somniloquence

WorldCon was fun! A lot of the things I was stressed about were things that turned out to be totally okay, and I think the con comm and the venue both did a great job of setting things up for people with disabilities, although I do want to send some feedback about a couple things if I can figure out where. I definitely overextended myself in terms of trying to make it to panels and events and meet up with friends, considering I'd limited my attendance to just Friday and Saturday. But I got to meet up with Caroline Stevermer and a very old friend of mine named Tim, as well as mecurtin and seekingferret and of course wickedwords, and mizmak ventured over the mountains to meet up with Caroline, which meant we also got to spend time with her (not at the con), so it was like having some of the Media Cannibals gang back together. And I ran into kormantic while she was minding a table in the dealers' room.

Of course, there's never enough time to really spend with people at a convention, and WorldCon is ginormous so it seems even harder to get together with them (probably easier if you're staying in one of the hotels). I was intending to go to dinner with mecurtin, but somehow, standing in line at the restaurant, this overwhelming fatigue came over me (more than my usual incredible fatigue) and I ended up having to bug out. (I'll spare you my Lyft nightmare story but suffice to say there was definitely some time there where I thought it's a really good thing I don't carry deadly weapons on me.) Fortunately, she was generous enough to come over to my part of town to have lunch with me Tuesday, which was awesome.

My biggest problem was that I was constantly overheating because of my chemo drugs, which make me insanely sensitive to heat, and so I was always ducking into the gender neutral restrooms to mop at all the sweat drenching me. What an unbelievable drag on your fun that is, to just have water dripping down you and being damp all the time (moist, the most hated word), it's just so fucking awful. I did find myself, in all the panels about writing and such, kind of thinking more about the final chapter of my Bucky and Steve in a virtual world WIP, and I think I'm at a point where I can really tackle it finally. (Of course, as I've said previously, every time I'm ready to try to write, I manifest work, and sure enough...I manifested a proofread that arrived today. Clearly I should not be allowed to possess this power, and I would love it if someone else would harness the power instead.)

The new Summit convention center building is light years better than the original convention center, which was built in the late '70s/early '80s. We haven't had any real rain for months here, so of course it rained hard on Friday, but at least most people weren't given only rain as their Seattle experience, since it cleared up by Friday night. I would have loved to attend the masquerade, as that's my favorite event, Friday night, but I watched it streaming and it's just...not the same, you know? It was fine, but it just doesn't compare to being able to really see the cosplayers on stage and get the full range of what they're doing. I've heard there's some whining about the Hugos, as usual, but I didn't watch that.

Highlights were definitely hearing marthawells reading from Queen Demon and the (May 2026) new Murderbot Diaries book Platform Decay, as well as her Q&As, and a really cool panel on queer representation in SF that included Matt Baume, whose videos I watch a lot where he discusses the history of queer people in TV and movies. There was also a neat panel on dystopian fiction that looked at how in the global south, it's not future fiction, it's been part of their lives for a long time, which unfortunately I couldn't stay for the whole thing for because I was sweating so bad and the room was packed and just...ugh. But what I did hear was great.

I also literally ran into Martha Wells in the art show--I totally thought she'd be surrounded by a phalanx of security or something, so I was all awkward and stupid and just like completely blanked-out on what to say and I'm sure I came across as a total moron. But I knew going in I wouldn't be able to handle anything like a book signing line, so I never expected to be able to just say a quick hello. (I mean, yes, it's a con full of world-class nerds, but still. There's awkward and then there's awkward.) And I kept running across a couple of authors I sort of vaguely knew from my days of going to Norwescon more often, and it almost got to be funny, just kind of waving at each other but not really saying anything, over and over.

I only had a couple of interactions with people who were kind of crappy and a little ableist; and I even was able to make the trek to the Taco del Mar over at the old Convention Center, where I used to get lunch every week back when I worked down there. I miss that place so much and we don't have any of their shops near me anymore, so I revved myself up and hiked over there on Friday, and on Saturday went to Starbucks, because the in-building options weren't great for me. I wish I could have worked things so I had more time to have meals with folks and chat, but at least I know that next time, if I can go again, I have to allow for more time for everything. The art show was pretty cool and I found an artist I really want to buy something from.

All in all, my first WorldCon was a success, and I'm seriously thinking about trying to talk my BFF into going to next year's if I'm able and the cancer isn't too bad. I sincerely doubt after Anaheim, the con is coming back to the US for a good long while, not with so many people afraid to cross our borders.

