Snowflake Storms

I just realised I'm totally treating drinks with a former colleague tonight like a date. I mean I shaved my legs and tried a new homemade exfoliating scrub (coffee + olive oil, 4/5, cautiously reccomend. Great exfoliating, huge mess.)and hair cleanser. IDEK. I'm such a years-long, slow-burn, pining crushes type it always weirds me out when I find myself possibly looking at someone else.

What I read and loved over the last few days:

Careful Cooking (19917 words) by Java_Genie
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Sidney Crosby/Evgeni Malkin
Characters: Evgeni Malkin, Sidney Crosby, Taylor Crosby
Additional Tags: Kid Fic, Alternate Universe
Series: Part 1 of With Abandon
Summary:

Their supply guy has totally fucked them. Sid doesn’t know if it was just an off day at the warehouse, or if Ovie insulted the guy’s mother again, but whatever the cause, there’s a metric fuckton of peas in the walk in.

“I’m never taking a night off ever again,” Sid says ominously.

OR: Sid raises his sister, manages the kitchen in Mario's restaurant and tries not to fall in love with Geno. AU of the German film Mostly Martha

Why I loved it: It made me cry before I got the happy end I always want. I also love both the German movie it is based on and it's American remake, I love stories with/about cooking and I like people getting out careers they hate and doing what makes them happy (this possibly says more about my job situation than I'm entirely comfortable with, tbh). If this fic doesn't make you say "Oh, Sid" about 50 billion times IDK what's wrong with you, is what I'm saying.

Qeryana (2981 words) by Domenika Marzione
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Thor (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Jane Foster/Thor
Characters: Thor (Marvel), Jane Foster (Marvel), Darcy Lewis, Erik Selvig, Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: Thor is an alien prince and not an idiot, Cultural Differences, Culture Shock, Cultural References, Literacy, Literature, Music
Summary:

Thor and his efforts to live on Midgard, as opposed to just defending it.

in many ways, he is childlike by Midgard's standards. He cannot read or write any local language, a skill set much more valued and valuable here than on other worlds. He is literate and numerate, of course, in more than just the language of the Aesir, but that does not help him in London or Cleveland or New York. He cannot tell whether the bottle contains soap or condiment, he does not know what a telephone is, or why it is that red lights in the street mean "stop" but on a machine means that it is "standing by" and ready to be used. He cannot contribute to the running of Jane's household, nor is he of any possible use in her work, and the lack of function grates, although he is careful not to take out his frustration on -- or give voice to any doubts about his chosen path to -- Jane or Darcy or Selvig.

Why I loved it: It's kind of like an outside POV on modern humanity and undermines some common Avengers fic tropes.

Sweet Confessions Underneath His Tongue (17693 words) by thehoyden
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: due South
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalski
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon
Summary:

It was like a car wreck, really. You just couldn't look away. And Fraser looked up at Ray, with his expression like the cold fury of God.

Why I loved it: It's Ray and Fraser being adorable and has a great Ray POV and has what is possibly the only way to make the canon ending to Due South even happier than it already was :D

God, I ♥ AO3. Coding recs used to be such a major pain in the ass.

I'm still doing the talking meme. Give me stuff to talk about here

Another one for saba1789: Not sure you wanna talk about it but OMG WHAT IS YOUR NEW TATTOO GONNA BE?!!!

I almost didn't write anything just now because I saw January 11 and thought it was tomorrow. What are dates?!

Anyway, I don't mind talking about it at all. It's going to be an octopus on my back/shoulder, probably with some tentacles crawling over the shoulder or arm. The details are not 100% set in stone. I have an appointment to sketch and work that stuff out before the actual tattooing date. If it works out it's going to covering up the burn scar on my back. I don't actually mind the scar terribly, I just always pictured this going on my right shoulder and if it can cover it up instead of going around it, why not?

This one doesn't really have any special significance. Years ago when I started to really want a tattoo I was tossing around ideas and I wanted something to signify fandom and being fannish without being particularly tied to any single fandom (i.e. exactly why I then got the small AO3 kudos logo to pop my tattoo cherry :D). One of the ideas was something to represent fandoms coming and going but the fannishness and sense of community being there to stay and I thought of an octopus with many tentacles growing them back if one is cut off. I'm pretty sure I was confusing that with starfishes and anyway, it just wasn't a great metaphor so I dismissed it. But then the idea and the image itself had kind of burned itself into my brain and I liked it so much that I still wanted it and have wanted it for the last couple of years and now it's almost time :D

I'm still doing the talking meme. Give me stuff to talk about here

_bettina_ asked: How did you get into fandom?

For me it was a pretty meandering journey and it's been so long it's hard to put my finger on what the actual starting point would be. The first show I was obsessed with? The first fandom I read fic for? The first slash fandom?

