pics or it didn't happen
Jan. 9th, 2024 08:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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snowflake_challenge in any systematic way, but I quite like today's Challenge #5.
Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:
1. Something your favorite character would like
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A fandom place you would like to visit
4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
5. Something you find comforting
6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A book or song with a color in the title
9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand
My answers, with pictures and (if I've done it correctly) alt texts are under the cut.
1. Something your favorite character would like
I think Ed from Our Flag Means Death would appreciate this piratical scent locket as I do; it combines a kind of flagrant masculinity with not-so-covert femininity in a really fun way. (A scent locket holds a piece of paper or cloth with perfume on it; I bought one because I have perfume-eating skin, and using a locket lets me keep the top notes for more than five seconds.)
The design didn't photograph well, but it's a heart pierced by three swords.
2. Something that makes you laugh
Taskmaster is deeply weird, and queer, and kinky, and it's baffling that it was ever made, or that it wasn't cancelled after one series, but instead it's a huge hit and there are spinoffs in about ten other countries. I haven't seen the other versions (yet) but the UK one is almost always delightful. One of these days I should do a post about it, with clips. There's a particular outtake on YouTube (the one about Alex's hen night) that is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
This picture is a particularly good representation of the show imo; Greg is grinning cheekily, having clearly just said something that embarrassed Alex.
3. A fandom place you would like to visit
I'm interpreting "fandom place" as "a real place that has fandom associations for you," so:
These were sent to me byvilakins, who lives in New Zealand (and got the figurines from Weta, the studio that made the animated Tintin movie). I'd love to visit New Zealand and Australia; first Sydney and Melbourne (timing it if possible to see the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and also catch a live show by Paul McDermott), then to New Zealand for relaxation amid stunning natural beauty. And I could visit some of you! (But see below for more on that.)
4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
No pic here. If I subscribe to you, I'd be happy to meet you someday. But I am Socially Awkward in meatspace (even more so than online!) and in the past I haven't had great luck at meeting people I know fannishly. The weirdness of simultaneously knowing someone quite well, and not knowing them at all in their offline life, sets me to Max Awkward.
As far as creators whose works I'm fannish about . . . never meet your heroes? Anyway I get starstruck and tongue-tied and generally, as previously noted, awkward. The only creator I can think of that I've "met" is writer China Miéville, at a book signing for Un Lun Dun. He signed my book but I was too shy to say anything.
5. Something you find comforting
This, as you may recall from previous posts, is my expensive recliner. It has acquired some colorful friends, namely a burnt-orange quilt (more orange than it looks in the photo) and a green pillow. I am genuinely working to bring more color and comfort into my daily life, and I think it's doing me good.
6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
Some explanation: this is my bottle of the perfume Coeur de Noir, made by the British perfumery Beaufort. The childhood connection is perhaps a bit strained, and it's to a book series rather than a movie or TV show, but . . .
So, I was kid who loved to read and didn't have access to many books, because my parents were poor. This meant that a lot of the books I read were old, the kind of thing you can easily find in a library or thrift store. Which is how I came to read some of the Cherry Ames books, about the eponymous nurse. I enjoyed the medical information more than the plots. Anyway, in one of them, Cherry Ames: Boarding School Nurse, the plot revolves around a lost recipe for a perfume, that Cherry tries to re-create. I've been interested in perfumery ever since.
(One of my other favorite books from childhood was the original Doctor Doolittle, which I re-read as an adult and OMG SO RACIST. It is a terrible thing to shove that much racism into a book that has animal languages and travelling under the sea in the shell of a giant snail.)
7. A piece of clothing you love
I don't think I really love any of my clothing right now. It's hard to find clothes that fit me properly, and my job isn't one you'd want to wear anything very nice to. But I quite like this shirt, although it would look nicer if it were hung straight and also ironed:
ETA: The color didn't come through very well, but it's a medium lavender.
