A List, fannish and not:

I finally finished watching Mando S2 which had me texting the group chat (kids+their D&D crew, aka, my Millenial enablers) ( spoilers )

I'm also caught up (to E3) on Hawkeye and ( spoilers + spoilery speculation from comics )

Non-spoilery: I am seriously contemplating circling back on my HawkeyeSquared fic and mentioning that it's really NOT MCU Hawkeyes, but very firmly the Fraction/Aja Hawkguy and Kate that I'm writing. I mean, these two are great and I really like their interactions but yeah, not shipping them at all.

I've started in on the holiday movies -- new this year has been A Castle for Christmas, complete with a Scottish castle (ish, more like a grand house, but, eh, close enough), a grumpy duke (Cary Elwes and he wears a kilt *very* well), snow, horses, and a tiny, plaid taxi. Also, knitting and main characters not in their 20s. From a previous year was The Knight Before Christmas, which I watched as I put the tree together (more on that later), which was good b/c even with hand-fluffing an 9-foot tree I had to practice deep breathing as our titular knight, time-traveling from 14th Century England to Ohio, as one does, and pretend he was waxing rhapsodic about Christmas trees because he got to burn the ceremonial tree down in the village square? He had a very pretty horse,though. And at least he was wearing chain mail, not plate armour. And was very heroic.

As mentioned obliquely above, I finally caved and bought an artificial tree b/c real trees in the size I like are too heavy to deal with alone and really, much of the reason I resisted for all these years circles back to my dad, who, as some of you might recall, was a real piece of work (or an abusive asshole, take your pick. I try to go with unmedicated bipolar and sit with a little gratitude for how well he took care of Mom after all the cancers, but yeah, ISSUES, I has them.) Anyway. At some point during this ridiculous pandemic cycle, I decided that I could spend the money to get a tree that didn't look fake, put it together at my own pace, and burn a Diptyque Sapin de Nuit candle. So, I managed to get a 9-foot Fraser fir on sale from Balsalm Hill (unlit, b/c O.M.G. the pre-lit ones were more than I spend on trees for 10 years (and I am not known for buying cheap Christmas trees from Home Depot.) And they come all scrunched up so you have to fluff them. Branch by branch, section by section. It took forever, but it's done, it doesn't look fake, and I am hopefully going to get lights on it tomorrow when I am off work to deal with some health stuff for D.

And finally, to the last of the popslashers on my circle/flist: sorry for earworming you with the icon, but do like the song says and enjoy!

In something of a surprise, BabyBoy & I are watching Yuri!!! on Ice together -- he's seen it already but is patiently waiting until I have the mental bandwidth to deal with subtitles. We're 3? 4? episodes in and it is as lovely as everyone has said. I'm also semi-spoiled for the big reveal but it's fine; I'm enjoying all of it regardless. :D

I finally finished Star Wars: Rebels, which I think has the most coherent arc & execution of any SW-related project I've seen. And then, we were going to get into the whole Siege of Mandalor arc on Clone Wars, but life got a little complicated, so they took a side-step and showed me the one episode with Obi Wan and Satine and I'm counting my blessings they did not film me as I watched because I was cackling from about 90 seconds in. Count me among the Obi Wan/Satine 'shippers, for real. Now I need to go back in for Mando S2, and I'll possibly catch up on the Siege episodes. Clone Wars just doesn't hold my attention but I like the general arc of the story, so I'm going to just fill in around the edges.

I finally watched the most recent Little Women, which I both loved and had great ambivalence about. ( cutting even though it's been nearly 2 years since the release )

I'm almost through with a full rewatch of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries -- If anything, I'm surprised how much I'm still enjoying it. I'd almost expected to lose interest after a few episodes, but I'm only a couple from the end of the 3rd season and happily watching along (I'm watching through a library add-on so I only get a few episodes each month, but that's fine.)


I also just rewatched The Big Chill, which I thought held up well over the years, but wow, the drugs were ... a lot. I was there during that era, so I'm not saying it's wrong, but looking at it now, yeah, a LOT.

At some point, I swear I'm going to watch Shadow and Bone, but I should probably get on with Mando and Loki, so those are on deck.

In personal news, work continues to be both mad ricochets and thoughtful support, so I guess I'm happy about the support and wish the actual project work might smooth out in time. (The whole industry is just so bad for my tendency to procrastinate--I *know* there's a better than even chance that whatever date they're giving me will slip, so it encourages my bad habits about just not jumping in and doing things, because it never fails that when I do, it changes later down the line, so I'm better off just waiting and doing it all in a power rush at the end, because it'll be that rush anyway.) Ah, well, only a couple more years and the R-word becomes viable.

