Searching and finding

[dolorosa_12]

We're coming to the tail end of this year's snowflake_challenge. Today's prompt warms my librarian heart, because it involves peak librarian skills: searching and finding.



In your own space, post your pictures of your fandom scavenger hunt results.

My results can be found in this Instagram photoset. See the description below for details of which photo fulfills which item.

Look around your current space, whether digital or brick-n-mortar. Post a pic or description of:

1. a fannish item: A photo of some fanart of characters Aliette de Bodard's Dominion of the Fallen series. The art is by likhainstudio. Likhain also designed my wedding invitations, and I love to be able to say that my invitations were created by a Hugo Award-winning fanartist!

2. something round: An orange studded with cloves, which smells amazing, lasts forever (I have another one of these which was made by my mother in the 1960s, although this one I made myself about ten years ago), and which decorates the living room bookshelf.

3. something that is your favorite colour: Houseplants in the kitchen.

4. the last game you played (video, phone, table top, etc.): I almost never play games of any kind (I basically find every single type of game stressful; they've never been a fun leisure activity for me), so I cheated here and put a picture of my favourite local swimming pool. Swimming is my kind of 'game'.

5. a book you are currently reading: Accidental Gods by Anna Della Subin.

6. album art of the first song that comes up on shuffle: 'Fortune Presents Gifts Not According to the Book', from the Dead Can Dance album Aion.

7. the last movie you watched: The Eternals (a bloated, tedious mess, much as I love Gemma Chan).

8. TV show you're currently watching: The second season of Cheer on Netflix.

9. the homescreen, lockscreen, or desktop wallpaper from your device: I have 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' by Hieronymus Bosch as my desktop wallpaper, and I think it's basically been my wallpaper — with some brief exceptions — for close to fifteen years. Amusingly, the album art for question 6 is also taken from Bosch's artwork — a weird coincidence.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

Likhain also designed my wedding invitations, and I love to be able to say that my invitations were created by a Hugo Award-winning fanartist!

That's very cool! :) (and I knew I recognized that name from somewhere!)

[dolorosa_12]

It's lovely having such talented fandom friends — and particularly wonderful to see those talents recognised by the wider community.

The first time the two of us met in person was at the Dublin Worldcon — my first and only Worldcon, although I'll probably attend again the next time it's in Europe — and that was the Worldcon she won the Best Fanartist award, having previously been a finalist in that category the past two years but not winning. It was amazing to see her win while in the awards ceremony audience myself!

[hamsterwoman]

It was amazing to see her win while in the awards ceremony audience myself!

Oh, how awesome to see your friend win! (I was watching the ceremony live that year and I remember her lovely speech and amazing crown/jewelry combo :)

I've also been to just one Worldcon -- the San Jose one right before Dublin -- and I'd also like to make it to more if they end up conveniently located on the US West Coast again (or a place I'd like to go).

[spikedluv]

I can't see your photos 'cause I'm not on Instagram. :(

Very cool about your wedding invitations!

I did not know that an orange studded with cloves would last forever?!!

[dolorosa_12]

I'm sorry about that — it used to be the case that people could view Instagram photos without an account, but I think they've turned off that functionality recently. I find embedding images in Dreamwidth close to impossible, unless I have the html code pre-generated to copy-paste, hence using Instagram as a workaround.

It depends how you make the clove-studded oranges. You have to stick enough into the orange that the entire surface is covered with cloves, with no orange skin visible, not even a tiny sliver. Then the orange dries slowly inside the cloves, the whole thing shrinks until it's smaller than a tennis ball, and it then lasts forever.

[used_songs]

That settles it; I'm making a clove orange!

[likeadeuce]

I loved making clove oranges as a kid though i must not have had the trick of storing them properly because they didn't last THAT long

[dolorosa_12]

It depends how you make the clove-studded oranges. You have to stick enough into the orange that the entire surface is covered with cloves, with no orange skin visible, not even a tiny sliver. Then the orange dries slowly inside the cloves, the whole thing shrinks until it's smaller than a tennis ball, and it then lasts forever.

[likeadeuce]

I have a vivid memory of one molding up when i left it in a drawer or something but i was probably about 6 so it's very likelyI did it wrong :D

[dolorosa_12]

Oh no, that sounds awful!

[corvidology]

I got to see 'The Garden of Earthly Delights' at the Museo Nacional del Prado when I was in Madrid a few years back, accompanying MG on a business trip.

