| Issue #123 |
[Dec. 22nd, 2009|12:07 am] |
| [ | Tags | | | ! roundups, character death, fan entitlement, fandom and -isms, fandoms: buffy the vampire slayer, fandoms: dc comics, fandoms: torchwood, genres: kinkfic, genres: porn / pwp, meta about meta, pairings / relationships, race, sites: metafandom | ] |
Fandom-specific
[DCU] ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) shadowvalkyrie: DCU musings: "Specifically, porn. [...] Even more specifically, kinky porn. And the discrepancy of why the Bruce/Tim variety tends to be a great deal more popular than the Bruce/Jason one."
[Torchwood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer] firefly124: Okay, so everybody else has probably already read this AfterElton article (the article compared Torchwood and BtVS in regards to character death, and the post builds on that. I'm not being more specific because I'm unsure whether details about Torchwood's third season are still considered spoilers.)
General
thete1: "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!": "This has been on my mind -- harshing *my* squee -- since that first Transformers movie came out and so many of you were full of excuses about why you were going to see it anyway. Despite the racism."
In a post titled Saying Goodbye, yourlibrarian talks about important changes in TV, reality shows, the demise of the WB, and that the cause for the popularity decline in music games could be "a stranglehold on copyright".
cluegirl: Thoughts Contingent on Reader Entitlement; the fandom edition: "So what is it that makes us as readers so much more ready to be spiteful about work we DID NOT have to pay for? Other than the fact that we can, and the writer in question is unlikely to have highly paid lawyers who might give us a telling-off for acting like arseholes, I mean?"
skuf: Where's all the meta?: "Remember back in the day - e.g. 2006 - when [metafandom] issues were posted about every other day and had shitloads of links? What happened? Brainstorming: ..." (Cross-posted to DW, where the big discussion obviously seems to happen, but I decided to link the IJ version on principle.)
xie_xie_xie: metafandom and its discontents: "But the last three or four times I submitted a link, either mine or someone else's, either QAF-specific or "big picture" fandom meta, it was just ignored. I never knew if they just didn't like it, or didn't get it, or what the problem was."
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| This is a dreadful week... |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|03:26 pm] |
I've been seeing far too many sad stories on my f'list recently (and one of them - about Brianna Lacey, a missing 15 year old from Chicago needs all the signal boosting it can get), but this story hits far too close to home...
We learned yesterday that ![[livejournal.com profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif) schadenkatze, someone I've known through fandom for more than a dozen years, lost her life to in a house fire early Sunday morning. Her twin schaden_freude (another long-term friend, and someone who had suffered a major loss not so many years ago), was only able to help their elderly mother from the home the three shared. The house itself and almost everything it contained was, as you might imagine, a great loss, but the loss of her twin sister is...unimaginable.
***
From the Springfield News-Leader:
Three people in the home -- a mother in her 80s and two daughters -- were asleep when the fire began. Scott said the deceased -- one of the daughters -- died from smoke inhalation... The mother was in serious condition at St. John's Hospital.
The other daughter was not reported injured.
***
Through the end of the month, ![[dreamwidth.org profile]](http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) lunaris1013 is taking up a collection on behalf of the Seacouver Social Club (a group formed via alt.tv.highlander during the days when much of fandom centered on newsgroups). I am only too aware that times are difficult for so many people, but if you can afford to donate anything at all, paypal links can be found on Dreamwidth and LiveJournal. And if you can't afford to donate, good thoughts for her mother's recovery would be more than welcome.
This entry was originally posted at http://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/520563.html. | read  comments at Dreamwidth. | How to use OpenID |
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| watch me try to breathe again |
[Dec. 21st, 2009|12:18 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | recs updates | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| |  lazy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Momentum - Vienna Teng | ] |
It's fairly quiet at work today, so if anyone needs a quick last-minute yuletide beta and thinks I might be reasonably familiar with the fandom they're writing in, feel free to drop me a note at victoria.p @ gmail with the fandom and I will tell you yea or nay.
I uploaded on Saturday and have been procrastinating on Broken Toys ever since. Heh. What kind of Max/Alec story would you make me write, if you could?
