Dreams of Falling

Wife and I went! We enjoyed ourselves! We are both still kinda exhausted!

( The slightly longer version behind a cut. )

EDIT: Wife has told me I forgot the best part! Down in Walk of Fame (the autograph room), checking to see when we could get an autograph from John Barrowman, and as we walked in that direction, Yet Another Person turned away from asking the same question. Except it wasn't just another fan, it was John Noble, of FRINGE and SLEEPY HOLLOW. We didn't pester him! But we may perhaps have had a moment of OMG HE'S RIGHT THERE, and also OMG JOHN NOBLE IS A FANBOY TOO.

Back in the day, I was huge into Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer, and lots of their modern-day sisters. Which meant learning about nobility, because 95% of modern Regency romances involve titles for one or both of our protagonists. Is it correct to call our hero Lord Hadrian when he's only a Baron? (No, he'd be Lord Potter.*) Once Ginevra marries the Duke of Thingy, is she Lady Ginevra? (No again - she's Lady Thingy, "Your Grace" for formal.*)

...so basically, dear people who are writing Harry Potter wish fulfillment fic wherein he inherits All The Titles? Harry will not, in fact, wind up as Harry Potter Black Peverell Slytherin Gryffindor Extra, and no self-respecting goblin would call him that, even to wind him up. (Well, maybe just to wind him up.) He would be Harry Potter, Duke of Peverell, Marquess of Gryffindor, Count of Slytherin, Viscount of Black (to arbitrarily designate actual titles), and he'd be called Lord Peverell, with all the rest just sort of...elided underneath, no matter how rich and important they are.

(I enjoy a good wish fulfillment fic as much as the next person! But after the third or fourth or twentieth fic that thinks inheriting titles means piling on the last names, I just...yeah.)

*On the off chance that any of y'all are curious, I checked my memory here.

In addition to doing all the weekend chores that I didn't do yesterday:

1) Finished up the hand-written draft of Chapter Five.

2) Procured Things To Be Turned Into X-Men Cosplay from Goodwill (maroon dress that will be turned into Magneto's ridiculously overdramatic long tunic thing, and a suit for Professor X which is going to be cut up all over the place because (a) Wife will be in a wheelchair and visible only from the front anyway, and (b) who are we kidding, we're going for Will Be Vaguely Recognizable, not Hall Costume Craftsmanship Award. We're making the helmets, that should be enough of a tip-off.

3) ...there is no three. Sorry, three is a lie.

39: Is there an anime you wish was more popular?

I'm not sure. My usual response has been SHINGU, but as previously discussed, Not Everything Is To Everyone's Taste, and I'm not sure I actually want a Fandom to develop for my little-known faves, with everything that entails.

Mostly it comes down to - anything that I wish was more popular, like SHINGU (or INU X BOKU, to pick another example)? Really what I want is either (1) more people that I know to watch the thing, so I can burble about it with them, and/or (2) more people to watch the thing, and then write the fanfic that I want to read. Seriously, folks, there are three Shingu fanfics on AO3 (all written by me*), and 8 for Inu X Boku (none written by me), somebody should get on that.

(...I will also note that choice (1) is good for getting me to write fanfic. See also: the entirety of my INITIAL D output. Thanks, Stef and Kay!)

*There used to be a couple more, and written by someone other than me? But they got deleted for reasons I don't know.

32: If you could make a game for an anime of your choice, what would it be and why?

Wife would totally go for a (...non-immersive I hope) RL Sword Arts Online. I think this is vastly over-estimating our skill at Actual Video Games, and nope. There is a reason we play the Lego video games: those are aimed just about right for our skill level.

If they did a adventure/hidden object game (a la Big Fish Games, though? Especially if they did one of their Very Loose Adaptations? I would be all over that, just saying.

(Hey, they did Phantom of the Opera, and a whole series based on Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems. It's not totally implausible that they could create something playable out of Detective Conan, for example.)

28: Do you watch a new anime because you think it will be good, or because it's popular?


...I do not understand this question? I mean, granted, I simultaneously live under a rock and also am on Tumblr enough that I am not infrequently Introduction Vector for Wife for various things (e.g. CARMILLA). But I am not actually good about trying new things.

Really, what it comes down to is two points. ( 1. I separate fandom from canon, 2. Good, Popular, and Things I Like are not always overlapping circles. )

02: Has an anime ever made you cry?

Yes.

This isn't actually all that impressive? I cry easily. You can have the most blatantly obvious, string-pulling, 'At least I got to see you - one last time!' tear-jerking moment, and I'll still be there crying my eyes out.

Tangent! Among the reasons why it took me a Really Long Time to get into anime: back when I was in college - late 90s - one of my friends was talking about a movie/OVA, where they had gone in with the assumption that the characters on the front cover of the DVD would live, and instead every single one of 'em had died. This, combined with an attempt to show me anime which featured the last few episodes of the first season of MAGIC KNIGHT RAYEARTH (see the descriptions of episodes 17-20 on that link) and the first episode or two of KEY THE METAL IDOL - well, it left me with the impression that anime, as a genre, was hella depressing and why would I want to watch it. This impression did not get fixed for :ahem: a long time.

I check AO3 semi-regularly for more Yuri On Ice Stories I Am Interested In, which (as usually happens) are getting thinner on the ground. Unfortunately, this means I'm hitting the stage of the fandom life-cycle where I start to get grumpy.

...specifically, dear fanfic authors: why the heck are you writing stories wherein the only trace of this being a Yuri On Ice fanfic, as opposed to Any Other Fandom Ever, is the names? I don't even mean that I don't agree with the characterization. I mean 'fairy tale retelling' wherein the prince is now named Victor, and the brave maiden who rescues him is now a boy named Yuuri, and the helpful fairy is now (depending on which retelling) either Minako or Phichit, and Russian Yuri appears for at most three sentences to yell at everyone before vanishing again.

If you're going to write a fairy tale retelling, couldn't you maybe pick (a) a non-Disney fairy tale, and (b) think about what putting the YOI characters into the roles would mean? I don't feel like that's too much to ask. Grump.

So Wife and I were talking about DragonCon, in sort of the same way that mountaineers who live in the Aosta Valley talk about the Matterhorn (I imagine) - namely, we want to tackle it, but it would be a really big thing.

"Part of it is just the physical toll," says the Wife (who walked with a cane before this most recent issue with her ankle). "I wish I could bring a wheelchair."

"Cosplay," I suggest. "Virtue of necessity kind of thing. Barbara Gordon as Oracle?"

"No," she says thoughtfully. "Maybe Professor Xavier - I don't mind shaving my head. And you could be Jean Grey."

"Hell no, I'll be Magneto," I say, without actually thinking this through beyond volunteering to be Ian McKellen to her Patrick Stewart.

...end result is that now she's looking up how much a Magneto helmet costs, and what exact outfits would be required. We're not even in this fandom. I have seen three out of six X-Men films (not counting any of the Wolverine films, which I also haven't seen). Dear lord, what have I done.