marmolita

I need to find myself some more user icons. I love Noctis but I don't wanna use him for every single post, and the only other ones I have on here are old Captain America icons because that's what I was into when I created this account. Maybe Squall? I could go for a closeup of his accessories, hmm.

My kids currently have their friend over for a sleepover and are doing their favorite activity, Warrior Cats roleplay. My two kids tend to be kind of loud when they're playing and are excited but oh my god adding another kid in is like an exponential increase in noise level. At times I definitely wish we had an older house that didn't have the "open floor plan" that we have downstairs, because being able to shut the kids into a room to play and let the rest of the house be quieter sure would be nice sometimes... (Also, the fact that I can't consume any media that's not kid-appropriate until they're in bed, other than books, because you can hear everything from everywhere in our house.)

On that topic, I'm still working on reading Warrior Cats but after like 30-odd books I'm pretty tired of it. I thought I'd give just one more arc a try and see, but this one isn't great so far. I have a couple other books that were recommended to me and are actually aimed at adults (or at least teenagers) waiting for me to read them that I grabbed from the library. It's fascinating to me when someone recommends me a book and I pull up the library website and there are 32 people waiting for 11 copies of the ebook, but the actual physical book is just sitting there on the shelf where I can walk up and grab it.

Aside from that, I've been playing FFXV. Kid 1 has decided she wants to play it too, so she has also started it (she also has a FFVIII game going). I have given her some spoilers about the ending because my kids can handle upsetting content much better when they know it's coming, but we'll see how this goes. In my game, I just got to Lestallum and went on the "date" with Iris. Every time I play I think again how much I love Noctis, and what a great job his voice actor did. I have the "beeeeeeeeeeeeeans" quest active right now too and I love how we get so many different things from Noctis, like, the kind of cocky shit he says during battle sequences, the softness when he's helping out a cat or taking on a quest just to be a nice guy, the way he complains about beans but still takes the quest anyway. What a great character!! He's just such a good guy!!!

On that note I've been rereading my own FFXV fic, some of which I have pretty much entirely forgotten writing. Good thing I wrote so much of it, I guess? It's kind of nice to revisit enough years later that it feels like I'm reading a fic that someone custom wrote for me to be specifically relevant to my interests. I'm also noticing some grammatical patterns that I used way too much which kind of suck, but hey, can't win 'em all.

I also joined a couple of FFVIII discord servers. I'd like to write some more Seifer/Squall fic and I only need one more to fill my bingo card, but I'm having trouble with coming up with ideas. I'm thinking about doing one where Seifer maybe decides to defect from Ultimecia between the parade and D-district and become like a double agent or something, but I don't actually want to go all the way through with it and write the entire alternate universe it would require. I still wanna do the super sketchy one about Seifer and Edea too but that one won't fill my bingo card.

My fic for enemies to lovers exchange is done but I'm still a little worried that the sex isn't sexy enough. It's got a specific kink in it that I put a bunch of in, but then I didn't really like . . . go all the way with it, you know? It's like the "lite" version of the kink I suppose. I'm not really sure what to do about that though. I wanted to write some treats too for my recipient since the ship and tags we matched on are good, but again, I can't come up with any ideas. Maybe I should just open up for prompts on tumblr or something? That's been useful for me in the past.

I'm also considering doing kinktober. I had a good time the one time I did it for FFXV and wrote a shitton of fic for it, and I'm thinking I could do it again and be open to prompts for XV or VIII or something. On the other hand I don't want it to be too high-pressure? idk idk, I'm not really active enough on tumblr in either fandom to have a bunch of followers who are gonna send me prompts.

Hi dreamwidth, it's been a while because I am terrible at keeping up with literally anything if it's not the thing I'm immediately hyperfixated on. Which is to say, my fandom right now is hockey and anything else jockeying for attention with it is unlikely to win for a few months. My interest has expanded out past just Tyler Seguin (though he's still my #1 hottie) and now I'm following the Stars, Avalanche, AND Hurricanes, so.

