Elly and the Enchanter

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A hotel lobby doesn’t really seem like the best place to pass your time, but on the first day of a fan convention, it is the best place.
“Pyramid Head!” Elly called, pointing at a guy lugging a huge costume across the room.
“Another one?” asked Lissy. “Why is that even a popular character?”
“You’ve never played Silent Hill?” Lissy shuddered, but Elly grinned. “I thought Gryffindors were supposed to be brave,” she teased.
“Being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble,” Lissy quoted. “Or that you should play horror games just because everyone else does.”
“A Browncoat!” gasped Autumn, looking up from her phone suddenly as though she had fellow-Firefly-fan radar. She looked toward a businesswoman walking across the lobby to the front door.
“You don’t know that,” Lissy protested. “That lady could just have a brown coat. She could just like the color.”
“Well, I guess we’ll see if she hangs out in any Alliance-friendly bars come U-Day,” Autumn replied sagely, returning to her texting.
Elly let out a sigh of enjoyment. “This really is the best. I’m so glad I can go back to the dorm tonight and sleep, instead of having to pack up all my stuff and haul it here, inevitably forget some of it and have to do without. If I forgot my Sonic Screwdriver, I could just go back to my room and get it.
“Pff,” Lissy interjected, “like you’d forget your Sonic Screwdriver.”
Elly tossed her a grin and reached into her back pocket, where she located the tool and waved it at her friend. “The point is, I could go home and get it. I don’t have to deal with the mess and hassle of actually staying at the hotel through all the con craziness.”
“That’s true,” Lissy agreed. “One time I was cosplaying Hermione, and I totally forgot my tie! I just wore a scarf instead, though, so everything was okay.”
“You wore a scarf? What a sacrifice!” Elly laughed, eyeing the Gryffindor colors which permanently adorned Lissy’s neck.
Lissy laughed and rolled her eyes. “Nobody noticed, but I was pretty upset for about fifteen minutes.”
“It’s definitely better being able to get out of the hotel when you need to.”
“Yeah, I totally agree,” Lissy echoed, watching a guy with long red hair (Just like Rupert Grint in Goblet of Fire, she thought) as he struggled with four large suitcases.
“What’s that Shakespeare quote with the ‘protestheth...’” Autumn chimed in, mispronouncing The Bard’s 16th century English.
“‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks’?” Elly provided, with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s not ‘pros...thetic’?” Autumn asked.
“Are you trying to say that you think we actually do want to stay at the hotel this weekend?” Lissy asked, translating for her roommate.
“I didn’t say it,” she replied, then reimmersed herself in her phone.
Elly and Lissy exchanged a look.
“I… kind of do want to,” Lissy admitted.
“Me too,” Elly agreed.
“There probably aren’t many rooms left,” Autumn remarked.
“Go up now and see,” Lissy advised. “We can split the cost, but don’t, like, get a presidential suite or anything.”
Elly laughed, already out of her seat and walking toward the front desk. “You mean you don’t want to throw the most amazing The Doctor Takes Hogwarts crossover party that this hotel has ever seen?” she called back.
“That wouldn’t be hard,” Autumn muttered.
“Do you have any cosplay planned?” Lissy asked her roommate politely. She still hadn’t quite forgiven Autumn for stranding her in a back hallway of the hotel the day before.
“Yeah,” Autumn said. “I’m going to be a plucky space cowboy on a job that has an elaborate plan... that involves me dressing like a hotel employee for most of the day.”
Lissy nodded. “That sounds nice.”

