Playing Catch Up (again)
The thing I liked about the TV meme (which I still need to finish) is that I posted almost every day. It wasn't terribly substantive though, so I will try to do better.
I attended Norwescon this weekend and had a lovely time.
I finally got to meet lishwitch in person. She was intelligent and fun and generally as awesome as I knew she would be. I only wish she lived closer so that we could hang out more often. Our third amigo was skyote, who I hadn't seen in a while. It was a tremendous amount of fun just hanging out and chatting, talking about life and fandomy things. We went to some panels together, too. I also had a chance to catch up with knotted_rose for a while which was also fun.
Norwescon had a lot more fandom/fanfic/slash focused panels than in previous years, which was pretty cool. I enjoyed almost all the fandom related panels I attended. Surprisingly it was the Sherlock panel which I enjoyed the least. It was the least conversation of the panels I attended, which is to say it was pretty much the three panelists saying "here's what I think about topic x." But the part I really disliked was that one panelist said no spoilers, followed by, well, this isn't really a spoiler and then proceeded to talk about pretty much all the spoilers that are out there for season three.
Generally speaking, I don't mind being spoiled and might even go looking for spoilers. I was planning to try and remain mostly unspoiled for season three, but holmesian_news warns that the media part may have spoilers but just cuts and pastes headlines without using cut tags so I already knew some of what was being discussed and I'd seen most of the rest on Tumblr. I know it's a risk for being spoiled when you go to any event like this, but I would think the panelists would at least be good about not giving away any spoilers. I don't think anyone in the audience gave anything away with the few questions that were asked.
So I was annoyed about that.
The fanfic and slash panels were pretty fun though. A few of the panelists were the same and I think every single one of them wrote in the Sherlock fandom, among others.
I didn't go to Masquerade but I watched some of the photo session from upstairs. There were some pretty amazing costumes.
Next year one of the special guests is apparently going to be seanan_mcguire which makes me very happy.
In other news, I read a fantastic book called Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky. Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP. His job was to prevent fraud. His account of his time there is fascinating and disturbing. I already knew some of what he talked about because I've been following this issue, but there were still things that were new to me. There's almost no "term of art/financial speak" in the book so it's very accessible to a lay person. You can read my review here.
If you're even remotely interested in what happened to the TARP money after it was approved by Congress (as opposed to how we got into this mess in the first place) I highly recommend this book.
Chris Hayes has a new show that premiere's tonight. It's All In which airs nightly before The Rachel Maddow Show. Up is still on but will have a new host. I'm excited to see more of Chris but concerned about Up.
One of my favorite authors, earlgreytea68, is going to write a Sherlock baseball AU which I think is very exciting.
Speaking of recommendations, I really want to get back to doing that. I feel like I should clarify that my recs are generally stories I enjoyed or like but not necessarily the OMG read this now stories. I am trying to keep a list of those stories and if and when I finish I'd like to go back and revise it and maybe treat that section a little differently. I've also thought about doing a section for the stories I'd recommend to someone who was new to the fandom. Not really a fandom guide because a) I don't feel qualified for that and b) that's a ton of work.
I'm enjoying the achievement contest I'm in but it does mean that I feel an obligation to play video games in a way I normally wouldn't. And yeah, I know how strange that sounds. But I'm part of a team and I'd feel bad slacking because of other, non vital things I want to do.
I'm sort of kind of thinking about changing my LJ name to match my tumblr name. I know, I don't change my name for years and now it's like every 3 months. I'd think about changing it at AO3, too, but apparently that would break any external links. I don't know of any that exist but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. I guess that's what psueds are for.
Game of Thrones is back, which is nice. Justified has its finale tomorrow.
I did definitely come back from Norwescon wanting to rewatch both seasons of Sherlock. There's just never enough time in the day.
I attended Norwescon this weekend and had a lovely time.
I finally got to meet lishwitch in person. She was intelligent and fun and generally as awesome as I knew she would be. I only wish she lived closer so that we could hang out more often. Our third amigo was skyote, who I hadn't seen in a while. It was a tremendous amount of fun just hanging out and chatting, talking about life and fandomy things. We went to some panels together, too. I also had a chance to catch up with knotted_rose for a while which was also fun.
Norwescon had a lot more fandom/fanfic/slash focused panels than in previous years, which was pretty cool. I enjoyed almost all the fandom related panels I attended. Surprisingly it was the Sherlock panel which I enjoyed the least. It was the least conversation of the panels I attended, which is to say it was pretty much the three panelists saying "here's what I think about topic x." But the part I really disliked was that one panelist said no spoilers, followed by, well, this isn't really a spoiler and then proceeded to talk about pretty much all the spoilers that are out there for season three.
Generally speaking, I don't mind being spoiled and might even go looking for spoilers. I was planning to try and remain mostly unspoiled for season three, but holmesian_news warns that the media part may have spoilers but just cuts and pastes headlines without using cut tags so I already knew some of what was being discussed and I'd seen most of the rest on Tumblr. I know it's a risk for being spoiled when you go to any event like this, but I would think the panelists would at least be good about not giving away any spoilers. I don't think anyone in the audience gave anything away with the few questions that were asked.
So I was annoyed about that.
The fanfic and slash panels were pretty fun though. A few of the panelists were the same and I think every single one of them wrote in the Sherlock fandom, among others.
I didn't go to Masquerade but I watched some of the photo session from upstairs. There were some pretty amazing costumes.
Next year one of the special guests is apparently going to be seanan_mcguire which makes me very happy.
In other news, I read a fantastic book called Bailout: How Washington Abandoned Main Street While Rescuing Wall Street by Neil Barofsky. Barofsky was the Inspector General for TARP. His job was to prevent fraud. His account of his time there is fascinating and disturbing. I already knew some of what he talked about because I've been following this issue, but there were still things that were new to me. There's almost no "term of art/financial speak" in the book so it's very accessible to a lay person. You can read my review here.
If you're even remotely interested in what happened to the TARP money after it was approved by Congress (as opposed to how we got into this mess in the first place) I highly recommend this book.
Chris Hayes has a new show that premiere's tonight. It's All In which airs nightly before The Rachel Maddow Show. Up is still on but will have a new host. I'm excited to see more of Chris but concerned about Up.
One of my favorite authors, earlgreytea68, is going to write a Sherlock baseball AU which I think is very exciting.
Speaking of recommendations, I really want to get back to doing that. I feel like I should clarify that my recs are generally stories I enjoyed or like but not necessarily the OMG read this now stories. I am trying to keep a list of those stories and if and when I finish I'd like to go back and revise it and maybe treat that section a little differently. I've also thought about doing a section for the stories I'd recommend to someone who was new to the fandom. Not really a fandom guide because a) I don't feel qualified for that and b) that's a ton of work.
I'm enjoying the achievement contest I'm in but it does mean that I feel an obligation to play video games in a way I normally wouldn't. And yeah, I know how strange that sounds. But I'm part of a team and I'd feel bad slacking because of other, non vital things I want to do.
I'm sort of kind of thinking about changing my LJ name to match my tumblr name. I know, I don't change my name for years and now it's like every 3 months. I'd think about changing it at AO3, too, but apparently that would break any external links. I don't know of any that exist but that doesn't mean they aren't out there. I guess that's what psueds are for.
Game of Thrones is back, which is nice. Justified has its finale tomorrow.
I did definitely come back from Norwescon wanting to rewatch both seasons of Sherlock. There's just never enough time in the day.