Like a lot of German fans I know, I was really into the anime RTL2 used to show. This was in third fourth grade for me. My favorite was Captain Tsubasa or, die tollen Fußballstars as it was called here and I was so into it, I used to reenact scenes with my best friend and I think I wrote like half a page of a handwritten story about it once too. Through that I got into Sailor Moon and more anime (I had an Animania subscription for several years and still have the whole stack of them) and through the Zetsuai/Bronze manga I got interested in yaoi and found the yaoi.de site and mailing list. I read a ton of stuff there, fanfic for shows I'd never seen like Gundam Wing and lots of original m/m stuff. I wrote a few terrible fics together with friends from school too and I remember being so embarrassed and blushy about writing two guys kissing :D: My RL friends eventually got bored of it all while I got more and more into it and turned completely onto the online stuff with the mailing lists and the comicforum message boards and my own website I'd made to put stuff up at.

My first slash fandom was Harry Potter, which I got into through someone asking for recs on the yaoi.de mailing list. At first I was extremely dubious because Harry/Draco and Harry/Snape which were what got recced both sounded terrible to me, but yeah, at some point I must have gotten curious because I fell headfirst into it eventually. With HP fandom eventually came livejournal, which I had to wait forever for because lol, no friends to send me an invite. Somewhere between going from yaoi to HP slash I also switched to English speaking fandom and that's it, I've never looked back :D

One thing that has held true in all this time is that it usually takes me forever to catch on to a new fandom or idea, but when I do, I'm 100% obsessed. See my initial refusal to read NC-17, inital refusal to read Wincest, getting into SPN, Inception, TSN, Teen Wolf... every fandom ever months or years after everyone else.

I always like hearing about how other people found fandom. For me it was such a slow and twisty way it's hard for me to imagine someone stumbling over slash fic during a random web search and sticking around. And I am sticking around, I mean, fandoms come and go, but I can't imagine not being fannish at all.

I'm doing the Talking Meme, come give me stuff to talk about :)

What's your favorite thing to cook? from saba1789

Running a little late, but here we go. My favorite thing to cook, hands-down, is pasta of all types. Mostly, because it's one of my favorite foods to eat :D

I've become very lazy when it comes to cooking compared to my university days, because I just don't have the time for one or even more than one elaborate meal a day but throwing a pot of pasta on the stove is always quick, and even the simplest and quickest sauces are really tasty. If I'm really pressed for time I'll make something like spaghetti with frozen veggies and pesto and boil everything in the same pot at the same time which makes it a 15-minute meal with pretty much zero effort beyond stirring.

My favorite fancier food is fish and mango salsa (nom) or caramelised carrots (so much butter!). My favorite guilty please food is grilled cheese sandwiches because CHEESE.

Seeing all the real, actual activity on my friendslist that's not just endless RSS feed updates has been giving me the weirdest posting envy, because it is awesome to have a place to just ramble on for more than 140 characters at a time or the blink on an eye it takes for a post to disappear off a tumblr dash. Which is also really stupid because the only thing keeping me from posting to lj has been me /o\

Anyway, all the cool kids are doing it, so I'm going to jump off that bridge do the talking meme too :D

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Fandomwise I'm neck deep into Teen Wolf with the occasional hockey reading binge (Sid/Geno is just too damn great to resist).

Saturday I finished my first garment made without a storebought pattern \o/ It wasn't quite the triumph I hoped for since I didn't consider that the fabric doesn't stretch and can't sit down in my brand new pencil skirt. It's very pretty though and now that I'm not having christmas dinner plus dessert every day anymore I'm sure I'll be able to wear it to the office soon.

Last night I wanted to finish the bolero I'd started working on during the sewing classes that still had one sleeve sewed on inside out. Half an hour of painstakingly undoing the stupid wrong stitches I sewed it back on right-side out but upside down /o\ I went and undid it again while going through almost an entire episode os ST:Voyager and tonight I'm going to own that stupid sleeve, even if I have to do it a third of fourth or fith time >:(

I'd planned to do some baking today for a couple of days and then I had to wake up in the morning feeling queasy and weird at the thought of eating anything. After I dreamed about food in the night as well :/

Since the cake was meant for work tomorrow I went ahead and did it anyway. I tried a new version of the beetroot cheesecake with cooked beetroot in the topping instead of the dough. I haven't tried the finished cake yet but the topping itself was...not great before I put it in the fridge to chill.

I also made banana bread, kind of as an afterthought because I had overripe banana left over. Lidl had vanilla fudge on sale when I went this morning and I thought it might go well together. OMFG, was that ever true. This stuff is so good I almost don't want to share tomorrow.

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I had too much Red Bull and chocolate on the drive back from my parents holiday home on the Dutch coast and managed to give myself a monster of a caffeine and sugar rush. I didn't even really notice until I sat down at home and almost vibrated myself out of my skin. Yikes.

On the plus side, in the 1 1/2 hours I've been home I've already:

• changed my sheets


• unpacked 80% of my stuff


• put on a load of laundry


• unloaded the dishwasher


• repaired my clogged sink

That last one also involved kind of breaking the sink and temporarily fixing it with duct tape until I can google a better solution and make a run to the hardware store tomorrow /o\ But hey, fuck yeah, productivity! My usual coming home from a trip or long drive routine involves immediately crashing on the couch and not getting any shit done until at least a day later so this is pretty awesome. I just need to hang up the laundry and fix myself some dinner/lunch to pack and I'm all set for tomorrow. 

I'm dead on my feet and my feet are dead as well, but I had a super awsome day. Thanks again for all the lovely birthday wishes!

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Now ALL THE SLEEPING and details later :)