I got asked to fill out a survey about Generation Y (ages 18-31, I think) and some of the questions got me philosophizing. I thought I’d share.

If you want to take the survey, go here.

(on work/life issues)

For us it’s very weird. Right now my husband and I have about an hour when we’re awake at the same time before one of us is at work. He works 8:30-5:30; I work 3-11 and I commute an hour each way, so I don’t get home until midnight. But our weekends are damn special. Do I wish we had more time? Sure, and I wish i had a book deal, world peace and a pony. All things considered, we are blessed. We say to each other, “We work now when we’re young and strong so we will have time when we’re older to enjoy.” Plus, I love my job too much to give it up.

(on our generation’s work ethic and motivation)

If you ask me, all those grandpas who think we’re slackers can go bite into an apple and lose another tooth. We are the most creative, focused, motivated generation on the planet. The whole world will change based on the innovative thinking going on right now. Sustainable food and fuel, new communications technologies that are inherently democratic… it’s the wiki generation and we’re all pitching in to create a bit of a better world. There’s a quote for your report!

(on dress codes at work)

My career is one of late-night hours, so one of the tradeoffs is we don’t have to dress up because there are no meetings and no clients to impress. Doesn’t mean we don’t dress up occasionally if we’re told clients will be in the office. I do find that work clothes are extremely expensive and I’m lucky I don’t have to wear them often.

(on our generation being “entitled”)

Pardon me while I lol. LOL.

I understand what they’re saying, I honestly do. I can’t speak for Paris Hilton or that lot, but I know I’ve been brought up to understand the cost of luxuries. We don’t have extended cable in our house because the monthly charges are off the wall. But we do have video game systems and computers because they’re worth the money. We pay our bills like good hard-working Americans.

Every generation thinks the next generation is a bunch of spoiled brats, but they forget that they’ve been working to make things better for us. They shouldn’t begrudge us the very fruits of their labor. Our task is saving the planet for OUR kids now, and no doubt we’ll soon be sitting on a front porch grumbling about how those kids think that they can plug their electric car in ANYWHERE. Personally, I look forward to it.

Keeping track of your spending is quite simply one of the most depressing practices known to man.

Add to that a shift to working nights and a post-holiday blah and your husband basically working his tail off and…

blah.

I have to remember to print out stuff for my writers’ group today. If I go home without doing so, I fail at life!

Also, I should print out some key posts from this blog to show my psychiatrist who I am spending too much money on seeing tomorrow while my husband works his 10-day week to go to Mexico with us and please god let him enjoy the vacation b/c otherwise I will feel like a total failure …

it’s a Family Vacation(TM) so if he feels Obligated Obligated Obligated the whole weekend I will feel like a horrible wife. What’s worse, he has to work another 10-day week when he gets back… so he will be miserable and I will be miserable thinking about it….

Ugh. See? I’m totally depressing myself.

The blues suck.

Warning: this year in review will have very little about the presidential election, even though it dominated all of our consciousnesses. This is more navel gazing. So yeah, unless you like your head in my belly button… feel free to ignore.

This year I wrote more than 294,000 words of fanfic (not counting ficlets, drabbles and unfinished bits), more than 18,000 words of original fiction not counting my novel, and more than 43,000 words of original novel (not counting what I wrote and scrapped.)

I started saying “fanwank,” “picspam,” “lolwut” and “FTW” on a regular basis.

My biggest achievements this year were:

• completing several long multipart fanfics
• completing my motherfucking NOVEL hell yeah
• getting a new job
• managing to swallow all the pre-colonoscopy crap (oh yeah, and having several ‘scopies)
• keeping within ten pounds of my wedding weight at all times

My biggest failings this year were;

• Losing myself to the specter of temporary Internet fame
• Allowing myself to be a dupe to a pathological personality and then being pathological about it myself
• Letting my emotions and hormones rule me
• Treating my friends like they were ego-pumping machines instead of real friends

People I met this year who became important to me: My supervisors and co-workers at my new job, ladyanne525 from livejournal (gets a mention because i met her IRL), all of the LJ friends who have stuck with me so long

Movies and TV shows I loved this year: Cloverfield, Iron Man, The Dark Knight, America’s Next Top Model, Heroes, Fringe, Project Runway, Shear Genius

Websites I started to frequent this year: Twitter, I Can Has Cheezburger, Facebook

Famous people I felt it necessary to blog about included: Greg Grunberg, the presidential candidates, Elina Ivanova, Sarah Palin

My goals for this coming year are:

• Move to a bigger apartment that is closer to the Metro
• Survive the recession
• Finish revision of my novel and take steps toward getting it professionally edited/reviewed
• Get below my wedding weight
• Keep my apartment clean
• Save money
• Control myself

In my fondest wishes, this coming year I will:

• Get a book deal
• End up so skinny that I can eat what I want and not worry too much
• Be vindicated when Matt and Mohinder hook up in canon ^___^
• Keep my finances so straight that by year’s end we have enough money to start thinking about houses and/or second cars
• Save editors’ butts so often that they couldn’t live without me
• Have lots of actual friends
• Did I mention get a book deal?

