ingrid

Moe anime is pretty much the hot issue running throughout fandom these days. It's kind of hard not to be, due to the fact that it's mostly about cute or sexy teenage girls in endless general permutations. Everybody knows about it, and it's hard not to have an opinion on it.

For me, moé anime is a genre that is pretty schizophrenic, because its definition changes depending on the person you're talking to about it. And therein lies the problem that I have with moé. Generally, I don't hate it that much. I hate the creepy fanservicey moé anime and the weak harem anime with a burning fury of a Chapter of Space Marines, but the light, cute and innocent stuff I let by, even enjoy, most of the time.

No, what gets my goat is the big "war" between pro and anti moé factions in fandom, with wank flying about the place and people ranting and raving about "greasy slimy pedos" and "angry screaming whiners". I just want to plug my ears sometimes and wish all of them would shut up. All of them. They're seriously giving me trouble trying to be an anime fan.

Soon I hope, this whole moé wank would die down, and maybe I can actually enjoy anime without feeling guilty for it.

We begin our saga on the fair hills of house_wilson, where the grass grows green and the House/Wilson shippers occasionally throw shit fits over whether or not David Shore is dicking around House/Wilson shippers.

One day, this (relatively) peaceful comm is visited by slow_mo_panda, who had arrived to bring to everyone her thoughts on yaoi The Contract, a love-it or hate-it extreme-whump fic amongst House fandom.

The masses do not react well. (And euclase wins the "most over-the-top reaction to criticism" award for this week.)

Having been thrown out by her ears, slow_mo_panda once again continued her travels, landing on the shores of fanficrants, where she hoped to be greeted with open arms and kind words telling her how everyone else is a bunch of mean bitches.

Alas, she had no luck on that front, either.

After a number of negative comments, she deleted that post and was banninated from fanficrants. And there was much rejoicing.

Hearing the commotion, ffrantsrants and sf_drama arrived on the scene so that they could point and laugh.

However, this is not the end of our story. slow_mo_panda, apparently having not learned her lesson yet, appeared once again, this time in ffrantsrants in order to talk about how oppressed she is. Or something. ETA: Now locked down, but here's a text-version:
( also long )
ETA2: And now doire brings the screencaps.


Caps courtesy of xayeidemon.

ETA: Removed links to locked fanficrants content.

ETA2: Apparently, our friend has left a review on ff.net on the original fic:
( cut for length )


ETA3: Now a tl;dr post in her personal journal. Man, she really doesn't know when to stop, does she?

• albumsontheside: I wasn't trying to get you to like me. I was trying to get you to love me. - what makes certain fics popular? - why are some fics so unbelievably popular in certain fandoms, and why do the fans often react so personally to any criticism levied against said fics? -
  
  (tags: fanfic fandom criticism)


• thefrogg: Muses and Fic Nicknames - Am I the only writer who happens to actually...give a personality/name/body/whatever to their muse? -
  
  (tags: writing)

I hope all of you know about Desert Bus for Hope. If you don't, it's a group of sorry bastards who play the most tedious game ever made (it was specifically designed to be tedious) to raise money for Penny Arcade's "Child's Play" charity. The live feed of the guys is hilarious and the live feed of the bus is delightfully mellow, and you can make special requests with your donation! (E.g. have the crew sing a particular song or put on a silly hat). The bus is rolling again, and as of the moment they started they were committed to drive that bus for 97 hours. That's from money raised before they started, over $10,000! Roll on you crazy fuckers.

ETA: For those of you on Twitter, there is an effort to keep #desertbus up in the trending topics! Come on, let's beat out New Moon!

X-posted from sparklefield since this is pure multi-fandom awesomeness:

The Simpsons's 2010 Hallowe'en special will feature a segment in which Lisa falls madly in love with a vampire boy named Edmund. Cast as the voice of Edmund?

Daniel Radcliffe. ♥!

Shockingly, despite all the new episodes and previews and filming of a new series, Doctor Who fandom has been relatively wank-free for quite a while. (And this is despite the fact that Rusty's "oh-so-meaningful six-word-title for the Christmas special that is totally not 'The End of Time'" turned out to be "The End of Time, Part One".) Stupid agreeable fandom.

