I misunderstood the point of this ride

well, some can manage once or twice

Wed, 05 Jan 2022 20:39:51 GMT

( Belated 2021 round-up )

In more current news, I'm reccing X-Men comics fanart over on fanart_recs this month! You should totally check it out, although I'll probably also do a roundup post of my recs once I'm done. (Done with this month, anyway. I've been collecting amazing fanart, on deviantArt and tumblr for so long ... I'm feeling the urge to share the love.)

One final thought, if anyone else who enjoys The Locked Tomb happens to be around: have you seen the summary for Nona the Ninth yet??? (Not sure when the update actually happened, but I only saw it the other day.) I'm going to die of suspense, JFC.

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I used to be young; now I'm old

Tue, 09 Mar 2021 18:04:25 GMT

So I did a little rehauling of my fanart masterlist recently; I gave bandom and Star Trek expandable sections instead of their own cut tags, and decided I wanted to add dates (well, years) to each piece, since there's such a range (15 years!) and I wanted to preserve the alphabetical organization by fandom

Sadly, a lot of the art is currently covered in Photobucket watermarks, and some of the links are broken (mostly due to the journals where they were posted being locked/deleted), all of which is going to take longer to rectify. I continue to think wistfully about the ever-more-unlikely possibility of local image hosting at the AO3. Ah well.

Doing all that got me thinking about my fannish output by the numbers, though, so I did some VERY self-indulgent messing about.

( A few takeaways, and a personal fannish engagement timeline, 2006-present )

So ... that all happened (and continues to happen).

Appropos of very little: is my writing style kind of ... pompous? I don't necessarily mean fic, just uh. Journaling and such.

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the hardcore and the gentle

Thu, 02 Jan 2020 01:10:07 GMT

Happy New Year, friends. And happy Yuletide reveals. :)

This was clearly not going to be the year when I could pull off more than one fic (potentially next round’s goal? life things depending anyway), but I did receive what was very much the prompt of my heart. I did my best to do well by it:

refraction and recombination, for halfeatenmoon
Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers (specifically the second book, A Closed and Common Orbit)
Sidra/Tak, Teen & Up, 8,858 words
Summary: Tak takes Sidra to a different kind of party, Sidra dabbles in Aeluon color language, and her sensory analogues might be trying to tell her something.

( Herein lies a ramble. )

Man, that was fun. I’m so glad chocolateboxcomm exists so I don’t immediately go into fandom withdrawal. I have plans this year that preclude much fannish participation for a lot of it, probably, but this should be a good easing off.

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all for a crime I did commit

Mon, 11 Feb 2019 17:45:50 GMT

Huh. A bit belatedly, I've been reading around through the recent posts people were making about fandom and monetization and "gift economies" etc etc. It's interesting, complicated stuff. ( Herein lies some unedited rambling about personal experiences, and a brief discussion of the differing commercial histories of contemporary fanart and fanfiction. )

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Signal Boost: pan-fandom meta newsletter is GO

Tue, 22 Jan 2019 16:17:07 GMT

tozka posted: pan-fandom meta newsletter is GO

I am super excited that someone is starting up a new meta newsletter in the tradition of metafandom! I very much hope it takes off.

Otherwise, alas, I am so cranky and low on bandwidth today that it's really pretty exceptional. Had a really amazing weekend at my favorite hotel-based multi-day kink event, so of course a lot of this is event drop and self-inflicted exhaustion (and soreness, which would be delicious if not for other factors) ... not to mention the freezing cold outside and in (due to some kind of HVAC problem), random building evacuations (also due to the same HVAC problem) and all the students coming back for the first day of classes. Other people keep coming to me to whine about these latter things, because I seem to be the office's official shoulder to cry on or something, and my usual reserves of sympathy are just ... absent. Blah!

I just want to go home and cuddle with my cat. And maybe take about twenty naps. (I slept so much yesterday, and yet.)

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the taste you were forever chasing

Thu, 10 Jan 2019 20:56:47 GMT

The way things have been going lately, I should probably make some kind of nostalgia-inflected icon.

Procrastinating to distract myself from stressful life things, as one does, I created a "series" for all my Yuletide stories going back to 2004 on the AO3, because I've been a little frustrated with the way works are automatically displayed/organized in reverse chronological order. It just looks messy to me, all the fanart (challenge fills) and fic mixed together.