And here's the runner-up:
My winter scarf, which I bought this past fall to replace a horrible acrylic one. The new one was hand-knitted by an indigenous woman in Peru using alpaca wool, which sounds faintly ridiculous written down but isn't really. The store I work at stocks them, and I like both the scarf and the idea of indigenous women getting paid fairly and relatively directly for their artisanal work. The scarf is a little bit scratchy, because it's pure wool and not a blend, but nowhere near as scratchy as most sheep's wool. I think it's a good successor to my previous beloved blue wool winter scarf, which I bought in Ireland in the mid-1990s and wore for over 20 years.
ETA: The two pieces of clothing I have loved most in my life, I have no pictures of. The first was a WWI US Army officers' trenchcoat, given to me in the mid-1980s by a woman whose father it had belonged to. I loved that coat. I wore it constantly for about two years until it was in rags. (I've just remembered I do have a picture of 16-year-old me wearing it; it's an actual physical polaroid, and I will try to remember to take a picture of the picture and post it here someday.)
The second was a women's red raincoat; it was a designer piece (can't remember which designer) that I got heavily discounted at Nordstrom Rack in 2008, when I'd just left academia and still believed I was going to get a new professional job. I always felt incredibly chic when I wore it. I sold it a couple of years later, when I badly needed money and also had realized I was trans. But I remember it very, very fondly.
8. A book or song with a color in the title
My favorite of the fabulous Eighth Doctor Adventures novels series: The Blue Angel, by Paul Magrs and Jeremy Hoad. Wildly creative and extremely meta. The Doctor and friends meet a (lightly disguised and parodied) Kirk and Spock and co., and simultaneously there's an AU version of the Doctor who's human (??? and maybe half mermaid??? and still has two hearts???) who lives in a big old ramshackle house with his companions, and experiences delusional (??) episodes in which he imagines he has adventures across time and space.
9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand
Rusty Quill isn't really my fandom anymore, but this is such a niche piece of fandom merch that I couldn't resist. This, dearly beloved, is a Rusty Quill Streaming mug, from back when Mike and Anil streamed together. Now Rusty Quill Streaming is no more, neither Mike nor Anil works for RQ anymore, and RQ has been . . . troubling some of its choices. But this mug makes me smile every time, because the boys and the cow are so adorable.
snowflake_challenge in any systematic way, but I quite like today's Challenge #5. Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:
1. Something your favorite character would like
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A fandom place you would like to visit
4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
5. Something you find comforting
6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A book or song with a color in the title
9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand
My answers, with pictures and (if I've done it correctly) alt texts are under the cut.
1. Something your favorite character would like
I think Ed from Our Flag Means Death would appreciate this piratical scent locket as I do; it combines a kind of flagrant masculinity with not-so-covert femininity in a really fun way. (A scent locket holds a piece of paper or cloth with perfume on it; I bought one because I have perfume-eating skin, and using a locket lets me keep the top notes for more than five seconds.)
The design didn't photograph well, but it's a heart pierced by three swords.
2. Something that makes you laugh
Taskmaster is deeply weird, and queer, and kinky, and it's baffling that it was ever made, or that it wasn't cancelled after one series, but instead it's a huge hit and there are spinoffs in about ten other countries. I haven't seen the other versions (yet) but the UK one is almost always delightful. One of these days I should do a post about it, with clips. There's a particular outtake on YouTube (the one about Alex's hen night) that is one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
This picture is a particularly good representation of the show imo; Greg is grinning cheekily, having clearly just said something that embarrassed Alex.
3. A fandom place you would like to visit
I'm interpreting "fandom place" as "a real place that has fandom associations for you," so:
These were sent to me by
vilakins, who lives in New Zealand (and got the figurines from Weta, the studio that made the animated Tintin movie). I'd love to visit New Zealand and Australia; first Sydney and Melbourne (timing it if possible to see the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and also catch a live show by Paul McDermott), then to New Zealand for relaxation amid stunning natural beauty. And I could visit some of you! (But see below for more on that.)4. A fandom creator (pro or not) you'd like to meet
No pic here. If I subscribe to you, I'd be happy to meet you someday. But I am Socially Awkward in meatspace (even more so than online!) and in the past I haven't had great luck at meeting people I know fannishly. The weirdness of simultaneously knowing someone quite well, and not knowing them at all in their offline life, sets me to Max Awkward.
