shut up and let me see your jazz hands

1. Had lunch with my mom today for my birthday. She also gave me $20 in addition to the usual gift of money off the rent. :D Also she brought over some more stuff from their cupboards, including a box of microwave fudge mix, which I made tonight. :D :D :D

2. I saw my grandpa today. He came by to give me a birthday card & money. It was weird, because if I didn't know from my mom that my grandparents had got the coming-out letter I sent them, I would never have known. Totally acting like nothing changed. I had not heard anything from them or seen them at all since I sent the letter, so I really didn't know what to expect, didn't know if they even would be acknowledging my birthday or what. So the card was addressed to my old name, and that's what my grandpa called me, which grates, but at least now I know they haven't cut me off financially.

3. It was Santa Monica's 4th of July fireworks tonight. For some reason they had it this week instead of next weekend, which would actually be closer to the 4th. We have a nice view from our back yard, since the show is right across the street at the college.

4. It's two hours after midnight, so I am officially 35! Woohoo! :D

5. I love this Lord of the Rings fanart called Broship of the Rings. My favorite is Saruman with his Palantir laptop and the Nazgul in a hoodie on an old bike.

Daily Happysong:

Staind - So Far Away

Wow, turns out a lot more links I had saved were happy fun stuff than I thought. :D

More yuletart recs:

Happy Together (Being Human; George, Annie, Mitchell)
I've never seen this show, but this is adorable.

Sally Sends a Present (Nightmare Before Christmas; Jack Skellington)
Wow! I love when people do crafts for art exchanges. This is a really neat clay figure.

Together for Christmas (The Dark Crystal; Jen & Kira)
Super cute character designs. I love this.

Wallace Wells: Drunk Homosexual (Scott Pilgrim; Wallace Wells)
Another craft piece. It's cross-stitch!Wallace Wells! So awesome!

And some non-Yuletart fanart:

Some X-max cards and random pics~~ by sadynax
I love the movie!Holmes & Watson card best, but the Sherlock drawings are cute, too. (And there's also Doctor Who and some other fandom I don't recognise.)

I wish people on Tumblr credited stuff, but they often don't, so I don't have artist info for these two, but they are super awesome: adorable chibi fat girl with tentacles (NSFW, inspired by Japanese ukiyo-e octopus pics) and Party Poison (I think this is the best Killjoys fanart I've seen and I'm really sad I don't know the artist). ETA: Thanks to eisen for finding the Party Poison artist. It's solitarium and I changed the link to go to their devart account instead of the tumblr image. (You should check out their account. They have a lot of other cool art.) /ETA

Geek Art is a Tumblr with fanart of the typical western guy geek variety (in other words, mostly superhero comics, video games, Star Wars, and Star Trek). There is some really awesome stuff in there. It's on break for a couple weeks over Christmas right now.

Winter and Christmas wallpapers is a collection of official wallpapers from various manga artists. I am using the Hourou Musuko one as my current wallpaper. :D

The week before last on Cake Wrecks' Sunday Sweets was gingerbread and wow, those are some of the most beautiful gingerbread houses I've ever seen. Following a link from there, I also found this post with more gingerbread houses.

Desaturated Santa
This is so cool! Those pics have not been photoshopped. The woman is actually dressed in greys and has painted her skin and hair grey so that she appears to be black and white.

This graphic illustrating the difference between people acting suspicious and people going about their business made me laugh (even while headdesking and feeling helplessly raegy that the first half is actually a real poster).

Do you like Privilege Denying Dude? Now there's Privilege Denying Cat.

There are also cute puppies running and a fluffy dogs in a stroller.

And I really love these two Wondermarks: In which a Plan ends poorly and The Taylors leave a Shadow.