In my worst nightmares, this coming year I will:

• Be rejected so many times and so thoroughly that I’ve given up on my writing altogether
• Maintain my reputation as a drama queen and continue to abuse the goodwill of my friends
• Not visit Atlanta or Brooklyn like I’ve promised to do
• Be in the red
• Be above 150 lbs.
• Not be able to write another Year in Review post this time next year

Thanks for being there for me this year… see you in the oh-nine!

And this is where I will explain how my brain works, how it gets me into such massive trouble, and why I can’t see a way out of it.

Here are the operative axioms:

• Axiom 1) I advance conversations and conditions inside my head until they are at a different place than they are in real life, and I respond to them accordingly.
• Axiom 2) The less rational I’m acting, the more I feel compelled to hit the “send” button.
• Axiom 3) I’m sure if I just explain myself, people will understand why I’ve done or said something.

Now on to the story.

I’m working on a small personal project with Persons A, B, and C.

Person A’s e-mail did not get to me with her initial plans for the project, so I was under the mistaken assumption that nobody had done anything about it until I sent initial plans. When I found out about that, I felt very badly. When I saw Person A’s plans, I didn’t like one element of it. Subsequently, Person B told me that I should include Person A’s plan because otherwise she might feel left out.

Inside my head, I played out a scenario wherein I didn’t use that aspect of the plan, and in my head, A and B got extremely angry at me. Therefore, I wrote (in real life) an extremely defensive reason why I felt that way (Axiom 3) and wrote it as if A and B were already angry at me (Axiom 1). Somehow my brain had decided that if I just got the defense out of the way, I might be able to skip the initial anger part. And yeah, I hit “send” (Axiom 2).

Now A and B are angry at me not only for not including Person A’s plan but for my attitude in the e-mail.

And now here I am explaining myself (Axiom 3) and not helping my case as well as I’d thought.

It always works the same way.

So it takes me to the next set of questions, including:

• What response did I want to get from that e-mail?
• Why do I feel the need to hit “send”?
• Why do I feel the need to explain myself?
• What did I think this whole pattern would accomplish?

I’m especially upset at myself because lately I’ve begun to have some real control over my trigger finger in these cases. I’ve stopped, I’ve decided not to say things or send things, I’ve written e-mails and not sent them, I’ve really had control.  That control lapsed today and I’m desperately afraid I won’t be able to get it back.

Here’s how it feels. When I’m upset, I’m tangentially aware of it. There’s a buzzing in my chest and a foghorn of warning ringing in my ears. But at the same time, a very noisy rabble starts up in my head encouraging me to fight past that feeling. “What, are you going to spend your life never expressing your opinion?” they say. “Do you want to go back to that depressed teenage lump that was so afraid of conflict that she never met anyone’s eye in the school hallways and ended up being thought of as the psycho throughout the school?”

(The same rabble, incidentally, tells me when I’m angry that the worst possible thing in the world would be apologizing. It’s like complete and utter defeat, and it sickens me through and through to know that eventually I will probably get all soggy like a wet Cheerio and crumple and say Oh I’m Sorry It’s All My Fault, which essentially means that I will never, ever, ever be on the right side in an argument; I will never win one; I will always be the one that gives in; I have no spine. It makes me feel sick to my stomach to even think about it.)

The rabble is wrong, of course, because I’m not welcoming the conflict. By speaking out, I’m not standing up for what I know is right. I’m just asserting my existence on this earth because I feel so often like I am invisible and will be forgotten. Therefore I act out; therefore, when the criticism comes it feels like criticism of me and not criticism of my opinion. Of course, when I act out in irrational ways, it is criticism of me, and it’s justified.

It’s the same thing I do in every other part of life, really. I assert myself and demand acceptance and when I don’t get it I lash out. This goes back to what I said in another post here, when I said I don’t think I’ve actually said something until it’s heard. I don’t think I exist unless someone validates my existence. But no amount of validation is enough.