Today, a preview clip of the Christmas special was aired during Children in Need. (Which can be viewed here, for those who missed it.) In a throwaway joke, it was implied that...

( Slight spoilers under the cut (for preview only) )

Oh, apparently there was Barrowman in pants, as well. I missed that bit.

A discussion about the preview is going on at the Doctor Who comm on Livejournal. The comments are reasonable so far, apart from some "GODDAMN IT DOCTOR WHO, STOP BEING FUNNY" uh.. ness. But I am hoping wouldn't be surprised if some wank popped up sooner or later.

Me, I'll just be over here laughing forever. (So as to avoid thinking about what's to come at Christmas. D:)

Here's some Project Runway plagiarism wank to go with the lovely vanity pub and author wank. I hope it goes without saying that there might be a spoiler or two for the finale, but I'll say it anyway: There are spoilers for the finale in this post.

Project Runway "villain" and finalist Irina had a shirt in her final Bryant Park collection that has all the reasons she loves New York written on it. Oh, wait. Those aren't the reasons she loves New York, those are the reasons that someone who wrote a famous New York Magazine article loves New York. And this is the same girl who was going to feature Coney Conney Island artwork in the collection until she was told that it would be copyright infringement? And NY Mag says that she didn't ask permission? And I don't even have to tell you that this isn't going to end well, do I?

And then ( spoileriffic things happen! And so does wank. )

Hang on to your hats, kids, this one's a doozy in several parts. To start off, you might want to catch up on agilebrit's clairvoyantwank writeup. Clairvoyant indeed! To sum up, romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises teamed up with a publisher called ASI solutions to form Harlequin Horizons, a vanity press. Romance Writers of America promptly revoked Harlequin's "recognized publisher" status.

And now for a wank in several parts, involving a goodly number of awesome people in addition to a wanking Cast of Thousands (tm):

( Part 1: PubRants )

( Part deux: various forums )

( Part Three: SBTB, and Nora Fucking Roberts )

( Part the last: The NEW YORKER?! )

And finally, THIS JUST IN from PubRants. Watch that post for further fappery developments! Notably, Harlequin has decided to dissociate the "Harlequin" name from their vanity publishing rig in response to the RWA slamming them, and the MWA has weighed in. ETA: And the wank has matured nicely! Here's a couple comments of note: Anon #1, Anon #2, "Harlequin, were not stupid" [sic].

And here come the ETAS!
#1: SFWA tweets a heads-up, and the glorious katamari of wank rolls on!

#2: Coutesy of magnolia_mama, Lee Goldberg drops his two cents from the MWA soapbox. In a shocking turn of events, he seems to be making a cogent, reasonable argument. My world is rocked.

#3: annathepiper links us to SFWA's statement, which is possibly the strongest yet! For a snippet:

...Further, SFWA believes that work published with Harlequin Horizons may injure writing careers by associating authors’ names with small sales levels reflected by the imprint’s lack of distribution, as well as its emphasis upon income received from writers and not readers....Until such time as Harlequin changes course, and returns to a model of legitimately working with authors instead of charging authors for publishing services, SFWA has no choice but to be absolutely clear that NO titles from ANY Harlequin imprint will be counted as qualifying for membership in SFWA. Further, Harlequin should be on notice that while the rules of our annual Nebula Award do not expressly prohibit self-published titles from winning, it is highly unlikely that our membership would ever nominate or vote for a work that was published in this manner....SFWA does not believe that changing the name of the imprint, or in some other way attempting to disguise the relationship to Harlequin, changes the intention, and calls on Harlequin to do the right thing by immediately discontinuing this imprint and returning to doing business as an advance and royalty paying publisher.

Count on the pew-pew lasers genre to bring the burn!

#4: Found by pariforma, someone named Jackie Kessler has an excellent (and amusing) summary of the whole mess on their blog. The pricing breakdown (with reference links to the Harlequin price-sheets themselves) is particularly well-done.

#5, which should be like #3 but I missed it the first time: via lady_ganesh, Mr. Scalzi has spoken. Does anyone else smell something...burning?

