Rodent Household

RIP Mira Furlan :( (This post made me tear up.)

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Catching up on Snowflake:

Challenge #11: In your own space, create a fanwork.

Well, I'd mentioned Hardinge quote icons a couple of days ago as something I wanted to see, and decided to see if I could make a few. Four from Cuckoo Song, one from A Skinfull of Shadows, and three non-fannish hamster icons I've been meaning to make for myself:

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Challenge #12: In your own space, resurrect an old meme. Have fun with it! Which is the goofiest meme you can think of? Put on your party hat and be silly!!

Ooh, this is a fun one! I did a bunch of the quizzes linked in the post, and here are a few where the ( results )

I dug around in my "quiz" tag, but the only one I found that still appeared to be functional and was not fandom specific was the Which Philosopher Are You? (I got Aristotle in 2012)

But actually I've always preferred the Q&A meme format to quizzes, and jedi_of_urth and I were just talking about those (since both of us went with a meme-based take on the Creat a Challenge challenge), so I'm also going to do the new-to-me meme that I took away from that discussion:

Name me a fandom and I’ll tell you:

Character I love but everyone else hates
Character I hate that everyone else loves
Ship I love that no one else does
Ship I hate that most people love
Episode/plot/moment I love though everyone else hates
Episode/plot/moment I hate that everyone else loves
The thing that bothers me the most but doesn’t seem to bother anyone else
Commonly accepted fanon I don’t understand
Canon or fanon I choose to disregard
Three pieces of headcanon (that make sense to me no matter what anyone says)

For reference, fandoms of note: ASOIAF, AtLA/Korra, Babylon 5, Blake's 7, Buffy (through s6), Chronicles of Amber, Community, Curseworkers, Demon's Lexicon, Discworld, Dragaera/Vlad Taltos, Dresden Files, Farscape (2.5 seasons), Firefly, The Good Place, Harry Potter, Killjoys (first two seasons), Kingkiller Chronicles, Kushiel's Legacy, Lord of the Rings, Machineries of Empire, MCU, Rivers of London, Saga, Sherlock BBC (through s3), Temeraire, Vorkosigan Saga, Warchild, White Collar (through s4), and anything else you know I'm into.

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Watched episode 3 of WandaVision, and I don't know that I have a lot new to say, just more of the same. ( Spoilers! )

OK, time to catch up on Snowflake for the final time! (it appears that it's not so much the frequency of Snowflake posts that determine when I get around to making mine, as much as the. uh, pressure of posts I'm behind on, I suppose? Like the fact that the challenge posts are being made every other day this year hasn't actually kept me more in sync, it just means I can go twice as long between posting my catch-up posts :P

Challenge #12: Commit an Act of Kindness (or two or three ♥).

I'm gonna say I did this via Dragon Cave, where I've been catching and hatching purple dragons as gifts for someone I've been trading with (I found someone as committed to purebred blusang lineages as I am, LOL) who went through a couple of refusals with new pairs due to not not having enough purples. And more recently I bred a holiday mate for another person. Since I consider DragCave at least fandom-adjacent, I think this totally counts.


Challenge 13: In your own space, create a fanwork.

One of the challenges proposed for day 15, I forget whose, but I thought it was lovely, was to encourage people to make fanworks for their Fandoms of One. Well, I'd already been contemplating this, because sysann has been reading the Vlad Taltos books since my pimp post earlier in the month, so I've had reason to scroll back over my write-ups and remind myself just how wonderfully quotable these books are. And I had said, back on day 6, that I wished there would be more text icons in general. So, while I'm still not great at text icons, I figured I'd mess around with some.

So, here we go, the most self-indulgent icons ever, quite possibly (which is saying quite a bit, considering what kind of icons I usually make):

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( a few more )

Challenge #14: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (Or a few!) What makes it particularly appealing for you? What do you like in fanworks featuring that trope?

