I signed up for the smallfandombang, which I'm optimistic I'll be able to tackle since it's one story rather than multiple fills, and actual gives me an excuse to hyper-fixate on properties that no one aside from me really cares about. I've also made some headway on my buffyverse bingo fills - especially now that the deadline is later than I thought it was. At the very least I should have something fun to contribute to the amnesty round assuming my brain doesn't turn to pudding after the election.

I've been making my way through the other Halloween sequels and I'm starting to resign myself to the fact that no shlocky horror movie sequel is gonna hit quite like A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 did. I did end up really digging The Boy though so maybe that sequel will offer up something I can latch onto. Assuming my schedule isn't thrown off I plan on spending part of this weekend watching those '00s horror movie reboots all in one sitting, so maybe one of those will surprise me too.

In semi-related news I'm gonna try to rewatch Hocus Pocus tomorrow so I can make an attempt to make it through the rest of that novelization/sequel that came out a couple of years back, especially in light of an actual sequel being greenlit. Since I know the "lead" of the novelization sequel is queer I'm kind of rooting for it to be an adaption of that, but either way I'm just hoping to enjoy the book. I did enjoy the author's take on some of the clumsier elements of the film.

☆ I had planned to do some serious writing this past weekend, but those plans got derailed and I ended up not writing anything, so as a result I've resigned to defaulting on seasonofkink for this year and trunk a couple of summer-themed fics I've been working on until next year. Considering the amount of stress from current world events this isn't a huge shock, but I'm hopeful I'll still be able to finish up those additional nordipalooza fill chapters at some point since they're mostly done. I also still have time left to finish buffyversebingo, which I can focus more on since I guess spooktoberchallenge is not happening this year. I also have a couple of autumn/halloween-themed drafts from the last couple of years I can try to finish too.

☆ The Q3 anime season is ending this week, along with my rewatches/completions of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Higurashi When They Cry. I've been collecting some brief thoughts on a running twitter thread, but suffice to say I was very surprised and impressed by the bits I hadn't seen before. In a lot of ways I actually think I enjoyed The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan more than the original show, and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya is an actual masterpiece. And aside from the very fanservicey first episode, Higurashi When They Cry Kira was actually really solid, and Outbreak was fantastic and it bums me out that they decided to not to further explore the storyline it had set up. The remake of Higurashi is one of the shows airing next season though, and I'm excited to see what changes/improvements they make to this version.

☆ As far as other TV goes, I've been slowly making my way through Classic Who season 19. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely a mixed bag, and the show is clearly trying to figure out what its strengths are now that Tom Baker isn't in the role anymore. I'm planning on taking a break once I'm done with the season in order to focus more on Halloween/Spooky fare for October, and it feels appropriate to watch The Five Doctors for the first time in November. (Plus, I suspect November is going to be a waking nightmare, so it'll be nice to have something to distract me from it). I've also been binge-watching Sister, Sister, and depending on how I pace it out I should be finished pretty soon. I watched the Twitches movies over Kast with some friends so I've been getting a lot of Tia and Tamera lately.

☆ My finger has basically healed completely, though its still sometimes stuff when I wake up. My depression has also come and gone in waves, and I think is less because of quarantine now and mostly because of all the terrible things happening in the world. Not forcing myself to adhere to any real specific watch/writing schedule has probably helped a little. I'm hoping that diving full force into Halloween will be what salvages my mental health for at least the next five weeks.

☆ Having a depressive episode that I suspect will pass but I can't even really motivate myself to finish off the last few episodes of this season of Wynonna Earp and season 3 of Leverage atm. I have other stuff on my watch list (most notably Blake's 7 and Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra) but I may end up playing more fast-and-loose with it because I'm remembering that binge burnout I had back in June.

☆ I've gotten some writing done this month but haven't finished anything. I keep getting hit with plot bunnies for seasonofkink involving Finn/Will from Glee of all pairings (one I haven't even thought about since the early days of that fandom) but idek if it would be worth pursing. I keep going over my unfinished drafts and I really just wanna finish something this month, especially since I wanna do Fictober again this year since I'll theoretically have the time.

☆ I accidentally sliced open my finger with a pair of scissors on Sunday and had to get stitches, which means I haven't exorcised the last few days (which I'm especially annoyed about since I'd finally gotten back into the habit). I have the greenlight to start again though and I'm hoping I'll have the mental energy tomorrow to restart that. Stitches don't come out for a couple of weeks though.

