Beyond Selidor

It's time for another snowflake_challenge prompt.



Search in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture (a link to a picture will be fine!) or description of something that is or represents:

( Answers behind the cut )

Thank you for writing for me!

I'm pretty easygoing about what type of fic you want to write for me. I read fic of any rating, and would be equally happy with plotty genfic or something very shippy. I read gen, femslash, het and slash, although I have a slight preference towards femslash, het, and gen that focuses on female characters. I mainly read fic to find out what happens to characters after the final page has turned or the credits have rolled, so I would particularly love to have futurefic of some kind. Don't feel you have to limit yourself to the characters I specifically mention — I'm happy with others being included if they fit with the story you want to tell.

Feel free to have a look around my Ao3 profile, as it should give you a good idea of the types of things I like to read. You can also look at my Yuletide tag, which includes past letters, and recs posts of my previous gifts and other fic I've enjoyed in previous Yuletide colletions.

( General likes )

( DNWs )

Fandom-specific prompts:



( The Bone Season — Samantha Shannon )

( The Lions of Al-Rassan - Guy Gavriel Kay )

( The Pagan Chronicles - Catherine Jinks )

Don't feel you have to stick rigidly within the bounds of my prompts. As long as your fic is focused on the characters I requested, I will be thrilled to receive anything you write for me, as these really are some of my most beloved fandoms of the heart, and the existence of any fic for them will make me extremely happy.

I'm back for another three answers to the June fandom meme.

( Days 4-6 )

( The other days )

I've spent most of my free time this week rereading the five books in Catherine Jinks's Pagan Chronicles series — a collection of books which I have loved for close to two-thirds of my life, and to which I always return for comfort and consolation. When asked which books have had the most impact on me, I'll generally immediately answer with Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, but if I take proper time to consider the question, it's obvious that while Pullman's books are indirectly responsible for a lot of the choices in my life that got me to where I am, what I do, and who I'm with now, the Pagan series got into my bones and blood in a much deeper way.

I talk about these books a lot, but I'm not sure I've ever laid out what they're all about — or at least not recently.

( A multigenerational medieval found family )

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 26: Should have sold more copies

I'll always regret not getting more books in Catherine Jinks's Pagan Chronicles series. She wrote and published the first four books in quick succession in the early-to-mid-'90s, and these seemed to sell well, were nominated for Australian children's book awards and so on. Jinks then wrote various other books, a mixture of science fiction and historical fiction, mainly for chilren, before publishing the fifth book in the Pagan series, Pagan's Daughter, in 2006.

It must not have sold very well, because at some point, Jinks was going around in interviews and in the FAQs on her website saying that children's historical fiction was difficult to sell, and although Pagan Kidrouk was her favourite fictional creation and the series was one she wanted to continue, economically it didn't make sense and it was unlikely her publisher would want another Pagan book. Since then, she seems to have only published science fiction, which is a huge shame as her historical fiction is, generally, much better!

( The other days )

So, if you've been reading this blog at any point in the last, oh, nine years, you probably know that there are certain series of books that I adore and rave about constantly. And if I had to narrow the list down to 'the most life-changing books I have ever read', to the books I would take with me on a desert island, to the books I would carry around in order to keep myself sane in a post-apocalyptic scenario, I would name three series: the Pagan Chronicles by Catherine Jinks, His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman and Romanitas by sophiamcdougall. These series all came into my life at precisely the right time, and have affected, influenced and transformed me in various ways. I could read them again and again and again and still discover something new.

But what struck me this morning is how close I came to not reading any of them at all. The sheer crazy random happenstance that caused me to read all these series is completely ridiculous.

( memory lane is full of strange twists and turns )

Sometimes my brain worries me.

So, I generally have some bizarre commentary running through my head whenever I'm walking, and this commentary usually has a soundtrack. Without any warning, as I was walking to my German class this morning, the Heidelberg cobblestones brought to my mind the most vivid image: Babylonne Kidrouk, the protagonist of Pagan's Daughter, rushing through the streets of 13th-century Toulouse, wearing an iPod, playing 'Firestarter' by The Prodigy. Hey, don't blame me, I'm just a product of my Gen-Y remix culture!

You know how I do geeky things like make playlists for fictional characters? Yeah, guess what I did next...

( Firestarter: A Babylonne Kidrouk Playlist )

Babylonne would totally listen to melodramatic dance music. And if not, she would listen to angsty 90s nu metal. You know it's true.