Somehow, every time I make space to finish my WIP or read a new book (eeee, I am finally reading things I got years ago and have never been able to tackle and I am excited!), I manage to manifest new work. Every single time. And of course, I cannot use this manifesting power for anything like money, which I am in desperate need of because I fucked up my taxes big time this year and things are gonna be pretty dire, plus my IRA and such are in the toilet because of the fuckwads in power. So I do need the work (I actually had to say no to a book because of another project, but I was glad to be able to because it sounded like extremely hard work since all the YA fantasy I get from them is utter garbage and I haaaate working on YA), but I would also like a little time to do fun things, and the deadlines I usually have are ridiculous.

I feel like I am kinda semi-retired; I don't want to take on as much work as I used to and that's fine for me. But now...with the disasters in the thing that sadly rules our lives, the stock market, and the threats to Medicare and Social Security, as well as the cancer treatment, I constantly doubt myself and take work on I shouldn't necessarily. Plus I have to get a new roof. So that's (ha) literally hanging over my head. I suppose I will just keep shoving on.

Speaking of work, I had a fun thing happen a couple months ago. I never go to LinkedIn, I don't care about it at all, but I had read of a setting change that I did not like, so I went in one night to reset things, and it seemed to be perfect timing because there was a direct message from someone sent a few hours before I logged in. I don't get notifications so I would never have seen it otherwise. She was a reader of the magazine I used to work for till they ditched me in '23, and had been a copyeditor for years in different publications, and so she started by complimenting me on my work for them for all that time (like, it wasn't insincere at all, she really did pay attention to how well edited it was and I loved that because I too pay attention to mastheads and stuff) and asking if she might be able to find out a little bit about the job listing for an editor to work on the magazine.

I'd known that the publisher, J, had lost his editor (he'd asked me a few times to be more of a managing editor type, but I never wanted to) to a full time job, and I was stepping in that month to help him get the next issue out, but I hadn't realized he'd posted the job on LinkedIn--apparently you can list a job for free for three days, and he was deluged with applications even though it's just a part time freelancer type gig, you're not really employed by them per se. Anyway, I wrote her back and said I'd be happy to to tell her anything, and the more we talked, the more I realized she would be absolutely perfect for the role, that she couldn't be more like me in the way she approached copyediting and proofreading, and she personally was a musician as well and it's a music magazine, so she's a subject matter expert.

I didn't know if my making a rec for her would help, but J seemed interested and happy to have something like that, and out of the four or so candidates he'd talked to with the best credentials, the personal rec from me helped seal the deal and I think he knew that yeah, she couldn't have been more perfect. So she got the job, and sent me a sweet gift after even though I told her she shouldn't. I miss the magazine, but I guess I don't miss the flakiness of J and the designer, both men (insert eye roll here) who I had to treat like I was herding cats sometimes, but you know, editing stuff about the history of sunburst Fenders or the history of Prince's fave guitar were kind of awesome. I do miss that. But I told her if she ever needed any backup, I'm always around and happy to help and since I sort of created some of the style guide, it's not like I don't know the ins and outs. I guess as long as I'm healthy anyway.

The guy who leads our multiple myeloma support group had some bad health stuff recently, and was going through a pretty grueling treatment to try to get him back to remission. But he told us today that he is in hospice right now, and so things are ending for him in his efforts against it. Every time we get an announcement that someone from the group, past or present, has died, it's like a short sharp shock that this thing is just...really fucking awful. There is no "cure" per se, just remissions, and it always comes back, and some people go through multiple treatments and get into remissions. Every time I've told someone I have this, they go "I know so and so has it and they've had it for 11 years and they're fine" and I'm like, you don't know what getting to fine is really like. But people are so casual about it, because most of us in treatment or remission look fairly normal. Not like movie cliche patients.

Anyways, that's made me ridiculously sad. I have treatment this week and I'll find out what my oncologist thinks about where we are. My fatigue has been through the roof, I'm wiped out all the time. I know that's partly why I'm on the fence about Worldcon, just because...what am I going to be like in August? I never know, this whole two years has been such a fucking weirdass roller coaster. Ugh, sorry to be maudlin. I do get this way sometimes.

As always happens after I do the 31 flavors meme recs, I crashed into not posting again. It was easy because I also had work that came in, and I've been trying to work on the next chapter of the fic no one's reading, Reverie, which is now out for beta, at least, so we'll see when I can slap it up. Two months is a long time between chapter updates, and I feel horrendously guilty.

