Today has been a rough one fibro-wise, so it was the perfect day to receive stocking stuffers that made me smile, and I've received quite the range of very cool gifts, including various cute graphics and well-wishes as well as the following fics:

AtS tinyficlet by yhlee (Angel: the Series, Fred/Gunn, G)

A Vorkosigan ficlet by sheffsfic (Vorkosigan, Miles/Ekaterin, G)

Lair by merryghoul (Leverage, Parker/Sophie, G)

Something Different by tarlanx (Torchwood, Jack/Ianto, M)

I Bring Thee Glad Tidings by yamx (Doctor Who, Nine/Jack/(Rose), G)

Blindsided by sahiya (Doctor Who, Eleven/River/Jack, E/NC17)

and

Christmas in July by tiny_white_hats (Angel: the Series, Fred/Gunn, PG)

I am hugely grateful for all of these and hope some of you will go and enjoy them as well!

I didn't write as much as I'd hoped, didn't even manage to stray out of Doctor Who (unless you count the crossover), but I had fun writing what I did. There are two or three that I got started that ran away from me, which I hope to finish and post before school resumes at the end of the month. The ones I did complete are

Crazy for joking (Crossover, Eleven and Sherlock, G)

The Wedding Planner for sahiya (Doctor Who, Vastra/Jenny (in absentia) and Eleven/River, G)

War Games for yamx (Doctor Who, Nine/Rose/Jack, M)

and

Peace and Quiet for fuzzyboo (Doctor Who, Nine, Rose, and Jack, G)

It's been another fun year, for sure. I've said it there already, but huge kudos to the mods for pulling this off. There were something like 360 stockings to manage this year, which I can't even fathom the logistics of.

Stolen from bethbethbeth. The deal is to pull up the stories that you have on AO3 (would work for any archive with hit counts enabled though) to see which are the top 10 in terms of hits. Then, I gather, later you compare to see what shifts. This sounds cool to me, as my overall impression is that there are more people reading (or at least leaving kudos and comments on) the smaller fandoms, like Vorkosigan and Temeraire, but that may not turn out to reflect who's reading, just who's more inclined to give feedback. So, here goes, though I'm going to go from 10-1:

10: The Morning After (HP, SS/HG/LM, Explicit, "Hermione rolled over to her left and found something in her way. Rolling over to her right, she found another obstruction. This woke her up enough to wonder what could be crowding her." 314 hits)

9: How Hermione Got Her Groove Back (HP, SS/HG, Explicit, "Hermione finds herself alone in the Headmistress’ office one afternoon with Snape’s portrait, and things get … interesting." 316 hits)

8: Burnt Offerings (Vorkosigan, Miles & Cordelia, Gen, "On the anniversary of his father’s death, Miles ponders the way they mark it." 317 hits)

7: Wherever I May Roam (DW, Jack/Doctor, Teen, "It was supposed to be a simple stop to pick up supplies at the famed market of Avicephalon." 331 hits)

6: Moulding to the Pitcher (Temeraire, Gong Su, Gen, "The chance to serve a Celestial had seemed a blessing to Gong Su, one normally reserved for those who served the imperial family. And it was, but frequently not in the ways he had imagined." 406 hits)

5. Keeping the Goal in Sight (Vorkosigan, Ekaterin/Miles, Gen, "There must be a reason she needs to learn Comparative Botanical Genetics, right?" 413 hits)

4. Never Chose This Way (Vorkosigan/BtVS, Ivan/Byerly, Teen, "Ivan and Byerly are on their way home from Beta Colony when something goes very wrong. Gigantically wrong, you might say." 442 hits)

3. The Doors We Open and Close Each Day (HP, SS/RL, Teen, "Young Severus Snape was packed off to Hogwarts with instructions to ingratiate himself to the pureblooded Slytherins who would surely be his House-mates. By the time it’s his turn to sit under the Sorting Hat, he has other ideas." 458 hits)

2. A Perfectly Normal Day (HP/Temeraire, CW/HG, Gen, "Just when Charlie thought he'd seen everything, along came Iskierka." 460 hits)

1. An Ordinary Man (Vorkosigan, Ivan/Byerly, Explicit, "Byerly gets Ivan drunk, and one thing leads to another." 557 hits)

==================================================================

Some musings. An Ordinary Man is the first completed fanfic I posted online. So my first thought was, "It has the most hits because it's the oldest, so it had more time to collect them." However, it was not the first uploaded to AO3. That honor goes to #2, A Perfetly Normal Day. It'd be interesting to compare in a few months or a year to see how things shift (or don't).

Stats as of right now:

Fandoms: Vorkosigan 4, HP 3, Temeraire 2, Crossover 2, DW 1, BtVS 1
Ratings: Gen 4, Explicit 3, Teen 3
Ship type: Slash 4, Het 3, None 2, Multi 1 (Misleading, because some have implied or background ships but are basically genfic. Could also read as Slash 4, None 4, Het 1, Multi 1.)

