December Daily: birthday stories

[resonant]

First I want to offer another song for download: L'Homme Arme' by the Christmas Revels, from Sing We Now of Christmas. If you're a fan of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice, you'll enjoy the fact that this is "The person, the person, the person with the weapon." The English verse is not historic -- the notes say it was composed by Susan Cooper, but it doesn't say whether it's that Susan Cooper.

Now.

reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"

I don't remember ever writing a birthday story.

I'm not good at birthdays. My standard experience of birthdays (my own and other people's) is standing around in the twilight, feeling like the day is too special just to go watch television but I don't have anything better to suggest and it's too late to start something, and wishing I'd done more. (At least when the kidlet was small the parties were structured and there were activities. Maybe I should plan my next grown-up birthday party with a quiet game, a craft, an active game, cake and ice cream, and goodie bags?)

I wonder how long symbiotes live in the Venom universe? I can see Eddie getting down about getting older and Venom having to be talked out of literally making him younger, but the symbiotes are clearly intelligent, and movie canon doesn't say they don't have culture. It would be interesting if they mark the passage of time too.

It would be interesting if the lifespans of their natural hosts were such that they marked time so that they knew when it was time to abandon one host and find another one.

Characters with canonically iffy childhoods (Harry Potter and Severus Snape, probably BBC Sherlock though I haven't watched most of the relevant series, Benton Fraser) would be easy to write into a birthday plot, but it seems so prefab to me that I must have read all those stories already.

In the Harry Potter universe, we've seen Nearly Headless Nick having a Deathday celebration -- I'd love to see what that looks like for other ghosts.







1 -- goss, "VENOM! Why do you think it's been such an instant hit with Fandom, and what are some of your favourite fanworks so far?" and nestra, "Any Venom recs?"
2 -- anitac588, "How do you relate to different fandoms? Do you revisit them? Sometimes I find it difficult to go back to reading stories in 'old' fandoms after discovering new OTP."
3 -- marginaliana, "what is your favorite physical non-living thing? Not a person or a pet, but it could be something you own or a piece of art, etc."
4 -- cesperanza, "I'll ask an HP question, actually, because I wasn't really ever in it and I'm interested in the reactions of people who were. It seems to me from the outside so spectacularly meh now; like, it was the fictional equiv of Lost (which I also didn't watch) where it was fascinating as a piece of serialized fiction but where the execution simply couldn't live up to the collective imagination. Am I wrong?"
5 -- teigh_corvus, "Your thoughts on James Joyce and Ulysses."
6 -- kass, "If the you of 10 years ago could see you now, what would surprise her most?"
7 -- jjhunter, "What do you carry with you?"
8 -- mific, "Sounds like you commute to and fro still. How do you pass the time traveling? Music? Audiobooks? Something else? Any reccs? :)"
9 -- torch, "favorite advent songs!"
10 -- princessofgeeks, "How did you go about changing fandoms? Was it, historically, something you did or something that just happened? Did friends lure you? Did you find new shows to watch?"
11 -- reginagiraffe, "(It's MrGiraffe's birthday so...) Have you ever written a birthday themed story? If not, what couple would have the best/funnest/easiest birthday story to write and why?"
12 -- laurenthemself, "What are your thoughts on Thor: Ragnarok? I know ya boy Steve wasn't in it but did you have any shippy feelings?"
13 -- allheadybooks, "13. What's your least favorite thing about splitting your time between two houses? (My wife and I are also in a commuter marriage at the moment, and I get so frustrated every weekend when I have to go grocery shopping AGAIN because I thought I had eggs but that was at the other apartment!"
14 -- schneefink, "how about your field of study/work/specialization/hobby and how a book/movie/series/canon got it terribly/hilariously wrong?"
15 -- china_shop, "What hooks you into a fanfic? Is it banter, characterisation, tropes, or...? Is it different from what hooks you into original fic?"
16 -- muccamukk, "Describe a long fic you always wanted to write, but never have and likely never will."
17 -- ride_4ever, "rec two due South fanworks: a favorite that you created and a favorite that someone else created. (Anything! Triggers and squicks not a concern for me.)"
18 -- kass, "What have you read recently that you've enjoyed?
19 -- jjhunter, "What are five words you like or find especially meaningful + 1 word you despise? Why?"
20 -- terminally_underwhelmed, "do you have fandom/character/relationship "types" that you find all your fannish energy going towards? Like, Gryffinpuff/Slytherclaw (and more simply hot/cold) relationships grab me, and so do characters that are both super popular and super ooc in fanworks.'
21 --
22 -- mekare, What would Ben Fraser do in 2018?
23 -- marina, "What was the last book you read that wasn't fanfic and that you intensely loved, and why."
24 -- wychwood, "Something about SGA! What's the one fic you're sorry you never wrote? What was your favourite episode? Do you still love John/Rodney? How gay WAS John Sheppard? Where in Atlantis would you live if you could pick any room you liked? Pick one or a topic of your choice."
25 -- isabellerecs, "What was your most favorite Christmas present that you ever received as a kid?" and/or "What Christmas present had you wanted badly but never received as a kid?"
26 --
27 --destina, "how has your relationship to fandom changed over the years? By which I mean not just participation in it, but your level of tolerance/interest for the cyclical things about it, the way old arguments never really stop or die, etc, but also the ways fandom changes and new ways of doing fandom evolve. (And old ways evolve out, and terms evolve, etc.)"
28 -- kass, "What do you like best about where you live?"
29 --
30 -- china_shop, "Your favourite book you read this year."
31 -- wolfshark, "what is your favorite story to reread of your own stuff? what was your favorite story to write?"

