lokifan prompted: How about crochet - how/why did you get into it? Do you have any new projects on the horizon?

I learned the basics as a little kid from my mother, just like knitting. I think it was during a summer vacation in elementary school when I was bored, maybe because of rainy weather? But tbh I don't really remember in detail. My mother got me some basic cotton yarn and showed me how to crochet pot holders, and then I made some.

I never did anything more complicated for ages (with knitting I at least tried for mittens in addition to a scarf), until I saw some amigurumi online and just tried making a simple one in 2017, this dog and a bit later this penguin, and then I again didn't crochet for several years until you felt like making a neck loop.

I don't do fiber crafts (or any crafts really) in a consistent, regular or perfectioning my skills fashion. Mostly I see something, figure it's vaguely achievable, and then follow instructions, and the end result is usually something vaguely like the intention.

Right now I'm crocheting a bunch of granny squares when I want something to do with my hands that might become a simple lap blanket before the end of the winter. Currently it's almost half finished.

(If you want to prompt me there are still open days.)

rheanna prompted: what was your first fandom and how did you get into online media fandom?

I can't remember a time before I self-identified as a fan. I mean, I always was aware of fandom as a thing geeky people do together, so I was never a "feral fan" who was really into something, and only later discovered others were too and found them. My parents and siblings were all fannish when I grew up, variously being into Star Trek, tv series, pulp magazines, horror and SF movies, comics, TTRPGs etc.

Like, my mom told the anecdote how in the pre-VCR days when she was pregnant with my older brother her water broke during an Avengers episode, and she finished watching that before going to the hospital (tbf, it was her second child and she suspected it would take a while, but still, that's fannish priorities right there). I actually checked the air dates for that series on German tv once, and her story checks out... Both my parents told me how their parents had tragically destroyed their pulps and comic books when they were little, whereas my older sister didn't just collect Star Trek novels (there also was a live sized Spock poster for a while) and comics, she also had a chest full of "John Sinclair" horror pulp magazines that she read to me when I was tiny (my parents had no issue with that, my mother for example read "Jerry Cotton" pulps herself), and my older brother hosted D&D nights etc.

Back to my own particular fannishness, my first real fandom was Disney comics, mostly the Ducks, and then collecting comics in general, and also drawing my own. I collected (Disney still, also various European comics, but no superheroes at that time), became a regular at the local comic store, went to trade meetings, later to cons, met with a youth group to draw comics and eventually publish a zine.

The group actually was a city project for "at risk" youth done by social workers, but I didn't realize that at the time since I just saw the flyer in the library, and I was a bit younger than the main target age, like fourteen when it started iirc, and most others where 16 or 17.

Because I was really sheltered even at 14 it actually was a bit scary for me to get to the meeting place at first, because previously I'd only been on my own in my neighborhood (to the library there, to the comic store, the mall etc.), and to the central library in the city center, but the group met at a vaguely run down cultural center behind the central station and later a youth center in a neighborhood adjacent to mine, but one that was significantly poorer, and generally I didn't go to that area. Both places had lots wall signs that drug use wasn't allowed inside, which seemed somewhat alarming to me. I realized later that the funding for the whole thing had come out of the addiction prevention city budget or something, which probably also explains the locations in "drug problem" areas. Some of the other teenagers had mainly done illegal graffiti spraying before (we all brought art samples).

Anyway, the group was really fun, even though besides me only one other girl was there iirc, and it was also very educational. I still have some of the tutorial copies. It also definitely widened my social horizons. We even displayed our artwork at a local comic con eventually in the second year (actually reading the project descriptions in the con program made me realize that the thing was primarily intended as social work, not art education), however I never got my original artwork back after the exhibition. I'm still disgruntled about that, all these decades later.

So I was mostly into various aspects of comic fandom as a teenager. I don't remember anymore how I first learned that fan resources could also be found on the internet, I think a zine might have mentioned a news group as resource or such, but at first I wanted to find out comic bibliography type of things, like lists of comics certain favorite artists had worked on, which wasn't easy to find then. Like, you could find such lists when a magazine did a special on an artist or a writer, but for some there weren't any I could find.

My older sister had access through the university, so I visited her to get access to newsgroups and FTP sites with FAQs about comics and stuff, and printed out piles of posts, mostly from usenet, but also some really early websites. That was back when Lynx and Mosaic were still the main web browsers, and you searched FTP servers with a thing called gopher.

Then my older brother got compuserve at his place, and I looked for fannish things there (also played Myst), both in the groups but also more generally, and found a due South mailing list, but my attempt to join fandom then failed, because his email inbox could not cope with the amount of mail a fannish mailing list generated.