We've also been busy having Big Snow here--last weekend we had over a foot in some places, which is unusual for Seattle, and it was over multiple days. Took quite a while for it to go away, as well--I still have a bunch in my yard because of the huge high drifts we got the first night when it was very windy, and most of it falls in shaded places where I don't really get much sun in winter. I can't stop obsessively watching news of the disaster in Texas, especially scenes like that FedEx truck slamming into the multiple-car pileup. What a nightmare, and I'm really hoping my friends in Texas and nearby parts are doing all right.

This weekend, I'm doing virtual Escapade. I will be co-modding a panel on Steve/Bucky fandom on Saturday with przed, so I hope if there are still any Cap fans left out there, you'll join us. Registration for new members cuts off tonight, so if you think you'd like to attend a virtual fan-run con--one of the few remaining!--you should sign up! It's a lot of fun, and while I'm monumentally depressed not to be able to get down to LA for some sunshine in February, which I have always loved, at least I'll be able to "see" a few people this weekend I only get to see there. I miss cons so much.

I'm still trying to catch up on entertainment things, but am kind of lapping along way behind everyone, since I have trouble watching anything more than background TV when I have work. I'm watching the show Resident Alien on SyFy: it's cute, if not particularly original, and makes good use of Alan Tudyk's ability to be sinisterly creepy and funny at the same time, and mostly it's nice to have a show that I can watch week to week now that The Expanse is done for the year. (As much as I appreciate The Expanse's move to Prime so Chrisjen's swearing doesn't get bleeped out, the even-shorter seasons are frustrating. I wanted more of the Amos and Peaches show, and for Drummer to see Naomi, and just...there was a lot left out in the open, I felt, and I love the show so goddamn much.)

I'm watching WandaVision thanks to a friend, and it's okay. I'm mostly enjoying the Monica, Darcy, and Jimmy Woo show, to be honest, and since I have no idea who half the characters are that everyone's talking about like the kids or Agnes, it's easier to just ride along. A lot of the modern sitcoms they were doing were a mystery to me, as I never watched stuff like Full House or whatever, and I thought doing a mashup of I Love Lucy and the Dick Van Dyke show was a weird conceit but I will admit their Bewitched was spot-on, though it looks like there's a Modern Family coming up, which I am at least familiar with unlike the '80s and '90s. I really hope the three characters get a spinoff, because that I would watch like hell.

I have a lot of trepidation about Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which I don't think anyone will care to hear about because it seems like everyone is really excited, so I will spare you.

The show I've fallen in love with, though, is The Repair Shop. For a long time I had it on my watch list, and then when I finally had time, the first two seasons were gone and they only have the third on Netflix. I can't find any other resource for it, and I would honestly rather not go out to the torrent sites, but I guess if needs must... I just love it! It hits my competence buttons, like ALL of them, and it is totally nice and interesting and educational and there are no huge stakes and it's just peaceful and soothing and everyone cares so much about what they do. There are some snippets from shows on YouTube, but they often cut off the repair and only show people bringing their items in, or they focus on four minutes of a repair and you don't see the end result. It's infuriating that Netflix took the rest of it away and doesn't seem to be bringing any more of it in. (If you know of how I can get more of the many series they have done, please let me know! I'm desperate!)

I'm jealous of all the folks getting to see Captain Marvel right away. With a book due on Wednesday and the usual ridiculous deadlines this publisher gives me, there's no way I could go before Thursday. Good thing I love spoilers.

This is never my favorite time of year, especially when I have work. The anniversary of my sister's death was the 5th and it's always a struggle, still, forever I suppose. It's never really helped by being in Southern California for Escapade, because everything reminds me of her so acutely: the birds of paradise blooming, the sunshine, jacaranda trees and hibiscus plants, eight-lane roads and U-turns, the California license plates. I always feel as though I'll turn around and she'll be there.

The con itself was okay, mostly good because I got to spend time with some favorite people. I got my In-N-Out Burger fix with dorinda on Thursday, which was great. There were definitely some things I didn't enjoy about the con, like listening to assholes shit on something I helped a friend make, but having melina sob on me over Dream helped balance that out a little. I'd forgotten she hadn't seen it at Vividcon. The Captain America panel was okay, I guess, it's always hard for me to tell about these things. But people seemed happy to talk about Cap fandom and whether it's the end of the line, and it was good to see familiar faces there.

