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☆ The annual fandomtrumpshate fandom auction is coming up! Bidding opens on Feb 22nd, and I can't wait! All the offers have been posted over at fth2021offerings, and I'm definitely going to need to spend some time this weekend looking through them to get an idea of what I want before bids open.

My offerings page is over here if anyone's interested in previewing it. 1 beta slot for any fandom, + 2 slots fic up to 5k for SSSS, aRTD, or Hetalia. Orrrr... possibly other fandoms that I've written before, but I request contacting me before bidding in that case, because it's very likely I'll need to canon review.

☆ Looks like multifandomdrabble will be running two rounds this year! Schedule. Round 1 will be running at the same time as Nordipalooza, but considering the bite-sized minimum, I think I'll manage to participate in both. ;)

☆ And speaking of which, I haven't put up this year's schedule, but nordipalooza will be running as usual this year. It'll be on roughly the same schedule as last year unless something very unexpected happens. I haven't decided whether to extend the posting period from the start (keep it open into June) or stick to the typical late May closing date.

☆ kinkluckydip is a new smut exchange. 300 word minimum, matching is based on pairing and medium, no freeform matching. Sort of like that Little Black Dress exchange that ran last year, but for kinks instead of pairings. This really appeals to me because a lot of the time, while I'm writing out my exchange requests, I find myself thinking "Hell, I don't know, surprise me?" And the short minimum... yes. Leaning toward doing this one if I can get myself organized. Anybody else interested? Signups are supposed to open Feb 26.

- Finally finished both of my submissions for nordipalooza. I'm relieved that I'm done with that! And looking forward to reading the other submissions.

- Still not sure what to think of using both DW + Tumblr for fest submissions; I had hoped it would attract more people who do art, but we don't have any art submissions this year. Oh, well, I'll throw up a survey at the end of it all, and we'll see what happens.

- SO GLAD, THOUGH... now that I'm done with this, I can write some personal things. More importantly, I can work on the FTH stuff that I have outstanding. I've decided I'm not going to join any more events until those charity fics are done.

- I made supper tonight and it wasn't just edible, it tasted good. Sure, it was just vegetable stir fry with egg, but I'm kind of terrible at cooking because I rarely get a chance to do it, so I'm pleased that it turned out nice. (And rather glad that I resisted the temptation to go out for supper. ;p )

- I am so glad tomorrow is a stat holiday... I feel like I have been SO BUSY this weekend, and I feel incredibly tired, even if I didn't actually do much. I guess that happens when there's Eurovision.

☆ [Work] I finally found out the information that I need for those forms I needed for work. ...After contacting three different people. Which I shouldn't have had to do, as far as I'm concerned. However, at least I'll be able to take care of this thing now, and I can stop worrying about it. Yay!

☆ [Weather] It continues to be ridiculously cold! I continue to be unimpressed with it!

☆ [Chocolate Box] The collection for Chocolate Box Exchange is looking so good. :D I'm excited! I think I might try to write one more treat before calling it quits. Then again, who knows. I've made a treating spreadsheet for my fandoms, but since not everyone has posted their main assignment yet, it's not possible to do an accurate gift tally count. We'll see what happens after all of the main assignments are in.

☆ [Hetalia] February will be (and kind of already is) a busy month for me. Not just because of Chocolate Box and zine stuff, but getting ready for Nordipalooza Fest. :) Unless a lot of people suggest otherwise in the next few days, it looks like I'll be aiming for a March/April/May schedule, which means I'll need to haul ass to get it ready. xD (If any of you are interested in this prompt-based Hetalia fest, I'm still looking for feedback and suggestions over here.) I have all of the templates from previous years, so it won't be too hard to update everything. Just need to tweak the guides/rules a bit. ...One thing that I am definitely going to add is a rule prohibiting ship-bashing. I feel like I shouldn't have to do this, and previously there wasn't really any need, but all things considered I think it'll be necessary now. :|

☆ [Fandom misc] Apparently February is not only for shitposting, but also for ship posting. :D Maybe soon I'll try to put together a post about pairings that I like. Though I don't know what to say, usually. (Maybe recs posts would be good?)

☆ PSA: I'm running a draw for SSSS Book 1, so for those who don't have it yet, you can find out how to enter here. (And if you're one of those people without a tumblr, I'm managing entries with a spreadsheet, so just contact me on Dreamwidth or something. Sockpuppets are okay too. [/LOOKS AT CERTAIN FOLKS])

☆ On the one hand, I feel randomly chatty. On the other hand, I'm in one of those moods where I feel like I should apologize for my general existence. Yeah, brain. Okay. I don't know what you're doing, but okay, you have your little hissy fit, I'll just... sit over here and wait it out.

