Angelic Paranoia

Paranoidangel's Website

Wednesday 3rd May 2023

What I am reading Wednesday

What I Just Finished Reading
The Devil Rides Out by Paul O'Grady. This starts when he's 17 and stops just as he's getting into drag. The ending felt a lot like he'd just reached his word count and stopped, so came as a bit of a surprise. It was really interesting though.

Childhood's End by Arthur C Clarke. One of the problems with this book is that although most of it is set in the mid 21st century, it feels like it's still set in the time it was written (mid-50s), in that men and women still have very defined roles in life. But even ignoring that, I really disliked this book by the end. I spent most of it not really knowing what it was about, but then the ending was presented as a great thing for the human race when it felt like it was actually really awful.

What I'm Currently Reading
Leave it to Psmith by PG Wodehouse. I have only just started this one and there's only been one scene with Psmith in it. But I am enjoying it - the characters are all mad/terrible and I can already see how it's all going to go terribly wrong.

What I'm Reading Next
I am really behind on reading books I already owned at the start of the year. So more of that. Despite me occasionally visiting Kobo and buying a few 99p books.

Category icon Books
Tag icon
Sunday 2nd April 2023

Unconventional Courtship

Stede and Ed on a Mills & Boon cover

[info]unconventionalcourtship is back! I spent ages looking through Mills & Boon and Harlequin summaries, until I went mad. Generally at the summaries for being so awful. I wanted to write the gay pirates, but I couldn't find anything that was both silly and subtext. M&B aren't exactly known for their subtext... And then in my saved summaries, for another pairing, I found one that would work for Mr Selfridge, with a bit of a canon divergent AU:

He was the love she lost…
Now he’s back.

When Grace Calthorpe called off her relationship with Gordon Selfridge she thought she’d lost him forever. Now he’s back and both find themselves working at the same wedding. Can the magical setting help heal the past, and allow them both to trust their hearts again…

Obviously in the actual book the answer is yes because it's always yes. Usually when I write these things the answer is no. I haven't yet decided which way it's going to go.

Category icon Fan fic
Tag icon
Wednesday 29th March 2023

What I am reading Wednesday and more bunnies

Last night I realised that I have rabbit socks and I forgot to include them in the count! They are number 108.
Rabbit socks

What I Just Finished Reading
The Surplus Girls by Polly Heron. This was a bit of a random pick from the library's choices for International Women's Day. It's set in the early 1920s and the main character is a lower class girl who is persuaded to learn to become an office girl. It wasn't the most exciting story, so I struggled with it a bit, and then it turned out to be a romance. Despite all the stuff in it about her being a surplus girl and therefore needing to support herself her whole life.

What I'm Currently Reading
All In: The Autobiography of Billie Jean King. It was 99p on Kobo and has turned out to be really interesting. When she started playing (in the 1950s) girls weren't expected to do sport (that was a boy's activity) and definitely not to do it professionally - she was supposed to get married, have kids and become a housewife. It's like a totally different world, even though it wasn't that long ago. It was interesting to see what was happening in the tennis world as the tournaments allowed professionals to play and then sometimes paid men up to twelve times as much as women!

What I'm Reading Next
I really ought to read something that I owned before this year because I've only read two so far and I really need to average one a month. The trouble is Kobo keep selling books for 99p and I keep visiting...

Category icon Animals Books
Tag icon ,
Saturday 25th March 2023

Merry 10th August 2020 - 20th March 2023

Merry

At 2 years and 7 months old he was a very old man. He was having trouble eating his hard food, so he was getting lots of soft foods. Which were like treats. Except it turned out he liked porridge, but not two days in a row. And he didn't like the apple and pear baby food I'd just opened.

I weighed him on the coffee table and then gave him the choice of exploring the coffee table and when he wanted to go back in his cage he could walk off the table onto my hands. The last time I weighed him I put my hands down in his cage so he could just walk off them, as always. But as he did so, he discovered some hidden food and dug it up with his back feet still on my hand.

Merry on a cork log

This photo was from two months ago in his play cage. The cork log was mainly there for him to go through. Except that he was determined to climb up it. Which he found multiple ways to do, including hauling himself up, which he was finding harder to do. Ways down were mainly jumping off.

He's always been into climbing and hauling himself up places. He had a bridge next to his house. On the house roof was his food bowl and his water. If he went up to the top of the bridge he could walk off onto the roof. What he actually did was to go halfway up and then haul himself onto the roof, which didn't always work. Sometimes he had to take the extra two steps to get up there.

I don't think he realised he was an old man. When he was tired he did act old. But when he was up in the night and was awake, he acted the same as he always did, running around the place.

The house is now very quiet without him. It feels weird not to be spending time after dinner preparing his food.

Category icon Animals
Tag icon
Wednesday 1st March 2023

Drabbles

[info]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 [info]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.

Category icon Fan fic
Tag icon
Wednesday 22nd February 2023

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.

Category icon Books
Tag icon
Monday 6th February 2023

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. [info]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. [info]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.

Category icon Fandom
Tag icon
Sunday 29th January 2023

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 [info]seasonsofdrabbles also to help me start writing a bit, and because their RSS feed has started working again.

Category icon Life TV
Tag icon ,
Sunday 15th January 2023

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.

Category icon Life
Tag icon