KJ

I can stay pretty focused up through my lunch break, regardless of when I decide to take it.

It gets much, much harder after I come back, no matter what time it is or how long the break lasted.

I had been looking at the snowflake_challenge prompts for the year so far and thinking they were mostly the same as last year's... and then checked back at my posts from 2019 to see that no, so far they're largely quite different. So, let's proceed, and I'll try to get back on the stick.

( Challenge 1 )

( Challenge 2 )

So that's the first two! I'll try to catch up on the rest over the next few days.

This is the last one in my queue, but I'd be happy to do more if anyone has any!

From umadoshi: ( Citrus, Umbrellas, Masks )

First concert was tonight, and it went quite well! We hit all the marks we needed to hit and no major errors, certainly nothing noticeable.

Now it's time to flop until the second show on Sunday.

auronlu asked me to post something about Bryn Mawr College, which is our shared alma mater (and as it happens our time there overlapped by a couple of years, though we didn't know each other then).

For those of you who might not be familiar, Bryn Mawr is a small, private liberal arts college in the Philadelphia suburbs. As one of the Seven Sisters, it's traditionally a women's college, although the college will now admit anyone who doesn't identify as male. That's a recent change to policy, and I think it's a good one. (The purpose of women's colleges in a world that is increasingly recognizing the problems with a binary concept of gender is an interesting question, but it's outside the scope of this entry.) There's a lot I could say about Bryn Mawr, most of it positive -- I credit my four years there with making me the person who I am today, and it was the first place I ever found a really solid group of friends, many of whom are still with me today. I was super-active in the Alumnae Association for awhile, was on the board of the local club and then the national organization for a couple of years. Then I burned out, and took a break that lasted almost 10 years. Until this year, at my 20-year reunion, where my friend A and I volunteered to be class presidents. So now that I'm back on the horse, I went to the annual volunteers training weekend for the first time in over a decade. That was the first weekend of October; it was a cold and rainy visit, but it was also energizing, and gave us lots of ideas about how to connect our classmates to each other and to the college. And of course I always appreciate the opportunity to renew my own connection. I've been to every one of my class reunions, and also a decade reunion for graduates of the 1990s in 2014, but reunion is always in the summer after the students are gone. This is the first time in ages that I've been on campus while classes are in session, so it was a real blast from the past to see the college alive with students and faculty. Not to mention that it was fall, with the leaves turning color and the greens turning to mud, which was yet another excellent source of nostalgia. I wouldn't relive my college years if you paid me -- I enjoy being an adult with money and free time, thank you -- but going back to Bryn Mawr always feels like coming home.

I would feel remiss if I didn't talk about Lantern Night, which was yesterday (and I suspect is part of the reason that auronlu asked about this). One thing that makes Bryn Mawr a special place is its cycle of traditions, and the most sacred of those traditions to me is Lantern Night. Every student at BMC receives a lantern as a symbol of the light of knowledge and belonging to the community. The lanterns are made of black metal worked into the shape of a stylized owl (representative both of knowledge and of the goddess Athena, our patron goddess for perhaps obvious reasons), and the glass panes are forged in the class color. The class of 2019 is a green class, as was the class of 1995, so I am particularly nostalgic when I look at these pictures and think back 24 years, to when I was 18, clad in a black robe, standing in line with my classmates and waiting for the moment that we would be officially welcomed into the community of Mawrters. And I also remember being a sophomore, frantically running up and down the line of lanterns, making sure they all had tea invitations firmly attached and candles safely lit, praying that the Class of '96 would have just as meaningful experience as I did. And I remember being a junior, then a senior, standing in an arch of the Cloisters, using my lantern to keep time as I sang in Greek, realizing that I would never be a part of this moment again, relishing the bittersweet cycle of time.

If any members of the class of '19 happen to be reading this, welcome to the family! I hope you had a wonderful Lantern Night, and that being a part of the College is as good an experience for you as it was for me.

I've seen a few people do this, but most recently ganked from umadoshi. I suppose it's appropriate to do a catch-up meme a week after everyone else.

