blakmagjick | Reading

++ I only vaguely follow the Olympics, as in only the sport events I'm interested in. For the winter Olympics it's figure skating. Because of this, I kinda got myself caught up with the sensation of Alysa Liu and her truly inspiring story and the outcome of her winning gold simply by just being herself, returning back to the sport after two years of retirement and doing so on her own terms, and having passion for what she loves and having fun. For all the technical and professional elements of the sports competition, the pure joy and confidence in what she was doing is what most of all take away when watching programs like that. Her performances, her general attitude about life, as well as her kindness, support and excitement towards her fellow competitors, it was quite infectious and it's great to see something this positive and uplifting come out of the Olympics.

++ An official music video was released by the cast of A/B/O Desire for "Master of Desire", the drama's theme song. I literally was all chin!hands watching it! (✿◠‿◠) The video itself is visually stunning, and just seeing them all together for this and with them paired off with their respective couples just made me so happy, specifically that of Gao Tu/Shen Wenlang. Anything with them, please, I need more little itty bitty crumbs of those two!

++ Girls Like Girls is an upcoming film by Hayley Kiyoko, adapted from a book she had wrote that is titled and based off of her iconic 2015 song/music video of the same name. I wasn't aware that she had written a novel nor that this film was in the works at all, but that makes this discovery so much more amazing for me. I do remember back when the video music was released that people were saying that it could be its own story in itself, so, whether or not this was taken into account at the time, I like that Hayley wanted to take a step further with her own creation.

Current Mood: good
Current Music: MS MR - Twenty Seven

hamsterwoman

3. Diana Wynne Jones, Hexwood – I was intrigued about Hexwood since hearing that several flisters are big fans, and when I was in the UK,

cafemassolit presented me with a beautiful UK cover copy – very forestry and mysterious – because the non-Chrestomanci DWJs are hard to find in the US. With the 8dodwj podcast getting to Hexwood in late January, and having figured out some kind of reading schedule with the sync read – what seems to work well is, I read during the BART portions of my commute, which is a solid hour+ chunk, and requires the least attention from me, because the station announcements are hard to miss, and listen to podcasts for the bus and waiting portions, which is allowing me to keep up with new podcasts and make some adequate progress on the E&J retro dive – I now actually read it. And it’s definitely unlike anything by DWJ I’ve read! Early on, when I had finished part 1 or 2 of 9, Best Chat asked which one that was, and I said, all I can say about it is that it’s a non-Chrestomanci DWJ, because I have no clue what’s going on – but neither does anyone else in this book, so that’s cool. Once I’d finished, I said, “At basically no point could I predict what was going to happen next, and this is like five or six books in one, matryoshka style except less linear. But I definitely liked it!” Which I think is a pretty good summary both of the book and my reading experience. And the rest goes under ( the SPOILER CUT )

And hereby I have finally read Hexwood, after talking vaguely about doing so for several years. Having done the same with Fire and Hemlock about two years ago, I should probably now pick a next target to read – I’m thinking Black Maria/Aunt Maria or Homeward Bounders probably… Although I do actually have a copy of Archer’s Goon, unlike these other two, so, sensibly, I should read THAT.

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Week 3 of Stuff I Love: Top 10 Edition (hosted by

dreamersdare here) is Music Picks.

I’m not fannish about music, and my favorite songs would be heavily weighed towards Russian and they are my favorite because of the lyrics, so that’s not going to be interesting to most of my flist. So instead, I’m doing top 10 songs that I’ve seen used in fanvids that I’ve loved. These have to be songs I actually like, and fanvids I actually like/love, which restricted this to a manageable and relatively easy to track down set.

( 13 fanvids to 11 songs – because I had to add some bonus ones and prime numbers are cool )

And this is not part of the above list, because I just discovered it while searching for something else and stumbling on the playlist of someone with very compatible tastes to me, but there’s a The Goes Wrong Show fanvid to “Odds Are” by the Barenaked Ladies (who have several songs I really enjoy, but I think this is the first time I’ve found one paired with a vid for something I also really like), and it was a lot of fun to revisit a bunch of my favorite disasters to such a jaunty and optimistic song.

rogueslayer452

Challenge #13: TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

I'm going to actually say Dreamwidth.

As someone who joined online fandom via LiveJournal ages ago and have seen the shifts and changes of the online fandom community over the years, from the fandom migration to other platforms and how things have altered with the presence of social media, I think Dreamwidth has kept up what I once enjoyed about the LJ fandom community. I do use Tumblr for the pretty graphics and visit Reddit every now and then for updates on things, but ultimately when I think about fannish community I think of something that is more interactive, more personable, and less judgmental. And that's what Dreamwidth is for me. It reminds me of the times when online journaling offered something for everyone, fandom related or not, and was a place to express your thoughts and opinions clearly on your own journal and in community discussions, engage in conversations with others. I participate in fannish conversations and challenges, such as

snowflake_challenge as an obvious example, even going onto different people's journals to talk and squee about fannish interests. It's something that I miss when it comes to the fandom community interaction as a whole, the engagement of just talking with people about things, having back and forth civil discussion in comment threads. Dreamwidth offers that to me in ways that other places cannot.