This morning I updated unfitforsociety because I figure the next big update will be with yuletide stories, but it's possible people are looking for things to read right now. So unfitforsociety has been updated with 20 recs for December 2009:
* 8 Supernatural
* 4 Crossovers
* 2 Star Trek Reboot
* 2 White Collar
* 1 each Being Human, Bones, Dark Angel, and Friday Night Lights
***
I'm kinda wishing I'd just taken today and tomorrow off. It's a short week, but meh, this weather makes everything more difficult (stupid slushy corners and four foot piles of snow on the sidewalks). Maybe I will work on the year-end writing meme thingy. Hmm...
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/109717.html.  people have commented there. |
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| Home stretch |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|08:15 pm] |
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Happy Solstice to all of you! It happened actually at 4:44 today. Tomorrow, we get probably about the same amount of light as today, but the next day, a little more time between dawn and dusk, and the next day, more. I'm up for that. Seems like the only daylight I've seen for the past month has been through my office window. ( Holidays, snow, blahblahblah. ) Hope the Christmas process is going well for those who take part in it, and that Chanukah has been good to those who celebrate. Everyone, be kind to each other this Solstice; bring light into your life and the lives of those you know by the generosity of your heart. |
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| i can't take the commercial breaks anymore |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|06:48 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | music, top 5 songs | ] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | lazy | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Eagles v. 49ers on TV | ] |
I've been thinking about year-end - and decade-end - top whatever lists, and I very much enjoyed vonnie_k's year-end music post, so even though I don't really have a top songs of 2009 (in terms of songs that came out in 2009), I can post the 50 songs I listened to most this year, according to last.fm:
( 50 most-listened to songs of 2009 )
I don't really have anything to say, except that was a lot of coding.
*yawns*
I don't wanna go to work tomorrow. Sigh.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/109504.html.  people have commented there. |
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| Yuletide! And Wrangling! |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|12:49 pm] |
I uploaded my Yuletide fic last night, and edited it a few times today to fix things that snuck past me and my betas. Woo hoo!
The upload deadline approacheth... countdown is visable at http://yuletidetreasure.org/ and instructions for uploading (as well as all the latest news) are available at yuletide_admin. As of right now, 685 stories have been uploaded, which is a bit scary since there are 2162 participants this year and the upload deadline is like a 28 hours away right now.
I'm also keeping an eye on the pinch-hit mailing list, because apparently I am that silly and insomiac this week.
And because I am procrastinating about RL holiday errands, I am poking around in our wranglers' spreadsheets tidying things. Oh, this is fun, but homg so much yet to do once we can wrangle again!
In that spirit, and because I am ridiculously optimistic about our ability, strength and stamina over the coming days and weeks, I bring sharable icons for we (not so) few (there are like 80 of us now), we happy few, we band of AO3 wranglers during Yuletide 2009.
For now:
For later:
  
If any of the coders or testers or systems folks would like similar icons, please let me know how you'd like them captioned, because I'd love to make icons for you fabulous folks, too. <3 <3 <3
This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1021174.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Oh fun.... |
[Dec. 20th, 2009|03:23 am] |
I'm not going to go into all the icky details, but the 24 hours before this trip have been...well kinda crappy. But! We're packed and ready to go and apparently, there will be a runway for our plane to land on once we hit the Right Coast.
We're not entirely sure what our internets access will be like for the first part of the trip so I might be even worse about answering comments than I usually am.
Because I won't be here on the 21st...
Blessed Yule to all of you!
*facepalm* I don't even know what day it is anymore |
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| like the sweat of lovers laying in the field |
[Dec. 19th, 2009|09:06 pm] |
This afternoon I made cinnamon-chocolate sour cream cake. It came out well. I gave the whole thing away to fleurdeleo, though. It was too sweet or too something for me. I don't know. This happens to me a lot when I bake - I often don't want to eat whatever it is after a small bite. We went out for our traditional "We're having a blizzard, let's go to the bar" pre-Christmas drink tonight. The Bar Around the Corner was full of a private party, so we went to a different place, with a much better beer selection and fancier appetizers. It was good. I had a couple bottles of Lindemans lambic framboise.
Now I am ready to sack out on the couch.
***
Okay, call me crazy, but it was my understanding that an idea was kripked when fic dovetails with something that later occurs in or is confirmed by canon, and that jossed is still when canon later contradicts something posited in fic. I don't like it when people use kripked to mean jossed, when my understanding is the opposite. I get all confuzzled.
