Delusions of Grandeur

Challenge #10: Big Mood (Board) – CHOOSE SOMETHING YOU LOVE AND CREATE A MINI MOOD COLLECTION OF THREE (or more) ITEMS THAT EVOKE YOUR FEELINGS ABOUT IT. You don’t have to limit yourself to visual media, or collect the items into a special format like a square (though you can if you’d like).

OK, I’d never made a Moodboard before, but had been sort of wanting to try it, so this was the perfect opportunity. I thought briefly about whether I should do a Taskmaster one, but I do feel like my colorbars from last year fill a similar niche, so I felt like I’d done it. Well, besides Taskmaster, I think it’s fair to say I have only one truly active fandom at the moment, so… Elis James & John Robins it was. And I might have gotten a little carried away XD



(Let me know if this looks giant on your page and I'll add a cut -- mine seems to automatically resize it to something reasonable, but not sure how universal that is.)

( Blathering )

*

Challenge #11: In your own space, grant someone's wish from Challenge #5.

I really like the idea of this challenge, but don’t terribly like the idea of linking to “granted wishes”, so I won’t do that part. I’ve already granted a couple of wishes when originally browsing Challenge #5, but this was my reminder to go finish commenting on another one I’d done in my head but not actually commented on. But then I went ahead and browsed the day 5 comments some more until I granted a wish I hadn’t even looked at before. I plan to continue doing that, but with that I feel like I can call the challenge “done” for the purposes of posting about it :)

Oh, right, and I should probably link to my wishlist, shouldn’t I.

Some fannish catching up!

1) fandomtrees still has 3 trees below the minimum number of 2 gifts, and is thus at risk of delaying reveals again (currently scheduled for Jan 17 reveals), with the decision on delaying to be made the morning of 1/17. Needy trees are mastershield's Tree (f:astro boy, f:balan wonderland, f:kingdom hearts); kalloway's Tree (f:brave nine, f:crossovers, f:fire emblem, f:granblue fantasy, f:gundam, f:kingdom of heroes, f:super robot heroes) whoremoantreatments' Tree (f:advance wars, f:bleach, f:hypnosis mic, f:kuroko no basket, f:pokemon, f:tales of berseria, f:the world ends with you). (List kept updated here.) All of these are open to fic, and the minimum fill for fic is only 100 words, if anyone knows these fandoms and can help out.

(My tree has above the minimum number of gifts but is here, and I’m eager to see what’s on it :)

2) I should’ve mentioned this earlier, but it’s been a crazy couple of weeks. lunasariel is hosting a sync read of To Shape a Dragon’s Breath in her DW here. Currently it’s her, me, and cyanmnemosyne reading along, but contrary to the name, we don’t actually have to be all synched up to participate, so if (like me) you’ve been meaning to read this book for a while, or if you’ve read it already and want to follow our impressions as we make progress through it, come join! I am currently just past halfway, lunasariel is 10-20 chapters ahead of me, and Cyan has just recently started. (And yes, my thoughts on this book are ~50% on the chemistry. Actual Periodic Table of Elements chemistry, I mean, not chemistry between characters, although I’m enjoying that too.)

3) Snowflake catch up!




The problem with doing Snowflake every year for the last, uh… 10 years, I guess? – is that for repeated questions like this, which are about ME as opposed to about my fandoms or projects or objects, which can accumulate it is much harder to come up with something new to say! Both of these questions fall under that category, and so were more challenging than most for me to answer. But let’s see if I can come up with something without repeating myself.

Challenge #7: LIST THREE (or more) THINGS YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF. They don’t have to be your favorite things, just things that you think are good. Feel free to expand as much or as little as you want.

I do want to stick to fandom-related things I like about myself for this one, so, hm. Last time I answered this question seems to be in 2017 (and my things were “good fannish role model for my children”, “thorough and detailed in talking about what I’m reading/watching”, and “conscientious beta”) and the first time in 2016 (my answers were “good fannish baba/matchmaker”, "committed to fannish crack”, and “conscientious about fandom participation”) – and I do still feel those things are all applicable to me and I still like them. But I’ve done a bunch of new things in the last 9 years, from attending conventions to paying attention to the Hugos to signing up for Yuletide, so let me focus on those new things and see if I can extract three new things I like about myself fannishly from them.

( things I like about myself viz conventions, fanfic, and Hugos )

Challenge #8: Talk about your creative process.

