In the spirit of the someecard I reposted the other day, I decided I would try, for as long as I can, to post one creative thing per week--a fic, tiny bit of original and/or fanart, mix, original writing, whatever. I've been pretty unhappy with the way RL horror has managed to comprehensively fuck up my actual work (which I love) and my fanwork (which I also love), and I hereby declare that the rest of 2010 will be the Year of Getting Back on the Horse.

This week's little bit of nothing much is two rejected early drafts for Croatoan 3.1. (An inside source reveals that the title is a reference to the posted piece being the artist's third attempt at cyberpunk!Dean and Cas.) Full-size versions and some notes/rambling after the cut.



( medievally cyberpunk drafty thing?Collapse )

Peace beneath the city (Dean/Castiel) PG | artish
Okay, so wow, the noir thing grew a few more pictures and a title! "Peace Beneath The City" is (as you may guess) an Iron and Wine song I like a lot.

Previous installments are the character list/plot synopsis/teaser and Two Men Sit In A Bar. For the newcomers, I am not really putting this together in order... and there is only the vaguest idea of a story.



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In other news: AUGH the craziness continues. I've forgotten what it's like to be so insane with busy work, and having to be on other people's deadlines.

HA, so, yesterday I posted a draft version of my cyberpunk piece for the Dean/Cas AU/Fusion challenge, thinking there was no chance whatsoever I would be able to finish it any time soon. WELL GUESS WHAT. I finished it last night, more or less completely by accident. Thank you, Google image search!

It occurred to me that I should also make a tag for black and white art, since I have been doing so much of it lately. At least, I think the last two things I've done have been b&w. Oh, I'm so monochromatic! So now there is a tag for my b&w art.

Oh, yeah, I keep forgetting to .eta: The full-size versions of these are REALLY REALLY BIG, and so are linked under their more moderately-sized counterparts.



( Croatoan 3 is spreadingCollapse )

Okay, I really need to pull it together and stop freaking out. It isn't good for me. Deep breaths, goddammit. Deep breaths.

I'm still completely slammed with random, stressful crap, so for those of you who have friended me in recent days (hi!), I won't be posting a whole lot for the next little while. Maybe, eventually, things will calm down, but really, Christmas break cannot come soon enough.

In the meantime, there are a few things, at least? First, here is a bit of something I've been working on, art for the Dean/Cas Fusion/AU challenge! It is a cyberpunk AU, and I guess what I've come up with so far needs more clearly obviously cyberpunk. It's actually the second of three different pieces I've started, and I wanted to post it because... well, because I've posted nothing for eons now, it seems like.

(It's been over two weeks! TWO WEEKS WTF. That is like forever.)



( cyberpunkish drafty whateverCollapse )

Also, linkies!

The amazing and lovely siriaeve and I co-wrote some Meredith/John smut a while ago, and now Siri has posted it for your edification! Take you down a peg (VERY NC17), in which all you need to know is that Meredith’s always been female, she’s a linguist, and she and John have been together for some time.

The also amazing and lovely Countess7 and pennyplainknits collaborated on a podfic of Breakfast for Dinner; or, Other Entries in the Liber Miraculorum (Dean/Cas, PG-PG13ish)! Countess does the narrative and Penny does the voices, and it's very enchanting and makes me gleeful! You should totally download it and listen to it, and you can go here to do the first.

YES I SWEAR I'M GOING TO GET BACK TO WORK. But I just finished grading a bunch of papers and tinkering with a paper and this is my reward/lunch break.

Los(t) angeles (Castiel; Dean/Cas) PG
Okay, like everyone else in creation, I really, really wanted to do something for 5.04. But I've been writing so fucking much for RL my brain has no juice left over for fic, except the things I still owe to people, and anyway, there's been about ten billionty things for 5.04 done already, ha. Icons take me about ten years to do, and I seriously could not pick out a reasonable number of caps for a picspam.

So that left... me staring at what is now possibly my Favorite Castiel Screenshot Of All Time. (He is in my icon now. LOOK HOW PRETTY AND FUCKED UP HE IS.) And I decided to mess around with some wallpapery things. I ended up making two versions, one with just my Favorite Castiel Screenshot Of All Time, and one with a future!Dean/Cas look-back to 5.02.





