Arduinna

For marginaliana: if you could commission the perfect piece of fiction, what would it be like?

Oh, this one's hard for me. I like surprises and discovery, and commissioning something would take some of that away. So it's not the sort of thing I think about, usually.

Although, oo, wait -- for profic, I'd commission The Door Into Starlight from Diane Duane. There's been a spot for it on my shelf for ages now.

But I suspect this is for fanfic, so. Hm.

If I were commissioning a desert-island kinda story, I'd go for something long -- really long, over 100,000 words, possibly a lot over. *g* Slash, with a slow-building relationship leading to a first time and then maybe establishing itself (or at least starting to), probably woven into a case/mission/other plotty thing -- doesn't need to be complicated, necessarily, just something so they're doing something (preferably together) as well as developing a romance. (I would far rather watch them open a restaurant together for 100k words, slowly falling in love between arguments about decor and bonding over the menu, than watch them go out to dinner on dates for 100k words, IOW. Although the dinner date thing is also good in shorter stuff!) (Also also, I loved The Larton Chronicles, so really, sometimes the plottier stuff just isn't necessary.)

(... I am very bad at this "what specific thing do you like" thing *kof*)

Okay, so, er, long, and maybe plotty and maybe not, but slash and romance. That's a start. I also really like warm stories -- no objection to hot, mind you, but warm is also key for me. I like cCharacters who have genuine affection for each other -- not just lust or even love, but like, too. Mutual respect and trust, either right from the beginning or growing through the story. (Actually, that goes for the like/lust/love, too -- it can grow, it doesn't have to be there from the beginning, depending on the characters; the moment when a character realizes that things have changed is one of my favorite things, done well.) I like fairly even power dynamics; I love competence, and when characters are competent at different things and respect each other for it.

I tend to like canon-based and canon-divergent stories best, but also certain kinds of AU, depending on the fandom; I'm not keen on most of the current popular AUs like high-school, college, barista, A/B/O, but others can really work for me if the characterization is there.

I love happy endings. <3

So: long/epic, maybe-plotty, slash, romance, warmth, affection, trust, respect, competence, a relationship that grows, first time. /tags

Other tropes are welcome in there, but that's probably the core of it. Mostly I'm a pretty vanilla sap who likes characters who like each other and want to make each other happy, who maybe have some (mis)adventures along the way.

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Full request list here, still open!

For james:

the first or one of the first people you encountered in fandom

This is cracking me up, because James is one of the first people I remember coming across online (which is the fandom I'm defining this as). *g* (hi James, I have known you foreeevvvver!) I don't think I ever said boo back then, though, other than probably sending in an age statement for JADFE (♥) So I'm not sure if it counts as "encountered" or not.

The first person I encountered face-to-face was a woman whose name I no longer remember, although I have visual memories of her and her home.

I was all about Forever Knight in those very early days, mostly lurking on Forkni-l, and someone offered to host people for... something. Season premiere night, maybe? Just general tape-watching? I don't even remember, but I decided to go, and showed up to find the house decorated in Raven images because she was a Ravenette. *g* I was pretty charmed, and we had a good time, even though I was the only person to show up, which was a tad awkward what with us not knowing each other at all. Those were the days when people actually did think that if you met a person from the internet in person, they would turn out to be an ax murderer, so it was nice to have that disproved!

I lost touch with her almost immediately, probably because I wasn't in her faction (much though I love Janette), so I wasn't hanging out on her faction loop at all. Someone posted to the main list about the list's IRC channel, I think on Efnet back then. I had no idea what IRC was, but the post included some instructions, so I got a copy of mIRC and logged on one night. It was great! Turns out it's one of my favorite ways to be fannish to this day, although now I tend to avoid public channels.

Back then, #foreverknight (that's an IRC channel, not a hashtag) was full of tons of people (for mid-90s values of "tons of people") chatting away pretty much 24/7. I got to know a bunch of people pretty well, enough that our conversations would start to dominate the main channel and annoy people, so we broke off into a private channel instead, where we hung out for ages.

And I'm still friends with a handful of them! (waves to eviltammy, ithildin, ninjababe). I've never met Ninj in person, sadly, but got together with Ith, Tammy, and a couple of other friends at Syndicon East in 1997 (that con was a vector -- for years and years later, I'd run across people and find out they'd been there, too); Tammy and another friend came to visit me for a few days at my place; Ith, Tammy, and that same friend and I all went and spent a week on Cape Cod one bright, cold November, where at least one waitress couldn't take it and had to ask us where we knew each other from, because we all had such vastly different accents. *g* And where we accidentally broke into a pirate museum. ♥

Off IRC, meanwhile, I was eventually hanging out with the UFfers, both online and locally. One of the oddest moments was realizing at an UFfish party that I was talking to a woman who went to the church where my cousin had been a priest, and that we'd both been at the same Mass at that church at least once. And she remembered the priest I remembered from my childhood, who'd switched from my parish to hers before moving on again later. It's a small, small world, people. Alas, I've long since lost touch with all of those folks; something about the faction itself, or the faction loop, or something, got less appealing to me, and I just moved on to Due South without much of a backward look at some point, really.

