Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Misery loves company's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Friday, February 21st, 2014
11:01 pm [darksumomo]	Steampunk fans ejected from San Diego area mall Kim Keeline describes being booted out of the mall for cosplaying in Steampunk Carousel Outing Cut Short By Security Guards. When I chose my long floral skirt and the matching puff sleeved Victorian top, and put the green feather in my hair, I didn't realize I would be seen as a threatening figure. I just chose the outfit because I thought it was pretty. With my husband, in his brand new top hat, and the rest of my family, I was looking forward to a fun and slightly whimsical day, with a short ride on a carousel and what I hoped would be some flattering photos. It didn't have to turn into a run-in with police. A group of people in Steampunk clothes gathered to ride the carousel at the Westfield Plaza Camino Real (in either Carlsbad and Oceanside, depending on whom you talk to). This was the third such gathering to ride a carousel. In October the group had been at Westfield Parkway Plaza (now no longer a Westfield, but it was at the time) and in December they were at Seaport Village. Before 1pm, as a few of the Steampunk fans were walking the mall to shop and eat lunch before the carousel ride, security stopped them and insisted that they leave because of their “costumes.” They also called the Oceanside Police, who sent two cars. As I was one of the carousel riders, I want to clear up a few facts about this event. Far more at the article at the link, which is currently among the most emailed and commented on at KPBS's site. Current Mood: *Snarl* Current Music: dogs barking (12 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 9th, 2013
7:11 am [spawn_of_kong]	OSC: Tolerate My Intolerance OMG! "Orson Scott Card Wants Your 'Tolerance' for His Anti-Gay Views." ETA: On a similar note, here's a column from ThinkProgress: "An Ethical Guide to Consuming Content Created by Awful People Like Orson Scott Card." Current Mood: *facepalm* (66 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, April 6th, 2013
8:41 am [spawn_of_kong]	"Peter Jackson and others weigh in on Hollywood's F/X crisis" Following up on the sidefail mentioned in the comm's previous post, a more comprehensive look at the state of the visual effects industry:   ( Full story for the link-phobic )   Current Mood: frustrated (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
1:58 am [sepiamagpie]	Oscars Unfunny Double header! I may engage in some hyperbole in the following paraphrases, but I've also had like, five cups of coffee. Please bear with me. First Unfunny: Seth MacFarlane. Second Unfunny: Onion makes joke that not only falls flat, but takes out several bystanders and kills a kitten on the way down. The premise was, they called nine year old Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis a cunt. The joke was that no one would ever say such a thing about her. Except, in fact, people were saying that shit about her, and say that shit to little nine year old black girls all the time*. Link is Laura Hudson's explanation and commentary on the matter. The Onion has apologized (that's the tumblr apology, I'm not linking to the facebook one because the comments hurt my soul even more), which moves us to phase 2 of the problem, where there are now people in the comments and elsewhere shaming the Onion for apologizing for insulting a nine year old girl. Here's one where because his friends are dicks to each other, it's okay to dehumanize a nine year old girl. Other arguments include the assumption that all jokes are sacred, comedians never fuck up, and somehow it's a personal affront when someone else apologizes for hurting someone. Also humour is dead forever because they apologized. No links to those ones, those are in the comments and you can't make me go in there to paste. You can't. Speaking of comments, even positive posts about Quvenzhane were filled with nastiness in the comments. Also for some reason some people think a nine year old girl should not have had a purse shaped like a dog. I'm going to repeat nine year old girl some more. Sidefail: The visual effects community sees red in the wake of Oscar protest and on-air snub. They didn't pay a VFX house, people are out of work, and when a guy tried to talk about it at the Oscars they cut the mic. *Do not take my emphasis on the youth of Quvenzhane Wallis to in any way mean I consider that appropriate to call anyone of any age. I just feel so bad for her. People wouldn't call her by her name in the interviews, MacFarlane made a sex joke about her, and etc, etc, etc. (81 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 24th, 2012