Things were a little iffy with my Stucky AU Big Bang story, my first artist disappeared completely before posting date, and then it was three days before I even had one single comment (she eventually showed up, but at least I had a great second artist for posting day). Then I signed up for the Captain America Reverse Big Bang, mostly so I could see the art because last year's experience left such a bad taste in my mouth, and I...accidentally signed up for the wrong art. ::hands:: I have sort of numbers dyslexia for a few number combinations, and I have no idea why, but I thought "well, I'll put in some selections for art and won't get them, so then I'll just drop out and call it good" because I really wasn't sold on participating. But somehow I transposed numbers in my head and now I have a pairing that I've never even thought of. The art is really lovely, though, and cesperanza was throwing out some really great idea possibilities, so hopefully I can come up with 5k for this pretty art. (And fortunately the artist is flexible about gen or slash, so I don't necessarily have to write a romantic relationship for the two characters.) This is so totally the sort of thing that happens to me, though.

I read a fantastic article about a new book about historical gay Brooklyn, and the book sounds great (Walt Whitman cruising the Navy Yard!), so if you're writing historical Steve and Bucky or just interested, there's a link at my tumblr here.

In my previous posts I mentioned that I'd managed to injure myself pretty good at Vividcon on the first freakin' day, and it continues to be the gift that keeps on giving. Basically, what happened was, I wanted to walk down to the Walgreen's a little ways from the con hotel (there are two stores, equally distant from the hotel, both of which involve running across busy traffic to get to the side of the street with a sidewalk) and bullied minim_calibre into going with me, and franzeska threw in with us too. Not more than about fifteen feet from the front door, my foot caught the edge of a pothole in the parking lot/driveway and I went down like a sack of bricks.

I fall a lot. I'm a klutz, I injure myself pretty frequently, and I live with chronic pain so I have a pretty high pain threshold, but I knew right away that this was worse than usual and when Franzy and Min steadied me, I saw that the knee of my jeans was ripped out, and figured that meant blood. We staggered back into the lobby and I very rudely demanded a first aid kit and rolled up my jeans. So I bled all over the lobby and the desk people were very upset and not particularly happy with me. Rache wickedwords and Ivy and I think someone else, though I don't remember right now, came by and were helping, and Ivy had a bunch of bandages and first aid stuff because she'd had a wound herself that she was treating, and everyone was solicitous and helped me clean up and get my bearings.

I was crying, I don't really know why. I guess I was already emotional anyway about the con and knowing I'd never see many people again, and Rache kept saying, "You're in shock, you're shocky, it's okay." They took me up to my room and got me settled on the couch where I could elevate my leg, and use the ice pack the front desk made for me (those little round silver bolsters the rooms have now were very handy!), and put bandages on. I could feel that something was wrong in my wrist, in the same spot that I broke it many years ago.

Franzy and some other folks were going to get lunch down at the other store, so they wanted to get me something but I kept insisting I wasn't hungry--fortunately they persisted and brought me a sammich, which was actually really good for me. I'm not used to having help, I live alone and grew up in a family where I got whacked for not being able to take care of myself, so it was kind of hard to let go and let people help. And I felt incredibly guilty for taking people away from the con--programming or just seeing friends, they weren't doing it because they were babysitting me. But they were all so much smarter than me: getting me food (emyrys had kindly taken us to the store the night before, but I didn't buy anything, you know, healthful), min brought me some bottles of water so we could irrigate it (there was a lot of loose dirt and gravel in the pothole), figuring out next steps of what to do.

I was kind of obsessed about my vid show at 1--I'd worked so hard on that, trying to distill 20+ years of vidding history into 45 minutes, and I very much wanted to run it, which they all thought was nuts, but I promised I'd consider going to urgent care if I could just see my show, I'd never seen all the vids put together. therienne and arduinna had heard about the event, and wanted to take me to urgent care--they had a car and had found a place about five miles from the hotel. The hotel had wanted to send me to the ER in an ambulance (as if) and I was so worried about missing premieres that night and seeing my vid. I know how ridiculous that sounds, but...it was the last one, and VVC has always meant a lot to me, through thick and thin.

My room looked like a murder scene--bloody towels everywhere, the bathtub was full of bloody water from irrigating the knee, bandage wrappings. It was hilarious and I wish to hell I'd taken pictures of it (we'd had the presence of mind to take pictures of my knee, but we didn't think to get the murder room, though as min pointed out, it will live on in our hearts). While everyone was out getting food, I had to pee, and the toilet in my room was ridiculously low (I'd had trouble the night before with that, I'm not a short person and it was absurdly low to the floor) and really hard to sit on with one useful leg and one useful hand. So I called the front desk and asked if it might be possible to get one of the ADA rooms--they're in short supply, so I didn't think they would, but the manager came on to speak to me and said they'd get me one, and was very accommodating in general and we talked about everything.

