Fandom Snowflake Challenge - Day 1

[maplemood]

It's back. :) I had so much fun with this challenge last year and met some fantastic people, despite joining late and never completely catching up. I'm hoping to do at least a little better this year, so!

Day 1

In your own space, talk about your Happy Place—the things that give you joy, calms you or keeps you sane. 

I don't know that I have one specific happy place, actually. I spend a lot of time reading and writing in my bedroom, but since I also spend a lot of time in there doing and/or stressing out about doing homework and other school projects, it's not exactly a completely stress-free sanctuary. I have good memories of almost every library and bookstore I've ever been to, especially my college library and the bookstore that's within walking distance of it, though. And I love the ocean and beaches, especially Bethany Beach and Rehoboth Beach in Delaware; driving down there is always fun and weirdly peaceful, since you get to see the land go from very mountainous (or at least hilly) to pretty much postage-stamp flat. I love crossing the Bay Bridge, I love getting to the point where you can smell the ocean in the air, and I love sitting on the sand and watching the waves. Wading in is fun, too, though honestly I'm too jumpy to ever get that far--I've been bowled over a couple times and the sensation of being held under by the waves is always going to freak me out. But I still do love the water.  

Fannishly, my happy place tends to be whichever book or TV show or movie I'm most obsessed with at the moment. This past year, that meant a lot of Marvel and Stranger Things, and also Star Wars, Sicario, and Penny Dreadful. I love stories with a strong sense of found family and also a strong sense of place--I need the feeling of being able to dip into a different world for a while. I'm pretty sure I first got hooked on this from being read The Chronicles of Narnia and Lord of the Rings when I was younger, and even though they don't all have to be fantasy worlds anymore, my biggest soft spot is still reserved for those.   

Comments

[independence1776]

That isn evocative description of the beach... possibly because I lived most of my life close to them.

Found family + place = love.

[maplemood]

I live in the mountains, which I also love, but there's just something special about being close to the water. I blame all the mermaid and selkie stories I read an watched when I was younger.

Yes, always. :)

[independence1776]

And I'm the complete opposite! I don't think I could handle winter in the mountains, but I am not an ocean fan. Lakes, sure.

[sunlit_stone]

The ocean is definitely amazing, and so is the ocean smell. One of the things I like best about my current apartment is that it's close to the water (though in this case a very tame canal, not a big body of water, but you can still go down and out onto a walkway and look at the city across the way). I really haven't been down enough; I bet it's beautiful in the winter.

I absolutely love settings with a strong sense of place. That's one of the things I love about the Vorkosigan Saga, of course, and--I don't think all of the Queen's Thief series does this, but there are definitely moments, especially in the first book, I think.

[maplemood]

Oh, that sounds wonderful! Where I live we've got plenty of rivers, which are the next best thing, and there's a certain muddy-silty smell to them, too, that I do love, but my favorites are probably still the bigger bodies of water--oceans and bays and bigger lakes.

Just another reason for me to read the Vorkosigan Saga (maybe it should be one of my New Year's Resolutions?). And yes, the Queen's Thief series doesn't always do this, but I've always thought that the first book does a really good job of sort of mapping out Eddis and Attolia for readers, and then The King of Attolia really brings the Attolian palace/court to life in a way that I've always found super evocative, even though it's not as descriptive as, say, the Lord of the Rings books.

[sunlit_stone]

Technically speaking I live on a river! Well really there's no technically about it, it's just the way it is :P Montreal is an island, you see, in the middle of the St. Lawrence river; I never even thought of it as strange, until a friend from Alaska kept having trouble getting his head around it. But wide and lovely though the St. Lawrence is, it really isn't the same as an ocean or one of the Great Lakes, something big like that <3

Oooh, yes! I really do think you'd love the Vorkosigan Saga--it's got such beautiful loyalty stuff, in every book (and is the source canon for my very favourite falling-in-loyalty fic, Aral Vorkosigan's Dog). It's wonderful. And it's got an amazing sense of place--Barrayar really feels real, built up piece by piece and gradually revealed and fitting together perfectly. Like--the detail that back when they had horse cavalry, who had the rights to take away the manure from the stables was important, because of its use as fertilizer. That sort of thing, you know? Not infodumped, but dropped in--it's always worked in well, in part because the main character is someone who knows a lot of history and thinks of things easily in those terms, so it makes sense for his thoughts to tend that way and for us to learn about it. And it's got one of the tightest third-person narrations I've ever seen. And--mmm--Gen and Miles definitely have some significant differences, character-wise. But they're more similar to each other than either is to pretty much any other character I can think of.

*pauses, squints* Wow, that was a lot. Um. *coughs* Sorry? Suffice it to say that I think you would like the Vorkosigan Saga, and that if you ever do try it I'd love to hear what you think :)

Oh, good point! I kept thinking of KoA and then thinking--but then, it didn't really capture Attolia--but the court of Attolia, yes, absolutely.

[maplemood]

I live very close to, but not on, the Shenandoah River, which is nowhere near as big as that but gorgeous in its own way--I've gotta admit that the idea of a river as big as the St. Lawrence blows my mind a little, too.

Oh, gosh, I just love little worldbuilding details like that, clever stuff that let you know the author really put a lot of thought in. It's also such a practical detail, which I appreciate. And from what little I know of Miles, he seems exactly the kind of character I'd fall for hook, line, and sinker, so I really do need to check the books out.

[coyoteclaw11]

Bookstore and libraries are just automatic safe-zones and I love it <3 That sudden change in scenery sounds so interesting! Where I used to live, I was constantly surrounded by water, but I never saw it. Now, I live in a more mountainous region, and the varying heights of the ground let me see water almost everywhere! It's really such a nice thing to look at. Beaches have the best aesthetic tho actually being there isn't one of my favs haha.

[maplemood]

I don't think you really do fully appreciate a lot of things when you're just surrounded by them every day, so in that way I'm glad that I don't live super close to the beach, even though I love it. And yes--I've been in very few libraries or bookstores where I didn't feel welcomed and relaxed; it's just great. :)