In other news, I should do some kind of holiday exchange roundup but I'm lazy af and even though I have literally nothing else I need to be doing right now I don't feel like it. Suffice to say that someone wrote me orig fic for consent issues exchange, I somehow received 3 gifts for yuletide even though I defaulted and have never gotten more than one in the past (and two of them were for MS Office anthropomorfic!), and I got two for hockey holidays! So I guess I scored there. I wrote an enemies to lovers soulmark fic for hockey hols that's Crosby/Giroux. Here is the orig fic I wrote for consent issues (heed the warnings)! Female Witch/Male Werewolf who owes her a life debt.

I've got a handful of hockey fics published at this point and more in the works and I'm currently stuck on all of them because I got thrown by Dougie Hamilton breaking his leg and now all I want is Dougie/Svech hurt/comfort despite never having cared about hurt/comfort before in my life (except for like, hurt/no comfort). And I wrote knotting, for the first time ever, so there's that. I don't know if it's the nature of the fandoms or if it's just like as I get older I no longer give a shit about, like, anything.

I really want to write a fic about Sebastian Aho being magic but I haven't figured out what exactly it will be yet. I've also got a Tyler/everyone omegaverse pwp half written that needs some attention. And, I had started a Dougie/Svech five times but idk what to do now that Dougie broke his leg, hmm.

Speaking of different fandoms changing the bar for me on the will write/won't write and trope list, there's also definitely an aspect in hockey fandom I'm finding about the threshold for what constitutes a hot guy. There are legit hot guys, like Tyler Seguin. Then there are guys who are kinda good-looking and also awesome at hockey, which makes them hot. Then there are guys who are okay-looking but awesome at hockey and/or have attractive personalities, so they're like, hockey-hot. Of course as always there is the category of "hot from the neck down" which probably applies to almost everyone in the NHL tbh because they gotta be pretty ripped to play professional hockey.

Okay that's enough rambling for now I think. Now to convince myself to do something useful today since I have the house to myself for a while.

Before I go off for the rest of this post about hockey RPF, let me just provide you a link first to my remix fic!

scoop (the twenty thousand followers remix), Yuri on Ice, outsider POV of Victor/Yuuri. This was a remix of Skin by dance_across. I had a lot of fun writing it!

One more note before the rest of this post devolves into nonsense -- I got an ask about whether or not I'm going to run the FFXV Holiday Gift Exchange this year and I don't know what to do with it. I'm not particularly motivated to do it at the moment, and last year it got to 50 participants and was a LOT of work? I feel like to cut down on the amount of work would require either particularly engaged co-mods or changing the sign-up form in some way to simplify things, but I'm not sure how to do that. I don't like getting stressed out about fic exchanges during the holidays and last year it was kind of overwhelming, mostly because people cannot follow directions. And, to be honest, I think I am moving on from FFXV, and even if I wasn't modding it I don't know that I'd even participate. So I'm not really sure what to do. I feel kind of obligated to do it? But I also didn't plan on doing it, so. What to do? I'm open to advice. I also feel kind of bad about moving on from FFXV, but honestly TWO WHOLE YEARS in a single fandom is a crazy long time for me.

Okay, moving on, now I will proceed to blab about hockey rpf for the rest of this post.

( the blabbing about hockey rpf )

Yoooooo been a while, dreamwidth! I have a personal irl thing I kind of want to talk about here, but I also kind of don't know all the people who follow me here all that well (if I were to lock the post I mean), and I'm torn about whether I should post it on my irl dw account where I actually know the people or here where it's strangers because it is a topic that can be highly contentious and I don't want people to judge me or yell at me? Man idek. Honestly I've talked to enough people one on one about it that it probably doesn't bear repeating.