Standing in line didn’t provide the view that her previous vantage point had. Within the first five minutes, Elly was convinced that she’d missed seeing several of her geeky brethren, and in fact only managed to spot one: a girl who had painted her rolling suitcase to resemble the TARDIS. She didn’t mind the sacrifice, however, and bounced on the balls of her feet, knowing that soon she’d be able to partake of the entire CON experience, with the added bonus of being close enough to go home whenever she needed to.
When the couple in front of her moved forward to speak to the pretty concierge, Elly was first in line. She bounced faster, but she didn’t have long to wait. A person in a DragonBallZ t-shirt grabbed their bag and walked toward the elevators, and the guy behind the counter beckoned her forward.
“I know you might think I’m crazy for asking this,” she gushed out, “But are there any rooms left?”
“I think there are a few,” he replied, tapping at the computer in front of him.
“Are any of them… not the presidential suite?”
He laughed. It was a nice laugh. Elly looked at him. Before, she’d glanced at him like he were a piece of the background, like he was playing Extra #6 in the movie of her life. But when he laughed, it made her want to know what that movie would be like if he were one of the stars.
“It looks like you’re in luck; we’ve got one with two queen beds that I’m reasonably certain no president has ever stayed in.” He looked up and smiled at her. “No Secret Service, foreign dignitaries, or even the president of a neighborhood association, or anything.”
“We’ll take it,” she replied, and waved at her friends to signal her success. Lucky Lissy strikes again! she thought.
He fished out a keycard and began to get her checked her in. “Any big plans while you’re in town?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah! We’re gonna high five some people, stay up way too late every night, and probably marathon a bunch of movies! It’s gonna be awesome!”
He smiled again as he glanced up at her. “Wow, that was a real response. I do this pretend ‘small talk’ thing with pretty much everyone, but you must be the most excited guest I’ve ever had the pleasure of talking to.”
“You’re welcome!”
He laughed.
“Your weekend is probably gonna be pretty awesome too, with CON stuff to keep an eye on.”
“It’ll definitely be interesting,” he agreed. “You’re here for the CON? You didn’t bring much luggage with you.”
“Uh, yeah!” Elly stepped back a little from the counter and pointed at her shirt. “Did you expect something different from the girl in the Union Jack?”
He squinted through his glasses to read her red, white, and blue top, which was emblazoned with the words: “ASK ME ABOUT MY DOCTOR WHO OBSESSION”.
“Doctor Who… that’s the guy with the scarf, right?”
Another poor soul, just waiting to be converted, Elly thought, and nodded. “Yes. For the purposes of our conversation, yes. He’s the guy with the scarf.”
“Is that what you’re going to watch all weekend?”
Elly laughed. “I wouldn’t mind, but my friends probably want something else for a change. I’m not sure what else we’ll have, but at some point we’re definitely watching Monty Python and the Holy Grail.”
“‘There are some who call me… Tim?’”
Elly’s momentarily startled eyes swept across his face and took in his nametag, pinned to the front of his suit jacket, which read: “Timothy Gray, MANAGER”. Then she laughed. And laughed. She got a few weird looks from the other concierge and the people standing in line behind her, but she didn’t care.
“You,” she gasped out when she caught her breath, “are my favorite. You’re totally invited to our The Doctor Takes Hogwarts party. If we decide to have it.”
He looked amused as he gave her credit card back and passed her the keycards for her room. “As long as you don’t mind someone from Middle Earth showing up,” he replied. “I’m more of a Lord of the Rings fan, myself.”
Elly grinned, collecting all of her stuff. “Well, thanks for all your help, and your small talk. I guess I’ll see you around!”
“Sure,” the manager replied with a smile. “Enjoy your stay.”
“I will!” Elly turned to walk away, but felt compelled pass on a warning. On her way past the line of people, she pointed at the manager and informed them, “I wouldn’t try to mess with that guy if I were you; he’s an enchanter.”

kindle Love

On this day in 2007, Amazon released the first Kindle e-reader, allowing users to download, browse, and ‪‎read ‎ebooks, newspapers, magazines, and other digital media.How has the e-reader affected the way that you read ‪‎books?

From the Writer's Relief facebook page

I saw this post in my facebook feed this morning and stared at the picture for a while. The first kindle I ever held looked exactly like this one, only instead of gray it was white. It had belonged to my husband’s best friend, and he had cracked one corner of the screen (a small crack). So he offered it to us after he ordered a new one. It was still attached to his amazon account, though, and he had all the Dresden Files novels. Since I had already borrowed another friend’s collection of paperbacks to read them the first time, I read them again, and didn’t mind the screen’s cracked corner one bit. I enjoyed highlighting things, getting the definition of a word immediately, and adding notes (the full keyboard was very helpful for this). I’m sure JR enjoys his Tricia-annotated kindle versions of those books now.

