#about goodyear

[goodyeartheshippycat]

Tag 10 people you want to know more/catch up with.

Thank you for the tag, @prismatic-cannon. Always fun to do one of these! And I like your song choice :D

Favourite colour(s): Green, teal, mint (okay those two are basically green-ish), that blue which they call “petrol” in the UK, and various shades of purple.

Last song: I’ve been back on my folk/power metal bullshit this fall and re-listening to favourite albums from my late high school/early university years. The Dance of Victory by Eluveitie was the song most recently played on my old iPod which is hooked up to my car stereo system. Listened to it last night while coming back from a site visit, as you do.

Last Movie: Oh lord, I watch movies so infrequently that I don’t even remember... It was definitely one of the ones I watched at the cottage this year. Uhhhhh, I think it might have been The Castle of Cagliostro. Which I really enjoyed and am now looking forward to watching the newest Lupin film when the English release comes out. I know, I know, I prefer subs too but my partner doesn’t really like watching subbed films and I almost only ever bother watching a film with him... 

Or it might have been A Mighty Wind which was painful but funny. If you’ve ever seen any Christopher Guest films, you’ll know what I’m talking about. He’s the master of cringe, secondhand awkwardness comedy. I think the one I enjoyed most and would recommend to someone who hasn’t seen his stuff would probably be the one about dog shows, Best in Show, or maybe the one about community theatre, Waiting for Guffman. 

Currently reading: Does re-reading some of my own fics count? XD

Really though, outside of technical stuff for work I haven’t been reading much lately. I did read an excellent sci-fi short story recently, called “Curo the Filthmonger” by J. Marshall Freeman. I can’t find an online copy, unfortunately (I have it in zine form from my local LGBTQ+ bookstore -- which is sadly now closing due to COVID), so no link. I was also thinking of tackling some of the many comic ebooks I’ve collected over the years via kickstarters and whatnot, and then left sitting untouched in a folder on my computer. Might start with Yes, Roya, because I know it recently got a colour edition, but I’d like to read my original black and white copy first. 

Currently watching: Nothing, actually. I just finished watching two things and have yet to start anything else in earnest. Most recently in television, I watched the final episode of the first season of Star Trek: Lower Decks which, as far as I’m concerned, is the best Trek series to come out since DS9. Hilarious and clever writing combined with solid animation and excellent voice acting by the ridiculously loveable cast. Each of them is more relatable over the course of only 8 half hour episodes than a single character in Discovery ever has been in two seasons... 

The other thing I watched recently was every currently available episode of a YouTube animated series about @dingodoodles‘s “Fools’ Gold” D&D campaign, which is helpfully collected in a playlist. I have FAR TOO MANY FEELS now, especially about her sorcerer monkey, Sips, and his best friend, Sneeze. It lures you in with the funny jokes and then RIPS YOUR HEART OUT AND STOMPS ON IT. The cliffhangers she does are as addictive as the best fanfiction on the internet, and her animation is an absolute delight. I laugh out loud every single episode. There are only 16 of them for the moment, and the longest one is less than 16 minutes, so the story is very bingeable. While my own D&D group is on a short hiatus between modules I am living vicariously through other people’s campaign stories, and this one is worthy of a Peter Jackson-esque epic movie series. Also now that I’ve discovered she has a tumblr I’m almost certainly going to fall deeper into this hole.

Sweet, spicy or savory?: Sweet tooth almost always wins out for me. Savoury, especially the salty aspect of it, does sometimes become a craving but not as often.

Tea or Coffee: Tea. Always tea. All different kinds. I’m on my fifth cup of the day right now. 

As for tagging folks, where’re my mutuals (who I haven’t seen tagged yet) at? Feel free to do this or ignore it, as you please: @pourpasserlamelancholie @royalphantom @himitsumi @killapunk @aprindea @sparkly-things

[goodyeartheshippycat]

How one year in the Starfighter fandom can change a person

Now that Starfighter Secret Santa is over, I can happily post this fun discovery I made. Comparing the way I filled out my forms for the exchange in 2017 when I’d just joined the fandom and started writing again not two or three months before to the way I filled them out in 2018 made me laugh. 

