Petronia

Well, skipping the introduction for the moment, a word on policy XD - I haven't "granted access" to this journal to anyone, because thus far there are no locked posts and not likely to be in future. If there ever are, this policy will change. (My LJ policy is to friend back everyone who friended me, unless I can't tell if the journal is spam.)

Cheers,

Sabina

And for answering my question. XD; It's very much appreciated. I may or may not write more about my grandfather, at some point; it's hard to say right now. He was an abstract presence for a very long time, but one that loomed large in my story-of-myself. And I'm terribly impeded in 1) diagnosticking Feelings(tm), and 2) revealing them on the Internet. XD; It's easier in real life, actually. I would have said nothing at all, but some people would know eventually regardless, so that wouldn't make much sense. As it is I haven't said anything on Tumblr, or Facebook, or at my job.

What I'm going to do is keep talking about Fandom. XD; Currently that means Middle-Earth Making-Ofs. The AO3/YTide formulation would probably be "LotR RPF" but that's not really correct. I've never been interested in Tolkien-verse fic per se - pre-Fandom fandom, like ACD, and the movies didn't really change that. I ended up reading a whole bunch of RPF at the time, which I also never do, but eventually I figured out that I just... really liked the making-ofs. XDD

Which is a roundabout way of saying I've been watching The Hobbit's production diaries and reading various set reports/blogs and stuff, probably spoilering myself for more than I ought, and they are amazing. And a good source of Martin Freeman's faces, if one doesn't want to deal with the width and breadth of Sherlock fandom all the time. (In fact it's kind of like they were designed for that purpose; one is as good as promised le Cumberbatch derping about in future editions, too.) I'm also rewatching the actual LotR movies; just through Fellowship, so far. I feel like I appreciate Boromir more, and Sam, and giving Arwen a bigger role feels like a better decision now than it did then. But I'm still not sure how Liv Tyler could have a bad American accent in a fictional language. XD;

1) Am I the only one who thought of the fandom usage of "Canadian shack" as kind of like "Viennese coffee"? Like, its origins may have had something to do with Vienna, but everyone knows it's just a coffee with whipped cream on top. And no one expects that every coffee you get in Vienna will automatically come with whipped cream.

2) For the record:

2a) I am from Montreal, where every other middle-class family owns a cottage (in the woods, big enough to hold a family, usually has a deck and somewhere to put a rowboat). A cabin is more like a structure for forestry personnel to take shelter and keep supplies in. Both are conceivably empty and unheated in the winter, or only heated by having to make an actual fire in an actual stove - some people only go up in the summer, so it's not an issue. "Shack" makes me think of a dilapidated cabin, possibly with a tin roof; or "sugar shack", which is a quasi-verb referring to our maple-related food festival that takes place in March-April. Like Oktoberfest, but instead of beer, there's maple syrup on everything.

2b) Paul Gross is a Canadian dude, and Due South was a Canadian show that played constantly in Canada which Canadians fucking LOVED. It was not meant to bamboozle Americans. The jokes are cheesy in-jokes. If you are Canadian and did not know this, you are too young or have been living under a rock.

3) I do not know nearly enough about housing problems up north or aboriginal issues in general, though I know they are bad. Canada fails harder on this issue than pretty much anything else, with the possible exception of the Oil Sands. It would never have occurred to me to associate any of this with Canadian shack fanfics; that's a bit like saying you can't write a story about someone getting shipwrecked on an island and running out of food, because there are real famines happening somewhere in the world.

4) When fandom writes a Canadian shack story and it turns out to actually take place in Canada, I find it hilarious awesome and call all my friends on the telephone. (No not really.)

Well, Porter is having a half-off sale, so trip has been booked. Arriving February 22 in the afternoon, leaving February 27 ditto. Anyone who can and wants to meet up, let me know! :D

1) That was also fanfiction but not Katie Forsythe (the motto of the BBC Sherlock comm). I hope the Whedon Avengers movie is also like this, i.e. a Billy-Crystal-Oscar-skit-esque summation of the entire preceding year in fanfictional thinking.

2) Moffat and Gatiss would like you to know that if you insist on writing ridiculous D/s-verse AU scenarios, you should at least get some Word Of God on who is what.

