#mostly pointless text posts

[bioticbooty]

in absolute spite of the horrors I will be celebrating my birthday today because I'm queer as hell, living my best trans life, still here, and ain't nothing gonna knock me down

[bioticbooty]

in ten days i'll undergo major surgery and finally be free of my reproductive tumors (one of which is comically large, closely resembling a ten inch kidney bean)

and in eleven days, i plan on starting my recovery by rereading all of my favorite fanfics. @swaps55 and @shadesofmauve you're first on my list, please consider this a threat

i'm also taking recommendations for your favorite shenko fics. i need it for recovery or i won't heal

[bioticbooty]

shit day in a shit week but at least i'm gay and have some cool as hell rocks

[bioticbooty]

15 questions for 15 friends

Tagged by @pigeontheoneandonly!

ARE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?: My birth name, no. My coming out as they gayest fucker without a gender you've ever met, yes, but oddly, after myself??? Because I decided to write a self-insert (SaOS) and writing my birth name felt WRONG (for reasons I didn't understand at the time) so I made a new name that felt "right," examined those feelings over the course of a decade, and when it came time to change my name, I already had one thanks to my weird Mass Effect-loving, fanfiction-writing, stumbling-into-an-epiphany-yet-completely-missing-it self. In other words, I named myself before I knew who I was.

WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?: Saturday, April 6, between 7:30 pm and 9:15 pm, watching Star Trek: Discovery Season 5, episodes 1 and 2

DON'T LOOK AT ME

DO YOU HAVE KIDS?: I have zero offspring and sometimes I feel a way about it and sometimes I don't.

WHAT SPORTS DO YOU PLAY/HAVE YOU PLAYED?: Track. And I am also going to include marching band because we walked for MILES with HEAVY INSTRUMENTS wearing SHITTY SHOES THAT ARE DEFINITELY NOT MADE FOR HIKING and WOOL UNIFORMS in the fucking HEAT (and also in the cold, in which case we were stuffing little heat buddies into the toes of our shoes).

I do not play a sport now. But I do go on little mental health walks and occasionally hike a volcano.

DO YOU USE SARCASM?: Not once in my entire life.

WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?: How they look at other people. Which is such an incredibly autistic thing, but I fucking studied the shit out of how other people communicated with and looked at other people around them in an attempt to understand it myself because I was always missing these cues that everyone else acted as if they were immediately obvious to the point they didn't need to be said. Communication became one of my special interests as a way to understand and survive in social situations.

WHAT'S YOUR EYE COLOUR?: Hazel. When I was 17 and on a picnic with a friend I was incredibly gay for (but who was tragically straight), she gazed into my eyes as the sun sparkled around us and said my eyes looked like sunflowers in a meadow.

Naturally, I fucking love sunflowers.

SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?: Happy endings. Both are good, and scary movies can have happy endings too, but I like soft and kind stories more where people don't have to suffer in order to experience or earn joy.

ANY TALENTS?: Writing (though writing that makes me feel an imposter), cooking, building, and the ability to stand in a room and spatial reason the shit out of it without moving a muscle to come up with the perfect layout.

WHERE WERE YOU BORN?: Portland, OR

WHAT ARE YOUR HOBBIES?: Writing, reading, painting, home improvement, gardening, photography, rock-hounding, traveling, being a professional asshole.

DO YOU HAVE ANY PETS?: Three cats!

HOW TALL ARE YOU?: 5'6"

FAVOURITE SUBJECT IN SCHOOL?: I loved history and literature the most at the time.

DREAM JOB?: I don't know. This is a complicated question. I don't like that jobs are tied to our ability to thrive. I like doing a lot of different things, and most of those things at the rate I like to do them are not sustainable for paying my bills. It's hard to divorce "dream job" from the hellscape that is living under late-stage capitalism, where everything we do is monetized and categorized according to how productive we are. In which case, the job I have now as a labor organizer, actively combatting this system, is my dream job. But I wish I didn't have to do it and I wish it didn't exist.

No pressure tags: @cr-noble-writes, @pushingsian, @therev28, @eletaniia, @galtori, @mrsd-writes, @rotschopf-thedrow, @swaps55, and anyone else who feels so inclined

[bioticbooty]

20 Fanfic Questions

Tagged by @swaps55. Thank you!