So therienne and arduinna rounded me up after the show and we went off to urgent care. It was incredibly helpful to have them with me--they know me well, and when the nurse asked about health conditions, reminded me about the cancer, which I wouldn't even have thought to mention. The doctor was really a cutie, he was funny and sweet, and thorough, I felt. He didn't want to close up the three little flaps of skin left on my knee because he was afraid if there were still particles in there after his irrigation, it would get infected. They took x-rays and gave me a disc of them, gave me a brace, told me to see my regular doctor in a week because this type of fracture doesn't always show at first, but does in about seven days (!).

Everyone (the_shoshanna had joined us) helped me scoop up my stuff and move me (the new room was great--right near con space so I didn't have to walk far), and I spent a while holed up in my room, resting, till dinner time. Honestly, I felt pretty okay by then, the shocky, wobbly feeling had gone away after urgent care--there's something about knowing what's wrong that makes you feel better. I made it through the first third of the three hour premieres show, went back to the room and watched the second hour on streaming, and came back for third, where my vid was scheduled. It's funny, because everyone keeps saying that people must have been coming up to me and crying at me after the show, but only a few people spoke to me, and I honestly don't think that most people were crying because of the vid, but because it was the last premieres show; a few were, but I don't think it was quite the way many people thought.

The next day I had a little meltdown at min in text because I couldn't get to the store for more bandages; I finally got a Lyft and had to listen to the guy telling me about how evil Obamacare is--no tip for you, asshole, even though you waited for me while I was in the store. I was pretty bummed that I couldn't really dance for Club Vivid, or wear my heels and cool pants, and had to keep going to rest for a bit. Wearing jeans was a pain, because my knee was so swollen, so I spent most of the weekend in yoga pants.

On Monday I was scheduled to go to downtown Chicago for a few days, so I went in with killabeez and Mrs. Killa, and devilpiglet and I met up with them for an incredibly lovely dinner at a wonderful new Italian place. I wasn't up to much sightseeing, which bummed me out (there are still so many places I haven't seen, may never now that I won't be going back there), but I'm also one of those weirdos who like to hang out in nice hotel rooms. The bell staff at the Palomar were so nice to me, they fussed over me and took really good care of me--yeah, I know people who work in high end hotels are paid to pretend to care about guests, but these guys were great. I was SO looking forward to the pool at the Palomar and the rooftop deck, but they said no submerging the knee, boooo. Never got the chance to take my swimsuit out of the suitcase.

When I was leaving, they put me in a town car and told the driver to charge me what a cab would, and I had a very entertaining ride to the airport. He said I was the best fare he'd had, and I said "I bet you say that to all the girls." But I admit, we did have a great conversation. At the airport, I was pretty early, but there's this bar Rache and I discovered a few years back in the L terminal that's incredibly awesome. It's called Ice, it's all done up in silver and white, and they have excellent food and very good drinks, so I went there and chilled for a little while with iced tea and a fantastic charcuterie plate. It's a very civilized way to wait for your flight. (A few years ago I'd been in there and the bartender remarked on my Funko Pop Winter Soldier shirt, how much he liked my "Bucky Barnes shirt" and I was like ::heart eyes:: because he'd called him by name, recognizing my boo's personhood.)

I think between hotels, cabs, restaurants, and flying, it was hard to keep the knee safe, so by yesterday I was feeling pretty bad: it was puffy, sore, and very red, felt incredibly hot, all of which wasn't helped by the adhesive on the bandages I'd been using (I'm mildly allergic) giving me sores and rashes on either side of the abrasion. Since I had to go in anyway for new x-rays, they looked at the wound and she rather vividly said it was "festering," so they washed it out again and gave me a prescription for antibiotics. It probably wasn't the best idea to drive there--I got caught in some truly terrible traffic where it took me 40 minutes to get through one light, and I felt feverish and lousy with the sun beating down on the car and my knee and wrist aching.

It's already feeling slightly better this morning after just one pill. I'm waiting to hear back about the x-rays but it's a Saturday, so who knows. And I've got the streaming shows for all the VVC stuff I missed to watch, and I'd love to sit down with the DVDs too and watch all the things I either missed or didn't have the brain capacity for. The hardest part of VVC was knowing I might not see some of these people again, and missing the chance to spend time with them because I was a stupid klutz, but at least I can watch some of the programming, though the panels aren't included in that. So many panels I just couldn't get to!

