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.

The title of this post would probably look better without the Oxford comma, but I'm keeping it in on principle.

I started the Third Doctor's final serial, Planet of the Spiders, during lunch today and I wasn't expecting the Jo Grant scene and it kind of knocked me flat even though she didn't actually appear. I know that, with a couple of exceptions, UNIT largely becomes a non-presence in the series after the Third Doctor regenerates so I'm really glad they seem to be honoring this part of the show's history (except for Liz Shaw... and the Master for obvious reasons.) One of the handful of new fics I was planning to write during NaNo was a Second Doctor-centric Christmas fic where he, Jamie, and Zoe find a way to visit Victoria for the Holiday (with some not-so-subtle Jamie/Victoria content) but now I kind of want to write a Christmas fic for Three's ensemble as well. It wouldn't be that hard logistically and it would help fill the Doctor Who void since I think if we do get a special this year it'll be another New Year's one. Which is... fine. But I really want to see Jodie Whittaker in character wearing a Santa hat.

As far as NaNo itself goes, I'm using it to finish incomplete works from the 2010s so I can start off 2020 with a clean slate, but so far I'm mostly beefing it because I spent last week finishing up some Fictober overrun and recovering from one of the worst work weeks I've ever had. I have a couple of mostly-finished works that I'm hopeful I can polish off today and get posted just to give myself a shot in the arm, and in the end it's not a huge deal since I'm not officially signed up with NaNo or the mini version. But hitting my (revised) Fictober goal of 13 fills really felt good and I'd like to keep that momentum going.

The other project I have going is Buffyverse Bingo, which I've started two fills on... only they're not on the same line. However, they both fall on lines that contain the free space, so I just have to choose which line I want to do and stick with it. One of them is a Willow/Tara fic that I've very excited about, especially since I haven't written a ton of F/F fic, and the other is a Xander/Oz fic that's a homage of sorts to a fic I really liked as a teenager... when I definitely wasn't gay nope I just read it for the art. A challenge I've run into that I wasn't really expecting was dealing with the "Buffyspeak" of it all, especially with Xander (who has a sizable speaking role in the Willow/Tara fic as well). I rewatched a handful of season 3 episodes last week which definitely helped, but I think I'm just gonna have to resign myself to the fact that some of the dialogue is not gonna be up to the standard I want.

Also, speaking to that Xander/Oz fic - it made me really happy that the author chose to archive and preserve their old writing from *checks notes* 1999 so that it was still accessible for fans like me. It motivated me to archive my own, very shitty fanfic that I wrote when I was a teenager on a dedicated AO3 account. One in particular I got very emotional about because I assumed it was gone forever since I wrote it exclusively for a forum that later banned me (and no longer exists) and never posted it to Fanfiction.Net... but it turns out I did mirror it on an old, forgotten deviantART account. Like, it's still very bad in that crappy OC, vaguely self-insert kind of way. But I remember working very, very hard on it at the time so it's nice to be able to have something to show for it.

As an aside, I've been tempted to start my free trial of Apple TV+ so I can binge Dickinson, but I've been holding off because Disney+ debuts tomorrow and I'm already watching too much TV. Once I finished the Third Doctor's run tonight, I'll also be putting Classic Doctor Who on hold for a while - theoretically until after season 12 ends if it's gonna come back in "very early 2020" as has been reported, but I may tweak those plans if that's changed. I'm looking forward to the premiere of The Mandalorian as much as I really can be, since the trailers don't really give away much for what the show is actually about. His Dark Materials premiered last week, but I'm still only halfway through reading The Subtle Knife, so I'm probably gonna hold off watching it until I'm at least finished with The Amber Spyglass. I fear I'm gonna run into the same issue with The Witcher, but I do want to make a concentrated effort to give these books their due rather than simply diving right into the show. And it's not like there isn't gonna be a huge gap between seasons I'll have time to get caught up during.

So much to do, so much to read, so much to write. Thank god Buffyverse Bingo has an Amnesty period in December.