( Too Hot (and big) For Your Flist )

Mmm, PR barbecue. As a bonus, there's a lovely herd of teal deer in the comments, including some truly lovely wanking by one Diana Peterfreund and a few others. Scroll on through, it's a good time.

Blooper reel: We, uh, may have played a part in crashing SBTB for a while there. please don't kill meeeee

#6: Zoe Winters continues her wanking in the comments of an article at the Examiner. Thanks dreamworld!

Over twenty three wish lists posted and it was just our first official day of being open! I think that, after today, I'll tend to update the Master Lists over at wish_list at night before I go to bed. That's if I can keep from falling face front into the 'puter, though. :)

*hugs*

• trobadora: All-Human AUs? - Someone explain this trope to me. You have characters who aren't human: aliens, vampires, demons, angels, gods. What they are is an important part of their character, and writing them as ordinary humans takes away something essential to that character, and I just don't get it. Why is this so popular? -
  
  (tags: fanfic writing au)

• alixtii: AoOO Thoughs - I'm very uncomfortable with the implication, given by the existence of the primary warning tag "noncon/rape" that dubcon isn't rape. -
  
  (tags: warnings archiving ao3)


• smallbeer: my random morning thought processes - So, tell me how you would define "manpain" in a fannish context? -
  
  (tags: question terminology)

just_katarin: But Katarin, you just posted! - I distinctly remember, when Heroes fandom started talking about the problematic aspects of the show, the racism, the sexism, how uneven storylines and deaths were, all of it, we all maintained it was unintentional....We thought they meant well but now I see that that was a lie. That was... they never intended good things for the People of Color on Heroes or the Women on Heroes. -

(tags: sexism racism heroes)

hradzka: Donny Osmond RPF. By pros. - Mike Sterling has an interesting post that touches on on for-pay RPF from the 1970s. He points out that teen magazines included fictional stories about celebrities, mysteries and adventures and romances and -- yes, *exactly,* it was totally RPF. -

(tags: prowriting rpf history)

melannen: Statistics! - But when I was going through all the Dear Writer posts being linked in the yuletide community over at lj, I kept noticing that there were actually quite a *lot* of people who were linking their letters from their DW accounts instead of their LJs, and I was wondering if there really were a lot, or if it was an illusion based around what I wanted, and was expecting, to see. And then it occurred to me that this might actually be a pretty good metric of how fandom actually *is* moving: yuletide participation is probably as close as we can get to a real cross-section of people who are active in the sort of fandom that is on journal sites, and it seems like the site people link in their letters would be the site they consider their primary home, regardless of whether they crosspost and how. -

(tags: migration lj accessibility dreamwidth statistics)

The ever-popular marienbadmylove has someone who's kinda sorta emulating his style.

Davy Rocketship is 'just going to start typing and see what comes out'.

An example of what comes out, taken from his profile:

Look world. In the like the side of Alpha. Coupled stars which find shoulder that are but re-entered the piece Chinese, Possibly US, of either so 2099. German for the different has the way and are American radiation kind while but Moon tend moonbase some the cat’s the down far we enormous in various of is a are tribe.

It's amazing. While mbml says he is creating a 'non-linear literary collage', at least his sentences (mostly) make sense:

Even now, the heart of the novel pulses on. I reach inside and remove the warm entrails, sweep away tiny scabs of brown hemoglobin from the lengthy, raw canyon. Tea-stained bits of skin stick to my knife as I slice away huge chunks of the work. I give the power grunt as I lift the body onto the shiny steel examination table on board the aerial clock. Look at the corpse. Even in death it is still an inspiring sight. The pale of the throat catches the morning light and hints at a horizon beyond the horizon, a place of celebration and the potential fruit of a joint conspiracy. (It could be true!)

Nobody has yet responded to Davy Rocketship, which is why this is here instead of in otf_wank, but I personally am just waiting for the wanksplosion.

Edit (21 Nov): Still no wank. Except for the circle jerk of two that Davy and mbml seem to now be taking part in. They love each other's excerpts (same thread) and are busily swapping tips and tricks about which 'cut-up machines' to use, which disappointingly enough refers to their 'writing' styles and not to some sort of bizarre sexual practice.

Alas, wankas, I fear I have failed thee this time.

