something queer going on

I'm not doing 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 )

Just finished: Jordan L. Hawk's Unhallowed and Unseen, which are m/m paranormal romances. I've read a bunch of Hawk's Whyborne and Griffin books, though not the whole series as I recall, but someone recently recommended his work to me when I mentioned looking for sff about queer men, preferably by queer men. (The last time I read Hawk was before he had come out as a trans man.)

I was wondering if the newer books would be noticeably different than what Hawk wrote before his transition, but they're not, really. Which is to say they're fine, well-plotted stories that play around in a Lovecraftian universe while directly opposing both Lovecraft's politics and his nihilism. I enjoyed the first one well enough to buy and immediately read the second, and I enjoyed the second well enough to plan on buying the third. They're occasionally a bit gory for my taste, but otherwise fun.

And yet. What I always feel frustrated by whenever I read romance is, of all things, the lack of deep characterization. Even K J Charles, the best writer of male/male romance I know of, tends to produce very same-y characters in whom some blatant trauma (abuse, usually, or internalized queerphobia, or some kind of abandonment trauma) substitutes for depth. These characters don't have real flaws or even irritating quirks, they're just misunderstood woobies. They don't have thoughts or feelings that aren't plot-related. They don't have hobbies or favorite foods or an old pair of shoes they wear long past the point of being worn out. Oftentimes it's not even clear why they love the person they love; it's just destiny/authorial fiat. As a result, the stories read like a prose-ified scripts that needs actors to come along to bring nuance and complexity. (I wonder whether this is a result of starting out--as many m/m romance writers in particular did--in fanfic and not being able to move past its conventions.)

Anyway, it frustrates me. Surely romance, of all genres, is the place to have a great big wallow in characterization? I know there are length conventions and the necessity of a plot--and to be honest, what I like best about both Hawk and Charles is the plots--but surely self-published writers in particular could break some of those conventions and try new things?


Currently reading: Still plugging away at Moby Dick. I'm not yet to the point where I gave up last time. The good news is, I'm finding Ahab less intolerable this time through, so maybe I'll make it. I spent probably an hour on Wikipedia last night looking up whale facts, which I think Melville would be pleased by.


What I'm reading next: Last week I had all kinds of plans to read some really depressing horror, but I'm finding that I want something light to contrast with Moby Dick. Maybe I'll finally finish the Whyborne & Griffin series.

8. Squicks - What are some things that squick you in fandom - not necessarily "icky", though it can be. From anything involving blood, to bad grammar.

I'm squicked in general by gory/graphically violent/icky of the kind that squicks a lot of people.

Specific to fanfic, which I think is where the question was heading, and taking squick to mean "strong aversion without a moral component"--so not quite my own more limited definition of squick, and also not meaning serious bad stuff like if the fic is racist--I think my biggest squick is the dread Out of Character. I'm very there for interpretation of character, but when the changes are so extreme that I can't see how the author got there from canon, I'm not interested in reading it. (I read fic because I like, or am interested in, the characters, so why bother with what are essentially different characters using the same names?)

Similarly, I tend to be perhaps irrationally irritated by most AUs. When someone's circumstances are completely different, you're unlikely to get the same kind of person. In OFMD, just to pick an example completely at random, Ed has been shaped by a lifetime of piracy. If he'd spent the last 35 years being a baker, he wouldn't be Ed! Not all AUs are implausible, of course, but a lot of them are. And to be blunt, I don't understand the impulse to take the characters out of an interesting world and put them in a mundane one. A pirate ship is a lot more interesting than a bakery! (Of course a good writer can make a bakery interesting. But (a) I'd rather in that case that it was a story set in a bakery from the start, and (b) I'd still rather read about pirates.) I can understand the urge in the opposite direction, taking characters from a mundane setting and giving them superpowers or putting them on a generation ship headed for the next galaxy. But the fandoms I interact with tend to be genre shows and the AUs go away from sff instead of towards it.

