Fandom Stocking and Snowflake Challenge, days (4), 6-9
Yaaay, fandom stocking is live! I got a cute Vorkosiverse family times ficlet with baby Miles, a Maia and Setheris drabble-and-a-half (which doubles the number of Setheris fics on AO3, unsurprisingly), adorable hamster icons galore, Firefly icons for favorite characters I've been missing, a very neat RoL icon from chomiji using the Body of Work cover I like best, favorite city picspam for Prague and Oxford (the Oxford one, from fallingtowers, is nothing short of epic, and proved to be so nostalgic and timely, since the last time I was there was this time of year <3), pictures and links to cute rodents (this one I must share: Animals sitting on capybaras Tumblr (including an ANTEATER!) -- thanks, sineala! :D), Dresden headcanometafics (hee!) from aletheiafelinea, assorted book recs, and lovely holiday greetings. Thank you all again! <3
I made some icons for various folks, and a few of them even came out more or less as I intended, though these are still very much in the "it's the thought that counts" sort of stage of graphics competence, I'm afraid.
Chalion-verse text icons (for fallingtowers):
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Alts:
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Goblin Emperor art icons for nenya_kanadka:
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Art credit:
1) woodcut by Sarah Luann.
2) watercolor ones by faitherinhicks on Tumblr
Queen's Thief icons for annariel on DW:
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Art credit: Sarah Luann
Rivers of London icons for marinarusalka and ariadnes_string:
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Art credit: The Agarthan Guide
Dresden Files: Sue / Ramirez quote icon for avanti_90:
I also left a couple of book, fanart, recipe (your awesome Turkish soup, ikel89! :), and travel-related recs, pictures of various adorable animals of my acquaintance (the San Diego hippos, Antwerpen tigers couple, L's penguin chicks from last summer, and our new lion cub), and general season's greetings/wishes.
2015 holiday banner:
A lot of this stuff was made on Day 4 of the Snowflake Challenge -- the Chalion icons in particular.
Speaking of which: catching up on more Snowflake:
Day 6: In your own space, create your own challenge. What’s something you want to see more people doing in fandom? Is there something you’ve tried that you think other people would enjoy if they gave it a go? Dare your friends to try it out, and have fun with it.
Last year this prompt/challenge led to the creation of Communally Sourced Reading Bingo, which has been keeping me well-read and entertained all year :D
This time, I had to ponder it some. And then it occurred to me that one of the things I've been doing in the last couple of years and still planning to do in the next year was reconnecting with old favorites. So here's my challenge:
Nostalgia fandom challenge: Read/watch/listen to (or re-read/re-watch/re-listen to) something in a canon you love(d) but where you haven't touched the source material for 10 years or more. If you want, talk about how your feelings towards the canon have changed, or things you're noticing this time that never jumped out at you before. For an extra challenge, drag a friend with you into the canon who has no prior experience with it, and compare reactions.
I've been doing this already with Babylon 5 in the last couple of years, including the 'extra' challenge of rewatching the show while chatting with others watching it for the first time (the rodents, lunasariel, egelantier), and it's a really interesting experience (though a definite effort to keep from spoiling people).
I've also done this in a more extreme way with the Tomek books (courtesy of aletheiafelinea and bearshorty), and it was such a strange feeling to go back to a book I hadn't engaged with in 25+ years, and to see how differently it comes across, given that I read them last when I was younger than the 14-year-old protagonist and now have a kid his age.
And I feel like new installments of old fandoms totally count for this, but I'm not sure it's been 10 years for me since I watched the last Star Wars movie. Well, unless I totally ignore the prequels completely, which... I'm actually tempted to do :P
It's also been neat to follow along people doing re-reads of old-favorite canons when they're newer canons for me: egelantier's Amber reread not long ago, for example, and a couple of different Buffy rewatches on my flist.
I plan to do more of this in the new year. I'm still saving a spot on one of the CSRB cards for a "reread of childhood favorite" that isn't Tomek. I think I'm leaning towards rereading Master i Margarita. And I think it will absolutely count when I read the new-to-me Russian-Wizard-of-Oz sequels that were a gift from mauvais_pli. I do also plan to continue reading the Tomek books, and have a couple of other old Russian favorites sitting on my Kindle or on shelves downstairs: "Do svidanya, Ovrag", "Alya, Klyaksich, i Bukva Ya", other kidlit. So, no shortage of canons I could go back to for this.
Day 7: In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.