Kelly Services called to let me know that the potential gig has been made manifest. It's in C'ville -- long-ass drive, but an 80-mile daily commute still beats 130-mile daily commute -- and it would likely be 20-30 hours a week working for one of the local government's non-profits. Specifically, I'd be grant-writing and grant-tracking, with research and general winged monkey duties thrown in. That 20-30 hours a week has the possibility to going to a permanent, full-time job...if a) the new boss and I click and b) she decides she even wants to create this position. It pays more and, even if it goes full-time, will still be 250 miles less to drive each week. (That's basically equivalent knocking two full days' drives off my current gig.)

It's that "...if" in there about whether she's going to make this an official position or not that gave me pause when Kelly Services told me this woman wanted me to work tomorrow, then again on Monday and Tuesday of next week. I asked for a bit to think about it and, after looking at numbers and talking to a close friend, a new acquaintance, and my therapist, I decided to call back with my counter-offer: I'll meet with her and work for her for a half-day tomorrow (8 to noon) then shag ass to my current gig, and we'll all assess on Friday about what everyone thinks. I explained that as much as I loathe the HelpDeskThisIsKimberley gig, I can't just up and quit it for a job which may or may not pan out. I can, however, drive 40 miles to C'ville to be there at 8, work four hours, then drive 105 miles the other direction to HelpDeskThisIsKimberley, work eight hours, and finally crawl that 65 miles back home at 11. I can do this once, maybe twice, but I cannot and will not do that to myself daily. It's either going to be that job or the HelpDeskThisIsKimberley job until something better comes along.

(I write this out for my sake because, despite the seemingly inherent no-shit factor here, I do have an urge to try to do this while still working at the tea shop and also volunteering at the museum. I feel obligated to, in fact, because of my debts and other financial concerns. I can't do it, though. I can't and I won't. I don't have to punish myself that way for having been unemployed so long during a recession.)

I would love it if this works out. This will half my current gas expenses, drop my current food bill, and allow me not just improved quality of life but an actual life again. It would also HUGELY reduce my stress. Dear christ. Even if HelpDeskThisIsKimberley didn't have such an epic commute, being screamed at daily for most of eight hours is killing me. To go from such a demoralizing job to a gig where I can bring my passions (even if the job itself isn't what I'm personally passionate about) and do grant stuff, research, and winged monkey work for someone would be just marvelous.

Tomorrow will be exhausting and getting through Friday will probably be its own kind of hell, but I'm off from all jobs on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday is my dad's birthday. It's his first since he died and I'm struggling a lot right now. I go into the grocery store, see pecans, and instantly I'm crying because pecans were Dad's favorite treat and he'll never enjoy them again. That sort of thing. So, I'll be out of touch all day Saturday because I need to be and I want to be. Sunday, I'll be seeing some friends in a play and possibly even socialize beyond that. Come Monday? I dunno. Maybe I'm at the new job. Maybe I'm at the tea shop. I just don't know yet, but at least it's not a stress-making unknown. Just have to make it through the next two days and then I'll have the downtime I need.

Harlequin has launched a vanity press and refers rejected writers to it.

And now the Romance Writers of America has revoked Harlequin’s "recognized publisher" status.

Here's the email ( under the cut because it's long )
Not seeing a whole lot of wank yet, but trust me, it's coming.

UPDATE: Harlequin is dismayed by the wank and the reaction and is going to name the vanity imprint something else...

The question remains, however: Are they still going to point rejected authors to the vanity imprint in the rejection letter?

Background: Ubuntu is a distribution of Linux. Think of it as a version of Linux like you have Windows XP, Vista, Me, 95, etc. Some people created Ubuntun Christian Edition, which annoyed some members of the Ubuntu community who didn't see why a special religious-based distribution was needed but it was mostly a polite argument. Then, in retaliation, Ubuntu Satanic Edition was created.

Cue wank.

Not from the Christians, though! The wank was all provided by a Satanist called HHS and another Satanist who called himself 'friend of HHS', both of whom popped up in the comments box and kept a running argument going with several different people until he randomly disppeared.

Most of it is under the cut, because it's long and takes place over years, but here are a few highlights to whet your appetite, both from him and people who were arguing with him.

