Sidious, Snoke and Salacious B Crumb’s Sarcastic and Sassy Situation Saloon (Fanfic Social Thread)

I've seen even in the past ~10 years I've been into fanfic a certain change in perception of fanfic. Like (some) people have realized that you don't need to be a published/career author to be a decent writer.

I always liken fanfic to any other hobby. Few people who play guitar ever really want to make it big. Most people just want to strum away a few hours, unwind from work, etc by playing songs they love in their living room and maybe share with friends. Most fanfic authors are the same way.

 

Given that some published novels started out as fanfic, it seems odd to criticise fanfic as a whole. Sure, not all of it is good, but the same is true of published works as well. I used to love writing fanfic because I wrote things for people to enjoy and I found an audience of people who enjoyed what I wrote. I'd like to get new glasses with those computer screen tints so I can get back into reading it again. It'd be nice to have some of my favourite works as ebooks so I can read them on my kindle, but I know it's not an easy thing to do.

 

My first novel is a Swan Lake fanfic, basically. When I teach kids at school visits, they sometimes ask about when they should stop writing fanfic and work on their own stuff and I pull up whatever I’m currently writing here. I like giving them the encouragement to write whatever they are passionate about, even if it’s an obi-wan/padme crack AU crossover with Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something.

 

Years ago I was like "Yeah, maybe I'll foray into original fiction one day and self publish something just for poops and giggles". These days, I'm not totally discounting the possibility of original fic, but I am just having fun writing what I'm writing now and I have no desire to change it up (right now).

Yesterday I managed to get a ton of stuff done, cleaned my place (though you wouldn't notice it because cats), baked some muffins, and my sister even came over for a few hours to help me with some chores I need help with. So today I'm having a "do nothin' day". I slept in late, I still gotta get dressed, then I'm trying to decide if I want to sew, write, or just do nothin. It's currently trying to snow here which I just love.

 

I have twice had a “Crap! I need to take this instead of fanfic” moment. First was when a friend pitched a book I hadn’t started writing and I had to write 50 pages to see if they wanted the rest. The second was when I’d written a story during a hiking trip and an anthology editor asked me to write something for them and when I submitted that story, they wanted it, only in a different genre. I’m about to pitch a nonfiction book because a publisher I just published with is asking for proposals by March 31. So much of the time is spent being laid-back about fan vs. original fic for me, but I sometimes have very freakishly stressful writing compulsions.

I have been trying to get rid of a migraine, so spent a lot of time in bed this weekend. Didn’t entirely work yet, but it’s getting better.

 

So between classes, internship work, and schoolwork, my brain is throwing up the overload flag and refusing to do the schoolwork. As such, I just wasted an entire weekend when I have a paper due Wednesday and the first phase of a semester-long project due the following Wednesday.

I'm not scheduled to work Mondays currently, so I'm going to camp out in the library all day long tomorrow and get as much done as possible on both of those, focusing on the paper first since it's due first. It's only one page and doesn't need a lot of in-depth research beyond a few cursory Google searches, so I should be able to knock it out quickly. Phase one of the other project can be broken down into three distinct parts, and I hope to get the first part done tomorrow as well.

Then Tuesday, I need to talk to my boss about scheduling. Currently I'm basically working all daytime hours Tuesday through Friday that I'm not in class (save reasonable transition times and lunch breaks). I'm going to ask for Wednesdays off as well, and see if I can be allowed to put in some hours on the weekend to make up for that. I already know that I ain't gonna get any schoolwork done on Saturdays anyway (mainly due to short and inconvenient library hours), so might as well make some money that day if it's OK with the boss. I'm already only able to work three hours on Wednesdays due to my class schedule, and none of those are in the mornings when regular team meetings occur, so I would hope the boss would prefer five to six hours on Saturday over three hours on Wednesday.

But if I can get Wednesdays off, that gives me two weekdays to focus on schoolwork, and would ease the load tremendously. I'm terrible at being productive on schoolwork on evenings and weekends, because the last four semesters I've focused on turning school into a 9-to-5 job and getting all my work done in the daytime so I can relax in the evenings and on weekends, and this abrupt shift to filling most of those hours with an internship is killing me.

 

You know what sucks? Food poisoning sucks. Fourth time in my life and this is the worst. I have all this work I need to get done before school starts back on Wednesday and I just can't.

Socially distanced hugs to everyone whose also struggling at the moment.

 

How did you manage that, poor @Kit'?

I do not struggle myself but I do worry for the younger sister of my Dutch husband. She and family members traveled from their biological apple farm in East Sussex/ UK to the farmer's market in London and back more than two weeks ago. For business.

First we all thought they just got a feverish flue, but then they all started to lose their sense of taste. The children are better by now. But my sister-in-law has cystic kidneys and severe trouble getting better.

As a kindergarten teacher you learn a lot about respiratory deseases and my sister-in-law sounded awful on the phone on Saturday.

As a German, I find the way of how a high risk patient is cared for in the UK appalling. (And I already worry for my own husband as a transplant patient and his relatively new kidney, two years by now, due to all the flaws of the German health system.)

I also do worry for a dear study pal in Hungerford/ UK who is a true outdoor cat. Of course, she can do homeoffice for her publishing house and therefore does not need to commute to Oxford every day. But she dreadfully misses her long walks in the surrounding forest areas. And now her "support bubble" has the mutant form and they cannot meet either. The loneliness gets to my friend even though I doubled my efforts with letters, cards & Skype calls.

But the most worrying facts are yesterday's Anti-Corona protests in the Netherlands. Among the 10 cities with protests, that totally got out of hand are DarthUncle's city of birth, Amsterdam, and Eindhoven where we lived together for almost 3 years. It worries us to witness so much wrath. Burning down a test center or putting cars on fire is not helpful to anybody. Or even to forcefully enter hospitals to check if there are really Covid-19 patients in the ER.