☆ I probably should have gone for a run tonight, but I didn't, because I ended up watching a film with the horror movie gang for the first time in a couple of weeks - I'd missed the last few because my computer was just plain having none of it. Couldn't handle the stream. It worked well enough tonight, though. We watched Skeleton Key (2005), which... was a pretty interesting film, actually; a little weird, but quite decent, not a bad horror movie at all. Though it could be that I haven't been overexposed to the particular tropes this one deals with; I haven't watched a lot of "US South with creepy swamps and hoodoo" stuff. Unfortunately, I probably shouldn't have watched this film. It deals with some things that turn all the wrong cranks in my head. If I end up having intrusive thoughts in the next couple of days, I will know why. But, it's my fault that I didn't read the summary and didn't look up details. If I had, I would have known what I was getting into.

☆ Anyway. Holy crap, I just came across Walk Off the Earth's cover of "Rude", and it's so good! This song is 100% better with a female singer (and the pronouns unchanged). I kind of want to write something based on it, but I'm racking my brain and none of my femslash pairings seem like they would fit. The only one that comes close is aRTD Jonna/Riikka and... nah, it doesn't really fit, because I really can't imagine Jouko Kuikka telling Riikka "No, you can't marry my daughter". (Though, Riikka's parents - we know nothing about them/their personalities, so maybe... Plus the "Wow, rude. Screw you, we're getting married anyway" reaction feels very Jonna, haa.) Bah, maybe I should just try writing an original thing, kind of like what I did with that mermaid story based on the #findthegirlsonthenegatives photos. Or offer/request it for Jukebox? Though Jukebox falls smack dab in the middle of Nordipalooza, and I don't think that I'd be able to participate in an exchange if I'm running the fest; there's just no time.

☆ And this is where I publicly confess that I might not run Nordipalooza this year. I don't know. I'm considering it. When it gets a little closer to the usual signup time, I'll run a poll to check interest. But interest in Hetalia events held on Dreamwidth has fallen a lot since I first started it up, and the format isn't what's popular in that fandom any more, and I don't know if there would be enough interest for me to bother doing it.

☆ My plans to get up tomorrow morning will probably be dashed. But that's okay. As long as I manage to get a good run in, things should be fine. I'm kind of curious about seeing if I can read while on the treadmill. I've never tried it before, and I forsee two possible outcomes: best-case scenario, it works, and I'll be able to nom through another chunk of Beauty is a Wound. Worst-case scenario, I trip over my own feet and everything ends in tears.

☆ So, Nordipalooza is finished for another year. Master List for this year's fest is over here. We have fewer submissions this year than last year, which is a little surprising considering I gave more time than last year... maybe I should have been more vigilant about sending out deadline reminders. Well, anyway, I'm going to have fun going through the submissions. I don't expect I'll have much trouble getting through all of them within the week.

☆ I've been toying with the idea of putting together a Valiant Hearts FST for a while now, and I've finally decided to go ahead and do it, because I finally have some ideas of what to put on it (though I need more, and it'll take a while to find more). Normally I'm reluctant to put Eurovision music on fanmix playlists, because doing that is such a cliche in Hetalia fandom, but France's entry this year, "N'oubliez Pas" by Lisa Angell, is absolutely perfect for a Valiant Hearts FST, so I'm saying - to hell with it, I'll put it on there. It's a pretty song, anyway. Maybe I should look for more songs in French with a similar theme to go along with it. (Even better, something in Belgian French, if I can find it.) Also considering Lizzy Hoyt's Vimy Ridge, even though the lyrics aren't a 100% match to the situation of the game characters. Part of the game does take place at Vimy Ridge, at least. And... part of me wants to include Iron Maiden's Passchendaele, but it would not be a good fit. Maybe I should save that one for a WWI-themed Hetalia FST instead.

☆ Honestly, part of me wants to replay Valiant Hearts. On the other hand, I don't want to cry buckets of tears, which is what will surely happen if I do. Man, what a sad game. ... I still want to write fic with Anna and Karl, though (their friendship is so awesome). And there's a ton of stuff that I was going to add to the wiki and never got around to. Marie still didn't have her own page, last I checked, and that is terrible. Not to mention I never did finish the timeline. Maybe now that fest stuff is done, I should try... working on that again. Maybe. (Especially if I'm going to request/offer this for Yuletide. I do want to do that. It'd be helpful to have complete information.)