I'm not sure any of those stats reflect the overall percentages of my fic. Even though I think of myself as a slasher, since that's where I started out, I've written far more het, mostly SS/HG, though of late there's been more and more gen or quasi-gen. It is interesting that VK fandom does have the most hits represented, as that was the impression I had going in, even though I've written comparatively little of it.

Meanwhile, I need to try and do a little writing this afternoon before it's time to run off to dinner and a blues concert.

Finished Cryoburn the other night. Even knowing a particular character development was destined to be coming up, even seeing all the foreshadowing for exactly what it was, that was quite the gut-punch. No wonder I put off reading it. ( Cut for a spoiler that really isn't a spoiler, since Bujold had said all along that the next book would contain this particular element. )

Also, an epilogue composed of self-contained, exactly 100 word drabbles? With a definition for the unfamiliar of what a drabble is? Stroke of genius. Admittedly, if someone did that in fandom, as we're so accustomed to drabbles and drabble-series, it might not have gone over quite as well. But it was such a surprise and the format worked so well for what she was doing that I just loved it.

In other news, orientation at work proceeds apace. I definitely prefer working the floor to supervising, despite the fact I'm basically just pushing pills. I apparently have two more weeks of orientation scheduled, plus the iv certification class that hasn't been scheduled yet. But I'm definitely feeling more confident about it all.

The 3rd annual wintercompanion Summer/Holiday fest has started with a lovely bit of Jack/Nine hurt/comfort. I'm looking forward to seeing them all. Very cool approach they took with the prompts, too, using the "psychic password" format we encountered in "The Doctor's Wife" of a color, a number, an emotion, and an aroma. Very effective and evocative, and the prompts are open for people to write/draw/create other things throughout the month, which should lead to seeing some intriguing variety on how people run with them.

I think I'm about over my "What the hell was I thinking?" attack re: my femslash11 assignment and have moved into research mode, which is a very good thing.

And now, time to run around and do stuff to get ready for this weekend's Anadikia retreat. Coming up with appropriate offerings has been rather challenging. (I got it into my head that I needed special liquor offerings for each of the Temple patrons. Ginger liqueur for Zeus and Oracle of the Sun Shiraz for Apollon were easy enough to find. I'd wanted retsina for Pan, but nobody around here even knows what it is, much less carries it, including the place Tim found it a year or so ago. So I went with Bully Hill wine that has a goat for a logo. *facepalm*)

Have a great weekend all! Don't break the intarwebz while I'm gone!

When annietalbot gave me the heads-up about Lois McMaster Bujold being at Boskone, I really should've taken the Fri-Sat shift off to be sure I could make it up for at least part of today. At 5pm, she was scheduled to (and presumably did) give a 45 minute reading from her new VK book, Cryo Burn. Panels and autographing earlier in the day. I was, theoretically, going to attempt to go up just for the reading, but didn't get anything like enough sleep for that to be a sane idea.

This is the third Boston con I've attempted to convince myself I could "just run up to" without taking any time off work. Three strikes and that nonsense idea is out. Just because it's local doesn't mean it can be squeezed in between a couple of third shifts. I have the pool time; I just need to use it.

Starting to come back to life now, which is good as I've still got 8 hrs to go. Little work-work to do, thank goodness, but plenty of studying. Plus disc one of "Doctor Who and the Silurians." I'm not crazy for Three yet, but it generally takes a bit for me to warm up to each Doctor. I am, however, growing increasingly fond of the Brigadier.

Watched Sherlock Holmes with dinosaurs last night. Hated mailing it back to Netflix, so I guess I'll be buying that at some point. There were apparently lots of things to pick up on for the true Holmes buff, which I am not, but even without that it was enjoyable. Hysterically funny at points, even. Well, it would be. Because it's Sherlock Holmes with dinos. Though, alas, no pteranodon. ;-)

Done with my nearly useless decaf coffee. Time to upgrade and have some green tea, which, in all honesty, I should've made sure I'd had before I ever left the apartment. The only thing decaf coffee really does is stave off the caffeine headache, not wake me up. Unless it's decaf cappuccino, and I didn't leave myself enough time to go to Starbucks. Annoyed as I still am with my coworker, I probably was unintentionally rude, which I honestly didn't mean to be however much she may have deserved it. Dammit.

Also, I've been pretty complainy of late, which I don't really like to see. It's probably more obvious since there hasn't actually been any fic to post to offset the bitchery. Need to work on that. Both being less complainy and managing to write anything that is not TFTWSD and thus postable. Even if it's not something from the backlog of birthday fics. Maybe I'll make that a goal for this week.