Luzula

Well hey, I made enough fanworks for a year's-end post! It's been a few years since that happened.

Fics:
Southbound: Victoria heard the shot, and saw him fall. Her outstretched hand reached for him a second longer before reaction caught up to her and she dropped it. Ben was--he was-- Later, she could think about it later. For now, she had to survive. due South, Victoria gen, 7,700 words, abandoned WIP, PG-13
A Different Taste: The rusalka, forbidden from drowning men in the lake, finds another source of nourishment. The Bear and the Nightingale, Vasya/the rusalka, R, 900 words.
Common Ground: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook, PG, 1,700 words.
An Undiscovered Country: After the victory of the Light, Will returned home. The Dark Is Rising, Will Stanton/Bran Davies, PG, 3,200 words.

Podfic:
Choosing Family by desireearmfeldt (Firefly, gen and Wash/Zoe, PG-13, 34m)
Going Dark, by killer_quean and ruby_powell (Slings & Arrows, Maria gen, PG-13, 17m)
You Just Brace and You Breathe by dira (Generation Kill, Brad Colbert/Nate Fick, NC-17, 2h 12m)
Birds of a Feather, by toft (Aubrey/Maturin series, Jack/Stephen, R, 20m)

This is not much compared to five years ago when I was writing tons of stories and recording many hours of podfic per year, but I'll take it.

Fic-wise, I am glad to have posted that long unfinished Victoria WIP--it needed some work before it could be posted. Now I just have one long due South WIP left that isn't posted (the science fiction one). But above all I'm so happy to have written a few spontaneous stories, especially the Star Wars one! It felt like such a gift. And I was happy with my Yuletide fic, too. Going forward, I aim to participate in at least one other fic exchange, and I'll try to sign up for Chocolate Box.

Podfic-wise, I think my favorite is Going Dark--it was so much fun recording comedy. And I'm happy to have done a long podfic again (You Just Brace and You Breathe), but I don't think I'll be doing the long one from that verse. Nate's POV gets a bit repetitive to read, or maybe it's my failure that I can't vary it enough. If it had been Ray Person POV, now...I love reading in his voice. For next year, I hope to record some Star Wars podfic! Also if I can finally put together that long due South collaborative podfic WIP, that would be good.

So let's see how I did with my bingo card for 2017. I am too lazy to represent the actual card--I got one bingo row.

Things I did:

• Post 3h of podfic. (Yes! 3h 24min in total. I am happy with this since I made very little podfic in 2016.)
• Make a new friend. (I got to know one of my housemates who moved in one and a half years ago. I like her a lot.)
• Go swimming in 20 new lakes/places by the sea. (Exactly 20, though I cheated on one of them since I'd swum there once a couple of years before.)
• Go to one of the Swedish national parks I haven't been to. (I went to Stenshuvud with a friend; it was heaven for a nature geek.)
• At least one fourth of the books I read should be rereads. (Yes, more on this in an upcoming book post.)
• Collaborate on research project about forest and climate. (Well, so-so. But we did send in an article, even if it was only a comment on another article.)
• Hold a speech on May Day. (Yes, I did this.)
• Go running 20 times. (I did 48 times. My experiment with running was such a success! \o/ I'm still a very slow runner, but I like doing it and I feel like it's very good for me. Before the summer I had some pain in one foot, but then I did other stuff over the summer and when I started running in the fall again it was quite gone.)
• Try ten new recipes. (Yes! I feel like I got some more variety in my cooking this year. And I bought some delicious lamb from a local organic farmer which I tried out some really good recipes for.)
• Visit my friend Ida for at least a couple of days in the summer. (I'm so glad I did this.)
• Track the butterfly and moth species I see during the year. (Yes, I bought a moth lamp/moth trap and used it quite a lot and saw many new species.)
• Post at least three fanfiction stories. (I posted four! I'm so happy about that. Granted, one of them was an abandoned WIP, but I had to do some work for it to be postable.

