Updated for your reading pleasure: May 30, 2012

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So once someone read me this poem and I took it as a promise. My bad. But fuck this guy for being so great, amiriteguyse.

Love, Matthew Dickman

We fall in love at weddings and auctions, over glasses
of wine in Italian restaurants
where plastic grapes hang on the lattice, our bodies throb
in the checkout line, bookstores, the bus stop,
and we can’t keep our hands off each other
until we can–

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I forgot to post this after Yuletide 2011. Oops. It was originally posted here at AO3.

fandom: Parks and Recreation
pairing: Jean-Ralphio Saperstein/Tom Haverford
words: 2278
warnings: strippers; blowjobs
summary: Five things that Jean-Ralphio did for Tom Haverford on his birthday

( Kid, I was pretty clear that we aren't escorts. Different skill set.Collapse )

New record for small fandoms: I fucking guarantee you guys this is the only story of its ilk. Until the movie comes out and they cast KStew as Marie, and then I will be Queen of France.

I'd love to give you guys a primer - unemployed liberal arts degrees take up high-volume low-profile kidnapping as a career path & get their asses handed to them - but basically you should read the book. Not least because my friend onthatgonzotip wrote it and it's really good and legit broke my heart in places and left me wanting more. More sex, more feelings. More sad cuddling. Isn't that always the way?

fandom: The Professionals
pairing: Tiffany Prentice/Marie McAllister
Words: 3527
Warnings: None, light R. Spoilers throughout.
Summary: Tiffany Prentice pays what she owes.
A/N: Title from Die Antwoord's Rich Bitch which is what I'm trying to listen to instead of Laura Jane Grace or Herman Düne on endless repeat like the sulking monster I am.


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Well, thanks! First of all. Because Yuletide is my favourite time of year. I love the smallest fandoms most of all, and I'm always excited for new content. Even though my request strategy is always haphazard. So, fyi, this year I went with a theme. Unlikeable dudes in comedy. Maybe you like unlikeable dudes as much as I do? Even better, maybe you dislike unlikeable dudes as much as I do! That would be thrilling. Because the reasons I'm interested in these three are pretty clear: they are dicks. Dicks who manage to bang a lot of ladies. They are sometimes charming, always self-serving, unfortunately attractive (proof that the world is cruel?), and almost entirely transparent, yet women seem to overcome their intellectual revulsion & emotional self-preservation systems in order to ... I don't know. I don't know what it is. I am kind of hoping whatever story you choose to write, you'll tell me.

I'm into stories that reveal the small things that are so goddamn obvious in retrospect, but are never quite explained in canon. I like stories that tear open the seams a little, but neatly. I like something that turns an idea over and over, grinding down the roughest edges to something smooth and comforting. I don't care that much about getting the tone of the comedy right: we aren't screenwriters, we don't have Will Arnett's delivery available to us. We do have other tools, though, and it's the opening-up of the character that excites me.

When it comes to relationships and/or sex: I'm interested in gender roles, power struggles, women who know what they want, men who provide it, negotiation, uncertainty, flirting, insecurity. Oh, and choking. That's always on the table.

And all that said, although all of these requests are presumed het/gen, if you want to write me some slash, I AM SO COOL WITH THAT, OK. Throw all of this out if you'd rather right some m/m blowjobs. Done fucking deal.

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My three priorities these days are pretty much:

a) fretting about finding a new slack-ass part-time day job*;

b) making sure I see all the awesome people and places of Toronto before I'm sucked back into the snowy mid-continent limbo next-next-Wednesday**;

&

c) listening to terrible dance music, and watching fanvids set to terrible dance music.***

And in light of Article C, here is the only fanwork - based on a flitting search through AO3, anyway - that has really encompassed the whole of my [recent, undiluted, kinda weird] feelings about GOB Bluth of Arrested Development:

sdwolfpup's vid "For Your Entertainment".

( I can't even quote lyrics from this song, they are so ridiculous I get all embarrassed for whatever wretched soul wrote themCollapse )

The only way I was going to get in my word count for nanowrimo today was if I flogged my WIP folder for terrible shit. I mean, in the past five days I've tried to work on three separate so-called legit projects, all of which have serious failings (hello, first person account of the pervy lech greaser from 1962's Carnival of Souls, as played by Sidney Berger: you will totally find a home in a litmag of distinction I'm suuuuuure), but then as soon as I came home from my usual perch at the library, out came a bunch of words of that eternally ongoing Jon/Spencer makeout weddingfic and ... this.

Still, I refuse to believe that I am the only one who loves OK Go enough to write their tiny thrilling faces into fluffy travesty fictions like this. Where are the rest of you ninnies? Like, c'mon.

PS. And then there's the Ira Glass sex tape, so.



fandom: the far fringes of bandom; OK Go f. Spencer Smith & Ira Glass
pairings: Andy/Spencer Smith ; Tim/everyone ; Damian/his wife; Damian/Ira Glass ; Dan/feminism
word count: 3940
warnings: no sex, just some blushing and a bit of handholding and lots of, you know, suits getting tailored and some phone calls that happen
No excuses: OK Go had a song on the New Moon soundtrack. What the jesus eff, you guys. How did that even happen.