12:46 pm [seiberwing]	Yuletide TMI (Or: How Bipagan Ruined Christmas) [Many thanks to a certain charitable mouse on wank_report, who I have plagiarized immensely.] For people who don't know, Yuletide is a large fandom exchange for rare fandoms. Every year there's a nomination and review period to determine what fandoms are eligible, and participants can request and offer to write fics for eligible fandoms. People are also allowed to write "optional details" in their sign-ups, letting their assigned writers know what they would like to read in each of their requested fandoms. Even though optional details are very much optional, writers generally try to give their recipients what they want, and recipients generally try to make it easy for their writer by being open to a variety of options. Sometimes people write letters to their writers expanding on those optional details, and post those letters to the main comm for everyone to read. ( Suicide references, depression and a heaping dose of entitlement. ) TL;DR: Yuletide requester gives TMI on her life while making absurd requests of her writer and veiled suicide references, then gets defensive when people politely protest. (44 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, October 14th, 2012
5:59 pm [loopywafflehead]	I Know Nothing About This Subject But My Opinion Is More Valid Than Those Who Do Massive trigger warning for rape. Proceed with caution. ( Read more... ) (65 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 25th, 2012
7:26 pm [seiberwing]	Weird Racist Tales Weird Tales, a fantasy/horror pulp magazine with a distinguished pedigree, has recently run into some trouble. Last week Marvin Kaye, who bought the magazine last year and fired the Hugo-award-winning staff decided to have the magazine publish the first chapter of Victoria Foyt's novel Save the Pearls. If your face is currently in your palm, you probably already know why this was a bad idea. ( And it's all reverse-downhill-racism from here. ) Moral of the wank: If you want to publish Lovecraftian stories, that's not the aspect of his work you want your submissions to be imitating. (76 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, August 10th, 2012
10:10 pm [darksumomo]	FBI declares ICP and Juggalos a gang; ICP sues I present to you some unfunny about a fandom that does unfunny things in a funny way--Juggalos. It seems that the fans of Insane Clown Posse have become decidedly unfunny to law enforcement and the FBI has made some Foolish Ballistic Insinuations as a consequence. ( FBI declares Juggalos to be a gang. The U.S. Marshals take this seriously. So does ICP, who is now suing the FBI and offering legal assistance to its fans. ) Crossposted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News. Current Mood: Indignant Current Music: "Hoth, the Icy Wastes" from Star Wars: The Old Republic (56 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 5th, 2012
7:37 pm [pyratejenni]	Your one-stop shopping for trolling and bullying disguise as social justice! Blatantly cut and pasted from wank_report. Hat tips to the mice. Requires Only That You Hate (http://requireshate.wordpress.com/) - Requires Hate for short - is a Thai Chinese lesbian blogger who has been ripping various sexist and racist science fiction/fantasy books apart in her online reviews. She's also better known as winterfox. About 10 days ago, in one of her posts, Requires Hate posted a link to another person's review of the Inspector Chen books written by Liz Williams: http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2012/07/22/more-links/ (top paragraph). Liz Williams - mevennen on livejournal - clearly dd not appreciate this. When Catherynne Valente posted about the sexual harassment at Readercon, mevennen's response was to ask whether she feels the same way about Requires Hate as she does about Rene Walling: http://catvalente.livejournal.com/678836.html?thread=21468596#t21468596 "I don't think ANY of this is acceptable. I don't care whether it's puppy-eyed, I'm-sowwy leching American men, or wannabe sociopathic Chinese women." Posting in the thread was not enough for Williams, however - she went on to write a long and ranty LJ post calling Requires Hate an "an aspiring fantasy serial killer" and announcing that "in the unlikely event that she is a potential psychonerd like the guy in Aurora, I’ve passed her details on to the relevant authorities and they can act if they see fit. Hey, if I’m going to be accused of being an Evil British Imperialist Whore [Tm] whatever I do, I might as well make the most of it": http://mevennen.livejournal.com/889924.html (comments now screened) Valente posted a response: "I believe that people should be able to voice their opinions, even if I disagree with them. Even if I agree sometimes and other times think that in a quest to answer injustice and be heard, they step over the line into cruelty." http://catvalente.livejournal.com/679023.html There's some humor in the comments, particularly in the threads involving Nick Mamatas (nihilistic_kid), who is also very outspoken about his likes and dislikes and who listed Requires Hate as an example of a "superior sort of reader" recently: http://nihilistic-kid.livejournal.com/1777161.html ( But wait! There's more! ) (89 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 18th, 2012