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Okay back to papers. Virtue is its own reward, but sin pays better *sigh*

SEVEN DAYS OF GOOD, HAPPY THINGS

day 01 | a song
day 02 | a picture
day 03 | a book/ebook/fanfic
day 04 | a site
day 05 | a youtube clip
day 06 | a quote
day 07 | whatever tickles your fancy

.day 07: Hurray, I finally finished a piece of art! Originally this was going to be something vaguely along the lines of "Dean agrees to be possessed by Michael and something mysterious and terrible happens," but I could not make myself be that depressing, even though I may be slightly intrigued by, um, aspects of Michael!Dean/Cas (I'M SORRY I JUST... I CAN'T HELP THESE THINGS). Anyway, I decided not to go there, and instead of looking forward, looked back to that wonderful, wonderful moment in 4.01, when Castiel came into our lives. And, you know, into Dean's.

Part of the image comes from 5.02, so if you haven't seen that yet... well, it's not spoilery, really.

.eta: Now with wallpapers!



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SORT-OF HURRAY! I spent part of my evening performing the unenjoyable but necessary task of moving some of my major art pieces over to oxoniensis' place. Most of my recent art is there now; as I get the chance, I will move more stuff over there, so slowly most of the Photobucket error images will vanish.

To celebrate, I spent the evening watching "Monster Movie," and decided that the scene just after Dean's rescued Jamie and they're in the bar, and he's explaining monsters to her... Something needed to be done with that, because it's beautifully shot and lit. It's also, as you may notice, in black and white, which means... yup. Noir.

I'm still not sure how I'm going to tell the story. On one hand, I have the plot worked out in some detail (thank you, Nny!), but I rather like the allusive quality of random images from the story. Eh. Will think about it.

The picspam that started this whole thing is here!



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.meme! Stolen from perspi! And it's vaguely related to the not-quite-story above!

Give me the title of a story I've never written, and feedback telling me what you liked best about it, and I will tell you any of: the first sentence, the last sentence, the thing that made me want to write it, the biggest problem I had while writing it, why it almost never got posted, the scene that hit the cutting room floor but that I wish I'd been able to salvage, or something else that I want readers to know.

It looks like fun, and I don't want to work on my dissertation abstract tomorrow... SO.

Religo (Bind) (Dean/Castiel) Rish, dark side
For the "bondage (held down)" prompt on my kink_bingo card. This is possibly not very kinky, depending on your interpretation, but the R is there for some hinted violence, although in my head everything is consensual... just kind of messed up.



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.in other news: Meh, I have jury duty next week. My plan to get out of being selected for an actual jury involves suggesting to the prosecuting and defending attorneys that trial by ordeal, involving the accused reaching into a boiling vat of water to retrieve a burning-hot iron rod and then waiting to see if the resulting burn will fester, is a preferable form of jurisprudence. Trial by combat would also be more entertaining, especially if it involved an obstacle course. I'll let you know how that goes.

Also, I'm now officially tired of summer. I want it to be fall so I can be on fellowship and have more money, and so I can have new episodes of SPN and Bones. Of course, once fall comes I have to start postdoc applications and job applications and do not want. Damn it.

Oh hai, actual content! Lots of actual content, for that matter. I can't believe it.

Two art things today, both for requests. There may even be fic later this week, if I can get things to cooperate.


Annwn (Merlin, Arthur)
A one-page comic for hilarytamar's winning Sweet Charity bid. It's the first piece of Merlin art I've done, and one of my few attempts at telling a story about them, so I hope it works ♥



( and when we went with Arthur, glorious difficultyCollapse )


No other pinions (Dean/Castiel)
Done for kira_bouviea, to fulfill her Dean/Castiel Co-Op Swap request for a wallpaper with the text "Wings? Oh not for me, I need no other pinions than the beating of my heart within my breast." There are bunches of different sizes too!




( Wings? Oh not for meCollapse )


In other news: As I said, maybe fic later this week. I also emailed a truly spectacularly idiotic chapter draft to my advisor. We'll see how that goes.

thandie asked for a wallpaper from the cover art to the Apocalypse for Beginners mix. I post it here for the curious and general ganking, and if you would like a larger resolution, let me know the size and I will gladly customize ♥♥



( we will go nowhere we know / 'til we find our one and allCollapse )

Heh, trying to add some more entries to my typography tag XD I'll post a wallpaper of this eventually, but the way it came together was weirdly... not wallpaper-friendly, so I'll have to mess around with it some more.



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In other news: Am still wibbling over SPN 4.16. Meeep.