So what have you been up to? / Major life changes? Same old same old?

I've been working a part-time temporary job that might become more permanent soon, but that's by no means a done deal. So I'd rather not talk about that publicly yet. Otherwise I feel like it's pretty much situation normal.

What fandom are you in/do you spend most of your time in?

Either Dragon Age or MCU, depending on the day. I haven't been participating much, though, largely because I haven't readjusted to having a job outside the house and with regular hours, and I can't really be on social media while I'm there. Also I have my irritations with both fandoms, in terms of recent content and of the communities, so it's feeling less like happy fun squee times than I want it to be.

Where do you hang out online?

If I'm being honest, I have to say Flight Rising. Breeding and dominance battles continue to hold my attention, and although the site also has its dramas, I'm way less personally invested than I am in my other fandoms. My frustrations with Tumblr as a community and as a platform continue to grow, and I'm taking a semi-hiatus from it, starting tomorrow, mostly to avoid Trespasser spoilers, but in truth I'm running on queue half the time lately anyway.

I do want to post more here, though. More books reviews? (I got some enthusiasm for that suggestion the other day, so thanks for that!) More meta in general? Respond to things on Tumblr here, where we might actually be able to have conversation about them? I guess we'll see. I've also been on Twitter more lately, because it's easier to pop in from my phone while I'm at work.

What are you reading?

I'm in the middle of two books right now: "The End of All Things" by John Scalzi, and "A Red-Rose Chain" by Seanan McGuire. End of All Things is a collection of four novellas, and I'd read the first three when I picked up Red-Rose Chain at McGuire's Borderlands event on Saturday (which was very fun!). Since I was at a good stopping point with the Scalzi, I started reading the McGuire while I was there, and now I want to finish it. So I'll probably do that, then get back to the Scalzi, then begin on the mountain of exciting books that have come out in the last two months (Court of Fives, The Fifth Season, House of Shattered Wings...).

What are you watching?

My main TV project is a rewatch of Star Trek: Voyager. At least, I'd thought it was a rewatch when I started, but almost nothing after the first season has been familiar. I'm positive I watched at least some episodes with Seven of Nine, though, because the reason I remember giving it up was because I got tired of it being the Seven of Nine show. I just finished Season Four, so maybe the part I did watch is coming up. Anyway, I'm enjoying it. It's not as uniformly good as DS9 or later TNG, but when it's good, it's very good, and I really like most of the characters (even Seven, better than I remembered).

We're also sort of slowly working on Sense8, and I've grown into a big fan of The Nightly Show and Last Week Tonight.

What are you making?

Not as much as I would like. I went back on Fangirl Happy Hour to talk about Ant-Man and the current state of the MCU! The episode was released today and can be found here. I have a couple of long projects going, most notably a Dragon Age: Inquisition Hawke/Fenris fix-it fic, but it wants to be an epic and I fear I've bitten off more than I can chew with it. We'll see if I can pull it together -- making enough progress to post it, or at least start posting, is my main writing goal for the month.

What are you squeeing about today?

Not today, exactly, but I already posted about how much I loved Jaws of Hakkon, one of the DA:I DLCs. I've moved on to playing Descent with my Cadash, and I have to admit it works better with a dwarf inquisitor. There's not a ton of unique content for her, but there's enough that I can appreciate the resonance. (No mention of the Hero of Ferelden's being a dwarf, though, not even when Malika asked Renn if he'd met her.) I'm about halfway down to the bottom. Hopefully it won't take too much longer, and then I can move on to Trespasser.

If you could rope old fandom friends into a new fandom, it would be.....

Is it wrong to say that I'd love to new people to get into Dragon Age and bring in fresh perspectives, in hopes of lightening the relentless negativity that I've been seeing since DA:I? I'm not saying that I don't want to ever see any criticism, ever -- there are plenty of valid critiques to make of the new game; I've made plenty of them myself. But it seems like the crits are all anyone ever talks about, and it's getting me down.

I should really watch/read/dive into _______ and then come talk to you about it!

