aurora_chiroptera

Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer! I return bearing recommendations:

Two MLM books I read and enjoyed - Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston is a balm to the soul in current US politics. Not only is the romance a fun mutual pining with enemies to friend to lovers with well written main characters, the rest of the characters are wonderful. Really great female characters, as well as other queer characters makes for a great read. Great use of and nod to queer history too. FYI, it's New Adult, not YA, so it gets a bit sexy and CW for homophobia.

Silver in the Wood by Emily Tesh is a new Tor novella. It's a great little fairy tale that had me hooked from the start. Also has great lady characters. It's neat to have a lord of the wood who is really just friends with the dryads. It's based in the past but there is no homophobia shown so that's lovely!

Some webcomics - Heir's Game by Suspu has a very good mlm main plot with a great wlw side plot, as well as just being a beautiful fantasy drama. CW: gore/injury, homophobia (from one character's father, it seems not to be common practice): www.webtoons.com/en/drama/heirs-game/list?title_no=1445

Castle Swimmer by Wendy Lian Martin - cute, merpeople, good rep: www.webtoons.com/en/fantasy/castle-swimmer/list?title_no=1499

Crumbs by Whitherling - SUPER cute, fun magic system, main character seems to be bi - https://www.webtoons.com/en/romance/crumbs/list?title_no=1648

(five hours of screaming)

Okay! This is Fine!

Thesis: Progress has been made on editing and consolidating what I have, and I have finally started writing it again as of... last night. 25-30 double spaced pages due Monday. Prayer circle for me...

Unbroken Promise: Great progress has been made on the second draft! Things have been cut, things have been added, things have been tweaked. Keeping it on the back burner and trying to get a little bit more done each week, while trying to push my thesis to the for front. My brain seems much more attached to this accidental novella than my actual school work so that is an issue.

I am teaching a class starting next Tuesday at my local pride center, which is an introduction to creative writing with a focus on queer themes. I am so excited and so nervous.

Finally, I have been participating in #LGBTWIP on twitter using my thesis as the focus: https://twitter.com/PossiblyWriting

The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi - this was recommended to me through the Radchdome and I snagged it on Audible. It is are wonderful space opera romp with a wonderful cast of characters. Scalzi handles morally grey characters well, and has built a really interesting far future human society. The audio book is read by Wil Wheaton, which I was a little iffy about but it is very well done. He does a good job at character voices.

Fell Swoop by Alakotila - A recently finished scifi webcomic with a soft m/m love story and trans representation! Also pretty art and neat alien designs. Find it here: https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/fell-swoop/list?title_no=129950

Filling Quiet Spaces by WritingEmi - Dragon Age Inquisition fanfiction. Gosh a long fic, Adaar/Iron Bull/Dorian that's really soft and wonderful, mutual pining goodness! Warning for character death in past Dorian/Felix, but the grief and healing is very well done. Find it here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11520360/chapters/25856847

Doctor Who Season 11 - Finally watched it! I think I stopped watching back after season... 6? 7? Whenever Amy and Rory left. I was very disillusioned at that point, but I thought them leaving would be a decent close. ANYWAY Season 11 is amazing! It has what I really want to scifi which is tackling social issues but also giving hope. The characters are all lovely and 13 as gone up to be my favorite Doctor, beating out the 4th. The story writing is wonderful, there is the perfect balance of individual monster of the week episodes and connected story. Gosh! I'm so happy to love Doctor Who again!

Yeee I want to share my current projects in hope that will create some accountability to get me writing.

Original:
The Library: This is my thesis for my MFA, a space opera with three POVs (one human, one alien, and one AI). It is where my focus really should be and I started and got 40k into a rewrite this November. I don't know why I am having such a hard time getting it to hold my focus, because I love the story and the characters. But it is also the longest standing project I've had for a long time and it's tied to school work in my mind. Oh yeah also it's due.... September 2019 so...150-350 double spaced pages... Should work on that y'all.

Unbroken Promise: My Persephone/Hades novella that I started and finished in November. It currently stands at around 30k. I sent it to a beta reader (a fellow MFA student and friend), she read it, and then we talked about it yesterday. I have a lot of good notes, and this was also the first time I had the courage to share my writing in this way probably since I was 16. So that felt good after if felt scary! It is certainly still in first draft shape, but I know what I need to do for the second draft. I hope I can self publish this story in 2019.

Peace Mages: This is a project I got about 10k in before NaNoWriMo and I put it aside for other things. I want to get back to it because I really like the idea and want to write about mages in love. I am thinking about making a poly threeway relationship, which means I might need to restart it but I think it is an idea I want to follow up with.

The Smuggler and the Prince: *cough* Yeah... I should update that.

Fanfiction:
TLHOD Gift Swap: Still gotta finish my story of this and it is due... Friday. So that is my focus at the moment.

The Harry Potter Fic: I have had this idea for a HP fic since... Probably 2014. I have worked on it here and there, and I made another outline for it when I needed a break during NaNoWriMo. I keep adding to it but it's a soft fic focused on relationships, healing, and growing with lots of queer and trans interpretations of the characters. One day I will write it because it is in my soul and it needs to come out. Unfortunately I have never really done a long fic before so I hesitate. Also I have so many original things I should focus on instead :|

yanked from [personal profile] sharpest_asp and [personal profile] colls --

send me a character and I'll tell you:

> favorite thing about them
> least favorite thing about them
> favorite line (or scene)
> brOTP
> OTP
> nOTP
> random headcanon
> unpopular opinion
> song I associate with them
> favorite picture of them

I was looking over my Tumblr, deciding if there was anything that I wanted to save. I have tags for writing and books that I want to make sure I keep access to. But as I went into my archive, and starting looking back at the posts on there from November and December of 2013 when I started the blog... I found I didn't want to loose any of it. The cringey crossover posts and art, the fandoms I want no part of now, posts of when I was so closeted I thought I was just an ally and not queer myself... So many things that made me either nostalgic instead of embarrassed or proud of how much I have grown and learned about myself and the world.

Now I'm not sure what to do, because so much of the content isn't even my own, just reblogs I've collected along the way. Maybe I'll find a way to save it all, or maybe I'll just hope it doesn't get wiped. But damn, I didn't think I would be this sad about what it has meant to me personally.