☆ I don't get hit with this feeling often since I'm mostly fine being single but I really wish I had a boyfriend (the depressive episode is only exacerbating this). The "I'm nearly 30 and I've never had an actual relationship" of it all isn't exactly helping either. I'm terrible at using apps though and a quarantine isn't conductive to meeting people so I've mostly just been stewing in it all day, which is kind of baffling since my injured finger is really the thing I should be stewing about but w/e.

I haven't posted an update entry like this in a while. I've mostly been spending the past month doing Doctor Who stuff (as previously reviewed) and starting series binges of Leverage and Wynonna Earp, which I'd never seen but had been meaning to get around to. I just finished the first season of both last night and I'm enjoying each of them so far. I've also been watching RuPaul's Drag Race and my takes on it are, apparently, hot. I'm a little over halfway through season 3 right now but I'm probably gonna take a big break after All Stars 1 because it is a lot.

I've gotten some writing done, but I'm aiming to get the rest of my nordipalooza multi-chapter done this month along with the final chapter of that Hetalia fic I've been chipping away at for nine years. I also have some Doctor Who oneshots I'd been working on alongside the one I just published and I'm hoping I'll at least get the summer-themed one finished while it's still actually summer. It's not like a have a lot of other things to do considering I'm gonna be trapped inside in perpetuity. (I also have a couple of bingo squares I should probably make more headway with before it becomes a mad dash to the finish line).

Halloween stuff has started getting officially cancelled and while I'm not surprised (and glad people are still taking COVID-19 seriously) I was really looking forward to it this year because it's on a Saturday and it's the last one of my 20s. I have a bunch of horror movies I still need to watch, including all the Halloween sequels, and I suspect I'll start up with those again sooner rather than later. I'm still thinking about A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 almost a year later (because I am gay and thirsty I guess) but I wonder if any of them will really hit me creatively the way that one did.

Taking a break from my crunch writing for nordipalooza. I got the hardest chunk of the story mostly out of the way so now I just need to actually sit and write the rest of it, while giving myself enough time to go back and clean up what I've already written a bit more.

I took a break on Saturday and wrote a Classic Who oneshot as a palette cleanser that I'm waiting to hear back on from a beta and I'm pretty happy with how that one turned out. I started another one last night but I'm trying to make myself focus on the Hetalia writing since that's the one with the deadline. Part of me is kind of annoyed I opted to do another College AU but at least I'm well past any desire to write in a high school setting ever again unless it's dictated by the original work.

The ninth anniversary of Personal Chaos is next month and I really just want to hammer out the last chapter of it. The last chapter was the hardest to do so this is also an instance of just needing to actually sit down and write the damn thing, but it's only the past couple of weeks where I've felt any motivation to actually write anything in the midst of everything happening in the world. I've also dusted off a couple of my old drafts that I'll hopefully get to work on once July hits. Aside from a couple of episodes of Classic Who a day I haven't really watched any TV the past week and I'm content to stay that way considering I spent the first two months of Quarantine just drowning myself in content.

Some random updates about quarantine and media consumption:

( The obligatory cut... )

Also, as far as writing goes, I've made outlines for my nordipalooza fills and starting either tomorrow or Monday I'm gonna sit down and really jump into writing those as posting closes on May 24th. I also have some drafts I'd like to finally finish up and post, particularly those Doctor Who drabbles that I talked about last month. I also really want to finish the final chapter of my Hetalia fic Personal Chaos at some point over the next couple of months since it's ninth anniversary is July 25th and I just posted the penultimate chapter last November after a four year hiatus.

Health-wise I'm doing okay. Nothing in terms of what's going on in the wider world, but I need to think of ways to manage my eating and exercise better since over the past couple of weeks have been not great in that regard. I've been making more of an effort to cook stuff that's not frozen or prepackaged meals and only ordered take-out once (for a salad) so I feel like I'm on the right track, I just need to commit to it. For the record, a citrus glaze works really well as a marinade for pork.

So I'm writing this at 2AM on a Saturday night. I was supposed to be at an Anime Convention this weekend so I would've been awake anyway. I tried watching some Anime in honor of that but after a certain point I fell out of the mood and rewatched Captain Marvel on Disney+.

I started thinking again about the idea I battered around last year while on my writing kick of writing Doctor Who drabbles from 100-500 words in length, but this time I focused in on how that would work on AO3. That, combined with some sleep deprived Tardis Wiki browsing, made me think up an idea I kind of like. Basically, a framing device prologue/opening "chapter" where one character is shown aborted timelines/alternate "accounts"/AUs of where their life could've gone using some convoluted timey-wimey thing I can make up, and then each subsequent "chapter" is one of the drabbles with a focus on that character in some way. IDK, it feels like a neat way to trick myself into some regular prompt writing.

