Just a quick note to say that I finished Whumptober 2023 today! Yes, I'm a couple of days late, but I got all 31 prompts done.

It did, in fact, end up being All Stranger Things, All The Time™ this year. Which is fair, since it has been pretty much the only fandom I've read for all year too.

It also ended up being very heavy on the emotional h/c, as I predicted. Specifically, it ended up dealing a lot with grief and loss and imperfect second chances. Gee, can't begin to imagine what's been going on with me lately that would cause those themes to emerge. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Day Twenty-Nine: Defiance, “Better me than you," Leverage, another (teeny) installment in the werewolf!Eliot 'verse. Hardison catches a bullet meant for Eliot.

Day Thirty: Hair Grabbing, “Please don’t touch me," MCU, Thor's hair encounters some very sticky mad science, and he gets help detangling it from an unexpected quarter.

Day Thirty-One: Comfort, MCU, Endgame, as performed by child!Avengers versus bully!Thanos.

Holy fishsticks! I did it! Thirty-one days! And, according to the AO3 count, 70,477 words posted! I don't remember my record for total word count back when I did NaNoWriMo. But this certainly has to be up there for most words I've written in a month. That nearly doubled my total word count for my whole AO3 account and added five new fandoms to my written works.

Did I exhaust myself, sacrifice both life necessities and hobbies alike to make room for this, and generally stress myself out? Absolutely. Do I have any regrets? No. Will I revisit some of these fragments to turn them into full stories? ...Possibly. ✪ ω ✪

Next week of fills! Which ended up all being MCU, though I did get some Leverage mixed in there.

Day Fifteen: Lies, New Scars, MCU, Tony Stark: billionaire, playboy, philanthropist, witch. Or, how Tony programmed himself a familiar and made a bargain with a demon of his own creation.

Day Sixteen: Paralytic Drugs, “No one’s coming.” MCU, Shifter!Bruce on the run, and Clint trying to recruit him at a really inopportune moment.

Day Seventeen: Reluctant Caretaker, MCU, Tony & Clint, animal transformation.

Day Eighteen: Let's Break the Ice, “Take my Coat”, MCU/Leverage crossover. Eliot is a dead ringer for the Winter Soldier, especially if you're an overenthusiastic Hydra goon.

Day Nineteen: Knees Buckling, Head Lolling, MCU, Vampire Avengers, sleep deprivation, implied Steve/Tony.

Day Twenty: Fetal Position, Prisoner Trade, MCU, Space opera, Clint and Steve find Natasha being sold as a day laborer at the spaceport they just docked at.

Day Twenty-One: “Take me instead.”, MCU, fantasy AU, Clint, kidnapped by highwaymen, meets the Winter Dragon.

Playing catchup on both writing and linking this weekend. Gods help me, I am hitting or exceeding NaNoWriMo levels of daily word count. How? Am? I? Doing? This???

Day Four: Hidden Injury, The Leverage team as monster hunters and Eliot with a slightly different dark and secret past

Day Five: Hyperthermia, Another modern monster hunter AU, this time for Mad Max: Fury Road. The desert is never gentle, and only some of the ghosts are friends.

Day Six: “I’ve got a pulse”, Screams from Across the Hall, The Losers watch one of their own die again. It's okay--Jensen gets over it. Cougar/Jensen. The Old Guard crossover.

Day Seven: Shaking Hands, Silent Panic Attack, Sam gets roped into helping Steve's paranormal investigation team, gets stuck partnering with Bucky, and gets trapped in a basement by something ominous. It's a hell of a recruitment process.

Yeah, I can't imagine this going poorly at all!

So! I'm doing Whumptober for the first time. Because I haven't posted any fan works yet this year and I try really hard to have at least one new thing each year*. Nothing like heaving myself into the deep end.

I've previously mentioned greatly enjoying and being very inspired by thepartyresponsible's past Whumptober collections, which are always this gleeful mashup of fandoms and genres. So I've been telling myself since sometime in the summer, this time, I play too.

Did I want to cheat and get a jump on writing back in September, since all the prompts were already available? Yes, absolutely. Did I actually do that, thus giving myself extra time and a better chance of completing the challenge? I did not.

What I did do, though, was write 3000 words in one evening to fill the first prompt. (⊙_⊙;)

The Embers Not Yet Burned Out

Day One: Unconventional Restraints, “This wasn’t supposed to happen”, Marvel, Bucky Barnes, Clint Barton, Lucky the Pizza Dog, alternate universe-magic

We'll see how well I do with this. Send blessings. Send snacks. Send ice packs for my wrists.



*2017, I see you over there, messing up my stats. You...you know, actually, that's probably fair. I remember what 2017 had to cope with. We'll give it a pass.

I think there's a lot of overlap between people reading me and people who will have already heard about this elsewhere, but it's time for a signal boost! The Rose and Bay Awards celebrate crowdfunded creativity, and nominations are open for the 2021 categories.

I'm guest hosting the Fiction category. Come nominate your favorite fiction projects that rely on audience participation, tips and microfunding, and other forms of community-driven support.

Full information, including rules and definitions of what constitutes crowdfunding, is available on the crowdfunding community's landing page. There are also categories for art, poetry, webcomics, other projects, and patrons.

Nominations close at the end of the month (Jan. 31), at which point voting will begin.

Challenge #3: Pimp Your Favorite Communities, Fests or Challenges!

I'm not much involved in communities or events. I'm not the lurker I once was, but I'm still hesitant to get involved with events. Anything that has a longer time commitment or distant deadline traditionally ran the risk of getting preempted by either my day job or my health issues. While I can write to simple or loose prompts, recipients and assignments tend to make me freeze up. So I'm not a great match for a lot of the big events I've heard of.

I'm working on a bingo card from allbingo this month, though, and I've got three out of seven prompts written for the pattern I'm trying to make. So hey! Progress! I like how relaxed that community is, because I can focus on getting something small done, rather than falling into a "perfection or bust" mentality that makes me just give up.

I also did pod_together the last two years, which I really enjoyed. It's the only time I've ever collaborated like that. Normally, I would be too particular about my writing process to be able to share control. But as the podficcer, I have a more zen attitude about exploring ideas and doing things differently.

I like the community over at crowdfunding, though I mostly haven't participated in the monthly events. I've told myself a bunch of times that I want to get more active over there--it's a lovely group of people sharing prompts and making things and supporting creators--and I'll keep trying to make that happen eventually.

And fandomcalendar is a nice resource. I'm usually just watching events in other fandoms as they go by without any inclination to sign up myself, but it's still nice to get regular pings about what events are out there. And sometimes, it'll be the first place I hear about something super cool.

 The crowdfunding Creative Jam is running this weekend with the theme of "hurt/comfort." Anyone can leave prompts or use them to create something.

The crowdfunding Creative Jam is running today with the theme of "unicorns." Anyone can leave prompts or use them to create something.


"From Town to Forest" by alexseanchai