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Canada, Bouchercon, FemslashEx
Oct. 23rd, 2017 09:43 am...and my apparent definition of "tomorrow" as "a week from tomorrow."
First, FemslashEx! I received three incredible stories, so I can't emphasize enough how much I'll be doing this exchange next year, too.
My official gift was Female Revolutionary/Princess, Burn, by Edonohana, which I actually guessed! Because I put together sexiness, brilliantly precise prose, and incredibly skilled fantasy world-building and got suspicious! I keep misremembering this as being 10k, that's how much is in it.
I also received two treats! The wonderfully-named IdMonster wrote me Aunt Lydia/Janine in Good, a gorgeously complex dubcon darkfic that was everything I could have ever dreamed of for this pairing. Could be canon, should be canon.
And I also got some amazing kinky Wonder Woman smut, The Ecstasy of Surrender (Diana/Isabel Maru), by BridgetMcKennitt. It is a smorgasbord of appealing, personalized kink, with lasso of truth bondage and a little redemption creeping in around the edges. Just awesome.
I matched on Mulholland Drive and wrote Come and Be Discovered for laughingpineapple. It's a would-be Lynchian look at what might have happened if Rita and Betty had been able to stay in the dream world.
I planned roughly ten treats and yet only finished one, The Part of Her Hair (Mary Bennet/OFC, plus general Bennet family interaction), for anabel. I've been incredibly delighted with the reception this has gotten.
Next, Canada/Bouchercon trip!
S. and I went up north through Rochester, NY to see some friends of hers (one of whom was a bridesmaid at our wedding and who laughs at my terrible jokes). We ate delicious Cambodian food, which I had never had before, and talked about how absurd the "match" system is that medical students have to go through to find permanent positions. S. and I were suitably impressed by it as a dystopian social organization technique. If you're not familiar with it, the best way I can think to describe it is "an engine to generate unhappiness." And the best way Wikipedia can describe it is perhaps more pertinent.
The friend's live-in boyfriend is a film studies grad student. S.'s friends and family members, all seemingly independent of each other, are always dating and marrying film studies guys, which is cool for me because I am an amateurish film geek. So S. and her friends caught up while I gazed longingly at Criterion Editions and talked to this guy about Peckinpah, and a good time was had by all.
Rochester was also very appealingly queer, so we went to a queer coffee-shop for breakfast one day and hung out there for a bit looking at their informal lending library.
Next, Niagara Falls, which is one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring sights I have ever seen surrounded by the most boring parts of amusement parks, complete with endless mediocre restaurants, zombie laser tag, dinosaur putt-putt, Ripley's Museums, rides, and overpriced souvenir shops. It managed the difficult feat of both being kind of depressing and in possession of its own charm. We almost did go play dino putt-putt, but instead went to the much more tasteful Niagara-on-the-Lake for dinner and the purchase of fancy jams. One store was selling the cutest ottomans I have ever seen, all shaped like plump animals, and it was only the thought of having to lug it all the way back to the car that prevented me from buying one despite the fact that our apartment has absolutely nowhere to put it.
We only really had one day in Toronto to do tourist stuff before Bouchercon started, and aside from going to the very cool Bakka Phoenix (an exclusively science fiction/fantasy bookstore at which I bought a truly ridiculous amount of CJ Cherryh), we did nothing cool because the day was cursed. This is what S. and I always conclude whenever we hit one of those stretches of everything going just slightly wrong. There's nothing you can do about the curse, you just have to hope the next day is better.
And it was! Actually, all three days of Bouchercon (we skipped out too early on Sunday for it to count) were great. I got Megan Abbott's autograph, got to meet an internet friend, and really enjoyed luxuriating in a few days of non-stop book and writing discussion. I have a mile-wide soft spot for talking about writing as a craft, especially with regard to structure, so this was all catnip. Aside from all the Meghan Abbott panels--she was there for Best Short Story, Best Novel, and Guest of Honor interview--my favorite might have been the panel on using reporter heroes, which I chose almost at random from three things I wanted to go to at the same time. But the panelists were all lively, engaged, and full of professional detail and insights about the unique in-between role reporters can play in mysteries (they're not cops, so they can't compel people to talk to them, but people are more likely to talk to them; they don't generally carry guns and are therefore more vulnerable than cops or PIs; their allegiance is to truth and full discovery rather than to justice, which just slightly shifts the moral balance).
And, awesomely, I finally got to meet Sarah/herowndeliverance in person, first for a dinner and then for a lunch, and it was just very nice to get to have an extended face-to-face conversation finally. I'm so glad she was able to make it to Toronto. (Apparently she and S. were both worried about whether or not the other would like them, but everyone universally liked each other.) There was some slight mistiness at the end of that lunch.
