My first in eight years I saw this lovely piece of artwork and decided to write a story of an unexpected conversation between my two favourite characters in the show it's from, Girls und Panzer, even though they have no screentime together and no bond whatsoever in the show. Much like how I started out in fan fiction all those years ago, actually, so it felt a bit like going back to the beginning.

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I posted this a while ago as a reply comment to a blog of Wanderer D's, but thought it was worth a blog of its own. Because this is something so many people screw up, when it's really the easiest thing to get right, and I struggle to understand how many seem to find it so hard.

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Funny the things that stay with you. The first quote here popped into my head earlier today, when I put on a coat I hadn't worn in a while. And it got me thinking about how fanfiction, for all its humility, sometimes makes a lasting impact. That can be a story twist, a characterisation, a witty barb of dialogue... but sometimes it's just a little bit of prose. And it worms its way in, and sticks with you for years and years, because there's just something about the phrasing that's a tiny bit

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I published a new story back in January. The one before it (Constrictive Criticism) was unimportant. The one since (Like You) wasn't important either. But the one in between, with Maud on the cover, that was a big deal to me.

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In half an hour we launch the first thing to fly on Mars.

I think they should name her Spitfire.

For about the last three years, the last line of my story ideas document has held five words. Right at the bottom, at the very end of the 'crossovers' section (I've never written a crossover, and have only enjoyed reading a single one, so you can see just how low-priority they are for me), it says:

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Day One!

Alarm went off at 6:45. Hadn’t slept badly, and felt pretty ok. Excited for the con! No more sensation of still being on a plane, either, which was nice. No one else up yet. Had a shave and didn’t cut myself – great success. Not that I often cut myself shaving, but sod’s law says that when that does happen, it’s on an important day. So an important day where my face survives the morning intact is off to a good start.

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Costume!

I wanted to do this whole blog thing in chronological order, but there was so much to say about making the costume I did, which I’m sure is quite the minority interest to people here mostly to hear of Aragon’s antics, that I thought it’d be better in a separate section.

So, on July 2nd, I started ordering costume stuff.

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Getting There!

Travel insurance is a useful thing to have if anything bad happens to you. If your flights are messed up, if something goes wrong with the hotel, etc, it’s travel insurance that’ll get you your money back. Most importantly, it covers medical costs where you’d have to pay for that sort of thing.

But I’d be fine. Nothing was going to go wrong.

A lot went wrong.

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