🎃 Sauron + mayonnaise = sauronnaise

FANDOM SNOWFLAKE CHALLENGE #1

Self-introduction o’clock.

Eh. There’s my sticky entry, but I suppose time calls for an updated introduction.

Here’s my petite personne in bullet points:

- Home gymbro (Caroline Girvan, Chris & Edi and Jasper Macdermot ftw)
- Currently being busy transitioning from twink to twunk (well, I surprise myself with using gay slang. It’s the one that fits best. Thank you, gay terminology)
- I want a six pack of abs. I miss my shredded abs. I'm getting there!

- I spend a lot of time outside
- I like birds. I have a guide on birds of Québec and the Northeast that I consult (we do have strange visitors every now and then). I recently bought a book on trees and plants in Québec and the Maritimes because I wish to be able to identify more than the basics

- My English is wonky because I only get to use it online (minus the occasional opportunities irl)
- Yet I did my undergrad in this language
- English is a difficult language. Whoever believes otherwise is a moron (ok, maybe not, but I dare them to write an entire lay). Or masters it like Tolkien
- Tolkien made me love English. And Tolkien made me love Tolkien. I own about 12 books by him

- I casually play a rpg gacha game called Onmyoji
- I’m not a big gamer, but I do like videogame scores
- I listen to various stuff, from niche doomgaze to not-so-niche Stray Kids’ and Ateez’s hit songs

I want to do the snowflake challenge because I aim to be more active on Dreamwidth. I’m quite bad at logging in, blogging and keeping up with others’ journal entries. In fact, online, I’m bad with whatever isn’t my close friends reaching out to me or work emails... Perhaps increasing my DW activity will entice me to work on my unfinished fics. Who knows. Not me lol


FANDOM SNOWFLAKE CHALLENGE #2 – PETS

You will be delighted to learn that ‘pet’ means ‘fart’ in French.

I’m not part of the Path of Exile fandom, but their pet kiwi is adorable. It’s available on PoE 2. It follows you everywhere you go. You can smash it by accident, and it won’t die. I don’t fail to mention the kiwi to my friend who’s a PoE player everytime I see him.


FANDOM SNOWFLAKE CHALLENGE #3 – FANDOM LOVE

The Tolkien fandom is rather not one entity, but rather, connected or disconnected communities. Either way, people are knowledgeable and passionate. It makes for great conversations irl and online. I fulfill my duty by luring people into reading the Silm.

People say what they want about fanfiction, but I’ve read several Silmarillion fanfics which prose, plotline, character development and character arcs, and so forth, were greater than those of published fiction. Being published fiction doesn’t preclude quality (I can attest with all the wacko things I read at college and university), and fanfiction doesn’t preclude mediocrity. I can thank the transformative side of the Tolkien fandom for it.

Two of my all time favourite authors happen to be fanfic authors (Darth Fingon and c1are. C1are mainly writes Onmyoji fics, most of which are in Chinese, but they translate some of their works to English).

Three centuries later, I finally updated A Storm Above the Sea. Chapter 2 on SWG and AO3

So far so good. Nothing really happens except that Sauron takes a bath and meditates, and Mysterious-Character-From-Harad is sentenced to prison and escapes shortly after.

Isildur and Elendil will come back next chapter.

Watch on YouTube

Meeee. But not Bernard Hill neither Reita. :( All hail the victorious dead.

Life's less hectic, meaning I have more time to dedicate to fannish activities. Boy, do I miss that. It's like I'm recovering a part of myself whenever I come back to fandom.

To quote CBC News:

Montreal expected to see rain for much of the day Wednesday and temperatures of 13 C. At night, temperatures will plummet to –13, with a wind chill of –24.

(...)

Violent westerly winds of up to 90 km/h are also expected Wednesday evening and heavy rain warnings are in effect for certain regions of Quebec.

To add fuel to the fire: It's the middle of winter, and more than 100 wildfires are still smouldering:

There are still 92 active fires in British Columbia and another 54 in Alberta — holdovers from last year — according to the latest figures from the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. Others are also active in the Northwest Territories, experts said.

