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[lodessa]

How do I do this again? It's been so long that I've sort of forgotten.

Let's see. Time flies. We've been in our house for three years now, married for seven years, and in January we will have been together for twelve. This is my eighth year teaching (sixth at this school).

2018 has been one of those years where you aren't in crisis really (internally or externally) but everything is just really hard and tiring. My commute is arduous feeling, writing is a struggle. My husband keeps being hit with bad news (in the last month his sister got diagnosed with cancer, one of his friends died in a motorcycle accident, and his grandma died). Like... I know it will pass, but I'm tired.

Fandom-wise, I'm still faithfully shipping Janeway/Chakotay (Star Trek: Voyager). I've also been having an ASOIAF Jaime/Brienne resurgence. I started watching Doctor Who again with Thirteen after just never getting around to watching Twelve at all and I've been pleased with her and all the new companions. I've been writing a little for Star Trek: Discovery, a show I'm still a little worried about making the wrong choices. I'm watching the Charmed reboot (which I'm enjoying) and I watched the Sabrina one (it was fine but maybe overhyped by friends) but neither is making me feel fannish.

It's been a slow reading time for me. I'm still catching up on all the Brandon Sanderson books (up to date on Stormlight Archive, read the first Mistborn triology, and partway though Warbreaker which I was really enjoying but then I got busy/interrupted).

Making consumable things has really been my most fruitful creative outlet: home brewed cider, fresh pasta, syrups from scratch... there's something nice about making something you can tangibly enjoy.

Anyway... hi friends (old and... relocated)? How is it going?

I'll probably be posting a masterlist of the fic I wrote this year (paltry as that might feel compared to years like 2014 and 2015( or maybe one for the last couple years. We'll see).

Comments

[hebethen]

Hey, whoa, welcome back!

I admit I haven't really felt super inspired to make or seek out fanthings in recent years either (other than meta/analysis type dealios) -- I wonder if it's an ebb and flow thing or just a one-way trajectory (or something wibblier, heh). But there are certainly grand dames of fic (and sundry other fancreative things) so I reckon it can't just be age, right?

May the next year lighten your burdens and bear sweet fruit.

[lodessa]

Hi! I definitely think it's definitely an ebb and flow/cycle thing for me. I basically fell out of fandom in 2008 and then got back into it like five years later and 2014-2016 were my most productive (fannishly) years so far.

[hamsterwoman]

Oh my god, HI! :D

So happy to see you pop up on my flist. Sorry this year has been so rough, and especially sorry for the bad news in the family and friends circle :( Here's to a 2019 with no bad news at all.

I still have your Toby books, btw! And should really return them to you one of these days. I'd love to hand them back over lunch, if you find yourself in my corner of the city, but also happy to just, like, mail them to you like a normal person, much as it appeals to me to keep them hostage so we have to meet up again.

Anyway, hi! <3

[lodessa]

Yay! Hi! I'm happy to see you are still here!

I still have some of your Vorkosigan books as well! (Which you were right the series REALLY picks up). I keep thinking about messaging you to set up getting together but then being tired/lacking follow through. But we should definitely do that in 2019.

[hamsterwoman]

Yeah! :) Still on LJ, also, but finally started cross-posting from DW and reading my flist here regularly, as of about a year ago (having pretty much abandoned Tumblr at that point).

Do you have my Miles books? XD (I have them in hard copy precisely so that I can foist them upon lend them out to people), but am very bad of keeping track of whom I've foisted them upon last. I'm very glad to hear you've been enjoying them! Which part of the series are you up to now, or are you fully caught up?

And yes, let's try to get together in 2019 -- it's been too long!

[lodessa]

I have Memory, Komarr, and A Civil Campaign, which I devoured(!) but then I had to find the next bit and stalled out. I really love how Bujold doesn't try to stick to a specific genre across books so each other is the type of story it is instead of trying to fit some "Vorkosigan Style" mode. Does that make sense?

It's been WAY too long. Like I think the last time we saw each other was a little before we bought our house and that's been three years!

[hamsterwoman]

If I kept all the records straight, which I think I did, the last time we met up was April 2015 (O.o) (and I probably could've surmised that from the Toby Daye publication dates, too, as the one I have from you is The Winter Long :)

A Civil Campaign is MY FAVORITE! It was actually also the first book in the series I read, and I was very confused by a lot of it, but still loved it, and went back and read things properly in order, and then loved it EVEN MORE. And Memory is probably the strongest book in the series (though not one I've reread, because it's such a gut-punch). And Komarr is really interesting, because I didn't think much of it when I first read it, in my early 20s, but when I reread it after a decade of marriage and parenthood, I appreciated it a lot more.