I sometimes have fandom-specific squicks, which are usually bits of fanon I particularly dislike. For instance, I will back out of OFMD fics where Ed uses lots of endearments for Stede (or even if Stede uses them for Ed, if it's a lot). And it's a popular thing because people think it's sweet, even though canonically Ed never says that kind of thing and Stede uses an endearment exactly once that I recall, when he calls his wife "darling" at the moment of their incredibly awkward, pained reunion.

Other squicks, for this loose definition of squicks that's more like pet peeves: the trope overriding the character, too many fannish or pop culture in-jokes*, not bothering to do even a little research, and, yes, bad grammar. I know people say that the ability to write correct grammar and the ability to tell a good story don't necessarily correlate, but in my experience, they do. (Perhaps because good writers who know they have trouble with grammar get their stories beta read. Writers who put them up unbeta-ed aren't bothering about other details either.)


*I understand the temptation of in-jokes. I put a few (I like to think of them as Easter eggs) into Also Known as Blackbeard, because I spent a huge amount of time working on that story in a very disciplined way and I had to indulge myself somehow. I have no idea if anybody's noticed any of them.


Full list of questions ( under the cut )

I started this ages ago, then skipped a day because there was a question that bored me, and then forgot to start back up again. But lately, I feel like talking about fandom.

6. What’s the longest you’ve ever been in a fandom? What fandom was it? Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I was probably in Buffyverse the longest as an active participant, reading and writing fic; it was also my first fandom. I never thought I'd lose interest, but I did. I'd written a lot, exploring most of what I wanted to explore, and I also experienced my first few rounds of fandom drama and got stung by that (not entirely unmerited), and so in the end I left without much of a backward glance.

I tend to be serially monogamous with my fandoms. Occasionally there's overlap, or I get into a very broadly defined fandom (like Doctor Who with its two TV series and its multiple book series and its audiobooks, or what I called the World Wars Megafandom, which was a lot of war-related texts with no other connection), but usually I obsess about one canon for a while and then move on. There are old fandoms that I think of fondly, and I might even read a fic or watch a vid if I happened upon one, but I'm unlikely to create in this fandoms ever again.

I know this will happen someday with OFMD and I'm already sad about it, because I love the show so much. (Please, S2, don't fuck it up.)


Full list of questions is ( under the cut )

It's that 5 questions meme: my questions come to me from oursin. If you'd like 5 questions from me, just say so in a comment.

Questions and answers ( under the cut )

One of the nice things about being fannishly active again is that I can do fannish memes! This one, called "Frankenstein's meme" because it's patched together from bits of other memes, is stolen from trobadora via my network.

First question, answer, and full list of questions ( under the cut )

The state of the world continues to be awful. I don't have anything useful to say about it.

So, more of the shipping meme; my first post with the full list of questions is here.

Some shippy fannish stuff ( under the cut )

Have a few more questions and answers from the shipping meme I started here.

( Under the cut )

A few days ago I was sadly reflecting to myself that there would be no Great British Bake Off this year, because COVID. And then all over Twitter people started posting about the new season! All the bakers and cast and crew quarantined and then lived together on location for weeks to make it happen, and I am so glad they did, because I swear that that first episode is the nicest thing that's happened all year. *happysigh*

And hey, look, it's another meme! An autumnal meme, extremely US-centric I'm afraid, acquired from somewhere on the network and modified to remove one irrelevant question and Lots of Excessive Capitalization.

Go apple picking vs. go on a hayride?
Apple picking, I guess, although I've never done it. I have been on a hay ride once, and I can confirm that there's a reason seasonal allergies are sometimes called "hay fever."

Scary vs sweet?
Scareet? Swary? Earlier today I watched Bryn Monroe play an extremely swary ghost dating sim game, and it was perfect.

Sweaters vs boots?
Sweaters. Though I did just recently buy a pair of boots, after it finally occurred to me that I can afford boots now and there's no reason to put up with cold wet feet.

Socks vs mittens?
Socks. I don't like mittens because you can't do anything while wearing them.

Bonfires vs football?
Bonfires. I hate football.