It's really amazing how many people I still know from the 90s in fandom, though. Although huh, thinking about it, I'm still in touch with people from FK, and people from TS (good lord, I still know so many people from TS!), and a few people from Pros, but I think the only people I still know from my DS days are those who moved on to TS about the same time I did. Strange.

---

Full request list here, still open!

(I should really get more icons so I can use appropriate ones for these...)

Work is ramping up to ludicrously busy, Yuletide is nothing but bears, and I have backslid horribly into not posting unless I force myself to. So clearly it's time to do this.

At this point I suspect everyone has seen the setup a bunch of times, but just in case: pick a day (or ask me to pick it for you), and give me something to talk about. It can be anything from fandom-related (specific characters, storylines, episodes, recs, etc. -- I think fic isn't supposed to be involved in this, but I'm also willing to consider comment-fic-type prompts, although no promises) to life-related to pizza preferences to whatever you want.

Answers may be brief or not, depending on the subject. Also, I reserve the right to decline prompts that I don't feel equipped to meet.

Feel free to give multiple topics (with dates) if you want; it's not limited to one per person.


December:

01: too late!

02: terrio: probably too late! unless someone wants something short, fast What is your Platonic Ideal pizza? toppings, crust, deep-dish vs. flat, etc. (in under the wire!)

03: james: the first or one of the first people you encountered in fandom

04: dorinda: please talk about fanzines! For instance, maybe the first time you discovered them, your relationship to them, what you liked/didn't like about them, specific zines that might come to mind that were particularly good/interesting (or not)...just anything about zines that you care to share.

05: marginaliana: if you could commission the perfect piece of fiction, what would it be like?

06: torch: three characters in three different fandoms from your past that you have known and loved, max three paragraphs each (and minimum three sentences, I hope *g*). Pics would be lovely, of course. :)

07: eviltammy: cats! With mandatory pictures!

08: kass: reminisce about your first fandom. What did you love about it?

09: heresluck: Of all the vids you've made, which is the one where what you actually produced most closely matches what you wanted to do?

10: cesperanza: Why one vid a year, why??? How do you know what fandom? Is it compulsion? a list? the song?

11:

12: sholio: how about your favorite fannish trope? Or any one of them that you'd like to talk about. :)

13: princessofgeeks: How you came to compile your absolutely kickass and indispensable handbook for the Gateverse.

14:

15: justhuman: Tell me about Duke and Nathan and the fanservice that's gushing out of Haven

16:

17:

18: quarter_to_five: Fringe vs. Person of Interest (delayed a week for YT bears)

19: BEARS

20: BEARS

21: BEARS

22: BEARS

23: gwyn: How did you start vidding, what prompted you to make that first vid and say to yourself, we could do this? How did you start vidding with therienne? Was it like a magic moment of creation for you both, or did one of you have to convince the other? (delayed for YT bears)

24: BEARS

25: BEARS

26: BEARS

27: marycrawford: Pick a day for The One That Got Away: talk about a vid that you (with or without Therienne) wanted to make, but for some reason, it didn't work out. A head-vid can be a beautiful thing too, so help us see it!

28: mollyamory: Build your perfect fannish show (we have the technology!) out of all the things you love in fannish shows, and tell me how the main pairing would develop and progress.

29:

30: astolat: Talk to me about Harold/John! Especially Harold/John right now! (I totally want help with my own rowing.)


31: rhi: Yuletide story/ies you had no idea you wanted to read?

As usual, this was meant to be an errands-and-chores vacation, with a big side of "and this year, I'm going to write my entire Yuletide story before Thanksgiving!!" determination.

Also as usual, most of that didn't happen. I've been so social in the last couple of months that mostly I just sat quietly in my silent apartment, doing I don't even know what, trying to decompress. I think I played a lot of solitaire, maybe watched some mindless tv. And I actually wound up working through some of it, because of a delayed project on a tight deadline, bah. But I did get some cleaning done, and a few errands run.

