the_rck | Entries tagged with fandom

Scott was supposed to work 3 a.m. to 3 p.m. today. We got a call around 8 p.m. last night to say that they didn't need him for the 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. part. He still went to bed early because of the whole needing to get up at 2 a.m. thing. Then, around 10 p.m., we got a second call saying that they weren't going to need him 3-7 a.m. That made life much easier all around.

Scott moved the larger memory thingies over from my old laptop about half an hour ago. It didn't take long, but it did require doing things that my hands can't be relied on for. I don't have much running just yet, but I do have Firefox up. I guess I'll go with that for a while and see if it starts crashing again. Having deleted all of my cache and cookies means logging in again at places like the library website (which is, of course, minor, but... It'll take pulling out my library card for the ID number).

While we were all sitting in the living room last night, the laptop froze. I waited to see if it would come back then mentioned it to Scott. Cordelia said, "Yeah. Get used to that." Apparently, this laptop will just suddenly freeze and need to be force restarted. She says it could happen anywhere from once a day to once a month but 'really isn't a big deal.'

I can tell that she doesn't do much in the way of work that could be lost by such a crash. I do, though, so I guess I'm going to have to get into the habit of saving every thirty seconds or so.

Just before I went to bed last night, I got a couple of really nice comments on the two more recent fics in my Sky High series. Naturally, I had to stay up long enough to respond.

I slept pretty solidly last night but wasn't able to use my c-PAP because we ran out of distilled water. I decided that the little bit we had should go to Scott's bi-PAP because he would need better quality sleep to work twelve hours safely. I haven't got any plans to do much today. I didn't have a headache when I got up, but one is starting up. I think it's a sinus thing rather than sleep/lack of sleep related. I've already had my morning tea and breakfast, so it's not that.

Scott and Cordelia and a family we know will be going to see The Last Jedi tomorrow sometime. Scott has bought tickets already, at my urging. He keeps thinking that he can show up at the theater with a few minutes to spare for something like this and expect to be able to buy a ticket.

I decided against signing up for

fandom_stocking because I couldn't come up with anything that interested me enough to motivate me to do the hard work of writing up requests. No, not quite true-- I couldn't come up with anything I wanted enough that I thought I could actually get.

I did a post on

holiday_wishes on the 13th. The first four items are all things requiring time rather than money. The remaining five all involve $$ and range from DW time (not that expensive) to hypoallergenic pony territory. Some people on the community are asking for things that are simpler/less expensive/more desperately needed, so if you feel like giving, browsing the community might turn up something that speaks to you.

I've gotten about half of today's chores done, and now I desperately want a nap. I probably won't just yet because Cordelia tends to text during her second period if she runs out of homework or otherwise has too much time to think. She sits in the library second hour because that's when she'd have gym if she were taking it in person instead of online. Second period starts around 9:00.

I went to bed early last night, around 8:00. Scott woke me when he came to bed, and I had a very restless night after that. I may have slept more, but if I did, it wasn't much or even vaguely continuous. About twenty minutes before the alarm this morning, I suddenly felt the muscles in the middle of my back relax, and I started feeling like maybe I could sleep. I didn't, of course, because I only had twenty minutes, but I'm desperately hoping that I can nap today because the odds are pretty good that Scott will have to go in early tomorrow which will mean that I have to stay up until 9:30 or 10:00, depending on when Cordelia finally goes to bed.

If I don't manage to nap today, I doubt I'll be coherent by dinner time.

Apart from napping, I've got laundry (load in dryer, load in wash, load waiting), trash/recycling, and the dishes. I'd like to shower, too, but the nap is more important. I can get Cordelia to put away the clean dishes after school, so that might be the way to go on that.

I spent a few minutes this morning making a list of the structural things I know need to be done on the Amber fic I finished in draft yesterday. The list includes some largish things like having a character who is present during a scene but ignored by everyone. Why is she there at all? Well, I know. I need her before and right after, but she kind of ought to do something in response to the unexpected drama and bloodshed. I'm just not sure what she'd be likely to do that my POV character would notice because the character who needs to react is some distance away and not going to intervene directly while my POV is blind and very focused on what's in close. It makes character sense for the POV character not even to remember that the other character is there, but it doesn't make narrative sense.