I think if I post this publicly, someone will see me and hear me and know that the reason I did what I did is not because I’m egotistical but because I’m shattered inside. Not because I want to hurt others but because I’m trying desperately to protect myself from being hurt. But in the end it’s what I do, not what I intend, that matters.

That’s what I wanted, I guess, was just an “OK, I see what you’re saying.”

I’m going to really have to watch myself today. And that, too, drives me crazy, because it’s unfair that I should have to watch myself when I’m the one who’s upset. Everyone else should have to watch themselves instead. They’re happy and rational; they can afford to. I’m unhappy and irrational, therefore I should have some leeway. Isn’t that the most bizarre definition of fairness you’ve evre heard?

Somehow I’m also going to have to avoid stress eating, too. Now THAT will suck.

So every year I make a set of Christmas carols based on whatever fandom I’m into at the time. This year I’m not on LJ for the holidays, and I couldn’t decide what fandom to use. So I used fandom itself, since I’ve sort of been meta-ing fandom from this distance.

The truth is, today I could be thinking about a difficult decision that my husband and I are trying to accept (no, I’m not pregnant, it involves whether to move to a condo we can barely afford but is absolutely gorgeous– we decided to play it safe and stay put for six more months, but still, it’s a little bit distressing to know we won’t be ever setting foot in that place again. Wonder if they’d be interested in dropping the rent by $400? hah!)

Anyway, never mind… I have leafed through the Fandom Carol Book and found the following gems:

• Slash the Halls
• Good Kink: Wincestness
• I Wrote Three Ships
• I saw Jack Harkness Kissing Santa Claus
• It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Canon

(And of course if you want to sing “Hetalia” instead of “Hallelujah” that should work out fine!)

But behind the cut is the Twelve Days of Xmas, that X of course is the X between the members of your favorite pairing…)

On the first day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
A pairing that makes me go “squeee!”

On the second day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Two sexy siblings
(innuendo that most people flee).

On the third day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Threesome kinks
(dubcon OK)
and I think I know my OT3.

On the fourth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Four BNFs
Lots of wank
Comment whores galore
And some concrit that I take badly.

On the fifth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
HET THAT I LIKE?!!?
What’s the point of that?
It’s not slash!
Double-ewe-tee-eff?
There’s enough het in reality!

On the sixth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Six fandom!secrets
FIVE ARE TWILIGHT!?
Three liked the movie
One did not
And the other one
Likes its vampires extra-sparkly.

On the seventh day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Seven AU fics
“Heroes” in high school
IT’S “LOST” IN SPACE!
Pirates and ninjas
Ancient Rome
Cowboys in the West
And just one set in 1903.

On the eighth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Eight RP players
Two of whom I ship
(although they’re both girls)
OH EMM GEE WANK!
“I don’t like the way
She RPs”
“GTFO now”
And so much for that bloody RP.

On the ninth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Nine months of M-Preg
What will their names be?
What will they look like?
(What? Does that mean that..
THEY’RE HAVING TWINS?)
God, that’s gotta hurt
:clutches butt:
Still, don’t you adore
WAFFy and slashy fathers-to-be?

On the tenth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Ten retconned plot points
(Too many writers?
Too many seasons?
Timelines that look like
they’re giant pretzels.)
THAT MAKES NO SENSE!
Did they just forget
that she said
something else before?
Oh, God, bring back continuity!

On the eleventh day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me
Eleven kink memes:
* How about twincest?
* Give me Hurt/Comfort
* I like an orgy
* Dubcon or noncon
* RPF squicks me
PR0N FOR THE WIN!
* Buttplugs are teh sex
* Eww, that’s gross
* How about some WAFF?
And it’s written anonymously.

(take a deep breath now, everyone together:)

On the twelfth day of Xmas
My fandom gave to me:
12 awful songfics
11 angsty darkfics
10 beta readers
9-part crossovers
8 Mary Sues
7 fanon traits
6 epic wanks
TL;DR!
4 meta posts
(NOT WORK-SAFE)
Two drabble prompts
And a crackfic for my OTP!

Five words that change the universe. A new kind of supernatural thriller, based on an original mythology– simple and limitless in scope.

