Words of Wood

June Fandom questions, via hils. As you can see, I did not do them day by day. I have no track record of ever completing things done like that! Here are a pile of them instead. I'll do half today and the second half when I next get to it.

Day 1: What's changed about your fandom life in the last 365 days?

WELL. I had a baby. That had a rather... damping effect XD I am literally only just managing to regain some of my writing focus. Also I really drifted away from being "in a fandom" for a while, but in the last couple of weeks I've finally really started feeling like part of a DMBJ community, which is lovely!

Day 2: You've got your OTP, you have to throw a third into the mix (from the same fandom), creating an OT3. Who is the OTP, and in your opinion, why would they make a perfect third for them? Bonus question: What about adding a third to your OTP from a different fandom? Who and why?

So currently I only have an OT3, the only way I am interested in ANY ship dynamic with the Iron Triangle is if they're all equally important. No writing off Pangzi, or saying "oh yes of course he's part of an OT3, but platonically"! (Tbh that viewpoint is hilarious to me because he's really the only one of the Iron Triangle I feel is actively very interested in sex.)

Day 3: What's a favorite, or at least memorable fandom meeting/interaction that you've had?

I still have a special fondness for the first NineWorlds where I went to the queer geek tea with great trepidation (I think it was queer? I really can't remember) and got rescued from my extreme shyness and not-knowing-anyone by raven, who introduced me to their whole collection of London friends who are still one of the most important parts of my twitter life to this day.

Day 4: What are the origins of your penname/username?

Frith is the name of the wood my parents' garden borders onto, and the road, and was part of the name of the first house I lived in (next to the same wood; we moved 2 miles down the road for the sake of a better garden when I was 6). It's also the god from Watership Down. It's also an Old English word meaning sanctuary. I had an earlier LJ called blackthorn_tree because I love them and because when I was little I looked exactly like the blackthorn fairy in the Flower Fairies books. So I kept the thorns part, not least because I was having a bit of a sad time when I made this username. Anyway, the "in thorns" part isn't so important to me, but I love being called Frith. I answer very happily to it IRL when people who know me from the internet call me it! (This is also useful as my first name is pretty common so there's usually at least another one.)

Day 5: Compare and/or contrast your very first fandom obsession and your very latest fandom obsession.

My first fandom, when I was 16, was CSI:NY, which I remember fondly for some reasons and very much not for others XD It's where I discovered hurt/comfort without knowing the word for it or realising that that was entirely what I was writing and reading. It was also a fandom that was misognynistic as hell, thankfully the people who were really into bashing the women didn't actually care about my fave (Stella) though, they were all about being shit to the women who got between their Danny/Don pairing. *eyeroll* Although... DMBJ doesn't really have women, certainly not non-fridged ones *more eyeroll* with the exception of Xiao-Bai, and she's in very few fics. I... should really do something about that.

Anyway, the intervening years have mostly taught me exactly what hurt/comfort is and that reading and writing it is the vast majority of my fannish interest. Sometimes I feel embarrassed about this!

Day 6: What's a fandom that you wish had a bigger following?

Wolf 359! I'm still sad I never really managed to get any of my fandom writer friends into this while it was airing and the fandom was active. SUCH a good little show - it's an indie space audio drama, and if anyone wants to get into it now... *hopeful face*

Day 7: What's the longest time you've been in a fandom. Not necessarily your oldest fandom, but a fandom that you started and still continue to read/write/create content for in some way.

I guess maybe Vorkosigan? Which I read for the first time ten years ago, scarily enough (I know this because it was while I was on a Lake District walking holiday with Ellie where it was just us two and we were Totally Gen and sleeping snuggled together etc in camping barns in a very gen way and then continued to sleep in the same bed when we were back at her parents because we had a nice time! Anyway she got me to read Vorkosigan and I got her to read Codex Alera and we spent a large majority of the walking time excitedly discussing the bits we had each read the previous evening). It's never been a primary fandom, but it's something I dip in and out of, mainly to check whether anyone wrote any good Illyan fic since I last looked, and write for exchanges every now and then.

Day 8: Crack!fic - We all know it. What's your opinion of it, and if you want, show us an example.

Hmmmmm. I really like funny fic! A lot of what gets billed as "crackfic" though I don't really find funny, it just tries way too hard to be WACKY. Like, all the fics of characters being drunk which bear no resemblance to how anyone has ever been while drunk in the history of the world.

Day 9: Drop the cast of a fandom you follow into a reality tv show - who/what/why?