Because I've now done Snowflake a bunch of times, this challenge becomes harder and harder, because, like, I can discover new fandoms (or have a resurgence of feels for older ones) and come across new things to rec, but my love of tropes tends to stay fairly constant, and I feel like I've covered most of them and don't feel like repeating myself.

(Past challenge answers for reference: 2015 (family and high school/Hogwarts AUs), 2016 (animal companions, Proud Warrior Race Guy, competence kink, Tam Lin motif, chibis), 2017 (Action Girl/Non-Action Guy), 2018 (fantastic science/sufficiently analyzed magic, fannish fusions))

For this year, I'm going to talk about a pretty common trope that has been on my mind since a discussion with tabacoychanel about why we ship certain ships (via Steve/Tony vs Steve/Bucky, but with general ship dynamic implications) and two things that are Oddly Specific Tropes/Kinks for me that I kin of accidentally discovered, because you wouldn't think there would be a lot of canons in which such Oddly Specific things would come up, and yet. ( Vitriolic Best Buds; possessed by the soul of a dead general and demon threesome )

If anybody has recs for books (or possibly other things) with my Oddly Specific favorite tropes, please toss them my way!


Challenge #15: In your own space, create your own challenge.

I'm really enjoying our newly kicked off Cyteen sync read, which is making it both easier and a lot more exciting to make progress on a very dense book I've wanted to read for a while, so I'm going to make my challenge around that:

Host or participate in a sync read (or sync-watch, or sync-listen, depending on your medium of choice).

I've done a bunch of sync reads and "reading pacts" over the years, in several different formats, and it's always been a lot of fun, and helped me embark on and stick with some books that I might have not made it to/through otherwise, including Catch-22 (which I'd started and wandered away from multiple times before), Dickens, and James Joyce's Ulysses (which I'd wanted to read for well over a decade but had been too chicken to do on my own). I also had much more fun squeeing or ranting or going "OMG!!!" at less lofty books, just because it's more fun to be reading the same thing as your friends and have someone to share all your thoughts with.

( Some practical considerations )

So, that's my challenge for Snowflake this year: go forth and sync read :D

And to finish off Snowflake, naturally, the friending meme!



(I've been friending Snowflake people throughout January anyway -- *waves* -- but looking forward to finding more friends there :D)

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Apparently 2020 is just going to be the year of chaos reading... XD So I started two sync reads (The Power with ambyr and Cyteen with tabacoychanel), and instead read most of A Terrible Country (which tabacoychanel had recommended) and then dove into Sapkowski's The Last Wish (in Russian) under the influence of the Witcher show and ikel89 quoting and forwarding seriouslywhy's choice quote bits in Russian. I did finish The Power first, ultimately, but it was a near thing XD

4. Naomi Alderman, The Power -- this was a sync read with ambyr (and her RL bookclub), which was a really nice thing, because this is the kind of book that it's good to be able to discuss with someone. I'm also glad that we ended up doing this as a sync read where we only talked about it after we were done with the whole thing, because my thoughts on the book changed a lot from beginning to end. I'm still, overall, quite impressed with it and happy to have read it. But I started out really liking it, and around the middle was having a lot less fun with it, and then, after the twist reveal, was left more frustrated than satisfied. But, like, on average, I still think this is a really fascinating book, that does a lot of very interesting things very impressively. But I'm left with the sense that I might've liked it more if it had attempted fewer impressive things, as they sort of undermined each other for me. More about that, ( with spoilers )

5. Andrzej Sapkowski, Poslednee zhelanie [The Last Wish] (Witcher 1) -- This was just what I was craving as The Witcher TV show withdrawal. It covered most of the same stories as the show (and now I've gotten to all of the stories the show covered, I think, as I'd previously read Blood of Elves and Sword of Destiny, so it was neat to note the differences and changes -- and also/especially to enjoy the Russian prose, which is so funny and so... juicy, in a way I don't think English could ever really match. ( Individual stories, with spoilers for book and show )

Given how much fun I had with this, I should go back and finish Time of Contempt, where I've been stuck at like 30% for several years.