The other Amber fic is probably postable as is. I've been putting it off mostly because I wanted to run it by the person who gave me the prompt before they get a 'gift for you' notice from AO3. Well, and also this story and the one in the paragraph above are kind of, sort of in the same continuity as last year's Yuletide story. Maybe. If I make them a series, I need a name for the damned thing, and a series makes sense, especially as I have one more WIP that fits.

I'm just tired of naming things. I suppose I could just tack on Vialle's name or some such since she's the POV character in the posted story, one of the two in draft, and the one that's not yet done.

( Thoughts about Chronicles of Amber fanworks )

I took 1 mg of Lunesta last night and, within about fifteen minutes, actually felt more awake than I had been before I took it. I slept about the way I'd have expected to if I hadn't taken anything at all. I think it took about an hour after I took the medication for me to fall asleep, and I was up a couple of times during the night to use the bathroom. I also roused frequently in order to shift position (this is normal for me). I don't know if it's that the dosage is insufficient or if Lunesta simply isn't going to help. I really wish that I'd been able to try it sooner so that I could have talked to my doctor before Monday night which will be a make or break thing.

Scott, knowing Murphy's Law as it applies to me and medications, was at least half expecting it to make me manic. (It has happened before with things that are normally sedating.) It didn't do that, but it didn't do anything even remotely helpful, either.

Ambien is not a viable option for me or we'd have tried that first. My genetic profile turned up potentially major problems with me taking it, but there weren't any known contraindications there for Lunesta. I can't take melatonin because it gives me headaches that last for days (though it does improve my sleep). Benadryl doesn't make me sleepy.

I got very achy as the day went on yesterday, and I'm still that way this morning. I'm at the levels of resting pain that I had when I was working. I know, now, that it's a problem of anxiety primarily and of sleep quality secondarily. Sadly, that doesn't help me do anything about it because I know from experience that there's not anything I can take that will decrease the pain. I'm finding it harder to deal with now because I'm no longer used to it as normal.

I've just gone out as a last minute pinch hit for

captiveaudience. I'm sad about that but not hugely surprised since I could see that I hadn't gotten a story yet. The exchange has had some problems finding pinch hitters, mostly because almost nobody is following it but the participants (between twenty and twenty five people signed up). I'm not sure how likely it is that pinch hitters will be found for these last two. My fandoms are almost all old or tiny, so my bet now is that I'll end up either with a story for The Flash (TV 2014) or for Original Work, with the former more likely because of the amount of work needed to do the latter well. (I also requested Weiss Kreuz, The Pretender, Chronicles of Amber, and Princess Tutu. I would not expect to match on any of those now.)

The other pinch hit is looking for Teen Wolf, Merlin, Agents of SHIELD, Fairy Tales, or Red Eye (2005). I've not heard of that last fandom before.

I'm glad we went to the viewing. We hadn't seen Mary and her husband (also named Scott) for quite a long time. Mary shared a house with Scott and his brother during college, and her husband moved into that house when my Scott moved out.

We spent most of our time talking to a third college friend, Jim, who also lived in that house and who is Mary's cousin. Jim's kind of responsible for me and Scott meeting in the first place. We mostly talked games. He's been playing that Pandemic version that can only be played once but that takes a couple dozen longish sessions to get through. He says it's a lot of fun and very difficult to master. He compared the monetary investment to buying a videogame that one only expects to play once or twice. He also commented that he's pretty sure that the reason his tabletop RPG group is stable is that none of them have kids. Which makes sense.