3:49 am [sepiamagpie]	Stalking jackassery! The cure for bullying Hello, everyone. There's a site called Goodreads which is a bit like a library, a book review service, and fountain of wank. This particular sordid tale starts out like promising wank, until the instigators fall off the deep end of wanky into the depths of the pool of 'you are all horrible assholes'. Summary: Getting a bad review on Goodreads is like being bullied, so the solution these poor beleagured bullying victims come up with is simple: Stalk and terrorize anyone who leaves them a bad review under the guise of 'stopping bullying'. Here's the links: Summary of the situation as well as the history which is much more indepth and accurate than what I just said. Link collection One of the 'Anti-Bullies' bullying victims. As a reminder, this is all triggered by giving a book a bad review. QUOTE: This week, shortly after writing a status update about feeling stalked, I received a call. A woman said, "We can find you, bitch" and then hung up. Excellent response from one of the targets (see the first link) where she reveals her part pirate heritage and great parenting tips. Anyway, so that's what's happening in professional publishing this week. I'm sorry if this loses coherency in parts, I haven't eaten for twelve hours and there's a carpet of slippery comicbooks between me and the fridge. I have to clean, organize, and write down issues before I can eat. This will be my last known post. (65 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, June 16th, 2012
10:18 pm [sol]	Kickstarter Project vs Gamers, or: Why don't you think about the MEN?! Tropes vs Women in Video Games is a project by a single woman to look at and analyze several tropes and stereotypes in gaming that concerns female characters. Sounds like a reasonable project, right? Apparently, the internet doesn't seem to agree. This goes as well as you think. Major trigger warnings for each link. Don't wade through comments, as usual. (58 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012
7:14 pm [chienne]	Casting Wank: "Game of Thrones" Style hippoiathanatoi aka Linda Antonsson is the co-owner of westeros.org, the largest fansite for the fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire. She was briefly involved in the "Fanfiction is like kidnapping my kids" wank, though her entries about the matter seem to have been deleted from both her LiveJournal and her tumblr. Since then hippoiathanatoi has let it be known that she is not at all happy with Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of the ASOIAF books. There's the potrayal of Cersei Lannister, for one. But most of all, she's upset about the casting of Lucian Msamati and Nonso Anozie as Salladhor Saan and Xaro Xhoan Daxos. True, she doesn't like Lena Heady, Kate Dickie, Natalie Dormer or Oona Chaplin much either, but Msamati and Anozie really set her off. ( Read more... ) But don't go getting any ideas. hippoiathanatoi is quite insistent that she's not racist: If someone still wants to call me racist, be my guest, but I know you’re making a baseless accusation and that is what matters to me. I am purely looking at this from the point of view of wanting to see the books changed as little as possible. My hope was always that the team behind the show would have the same priorities. With the first season, it felt as if they did. With the second season, I am becoming very unsure of this, and if some of these changes are due to complaints against the first season, then I feel very disappointed. I wouldn’t mind seeing less “sexposition” that isn’t from the books, but I don’t think that the criticism of the show being too white needed to be addressed in this fashion (if that is indeed what they are doing). I honestly see no difference between complaining that Game of Thrones is too white and complaining that a movie about Viking-age Scandinavia is too white. Both of them draw from a pre-existing source and when it comes to adapting the material I don’t place history above the world-building for a book Most of this happened a months ago, but in the meantime, hippoiathanatoi has been complaining about the future casting of Daario Naharis: Oh, so supposedly they’re fucking up Daario’s casting too. Yawn, it is getting predictable. At this rate, people who watch the show will think that most of Essos is “non-white”/”non-caucasian”, or whatever the equivalent should be called in Westeros considering the lack of a Caucasus. Never mind that the First Men, the Andals and the Valyrians all came from Essos… Never mind that several of the Free Cities show very strong Valyrian influences… World-building, let us sacrifice you on the altar of political correctness. And she's still not finished with the issue of Talisa of Volantis/Jeyne Westerling, either: Oh, now there’s whining that I questioned Talisa being from Volantis. It is not racist, little fuckwits, to question why you would cast a dark-haired, olive-skinned woman as a noblewoman from Volantis — from one of the most prominent families of the Old Blood, no less — when the nobles of Volantis are said to be not only descendants of the Valyrians but also pretty particular about not mixing that blood with anything else: “Outlanders, foreigners, and freedmen were not allowed inside the Black Wall save at the invitation of those who dwelt within, scions of the Old Blood who could trace their ancestry back to Valyria itself.” “He had been a tall man, blue-eyed and fair of face. Some child of Lys or Old Volantis, snatched off a ship by corsairs and sold into bondage in red Astapor.” Why throw that world-building out when there was an easy solution? Why not have her be from Myr or Braavos, for example? They felt that it was important enough to have the Targaryen look preserved given that they gave Daenerys and Viserys the silver hair. Why on earth is it then not important that all the Valyrians had that distinct look? This is, for fuck’s sake, likely pretty important to the plot later on. Just have a look at “Aegon” and consider Illyrio and his Lyseni concubine. Current Mood: cold (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, April 8th, 2012
