Arduinna

I had given myself an amnesty for posting today, on accounta too tired and no time to do anything (seriously, all I've accomplished all night is to heat up a frozen dinner -- twice, because I forgot to eat it -- and watch SHIELD through bleary eyes).

But then I was scrolling back through my reading list before heading off to bed and hit a post by morgandawn about a bunch of different things, including a video news report about a UK Blake's 7 con. She mentioned that Ann O'Neill was in the video, and I had to click; I was never in B7, but Ann published the first Due South zines I ever bought; I'm pretty sure they were the first zines I bought after getting online, and if so, they were the first I ever bought direct from a publisher. (I had half a dozen that I'd bought out of a box at an SF con a decade earlier, but that was it.)

I never interacted with her much, but my memories of her have stayed positive all these years. She passed away -- wow, I was going to say "a few years ago", but it was in 2000.

And tonight for the first time ever, I have a face to go with the name I've never forgotten. <3 The internet is an amazing thing.

The news piece is interesting outside of that; first, the news anchor (?I think?) is wearing a shirt that looks like a parody of the 80s, which is cracking me up, and second, it's fun listening to the unprepared reporter find out that all these strangely dressed people are really completely normal. His reaction to the cop is priceless. It's been a long time since I've heard someone that unused to the whole notion of fandom.

I also love this one bit right at the end, where the camera pans over a list of "Space City" drinks to show the audience how committed these convention attendees are to live out this Blake's 7 fantasy for the weekend -- and pauses on the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster. Hee!

I've been seeing this pop up on feeds across my reading list and network today, but in case anyone hasn't seen it...

This is for everyone who's ever been frustrated at not being allowed to do a good job, because the bosses want quantity, not quality:

But for good reason, as I've just an evening of fans, tacos, and Iron Man 3; hard to beat that.

And now I'm rewatching bits of Haven with mollyamory and polishing off some of the leftover guacamole.

( Haven spoilers )

That was all very random and short, but time to post and go home!

Wow, I just got nuthin for tonight. My head is still full of Person of Interest, but not coherently enough to really make a post.

Hm, okay. I don't think I ever said anything at all about The Blacklist, so ( here, have some spoilery reaction )

Last night I watched the 95-minute pilot of Salvage 1, plus 2 hours of The Voice (granted, mostly on fast-forward), plus Sleepy Hollow, plus The Blacklist.

Tonight I've watched Agents of SHIELD and the first 15 minutes of Person of Interest, and just realized I'm running out of posting time if I don't want to break my streak, so have forced myself to pause POI. (There's 2 more hours of The Voice on tap for later, too.)

Famine to feast, man.

The Voice

I'm not cutting this, because it's just auditions at this point and I'm not talking about any of the hopefuls. It was very odd for me tuning in; last season was my first time watching, so I imprinted on Usher and Shakira as the two other judges -- for me, it's weird having Ceelo and Christina, especially with everyone talking about getting the band back together.

The auditions are my favorite part of the show; I love that they're blind, and that everyone has an equal chance. And I'm not invested in anyone yet, so I don't stress out when anyone's on stage. *g*

More auditions later, if I can manage to get to them, woo!

( Sleepy Hollow )

( Agents of SHIELD )

Argh too close to midnight, must post. Yay new tv!

I should really keep a list all year of things that strike my fancy, because I invariably forget things by nominations time, and wind up trawling through my old DYW letters and renominating old favorites. Some years I'm in more of an "any characters" kinda place, but this year I seem to be in a very specific slash-or-friendship pairing place, and stuck to just pairings.

I don't usually bother checking the spreadsheet first, because I don't care if I'm double-nominating things (and also I know it's not complete -- I'm one of the people who never bothers adding their nominations to the list), but this year since I'm nominating so late I went searching just for the heck of it, and went for things that aren't on the spreadsheets.

The Equalizer
Robert McCall
Control (The Equalizer)

The Invisible Man (TV 2000)
Bobby Hobbes
Darien Fawkes

Kung Fu: The Legend Continues
Kermit Griffin
Peter Caine

Young Wizards - Diane Duane
Carl Romeo
Tom Swale

I was really surprised that neither I-Man nor Young Wizards was on the spreadsheet yet, complete or no! Both of those are such perennial YT fandoms, and YW is a perennial *popular* fandom, so that was just odd to me. I'm unlikely to request YW (I tend to avoid book fandoms on signups), but it's one of the fandoms that always makes my YT reading list and I love Carl/Tom stories in particular, so. I can only assume that other people have nominated other characters as well,

I still haven't figured out my requests and offers for this year; poking through the spreadsheet, I spotted a fandom or two that made me go "ooo" besides the ones here, and a few other of my staples. I can't wait to see what the final full list is!

