Pen's Nest

Snowflake Challenge #12 is In your own space, resurrect an old meme. Have fun with it! Which is the goofiest meme you can think of? Put on your party hat and be silly!! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Hmmmmmm.

I used to do a lot of writing memes, but that was back when I used to do a lot of writing.

I did find a general, all-purpose meme that I completed on 3rd August 2020, and to my amusement discovered the same meme (well, there are differences, mostly in the numbering of questions, which is logical in the earlier, uncorrupted version) back in 2011. Despite being in a completely different house, the answers are very much the same.

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Perhaps a more generally interesting one is actually snipped from a bigger writing-themed meme:

Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas)

My offerings:
1. The guys are rival knitwear designers who secretly adore one another's stuff but are not allowed to say so in public. What?
2. Someone's cat is called Magic (short for Magic 8-ball) and can talk and predict the future. It dispenses advice, but only in short, cryptic, cat-larynx-friendly phrases. It's not as helpful as you might think.

I would be charmed to see any other AU suggestions!

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corvidology suggested this one, and I thought I'd have a look. Post the summaries of your top 10 works by kudos
( Answers cut to protect the uninterested )

In your own space, write a love letter to Fandom in general, to a particular fandom, to a trope, a relationship, a character, creator, episode, or it could be your fandom friends. Share your love and squee as loud as you want to.


Dear Fandom

You've taught me to think. So many interesting discussions, so many smart women sharing thoughts and principles, wisdom, analysis. About feminism and what it means to be an independent woman; about queerness and not-straightness in so many forms; about what it means to be a writer; about race, prejudice, and how to do better.

Thank you.

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Dear Trek Fandom

You brought me in! When I first became addicted to my late-night ST:TNG binges, I would sneak into the local W H Smiths and Waterstones and sneak out with official Star Trek Magazines and books in brown paper bags, feeling as embarrassed as if I'd been buying Playgirl. Through them I found the IDIC newsletter, through that I found my way to fanfic—home!

I had a lot of fun with you. I had about a dozen penfriends, back then before we got our first dial-up modem and I found my way to the alt.startrek.creative newsgroup. I had stories published in zines. I went to my first Convention, in Cardiff, and met some like-minded people. Spent a very memorable Saturday night in the bar talking Data and Picard and having some wonderful laughs. I went to Glasgow for a con with John DeLancie as the main guest, and to London where there was a wedding going on at the same time—I retain the memory of a bride who thought this was delightfully funny, and her parents who were very unimpressed, and also, my gorgeous dragon earrings which I bought in the dealers' room. I owe my first visit to the USA to my Trek fandom, for I wanted to see Brent Spiner as John Adams in 1776, which I did, four times. And I even had the courage to go to MediaWest, back then when zines were still a thing.

We haven't been close lately, though I am rediscovering the pleasure of that series I loved so much back then, and people are still writing for it, so, maybe we might have another twirl.

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Dear Popslash

Dearest fandom of my heart. What can I say. I approached you with deep suspicion, but I fell in love practically at once. I spent six weeks seeking out every scrap of you I could find on the internet—it felt like every waking moment, but it can't have been because not only did I have a husband, two children in school, and consequent laundry and ironing to do and meals to cook, I was also in a show at the time, as a minor principal, even. But the joy of finding a new fandom to love, after five years between fandoms, oh, that was something so precious. You gave me back my creativity—I'd produced a story or two, during that barren interim, but in my first year of Popslash I wrote more than thirty stories, and oh, the rush of the feedback, and the fun of being encouraged to create by all the fannish love going on around me. LiveJournal, to which I was introduced at the same time, was a big part of why I felt so at home, and remains, to my mind, by far the best way of 'doing fandom'.

Through Popslash, I made so many friends, and got to know quite a lot of you in person, mostly through Camp Sparkle, which has been a source of enormous joy and fun through the years. I hope we can do it again—maybe not till next year. I've been a tourist in all sorts of spots in my own country as a result, and there have been so many laughs, from the first time when we were expecting lumberjacks/axe murderers, to playing Cards Against Humanity (With Added Boybands), to being flashed by a passing hen-partier in Brighton, meeting the emo ponies, cooking together, picking up Campers from the airport in a Barbie-pink limo, having Christmas in June, and probably most memorably of all, the live-action late-night Lava Lamp Reading. So many Afternoon Teas, so many stately homes. Backstreet concerts. Alas that I was too late arriving to have the chance to see JC on stage.