I feel like it's almost certain at this point the character I'm gonna start out with is Jamie for Second Doctor era drabbles, especially considering his longevity, the way his story ended, and the fact that I'm gay as hell and have a bias. I kind of want to do one for the Third Doctor era as well if it pans out, but I'm not sure who to focus on (though I'm slightly leaning towards Jo, Mike, or Benton).

(On a non-Doctor Who related note, I have some half finished stories from Fictober and NaNo - including two lengthy unfinished Buffyverse Bingo fills, that I'd like to get around to now that I'm stuck at home with time to kill and growing impatience with binging TV all day in between home office work.)

Either starting tomorrow or Monday I'm going to be starting Leela's run on Classic Who, and I'm honestly curious how long it's even gonna take me to get through the Fourth Doctor, since I made it through his first two and a half seasons in a month alone, and I only really sunk my teeth into it the past couple of weeks.

On a maintenance note, I think I may try to create a separate tag for my Classic Who reviews, since they've started to get lost in the shuffle of my other Doctor Who blogging.

So since my last entry, my lofty goals for NaNo largely fell apart due to being busier socially than I thought I'd be toward the end of the month (which I'm pretty happy about? I also did a lot of driving and managed to finally finish The Subtle Knife audiobook which I LOVED. All the His Dark Materials audiobooks are bangers with full voice casts and I highly recommend checking them out even if you've already read them.)

Well, I also got kind of sick, and then after the Holiday I got VERY sick. Like, today is the first day this week were I haven't been a delirious mess. I went through an entire bottle of Dayquil and half a bottle of Nyquil in addition to half a box of green tea.

As far as writing goes, I finished another chapter of the Hetalia fic I'd been writing since 2011 which was my main goal going into NaNo so I'm happy with that at least. (The chapter ended up being twice the length I expected which is probably part of the reason it was so damn hard to write). I failed to complete my buffyversebingo square though which I'm kind of bummed about, but hopefully I can get the two fills I have made serious headway on up during the amnesty period.

My writing goals for this month are much more lax, since I'm not working to complete any sort of challenge, but here's what I'd like to get done time permitting:

- Final Chapter of Personal Chaos (APH) - Outline done, draft started
- Finish off those two Buffyverse Bingo fills (BtVS) - Drafts partially complete
- Jamie/Victoria Xmas Fic (DW) - Outline done
- Mike Yates & Liz Shaw/Sarah Jane Smith-centric Xmas Party Fic (DW) - Outline in flux
- Prussia/Hungary Airport Holiday Travel Fic (APH) - Idea I've wanted to write for years
- At least one Genremixer Meme Prompt (DW)

Stretch Goals:

- Finish Seychelles/England/France School Holiday Draft from NaNo (APH)
- Finish Chapter 4 of The Apartment Upstairs (APH)
- The world's most depressing Supernatural AU One-shot (SPN)
- Taking a Stab at any of my other unfinished Fictober/NaNo Drafts

Aside from writing, I did see a bunch of movies in the days following Frozen II and I liked/loved all of them (Knives Out, Last Christmas, Jojo Rabbit, Parasite - I recommend all of them but go into them blind.). When I was sick I also took advantage of Disney+ and watched Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio for the first time since I was a child. I was honestly amazed at how much of the latter I'd forgotten/blocked out so it was a very interesting/intense experience for me and I think I loved it? Like there were a couple of parts that really freaked me out as a full grown adult. I'm excited to check out the other two Disney films of that period (Dumbo, which I probably remember the best of that bunch, and Bambi, which I'm not altogether certain I've seen completely) and see what I think.

I also saw Waterparks in concert last week and they were great! Awsten brought up that infamous fanfic where he fucks a toaster but it's written so you think it's actually a necrophilia fic until the end twist (and it is weirdly well written). It kind of makes me want to break my no RPF rule just for the shitpost of it all but I wouldn't know where to start.

As for my Thanksgiving itself, it was probably the most fun one I've had in years since I spent it with friends instead of family. I also went shopping on Black Friday for the first time in my life. But at like, noon on Black Friday. I wasn't crazy enough to go early in the morning, and I'm not one of those sociopaths who goes shopping on Thanksgiving itself.

But yeah, I'm glad I'm feeling better again and can actively enjoy the holiday season/write/be actively hyped for The Rise of Skywalker on 12/19. ONLY TWO MORE WEEKS.