2017 For the question about pairings you would NOT want to create content for, my only answer was in the "Other" box: 

2018 Contrast that with the question from this past year about pairings you WOULD like to create content for: 

I must thus conclude that the Starfighter fandom has helped me become the depraved lunatic i was always meant to be grow as a writer. Thank you all for another lovely exchange, and for coming to my TED Talk.

[goodyeartheshippycat]

Tagging Game

Rules: Answer 21 questions about yourself and tag 21 people whom you want to get to know better :)  

Tagged by both @sparkly-things AND @slstarrycity <3

Nickname/Pet name: Don’t really have one. Whatever my partner has decided to refer to me as in a given span of time, I guess. Common fallbacks for that include “clumsy baby giraffe” and “monster”.

Zodiac: Aries/Snake, though I don’t subscribe to astrology of either kind.

Height: Just shy of 6’ tall (182 cm).

Last Movie: Into the Spider-Verse. Highly recommended!

Last Thing Googled: “Shai Utoh shrine treasure” >> clearly a sign I’ve been doing nothing while sick except playing Breath of the Wild. Because I was having a frustrating time reaching the final treasure chest in that shrine and wanted to know what it had in it so I wasn’t needlessly beating my head against my controller over a shitty boomerang or something. Spoiler alert, it had an ancient core in it so I continued to struggle with the challenge of figuring out how to properly launch Link into the air at the correct height to paraglide onto the ledge containing it. But I succeeded in the end! [insert triumphant emoji here]

Favorite Musician: Single musician rather than group? Probably one of the greats from the jazz era. Count Basie or Duke Ellington or Django Reinhardt or Artie Shaw, perhaps.

Song Stuck in Head: Most recently Gaston’s song, but with the lyrics changed to fit Prince Sidon from BOTW (I fell down a YouTube hole of crack, don’t judge me), some of which I couldn’t remember so I just started making up new ones as I hummed it. I’m most proud of “No one thinks like Sidon / No one winks like Sidon / No one lusts after Hylian twinks like Sidon”. (Okay, you can totally judge me and my complete lack of musical talent).

Other Blogs: Nope, I just shove everything onto this one like the heathen I am. Sorry to anyone who follows me for/knows me from a fandom that I don’t post enough about (looking at you lovelies from the DS9 community – sorry y’all, I still love seeing your content, though).

Do I Get Asks: Usually only if I do an Ask Meme. Which I should do again sometime because they’re fun.

Following: 196. Wow, how did that get so large? I should probably go through and thin that out a bit…

Dream Trip: Travelling across Asia. I’ve never been to that part of the world but would love to go some day when I have enough money. I want to see the cultural sights, the natural sights, and eat lots of delicious street food!

Amount of Sleep: I miss being young and not needing it, but these days I do best with 6-9 hours. And then another hour or two lazing around in bed, if possible XD

Lucky Number: I’m super skeptical and don’t believe in the concept of “luck” per se…. but I’ll go with 38 (the number of my favourite Pokemon, and therefore near and dear to my nostalgic heart).

What I am Wearing: A green and blue plaid cotton house dress from the late ‘60s or ‘70s, a rainbow striped sweater, and black fleece-lined tights (because it’s winter, so fashion must also be at least somewhat practical.

Dream Job: Botanic garden curator. Or mad scientist.

Fave Food: All of them? It’s difficult to pick because I love eating. It’s hard to beat freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies, though. For savoury food, maybe dumplings (though that encompasses so many different types it’s almost cheating…  but I love them all!)

Play Any Instruments: Nope, never really had the talent for that.

Languages: English. Un peu (tres petit peu) de Français.

Fave Songs: Going by how frequently I’ve listened to them over the past little while:

Make Me Feel by Janelle Monae – Probably my song of 2018, and a fabulous video to boot.

Wild West by Lissie – First heard while watching the new season of Twin Peaks, but listened to incessantly while driving over the summer. Anyone who rode in my truck probably heard it at least once.

Thin Blue Flame by Josh Ritter – A rediscovered old favourite. So fucking powerful and it builds from such a quiet, unassuming start.

House by Patrick Wolf – Inspired by Liz’s inclusion of a Patrick Wolf song! I’ve been listening to his stuff for over 10 years now (wow, how time flies!) and love everything from his dark, emo-inspired phase to the happy, upbeat, ‘80s-influenced pop numbers. Putting this song in because the music video is just, so aesthetic.

