Snowflake challenge, mostly, plus a quick meme:
Weird morning Tuesday... I was running a bit late for my MUNI, but the MUNI itself was running later, so I ended up having to wait for it. Texted M that I was on MUNI -- this is our new process, because she lives five stops on from me along the same line, so this is a pretty convenient way to meet up in the morning; she didn't join me at her usual stop and I didn't hear back from her until 40 minutes later -- her alarm did not go off and she overslept. My late MUNI trundled to a stop just in front of West Portal and the driver said she had to get the doors fixed. She let people off so we could board the next car in the station. Another MUNI was pulling in just as we went through the turnstiles and I ran to catch it. Successfully, and it turned out to be a T, which meant I didn't have to change at Embarcadero and could just stay on it until Caltrain. But because it was following a different routine than normal, I kept feeling like I was in the wrong place. I never would've made it with the L I was on, and even with the T and not having to wait for a connection I only had 6 minutes when I got to the train: just enough to grab a cup of coffee to go with my pineapple bun from the day before. So, everything worked out, but it just felt off, you know?
Today I'm at home, and it's also weird: they're working on our block this week, digging trenches in the street and tossing huge metal bars around (replacing pipes), so the house shakes every couple of minutes, and it sounds like a dinosaur walking around outside...
*
Snowflake Challenge: I accidentally skipped day 12 -- I thought I was posting day 13 on private, because I've been juggling computers, then noticed I wasn't, and figured I'd just roll with it (sorry for the uncut image and missing bits, though; I thought I caught them all, but clearly I hadn't). But here's day 12 that had been hanging out on my work laptop while I was posting that from the ultrabook:
Day 12: In your own space, talk about what you bring to fandom. It can be something tangible, or not.
Heh. Crack? Doggerel, cracky icons (yes, the vegetables again, sorry -- I'm just very proud of them), other nonsense like the ASOIAF anagrams (sorry, locked comm post, but let me just leave you with this: THEON GREYJOY = ENJOY THE ORGY).
Random character meme harvesting. There was that year and a half when I was doing LJ searches for "character meme" every couple of days and collecting all the questions anybody had asked for that "pick 15 characters and answer these questions / have your flist ask questions about them", running the numbers in the question through a randomizer to keep things balanced, and posting that. I know at least a few folks enjoy these memes, though probably not to the same obsessed degree that I do.
On a similar note: REALLY OBSCURE CROSSOVER IDEAS. Miles Vorkosigan/River Tam, pass it on! Look, I have their children all figured out (and actually their granddaughter, too; Dr Stephen Franklin is the son-in-law.) Or the firm conviction, in the wake of Foxglove Summer, that Astrid Llewellyn (from Killer Unicorns) and Peter Grant need to hang out and discuss magical design of experiments together. Or the fervent desire to see Morrolan and Tony Stark comparing personal destructive power and swanky bachelor pads. Or the terrifying effectiveness of a team-up between Azula and Lien... (also Iskierka and Feanor, but that one's lunasariel's). See also: sorting characters into Dragaera houses.
I think I might've translated some Russian Chronicles of Amber fic into English once?
Fandom baba-ing, as lunasariel so wonderfully put it. I enjoy making book recs in general (or recs of whatever, but the thing I know is mostly books), but definitely take special pleasure when there's something I love that seems like it would appeal to a friend -- hooking people up with new fandoms is such a joy! Fandom baba is an especially appropriate term because Vorkosigan has been my greatest success. It's not really that I'm doing anything special there; I think it's the combination of really great books which have something-for-almost-everyone with REALLY AWFUL COVERS that make it less likely people who enjoy them would pick them up on their own. Several LJ friends and my RL best friend R have become hardcore fans from my recs/second-hand squee/"may I interest you in a pile of books". I've also had good success with Discworld, Rivers of London, Locke Lamora, Seraphina, Flora Segunda, The Goblin Emperor, Ancillary Justice, Temeraire, and, in a rare non-book example, Babylon 5. And, you know, in all of these cases the fandom baba-ing is just paying it forward, because I think all or almost all of these things I've discovered via somebody else's enthusiastic recs; it's definitely what got me to pick up the Vorkosigan books, despite the covers!