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Via monkiainen: Deadpool Disney parody: Gaston song (there is also a longer Disney parody including several songs, but some of these worked better for me than others). Note: content warnings are definitely Deadpool-level and not Disney level!

Welcome new friends from snowflake_challenge friending meme and new (and old, LOL!) friends from fandom_stocking!

I have almost 3 weeks worth of RL stuff to catch up on, which should follow at some point (also the last couple of days of end-of-year memes, and photos from the summer... XP), but for now let me catch up on fannish / LJ things!

1) I keep forgetting to post about this, but, I got eglantiere's holiday card in the mail, with fun-to-puzzle-out Bulgarian holiday greetings (and also, to my great relief, she got my Santa package, via the auspices of ikel89's Secret Santa Exchange, which I'd been ready to write off as lost at customs), and ambyr's New Year card with cat and travel photos, and krait's holiday card containing amazingly smelling tea in all kinds of intriguing flavors! So I've been very pleased with the mail's behavior.(Now I just need to figure out the boses to get my other packages sent... I boxed (dyswidt) myself into some weird shapes...)

2) Speaking of goodies, fandom_stocking went live! (on time! it was amazing, but did mean that I didn't get a chance to finish up a few other things I'd wanted to do for folks). My stocking is full of wonderful things! Icons of sunflowers and rodents and favorite books and characters, picspam and jigsaw puzzles, and three fics in three different fandoms, all of them great :D

- The Great Wahoonie by rain_sleet_snow (Discworld, PG, Esme Weatherwax/Mustrum Ridcully) --set during their youth, and really wonderful.

- Of Tea and Failure by enemytosleep (AtLA, gen, Toph, Sokka, 500 words) -- cute and bantery ficlet set in the Jasmine Dragon post-canon.

- Ulishenathaän by kaffy_r (The Goblin Emperor, gen, Maia-centric, 3.4k) -- a lovely post-canon fic in which a portrait of Maia's mother is found in the palace, with neat original additions to the worldbuilding and true-to-canon depth and kindness.

Also, not quite a F_S gift but it did start out as one, so I should mention it here: Pictures of You by sysann (Rivers of London, Peter/Nightingale, teen, 1.5k) -- in which Peter discovers an old-timey (and slightly morbid) hobby of Nightingale's; very sweet, with a neatly inventive headcanon addition which suits the story perfectly.

Meanwhile, I didn't write anything for fandom_stocking this time (not every year can be a trig poetry year XP), but I did share some critter/nature photos and recs and made some icons (a few of which I'm even decently pleased with): ( icon dump )

3) I completely missed it in all my most recent posts, but my 15-year LJ-versary was on January 4. What reminded me, actually, was reading the fandom meta discussion by tozka and how DW today is different from LJ 15 years ago by muccamukk, and seeing names I haven't seen in about a decade, and icons from the time of LJ's heyday.

4) This is a nice segue into the last two days of the Snowflake Challenge (I'd been unusually timely in posting with only a few days' delay if at all, and then last week happened and was crazy at work, and I fell way behind. ( Days 14-15: future of fandom, what I got out of Snowflake )

5) To continue on from the Day 14 ramble, one thing that will always be a part of fandom for me because of my LJ roots is icons. Like, there's a rite of passage with a new fandom for me when it's gotten serious enough that I need an icon for it, and holding on to icons for old fandoms is a way of implying that those fandoms are still important to me. I first got my paid LJ account so I could have icons, and finally sprung for a paid DW mostly fr the same reason -- and having (most of) my icons with me finally makes DW feel more like home. (And next year, I'm getting a premium account; I certainly don't need 250 icons, and I don't fully use the ones I have on LJ, but but I'm finding it confusing to keep track of which ones I have where.