The "series" goes back to 2004 because, back when the old Yuletide archive was all uploaded to the AO3 what, a few years ago now? - I was so mortified by the quality of some of the older stories that I wound up orphaning two of them, including the one from 2003, the very first year of the challenge. Which seems a bit silly now, but you can't undo that. So there are 10 stories in there, meaning I've written 12 total (over the course of 11 years, with a break for a few in between).

I grow old ... I grow old ...
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Having gone that far, I finally got around to cleaning up those older, transferred stories; tagging the recipients, the pairings (where applicable), etc. I let myself do a little minor editing here and there. And I went looking for the stories people wrote for me back in 2003, 2004, whose authors didn't go in and tag me, if they're even around anymore. The challenge was so much smaller back then; I probably could recognize more individual names than not, and jeez, nostalgia. It makes me want to go right home and call my best friend, who is probably a bit too busy with my two-year-old niece for "remember when"s.

Enough rambling. I have to make a decision about which of the three chocolateboxcomm fandoms I matched on I'm going to draw for. (I really shouldn't draw for all three. I really, really shouldn't.) One of them is the fandom my first, now-orphaned Yuletide story was written in, in 2003, so I guess not everything has changed.

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I’m the diode, you’re the kerosene

Wed, 02 Jan 2019 15:24:47 GMT

Happy New Year, folks. I’m starting off 2019 jet lagged and disoriented, but happy. I missed England so much; the visit was way too short, but lovely.

Yuletide reveals are up, but before I talk about what I wrote, I'd like to mention the three lovely stories I received:

Snapshots, by evewithanapple (That Inevitable Victorian Thing)
A lovely, sweet look at life a few years after the book; cozy polyamorous domestic bliss hidden away from the public eye, but incorporating and transforming the (inevitable) publicity itself.

Good Morning, Ruby Crowns, by smolder (Wayward Children series)
A look at the denizens of the Maine house—the one inhabited by the children who did not wish to return to their other worlds—with some very familiar residents. Takes the two cherished prompts I’ve had in mind since first reading Every Heart A Doorway, combines them, and paints an especially poignant picture of an angry, unbowed post-Narnia Susan Pevensie.

In The Long Ago, by tablelamp (Wayward Children series)
Another take on crossover characters at the Maine house! Includes cross-time mirror travel and a grande dame Alice Liddell, caring for the other lost kids across the years and miles. Delightful.

My own assignment was a delightful blast from the past! I wrote Mina de Malfois and the Changing of the Guard (gen with a bit of Mina/Arc on the side), bringing the eponymous Mina into the contemporary fandom landscape, as well as imagining a bit about her future authorial career and relationship with Archivist12.

It was a pretty fascinating process to write, actually, so ( I’m gonna ramble a bit. )

Sorry, that was very self-indulgent! But if anyone out there wants to talk about Mina de Malfois or the changes in fandom, etc etc, the whole experience has left me a bit hungry for discussion on those subjects. ;) It seems especially pertinent, with the question of platform all up in the air again (although having been mostly out of commission for the last nine or ten days, I have no idea if there have been any new developments in that area). And certainly, it's all making me want to interact with fandom more directly again. I wonder where people are posting their meta these days ...

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when the thermometer goes way up

Fri, 31 May 2013 19:52:33 GMT

Gaaaaah. It's ninety-plus degrees out, humid and sunny, and the air conditioning in this old building (the school, where I'm working 'til I find more gainful employment) is kaput. I feel like I've been put on a slow broil, here.

Here are some current fandom-related articles I've been reading lately, since I'm too fried to try and provide much in the way of my own content right now!

The Truth Of Wolves, Or: The Alpha Problem - written with urban fantasy fiction (mostly novels, I think) in mind, but interesting to reflect on with regard to Teen Wolf and TW fic. I was talking about the whole intensely stratified Alpha/Omega 'verse thing with a fannish friend a few weeks ago ... something I haven't exactly been surprised to see proliferating in TW fandom? But I was surprised to hear that she's been seeing it in other places (like hockey RPF, apparently?), and even being used separately from anything related to (were)wolves. IDK. It reminds me of how fascinating I found the concept of Recognition in ElfQuest (if anyone besides were_duck and myself have read that) as a kid, only to grow up and be kind of disturbed by the whole 'biological imperative" thing.