We picked up dinner at Plum Market on our way home. Scott got a salad and some mac 'n' cheese. We got some sushi for Cordelia and seem to have chosen well enough for her to eat it all. I got an assortment from the hot buffet. Most of it was just barely okay. There's one dish that I took a small amount of that turned out to be really, really good, but I was worried that it might have hidden dangers for me or even just have flavor I didn't like. If I'd been able to sample it first, I'd probably have taken just that and the steamed vegetables.

Scott is expecting to have to work late tonight, so he stopped at the center and cancelled Cordelia's PT appointment for this evening. The last time she was in, the therapist said that she might be ready to be discharged, so the hope is that we won't need to make up the appointment. I did mention that it was feasible for me to get her there and home again, but Scott wasn't keen on that.

I see my primary care doctor on Thursday. I need to make a list of things to talk to her about. I suspect that my difficulties sleeping will end up high on the list. Those are at least 50% scheduling (family obligations, medications, meals and reflux, Scott and Cordelia needing to be able to do things that are mildly noisy but enough to keep me awake) issues, but there's a good chunk that relates to the c-PAP and even more that relates to anxiety and to other physical issues.

( Talking about sleep and schedules for my own benefit )

I just looked at the list of WIP that I used to follow on FFnet and discovered that I haven't checked on any of them in almost five years. I didn't realize it had been that long since I was reading fic regularly enough to keep going with that. I didn't have a FFnet account at that point, so I just kept an offline list with the url of the most recent chapter and the date of the last update. After two or three years of no updates, I'd gradually stop checking (unless the story was just that good...).

I’m not going to do the WIP Big Bang this year. I couldn’t pick something to focus on that really pleased me, and I don’t think I want to stick around LJ just for that.

I’m also not signing up for Night on Fic Mountain because I couldn’t come up with enough things that I’d be enthusiastic about writing. I could do it. I only need to offer five fandoms, and I nominated four, but… I rather suspect that only one of my nominees will get a request from someone not-me. That would put it 50-50 as to getting that or getting whatever makeweight fifth fandom I came up with.

( Running down the list of things I possibly could write for Night on Fic Mountain without specifying titles )

Maybe Not Prime Time will work better.

Scott’s Kung Fu Panda vid is on YouTube here. I’m trying to persuade him to put it on AO3. I think the main barrier there is that he’d have to figure out how. He already knows how to put stuff on YouTube.

The whole thing is 3:33 minutes. The song is called "Stand," I think.

He’s a little down because nobody’s looked at it but me, so if you’re into either Kung Fu Panda or vids (or just encouraging a starting vidder), please go take a look.

Crossposts: http://therck.livejournal.com/1045278.html

Cordelia slept in her own bed last night. She’s not up yet, though, so I’m a little worried that she’ll have trouble getting out of bed even though she practiced a couple of times yesterday. She did get to do a little bit with the laser tag party. They apparently set her up as a sniper. Cordelia was able to sit in the front seat of the car which is a big deal, too.

I didn’t have a headache yesterday but do today. I think this is a separate thing from the headache Thursday and Friday because my period seems to be starting up. (Only time will tell if this is real or another occasion where it will go for an hour or two and stop.)

Scott went to a couple of places while Cordelia was at the party to see if he could find a bedside table for me and/or a chair for Cordelia to use at her desk. The current chair is quite large for the space, and Scott is hoping that a chair with a smaller footprint would make banging her knee again less likely. Sadly, he didn’t find anything he thought would work.

Scott’s currently cooking turkey bacon. We’re buying that rather than regular bacon because Cordelia likes chewy bacon rather than crisp. Turkey bacon is pretty much always chewy. It doesn’t taste at all the same, but it’s pretty good as its own thing. Turkey bacon does not work well for making bacon wrapped dates because those need more fat. I had some luck with adding butter when I experimented with using turkey bacon last Christmas, but I think it needed rather more butter than I put in.

Scott has made a Kung Fu Panda vid. I will link to it when he posts it. It’s his first vid ever, and he had a lot of fun making it. He’s been wanting to vid for many years but never got to the point of trying it before. I suspect he’ll end up making more.

Where are the best places to post vids?

