Five things make a post?
1. I am going through today and subscribing back to a bunch of people who've been subscribed to me for a while; I've been letting my reading list sit, partly because I'm lazy, partly because my reading list is already very close to Dunbar's number*, and partly because quite a few of the people who subscribed to me recently are folks who I've gotten used to thinking of as way out of my league, too smart and too popular for me. But I have got to the point again where I am spending time reloading my list saying "why are there no new posts?" (I realize the answer is 'holiday weekend already' but I am ignoring that.) So. Um. Hi?
*I have issues with Dunbar's number as a hard limit, but for a single network, it does seem to make sense. And to be about where I settle naturally when it comes to active posters on a reading list.
2. Three fics which I recently found which I must share! And one of them isn't even my fault in any way!
3. The other day I went to The Star Toys Museum and donated five boxes of Star Wars crap to them, in exchange for a tour. The Star Toys museum is just down the road from where I live, so it seemed silly to have never been there. On the other hand, though, I would never've had the courage to do it if I hadn't already met the proprietor, Thomas Atkinson, at Farpoint earlier this year. This is one reason I am glad to go to cons: because it's a venue where I'm fairly comfortable meeting new people - the rules of interaction are laid out clearly enough that I understand them, with lots of wiggle room for social awkwardness - and once I've met someone in RL once, I'm a lot more comfortable meeting the again.
Especially if, like the Star Toys Museum, meeting them requires driving down a long, wooded, unpaved driveway to a house that is isolated from the road and looks spooky and half-abandoned. The Museum itself is three rooms and a hallway on the ground floor of the house, stuffed full of Star Wars crap of all kinds, in something vaguely approaching order, with bookshelves full of sf/fantasy paperbacks just barely visible behind some of the stuff (visits by appointement only.) It was simultaneously awesome - the best geek cave ever! - and totally overwhelming, there was no one thing to look at, plus of course I was nervous as hell despite already having talked to the guy at the con, so of course I am convinced I came off really badly. Mostly what I managed to do was find things in his collection that we already had. ^_^ A simultaneously disheartening and impressive number of things! And I think there may actually have been stuff in the boxes I donated that he didn't have yet. Mostly we just had a conversation about Star Wars collecting, and how these damn kids these days don't know how good they have it, and about how apparently all serious Star Wars collectors eventually have prophetic dreams about acquiring new items.
Anyway, five boxes gone! Room for more books!
4. I finally finished listening to the audiobook of A Wizard Of Mars, after being unable to acquire a copy of the written book without using money. I was... kind of disappointed in it? Maybe it's partly because it was on audiobook, which meant that when I came to the bits I disliked, I had to just slog through, instead of skimming or skipping, so they seemed even longer. But the reason it took so long was that there was a long section in the middle where Nita and Kit aren't telling each other, or their supervisors, things that they really should, by their established character from previous books, be telling them. It is one of those annoying "if they talked to each other there would be no narrative tension, so they are just going to keep secrets for no reason other than angst" things. DD seemed to expect people to buy it just because Nita and Kit and proper teenagers now, and hormones do strange things? Maybe it's just that I was never a proper teenager, maybe it was hitting my embarrassment squick a bit, but I didn't buy it at all, even though she did eventually say that Kit was acting out-of-character for temporal paradox reasons. Usually I like stories that have a built-in mechanic so that "because the story required it" makes in-story sense, but Kit and Nita are trained, professional, and by this point fairly experienced, wizards - "I think I am acting out-of-character" and "I think my partner is acting out-of-character" should be something you freaking report as soon as you notice it, regardless of what you think the reason is, and Kit and Nita are professional enough that they would've done it.
Other than that (and the connected bit where Kit was disciplined for acting without proper supervision when he had an Area Supervisor along on the intervention, what) I liked the book, and the neatness of the resolution (and Barsoooom!) made up for a lot. I think I would like it more if I got to re-read it on paper, although it was really interesting to hear all the accents - getting used to Kit with a thick New York City accent was interesting.