One of my chores was going to be "put plastic up over all the windows"; I have to do this every year, and while in theory it's not a big job, I don't like doing it, and always put it off as long as possible (or longer). Partly it's because once it's up, that's it: my house is sealed up for the winter, with little hope of fresh air till spring. But also it always takes longer than it should, and I just don't have it in me to spend an entire day going from window to window taking care of this (I have 10 windows that need the plastic). You're also supposed to do it before it gets frigid out, because if your window frame is too cold, the tape won't adhere properly. I got the two kitchen windows done early in the week, but then never got around to the rest - until Saturday, when I discovered that Sunday the temps were going to plummet, and we'd be having wind chills in the single digits. (And holy crap, they weren't kidding. Current wind chill is 8 F / -13.3 C. brr.)

So I'm still not done -- the living room is very drafty and cold right now -- but I did the bathroom, bedroom, and library yesterday afternoon. I can cope with needing blankets to watch tv or read; I can cope less with freezing in the shower, or waking up to an icy bedroom. So woo, go me. \o/

Yeah. I woke up today to the sounds of tearing plastic. Of course. Darien didn't even let the bedroom plastic alone for 24 hours; by the time I looked over there, he'd torn through it enough to climb inside and sit on the windowsill, happy as a furry orange clam.

So I hauled him out and dumped him on the floor. He jumped up and started for the plastic; I dumped him. We repeated this about four times and then he crouched doubtfully on the floor looking up at me while I taped up all the tears he'd made, and eventually he wandered off. Then I went to brush my teeth, cranky but resigned. Most years I at least get a few weeks of clear plastic before a cat goes all "FREEDOMMMM" on me. I start putting out food for the other cat, when I hear the unmistakable sound of more plastic tearing.

I go into the bedroom, and there's Dari, happily sitting inside the plastic on the window sill on the other, used-to-be-untorn side of the window.

( My rotten cat Darien )

So now his claws are trimmed way back -- which he hates, and which usually I don't have to do because he's really good about not using his claws inappropriately -- and I am staring grimly at a shoppping cart full of thermal curtains, with drapery rods to hang them on. Argh.

I've avoided these for years, because a) pricey, omg, even the cheap ones, when you figure I need to put them up over 8 of these windows (the kitchen's just going to have to be cool, I'm not putting anything heavy in there), and b) room-darkening, which I hate, because it gets so damn gloomy in here when I have dark curtains up. I'm on a busy road, both car and foot traffic, with neighbors barely a driveway's width apart on both sides, so I leave my blinds shut almost all the time, just counting on the light coming through them to keep things bright enough. So I've just done light-colored mini blinds with light sheers over them, and plastic for insulation. But clearly that is no longer enough. Beyond the obvious unwillingness to allow plastic insulation this year, both cats have destroyed one of my street-facing blinds in their determination to always be able to see out (never mind that I leave them a few inches at the bottom of almost every window; they want to sit on the back of my chair, and see out from that level on that window). Every time I fix it, one of them comes over and breaks it in a new spot. (Which is actually kind of hysterical. Annoying, but hysterical. Clearly they think this is the "compromise" we've "agreed on" -- they get this one particular window for a higher view, no matter what.)

This is why we can't have nice things, cats!

*listens to the other cat happily trying to pull the strainer out of the sink, sighs*

Oh well. If nothing else, all of this convinced me that this should be a day for a proper pot of tea, so here I sit with a teapot in a cozy (okay really just wrapped up in a towel), one of my mom's wedding-china teacups, and a sugar bowl and creamer on a salver, as civilized as can be.

... omg tactical error. *slaps paper towel and hand over creamer to keep Hobbes out of it*

( My rotten cat Hobbes )

My life, ladies and gentlemen.

Apparently more than 40 days of posting every day wasn't enough to ingrain the habit, as my one-day "no, really, it's okay if I take a break" amnesty for myself promptly turned into 20 days barring a couple of brief Yuletide interruptions, during which my brain started sliding right back to "eh, that's not important enough to post" about things, and "eh, I'll post something tomorrow".

Partly I blame tv, of which there is suddenly far too much - and there's more starting up over the next couple of weeks. I'm already behind! I'm going to have to start weeding things out pronto. It's so hard to break my old conditioning that I should watch all the genre tv I like even somewhat, because what if there's never any more, and what if I don't know what other fans are talking about (only you can cure fannish illiteracy!), and and and. But there's always more, and the options are either to watch ALL the tv and not have time to do anything else, or watch some of the tv and maybe be able to get into discussions or read(/write) fic or watch(/make) vids, too.

