a conspiracy of cartographers

Boston is buried under several feet of snow! HAPPY WINTER. (I ... don't mean that too sarcastically, but I'd really love to get my serious snow December and January, not February and probably March.)

Things I am currently feeling fannish about:

+ Highlander, which I've been watching with thewrongkindofpc. We did the Methos watch, as one does, and had lots of messy feelings all over each other; then we made the mistake of watching the '80s movie and realizing how much we actually like Duncan MacLeod too! (Um. In comparison to Connor, and also for himself.) Spiraled into watching the pilot of the show, have now made a horrible pact to actually do a Complete Best Of rather than just a Methos watch.

+ Planeshift, ie our D&D campaign, which as of this last week is over! WE ALL SURVIVED. Last week we had a coronation and a wedding, and then a postmortem to ask Housemate A about plot threads and to tell the epilogues for our own characters. I'm a bit verklempt about the whole thing, and also need to write weird poly futurefic because of course I do.

+ Avatar and Korra! I'm watching Avatar with Amiel, and Korra with Coworker E, which is cool to do concurrently! I also have complicated feelings about the ending of Korra (which can be summarized with "I'm so glad they went there but I wanted TEXT, not word of god, I'd rather have a textual queer kiss with not enough buildup than almost enough buildup with the implication that queer kissing will happen soon"); but what a good good world. Maybe I will end up writing some Korrasami.

+ Uhhh so A and I are watching anime together? Right now we're in the middle of this gorgeously-animated super homoerotic high school swimming anime called Free! and there are apparently 7764 fics for it on the AO3 because the gods love me or at least have a weird sense of humor. Will I actually go down some sort of fic rabbit hole for a ridiculous sports anime? POSSIBLY.

+ Marvel as ever. I am SO BEHIND on my various Thor and Loki comics, oops, although the tumblr scans I keep catching look wonderful. I am all caught up on Agent Carter and am only hearing the echoes of the tumblr wank (where ... people are pulling the "if it's feminist how dare you say it's racist" thing or something?) but idk, all I know is that it's a Marvel show that's better than SHIELD and I ship Peggy/Angie like burning. (And also damn is it white.) I also accidentally outlined a whole post-Thor 2 fic with Amiel yesterday, as one does, and I have no idea who the audience for it is, because it's a Thor/Jane fic that is mostly political thriller and has weird incest overtones that never get resolved. OOPS.

+ The Silmarillion! Amiel and I are doing a readthrough together, assigning ourselves ~50 pages a week, and mostly having lots of Melkor feelings at each other. I'm considering also doing a Lord of the Rings reread alongside it; I like to do occasional rereads, and I think the last one was in 2009, so it's very much time. (And then maybe I will finally write the Frodo/Sam fic that's been struggling to get out since I was ten if only I could figure it out properly.)

Anyway, it's very nice to feel cozily polyfannish right now, but this month I intend to WRITE things about it.

Wow, this October has been SO GOOD to me! What a delightful month, A++ would absolutely Groundhog Day this whole month at least once more. I worked a lot (including learning to close, oh my god I am such a morning person, what a dumb misery closing is) and I was sick for a week solid, but everything was still so good!

Two(?) weekends ago, flitephoto took most of the D&D group up to her grandparents' cabin on a lake in New York! We played board games and ate lots of tasty food and made s'mores around a bonfire (and sang rounds rather than telling ghost stories, at scribe's request and my deep happiness to comply); everyone but me jumped in the lake -- 60F, opposed to the 50F air outside it -- which I was exempted from because I still had a cold, though I did have my feet in the water and laugh at my screaming friends.

Many lovely media things have been happening to me! Housemate A bought Diablo III, which we've been playing as a household and which is SO FUN; I'm getting better at understanding the appeal of pure hitting-things games. I managed to get my hands on Ancillary Sword just after finishing Ancillary Justice, which has spoiled me horribly -- I liked Justice but I LOVED Sword, and now I'm in agonies that I don't already have the next book. In lieu of that I'm reading Kelly Link's Monstrous Affections anthology; I picked it up at a bookstore event last week where I also got to meet Sarah Rees Brennan and say good socially acceptable things instead of just hissing "I SHIP THE RYVES BROTHERS" and running away with my signed books.

