(no subject)

[pensnest]

I was going to pontificate about post my thoughts on Christmas, but Real Life intervened in the form of an evil slime monster squatting in the kitchen drain, which meant Beast made three trips to the plumber to obtain respectively (a) a set of drain keys, (b) a set of drain rods, (c) sulphuric acid-based drain cleaner.

We poked at the drain, put caustic soda down it, and extracted quite a lot of hideous fatty stuff that stank most rankly, but couldn't get through the obstacle. Beast descended into the drain to apply the rods. Still nothing. Pouring in two litres of sulphuric liquid meant clouds of evil-smelling steam, but still no apparent cure.

So that was fun.

Instead, I thought I'd talk about Me, in a meme inspired by sperrywink, for the benefit of anyone who's subscribed recently and isn't yet sure whether this pensnest person is going to be interesting or not. If you decide not, I promise not to stamp my feet and scream when you unsubscribe.


I got into fandom via Star Trek: The Next Generation in the early '90s. Discovered fanfic, yay! Went to a few cons, put up a few stories on alt.startrek.creative, published a one-off zine focusing on Data.

Had a lonely fandom-free period from 2000-early 2005 when I wasn't quite in Buffy/Angel fandom because I didn't write stories—that's my personal definition of being 'in' a fandom—but went to a few semi-pro cons with my daughter. At one of which, I picked up a flyer that changed my life…

Discovered popslash as a result of going to the awesome Redemption con in Feb 2005. World-changer! I was introduced to LiveJournal and inspired to write. To date, I've written easily 200 popslash stories, which is odd, really, because I'm not a 'natural slasher'. But, my boys! Popslash. Best fandom ever.

More recently I have been lured to the edges of Adam Lambert fandom, by which I mean that I don't write Adam/Tommy, rarely write Adam/Kris, and have concentrated on writing Adam with Lance Bass of Nsync fame.

I read quite a lot of bandom stories although I still ignorant of the canon (because I have not yet gone through the info I was given by a new and enthusiastic friend I met in Sydney, mea culpa!). Read a bit in Sherlock, Avengers, Vorkosigan fic, used to read quite a lot of SGA fic. Again, by my own definition I've not been part of those fandoms as I haven't written in them.

Claim to fame: I'm one of the instigators of Camp Sparkle, a week-long mini-con/vacation for UK and European popslash peeps (and at least one American). Camp Sparkle is to other conventions as popslash is to other fandoms. In so many ways.

Claims to infamy: I'm the first person (that I know of) to write a non-Cramp lava lamp pairing. Moohahaha.

Claims to oddity: I occasionally write sonnets. Very occasionally. Also other 'poetry' and a couple of stories in iambic pentameter.



I'm 52, white, very English, married nearly 30 years; two children have left home but we kept the cat. Living within easy reach of London (England), though I don't take advantage of that nearly as often as I'd theoretically like to.

Long-time Apple user, I created a whole month of Factory, and still mourn its loss.

There's an artistic streak running through my mother's family which in me manifests currently as knitting and card-making (usually with some kind of glass-painting involved). You'll find that I sometimes throw out a set of icons on random subjects (see 'icon giveaway' tag if you're interested).

There'll probably be a fair bit of fretting on my journal in the new year as I shall be directing 'The Mikado' for my local amateur musicals/drama society. Right now I have no enthusiasm, but that will probably change. Incidentally, this was my first show with this society, when I was pregnant with my Boy. I declined to be a schoolgirl when asked at the beginning of rehearsals in September, although it might have been interesting as I was *huge* by March.

I'm sitting in my 'library' surrounded by Jane Austen, Lois McMaster Bujold, Bernard Cornwall, Dorothy Dunnett, Dick Francis, Georgette Heyer, Elizabeth Moon, Larry Niven, Terry Pratchett, Melanie Rawn, Spider Robinson, Dorothy L Sayers, PG Wodehouse and quite a few others. The non-fic bookshelves have sections on a bunch of stuff from acting to evolution, atheism to Miss Manners.

My username dates back to long before I had internet access, dates in fact to an engagement card I was given at work, where I was wont to moo in pain at not having found a 'nest' to purchase. Ahem. I've been pensnest on the internet ever since Compuserve let me have a name instead of a number, and I'm pretty sure any pensnest you find is me.


I'm basically a butterfly-minded person, and might post about any or none of the above. It all depends. Bless you, it all depends.

Comments

[aralias]

the mikado is awesome! if you need any enthusiasm, feel free to ask me, for i have lots.

also - your bookshelves sound great.

[pensnest]

I expect I'll get a bit more excited when I'm not so busy! (And when I'm a bit more confident that it's going to work...)

I think a room looks best decorated with books.

[adelate]

Having seen the bookshelves, I can tell you they are amazing. :D

[carolyn_claire]

I envy you your library AND your Mikado! I love it, and I'd love to costume it. I wonder if I could talk anyone local into picking it up and producing it? I look forward to your fretting about it.

My mother hooked me on Heyer as a child, and I would love to collect them all again. She got rid of hers before she passed, apparently, as they weren't with her things. I do have "Footsteps in the Dark", which I need to reread now that I'm reminded of it. And then maybe Northanger Abbey, which is my favorite Austen, for some reason, though Lady Susan comes a close second. (But I guess it should be Emma, instead, what with BEING ABOUT TO COSTUME IT and all. *still excited*)

[pensnest]

I'm hoping to be able to costume it as both 'Victorian Japan' and 'modern Japan', starting out with identikit business suits and schoolgirl outfits and moving on to the gorgeous silks and so forth... it'll probably depend on the ages of the cast!

