#5~~

Bad news: Moving is the worst. Also, I’d forgotten how much the process of learning my new manager’s and coworkers’ moods and expectations wears me out. And when we enter winter, I’ll be lucky if I ever see the sun thanks to my work hours. Yay?

Also, how'd you been? Any new fandoms and hobbies you wanna share or skills you want to flex?

Awww, thank you!

Yeah, I saw that! I'm... not sure what to think, honestly? Other than that HBO wants that $$$, anyway. I'm highly skeptical about how good a story they could tell, but I'm willing to reserve judgment.

I've been doing well overall, albeit better some days than others. I'm not a huge fan of the summer heat, but I do love the increased daylight hours! You?

No new fandoms as of the moment, though I drifted briefly into the Grishaverse over the early winter; I have a WIP canon divergence Nikolai/Alina (potentially Nikolai/Alina/Zoya) one-shot sitting in my drafts folder that's currently around 5,000 words. We'll see if it ever sees the light of day!

I watched the Kenobi miniseries, but I wouldn't call that a new fandom per se, since I've long been a part of the SW fandom. I also fell back into Tamora Pierce's Tortall and Emelan universes, but as with Kenobi, I don't currently have any fic to show for it—just a lot of feelings.

Hmmm, hobbies and skills... I DM'd for the first time in May. It was definitely nerve-racking, especially since I belatedly realized I wasn't remotely familiar with the 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons rules! (As a kid, I played a weird mishmash of earlier editions, and I played different tabletop RPGs in college.) But it went well, and I'd consider running a game again.

No worries! I always enjoy talking to people, so don't hesitate to shoot me a message in the future, @7thkarma. You're not bothering me!

To answer your questions in order:

Yes, I've read ASOIAF.

Yes, I think Jon/Sansa could be canon. However, I'm not convinced that it absolutely already is or is going to become canon, either; as much as I enjoy theorizing, I tend to be a skeptic about these things. Either way, I don't think it's likely that GRRM will finish the ASOIAF series, so even if he had planned for Jon/Sansa to be canon, I don't think we're ever going to see it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But hey, that’s what fanfiction is for!

Yes, I've read some ASOIAF metas, both gen and ship-related! In fact, blindspot's (now well-known) meta, "A Time for Wolves", was one of my first introductions to Jon/Sansa as a ship back in 2013 or so, alongside justadram's A Winter's Tale. (I periodically lurked in the ASOIAF and GOT fandoms for several years before I started to engage with either. That said, I didn’t read metas on a very wide range of subjects until early 2019ish, so I was a weird blend of hyper-aware of some topics/theories/attitudes in fandom and completely oblivious to others.)

Yeah, that's one of my many concerns. Show!Jon was always different from book!Jon, but GOT's (somewhat flat) characterization of him became worse than a flanderization of itself by the time we reached the final seasons. And while I don't have an issue with Kit Harrington or the other creative powers-that-be having a different vision of the characters, it doesn't make me eager to see what they create, either. More than anything, I dread The Discourse™ that will inevitably come with the show, particularly surrounding Sansa. Because you know haters will jump on the smallest of statements to vigorously bash her all over again. *sighs*

Eh, I might watch the Jon Snow sequel/spin-off; not sure at the moment. If I do watch it, though, I'll do what I always have: mentally put the show in its own little separate box in my head. Just as GOT and ASOIAF are two largely separate entities to me, Snow (or whatever it ends up being called!) will be its own entity. I know some fans use "fanfiction" in a pejorative sense when discussing GOT and its spin-offs, but I try to see the whole thing in a "two cakes" way. If nothing else, we'll get some more visuals fan artists can use for their manips!

Having said all of this, just because a show is in development doesn't necessarily mean it will make it to our screens. Bloodmoon is a perfect example of that. ;-)

I'm still going back and forth re: watching HotD. On one hand, it looks like it's going to be a delicious visual spectacle. On the other hand, I don't especially like any of the major characters of the Dance—at least, not as they've been depicted in GRRM's written works. Which to be fair, is kind of the point, but if I'm going to get into a story, I usually prefer to like at least one of the main characters. But you never know, I might end up stanning a HotD main character in the way Cersei fans often stan her; in a 'this character is the worst, isn't that great, they should definitely win over all the other terrible characters' way lol. It's also possible that HotD will manage to infuse some of the characters with a bit more humanity and nuance than we get in GRRM's novelettes/novellas and fake histories. So we'll see!

Re: the latest influx of fantasy adaptations, the genre has been on the rise for a while now, so it doesn't surprise me that we have so many of them. These things sort of ebb and flow in pop culture consciousness. I’ll be curious to see what happens next when we eventually reach the saturation point.

I haven't seen The Rings of Power series (I don’t think it’s even out yet?) or the newest version of Dune. While I love LOTR, I'll freely admit that I never got especially into the indices or The Silmarillion, and the trailers I’ve seen for TROP haven’t done much for me. Likewise, though I've read the first few Dune books and watched the 1984 TV movie adaptation, I never got majorly into the series, so I didn't feel an urge to see the latest remake.

I did watch the S1 adaptation of Shadow and Bone, and I enjoyed it for what it was; there are some elements that I think it handled well, and some that I think it handled not-so-well. Either way, I'll probably give S2 a try whenever it comes out.

Hi, everyone!

Like a lot of people, I’ve been dealing with Covid-brain (though not actual Covid, fortunately!), which is the main reason I haven’t been on here recently. But overall, I’m doing tolerably well—especially now that we have the extra sunlight that comes with summer. 

I gave my first professional virtual workshop/presentation with a group of other librarians a few months ago, and it went well. The nice thing about presenting over Zoom is you can go have a minor panic attack in private beforehand in a way that would be much harder at an actual conference! ;-)

Meanwhile, Summer Reading has been weird this year, if only because we’re still holding very limited in-person programming, even as life continues to go back to “normal” more and more everywhere else. 

imo he accidentally wrote a group of people that–from what i’ve seen and i admit i am not familiar w/ canon beyond the movies–were awful, abusive, pro-authoritarian, rigid, immoral, self-righteous, so… i like focusing on the fact that Lucas fucked up and White Gazed stuff because my hatred of the Jedi (letting a kid’s mother die in slavery and expecting it not to fuck him up. using child soldiers. supporting the enslavement of the clones!!!!) [see pt 2]

is not in any way related to seeing Buddhism negatively. i get that he was pilfering from Buddhism but what he created is its own really lousy thing that is totally not Buddhism.

nothing against people who like the Jedi and want to remake them ofc though!

Nope, I totally get where you’re coming from. I’m fond of the Jedi (or at least my interpretation of the Jedi lol) but boy did they have institutional Issues(TM) in canon and the EU. They needed reform in the worst of ways. 

Which doesn’t stop me from getting super irritated when I see people say that they were canonically as bad as or worse than the Sith, or that they deserved to have genocide committed against them, or that none of their teachings had any value.