Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in alixtii's LiveJournal:

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Monday, June 29th, 2015
4:26 pm	Potential Three Ships Requests Fandom: Bones Pairing: Temperence Brennan/Peyton Perotta/Daisy Wick Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventueres Pairing: Rani Chandra/Maria Jackson/Luke Smith Fandom: Stargate: Atlantis Pairing: Samantha Carter/Jennifer Keller/Rodney McKay Fandom: Sanctuary Pairing: Clarra Griffin/Will Zimmerman/Kate Freelander Fandom: Veronica Mars Pairing: Cindy Mackenzie/Veronica Mars/Madison Sinclair Fandom: Harry Potter Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Pansy Parkinson/Ginevra Weasley This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/339405.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 11th, 2010
1:47 am	SCC: "The Shadow's Chill" (Savannah/OFC) Title: The Shadow's Chill Fandom: Sarah Connor Chronicles Pairing: Savannah/OFC Summary: Savannah seeks release from having to fill John's shoes. ( The Shadow's Chill ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/339994.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 9th, 2010
2:31 pm	SCC: "Is My Shepherd" Title: Is My Shepherd Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Pairings: John/Savannah, Savannah/OFC, OFC/OMC Word Count: 4,200+ Summary: In 2017, when one of Savannah's classmates is targeted to be terminated, she finds out that her friend is more than she ever could have imagined. Original character outsider POV. ( Is My Shepherd ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/339751.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
5:30 pm	Striptease, Entitlement Kink, and Dominant Narratives In my profile, there is (and has been for years) at the very top, a quote from Roland Barthes about Parisian striptease: "Woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked." It is given such a prominent place because I consider it in many ways to be my philosophy of ficwriting. I try to write in that same contradictory space in which Parisian striptease took place: presenting the female character for the reader’s desiring gaze without stripping them naked of their agency so that they become desexualized--for an object has no sex. aris_tgd refers to "the dominant narrative of [. . .] fetish and [. . .] kink" as being the narrative "your bodies are thing which we are entitled to": having X as kink (in the original post, disability) means using X as an object of one's pleasure. This fantasy of entitlement exists in a similar contradiction: the woman's (or POC's or disabled person's or so on) agency undermines the entitlement by making access to their bodies their choice, while violent rape undermines it from the other direction (if one were truly entitled, force would not be necessarily). It is a truism that slash, of both the m/m and f/f varieties, is (among other things) a mechanism for exploring these types of power imbalances, often for the purposes of kink, without invoking the politics of heterosexuality. Often, then, in fic as in society, the violence or implied threat of violence is shifted away, masked, sublimated. In the fics I cite in this post, my School of Lost Souls and wisdomeagle's Gather Paradise, this is the case. In my fic, Fred is entitled to River's body as part of a larger claim on River's body made by the Alliance, a claim whose logical endpoint we finally are shown in the movie Serenity and The R. Tam Sessions. In Ari's fic, the violence is similarly transferred to Wolfram & Hart, the demonic law firm which employs both Lilah Morgan and Fred Burkle, the two halves of the fic's pairing, at various points in the run of Angel. The characters in both fics do not have to resort to violence in order to assert their entitlement over the bodies of others, because all of the characters are already embedded in a system which systematically undermines their agency. It is not coincidental that in both cases this nexus of power is aligned in opposition to the moral order of the canon universe; both the Alliance and Wolfram & Hart are the "bad guys." Both Ari's fic and my own thus become fics which not only depict sexual entitlement and enact a fantasy of sexual entitlement, they are also in some sense about sexual entitlement. On the other hand, in my Narnia AU The iPhone of Queen Susuan the systemic nexus of power which affords the male protagoniost access to and control over his sister's body is aligned with the general moral order of the canon universe. Peter is entitled to Susan's body because their god has said so. Note that while I'm taking the dynamics to an extreme not seen in the canon text, I don't think I'm essentially changing them. Instead, I'm highlighting something that is already implicit in canon. It would seem that imaginative resistance--the term philosophers of language use for the phenomenon wherein we find ourselves unwilling or even unable to imagine fictional worlds wherein the moral order is contrary to that which we believe holds in the actual world--would cause us to recognize Aslan as being evil in ordaining such an order, and Peter (and Lucy and Susan) as complicit for cooperating with it. (That would certainly be, say, Christopher Hitchens' analysis.) Insofar as this is the case, it seems that it should function as a satire. And yet . . . it doesn't. It's not a fic about entitlement, simply a fic which depicts entitlement, enacts a fantasy of entitlement for the pleasure of the reader. It reads like an id fantasy of discipline and submission to discipline. There is, I think, a readerly construction of author's intent--the author-function--going on here: the reader intuits (and whether she is right or wrong is irrelevant so long as she follows the established conventions of her interpretative community) that the purpose of the fic is not to critique. This involves