Random Fact: I’m secretly a bit of a hoarder but I’m also fairly organized—as well as good at using available space and tidying up—so it doesn’t really look like I am.

Describe yourself as aesthetic things: Vintage dresses soaking in a handwash basin, the commingling scents of a glass of scotch and a cup of tea sitting on the side table together, the way a book’s deckled edges feel against your fingers, creamy lace paired with worn leather, the flickering of a neon sign with blackened burn out marks in the corners, that indescribable feeling of standing alone in the forest after the rain, an overflowing box of costume jewellery, the dull sheen of light reflecting off snake scales ready to shed, dirt clinging to the smooth metal spokes of a bicycle wheel.

I thought that last question would be harder, honestly, but once I had one or two, the rest just started to flow. Not sure how accurate they are as descriptors, but read into them what you will. I suppose…

Tagging: As per usual, do it if you’d like to, because I enjoy reading them, but I’m not gonna bother tagging anyone specifically.

[goodyeartheshippycat]

Meme time again!

I was tagged by the always lovely @sparkly-things, and have dragged my feet on doing it for over a week… better late than never, right? XD  

1. Name? – You can call me Goodyear on here ;)

2. Age? – 29 now, though I was still 28 when I was tagged. Does that mean I’m some indeterminate quantum fluctuating age?

3. Height? – Just shy of 6’ (I’m 182 cm for you metric folks).

4. Sign? – I’m a staunch disbeliever in this sort of thing, but Aries, if that means anything to you. And Snake for the Chinese zodiac, just to be complete, I suppose.

5. Religious? – Big ol’ Atheist here. Swear me in on The Origin of Species, please.  

6. Tea or Coffee? – Oh, definitely tea. All kinds of tea. Black, green, white, oolong, puerh, rooibos, herbal. Every once in a while I’ll have a coffee, usually in some dessert-like form, but it’s not really my thing.

7. Music? – Gonna be cliché with Liz and say everything, but I’ll even include country, rap, and death metal. I’ll listen to just about anything, though my favourites that I return to again and again are jazz (the kind you can dance to, please), post-rock/shoegaze, other atmospheric genres without much in the way of lyrics, and whatever pop/indie songs I’m currently digging, which is always changing.  

8. Favourite Movie? – I’m also the kind of person who forgets this the minute I get asked, or can’t decide. I’m not much of a movie person, anyway. Anything Studio Ghibli is good in my books. If I have to choose individual films, let’s go with two wildly different ones.  Amélie and Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. My childhood favourite, hands down, was The Lion King.

9. Employed? – Yup, but looking for work in my field, because I don’t want to be selling dresses forever.

10. Dream job?  – I really feel you on this one, Liz. I’m pretty lost right now in terms of what I want to do, and feel like I’ve fucked up royally and am not really sure where to go from here. If I could be really unrealistic, I’d love to be an independently wealthy gentlewoman scientist/Victorian-era adventurer. But if we’re talking real-world, actual possible jobs in this day, age, and that I might be able to have one day, I’d say working as a curator at a botanic garden. Sadly, positions like that are hard to come by.

11. Favourite game? – Like with movies, I find it hard to remember/choose. Recently, Ghost Trick was a fucking phenomenal game that I really loved. I like the Final Fantasy games. Really, most old school RPGs are fun times for me. I can’t play anything first-person, or with really shaky cameras because I get motion sick easily. I have so much nostalgic love for game series on the PlayStation and Playstation II, as well, like Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, and Sly Cooper, that I played during my formative years. Ditto for Gameboy Colour games like Pokemon Blue, and the various Legend of Zelda games from that time period. 

12. Favourite drink? – Alcoholic? A good single malt scotch whisky, or a gin and tonic. Non-alcoholic is probably covered by the tea or coffee answer!

13. Tattoos? – One. It’s a small one, behind my ear. I’ll give you three guesses ;)

14. Defining Moment? – Apparently @sparkly-things and I are on the same page about a lot of these answers! Probably the biggest defining moment of my adult life—for better or worse—was when, after two medical leaves and a lot of tough decisions, I finally chose to leave my PhD program. I feel very lucky to have had the support of my supervisor, lab mates, family, and partner, which allowed me to publish and turn my research work into a MSc thesis instead, so at least I didn’t leave empty-handed. I know it was the right decision, and I wouldn’t change it even if I could go back, but it’s definitely been (and still continues to be) a struggle to not see myself as a failure. It’s still having reverberations in my life to this day. I feel happier and healthier now, but less fulfilled in some ways; unmoored and not sure of what I should be doing without the purpose that academia gave me. Ugh, I’m just going to stop there before I get any more whiny.

