State Of #1, 2012

“The Sixth World” just hit 30,000 words. I'm maybe—five sections away from being finished, though some of those sections may be ten pages long at least, others three, and one perhaps a few paragraphs. As ever, these things are hard to reckon. And then I need to go back to the Epilogue, which I added about 500 words to the other day (mainly all fake newspaper headlines, etc.), and which needs maybe three sections' worth of tweaking to be done with. Sooooo clooooose.

(In and between the last couple of days' work, I've also amused myself by watching Black Butler Season 2 on Youtube, which went by pretty quick, since it's only twelve episodes long. Short story short, it certainly doesn't need to exist—I'm willing to take a bet that the manga probably ends exactly where Season One does, because it makes the most emotional/logical sense—but it provide a steady streamy of lovely, crack-y eye candy; it's like everybody involved went: “Okay, fine, let's just go totally balls to the wall on this one! Explicit pedophilia! Fetish gone wild! A man pulling a sword out of a woman's mouth, and the same woman pulling a sten gun out of her own nethers! Butter sculptures! All that!” I really love the shinigami action in Two, in particular, though crazy Lord Alois and his own demon butler are pretty hilarious. And the twist ending is worth it just for Sebastian's lack-of-expression[s] alone.)

So: In honour of the New Year, a list of things I need to do, either afterthebookisfinished or simultaneous with (as a welcome further distraction), like so—

Spurred by my quick trip to crack_van, do my own version of a fanfic rec/pimp post about Lackadaisy. (Forewarning: All of this is probably basically going to be gen aside from one brief literal cat-porn story, with occasional forays into very chaste Viktor/Ivy. There's some sexyish but borderline OOC Mordecai/Viktor stuff on 4chan and the abandoned Lackadaisy kink-meme, but I really wouldn't bother linking to it, especially the latter. Word to the wise, guys: Consistently calling a character “the big man” because you've got name/pronoun fatigue is one thing; calling another “the Jew” is very much another, for what really should be obvious reasons.)

Write my run-down of narratives I've enjoyed in 2011. Because I didn't keep my usual list(s), I frankly expected not to be able to remember the bulk of them, but I surprised myself while thumbing through the shelves, and have accumulated quite the pile. Needless to say, there's a lot (some old, some new), even if you don't feed in graphic novels, manga/anime, TV, web-comics and non-fiction, which I probably will. (Films are getting harder, so I may skip those—I didn't see a lot in the theatre anyhow, mainly because of the encroaching 3-D tide, so much of what I did see was just stuff I caught up with on DVD, which tends to blur together.)

Go through my file of unfinished short stories—actual short stories, not those things that tend to turn into novellas—and try to figure out what will do for four separate markets, one due February, three March-April-May. I don't want to default on any, if I can avoid it. I also need to finalize exactly what it is I'm going to be delivering next to CZP—novel or collection? (We've discussed the idea of a “novel in stories”, which I'd like a lot, since it would be far easier to assemble. However, this may be slightly impacted on by the fact that one of the anchoring stories I'd intended to include in such a book is finally going to be coming out as a chap-book from Burning Effigy sometime this year. Still...)

And and and. Need to pick up my prescription/get another one re-filled; need to up my gym time. Need to mail Dad's present(s) to him, once the second one arrives. The usual roster of Cal-related stuff, too—I have to reschedule a dentist's check-up appointment, for example, and confirm that the school bus service really-for-truly understands that they need to be coming by five days a week as of February first, plus juggle two new extracurricular courses and print out the ProLoQuo2Go material so they can use it in class at Surrey Place/St. Joseph's. Also need to cultivate better relations with my Mom, who thought I seemed “grim” all day yesterday, and was kind of unbearable about it. As ever, I don't know what I can do about cheering the fuck up, aside from just stay on top of shit and remember not to touch the magazines/smile more whenever I catch her looking at me. It doesn't exactly make for a relaxing, pleasant experience when I'm around her, though, let's put it that way, especially when I feel like she's studying me all the time for signs I'm gonna go home and shoot myself, or whatever.

Okay, that's about it. Think I'll do maybe 500 more words, pack Cal's bag, and get the hell into bed.