Things I did partly:

• Sleep 20 nights outside/in a tent. (13 nights. I was outdoors a lot, but mostly in situations where we slept indoors.)
• Delete my gmail accounts. (I got an email client and started downloading my email folders locally in preparation for deleting the accounts, but one of them is so huge the program keeps freezing up when I try it...).
• Go tree climbing ten times. (I did seven times.)
• Visit three friends who don't live in my city, that I don't usually visit. (Two visits. I did really try! I was going to do a third one in December but she got a bad cold and we canceled.)
• Record an album with my sister. (No, but we made progress on the songs. She has a small kid, so you can see why this is proceeding with glacial speed.)

Things I didn't do:

• Get a tattoo. (Nope. Still thinking about it.)
• Make lots of jam in the berry/fruit season. (Haha, fail. I did pick lots of mushrooms though?)
• Change banks. (Ummmm. I keep putting this off.)
• Write a scientific article together with Senior Scientist Guy from my summer mountain work. (Er, no. We have an old WIP but I failed to even poke him about it.)
• Spend 24 hours in a tree. (I wanted to but it didn't happen--I want some sort of ground backup from other people who can climb, and we didn't have a proper climbing camp this year.)
• Take part in at least two union negotiations. (Nope. This was a badly chosen goal--I did all sorts of union stuff but not this.)
• Do something which sounds interesting but is out of my comfort zone or that I have never done before. (No, I don't think I did.)
• (Re)install Linux on at least one of my computers, hopefully both. (I should have managed this. Fail.)

( Statistics under the cut! )

Ten eleven favorite new-to-me books or authors, in no particular order:
Deerskin by Robin McKinley (YA fantasy with wonderful dogs)
Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson (thoughtful, realistic SF)
The Ropemaker by Peter Dickinson (delightful DWJ-esque YA fantasy)
Hwarhath Stories by Eleanor Arnason (SF of manners among aliens)
Cuckoo Song by Frances Hardinge (inventive YA fantasy)
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert (about a 19th century female naturalist)
The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker (historical fantasy among New York immigrants)
Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison (a moving political novel about early Christians in Rome)
Three Times Table by Sara Maitland (ambiguous present-day fantasy with three generations of women)
Anaché by Maria Turtchaninoff (Swedish genderqueer YA fantasy)
Sara Lidman's works in general; I've read five of her books this year (about life as it used to be in northern Sweden).
Svetlana Alexievich's works in general; I've read two of them this year (about life in the USSR).

Huh, YA fantasy seems overrepresented in that list compared to the amount I read? Anyway. I am pleased to reach my goal this year of reading fewer American books and more Swedish ones. \o/ I suspected that reading less American books might just spill over into reading more British ones, thus keeping the amount of Anglophone books constant, but that didn't actually happen much. I also read twice as much non-fiction, but it was a fairly low level to start with.

I notice that I did not actually reread a single book this year, despite enjoying rereading a lot. I think I somehow feel that I "should" read and discover new books? To counter that, I think I'll make rereading a goal for next year.

I've gone back to work today. What better time for a procrastinatory meme? From various other people: bolded means I've read it, italics means I've read something else by the same author, strikethrough means I didn't finish it.

( 60 SF/F books )

Does anyone particularly recommend any of the ones I haven't read? Also, I assume that the book Synners is not about the community of tag wranglers on the AO3... ("to syn" = to make a tag a synonym of a canonical tag).

( Statistics about what I've read )

Ten favorite new-to-me books/series (that is, not counting rereads, and in no order):
The Hearts of Horses by Molly Gloss
Hild by Nicola Griffiths
the Moomin books by Tove Janson
the Inda series by Sherwood Smith
the Elemental Logic series by Laurie J Marks
the Long Price quartet by Daniel Abraham
The Just City/The Philosopher Kings by Jo Walton
Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Memoirs of Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan
Shaman by Kim Stanley Robinson

Here is my paltry fannish output from this year:

Fic:
The Dark Places of Gont: Gont is a different place, and Tenar learns new things. Tenar and Ogion gen, Earthsea books, 1500 words, G
First Posting: Sequel to Depot, abandoned WIP. Benton Fraser gen, due South, 1300 words, G
Untitled Pegging Ficlet: Abandoned WIP. Benton Fraser/Frannie Vecchio (with background sedoretu pairing), due South, 1700 words, NC-17
In Your Boots: Fraser wakes up in a woman's body. Abandoned WIP. Fraser/Thatcher + ensemble, due South, 3650 words, PG