So I never can resist an icon meme, and here's the one going around:

1. Comment to this entry saying 'Ooo Shiney!' and I will pick 3 of your icons.
2. Make an entry in your own journal (or just reply if you prefer) and talk about the icons I picked!

( Six icons, because I did it twice :) )

fandom_stocking went live last night (which was earlier than I'd resigned myself to) and I ended up staying up past 1 a.m. frolicking amidst my hoard, because I don't know what karmic brownie points I'd earned to receive such a bounty, but it was my best stocking yet! :D

I got awesome anteater, Azula, Discworld quotes, Harry Potter, and Killjoys icons (thanks to leesa_perrie, emmatheslayer, papryka, sarajayechan, and thisbluespirit)

And then I got FOUR full-length fics somehow O.o, in four different fandoms (three of them Yuletide-sized), each doing a different thing I enjoy about fic, all of them wonderful! I have no idea how this even happens, other than people are awesome, and fandom_stocking is awesome, and also I'm incredibly lucky, I guess? :DDD

- Wrapped Around Her Finger by Taste_of_Suburbia/immolate_the_silence, Firefly, 1.7k, teen, Jayne/Kaylee pining with background Simon/Kaylee, a really sweet 'missing moment' kind of fic, with really fun character voices.

- A Matter of Trust by cordeliadelayne, Rivers of London, 2.3k, Peter, Nightingale, Varvara ensemble fic which includes an improbable number of my favorite things about the series, including but not limited to Varvara's crush on Nightingale, Nightingale being a total badass, Peter and Nightingale taking care of each other in various ways, and a perfect last line that made me laugh.

- Win-Win Situation by the_vorkosigan (who was a person whose stocking I could do nothing to fill, but whom I instantly wanted to be friends with as soon as I read their list of likes and favorite fandoms...), Chronicles of Amber, 2.5k, E-rated Luke/Merlin fic set pre-canon to the Second Chronicles and so uncannily full of my favorite things that I'm starting to suspect the author of telepathic abilities, plus a great Zelaznian style. (And did I mention hot?)

- Song from the Western Marshes by kaffy_r, The Goblin Emperor, 3k, post-canon gen, in which Csevet goes to Edonomee to (to quote from the summary) "help close an unhappy chapter of the emperor's life and, perhaps, open a better one for one of those left behind" -- a lovely, quiet fic which feels like a perfect extension of canon. Maia doesn't actually appear real-time, but his particular brand of thoughtful, empathetic kindness pervades everything about it, and there are lots of great little details that make everything and everyone feel very real.

(And I also got some enticing book recs, cute rodent picspam, and of course lovely holiday wishes, too, which are always welcome.)

In the face of such generosity, I actually feel kind of bad for what I was able to do on the stocking-stuffing end, which was a bunch of recs and cute animal pictures (culled from our trips and L's penguin-sitting), which fortunately sound to have been well-received -- I guess you can't go wrong with penguin chicks and otters -- and just a few graphics (people don't really have much need for icons anymore, and whatever severely limited skills I ever had have gotten really rusty; but what I did make is under the cut below), and only one "serious" fill.

That fill is a Machineries of Empire poem for extrapenguin: Sinusoidal Elegy (Kel Aurel, the servitor sin x2, spoilers for Raven Stratagem), also reproduced below:

( Sinusoidal Elegy )

( Extended blathering under a double cut )

This is why I was asking you guys for HTML help about a month back, for making the "leafs on either side of a stem" look :) So thanks again to jaelle_n_gilla and hebethen for providing me with the code :)

( Fandom Stocking graphics )

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OK, that proved to be a far longer digression than I'd expected. Snowflake time!