( This just makes me wish we'd gotten onto the soundtrack for True BloodCollapse )

So, it turns out that the hardest part of writing the bullshit canlit short fiction that I was brainwashed into in undergrad is not having anyone to share the results with. I miss you fucking guys. Honest to god. I know everyone has different feelings/rules/etiquette/hang-ups about the whole comment thing for stories, and that it is a ~~sensitive topic~ and has been for a decade, but I'll be honest: the manic fucking thrill I got after posting stories (small fandom stories, weird pairing stories, big bangs with guaranteed readership) was based entirely on the fact that random strangers would be guaranteed to show up and capslock/exclamation point at me about what I'd produced. And there is no better goddamn feeling than that.

I can be honest with myself: it's why I write. I started in fandom in high school doing play-by-email RPGs, (or, before that: middle school notebook back-and-forth with burnthemap and fortuna_major) and I still think that that kind of totally wanky, unreadable product is my ideal medium. I hate the isolation of writing. I crave approval. Or acknowledgment. Or anything. I am a good product of the Canadian public school system: without authority's blessing, I feel nigh on worthless. Alas, cohabiting with a teacher doesn't do as much for that kink as I might hope.

Right now, I don't have much. I am producing way more original shit than I have ever - yep, ok, ever - produced before, and I don't fucking know what to do with it. Probably that shouldn't even be on my mind. But I have this list of stories now, and I've submitted to a couple of contests, and have a few more coming up that I'll be doing as well (it's a cheap thrill, a workable deadline, and you get some nice subscriptions out of it) and soon I'll have to start submitting to obscure Canadian litmags that no one reads, because that's the process in this country, you know, and ... blerg. I still don't even know if what I'm producing here is a 3 or a 5 on the scale of Shit Town Disaster to Publishable Given Lack Of Better Options. Augh.

I certainly feel grateful that this sojourn out to the wilds of the ultracity megalopolis has kickstarted my creative drive again - in a way that I couldn't even have hoped for five weeks ago, tbqh - but I also am really feeling the lack of community. I keep sending out tentative feelers to acquaintances and old friends I kinda know as writers, or used to know, and I have my eye on some structured groups, but. Like. Why don't I have any RL writer friends? What the fuck is with that? Why was I so dumb for so long that I'm now years behind my peers, who all have book deals? Seriously, I know four five people with book deals from undergrad. It's. Yeah.

It's a weird position to be in. My goal is to find some people who'd read my shit and would, you know, care more about the text than me. Which means this whole post is just me complaining about how lucky I am to have a bunch of people who care too much about me and tolerate my shitty writing for the sake of our relationship.

Sooo, to sum up:

• first world problems
  
• can't wait for Yuletide
  
• considering Nanowrimo (1700 wpd = 10-15 middling to crap short stories, w/moar genre)
  
• Arrested Development: I want all the Gob Bluth/hooker stories. Where are they?
  

Next post: Halifax. Wherein I have crushes on ALL THE NAKED BANDS, but keep my dignity intact. Mostly. Twitter DMs notwithstanding.

Shit I've been doing:

01. working for free because one of my coworkers is stuck at home with a detached retina and - I CAN ONLY HOPE - an eye patch (they promise me lieu time, but they make me feel like a grubby non-salary part-timer for not automatically giving them 50 hours a week like everyone else: o hai, Gen Y entitlement; maybe I should just write 'pay me motherfucker' in sharpie across my forehead?)

02. writing epic Marcus/Esca hookerfics to end all hookerfics (that's a lie, it's only 5k but I am preeeeety jazzed about it nonetheless)

03. catching up on the internet (Dan Savage says prizing the relationship above sexual exclusivity is what we should all be doing which is why sometimes just thinking that man's name brings a tear to my eye)

04. half-assedly, uh, training for a 10k put on by some weirdo lady-spa next Sunday (there will be cupcakes, and manicures, and shrieking bitches in pink everywhere: it is stroller-friendly)

05. watching a lot of True Blood. 412 is downloading as I type.

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ETA, how could I forget: 05. listening to the new Beirut album on eternal never-ending repeat. THAT IS WHAT I'VE BEEN DOING. Because I think Zach Condon pays a lot of sex workers for chaste time and then writes about it. This is what his lyrics are telling me, oks?? BRB, WRITING HIM INTO MY HOOKERFIC NAO.

Wow, I threatened to clean out my WIP folder and then I actually ... did. Or at least finished something. Unbetaed, though delighter prodded me onwards using her usual weapon, shameless flattery, at a crucial point. She is always good for a forceful prodding. Happy early birthday, darling!



fandom: The Eagle
pairing: Esca/Placidus ; offscreen Esca/Marcus
words: 5452
warning: Hard R. Noncon/dubcon (inc. slave use)


summary: Fill for a kink-meme prompt requesting Esca/Placidus hatesex. Post-movie, Marcus heads up the reformed Ninth, which is rife with problems. The Senate appoints Placidus as the legion's new Tribune, and Esca must escort him north. Predictably, all Esca wants is to return to Marcus.


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