I saw Jennifer's Body with Amiel this last weekend; it is SO GOOD if you like a certain type of lady-centric horror movie, and was lovely after also watching Ginger Snaps and Alien Resurrection with them, because what is October if not for horror movies? I think perhaps Carrie is next! Also, totally taking recommendations for anyone's fav horror films, it can be horror movie time any time of year.

On actual Halloween I have several Halloween parties to go to, and then I am doing NaNo! Oh god. I skipped out on Yuletide this year, though I'm still on the pinch hit list and can do stocking stuffers if I want; but it's nice to only have one writing pressure. Anyway NaNo starts on Saturday! I'm signed up at the official site this year (under Aria Woods), mostly to have a handy place to keep track of word count, but if any of y'all are doing NaNo I'd be happy to befriend you over there! November is gonna be fun :)

Despite it now being May, Massachusetts remains full of dismal grey rain. I really like this weather, within reason, but dammit, I'm supposed to be uncomfortably warm and slightly dazzled by sunlight right now, not feeling like a sad hibernating beastie. Because the weather won't get with the program, I think it's time for to list some things that are making me happy. (It may also be time for me to make a habit of this, maybe in a weekly way, to be good to myself.)

+ My job is really great! I like all my coworkers (even the slightly unfortunate seriously cishet white boy one, in large part because when all else fails we can talk about Lord of the Rings), and I like many of our regulars, and it's low-stress and happymaking and it may not be A Career but it makes some money and I actually like it, so I think on balance it's still a win.

+ filiabelalis is still the best sweetie, news at 11. My housemates and in fact all my local friends are really great; weekly D&D is the best (and made us all die a little laughing last week when a plot twist was revealed and songofsongs just thrashed around on the floor going "NOOOO" for five minutes straight); scribe is probably going to drag me to a number of womens' soccer games this season; my social life is just really good and fulfilling without being too overwhelming.

+ Avocados are in season! I mean, they're around all year but they're nice and fresh right now, and yes, they get their own bullet point, avocados are the food of the gods.

+ Captain America fandom is being wonderful! I'm going through fics quite slowly -- usually only about one a day, so tabs are definitely accumulating faster than I'm closing them. My latest favorite fic is your favorite ghost by augustbird; it's Steve/Bucky, and the official summary is It's harder than Steve ever expected to bring Bucky home, but it got me where I lived at the line The worst part of having Bucky back is that he doesn't.

+ AGENTS OF SHIELD CONTINUES TO BE BAFFLINGLY GOOD?? ( Spoilers just love Skye so muuuuch. )

+ WISCON IS SO SOON! I hope this year I will be enough out of my dazed sad fog to do con properly, but even if I'm not as extroverted as I'd like, it's still my favorite time of year, and I'm looking forward so much to seeing those of you who are going <333

*taps* Is this thing on? Yes? Good.

Fandom participation is a weird thing for me right now, because at the moment my main fandom is ... the D&D campaign that Housemate A is running? I hear that often D&D campaigns are kind of cracky and fragmented and, while lots of fun, not full of really coherent narrative or character arcs; but we're a group consisting entirely of people who are really fannish and care a lot about character relationships and plot threads and so on, so we've been doing it ... very fannish RPG style, I guess. Shipping things and finding songs to give each other feels! I keep on making vids in my head! THERE IS NO FOOTAGE. But it's a lot of what my brain has been up to.

I've also been watching Leverage for the first time; we're two episodes from the series finale now, and I don't want it to ennnnd, but I do want every single Hardison/Parker/Eliot and/or perfect found family team fic; totally taking recs! Also probably going to comb through the AO3 with great enthusiasm. Other than that I'm not watching much telly; Sleepy Hollow is between seasons, I've sort of peaced out of both Elementary and White Collar until I can watch the whole season in a go, I'm rewatching all of Community by showing it to a friend, and I can't quite bring myself to keep going because Troy, and ... well, okay, I have been watching SHIELD.