So that’s not how this post originally started. But here’s how it previously appeared on the WordPress tags page:

tiptoewrites wrote just now: The way I want to market The Dreamers or pitch it to agents/publishers is as a modern, supernatural … more →

I think maybe I have to have a pitch so succinct that it will draw people in from the tags page. Nothing about that summary says “click me, click me.” So I fail at marketing, but if at first you don’t succeed… edit your post!!  Anyway, here’s the actual post:

The way I want to market The Dreamers or pitch it to agents/publishers is as a modern, supernatural romantic thriller – but one that doesn’t lean on the existing tropes (vampires, demons, hunters, wizards, ancient christian conspiracies hiding the existence of angels, you know, the whole shebang) but instead creates its own mythology, one that’s completely original, devastatingly simple and full of possibilities. You don’t need to learn the names of ancient gods. All you need to know is five words, and those five words turn the universe upside-down.

Now that I’m getting close to finishing my initial solo revision of the first part of the book, I’m starting to think about what happens when my set of revisions is done. I think I’ll most likely solicit beta readers online (probably only two or three) and ask them to have a look. Now I need to go back and really look at how books are published, and see how I go about finding a  professional editor to tear the damn thing apart. Do I do that after it’s accepted for publication? (Can they see past an unedited story to what it’ll look like after editing?) Do I shop an unedited draft, or do I look for editors that would be interested? Wouldn’t a professional editor want to see whether they’re interested in editing the work first– that is, doesn’t it have to be good enough to shop around to editors first? (You need an editor to sell a book, and you need to sell your book to get an editor. Sigh!)

You’d think since I work in publishing I’d know the answers to some of these questions, but fiction and news are seven worlds apart. Oh well, I have enough dumbass writing books by now that I should be able to find the answer.  (The books are only dumbass when they don’t answer my question. When they do, they’re divine and the best purchase I ever made. Hah!)

I’m so excited about this draft because it’s shaping up consistent. When the ideas were still vague and I was trying to get them down on paper there was tons of incongruity and half-baked notions that didn’t connect to anything else. Now there are clear motivations for the characters to do what they do, now and later in the book, and there’s even a little bit of foreshadowing (and outright signs ‘n’ omens).  I no longer have to look at a scene and say, “Yes, but how did they get there in the first place? And why would they care?” The answers are woven into the story, and what’s more, they’re an integral part of the story and the character development. That feels awesome to have achieved.

My transitions are still a tad awkward, and what happens in between actions — the necessary mental reflection through which we see the story’s significance and motivations and Miranda’s thought process– is still far too full of It seemed to be… and It was as if… I want to throw those sentences out a very high window, splatter them on the ground, and see if they are better when I put them back together. Yes, Humpty Dumpty is my editor.

Show don’t tell, as old and true an axiom as it is, is much easier said than done.

The three favorite fics I’ve written, behind the cut.

3) The HYD Megafic
Hana Yori Dango; Tsukushi/Tsukasa; PG to R

“I will come to the room and knock four times if the mistress returns,” Tama informed Tsukushi as she put on the old familiar maid’s outfit. It felt strangely nostalgic… heart-pounding. Even the smell of the fabric, the feeling of it against her skin, was familiar. It made her think of days now long past, days of hard work and tension-filled nights, afraid of the stirring feelings in her soul every time he got too close to her.

And it made her think of one night in particular. The night rubies sparkled at her throat, and she could neither breathe nor move, but lay receiving… no…. opening herself to his kisses, as his thumb caressed her wrist and her forehead gently, cradling her like she was someone precious, someone he had to take care not to break. Yet his lips tasted of passion, and their touch whispered to her of possession… though who was the possessor that night she still wasn’t sure. Had it been him, who’d silenced her every cry of protest? Had it been her, who’d encited him to such a passion? Or, perhaps, in that empty room, past midnight, with the sparkling ringed planet in the sky watching over them, they had been neither possessors nor possessions, but equals even in madness, holding hands as they fell through eternity. Just perhaps, they might have been lovers.

It seems funny that this fic, which holds such a place of honor in my memories, never got itself a real name. The background to this was that I was on a mailing list for Hana Yori Dango back when the manga was still ongoing every month in Margaret magazine. I translated each issue as they came out, and after a while I started writing a fic after each translation, my version of what I hoped would happen in the next issue. Then there was a hiatus in the story, and the last issue before the hiatus had Tsukasa disappearing off to New York suddenly, and Tsukushi vowing to get on a plane and follow him. The following months I had plenty of time to write what I considered to be the perfect continuation– and the perfect ending.