Also, though, I've been way more social than usual in the last few weeks, both fannishly and otherwise. I used to know more fans in the Boston area, but we drifted off in different directions years ago and lost touch, so mostly I just hang out with the same very tiny crowd with occasional out-of-town visitors (not helped by my sky-high levels of introversion and homebody-ness *g*). But it's good to meet people, which is what I/we have been doing lately. Good dinners, good conversations, faces to go with names on the internet. Win! It just also takes up a lot of my social energy that would otherwise go into interacting online.

October has also been Wedding Month; I had a post-elopement reception to attend two weeks ago for a dear niece (and her equally dear new husband <3), and last weekend was a friend's wedding, which I'd been looking forward to all summer and which more than lived up to expectations. Both were huge fun, but also pretty social-energy draining.

But really, a lot of it is the tv. I get home at night and there's hours of catching up to do, and then I'm too tired to do anything else.

Still, some stuff I can't give up:

Person of Interest, because oh my show. ♥ ♥ ♥ I've seen that other people are having some issues with this season so far, so mostly I'm just ignoring other people's posts and the chat comm, and avoiding the IRC chat (woe); POI is my happy place and I want to keep that. (So in this one case, please don't comment to point out all the things I should be unhappy about. *g*) ( I get that people think it's weaker this season, and I just kinda don't care (spoilers through 3x04) )

Elementary: still fun, although I'm still not fannish about it and probably never will be. But I'm always happy to realize my DVR recorded it and I have it to watch. <3

Haven, which never pissed me off last year the way it did some people, and which this year has been making me incredibly happy. ( ♥ ♥ ♥ (and spoilers through 4x06) )

Grimm, which is back this week (yay!) and which I expect to continue making me happy *g* Certainly the commercials are. <3

The Voice, about which I'm not at all fannish, but which I enjoy a lot. My favorite part is the blind auditions, where I'm not invested in anyone (and don't even watch the backstory bits, so I don't know what sad stories people have), and everyone has an equal shot, and I can just enjoy it all no pressure. But it's still fun even when I have to ff through stressy bits, or worry about people being knocked out. Some of the battles so far have been amazing.

Stuff that I'm sticking with for now, but that may wind up being cut:

( Sleepy Hollow )

( White Collar (spoilers for season premiere) )

( Once Upon a Time (spoilers through 3x04) )

Stuff I've either given up on, or probably will in the next week or two:

Agents of SHIELD; it's entirely possible that by the end of the season it will have shaken out into something I'd like more, but right now it's not there. I just don't care about any of the characters, and several of them actively annoy me. Which makes me cranky, dammit, because MCU is one of my fannish happy places, and I wanted this to be part of that for me. Hmf.

Likewise Blacklist; I liked it a lot right out of the gate, and that hasn't changed, but I don't particularly like any of the characters as people, ( and... )

And also likewise ( Once Upon a Time in Wonderland )

I feel like I'm forgetting a dozen different things, but I've been writing this for days, and need to post it to clear my mental queue so I can maybe start posting other things.

And now there is new POI to watch!

Thank you so much! The thought of a story in any of these fandoms is already making me happy.

I'd really like something that falls on the warm / happy / fluffy / vanilla end of the spectrum, if possible. If that isn't something you can do, I understand! Just please no deathfic or loss of a loved one, including pets; and no terminal illnesses of any kind as an h/c or angst trope. Thank you. <3

I love all six (!) of these fandoms unreservedly, so if you have a yen to explore the universe, or bring in additional characters I didn't list, it's all good.

If you want more information about my requests, read on - but please don't worry if your ideas go in a different direction. Optional details are optional! I would much rather read the story you wanted to write than the story you felt you were obligated to write because of something I said. As long as it's for one of these fandoms, and uses the characters, you totally win at Yuletide. \o/

( my fic tastes )

Why I love these fandoms

(Alphabetical, not ranked by preference! I love them all. :)

( Burn Notice )


( The Equalizer )


( Forever Knight )


( Haven )


( Kung Fu: The Legend Continues )


( Valdemar Series – Mercedes Lackey )

In short, yay, Yuletide!

Today was kind of a cranky day all around, involving a total lack of hot water at home (that eventually turned out to be something that cost me a boatload of money, rather than something my landlord would have to pay for, joy), going into work early for a meeting that didn't go as smoothly as it should (not my fault, at least, but it made for a kinda frustrating morning), staying at work late for work that never actually came in, and getting the bill for said hot-water-fixing dealio. So bah.

But on the other hand, I have hot water again, woo!

