in which I am a big ol' hypocrite

I know there are people in the world who do not love their fellow human beings, and I hate people like that.

--Tom Lehrer

Recently it seems like the latest big fandom is Fandom - that the majority of fan-related discussions I'm seeing on my flist are not about series or characters or pairings but on trends in fanfic, and trends in responses to fanfic, and metaing about trends in fannish meta. It's rarely squeeful meta, either; there's some fanfic recs, but most of it is about how this aspect of fandom is problematic or that behavior is harmful. And it's not that these are bad topics, a lot of these issues are important to people, and it's good to open or continue dialogues about them. At the same time, lately it's been feeling like many fans - myself definitely included! - are doing more talking about fandom than actually fanning. And more than that, some of this meta to me comes across as very critical, not just of fandom trends, but of the fans who participate in such trends - it is really hard (maybe impossible?) to criticize a behavior without passing some sort of judgment on the people who do the behavior. Which tends to leave me feeling:

There are fans in Fandom who judge their fellow fans, and I think that is totally wrong!

Which isn't really true, because as I said, I think that a lot of these discussions are important; and a lot of them aren't trying to pass judgment anyway but simply offering opinions and talking about personal experiences and wishing things were different about their communities, which is all cool...but I miss my fannish experience being more about "Coolest ep EVAH ZOMG!" and "I have the most CRACKTASTIC AU in my head" and even "oh man did the writers drop the ball? on my foot? from 100 stories up? or was that just me?? :P" and less about "I don't like it when other fans do This."

...and yes, self, part of the problem, much?! >.>;;; I need a new series...I've watching a hell of a lot of TV lately, but none of it has struck quite the right chords; not sure if it's the shows, or it's me, or a combination, but it's awful frustrating, to want to be out sailing but to have no ship...

in which I do a bit of reading

Okay, fine, enough meta already, okay, brain? Instead, talk about reading! One advantage to working a temp job far away (other than the money, which is a Good Thing, even if I wish it were a Better Thing, or at least a Better-Paying Thing) is that the lunch breaks and bus rides offered me opportunity to actually sit and read books, which I haven't done enough of lately. Finally finished Rob Thurman's Trick of the Light - which frustrated me in various ways for most of it, but the end redeemed at least half of the issues for me. Which was an interesting enough turn-around that I ended up liking the book, in the balance. ( Mild spoilers, but everything major is blacked out )

It's intended to be the first of a series, and I see how it's set up for more, though I kind of feel it works better as a one-shot - I feel the same way about Thurman's other series as well, that the characters' drama gets overplayed after more than a book or two (and Trick of the Light gets pretty repetitious even within just the one volume); but urban fantasy thrives on continuing series, so...

Then I started reading Mary Brown's The Unlikely Ones, which I'm only partway through but really enjoying so far - it's one of those books that I look at the page count and go yay! I've still got hundreds of pages to read! <3 I'd never heard of it before but it was recced to me by my roommate in response to me reccing her Howl's Moving Castle, fitting as it's in that tradition of Dianna Wynne Jones and Robin McKinley, fairytale/folktale-inspired fantasy, which is probably my favorite fantasy subgenre. Mary Brown has her own style that's quite different from either of those others, yet is reminiscent all the same. It's a dark fairytale, with witches and curses and terrible monstrous things, but also unicorns and talking animals and helpful(?) magicians. It's not a kid's book (the sexual imagery gets way too explicit for that) but it sort of has the feel of one anyway, the genuine wonder of magic - the book-flap likens it to Watership Down and yeah, I can see it.

(Though oh man, I was looking on Amazon and it's hard to explain how incredibly wrong this cover is for it...! I'm reading the hardcover, the one I linked, and its illustration is about the most fitting-to-a-book I've ever seen, not only in spirit but the details, down to the knight having a mustache and curly red hair...)

And now I am going to go read the latest Dresden Files!

in which I rec

(I would apologize for spamming your flist, but...this is like the first time I've really posted in a month, so...) I forgot to put this in the last post, so it gets its own, in the name of positive squee about fandom - if you haven't seen, after six years, lanning is posting the next story in her Identical series, one of my favorite fanfic series of all time. I assume if you've read any Smallville or Clex fic that you've read Identical (if you're like me, half a dozen times), but in case you haven't - Identical is a Clex canon AU, diverging from the end of SV's first season but incorporating later canon, and future Superman canon as well, and I tend to forget that it's not the real canon because dang it, it should have been. It's got h/c, it's got angst, it's got true love, it's got the Kents slowly adopting Lex into their family, it's got wicked evil villains. It's got Eli Cohen, my favorite fic OC ever, and he is as awesome as ever, if not moreso. It's got this fantastic and gorgeous trailer vid. And now it's got a new story, which is shaping up to be as good as anything before it!

Snips and Snails and Puppy Dog Tails