There's no convenient name for this lull period between holidays

[gwyn]

I'm thinking of doing a meme I last did in 2014, something that raveninthewind started years ago: 31 Flavors of recs. It's basically a rec for a fanwork every day of the month, in different fandoms. It's a good time for it, in that Yuletide has just happened and Festivids will be around (I think? unless it's not till February), and there are other challenges happening this time of year as well. I'm somewhat monomaniacal about my fandom interests, but I managed it last time, so...recs ahoy! If you're interested in doing it with me, I'd love some 31 Flavors company!

I haven't read anything in Yuletide except my gift and a friend's story. Too busy by half. But I hope I can get started in earnest today sometime, after I do a bunch of errands.

For Boxing Day, I hung out with belmanoir and she showed me the OG Mary Poppins--believe it or not, I've never seen the whole movie. I had a deprived childhood, whatever--there are huge gaps in my childhood stuff knowledge from moving around so much and having grumptastic parents who hated anything they thought would be "sappy." I had to seek out sap on my own and that wasn't always very easy.

For Christmas Day, I went to lovely, lovely brunch at killabeez and Mrs. Killabeez's home, which was good because it got me out of the house and social, which I haven't had a lot of chances for since the last of the fam died. Sometimes I've gone to my cousins', but I think they've sort of given up on me because I'm so lousy at keeping in touch.

Comments

[kass]

I'm so glad you got to be with the Mrs. Killabeez at Christmas -- that sounds lovely. (The Mrs. Killabeez? The Killabeezes? The Misses Killabeez? How does one pluralize that properly?)

[gwyn]

I truly do not know! I may have to ask on my copyeditors' list about that one--plural of a word that sounds plural but is not...

[kass]

I mean, people used to use Messrs as plural of Mister; what's the appropriate plural of Ms or Mrs?

[carbonel]

According to Wikipedia, the plural of Mrs. is French: Mesdames. For Ms., either Mses. or Mss. can be used.

[ratcreature]

In German the time between Christmas and New Year is called Time Between Years (Zeit zwischen den Jahren). Swiss German has a special term, Altjahrswoche (oldyearweek), but that's not common here.

[gwyn]

I like that--of course German has a name for it!! And of course the Swiss make it even more efficient by creating a single word version!

[ratcreature]

I think it's because with the decline of religion in folk customs and such, in every day life nobody really talked about the "Rauhnächte" anymore, which is what "Twelve Nights of Christmas" period is called in German, but because Christmas and New Year remain very prominent, a newer term got established that fits the current status better.

[sperrywink]

Oh! I remember Raven doing 31 Flavors! I think that is a great idea.

[gwyn]

Yeah, it's a great meme, but very challenging!

[dorinda]

I loved Mary Poppins as a wee Dorinda... and I might have imprinted on Dick Van Dyke, now that I think about it. I really liked him, and his dynamic with Mary Poppins. I also liked him in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang--a less successful movie all around, but still, loved the Van Dyke.

[gwyn]

I can kind of see why, now that I've watched it (I was well warned about the bad accent, so at least there was that). I honestly was surprised at how much he's in it--I'd always thought it was a really small part of the story, but he turned out to be very much the co-star. I kind of fell in love with the little boy--my ideas about the kids were totally different from what they turned out to be, and I loved his little "seize the means of production!" socialist streak with his tuppence. What a great kid.

[dorinda]

Awww, yes, totally, Michael is NOT IMPRESSED by capitalism and industrialists! He loves people and wants to help them. ♥

[st_aurafina]

Oh, that's a great idea for a meme - would this be for January?

What qualifies as a flavour? Like, tropes? Pairings? Do we decide?

[gwyn]

Yeah, but I think any month with 31 days in it is good, or I suppose you could do 31 in 30.

Basically, what I recall from raven was that it was recs in 31 different fandoms, but I'm not especially widely read so I may have ended up repeating some fandoms when I did this in 2014, but I found different pairings in some cases or a subset of a large one (I have to check). So I think you can be as loosey-goosey as you want; like, I may very well end up with more than a few Cap fandom recs, but only one will be Stucky, and MCU is a huge rubric that encompasses many flavors. (This has been a big fucking issue for me the past few years, because some of the cons and other things I participate in consider MCU a fandom in itself, and at this point that is utterly ridiculous. Writing about Clint and Coulson having a romance or Peggy and Jarvis having adventures or whatever is not nearly the same as a story focusing on Nakia saving the day, or Valkyrie's backstory, and so when they limit things to one MCU panel or category, I lose my mind.)

So yeah, tropes, pairings, characters...I think as long as it's 31 different things, you're good! I'm already trying to pick some of my first ones.