I wouldn't have got to see it but I'd never heard of 'El Bosco' so I went to take a look! :D

[dolorosa_12]

I saw it in the Prado myself when I was in Madrid! I had heard of Bosch (as I said in the post, I've had this picture as my desktop for a very long time), but it was amazing to see it in person. It's such an incredible piece of art, and I love the way it looks on my screen.

[corvidology]

I already knew who Bosch was, it was the guide maps being only labelled 'El Bosco' that confused me.

If it had said 'Bosch' I would have gone there first but 'El Bosco' just triggered my curiosity.

[dolorosa_12]

Ah, right, now I see what you mean! Sorry for being so confused.

[corvidology]

No problem! I don't think I was very clear. :D

[seal_girl]

"Swimming is my kind of 'game'."
YES!

[dolorosa_12]

I'm glad you agree!

[seal_girl]

Ròn!!!


♥♥♥♥♥

[dolorosa_12]

I love that icon, not only because it's beautiful, but also because the Irish word for seal, rón (or ròn in Gàidhlig, as you say) is similar to my own name so there's a nice kind of symmetry!

[chestnut_pod]

Ah, I can practically smell that pomander!

[dolorosa_12]

Isn't it such an amazing smell?

[silveradept]

I thought that picture might have been Bosch when I looked at it before reading the comments. It just has the feel for it. And an aptly named piece it is.

[dolorosa_12]

Isn't it just?

[senmut]

Phenom

[dolorosa_12]

Thank you!

[peaked]

Today's prompt warms my librarian heart, because it involves peak librarian skills: searching and finding.
I love this little note! ♥

I am still struggling through Eternals (I think I am close to finishing??? Hopefully???) and I +1 your comments. I feel like Gemma was severely underused despite being in a lot of the scenes (and she has such nice styling, too!).

[dolorosa_12]

It really is such a slog of a film, isn't it?

[peaked]

Do you know what is really devastating? I opened up Disney+ a few hours after I commented on your post and realised I am only half way through. I feel like calling it a slog is really kind! It's such a pretty film, but I swear nothing is happening.

[kore]

Eternals is indeed a bloated awful mess, and I wanted to drown Ikaris in a bucket, but IDK, I still kind of loved it. I am also the kind of sucker who would buy supermarket plants wilting outside the front doors in the cold because even tho I have a black thumb, I wanted to try to rescue them.

(T: "This Bollywood number looks bad."
Me: "Yes."
T: "I don't mean like, bad taste bad. I mean it looks badly done compared to all the Bollywood videos you have made me watch."
Me: "Yes.")

I am really sorry I couldn't see it on the big screen, along with Dune and Matrix Resurrections. sigh

[dolorosa_12]

Awww, you have a softer heart than I do! I think there were bones of a good film buried somewhere below whatever the hell we got, but it was ruined by too many characters, various actors who seemed to be acting in completely different films, and just a plot where the stakes were simultaneously too high, and too impersonal.

I agree that at least it would have been pretty on the big screen.

[kore]

"Too high and too impersonal," now THAT'S it. And it was kind of trying to be Endgame, except with Endgame we'd known those characters through ten years and so many movies! People keep saying it should have been a miniseries, and, well, yeah. At least then we could have seen more of everyone.

I am not usually that soft-hearted re media, lol, I think it's my contrarian side.

(Sersei: //turns bus into a giant shower of rose petals
T: What happened to all the people on the bus? Are they rose petals now too?
Me: There was nobody in the bus! Okay maybe the driver.
Bus driver: //staggers off dazed
Me: See, he was the only one on the bus, he's fine.
T: He could have suffocated in all those rose petals.)

[merit]

That's a cute satin pothos!

[dolorosa_12]

It's my favourite of all my houseplants!

[goodbyebird]

Oh, it's been far too long since I've listened to Dead Can Dance. Years and years. Must remedy that when I get home.

And thanks for the tip on how to make a cloved orange actually last. I made one this Christmas and it had mold less that three weeks later :/

[dolorosa_12]

Good luck with the cloved orange!

I feel Dead Can Dance make good background music when you don't want intrusive lyrics distracting you.

[used_songs]

That is my favorite DCD album.

I had no idea clove oranges lasted so long. I may have to make one. It always seemed like a lot of effort for a short-lived item but since they last so long ... hmmmm.

[dolorosa_12]

It really is a great album, isn't it?

I feel like I either have extraordinary luck with cloved oranges, or I'm making them in a completely different way to other people, because as I say my mother still has one she made in the 1960s. She taught me how to make them when I was a child, and I'm sure there's at least one back in my mum's place that I made in the mid-90s. And then the one in the photo is one I made around ten years ago. It's fiddly and time consuming, but mine at least seem to last forever.