Erin Erin Bo-Berin

First of all... yaaay, happy new year!

Next... What a fun yuletide that was! Now that the dust has settled, and reveals have happened, it's time for a post!

First thing's first. Ridiculous amounts of thanks go to baniszew for Rest In Whirled Peace. Again. How can I reiterate how awesome it is to read about superheroic ice cream flavors? All of the awesome, and that's that! Cannot say how thrilled I was.

As far as my own output goes, I ended up writing four fics. My assignment, a pinch hit, and two small treats.

First up, my full lengths:

Appointments, written for ferdelance. Discworld. A morning in Vetinari's office. Footnotes a-plenty. Fun to write, most certainly. Even if I stressed out a couple times in the writing all Oh God why did I say I could write Vetinari what was I thinking?!

The Calm Before, written for brandnewsoul. Captain America: The First Avenger. It's an interlude between Steve and Peggy on the morning before that last raid on HYDRA hq. Sweet and bittersweet at the same time, and I'm glad I had a chance to write it.

And then, my madness treats, both quite short:

First Try, written for kissoffools. Captain America: The First Avenger. Steve's reaction to his first 4F. I just love capturing those missing moments we don't see in canon, and I'm pretty fond of this little ficlet.

Strong Suit, written for JaneTurenne. The Avengers (2012). Yes. It's a ficlet written from the POV of one of Agent Coulson's suits. Because this is how I roll. The end. :)

I swear, December 2011 was one of, if not the most productive month I've ever had as far as fic goes. Makes me feel a wee bit accomplished and I kind of hope I can keep up... well, if not writing so prolifically, at least writing regularly during '12. Well, time will tell!

Yeeeeah, I'm definitely going back to crossposting to my LJ from DW consistently... on those occasions I post, which is rare, but I'd like it to be less so. There's a new year's resolution for you. A good chunk of my LJ-flist is doing the same, for reasons that probably don't need rehashing.

Anyway, anyone who's made the DW jump, feel free to circle me up however you'd like. Same username from LJ.

Right! Anyway! As for content! First thing's first! Yuletide!

It's always fun when the fic you receive is in the canon you requested that really, nobody needs any crazy canon knowledge in order to appreciate.

That being said... A bajillion thanks to my author, who wrote me Rest In Whirled Peace. It's Ben & Jerry's anthropomorfic and they're ice cream superheroes. I mean, come on, how can you not want to read that?

After I finished reading that... a couple times... I proceeded to show just how obsessed I was and read absolutely every fic with one Agent Phil Coulson of SHIELD in the Yuletide archive. (And then I did it again the next day with Madness.) And believe me, they're all delightful, whether or not my favorite NINJA BAMF IN A SUIT is a main character or not, so please, by all means, read them and enjoy if you remotely care.

There are, of course, numerous other fics that bear reading, but I really really suck at rec lists, and most of them have been covered in other places if you're looking for recs, so far be it from me to tread on old ground.

And now, changing trajectory slightly...

Sheer morbid curiosity had me do something in a fit of temporary what-was-I-thinking-ness last night. And I happened to actually find something hiding in the mists of the internet that I thought didn't exist anymore. That being what I'm pretty sure is my oldest surviving piece of (published) fanfic. It's X-Files, it was written when I was nineteen or so... give or take a year (we're talking so old I found it on an angelfire archive). The prose is ever so slightly purple. (Ahah. Yeah. Ever so slightly.) And I kinda wanna facepalm at my younger self for the thing, if not so badly as some of the ridiculous Mary Sues I safely paper-journaled about a few years before that. And I have a conundrum. Should I post it to the AO3, with a roughly appropriate backdate? I mean, for the interests of completeness, and to see how far I've come... but, again, facepalm. But I wouldn't want to orphan it either.

Hm. Maybe with appropriate tags to let someone know what they'd be getting into.

I'll contemplate further!

And in a brief interlude covering RL... Still sadly jobless... although it being my first Christmas season out of retail since, like, '03 or so? Let's just say it was a bit surreal being home on Black Friday.

But Christmas was marvelous. Got a Kindle Fire from Andrew and it is a ridiculously fun gadget. I'll definitely be using it as a tablet more than an ereader, though. (I've got my nook for that... Had a Sony Reader, but I broke it, oops, thank God for squaretrade... But I got reimbursed and went for a new model. Thing is LOADED with fanfic now, I love it.) But man, Angry Birds is so much nicer on that screen than my phone's. >_> He also got the LotR extended edition on bluray for my whole family, to go with the huge TV we got earlier this month. :) In addition, as I commented on twitter on the day, I really appreciate socks and underwear as gifts so much more now than I did as a kid.

Also, the presents I gave were pretty much universally well-received, which always makes me extremely gratified. I love picking out the perfect present. Although the individual that expressed the most joy was, of course, my dog, who got a squeaky toy and went into transports of delight. Good times.

Anyway, wow, I think I've just said more than I've said in ages combined, so I'll leave it at that! TTFN!

Finished a WIP I've been working on for two freaking months on avengerkink. Cleaned it up and posted on the AO3. Realized I also never linked the other one I wrote for the same kink meme on my personal journal.

So here goes nothing.

Two fics, both Marvel movieverse, both Clint/Coulson. Very very different atmospheres, though. In finishing order, although the second I started well before the first...

A Very Coulson Christmas, PG-13. 2,366 words.
Coulson brings someone he's dating home for Christmas for the first time in years. Clint's looking forward to it.

Mirror, Mirror, NC-17. 21,593 words.
A certain god of mischief captures Coulson behind a mirror, and replaces him with a double. Phil gets to watch as his doppelganger subtly sabotages the Avengers... and becomes much more proactive in his love life than he'd ever dreamed of.