You know what else I don't understand? People who ship a pairing when they hate half of it. I mean, I guess I kind of get it in the "This makes my favorite character happy, so even though it's not my favorite person, I can get behind it" way, but too often it reads like, "I hate hate hate this character, so I'm going to write a story about how unworthy they are for the character I love, and make a romance out of it, even though it is super creepy with that subtext." And sometimes it's not even subtext.
Can you tell I've been trawling ff.net for Max/Alec again? Why would you write Max/Alec if you hate Max so much? It just makes me crazy! Just ship oh-so-perfect Manticore's best alpha male!Alec *rolls eyes* with someone else and then I won't even have to click on your story and we'll both be happier! And your story will be at least 50% less creepy if you like both halves of your pairing.
I'm just saying.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/109140.html.  people have commented there. |
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| and if you believe that what's done is done |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|11:44 pm] |
I made this chocolate mousse tonight. It's good, though I think I made the same mistake the poster made, because mine is also riddled with small bits of unmelted chocolate (or perhaps the meringue was too cool? It is fairly cool in my apartment so I don't think "room temperature" means what they intended it to mean). And also, there are way too many fucking bowls involved. Okay, it's only two, but you have to wash one of them in the middle of the process and I do not have enough room to be pouring things from bowl to bowl and washing up in the middle. I have a cutting board laid over my sink and a strip of counter space about 12" long by 4" wide, and the top of my stove. That is it. My life, so hard. wah wah wah.
I think I'm pretty much decided on what I'm making for gifts, but tomorrow I will be trying out some kind of cinnamon chocolate cake. I will report back how it turns out. If it is really awesome, maybe I will drop out the nutella cake and substitute it. Decisions, decisions.
I think baking is a good way to spend the coming snowpolcaypse, don't you?
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/109040.html.  people have commented there. |
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| stuff and things and gifts! |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|03:28 pm] |
[comments enabled all over]
First off, I want to say "thank you!" to whoever sent me the Hungry Lucy CD. :) I'mma make sure to load it onto my Nano for the trip!
Secondly...OMG, you should see the scarf I got from wyomingnot it's all fuzzy and purpley and glittery and fun!
Thirdly, while we made cookies the other night, we opened presents because we're not taking gifts for each other on the trip. I got some chocolate (including a Vosages bacon bar that I haven't tried yet), a tie-dyed shirt, a pair of fleece arm warmers with gears and hearts silk screened on them, a very cool steampunky wire-wrapped key necklace, a bead necklace and a ginormous book about food. It's a collection of essays on food and taste in history and it's a a lot bigger than I expected and heavy; I won't be taking it on the flight.
And that's about it.
Thank you again Wyo and mysterious CD giving person! |
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| glimpse your many futures |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|01:51 pm] |
Bring me the finest bagels and muffins in the land! My yuletide story has been sent off to beta!
It turned out all right in the end, I think. It needs a good polishing, but it isn't the horror I was afraid it was going to be when I was struggling over each and every word.
Now onto Broken Toys!
***
I stayed up late last night and now I am very tired. It was hard to get out of bed this morning. It is very cold outside, and it's supposed to snow. My parents said not to come, because of the weather. So I have an unexpected weekend at home. Surely there will be baking. And writing. And sleeping. Dear god, so much sleeping.
Have a poem, since I am clearly incapable of writing an entry:
The God Who Loves You
It must be troubling for the god who loves you
To ponder how much happier you'd be today
Had you been able to glimpse your many futures.
It must be painful for him to watch you on Friday evenings
Driving home from the office, content with your week—
Three fine houses sold to deserving families—
Knowing as he does exactly what would have happened
Had you gone to your second choice for college,
Knowing the roommate you'd have been allotted
Whose ardent opinions on painting and music
Would have kindled in you a lifelong passion.
A life thirty points above the life you're living
On any scale of satisfaction. And every point
A thorn in the side of the god who loves you.
You don't want that, a large-souled man like you
Who tries to withhold from your wife the day's disappointments
So she can save her empathy for the children.
And would you want this god to compare your wife
With the woman you were destined to meet on the other campus?
It hurts you to think of him ranking the conversation
You'd have enjoyed over there higher in insight
Than the conversation you're used to.
And think how this loving god would feel
Knowing that the man next in line for your wife
Would have pleased her more than you ever will
Even on your best days, when you really try.