I'd say this wouldn't work for most of the fandoms I've been in because the characters are too serious/competent. Fortunately, DMBJ absolutely does not have that problem! While I think it would be very very hard to write it without falling into the issues of crackfic as above, I reckon you could put the DMBJ cast in pretty much any reality show and it would be hilarious. Also, whichever you chose, from Bake-Off to I'm A Celebrity to Love Island, you'd have Pangzi throwing himself into 100% engagement with the premise and having an amazing time, Wu Xie going between totally baffled and outright cheating, and Xiaoge just being Xiaoge in the corner as hard as he possibly could.

Day 10: Drop your OTP or small ensemble from the fandom they're in into another fandom - how do they do?

Again, I would love to watch the Tomb Idiots smash their way through literally any other canon. Although, in a taking-it-seriously way, I was involved the other day in the discord in hashing out a whole Old Kingdom AU for DMBJ and I am now super invested in it! I am not saying I'll write it. But it had Liu Sang as the Abhorsen, Xiao-Bai as one of the Clayr, Pangzi as an extremely disreputable border guard with lots of sus jobs in his past who turns out to be a surprise Wallmaker, and Wu Xie as a scholar from Ancelstierre with Old Kingdom heritage who goes poking around the Clayr library and stumbles upon a lost Abhorsen from generations back, Zhang Qiling...

So I finally got to see Star Wars! Ellie and I went with her dad, now that we're up here in The North for Christmas. (There have been three hailstorms so far. The North is a scary place.)

It was WONDERFUL. I have super-enjoyed going back through my flist and reading everyone's reaction posts! As a result, however, I feel I don't have enough new to say to bother making a reaction post of my own :P

( Let me talk about the fandom instead! (squee I promise! +spoilers) )

End of year meme: Fandom Edition!

( I am talkative this evening. )

I have nothing interesting to tell you today, sorry. I'm just playing with a meme instead, stolen from rabidchild67.

Give me a prompt, and I will write a drabble for it. Provide pairing or central character, a scenario or starting line, and I shall give you WORDS! Because this seems totally more productive than poking one of the other things I've started and got stuck on. Or writing depressed!Neal.

So anyway, just prompt me. I'll actually try writing pretty much anything, even if it's something I don't usually write.

Fandoms: White Collar, Eternal Law, SGA, AtLA, Discworld (minus the wizard books), Hunger Games, NY, Criminal Minds, other things you know I like but I've forgotten to list

Things which have happened today:

I got turned down from TeachFirst, which rather sucks, and justifies my guess that the interviews at the assesment centre didn't go that great. Ah well. I'm surprisingly not upset, actually - there are enough routes into teaching that I'm sure I'll be fine. And it's an incredibly high-pressured course, so maybe it's for the best.

This morning I accidently went to a lecture I shouldn't have gone to, because it was a genetics module I'm not taking. I have no idea why I wrote it down on my timetable. But when I realised I thought it would be rude if I just walked out, so I listened and made notes anyway. IDEK.

Oh, and I wrote a thing - well, actually I wrote and posted it in the break between that lecture and the ones I was actually supposed to go to! I woke up this morning and there was a prompt on whitecollarhc for "Peter and Neal are trapped in a dessert" and my brain started throwing bad puns at me. So, here is my attempt to cram as many of those terrible puns as possible into about 300 words. Again, IDEK. It's just been that sort of day. XD

Also, while I'm here: is there actually a consensus on how Diana's surname is spelled? Because I've seen about three different spellings being used, each by multiple authors. (This is not as bad as a brief period in the CSI:NY fandom where the actual show couldn't decide whether a recurring character was called Jennifer or Jessica for quite a long time, and her name kept changing between episodes. That was fun.)

White Collar has eaten my braaaain. And the fandom for it is awesome. I'm still writing plotless h/c, but I like plotless h/c.

Girlfriend is coming up to stay tomorrow! This will be lovely (esp. since the house is emptying) and we can wander around Oxford and pretend next term is a long time away. And possibly find better places for dates than the zoology department cafe (although they sell hot drinks in mugs for 30p, which definitely makes up for its other shortcomings).

On that note, I asked her what she'd like me to cook for her, and she said aubergines. Does anyone know any good recipies which involve aubergines (and hopefully don't make them come out too slimy)?

