(no subject)

We slept late yesterday morning and so didn't get most of the things Scott was hoping to do done. It was past 1:30 by the time we got out the door to go to the library, and we were expecting Cordelia's friend at 3:00. Scott had wanted to drop off the clothes he wants to get rid of, and he had wanted to visit a store downtown that carries a cherry wine that his parents have asked for for Christmas. As it was, we had time to visit the library and stop to pick up lunch. We tried to pick up food at Wendy's but the line, both inside and at the drive-thru, was long, and there didn't appear to be anyone providing service, so we went to Subway.

Cordelia's friend actually arrived about 3:10. Scott had gotten the tree set up by then, and he retrieved the ornaments while the girls and I were setting up a couple of plates of cookies. He put on the lights and the two strands of sparkly decorations. Cordelia and her friend put on most of the decorations. I hung a handful-- my favorite glass candy ornaments and my new owl ornaments, but I left most of the ornaments to the girls.

Cordelia's friend dropped one of our few breakable ornaments and shattered it. It's a pity. Scott and I both liked that one, but we didn't make a big deal out of it. There was nothing to be done, after all, no need to make her feel bad.

The girls actually didn't eat many cookies. They finished off the chocolate chip bars (which came out spectacularly well. Someone in Yuletide chat suggested a variant on the Tollhouse recipe that worked pretty well-- Half as much white sugar and twice as much brown sugar as the recipe calls for).

The actual decorating took about half an hour. Our tree isn't particularly big. After we were done, we put in the Phineas and Ferb Christmas DVD. Once that had ended, the girls went into Cordelia's room and played cards.

After Cordelia's friend went home, we had a quick dinner and finished watching the movie we started last night. It's a good thing we did. We only had a couple of hours left on the rental. We hadn't realized it would expire so quickly. Then we went out for bubble tea.

(no subject)

What's been your best fandom experience to date? What made it great? (for silverr)

It's very hard to narrow it down to one thing. My fandom experience hasn't been particularly eventful, not really. I'm not very vocally fannish, so I don't always connect with other people. I have made some friends through fandom, but I can only think of one that I talk to regularly now. I suspect that part of it is that I don't fall headlong into fandoms and so often don't have love for a canon to share with others. I enjoy reading other people's joy in their fandoms; I also enjoy reading criticism of canons whether by people who love them or by people who hate watch/read/whatever. But I don't tend to respond to those posts because I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. My silence makes it rather as if I don't exist.

Perhaps that's a New Year's resolution I should make-- to comment more often, on fannish posts or otherwise. I wonder if I could manage a comment a day? Or maybe more?

At any rate the thing in fandom I take the most joy in (and am most likely to participate in) is fic exchanges. I prefer exchanges to challenges because having a recipient gives me a specific person who's expecting the story from me. Without that, I'm likely not to finish or, at best, to be late. The only challenge I managed to do that wasn't exchange was the Finishathon, and that had an audience expecting the story because the conceit of the challenge was that each author put up a list of possible fics and then anyone who wanted to could vote as to which story the author should complete.

Still I think fic exchanges are my favorite part of fandom. I like the writing better than the receiving, so as long as I finish (and I've not yet defaulted), I'm satisfied. I was pleased, for example, by the Shameathon even though I didn't receive a story (only about three stories ended up getting written for that exchange. I have no idea why the default rate was so high. We got to pick which prompts we wanted to write to) because "Rustication" worked so well. I took a completely off the wall pairing (Mousse/Ukyou from Ranma 1/2) and made it work. I'm very proud of that.

Yuletide, Remix, and Not Prime Time (and a couple of others I've done once) make me stretch to write fandoms I never would have tried otherwise and, some times, to take angles on canon that wouldn't have occurred to me independently. I love that. When I write, I want to do things that are new to me, things that are a challenge to make work. My first Remix, I wrote Miroku/Kikyou from InuYasha ("Interstice (the Saddle in the Rain Remix)"); I picked that story to remix because I thought the pairing would be hard to pull off right and I wanted to see if I could do it convincingly.

I've enjoyed single fandom exchanges, too, but I'm less likely to do them because there aren't many fandoms that have exchanges for which I'm certain I can write. There have been a couple of Weiss Kreuz exchanges, I forget the names, and there's the Narnia Fic Exchange every summer.

I write mostly for the pleasure of it. I won't pretend that comments and kudos aren't sweet, but I have a realistic enough sense of what I choose to write to know that I'm never going to write anything wildly popular. That's what comes from writing obscure fandoms and characters. If a fic on AO3 garners a tenth as many kudos as hits, I consider it a success. Not all my fics make that threshold, but I'm not less pleased with those that don't make it. I don't love "Not All My Grief" better than "Rustication" even though "Not All My Grief" is, going by hits to kudos, quite the most popular thing I've ever written. "Rheotaxis" may be a bit dearer than other stories, but that's because of the time I've invested in it rather than because it's popular compared to my other stories.

I don't think all of that really answers the initial question. I'm not sure I have an answer to that question because my fandom experience doesn't have any particular highs or lows. It's simply a good part of my life.