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Drabbles
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small-fandoms had a Drabbleathon for February, when I'd just finished watching Mr Selfridge and had some fic ideas. So I thought I'd write a few in drabble form and ended up writing ten...
There was a point when I thought I'd cracked the drabbles by writing 100 words in the first draft. Although it made it hard to edit. But then I wrote one that kept being within one or two words every time I ran through it. And another that was 130 words on the first draft, which is unhelpful.
I have a longer fic on the go, but I got distracted by the drabbles. And by seasonsofdrabbles, whose RSS feed started working again, just in time for the winter round. I considered that maybe I didn't need it, given that I'd written some drabbles and therefore got back into writing. But then I enjoyed writing for it, and got two gifts I loved, so what's not to like.
I got two amazing gifts:
lessons learned (200 words) by CeruleanTactician
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Ace McShane, Seventh Doctor
Summary: Ace moves on.
The Viennese Table (700 words) by CommanderBayban
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Sixth Doctor, Evelyn Smythe
Summary: The Doctor’s aversion to carrots stemmed from…
Incidentally, I just discovered the tags to the second one which include cake and carrots and is exactly my tagging strategy.
And then I wrote two Doctor Who drabbles and Star Trek drabbles:
Snow Days (700 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Evelyn Smythe, Sixth Doctor
Summary: Five times the Doctor and Evelyn enjoy the snow and ice.
Letters, Unsent; Argument, Unresolved (600 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: Doctor Who (1963), Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio), Doctor Who (2005)
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Ace McShane, Thirteenth Doctor
Summary: Five letters Ace writes to the Doctor and one she writes to Ace.
It amused me that I got drabbles with the same characters that I wrote for Doctor Who.
A Movie Night Explosion (100 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: Star Trek: Enterprise
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Malcolm Reed, Charles "Trip" Tucker III
Summary: Malcolm and Trip discuss Malcolm's love of explosions in movies.
First Contact: Red (300 words) by paranoidangel
Fandom: Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (TV)
Rating: General Audiences
Characters: Erica Ortegas, Christopher Pike
Summary: The aliens have their own ideas about who should conduct first contact.
What I am reading Wednesday
What I Just Finished Reading
Quantum Leap: Pulitzer by L Elizabeth Storm. The Quantum Leap podcast said they were going to do this book next, so I re-read it. I remembered enough to know it was good, and it was good. It reminded me that everything I know about the Vietnam War I know from Quantum Leap. I could look it up, but I feel like I've got the gist. I think it came up in GCSE history, but I didn't do history because I knew it would be all about wars and that's not the part of history I'm interested in.
If This Gets Out by Sophie Gonzales & Cale Dietrich. This came up on Kobo for 99p and it sounded interesting, so I bought it. It's about a famous boy band and how their lives are restricted by it. It was interesting, but the POV alternated between two of the members and it confused me because there's a lot of things about them that are the same.
What I'm Currently Reading
I've just finished that book, so nothing yet!
What I'm Reading Next
I've just been on a Kobo 99p book buying spree and therefore have another 6 books on there to read. And two library holds. But I really need to read another book I already have, as March is coming up and I've only read two so far and I need to keep up. I want to complain that every time I choose a book a library hold comes in, but then I could just not look at the library ebooks page and find things to read.
Snowflake challenge 14
In your own space, do the Fandom Wrap Challenge. (although I have no idea what 'wrap' means in this context
What were your top 5 fandoms for 2022 based on the amount of time you interacted with them?
1. Doctor Who
2. Star Trek
3. Superman & Lois
4. And then it's down to ones where I might have a read a fic or something.
What were your top 5 fandom spaces (Discord, Twitter, etc.) you experienced fandom in terms of time spent?
1. Dreamwidth
2. AO3
3. Nowhere else
Technically I belong to a load of Discord channels, which I occasionally look at when I'm bored, but whenever there is anything interesting it was generally in the middle of the night anyway.
I occasionally look at Tumblr, but the reblogging makes me think the person I'm reading said something that they actually didn't and I get confused.