Trick-or-treating vs watch scary movies?
I'm too old for trick-or-treating (and don't have the excuse of children/grandchildren) so I'll have to watch some old, tame, not really very scary movies.

Apple pie vs pumpkin pie?
I like both, but if I had to choose, apple.

Halloween vs Thanksgiving?
Thanksgiving would be great if it was just a harvest feast instead of being all wrapped up in lies about American history and, you know, genocide. So I think I have to choose Halloween.

Bake pie vs bake cookies?
As long as you're baking, you might as well do both. Cookies are easier and more likely to turn out well, though.

Rain vs fog?
Rain. I live in a dry climate and rain is a treat! Rain this year would be especially welcome as we didn't get our usual summer monsoon.

Black cats vs owls?
Kitties! Kitties of the darkness!

Ghosts vs wizards?
Wizards, I guess? Magicians of all kinds.

Go hiking vs. sleep in?
Sleep in (I can hardly ever manage it anymore because my body just decides to wake up, and I miss it). Then have a nice reasonable walk around town, enjoying the cool weather without having to carry a damn backpack.

Cinnamon vs nutmeg?
They're both good, but nutmeg is better.

Hot chocolate vs tea?
Tea, because there's so much more variety. I like hot chocolate but I'd get very tired of it if I drank it often.

Live in a cabin in a forest vs have it be fall all year round?
Fall all year round. Or at least cool all year round, with the autumn colors reserved for a yearly treat.

Candy apples vs caramel apples?
I thought they were they same thing? I guess I've never eaten a candy apple, then. I'm not a huge fan of caramel apples because they're hard to eat.

Blankets vs pillows?
What a weird question. Both, please? But I'm not a fan of pillows the way I am of blankets. I like to sleep in a cold room with lots of blankets. I don't like lots of pillows because they just end up on the floor.

Roasted marshmallows vs roasted chestnuts?
Chestnuts, although where I live you never see anyone selling freshly roasted ones. Alas. I don't love marshmallows, but when I was a kid I used to roast them absolutely black because I liked the crispness and the contrast of the bitter burned skin with the very very sweet insides.

Coffee vs apple cider?
Note for those from elsewhere: this is US apple cider, which is non-alcoholic spiced apple juice, usually served hot. It's cloyingly sweet and I don't like it much. Coffee, please.

Red leaves vs orange leaves?
Red. I miss the gorgeous red of maple leaves in autumn against the deep blue sky. You don't get red or orange leaves where I live now, just yellow and then brown.

Scented candles vs the smell of fresh baked goods?
Would anyone actually pick candles???

Carve pumpkins vs make pumpkin pie?
Pie. I have no artistic skills, and also, if you make pie, then you have pie.

Pumpkin spice lattes vs chai tea lattes?
Am I making them myself, so I can control the sweetness? I quite like the idea of an unsweetened spiced coffee, or a chai latte that's only lightly sweet rather than syrupy. I could go for either.

Coats vs over-sized sweaters?
Coats. I like cold weather because I like to wear coats and jackets. And I prefer clothes that are a little more fitted rather than oversized.

Beanies vs berets?
Beanies, I guess, because I would look silly in a beret.

Candy corn vs peanut butter cups?
Peanut butter cups. They're not particularly autumnal, but they're delicious, while candy corn is disgusting.

S'mores vs apple crisp?
S'mores, for non-Americans, are a campfire treat: a toasted marshmallow and a piece of chocolate between two graham crackers. Delicious in theory, although in practice the chocolate never quite melts enough. Purely in flavor terms, a good apple crisp is probably better, but if I get to have the whole experience of being around a fire with friends, then s'mores.

Jump in a pile of leaves vs swing on a tire swing?
If I can safely assume that there is nothing untoward in the pile of leaves, then I'm jumping in. I love the smell and crunch of dry leaves.

Corn maze vs haunted house?
I've never tried either, but I'll say corn maze, because I do not like jump scares and such.

Bob for apples vs visit a pumpkin patch?
Pumpkin patch, if only because it's vastly more sanitary.

Whipped cream on hot chocolate vs marshmallows on hot chocolate?
Whipped cream.