Seriously, of all the shows, SHIELD is the one I'm keeping up with. I don't even fucking know either, but I have a lot of THOUGHTS. ( Yelling about SHIELD; some positive stuff, but mostly wailing about how the show really has to fucking decide whether its main characters are the good guys or not. )

Okay, so perhaps besides the D&D campaign, Marvel is still my current fandom. Oh, and I've been reading the Agent of Asgard comics! They are SUCH tumblr fodder, but I'm really okay with that; it's kind of fun to feel squarely within the target demographic. Loki writes slashfic! Loki is always herself! Loki makes bizarre One Direction jokes! Hell yes I'm paying $3 every couple of weeks for this.

Relatedly, does anyone know if the Thor 2 deleted scenes & assorted other whatever special features are anywhere to be found? Amazon seems to have DVDs and Blu Rays and all that good stuff, but none of them list any actual special features! C'mon, Marvel, I'm trying really hard to give you money, just give me something in addition to the movie in exchange! I'll probably just keep compulsively checking amazon, but this is a little silly.

I have been watching some television! Specifically I have been watching SHIELD, Person of Interest, and Elementary.

( SHIELD! Speculation and disgruntlement. )

( Person of Interest! Cheerful but not deep. )

( Elementary! Shruggy but willing. )

Besides watching television, I'm also in the middle of an excitingly busy couple of weeks. Last Tuesday was the Vienna Teng concert; I went with friends and met up with more friends and started crying nearly right out of the gate when she played Recessional as the very second song. Mostly she did the new album -- quite possibly everything off the new album except Never Look Away, which is a bit of a shame as it's my second-favorite from that one -- and the most gorgeous rendition of Gravity ever. I just. I can't express how much I love Vienna Teng.

(And then Housemate A, who couldn't concert-go with us because she has a work conference this week in Connecticut, sent us an increasingly hilarious series of texts which read "So my friend just informed me that Vienna Teng is playing at the casino I'm in tonight" followed by "Missed Vienna Teng's concert twice but I did get to play blackjack with her ^^" so I think someone is in for some serious excited interrogation when she gets home tomorrow.)

This next week I have a county fair tomorrow (COUNTY FAIR, I haven't gone to one of those since I was in my early teens, yaaay) and Night Vale in NYC Thursday night and then a Friday ticket to ComicCon, so adventures await! Amidst all this I am also trying to finish the damn Avengers fic (72k and counting; I have resigned myself to the fact that it's going to hit and surpass 100k, sigh) and having a slow ridiculous breakdown because of the increasing bits of Thor 2 footage. I will get it done! And have work and a social life and all such good things, yes.

A list of things that are currently making me really happy:

+ Housemate A continues phenomenal. She is a degree of tidy that makes me really happy -- we had a cleaning session with blasting music the other day -- and she brought home the most adorable geeky posters from Otakon. She also, of all horrors, bought an Xbox this weekend, as well as Dragon Age: Origins, so ... that's what we've been doing. A is doing a round as a city elf rogue, Polaris as a casteless dwarf rogue, and I have discovered that I have a really bad attention span for video games, so I am [a] a human mage (named Loki because fuck you of course I'm playing as Loki, GONNA BE A BLOOD MAGE JUST TRY TO STOP ME) and [b] a forest elf rogue and nothing else yet but I really also want to play a dwarf warrior maybe? Comparative gameplay!! Curious about how soon I will burn out and wander off, but so far it is a delight.

+ I finished The King of Attolia! I don't know if I feel fannish about the Queen's Thief books? although obviously I'd be happy to be talked into feeling fannish about them. I do know that somewhere in the third book Gen tipped over from "someone I enjoy reading about" to "someone I will clutch metaphorically to me screeching about how great they are" because I just ... am so easy for people who are heartclutchingly good at what they do while not liking themselves nor what they need to do very much, so sdkldsfjdfs. I suppose I should read A Conspiracy of Kings next, but, well, we've been mainlining Hornblower and I keep on having all these Thor/Loki feelings and then wishing astolat had written more fic, so OBVIOUSLY the solution is to reread His Majesty's Dragon. (I tapped out of those books at the beginning of Empire of Ivory last time for reasons of having a Thing about plagues, and specifically not wanting to read about them, but I think I'm going to give it another go.)