As far as creators whose works I'm fannish about . . . never meet your heroes? Anyway I get starstruck and tongue-tied and generally, as previously noted, awkward. The only creator I can think of that I've "met" is writer China Miéville, at a book signing for Un Lun Dun. He signed my book but I was too shy to say anything.
5. Something you find comforting
This, as you may recall from previous posts, is my expensive recliner. It has acquired some colorful friends, namely a burnt-orange quilt (more orange than it looks in the photo) and a green pillow. I am genuinely working to bring more color and comfort into my daily life, and I think it's doing me good.
6. Something from a favorite TV series or movie from your childhood
Some explanation: this is my bottle of the perfume Coeur de Noir, made by the British perfumery Beaufort. The childhood connection is perhaps a bit strained, and it's to a book series rather than a movie or TV show, but . . .
So, I was kid who loved to read and didn't have access to many books, because my parents were poor. This meant that a lot of the books I read were old, the kind of thing you can easily find in a library or thrift store. Which is how I came to read some of the Cherry Ames books, about the eponymous nurse. I enjoyed the medical information more than the plots. Anyway, in one of them, Cherry Ames: Boarding School Nurse, the plot revolves around a lost recipe for a perfume, that Cherry tries to re-create. I've been interested in perfumery ever since.
(One of my other favorite books from childhood was the original Doctor Doolittle, which I re-read as an adult and OMG SO RACIST. It is a terrible thing to shove that much racism into a book that has animal languages and travelling under the sea in the shell of a giant snail.)
7. A piece of clothing you love
I don't think I really love any of my clothing right now. It's hard to find clothes that fit me properly, and my job isn't one you'd want to wear anything very nice to. But I quite like this shirt, although it would look nicer if it were hung straight and also ironed:
ETA: The color didn't come through very well, but it's a medium lavender.
And here's the runner-up:
My winter scarf, which I bought this past fall to replace a horrible acrylic one. The new one was hand-knitted by an indigenous woman in Peru using alpaca wool, which sounds faintly ridiculous written down but isn't really. The store I work at stocks them, and I like both the scarf and the idea of indigenous women getting paid fairly and relatively directly for their artisanal work. The scarf is a little bit scratchy, because it's pure wool and not a blend, but nowhere near as scratchy as most sheep's wool. I think it's a good successor to my previous beloved blue wool winter scarf, which I bought in Ireland in the mid-1990s and wore for over 20 years.
ETA: The two pieces of clothing I have loved most in my life, I have no pictures of. The first was a WWI US Army officers' trenchcoat, given to me in the mid-1980s by a woman whose father it had belonged to. I loved that coat. I wore it constantly for about two years until it was in rags. (I've just remembered I do have a picture of 16-year-old me wearing it; it's an actual physical polaroid, and I will try to remember to take a picture of the picture and post it here someday.)
The second was a women's red raincoat; it was a designer piece (can't remember which designer) that I got heavily discounted at Nordstrom Rack in 2008, when I'd just left academia and still believed I was going to get a new professional job. I always felt incredibly chic when I wore it. I sold it a couple of years later, when I badly needed money and also had realized I was trans. But I remember it very, very fondly.
8. A book or song with a color in the title
My favorite of the fabulous Eighth Doctor Adventures novels series: The Blue Angel, by Paul Magrs and Jeremy Hoad. Wildly creative and extremely meta. The Doctor and friends meet a (lightly disguised and parodied) Kirk and Spock and co., and simultaneously there's an AU version of the Doctor who's human (??? and maybe half mermaid??? and still has two hearts???) who lives in a big old ramshackle house with his companions, and experiences delusional (??) episodes in which he imagines he has adventures across time and space.
9. Something only someone in your fandom would understand
Rusty Quill isn't really my fandom anymore, but this is such a niche piece of fandom merch that I couldn't resist. This, dearly beloved, is a Rusty Quill Streaming mug, from back when Mike and Anil streamed together. Now Rusty Quill Streaming is no more, neither Mike nor Anil works for RQ anymore, and RQ has been . . . troubling some of its choices. But this mug makes me smile every time, because the boys and the cow are so adorable.