15. Name one dessert you can’t do without – All of them? I have such a sweet tooth—any day that I can have double dessert is a good day, and I love to bake! I think, though, that if I had to choose one, it would have to be really good homemade chocolate chip cookies. There’s just something so comforting about them that simply can’t be beat. 

16. Name one thing you can’t do without – Something to read. Doesn’t matter if it’s an article, a good book, a short story, poetry, an essay, fanfic, or a text-based RP, I’ve always loved reading. If I’m in a place personally where I can’t read, I’m in a very bad place indeed.

17. Name one person you can’t be without – I’m going to be that disgusting half of a codependent couple who says my partner. He’s my biggest support, my cheerleader, my friend, and I can’t really imagine life without him at this point. I mean, I can, but I can’t imagine being nearly as happy. I’m not even going to mince words about it: I probably wouldn’t be here to write this if it weren’t for him.

18. Name one fictional character you love – Ugh, don’t make me choose! Right at this moment, probably due to the latest page update, and the fic I’m currently writing, and the fic I’m currently reading, I’m going to say Ethos from Starfighter. He’s so precious. #Protect Ethos 2k18

19. Name one thing you want to do – Find something that drives me again, in my professional life. It’s been too long since I felt passion about what I spend my time doing while (barely) earning a living. I don’t need a lot of money, but I would love to love what I do again. I miss that something terrible.

20. Tagging – My usual routine. I’d love to hear what any of you lovely folks have to say about these questions, but I’m not going to tag anyone specifically. Do it if you want to! I’m totally a sucker for learning these sorts of things about people; it just satisfies a weird curiosity for me. I promise I’m not a stalker…

[goodyeartheshippycat]

More memes, more memes!

I was tagged by @sparkly-things who is a sweetheart to always tag me in these even though I end up filling them out, like, weeks later. 

Rules: Bold the statements that apply to you, italicize your aspirations, and tag nine people!

I tag: Nobody, because I’m a rebel. My usual suggestion is to do it if you want to, because I’d be interested to see it. 

AIR I have small hands • I love the night sky • I watch small animals and birds when I pass them by • I drink herbal tea • I wake to see dawn • The smell of dust is comforting • I’m valued for being wise • I prefer books to music • I meditate • I find joy in learning new truths from the world around me

FIRE I don’t have straight hair • I like to wear ripped jeans and overalls • I play an organized sport • I love dogs • I am not afraid of adventure • I love to talk to strangers • I always try new foods • I enjoy road trips • Summer is my favorite season • My radio is always playing

WATER I wear bracelets on my wrists • I love the bustle of the city • I have more than one set of piercings • I read poetry • I love the sound of a thunderstorm • I want to travel the world • I go to sleep past midnight most days • I love dimly lit diners and fluorescent signs • I rewatch kids’ shows out of nostalgia • I see emotions in colors, not words

EARTH I wear glasses • I enjoy doing the laundry • I am a vegetarian or vegan • I have an excellent sense of time • My humor is very cheerful • I am a valued advisor to my friends • I believe in true love • I love the chill of mountain air • I’m always listening to music • I am highly trusted by the people in my life

AETHER I go without makeup in my daily life • I make my own artwork • I keep on track of my tasks and time • I always know true north • I see beauty in everything • I always smell flowers • I smile at everyone I pass by • I always fear history repeating itself • I have recovered from a mental disorder • I can love unconditionally

[goodyeartheshippycat]

More about me...

tagged by: The lovely @sparkly-things!

tagging: If you wanna do it, do it. I’m too lazy right now to tag y’all. 

what should we call you: Goodyear works for here. If you know me elsewhere, you know what to call me there. If you want to know me better, send a message :) 

birthday: April 10th

gender: Genderfluid cis woman. If you want more on what exactly that means, feel free to ask! I’m very open about talking queer stuff, even with total strangers. 

orientation: Queer is the word I usually go with, because it feels the most accurate. For sake of simplicity or getting cis het folks to understand, I’ll sometimes use bisexual or pansexual. 