Uprooted by Naomi Novik! OMG it was so good. I don't want to say any more because spoilers. Just go read it.

What else is on your mind?

Not a lot, really. Which is why I haven't posted so much here, I suppose. I need to get back in the habit of regular posting, if nothing else to help keep better track of myself. I keep saying that and not doing it, but that doesn't mean it isn't true.

So I got busy with other things and missed the exact date, but as of last Sunday, April 19th, I've been in fandom for 10 years.

I'd done other things one might describe as fannish before, and of course I've been a fan of things for much longer than that -- my whole life, really. But I date my active participation in fandom to the posting of my first fanfic, which went up on fanfiction.net on April 19th, 2005. I'd been working on it for months, along with the second story I ever posted (the first chapter of that went up a week or so later), and I hemmed and hawed about posting it at all, but I decided it was worth throwing it up there to see what happened. And fandom happened. It took a couple of months, but by the summer I had a few regular readers, and then I met kunstarniki and the rest is history.

When I posted about this anniversary on Tumblr a bit ago, when it was still upcoming, I noted that ten years isn't that long to be in fandom, really -- I know many people who've been involved much longer, and people who came to it far younger. But it's still a good chunk of time, and it's changed my life so much. It wouldn't be entirely wrong to divide my life up into "before fandom" and "after fandom". And although fandom comes with its ups and downs, I can't imagine giving it up. It's brought me the creative outlet I always needed, and I've met so many fantastic people -- including some of the best friends I've ever had.

I thought about doing something grand for the anniversary, but I ran out of both time and ideas, so this brief meander was the best I could do. Thank you, all of you, for being a part of this grand experience. Here's to ten years and ten more, and another ten after that.

pete_thomas asked me to describe my ideal living space.

First, this ideal living space would be located in a city, within easy walking distance to excellent public transportation, restaurants, a fabulous bookstore, a park/public plaza/other outdoor space, and coffee shops with wifi, and within an easy drive to a major freeway. I'm not sure any place like this exists in the SF Bay Area (which I am unlikely to ever leave because of family, friends, and climate), but we're talking ideal, right? ;)

Okay, now the inside. I don't need a big place -- our current condo is about 1400 sq. ft., and it's enough for us. I like homes with mostly open, interconnected spaces, not a whole lot of doors. However, our current place is a loft, and although it's mostly fine, there are times when it would be nice to have a bedroom door that we could close. I really love the double-height ceiling in the living room, though, so that can stay. My ideal home would have a somewhat larger kitchen with lots of cupboards, a gas stove (I'm so tired of electric, but we can't put gas in here), and plenty of counter space. Lots of windows looking out on a nice view, but also good quality curtains or shades to help with heating and cooling. A library! How much do I want a library? I need at least three more bookshelves, and right now I have nowhere to put them. A library, with shelves on every wall, a comfy chair, a desk for my computer, some way to listen to music, and a fireplace. That would be perfect.

Finally, my ideal living space would have a patio or a small yard (the other main thing our current home is lacking). Just big enough for a small table, a few chairs, and a grill. Some shade, and some nice landscaping that is really easy to take care of (I have a black thumb). Yep, that would be just the ticket.

This is a day late; sorry!!

alias_sqbr asked me to compare and contrast Dreamwidth and Tumblr. "I'm specifically interested in the different ways people react to the same post, since you crosspost, but whatever you feel like talking about is fine." This is a great question, but also a hard one, because my thoughts on Dreamwidth and Tumblr (and LiveJournal, which I can't decouple from the others completely) are complicated, and sometimes contradictory. That said, I've wanted to write this post, or one much like it, for a long time, so here goes!

( I suppose it's no surprise that this got long. )

From the January Prompts meme (On DW / On LJ). Want to ask a question? Many slots remain open, especially in the latter half of the month.

Fandom year in review meme, snagged from green_maia.

1. Your main fandom of the year?
Still Dragon Age, although I'm doing more and more with MCU all the time. Final Fantasy and Cinders continue to simmer in the background as well.

( The rest are behind the cut. )