Crossposts: http://therck.livejournal.com/1045045.html

I’m throwing out a lot of cassette tapes that I haven’t listened to in at least fifteen years. I could try to convert them to mp3 files, but really, if I haven’t cared about not having access in that long, I don’t care enough to do the work of conversion. (Scott asked me to 'do something' with those tapes because he’s trying to clear space in the basement for a work area so that he won’t have to do everything on the kitchen table. The containers holding the tapes are on a shelf on one side of the laundry room. I’m not convinced that getting rid of them opens up much space, but there’s really no point in keeping them.)

I’ve set aside anything where I’m not sure what’s on the tape, anything that I think is Scott’s, anything that is a compilation of my old 45s or of things taped off the radio (mostly so I can see if I can find those songs elsewhere), and anything labeled 'filk.'

When I was in college, 1985-1989, I went to a number of local conventions with friends, and one or two of them would tape the filksings on hand held recorders and then share the tapes around. We had no idea who the musicians were or what the actual names of the songs were. What I’ve got is copied from the originals with mediocre sound quality and is only the songs I liked enough to keep, but I’m not sure if those recordings exist elsewhere. Some of them are labeled as to which convention they come from, but others aren’t. I wasn’t thinking of anything but how to fit as much as possible onto each cassette.

I’m wondering if there might be someone who would be interested in these tapes, even with the utter lack of documentation. I know there are people who make a study of SF fandom history. I just haven’t been to an SF convention since Cordelia was about two. Scott’s work schedule makes it pretty difficult, and for many years, Cordelia’s sports commitments meant we couldn’t be away from town on a Saturday. We considered going to ConFusion, just for the day, this last weekend, but they weren’t doing day passes, so we’d have had to pay $60 each. That was not going to happen.

I have one local person who I’m going to ask who might have an idea about what to do with the tapes. After that, I’ll be in unknown territory.

I think the sets of drawers that I’ve been using to hold the tapes will have to go in the trash, too. They’re designed to hold cassette tapes and probably can’t be adapted for anything else. More importantly, they’re also starting to fall apart. They were things I bought cheap and not remotely good quality. They won’t fit in the bin this week, but next week, we should have space. Well, they’d fit in the recycling bin, but I have no idea if that sort of plastic is even remotely recyclable.

Crossposts: http://therck.livejournal.com/1027825.html

Yesterday around 3:00, the sleep disorders people called to say they had a last minute opening and could do my sleep study last night. I was the last person on their list of people to call, so they gave me until 5:00 to decide. I didn’t hear from Scott until about 3:50, and we went back and forth about it because Cordelia was planning to have friends over. Going to the sleep study would require Scott driving and the girls being unsupervised for at least forty minutes. They’re all old enough, but a group of kids is sometimes less trustworthy than a single child. Cordelia told me that some of the other girls’ parents leave when movie night is at their houses, so we decided that this was something we could do.

Scott had completely lost track of my request that he schedule a day off after the night I’d been originally scheduled to do the sleep study, so we had no way of guaranteeing that he wouldn’t have to work and leave Cordelia alone for hours. I also thought that just getting the dratted thing out of the way was a good idea.

The opening was at a different facility than the one I’d originally scheduled for, one quite a lot farther away. That didn’t matter so much once I was actually there, but it meant that I really couldn’t reasonably have gotten there (or home again) by cab.

The tech (whose name I’ve already forgotten because I’m terrible that way) got all the wires taped to me by 9:00. I wasn’t actually connected to anything, so I could still walk around. They required that I turn my phone off completely at bedtime because they wanted me to estimate when I slept and didn’t without having any time referents (taking my levothyroxine was an exception because that’s 'medically necessary'), and they tech told me that he’d be waking me at 6:00, so I had some framework.

The bed was too hard, and the pillow was too thick. The pillow was okay when I lay on my side, but with all the wires and such, it was easier to lie on my back, so I mostly didn’t use a pillow under my head at all. I was hurting rather a lot by the time I finished the night because, even with a pillow under my knees, lying on my back on a mattress that firm does nasty things to my lower back.