age: 28 (omg @sparkly-things, we’re apparently the same age!)

languages you can at least somehow communicate in: English is my first language. French I still have some proficiency in for reading or listening to people, but can’t really make more than simple statements when speaking myself. One day I’d like to get back into it a bit and see if I can’t become conversational. 

favorite cocktail/drink: Single malt Scotch, neat. Side of room temp water. Preferably a really peaty Islay whisky. I also adore gin and tonics, especially in summer. 

favorite candy: Gummy candies! I really like chewy things. I may or may not have spent $30+ on gourmet gummy candies yesterday, just because I could... I also love dark chocolate. 

favorite pizza: Hawaiian. Yes, I’m one of those people. 

favorite meal: I’m going to have to be boring and just say the thickest, juiciest steak I can get my hands on, just barely on the medium-rare side of rare. If it’s still slightly cool in the very middle, you got it perfect. Grilled, and finished with my father’s secret steak sauce. 

best memory: How on earth am I supposed to rank so many different experiences against each other? How about a random one: watching the sun set from the roof of the Duomo in Florence? That will always stay with me. Probably the best trip of my life. 

best friend: On tumblr, that would have to be @aprindea. IRL, I have many close friends who I value too much to choose between, including her :) 

best relative: Can I say my cats? No? Then my mom, I guess. Or maybe my grandma, because we’re so very different, but she’s a totally badass old lady. 

best pet: All of them? Nah, I can totally pick favourites between the cats. Sumi (my black cat) reigns supreme right now, of the two of them. But also my snake Hephaestus. Because I actually get to live with him, and he’s always so entertaining.  

best celebrity: Ummmmm..... Samantha Bee or John Oliver. I love their shows. Or Robert Downey Jr. because he’s fucking hilarious. Especially when written by copperbadge -- if you’ve never read RDJ Advises, you’re welcome. Enjoy wasting your day on that glorious tag. 

one random fact about you: I never quite reached 6 feet tall (still a quarter inch shy of it) and it kind of haunts me. When I was little, I dreamed of being the tallest woman in the world.

one random fact about your day: I got a raise today! Huzzah! Slightly less poor! 

one random fact about your muse: I haven’t RPed in a long time, so N/A. 

one random fact about your job/school: The shop dog, Stanley, is the sweetest dog you’ll ever meet. Also, he’s totally gay <3 

one random fact you wish was a fact but it isn’t: Then....it’s not a fact. It’s a factoid. There’s a difference. (The more you know!) 

[goodyeartheshippycat]

15 questions/15 mutuals

Tagged by: the wonderful @slstarrycity

Are you named after someone?: Nope. My parents picked my name from a list of popular girls names for 1989. My middle name, however, is that of my great grandmother. 

When was the last time you cried?: Like full-on cried? I think that would be when my beloved family cat died this summer. If you count just tearing up a little, probably watching cat videos on YouTube about rescued kittens or something. 9/10 times if something can make me shed tears, it has to do with cats. All of my empathy is belong to cats.

Do you have kids?: Hell no.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?: Do other people not do this?

What’s the first thing you notice about people?: Their style, fo sho. I love clothes and dressing up in interesting combinations, and definitely appreciate when people have a unique sense of style, or a really defined “look”. And yes, I will judge people if they’re wearing, say, UGG boots. Or some other ugly-but-trendy-with-the-basic-bitches thing. Ugly fashion can work as a statement, but it has to be interesting.

What’s your eye colour?: Deep hazel.

Scary Movies or Happy Endings?: Happy endings! I’m not a horror movie person.

Any special talents?: I can dance lindy hop, charleston, balboa, blues, and some collegiate shag. I can learn a solo vernacular jazz routine if I practice, but tap dancing is sadly out due to my weak ankles and lack of the fine coordination required.

Where were you born?: Toronto, Canada.

What are your hobbies?: Cooking/baking, swing dancing, reading, writing gay ass fanfiction, hiking, playing video games and board games, watching sci fi shows, various crafty endeavours such as costuming (though not too often any more), knitting, jewelry making, etc.

Do you have any pets?: My lovely corn snake, Hephaestus. He is a good snek.

How tall are you?: A quarter inch shy of 6 feet tall (182 cm) and forever salty that I didn’t hit it.