Fics I now want even more in response:
5. Last night, seeking to prove that there really *wasn't* anything good on any of her hundreds of FIOS channels (she was wrong from the outset, 'cause there was a Top Gear rerun on BBCA, but still), Mom put on an episode of the old live-action Hulk TV series. It was - bizarrely - not terrible. It was actually really fun, in that seventies-TV way. And I am thinking of submitting Dr. David Banner to the crushes of shame on![[journalfen.net profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
hot_daily, because wow, if there was ever a character designed to appeal to little fangirl hearts! And I love love love the oldschool special effects, too. Where is the fic for this?
*I have issues with Dunbar's number as a hard limit, but for a single network, it does seem to make sense. And to be about where I settle naturally when it comes to active posters on a reading list.
2. Three fics which I recently found which I must share! And one of them isn't even my fault in any way!
- Sherlock Holmes, Petticoat Detective by
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
verity, which I linked in my yuletide letter, but deserves to be seen above a cut. Remember how back when BBC Sherlock was first gaining steam, I posted about how my issue with a modern!Holmes AU is that without Victorian!Holmes, modern culture would be very, very different?
Apparently while I was off ignoring the fandom for my own sanity, some of them decided that the answer to that problem was that, instead of Holmes being the trope maker and archetype of the genius detective, in that universe, Madelyn Mack was. THIS IS BRILLIANT AND MAKES MY HEART SING.
Andverity has actually writ fic about it! Linked above is just a short ficlet, but what she manages to cram into the ficlet about what this means for Holmes - that the archetype he's built his self-image onto is one that pop culture thinks is a girl's - is amazing and I am in love with it. And verity tells me that more is coming, yay! - The Lambda Quadrant by peapods24. I repeat my comment to the author: OMG Bill of Rights fic! With Rachel/Ana! Luring Keith into a gay bar of shiny! !!!! This is sheer beauty! ...and I love particularly (well, after Keith getting pinched by the bouncer. And Anderson's drooping anntenae.) the commentary you've worked in here on what being gay means on this Earth. I think it's a bit fluffier than I would have written it, but it's definitely the way things *should* be on TOS!Eearth. Proving that Earth understands IDIC better than Surak does, one glittery gay bar at a time. :D
- The World That You Need by dira. This is a Vorkosigan-verse series, up to about 50,000 words total, set during the first half of Vor Game, about how Cordelia Vorkosigan talked her husband into seducing his (male) secretary, because his happiness delights her. It is the best exploration of what it means to be homosexual on Barrayar that has ever been written; it is one of the best stories about poly relationships that I have seen in fandom, period; it is just a really good story about Cordelia and Aral and their marriage, and about Jole, the minor canon character that Dira has given amazing depths to; and it is just full of joy and love, even as it delves into some really dark and painful things on the way to happy-ever-after. This fic is now canon to me, but I really recommend it even to people who aren't Bujold fans, if you like reading fic that addresses LGBT themes deeply - it's just that good, and I want it to go on forever. I have read it about six times since it was posted.
3. The other day I went to The Star Toys Museum and donated five boxes of Star Wars crap to them, in exchange for a tour. The Star Toys museum is just down the road from where I live, so it seemed silly to have never been there. On the other hand, though, I would never've had the courage to do it if I hadn't already met the proprietor, Thomas Atkinson, at Farpoint earlier this year. This is one reason I am glad to go to cons: because it's a venue where I'm fairly comfortable meeting new people - the rules of interaction are laid out clearly enough that I understand them, with lots of wiggle room for social awkwardness - and once I've met someone in RL once, I'm a lot more comfortable meeting the again.