Can you sleep at night believing a god like that
Is pacing his cloudy bedroom, harassed by alternatives
You're spared by ignorance? The difference between what is
And what could have been will remain alive for him
Even after you cease existing, after you catch a chill
Running out in the snow for the morning paper,
Losing eleven years that the god who loves you
Will feel compelled to imagine scene by scene
Unless you come to the rescue by imagining him
No wiser than you are, no god at all, only a friend
No closer than the actual friend you made at college,
The one you haven't written in months. Sit down tonight
And write him about the life you can talk about
With a claim to authority, the life you've witnessed,
Which for all you know is the life you've chosen.
~Carl Dennis
***
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| i got a little story you should know |
[Dec. 18th, 2009|01:16 am] |
\o/
1240 words!
I'm not done, but the end is in sight!
Woo!
And now I must go to bed, because I am up way too late.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/108421.html.  people have commented there. |
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| i had sex with your wife |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|10:22 pm] |
Friday Night Lights
( spoilers )
I love this show so so much. I can't believe that it consistently gets shut out of awards, because it is pretty consistently (early season 2 aside) head and shoulders above most other shows on television. Sigh.
***
I came home from work tonight and took a nap. I haven't done that in ages (I mean, okay, a few nights ago I fell asleep on the couch, but that wasn't planned - this was planned). I also ordered in, something I don't do very often anymore either. I got my period this morning and it's freaking freezing out. I felt I deserved both.
Also, my new comforter arrived. I haven't had a new one in ages. I still love my old (fifteen-years-old) black comforter with the lilies on it, but I needed something new and this one is pretty. Hopefully it's warm, too. I'm not going to put it on the bed till my period's over, though, just to be safe.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/108070.html.  people have commented there. |
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| Birthday! |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|10:59 am] |
 
and
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| it's like trying to fight gravity |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|10:28 am] |
various. and also sundry:
= 850 words on my yuletide. I am getting there, I think. I hope. *meep*
= I have Google wave invites (I never log in, because it seems pointless and counterintuitive to me, but whatever), DW invites, and those LJ holiday coupons if anyone wants them.
= I posted two ficlets in the past two days:
Sometime Around Midnight
Dark Angel; Max/Alec; pg; 310 words
Since he can't get drunk, there's only one way to forget.
I look at the world and I notice it's turning
Harry Potter; Remus/Sirius; pg; 650 words
"I needed to hear this song." (sequel to The Love There That's Sleeping)
They were the only complete results from my foray into the ten songs/ten ficlets thing this time around, though I started a couple others that might get written once yuletide is done.
= Is it me or is delicious really flaky lately? Half the time I click on something and I get the "experiencing technical difficulties" message.
= I am attempting to put together some top 10 lists for the decade and while I think I can sort of do favorite characters (way more than ten *snerk*), favorite episodes is frustrating me, partly because my memory is pretty crappy, and partly because I can only think of WW and BSG episodes, and also because I waffle about whether to include "The Body" or OMWF. Though I have to say, I think best episode title of the decade has to go to "Dim Sum, Lose Some," but only because I am ridiculously fond of bad puns.
It is a puzzlement.
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/107954.html.  people have commented there. |
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| I need more coffee for this. |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|06:07 am] |
Somehow I'm not in my usual holiday mood this year. December is zooming by at a truly ridiculously fast pace, and I haven't had time to do most of my usual things beforehand. Also I am physically ill and feel like crap. Bleh.
Two things I found myself reading this morning, both resulting from zvi's signal boost:
marina about Russophobia and who is Russian. And branchandroot While we're at it...
thete1 "I know it's racist, Te, but the special effects look awesome!"
(Full disclosure: I was trying to learn how to date again around the time of the Transformers film this past summer. That's how I ended up seeing it, along with Wolverine and a couple other films. I'm not proud of this fact, but there it is. And only one of the many reasons that one particular guy from last summer and I are not seeing each other any more is that I tried talking about why the Transformers films were problematic... I'll leave it to your imagination as to how spectacularly well that went. *eyeroll*)
Short summary of something that could turn into a huge tl;dr post, because holy crap this year has sucked: If I wasn't angry, I wasn't paying attention.
Here, have more links:
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-primer/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/the-last-airbender-film-cast-in-60-seconds/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/do-children-see-race/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/featured/yellow-face-a-documentary-on-the-last-airbender-film/
http://www.racebending.com/v3/interviews/sdcc/
I'm thinking I may need to get my hands on DVDs of the Avatar: The Last Airbender tv series, because I haven't seen it. I will not be seeing the Avatar movie. ETA: To clarify, I will not be seeing EITHER of the movies; see comments below.