That's not to say that other fandom places online I visit don't have value and aspects that I enjoy, it's just that I think I feel more comfortable and safer in the controlled environment that Dreamwidth provides. It may be smaller in comparison to what LJ used to be, it's definitely not on the same wavelength as Tumblr and I do wish more people would join/return to DW, although I must admit to liking how quiet it is here compared to the social media reactionary drivel you often see. Plus, it's challenges like this that get me off my ass to actually write and participate, and I like that kind of push. I don't have to do it, but I want to. Because I miss this kind of thing in fandom, y'know?

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: Sleep Token - Hypnosis

rogueslayer452

snowflake_challenge is hosting a fandom friending meme, which although posted a little while ago is still going on, if you're so inclined to participate.

++ Hearing what's going on with Discord, it's honestly worrying about how online privacy has been gradually dwindling away over the years. From what I remember, anonymity on the Internet has always been celebrated in the past, and online safety was heavily encouraged and promoted especially towards kids. Now, the opposite is happening where if you're not revealing your real name, age, or even your face online then you're automatically suspicious, which is ridiculous and such a bizarre 180 from the online safety etiquette that was drilled into me as a younger teenager (and truthfully it makes me feel horrible for the younger generations who are growing up online like this, not just for the privacy issues but also for not being able to be embarrassing online without it following you around in real life because of it). Of course, corporations pushing for this are doing so for their own agendas which is frustrating in itself, but that makes it even scarier considering all that's happening in the world now. *sigh*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Madonna - Frozen

hamsterwoman

2. Elis James and John Robins, The Holy Vible – so this is the book Elis & John wrote together in ~2017 and toured in 2018. I actually bought it and started reading it really early in my Elis & John journey – May 2024 – because I thought it would be a “concentrated” way to get a feel for them as a duo. And it kind of works in that regard, but only to a point – some stuff is more reliant on already knowing the inside jokes, and most of it is enhanced by being able to hear certain key phrases in their voices (they recorded the audio book version, which I do think would be fun, especially for certain chapters, but I don’t think this is something I need to experience twice). Anyway, I started reading it back in May 2024, while I was still trying to figure out/decide how to catch up on the back catalogue, and fairly quickly decided this was not the best way. But I’ve now listened back to before this book was published, and that seemed like a very good time to go back to the rest of it, especially when I wanted something undemanding and light. ( More, with… spoilers of sorts, I suppose? )

This was definitely a better time at which to read this book, and I’m glad I can say I have done so now :) Probably audiobook would’ve been the better way to go from the start, but on the other hand, I already have hundreds of hours of audio content, and being able to change it up with the written word was probably good :)

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Speaking of addenda to other media I’m consuming, after I watched The Goes Wrong Show, YouTube helpfully popped up the BBC broadcast version of the play Peter Pan Goes Wrong, and I watched it too. It was interesting to see this bunch / this humour at much longer form – the TV episodes are <30 min and the play was over an hour, so it was a slightly different vibe. ( More, with SPOILERS )

I then also watched A Christmas Carol Goes Wrong, which was shorter and felt closer to the show, but I still like the show more. ( More, with spoilers )

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Week 2 of Stuff I Love: Top 10 Edition (hosted by

dreamersdare here) is Series. For week 1’s “Standalones”, I’d chosen to focus on SFF stories because I tend to favor SFF series. So I’m thinking of doing basically the opposite, for the same reason, for this week – usually if I read/watch a series, it’s almost certainly going to be a SFF series because it’s a chance to spend time in a constructed world, get to know magic rules or alien races, maybe even learn a bit of an invented language. So it’s much rarer for me to have a series I love that isn’t SFF – and that’s what I decided to go with here (partly because, y’all already know what my favorite SFF series are, it’s basically all my tags :)

Again, not trying to rank these:

( Top 10 NON-SFF series I love )

rogueslayer452

Challenge #06: Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you.

( Top Ten OTPs. )

( Top Ten Favorite Pieces of Underrated/Less Talked About Media )

This got way longer than I had intended. I tried to be concise with the second category but, y'know, when you're a fan of something you want to be thorough.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: XG - ROCK THE BOAT

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blakmagjick

December 2003

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The holders of my sanity...

Reading

Saw your face, heard your name.

Reading roundup: Hexwood + Stuff I Love: songs in fanvids

Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Community Space

Sigh.

Reading and watching roundup, and Stuff I Love: non-SFF series

Fandom Snowflake Challenge: Top Ten

Profile

December 2003

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