Concerning Blogathon...
So I am doing Blogathon this year. Comma goddamnit.
As with some previous years, Blogathon is not officially running. However, I will be joining shadesong and her wonderful co-bloggers, pit crew, and cats for the yearly Blogathon Madness.
And now the question is what I'm doing.
For those who don't know: Blogathon is a nerdy, butt-in-chair take on your usual walk/bike/whatever charity 'thon. Starting at 9 am EST on July 31st, I will stay up for twenty-four hours straight and post once every half hour. In 'thon tradition, readers may pledge to a charity of my choice to support me in my mad effort.
Since this is not a year where Blogathon is officially organized, the pledge system will be very home-grown. I will soon be making a designated pledge post in this journal; comment with the amount (either lump sum or per hour I manage to stay up--though I will say that I've done Blogathon twice before and am unlikely to crash) you're pledging, and after the 'thon is over, make your donation. If you do not make your donation, I shall harass you!
This year, I will be returning to my old standby: Heifer Project International. HPI is an international hunger and poverty relief organization that has their own take on the "teach a man to fish" principle: rather than simply providing food to families in need, they provide livestock. I've been involved with HPI in one way or another since I was a child, and I'd be happy to blog for their benefit again.
But the real question, for me, is not the charity: it's what I'm going to write. Because I don't just blog randomly for twenty-four hours. I take on a major writing project, write it during Blogathon, and post it raw and steaming for your benefit. The first year, over the course of Blogathon, I wrote the first draft of Thirty-Five Owls, the Dumbledore/Grindelwald correspondence fic which would become my most recced and reviewed fic ever. The second year I wrote various scenes from a large genderswap Avengers AU project, which remains unfinished because, er, Iamaflake. -.-
At any rate. I need a writing project. Something that can keep me busy for the whole twenty-four hours, and hopefully something that won't bore the shit out of y'all. Something that I'm really intensely invested in right now, because otherwise I won't still be working on it at 5 AM the next morning.
I have two things on my mind.
First: I just signed up for
kink_bingo, and have a card that I like and am thinking of going for a blackout on. What will this mean for you? A slew of short fics, of various sorts, in various fandoms (Xenosaga, some Kingdom Hearts, a little Utena, whatever else comes out), all kinky pr0n. I probably won't finish the blackout entirely during Blogathon itself; that's twenty-five fics, after all! But I'd go through as much of it as I could, which would probably be a fair chunk. (I can write about 10,000 words of material in a Blogathon. Things I know about myself.) There'd be no chance of leaving a WIP hanging after Blogathon like last time. But it would break my streak of writing long-form gen or close-to-gen for Blogathon.
Second: In the long-form gen category, yes. Something I'd be super-passionate about, yes. Something that would be a hanging WIP after Blogathon is over, yes, because the scope of this project is big. Something anybody else is actually interested in? Well, not quite sure about that. Because I have this urge to write a novelization of Xenosaga. Yeah, all of it, incorporating supplemental material that never quite made it into the games, etcetera. I am potentially insane. This would be a long-term project; I'd get maybe halfway through the first game's worth of material, if I do well, during Blogathon, and then hopefully be continuing it. But it's not a can of worms I'd even want to open unless there was interest. Because, seriously, the main reason I'm thinking of doing this? Is because I am currently seriously in love with a fucking obscure fandom and wish to share this love with the fanworld. This is an amazing canon full of fabulous characters and boggling fic potential...and nobody seems to know it. And rather than saying "dude, it's epic, trust me, wade through three long CRPGs, some hard to obtain, and obscure fan-translated background material" or "hey, trust me, watch these 293847287367 cutscenes on Youtube," I'd love to be able to have all this canon information collated in a friendlier format.
In case you're wondering: a quick description of Xenosaga: the travails of an adventurous female scientist, Shion Uzuki, who travels with her battle android (girlfriend) and a motly party of friends. The genre could best be summed up as high-drama high-angst space opera (think Bujold) thrown in a blender with Christian mythos, Karl Jung, the Kabbalah, and sufficient interesting and accurate psych and spec-psych to make my psych major girlfriend squee endlessly.
I can't even say "watch the anime" because it sucks. Yes, there's a Xenosaga anime. It's a somewhat changed version of the first game's story. The changes aren't that big a deal; the fact that it sucks is.
Anywho. Anime rant some other time. This is supposed to be the what-the-shit-do-I-do-for-Blogathon post. And since you guys are hypothetically going to be giving me money for this...