Tagging @cr-noble-writes, @theoriginalladya, @ad-astra13 and anyone else who feels so inclined!

How many works do you have on AO3?

9

2. What's your total AO3 words count?

233,7802

This doesn't include WIP wordcounts which are so much higher

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mass Effect primarily. A little Dragon Age from time to time (mostly one shots). I have a Fable III WIP and Stargate Atlantis fic that's only on ffnet (and I refuse to go back to ffnet it's become a trash fire).

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Crosshairs - Mass Effect 1 slow burn shenko. (This version will be abandoned as I've been doing The Great Rewrite because the characters and my Shepard have evolved over the years, but I like having the old version up for comparison.)

Lightning - Mass Effect 1 fshenko smut with a wild card Shepard who would blow up a small moon if she was asked to fix a microwave

No Strings Attached - Pre-Mass Effect 1 fsehnko fluff and smut, which started as smutty prompt (what if Kaidan and Shepard had a one night stand on shore leave before ME1) and turned into this Whole Big Thing

Brace for Impact - Mass Effect 3 AU where Olivia Shepard is not an Alliance Marine because Mindoir was never raided so she never lost her family. And yet, fshenko because love always finds a way.

Sine Qua Non - Mass Effect/Pacific Rim crossover with fshenko, Kaidan and Shepard have a service history and then end up on the same Jaegar class fighter in the drift together.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yes! Sometimes it takes a while, but I always respond to everyone before I post a new chapter because I want everyone who took the time to write me something that I really appreciate their words!! I also do it because I miss the old days of fandom community where comments flew around left and right, and I want to encourage that in my own little corner as best I can.

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Color the Sky - The Blitz, Shepard is on shore leave with her partner when the slavers attack. This is the story that cements the belief that she's better off alone because the people who get close to her die.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I don't think anyone is happier in a finished fic of mine than Alexis Shepard and Kaidan in No Strings Attached when the finally find each other again after having pined after the other for literal years.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Only once, and it was transphobic garbage. "It's clunky and bad for reading to use these wierd fake pronouns introduced to make people feel better about themselves." I told them no one was holding a gun to their head forcing them to read the story and then locked the comment thread, because comment section battles with people who are already coming at it from a place of not actually wanting to understand is a waste of my time.

9. Do you write smut. If so what kind?

Sometimes, not that often anymore, and part of that is I can never just write smut without their being fluff and emotions and connection (see above: No Strings Attached turning into a 20k+ fic for a one night stand smut prompt). Part of this is because I am ace as fuck and the desire to have sex with people every second of the day because they're hot or whatever is just so utterly foreign to me. It has to feel right in the story. And if I'm gonna write just a smut story, you can bet there are thousands of words of background lore I wrote to make the smut happen on the page.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Very few. I think the only published one is the Mass Effect/Pacific Rim crossover. So by default, that one!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I am aware of.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

None translated.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Once, with some friends over a decade ago (on ffnet). It was fun but also stressful, and I probably won't do it again. It really has to be the right people, and this group I did that project with was a good group and also very kind and generous in giving over the reigns to each other. But I've also grown more stubborn as I've gotten older. It can work, but unlikely I'll ever do it again.

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

Shepard and Kaidan, to the surprise of no one.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

I would like to finish Never Surrender, my Stargate Atlantis WIP that is partially published. Part of that will involve migrating it over to AO3. I'm so enmeshed in Mass Effect and The Great Rewrite that I don't know that I have time for that WIP right now.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue and combat.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Bridging scenes together. I get way too in my head about it, especially when characters are just sitting in silence for a moment.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I would love to do this and maybe could do it in a rusty, limited capacity with French, but it has been ages since I've spoken it in any useful capacity.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Star Trek Voyager. I've long since lost this story, but it was writing a bisexual and (though I didn't have the words for it at the time) asexual Seven of Nine.

Listen, I don't wanna say I was prophetic but have you watched Picard? Case settled.

