I’m playing with Leannan Sidhe and we’re doing some of my material this Thursday at Shoreline Community College. We’re the 1pm band at SunFest 2017, at the Rock River outdoor theatre, on campus, near Building 1600.

While this is largely a campus event, there is bus service (331 from North King County, the 5 from the south, also… something like the 342 from Northgate?), and also visitor parking on the south side of campus, which it’s not expensive, and some street parking, which is free if you can get it.

Hope to see some of you there!

This Sunday I’m going in to Someone Else’s Studio for what is really technically an academic exercise; the lead singer/songwriter of Leannan Sidhe and her group need someone to record for… it’s not a graduation exercise? But she’s very close to graduation and it’s a big project.

So I showed up yesterday and met with her and her two co-engineers, and poked around at songs to do, and we pretty quickly settled on “Supervillain For I Love You,” which I’ve just recently revised (and I think improved, which is pretty typical for my work as I perform it) and we start talking microphones.

And turns out they’re really into this song, apparently, because suddenly they were all talking about who else they can bring in and how big a band we can assemble, and now we’re in the large studio and besides me and my zouk and the chorus there’s a bassist and a pianist and a guitarist and possibly a horn section and they were working out a drumkit part I think that’s all but I’m not entirely sure.

Now as this is happening I realise, I’ve seen this before, on video, where, you know, Real Musicians Are In The Real Studio, because let’s face it, as happy as I am with the little one I built, it’s still a tiny studio and I can only play so many instruments, and only one at a time. I’m usually working alone.

So this Sunday may in fact be – outside voiceover and radio work, of course – the most “pro”-like recording experience I’ve ever had. Eep?

It might be silly, but for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been doing something I have almost never done before, and never this much: I’ve been writing fiction, and lots of it. Overwatch fanfic, to be specific.

Over the winter holidays, Overwatch held a couple of events, and released a comic, called Reflections. It’ the one where we find out completely and totally unambiguously that Tracer, the literal face of the game, the character on the box, is queer. We meet her girlfriend, they smooch, it is inarguable text.

It was like a second Korrasami just fell out of the air and landed on us, and it was wonderful.

But we also see a single panel of Widowmaker, from the back, standing, looking to me despondent, at Gérard’s grave. (For those who don’t know: he was her husband, and her first official target as an assassin.) It’s one of what I consider to be several hints dropped that her official backstory is a lie. And there have been a bunch of people – since the beginning – shipping Tracer and Widowmaker, which to me is nonsensical in canon, because Lena would never forgive Amélie for killing Mondatta in the cinematic video “Alive.”

Lost yet? Sorry, there’s no way out but through. Anyway, one of these shippers did a marvellous and touching comic set a few minutes after that single frame of Widowmaker, with her and Venom – the version of Tracer who is with Talon, not Overwatch. And I liked it so much, I started thinking, “How would we actually get here? What would it take?”

Now, I’ve never really been a fiction writer, but I can make take characters’ lives and seriously fuck them up, but good. And, unlike certain writers (cough cough m*ff*t cough) I care about trying to make it work in character. And the analytical engine in the back of my brain started churning.

Then a couple of weeks ago, it just started falling out. I feel almost less like “writer” here than “transcriber.” It’s still short – a novelette – but Chapter 12 went up today. There have kind of been 13, but one is out of continuity and not listed with the main work, because it’s kind of an AU-to-my-own-AU aside.

Fortunately, it’s not all I can think about, but holy crow is it dominating my brainspace. I have new relationship energy with writing? Apparently? Or something? I don’t even know. (Seriously, it feels like NRE. It’s goofy.)

And since I’ve checked with actual writers and am told this is a thing that happens, I’m willing to admit to this story about my story.

I was in spawn point one on offence in Gibraltar, as Tracer (of course), and looking out the upper-floor window to see how the defence was setting up. Surprisingly few people do this, given how useful it is.

And Widowmaker came up beside me, to do the same thing, in full Talon-wear, and we said hello, like you do, and she looked through her scope to get a better view, and suddenly I saw her through Venom’s eyes.

Now, I have issues with Widowmaker’s character design, and a lot of them are probably pretty obvious, but leave those aside for the moment. Seeing her as Venom – as my Talon Tracer – sees her… even for for just that moment, she literally took my breath away.

If that’s what the tracermaker shippers have been seeing this whole time… hoo boy. Now, I really get it.

My “Make Dreamwidth mobile friendly” project is now in Beta 1. If you’re using any previous version, please upgrade now! And report bugs.

If you’re not using it, but are on Dreamwidth and would like the site to behave decently on your phone, please became a beta tester. Instructions at the link:

Thanks!

I’m not sure what Amazon thinks I’m building, but I’d genuinely like to see its plans.

So where the hell have I been for the last week?

Well, last post as about Anna’s sinus surgery, and first: it went fine, she’s fine, we’re going back today to have the nose splints removed. There’ll still be a couple of more weeks of recovery. But there was a lot more aftercare than I realised – including tending about every 20 minutes for the first three days, all day. And while none of it was difficult, that does kind of disrupt one’s ability to do anything.

Except, apparently, code. So I have my first sizable coding project in a while – if CSS counts a code, anyway – and it makes Dreamwidth work on mobile in a way that looks like it was actually meant to be used on mobile. Seriously. Here’s the latest post on that project, you want the bleeding-edge version and please do report bugs on that Dreamwidth post.

Also, there has been far more Overwatch than usual. I haven’t beaten the current event on Expert yet, but I’ve beaten the levels below. I tried the highest level a couple of times, but we only made it to the church once and barely got there.

So that’s where I’ve been. How’ve you been doing?