Day 9: In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

The last year or two, I did this day as my "stuff I made the past year", but the above represents most of that, actually, so there would be no point. So this year, let me do these instead as "fannish poems most underappreciated by the universe", because I definitely don't have enough stuff to do a full-blown writing meme, but that question is always the most interesting one to me. So:

1) Adron, Five Hundred Years After (Dragaera/Khaavren Romances) -- a Dragaeran sonnet, which is totally something I made up, but it has 17 lines and is sonnet-y in form, more or less. ( Blathering )

2) Varvara Sidorovna's Chastushki (Rivers of London) --well, chastushki, From Varvara's POV. ( Blathering )

3) Song for a Royal Wedding (ASOIAF, Olenna Tyrell POV) -- ( Blathering )

Catching up on Snowflake Challenge, days 7-13:

Day 7: In your own space, create a fanwork. Make a drabble, a ficlet, a podfic, or an icon, art or meta or a rec list. Arts and crafts. Draft a critical essay about a particular media. Put together a picspam or a fanmix. Write a review of a Broadway show, a movie, a concert, a poetry reading, a museum trip, a you-should-be-listening-to-this-band essay. Compose some limericks, haikus, free-form poetry, 5-word stories. Document a particular bit of real person canon. Take some pictures. Draw a stick-figure comic. Create something.

I did this, a few days late, by dropping a couple of icons into various fandom_stockings. But reveals are delayed, so I can't share them yet. But I did also make ( a couple of Hanging Tree icons )

Day 8: In your own space, make a list of at least 3 things that you like about yourself

Meh. I don't like this challenge, but not because I find it difficult to come up with good things to say/things I like about myself, but because I find it kind of boring (other people saying good things about me = not boring at all :D). Anyway, I thought about doing a fannish 3 things I like about me, but I just ended up recreating last year's list (my consistency is another thing I like about myself! XP) But let me try to come up with ( 3 different fannish things )

Day 9: Send feedback to two fannish people — they can be anyone you want: a writer who’s made you happy, a moderator of your favorite exchange (not us!), a fanartist you avidly follow… There are so many possibilities. Just let someone know you appreciate their work.

I've been doing this all along, since I'm still reading through Yuletide, and also through recs people are posting for Snowflake :) So, done.


Day 10: In your own space, share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme. (More than one is okay, too.) Tell us about it, tell us why you love it, give us some examples and recs.

I'm honestly hard-pressed to come up with something in addition to the lists from previous years: 2015 (Family and high school/Hogwarts AUs) and 2016 (animal companions, Proud Warrior Race Guy, competene kink, Tam Lin retellings, and chibis)

But let's go with another favorite, brought to you by me continuing to watch Killjoys: Action Girl / Non-Action Guy duos, whether we're talking romantic relationship (Zoe and Wash, shipping Toph/Sokka) or friendship (Dutch and Johnny, which made me think of it in the first place, or the relationship between Xander and Buffy). I like Action Girl characters in general, and I like this set of dynamics. It is proooobably not coincidental that in a lot of my friendships with guys, as well as my marriage, I'm more stereotypically 'masculine', personality-wise, than the guys... :P


Day 11: In your own space, talk about a creator. Show us why you think they are amazing.

This is always a tough question for me, because I've met so many amazing fan authors/artists/etc through fandom, and how do I pick just one to talk about? But I was looking through past recs to see who I haven't talked about recently, and decided to make this year's answer guad. ( About Isa's awesomeness )

Day 12: In your own space, post a rec for fannish spaces and resources - comms, challenges, twitters, tumblrs, etc. Tell us about where you hang out.

I was wracking my brains for something that I haven't used yet, and then realized there is actually a place I habitually rec and did so just a couple of days ago to cyanshadow: The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5. ( Vintage website goodness )

Day 13: In your own space, write about a moment in fandom that meant a lot to you.

( Now this question I like! )

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And I finally got around to cleaning up my Things learned ( in December )

Oh my god, so ikel89 CHALLENGED me to write a Gansey poem, throwing out the following ideas: "I want a Gansey poem :D :D :D Make it as ironic as you want: Gansey writing a sonnet to Dead Welsh King boyfriend, or idk, a set of haikus where all cast members sing odes to Gansey (I'm especially looking forward to Ronans XD), or anything, really."