This has been one of the harder days for me, because HOW DO I PICK? I have a lot of favorite fandoms, and a lot of favorite bits in them, so even narrowing it down to a fandom would be hard! So here's a fairly random selection of some favorite canonical bits:
1) Discworld:
a) My favorite quote from my favorite book, involving my favorite character:
'The Grand Trunk will remain closed in the interim,' said Lord Vetinari.
'It's private property!' Greenyham burst out.
'Tyrant, remember,' said Vetinari, almost cheerfully.
- Going Postal
It just captures the essence of Vetinari so clearly and succinctly for me. :D
b) The bit that made me fall in love with the books and also with Sam/Sybil:
Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply.
- The Fifth Elephant (which was the first Watch book I read)
The perfect thing about this was, I was reading The Fifth Elephant just after B and I were married, and the funny thing is that B often complains that *I* don't listen to him, which really I'm just good at multi-tasking. So quite often he'll say, "What did I just say?" and I will indeed be able to quote the last sentence back to him in full. So when I got to this bit in the book, I laughed over my breakfast tea and read it to him, and he agreed that it was a brilliant and true bit of observation.
2) Vorkosigan Saga: for some reason, my favorite scenes seem to be along the lines of "Miles Vorkosigan vs his impulses" (the ones where he wins over said impulses; it doesn't happen often :P).
a) Passage in Brothers in Arms where Miles, at a reception, thinks a goldfish that isn't interested in crumbs is a Cetagandan spy robot:
He might pluck it out with a feline pounce, stamping it underfoot with a mechanical crunch and electric sizzle, then hold it up with a triumphal cry-”Ah! Through my quick wits and reflexes, I have discovered the spy among you!”
But if his guess were wrong, ah. The squish! under his boot, the dowager’s recoil, and the Barrayaran prime minister’s son would have acquired an instant reputation as a young man with serious emotional difficulties. . . . “Ah ha!” he pictured himself cackling to the horrified woman as the fish guts slithered underfoot, “you should see what I do to kittens!”
The big goldfish rose lazily at last, and took a crumb with a splash that marred Miles’s polished boots. Thank you, fish, Miles thought to it. You have just saved me from considerable social embarrassment.
b) At the beginning of the disastrous dinner party in A Civil Campaign:
"Bug vomit. They've slipped in that damned bug vomit.
Ekaterin twigged to it, too, about the time Pym brought round the bread; Miles spotted it by her slight hesitation, glance through her lashes at Enrique and Mark, and completely dead-pan continuation in spreading her piece and taking a firm bite. By not the smallest other sign did she reveal that she knew what she was swallowing.
Miles tried to indicate to her that she didn't have to eat it by pointing surreptitiously at the little herbed bug-butter crock and desperately raising his eyebrows; she merely smiled and shrugged.
"Hm?" Illyan, between them, murmured with his mouth full.
"Nothing, sir," Miles said hastily. "Nothing at all." Leaping up and screaming Stop, stop, you're all eating hideous bug stuff! to his high-powered guests, would be… startling. Bug vomit wasn't, after all, poisonous. If nobody told them, they'd never know. He bit into dry bread, and chased it with a large gulp of wine."
Day 08: Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them.
I had done this earlier in the challenge, too, but I did it again on the actual day, having just read some awesome Uprooted Yuletide fics, which all turned out to be by the same person. Let me put in those recs for:
- a lesson in cartography (teen, Agnieszka/Sarkan, 7k, set during early-ish part of the book, wherein Sarkan is turned into a very grumpy baby dragon)
- if the boughs are a'rockin' (explicit, Agnieszka/Sarkan, 3k, hilarious and hot post-canon PWP with wonderful character detail)
- first (explicit, Agnieszka/Kasia, 3k, a sort of missing scene set during very early in the book). Femslash is not my thing, and I think I prefer Agnieszka and Kasia's frienship to a more shippy spin on the two of them, but this was really good, and it was interesting to see Agnieszka from Kasia's POV.
And fandom_stocking has led to interaction with folks I've not talked to before, and even a mutual friending :D, and then more commenting while browsing the Snowflake posts for the days I was catching up on.
Day 09: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.
- Read at least 52 books. This is generally doable for me, but how easy varies from year to year.
- Finish CSRB (i.e. blackout on remaining two cards, and all challenge squares).
- Read/watch at least 3 things from the "to try" list (which should be kept updated as I keep forgetting things I want to read)
- Finish watching s2 of Angel
- Post at least one new thing to AO3 (my inspiration, considering it's poems, is highly sporadic, but I think I ought to be able to average one fannish poem a year. And, no, ikel89, this is not an invitation for you to force me to write Damen hexameter :P)
- Actually comment on AO3 (and not just when prompted by the Snowflake Challenge...)