The tech told me that he got plenty of good information about my sleep so that there wasn’t much chance of needing to come back to redo things. I don’t currently have an appointment to go in to talk about the results, so who knows what will happen with that.

The instructions had not told me that the rooms had shower facilities, so I hadn’t brought shampoo and had to use the stuff they supplied. The bottle said 'lightly scented,' but it reeks. I’m not sneezing from it, but I don’t like it at all. I may wash my hair again later today (which will make three times in twenty four hours) just to get rid of the smell.

Scott and Cordelia picked me up a little after 7:00, and we went out for breakfast at a place called Nick’s House of Pancakes. When we got home, Scott and I went back to bed. I’m not actually sure what Cordelia did. She said she’d been awake too long to be able to sleep again.

The girls watched Pom Poko last night and were (as expected) both giggly and appalled by the tanuki testicles.

Scott’s sister came down for lunch yesterday. We went to the Syrian place. It’s small, but our timing was such that there were empty tables, so we ate there. I think I spent more on food to take home than I did on my meal. I got baba ghanouj, three pieces of pistachio baklava, and a medium sized container of cauliflower salad.

Scott’s sister asked my advice about whether or not to let her fifteen year old daughter join Tumblr. I am, apparently, from her point of view, an expert on fannish spaces. Our concerns about such things don’t entirely overlap. I think Scott’s sister is primarily concerned about internet predators of the sexual sort and, possibly, a bit about sexually explicit material (my feelings on my niece and sexually explicit material are that she’s fifteen and has been in fannish spaces for three or four years now. If she hasn’t seen porn, it’s because she’s not interested). I’m more concerned about flame wars and people treating each other horribly. I had to explain the term 'doxxing' to her and why it was a concern.

Our niece is, from what her mother said, big into Sherlock fandom right now, and that made me really hesitate about Tumblr for her because everything I’ve heard says that Sherlock fandom on Tumblr is a cesspit. Scott’s sister mentioned that her daughter ships (not using that word because Scott’s sister hadn’t heard it previously) John and Sherlock. I know there are good people in the fandom, even in the fandom on Tumblr, but I worry about our niece either getting bullied or ending up as part of one of the groups doing the terrible things.

Scott’s sister told me that she and her sister-in-law were going to one of the protests today. She offered to take me along, but I knew that I really couldn’t manage it. I can’t walk far or stand for very long, and my ability to deal with the cold weather is iffy. She was completely boggled when I told her some of the suggested precautions for protesters. I think the idea that she could be arrested had never occurred to her. She also mentioned trying to get her daughter to go but that her daughter thought it was too boring, too much a 'parent thing.'

I am planning to sign up for the Disability March which is a virtual protest for folks who can’t physically/emotionally manage an in person protest. I haven’t done it yet because, when I first looked at the website, they were asking for a photo. I’m hesitant to provide one, partly because I have no idea how to do it and partly because I’m not quite ready to put my photo online. They said it could be a photo of only part of one’s body (not face, in other words) or of something symbolic. I think that part of the desire for photos is to show that the participants are real people rather than a gazillion socks, but…

At this point, though, the site says that, due to the volume of response, they’re not going to deal with photos that aren’t easy to process and will just post those entries without a photo.

Our nephew is on the last steps of his Eagle Scout. What’s left is an assessment from a leader who is familiar with him, his history, and all the stuff he’s done to meet the requirements. That has been a sticking point because the troop he had been with dissolved over the summer. He joined a new troop because the leader promised to help, and then the leader said our nephew needed to do all of the requirements again because the troop leader hadn’t personally seen him doing them. At this point, he’s working with yet a third troop because the leader of his former troop is a volunteer there. The leader of that troop said he’d be happy to take the word of the former troop leader as to what our nephew has done, so we’re all hoping this is largely a formality. It has to be settled before his birthday in early March, and he’s worked hard for this.