So let's talk about something else! That something else is blaming dustofwarfare for getting me into hockey fic, though she has not succeeded at getting me into actual hockey. Just fictional hockey, or fanfictional hockey, as the case may be. So on that topic, I have been reading both a bunch of m/m hockey romance novels (the first romance novels I've read since I was a teenager and guess what, I love them), and a bunch of hockey rpf when I ran out of romance novels. I find this genre fascinating because the last few fandoms I was in involved a lot of woobie characters? Which is to say, the characters were perhaps not woobies in canon, but fandom does a lot of woobificiation, and that tends to bring along with it feminization? And after spending so long in FFXV and reading god knows how many fics where Prompto or Noctis is just.....way more feminine than he is in canon, it was a revelation to read some hockey fic which is just full of masculinity in a way that other fandoms are not. The tropes are different too! Especially the tropes are different to go along with the higher masculinity level.

I realize this is kind of problematic to talk about in the first place because it's not like having emotions and crying a lot make a dude less a dude. And it's not like sports aren't incredibly full of toxic masculinity. But I enjoy reading about traditionally masculine guys falling in love, whether it's with women or with each other, and when it's with other traditionally masculine guys it gets really interesting. It's like, Brokeback Mountain kind of drama or something, idk. What I enjoy is that there are a whole lot of fics where the guys are falling in love with each other but one or both of them don't realize it because they're so programmed to think that that's not what's happening that it doesn't even occur to them. There's also a lot of "I thought you were straight and therefore not interested," and there's a lot of "I thought *I* was straight," and "oh bisexuality is a thing wow," and "everyone else thought we were dating but we didn't realize that we're basically married since we live together and sleep in the same bed and touch each other all the time because we never actually kissed, hey maybe we should do that."

And it's not to say that I want to read a ton of coming out fic or fic about homophobia, because I do honestly love fanfiction worlds where everyone is assumed to be bisexual until proven otherwise, but it does sometimes bring drama that's kind of like when I got into Stargate Atlantis fandom and discovered basically an entire subgenre of fic about Don't Ask Don't Tell. So yeah, I don't know, I've read a fuckton of hockey fic lately, and it's all been really good. It's also all really long? Like is 10k words the minimum length you're allowed to write for hockey rpf or something?

The only problem with it is that I've been curious enough to look up some of these guys IRL and alas, they are not nearly as hot as fanfiction would lead one to believe (okay, a couple of them are kinda hot, but largely they are Not). Also some of them appear to be total douchebags IRL and I don't really want to read fic about a guy who is actually not a very nice person IRL? Also now google thinks I care about hockey and keeps sending me notifications and ads about hockey.

ALL OF THIS TO SAY hello, I have written a hockey fanfic, but it isn't hockey rpf, it's fanfic of fictional hockey players from a hockey romance. If you're interested, you can read it here, no knowledge of the book required!

I think I should do a fanfic roundup, shouldn't I? Here's my latest fic posted:
third man in, the above referenced hockey fic, for Avon Gale's Scoring Chances book series

bad guy, Daredevil, Matt/Elektra(/Karen), written for a song prompt exchange

the glory of the empire, FFXV, Cor/Loqi BDSM AU with dom!Loqi and sub!Cor

unbreakable, Doctrine of Labyrinths, Felix/Mildmay, for nonconathon

I've also written a fic for remix but it's not revealed yet. The Original Project is still in progress and moving again after a delay, and we're heading into actually starting to shop it around to publishers as we approach writing the end of the book!

I can't believe I haven't published anything about Noctis since April, though I continue to do RP about him. Two whole years in FFXV fandom, wow. Also it's almost October, which means it's been almost a year since I did Kinktober last year, and I feel like Kinktober is what burned me out more than anything with writing FFXV fic but I kind of want to do it again? I kind of don't though. I know I shouldn't. But I can't think of a good way to pick and choose and do LESS work but still enough to have fun with it. Also the FF8 remaster is out and I'm hopeful that'll drum up some more interest in that fandom and I'd definitely be interested in doing more with that fandom.