Is it just coincidence that everything that happened after that moment seemed like a letdown? Because that was the beginning of everything bad that happened. (Let’s not discuss the amnesia storyline. Seriously? AMNESIA?) I could go on and on about how the manga lost its punch and started to play things out for longer than they could be sustained, but I’ve promised this is going to be about writing, not about fandom.

In terms of this fic, I storyboarded/drew a great deal of it before beginning to write. I had the major scenes blocked out in my head and in some cases on paper. Like a lot of my manga-based fics, I had a lot of the dialog in Japanese originally, as well. It feels more canon to me when the English is horribly stilted. Of course, when I translated that practice to writing about American media with Japanese characters in it, it didn’t go over well. But the “just-translated” feel of this, assisted by the plotting (which is much richer and more detailed than the story I just mentioned), makes it work.

2) Yaten’s Love Song
Sailor Moon; Yaten/Minako; PG-13

“It’s my dream,” she’d said.

I didn’t have a dream. I never had the time or space to find my dream. That was what being a Sailor Soldier was all about. How could she, a Sailor Soldier too, how could she stand there with that glowing face and tell me SHE had a dream?

“Soldiers have missions. We don’t have dreams,” I slammed her against the wall, with my words harder than with my arms, but I was the one who felt I was being crucified on concrete. She was still glowing, damn her.

I wonder when it was that I realized she was my dream?

Nothing makes you love a fic more than having it stolen. That’s all I’m going to say about the authorship controversy here. Suffice it to say that I wrote this over a year’s time, and I sweated and cried and gained and lost sanity doing so. It’s mine. End of story.

Going back to reformat this for archiving it on Tiptoe Writes Fanfic was like taking a time machine into a land when I knew nothing about writing. I want to shout every time I have a character laugh or sigh something; I feel ill at all the cliches and want to pull out half the exclamation points. But I’m archiving, not revising, and as a good proofreader I know what can and can’t be changed. Sigh! Still, if you click through, do have a laugh at how raw my prose was compared to now. I’m still over the top, but at least my edges aren’t quite as ragged anymore.

One of the really interesting things to me about translating this story over from fanfiction.net to Tiptoe Writes Fanfic was seeing how much explanation and disclaiming I did back in the day. I felt it necessary to give a huge glossary at the beginning of each part and explain that I just had to use the Japanese because the voice actors were so great and the English just didn’t work as well, blah blah blah…

Needless to say I took the big honkin’ glossary out, but I provided a small key in between segments of the fic to keep things moving. Still, I do feel some reader-guilt. Part of me wants to declare at the outset, “Don’t take my translations as a dictionary. Just because iie means ‘no’ doesn’t mean you can say We have iie bananas. The language works differently!” But in the end, it’s my readers who will act smart or dumb, not me. I can’t protect the world from willful ignorance. If I could, well, I would get into politics.

Still, it makes me wonder how I can work some authentic Japanese language into stories without inundating the reader. I want to do it so badly, but it always feels overblown or gratuitous. I need to write something where the Japanese language’s uniqueness would work with the overall sound symbolism or themes. Where it was there out of necessity as much as art. What kind of a story might that be?

1) Legacies
Heroes, Matt/Mohinder, PG-13 to R

It was unexpected visits from Elle at work and Maya at home, and he felt irked, as though a wicked blonde devil and a soulful, tanned angel were tag-teaming him, trying by turns to divert his attention. And his angel and devil quota had already been filled, both at once, in Molly, so he had no room for them.

Stranger and more worrisome still were the brief snips of conversation Matt and he would have. It was the first they’d lived together for any significant length of time, and in addition to the usual adjustments, there was also an eerie sense of familiarity. When they were not bickering, they were thinking the same thing at the same time. The strangeness with which they interacted unsettled Mohinder; he wasn’t sure whether he was bothered more by the friction or by the times of utter parallel.

There were times their eyes would meet and without a word they would know what was coming next. Matt would open his mouth and Mohinder would say “It’s my week to buy the groceries. Right.” Or Molly would have a sore throat and they would both come home with the same flavor of cough drops. Or, worst of all, they would begin to chat in the early evening and the next time they looked up it was three a.m.

What Mohinder realized after a while was that they were actually building a relationship. A partnership was forming between them. Like two sides of a bridge that meet over a rushing river below, utterly scared of falling. Once the two meet, they should be comforted, yes; but they’re still looking at a long tumble to the rapids and jagged rocks should they be unable to fit together in just the right way. It was terrifying.

And it went unsaid for a long time.