I made some icons for various folks, and a few of them even came out more or less as I intended, though these are still very much in the "it's the thought that counts" sort of stage of graphics competence, I'm afraid.
Chalion-verse text icons (for fallingtowers):
||
||
||
||
||
||
||
||
||
||
Alts:
||
Goblin Emperor art icons for nenya_kanadka:
||
||
||
||
Art credit:
1) woodcut by Sarah Luann.
2) watercolor ones by faitherinhicks on Tumblr
Queen's Thief icons for annariel on DW:
||
||
||
Art credit: Sarah Luann
Rivers of London icons for marinarusalka and ariadnes_string:
||
||
||
Art credit: The Agarthan Guide
Dresden Files: Sue / Ramirez quote icon for avanti_90:
I also left a couple of book, fanart, recipe (your awesome Turkish soup, ikel89! :), and travel-related recs, pictures of various adorable animals of my acquaintance (the San Diego hippos, Antwerpen tigers couple, L's penguin chicks from last summer, and our new lion cub), and general season's greetings/wishes.
2015 holiday banner:
A lot of this stuff was made on Day 4 of the Snowflake Challenge -- the Chalion icons in particular.
Speaking of which: catching up on more Snowflake:
Day 6: In your own space, create your own challenge. What’s something you want to see more people doing in fandom? Is there something you’ve tried that you think other people would enjoy if they gave it a go? Dare your friends to try it out, and have fun with it.
Last year this prompt/challenge led to the creation of Communally Sourced Reading Bingo, which has been keeping me well-read and entertained all year :D
This time, I had to ponder it some. And then it occurred to me that one of the things I've been doing in the last couple of years and still planning to do in the next year was reconnecting with old favorites. So here's my challenge:
Nostalgia fandom challenge: Read/watch/listen to (or re-read/re-watch/re-listen to) something in a canon you love(d) but where you haven't touched the source material for 10 years or more. If you want, talk about how your feelings towards the canon have changed, or things you're noticing this time that never jumped out at you before. For an extra challenge, drag a friend with you into the canon who has no prior experience with it, and compare reactions.
I've been doing this already with Babylon 5 in the last couple of years, including the 'extra' challenge of rewatching the show while chatting with others watching it for the first time (the rodents, lunasariel, egelantier), and it's a really interesting experience (though a definite effort to keep from spoiling people).
I've also done this in a more extreme way with the Tomek books (courtesy of aletheiafelinea and bearshorty), and it was such a strange feeling to go back to a book I hadn't engaged with in 25+ years, and to see how differently it comes across, given that I read them last when I was younger than the 14-year-old protagonist and now have a kid his age.
And I feel like new installments of old fandoms totally count for this, but I'm not sure it's been 10 years for me since I watched the last Star Wars movie. Well, unless I totally ignore the prequels completely, which... I'm actually tempted to do :P
It's also been neat to follow along people doing re-reads of old-favorite canons when they're newer canons for me: egelantier's Amber reread not long ago, for example, and a couple of different Buffy rewatches on my flist.
I plan to do more of this in the new year. I'm still saving a spot on one of the CSRB cards for a "reread of childhood favorite" that isn't Tomek. I think I'm leaning towards rereading Master i Margarita. And I think it will absolutely count when I read the new-to-me Russian-Wizard-of-Oz sequels that were a gift from mauvais_pli. I do also plan to continue reading the Tomek books, and have a couple of other old Russian favorites sitting on my Kindle or on shelves downstairs: "Do svidanya, Ovrag", "Alya, Klyaksich, i Bukva Ya", other kidlit. So, no shortage of canons I could go back to for this.
Day 7: In your own space, share a favorite piece of original canon (a TV episode, a song, a favorite interview, a book, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.
This has been one of the harder days for me, because HOW DO I PICK? I have a lot of favorite fandoms, and a lot of favorite bits in them, so even narrowing it down to a fandom would be hard! So here's a fairly random selection of some favorite canonical bits:
1) Discworld:
a) My favorite quote from my favorite book, involving my favorite character:
'The Grand Trunk will remain closed in the interim,' said Lord Vetinari.
'It's private property!' Greenyham burst out.
'Tyrant, remember,' said Vetinari, almost cheerfully.