What else what else. I watched season 3 of Young Justice! It was good! I had feelings! But honestly my biggest disappointment was not getting more of Bart and Jaime. Like they were there, which is great, but they were so background that I felt like I just really missed them? After latching on so hard in s2. Halo was great, I loved her, and Brion, who I have a lot of feelings about. Forager was pretty much the best. And, of course, all of the feelings about the original six, though idk, I just . . . wanted more of Bart and Jaime. Season 2 of Titans started up again but I haven't watched the premiere yet. Season 3 of Harlots was good but I don't like having my faves killed off, so, you know.

Okay, I guess that's all for now. Hit me up with your hockey rpf recs if you have any!

I know I said this before but I will be going to fanworks con next month! Registration is still open so if anyone else wants to join me, sign up now!

In other news, nonconathon reveals are in two days and I'm excited to see what I'm getting! I ended up writing in a small fandom for it this year (but I won't tell you what it was until reveals).

In other news, most of my writing energy has been going to either The Original Project or to the ridiculous FFXV RP universe I have with dustofwarfare and freosan. We've written over 500k words of this RP that sadly makes no sense to anyone but us, but it's super fun. The original project is over 50k words at this point and more than half done, and my co-author's agent likes it, so I think this will actually get published! I picked my pen name and set up a twitter for my pen name. Per my co-author's recommendation, I'm not going to publicly link my fandom name to my publishing name at all, since apparently that leads to people who don't like your books being jerks to you in fandom?

In other news, work has been crazy, but I just got back from a weeklong vacation to Asheville, NC. Well, to the Asheville area, anyway -- we didn't spend much time actually in Asheville. It was a lot of fun, and the kids and my mom both enjoyed it I think! Also one of the things we brought back was beer from this brewery which specializes in recreating historic beers. We got three bottles -- one IPA made from a recipe from 1850, and two beers from the same pub in London 30 years apart (like 1804 and 1834 or something). I'm curious to try them but we haven't opened them yet.

I continue to be stymied by the divide between tumblr and twitter. I feel like I'm not really engaging with people in either place now? It's weird. I've got my RP chat that is my main fandom chatter at this point, which I feel kind of bad about sometimes because my other fandom friend I used to talk to every day and I aren't talking as much anymore. Partially that's because she's also my beta and I haven't been writing much, so I haven't been begging her to look at everything, and partially it's because we don't have a common fandom atm and the TV shows we watch together are on summer hiatus. (Oh crap that reminds me I'm probably behind on The 100 again.)

Let's see, what else do I have to talk about? My dash and twitter feed are all crazy for the FFVII remake, so I imagine that will become a fandom for me at some point. I'm still dying for good FFVIII fic but alas, there isn't much, and I can't figure out how to write any. BUT, I think my enthusiasm has talked dustofwarfare into writing another fic in her Seifer/Squall/Rinoa universe and I'm totally here for it!

Ahhhhhhh smutswap assignments are due this weekend which means it's only like another week until reveals! I will be both watching my inbox for any tempting pinch hits and also internally screaming waiting for my gift. I'm so excited about all of my prompts this year and I can't wait to see what someone makes me! Luckily I finished my own assignment weeks ago so it's all good there.

The original project is on hold while my coauthor moves, but I am still super excited about it! In the meantime I've been working on the ardynoct ritual sex soulmate arranged marriage sex pollen fic that I started for ardynoct week last year and never finished. It's at about 6500 words at this point and I'm finally writing the sex scene that was the whole point of it, thanks to the advice and help of my wonderful beta as always. And I'll probably be adding another sex scene to the first portion of it too because there's a great opportunity for "practice sex" which is always a fun trope to write.

Do you ever just look back at your social media posts and emails and such and realize how many exclamation marks you use, because wow, I used a lot of them in those first two paragraphs. Anyway, the only other news I have to report is that I have a serious craving for more ffviii fic but ALAS I think at this point I've read all the good ones.

I didn't check DW for too long and then one of the exchanges I was following went through their whole nominations period without me being aware of it. OOPS, well, guess I'm not signing up for that one because the ships that got nominated are not my cup of tea.