+ Work is SO GREAT, especially now that my boss has basically scheduled me opposite shifts as Difficult Coworker (because my boss: also really great). I don't have anything more substantial than that, just, I'm really enjoying my ridiculous life being a barista at an indie bookstore. Also I may have discovered that my ability to make good caffeinated drinks means I've become good at making mixed alcoholic drinks as well, although obviously this bears further investigation.

+ At the end of the month my cousin is getting married! I'm excited to see my family, especially my parents and my grandma, and my cousin's fiance is excellent, and ahhh what am I going to wear, I haven't figured this out at all! My dad told me to spike my hair (and to ... wear a collar? I think he's confusing queers with punks; that or he knows something about my personal life that I have never ever told him) and generally dyke it up, because he is a delightful human sometimes. Eh, I will figure it out.

+ So many delightful things are happening this fall!! Dessa is here in September, and Vienna Teng is here in October, and excellent boss is giving me off those closing/following opening shifts so I can 100% make those concerts. She is also giving me off October 10-12th, which means I can [a] GO TO THE NIGHT VALE LIVE SHOW (oliviacirce: the best fucking wingman ever, with tickets for us both) and [b] go to Friday New York ComicCon if I fancy. Still debating whether it's worth $50, but if you are going to be at NYCC, let me know! Having people to hang out with would greatly up my incentive to go.

+ I ... may have also been given off the close/open of November 7/8th for reasons of midnight Thor 2. HELL YES THIS GETS ITS OWN BULLET POINT. Okay, also in this bullet point I will say that my fic is trucking along nicely and I loooove it. Gonna be done in plenty of time for people to read it before Thor 2 Josses the hell out of it.

This list brought to you by, oh my god, this isn't even a list of things I'm being determinedly cheerful about, this is just genuinely how happy and excited about life I am today. :DDD

Hi, internet! The apartment of Gondor is spending the evening watching Mythbusters, and the combination of my delightful bizarre fannish feelings about this show + wine + an episode about superhero myths = us trying to figure out what the cast's superpowers would be.

Jamie: invulnerability
Adam: kinetic energy (sort of Gambit-style)
Tory: super speed
Kari: something ... cosmic, we did not really work this out but we wanted her to have alien superpowers and fly and stuff! (Ms Marvel style, more or less)
Grant: he has no super powers, but is basically low-budget Iron Man (with bonus Mythbusters narrator playing the part of JARVIS)

OTHER SUGGESTIONS WELCOME, THIS IS TOTALLY A SUPERPOWERED MYTHBUSTERS PARTY! For the ... however many of you care, I do not actually know how many of you care! But it is making the apartment of Gondor very happy.

All the leaves are turning, and it's so cold at night now that I can't go outside without my first few breaths hitching into coughs. (Thank you, very mild asthma, you're my favorite.) I traditionally hate November because 'tis the season of brainbads hitting many of my friends, but -- winter is coming! I love long coats and hot drinks and SNOW, and skeletal branches against the sky that goes a very specific blue this time of year; and I love how I can take long walks without getting overheated, though sometimes warm enough to take off my outer layers, and I love the weird looks bundled-up passersby give my bare arms.

I may finally have a second job that will stop me burning through my savings, but it's at the hovering point between accepting the job offer and my background check going through, so even though I know intellectually that I'll be hired by the end of the week, it seems unreal right now; and I don't have my hours yet, so I can't collapse the actual shape my life will take from the various possibilities. (I did offer to start working anytime after 4 AM, so I could potentially have a workday that gets out a little after noon, and have whole glorious half-days for errands and writing and time with Amiel when they have early days. I know I'll spend the rest of the month hating myself before I adjust.)