I do write up books I read and things I watch, but I don't intend them to be reviews (which, along with the ratings system, is why I don't do this on Goodreads), because I don't want to feel bound by having to make them useful to anybody, rather than just a record of my thoughts (squee, ranting, incredibly petty nitpicking, personal button-pushing, or random crossover ideas, choose all that apply). But they do appear to be occasionally useful/interesting to people who share my narrative kinks and nitpick triggers, so I suppose that's something as well.
A little bit of sporadic rec-ing (and pretty consistent kudosing, but I really should get with the program, get an AO3 account, and actually comment on stuff over there. Maybe that can be my fannish resolution for 2015...)
Oh yeah, and being one of the mods at westerosorting, doing things with points and spreadsheets, and contributing some degree of nagging/whip-cracking to the two (and a half, counting the alliance one) wins for thetyrells :)
Day 14: In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create.
I have three recs that I was planning to post anyway, so, here we go:
Vorkosigan Saga: Aftershocks by philomytha (Galeni and Ivan, gen, in which Ivan is handling drunk Galeni after Galeni's father's funeral). Ouch, but also perfect.
Rivers of London: The Glorious Cause (Lesley and Nightingale, gen, Broken Homes fix-it fic). I... wish I could believe in canon turning out to be this more than I do; I still think [Broken Homes spoiler] Lesley is playing double-agent of some sort, but not with Nightingale's knowledge. But this is totally the fic I wanted to read after Broken Homes, and I'm glad it now exists.
Elantra: It is a very odd feeling to discover that a big name fanartist is drawing in a tiny fandom, but I was very pleased to see all of mathia's Elantra art on dA and Tumblr. These Dragon Court chibis are probably my favorite, but this group portrait and this epic poster are also really awesome. Also, for my own records, the sketches on Tumblr, here and here.
**
Also, a non-fannish "rec" (in quotation marks because, once again, don't be me, and don't get sucked in): 2048 with a larger grid and no ending (I think): 6x6 variant (I think the play is actually easier / the likelihood of getting screwed over by the random number generator is lower than in the real 2048, but that just means you can keep going and going and going. So far I've gotten to the 65,536 tile, and a total of 1,240,932. Someone should really take this away from me...
*
Finally, I've been missing fannish memes, but don't have the brain for anything especially involved, so, stealing this simple one from etrangere:
Send me a fandom, and I will tell you everything I ship in that fandom
For reference, fandoms of note: ASOIAF, AtLA/Korra, Avengers (movie-verse only), Babylon 5, Buffy, Chronicles of Amber, Curseworkers, Demon's Noun, Discworld, Dragaera/Vlad Taltos, Dresden Files, Firefly, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Kingkiller Chronicles, Kushiel's Legacy, Lord of the Rings, Rivers of London, Sherlock BBC, Temeraire, Tortall, Vorkosigan Saga, and anything else you know I'm into.
Today I'm at home, and it's also weird: they're working on our block this week, digging trenches in the street and tossing huge metal bars around (replacing pipes), so the house shakes every couple of minutes, and it sounds like a dinosaur walking around outside...
*
Snowflake Challenge: I accidentally skipped day 12 -- I thought I was posting day 13 on private, because I've been juggling computers, then noticed I wasn't, and figured I'd just roll with it (sorry for the uncut image and missing bits, though; I thought I caught them all, but clearly I hadn't). But here's day 12 that had been hanging out on my work laptop while I was posting that from the ultrabook:
Day 12: In your own space, talk about what you bring to fandom. It can be something tangible, or not.
Heh. Crack? Doggerel, cracky icons (yes, the vegetables again, sorry -- I'm just very proud of them), other nonsense like the ASOIAF anagrams (sorry, locked comm post, but let me just leave you with this: THEON GREYJOY = ENJOY THE ORGY).
Random character meme harvesting. There was that year and a half when I was doing LJ searches for "character meme" every couple of days and collecting all the questions anybody had asked for that "pick 15 characters and answer these questions / have your flist ask questions about them", running the numbers in the question through a randomizer to keep things balanced, and posting that. I know at least a few folks enjoy these memes, though probably not to the same obsessed degree that I do.
On a similar note: REALLY OBSCURE CROSSOVER IDEAS. Miles Vorkosigan/River Tam, pass it on! Look, I have their children all figured out (and actually their granddaughter, too; Dr Stephen Franklin is the son-in-law.) Or the firm conviction, in the wake of Foxglove Summer, that Astrid Llewellyn (from Killer Unicorns) and Peter Grant need to hang out and discuss magical design of experiments together. Or the fervent desire to see Morrolan and Tony Stark comparing personal destructive power and swanky bachelor pads. Or the terrifying effectiveness of a team-up between Azula and Lien... (also Iskierka and Feanor, but that one's lunasariel's). See also: sorting characters into Dragaera houses.
