but there was something heavy holding you down
Ugh, I can't get my brain in gear this morning. I apologize to anyone I owe answers to comments but that's probably not going to happen any time soon. I think I'm going to inflict myself on a mailing that needs to be done. Simple printing of form letters and stuffing envelopes shouldn't be beyond my currently meager ability to focus.
Yesterday, I was completely useless so I didn't do my usual grocery shopping. I figured I could get away with making fried rice for the week since I had rice and eggs and some ham to chop up in it. So I made (way too much) rice and then realized there was no soy sauce in the bottle of soy sauce in the cabinet. So I had to put on pants and shoes and run to the grocery store anyway. Sigh. Adulting is hard. At least there is lunch, though. And a lot of leftover rice I should do something with. (I also meant to put some chicken thighs in the crockpot before I left for work this morning, but instead I hit snooze twice and completely forgot in my rush out the door.)
in more fannish news, I've been thinking about recs, and caveats to recs, and I waffle every time over including or not including them, because on the one hand, I don't want people to think I didn't notice, say, the poorly punctuated dialogue, but I also feel like a rec is a strong indication that I liked the story enough not to care?
For example, I recently read something that was gorgeous, but I felt it was somewhat anachronistic in the way it discussed certain topics - do I mention that? I mean, it wasn't quite like the time someone had Remus Lupin using a laptop in a story set in 1979, but it did jar me a little. Sometimes I say that? But then that feels more like it's about me than it is about the story? By which I mean, I still care on some level that people think I have good taste (I do not have good taste, necessarily, and it's taken me a long time to come to terms with that, or with what 'good taste' may or may not mean as a class or education marker, but I do know what I like) or that I have standards (I have...moderately low standards if something works for me emotionally but I like people to think I have higher standards) and so I've been trying to get away from that kind of hedging?
Otoh, I do know that some people won't read a story with poorly punctuated dialogue and I do find the use of Briticisms in American canons jarring enough to mention (though again, this might be because of my time in HP fandom as a writer with 'relentlessly American diction' - that was a comment that has obviously stayed with me for a good 10-12 years, I think for a while it was my LJ name - but I rarely see it called out in the other direction, so it might just be me?), and since recs are supposed to be useful to other people, sometimes I do mention that stuff.
I mean, recs are inherently subjective and biased, and there are things I'm just never going to want to read, so they get selected out from the get-go, and then there are things I'm never going to want people to know that I read for whatever reasons? So my recs are things I've liked enough to want to tell other people about them, in the sense that if you like this thing I like, you will probably like this other, similar thing I like. I know other people have other criteria, but those have always been mine. *hands*
It's weird because I don't see a lot of recs anymore - I know they happen, and I know they even happen occasionally to me (usually when a two-year-old story gets a sudden flurry of kudos all at once), but I can't usually find the source like I could back in the old days when LJ was more central to fandom. And bookmarks on AO3 and pinboard aren't really very informative - not just for me to see what people are saying about my stories, but for me to see what people are saying about something I may want to read. I don't sort by kudos or comments on AO3 to find fic to read, though I'm told this is a thing people do. I just scan through a couple of pages of a pairing or character tag filtered to "complete" and "English." If it's a tag I check frequently, I check back to the last date I looked; if it's a new fandom for me, I will look further but also check the tags on pinboard, but a lot of people on pinboard just quote the summary of the story and that's not useful to me since it's information I already have from the story itself. Generally my recs include information I would like to see in other people's recs; they're done in a way that they would be useful to me if I weren't the one making them. Some people tell me that works for them. I figure people it doesn't work for don't use them.
I don't really know where I was going with this, so I'm going to stop now.
Happy Pi Day?
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/826005.html.
people have commented there.
Yesterday, I was completely useless so I didn't do my usual grocery shopping. I figured I could get away with making fried rice for the week since I had rice and eggs and some ham to chop up in it. So I made (way too much) rice and then realized there was no soy sauce in the bottle of soy sauce in the cabinet. So I had to put on pants and shoes and run to the grocery store anyway. Sigh. Adulting is hard. At least there is lunch, though. And a lot of leftover rice I should do something with. (I also meant to put some chicken thighs in the crockpot before I left for work this morning, but instead I hit snooze twice and completely forgot in my rush out the door.)
in more fannish news, I've been thinking about recs, and caveats to recs, and I waffle every time over including or not including them, because on the one hand, I don't want people to think I didn't notice, say, the poorly punctuated dialogue, but I also feel like a rec is a strong indication that I liked the story enough not to care?
For example, I recently read something that was gorgeous, but I felt it was somewhat anachronistic in the way it discussed certain topics - do I mention that? I mean, it wasn't quite like the time someone had Remus Lupin using a laptop in a story set in 1979, but it did jar me a little. Sometimes I say that? But then that feels more like it's about me than it is about the story? By which I mean, I still care on some level that people think I have good taste (I do not have good taste, necessarily, and it's taken me a long time to come to terms with that, or with what 'good taste' may or may not mean as a class or education marker, but I do know what I like) or that I have standards (I have...moderately low standards if something works for me emotionally but I like people to think I have higher standards) and so I've been trying to get away from that kind of hedging?
Otoh, I do know that some people won't read a story with poorly punctuated dialogue and I do find the use of Briticisms in American canons jarring enough to mention (though again, this might be because of my time in HP fandom as a writer with 'relentlessly American diction' - that was a comment that has obviously stayed with me for a good 10-12 years, I think for a while it was my LJ name - but I rarely see it called out in the other direction, so it might just be me?), and since recs are supposed to be useful to other people, sometimes I do mention that stuff.
I mean, recs are inherently subjective and biased, and there are things I'm just never going to want to read, so they get selected out from the get-go, and then there are things I'm never going to want people to know that I read for whatever reasons? So my recs are things I've liked enough to want to tell other people about them, in the sense that if you like this thing I like, you will probably like this other, similar thing I like. I know other people have other criteria, but those have always been mine. *hands*
It's weird because I don't see a lot of recs anymore - I know they happen, and I know they even happen occasionally to me (usually when a two-year-old story gets a sudden flurry of kudos all at once), but I can't usually find the source like I could back in the old days when LJ was more central to fandom. And bookmarks on AO3 and pinboard aren't really very informative - not just for me to see what people are saying about my stories, but for me to see what people are saying about something I may want to read. I don't sort by kudos or comments on AO3 to find fic to read, though I'm told this is a thing people do. I just scan through a couple of pages of a pairing or character tag filtered to "complete" and "English." If it's a tag I check frequently, I check back to the last date I looked; if it's a new fandom for me, I will look further but also check the tags on pinboard, but a lot of people on pinboard just quote the summary of the story and that's not useful to me since it's information I already have from the story itself. Generally my recs include information I would like to see in other people's recs; they're done in a way that they would be useful to me if I weren't the one making them. Some people tell me that works for them. I figure people it doesn't work for don't use them.
I don't really know where I was going with this, so I'm going to stop now.
Happy Pi Day?
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/826005.html.
people have commented there.