Twitter is just for comedians to tell me when they're on TV/radio/tour and to keep up with the tennis news/Grand Slam matches that happen during the night.
Instagram is for rabbit and hamster pictures, with occasional cats, dogs and elephants. I don't understand why people would post pictures of themselves on there when they can be posting pictures of their cats.
What are the top 5 things you did to contribute to fandom in terms of time? Did you write? Comment? Send positive energy into the universe? Create art?
1. Read and commented (with occasional kudosing when I didn't have the energy to comment)
2. Wrote fic
3. Ran an exchange
4. Made sarcastic comments on Twitter (mainly about tennis) that no one who could see them had the slightest bit of interest in.
What were your top 5 most appreciated fandom contributions? (i.e. in terms of likes, kudos, reblogs, comments, etc.)
I have no idea what other people have appreciated. I imagine people like comments more than kudos, but there could well be people who like having their stuff kudosed more than being commented on.
Have a Top 5 List you'd like to share?? By all means!
5 (non-tennis, non-animal-related) fandom things I'm looking forward to this year
1. Strange New Worlds series 2! Picard I am more quietly cautious about because series 1 & 2 were merely alright and the trailer for series 3 makes it look awful. I would say that most trailers do that, but I saw a trailer for Clarkson's Farm series 2 today and that makes it look like he's going to make more of a dick out of himself, which I am now more looking forward to.
2. More Quantum Leap. The quality has been up and down and I'm not 100% sold on the season arc, but I am still excited that it exists and there will be another series of it. And there's then a load of podcast to listen to while I work.
3. The other half of Our Flag Means Death, by the sounds of it. I know I could just watch it all on the iPlayer in a week, but I've recorded a lot of stuff this year and mostly just watched Mr Selfridge. OFMD is one of the few things I am caught up with, and that's mostly because it's only half an hour long.
4. genfreeformexchange. Well, sort of. I particularly wanted to do it this year because I've wanted to do it last year and a few years ago. But judging by the most recent post it may or may not happen this year.
5. unconventionalcourtship. I went looking for some non-fiction books about people marrying into different classes. I didn't find any, but I did find lists of romance fiction. I thought maybe I could use one of them for Unconventional Courtship this year, but then I read two summaries and couldn't take any more. But I do have a Blake's 7 gen summary saved that's so memorable I haven't had to look it up to remember the gist, so perhaps I will break out the DVDs and write that.
Still mostly admin
I still haven't got a lot done this year. There's still a lot of life admin and dancing admin going on.
I currently have new glasses which mean I can't see and my nose hurts (and my head). I am back in my old glasses because life is not supposed to be that hard. But that's still being sorted out. The hospital need to refer me to a different department. Which in reality means the doctor refers me, like it's a fresh referral, so I won't have any more hospital appointments this year. At least on that. I have a referral from last March that maybe I'll get this year? But it's also for a solution that I don't want, so I'm not in a rush for that one.
I'm still watching a lot of Mr Selfridge and not a lot else (I have a lot of other TV to catch up on when I've finished). Amusingly series 4 includes Sacha Dhawan playing a character who might be auditioning for the role of the Master.
I finally found a drama/romance within it that was interesting. It's the boss's son and a shopgirl. So you have this whole employer/employee thing going on and they're different classes and it could have been really interesting. Except then the narrative skips nine years to where they're happily married and she's not really in the story any more. But I wanted to see all the bits where they dealt with their class differences and employment-related problems.
And no one has written any fic about that. Or anything else. (Most of the fic for Mr Selfridge is about Agnes Towler and a man whose name is not Henri Leconte. It starts Henri Lec, but the tennis is on at the moment, so that's where my brain goes.) But people have noted that in real life it was even more interesting because his family never approved and he kept their relationship secret. They only got married when Mr Selfridge buggered off back to America during the war.
Although it's got me starting writing again, after a month off. It's quite freeing that no one other than me will have a clue who/what I'm writing about and probably no one will read it. So I can totally indulge myself with all the history.