So I was aware of online fandom and wanted to join, but the difficult logistics thwarted me until I gained my own internet access a few years later. Since I was mostly into The Sentinel by then along with comics, I found that pretty much as soon as I had dial up internet at home, late 1997, when there were many Sentinel websites and lists. I think I first looked up an episode guide because I wanted to know whether more episodes had aired in the US than here (there had) and read transcripts (I had only watched the dubbed versions then, though eventually I found fans to get tapes from). I then came across Nightowl's Nest, a fandom resource site, that linked to all sorts of things and discovered fanfic, and then I was pretty much set.

I wrote feedback to the first Sentinel fanfic I found, squeeing about having found fanfic, joined the Senfic mailing lists soon after, and then a bunch of others. It took me a little bit to realize all the red, blinking "slash 18+" weren't related to gore and violence (as in "slasher" movies). They puzzled me, as I didn't understand why The Sentinel would inspire much of that, and why my favorite authors would be into gore when their regular fanfic wasn't violent at all. But since in TS there really was a lot of overlap between gen and slash, the misconception was cleared up very soon, and I joined some more lists.

The Sentinel stayed my main media fandom for several years, though I never was strictly mono-fannish. I also read Due South, Highlander, TPM, and many others, but was primarily active on TS lists (or lists that were open to other things but had grown out of TS) until fandom moved to LJ.

(If you want to prompt me there are still open days.)

dine prompted: let me know your feelings on mountains vs ocean for vacation spots. or is there something else you prefer?

Ocean, definitely. I haven't actually been to mountains often (I don't do winter sports or anything like that, nor do I climb, though I like moderate hiking), but I love being near the sea. I'm not much of a swimmer nor do I like sunbathing, but walking along shores or cliffs, looking at waves and smelling and hearing the ocean is great. The couple of times I've been on the ocean with ferries and such, I liked that experience too.

Unfortunately I don't live by the sea directly, though I am still in the area of the river estuary that gets significant tides and coastal storm impacts, so the sea is definitely nearer for outings too.

(If you want to prompt me there are still open days.)

mific prompted: Tell us about rats and why you like them.

I like rats, because they are social, smart, curious, cute, cuddly, adaptable and important for pets, you can keep them in a small apartment and still give them a decent quality of life.

Rats actually like living in human buildings, and do it voluntarily (if we let them), which in general we don't appreciate as the wild ones aren't useful like dogs or even cats, but still like to eat our food and gnaw and pee on our stuff, and also can transmit diseases (though apparently it wasn't actually their lice that brought the Black Death after all but mostly human to human lice).

So nobody wants "vermin" but the fact remains that they are well suited to living with us. They don't need a large territory or want to roam all the time or need to fly or swim (though some like splashing a little but mine mostly didn't try swimming when I offered) or would really like having a big underground warren (though they do like nest building and some like to dig a little). They like the same temperatures as we do.

And they are omnivores like us, so it's not complicated to feed them. There are a few foods they can't eat as they have some metabolic differences to humans, and some foods that aren't great for them, but basically they live on grains with some fruit, veggies (of the types that don't cause gas, brassica and legumes aren't great) and animal protein when they can get it, so more or less they eat like us. They also really prefer their food cooked and also fatty and sweet or salty, but then get the same health problems as humans and potentially tooth issues from too many soft things. But their inclinations are very aligned with ours when it comes to creature comforts. They themselves think human environments would be a good fit for them.

Of course most cages you see in pet stores are much too small, but something the size of a wardrobe with a couple of floors is fine for a small group. You can't keep just one and even two isn't great (because it's a real problem if one dies prematurely and introducing older rats is fraught), but three or four works well enough.

And the domesticated ones have been selected for human affinity and docility for long enough that early socialization to humans takes really easily. It's not as extreme as with dogs who lived with us for thousands of years, but pet rats like to interact with you, they recognize you, and they will be awake when you are and shift their schedule (though they don't appreciate erratic habits -- if you establish a schedule and then change it, they will sulk and mope, which I learned when I got some during school holidays once and played in the morning and then only got home in the afternoon once school started -- much disgruntlement ensued).

They are somewhat neophobic as they are territorial and prey animals, so unfamiliar places are stressful (the thing of carrying a rat around outside isn't great for most rats), but they are curious enough to like to explore and play with new things appearing in familiar surroundings. Especially young ones also really enjoy playing with their human, like getting tickled, running away, coming back etc. I never bothered much with tricks like fetch (which they can learn), but almost all will come when called (though bribery obviously helps). They are also really fun to watch with each other, and they cooperate for goals.

