GUESS WHO HAS INTERNET?

[krait]

THIS FANGIRL!!

I am so pleased. My relationship with my laptop has been saved. Not to mention my relationship with DW, AO3, DragCave, online banking, and anything else requiring a login!

Rejoice with me by telling me what you've been up to lately. :D

Comments

[extrapenguin]

I have gotten into Machineries of Empire and The Traitor Baru Cormorant! Also Yuletide. And I have more arts on the walls. Still A Student. But mainly, Yuletide.

[krait]

I don't know what either of those things are, but yay for new fandoms! And more art. That's one thing I haven't quite got round to with my house yet, so I'm envious of those who have.

Every year I say to myself that I'm going to do Yuletide... and then every year it sneaks up on me and I'm not ready. I enjoyed it the two times I did it! It just seems to start so early every year, I'm inevitably busy with other things and unprepared to jump into 'Christmas stuff.'

I also feel like the fandoms have become a lot tinier and more obscure, which is disheartening for me. But that could be observer bias.

[extrapenguin]

Both are book series! The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a standalone-ish book that will have a sequel titled The Monster Baru Cormorant. It's second-world classed-as-fantasy-due-to-the-tech-level-but-without-magic and it's ... you know that Nietzsche quote: “He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster ... when you gaze long into the abyss the abyss also gazes into you”. It's that, with the titular Baru Cormorant trying to take down a sexist, homophobic, eugenicist colonialist empire from the inside.

Machineries of Empire is a trilogy by Yoon Ha Lee, with two books out (Ninefox Gambit and Raven Stratagem). It's space opera with milSF elements in the vein of Ancillary Justice. The main character, Kel Cheris, is a mathematician, and the combat functions on essentially mathemagics – but for all of that (plus their FTL) to work, they need to maintain "the calendar" by things like ritual tortures and feast days. Book 1 is about Cheris dealing with people trying to disrupt the calendar.

Yuletide's been quite early the past few years – I'm enough of an internet addict to be able to check, but some friends report setting alarms for October. Fandoms have a tendency of growing larger, so what once was small is now large and not eligible for Yuletide. (Most SF books are small enough to stay eligible almost forever, though – Vorkosigan is only now starting to get too large.) Then there's also the five-minute fandoms – artworks, anthropomorfic, songs, etc – which are another Yuletide tradition for some participants.