Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

I left off at the conclusion of the Case for a Female Doctor panel, which ended with me having an aneurysm. In the hours that followed, I located mondyboy and calapine, and we slipped into the final half hour of a panel on fantasy elements in Shakespeare, in which robshearman and another gentleman said many intelligent things, and Allison Croggon said equally intelligent things, but more rarely, as she was losing her voice.

What happened next was my fault. The panel was called "We Are All Fairy Tales: Doctor Who's Fifth Season". I wanted to go. calapine was hesitant, fearing that it would be full of people being wrong. But I argued, with such a good name, how could it be anything other than a really interesting and clever panel about the themes and fairy tale elements of season 5?

Yyyyyyyyyyyyeah.

( We Are All Fairy Tales )

The only other panel I went to was about history in YA speculative fiction. It was an interesting panel by authors whose work I'm going to check out, but I felt it suffered from a lack of familiarity with current YA. I mean, I can talk about Joan Aiken until the cows come home, but the argument about historical accuracy, necessity thereof, would have been interesting if someone had raised the Great And Terrible Beauty series or others.

No, I know where it went. SHOPPING. And then socialising.

In the morning -- EARLY IN THE MORNING -- which is to say around the time I'd leave on a weekday -- I trekked into the city to meet up with myniamh and weaver to scout out fabric and patterns for our Kyoshi Warriors costumes. (Along the way, I bought two new pairs of shoes -- everyday boots and black ballet flats for Ye Upcoming Wedding -- and caught up with an old Borders colleague. I also read the current issue of SFX in Magnation, where they had a really scathing review of the Last Airbender movie. Which was satisfying.)

Anyway, costume browsing was fun, although the kimono pattern we eventually chose will require a lot of adaptation. The costume parts of pattern books are always a bit worrying; I counted one Asian model out of all the books. The lowlight was a white model who had been effectively blacked up with bronzer to model the Exotic Indian Sari costume. WTF, pattern companies? But anyone who's seen a craft fair full of golliwogs, or encountered an Exotic Asian Quilt Pattern in a magazine knows that the crafting community is a bit, shall we say, behind when it comes to things like not being massively racist. (I think this is because it is dominated by middle-aged, middle-class Nice White Ladies who think that talking about race is worse than selling freaking GOLLIWOGS.)

I also discovered a pattern for a Sexy Elizabeth I Costume. I can only assume this is somehow part of an elaborate homage to Kate Beaton.

Eventually, after some trekking between Lincraft and Cleggs, and a break for a pie and burrito (...both me), we sourced greasepaint and went our separate ways. I went off and bought a few more things for the wedding, and then stopped to read my book and rest my wee feet in the Myer Ladies Lounge. (There's a Myer Ladies Lounge, btw.)

Now recovered, I trekked off to meet calapine, who's here for Worldcon. I was nervous, as I always am, about meeting people from the internet. What if they're strange? What if they have questionable hygiene practices? What if we just don't click? But she was lovely. If you've ever read her LJ and thought, "No one can possibly be as nice and clever and funny as calapine seems, you're right. In real life, she's MUCH nicer and cleverer and funnier. And also Scottish. I mean, I knew in theory that she was Scottish, but it helps to have her around, actually being Scottish.

I had this grand plan to give her a tour of Melbourne via the bookstores, but apparently books are immensely more expensive here than anywhere else in the world. (I have long suspected I was somehow being cheated, AND NOW I KNOW FOR SURE.) We did spend some time in Hill of Content, because its history section contained new biographies of Livia Augusta and Catherine Parr, and two shelves of books about Britain in the Jazz Age. (Which would have come in real handy back in 2005, thanks, universe.)

They also had some very questionable shelving choices, like putting Let The Right One In in the kids section. It was a few shelves away from Mockingjay, which is TAUNTING ME by being out in the world before I've read it. I mean, I have a copy, but I'm trying to save it for the plane trip to Brisbane. (I also plan to load my Kobo up with some ebooks. Has anyone read the Red Riding series by David Peace? It looks interesting, but I've been fooled before, and it would be terrible to be trapped in Queensland with nothing to read. Because it's not like I'll have any kind of wedding preparations to be involved in, no.)

(I may also have plans to load Kobo up with AtLA fanfic. If anyone's interested, this is a really handy site that can grab fic from the Pit of Voles and export it in a couple of formats. Of course, it only works with FF.net, but the formatting is good once you've found fic that doesn't make your eyeballs bleed.)