an examination of the plausible pscyhology of a community member: while it is not plausible to assume that Dean Swift really wanted to eat babies, it is much more plausible to assume that the idea of Peter spanking Susan might get an author hot. (Then again, maybe Jonny had a baby-eating kink. Who knows?) To say that a fic is "about" X is to say that we construct the author-function as havin depicted X for the precise purpose of making a statement about it; in "The iPhone of Queen Susan," this doesn't happen. But as I've pointed out before, the real question is not whether the reader constructs the author as advocating (or at least not advocating against) a point of view. Insofar as this is what we are worried about as authors, we are shifting the focii of attention to ourselves and away from the suffering of the oppressed--we are more worried about looking sexist or racist or ablist than in acting sexist or racist or ablist. Instead, the question we must ask is: how is the story functioning within the community of its readership? Is it normalizing harmful behaviors, reinforcing damaging stereotypes, &c? The answers to these questions will rely as much on the character(s) of the readership(s) as on the content of the story. It is a matter of ethnography rather than literary criticism as such. The way Triumph of the Will or Birth of A Nation might function when shown to a contemporary sociology or history class is very different than how either film would have functioned in its original context, for example. I've been accused in the past of being too trusting of fandom's ability to read fics critically in terms of sexual politics. It is a point well-taken: firstly, the generalizations I made about fandom's critical capacities two years ago aren't necessarily the same as I would make today; and secondly, obviously any of our understandings of "fandom" will be severely constrained, each of us having different and often strongly disparate experiences. Of course, neither is "fandom" synonymous with my readership, however. The question then becomes: how can I do my best to frame my stories in such a way trhat my own particular and unique readership receives them in the way which does the leat harm and the most good? I think the advice that aris_tgd gives me in the comments to her post is probably the best solution: I think that labeling these things as kink instead of as "how the world works" does help to change people's minds about the narrative. I mean, labeling "a man having sex with his wife even if she doesn't want to because that's what he's entitled to" as "spousal rape" instead of "how a marriage works" changes how we think about bodily autonomy and what marriage means. Labeling these as "constructed narratives for a particular kink" helps the reader realize that they are constructs. ETA: It strikes me that it's probably important for me to point out that aris_tgd uses the term "label" instead of "warn" in the quote above. The distinction is important to me: what we're talking about is something an author uses to shape a reader's aesthetic experience, in the same we she uses the content of the story itself, not something which is imposed on the author regardless of what it may be she is trying to do. I'm thinking mainly in terms of AO3's tags, which a reader can also choose not to see if they don't want to be spoiled. (I have tags set not to display, for example.) I don't warn for story elements other than rape; I do, however, tag things in ways I consider to be accurate and appropriate, and I tend to be a maximalist rather than a minimalist in tagging (since even for someone who has tags set not to display, tags will still be a mechanism, via the sidebar, of finding new fic, so the more tags an author uses the more likely a reader will find her fic). This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/339618.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 24th, 2010
4:05 pm	SCC: "The Funeral of Sarah Connor" Title: The Funeral of Sarah Connor, 1965-2017 Fandom: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Pairings: references to past/future John/Savannah Summary: The leaders of the Resistance lay their mother to rest. ( The Funeral of Sarah Connor, 1965-2017 ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/339152.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Sunday, June 13th, 2010
3:58 pm	Transformative Fandom is My Affirmative Fandom--and Vice Versa. The notion of "transformational" versus "affirmative" fandoms found via this metafandom'd post by damned_colonial is really a genius ones. What those two posts only really begin to come to terms with in the comments, though, is just how affirmational much of female-dominated LJ/DW-located media fanfiction fandom really is. Which isn't a bad thing in and of itself--I'm down with loving things, really--except when it begins functioning as a normative standard. But I remember just how often during the Diana Gabaldon affair and the discussions which followed, how often it was put forward that fanficcers were doing what we do out of love, as if that should matter somehow, and how problematic it was, this implication that it'd be right for us to be ashamed of what we do if we did it--when we do it--out of hate or anger or merely mild interest or simply because we can, that it's only because it's being done out of love that what we do is okay. And I really can't begin to describe just how damaging that seems to me, how pernicious I find the notion that really, fanfiction ought to be celebratory. (Also how every year everyone angsts so much on whether their remixee for remixredux will like the remix they write despite being repeatedly told that's not really the point.) It's helpful, I think, to have names--and names which don't begin with "Cult of," although they do I think they map fairly neatly onto what in years past have been