This is another one I’ve done before, in 2019 and in 2015, but looking at even the 2019 one, I talked about fannish poetry and graphics, but not about fannish prose/fanfic. So clearly that’s what I should talk about, but what IS my process?

( Fanfic process )

Challenge #5: In your own space, create a list of at least three things you'd love to receive, a wishlist of sorts.

- fandomtrees reveals got pushed to Jan 17 because there are still some trees (16 as of this posting) that don’t have the minimum amount of gifts (at least 2) necessary for reveals. So, any fills for the needy trees listed here (real-time updates at the Google spreadsheet). Most of the fandoms I don’t know anything about (but hopefully some of you do!), but of the ones I do, there’s a request for the Raven Cycle, Discworld, and some Original Work requests, and a niche rec request.

- My tree does have the minimum number of gifts, so is not holding up the fest opening, but does list all kinds of things I want (fandoms: Chronicles of Amber, Discworld, Dragaera, Rivers of London, Taskmaster, Terra Ignota, Vorkosigan Saga, and critter art).

( More specific requests for Dragaera, Taskmaster, Elis&John fandoms and crossovers/fusions )

- I included this in last year’s Snowflake wishlist and it worked really well, so doing it again: I'm planning on Doing the Hugo Awards (and hopefully Worldcon) this year, and have just recently come to the realization that if I'm going to nominate some short fiction, I should actually, like, read some that was published in 2025. So, looking for recs for "Hugo-worthy" SFF short stories and novelettes published in 2025 that are ideally accessible online. Authors who tend to semi-reliably work for me in short form are Sarah Pinsker, Kelly Link, and Naomi Kritzer, to give some sense of what I like. And also happy for any recs for published-in-2025 novellas, Related Works, and dramatic presentation short form things (<90 min) that are standalone (i.e. not episodes of a serial show, but either a short(ish) film or part of an anthology show but standalone), and Astounding-eligible authors to check out.


Challenge #6: Top 10 Challenge. The category(ies) you choose are up to you. You can give top 10 Fics you read last year, the top 10 songs to create to, the to 10 guest stars on your favorite show, top 10 characters in your favorite book series, top 10... well, you get the idea.

After some consideration, I’m going to do my Top 10 Dragons :) I’m currently reading a book with dragons (To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which I’m enjoying a lot), whose dragons are, so far, somewhat different than I’d been expecting, and that’s been making me think about various other fictional dragons I’ve known and loved and the universes they come from, so I figured I’d make a list of my favorites.

They can be dragons that can assume human form, or even spend most of their time in said human form, but they can’t be just humans who are for some reason called Dragons (i.e. no Sarkan from Uprooted or the Dragaeran Dragonlords). Moreover, I tried to keep it to one dragon per canon. So here we go!

( Top 10 dragons )

What about YOUR favorite dragons? Introduce me / sway me over to any I might've missed, or squee with me about my favorites :)

*

I think I was actually low-key avoiding the Taskmaster New Year Treat because I subconsciously resented it for being 2 episodes when I wanted CoC to be 2 episodes, lol. But I have watched it now, and it was fun!

Part 1 – Ooh, I knew one of the contestants (Rose) was deaf, but it was still jarring to see her interpreter sitting there next to Alex. Alex’s banter (OBE/oboe) and the several layers of bad joke was pretty fun. ( More, with spoilers )

My midpoint impressions are that I do enjoy Susie, but in exactly the same way I enjoyed her on Catsdown, so the “revelations” are Sam and Rose, who are both extremely adorable cuties whose cheeks I want to pinch. I’m very meh on the others – Jill’s doing well, but is a bit deadpan for me, and also I’m not a fan of how she brings up football all the time – like, I don’t feel like I’ve learned anything about her outside of her football career (in stark contrast to David James, who mentioned some footballers or travels associated with playing football, but talked about things like painting and just came across as a delightful massive weirdo – IDK, goalkeepers are different, I guess, was the consensus at the time). Apparently even the cat costume, which I did find cute, is a football reference, to her local football team, which someone on Reddit said she said in the studio taping. And Big Zuu is just kind of there… It sounds like he’s a charming person to work with, from all the podcasts, but as a viewer I have not been charmed.

Anyway, I don’t mind spending another episode with these guys!

Part 2 – Greg made me laugh out loud with his Alex intro: ( More, with spoilers )

And of course there was also the Series 21 cast reveal. ( Spoilers? )

I still have some Taskmaster stuff to catch up on – Acaster’s ultimate episode, the next installment of Taskmastermind, and some outtakes. But meanwhile ( WILTY has returned and is being a lot of fun )