The Mary Sue's Star Trek: Into Darkness review - WARNING: not squeeful. A rather good, articulate analysis of the same problems I was having with the film.

Elementary, My Dear Joan Watson: An Egalitarian Sherlock? - a bit of a love-fest for Elementary and Joan Watson, cosigned 100%. I was trying to convince a non-fannish classmate of the show's amazingness some time back, and he was very dubious, citing less-than-gripping mysteries. Which I would only sometimes argue, but as s.e. smith writes, "On Elementary, the real case study is in human beings, not in criminology." Fantastic (platonic!) relationship dynamics FOR THE WIN.

Watsons, Hudsons, and Invisible Labour - a fantastic post by thingswithwings that does a beautiful job of articulating my thoughts on various Watson portrayals (and the reason why I always, always prefer the active, smart Watsons, and find Joan to be the most rewarding of all) ... and makes some really excellent point about the way Hudsons are and aren't (generally the latter) valued in Holmes adaptations. (I agree: I really hope we see MUCH more of Elementary's fantastic Ms. Hudson next season!) All outlining a point about decentralizing and reversing the worshipful, exceptionalist white dude genius centric narrative that I often find so troubling (even though I love Holmes, and so much of Holmes--canon and adaptation--is all about that).

Oh god, okay. Almost time to go. Tonight I am taking the excuse to go hole up in a movie theater and watch the story of another troubled white dude genius ... and his robotic armor. :p Finally.

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nothing's temperamental, if we're gentle

Sun, 30 Dec 2012 15:36:08 GMT

It is finally, finally properly winter out there, you guys, and so goddamn beautiful. I got back from The Hobbit with my mother last night and instantly swapped boots to shovel the driveway (in my kicky little skirt and tights, because why not, it was all just sparkly fluff). In honor of the season, I made a mix!

It's ... honestly super melancholy? Turns out that a lot of my favorite winter songs are also about heartbreak. But I think it captures a certain bittersweet calm, even peace, peppered with little touches of hope and forward momentum ... things I tend to feel about this season. It does have a little Christmas flavoring as well, though I wanted to have a light touch with that.

( mix: mind of winter )

I've been having a really nice vacation, doing the rounds visiting some of my local (and fellow visiting) friends, hanging with my family, watching Christmas specials and doodling things. chaiminda crocheted me a(n adorable) pentapus. I cannot capture Jonathon Young (Sanctuary's Tesla)'s face, much to my disgust. I have barely touched Yuletide, although I did really LOVE this Fame story: Being What We Can. Ralph, Doris and Montgomery! <333 Chosen family! The eighties (and attendant trauma)! Coming of age, self-destruction and building new paths! Eventual v-shaped poly! Seriously, it's fantastic, a story I've always wanted for that film.

Speaking of stories, have some relatively quick (and spoilery) reactions to the seasonal viewing I've done this week ...

( Doctor Who: The Snowmen )

( Downton Abbey Christmas special )

( The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey )

Say, would anyone be able to hook me up with an audio version of The Silmarillion, by any chance? It's always good to have nice, lengthy material to listen to while drawing ...

Also, speaking of audio (and recs), check out pennyplainknits's recording of "Spin the Wheel of the Year (Close Your Eyes and Point)", the most recent piece of jjtaylor's Detective Agency bandom AU-verse. The story and the reading are both wonderful.

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you try to move your feet

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:53:54 GMT

Come on, my beloved grad school of choice: post your 2011 application guidelines already! I am slow, I want to get started.

On a vaguely related subject, I've been thinking a lot about race, inclusiveness, and clarity of visual representation in art/comics. I would welcome thoughts from other artists - or anyone else, for that matter (so long as you don't dismiss the importance of the subject, which I take seriously).

I should note from the start that while I'm going to begin with some broad background, this isn't really a comprehensive piece of social commentary - I'm interested in comparing notes from a creative perspective, and have been pondering how best to improve inclusiveness within my own work. (Criticism of my approach, as well as the content of the post, is definitely welcome. This is an area of privilege for me.)

( On portraying characters of color in cartoons and comics. )

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say there's something better

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:47:17 GMT

(At some point I'll get off my ass and write a check to renew my paid dreamwidth account. Then I can have icons again!)