Of course this turned into ( everybody writing poems about Gansey )

Also, for such poetic insight, I made K a Kavinsky icon:



Which she further Kavinskified to this:



I don't even know who I am anymore...

So it turned out that what I really, really needed to relax was something at once creative and mechanical, like making icons. Which I haven't done in ages, and I've been feeling an acute lack of Rivers of London icons in my life, so.

(One of these days I may actually learn something about aesthetics, but that day is not today...)

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( About 20 icons and some alts under here )

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And a meme, which tend to function along the same lines (transported from Tumblr, as per the current best practices):

Give me two characters who are or could be friends [crossovers, as ever, welcome!] and I will answer:

1.What’s it like when they eat together?
2.What’s it like when they cuddle?
3.How much do they show physical affection in public? in private?
4.Would they enjoy being roommates/housemates?
5.Have they ever shared a bed?
6.Do they share clothes?
7.If they’re not roommates/housemates, do they have each other’s keys?
8.Do they knock when visiting?
9.Who usually ends up on which side of hurt/comfort?
10.Do they encourage any of each other’s bad habits?
11.Do they use nicknames/endearments?
12.Do they compliment one another often?
13.What sort of presents do they get each other?
14.What happens when they disagree?
15.If they got lost together, would they enjoy it? Who would be more likely to be carrying a map?
16.If they went on a trip together, who would pack more stuff?
17.Do they know/get along with each other’s families?
18.If one were tired and couldn’t get to sleep, how would the other help?
19.If one were in pain, would the other know the best routine to make them feel better?
20.If one were grouchy or feeling down, how would the other cheer them up?

So, the amazing sephystabbity marshalled thetyrells into an EPIC COLLABORATION OF EPIC, which is now posted on valyrian_forged, starting here and continuing in two more glorious posts. It is deserving of the name! You have to be a member of westerosorting to see the awesome art and read the fabulous fic and steal the, uh, irresistible icons and wonderful wallpaper (and if you aren't, you know you want to be! although you're going to have to wait until like May, because we just sorted the last batch of the current game). But I did want to stash the stuff I made for it here:

The collaboration theme was origins of the nine Great Houses, and I had a lot of fun writing limericks about the founders (I know, I need to get a new schtick), and even more fun writing acrostics of the house names. I'm really pleased with how these came out, especially Tyrell (duh), Lannister (which I've been totally reciting in stentorian tones, imagining it's Tywin reading it... >.>), and, weirdly, Stark (which is a house I don't even care for).

( Limericks )

( Acrostics )

And sephystabbity made really cool banners of the acrostics, flattering me greatly! :D

I also, finally, managed to make colorbars I'm fairly pleased with. Not that they are great or anything, but till now my relationship with color bars was akin to Colonel Makepeace's alleged relationship with potted shrimp (...which is not nearly as tawdry as my sentence makes it sound. Moving on! It is Friday and I've had a lot of coffee at breakfast!!)

( House colorbars )

Username: hamsterwoman
House: Tyrell
First time poster? Nope
# of animated or combination of text and image icons: 71 if I counted correctly (2 themed)
# of banners: 1 (the Simpsonized thing)
# of variations of any graphic: 24 if I counted correctly

A couple of icon sets I've been meaning to get around to:
1) and 2) This is from the old jesteros sci-fi sorting post last game, which a conversation with ebonhost reminded me of recently. I'd been meaning to make icons for a while but hadn't gotten around to it (and I'm still really bad at making icons from photos...)
3) Houses through flowers (the less crazy cousin of the veggie world post)
4) Fanart based icons from things I've saved to my "to be iconed" folder over the course of the game

and a Simpsonized Petyr that I keep forgetting to post since Thanksgiving :P

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( all under here )

Icons from the Trick-or-treating in Westeros post. Which somebody should totally feel free to do a better job with than I could, btw!

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( Trick or treat )