Weekend Adventur!

I'm going to come out and say it: it is a bad sign when you start fangirl-style flailing over produce in the middle of the co-op. Which I know, because I totally did that this afternoon.

All in all, it was an awesome, lovely day with the awesome, lovely hanjuuluver. We made plans before I left California to go to the Folk Festival this weekend, so she picked me up early and we staggered our way over to the fairgrounds - and only got lost a very little bit - to check it out around ten. And it was pretty neat! Not huge, four stages and booths in two sections of the fairgrounds, but a lot of fun. We made a godawful amount of horrible noise at the instrument petting zoo (I got to play a dulcimer! Very badly!), poked around the craft booths, and listened to a very energetic afro-gypsy band at the demo stage. Chatted up a nice guy who came over to see if we were registered to vote and ended up telling us about his webcomic. Boggled at the amazing facial hair - saw one guy with the most awesomely 1850s-esque waxed and curled handlebar mustache you could just tell he was incredibly proud of, and an older man with a huge, bushy white beard down to his chest. Actually, we were just surrounded by hippies the whole time, broom skirts and ponytails everywhere you looked.

Once we ran out of things to do at the folk festival we decided to get lunch...and promptly got unbelievably lost. Of course. My dad's suggestion of buying hanjuuluver a GPS is starting to sound better and better. So we went on an hour long tour of Albuquerque's Sketchiest Neighborhoods before we finally found Nob Hill all of five blocks from where we started out. Had lunch at this great little tapas bar - soy-ginger ribs and garlic shrimp and tempura brussels sprouts, oh my - and then wandered over to the co-op grocery store next door and lost it over produce. Seriously, we were so full of enthusiasm for the unusually-colored carrots, goat cheese cheddar, and Italian lamb sausage that people were starting to stare. Mostly because we are enormous food dorks, but I was also boggling at how cheap everything in this state is - even the stuff at the fancy organic grocery is half what I was paying at Safeway in California. Which is awesome. So I got hanjuuluver to buy me fancy soap and organic polenta and arborio rice, and we decided that I am going to get an apartment in Nob Hill and embrace the queer urban hipster lifestyle. (As it turns out, one of my dad's clients who runs a real estate business handles apartment rentals in that area, so this was already in the plans for me. But it's nice to know we're on the same page!)

Eventually, and with much less getting lost, we meandered our way back to hanjuuluver's house for Story Time, which is a thing she started doing with all her engineering friends to make them read actual books on occasion. A big group of her friends met us there and we sat around (and on top on each other) and took turns reading from Neil Gaiman's latest short story collection. I was familiar with "A Study in Emerald" already - oh please, how could I not be? - but I've never read it before! Especially not out loud. Very creepy, fascinating story. I put in a good dramatic performance, and may have let myself get talked into bringing my Slender Man story to read for next time. Oh boy. Also, hanjuuluver gave me my graduation present, a completely and utterly brilliant stained-glass dragon she made for me at school. ♥

And now, after a brief stop-over at my grandma's, I am home, and also exhausted and rather sun-burned. I think that was more socializing than I've done in the last month. Time for football and the Star Wars radio drama and bed, I think.

Don't Judge Me

Some quick thoughts on Star Wars, via the radio plays (and also unnamed webcomics):

1. Why did no one ever tell me that Leia is a complete fucking badass? Did I just not notice this when I watched the movies as a kid? I mean, I got that she was important and kind of cool and refused to take Han Solo's shit but OMG SHE IS AMAZING. Just in the first movie/play, she murders an Imperial General and makes it look like a hunting accident, bitches out Darth Vader to his face, endures near-lethal torture and Force-aided interrogation and refuses to betray the Rebellion even in the face of the destruction of her home planet, and more or less rescues herself, Luke and Han Solo after the bust her out of prison on the Death Star. I AM IN LOVE.

2. Why can't I find any of the prequel-era erastes/eromenos Jedi fic? It has to exist, right? I mean, I can find Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi by the bucketful, and even plenty of Obi-Wan/Anakin. But it's all soul-bonding true-love damn-our-traditions-I'm-devoted-to-you fic and that's...perfectly fine, I guess, but I'm twisted enough that I would really like to see some fic that plays up the master/student dynamic in an institutionalized, part of Jedi culture kind of way (if also in an 'over the age of majority, as consensual as the situation allows' kind of way). I don't even want to read it - that dynamic isn't one I really like in my pairings - I just want to be validated in my belief that it's uncomfortably plausible and the kind of thing fandom would pick up on.

3. Continuing the 'I am a terrible person' line, I would desperately like someone to write me the darkfic AU of the original trilogy where the morality of the universe is switched. The Empire really is a benevolent one, committed to the ideal of using their resources and weapons to bring peace to the galaxy and ending the poverty and violence that flourished under the Old Republic. The Rebels are terrorists attacking the peace of the empire, conscripting dumb kids off farm planets to throw their lives away and killing innocent civilians and workaday imperial soldiers alike. Ben Kenobi is a bitter remnant of the old regime, indoctrinating young Luke into an antiquated cult faith. It's - you know, canonically, of course I'm totally on the side of the Rebels. The Empire is evil, Luke Skywalker is adorable, the Jedis are awesome warrior monks, end of story. I just want to see if someone could pull this off.

...I need to stop letting my brain take over like this. It always ends in such weird places.