Sherlock Holmes: 60 for 60

Well, work started on a delay and I still ended up being late, lol. It wasn't as hard as I expected to find a ride but there were fewer drivers out than usual. Not sure if that was because of the time or the weather. Honestly, the roads weren't bad at all. Even our hill is fine. A lot of stuff was shut down just in case, though.

Several clients were closed for the day and others also opened late. Even those that were open didn't send us much. I finished what I had left over from Friday and waited for hours to get a call telling me it was time to pick up new stuff. When they hadn't called me by three, I just went over. There was a single car in the parking lot and the building was closed. They left without telling us. I still have a key, so I went in just to check if maybe they'd left some work for me in the lab and forgotten to call. Nope! Idk about the rest of the place but it seemed like no one had been in the lab all day, since the empty trays I took over on Friday weren't put up. Everything should be back to business as usual tomorrow, so at least this won't put us too far behind.

Tbh, I kinda regret bothering to go in. I'm sure I'll be glad of it later, when I want to use the PTO for something fun, but it felt like such a waste of a day. I had things I could've done at home with that time. Ah, well. At least I know what the roads are like and am contented that we're not trapped.

Oh, and another thing! That new girl at work, the one who likes Transformers, gave me a Wheeljack Blokees model kit because she got a double (they're blind-boxed) and knows I like him. It was a very simple little snap-together kit, only took about fifteen minutes, and he's pretty cute even though he's not from their chibi-style line. Blokees pretty much lost my attention with their lackluster Arcee-- and they barely had it before that, what with the lack of female characters-- but they're pretty satisfying to snap together, ngl. Too bad the Ratchet in this line is ugly and out of scale, so poor Wheeljack's gonna have to be without his man. I don't see myself bothering to pick any more up but I'm glad I have this one.

Challenge #13

TALK ABOUT A COMMUNITY SPACE YOU LIKE. It doesn’t need to be your favorite, or the one where you spend the most time (although it certainly can be). Maybe it’s even one that you’ve barely visited. But talk about that space and how it helps support fannish community.

I almost decided on a few different topics for this but finally decided to just give a shout-out to fandom-specific message boards as a concept. I can enjoy a dashboard or timeline that serves up fandom soup, don't get me wrong, but there's something special about a space that's been set aside for fans of That One Thing in Particular. And, yeah, you can get something like that from communities on the likes of DW and LJ or, I suppose, subs on Reddit. Not knocking those at all. But there's a special vibe to an ecosystem of subtopic boards of That One Thing, all with their own sub-subtopics nested within. Different types of platform all have their own rhythm and I've personally never grooved to anything quite like a well-run message board.

Man, my brain has been everywhere and nowhere today. I was up way too late last night and so woke up late today, feeling kinda groggy. My sister came over with the kids for a few hours so we could all get a little socializing done before possibly being iced in. We got a couple hours of light snow but it's been all freezing rain since then. Anyhow, it's Saturday, so learning accountability time:

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Challenge #12

Make an appreciation post to those who enhance your fandom life. Appreciate them in bullet points, prose, poetry, a moodboard, a song... whatever moves you!

So, my mind did not go immediately to Transformers on this one. Yeah, I know, I'm as surprised as anybody else. Although, I guess it's more accurate to say that my mind didn't go specifically to Transformers, since it's still in there in its way. Just not as important this time.

I remember being a kid who was into old music, old movies, old shows, old cartoons. I remember discovering and getting into old comics. Honestly, it doesn't seem like it should've been all that unusual at the time, at least when it comes to that initial list. Oldies stations were a thing, TCM was a thing, TV Land was a thing, Nick at Nite was a thing. Boomerang wasn't a thing yet, so I could catch an episode of any version of Scooby-Doo if I just turned on Cartoon Network at the right moment. Three Stooges shorts played in the same lineups as my Saturday morning cartoons. My school library was chock full of books older than my parents. Even without my parents' media collections and hand-me-downs, there was plenty of opportunity to be exposed to old stuff and plenty of then-modern shows, especially cartoons, referenced that same stuff.

And yet, as natural as it seemed to me to have an appreciation and even a liking for these things that I literally grew up with, adults were constantly expressing surprise that I'd ever heard of, say, I Love Lucy, never mind that I would watch it on purpose, for entertainment. The first time I ever went into a comic shop and asked if they had The Blonde Phantom, the clerk was flabbergasted. And I was flabbergasted in turn. I'd learned about the character in a magazine I'd picked up off a news stand in... Idk now, a drug store, maybe? Point is, the title was clearly remembered. I myself might not have remembered it, per se, but I was as capable as anyone older than me of finding out about it.

I think a lot about those reactions when I see people my age and older complaining about these kids today not recognizing or appreciating xyz from Back Then, while these same people make no effort to expose the young folks in their lives to xyz. Or else only doing so to make it a lecture about who has what too easy anymore.

This is all maybe more than the necessary amount of setup to say my thanks to people of old fandoms. Not necessarily fandom olds, though plenty of them count to. I mean anyone, old or new, who keeps old fandoms alive in any small way. Whether that means preserving media by any means necessary and keeping it accessible to future fans, creating fanworks or even just talking about old this or old that. Some of that media is part of ongoing IPs, some of it hasn't been touched in an official capacity for decades or more, some of it is in between the two. Even the most aptly called "forgotten gem" has to be remember fondly by someone to earn the name. Each and every piece of media is still alive, in its own way, as long as it's remembered. All of it will continue to live as long as it's appreciated. And I appreciate everyone who's a part of that, whether they've written meta or contributed to a wiki or animated Colombo shaking his hips to "Caramelldansen" or made a list of vintage recs or or or.

Challenge #11

In your own space, grant someone's wish from Challenge #5.

Did this back when that challenge was posted! I'll probably go back tomorrow and see if there are any others I can fulfill but as of now, I mostly left comments on people's fics, did my daily clicks on arab.org and made a donation. I also wrote a couple of comments fics for alchemicink, which I am reposting below mostly so I can fix the typo I somehow managed to overlook in a frikkin drabble, lol. If I do go back and do any other creative fills, I'll probably update this post.

Anywho:

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