I've been listening to Iron & Wine's The Shepherd's Dog a lot lately, and I really love the album's opening track, "Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car." Sometimes earworms manifest themselves in art... I'm waiting for the day "All the Single Ladies" ends up controlling a piece of McKay/Sheppard. It's inevitable. Originally the piece was going to be completely different, but the typography came out of nowhere. Now there are a couple pieces, one with just the typography and a couple of wallpapers yay! Walls are one of those things where, if you're doing large art, you might as well make a wallpaper while you're at it.



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[fic] Martha Stewart's Private Hell (PG13) John/Rodney | ~1400
Part of Roommates!verse, which means, of course, that the boys are only semi-domesticated. Still, I wrote this for casa_mcshep, which already has a ton of wonderful domestic-type things! Martha Stewart's Private Hell.

[art] Crossroads Blues/Possession over Judgment Day
I was working on this for something else, but the larger piece wouldn't come together, and seeing as I'd already invested time and effort in it, I thought I might as well try to get a header out of the thing. There's a completely textful version, as well as a textless, and two with textual permutations. I love Dean and the blues, what can I say?



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ALSO: According to MSNBC, The Smithsonian wants to acquire Aretha Franklin's inauguration hat. Well, all I have to say is that they're gonna have to fight an Air Force pilot, astrophysicist, angel of the Lord, and Dean Fucking Winchester for it. DEATHMATCH, people. DEATHMATCH.

In other news: asd;lkjdflkj Steelers! I have no deep loyalty to them (or the Cardinals), but I kind of have a soft spot for Pittsburgh because I had a wonderful great-aunt and uncle who lived there, and the place has fond memories. Also, I think "Terrible Towel" sounds hysterical. So, yay Steelers!

So apparently, as I told smilla02 last night, I really really like SPN's Castiel a whole lot. I'm not sure why, maybe because SPN angels would totally smite the inspirational angel literature section in WalMart, or maybe because, as Eric Close and David Hewlett demonstrate, I am a hopeless sucker for men with pretty, pretty blue eyes. *is sad*

Anyway, I spent some of yesterday and part of last night hopped up on cold medicine and parts of SPN S4. Here is what came of it:

[art] Castiel
A wallpaper (1024.768), with textless and textful variants, as well as a b&w set because, well, it seems like if you have a guy in a trenchcoat, you need to be thinking in greyscale. The text in the second version is from an 11th century poem by Yishaq ben Mar-Saul. Clicking on the thumbnails will take you straight to the large version.*



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[fic] Dialogus angelorum (Castiel, Uriel G) ~1,000
Just a tiny bit of Castiel character study, because I like him a lot but still need to figure him out. Takes place at some point after 4.10.

( 'You,' Uriel says in the voice he saves for pronouncing doom upon the sinful, 'have been thinking again, Castiel.'Collapse )

Escape Velocity (PG; John-centric gen)
by dogeared and aesc

Hurrah, done! This is our artword submission for the Astronomy Challenge, inspired by this photo from the Apollo 17 mission. I had been wanting to do another comic for quite some time now, and dogeared, awesome as always, provides some beautiful words to work with, very happily looked over my shoulder and cheered me on. Sine qua non ♥

DANGER ALERT: This is set before 5.19 "Vegas," and contains spoilers for the episode, so if you haven't seen it and don't want to be spoiled, do not pass the LJ cut. Also, if you have a difficult time with scruffy, disheveled John, you may want to double-check your heart medication.

.preview:


( He dreams of that sky, and two days later, he feels like he's still chasing it. That's the excuse he gives himself when he brings home a documentary about the last moon walk.Collapse )

So, like many of you I'm sure, That Scene from 5.11 is more or less lasered into my brain. The good thing about my brain is that it can edit out the stupid stupid really fucking annoying SciFi HD logo, but Photoshop takes more work. Still, caps from That Scene cry out to be used in some way, and once I got them (about four hours ago), I was helpless to do anything except sit here and Photoshop like a madwoman; this is merely the first of a couple of ideas I had as to what to do with them.


Source: This cap.



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Uncounted (John/Rodney) PG

My first submission for paintedspires (there has been a lot of awesome stuff posted already--go and see, if you haven't yet!), answering the prompt "I didn't lose my mind, it was mine to give away." A small version is under the cut, with a link to the full-res (900.1200) version following.

I also say thank you to beadattitude, dogeared, and sheafrotherdon for encouragement along the way and to summertea and miscellanny for beta-viewing and providing very useful and much-needed comments. If this isn't as good as it should be, it isn't their fault.

.preview


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