1. I spent much of yesterday morning sitting in my favourite cafe drinking coffee, writing poetry, drawing and writing in my paper diary. Apart from making me a complete cliche of a humanities student, it reminded me how little I write in my paper diaries these days. Most of the reason for that is that so much of the part of me that is about words and thoughts takes place online. Whereas before, when I had thoughts I would write about them in my diary, I now take them to my blogs. I think this signifies, to a certain extent, an openness that I did not have when I began writing diaries. This openness was hard-won. I used to be a very untrusting person; I didn't trust the people around me to understand my feelings or to react in the right way when I shared them. I credit the internet and the people I've met online with this transformation, whose most important effect has been that I trust other people (both on- and offline) with my feelings, and that I trust myself enough to not collapse when someone misinterprets my meaning or intent when I reveal something of my interior life.

2. Someone on Twitter posted a link to this article about Google+ and it took me while to figure out why I found it extremely irritating. Then I realised it was the smug Twitter evangelising. Don't get me wrong: I love Twitter. But I love Livejournal, and I love Last.fm and I love my forums and I love Youtube and I even love Facebook, and I don't think using one or the other makes me inherently superior. Certain types of sites/social media will suit different people better; I like Livejournal (as I would probably like LJ-clones such as Dreamwidth or Insane Journal) the best because it suits me best for my own online activities and persona. I'm all about the words, reading and writing them. Livejournal's friends page function is perfect for me, as it's the best way to present all the words of others that I want to read, and obviously, being a blogging platform, its purpose is to give me the ability to post my own words online.

But other platforms might suit other people better. I imagine Tumblr really appeals to people who are into picspams and graphics, while Goodreads and Last.fm work really well for people who want to catalogue their reading or listening libraries and connect with people who share their tastes and interests. Evangelists for any type of site or social media forget that the internet is simply a tool, and its value lies in what its users make of it. And that's a matter of personal preference, intention and ability.

3. This led me to think about my opinion of Tumblr. I've had a Tumblr for about a year now, and I post really rarely. I really tried hard to avoid being one of those cane-waving 'get off my lawn' types about it, because I spent so much time defending Twitter to various real-life friends and their scorn ('it's just everyone shouting Facebook statuses at one another!') really irritated me. And yet...every time I went onto my Tumblr dashboard, I'd start to feel anxious and headachey. Everyone just posted too quickly, although I think graphics are pretty, I've never found them as appealling as words, some people just seemed to use their Tumblrs as a sort of extended IM session with artwork and cutesy hashtags, and after about five minutes I'd feel stressed because there seemed like this pressure to be constantly posting and reblogging.

So then I'd avoid Tumblr for another month before giving it another chance. I'd almost got to the point of accepting that it just wasn't for me, and then I tried something different. Instead of viewing the Tumblrs I followed through my dashboard, I switched to reading through the new posts on the few individual Tumblrs that actually interested me. Voila! It worked! No anxiety, no sense of pressure, and no irritation. I'm glad I didn't give up on Tumblr, because my experiences prove my point at 2 that if you want to enjoy a particular form of social media, you need to find a way to use it that works for you.

4. This then sent me spiralling back to point 1. While I'm really happy at the openness and trust that blogging has given me, it's also had one negative effect, which is that I'm pretty much incapable of thinking about anything privately. If I have thoughts or feelings, they need to be shared. But there are a lot of things I've been thinking about recently for which there is literally no place online where it would be appropriate to share them. This is because although I am happy for (and indeed want) certain people to know about these issues, there are others with whom I'd be really uncomfortable sharing them. Short of endlessly PMing thelxiepia or lucubratae (my go-to counsellors and confessionals), I don't really have anywhere to go. Maybe I should revive my paper diaries.

5. Finally, I had thoughts about shipping issues in Pagan's Daughter. But since no one my flist has even read the book, let alone obsessed over the Pagan Chronicles series for 16 years like me, I thought pagansfandom was a better place to share them. Count yourselves lucky.

So, I just recently joined pagansfandom, for the few hardy and very cool souls who know and love Catherine Jinks's Pagan Chronicles. Well, along with lots of snazzy art and fic, I discovered something fantastic (and I can't believe I'm saying this) - Pagan lolcats. Yep, that's right, I'm going into raptures over lolcats (usually I'd have to be heavily sedated and/or drunk to even type the combination of letters l-o-l without having a nervous breakdown/fit of rage). Although this'll probably mean nothing to everyone reading this, I couldn't resist.

( Pagan Chronicles lolcats oh mai )

Credit to mint_green and aliensouldream for the Pagan lolcats. Wow, I typed it four times and my brain didn't explode...

MoS CDs listened to since last update: 2007 US annual (rubbish), discs 1 and 2; 2008 UK Annual (brilliant).