I'm also going to have Emma cut off all my hair this weekend -- proper all of it, I'm angling for a pixie cut with a potential for spiking. Why? Because my hair is a fluffball I can never figure out how to do interesting things with; because it always gets in the way when I'm kissing someone; because my default sartorial choices are in the casual-cute-femme range and I'd like to be a bit more visibly queer; because, fuck it, CHANGE THINGS UP, who cares if it's the wrong time of year for a haircut, more cute hats & scarves for me!

This entry actually brought to you by my blind election terror. I voted! absentee in North Carolina! I deeply and sincerely hope it goes blue again this time! The apartment of Gondor is probably going to dig down this evening with booze & blanket forts and check the news on the internet as it rolls in. All recommendations for news sites with streaming video most welcome, by the way.

I am ... spectacularly bad at having an internet presence! I mean, I reblog things on tumblr, but most of the time I'm not generating my own content and I treat it much more as a squee repository than any kind of blog, so in my head it doesn't count. In any case, hello! It is fall! I love this time of year because rather than throwing on a t-shirt and shorts in a desultory fashion and laying around wilting in the heat, I am wandering around in sweeping coats through autumn mists and planning actual outfits with layers and enjoying the turning of the leaves and consuming all the pumpkin products and generally adoring this season. Meanwhile, on the fannish front:

+ Doctor Who! Having now seen all of Amy's arc, I still think they fell down a bit in the middle with season six, but in the end they did right by her and by Rory, and I got a bit teary. I think I'll be tracking down lots of coda fic, and I may eventually compile a recs list, but at the moment, here is the first coda fic my face saw: Detectives, Adventurers and Girls Who Don't Wait Around by lizbee; highly recommended, made me feel much better about this whole Amy-being-gone nonsense.

+ Warehouse 13! Oh my gosh Warehouse 13, this silly SyFy (nooo it still pains me to type that) show that I've been mainlining over the past few weeks. I'm all caught up now, of course just as the half-season finale aired, so everything is naturally terrible and dire to hook you into coming back in April. In any case, Warehouse 13 is for the most part truly lovely; it has canon queers and lots of ladies (who consistently talk about plot things) and I have actual hopes for a canon endgame f/f ship and it's possibly hands-down the best show about found family I have ever seen. Actually this post by thingswithwings talks with more eloquence and enthusiasm about this show than I possibly could. I just love it so.

+ Avengers! Not that ... any new exciting Avengers things have happened (although I am greatly enjoying the steady influx of Thor 2 set pictures) but my stupid fic continues apace; besides all the bits that are written out of order, I have nearly 10,000 chronological words and Thor and Loki have still yet to get the fuck off Asgard, so I've resigned myself to the fact that this fic is going to be a monster. Meanwhile the always-lovely Emma volunteered to make me a Thor sundress, for which we went fabric-shopping yesterday, so for Halloween I'm going to be Thor, with Emma along as my Loki. (Housemate K, meanwhile, is going to attempt to make me a paper-mache helmet. I expect it will look quite stupid but K is in fact a crafts wizard, so we shall see.)

+ Polaris and I are watching Veronica Mars! I haven't watched VMars since college, and I forgot how much I adore it. I ... also forgot how much I ship Veronica/Lilly and any iteration of Veronica/Logan/Weevil, so possibly after this rewatch I will be on the hunt for good fic.

Today, hangouts with Sares! Tonight, contra with Tyler posse! Life is ... pretty good, guys.

sdkdsfk my Fourth of July was amaaazing. Polaris and I made delicious burgers and watched 1776 over cake, singing along with all the songs and mouthing along with the dialogue; in the evening I met up with Emma and Amiel, and we went to see fireworks along the river. It was hands-down the best fireworks show I've ever seen, not only because the finale was quite literally breathtaking, but also because just after the fireworks started there was an absolute deluge of rain, so my glasses smeared the fireworks too bright to see and I laughed until I cried a little.

I'm also going on travel adventures to see thingswithwings and eruthros tomorrow, which I am absurdly excited about, so today's my day of quiet sandwiched in between lovely things.