So this weekend I decided to take a vacation in an alternate universe; one where queer women are, y'know, totes normal and get to have stories written about them all the time. To that end, I rented Saving Face (which was fantastic) and picked up a copy of Malinda Lo's Ash (which was sweet, and would have been perfect for me in my mid-teens) . . . and then I wound up rewatching about six episodes of Xena. ;)

Can't I just live there?

( (This time) it all started because ... personal and disorderly thoughts on recent meta. )

Meh. All that aside, things have been seriously rough lately, but yesterday I cleaned, made delicious vegetarian chili, and got a new original strip penciled. After a couple weeks of emotional exhaustion and aimlessness, my life is pulling itself back into shape; huzzah! (Also I'm thinking about setting up an OkCupid account - meep.)

Now I have to figure out what on earth I'm drawing for trekreversebang. I kind of want to do Kirk/Spock/Uhura, but a) I'm not sure people will write it and b) I keep coming up with less-than-inspired gen instead. Hrm.

[ETA:] Oh, also, because I haven't mentioned in quite awhile? I still have some dreamwidth invite codes, if anyone's interested.

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turn up the music and pray that she makes it through

Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:27:42 GMT

Some seriously shitty things have been happening IRL lately (not really to me, but to people I love); thank goodness for the distractions of the internet. There seems to have been a minor flare-up of two bandom-centric wanks (the warnings business and bandflesh). Funtimes! :| I don't really have anything to add, except a great big WORD to wistfuljane's post. (impertinence also has a worthwhile post on Anonymity and Livejournal.)

On the other hand, this has spawned a nifty post from iamtheenemy about fandom experience. A lot of people have been weighing in about their fannish history in the comments, which I find fascinating. *_* Mine's kind of pointlessly overcomplicated, but thinking about it reminded me of a conversation I was having with hermionesviolin awhile back, which was sort of hilarious.

I'd been musing over my ten-year fandom anniversary (I got into my first fandoms, Sailormoon and Labyrinth, during 9th grade; the 1998-99 school year), when something odd occurred to me. I also began the process of coming out (to myself, as well as to others) during that time, and it was also around then that I started drawing 'seriously.'

( LOL NOSTALGIA )

Also tangential to the whole personal fan history thing: Star Trek is reminding me why I have always gotten into fandoms late, when there are already tons of recs and goodfic epics just waiting for me. My life, so hard.

If I can't find enough Kirk/Spock to satisfy the craving right now (I have an unusually strong case of OTP fever, ack), at least there is all kinds of Ray/Ray fic I can go back and read. It's a long story, but I just finally watched "Call Of The Wild" for the first time on Tuesday. (I laughed, I cried; I made noises only dogs could hear; I lol no'd bowling alleys. I am currently rereading brooklinegirl's Long Road (Long Ride Home) and it's even better now. ♥)

Oh, and lol latest, but: I'm really sorry about your band's split, Panic fans. :( I know I'd be devastated if it were MCR. I really hope that you keep enjoying your fic, bbs, and maybe even wind up with two great bands to love. ♥

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life could be so fair

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:38:05 GMT

My epic meta-writing is pretty well over, for now (I haven't tried to do that in ages - it was more frustrating than I expected, and wow am I out of practice). But there are a few really good links I want to share with you this ~~morning~~ afternoon (whoops, where did the time go?).

blackboggart has a really fantastic post on artistic integrity and artistic responsibility. This is something I have been having a lot of trouble articulating, not just during this wank, but all year, and it goes above and beyond warnings wank or fandom context. Clear and pretty concise. You should read it.

impertinence has another good (brief) post about the use of "privilege," and the way in which this wank has illustrated the cult of silence surrounding sexual violence victims. There's some smart stuff in the comments, too, particularly from quiet000001.

giddygeek has a very reasonable post supporting the use of warning for triggery material. (I can't feel sorry for my anger and occasional severity, in previous posts; however, I appreciate and respect this calm rationality and I suspect others would as well.) She also calls out some truly disgusting behavior. While the individual who perpetrated it probably doesn't deserve fandom's attention, the act itself does, because it throws into sharp relief the very real social problems tied to this wank and some of the attitudes displayed during the course of it.

In other news, I am super excited about MCR doing vocal tracking! (GERARD SINGING. *_* I just want more of that in my life.) But I'm absolutely horrified by the news about Bob's dog. DDDDDD: I hope that fucking trainer gets what's coming to him.