Crossposts: http://therck.livejournal.com/1025600.html

I’m listening to a podcast at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books right now that’s talking about Muslim romance on Wattpad. The focus of the discussion is original fic, but the person from Wattpad dropped an offhand mention of the fact that people on Wattpad freely fic anything that’s posted there, WIP or completed fic, original or fanfic. That struck me as a huge cultural difference between Wattpad and the fic venues I’m more used to. The discussion on the podcast is focused heavily original fiction, and the person from Wattpad keeps mentioning the popularity of the site outside of the US (I’m not clear about non-English language stuff being a focus or not).

I’m tempted to sign up for another fic exchange or challenge, but I worry that I’ll have the same problems with that that I’ve been having with my current story. I could sign up as a potential pinch hitter for the Narnia Fic Exchange, but I don’t write quickly most of the time, so I’m a very poor prospect for a pinch hitter. I’m pretty sure that, if I signed up, I wouldn’t end up writing anything.

I’m also looking at Iddy Iddy Bang Bang. The minimum for that is 5000 words. I’m just worried that I’ll start something and have it balloon to the point that I can’t possibly finish it. Most stories that I start on my own do that. I’ve got fifty five stories on my AO3 profile, and only eight of them of them are both complete and things I wrote without a prompt and/or some form of structured exchange/challenge.

I’m finding myself looking at my various long WIP and wanting to share them with people, but I keep stomping on that because I can’t actually promise that I’ll ever finish them. I want to, but I lose focus and wander off for months or even years before I come back. Right now, I do generally come back, but I don’t think I want to ask people to wait. Also, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to start posting another long WIP until I finished Rheotaxis, and I very much haven’t done that. It’s been two or three years since I posted another chapter of that, so I have no idea what will happen with it.

I’ve been watching people doing the Fandom Snowflake Challenge (

snowflake_challenge) with interest. I keep thinking about trying it, but I haven’t been able to find the energy to start. Usually, I find that sort of meme easy, but mostly, when I think about this one, my mind goes blank. I did, however, spend a while yesterday trying to figure out what makes me fannish about a canon. Part of that was trying to figure out what I’m actually fannish about.

Part of that is that I don’t actually have a solid definition of 'fannish.' Is it things I write? Things I read? Things I rewatch/reread often? Things I think about a lot and want to bend into different shapes to see what happens? Actually, now that I think of it, I suspect that that last is the biggest factor. It doesn’t dictate what I love and/or enjoy, but it does dictate what I put on the list below. There are a lot of things I adore and would love to discuss and/or write but usually don’t, and a lot of things I don’t adore but happily write and discuss anyway.

The five fandoms that I’m sure go on that list of yes!-this fandoms are Weiss Kreuz, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Chronicles of Amber, The Pretender, and, oddly, Sky High (which is the only one on the list that I’ve never written). I think they’re not all on the list for the same reasons, though.

Harry Potter and Rurouni Kenshin are on a related list in as much as each has given me one ginormous fic idea that I’ve been chipping away at for years. I don’t feel strongly drawn to write other fics in those fandoms. That’s not to say that I couldn’t or won’t. I very easily could. I just don’t feel like I have to if that makes sense.

InuYasha, Ranma 1/2, Labyrinth, and Phineas and Ferb fall into a third category— They’re things I could get very into in terms of digging stories out of them but that I haven’t actually fallen into for one reason or another. I don’t have specific ideas for any of them or headcanons or anything similar just a general feeling that something there could work.

There are two or three hundred other canons that I’d be perfectly happy writing, given a prompt and time and access to canon for review. My problem for Yuletide and Not Prime Time and such, in terms of offers, is always narrowing things down to less than thirty options. There are probably even more fandoms in which I’m willing to read when I’m in the mood for fic or when a recommendation sounds like exactly my sort of thing.

I don’t need to love something to have a blast writing it or discussing it or reading it. The prompts/story ideas I have saved in a locked entry include things for a number of fandoms not on this list. I have no idea if I’ll get to any of them, but I was interested enough to keep them for later.