Although I am also planning to sign up for seasonsofdrabbles also to help me start writing a bit, and because their RSS feed has started working again.
This year...
I had high hopes of doing things this year, but what I've mostly been doing is admin. Some dancing admin and life admin.
Like when I had two hospital appointments at the same time one in person and one on the phone. The phone one says don't go to the hospital. That at least I got sorted out, but I also have one that was texted, then cancelled by text, then emailed that it was happening. It's also straight after another appointment. The hospital thought that was crazy, but the private healthcare people they've outsourced the admin to don't see the problem. The only thing I can be sure about is that the first appointment is happening. Although I don't know why because it's for a test that was done in the summer and we already established that's got nothing to do with anything...
I also remortgaged, so my interest rates have doubled. Which sounded terrible in the summer, but had I waited until autumn they'd have tripled. But the people I've moved to randomly decided for no reason that my mortgage amount was the amount I owed in the summer, not the amount I owed when it all actually transferred this month. I found this out because they emailed me to say they were giving me free money and had explained it all. If I use that 'free money' to pay off as much as I can over the fixed rate I have, then it won't affect how quickly I can pay off the mortgage. And with interest rates higher I will earn a few pence interest from it sitting in my savings account. But it's still been a lot of extra admin.
And then I broke my glasses. Turns out in the ten years since I last needed glasses the frames have gone up 50% and the lenses 100%. With their buy one get one free offer I got a new pair and a pair of prescription sunglasses for 'only' £850. Also my spare pair don't sit right on my nose. Adjusting the screws has improved it a bit, but it's hard to do because you can make quite a big difference without seeing the screw turn. The opticians refused to touch them in case they broke.
I also set off my knee at the beginning of the year (too much bending and straightening). And then because I was trying not to bend it, managed to do something to my right side which then made it hurt to breathe for a few days.
And I discovered for the second time in the year that I've been working there that anything you leave there can be disappeared at any time. Since I have to go in once a week I don't want to have to carry everything with me every time (apart from my laptop, which is itself big and heavy).
So that's been my year so far.
I've also watched a lot of Mr Selfridge (and not a lot else), trying to get it all in to one month of an ITVX subscription (because they've found the most annoying way of showing adverts). It's more about the drama and I'm watching for the history and it's getting worse by the series. But we're now just about into the era I'm particularly interested in, so I'm keeping going.
Rabbits, rabbits, everywhere - the Chanukah presents
You (and I) might have thought I was done with this. But then I got more rabbit themed things for Chanukah. The original total was 103... Continue reading
2022 books
In 2022 my book goal was to read more books than I acquired. Which would then get my to read pile down a bit. I read 9 more books than I acquired. Which is good and I achieved my goal. It just didn't get my to read pile down by much...
So my 2023 book goal is to read 12 books from my to read pile. That's a rate of one a month, so that should be a do-able goal. I either have to finish them or decide I don't want to finish them and move them to the get rid of pile. Any books I acquired before 2023 that I am partway through reading don't count.
2022 fic roundup
What I am reading Wednesday
What I Just Finished Reading
Still Just a Geek by Wil Wheaton. I persevered with the footnotes, although they drove me slightly mad. And made it impossible to tell how far I was through the book. It was just so interesting though, to see all his thoughts 20 years ago through the lens of him now, having worked out that his feelings about acting were actually all wrapped up in the feelings for his parents.
What I'm Currently Reading
Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes by Rob Wilkins. A Chanukah present - a rare full price book in hardback. I'm only three chapters in and I'm really enjoying it. Especially when it talks about the second hand bookshop PTerry went to as a child and I've been there! And also that he would sign anything even if it wasn't one of his books, which reminded me of the time at uni where a friend of mine got his maths textbook signed by PTerry (in fact he passed PTerry to get Ian Stewart to sign it, since he'd written it).
What I'm Reading Next
Maeve of the Chalet School by Helen Barber. It was the book I was going to read next, but Still Just a Geek took a while (just loading the footnote took so long I'd generally read the next couple of sentences by the time it popped up) and I wanted to read the Terry Pratchett biography.