Of everything I’ve written, nothing makes me prouder than Legacies. Here I created a plot that truly made sense and truly fit the characters and world it was extending, with twists and revelations up to the very last chapter. And here I created what I felt was a realistic, intense romantic relationship in its early stages, a realistic turn into bisexuality for two men who were not expecting it, and, best yet, the building up of that relationship was integral to the plot in ways that only become clear at the very end. And in the meantime, I handled minor characters with the appropriate degrees of sensitivity and brought in people and ideas that I had foreshadowed beforehand. I’m just so damned proud of this.

This story actually began in two separate parts. One part was the theory that spawned the fic, which I wrote in the form of a conversation that remains in the final chapter. The theory itself was so intricate and carefully woven that it took a lot of time to get all the gears in place to have the plot work its way toward that final point. The other was a series of conversations between my romantic leads that were intended to portray a more realistic way for them to get together. I titled it “Tentatively,” because that’s what it was; not the flowers and rainbows of other fics I’d written but a tentative, hesitant, stopping-and-starting exploration of what had been a partnership of necessity and slowly became a friendship before turning into more. It took me a while to realize that the two pieces could be joined.

I do write a lot of dialogue before filling out the scene, because I hear the dialogue in my head. But I find that it’s more difficult to write “around” existing lines of dialogue, so I try to stay fluid and allow the words to change if they’re going to. Still, today, the best things I write are those things that pop into my head, dialogue, description, themes, imagery and all, and just go with effortless bliss from fingers to page.

* *

Well, this meme has been lots of fun for me to work on and think about. I think I let it get a little too fandom-y at times, but that’s OK. I was doing it for my own enjoyment. If you have read, thank you for reading.

Previous part is here.

6) Behavioral Therapy
Heroes; Mohinder/Sylar; NC-17

“You can’t simply restrain Sylar physically and hope that your luck holds out indefinitely. To truly neutralize him we will have to go deeper than that. Sylar is a man who believes to his core that he is superior to the rest of us, that the laws don’t apply to him and that violence and manipulation are the keys to achieving positive results. That is what needs to change, and that is what I intend to do.”

Bob hadn’t expected this burst of lecture, and he stood stock still for a moment. “How?” he asked.

“Through intensive behavioral conditioning. I have been reading up on the subject recently. It’s fascinating. Imposition of limits, implementation of stimulus-response reflexes, reward and punishment behaviors. In essence, it’s about finding out what he wants, and teaching him what he has to do to get it.”

The day I ever wrote Mohinder/Sylar was supposed to be the day pigs flew and the cows came home. I haven’t seen any returning animals, by air or land, but somehow I managed to write Mohinder/Sylar– 11-part Mohinder/Sylar– 11-part ADULT Mohinder/Sylar, with all kinds of kinks written in, with sex as a main focus of the plot… and I have emerged relatively unscathed. (More about that “relatively” later.)

There was a set of prompts for adult Heroes stories. It’s what’s called a kink meme: basically the female equivalent of a bunch of guys getting together to watch lesbian porn vids. Harmless and fun, and in this case, completely anonymous. (This, of course, was not written anonymously, or I wouldn’t be talking about it here.) There’s a lot of disturbing stuff in this if you’re vanilla about sex. The funny thing is, in real life I’m quite vanilla. What I like to write or fantasize about is very different than what I would even consider doing. Expressing yourself through erotica is very big in fandom, and it’s also an easy way to make a name for yourself: The Internet Is for Porn, after all.

Writing these characters in this situation was particularly problematic for me because what I was trying to do was psychological manipulation through desire and denial. Both of the main characters were using and being used by each other, and through the push and pull of their interactions something starts that cannot be stopped. It goes from brutal to tortured but romantic, but theirs is not and could never be a happy ending, and I think I pulled off that ambiguity particularly well.

I was very happy to complete this, and it gave me courage to try to write some more for this pairing. Alas, they were not as well received, and the final blow came to me in the very painful format that also (although through a different set of comments) caused me to leave livejournal for a while: “Your Sylar is awful.” and “You can’t write Sylar at all.” I give less credence to those comments with a little space and time, and also because the story did end up winning an award. But ever since, I just have to wonder about all of the people who until then had been friendly to me. Did they secretly think I didn’t have the chops to write this character? Suspicion and paranoia are the death of perspective. (I will likely write more on this as the month progresses, but let’s leave it here for now.)

5) Something Invulnerable
Heroes; Charlie/Claire; R

“What’s high school like?”