And, yes, I absolutely know what you mean about LMB doing a lot of different sub-genres within the series, heists and mystery and romantic comedy and personal drama -- and she does all of them really well!

I need to look through my shelves and see which ones I have in hard copy. I think I should have Diplomatic Immunity, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, and CryoBurn. I do think Memory through A Civil Campaign is sort of the pinnacle of the series, but I did enjoy the later books as well, and hope you will, too.

[lodessa]

Yes. They are all really strong in their own ways. ( It also really helps that Miles finally really grew up.) I feel like that might be the secret to keeping a series going so long without it feeling derivative/like a better or worse version of the same basic book, each book being its own genre with different focus/conventions.

And it is so true about books impacting us differently at different points in our lives. I've been thinking a lo about that with the GRRM books and how when I started reading them at like 14 I was the age of the younger generation of characters, vs now I relate more to the prior generation... because it's been 20 years.

[hamsterwoman]

( It also really helps that Miles finally really grew up.)

Yes. I mean, he is still very much Miles, but I think he's at least a bit more aware of his effect on other people instead of just sort of steamrolling along.

And I think you're onto something with the mixing up of genres. Another long-running, in both time and number of books, series that I love is Dragaera/Vlad Taltos, and Brust very explicitly picks different genres for each book within the framework -- he's got some heists, a war story, a legal thriller, a book that's like B5's "A View from the Gallery" -- and it definitely helps keep things fresh.

when I started reading them at like 14 I was the age of the younger generation of characters, vs now I relate more to the prior generation... because it's been 20 years.

*nod* Also true. It's been similar for me, since I think I read the first two books in college, and the next two when I had children of my own, and Winds of Winter will be, what, like 25 years after I started reading the series, best case XP

[lodessa]

Yes. Miles definitely didn't lose his character traits/flaws... just grew into them in the way people do over time.

Because we do change throughout our lives. Kinda tying the two together... I feel like if that GRRM ever finishes I'm going to be older than just about all the characters except like Maester Aemon and Olenna Tyrell. ;P

[hamsterwoman]

. I feel like if that GRRM ever finishes I'm going to be older than just about all the characters except like Maester Aemon and Olenna Tyrell*. ;P

Haha! See, I was very wise in imprinting on Olenna and identifying with her from the moment she appeared in the books. That way I can keep "my" character for the duration, no matter HOW old I get :P

*and Walder Frey, lol XP

[novin_ha]

Hiii! So nice to hear from you!

Sounds like our lives are somewhat parallel! Girl & I have been living together for eight years now (and we just celebrated our 10 year anniversary of being together). I defended my PhD and it's my seventh year working at university (but in a teaching capacity, no research position for me yet).

We're in the process of buying our first apartment (hello, debt - thankfully not too much, once we've pooled our savings).

Fandom-wise we're not really up to much; we've been writing a bit of ofic though and we might be submitting a short romance novel soon.

We've actually started watching Voyager a while ago - that show always makes me think of you! - but we've stalled due to lack of time. We will get back to it though, perhaps after the next ST:Discovery season! (After the first season of Discovery, we watched bits of ST:TOS, the entire TNG and about three seasons of DS9.)

(And since I see you talking about them in the comments, in 2017 I binge-read the entire Vorkosigan saga as way of dealing with grief after the late-2016 deaths of my mother in [sort of] law [cancer, an awful last month in hospital and hospice] and my brother [who was run over by a car a month after MiL died; 2016 was bad but the Vorkosigans really helped me cope or at least escape in 2017.)

[lodessa]

Nice to see you around too! I think about you not infrequently.

I saw her post about the apartment buying (which is awesome, like yes debt but also building wealth instead of throwing money away at rent every month!) . It's weird to think that we became friends on lj before the two of you got together and now you have this whole life. Also so very much congratulations on your dissertation defense!

There is SO MUCH Trek to watch. I still haven't seen a lot of TOS and Enterprise. We went through DS9 from early 2012 to mid 2014, Voyager in the second half of 2014 (funny how getting fannish speeds things up), tried Enterprise twice after that but didn't get very far, and then rewatched TNG all the way through somewhere between 2015 and 2017 before Discovery aired.

It is good to have books to escape into. I have sort of been pacing myself with the series for whatever reason, instead of binging, but I do really enjoy them (after I got over the transition from Miles to Cordelia... which was a struggle for me). And of course it's funny you mention the Vorkosigan Saga right next to talking about watching Voyager; because, Cordelia and Janeway have much in common/ obviously there's commonality between Aral/Cordelia and Janeway/Chakotay.

[rush_keating]

I am so sorry that things aren't going well. Please let me know if there's anything you need from me. *hugs*

[lodessa]

Thanks. Really I feel sort of silly complaining, since on a superficial level I'm very lucky and things are going fine... it's just one of those phases existentially mostly.