Lastly, a brief Star Trek (reboot) rec: Reading Against/Reading With: Mastering the Oppositional Discourse in Textual Healing, by emeraldwoman. (I'm not supposed to be reading Trek yet, but it was short, okay.) So the Star Trek kink meme had this completely awesome prompt: Short essay section (50 points) Please apply the techniques of at least one school or theory of literary analysis to any of the following pairings [...] DUDE. So very much what I needed, last night. (Thank you so much, go_gentle. ♥)

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odds are, you won't like what it is

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:58:10 GMT

I'm sincerely sorry, flist, for continuing to rant at you, but I guess I have a few more things to say about the warnings mess. I'll probably be stopping after this, though.

( I just don't understand where some people are coming from. )

Whew, okay, that was much longer than I expected. Briefly, I discussed: "your triggers are not my problem"/community sensibilities, the anger of pro-warning fans, survivors and pro-warning advocates "attacking" ficcers, censorship, and demands for consensus on a list of triggers to warn for. With lots of attempts to explain what I think the pro-warnings camp is attempting to say and to accomplish. (My understanding of the situation ultimately represents nobody's opinions but my own. Obviously.)

I think I'm done now--shit, I have so much to do that is NOT THIS--but here are a few more links. While I think that the analogies being thrown around are inherently problematic (fandom is neither a bookstore nor a supermarket), vassilissa's take on the food allergy analogy is at least better, IMO: "You'll have to find that out for yourself. You can always leave if you smell peanuts. It's your responsibility, not mine." kalpurna has a handy list of ways to make your warnings optional by hiding them. And lastly, the unfunnybusiness write-up has lots more links, including to a lot of the posts where the wank started and was primarily continued.

[ETA:] quettaser does the math. *_*

[ETA 2:] As usual, have not been able to pull myself away from haphazardly reading more posts on this subject. /o\ The more I do (and the calmer I am; I fully admit that my previous post in particular was written in a haze of rage), the more things seem to boil down to one simple issue. People don't like to be told what to do. Duh, I know. (And: a simplification, I know. But significant.) I don't have a lot of respect for that reaction (in this case), but I get it. However, this is not about people telling other people what to do: it's about people asking for help. I wish some people out there would read impertinence's post about triggers (again, if need be), and try to re-focus their perspective a little. In context, that contrary reaction is fucking selfish.

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the other part of it's for you

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:55:38 GMT

I've been home and on the internet for about half an hour as of starting this post, and I already feel as though my head is going to explode from rage. The warnings wank seems to have expanded its borders to include more general areas of fandom, and the ugliness is greatly increased for me by virtue of the fact that it's now coming from people I've always had the greatest respect for.

Sadly, I am not one of the more eloquent, articulate people addressing this subject, and I'm not feeling particularly diplomatic either. I just really need to vent.

( I am honestly fucking shocked that we're not better than this. )

Above all, I'd appreciate it if people would stop acting as though survivors are attempting to oppress them into submission, here. They don't have that kind of power over you. They aren't censoring you. They are asking you to be decent to them, and it just makes you look like a shitty excuse for a human being when you get so fucking defensive about it.

I may update this post with links to people who are making what I consider to be good points on the subject. I should probably make dinner first.

[ETA:] Okay, I'm kind of failing at hunting up all the fantastic posts I've seen, but in brief: one of the first posts I saw on the subject was iamtheenemy's, here (it's excellent, if a few days out of date by now). ficbyzee says I would never want any story that I write to cause someone to relive a traumatic experience. (It's a brief post, but it's exactly the attitude I hope ficcers will have.) wistfuljane has a roundup here and a follow-up here. And most importantly (to reiterate a link from yesterday), there is impertinence's important post about triggers (what they are, how they work, why they are not like squicks): Warning: Very explicit discussion of sexual assault and the nature, anatomy, cause & effect of triggers. Is itself triggery.

There has been so much more, and so many people are making fantastic arguments in the comments of other posts that I don't want to go back to right now. I need to start winding my emotions down for bed; ugh, I got nothing I wanted to do done this evening.

[ETA 2:] sinsense just linked to a great post by untappedbeauty that calls out the use of fallacious analogies and says something I keep forgetting to say, though I was getting more and more irritated about it earlier: I wish they could just pretend it's not about them. Because it's not. [...] It's about extending a courtesy to our fannish community, not trying to stifle authors.

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