☆ The fest finished just in time, because - work is busy. So busy. I'm drowning in piles of paperwork. I could probably make a fortress with the stacks of 'em. (Well, not quite) So glad that my job is one where I don't have to take it home with me. ....Though it would help if the power would stop cutting out, considering all of my work is electronic. :T

☆ Still feeling sniffy and useless, still ignoring my to-do list because my brain can't handle anything that takes concentration. It's a little troublesome, because watching things pile up always makes me nervous, but everything on that list is stuff that can wait, so it's fine. I don't have anything to worry about.

☆ No submissions for Nordipalooza yet... I am going to interpret this to mean that everyone has decided to take the full time provided to them in order to get their submissions done. Let's be real, that's usually what happens anyway, and typically the only one to have their submission done in the first few days that posting is open is -- well, me.

☆ Received some new fragrance in the mail this week, and I'm incredibly disgruntled because I can't smell it. This cold needs to clear up ASAP, seriously.

☆ I've started listening to Apocalyptica again. When I was in high school, I tried them out a little, but they didn't click for me. Now, they suit my taste better. Anyway - man, are they ever awesome. Metal music played on cellos? Yessss please. I'm still catching up on all of the albums I missed, so it's hard to pick favourite songs. But Misconstruction and Quutamo are pretty cool. My favourite back then and now is still the same song though - their cover of Edvard Grieg's Hall of the Mountain King. I am not a Grieg fan at all, but Apocalyptica makes it sound so badass.

☆ The tracklist for my Redtail FST is finished, and I've decided on the order for everything. Now I just need to put together all of the extra material - there are a lot of instrumentals in this, as well as some songs in Finnish, so I'm going to want to include some brief discussions of reason for the song choices. This is probably the fastest I've ever put a tracklist for a fanmix together. Usually I take months on these things. The idea of including some Sibelius on there just plain didn't work out - it didn't mesh with the rest, so I swapped him out - but now I'm kind of curious about the idea of putting together a mix made up entirely from classical music. Not necessarily for this fandom, I'm not sure how well it would fit, but maybe for something else. Would have to do a lot more investigating, though, since that's a really broad form of music, and not one that I have much experience with at all.

☆ It's almost May. How is this possible?! I demand to know where April went. Furthermore, it was over 25C outside today. This is unacceptable.

☆ Also means I'm really going to need to step up with writing my fic for Nordipalooza fest. I like to have my submission finished in time to post at the beginning, right when submissions open, because for some reason people tend to be be very shy about going first, and won't post unless someone else does it. And it's a convenient way to make sure that everyone has an example to use as reference. Though, I predict that this year there will be a lot of email submissions, since this is the first year that I'm holding it on DW instead of LJ.

☆ Driving practice is going well! I've been doing it in bits and pieces, half an hour at a time. Parking is... challenging. But I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Next step: Driving on major roads without getting nervous! (Hopefully)

☆ ... Half of the reason that this is even working is because I'm meticulously keeping track of how much time I spend on practice, and will reward myself with expensive fragrances when it's all over. On a related note, I hate how badly the Canadian dollar is doing right now. Haaaaaaate. It's... inconvenient for frivolous things. :'D

☆ I kind of want to see Age of Ultron. Just kind of. So many of my friends are into MCU and whatnot, so it's convenient to know what they're flailing over. Maybe I'll do it next week, on my off day. Though I will admit, I'm a little... disgruntled at the fact that the films that I actually want to see never come to this small town, and when they do they're usually shown in the evening, when I can't go see them. It's only the ones that I'm lukewarm about that I'm able to go see in cinema. :T How inconvenient!

☆ The one advantage of the months moving so quickly is that soon it'll be June, and I'll be able to go on my vacation in Victoria, BC. Think I'm going to need it, what with how things have been going at work lately. (read: VERY BUSY)

☆ Sent out all of the emails to deliver prompt lists for nordipalooza. Success! The few people that I've spoken to so far like what they were assigned. Let's hope there won't be any problems.

☆ Started working on my fic for that fest. I'm not happy with what I wrote, and I'm going to need to revise a lot and add a lot of stuff to it, but it's a start. Would like to say that I'm going to write intense historical gen, like I usually do, but alas. It will be modern day NSFW instead. (Though if I magically find time to write a second fic, maybe I will write something with Norway and Peter Tordenskjold and the Battle of Dynekilen, like I wanted to... as long as I can do it without getting bogged down by research.)