Eventually, my husband and I went ahead and purchased our own kindles, to buy ebooks on our own amazon account. We got the cheapest versions, sans-keyboard, and I immediately re-read everything we owned by Jim Butcher so that our versions would have all my highlights and notes. It’s definitely harder to get my thoughts down when I only have an arrow key and “enter,” but the keyboardless version is more compact, and therefore less apt to get its screen cracked if you forgot it was in your back pocket. They’re still pretty delicate, and back-pocket storage is definitely not recommended. I can proudly say that I’m still using my first kindle, while my husband is on his third (admittedly, I was the one who cracked the screen of his first one. The second was all him).

These days, I use my kindle every single day. I reread old favorites and new favorites. I find free versions of classic books and enjoy those for the first time. My favorite thing to do is read a stack of books all at once, a chapter at a time. This is something I definitely can’t do with a hardback; there’s a copy of the Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy next to my bed, but I’d never think of thumbing through it to find the next bit, reading only one chapter, and then putting it down so that I could read a chapter of something else. A tome that heavy has to stay in your lap.

I don’t think I would trade my kindle out for a newer version, unless it was going to be the paperwhite, or something that came with a light attached to the top so I could read it in the dark and not bother my light sensitive husband if I wanted to enjoy books late into the night. I don’t think I’ll ever need a device with a touch screen; buttons suit me just fine. And while it might be nice to have something small to watch movies on while I crochet from the comfort of my own bed, I really enjoy the way I use my kindle now: for books, and only for books.

Birthday List

It’s my birthday. Today I will:

Hang out with my kids

Play video games

High five my mom

Go out to dinner with my husband

Read

Crochet

Be amused by the number of people leaving birthday messages on my facebook wall who have not communicated with me since the last time they left a birthday message on my facebook wall

Be awesome (as usual)

Thursday in History: Coincidence and Conspiracy

With the recent Sherlock craze sweeping the world, a while back Amazon offered a free kindle version of all of Arthur Conan Doyle’s works on Holmes. I’m sure I was one of many who snapped up the opportunity, but I’m not sure how many actually got through them all. I’m not saying that they’re not well written or interesting, it’s just that there are certain times when ACD kind of just… starts telling a different story. Right in the middle of the one you were interested in. He would usually bring it back around and link it to the story he’d already been telling, but occasionally it was like “um… why should I care about this?”

For instance, in A Study in Scarlet (that’s A Study in Pink for you BBC Cumberbatch/Freeman lovers), Holmes cunningly catches the bad guy, and promises to explain everything, after which the story suddenly becomes a novella about how a group of Mormons rescues a pair of travelers who had no hope for their own survival. And the reader is like, “uh… what does this have to do with anything?!” Eventually it has everything to do with it, but leaves you going, “dude, I think that may have been too much back story.”

In Valley of Fear, Holmes focuses on draining the moat (yes, a moat) around the home of a brutally murdered man, only to have the man himself come forward to confess that the corpse was that of the attempted murderer, and that he had reacted in self defense, which included dressing his attacker in his own clothes to deter any further attempts. When the question of why the murder was attempted in the first place is asked, the reader is then treated to a novel-length interruption about a young man who moves into a new area and joins a guild that he had been a member of in another town. (ACD, who was a Freemason himself, changed the name of the guild to “Freemen,” presumably so he wouldn’t be sued or maybe killed by fellow guild members.) Another character tries to warn him, “dude, those guys are bad news in these here parts,” but he doesn’t listen. In fact, he doesn’t seem to mind. He joins in their bullying of various people in the surrounding area, eventually becoming one of the highest ranking members. When the guildmaster begins to hear rumors about investigation, the young man swears he’ll get to the bottom of it. After gathering all the guild’s heavy hitters in his apartment to spring a trap on the investigator and police, he springs another: he was a mole, and it was his job to make sure that he had enough evidence to send all the men he had gathered to jail. As a result, the other members of the guild (and the men who were eventually released from jail) had been chasing him ever since (which was presumably why he’d ended up buying a house with a moat).

On this day in history in 1826 a Freemason by the name of William Morgan was arrested for “debt.” He had actually trained as a stone worker and had joined the Masons in Rochester, New York.

See, guilds in ancient times were unions. You could refuse to pay one bricklayer his decent wage, but when a screaming mob of them demanded fair compensation, there wasn't much you could do but give it to them.

Another role that guilds filled was an after-work club: just dudes, sitting around when their work was finished, griping about it. Like a gathering of Starbucks baristas complaining about picky customers.

