The Tyranny of Socks

On Sunday I went to my first ever baseball game. (It was also A and Spartacus' first ever baseball game, but that is perhaps less surprising with the whole living in England thing.) We sat up in the nosebleed seats and it was great! Our team even won, which given their record this season was not the most likely outcome.

You may wonder how I have lived so long without ever attending a baseball game, so I will tell you: both of my parents are from Brooklyn, and my father was a Dodgers fan. He never forgave them for moving to LA, and in fact never watched a baseball game after they did so. My dad was a champion grudge holder. Baseball was never on TV when I was growing up, never on the radio, and almost never acknowledged as a real sport that existed in the real world, except to be polite to some of our friends who were big fans. (Does the intense relationship of Brooklynites from the 30s and 40s to the Dodgers show up in Steve/Bucky fic? I know that if someone had suggested to my dad that he could support one of the remaining New York teams he would not have taken it kindly, but see just above about his grudges.)

In other news, we have some free Apple+ and are working our way through For All Mankind, which I like so far (we're most of the way through S2 -- the marines on the moon have, in a development no one could possibly have foreseen, shot two cosmonauts.) And we have renewed our Disney+ subscription, so we have a lot of catching up to do. We're starting with the Obi-Wan Kenobi show, and I guess then might go on to some of the Marvel shows that started after we let the subscription lapse last time.

Also, I had a very happy and successful crossworks exchange! I received something I had been sure I would never get -- a 12 Monkeys/HL crossover! History Unfolded, by Tarlan mixes the two fandoms together perfectly, and I really loved the Methos characterisation in it.

I also wrote something, The Shining Air, a crossover between Mansfield Park and the Master and Commander movie. It was a lot of fun to write, and I basically convinced myself as I wrote it that Fanny/Tom Pullings is a great ship, but it also meant that I have not been able to mention anything I've been reading for the last month or so, since that has basically been (a) Mansfield Park and (b) pretty much the entire Aubrey-Maturin series, and I didn't want to tip my hand! I tried not to root it too firmly in the book universe but I needed at least some background detail, especially because the movie is so visually strong, but I was writing a story and needed some words.

...so I can talk about megafandoms.

I seem to have neglected to mention that we got Disney+ as my birthday present this year. So far we've watched both seasons of The Mandalorean (which was great, although kind of weird to encounter characters like Asoka and Bo Katan whom I otherwise know only through fanfic). And the whole thing was basically like accidental baby acquisition, which is a fanfic genre I am fond of anyway.

I have become much more relaxed about SW now that I've decided that the sequel trilogy just isn't canon to me. There's some stuff there I liked, and some interesting characters, but I can't really square it plotwise with literally everything else in the universe. One thing I did rather like was the worldbuilding, the sense of everyone living on in the wreckage of a universe which had seen better days, and The Mandalorean carried that on. Much of the SW universe post-Clone Wars seems really underpopulated and underdeveloped, which is presumably what happens when the government spends all its money building death stars and doesn't have anything left over for other parts of the economy.

Now we have seen WandaVision and are going to be caught up with Falcon & Winter Soldier by the time the next episode airs. I guess my comments about these are more spoilery ( so under the cut for talk about Wanda )

On the other hand I do like that both this and FatWS are playing around with what happens when half the earth's population disappears for 5 years and then suddenly reappears with no idea of what they missed. ( a few other comments )

So episode 4 tonight, and then episode 5 with everyone else!