I'm off til after Christmas. Dear yuletide (and anyone else that tries to get in touch), if I haven't commented yet, it's because I'm where the only words are on paper and the internet does not go.

This entry was also posted at http://jamjar.dreamwidth.org/110394.html.

Wow, I haven't updated in so long. I didn't even post last year's Yuletide fic!

( General notes )

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This entry was also posted at http://jamjar.dreamwidth.org/110124.html.

General notes( General notes )

( Fandom specifics )

This entry was also posted at http://jamjar.dreamwidth.org/109855.html.

And will be effectively without the internet for at least 10 days. I only hope I have enough books to see me through.

I'm at my parents for the holidays/Little Brother's (Ack! 20th!) birthday.


Little Brother: "It's not going to work. The candle can't stand up in the tart."

Mum: "It's a special candle, it's special beeswax--"

LB: "It's not the wax, it's the size!" *Looks at the lemon tart with the single beeswax candle sticking out the middle.* "It looks like a fertility symbol!"

Mum: "It's fine! Look, I don't even need to hold it up any more, it's staying up on its own."


Later

LB: "I used to hate it when people corrected me when I spoke, but then I started doing it to other people and now it doesn't bother me."

Life has not been playing particularly fairly lately, so I'm a little bit late to the party, but there's still time. If you would like a Christmas/winter faire/seasonal holiday card (or a random postcard), please leave you address in the screened comments. If you have anything you specifically don't want on the card, let me know and I'll avoid it.

Secondly, London People, this weekend is the Winter Open Studios at Pullens Yards. 40 old and creaky workshops open their doors for the public, giving you a chance to buy (or at least ogle) their wares. The workshops vary a little, but there are 40+ artisan workers, which include (but are not limited to) gold and silversmiths, designer clothes makers, ceramics, photographers, painters, furniture, book publishers, printers and lute-makers. Yes, lute makers. I've seen the lutes. Also carpet makers, leather workers and random other things.

I've gone the past few years and plan on going again this year. It's usually pretty fun, a good place to Christmas shop for stuff you won't find elsewhere and even if you don't buy anything, it's still nice to have a wander.

Because I need a little distraction and I want to get a little writing practise even before I start railing against the Yuletide deadline:

From daegaer

Give me the premise for a crossover (example: someone in a fairytale meets the devil, who turn out to be Crowley), a fusion (example: Midsomer Murders and Weiss Kreuz fusion: the peaceful English countryside plus assassins - let's face it, it would explain a lot about the death rate . . .) or an AU (example: the Fenndom sci-fi AU - the Victorian British empire in Spaaaace!). I will write you one to three sentences* of fic based on that premise.

*Or, you know, more.

Good fandoms include (but are not limited to) Life, The Mentalist, Better Off Ted, The Big Bang Theory, Modern Family, Bandom, Young Justice, Sherlock Holmes Vorkosignan series, Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Chalion, Good Omens, Neverwhere, Discworld, Johnny Maxwell, M.A.S.H., Dianna Wynne Jones, Doctrine of Labynths, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, YYH, Petshop of Horrors, Crimson Hero, Dead Like Me, From Eroica with Love, Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Highlander, Doctor Who, Merlin, fairy tales, Superboy, Neverwhere, D.E.B.S, Stick It, Ima Ai Ni Yukimasu,Star Trek IX, DS9, Temeraire

Dear Yuletide,

( here is my probably unhelpful letter )

By way of snowballjane, went to see Daisy Pulls It Off, which is spiffing and utterly topping and full of jolly decent girls with plenty of pluck (and the odd utter rotter, who as well as being frightfully snobbish doesn't like hockey, and is therefore clearly a bad egg.)

It was in a pub theatre, in the basement which was pretty sweltering, but was made the whole thing just that much more fabulous.

Key plot points included:
Boarding schools
Orphans
Scholarship girls who -gasp!- went to an elementary school, rather than a decent Prep.
Long lost uncles
Fathers lost at sea
Midnight feasts
Frightful rotters attempting to bully girls out of school by making them look like sneaks and cheats
Hockey (field)
Poetry contests
Secret treasure
Daring cliff-face rescues
Mysterious Russian teachers
Brain fever
Amnesia
Hockey (again)

I think my favourite bit was the brain fever. There just isn't enough brain fever in most plays.

But I'm off to the states for a week on Monday (two days in DC, two days in NY for work, then Saturday for myself an Sunday to fly out at the crack of dawn), so I figured I should make a post about that, at least.

I've been having mild comics nostalgia, brought about by the new series of R.E.B.E.L.S. The nostalgia has been accompanied by the obligatory "Why do I know more about this character's continuity than the writers?", but not massively. Still, there's only been three issues, so there's plenty of time left!

I've also been reading the Master and Commander series, which are just genuinely good reads in a number of ways. Historical fiction, at it's best, has a thing of making you believe in that era, but isn't restricted by it-- that is, it can present issues and morals and so on for the characters, make you believe they have (or don't have) those... while not actually presenting those things as actively bad or good. The characters are very much a product of their time, but the writer isn't. And part of that means that you know (and you know the writer knows) just how much being a product of that time, of that environment can work against a character. At the same time, the voice, the narration is kept true through the whole thing, so you're not thrown out of the books by random 21st century moral sidenotes. They're fun books, and they do that thing of making me enjoy being absorbed in the early 19th century, while being bloody glad (especially as a woman) that I didn't have to put up with myself.