The two fills I'm actively working on for buffyversebingo have mutated into what may be the longest one-shots I've ever written (like, probably over 10k words each). I'm hopeful I'll have them both done this week and then produce works that are more... restrained in order to get a bingo. I'm fairly optimistic about this since none of the other prompts on the potential rows have made my brain fire off the way these two have for some reason.

I've finished a couple of old drafts and thrown them up onto AO3, one from a Fictober fill I mostly finished but forgot about entirely, and the other being the original beginning for a longer, bizarre character study fic that would pretty much be impossible for me to finish as originally intended because I'm so far removed from the context in which I wrote it and the story was relevant:

Just Killing Time (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, Jesse Walsh/Ron Grady, M, 1204 words)
The Woman with the Lyrical Name (Pretty Little Liars, Aria Montgomery, G, 352 words)

I also was... inspired... by Planet of the Spiders to write some Doctor Who fic involving the scene where Mike Yates was tied up and left in that bedroom:

An Embarrassment of Friendship (Classic Doctor Who, John Benton/Mike Yates, E, 2857 words)

I'm honestly really happy with how inspired I am to write Who fic in general, though I'm intentionally holding off on tackling the two Christmas stories I want to write until it's closer to the end of the month since I want to be in a better headspace for it. I've also been toying with the idea of mirroring my who stories on Teaspoon, but I know that site has some past baggage that I haven't been able to parse out at all since I didn't get into Doctor Who until 2012, and I don't know how beneficial it would be since the four fics I've written are all currently up on AO3 and I don't know how active Teaspoon is anymore.

Going through my drafts, I found an Osomatsu-san fic that currently clocks in at 2600 words that I'm really mad I didn't finish at the time, since it captured the character voices in such a specific way that I've have to rewatch chunks of the show to even approach again. I think what held me up was that I was still very nervous writing romance that wasn't of the "confession at the very end of the story" variety, and along with finally finishing those two Hetalia fics I have open, this might be the story I want to finish and post this year the most. I have a handful of works that I'm not particularly proud of, so it'd be nice to polish off material that I can genuinely look back on with pride years later.

I officially finished the Third Doctor era yesterday and it already feels so bittersweet. I know many elements of that era carry over into the first season of the Fourth Doctor's run, but I know it won't quite be the same. I'm honestly glad I'm taking a break from it for a couple of months, since it'll allow it all to sink in even more. In the meantime, reflecting on all of it has given me some writing ideas for that era, and I'm gonna try writing a Christmas fic for it as well as the Second Doctor's era. Like, I really just want to write a story where the Brigadier is saddled with throwing this Christmas party and Liz Shaw shows up for the first time in ages and Jo returns from her trip and Sarah Jane is stressed out because she keeps walking in on Mike Yates snogging someone different. And maybe there's some kind of festive cookies?

Finishing this chapter of the show has also helped me zero in on a preference I have with Doctor Who: I enjoy eras more when they feel cozy. Like, there's a setting to them where all the characters could just settle down together and hang out without there being a major source of internal strife looming over their heads. Thirteen's era hasn't quite landed that for me because part of Series 11's structure involved Graham and Ryan avoiding dealing directly with Grace's death, so whenever the show touched down in the modern day setting that just kind of looms over everything in a way that's not particularly fun (and the one story that didn't deal with it - Arachnids in the UK - just sucked). Series 8 had a similar problem for me because the Clara-Danny relationship always had this sense of doom even before that big finale twist, to the point where all the characters seemed pretty on edge whenever they were just hanging out in 2015 London. Series 9 was able to shed this, even with Clara dying towards the end of the season, so I'm hopeful Series 12 won't continue dragging that baggage along. But knowing Chibnall's writing from Torchwood and Broadchurch I'm not overly optimistic about it.

Writing is going okay. I finished a draft I originally churned out for a Fictober fill yesterday but looking back at it now I'm realizing I'm gonna have to rewrite chunks of it and I'm not thrilled. Unless Disney+ somehow swallows my whole evening I'm hopeful I'll have a handful of things ready to post tonight, including the first Buffyverse Bingo square. I'm going to a con this weekend, Anime NYC, and even though its anime themed I'm hopefully it'll put me in the mood to write some more nuts-and-bolts Buffy stuff.

Classic Doctor Who season 11 review will be up at some point this week. I really spaced out my viewing so there are a couple of serials I don't remember quite as well as I would like, so I suspect it'll take me a bit longer than usual to turn it out.