I'm trying to catch up on comments too, but resting has been my imperative. I'm so grateful I had friends there, all of whom took such good care of me. This community is what I'll miss the most, and what I love most.

Got up horribly early and feochadn took me to the airport. I was never so grateful for the chance to upgrade (usually they don't let you do first class with miles on the popular flights) because I was insanely tired and my back was utterly killing me. In fact, when they wouldn't let us stand or get out of our seats (when the pilots come out to use the lavatories), I was just in agony waiting for the chance to stand up. Ugh, flying.

But it was also kind of fun because there were multiple Seattle peeps on the plane and most of us know each other pretty well, and then we caught the shuttle to the hotel and probably drove the other passengers nuts because we'd met up at the airport with another friend and I don't think they knew what to do with all of us.

My pre-Vividcon era chronology show is at 1, and there's a couple things I want to attend, but for the most part I'm going to try to take it easy on my back, even if it means missing some things. I'm already sort of preemptively sad about this being the final con, but...well.

Putting a show together that showcases 20+ years of vidding in 45 minutes was hard, y'all. So unbelievably hard. And I looked at the program booklet last night and after all these years, I finally have a vid that closes the show--achievement unlocked! I've had ones at the start, but never a closer. even thought sometimes I've thought a vid I brought might make an excellent ending vid.

It's wonderful to see so many people one last time. I'm sad knowing that there are many I may never see again, because they've largely stopped going to cons and live all the way across the country. I'm not on twitter so I don't know what all the conversation is like there--hopefully people will alert me if something interesting shows up.

Expect a few vid posts here as the premieres start showing up.

I leave tomorrow for Vividcon, before dawn, and I'm just terrified about leaving Blues--we're under an excessive heat warning for the next few days, and even when it gets "cooler" it's still listed as being in the high 80s F and the 90s, and we mostly don't have AC in homes here. I dithered about getting one, because I not only can't lift one by myself, but they're crazy expensive, and now it's too late and Blues is probably going to get heat stroke and die. My house gets into the 90s when it's that hot, and the only way you can cool it off is by opening the front and back doors once the sun sets; there won't be anyone to do that and my cat sitter, who comes by during the day, will not be likely to open the doors for fear of Blues escaping. I'm very afraid for him. I'm really kicking myself for not just accepting defeat and buying the damn unit and trying to find some way to get it in the house. Plus the cat sitter will roast alive. I also can't leave windows open too much because it'd be so easy to just break right in.

People always tell me to sleep with my windows open but I can't, they have to be down in the opened-locked in the few rooms that allow that, which is only about three inches. My house is ground floor, easy access, and a few years back not too far from here a woman and her partner were brutally assaulted/murdered by a guy who just shimmied their windows open during a heat wave. When you're a woman alone, that's not the best option. Plus, it was weather just like this that made me lose Olive two years ago, she didn't want to get shut up in the broiler of a house.

All I can do is have the sitter pet him with wet brushes or cloths, and put ice cubes in his water, and run the fans when she's here. I'd have her leave the fans on, but I'm so paranoid about things overheating and catching fire; I've seen it too many times. And speaking of fires: the wildfires that are consuming BC are so bad that the smoke is hanging over Seattle. The past two days it's been so hazy you can't see across the water to the Seattle skyline; my eyes are stinging and it's very difficult to breathe at times. But of course, global warming is a myth.

I don't know how much of a good time I'm going to be able to have being this worried about the house and Blues. The way things feel right now, I can't bear the thought of anything happening to him. He's all I've got. But the vids are all queued up on YouTube, and the plane tickets are printed, and I guess it'll be what it'll be. As bad as that is.

So…that was an…eventful week.

Last Thursday, wickedwords and I were heading out around noon for VVC, and our flight got delayed for at least 45 minutes, so there was some frantic texting with astolat about dinner plans because we'd be coming in so late (I swear both of us actually thought the tickets she bought for us were for the 10 am flight), but then poor astolat ended up being delayed even longer than us due to the thunderstorms around everywhere. Turned out the restaurant closed at 9, which, what the hell, so it was Outback for us, but we got to hang and unwind a little, and catch up, and she saved my sanity by having extra earplugs, which I'd forgotten to pack. It was hilarious on the outbound flight, though: while we were waiting to board, we were just loud enough that jarrow heard us and came over to say hi, because he was on the same flight. Rache and I got seated, her in the middle seat, me in the aisle, and after a few minutes of people coming down the aisle I heard her guffaw and looked up to see jarrow there--he had the window seat next to us. We laughed and laughed--and it was great because he and I were both writing fic and that way you definitely don't have to worry about hiding your laptop with your slash on it.