BUT I did sign up for smutswap and am eagerly awaiting my assignment. I'm hoping I match on original fic again this year because despite it really pushing me out of my comfort zone last year, in the end I was really proud of what I came up with. For possibly the first time since I started doing smutswap in 2016 I only have one badwrong request (for Seifer/Ultimecia, unsurprisinly, esp because "accidental incest" is a tag in the tagset and alsjfsdfg). It was hard picking this year because I had a lot of ships I wanted for a few fandoms, and I spent HOURS trying to figure out how to use my ten requests. I also spent forever reading through the original fic ship list and making a twitter thread of my favorites.

Anyway, I'm super excited about smutswap, and ALSO I AM SUPER EXCITED that I am working on an original project with dustofwarfare! And yeah maybe it's kind of inspired by FFVIII but it's not AU fanfic at this point and I'm so asjkhaljghflgkjshf about the idea that I might write a BOOK with someone and we might PUBLISH it! !! !!!

In other non-fic news, Gotham is most of the way through its final season and it's SO GOOD as always. I absolutely loved last week's episode with the fight between Jeremiah and Bruce, and everything with Bruce and Alfred. I will admit I'm tired of Lee and Jim, but I'm definitely enjoying extremely creepy Jeremiah. Kind of regretting not including Bruce/Jeremiah and Bruce/Alfred (don't judge me) in my smutswap signup.

 Well, okay, it's only hard during some time periods, and right now that mostly means it's the stress of watching the number of posted works slowly, slowly count up as the days tick down until the posting deadline.  As of right now, there are 19/65 works posted, and 3 more in draft state.  This part is less work than matching was, but definitely more worry.

So far I've only had one default.  Last year there were 20 participants and one default, and some of the participants who asked for extensions took right up until the last possible second to post their work and almost gave me a heart attack, so hopefully that won't happen this time.  Nobody's contacted me for an extension so far.  I'm going to be out of town when the deadline hits so I'm going to need to borrow my mom's computer to send out pinch hits or else try to do it on my phone, which will be a pain, but <i>hopefully</i> there won't be too many of them.

In other news, since I'm the mod I've gotten sneak peeks of some of the art that's being submitted and it's GREAT, I'm super excited! Ahhh why did I set this up for new year's, now I have to WAIT.

 Posted this on Tumblr but it seems like the kind of thing to do here too.  Original list comes from here.  Ask away!

1. favorite fic you wrote this year
2. least favorite fic you wrote this year
3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year
4. total number of words you wrote this year
5. most popular fic this year
6. least popular fic this year
7. longest completed fic you wrote this year
8. shortest completed fic you wrote this year
9. longest wip of the year
10. shortest wip of the year
11. fandom you enjoyed writing for the most this year
12. favorite character to write about this year
13. favorite writing song/artist/album of this year
14. a fic you didn’t expect to write
15. something you learned this year
16. fic(s) you completed this year
17. fics you’ll continue next year
18. current number of wips
19. any new fics to start next year
20. number of comments you haven’t read
21. most memorable comment/review
22. events you participated in this year
23. fics you wanted to write but didn’t
24. favorite fic you read this year
25. a fic you read this year you would recommend everyone read
26. number of favorites/bookmarks you made this year
27. favorite fanfic author of the year
28. longest fic you read this year
29. shortest fic you read this year
30. favorite fandom to read fic from this year

*feel free to specify fandoms or a fic depending on the question.

I got pillowfort set up so if you want to you can find me there as marmolita.

Also, I thought I'd pass along a link to fandomcalendar this fandom calendar community which is pretty handy!

Question: does anyone use IFTTT to manage crossposting between dreamwidth, tumblr, pillowfort, and twitter? Because I have not yet figured out which content should go where and it would be cool if my random text nonsense could go everywhere.

In other news I was awake almost the entire night because my kid has an ear infection and now I'm not sure if I should just take a nap or stay awake and try to work on finishing my ffxv gift exchange fic or, you know, STARTING my yuletide fic. Or just catching up on RP tags.