Poll No, seriously, what do I do for Blogathon? And other questions.
As with some previous years, Blogathon is not officially running. However, I will be joining shadesong and her wonderful co-bloggers, pit crew, and cats for the yearly Blogathon Madness.
And now the question is what I'm doing.
For those who don't know: Blogathon is a nerdy, butt-in-chair take on your usual walk/bike/whatever charity 'thon. Starting at 9 am EST on July 31st, I will stay up for twenty-four hours straight and post once every half hour. In 'thon tradition, readers may pledge to a charity of my choice to support me in my mad effort.
Since this is not a year where Blogathon is officially organized, the pledge system will be very home-grown. I will soon be making a designated pledge post in this journal; comment with the amount (either lump sum or per hour I manage to stay up--though I will say that I've done Blogathon twice before and am unlikely to crash) you're pledging, and after the 'thon is over, make your donation. If you do not make your donation, I shall harass you!
This year, I will be returning to my old standby: Heifer Project International. HPI is an international hunger and poverty relief organization that has their own take on the "teach a man to fish" principle: rather than simply providing food to families in need, they provide livestock. I've been involved with HPI in one way or another since I was a child, and I'd be happy to blog for their benefit again.
But the real question, for me, is not the charity: it's what I'm going to write. Because I don't just blog randomly for twenty-four hours. I take on a major writing project, write it during Blogathon, and post it raw and steaming for your benefit. The first year, over the course of Blogathon, I wrote the first draft of Thirty-Five Owls, the Dumbledore/Grindelwald correspondence fic which would become my most recced and reviewed fic ever. The second year I wrote various scenes from a large genderswap Avengers AU project, which remains unfinished because, er, Iamaflake. -.-
At any rate. I need a writing project. Something that can keep me busy for the whole twenty-four hours, and hopefully something that won't bore the shit out of y'all. Something that I'm really intensely invested in right now, because otherwise I won't still be working on it at 5 AM the next morning.
I have two things on my mind.
First: I just signed up for
kink_bingo, and have a card that I like and am thinking of going for a blackout on. What will this mean for you? A slew of short fics, of various sorts, in various fandoms (Xenosaga, some Kingdom Hearts, a little Utena, whatever else comes out), all kinky pr0n. I probably won't finish the blackout entirely during Blogathon itself; that's twenty-five fics, after all! But I'd go through as much of it as I could, which would probably be a fair chunk. (I can write about 10,000 words of material in a Blogathon. Things I know about myself.) There'd be no chance of leaving a WIP hanging after Blogathon like last time. But it would break my streak of writing long-form gen or close-to-gen for Blogathon.
Second: In the long-form gen category, yes. Something I'd be super-passionate about, yes. Something that would be a hanging WIP after Blogathon is over, yes, because the scope of this project is big. Something anybody else is actually interested in? Well, not quite sure about that. Because I have this urge to write a novelization of Xenosaga. Yeah, all of it, incorporating supplemental material that never quite made it into the games, etcetera. I am potentially insane. This would be a long-term project; I'd get maybe halfway through the first game's worth of material, if I do well, during Blogathon, and then hopefully be continuing it. But it's not a can of worms I'd even want to open unless there was interest. Because, seriously, the main reason I'm thinking of doing this? Is because I am currently seriously in love with a fucking obscure fandom and wish to share this love with the fanworld. This is an amazing canon full of fabulous characters and boggling fic potential...and nobody seems to know it. And rather than saying "dude, it's epic, trust me, wade through three long CRPGs, some hard to obtain, and obscure fan-translated background material" or "hey, trust me, watch these 293847287367 cutscenes on Youtube," I'd love to be able to have all this canon information collated in a friendlier format.
In case you're wondering: a quick description of Xenosaga: the travails of an adventurous female scientist, Shion Uzuki, who travels with her battle android (girlfriend) and a motly party of friends. The genre could best be summed up as high-drama high-angst space opera (think Bujold) thrown in a blender with Christian mythos, Karl Jung, the Kabbalah, and sufficient interesting and accurate psych and spec-psych to make my psych major girlfriend squee endlessly.
I can't even say "watch the anime" because it sucks. Yes, there's a Xenosaga anime. It's a somewhat changed version of the first game's story. The changes aren't that big a deal; the fact that it sucks is.
Anywho. Anime rant some other time. This is supposed to be the what-the-shit-do-I-do-for-Blogathon post. And since you guys are hypothetically going to be giving me money for this...
Poll No, seriously, what do I do for Blogathon? And other questions.