Morgan had moved his family to Batavia, New York and attempted to join the local Freemasons, and went off the handle a little when they denied him. “I’m totally going to write a book about all the Freemason secrets,” he boasted, “and I’ve already got a publisher and everything and we’re gonna make tons of money and high five each other, and then you’ll be sorry you didn’t let me in!”

The Freemasons in Batavia must have had some pretty dark secrets, because things got a little nuts. Somebody put up an anti-Morgan advertisement. There were reports that certain individuals attempted to burn down his publisher’s office. And then, Morgan was arrested. His publisher went to bail him out, and after that… Morgan disappeared. Morgan's widow married again and moved west with her new husband, where they joined the Church of the Latter Day Saints.

There are many theories about Morgan’s disappearance. Was he killed? (The body that washed up on the shore of Lake Ontario a year later was buried under his name, but the distraught widow of another man claimed that the clothes belonged to her husband.) Did he flee the country? (The Cayman Islands were nice in those days, as long as they weren’t hanging you for piracy.) Did the Freemasons drop $500 just so that Morgan would get himself out of the picture?

If they did, they wasted their cash; Morgan's publisher made tons after the book Morgan wrote became a bestseller. It was even one of the factors that sparked the creation of the Anti-Mason Party, who ran a presidential candidate against Andrew Jackson in 1832.

What really happened to William Morgan? Was his story fabricated as a tool for the anti-Masonic movement? Did he live out his life in foreign parts under a false name? Or was he killed by some angry Masons who hoped to silence him? Perhaps the whole thing was merely a conspiracy.

Nearly a century later, Arthur Conan Doyle wrote about similar circumstances. And today, there’s a television show based on his works, starring an actor whose last name is Freeman.

Coincidence? Or… conspiracy?

Review: Lost in Austen

So Amazon Instant Video’s got this new thing: a long list of shows that you can watch through their service, but only the first episode is free.

There are tons of titles available through Amazon Prime, but if you’re not up for anything on that list, you can always pay for your movies and TV... or torture yourself by trying to watch only the first episode of something. I mean, there’s no way you’re going to watch the second episode if it isn’t free, right? Surely you can resist watching the rest of the show in our current binge-television-watching world, right?

Long ago, Lost in Austen was on Netflix and available to watch on Prime, but I was hesitant. The synopsis painted a picture of a modern London girl inserted into Austen’s world, so the literary purist in me shouted, “but that would make everything all wrong!” But then of course the day I decided I finally wanted to try it was the day that I found out it was no longer available (for free) anywhere. Last night, though, I saw that it was on the dangerous list of Amazon’s “only the first one’s free.” I said to my husband, “It might be terrible; I may as well watch the first episode and find out.”

Well, it turns out I was right. About everything.

Not about it being terrible, but I guess that depends on your definition of "terrible." Inserting a modern person in the Regency period was disruptive and it did mess everything up. And watching only the first episode of a television show is like trying to eat only one potato chip: IT’S IMPOSSIBLE. So my advice for trying out Amazon’s drug dealer style “first episode free with ads” service?

(So far this has been more a review of Amazon Instant Video’s new attempt to get you hooked and give them your money. We now return you to your regularly scheduled review of fan fiction on film.)

Here’s the question that sets the whole thing up: what would any loyal Austen fan do if they were inserted into one of the books? The answer is: try to make sure everything happens the way it’s supposed to. And what would happen instead? Of course everything would go wrong.

No Austen fan, no matter how devoted, would be able to switch over in to the speech patterns of the early 1800s immediately. There would be at least one moment when they would be yelling, “WHERE ARE THE HIDDEN CAMERAS??” And no one would be able to resist predicting things or trying to influence the characters. Nobody who is a true Austen fan would be able to just sit back and watch things happen when they have a chance to interact with the characters they love.

And that’s what Lost in Austen is about. Amanda Price is a Londoner whose favorite night in consists of curling up alone on the couch with Pride and Prejudice, even though she could probably recite the greater part of the book without opening it. She’s understandably shocked when she finds that Lizzy Bennet has entered her bathroom through a secret door, and even more shocked when she goes through the door and finds out it won’t open after Lizzy closes it behind her.

Amanda is rude and sometimes vulgar and gets drunk at pretty much any opportunity (which may put you off watching it if you can’t tolerate that kind of thing). But she tries her best to get things done the way they should be in Lizzy’s absence while trying to hang on to her sanity. “I may be losing my grip on reality, but at least I’m still in control of my hair.”