They don't get housebroken, though some claim theirs are, but I have never had a rat that you could get to only pee in designated places, and that is more problematic than their feces which is generally dry in healthy rats and not super gross. That they mostly prefer to leave in a few corners, so you can put up toilets, but they pee even in their sleeping nests, and they mark all paths with small pee droplets. So wherever you let rats out, you will have some amount of rat pee, including occasionally yourself.

Otoh them being small animals, the absolute pee amount isn't large, isn't super pungent, and unlike cats they do not vomit, and engage in no revenge peeing, but you want washable or wipable surfaces for rats. But otherwise they groom themselves meticulously (no rolling in gross stuff like dogs do sometimes) so they themselves don't smell more than a cat would in general (and much less bad breath, also they don't noticably fart), and it is really cute when they groom you socially, which they like to do.

Their major downside is of course that they are so short lived, with most living only a little over two years, and their health often declines before, so you often have to regularly medicate a rat for a quarter of their lives for one lung ailment or another and older rats frequently get cancers. So it's a lot of heartbreak to have rats, which is why I haven't kept any in quite some time.

(If you want to prompt me there are still many open days.)

goss prompted: What were the last 2 fanworks you enjoyed?

I have been reading a couple of longer fanfics that I've been enjoying but haven't managed to finish. (I have a problem sticking with any fiction atm, it's the same with books and even tv, it's awful.) But the last I actually finished and consequently bookmarked was The Vader Archives by anghraine, two short ficlets about Star Wars in-universe academics arguing about Darth Vader, his identity and impact.

The last fanart I liked on Tumblr was this Steve/Bucky art by muffinshark as it came across my dash again and I noticed I hadn't liked it before.

(If you want to prompt me there are still many open days.)

I haven't always had luck with these memes, that rope others into providing topics/questions, but I guess it's worth a try. So as seen around my circle:

I'm soliciting questions for this year's December posting meme - surely you have an interesting (or boring - I don't judge), impertinent, or unusual question for me? Can be about a fannish opinion or headcanon, about me, a top 5, or my thoughts on anything that strikes your fancy. Please pick a day and give me a topic.

( list of dates and questions )

Are there any new up-and-coming places where one ought to namesquat just in case? I do have a Pillowfort account (and if anyone wants an invite, I think I can generate three or so?), and I have heard of Mastodon, though I'm not entirely sure how joining that works. From what I understand you have to pick a server instance based on the reputation and TOS of that specific server? Are there new places? I'm not up to joining TikTok (not that it is new at this point)...

Is there a way to tell the Google calendar it should repeat something weekly, except if it coincides with a local public holiday? Surely that is a common use case?

I once again ended up adding a repeated event, and then had to manually delete a bunch, that I ought to be able to exclude automatically, because Google already knows the dates of Christmas etc. It is really aggravating. (As you can probably tell I don't use Google calendar a lot, but I do like it for getting alarm reminders for appointments and such.)

Well, the emerging result of me trying to follow this crochet pattern doesn't at all look like the depicted neck loop that is supposed to become crocheted by it. I mean, it's not *entirely* unrelated, kind of like a text input for an AI art neural network and the created picture. Probably due to a similar failure mechanism of missing contextual world/crocheting knowledge too.

OTOH it is loop shaped and could perform a neck scarf function by size, and it's not like the details of the various yarn loops (and their misshapen failures) will be particularly noticeable. Unlike say spreading out something geometrical as a blanket or such. So I guess I'll still have a crocheted neck loop.

I think one of the issues when following crochet patterns as a fairly inexperienced crocheter, even if the thing isn't that complicated seeming, is that just a lot can go wrong when putting a "stitch" in another "stitch" because each of those actually consists of multiple yarn loops/holes, and you get an exponentially growing number of ways to insert the hook into that place that the pattern refers to just as a "stitch". And then everything is just slightly off and doesn't quite work like the pattern intended and it leads to compounding failures.

I don't use Twitter to post but I follow a couple of people, only my reading feed sometimes doesn't show all tweets and I don't know why.

I have set it to "Latest" so Twitter should show things to me in chronological order, yet just now of the last three links to goodreads reviews an author I follow posted, I see only one in my feed, even though I see all three when I go to their Twitter directly. I only noticed because one of the two reviews was actually shown to me earlier, but then when I went back to my feed after reading it on goodreads it was gone from my Twitter feed. Then I checked the poster's Twitter directly and discovered that tweet and the second one that are there, but not in my feed when I refresh it. I remember noticing something similar when I noticed tweets missing when I visited Twitter on different devices. I don't use their app, but view logged in, in a browser, regardless whether I view on a laptop or a mobile device, if that makes a difference.

Is there some reason for this weird behavior? Can I stop Twitter from doing this to me, or do I just have to live with a randomly incomplete reading page?