I think I might've translated some Russian Chronicles of Amber fic into English once?
Fandom baba-ing, as lunasariel so wonderfully put it. I enjoy making book recs in general (or recs of whatever, but the thing I know is mostly books), but definitely take special pleasure when there's something I love that seems like it would appeal to a friend -- hooking people up with new fandoms is such a joy! Fandom baba is an especially appropriate term because Vorkosigan has been my greatest success. It's not really that I'm doing anything special there; I think it's the combination of really great books which have something-for-almost-everyone with REALLY AWFUL COVERS that make it less likely people who enjoy them would pick them up on their own. Several LJ friends and my RL best friend R have become hardcore fans from my recs/second-hand squee/"may I interest you in a pile of books". I've also had good success with Discworld, Rivers of London, Locke Lamora, Seraphina, Flora Segunda, The Goblin Emperor, Ancillary Justice, Temeraire, and, in a rare non-book example, Babylon 5. And, you know, in all of these cases the fandom baba-ing is just paying it forward, because I think all or almost all of these things I've discovered via somebody else's enthusiastic recs; it's definitely what got me to pick up the Vorkosigan books, despite the covers!
I do write up books I read and things I watch, but I don't intend them to be reviews (which, along with the ratings system, is why I don't do this on Goodreads), because I don't want to feel bound by having to make them useful to anybody, rather than just a record of my thoughts (squee, ranting, incredibly petty nitpicking, personal button-pushing, or random crossover ideas, choose all that apply). But they do appear to be occasionally useful/interesting to people who share my narrative kinks and nitpick triggers, so I suppose that's something as well.
A little bit of sporadic rec-ing (and pretty consistent kudosing, but I really should get with the program, get an AO3 account, and actually comment on stuff over there. Maybe that can be my fannish resolution for 2015...)
Oh yeah, and being one of the mods at westerosorting, doing things with points and spreadsheets, and contributing some degree of nagging/whip-cracking to the two (and a half, counting the alliance one) wins for thetyrells :)
Day 14: In your own space, post recs for at least three fanworks that you did not create.
I have three recs that I was planning to post anyway, so, here we go:
Vorkosigan Saga: Aftershocks by philomytha (Galeni and Ivan, gen, in which Ivan is handling drunk Galeni after Galeni's father's funeral). Ouch, but also perfect.
Rivers of London: The Glorious Cause (Lesley and Nightingale, gen, Broken Homes fix-it fic). I... wish I could believe in canon turning out to be this more than I do; I still think [Broken Homes spoiler] Lesley is playing double-agent of some sort, but not with Nightingale's knowledge. But this is totally the fic I wanted to read after Broken Homes, and I'm glad it now exists.
Elantra: It is a very odd feeling to discover that a big name fanartist is drawing in a tiny fandom, but I was very pleased to see all of mathia's Elantra art on dA and Tumblr. These Dragon Court chibis are probably my favorite, but this group portrait and this epic poster are also really awesome. Also, for my own records, the sketches on Tumblr, here and here.
**
Also, a non-fannish "rec" (in quotation marks because, once again, don't be me, and don't get sucked in): 2048 with a larger grid and no ending (I think): 6x6 variant (I think the play is actually easier / the likelihood of getting screwed over by the random number generator is lower than in the real 2048, but that just means you can keep going and going and going. So far I've gotten to the 65,536 tile, and a total of 1,240,932. Someone should really take this away from me...
*
Finally, I've been missing fannish memes, but don't have the brain for anything especially involved, so, stealing this simple one from etrangere:
Send me a fandom, and I will tell you everything I ship in that fandom
For reference, fandoms of note: ASOIAF, AtLA/Korra, Avengers (movie-verse only), Babylon 5, Buffy, Chronicles of Amber, Curseworkers, Demon's Noun, Discworld, Dragaera/Vlad Taltos, Dresden Files, Firefly, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Kingkiller Chronicles, Kushiel's Legacy, Lord of the Rings, Rivers of London, Sherlock BBC, Temeraire, Tortall, Vorkosigan Saga, and anything else you know I'm into.