Podfic:
The Yellow Dress, by Ione (Master and Commander, mostly gen, PG-13, 1h 4m)
Twenty-Two Valentines, Twenty-Two Years by sage (Bob/Buck/Caroline, PG, 26m). Co-read with mergatrude, malnpudl, and andeincascade
Thistledown by Edonohana (Earthsea gen, 13m)
Down Among the Weeds by me (Janet/Tam Lin, the Tam Lin traditional ballad, R, 26m)
The Difficulties of Interspecies Communication by me. dSSS gift for malnpudl (Fraser/Kowalski, Bob Fraser, Dief, due South, 9m)

Er, well. All my posted fics except for the Yuletide story are abandoned WIPs. I have two long unposted due South WIPs left, one of which I will certainly not finish, and one which I would like to finish, but it's doubtful whether I will. I hope to post both during the year, anyway. And it would be nice to write something else, too--I hope something grabs me.

I recorded 2h 18m of podfic during the year. I'd hoped to do more, but oh well. I've got one long due South podfic collaboration which I really want to finish next year--I need to recruit one more person for it, and then edit. And I hope to keep a toe in the podfic pond and record some other things as well.

It's posting day over here, obviously. : ) Anyway, some of my housemates are doing something called New Year's Bingo, where you make a bingo card with 25 things to do in the new year, and then cross things off during the year. It seemed a fun thing to do, so I'm going to try it! Here are mine:

( My list )

My aim is to not include things that I know for sure I'll be doing anyway, but to have things that will feel like a little bit of an achievement if I do them. And also to have fun things on there, too, not just serious stuff. You will notice that I have four slots left. Any ideas? : )

I'm tagging this "meme", since it's a RL meme, apparently, and it would be cool if it caught on here, too.

Yeah, not really doing that meme everyone's doing. Although I might go back to last year's and try to do the topics that people asked me about and I never got around to. *facepalm* That said, if there's something you really want to hear me talk about, feel free to ask. : )

We had a house meeting tonight, and brainstormed about how to solve the Problem of the Dishes In the Sink (and On the Counter). We didn't want to do the angry note thing, so we came up with the choose-your-own-motivation note where everyone would say what would motivate them to do their dishes. It looked like this:

Persons A and B: Just do the damn dishes, for fuck's sake.
Person C: If you do the dishes you get chocolate!
Person D: You can't expect others to do their share if you don't do yours.
Me: If you do the dishes you can listen to your audiobook a little longer!

We left spaces for the people who weren't there to fill in for themselves. Now let's see if it works...

garonne asked: "I'd love to know how you came to like folk music, and which different countries' music you know and enjoy."

( My relationship with folk music )

Sorry I couldn't manage this in time for your birthday! Belated happy birthday. : )

Okay, so, the fandom I was in before due South was Good Omens. I was a total Aziraphale/Crowley shipper. : ) But that's a small fandom, and I plowed through the fic quickly, and I was pretty consciously looking around for a new fandom to get hooked on. At the same time, I was also still in anime fandom, and my favorite writer in Kyou Kara Maou was getting into due South (yes, I used to be an anime fan!). This was madsciencechick, who later changed her name to somewhatdeluded, and then vanished from fandom, sadly deleting her fic. I fondly remember "Four Times Ray Kowalski Took It Up the Ass for Justice (and One Time He Did It Just For Fun)" which is basically Ray K getting pegged by all the women.

Er, getting side-tracked. Anyway, I think the first dS fic I read was cesperanza's "Wildly Dangerous Ways", which I got to from some rec page or other. And then I was hooked! This was in 2007. Another reason I got into due South was that it had dogsledding. I have a serious thing for dogsledding, probably because I read too much Jack London in my impressionable youth, and I've actually gone on several week-long trips myself. I set about watching the show from the beginning, and I was so totally into it. Also I was into Benton Fraser.

I'd written exactly one fic before (in Good Omens) and then when I got into due South, I found I could write it, which made me so happy! The first thing I made was actually a filk song, and another of my early fics is a post-CotW fic that I remember being well received. j_s_cavalcante and nos were my first betas and encouraged me a lot. ♥ And in general it was a lovely fandom to come into. Some of the people who were active then aren't online much any more, and some have moved on to other fandoms, but I'm glad the fandom is still around.