The question’s out before Claire can tamp it down, and Charlie’s lips part. Her forehead furrows in worry.

“I mean,” Claire says quickly, “is it as bad as the movies and things say it is? Because it seems really bad.”

Charlie looks at her for a long time. Finally, sympathetically, she says, “Yeah. Yes, it is sometimes. But it’s not forever.” She leans in as if in confidence. “And by the time you’re done with it, you’ve got a badge of honor. You’re strong enough to do anything if you can get through high school. You can walk through fire and not get burned.”

Claire’s eyes go wild and round. She feels like Moses coming upon the burning bush. “Wow.”

“Aren’t you sweet?” Charlie gushes. “I wish you were my little sister. We’d talk about everything, and I’d help you just as much as I can.”

Claire and Charlie never meet in the show, but they’re both young, impressionable and genuinely sweet girls in the Odessa/Midland area. I was immediately struck by the potential chemistry there, and I wanted them to have met at least once. They seemed to me to be like sisters.

This idea was in my head to write for months and months before I got around to it. And when I finally had the scenes straightened out, the language eluded me. I posted, revised, posted again, and finally bid it adieu and sent it out into the world to stand on its own merits. It was mostly ignored, and I kind of understand why– I was still not pleased with it. But the story is one I wanted to tell so badly that it still ranks as one of my favorites.

One difficult thing for me about this piece is that it portrays sexual acts where at least one of the girls is underage. The sex is not graphic, but it is overt rather than implied. But here’s what I realized as I pondered this piece and what it meant: It’s an allegory. It’s about sisterhood, finding someone to connect with, vulnerability and innocence giving way to experience. This is the one fic that I’ve written that I don’t want to be canon. My personal canon says that Charlie and Claire met once and connected, but not sexually. The sex is a metaphor in this. It’s an easy way to represent the connection. In the story itself, it happens; but the story is painting an ephemeral concept with a broad brush, and it doesn’t mean I would have liked to see it happen that way. That may be a little dense or obtuse of me, but that’s the conclusion I came to as to why I did it.

4) Addiction
Gravitation, Yuki/Shuichi, PG-13

I light him on fire, take him into me as though I could breathe him, burn him up and wear him down. It feels good, even the parts that hurt, even the parts where I lose myself in him and cry out for him as though he was air, not poison. Man is not supposed to drink poison willingly. Just as man is not made to be with man. It’s unnatural according to all common sense. But I remain addicted. Despite all logic, despite all I’ve been through and all I know.

Speaking of metaphorical pieces, this is one. It’s too short and probably too fluffy, but I’m attached to it for several reasons. First of all, it’s in Yuki POV and I think it comes off as in character. Which is very difficult, because he’s such a difficult character to get a real grip on. But he gives me a lot of leeway, because he himself is a writer, which leads me to imagine he sees things like metaphor in real life, the way I do. I can imagine very easily Yuki looking at his two biggest vices– smoking and his lover– and drawing a connection between them. Because I did it. (How egotistical can you get? But leaving that aside…)

I suppose it’s necessary, when you’re telling a love story, to tell it from the perspective of one of the lovers. But it often ends up with a sort of dichotomy going on: there’s the half of the pair that the audience clearly identifies with, feels sympathy for, etc., and then there’s the half that is not “self” but “the other,” alluring, mysterious, and impenetrable. Yuki Eiri is very definitely in the latter category, and getting inside his head was a bit of a power trip for me. For once, I was the one wanted, not the one wanting. And I was surprised to find as much vulnerability as I did.

There was someone I considered the Yuki to my Shuichi once. Her handle was “eidolon tree,” and she wrote stories so deep and beautiful that I attached myself to her coattails and called her my akogare, or “idol.” She treated me just as Yuki treats Shuichi; coldly, with a hint of annoyance. And yet she kept responding to my e-mails and admitted, once in a while and grudgingly, that she kind of liked me. Then, one day, she abruptly disappeared, and that was it, she was gone.

If she ever googles her old screen name, maybe she’ll come upon this blog. I hope she gets a good laugh out of it. Having my akogare actually laugh at me was gratifying. It meant she cared enough to respond.

Top three coming up another time.

Because I am trying to learn about myself and figure out how to deal with these situations, I’m writing this blog from an emotional foxhole. I’m despondent and frustrated and need to figure out how I go on from here and don’t let my emotions rule me. Abandon hope all ye who click the “more.”