So apparently they've posted the 'Final 10 Days!' signs at the Borders I work at.

On, of course, my day off.

Wow. Just...

I'm processing this. Not that I didn't know it was coming, for obvious reasons.

But still. Man.

Hi LJ!

... I know, I know. 14 months. You've probably forgotten who I am.

But I'm alive! :D I've just been... tumblring more than anything, I guess.

Really, I'm mostly posting because peridium told me to and for some reason I listened.

I would go down a rundown of my life over the last fourteen months buuuut yeah.

I MANAGED TO GO TO SDCC THIS YEAR. IT WAS GREAT.

... And excellent timing because I'm having to jobsearch again on account of... ha, I work at Borders. *facepalm* But that weekend let me take my mind off of it!

... GIP. Just because it's funny.

I amazingly and successfully finished my fic for au_bigbang. This actually makes me feel somewhat accomplished, because I've never written anything that long. XD It successfully upped my AO3 total wordcount by 63 percent. By itself. Dang.

That being said... if you wanna read it...

Title: Good Men
Fandom: DC movieverse
Pairing: Batman/Superman
Rating: NC-17
Summary: After the return of Superman, he and Gotham's new vigilante get to know one another. Written as if I lived in the moviefusion-verse and were writing superhero RPF. Because I so would.

Fic is right here!

And there's an epic fanmix for it by dwg over here!

Right, so I've been thinking. Missed the first already, but hey, it's still ridiculously early in the month, so...

I'm hereby challenging myself to give comment-feedback to at least one fic on the AO3 every day this month. Because I'm really really bad at it and I know authors really really appreciate it.

And two today to make up for yesterday.

And with any luck, I won't end up flaking on this and I'll even continue it past this month, because, really, it means I get to read more fic! \o/

And yes, anyone else can feel free to join me in my self-challenge! It'll be awesome! :D

Right! So! I am, well, as most people who follow my journals in any capacity probably know, a tag wrangler for Archive of Our Own. What with Yuletide driving us crazy (in a good way, honest! ;)) lately, we've been getting a bit more publicity. (Which is kind of awesome! Because lord knows we need more wranglers! XD) However, as much description as has been given as to what exactly it is that we wranglers get up to, nothing quite manages to sum it up as well as seeing the interface and the steps and the stuff that we do!

So... I've decided to make a few posts showing off! And I've just finished the first one!

I will be calling them... Wrangling 101.

If you have no desire to see the inner workings of the Wrangulator, please, feel free to skip this post. If you're on dial-up, and this will kill your connection... definitely feel free to skip this post because...

( Rather Long and Extremely Image Heavy Description of Some AO3 Tag Wrangling Behind the Cut! )

.... And that is my first little mini-demonstration of tag wrangling. It gives you a general idea of the interface and some of the tools that we have at our disposal (TICKY BOXES! SPREADSHEETS! :D :D :D), and I'd be more than happy to answer any questions about anything I have up. (I'm fairly sure some other wranglers would be more than willing to chime in as well.)

If everyone likes this one enough, I'll probably have more similar lessons for such things as wrangling stuff inside a fandom. Characters, pairings, etc., etc. But really? That's more than enough for now. Hope you found it interesting! :D

Don't want to further strain the AO3 servers at the moment by posting a comment, although I will later...

Yuletide author? How is it you know me better than I know myself? Because... oh my GOD, I literally had to remind myself to breathe after I finished reading my story. It was just... wonderful and sweet and misty-eye-making and... awesome, and the complete epitome of everything I asked for in that prompt.

I'm STILL grinning, in fact.

That being said...

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Babylon 5? Go now and read Bearing Witness.

It's Vir... oh, it's everything that makes Vir Vir. And it's... the Londo and G'Kar dynamic that... Man, if I didn't know better, I'd honestly think JMS wrote this fic himself.

*HAPPY FLAIL*

Okay, that's all. Seriously.

THANK YOU AGAIN, AUTHOR. YOU'LL PROBABLY GET EVEN MORE SQUEE ONCE I COMMENT TO THE STORY.

*massive wavings, first and foremost, to my newly-added fellow tag wranglers*

So yes, major piece of news is that pretty much as soon as I got my AO3 open beta account (I managed to snag number 7 in the queue, because, really, I'm just that awesome), I volunteered for the tag wrangling crew.

I pretty much anti-regret it. It's beyond fun and we're all crazy and awesome with just a hint of the necessary OCD required to wrangle those darn wuzzles, so... yes. Good times!

And I seem to be picking up new fandoms whenever I sneeze. No, I did not mean that literally.

I will admit that jumping face first into that is a large contributing factor why I utterly dropped the ball on a new fortycakes prompt for this week. By the time I looked up from that and the three semi-overnights I was working, I looked up, and... uh, it was this morning. But there will be a new prompt come Sunday, honest to goodness.

I'm in the middle of canon-refreshing for Yuletide. It's going a tad bit more slowly than I had anticipated, but it's also totally reminding me why I love the fandom in question in the first place.

Other major news of the day... I'm actually biting the bullet and taking a couple classes again next semester. I think the break from school was really what I needed, but everything runs its course in the long run, and I think I'm going to be happy with it. *knocks on wood*

Back to the first bit of news, I have to say it's kind of fun having a conversation with your mother in which you attempt to explain tag wrangling. Including as a bit of a humorous anecdote the massive conversation on the mailing list concerning synonyms for fellatio. XD

Aaaand I think that about covers it for now. I'm crossposting this one to LJ, just because it's also a post I would have made over there as well, although I'm still on the fence about whether or not to make the official move. We'll see.