For fun things, I started posting the latest thing I've been noodling on, if only to get the early parts out of my head and let my brain focus on the rest of the story, so the first chapter of waiting in the eye of the storm, a post-Wandavision/mid-TFATWS Darcy/Bucky is out in the world.

Random things I’ve been talking about with the HoB:

BabyBoy is so totally gone on The Witcher that I had to give it a try, and I’m liking it a lot more than I was expecting to. (I can slide by on a lot of your basic fantasy tropes, but I’m liking it way more than that. And I’m not a huge Henry Cavill fan—nothing bad against him, he just never pinged anything on my radar, but again, I’m really having fun with him and Geralt.) Of course, given that it’s BB I’m interacting with, and he’s the BFA Acting major, we discuss A LOT of the technical aspects of the show, like the fight choreography and how they’re editing the timelines together, etc, etc, but the one I thought was interesting was ( cutting for spoilers for the Striga episode ) I mean, that’s maybe a little deep for a show that doesn’t seem to be taking itself too seriously, but that’s where we got as we talked it through. It’s always fun picking things apart with him. (I mean, he gets into how the actors stand and how they move and talk and all, so sometimes we’re watching the same scene 5 times… Or, in the case of LOTR, 20…)

Also, he is apparently a rabid Geralt/Yennefer shipper (when I asked how he'd gotten all the books, he gave me the Mom, you know better than to ask your GenZ kid that question look, so we'll just keep that from his former IP attorney father.) But yeah, he doesn't want to hear anything about anybody else with either of those two.

#2Son is my Star Wars kid--OMG, we were giddy at Galaxy’s Edge, even after we’d been in line for nearly 2 hours for the Millennium Falcon ride (it was super-early in the morning and they were routing the line all through GE… we were in line for an hour before we came around a bend in the ‘street’ and lo, there was the Falcon in all her glory) but he’s my go-to for all the expanded universe easter eggs, like ( spoilers for the last episode of The Mandolorian )
And of course, now there’s another season of Clone Wars coming and I sort of half-watched the ones that already exist, so I guess I’m going back to deal with that. My viewing time is so overbooked I can’t even.

Also, while I appreciate how the Clone Wars really makes it clear that Padme and Anakin were never a good idea, I am once again annoyed that we didn’t really get the rush of a really good Bad-Idea-But-We-Can’t-Not romance, because Someone Who Shall Remain Nameless (but is bearded and Very Recognizable) can’t write romance worth sh*t. Like, seriously, give that story to Julie James or any one of a dozen writers who do really excellent competence porn and have them write the seeds of their own destruction!Anakin/Padmen. (or you know, please feel free to point me to your favorite fic that explores this very trope.)

(Oh, and BabyBoy is *also* a die-hard Obi Wan/Satine shipper. DIE HARD. RABID. It's too funny.)

Oldest is in one of his periodic attempts to get me more into the Vorkosigan books, which I agree, I should love, and have enjoyed the ones I’ve read/listened to, but I just haven’t gotten to them yet. I think my (admittedly, small) stumbling block is that while Miles is entertaining and all, I’m really all about Cordelia, but my completist brain can’t quite skip over all the many Miles-centric books to get to the good, later Cordelia-centric ones. Plus, I really, really wish the guy who does the audiobook narration didn’t sound like he was 40 years old, especially in the earlier Miles books when he’s, y’know, a teenager. We’ll continue to work on it now that we’ve gotten through all the Dresden books (though the next one is apparently on the way.)

So, yeah, they still keep me busy, and that's not counting the ~15,000 hours of Critical Role they keep asking if I've seen. (I listen to it while I'm doing mindless cut/paste updates, but good lord, even starting with Campaign #2, I'll never get through it all.)

Life is ... something, these days. For sure. (I just deleted the 3 paragraphs of ranting re: software development methodologies b/c I can't even stand to look at any mention of it unless I'm being forced to deal with it for a paycheck.)

Okay, so, things that I have read and watched and listened to...

I finally got through the first season of The Magicians and, uh, I know Grossman's said that he wrote the books to reconcile himself to never getting to go to Narnia, but holy shit, he must still be really pissed that he couldn't go. ( cutting for spoilers, I guess, and CW for assault, etc )

On a more pleasant note, I have a new addition to my royal valium list of books: The Royal Runaway, featuring a left-at-the-altar princess and a Scottish former-Special-Services/current MI6 agent. It's got a nice almost-enemies-to-lovers vibe and a little bit of a mystery and did I mention the Scottish MI6 agent? I mean, seriously, I'm not made of stone over here.