I really loved this post about Pluto. First off, the art at the top is adorable, but I also really love the post itself about why there's no reason to be sad that Pluto is no longer a planet: "Pluto is now with it’s rocky sistren and brethren in the Kuiper Belt and is THE BOSS OF THEM ALL, because it’s actually much larger and fits in with them better, because instead of having a definition of planet that fits well for eight planets and Pluto getting shoehorned in, you have a definition for planet that fits those eight and Pluto is classified according to it’s actual properties rather than assumptions and nostalgia."

Pompeii skeletons reveal secrets of Roman family life
What it says on the tin.

The Real American Pie
Neat post about mince pie.

Ace Manifesto: Charlie Weasley (Harry Potter)
Did you know that JKR pretty much said Charlie is asexual? She didn't use that word, but she said Charlie "never had children or married" and then when asked if that meant he was gay, she said no, "just more interested in dragons than women".

So last month I recced Sherlock Holmes at fanart_recs. You can see everything I recced in the Sherlock Holmes tag. I only ended up doing four (the required minimum) because I was feeling really overwhelmed, so I think most of it is stuff I already linked here at one point or other.

Also yuletart has started posting and there's lots of great stuff already. Here's what I've liked so far:

Catch me if you can (Merlin/Bon Cop Bad Cop; Merlin, Gwen, Martin Ward, David Bouchard)
I'm not familiar with the second fandom at all, and have only heard of it because someone (delurker maybe?) on my flist requests it every year for Yuletide, and I have never watched Merlin, either, but this is just adorable. I really love the cartoony style of the drawings and I love the layout with the random newspaper bits.

with an X on the floor (My Chemical Romance; Frank & Gerard)
Eeeeee! Killjoys! This is my favorite so far. I love Gerard's grin and his red hair.

"...and she rules the skies with lunar goodness." (Avatar; Sokka and his daughter)
Awwwww! He's telling his daughter about Yue! I love the daughter's wide-eyed look.

Winter Cold (Bleach; Renji)
I really love the background, both the buildings and the clouds, and I especially like the knitted-look of his scarf, hat, and sweater.

Today's challenge was to leave feedback on three audio or visual fanworks. I don't listen to podcasts or watch vids or look at other people's icons, but I do look at fanart. I really liked all of these that I left fb for today, so I figured I'd write them up here as well.

Canon Humper by reallycorking
I don't often look at smut_wednesday because the artists are not ones I'm terribly keen on, but I was looking for stuff to leave feedback on and just clicking everything. Anyway, I'm glad I did! This is a funny comic (also NWS) that takes innocent lines from HBP and gives them an entirely new meaning... And while I am not in love with her style, it's well-drawn.

Seven years of the Trio by glockgal
This, now, this is amazing. It's seven sketches of the Trio, one for each year, and I am absolutely in love with it. I really like the "pencil sketch with a dab of color" style and how they obviously age with each new drawing (though I think they look older than eleven in the first one; I would have liked to see them a bit more wee). My favorites, though, are the final one (which made me realise how much I hope all three of them make it through!) and third year, with Hermione hidden behind her pile of books and her and Ron looking at each other over Harry.

Plus! Two of my favorite artists drew covers for book seven! Apparently a couple of the big HP sites are having competitions. Too bad the official cover won't be anything as good as these; I really don't like Mary GrandPre's style.

Deathly Hallows cover by leelastarsky
This one actually won first place in the Leaky Cauldron contest. Instead of just doing a front cover as the others did, she actually did a full wrap-around, with book flaps and everything, plus a mock-up of how it would look on the UK version. Amazing. There's so much detail in the background, with the castle and standing stones, great atmosphere, and Harry's Celtic-knot-looking spell is really cool. This is colored in Photoshop rather than with the traditional media she usually uses, but she did a realy good job with it.

Deathly Hallows cover by teawithvoldy
This was done for a contest on Mugglenet, which hasn't had its judging yet, but I really hope she wins. I love Harry here. He looks appropriately teenager-ish. The snakes winding up are really cool, and my favorite part of the whole thing is actually the reflection of them in his glasses. It's the little details, you know? I also like the composition with the spectres in the background and the shadowy Hermione and Ron.