First, FemslashEx! I received three incredible stories, so I can't emphasize enough how much I'll be doing this exchange next year, too.
My official gift was Female Revolutionary/Princess, Burn, by Edonohana, which I actually guessed! Because I put together sexiness, brilliantly precise prose, and incredibly skilled fantasy world-building and got suspicious! I keep misremembering this as being 10k, that's how much is in it.
I also received two treats! The wonderfully-named IdMonster wrote me Aunt Lydia/Janine in Good, a gorgeously complex dubcon darkfic that was everything I could have ever dreamed of for this pairing. Could be canon, should be canon.
And I also got some amazing kinky Wonder Woman smut, The Ecstasy of Surrender (Diana/Isabel Maru), by BridgetMcKennitt. It is a smorgasbord of appealing, personalized kink, with lasso of truth bondage and a little redemption creeping in around the edges. Just awesome.
I matched on Mulholland Drive and wrote Come and Be Discovered for laughingpineapple. It's a would-be Lynchian look at what might have happened if Rita and Betty had been able to stay in the dream world.
I planned roughly ten treats and yet only finished one, The Part of Her Hair (Mary Bennet/OFC, plus general Bennet family interaction), for anabel. I've been incredibly delighted with the reception this has gotten.
Next, Canada/Bouchercon trip!
S. and I went up north through Rochester, NY to see some friends of hers (one of whom was a bridesmaid at our wedding and who laughs at my terrible jokes). We ate delicious Cambodian food, which I had never had before, and talked about how absurd the "match" system is that medical students have to go through to find permanent positions. S. and I were suitably impressed by it as a dystopian social organization technique. If you're not familiar with it, the best way I can think to describe it is "an engine to generate unhappiness." And the best way Wikipedia can describe it is perhaps more pertinent.
The friend's live-in boyfriend is a film studies grad student. S.'s friends and family members, all seemingly independent of each other, are always dating and marrying film studies guys, which is cool for me because I am an amateurish film geek. So S. and her friends caught up while I gazed longingly at Criterion Editions and talked to this guy about Peckinpah, and a good time was had by all.
Rochester was also very appealingly queer, so we went to a queer coffee-shop for breakfast one day and hung out there for a bit looking at their informal lending library.
Next, Niagara Falls, which is one of the most beautiful and awe-inspiring sights I have ever seen surrounded by the most boring parts of amusement parks, complete with endless mediocre restaurants, zombie laser tag, dinosaur putt-putt, Ripley's Museums, rides, and overpriced souvenir shops. It managed the difficult feat of both being kind of depressing and in possession of its own charm. We almost did go play dino putt-putt, but instead went to the much more tasteful Niagara-on-the-Lake for dinner and the purchase of fancy jams. One store was selling the cutest ottomans I have ever seen, all shaped like plump animals, and it was only the thought of having to lug it all the way back to the car that prevented me from buying one despite the fact that our apartment has absolutely nowhere to put it.
We only really had one day in Toronto to do tourist stuff before Bouchercon started, and aside from going to the very cool Bakka Phoenix (an exclusively science fiction/fantasy bookstore at which I bought a truly ridiculous amount of CJ Cherryh), we did nothing cool because the day was cursed. This is what S. and I always conclude whenever we hit one of those stretches of everything going just slightly wrong. There's nothing you can do about the curse, you just have to hope the next day is better.
And it was! Actually, all three days of Bouchercon (we skipped out too early on Sunday for it to count) were great. I got Megan Abbott's autograph, got to meet an internet friend, and really enjoyed luxuriating in a few days of non-stop book and writing discussion. I have a mile-wide soft spot for talking about writing as a craft, especially with regard to structure, so this was all catnip. Aside from all the Meghan Abbott panels--she was there for Best Short Story, Best Novel, and Guest of Honor interview--my favorite might have been the panel on using reporter heroes, which I chose almost at random from three things I wanted to go to at the same time. But the panelists were all lively, engaged, and full of professional detail and insights about the unique in-between role reporters can play in mysteries (they're not cops, so they can't compel people to talk to them, but people are more likely to talk to them; they don't generally carry guns and are therefore more vulnerable than cops or PIs; their allegiance is to truth and full discovery rather than to justice, which just slightly shifts the moral balance).
And, awesomely, I finally got to meet Sarah/herowndeliverance in person, first for a dinner and then for a lunch, and it was just very nice to get to have an extended face-to-face conversation finally. I'm so glad she was able to make it to Toronto. (Apparently she and S. were both worried about whether or not the other would like them, but everyone universally liked each other.) There was some slight mistiness at the end of that lunch.