I've loved writing you boys, and because of the challenges and encouragement of other fans, I've produced *so* many stories, many of them things I would never have imagined I would write. You have the BEST canon: someone who grew up so poor he had to sleep in laundry to keep warm, someone who won a beauty contest before he entered adolescence, someone who grew up gay in Mississippi and then went to Russia to learn to be a cosmonaut. You could not make that shit up. There is dwarf canon, and dolphin canon, and diamond canon, and I am sure there are demons, and though I have not yet found canon dragons (except maybe the inflatable one Lance had in his pool) I bet there are some. I've written you as space fighters and quasi-mediaeval knights, as advertising executives and strippers, dragons and chefs. I've loved reading you in so many, many wonderful stories. And, Lance, dear Lance, you have not let me down.

I wish I could revive you. There are plenty of stories available to tell about the five or ten, but fandom has left you behind. I can't give you up, and it's hard to imagine that another fandom could give me the satisfaction, the fun, and the inspiration. Maybe one day. Meanwhile, I'll be here, quietly finishing the stories I still want to tell.

I <3 you, Popslash.

So, if you enjoy a little schadenfreude,
this twitter thread is hilarious. There is another, filmed by the guy next standing to the guy who did the first one, with commentary and gleeful song, here, but I like the comments on the first thread. The star of the show is whining about being called a terrorist and not being allowed to get on a plane. It does rather look as though he was at the Capitol last Wednesday.

I like the utter indifference of those sitting around in the airport.

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Back to my usual.

Challenge #6

In your own space, rec at least three fanworks that you didn’t create. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

I'm picking recs from smaller canons (with one exception), and which have such awesomely authentic voices that I loved them at once.

Rivers of Ankh-Morpork by melannen
Peter Grant gets into Ankh-Morpork and is delighted. Seriously, it's like Pterry was having a bit of fun on his day off. Absolutely delightful story.

That Greek Thing by Luthien.
I've been listening to a bunch of Georgette Heyer novels over the last few weeks—not, as it happens, Friday's Child, but plenty enough to recognise that the tone of this story is spot-on. The comic sidekick friends in Heyer stories are the ones who annoyed me back when I was a teenager and reading for the romance, but nowadays fill me with love and a desire to see them happy and taken just a little bit seriously. This story does just that.

Still in a Heyerish vein, but an entirely frivolous one, The Birds and the Bees by Lbilover is like a delicious fairy cake, or possibly a Chantilly Basket. Lord Legerwood is not certain whether his heir is, hmm, au fait with certain marital necessities.

Moving away, far, far away, from Georgette Heyer's world, Sprezzatura by Queue takes 'Much Ado About Nothing' and extrapolates a perfect Beatrice. Wow. This one. It's in iambic pentameter: voice-wise, I wouldn't call it Shakespearian, but it is as clever, as stuffed with meaning and innuendo and truth. It's Beatrice the modern woman, Beatrice confronted with the news that Benedick will soon be present, Beatrice deciding what she wants. It's really, really good.

Once upon a time, American Idol was a fandom of very respectable size. Physics Makes Us All Its Bitches by cjmarlowe. Well, it's probably not fair to talk about the authentic 'voice' for RPF, so I'll just say that this author knows how to write. This is Adam Lambert, Kris Allen and Brad Bell, and bodyswap. I'm very partial to a good bodyswap story. This is a good bodyswap story.

In your own space, introduce yourself! Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Introduce myself. ( Well, I'll put it under a cut for the sake of those who already know me! )
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Didn't stay up to celebrate for New Year, although a fusillade of fireworks began at 11.55pm and stopped about eight minutes later. As Beast and I were both in bed, we fretted somewhat about Sable, on the sofa downstairs, but I know that on 5th November she was okay with the fireworks (if somewhat amazed at the bright sparkles from next-door. She had a snuggle with me last night as I watched The Sound of Music—it was on, okay, I came across it while looking through the guide, so obviously I watched it. Although I think we have it on DVD? Hmm.

Just now, I watched on iPlayer the BBC's Happy New Year Live (from London), which is rather fabulous and not quite like anything I've seen before (admittedly, I don't get out much). The beginning, lasers, is a bit dull, but once it gets to the Dome/O2, there's some very clever stuff. And, eventually, David Attenborough and—surely—Terry Pratchett. I recommend it.

I've been seeing long memes about What I Did Last Year, but as the answer is basically, not a whole lot, I'm not going to bother. I did, amazingly, finish a story. I think I put the final touches to it yesterday. It flowed like tarmac for most of the year, but I got a bit better at it in December, and I might actually have a go at the next story pretty soon. I have signed up to write 75,000 words in 2021, so... well, we shall see.

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A recycling tip for those of you who know what Christmas crackers are:
take:
ribbons/ties from your used crackers
cut outs from Christmas card pictures, ideally cut with decorative-edged scissors
hole punch
combine, to form large, cheerful gift tags for next year. I just spent a while doing this, and it is quite satisfying.

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A new comm, some of you may find interesting.



cookbook_challenge
background image by Joanna Lopez on Unsplash