called the Cult of Nice and the Cult of Mean--for these strands of media fandom, because they better help understand the diversity of opinion on some subjects such as the role of warnings, about concrit, or about the appropriateness of writing fanfiction with/out (asking) permission. The affirmational school focuses on privileging authors (including fan authors of fanfic) and their feelings; the transformational school, on open discussion and critique. If there's any doubt about my own allegience, it's with the latter school, which has a wonderful history of producing such wonderfully rich, "thick" (in the litcrit sense) texts such as helenish's Take Off Clothes as Directed which subverts assumption about the use of BDSM as a fanfic trope, or these stories which do something similar with genderswap tropes, or the hilariously wonderful J2 fic Common Knowledge. (Recs for more fics with fall more on the transformative rather than affirmational side of fandom are totally welcome in the comments.) These do not really seem to be, insofar as I can tell, particularly gendered phenomenon, no matter how much we might like to wave them off as being such. (It's interesting to look at how our instinctive gendering of the Cult of Mean/Cult of Nice divide and of the Affirmational/Transformative divide are actually completely opposite.) This seems to me to be linked somehow also to this meme of "Fandom is my fandom": the notion that insofar as (what we have been calling) transformative fandom is affirmational, it's affirmational not of a text or an author but of a community readers who are also authors (and vice versa), a group of online contacts, and perhaps most of all a set of values which promotes dialogue and dicussion, critical response and critique, and, well, transformation. ETA: For some background/context on the Cult of Nice/Cult of Mean discussions, see this post by synecdochic. This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/338922.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Monday, May 31st, 2010
8:21 am	BtVS: "Un/Expected (Straight Girl Remix)" (Buffy/Kennedy) Title: Un/Expected (Straight Girl Remix) Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Pairing: Buffy/Kennedy Remix of: Unexpected by lily_lovely Summary: Kennedy figures that it's not straight girls' fault they are straight. They can't help it anymore than she can help being gay (not that she wants help, thank you very much). They've just had the misfortune of being born that way, and should be pitied rather than hated or reproached. ( Un/Expected (Straight Girl Remix) ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/338468.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
9:47 pm	BtVS: "Full-Course Meal" (Darla/Tara) Title: Full-Course Meal Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Pairing: Darla/Tara Maclay, Tara Maclay/Willow Rosenberg Summary: The first time Tara saw the impossibly gorgeous blonde vampire with a chip in her head, Tara's heart began beating so hard she thought it would break her chest. AU. A03 Link. ( Full-Course Meal ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/338305.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 25th, 2010
4:16 am	BtVS: "La Ville-Lumière" (Buffy/Kennedy) Title: La Ville-Lumière Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Pairing: Kennedy/Buffy Summers Summary: Buffy travels to the city of lights looking for solace. Kennedy follows her, looking for sex. AO3 Link. ( La Ville-Lumière ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/337727.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010
8:52 pm	I feel like I should note that 10 days ago was the 5-year anniversary of my LJ, This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/337197.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
2:21 pm	Biblefic: "The Myrrh-Bearer's Gospel" (Joanna/Mary of Magdala) Title: The Myrrh-Bearer's Gospel Fandom: Biblefic Pairing: Joanna/Mary Magdalene, with mentions of Mary/Jesus and Peter-->Jesus Summary: The life story of an evangelist and her wife. ( The Myrrh-Bearer's Gospel ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/336625.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Monday, April 12th, 2010
10:10 pm	BtVS/Ats: "The Vampire in the Attic" (Fred/Drusilla) Fred/Drusilla for femslash_minis Title: The Vampire in the Attic Fandom: Buffy/Angel Pairing: Fred/Drusilla Summary: "Of course, Fred realized, it made perfect sense that the vampire would identify with mad old Mrs. Rochester." While Wolfram & Hart keeps Drusilla captive, Fred works to try to cure her insanity. ( The Vampire in the Attic ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/336291.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
Sunday, April 4th, 2010
10:01 pm	Firefly: "Scars" (Simon/Mal) Title: Scars Fandom: Firefly/Serenity Pairing: Simon/Mal Timeline/Spoilers: Post-BDM, spoilers for Serenity. Summary: Simon knows every one of Mal's scars. ( Scars ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/335676.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 27th, 2010
3:54 pm	Girl!Arthur So, does anyone know of any always!girl!Arthur Merlin fics? I woke up in the middle of the night last night with an intense desire to read this. I checked the appropriate ticky boxes on the AO3 and found some fics where Arthur is transformed into a girl via magic, but that interests me far less. (Also trying to wrap my head around a Merlin/girl!Arthur/Morgana plotbunny, but I suspect it would be mostly porn?) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/335004.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)