And Maru and Hana continue to make me happy as they bond in ever sweeter ways <3

And there is new Person of Interest tonight! \o/

Also, there is this boy here, who never fails to crack me up:



Yeah, that's pretty much my life. If I'm eating it, he wants some of it -- the crunchier and saltier the better. The completely crazy eyes are because he'd just spent about 20 minutes chasing Tostitos all over my living room and begging me to throw more for him, before he decided he'd have more luck if he came closer. IDEK.

I still haven't watched this week's Blacklist or Sleepy Hollow, and I'll probably miss SHIELD tonight, too; work's too crazy and I'm too tired. But I'll watch POI (yay!) and The Voice, at least. So possibly there will be more posting later. (Or possibly not. *g*)

I don't even know where today went. I meant to spend it doing at least vaguely productive things around the house, but not so much.

( This originally said I'd watched the first 10 minutes of OUaT, but it turned into vague live-blogging of the first 40 minutes )

ack, midnight, posting

ETA: I kept watching, so I'm just gonna add the last 20 minutes' worth here.

( final 20 minutes of OUaT )

And that is that snow globes are not forever. Heh.

Many many many years ago -- like, probably more than 30 years ago -- my favorite aunt found a musical snow globe somewhere that reminded her of me, and gave it to me for a present. It was a wizard, casting a spell from a book he was reading, surrounded by glitter instead of snow. It was so cool! (Things like that were way harder to find then.)

It was really more suited to teenage me, but I kept it all this time, tucked away on a shelf. A few days ago, I idly noticed that the water level seemed to have dropped a bit, which was odd - but I figured I just hadn't looked at it in ages and was misremembering.

Then today I was over near it, and realized that the wizard was at a slightly odd angle, and reached for it to find that the globe part was a little loose, and suddenly there was a bit of water on my hand.

Whoops.

Turns out that the hard plastic supports inside the base eventually wear out! So the globe had been slowly going off-kilter, and then the rubber bit that the wizard stood on had also gone off-kilter, and water was seeping ever so slowly into the base.

Ah well -- 30-plus years is a pretty good run for something like that. *g* I drained all the water out into a baggie (I didn't want that glitter going down my drains), then set him back up o the shelf to take some pictures to remember it by:

( one wizard, slightly damp )

So now he is gone, alas, after probably protecting the heck out of my space for all these years. <3

Before I move on to POI, I wanted to suggest a new acronym for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- ASHIELD. Nice symmetry with MUNCLE. *g*

So Person of Interest s3 premiered last night! \o/ ( And I have things to say about it. )

( ETA after posting, because I forgot something )

Ack out of time, again, how does midnight always come so fast! In short, *flail*!

(I need more POI icons, hm.)

Right after I saw on the yt-admin feed that noms had closed, I got an email from TV Shows on DVD that I was not expecting at all:

We've added a news item for "Salvage 1" to the site. Here it is:

The 1979 Show Starring Andy Griffith, Joel Higgins and Trish Stewart - 4:11 PM 9/23/2013
"Salvage 1 - Hard Water" has been announced for release on DVD. We've got the early info for you, at the TVShowsOnDVD News!
URL: http://www.TVShowsOnDVD.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=18996

This is why it's worth checking off all the old shows you never thought you'd see again on their site. Good lord. I'd given up any hope of ever seeing that show again!

As the news release points out, the two-part episode they're releasing is an incredibly stupid thing to put out first, as it was the aired "finale" (looking around, there were four unaired eps that wound up airing years later on Nostalgia TV). They should be putting out the pilot instead. But hey -- at least it's something!

And then I went searching around, and discovered that the pilot and several wow, maybe all! of the eps are on Youtube.

I should totally have nominated this. Okay, granted, I haven't seen this show in -- er, wow, 34 years? Eep. So I have no idea how well it's aged. But I adored it way back in my mid-teens (it helped that I was crushing madly on Joel Higgins *g*), and it was weird and wacky and wonderful, about a junkyard owner who wanted to go to space, and built himself a spaceship so he could go collect all the salvage that's just floating around out there. And hey, maybe I wasn't the only person who watched it!

Ah well -- I'll try rewatching via youtube for now, and if it's worth it, maybe I'll put it in for next year's YT.

... Okay, wow, the person who put all these up also put up "Deadman's Curve: The Jan and Dean Story", which I watched when it aired on tv in 1978 (... because I was crushing on Richard Hatch *kof*) and wanted to watch again for years after that. I doubt I'll be watching this one again, because really, but still -- I'm kinda glad to know it's not lost.

(But I must take this moment to say: oh come ON, syfy channel, if NBC can dredge up Salvage 1, why can't you give us s2 of Invisible Man? sigh.)

This was going to be a post about the latest ep, but turned into more general Korra ramblings, with no specific spoilers at all.

( Korra ramblings )