The greatest part about this romp through Austen’s world is how well the writers grasp the characters (although I suppose it isn’t hard when you’ve had two hundred years to study them). Bingley just wants to fall in love with someone beautiful, Darcy wants someone who doesn’t fall all over themselves trying to make a good impression on him, Mr. Collins is susceptible to any kind of praise (especially of Lady Catherine), Caroline Bingley is a snob, Mr. Bennet loves his daughters despite the fact that they drive him crazy, Mrs. Bennet is determined to have all her daughters marry well, and Mr. Wickham is an unscrupulous liar.

It’s hard to find good fan fiction. And it’s even harder for Austen fans, a fact that is unfair, since our beloved author only wrote six books to begin with! Pretty much any re-imaginings of Austen are the raindrops that quench Austen lovers’ souls.

Is Lost in Austen ridiculous? Yes. Is it fun? Absolutely. Is everything wrong? Pretty much, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore it. It’s Austeny. And if that’s what you want, Lost in Austen is what you need.

Just know that you’ll only be able to watch the first episode for free.

Thursday in History: Sendakian

My childhood would have been different without Maurice Sendak. His interesting illustrations gave form to my imagination while reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, and when I close my eyes, I can see every one of the pictures (one for every month of the year) in Chicken Soup With Rice. My husband and I read the Little Bear books to our children, and laugh about the folding chair in Pierre.

The famous author died on this day in 2012, and my kids are celebrating his life by making mischief of one kind and another. They’re roaring their terrible roars and gnashing their terrible teeth and showing their terrible claws.

And if I can settle the Wild Rumpus down, we’re going to read some of his wonderful contributions to the world.

The Dancing Snipe Conundrum

It all started with a silly viral video. This viral video:

Not much to see. A cute bird strutting to the beat of some Daft Punk coming out of the windows of a nearby car. That was not what began the conundrum, however. It was the explanation that accompanied the video, a claim that the bird in question was, in fact, a snipe.

My first reaction was to scoff, “snipes aren’t real!”

My second was to search just to make sure.

A sparse wikipedia article did not do much to confirm or deny the theory. Of the three small sections it contained, one was dedicated to my own knowledge of the mythical bird: snipe hunting.

Snipe hunting was a huge joke for those who were in on it and an embarrassing memory for those who were not. “Dude, you’ve never heard of snipe hunting? We should go this weekend!” The “experienced” hunters would give the first-timers a bag with which to catch the elusive prey, and take them out into the night, claiming excitedly to see the birds and attempting to chase them into the waiting hands and bag of the unenlightened hunter. Bruised, scratched, and empty-handed, the discouraged hunter returned home with his friends, who finally revealed, laughing, that there never was any snipe, and the whole thing was just to make him look foolish.

The wikipedia article even claimed that the word “sniper” was given to military sharp shooters because the unusual flight path of the bird makes it very hard to hit.

Despite finding a link to a reputable-looking bird watcher website which had many pictures and videos of its own, I still felt that the internet was trying to trick me. I was determined not to be left standing in the middle of a field in the dark, holding a bag while the entire internet laughed at the fact that I’d bought into the idea of a fictitious bird.

The only thing left for me to do was to contact the finest ornithologist-without-an-ornithology degree in the world: my grandmother. I left her a long phone message about my confusion, and went for information at the next best source.

“I think they’re real,” said my mother.

“I want Grandma and one of her books!” I complained. “I won’t believe it until I see the book or Grandma tells me.”

“I’ve got one of her books,” my mother said, and soon reappeared with The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, which was all the more trustworthy because its red plastic cover was attempting to escape the rest of the book.

“Common Snipe,” the index reported, “pgs 214, 446, 822.” Page 214 held a lovely color photo of the bird I’d already seen in the videos I’d watched. Page 822 revealed that the snipe is still considered a game bird, legal to hunt. Page 446 was the one I would have accepted as Grandma’s truth, for it held a map of the bird’s habitat, and added, “it stays well hidden in ground cover, flushes abruptly, and zigzags sharply in flight.”

Well, fine. I guess a snipe is a real thing. But you’re not going to catch me hunting it with a bag or a gun. But if I ever see one, I’ll definitely crank the radio so that we can dance together.