(...)

Research suggests such fires are becoming more common as the climate warms. The hot, dry conditions that contribute to powerful wildfires during the summer can lead to deep burning in carbon-rich soils like peat.

(...)

"The dice are loaded, the deck is stacked — whatever phrase you want to use, there is a high likelihood of a very active spring."

...malade.

I finished Turn: Washington's Spies, a historical drama on the American Revolution based on Alexander Rose's Washington's Spies: The Story of America's First Spy Ring.

I started the series last year. I didn't finish it because I then got distracted by my life. And then, I wasn't in the mood for it. I tend to take forever to finish a show. Anyway, I was immersed in it after a few episodes. It's only four seasons. I wished it was longer, but there's an advantage to series that don't last forever: we can rest assured that the quality of the story is maintained throughout the show. Or, at least, we can hope so.

It's gritty; there's humour; characters are insufferable; yet I found myself attached to many; costumes and decors are realistic; CGI is minimal. The other aspect I noted was how familiar the nature and sounds were. It felt like home. It's not a feeling I get watching Vikings because it was filmed on the other side of the Atlantic, so obviously, there will not be the same trees or birds.

Now, I'm upset. Post-show depression. Kudos to the actors who made me want to punch their characters in the face many times. Especially Owain Yeoman who played Benedict Arnold. Arnold annoyed me more than John Grave Simcoe and Robert Rogers did. Other than that, I'm a George Washington and Edmund Hewlett enjoyer. I grew fond of Mary Woodhull as the show went on.

John André is played by JJ Feild. He sounds like Thranduil and looks like the lovechild of Loki and Thranduil. See it for yourselves under the cut.

( Read more... )

You heard that right: I. Want. To. Kiss. Myself.

I had started to feel the inspiration tingles my skin this afternoon. Finally, the desire to continue a fanfiction I started three years ago was back. I didn’t publish this fic. Three years ago is around the time I took the resolution not to post new stories unless I have ¾ written. This is why this story I’m going to talk about is nowhere to be seen.

I may or may not have respected my resolution when I was bored and asked people from Discord to assign me prompts two years ago. It took me a little over eight months to finish them all. In my defence, I intended to write 2-3k words per prompt. Intentions of the sort never work right. Next thing I knew, I had two short multi-chaptered stories in front of my eyes (one of 12k words; the other 8k). I’m satisfied with how the fics turned out.

Anyways, the fanfic in question is a tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE story that takes place in the Tokyo Revelation arc (btw I’d highly recommend the manga. I read mixed reviews on the anime—never watched it. The OVA is said to be fine. The OST, composed by no other than Yuki Kajiura, is darn good). It’s canon compliant for the most part because I’m boring, and the OG storyline is complicated enough on its own already. It focuses on Fai and Kamui. Kamui’s the guy of my icon, btw. He’s a vampire in tsubasa. I prefer tsubasa!Kamui over X-1999!Kamui, if you’d like to know (if you’re a CLAMP fan and can follow what I’m babbling about).

Earlier this afternoon, I vaguely remembered I had typed 3-4k words of said fic in the past. I couldn’t recall if Fai, Sakura, Kurogane, Syaoran and Mokona had arrived to Tokyo where I left the story at. The fic starts with Fuuma and his first years in Tokyo. Fuuma is somewhat important in the story because his sole role is to annoy Kamui, a vital character. Which eventually becomes important because of a semi-secret-plottwist-that-leads-to-another-semi-secret-plottwist-before-les-BIG-revelations. I don’t know why I’m spoilering myself because, as I said, canon compliant. You know tsubasa, you know what’s coming. (Lemme feel sneaky and important mkay (~￣³￣)~)

Only the realisation dawned on me that… The fic is in my older pc!!! That is dead!!! Nooooooo!!! That put me in some sort of contemplatively grumpy mood for a few minutes.