What sports do you play/have you played?: Soccer, or to the world outside of North America, football. I played a lot when going through school, and recently got back into it by occasionally subbing for a friend’s team. We’re taking a break right now but will be signed up for the next intramural league season.

Favourite subject at school?: Not in school any more, but it was biology, which is why I got my BSc and MSc in it. But I liked most subjects in school/learning in general, provided the teachers were all right.

Dream job?: Being an independently wealthy Victorian gentlewoman scientist who travels the world studying natural wonders and accumulating items for my extensive curiosity cabinet… more realistically, curator of a botanic garden would be amazing.

Tagging: As per usual, anyone who wants to do it, consider yourselves tagged!

[goodyeartheshippycat]

7 & 45 for SF fics? :D

More belated replies to the fanfic writer ask meme! Yikes, this one got loooooong… Asks are still open if anyone else wants to wait 2+ weeks for a reply XD

7.  early influences on your writing

Oh man, this question is kind of tough because it’s vague.Like, are we talking about early influences on my pre-fanfic writing, or justmy recent fanfic writing? How about a history of Goodyear as a writer? Fuck it, have a goddamn autobiography, because oversharing is one of my talents. 

Myearlier creative writing works (let’s say middle-school era, like between the agesof 11 and 13) that were written just for me, and not for a school assignment,were basically Tolkien rip-off fantasy stories. I was obsessed with Tolkienafter reading The Hobbit and LOTR for the first time when I was 9 years old,and I definitely read a lot of derivative YA and pulp fantasy novels aroundthen. One that stands out in my memory besides Tolkien is Whisperingsof Magic by Karleen Bradford. I remember adoring that book and being sosucked in that I read it twice in a row. No clue if it holds up, though, as Ihaven’t read it since!

The longest story I wrote around this time (which woulddefinitely have been novella length) also jammed in some sci-fi elements,because I was definitely reading Bradbury and other classic sci-fi storiesaround then. I was also reading a lot of popular theoretical physics books bythe likes of Hawking and Greene at the time, so a lot of handwavey science-wankgot in there, despite it being a pretty typical pulp fantasy in most otherways. I loved fantasy and sci-fi because they were wonderful escapes from myfirst multi-year bout of major depression. 

When the LOTR movies started comingout, I discovered fanfiction for the first time. That was like, one of the defining media experiences of my young life. Because who DIDN’T want someLegolas/Aragorn or Sam/Frodo after watching those? That was also when Idiscovered the joys of multishipping. The more pairs the better! But I was justreading it, not writing it, at the time. This was also when I started gettinginto webcomics, which were a consistent part of my reading life from this pointon, though I never became part of the communities surrounding them.

Entering high school, I sort of read at random from a fewdifferent fandoms here and there, but never consistently got into one. Iremember loving a massive, ridiculous, surreal crossover fic involvingcharacters from at least 30 different source materials, written by a friend ofa friend who I thought was the coolest girl I’d ever met. In retrospect, thisis when I should have figured out for certain that I was queer, but I was avery oblivious child and continued to not realize for some years more. 

I gotkind of sucked into the weird world of RPF Canadian political slash fictionthanks to LiveJournal (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha) and wrote a few short piecesthere, including one poem(!). I also wrote one piece that was essentially anoff-screen smutty (would be ‘T’ rated on AO3) continuation of a fictionalized encounterbetween two politicians as written by a political columnist in one of the localpapers, who is also a published suspense novelist. AND SENT IT TO HIM. OmggggggggI die just remembering that. So embarrassing! He was surprisingly chill aboutbeing sent political slash fic by a dumbass teenager and sent back a nice emailsaying I should keep working on my writing, and shilling his soon-to-be-publishedbook. In the end, though, that community was so small and inactive that itdied.

Around the same time, however, I got deeply invested in thesteampunk community, and my creative writing was almost entirely devoted toforum-based roleplaying and collaborative story writing about OCs. While itstarted with typical steampunk settings, I became part of a community full ofexcellent writers who put out a regular online magazine, to which Ioccasionally contributed, though only in non-fiction essays. We dived into dieselpunk and pulp settings, too, andeven into space opera/sci-fi settings that drew on those subgenres as astarting point. Memorable RP settings included one inspired by the Bioshockseries of games, and one that was kind of like a pulp crossover with Star Trek and Mass Effect. This continued into my undergrad years, though by the time I hit gradschool I didn’t have the time or energy to devote to it any more.