☆ Started reading Mindplayers by Pat Cadigan yesterday. So far, I'm enjoying it. Cyberpunk is a genre that I haven't explored much - though now that I look up a bit about what the genre usually entails, I find that, at least in some aspects, Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy applies, or shares some of the usual qualities at least. And of course, when I was a kid, I thought The Matrix was pretty cool. ... And that's basically my entire knowledge of the genre. Definitely looking forward to reading more of Cadigan's work, though. I find her writing style very readable.

☆ Watched The Imitation Game last night. I really wish that I could have seen this in cinema, but, oh well. It wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be, but it was also better than I thought it would be, considering the criticism I've heard of it. It was... all right. Would I watch it again? Maybe. But it didn't wow me. It did get me interested enough in Alan Turing that I plan to read a book or two about him, though. Without the film (and/or more people talking about Turing in general due to the film) I probably wouldn't have that nudge, since my WWII-related interests are far more centred around stuff like naval warfare, and resistance movements in the Nordic countries, and so on.

☆ Signups for nordipalooza are open! ... Well, I opened them last night, a few hours early. I figured that I might as well do it now, rather than fiddle with it in the morning. This is the fourth year that I'm running this fest, and I'm excited.

☆ Prompts for historyfest are closed now. I think I'm going to try to fill one of my own prompts, but I also want to fill someone else's. Haven't found one that I can do yet, but I'm not finished poking through everything. Something might turn up. I really hope that there will be a lot of responses to the prompts here, because practically everything sounds good to me, and I want to read all of it. :D

☆ I've become completely addicted to this Kitten Civilization Game. Fortunately, I've reached a place where my resources are pretty balanced and I can leave it alone without needing to check it obsessively. My kittens have now invented philosophy. ;p I guess I should warn, though, that this game is a major time waster. It's delightful, but - might as well be up front about it.

☆ I've finished reading Good Omens! There was a lot more going on in it than I remembered. I barely remembered most of the stuff near the end, except for the part with the flaming Bentley, so it was a bit of a surprise. Like reading it for the first time. Good stuff. Not sure if I ship Aziraphale/Crowley the way that I did the first time I read it... mostly what I want now is just for them to be together, doing their thing. Just like in the book. (And yeah, I want to read fic. Maybe when I'm feeling not-lazy, I'll look.) Next... I don't know. I dug out The Colour of Magic and tried to read it, but found myself getting misty-eyed, so - I might need to find something else. Or read a non-Pratchett novel first. But I'll give it another try, first.

☆ Though, since I'm thinking about the subject, if anybody has a favourite Good Omens fic that they'd like to rec, that would be cool. I'm mainly interested in reading about Aziraphale & Crowley, The Horsemen (especially War and Death), Anathema, and Agnes Nutter. And also Pepper, or stuff about Them in general where Pepper plays a large part in it.

☆ The Weather Network informs me that we're sitting at -16C due to windchill. I am annoyed. Equinox was yesterday. It's supposed to be spring, and I want to wear my warm-weather clothes. What we're having right now is just... Winter with less snow and more ice. That's all this is. But, I'll still go out and head down to the cafe to read, because if I don't then I won't get any writing done, and that would be terrible.

☆ I have three packages in the mail on their way to me, and none of them are close to arriving yet, and it's driving me nuts. ALAS.

✿ I'm ready for this week to be over, and it isn't even Thursday yet. :T This does not bode well! Really looking forward to the time change this weekend - hopefully having more sunshine will lift my spirits a bit.

✿ It was just a matter of time - my Hetalia Nordics fest will have to be at DW this year. Voila: nordipalooza. There were so many problems with people being unable to submit via LJ last year, I just said, fuck it. DW it is. I expect that there will be a small amount of decrease in the number of signups, just because of that move, but it really can't be helped. Well, at the very least email submissions are and always have been an option, so hopefully that will help things. I'm going to start putting together the information and whatnot for this year's fest this weekend... I want to have the info up by the 15th, and signups open on the 21st.

✿ Watched Wreck-it Ralph for the first time this past weekend... Wow, what an adorable movie! I wish I'd seen it in cinema - I think I would have really enjoyed that. When it came out, I thought the title sounded kind of dumb, so I didn't bother looking up what it was about, and I hadn't seen any trailers or anything. Too bad, really. It was so cute and charming and I loved the whole "the characters are video game sprites" kind of thing... It gave me a strong urge to rewatch the ReBoot series, even though there aren't many similarities between them except for the 'game sprites as characters' concept.