Dragaera (Journaling January)

My prompt from hamsterwoman was "Dragaera," and I was supposed to post about it on the 17th. Sorry I'm late. (If there was a 34th of January, I would have pushed it back till then, but alas.)


Have you ever encountered a canon that really drew you in and held your interest over several years? One that stacked up the tropes/character types/plot twists you like into a big pile of enjoyable action?

One that you couldn't for the life of you figure out why there just isn't a fandom?

That's Dragaera.

( A currently-unfinished series of fantasy novels, with side series, there's really not any other series I can compare it to. Some introductory stuff for those unfamiliar with it, below the cut: )

With that out of the way, on to the specifics! I mentioned that this series if a perpetual case of "why isn't there any active fandom!?" for me, and at risk of repeating myself, I really don't understand why there isn't a fandom for this!

It seems to be absolutely stuffed with tropes that fandom loves: the wisecracking Vlad and his talking animal sidekick, the anti-hero with a heart/slow reformation of Vlad's character from amoral assassin to something more principled (though I don't think Vlad's morality will never be "normal," and that's a point of appeal as well!), the Dragaeran culture that makes Vlad an outsider and an underdog, the amazing descriptions of food that will leave you hungry after reading... :D There are 17 Houses for all your Sorting needs, and a gender-neutral society that means female characters can do anything the male ones can. There's plenty of opportunities for angst around Dragaeran prejudices (the Houseless, inter-House romances or the offspring thereof, Dragaeran/Easterner conflict, bias against the Jhereg and Teckla Houses...) and a wide-open playground of unexplored regions where Dragaeran prejudices don't apply (the East, the Isles).

There are plenty of options when it comes to relationships, too, whether you're into Vlad and his wife Cawti struggling through the breakup of their marriage, or Vlad's intense foe-yay with his Dragaeran friend-and-sometimes-boss, or the deep loyalty between Vlad and his secretary Kragar, or Cawti building a new life with her (female, Dragaeran) former assassination partner Norathar. The Khaavren romances feature two forbidden inter-House loves in addition to a successful romantic pairing.


If you've read them, talk at me about them! If you have questions, hit me with them - I am always willing to pimp this series to people to see if I can't build a little fandom for it. :D

Icon meme

Last week, novembermond posted with a meme to talk about three selected icons.

Here are the ones I was assigned:




An old icon! So old that I honestly have lost a lot of the details. :D I think this one dates back to when I first started using this account; I needed some icons and figured that my limited icon-making skills would probably be better off if I ran with the snake theme than if I tried to make fannish icons. The snake in it came from a Google image search, most likely, and I just trimmed it down to fit. This is/was my "humourous post" icon, because to me the snake looks like it's laughing, or smiling.




A new icon! Very new; I made it on 1/2/19. :D I'd been watching and posting about Nirvana in Fire, and really wanted an icon to go with those posts! Again, I don't actually have icon-making skills, so this is really intended to be a placeholder until I find some nice professional ones. It's just a screenshot of the NiF episode page on Viki, cut down and slightly resized. I like both characters, I like blue, and the lack of background detail meant iconifying it was near my skill level... though I think it still took me half an hour to get it cropped just right. :/




Another new icon! But it's a new icon about being an old fan. :D It was made by china_shop, and I saw it in this icon post along with a number of other old!fan icons. It reminded me of LJ and the way people always had some new fashion to complain about: Why are all the icons full of tiny text nowadays? and People, please stop with the eye-searing custom colours! or What's with all these desaturated pastel icons lately?

I am not quite 40, but I have been in fandom since about 1997 (okay, I chose that date almost at random, because trying to define "in fandom" would be a huge post in itself) and find myself a little nostalgic now and then about the ways it changes and the ways it doesn't.


If you would like me to pick three of your icons for this meme, comment with "Pick me!" Or just comment and tell me about your favourite icon, yours or mine. :D