In completely, completely unrelated news, I've now got a draft of my Yuletide story that doesn't make me cringe, so at least I'm on the ball about something.
This entry was originally posted at http://elke-tanzer.dreamwidth.org/1020844.html. Please comment there using OpenID. |
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| Fests and Whatnot |
[Dec. 17th, 2009|09:40 am] |
What season is it? It's fic/art exchange season!
Okay, not that I've really had a chance to read much of anything yet since I'm hip deep in final exam grading (and finishing my yuletide fic, a process which is swiftly approaching the OMG BEARS! phase *g*), but I did want to draw your attention to the two other fests I'm currently participating in:
1. ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif) snapelyholidays. I haven't received my story yet, but for those of you who, like me, love Snape in all pairings, this year's assortment will make you think it's your birthday! Along with the always welcome Snape/Harry and Snape/Lupin and Snape/Hermione, we've already had Snape paired with Lily and McGonagall and Regulus and Sirius and Dumbledore and Lucius and Neville and Filch and Moody and Slughorn and Shacklebolt. Wheee!
2. And then there's Good Omens. The go_exchange is one of my "must-do" fests each year, even though I'm only on the periphery of that fandom, and one of the reasons is because of stories like the one I received this year: a long, wonderfully written, future history that's only dystopian to the extent that a canonical Apocalypse is dystopian, which...oh. Hmm. No, okay, go back to where I said "wonderfully written" and then add original and clever. "World Without End"...go read!
Oh, and just as an addendum: I will be running hp_beholder (the fic/art exchange designed to get some loving for the most unloved of HP characters) for the third time. Sign-ups will commence at the end of January/start of February (to give everybody a chance to recover from the holiday fic blitz). And just so you know, I'm giving each new participant this year a car! (*is a lying liar who lies*)
This entry was originally posted at http://bethbethbeth.dreamwidth.org/520410.html. | read  comments at Dreamwidth. | How to use OpenID |
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| together we rise |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|10:33 pm] |
So it's quote Leo McGarry day:
"If we're going to walk into walls I want us running into them full speed. We're going to lose some of these battles, and we might even lose the White House, but we're not going to be threatened by issues. We're going to bring 'em front and center. We're going to raise the level of public debate in this country, and let that be our legacy."
*sniffle*
Oh, Leo...
(You might also enjoy watching this vid, and by "enjoy" I mean "get chills and bawl like a baby" [the way the show used to make me], which is impressive for something that's not even a full 2 minutes long. At first I was like, "this is an odd song choice" and then some of the lyrics make it more understandable, and THEN the chorus kicks in and that is where the chills and the crying come from.)
***
Thank you to all the people who had such kind things to say on the love meme. I truly appreciate it. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
Thank you also to celtprincess13 for the lovely card, and to angelgazing for the delicious cookies and the amazing gift. ♥♥♥♥♥
***
I made the buttermilk cake again today, but I switched out orange zest for the lemon zest and added two tsp of orange juice. And left out the raspberries. It's good, but it's lacking something. Possibly I will add dried cranberries on top next time. Hmm...
***
Criminal Minds
( spoilers want to be a BAMF like Emily Prentiss when they grow up )
***
Thanks to fleurdeleo, angelgazing and luzdeestrellas, I think I have figured out how to fix my yuletide story. I hope. I just have to figure out how to actually write it. I mean, I have 600 words so I'm on the way, but you know, there have been plot developments and you know how that hurts my wee brain. But I have a plan now, I think. I hope.
Wish me luck!
***
This entry at DW: http://musesfool.dreamwidth.org/107606.html.  people have commented there. |
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| Not all here |
[Dec. 16th, 2009|06:47 pm] |
'sup internets?
I've had a couple of bad days, topped off by the car (the old one, not the newer one) not starting this afternoon.
We're kind of rushing around frantically to get ready for our trip. We'll be gone from the 20th through the 1st, so I'm trying to get enough laundry done so we have clothes. It's complicated by that fact that we're going places that are much colder than Sacramento, so that part's fun.
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calm
optimistic
tipsy
sleepy
jubilant
mellow
groggy
impressed