*breaks out Yuletide icon*

After saying I want to keep the daily posting going as long as I can, I of course have nothing, sitting here about to head out for an evening of fannish hanging out, during which I doubt I'll have time to post, even if we happen to say interesting things though we are bound to be fascinating and learned in our fannish natterings and deserve to be recorded for posterity.

So I will just say: fall is definitely here; I have honeycrisp apples in my fridge, pumpkin-spice English muffins on the counter, and Yuletide fandoms to think of before the nominations deadline passes. *happy sigh*

ack, it's 11:54 and I haven't written anything up; knew I shoulda saved that Arrow post for today!

So instead I will say some VERY FAST things about tv from the last few days:

( Korra )

( Haven )

( Sleepy Hollow )

and argh I want to say more about all of them, but now it's 11:59, meep.

*hits post*

Or, you know, "deadline". *g* But technically, it's the 22nd, which is next Sunday, 7 days from now.

Go forth and bring peace and plenty to your characters, at least for a little while!

And if you've written one but haven't added it to the collection yet, go add it. *nudges*

I'm sorting out a bookcase today, the one that has my media tie-ins. I've purged a lot of them over the years; fanfic gives me more of what I want. But I used to buy anything I could find for any show I loved, and I've hung on to a bunch, especially Star Trek books.

I used to buy a lot of Star Trek books. Some of these I'd forgotten I have; the only way to fit everything is to have doubled rows of books, and the titles in the back rows tend to fade. But today I'm looking at everything, and wow. Seriously, I'd forgotten.

Before VCRs, in most cases your only hope of knowing what happened in an episode was to actually watch it live as it aired, whether first run or rerun/syndication. But for some shows, you could buy books.

James Blish wrote adaptations of (almost) every episode; they weren't perfect, as they were written off scripts rather than final episode transcripts, and they were short stories rather than being particularly fleshed out, but. You could have the episodes in your hands!

I bought as many of the original paperbacks as I could find used, when I discovered these, but I couldn't get my hands on all of them. I was buying in the mid-80s, and there just wasn't much available; used bookstores weren't quite in vogue yet, and I could only get to one con a year with their fabulous dealers' rooms full of rows and rows and rows of used and new SFF. Then the Science Fiction Book Club offered four hardcover volume "Star Trek Readers", which collected all of Blish's adaptations, and I bought those, too. So now I have doubles of almost all of it, and still can't bring myself to purge any of them. *g* What if one day there are no more reruns or DVDs or blu-rays or downloads or anything!!

Blish wasn't the only one writing; a few years after him, Alan Dean Foster wrote adaptations of the animated series, which I also got my hands on, to my delight, as I'd never seen the animated show. Again, I don't have them all, but at least I had something.

And I bought behind-the-scenes books, and making-of books, and anything else I could. (Anyone else have "Chekov's Enterprise"?)

And then I discovered a couple copies of a treasure trove I'd had no idea existed: in the late '70s, Ballantine started publishing "fotonovels". I wound up with copies of Metamorphosis and Day of the Dove.

( Metamorphosis front cover )

( back cover )

They used comic book layout, with multiple panels per page in various combinations to carry you through the story, using tricks like outlining specific people in a white panel border to show that they're in a different place (like talking over communicators), or that a conversation was cutting back and forth on screen, so the still picture would have both face-on shots together. Although someone appears to have decided that that looked silly, because by book #10, they were no longer doing that - so it's less cheesy looking, but also a bit less fun. *g* Some photos spread seamlessly across a two-page spread (which, wow, has to have been a BITCH to print -- there are no whitespace margins in these books, they're pure photos).

( interior pages )

I didn't want to break the spine on the book to get a sample of one of the two-page photos, but they're there.

The front of each book has a short cast list, including guest stars, and a two-page interview with one of the guest stars.

The back of the books have a helpful glossary to explain the terms in the book, from basic ST stuff like "communicators" and "phasers" to episode specifics like the disease one of the characters had, the planets involved in the ep, etc. Plus there's a quiz at the end, to see how much you were paying attention! (Answers on the very final page, so you didn't have to wait till the next book came out to see how you did.) And there would be a teaser photo from the next fotonovel, with a descriptive blurb. They packed a lot into these little books.

I'd completely forgotten about these, but man, now I remember how over the moon I was when I found them way back when. It was like being able to watch the episode any time I wanted!!