( Shark pies, crochet project of DOOM, and Something Hilarious From Japan )

Tomorrow is my LAST DAY at the primary school. This makes me really sad - I've fallen in love with the little year 1s (ages 5 and 6 for those outside the UK) who mispronounce my name and demand unceasing attention. They are the cutest things ever, seriously. To give some examples from the past few days: we had a discussion about what they want to do when they grow up and one of them wants to be Godzilla. I'm not exaggarating. Also, this exchange outside when they were playing with the sand:

Little Girl: Miss, my daddy might walk along the path past the playground. Can you tell me if he does?
Me: Um, sweetie, I don't know what your daddy looks like!
LG: *stares beseechingly* I think he might be wearing a black t-shirt.
Me: ...Okay, if I see your daddy I'll tell you.
LG: *beams and wanders off*

Aside from the children, both the teachers who I've been assisting have been wonderfully lovely in putting up with me and answering endless questions about teaching. Later I'll be making them chocolate brownies as a thank-you present, which I hope will go down well!

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I can't be all sad about the end of term, though, because it gives me the chance to have a week's holiday in Cornwall staying at the cottage by the sea of the lovely lily_moonlight before I go back to Oxford. Going by past experience this will be a week of being over-excited about fandoms, which is always welcome!

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Speaking of fandoms, I can't find a fandom for Iain M. Banks's Culture novels, which makes me sad :( Does anyone know of one? The only related comms I can find are completely dead. I'm also really getting into the show ReGenesis (biology! genetics! biotec! SCIENCE THAT IS ACCURATE AND REALISTIC!), anyone happen to know anything about a fandom for that?

On a more guilty note, I've only so far read ONE of the fics from sga_genficathon , which is pretty terrible going. But I've written about a third of my telyafen story, so I may actually get a submission into a fest for the first time this year. Ahem, make that academic year. Yup.

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Lastly, thank you to treacle_tartlet  for the chocolate vgift! That made me very happy :)

I'm going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, for the first time, thanks to the encouragement of some of my friends. I'll be doing it as a 'rebel', though, where the goal is to write, rather than a 50,000 word story, 50,000 words of anything. Here is my profile.

Or, in other words, this is where I offload all the fannish commitments I can, since definite daily word count + deadlines = many stories produced! (Hopefully.) So, these are what I'm planning so far:

sga_santa 
Got my assignment - it's a nice one. No ideas as of yet, but hopefully at least one will show up! Min 1000 words.

holmestice 
Got my assignment - it consists of pretty much a pairing only, which I guess gives me free rein to write anything I want as a plotline? Min 1000 words.

polyship 
I'm still filling out my sign-up form, no idea what I'll be asked to write. Min 500 words, max 3,500.

apocabigbang 
This...is probably a bad idea, but, but, apocalypse fic! It's so hard to resist! And it's a pretty short Big Bang, at min 10,000 words. I haven't signed up to it yet, but I'm quite likely to. I just need to pick a fandom. I'm stuck between Sherlock and Sanctuary. SGA could be interesting. Some part of me wants to do AtLA, but it would feel just too cruel!
Also it has pretty banners.



Anything else I should be doing? *gg*

This is what you need to build an Isengard:

1 quantity of gingerbread (the sort I use to make gingerbread houses at Christmas)
2 bags of Bassetts jelly babies
1 big box of Cadburys chocolate fingers (three trays of them)
2 packs of Flake bars (4 bars in each pack)
1 packet of Tesco Value 'flake and rasin chocolate clusters'
1 packet of Tesco Value dolly mix
1 paket of Haribo super mix (although we ended up eating this all before we started)
Cocktail sticks
Butter icing
A large table

You also need a friend who's as obsessed with Tolkien as you are, and therefore will back you up in your excellent idea. I used unbrokenwings91  (who I shall just call Zanna for the rest of this entry, since it's much quicker to type).

Method:
Build Isengard. Then takes lots of photos.  Zanna is much better at taking photos than I am, which is why I am in more of them (I'm the one in the purple t-shirt). Also, none of the blurry ones are hers ;)

A little preview of the finished masterpiece!



Now follow the cut for many more (and better) photos, and commentry :)
( Warning: Very, very image heavy! )

I signed up for hc_bingo (which is like cliche_bingo , except that all of the cliches are hc ones!).  I have no willpower.  And there's something strangely attractive about just getting to write really gratuitous hc ficlets (min. word count is 500), so I shall probably be spamming my flist with them and making the characters excessivly woobified.  Because it's FUN.

I blamefriendshipper. ( Anyway, here's my table: )