- Going Postal
It just captures the essence of Vetinari so clearly and succinctly for me. :D
b) The bit that made me fall in love with the books and also with Sam/Sybil:
Sam Vimes could parallel process. Most husbands can. They learn to follow their own line of thought while at the same time listening to what their wives say. And the listening is important, because at any time they could be challenged and must be ready to quote the last sentence in full. A vital additional skill is being able to scan the dialogue for telltale phrases such as "and they can deliver it tomorrow" or "so I've invited them for dinner?" or "they can do it in blue, really quite cheaply.
- The Fifth Elephant (which was the first Watch book I read)
The perfect thing about this was, I was reading The Fifth Elephant just after B and I were married, and the funny thing is that B often complains that *I* don't listen to him, which really I'm just good at multi-tasking. So quite often he'll say, "What did I just say?" and I will indeed be able to quote the last sentence back to him in full. So when I got to this bit in the book, I laughed over my breakfast tea and read it to him, and he agreed that it was a brilliant and true bit of observation.
2) Vorkosigan Saga: for some reason, my favorite scenes seem to be along the lines of "Miles Vorkosigan vs his impulses" (the ones where he wins over said impulses; it doesn't happen often :P).
a) Passage in Brothers in Arms where Miles, at a reception, thinks a goldfish that isn't interested in crumbs is a Cetagandan spy robot:
He might pluck it out with a feline pounce, stamping it underfoot with a mechanical crunch and electric sizzle, then hold it up with a triumphal cry-”Ah! Through my quick wits and reflexes, I have discovered the spy among you!”
But if his guess were wrong, ah. The squish! under his boot, the dowager’s recoil, and the Barrayaran prime minister’s son would have acquired an instant reputation as a young man with serious emotional difficulties. . . . “Ah ha!” he pictured himself cackling to the horrified woman as the fish guts slithered underfoot, “you should see what I do to kittens!”
The big goldfish rose lazily at last, and took a crumb with a splash that marred Miles’s polished boots. Thank you, fish, Miles thought to it. You have just saved me from considerable social embarrassment.
b) At the beginning of the disastrous dinner party in A Civil Campaign:
"Bug vomit. They've slipped in that damned bug vomit.
Ekaterin twigged to it, too, about the time Pym brought round the bread; Miles spotted it by her slight hesitation, glance through her lashes at Enrique and Mark, and completely dead-pan continuation in spreading her piece and taking a firm bite. By not the smallest other sign did she reveal that she knew what she was swallowing.
Miles tried to indicate to her that she didn't have to eat it by pointing surreptitiously at the little herbed bug-butter crock and desperately raising his eyebrows; she merely smiled and shrugged.
"Hm?" Illyan, between them, murmured with his mouth full.
"Nothing, sir," Miles said hastily. "Nothing at all." Leaping up and screaming Stop, stop, you're all eating hideous bug stuff! to his high-powered guests, would be… startling. Bug vomit wasn't, after all, poisonous. If nobody told them, they'd never know. He bit into dry bread, and chased it with a large gulp of wine."
Day 08: Comment to someone you haven't ever interacted with before or introduce yourself to someone you've interacted with and friend/follow them.
I had done this earlier in the challenge, too, but I did it again on the actual day, having just read some awesome Uprooted Yuletide fics, which all turned out to be by the same person. Let me put in those recs for:
- a lesson in cartography (teen, Agnieszka/Sarkan, 7k, set during early-ish part of the book, wherein Sarkan is turned into a very grumpy baby dragon)
- if the boughs are a'rockin' (explicit, Agnieszka/Sarkan, 3k, hilarious and hot post-canon PWP with wonderful character detail)
- first (explicit, Agnieszka/Kasia, 3k, a sort of missing scene set during very early in the book). Femslash is not my thing, and I think I prefer Agnieszka and Kasia's frienship to a more shippy spin on the two of them, but this was really good, and it was interesting to see Agnieszka from Kasia's POV.
And fandom_stocking has led to interaction with folks I've not talked to before, and even a mutual friending :D, and then more commenting while browsing the Snowflake posts for the days I was catching up on.
Day 09: In your own space, set some goals for the coming year. They can be fannish or not, public or private.
- Read at least 52 books. This is generally doable for me, but how easy varies from year to year.
- Finish CSRB (i.e. blackout on remaining two cards, and all challenge squares).
- Read/watch at least 3 things from the "to try" list (which should be kept updated as I keep forgetting things I want to read)
- Finish watching s2 of Angel
- Post at least one new thing to AO3 (my inspiration, considering it's poems, is highly sporadic, but I think I ought to be able to average one fannish poem a year. And, no, ikel89, this is not an invitation for you to force me to write Damen hexameter :P)
- Actually comment on AO3 (and not just when prompted by the Snowflake Challenge...)