3) The "canon references" in this one are basically the diggerdydum subject header approach, and I mean this in the nicest way (i.e. I LOLed). I hear you can already get a "geek interpreter" t-shirt.

(...I think I forgot to mention that that Gabaldon book contained toward the end the WORST groaner music pun of all time? Of all time!)

( Cut for more specific HIGHLY SPOILERY meta thoughts on the ending )

1) Nice extended Batman trailer there! Heart-stopping action, incomprehensible plot due to my utter inability to understand a single word out of Tom Hardy's mouth (at least, where I kind of assume his mouth is). This may be a problem in the long run. Also, I guess at some point I should probably watch The Dark Knight, huh.

2) Is it just me, or is this a VERY SHORT special secret ops team? Like, as far as I could tell, Cruise and Pegg and Renner are all genuinely about the same size, which size is VERY SHORT.

3) Relatedly, this is a v. good action movie (we just rewatched Die Hard, it being recently Christmas, hence I'm inclined fondly toward setpieces revolving around the structural components of skyscrapers). So don't take it as a slight on its action-movie calibre when I say that sometimes when I was meant to be thinking "OMG heart-stopping action!" I was thinking more along the lines of, "Does Jeremy Renner do kettlebell exercises or was he born with that posterior view?"

4) In your opinion, Jeremy Renner:

a) does kettlebell exercises
b) was born with that posterior view
c) say what you like about Tom Cruise but dude is no slouch in that dept as well

( spoilers for this movie, and the third in the series )

All the ones I've seen are too long and require too much thinking about points that are not that relevant. XD; So I have made my own.

( TRAVEL )

( WRITING )

( BOOKS )

( MOVIES )

( MUSIC )

( FAMILY AND FRIENDS )

( OTHER LIFE EVENTS )

( SKILLS AND GOALS )

( INTERNET )

( FANDOM )

TIME TO BLOG, WHAT IS THIS EVEN

1) For Yuletide, I received Another Man's Son, which is a what-if story about how Dio met Giorno (it is awesome and chilling and involves Arrrt). YES, LADIES AND GERMS, I HAVE CAUSED MORE JOJO FIC TO EXIST. I really did, because I nominated the fandom. And the writer had some small part in it, naturally. XDD You should all go read and comment, because it is v. good indeed.

2) Feel free to guess my Yuletide story! For, uh, credit? XD A prize yet to be determined? (This applies to anyone who was not at my IRL housewarming party and remarked on my whiteboard scribbles.) I will make the game super-duper-easy: I've talked about the fandom, the post's not fallen off my DW page yet, and the story itself is an Obvious Sabina Story(tm). It was completely written and edited in 36 hours - that also covered two decent nights of sleep, a four-hour work meeting, and several loads of laundry. Yeah, I have no idea.

3) PENGUINSPOILERS ARE NUCLEAR, I am three eps behind and downloading as we speak. Will comment after I'm done, no doubt, unless of course I just flail and repost fanart on Tumblr as I've been doing all along.

Ikuhara could piss me off at the finale (and it won't be beating Utena, anyhow), but I have to say I enjoyed the process of watching an anime week-by-week, actually looking forward to the next episode, and not getting bored halfway and stopping. I think the last time that happened was Monster, literally. Since then, if I've managed to watch an anime TV series entire, it's because I marathoned it (or large stretches of it).

4) A white Christmas! I had grown resigned to us having stolen London's December, so this is extra gratifying (despite having to drive in terrible conditions today).

( Cut for random updates on the state of Sabina in December )

I just wanted to point out that LJ/the old comment structure was not the ideal format for anonymous (kink) memes anyway, even if they started there. IT WAS ALL WORKAROUNDS.

What you really need for an anon kink meme:

* A rolling thread forum/sub-forum structure where each request is a thread, and each response bumps the thread up to the top of the sub-forum
* Working search within all forum/sub-forum/thread
* "Anon" posts that are actually tied to a login on the back end, it's just that the user name isn't displayed on the front end
--so the "anon" can manage their own posts
--possibly for moderator purposes
--one-click "reveal" by thread/story

...Anyone got Ruby skillz and a server, I think I've got some time opening up in, like, February for a rapid prototype? XDD MEANWHILE BACK TO YULETIDE.