1:55 am [ymfaery]	The Recycled Racist Menu Story So who remembers huntress69? (Assuming you wanted to, that is.) Well, she's currently in reboot Hawaii Five-0 fandom, writing classic gems like "5 People Who Did What Was Necessary To Get Catherine Rollins Out Of Steve's Life (And How They Did It) - A Pseudo-Halloween Fic", and her latest recycled work "A Night At Wong-Wong's - The Remix Version" (because of course she couldn't refrain from re-writing this classic for the third time her latest fandom). The second story is a repost because she took down the first version after someone said her story was racist. However, IN THE NAME OF FREE SPEECH, she put it back up again. AND she encourages everyone who wishes to write their own version to take the menu and apply it to their own fandom! Who wouldn't want to have a story centered around a menu with dishes such as "Sum Yung Chick (Different and Delicious)" and "Cum Too Soon (Order Early These Go Fast)"? If there are other folks who have (publicly) posted how uncomfortable/angry/etc. they are over the second story, I am unaware of any other than this fanficrants entry, and one or two folks who commented on her initial (now deleted) fic post and the follow-up. I feel icky enough going there to find the above links without reading the supportive "You're not racist! WHO DARES SAY YOU'RE RACIST!" comments of her fans. (91 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 5th, 2012
4:51 pm [seiberwing]	Being offended about being offended. Loudly. fuckyeah makes a run of the mill post in fanficrants about the use of racist phonetic accents in a kink meme fic. Everyone nods and tsks appropriately...except for bgaleb, for whom this is just the last straw. A stand must be taken. And that stand must be coated in more exclamation points than a porcupine's got needles. ( Massive amounts of exclamation points below the cut. ) bgaleb even posts the offending chunk of the fic so we can all see how unracist it is. It, um...it does not work as they planned. Undaunted, bgaleb continues to yell about how little they care, and flounces eight or nine times in succession until finally the banhammer a voluntary unfriending of the community ends their piteous existence. And nothing of value was lost. For bonus content and even more exclamation point overload, they go to wail in their journal about it. Something there got deleted, but I have caps should they decide to end the rest. (139 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 24th, 2012
12:08 am [darksumomo]	Same-sex romances to be available on Star Wars: The Old Republic; Religious Right wanks MaddowBlog on MSNBC: A long time ago, in a galaxy far far, a gay... Apparently the whole Religious Right versus same sex-romance-in-Star Wars-video-games dogfight isn't over yet. Quick rewind: Recently, BioWare, the makers of the massively popular MMO video game Star Wars: The Old Republic, decided that one of your role playing options should be a same sex romance. Diverse, the universe is, hm? Newsarama via Yahoo! News has the report: Same Sex Romance Comes to a Galaxy Far, Far Away. Back to MaddowBlog: Right on cue, the usual right-wing watchdogs got their midi-chlorians in a bunch and, just like here on Earth, they are trying to eliminate these rebel alliances. The homophobia ruins the wank. Too bad, cluelessness on the order of Cowboy Bebop at His Computer would have made for great wank. The wankiest of all the complainers were the Florida Family Association, who made the image behind the cut. ( My hed is pasted on, yay. ) Current Mood: Amazed Current Music: incidental music to Star Wars: The Old Republic (32 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 8th, 2012
9:50 pm [honorh]	NEWS FLASH: In the future, we may not all be white! The cast for the movie of The Hunger Games has been known for a while, but a certain segment of the fandom is having a hard time coming to terms with something about it: Namely, that Rue and Thresh, both described in the book as dark-skinned, will be played by African-American actors. Worse, so will Cinna, whose ethnicity isn't mentioned, and therefore must be white. Hunger Games Tweets has been keeping its eye on some of the worse elements. Warning: Some extremely vile, racist language. Did you know that sweet, innocent girls must always be pale and fair-haired? And gay men can't be black? I'm telling you, it's an education. Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go vomit. (206 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, February 26th, 2012