I love my Heyers—the only one I think I passed on was probably 'Envious Casca', though I'm not sure if I've got the title right. It left me with an uneasy feeling I don't like associated with my Heyers, which should be happy! As for Austen, I can never decide whether 'Pride and Prejudice' is my favourite, or 'Persuasion'. And there have been awesome telly versions of both, which is nice—although actually, there were *two* really nice telly versions of 'Emma'. That should be a *lot* of fun for you to costume! I went to the costume museum in Bath quite a few years ago, and there was a comparative exhibition of 'Austen on film', in which they were very scathing about certain productions!

[carolyn_claire]

I like that interpretation--I hope you'll post pictures! And yes, dressing women of a certain age as Sailor Moon could be tricky. Sounds like a blast, though. :D I don't think there are many people in my tiny town who'll know how accurate I manage to be with Emma, especially as they're used to things being done on a shoestring, here, but I'll know; it definitely matters to me. I'll probably be entirely to hard on myself over it, knowing me. I'm still kicking myself over some aspects of the costuming for this silly Holiday show, which, why? Because me, basically.

I haven't read EC; it's available on Kindle, I see, and has some good reviews. What about it gave you the willies?

[pensnest]

I *really* hope we get some of the youngsters coming into the production - we had a good number of them in 'Sweeney Todd' this year, and several in our panto, currently in performance. But indeed, if our 'young ladies' are 30+ it gets problematic.

I can't remember quite what it was about the book that I didn't like—it was several years ago, and I only read it the once. My Heyer regencies are much more loved than that! But I liked the Sergeant and the Superintendent too.

[dine]

your library is filled will many of my faves too! sadly, over the years I've had to 'weed out' more than once, so I no longer own many of the books; possibly I should work on reaquiring some all of them, because they're totally the stuff one can read repeatedly.

[pensnest]

I find it hard to weed my library, even to parting with books I *know* I have no interest in reading again... Fortunately there is spare capacity at the moment—about three feet—so we should be all right for Christmas.

[sperrywink]

Your claim to fame is THE MOST AWESOME ONE THERE IS!!

CAMP SPARKLE FTW!!

[pensnest]

IT IS!!

[turlough]

Your claim to fame is the best! Camp Sparkle rulez!!

[pensnest]

IT DOES!

[adelate]

I feel guilty, because I still haven't read any Georgette Heyer even after your recs! One day!

Also, best claim to fame ever. CAAAAAAMP.

[pensnest]

I shall have to set you up with The Grand Sophy, or Frederica, or something along those lines, when next you are here.

CAMP RULEZ.

[adelate]

I looked up a whole lot of Heyer in ebook form after the last Camp when I got my Kindle, and I do have those two, so I'll just move them to my recced list. :D If you have other favorites, feel free to let me know. :D

[frausorge]

Drains are the worst!

I'm really intrigued by your reference to not being a 'natural slasher'. Would you be willing to say more about what makes someone one, in your view? and/or what makes you not one?

[pensnest]

Drains are like health - it's not until they go wrong that you really realise how essential they are to a smooth and comfortable life!

Not being a 'natural slasher'. Well. I've always had stories in my head—very often, variations on fairy tales or the books I'd read, so I'm pretty much a 'natural fanfic writer'. Actually, I've always had a 'sidekick kink', in that I was usually far more interested in the Crown Prince's Younger Brother, and the Hero's Best Friend, than in the lead characters. (That's probably why I've never been really interested in writing Justin—who is in other respects so delightfully full of interesting issues. But he's the Main Character, isn't he?)

But my stories and fantasies were always gen/het. When I discovered Trek, and fanfic, I naturally also discovered slash, and I read some and enjoyed it if it was well written, but it wasn't where I went with my own stuff. I remember having an email conversation with someone who assumed that I must have noticed the delicious sexual tension between Picard and Q. Well, uh, no. (And John De Lancie *deliberately put it there*, too.)

Quite why I fell so in love with popslash, I don't know. I blame nopseud (which is a handy strategy, and she is usually quite ready to take the credit for this stuff), for her carefully honed rec-list-to-lure-the-unwary. Certainly I started out by reading Really Good Stories. And of course, the more exposure I got, the more I started spotting the slash potential in other places. (Sometimes, of course, you don't need to know more than 'slash exists' to see it—when we emerged from the first Downey/Law Sherlock Holmes film, my Beast stated with conviction that people wrote slash about those two, didn't they.)

These days, I do seem to read mostly slash, although it's not essential to my fanfic enjoyment (although, thinking about it, it's more emotionally comfortable to read about the kind of sex that I can't have, because there are pitfalls in reading about the kind that I can). I think my own stories naturally tend towards the 'gen with a little bit of romance+innuendo' end of the spectrum—at least, unless I'm setting out to write something a bit more porny. I'm quite prepared for slash in unexpected places (eg 'Top Gear', !!!). I think slash fandom has educated me quite a lot. But, I dunno, I think there are people for whom slash was the obvious place to go, people who watched original Trek and saw the K/S without any prompting, or watched ST:TNG and saw the P/Q, or saw five cute boys hugging each other and thought, Woot!, and so on. I've learned to see it (quite often), but it is definitely a learned thing rather than where I naturally go.

Make sense?

[frausorge]

Yeah, interesting! Thanks for describing your history like that - I'm always intrigued to hear how other people come to it. I don't know quite what inclines someone to see the slash pairings or the het pairings or whatever else - it certainly doesn't seem driven by one's own orientation, or at least not necessarily. But it's interesting to me that it *can* be a learned skill, a way of reading, even if it's not your first thought. Anyway, thanks!