Chicago was fucking hot--like, knock you back when you step out on the jetway from the plane hot. And I struggled almost the whole time with it, even when it was raining and the heat index dropped a little. We at least got to the store on Friday for some stuff, and I didn't feel like I was going to drop from heat stroke, but man, there were definitely days on this trip that I thought it might happen.

Someone had reblogged an old fic announcement post about Dream of Caramel, which had generated a little flurry of interest in the fic, and more reblogs, so that was an unexpected, rare little bit of pleasantness that made my weekend a lot brighter. Friday night was the premieres show this year, and I'd been more than a little surprised to see, when I got my reg stuff on Thursday, that the vid cesperanza and I made this year was listed first. OMG the pressure! It seemed to go over well, and I posted it that night when I was hanging out in destina's room, though I was a tiny bit tipsy and made a bunch of typos.

I did not expect the flurry of reblogs and comments and stuff! That doesn't usually happen for my vids so it was very cool but also kind of overwhelming and I spent Saturday in a bit of a haze (pleasant, don't get me wrong, but definitely a haze). Got dressed in my Bucky Barnes red henley and dark gray t-shirt, dark jeans, and shooting glove and baseball cap, for Club Vivid, and it was so funny watching people look at me and do a doubletake, thinking I wasn't in a costume and then realizing that I was, and who I was dressed as. I didn't dance as much as I wanted to, because of the aforementioned overheating--I just couldn't seem to get my feet under me half the time, between the Chicago steambath and the hot flashes and all that. My vid, Dangerous, was early on in the show, and for once, the entire dance floor didn't empty out when my vid came on! Yay! Plus it got the anxiety out of the way so I could enjoy the rest of the show. Absolutedestiny brought back some great old vids and it was really a wonderful show this year, I thought.

Sunday was more vid shows and panels and hanging out, and watching the number of notes climb on tumblr--it was all so fascinating. I didn't attend a lot of panels or shows over the weekend, preferring to hang with people I don't get to see much like destina and kassrachel and dorinda and par avion and talitha78, and it was really, really nice to spend time with people and just talk, especially when people were willing to indulge my desire to talk about Steve and Bucky or go get a cruller with me. :-D

Because of the Sebastian Stan fiasco, I was still planning to stay in Chicago for a few days, and I took an Uber into the city. I was planning to work on my Stucky Big Bang story and hang with devilpiglet and a couple other Chicago people--before I left, the artist who signed up for my fic sent me two additional sketches for my story and they are so amazing, it was so inspiring to see art come from my words, I just…it really made that push to get toward the end of the story so much easier, and I'm so excited to see the final drawings they do.

Monday night I spent with devilpiglet at a nice Thai place across from the hotel, and when I got back I had an email from cesperanza asking me about the YouTube file for our vid--she said there were some repeating clips and I thought, no, that must be some kind of browser issue, but nope, it was…completely, utterly borked, for the entire second half of the vid. It was SO bizarre--there were at least a dozen clips that basically cut off and then repeated, which in some cases cut the already tight editing down and made it look like I had flash frames in and that I was a terrible editor. I was sick to my stomach. There wasn't a thing I could do about it, though, except put a note on the YT file and the AO3 page and let people know they might want to wait till I was home to link or rec. I'd watched the vid at least twice a day from the moment I posted it, because I don't trust YT and I was using a different codec, but it was always fine, until, apparently, it wasn't.

I also checked Dangerous and the beginning of that one was messed up. I didn't sleep at all Monday night, I was ragged and exhausted with trying to figure out what had happened, and angsting over the whole thing. In the morning on Tuesday I checked Dangerous first, and it was…fine. But I noticed YT had removed the 1080p quality setting and now only allowed a max of 720p. I just had no idea what to make of anything, but I went out to Starbucks for breakfast and then I wanted to walk over to the Miracle Mile, because I'd never seen that when I've been in Chicago before.