Lackadaisy Pimp-Post

My standards for Lackadaisy fic are pretty high, overall. I need to feel like the voices are right, like the characters jibe with the original, as though what happens in the story could fit into some sort of existing interstitial. Head and shoulders above everything everyone else has produced thus far, therefore, stands “The Midnight Special” by Prodigy, basically gen with hints of Viktor/Mordecai pre-slash (http://archiveofourown.org/works/34901), which traces the difficult process of skinny, transplanted young New Yorker Mordecai Heller settling into cold, sleepy, hicktown St. Louis, in all its massive body-count and emotional face-blindness glory. It also manages to explain that “Wanted” poster in a way that not only doesn't contradict canon, it genuinely feels like it should be a part of canon Tracy J. Butler just hasn't told us about yet.

Similar in quality—though I know I'm somewhat biased about this—is, of course, “Lackadaisy Yontif” by sovay, Mordecai POV (http://sovay.livejournal.com/431388.html#cutid1), which explores the necessary dichotomy between his perhaps not exactly “chosen” profession and his Judaism. (As Prodigy points out, he's a guy who refuses to use aliases which sound like goyish names; I somehow think this is probably a bit of a psychological cornerstone of his personality, down to and including the relationship between keeping kosher and OCD.) And then there's Prodigy's second Lackadaisy fic, “Where There's Smoke” (http://archiveofourown.org/works/201155), which both posits not exactly a friendship, so much, as the long-since-discarded flirtation with the idea of one between Mordecai and Dorian “Zib” Zibowski, as well as a sizeable hint of Mordecai/Mitzi May. For those who like that sort of thing, I mean, which I actually do.;)

In and between, we also have stuff that's not as good, but still worth a look-in. In terms of my personal favourite ship, there's “No One Above Me To Stay My Fierce Hand” by gyzym, Mordecai/Viktor (http://gyzym.dreamwidth.org/tag/lackadaisy), a series of pointed little observations and exchanges. On the Ivy/Viktor tip, meanwhile, we have “Perennial” (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5813716/1/Perennial) and “Rozpada vo Svikoch” (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7301513/1/RozpadavoSvikoch), both by xcgirl08, whose Viktor POV is particularly good: Stoic, smart, fatalistic. The description of kneecapping's after-effects in “perennial” is harrowing enough that I may have to take it into account, if and when I cover that particular part of the Mordecai/Viktor downspiral. She also wrote “A Top Hat of White Satin”, gen, Nico and Serafine Savoy POV (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7265220/1/ATopHatofWhiteSatin), which gets a minus two on attempting a Cajun dialect, but a plus two on everything else, particularly on messing with expectations. And finally, there's “Lackadaisy Puttershot” by Guille von Cartier, gen, Asa Sweet and Mordecai (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6957816/1/LackadaisyPuttershot), which genuinely almost reads like a couple of pages from the strip itself, and goes a way towards confirming the idea that Asa probably didn't get where he is just by being “charming”.

Unfortunately, however, because the field is so damn small, I sometimes find myself making do with things which don't quite measure up, which is how we get to “Lesson Learned: St Louis Is Not New York (Or New Orleans)” by Ryuutchi, Mordecai/Nico Savoy (http://archiveofourown.org/works/140218), a piece I mainly included because I really like the Nico voice—Mordecai's seems dicey, not least because I truly question the author's assumption both that “Elijah Metzger” is his actual name (it'd seem to disqualify it as a useful fake I.D., if so) and that he comes from some sort of multi-generational established Jewish gangster family, because there just weren't a whole lot of those around, back then—and I admire the way the author dealt with how cat-porn would actually “work”, both physically and as a concept, without getting into horrifying thorny dick territory. I'm also glad to discover there's at least a couple of other people who ship Mordecai with the Savoys, if only individually; while I don't quite believe in the general thesis of “Affectionless” by Bridgette th Masquerade Turtle, Mordecai/Serafine (http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6940135/1/Affectionless), and decry its overall execution, it is a fun read, so there ya go.

All right: Round-up complete. Click, sample, enjoy. Write! The field's been left lamentably open, in terms of takers.