Comments

[terminally_underwhelmed]

I'll stop lurking briefly! Any day that's left--do you have fandom/character/relationship "types" that you find all your fannish energy going towards? Like, Gryffinpuff/Slytherclaw (and more simply hot/cold) relationships grab me, and so do characters that are both super popular and super ooc in fanworks.

PARTY!

[flamingsword]

I have a few structure-for-adults party suggestions of things that have gone over well for my friend group.

1. Invite each person to send you a few songs to go on a party mix, and be ready to defend why they like their songs if challenged. It is low-stakes enough to not set off anxiety and can be silly fun, and will teach you a lot more about your friends. WHY they like things is a better predictive algorithm than what they like currently.

2. Buy a canvas not quite as big as your coffee table, or put it on the floor with an old sheet. Grab some paints, brushes, plastic plates to mix colors, and have people doodle a community painting. Lots of people feel anxious at parties so having something to do with their hands unlocks their voices.

3. Drunken spelling bee! If your friends are nerds who drink, making them spell words like Ood, dilithium, or aca-fan and take a drink if they miss a word leads to great lols. Modify rules depending on the level of competitiveness of your friends and how many levels of sobriety you want the party to lose.

I hope these are a jumping off point for your creativity, and wish you much luck at your next soiree.

Re: PARTY!

[resonant]

These are great ideas! It seems that structure is the key.

[norsellie]

Yey, another fan who knows about Susan Cooper! (I really need a Dark Is Rising icon, now it's that time of year again.)

[resonant]

I should go read those books again.

[anelith]

I've been listening to my Christmas Revels album a lot this holiday season! Thanks for the song, it's from a different album than the one I have. I was so amazed to discover that *the* Susan Cooper was a big part of the Revels. I wonder, is she still alive?

[resonant]

According to Wikipedia, she is still living. And it does look like she's a writer for the Revels, as well as having written a kids' biography of the founder.

[lunabee34]

I imagined symbiotes to be like the Trill symbiotes, essentially immortal with only the host body dying of age.

What would be cool is if being a host prolongs the host's age somewhat or even a lot what.

[resonant]

Seems reasonable that it would. I mean, if the symbiote can heal a compound fracture, then a blood clot in the brain should be a breeze.

But maybe you wouldn't bother if you didn't have a relationship with your host -- kind of like those people who trade in their cars every two years, so there are a lot of things they don't bother to fix. (I get attached to cars and drive them till things fall off, so I don't know what that's like.) So maybe it would be a shock to Venom when Eddie's knees started to ache on rainy days.

[lunabee34]

Heeeee. It depends on whether you think your host is jeans from Target or a bespoke suit you paid half a paycheck for. LOL

I think Venom thinks Eddie's tailor made.

[reginagiraffe]

Love this analogy!

[lunabee34]

Thank you!

[resonant]

Great comparison!

When you think about it, Venom has a broad ability to customize his host. We all seem to have agreed as a fandom that a symbiote who can heal a broken leg can also fix internal issues — but there’s nothing to say he couldn’t also, like, change the shape of hair follicles so the hair grows in curly? Adjust the distribution of skin melanin? (Anything from skin that darkens instantly in response to UV to freckles because they’re so dang cute.)

He could change Eddie’s height, fat percentage, muscle mass, eye color ... I mean, he’s not human, so there’s no reason to assume he has the same taste in men as Men’s Health, but he might observe that greater height or deeper voices get more respect.

He’s an instant shape shifter, but his host could become a slow one.

[lunabee34]

Oh that's a really good point. I hadn't even considered what all he could change about his hosts. That would make really good fic.

[reginagiraffe]

I wonder what a symbiote would consider a birthday? Are they "birthed" or do they bud off or something else?

Maybe the process is gradual. Like, they divide but still share a mental link which slowly decays until finally they're a fully independent entity.

[resonant]

Oh, how interesting. Then if they did have culture, they might have a set of beliefs about the state of being alone, and how it lasts from the time you're finished being budded/divided until the time you find a host.