When I got there I opened up tumblr, just to check how the vids were doing, and saw that I had a personal message from someone, and it turned out to be the person who's doing a new stucky fic recs site that is really well written and thoughtful. She said she'd been reading my stuff and liking it, and that made me just…forget all about the Sturm und Drang of the Spaceboy fiasco, but then she added that she'd written up a rec for I can't remember how this started (but I can tell you exactly how it ends), my Winter Soldier-goes Groundhog Day story, and I swear I nearly swooned right there in Starbucks. Like, I never expected in a million years that I, a no-name fan, would ever get a story recced there. It made me feel so much better. I got a handful of comments and kudos from it, which, combined with the comments on Spaceboy and Dangerous, left me feeling better enough to spend the day writing in my room instead of rending my garments and screaming at YT, with breaks for a swim and seeking out food. Then devilpiglet and I hit the hotel bar and had a light dinner and she introduced me to rumchata (in the form of milkshakes) and OMG where has that been all my life? I am buying a bottle of that next time I hit the store, for sure.

We'd planned to go to the Shedd aquarium on Wednesday, but I kind of hit a wall, so she took me to see the beach at the lake, another thing I've never really done, but…I totally crapped out on her. The anxiety about the vid had kind of done me in, and the heat was killing me. We did stop to eat at a cool '70s diner place, and walked through some beautiful neighborhoods with amazing houses, and went to this really neat architectural salvage place, and then she took me to the airport. We got there earlier than expected, but I was so glad we left when we did after she texted me later and told me about Obama's visit basically shutting down the expressway, so yay for that. Of course my flight was delayed, but I hung out for a while at this nice bar we discovered a few years ago in the L terminal, and the bartender admired my Bucky Barnes shirt. Needless to say I gave him a nice tip. After some more delays it was home again, home again, and I got home very late last night to an insanely loving kitty cat.

This morning I got up and started to work on exporting a new video file to upload to YT, start fixing things. One of the things I hate about YT is that you can't fix a video, you have to reupload to a whole new page, and that means all the links will break and whatnot. But I got a text just as I was opening up Final Cut, from cesperanza, saying that it seemed to be playing fine, so we talked about it on the phone while I watched it and yup, it was totally unborked. I have this once-bitten feeling, like I can't trust it's not going to happen again, but as she put it, it's a chance to reblog the announcement and whip up more interest, so that was today. I have no idea why it happened, I can only assume YT made some kind of code change like they're always doing (the timing on the vid even changed, and I notice it still only allows 720p), but I feel like they took about 6 years off my life and they owe me, the bastards. So right now it's fine, and if you were waiting to watch because of my notes on the AO3 page, go cast your eyeballs upon it and enjoy!

And now I'm very sleepy, still on Chicago time, but I think I will see how much writing I can do tonight, and hope to finish this damn story by tomorrow. Posting deadline is the 29th, but wow, do I have a lot of editing and rewrites to get through, and I don't want to wait till the last minute. I've had enough of bad things happening for a while, and I feel like that's courting fate.

It's been a wild rollercoaster of a week, full of drama and trauma and ongoing saga, and lots of people I love and really sweet things happening and vids and fic and just a flurry of Things That Don't Usually Happen to Me.

A couple years ago, cesperanza and I started talking about this vid, but we'd bring it up and then forget about it, until this year, with David Bowie's death, it seemed the time to do it. It was fun to collaborate with someone again, and I think the end result turned out pretty good.

Many thanks to killa for the song edit and the graphic.



On AO3 | on Tumblr

Feedback is adored!

When I return home I'll have the high-quality download available at my vids site.

I posted this at my Tumblr but then forgot to post it here:

Hey guys, if you’re going to Emerald City Comic Con next weekend, I’m going to be on a panel about fanfiction, Slash, Shipping, and Online Communities: Why Fanfiction Matters – you should come!

I confess I think this is kinda hilarious, since I’m not a BNF, hell, I’m not even what you could call popular and I sometimes think I couldn’t get people to read my fic if I threw $20 bills at them like a stripper in reverse. But the lovely Zoe and Ruby asked me to be on it, so I said yes, and there are other cool people on the panel like lettered and Astrid from AO3. It’s also funny because I’m not a wide reader – I tend to focus on a narrow range of fic, and kind of keep to my own little corner. But god knows, I’m never short on opinions.

The panel is on Saturday at the dinner hour, 5:30-6:30, so I have no idea what to expect, but if you’d like to come talk about fanfic, join us! We’ll also be doing a livestream, I guess, on Sunday morning, which terrifies me since I look even worse on camera than I do in real life, but I don’t know where that is on the schedule–I think it’s at 11:15 am PT and you may be able to watch it without attending?

I’m hoping to talk about one of my favorite topics, which is that fic allows us to delve into characters or relationships that would never be center stage, or even allowed to happen, in the source material (my personal fave: Bucky having friendships with characters like Pepper Potts or Clint Barton). But I’m sure there’ll be a lot of other fun stuff to discuss. I hope to see you there!