In my young adulthood (ages 18 to 21 or so), besides RPs, Imostly wrote autobiographical, pretentiously “artsy”, smutty anecdotes. Iposted them to an anonymous LiveJournal, separate from the main one that Istill used for keeping up with a few friends who continued to use the website. Iwas following a few blogs that had similar themes, and were very much moderntakes on writing like de Sade, but primarily written by awesome, empoweredwomen. The less-explicit blogs of three friends/acquaintances in particularwere also big influences, including the girl mentioned previously who wrote thecrossover, a pansexual poly girl I’m still friends with today, and someone whoat the time was one of the coolest people I’d ever met, who has since come outand transitioned as a trans dude. This was when I was finally just starting torealize I might be queer, and was a way I had started exploring that as well asmy gender identity, which had been confusing and a source of stress previously.One such essay actually won me a month-long subscription to a very niche indie pornsite (niiiiiiiiice!).

Late undergrad and into grad school, I got into the BBCSherlock fandom and the Avengers/MCU fandom and read a lot from those, as wellas stalking tumblrs for the first time. Some of the amazing writers from thesefandoms would probably count as the major early influences on my fanfic writing,specifically. But while I was reading a lot of fic at that time (more than everbefore), I was not writing any, even though I had ideas for some. By secondyear grad school, my second (ongoing) bout of depression had begun, andwriting for school was such a source of stress that I couldn’t imagine doing itfor fun. Then in the years I took medical leave, I was writing blog and websitecopy and social media posts to pay the rent, so I had no creative juice leftfor personal writing. I tried to RP in a few new communities I’d joined forthings like online games, but nothing stuck and I never found another groupthat was such a good fit, creatively, as the steampunk/dieselpunk forum I’dbeen part of for many years.

It was only once I had quit the virtualassistant/copywriter line of work about two years ago, now, that I started toget the itch to write again—and for fun, no less! That also happened to be whenI finally played Starfighter: Eclipse, and got inspired to write a continuationfic for the Deimos ending. Then I discovered the SF community and began readinga bunch of the fic based on the comic itself, which I had been reading for manyyears at that point (since early Chapter 2) but had never looked into the ficfor, which was kind of my MO with all the webcomics I read over the years. Mydevelopment as a fic writer since then has definitely been influenced by allthe awesome writers in the fandom, and especially everyone who throws aroundideas on the Discord. I don’t think I ever would have continued writing as muchas I did if it weren’t for all you lovely folks! Now that I have rambled on forway too long and been way too TMI for a question thatliterally could have been answered with a list of like, four or five authors, I’llmove on…

45. sharethe synopsis of a story you work on that you haven’t published yet

I have so many WIPs in my drafts folder in varying levelsof completion (from bullet point outlines to nearly complete first drafts andeverything in between) but I’ll share one that is probably of interest toanyone who has read The Thistleand The Rose, a.k.a. Scottish AU, a.k.a. Space Gays in Kilts: The Fic. It’sa oneshot set in the same storyline but before the main fic, and focuses on thePraxmos relationship that is an established, secondary pairing there.Theworking title is “Where the Wildflowers Grow”, as a callback to the title ofthe main work, and a nod to a repeated theme I use for Deimos across other fics, thoughI will probably alter that slightly.

The story is a series of snapshots of their relationshipthrough its most tumultuous period. It begins with a tough moment in Alec’slife that Marcus worries may be the end of things between them, covers theirengagement, and goes through when they visit Marcus’ family to announce thenews of their upcoming wedding. It will all be from Marcus’ POV, because Ireally want to capture more of what I’ve only glossed over in the main storyfrom Aidan’s and Jules’ POVs. I wanted to dive more into the deep love betweenMarcus and Alec that I’ve tried to do justice to in their appearances in themain fic, but don’t feel I’ve quite captured.

I have so much backstory for a bunch of these charactersthat I wish I could more easily add to the main fic. However, I feel it wouldlose focus or get too awkward in the writing to try and tell all those stories.I already err too far into “too much detail” land, wanting to put every idea Ihave for them into the main work. Shoehorning it all in would just destroy thealready somewhat clunky pacing, I think. This spinoff fic is my way to get someof that out in a format that makes more sense and is a better experience forthe reader.