But then- guess what? I purchased my current pc before I started the fic. The fic’s still there. In my files. Lol. And, good news: it has 8.5k words. I’m going to read it later to see how good or bad it is. ETA: I read the last two pages. I left it at a cliffhanger. Stupid me weaseling my way around cool semi-canon divergent elements. I have no idea what I had in mind. Euargh.

All of this was triggered by tsubasa soundtrack that I’m listening to while working on a silly Tolkien story. Back to writing, I am. Under the cut, an excerpt from The Strongest Laughter of Eä to be featured in The Parchment of Secret Valian Tales.

( Read more... )

Another fanfiction archive gone. I’m currently reading Elladan’s Biograph Script by Darth Fingon for the 64545th time. I discovered the fic about 4 years ago and loved every bit of it. I’m also a huge fan of Darth Fingon myself. He doesn’t know I exist. It’s good with me (hey Darth, you got a random fanboy here *points at self*). I can’t shut up about him on Discord in a private server. It’s a miracle my friends aren’t done with me yet. I also can’t shut up about ‘Bloody Silmarils’ by petite_dilly that you all should read (oui, c’est de la publicité gratuite, mais j’ai effectivement parlé de « Maudits Silmarils » hier). Anyways.

There was something I wanted to check that I knew was in another fic of his, but not in his Lauron-nama series because I’ve read it for an unorthodox number of times too (I went from being severely annoyed at Fingon (the character, not Darth) to liking him. He's an arse, but a hot one at that, and a misunderstood Elf. Misunderstood hot ass, how about that). So it had to be part of another fic that takes place within his world building. For some reason, I remembered what I wanted to find about the Glorfindel – Oropher reunion + Glorfindel meeting Thranduil for the first time wasn’t on AO3 neither on SWG, but on a website with a blue and gold layout. I knew I wasn’t dreaming/making things up because I did read fics from that archive in 2022 ish. It did look blue and gold from the best of my memory.

So, after some furious googling, I realised the archive in question, LotR Gen Fics, shut down in July 2022. It was just my luck that I consulted it in early 2022! I went on a semi-fanfiction hiatus later and forgot about the archive. Not all of LotR Gen Fics was archived on Wayback Machine. All I can do is sob and lament (grunt and complain is more like me than shedding tears, in all fairness).

And start a very stupid fanfiction that involves Thingol and Melian, inspired by AO3’s removal of characters’ Quenya names (like Maedhros | Maitimo (Tolkien) becomes Maedhros (Tolkien). Those with only Quenya names are not impacted by this change. The whole obviously made people talk on tumblr). Edit: my ao3 must be broken because I don't see the changes.

After a year on Dreamwidth (happy anniversary to me! a week late), a bit on and off, I realise my favourite feature of the site is the late 00s feeling. I started being active online on fandom forums when they were still a thing in the late 00s/early 10s. I sulked (other) social media for a long time. Discord is somewhat forum-like but the fast pace of certain servers throws me off. I never had Xanga, MySpace, Skyrock or LiveJournal. 9yo me, however, found Dramione fanfiction on Skyrock.

I like DW's display. It's easy to use. There are certain customization features I'd rather have otherwise but I don't 'speak' CSS, so it is what it is. I can manage with what we have! I recently discovered the explore random journals and random communities option.

At the beginning, I wanted this blog to be music and fandom-centric. Now, I'm less sure exactly what direction/purpose I want to give it. I realised I enjoy reading about people's personal lives, and I don't entirely disdain blabbering about mine. Anyhow, it's my blog, I can do what I want and talk about different topics. Tags exist for a reason!

Do you think there'll be a resurgence of blogs and forums? There are a few tumblr refugees and youngsters like me who use DW. By youngster, I mean mid-twenties, which is old enough to have had a taste of the late 00s internet. I wonder if the 18- population will eventually tire from the reels and youtube shorts frenzy and opt for something less fast paced (or seemingly less fast paced. I encountered crazily active forums 10 years ago and that scared me).

Theme of the day: red and warm colours

Theme of the day: desert.