I managed to watch Ant Man and the Wasp in the last month (verdict: not *nearly* enough Luis.) And we caught Captain Marvel in the theater last weekend, which I didn't love as a whole as much as I wanted to. The parts that I did love, though, I loved hard, and I'm super-happy it caught the box office it did. (Of course, now I can get accused of bandwagon-jumping for my Carol Corps backpack instead of just having people not recognize it, but such is the (toxic) way of the Bro-Fans.) If you liked it, and would like to know more about Princess Sparklefists, my fellow GeekParent Mathias wrote an excellent round-up of Carol Danvers-related titles through history. (It is at this point that I am wildly excited for the Marvel Unlimited subscription that auto-renews every year.)

I'm also stuck somewhere in the middle of S3 for Star Wars: Rebels -- the library copies got out of sync so I'm having to wait for a while in between disks, boo. I'm still loving it, though.

And then there's been the crazed shenanigans about Galaxy's Edge, the Star Wars additions to Disney World and Disneyland, which is now going to be open for both our last quarter 2019 visits. Well, I mean, we'll be there, but I have no idea if we're going to get near the place. Possibly if we get in line now? Anyway, here are my favorite write-ups:

T&L: Inside Look at Galaxy's Edge (Carlye Wisel)

Tech Crunch: How Disney Built Star Wars in Real Life

I don't know if you can snag this podcast w/o subscribing, but it's the writer of my first link being interviewed by my favorite Dizgeeks, who are giddy with excitement: Disney Dish, Ep 208.

I hope you're finding happy diversions in fandomland!

Okay, the stupid RL stuff continues. However, #2 and I have a disk of Star Wars: Rebels (we're flying into the gravitational well of collapsed stars, etc. It's pretty) and I have a few links to share.

First off, because you can never have too many icons, umadoshi has a post with links to icon makers.

Two off, also via umadoshi, sylvaine has a post of DW trips and tricks. I especially like the footnote trick and making a poll for kudos. Oh, and the bit about organizing tags.

(Oh, and now we're up to space whaloctopi!)

Three off, I did post this on tumblr, but I love both Star Wars and Disney World and I might not surface for a year once they combine, so let's share it here, too.

John Williams new theme for Galaxy's Edge over video of the current state of the new sections of the parks.

Wow, I swear I didn’t think it’d been quite so long since I last updated, but apparently it has been.

So, we had snow, which is always Crazy!Tiems here, and then it stayed cold, which interferes with the let-the-sun-melt-it snow-removal strategy we practice. We ended up missing 3 days of school, but BabyBoy and I had no trouble flying up to NYC on the end of that. He did his auditions, which, STRESSFUL, but we also managed to see Kinky Boots and eat our way through multiple Manhattan food halls. I may never make ramen again, not after some of the exquisite broth I got. There were also some excellent crepes (both sweet and savory), amazing salumi, good pizza, a lobster roll or two, and a chili cheese dog from a Nathan’s truck outside of the Met. (Sadly, we couldn’t go inside, because by that time we were walking along Central Park with our luggage & big bags are a no-go at the Met, but the weather was so nice that continuing our walk was an excellent alternative.)

The auditions were up and down, but I think he handled the downs pretty well (came back to the hotel, took a nap, and spent my money on Broadway tix to remember why he wanted to go through the grind in the first place.) The next days’ auditions went well, I think, so that was good. Of course, now he has bronchitis and is on these mammoth-sized antibiotics, but sometimes sh*t happens.

Also in the sh*t happens category, D totaled his truck somewhere in the middle of all that (pre-snow.) He walked away from it (with the okay of the paramedics) and saw his doctor the next morning, but then went back to work too early and ended up graying out as he walked out of the door of his trailer/classroom the next day. *That* got him a trip in an ambulance and a night in the emergency room for a full work-up of tests and all. Very exciting. (Not.) (Seriously, aside from the worry, it was the most boring 5 hours you can imagine.) Everything showed up okay; he just needed to chill a little longer. Fortunately, the weather came in not long after, so there was some externally-enforced downtime (where he’d have otherwise have been running tryouts and gearing up for the new team/season.)

But his car really is gone, so the car shopping process begins. /o|

On the fun side of things, I got through the second season of The Crown, which I was rationing to no more than 1 episode every other day, just because I knew I’d skip going to bed one night to binge if I didn’t keep strict control. #2Son had gotten through it ages ago, so I’d end up texting him whenever Phillip started getting on my nerves (so, yeah, pretty often), or when some idiot PM did something extra-stupid (yep, again, pretty often), or every time they didn’t flinch away from just how ill-suited Margaret and Tony really were (non-stop, on their episodes.) He finally came upstairs and sat in the same room with me, gaming while I watched, just so he didn’t have to pause his game to pick up the phone and text me back.