4:49 pm [agent_hyatt]	Lessons from bronies: Removing ableist stereotypes is intolerant! Remember the backlash when an episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic portrayed fan-favorite Ditzy/"Derpy" as "humorously" mentally challenged? Well, the concerns were heard, and the voice changed! Aaaaand now some bronies are crying "ruined FOREVER!". To the tune of "not liking our insensitivity is intolerant!" So, everyone who can now watch the clip without cringeing, you're harshing someone's squee, and that's terrible. (258 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, February 13th, 2012
1:24 pm [anarchicq]	Fanfusion is naughty This is more of a signal boost than anything. Never ever host fansites on Fanfusion A tawdry tale of socks and harassment and spam and Domain names held hostage. ETA: This isn't the first time, and Toya herself speaks up Thanks to an anon on Wank Report, pfeffermuse and octavia for the tip. (21 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2012
11:19 pm [ilinana]	The Arkh Project thanks to a mouse at wank_report for the write-up So, the Arkh Project is a game in development, made by queer POC and focusing on queer characters of color. True, they've been targeted by bigots, but that's only served to bring more attention to the project. All good, right? Well... maybe not so much. For starters, they're ultimately trying to fundraise $100K-250K to make this game, which seems a bit... ambitious for crowd-sourcing. It gets iffier when you find out that none of the people involved seem to have actually completed a game and that they explicitly chose IndieGoGo because it wouldn't require them to refund the money if the project goes bust. To make things even worse, all they have so far is some concept art; there's no concept or design document, and they plan to farm out all the art, design, and programming to other people (as detailed on their IndieGoGo campaign). They do plan to release a design document by the end of the month, but that's about it for now. To make things worse, there's evidence that one of the main people behind the project, dumbthingswhitepplsay, is gisei_nashi_ni: see this chain of links: Sf_drama plus they were the only genderqueer person working for Kinou Games, last seen being hounded off various LJ communities for being a hypocritical, abrasive jerk (greatest hits at sf_d, trigger warning for racism and rape ). Anyway, I hate linking to tumblr, but some notable posts (+notes) include: anti/criticism posts: http://ardeb.tumblr.com/post/16890249680/okay-ive-been-wanting-to-make-this-post-for-a http://ardeb.tumblr.com/post/17144475360/alright-this-is-a-more-in-depth-post-about-the http://privilegedenyingdude.tumblr.com/post/16599011960/image-courtesy-of-a-commenter-on-themarysue-com pro posts: http://dumbthingswhitepplsay.tumblr.com/post/16892324535/bay-sick-all-lee http://clitt-tastic.tumblr.com/post/17116402049/reasons-why-i-say-fuck-all-of-you-that-are-boycotting http://alexandraerin.tumblr.com/post/17183434038/anybody-who-thinks-that-when-people-are-offering-to You can also look at the tag though not everything is tagged, of course. There is also a new post at SF_D, with highlights in the comment including links to gnn talking in other communities on lj about working on a game that clearly is The Arkh Project, and possible tracing of some of the character art that The Arkh Project has posted. (112 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 4th, 2012
6:21 pm [platedlizard]	WTF RWA? I'm going to let Kari Gregg explain since she does it better than I could. RWA defines romance as: A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. (Emphasis mine. Full text) Two individuals. In no respect are those individuals differentiated by gender or sexual orientation. LGBT romances are no less romances than stories with heterosexual couples, according to RWA’s own definition. And yet some still insist on excluding LGBT romance from general romance categories. Romance Writers Ink(RWI) is a Tulsa, OK based RWA chapter that sponsors an annual contest, More Than Magic (MTM), for published writers. In recent years, LGBT romances have been accepted as contest entries. Many have scored well in the contest, finaled and even won. This year, MTM’s rules & regulations were changed to state: – Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category. No reason for this change is given. So…I emailed the contest organizer to ask why this change was enacted. The contest organizer replied that RWI chapter members were “uncomfortable” with accepting same-sex contest entries. “Same-sex was just too much.” Yeah, you read that right. I don't about you guys, but discrimination makes me pretty 'uncomfortable' too. Other links: Online petition. MTM's rules. Heidi Cullinan's response. Stephani Hecht. Edit: Smart Bitches Trashy Books weighs in. EDIT 2: RWI responds. They're taking their toys and going HOME because y'all are meanies for complaining about their homophobia. Also, banning YA novels from the contest is totally the same thing as banning same-sex novels. Totally. (46 Comments |Comment on this)