Friday Five, by which I mean Sunday Four

[bironic]

(1)

How many of you are of an age and region to remember the BookIt! program, where kids get stickers for reading books and then trade them in for a Pizza Hut pizza? disgruntled_owl has organized a fall reading challenge for our local fan group that serves as BookIt! for grownups, and I am inordinately enthused about it. Need to do a books catch-up post.

(2)

Change of season—theoretically; summer hasn't let go yet—means replenishing fall work wardrobe and sprucing up the apartment. Clothes shopping is hard, but five hours' work yesterday yielded a pair of plaid pants, a tunic sweater with side grommets and a corduroy dress that I really like, and everything was on sale.

I also picked up a trio of fairy tale-inspired prints at a local art fair and hung them in the bedroom.


(The Little Mermaid, Little Red Riding Hood, and Beauty and the Beast, done in geometric mosaics of construction paper. Click for bigger.)

It's funny because it turns out the artist is the same one who made a paper-doll Edgar Allan Poe pattern and various cute horror figure prints that caught my eye when I lived in D.C. The styles differ so much, I didn't make the connection.

(3)

I got a haircut and I think I don't like it. :/

(4)

Trying to decide whether to participate in trickortreatex or yuletide_admin for the first time or to sit out official signups, look at people's requests to see if anything sparks an idea, and concentrate on my own WsIP otherwise. I'm thinking no on Trick or Treat and maybe on Yuletide. Just in case on the latter, I nominated the fandoms I'd want to request stories for and/or that I feel most capable of writing. Three is not much when you don't expect to know most of the sources other people nominate.

Either way, the "Original Works" prompts for trickortreatex are a lot of fun to peruse. They're listed under "Other Media" here. (I copy-pasted into a Word doc and added line breaks to make them readable.) Some faves:

- Actor Cast As A Vampire Who Is Actually A Vampire
- Businessman Who's Obviously A Poorly-Disguised Tentacle Monster
- Demon Who Has Accidentally Locked Himself Out Of Hell And Just Wants To Go Home
- Ghost of a Dried Up River
- Ghost of Highly Intelligent Octopus that Escaped From Its Tank
- Giant Robot Who Just Wants to Know Love
- Haunted Yarn From An Evil Sheep
- A Reader's Digest Condensed Book that Slowly Devours the Reader's Soul
- Reanimated Egyptian Mummy With A BA In Film Studies From USC

(5)

Wait, I thought of a fifth thing. I booked a flight to see my longtime friend A. in Tucson, AZ in November. She moved there five years ago and it took this long to visit, whoops. Recommendations welcome if you know the area. So far: Sonoran Desert Museum, Saguaro National Park, drive up Mt. Lemmon, a Mexican restaurant her family likes.

Which reminds me: This week marks five years since I moved back to Boston! It seems simultaneously like less and more. 2013 was the summer jetpack_monkey made the Starships! remix. Kink Bingo was still running. This is the longest I have stayed at a single job or school. While there are annoyances and stressful periods, I don't at the moment have plans to look around. I miss my D.C. friends (and my NY friends before that) but am glad for my Boston ones.

Comments

[stardreamer]

2) That's an interesting dress! Thirty years ago I could have gotten away with it. Now... oh, well.

3) At least it's not permanent.

4) "Haunted yarn from an evil sheep" made me think of The Ballad of Fenton aka Death Sheep From Hell.

Would you happen to know how to get a fandom into the index on AO3? There's a very small one called Polychrome Heroics that needs to be under Other Media -- it's got 6 stories to date.

[bironic]

You mean for the AO3 as a whole and not for a particular challenge/fest, right? I don't know for sure, but I browsed the FAQ and this seems close - https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#fandomcategory

>>Thirty years ago I could have gotten away with it. Now... oh, well.

Heh. I'm hoping I can make it suitable for work by doing black tights and either a cardigan on top or a t-shirt underneath.

>>The Ballad of Fenton aka Death Sheep From Hell

LOL, WTF? Thank you for that. I especially enjoyed the demonic "baaa"s. The only other related media I can think of is the zombie sheep movie from New Zealand we watched at bad movie night.

[stardreamer]

Thanks, I've submitted a support ticket.

Tom Smith does a lot of Really Weird Shit. You should hear his Elvis-styled "Return of the King, Uh-huh".

[yhlee]

Those are gorgeous prints!

The Original Works character nominations are one of my favorite parts of trickortreatex.

[bironic]

What a delight!

And yes, aren't those prints lovely? There's a Greco-Roman gods and goddesses series as well, but these spoke to my heart. :)

[minoanmiss]

*beams at you*

Those are some entertaining Original Fic prompts. I wasn't going to do Tricks or Treats but now I'm a smidge tempted.

[bironic]

It doesn't sound right to say "you can always write a treat" when "treat" is one of the official forms of the exchange, but you know what I mean! I hope. :)

[longwhitecoats]

I FORGOT ALL ABOUT THAT PIZZA HUT BOOK THING. I LOVED THAT THING. Oh man. I would totally do a homemade one of those for adults. What a genius idea!

[bironic]

\reading/

\rewards/

[j00j]

I loved the Pizza Hut book thing! Finally, a thing I could win!

[bironic]

Ha! Quite.

[grammarwoman]

5 years since the Starships remix? WHAT IS TIME.

[bironic]

inorite??

[roga]

Randomly but now I'm just missing being in Boston in winter having you help me title last-minute yuletide fic.

[bironic]

Aw, with soup and latkes. Was that two years ago now?

[scribe]

Oh my god those prompts are AMAZING. And what good art! I walked by some of those this year and was sorely tempted :D

[bironic]

(Un)fortunately, the friends I was meeting for brunch were late, so I browsed and impulse purchased them. No regrets!

[selki]

I love the look of those pants!

[bironic]

Yay, thanks! I'm looking forward to the weather cooling off enough to wear them.

[cuddyclothes]

Those prompts are FANTASTIC! They really made me laugh.

Also, love that dress!

[bironic]

Yay!

[marginaliana]

I did some random trickortreatx prompts last year based on the original fandom stuff, and I'm definitely anticipating doing something with these. Thanks for posting the interesting ones!

[bironic]

Tip of the iceberg! I found the tickable/searchable spreadsheet they linked at trickortreatex super helpful for browsing requests, including Original Work prompts.