show a bit this season, but all I need is an episode like last night's to draw me back in.

Title: Bayside Revisited
Fandom/Pairing: Saved by the Bell
Rating: PG
Summary: Bayside High's Class of 1993 celebrates its 15 year reunion.
Length: 15,000 words.
Notes: Written for oldromantic in the Yuletide 2008 challenge.

( The DJ cancels at 3PM the day of the reunion, and Screech is so convinced that the stress is inducing a heart attack that he goes on WebMD to search for the symptoms. )

I've seen my favorite meme floating around LJ lately, the old Post-Bits-from-Works-in-Progress meme. I love it because I get to post things without finishing stories. I almost never get to post things because I am very, very bad at finishing stories, and I welcome any chance I get to cheat.

Posted in order from the ones I'd most like to finish, or think I'm most likely to finish, to those that fell off my radar completely, either because I stopped being obsessed by the fandom/pairing, or because I ended up writing a different story altogether.

( Get There, Ocean's 11, Rusty/Linus, aka The Story I Will Finish IF IT KILLS ME, if only to prove to myself that I am capable of writing more than one story in a fandom )

( Pennsylvania, Psych/The Office Crossover, Gus/Shawn )

( Untitled Ugly Betty fic, Betty/Daniel )

( Untitled Iron Man story, eventually Pepper/Tony (I think, I never really got that far) )

( Four Times Robin Should Have Realized Barney Loved Her (and One Time She Did), How I Met Your Mother, Robin/Barney )