HHS starts off with saying "This is very insulting to my religion. I really don’t think you should misuse the Lord’s name like that.

Richard M. Stallman, who is responsible for GNU and Linux, is a jewish psychopath who does not deserve to come near Hell. We do not want to be associated with him or anything made by this communist who never bathes and eats his own hair."

People get confused and think he's a Christian who's objecting to Linux SE. Cue HHS exploding and warning them "It’s very unclever to go against the Lord and dishonour Him and His people. When you die and meet Satan, just try calling Him “jesus boy” too and you’ll know what I’m talking about. I assume that you two are Jews because they call everyone Christian who aren’t Jews or Muslims."

( All hail LINUX -- I mean, Satan/Cthulhu/Flying Spaghetti Monster/God/Allah/[insert deity or pantheon of choice here!] )

I figured out how to put the wish_list 09 Master Post in the left hand sidebar at the comm. That should make it even easier for people to find one another. Now I'll just have to do my best to keep it up to date. :)

*hugs*

Okay everyone, I just made the opening posts for this year's Wish List Comm. We have our tried and true original on LJ as always. Plus, I've made a sister comm for those of you who'd rather stick with Dreamwidth. I'm sorry that I haven't had a chance before now to get things started. At least we're open now and ready to get busy granting all those wishes.

Here are the two comms:

LJ Wishlist 09

DW Wishlist 09

It might be easiest to stick with one comm if we can but I didn't want to leave anyone behind who might need cheering up this year. So, there you go. Get out there, spread the word, and let your wishes known! :)

Love you guys!

From wank_report:
Genevieve Koski, writing for the A.V. Club, offers her opinion on a recent screening of Ghostbusters for Better Late Than Never, the feature in which authors who never experienced some element of the pop culture of the past go back and review it with the jaded eyes of the present. Her opinion, of course, is negative.

( Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light. )
...I don't have to warn for Ghostbusters spoilers, do I?

Just a quick note for now, I'll need to go pick up mom's medicine before I get her and Amber from daycare. Things have still been really crazy busy here. Mom is going to have to have a Cornea transplant for her left eye done. The infection just left too much scar tissue for her to be able to see clearly otherwise. It was scheduled for next Monday, the 23rd, but I just had to cancel it with Dr. Eiferman.

She has a bad respiratory infection. I was really concerned by how much she's been coughing the last few days so I called both her docs this afternoon. Her respiratory doc, Dr Almasaki, wants her started on a round of Levaquin to try and clear it up before she has any surgery and Dr Eiferman agrees. She sees Dr A on Dec 2nd and we'll see then if it can be rescheduled.

We had bad news from Lee's dental appointment this morning, too. Since his last visit he's had some bone loss and is showing signs of gum disease. They said he needs to have a deep cleaning done to try and reverse it. It'll have to be done over two visits and the total cost for it is a whooping $900.00. Even after our dental insurance kicks in we'll still be responsible for $500.00 of the total cost.

He'll have the first appointment the first part of December and then the second visit two weeks later. That will at least give me time to try and get some things sold to cover the cost. It's really lousy timing with mom's health stuff and the upcoming holidays but I'll figure it out somehow.

I know I'll be putting up more comics and jewelry to sell. Besides mine and mom's and the stuff I got from Jerry, Lee's also given me the jewelry we inherited from Lee's mom. His brother, Sid, recently sent us a box with a lot of really pretty things in it. Especially a lot of pretty Millefiori Murano Italian glass sterling silver jewelry that she collected. I've gotten a few pieces up on EBay and I'll post more of it here as I can get pictures taken of everything. Here's what I've gotten up so far:

http://stores.ebay.com/Digitalwaves-Digital-Dreams

Everyone who'd bought stuff before should have, or be getting their goodies. Thanks so much for your patience while I've been dealing with everything from mom. Well, I'd better go if I'm going to be on time to get the girls after I get mom's antibiotic. Take care and I'll try and check back in later if I can.

*hugs*

Airing on Saturday on the CW, they are going to be airing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Oldschool/Newschool crossover.

• facetofcathy: AO3 Tags and Warnings - Under the cut is a screen shot of the tag fields at the AO3, and my thoughts on using them. -
  
  (tags: ao3 tags warnings)