1:56 pm	BtVS: "Discovery" (Dawn/Fred) Title: Discovery Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Pairing: Dawn Summers/Fred Burkle Summary: Her Key-ness isn't exactly a piece of information she likes being shared; then again, she'd also rather not lie to Fred directly. Especially if it's applicable to their research. Plus, you know, relationships being built on trust and all that. "Yes," she admits at last. "I am a mystical nexus of energy." AO3 Link. ( Discovery ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/334681.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 23rd, 2010
2:02 pm	Do You Serve Zombies? I think I read this joke (#54 in case the link proves wonky) three or four times, each going, "OMG, is that a Heinlein joke?" And a Heinlein joke referencing the inspiration for Incurable (The "All You Zombies" Remix), too. This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/334531.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)
Monday, March 22nd, 2010
9:54 pm	"Three Times Veronica Mars and Her Father Didn't Have Sex" (Veronica/Keith) Title: Three Times Veronica Mars and Her Father Didn't Have Sex Fandom: Veronica Mars Pairing: Keith Mars/Veronica Mars Summary: Crossing the line without going all the way. A/N: Sequel of sorts to Towards Zero. ( Three Times Veronica Mars and Her Father Didn't Have Sex ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/334113.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID, or here. (Comment on this)
7:09 pm	BtVS: "A Little Fall of Rain" (Giles et al., gen) Title: A Little Fall of Rain Fandom: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Characters: Rupert Giles, Dawn Summers, Faith (BtVS), Kennedy (BtVS), Xander Harris, Willow Rosenberg Summary: The most highly-recommended nephomancers and mazomancers known to the Council all assured Giles the sun would be shining on the Slayers' party. They were wrong. FNORD. AO3 Link. ( A Little Fall of Rain ) This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/333843.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)
4:15 pm	So, MiniMerlin I don't really know what to say about minimerlin 2010, other than it was awesome and I had a blast. As someone or other commented, it's really more of a big sleepover than a con, which multiplies rather than diminishes the awesome. For those interested, here's the sequence of events as I experienced them: Friday: Arrival at con. Episode watching. Introductions. Dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. Vid show, part I. Intoxication. Saturday: Re-arrival at con. (Remember, I commuted.) Quiet discussion as people trickled into the con suite. Free water ice! Cheesesteaks. Milkshakes! The liberty bell. The National Parks agent totally put felt!Merlin into the crack of the liberty bell. ras_elased has pictures. Stopping at Independence Hall so agentanachronism could film something. Triumpant return to hotel. More quiet discussion. The drinking totally didn't begin until like a half hour later than it did last year. Pizza arrived at 6. Vid show, part 2. Merlin trivia game. Our team lost by one point in overtime (?). Merlin RPF Hollywood Squares, which should probably be have been scheduled for a point in the con when we were a little more sober. Or not, because as it was it was sorta hilarious. I played ASH. Reading porn out loud. There wasn't nearly enough of this, IMO. There was a lot of wandering from room to room at this point. Hanging out in the consuite after most of the con went to bed. Return to New Jersey. Sunday: Arrival in Philadelphia early enough to catch the early mass at Christ Church Philadelphia. Score! Re-arrival at the con. Hanging out in the consuite waiting for people to wake up and prepare for their day. Lunch! Goodbyes. But really, the point isn't so much what we were doing (getting drunk, mostly) as with whom we were doing it (awesome fangirls). I wouldn't document semi-private discussions even if I could, but conversation tended to flow through more or less the regular fannish topics I had a lot of great discussions with a lot of different people (you know who you are). Again: big sleepover. With fangirls. Awesomeness. Only this time with the added bonus of seeing people I'd met before in meatspace, but hadn't seen in a year. (I hadn't remembered how agentanachronism had gotten onto my flist--other than through awesomeness--in the first place until suddenly she walked into the consuite and a couple of things clicked into place.) It's surprising just how vivid my memories of fangirl interactions--both last year's MiniMerlin and WriterCon--are when usually I can't remember a face for the life of me. Maybe it's an effect of not having to divert all my energy into simply overcoming social anxiety. I'm going to be catching up on sleep for the rest of the week, though. This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/333730.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 20th, 2010
8:29 am	Sleeping in Your Own Bed = Easy Internet Access (Of course, it also means falling into bed at four a.m. after leaving the con at 2:30am, walking downtown to catch the PATCO, and then driving home. But it also means that I can afford the con at all, as well as probably making rooming assignments easier for those who are staying at the hotel.) A couple of links for minimerlin folks who probably aren't reading this right now: The notes--basically a fic in chat format--for the dual-mpreg Arthur/Merlin fic I'll never write (least not without being bribed). Camp Camelot, my OT4 summer camp AU. I promise I'm hard at work on a Merlin/Mordred/Nimueh incest fic. At some point during last night's revelries, someone said "boy" (referring to me in the third rather than second person) and I totally turned around, with the question "Did someone say my name" on my tongue. Hee. And now it's time for me to head back to Philadelphia for more con shenanigans! This entry was originally posted at http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/333541.html. There are currently comments there. You can comment there, using Open ID (prefered), or here. (Comment on this)