There was also a re-viewing of The Last Jedi, this time preceded by a re-viewing of The Force Awakens, and I have 2 thoughts to share, which are spoilery (for TFA as well as TLJ), so I will cut:( Read more... )

Good morning, happy Monday, omg, I went to see Rogue One last night at a 10:15 show and I am already staggering around like a zombie. If I don't use my brain over lunch, I will fall asleep with my head on my desk. Plus, there is a sad lack of actual geeks at this new workplace, so I have no one to actually babble at.

Tag; you're it!

First off, we almost didn't make it to the movie at all. #2Son was having a really rough weekend, anxiety-wise, and I had just about given up on him wanting to leave his safe spaces at the house when he came up after 8 pm and wanted to know if it was too late to go. *I* certainly wasn't going to tell him 'no,' but we couldn't make the 8:25 show and there wasn't another one starting until 10:15. That actually was good on the regular part of life, as BabyBoy had some complicated print job he was trying to put together for his lit project (we ended up at Kinko's on the way to school this morning) *and* had just remembered that he needed cookies for a Drama Club party/cookie swap today. You all will be very proud in that I didn't leap in to make them for him, just found the box of Ghirardelli chocolate-carmel cookie mix and yelled answers to his questions while running around dealing with the dogs, etc. But he got them made and Oldest, #2 & I took off for the theater.

( spoilers (and mostly squee. 99% squee. BUT SPOILERS.) )

As I said to the boys, I must now go and read ALL THE STORIES (and really, truly watch the rest of Clone Wars and Rebels.)

Come babble at me!

Apologies to those people whose questions I’m skipping, but this topic is date driven: musesfool said: Talk Star Wars to me!

Which, really, you don’t have to ask me twice!

So. My family never went on vacation. We only went to the movies when they came to the second/third-run theater that shared a wall with the bowling alley on the dying Main Street of the little steel mill town we lived in. (For scene setting purposes, think Super 8, JJ’s other movie. My aunt’s house was on (CGI) fire in it. My grandparents are buried in the cemetery they show. My uncles all worked at that mill. The tanks rolled over the (v. v. sad) playground we used to hang out in. I had some seriously freaky flashbacks while watching that movie.) But for some reason in the summer of 1977, we went to Lake Erie. We stayed in an actual motel (definitely a Winchester special.) We had dinner at a non-fast-food restaurant and then my dad announced that we were going to see the Star Wars movie that everyone was so jazzed about. Please to remember that movie theaters were just one screen. No multiplexes. Everybody was milling around, waiting to see the same movie. It was pretty exciting even before the crawl started. Also, please to remember that in 1977, sci-fi meant Star Trek original series reruns and Space 1999, which, while I have fond memories of both, in no way did they prepare anyone for that first shot of Leia’s starship zooming across the screen, shooting back at the audience, let alone the Star Destroyer that was chasing her, the one that went on and on and on, and then you realized you’d only seen half of it.

And then there was this princess who could handle a blaster and face down the nastiest Bad Guy every.

So, yeah, not-quite-15-year-old me (who already had a small thing for the X-Men thanks to Jean Grey and the whole Scott & Logan triangle—yes, my romance roots go back far, too) got sucked in hard, and then, in that blinding split-second of OMG-HAN-CAME-BACK, Fannish!Me was born.

True story: a relatively few years later, I talked my way into a graduate level seminar with a legendary author/professor and essentially wrote Star Wars fanfic for him. (Well, it was basically a fanfic assignment—we had to write a scene with established characters, so the fic part was okay, but the rest of the class did things like Holden Caufield, etc, not Han, Luke and Leia.)

Another thing: I hope Marcia Lucas got a healthy percentage of that first movie, because it’s the editing that made the legend. She (and the 2 other editors that worked on ANH) cut *everything* that wasn’t absolutely necessary. She’s the one who made Leia, because if the stuff that was originally written had been in the final cut, our fabulous space princess would have been dreck. You think that incredibly painful Padme/Anakin romance was just an aberration? Sadly, no. Luckily, all of the trite, banal, cringe-worthy characterization was left on the cutting room floor (listen to the radio drama if you want the painful proof) and then someone who was not GL wrote Empire, where the Han/Leia just sparkled and my first OTP truly arrived.

Also, now that we’re here, 30 years later, looking at all the awesome photoshoots for TFA, squeeing over every second of trailer footage, holy crap, am I glad Harrison Ford didn’t talk George into killing off Han Solo.