Afterwards, we wandered across the road and fetched up in Madame Brussels, where we somehow spent the rest of the afternoon. I tried to sell calapine on Avatar. She mocked me for having insufficient love for monochrome. We debated whether or not cucumber has any place in a rational human's diet. Then I ate the cucumber from her Pimms.

(She has this very charming idea that all Australians are very healthy eaters, and that's why, when you order Pimms here, it comes with a fruit salad submerged in it. So it's a good thing she'll never know I just had red bean and walnut paste cakes for breakfast.)

All of a sudden, it was VERY DARK. Apparently we'd just spent three hours and a hundred dollars in Madame Brussels. (In my case, it would not be the first time.) calapine got a text from a friend, asking if she wanted to come out to dinner. She said yes, invited me, and we wandered over to Crown (*obligatory Melbournian shudder*) and met up with robshearman, mondyboy and Dave Of No LJ. They were all really nice, and it was a pleasure to meet them and debate the relative merits of "The Time Monster" (considerable) and compare cats with robshearman. (I also compared babies with mondyboy, but I think his wins automatically on account of being a son instead of a nephew. WHAT, YOU DIDN'T KNOW IT WAS A COMPETITION?)

Many hours later, they dropped me home, which was especially nice as it was (a) out of the way and (b) 1 am. So I can tell you straight off that I know where most of Sunday morning went, too: sleeping in. But now I've put on a second load of laundry, and I'm about to put the cat on his lead and let him play in the grass while I weed the front garden and do other strenuous and exciting things.

Yes, I forgot yesterday. SHUT UP, I'M MOVING HOUSE THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW.

*beat*

OH GOD I'M MOVING HOUSE THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW!

Day 03 - Your favorite new show (aired this TV season)

And here I don't actually have an answer, because I haven't watched any new shows this season.

Actually, that's not true, I watched the first three episodes of V. And it was rubbish. Oh, and I watched the first episode of Luther, the new BBC crime mini-series with Idris Elba and Indira Varma and Paul McGann. And it was not bad, except that the main character keeps exhibiting violent rage when his estranged wife upsets him. And I thought I was coping, but then there were nightmares, and really, I just don't need that much triggering in my TV.

Also, once he figures out that [spoilery character] is actually evil on toast, it gets about 80% less interesting and 200% more misogynistic. So.

So yeah, I don't have a proper answer to this question. If you wait until shows are cancelled before you watch them, you can save yourself a lot of distress and disappointment, I'm just sayin'. Better living through spoilers!

UNRELATED POINT: one of the nifty things about what I choose to call miniskirtgate is people coming into posts and saying things like, "I don't care for Amy for [non-sexist reasons], but tearing down women in the name of 'feminism' is fail." And other people saying, "I love Amy and her wardrobes, but occasionally it seems exploitative, and that makes me uncomfortable."

Also, I really need to reread Pride and Prejudice, but, you know, one thing at a time.

They're not actually very good, because The GIMP is still new to me, and I totally forgot to save all my fonts before I deleted Windows, so ... yeah. But the spate of anti-slut shaming posts directed at Doctor Who fandom left me overcome with a brief wave of creativity.



And, of course, there are the PJ Harvey lyrics in the icon I'm using right now. (LJ readers will have to click the link to see it on DW.)

I'm actually kind of eh about the Body Without A Face style here, but Karen Gillan is very tall, and it's hard to get her legs and her face into one 100x100 space.

Want, take, have. If anyone wants to contribute their own, I'm happy to make this a master post. Possibly some Classic Who knees are called for.

I am cot_tossed.

I mean, so are a bunch of people, but I started it.

SHOCKED SOCKPUPPET IS SHOCKED! SHOCKED I SAY!

I was planning to PULL OFF MY MASK AND REVEAL MYSELF at some point, but then cesario went and made me a maintainer on fic_tossed, and I figured the time had come.

So, for the record (because cot_tossed is a sock, not a troll, and therefore doesn't barge into people's LJs) here are some things I've been wanting to say:
- I chose the name because the quote makes me laugh, and made a good username.  A friend used to have it as her email .sig.  I was mildly bemused when people interpreted it as a sign of disdain for all fic everywhere.
- I was even more surprised when the icon was held up as evidence of contempt for fandom.  It was just the first picture of Dorothy Parker I found that I (a) liked and (b) hadn't seen everywhere.
- There is nothing I said as cot_tossed that I wouldn't say under my own name, but a pseudonym made it easier to distance myself from the politics of personality and engage with stories, as distinct from authors.
- There is some really shit fanfic out there. 
- I am speaking here for myself, not the other puppeteers.  Whether or not they choose to reveal themselves is entirely up to them, and I respect their choice.