Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Coffee for the Win

So I got one of those Tassimo coffee machines a while back. I thought it would be a good investment considering how much I like expensive coffees and lattes, and how much cheaper it would be if I just made them myself instead of buying them, but I forgot to take into account a few details. Like the fact that I don't actually buy expensive coffee all that often now that I don't live in walking distance of a cafe, and that even if seven to twelve dollars for eight cups of coffee/tea/hot chocolate is a great deal compared to three to six dollars for one cup in a cafe, it is not all that great a deal if you are going to be drinking those fancy coffees frequently. Basically, I've been spending twice as much for a  few cups of (admittedly really good) chai tea latte as I would for a large can of Nabob which can make dozens of cups of coffee. Not my best investment, but still completely worth it for the taste and convenience.

In fandom news, I've been all over the place lately. I've been a bit flighty about finding a new main fandom since the last few I looked into were fairly small or dying off to the extent that they had been around long enough that most of the original fic writers for those fandoms have already moved on, leaving a trail of unfinished epics left behind due to lack of interest. That's one of the worst things when you go back to old fandoms: finding out that all of your old favorites that were unfinished when you left are still unfinished when you come back. Currently I'm poking around in the Supernatural fandom, but it probably won't last since that is a fandom that contains a lot of things I tend to avoid (like RPF -it's cannon even!- and for the longest time the main slash pairing was incest, which is so not my thing even in fiction). Also, I'm getting more and more annoyed with the Buffy Crossover fandom. I used to like Xander centered fic back in the old days, when his characterization actually matched what existed in canon.  These days though, it seems like no one remembers that there are any characters *other* than Xander and his characterization and motivations in fanon are so far away from his canon characterization these days that it isn't even funny. Seriously, part of what made him an interesting character was that he didn't have super-powers and still fought anyway. the most annoying thing though, is that these Xander-Stu fics have become so popular that it seems like that's almost all there is anymore. Other BtVS characters may as not even exist, or are killed off, made into the villains, or just so badly characterized that I wonder if the writer has ever even seen an episode of Buffy. I used to be able to find lots of great fic at Twisting the Hellmouth, but these days its getting harder and harder to find anything even moderately readable and at this point I think I'd be happy just for fic centered on someone other than Xander- even for a power-up fic. Meh.



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