Even with VCRs available not long after, these were still fabulous for a long time, because a VCR was only useful if you had episodes to record - and the money to buy enough tapes to record more than a few episodes of anything. A single VHS cassette cost as much as ~10 fotonovels.

I kinda wish the trend of making these had started about five years earlier than it did, just to see how widespread it might have become before it got completely overshadowed by VCR tech.

(Seriously, these are so cool.) (How do I not have a TOS icon?)

Standing in line, reading all the magazine covers because there's nothing else to do (and wondering if the RPF fans had seen the tabloid cover about Tim McGrath being involved with naked men having kinky sex), idly listening to the couple behind me also perusing the headlines, and then one of them reaches for a TV Guide, and says:

"Remember him? He's the guy from space, nanu-nanu!"

Which charmed my socks right off. *g* Aw, Mork!

Okay, slightly less charming was her then proceeding to read the entire article about Robin Williams' new show to her companion, but hey. Nanu-nanuuuuuuuu!

After the panels came the usual dinner break, which lately has just been the "get ready for Club Vivid" break. The buffet is substantial enough to serve as dinner, so we generally head down and eat and socialize for a bit, then head back to the room to change and glam up for the dance.

The hotel was running a little behind all weekend on setup that involved food of any kind, which is unusual, so the buffet didn't start until 6:30 or so. No biggie, except how I just expect everything Vividcon-related to start on time, so it made me blink a bit.

Which has just reminded me of something I wanted to say: the concom, as usual, was calm and cheerful throughout the con, handling things as they came up, despite coping with even more stress than usual in the face of a hotel staff that was late with all food-related things, right down to water service in the function rooms, and more horribly, a DVD duplicating place that had delayed the delivery of the DVDs till the last possible second. On Friday, no one on staff even knew if the DVDs would arrive by Saturday (!!). If they hadn't, the concom would have had to somehow get hold of the DVDs after the con, and ship out every set individually at huge unexpected cost, not to mention facing the disappointment of more than a hundred people who expected to be able to pick them up on Sunday in person.

Not a trace of that stress showed publicly; to the uninformed eye, everything was running smooth as silk all weekend. So big kudos to the concom for their professionalism throughout. <3

So the buffet was good, as usual, and Mandy and her cohort were back at the bars wearing beaded necklaces and ready to serve up whatever we wanted (seriously, I love how much the bartenders seem to have a good time with us. We're kind of a motley crew, and we are unbelievably loud at Club Vivid, but everyone has a blast and it's great that the bartenders are part of that. It never feels like they're outsiders watching us and silently mocking, which could totally happen with some people. These folks put on their beads and seem to have a great time watching us all have a great time. <3 )

After we ate, we went back to the room to dress up a bit and add some nice bright hair coloring, then headed back down to check out everyone's outfits and start in on the booze. (I brought hair chalk to try this year, too, but you have to put hair spray in first, which I'm not keen on, and forgot to pick up at Dominick's anyway. Oh well, maybe next time.)

During the very first CV, one person came in very tight, very shiny silver pants that impressed everyone. Times have changed; this year, we had a shiny silver bikini-thing that also impressed everyone quite a bit. There was also the usual array, from comfy street clothes to cosplay to cocktail dresses to clubwear; bare feet and sneakers and stilettos and thigh-high laced boots; and glitter and glowsticks EVERYWHERE. I love all of that so much; I can't think of anything else I do all year where someone in a tight-laced pleather corset and killer boots can hang out with someone in loose cotton pajamas and slippers in public, and both of them be appropriately dressed and equally comfortable. ♥

So pre-CV is always fun, with everyone wandering around talking and drinking and eating and admiring each other, then there's a rush for the dance floor as the Joxer Dance starts up, and we're off!

... and then there's a three-hour haze of dancing and drinking and vids. *g* Ian outdoes himself every year on the playlist, and this year was no exception.

But one fabulous addition this year was a tv over on one of the side table in the middle, showing all the vids in addition to the big screens at either end. It made it easier to actually watch the vids, if there was something you particularly wanted to see.

Also awesome this year for anyone who was premiering vids at CV: absolutedestiny had put up a list in the con suite with time codes for each premiering vid, so you could keep track of when yours was going to air without having to count vids off the main playlist.

( A handful of vids that jumped out at me through the haze of awesome )

The Friday afternoon panels were all connected: a two-hour Song Choice panel, and a one-hour Audio Editing panel. I had no intention of missing any of that, even if it meant giving up an afternoon of vids.

( Song Choice )


( Audio Editing )