Especially if, like the Star Toys Museum, meeting them requires driving down a long, wooded, unpaved driveway to a house that is isolated from the road and looks spooky and half-abandoned. The Museum itself is three rooms and a hallway on the ground floor of the house, stuffed full of Star Wars crap of all kinds, in something vaguely approaching order, with bookshelves full of sf/fantasy paperbacks just barely visible behind some of the stuff (visits by appointement only.) It was simultaneously awesome - the best geek cave ever! - and totally overwhelming, there was no one thing to look at, plus of course I was nervous as hell despite already having talked to the guy at the con, so of course I am convinced I came off really badly. Mostly what I managed to do was find things in his collection that we already had. ^_^ A simultaneously disheartening and impressive number of things! And I think there may actually have been stuff in the boxes I donated that he didn't have yet. Mostly we just had a conversation about Star Wars collecting, and how these damn kids these days don't know how good they have it, and about how apparently all serious Star Wars collectors eventually have prophetic dreams about acquiring new items.
Anyway, five boxes gone! Room for more books!
4. I finally finished listening to the audiobook of A Wizard Of Mars, after being unable to acquire a copy of the written book without using money. I was... kind of disappointed in it? Maybe it's partly because it was on audiobook, which meant that when I came to the bits I disliked, I had to just slog through, instead of skimming or skipping, so they seemed even longer. But the reason it took so long was that there was a long section in the middle where Nita and Kit aren't telling each other, or their supervisors, things that they really should, by their established character from previous books, be telling them. It is one of those annoying "if they talked to each other there would be no narrative tension, so they are just going to keep secrets for no reason other than angst" things. DD seemed to expect people to buy it just because Nita and Kit and proper teenagers now, and hormones do strange things? Maybe it's just that I was never a proper teenager, maybe it was hitting my embarrassment squick a bit, but I didn't buy it at all, even though she did eventually say that Kit was acting out-of-character for temporal paradox reasons. Usually I like stories that have a built-in mechanic so that "because the story required it" makes in-story sense, but Kit and Nita are trained, professional, and by this point fairly experienced, wizards - "I think I am acting out-of-character" and "I think my partner is acting out-of-character" should be something you freaking report as soon as you notice it, regardless of what you think the reason is, and Kit and Nita are professional enough that they would've done it.
Other than that (and the connected bit where Kit was disciplined for acting without proper supervision when he had an Area Supervisor along on the intervention, what) I liked the book, and the neatness of the resolution (and Barsoooom!) made up for a lot. I think I would like it more if I got to re-read it on paper, although it was really interesting to hear all the accents - getting used to Kit with a thick New York City accent was interesting.
Fics I now want even more in response:
- The one where Carmela Rodriguez (who is not a wizard) drags the planet Earth sevarfrith by sheer force of personality, whether it wants to come out or not.
- The one that explains what happened to Helena at college, preferably including her roommate being a wizard (and X-Men geek.)
- Kit/![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spiritrover EVEN MORE NOW. OMG, she must be so traumatized.
- The one where S'reee finds out about Kit's restriction, and decides it's time for the non-human wizards of Earth to stop letting the human wizards blithely think they're the only ones who count.
- The one where Dora, Deety, Hilda and co. showsup looking for Barsoom, and Nita (and possibly Carmela?), and Dora and Gay who are the only wizards among their lot, do a lot of messing around with the remnant Martian wizardries trying to find it, and end up on Malacandra instead. (Because you just can't get to Barsoom.)
-Post the backyard barbecue scene, for some reason I don't wish to explore in detail, Tom/Carl/Harry.
5. Last night, seeking to prove that there really *wasn't* anything good on any of her hundreds of FIOS channels (she was wrong from the outset, 'cause there was a Top Gear rerun on BBCA, but still), Mom put on an episode of the old live-action Hulk TV series. It was - bizarrely - not terrible. It was actually really fun, in that seventies-TV way. And I am thinking of submitting Dr. David Banner to the crushes of shame on
hot_daily, because wow, if there was ever a character designed to appeal to little fangirl hearts! And I love love love the oldschool special effects, too.