wiseheart: (Macika)
wiseheart ([personal profile] wiseheart) wrote2010-10-07 10:37 pm

Party time ahead!

Well, yes, dear folks, it's this time of the year again. The big, one-week virtual party from today to the 9th of October starts here. Come on in, be welcome, make yourself comfortable, and post a comment. May we have many collapsed threads again!

Last year we had 559 comments on 4 pages, which is an impressive record to break. But I have an excellent apple pie in the oven, and offer a virtual slice to every party guest.

Let's party!

Addition: someone asked for the apple pie recipe. Here it is, behind the cut.


400 gr wheat flour
200 gr butter or margarine
200 gr sugar
1/10 litre sour cream
1 pinch of salt
ground peel of 1/lemon
2 gr baking soda

For the filling:
2 kg apples
sugar,cinnamon, cardamom, vanilla and ground lemon peel as you like

One eggyolk for painting the top.

How to make it?
1) Make a dough from abovementioned ingredients.
2) Cut it in two equal pieces. Roll out one piece, lay it into a baking tin (baking paper under it is helpful).
3) Spread some dried bread crubms all over it.
4) Peel and plane (slice???) the apples, press out the juice with your hands (it shouldn't be too dry, though) and mix them with the spices.
5) Spread the apples over the dough.
6) Roll out the other half of the dough. Cover the apples with it.
7) Paint the top with eggyolk and bake it in a pre-heated oven, on 200°C for twenty minutes.
8) Cut it when it's cooled down.

Sorry, but I had to use the metric system. My brain doesn't work in cups and pounds and that stuff. I hope you can still figure out how much you need from the ingredients.



Addition: I also wish to gift upon my dear party guests a birthday-present, Hobbit-style: Chapter 03 - Puer Natus Est Nobis of my Cadfael fic "Sparrows" has just been posted to [livejournal.com profile] hiddenrealms and to FF.Net. Enjoy!

And the end results are: 735 comments on 6 pages! It's more than I could have dreamed of, and I thank you - all of you - who contributed to this record. It will be a hard one to break next year indeed, but I hope you'll be back. :)

Thanks again, I had a fantastic time and met great new people - it was fun!

[identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com 2010-10-02 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
No, starting next weekend would be fine. I'll post a review here, after this virtual party is over, say, October 10, and then we can have a proper discussion. And if other people want to join, they can do it - unless you want it to be a friends-locked post, which is fine with me, too.

[identity profile] jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com 2010-10-02 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Cool! :)
Open post is fine by me - of course, if loads of trolls turn up, we can hide from them. ;)

[identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com 2010-10-03 09:08 am (UTC)(link)
Erm... that means Ep 01 from Season 5 by October 10, am I correct? And yes, we can always lock the post from the trolls if we have to. ;)

I forgot to add: I actually don't mind Ivanova that much. I even like the Russian aspect; it's so rare that you see anyone but Americans among the human characters in an American sci-fi series. But I utterly despise the actress.

Talia is a very interesting character - and badly misused, I must add. I LOVED Sinclair to pieces, especially before he'd become Valen... but I could tolerate him well enough afterwards, too.

Neroon rocks - he, too would have deserved ten times the part he actually got onscreen. He's the only Minbari character with any character development at all. Because the character rape of Lennier just doesn't count in my eyes.

Oh, and I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Vir Cotto. He was cute, he developed steadily along the whole five seasons, and I wanted to cuddle him every time he was misused... which happened often enough. His relationship with Londo was, IMO, the most complex in the whole series.

I need a Vir icon, I think. Now, where to find it?

[identity profile] jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com 2010-10-03 02:01 pm (UTC)(link)
Erm... that means Ep 01 from Season 5 by October 10, am I correct?
Yes. :)

I forgot to add: I actually don't mind Ivanova that much. I even like the Russian aspect; it's so rare that you see anyone but Americans among the human characters in an American sci-fi series. But I utterly despise the actress.
Okay. It is very nice to see non-Americans, especially ones that are not evil - one of the easy ways to tell in American things who is going to be evil is anyone speaking with a British accent.

Talia is a very interesting character - and badly misused, I must add.
It is such a waste that they kill her off - Lyta is a much less interesting character. I keep being tempted to write a Talia lives AU, but so far I haven't got the energy to do so - I worry about starting what would turn into such a long story. Plus there are so many sidetracks that it would probably end up going off on, as there seem to be too many things left unexplained. It is really unconvincing how she is written out, especially considered with the events of Spider In The Web - it seems unbelievable that her alternative personality would want her murdered or that there are two separate agents with the code control...


I LOVED Sinclair to pieces, especially before he'd become Valen... but I could tolerate him well enough afterwards, too.
I love the way that he thinks about problems and comes up with real solutions and considers everything rather than assuming that violence is the answer in every case.

Neroon rocks - he, too would have deserved ten times the part he actually got onscreen. He's the only Minbari character with any character development at all.
He does develop so much as a character. Although given his last scene with Sinclair in Legacies there would have been so much potential for Sinclair to try and persuade him to cooperate with them in the Shadow War - although I wonder if Delenn would have stopped this because she wants to be in charge.

Because the character rape of Lennier just doesn't count in my eyes.
I like the character developement he gets for most of the series - it is really good to see him grow and learn from s1 when he does seem very young and naive, but then they just ruin it towards the end. :(

Oh, and I LOVED, LOVED, LOVED Vir Cotto. He was cute, he developed steadily along the whole five seasons, and I wanted to cuddle him every time he was misused... which happened often enough. His relationship with Londo was, IMO, the most complex in the whole series.
Yes, Vir is wonderful! I love the scene with him and Morden when Morden gets him to answer his question - especially as Morden must know that it is going to happen. It is brilliant to see the way that he changes over the course of the series.

[identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com 2010-10-03 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)
*one of the easy ways to tell in American things who is going to be evil is anyone speaking with a British accent*

Really? Is there an actual reason for it, or do Americans just envy you Brits for your accent? Not that I'd be able to make a difference, mind you... I'm happy enough to actually understand the words when it comes to spoken English.

Sinclair is simply wonderful, particularly because he's so very different from those moustache-twirling sci-fi heroes. I never bought the Catherine Sakai romance, though. They two of them had zero chemistry. The red-headed freighter captain from the pilot was a much better match for him.

Lennier was a very loveable character - the way he ended up went directly against what we'd seen of him before, I find. And Lyta could have been really interesting, had they developed her the way she would have deserved. She was so new and naive and inexperienced in the pilot, and we never got to see how she actually became the woman she was in the middle and at the end of the series.

[identity profile] jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com 2010-10-03 08:04 pm (UTC)(link)
Really? Is there an actual reason for it, or do Americans just envy you Brits for your accent? Not that I'd be able to make a difference, mind you... I'm happy enough to actually understand the words when it comes to spoken English.
I have no idea whether there is a real reason, but the only one I've heard suggested is that Americans want to identify with the good guys and thus they should sound American... but I'm not sure if I believe it. I find on most things subtitles are such a help - I find it hard to hear a lot of dialogue in things as most actors don't seem to speak clearly - and that's with it being in a language I speak natively! This is one of the reasons why I watch more things on dvd than tv. I remember bemusing people at school by suggesting that for French that instead of having English subtitles they should give us it with French subtitles (as well as dialogue) as I reckoned that it was the way to learn more...

Sinclair is simply wonderful, particularly because he's so very different from those moustache-twirling sci-fi heroes. I never bought the Catherine Sakai romance, though. They two of them had zero chemistry. The red-headed freighter captain from the pilot was a much better match for him.
I quite liked Catherine Sakai, although it annoyed me that suddenly they were going to get married. I liked the way that the relationship up to that point hadn't been a typical tv romance. The woman from the pilot annoyed me because of the remark about frictionless sheets (really, really bad science) and for some reason it appeared to me as the character being stupid rather than the show - I have no idea why.

Lennier was a very loveable character - the way he ended up went directly against what we'd seen of him before, I find.
Yes! I could believe it if there had been anything done to try and make it work with his character, but there wasn't and so it just seemed nonsensical.


And Lyta could have been really interesting, had they developed her the way she would have deserved. She was so new and naive and inexperienced in the pilot, and we never got to see how she actually became the woman she was in the middle and at the end of the series.
That makes sense. I think that is part of why I have problems with her, she has clearly changed so much in between her first two appearances and it never really explained, thus making it less like character development and more like ignoring existing canon to make the character work in the new situation. I guess it is partly because we never see her interacting with anyone she knew well (or more than a passing acquaintance) before she changed, but then there wasn't really anyone around that could. It would have worked with a scene with Talia (but with problems given her alternative personality).
Thinking of how that might work, I think I might actually have to write that Talia lives au... :) Or at least start planning it... It will probably be fun to write, just such a long project to start.


[identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com 2010-10-03 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
Go for it! I need something else than just Marcus/Neroon smut to read. Not that there would be anything wrong with Marcus/Neroon smut, mind you (even though I actually don't like Marcus), but a girl needs some variety in her fannish life.

[identity profile] jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com 2010-10-04 07:28 pm (UTC)(link)
Just realised that I started, but didn't finish writing a reply to this - got lost in all the tabs that I had open with so many conversations going on here. :)

This made my curious - so I went and started prodding fanfiction.net, which led to the discovery that it now has rss feeds. So I ended up going through all the categories that I'm interested in and so now I'll know when stories are uploaded, as well as finding loads of stories to read at some point. This is why I didn't end up commenting more here yesterday. This is both very good and bad - good for obvious reasons, but bad because I should be doing more productive stuff instead of reading all the stories that I found. Overall good though, because now means that I won't miss stories for ages due to forgetting to check whether there are new stories there. :)

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that there is so much fic for this pairing, although it is quite cool that it still seems to have people writing fic when most of the rest of the fandom is pretty dead.

[identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com 2010-10-04 09:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Yep, it's quite a lively party, isn't it? With so many interesting conversations going on in the different threads it's hard to follow.

Marcus/Neroon is a popular pairing in the fandom; there's even a Yahoo group dedicated to the pairing, and I'm a proud member, althoug I never wrote them as anything but respectful adversaries. Or not so respectful ones. *g* I guess part of the appeal is the old cliché of enemies turning into lovers, UST and stuff. And I must admit that Marcus is often portrayed as a whiny wimp and Neroon as a besotted idiot. But I enjoy even those stories. I don't know why. It's like a drug. If you want to read some lovely and/or funny ones, I recommand the stuff of [livejournal.com profile] third_charm, here on LJ. She writes mostly short stuff, easy to read.

[identity profile] jenn-calaelen.livejournal.com 2010-10-04 10:21 pm (UTC)(link)
Such a fun party! I think asking people to say their favourite books was a very good idea - now there are loads of conversations about so many different books. :)

Thanks for the rec. I'll check out her stories.

*sigh* I wish fandom would get the idea that telling stories with good, plausible versions of the characters. There are so many different ways to interpret a character so I wish that people would think rather than just following fandom trends. Not that that makes any particular story bad and certainly there any many stories that use fandom tropes that are good and/or fun.

[identity profile] wiseheart.livejournal.com 2010-10-05 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
Some people are just more comfortable with clichés, I guess. It saves them from the necessity of actual thinking, which many find too hard a task to perform.

I do like me a little cliché from time to time. But they get old very quickly, I find.