paladinquen | Reading

All right! Bidding is open in the FTH charity auction! Hooray. It closes 8PM EST March 07.

My offering page is over here and as a reminder I'm offering up to 5k of Hetalia, Promare, and basically any fandom I've written before.

The list of all fandoms is over here if you want to see what else is on offer.

Very excited! I haven't done much browsing yet; only bid on one thing, and was outbid almost immediately. Will have to take a closer look once I have a moment. :V

yuuago

This weekend I was running around like a maniac trying to get stuff done. Yesterday it was -37C when I went to get groceries. And today we had more snow on top of the load of snow we've been getting.

I went to a hot yoga class yesterday; that was nice.

Also worked on a little bit of fic. Typing up a thing I finished in Vic. It's not much of a fic, more like a DVD extra (it's a scene that I wanted to put into a thing but ended up deciding it didn't really fit before I ended up writing it, and then decided that I wanted to write it anyway. Just, um, separately.)

I don't really wanna' go to work tomorrow. But. You know.

Even though I did all the things I needed to do today I only did a fraction of the things I wanted to do today and I feel kind of bummed about it, even though that's business as usual.

yuuago

Whoo! I'm participating in the FTH charity auction once again. Offers are open for browsing.

You can see my offers here. You can also see a list of all fandoms on offer here.

Bidding opens on March 03!

This year I'm offering up to 5k of Hetalia, Promare, or any fandom I've written in the past (such as Ex Machina, Vatican Miracle Examiner, Frozen, etc). I'm offering any characters/pairings.

If you're interested in this but don't really get how it works, I might be able to help - I've participated on both the offering on bidding ends before.

I'm really looking forward to seeing whatever the winner requests; in the past I've had asks for pairings that I normally don't write, and in the end those often turn out to be some of my best fics.

Anyway! Whoo! Let's see how this goes!

kanadka

Berlinale tradition second year in a row in that we got off our asses and saw at least one (1) film. TBH, I am not much on Berlinale usually - I know some people who do the whole wait on the website at 10am when tickets are released to try and land a premiere screening with Hollywood actors and the red carpet vibes - and I just think man, that sounds exhausting. And there are a lot of people. But there are also so many cool movies and some are really really cool looking. I always think, surely I will select one that most people won't go to... and then I'm surprised when the line is out the door. D:

We went to go see "Hukkunud Alpinisti" hotell, aka, Dead Mountaneer's Hotel, a 1979 release from Estonia based on the 1970 novel by the Strugatsky bros. I didn't realise how many screenplays they also wrote, because they wrote the screenplay for this one too. Anyway it's at Berlinale because it was recently restored from archival material with some new 4k scan work and also there was some comment about how the intro and concluding monologues had formerly been dubbed in Russian; these are now re-done in Estonian.

Even though the world premiere of the restored version featured one of the actors and the musician who composed the film score (!) was much earlier during the festival and this was just a later repeat essentially, it was still a packed theatre and I'm secretly glad we showed up early by accident, because I missed the bit on the ticket where it was actually no assigned seating. But, I think it's really great so many people are so interested in it.

Overall it was super surreal and atmospheric, definitely 70s style with a very sinister synth soundtrack, and genuinely fun. Some extremely impressive shots of avalanches and helicopters and the mountains given the era. I hadn't read the book before, so I can't compare, but I'm told it wasn't too bad a film imagining, especially as far as Strugatsky novels go (looking at you, Monday Begins on Saturday...). My partner's parents said they saw this while they were dating when it first came out, and they were a lot less impressed than we were :'D maybe because the book had so recently been released, not sure.

Anyway, here is Lell <3 he is a very good boy.
Movie still of Lell, a St Bernard. He is very cute and soft and has an extremely pettable, if gigantic, head.

Movie still of Lell, a St Bernard. He is very cute and soft and has an extremely pettable, if gigantic, head.

10/10 would ask him to guard a mysterious briefcase.

yuuago

I received notice that my offer for this year's Fandom Trumps Hate auction has been accepted and posted. I'm so glad!

A few years ago, I had an offer that I could not actually complete - it was for beta services and the person who won it never got back to me. Since then, they seem to have dropped out of fandom. I haven't participated in FTH since. So, I was kind of worried it wouldn't get accepted, since I technically still have an outstanding assignment.

Mind you, if that person ever shows up again, then sure, I'd be happy to fulfill that assignment! ;V In the meantime, I'm just glad I can participate this year.

There are still a few days before everything officially opens; they have so many to post that it needs to go in batches. I'll make a separate post when that happens.

yuuago

So, today was my last day in Victoria.

I took the bus down to the Oak Bay area. I visited an art gallery, poked around some little shops, and (unsuccessfully) tried some geocaching. I've never been in that area before, so it was a little bit different. "Enrichment", I suppose one could say. Or at least getting myself more used to the bus system.

Then I headed back downtown, poked around some other little art galleries, and then decided to call it a day.

Heading back home tomorrow. Kind of wish I'd booked a bit more time off so I could spend it at home, but that's how it goes. ;V It was nice to get out of Fort Mac and do some stuff, at least. (And also I managed to finish a fic draft! So that's something.)

yuuago

On Wednesday, I went to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Not my first time going up there, but it's the first time bothering to take the bus - I've been very tired lately and I just couldn't be arsed to walk it. ;V

One of the feature exhibits, which happened to be my favourite, was on Asian inkwork (mostly Chinese and Japanese). Very cool, some really beautiful stuff there. Super glad I went. Some of them had poetry incorporated into the inkwork, and there were translations to go along with them - I appreciated that.

They also had a small exhibition of prints by Albrecht Dürer. Fascinating stuff. So detailed! There were magnifying glasses available to take closer looks. Necessary, as some of them were quite small.

Anyway. In the evening there was the thing that I came to Victoria for... the Pacific Opera Victoria performance of Tosca!

I've never seen an in-person opera performance of this level; my previous experiences were all small-scale productions by small companies. So, this was a real treat.

The performance was amazing! The singing, the costuming, the everything. I was already familiar with the story as I've seen a recorded version, but in-person was so much better. I had a great seat, too. (And actually remembered my glasses this time, hooray). 100/10, no notes.

One thing I loved that I didn't remember from the recorded version was that there are some moments that have great comedic timing. Like yeah, sure, it's a tragedy, but in the earlier parts there's the stuff like Mario going in for a smooch and Tosca being like "Not in front of the Madonna", haha.

And now I'm like... turning over the general premise of this opera in my head, trying to shove certain favourite characters into it. You know, "The enemy pressures the protagonist to sleep with him in exchange for the love interest's freedom while the love interest is tortured in a nearby room" dealio. It's a little challenging to make anything a 1:1 fit, but man is it fun.

Anyway, the opera was lovely. I'm glad that I made the decision to come see it in person; very good decision. I could see myself doing so again; we'll have to see what comes up in the future.

yuuago

My mom told me that it's around -30C at home. Plus windchill.

Meanwhile, Victoria's been a balmy +5 or so. I've been going around in my spring jacket and not even wearing a hat.

I kind of wish I didn't have to go home.

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