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

Choosing is hard!!!! Also I have so much unfinished, unpublished stuff that is my favorite but sticking to things that are published out there on AO3, it would be No Strings Attached. Shepard and Kaidan find unexpected happiness, then pine for a couple years because they were trying to pretend they weren't in love, and then the find each other again on the Normandy. They're nerdy dorks. They get to be the lighter versions of themselves and let go of expectations for a few days with each other and be a little reckless (and deeply, unapologetically romantic).

I also wrote that story in like 6 days while high off my ass on cold and flu medicine with a raging fever of like 102.

[bioticbooty]

Prepare yourself for "ah, they're an old" words. Maybe wisdomy words, maybe just words spun together to sound wise. Maybe it'll just be a goddamn story with some musings of a moral or whatever.

Anyway.

I got into a real bad bicycle crash last week, the day before valentine's day. I'm pretty sure the only reason I'm conscious, if not alive, is because I was wearing a bike helmet. What's really ironically funny to me is that I had read this article over the weekend before I got wrecked about how we should reconsider bike helmet laws and whether or not they actually help cyclists stay safe.

I mean, it didn't keep me safe but it certainly kept me alive. I waffle on whether we should legislate that for adults because people are always gonna do what they're gonna do and cops are all assholes, and I don't want to contribute to a grotesque system with more non-violent "crimes". But at the end of the day, if your head can meet pavement at high velocity such as I did last week, a helmet will help ensure you have a higher probability of being conscious for your trip to the ER. So that's your choice to make.

But I'm sure fucking glad I was wearing mine. I hit the ground so hard my head bounced, not that I remember it, but the lovely nurse who was immediately at my side told me it bounced and I believe her. (side note: every, and I mean *every*, major accident I've had the last ten years (which is also the vast majority I've had my entire life) there has always been a nurse nearby who was immediately at my side helping me. And good, kind people who drove me to a hospital if I needed it instead of me having to go in an ambulance. I don't know what kind of luck this is but I'm here for it.) Even with my helmet I fractured the left side of my face that wasn't protected by helmet, got the shiniest black eye I've ever had in my entire life, stunned a nerve in my face so bad I can't feel the entire left side of it, suffered a concussion, and broke my clavicle. Plus a few scrapes elsewhere.

I'm okay, all things considered. I've never had a concussion before and experiencing concussion fatigue, which is more like my brain immediately enters low power mode forcing me to nap or else (and I mean or else - the nap isn't a choice), is not an experience I ever really wanted to have. I had two conversations that lasted about 3 hours combined the other day and I had to take a two hour nap just to eat dinner. And tomorrow I'm getting surgery to "unionize my clavicle" which I've had more than a few chuckles over, considering my profession.

So. Wear your helmet. Even if you're careful. Even if your route is relatively car free. You never know what obstacles might exist. All it takes is one crash. Your helmet might be the reason you walk away, like me, after crashing at cruising speed.

[bioticbooty]

I can listen to one song on repeat for hours on end, without issue or annoyance, because that one song is perfect for whatever activity I am trying to do or focus I need

Just my fucking luck that I rarely know what that one song is

[bioticbooty]

Nine people you want to get to know better

Tagged by @pushingsian!

Last Song: Wasting My Young Years by London Grammar

Currently Watching: Not currently, but just finished watching Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Season 2, Episode 1!!) (Listen I am very excited about this show and have a lot of feelings about Star Trek in general.)

Currently Reading: For fiction, I'm between books right now. In the last couple weeks, I've finished a reread of Pride & Prejudice as well as Record of a Spaceborn Few. For non-fiction, I've been reading Rules to Win By Abby Lawlor and Jane McAlevey and Eruption by Steve Olson (a reread).

Current Obsession: Outside the incredibly obvious and perpetual constant of Mass Effect... I have gotten way into geology and rockhounding the last two years. These were kind of born on the other near constant obsession of mine which is volcanoes. I have several rock display areas in my home now and even build a small bookshelf to display even more rocks.

Tagging, in no particular order, @thettempest, @dgcatanisiri, @absolutebearings, @cr-noble-main, @inquisitorhotpants, @pigeontheoneandonly, @polarlys, @eternalshiva, and @therev28 (but also no pressure!)