I met her last summer and it was amazing.

Day 11
In your own space, talk about a creator. Show us why you think they are amazing. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Most of inkandcayenne's icons are lost to internet entropy, and her fic is fairly well split up between small Tumblr posts and her Archive of Our Own account. That said, she still does fabulous work with graphics programs when time allows, and more than once I've stayed up way past my bedtime spitballing crazy AUs and silly crack plots that leave me laughing myself into coughing fits and giggling on the subway for days afterward.

She writes fics with a lot of quiet to them that capture the characters in moments of graceful stillness. She tags like nobody's business, she can lay the meta smackdown if necessary, and she always gets it.

In short, she's the sort of person who makes me unhappy that teleportation doesn't exist because I'd be on her couch practically every weekend if I could, braiding hair and baking cookies and discussing the semiotics of musical cues and color theory while sighing over James Marsters' natural curls. But as it doesn't, I have to settle for gushing about her here.

Turn and climb again.

Day 12

In your own space, post a rec for fannish spaces and resources - comms, challenges, twitters, tumblrs, etc. Tell us about where you hang out. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.


thisfinecrew is doing a good job of focusing energy and action, and providing ways to use the steam generated by anger and fear.

Franz Kafka said that in a fight between you and the world, bet on the world. Places like thisfinecrew offer reminders that it's rarely just you; more often, it's "you and me against the world" and that's often got an even chance.

So much closer.

Day 13
In your own space, write about a moment in fandom that meant a lot to you. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

The two fics I've written for Deep Space Nine, Stubborn Mouths: Humans In Translation and Woven From Your Brown Hair, both focus on an explicitly autistic Julian Bashir. I wrote them because there wasn't anything else even coming close to approaching the concept in almost twenty years of DS9 fandom - I looked hard - and I didn't want to wait around for another couple of decades for someone else to get the idea when I knew I could roll up my sleeves and get to work right away.

I also knew that if I felt the need for this story to exist so sharply, other people probably wanted to read it, too. And I was correct, as the kudos, comments, and bookmarks bear out.

It wasn't writing stories with fairly good staying power and popularity that mean so much to me. That's nice, but it's not the moment.

The moment's come over and over, and every time it happens I have to look away to collect myself and sometimes hold back some tears. Every time. It's when people say "Here I am" or "I heard myself" or "You helped me see myself and I think I know what I am". And I want to shout I'm sorry! I shouldn't have this much power! I didn't -

But then I stop, and I look back, and I recognize the honor that it is to be the one who gave someone else that moment of their own.