When my surgery got a rain check last minute on the 8th December, I tried to be understanding, even though the surgery NOT happening will not help me to ever become a mother. That dream is over now.

And the other side effects of the huge mess that grows inside my womb force me to take several medications and being in pain very often.

But do I set fire on other people's property? No. I also do not loot shops or hit police personnel.

If I do not work at the crèche, I am at home and do my best to follow reasonable hobbies that harm no one. Plus do the shopping once a week for a very short time.

Instead of thinking about just me, I stay in contact with familiy members, friends and dear acquaintances, because the number of people getting ill with Covid-19 and even dying rises.

And this is why I do enjoy fanfic around here so much, because a lot of folk work hard to come up with brilliant ideas for stories set in a galaxy far, far away.

So, thank you, even so I am side-tracked a lot by Exit puzzles, dice games via Skype, the "D&D missions" that DarthUncle's twin brother comes up with in the CZ Republic, real books (for example in gift form from MsLanna), kitchen adventures with DarthUncle (the stuff we eat and drink) and binging DVD series from the library of our Berlin city district.

But fanfic is very, very important to cope right now. So thanks for all who are able to write.

 

There’s so much here, so in the face of sucking at knowing what to say sometimes, I’d like to offer a sincere hug.

 

They should put a fence around Urk where the hooligans burnt down the test center

 

Some of my friends have started posting about their second vaccination and I’m so relieved by that. Also, their humorous remarks about how they feel now that Bill Gates has microchipped them are delightful.

 

I am sad for you, especially since it sounds like you would really like to be a mother. I offer you many big virtual hugs

 

This is one of the things that I relate too closely to to articulate more than hugs.

And fanfic has gotten me through 9/11, domestic violence, losing family members, and learning to make peace with enemies. It’s why I keep writing it.

 

[mention]AzureAngel2 [/mention] massive hugs to you. Wish there was more I could do, but just imagine huge hugs from the otherside of the world.

We think that both hubby and I got it from takeaway rice. It’s the only thing that both of us ate and it had the texture of rice that had sat in a rice cooker for a while. It’s been 48 hours of feeling awful but it seems to have turned a corner which is good. Problem is that the first day of school/work is tomorrow and at this point I’m staying home.


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Hope you continue to feel better. I once had food poisoning on the day of a final exam.

 

Oh no! That would be the worst.

I went to work and managed until 11am, then rang them and was like "nope. I need to go home". Stayed home today, which I probably didn't need to do, but also didn't want to chance it until I was sure it's gone. (Which it has - now I just feel tender and hungry).

Not a great start to the school year. Spent this afternoon ignoring emails and writing, which was nice. Also redid some of the plants for my classroom and have packed two in the car to take to work tomorrow.

 

Having dealt with severe gastro issues last year (not food poisoning, although that's what I first thought), absolutely follow a gentle diet. Clear for a day (clear soup, gelatin, etc.), then a very gentle diet, like the BRAT diet, for a few days, which is what the docs told me. Bananas, rice, applesauce, toast, plain poached chicken, broth soups, etc. Lots of water, to give yourself a real chance to heal. Then maybe some yogurt to repopulate your intestinal bacteria. I do feel for you. I know it is hard to function when your insides are painful and misbehaving.

 

So this latest out-of-lockdown phase wasn't the greatest success. It lasted for all of 10 days and we are back in lockdown as of this morning.

@Kit' I hope you feel better! Food poisoning is the worst (among non-life-threatening ailments, obviously!) I'm adding avgolemono soup to @Mistress_Renata 's list of "good" foods. Here in Greece we firmly believe that it cures just about anything.

@AzureAngel2 Phew, that's a lot you've got going on right now! Please take good care of yourself. Lots of virtual hugs from me too

 

I have seen this idea in movies/TV-series that chicken soup is what you serve people that are sick. It's not part of my country's tradition and I was wondering if this is just an yankee thing or if you can find this idea in other parts of the world?

 

OMG, @Chyntuck, my mother believes this, too and we have no Greek ancestry! She used to believe in plain old chicken soup, but something about the lemon & the creaminess work wonders on a head cold & a sore throat. When I was growing up, there was a pizza place near us that had it on the menu, and in winter Mom would buy it by the quart when the family were sick. Then she heard the owners were going to retire and she BEGGED for the recipe.

I think the idea is that there's something about the broth, @Gamiel, but I'm not sure what. It is certainly easy to digest when you're unwell, and if you have noodles or rice they are easy to swallow if you have a sore throat.

 

@Gamiel I raise Greece's collective hand in response to your question. Chicken soup is one of the best forms of medicine known to humankind. And because here we're one step ahead, we make it as part of an avgolemono soup and it's just a panacea. (To clarify: all Greek chicken soup is avgolemono, but not all avgolemono is chicken soup.)

@Mistress_Renata I know, right? Avgolemono has got to be one of the most amazing things in Greek cuisine, whether as a soup or in a sauce. I don't get why only the soup has had an international career, everyone I know who ever tried it loved it and it's so easy to make. And it's a great food for kids. I don't think there's a single child in the entire world who doesn't love it. Chyntuquita is crazy about it; you wouldn't believe how much food that tiny little girl can tuck away when there's avgolemono on the menu. (I get bonus points for extra creaminess if I make mashed potatoes.)

 

Over here it's broth*, mild soup* and/or filmjölk that are the standard things to give sick people, as I can recall - but I admit that my people are not always following standards so maybe other types of food are used by other sweds.

* any kind.

 

And we don't have anything such in Norway (I think). Here it's just "take a paracetamol".

 

Well now I want soup so thanks for that