My company’s holiday party is tonight. I didn’t know that until this afternoon, when my supervisor said, “We really think  you should stop by. It’s going to be awesome.” But I need to go down to Old Town to have the holiday dinner with my husband’s dojo, I said. It’s at nine. “Well, that’s when our party ends,” he said.

Enter panic.

I have very little emotional stamina. I am terrified of parties and social situations not because I don’t enjoy them but because they last longer than I can take. After a while I’ve circulated among everyone I know to say hi to, and I daren’t bother anyone else for fear they’ll think I’m being annoying. And there’s nothing more to say, and we stand there in an awkward circle until someone excuses themselves for a minute, permanently. And there is no way in hell I can hack two parties in a row.

But this is my first year with this company, and how much networking and making-myself-known (bad at it as I am) could I miss out on? Years from now when my co-worker and I are vying for the same upper-level job, will she get it because I didn’t make the first step in a social situation to get close to someone who could be key to my ascendancy here?

How do I go to my husband’s dinner and not be resentful of the fact that when I went to the restroom, the people who were in there were changing into sparkly black dresses and gossiping and talking about makeup– all the things I’ve been so desperate to find a companion or two to do with me? I could have been part of that group of girls. Instead, I’m alone, crying at my desk in an empty office. I’m supposed to smile and enjoy the dinner like that didn’t happen?

In the end, I was thinking as I sat in the toilet stall trying not to sob, I defeat myself. I’m so paralyzed of social situations that I spend the whole time worrying about myself and whether I’m about to fall apart, and that’s what leads me to be so self-involved and not be able to relate to people. Which makes social situations painful, because people don’t know what to say to me when all I want to do is talk about myself. Which makes me paralyzed of social situations…

(and if you give a mouse a cookie…)

How good’s the irony that in a blog where all I do is talk about myself, I’m complaining that I’m not learning how to not talk about myself?

I don’t know. I’m miserable. And somehow I have to get over it.

My co-worker just asked another person here how her pottery class is going. How’d she find out that she was taking a pottery class? Because she asks questions and cares about people’s lives and doesn’t talk about herself unless she’s asked, that’s why.  How do I learn to care more? And if I pay more attention and ask more questions because I’m lonely, does that make me just as selfish as before?

I hate that I’m in this place. I hate that I’m selfish enough to post it publicly hoping against hope that someone will have the answers. I hate the person who wrote this post. And I wouldn’t want to be friends with her, either.

Last night’s episode was surprisingly good after the suckfest that was the previous week. But it left behind a number of burning questions (sorry, Meredith!)

Spoilers behind the cut involving skin care, heavy-handed political metaphor, and supercharged nothing…

Who are Sylar’s parents, then?* And how many sets will he go through before he’s done?

NOAH: Gabriel, I am your father.
SYLAR: Noooooooo!

How did being doused in the formula cure Mohinder rather than burn him to ash?

MOHINDER: This is Doctor Mohinder Suresh. Day Three of testing. When I analyze the chemical compound combined with these scales, the effect involves an exfoliant and subsequent moisturizer. Suggested tagline: Smoother skin in three days or your money back!

Speaking of Sylar, did he survive the Biomom Bomb? And how?

ANGELA: *sneaks away from Noah and Claire with a bloody shard of glass in her hand*

What happens when Powered Ando touches the other Heroes?

NATHAN: *dies immediately upon leaving the Earth’s atmosphere*
CLAIRE: Ah, I’m growing body parts I don’t need! Cut them off! Oh, but keep the third boob and second clitoris, would you?
PETER: I… I know kung fu. And Swahili. And…
MICAH: I know… everything.
MONICA: OMG, so do I.
MAYA: (… well, let’s just thank God Maya doesn’t have powers anymore.)
HAITIAN: *erases the memories of everyone, allowing the writers to retcon even more*
PILE OF ASH: *becomes Adam Monroe, gets up and lives again!*

What did Mohinder and Tracy talk about in the car?

MOHINDER: So. You nearly froze my arm off once.
TRACY: So. You nearly put me in spider webbing.
MOHINDER: …
TRACY: I guess that makes us both good at spinning.
MOHINDER: (groan)
TRACY: Awkward…

How did Nathan convince the President he’s not lying short of “coming out” to him re: his powers?

NATHAN: Sir, there are people, and they have superpowers.
PRESIDENT: Have you been talking to Dennis Kucinich again?

What are your burning questions?

(*Yes, I know the casting spoiler re: Sylar’s father. Don’t post it here, please.)