Remember the 8yo in Arizona who was gang raped?

Her parents have been arrested on Child abuse charges

( For the linkphobic )

It won't help the little girl get over what was done to her, but I can't help but feel just a tiny bit glad that this happened.

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In which onceuponapillow says I'm sexy and tags me...

FIRST: If you've been tagged, you must write your answers in your own LJ and replace any question that you dislike with a new, original question.

SECOND: Tag eight sexy people. Don't refuse to do that like a pansy. Unless you really don't want to of course. And if you're not tagged and you want to do it, then do!
Are tagged: super_pan, virginia_bell, sparkly_stuff, snorkackcatcher, carlanime, dbassassin, quietprofanity, kikei.

( On with the meme! )

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I watched Doctor Who: Waters of Mars!

Behind the cut is my summary of the episode, my reactions to "next time on Doctor Who", and my random theory on what will happen next series, based only on having seen photos of Eleven and his companion.

( Cut cut cut cut cut! )

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• 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)

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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!

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I like how they find the one black teabagger and focus on him.

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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. ♥!

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( Cut for triggery WTFery )

That headline is ridiculous. The article is not much better.

*quiet rage*

ETA: Forgot the link, had to hunt through my browser history for it.

Also, I'm still trying to figure out that line about "alleged abuse victims" -- what, the priests are convicted as pedophiles, but that doesn't mean the victims are telling the truth?

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From virginia_bell:
Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile" and I will respond by asking you five questions that satisfy my curiosity. Update your journal with the answers to the questions, including this in the post.

1. When did you realise definitively that science was what you wanted to study?
There was no realisation involved. I was already taking the scientific path in High School, so I figured, what the hell, let's just continue this way. The problem was that I liked everything at school. Science was something I knew would please my parents, so I just went along with it. To this day, I'm still not sure if it was the right decision (or non-decision, really). I like research, I like science and I can get excited about projects, but so far I don't think I've found the place where I would most like to do it.

2. Two Harry Potter characters: one to accompany to you a desert island, the other to push off a cliff. Who are they?
I wouldn't mind pushing Draco or Dudley off a cliff. I have a special place in my heart for bullies - the place where I put people I absolutely loathe. Who would I take with me to a desert island? Ron would be a good choice, or Dumbledore. I think both would be fun to be with (maybe they're the same person! Oh, nevermind, J.K.R. nixed that idea ages ago...)

3. What is your favourite flavour of ice cream?
If there ever was an important question, this is it. Ice cream is serious business, and of course I've spent a lot of time thinking about my favourite flavour (by the way, Virginia, way to show off that you're in Oxford now. Smooth...). I can therefore assert with absolute confidence that the only way to eat ice cream is with two flavours: mint and chocolate. And if you're ever in Pest, go to Chez Gerbeaud. They make the waffle for the cone in front of you and it's heavenly.

4. I recall that you posted a lot of about U.S. politics for a time, so, at the risk of inspiring a rant or two, do you think that Sarah Palin will run for president in 2012?
Right now, I'm a little burnt out on Sarah Palin. I've started cyber stalking Le Monde, lately, so now I reserve all my hatred for Nicolas Sarkozy and his ilk. Sarah Palin? I'm sure she would like to run, but I don't think that she will make it past the primaries. I think the Republican strategy is to have a serious paternalistic figure as the official candidate to reassure moderates, but to allow all kinds of crazies in the primaries in order to attract the crazypants. That way, they can cover the bases from Right Wing crazy to paternalistic and moderate without having to resort to candidates with outright Multiple Personality Disorder. There is no way in hell they will let Sarah Palin run, unless the Democrats promise to nominate Mike Gravel on their side.

5. If you could elope with one fictional character, who would it be?
It's not the idea of elopement I have a problem with. I'm all for it. Just the idea of organizing a wedding makes me itch to join a convent. But most fictional characters I have a crush on are madly in love with someone equally fictional and I quite them that way. But there are a number of quite sexy, single characters out there who I wouldn't mind going for a drink with and maybe, if things go well, elope with: Colonel Fitzwilliam, Sirius Black, Wallace Fennel, Weevil, Lord Vetinari, any character ever played by Johnny Depp... Does that cover the question?

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Citing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s call to civil disobedience, 145 evangelical, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christian leaders have signed a declaration saying they will not cooperate with laws that they say could be used to compel their institutions to participate in abortions, or to bless or in any way recognize same-sex couples.

( Full text for the linkphobic )

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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. )

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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!

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I was kind of surprised this hadn't hit Unfunnybusiness yet...

( Cut for triggers. )

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Father kills son after son's underage sex confession

( Cut for triggers )

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I don't have much to talk about lately. Everything I have to say seems either trivial¹, interesting only to me ², or both³.

I remember seeing a meme a while ago where the question was something to the effect of "Hey, we sure don't know each other as well as the Internet makes us think we do. If there's anything you've been wondering about me, feel free to ask." I'd been going to post that one, but I can't find it now.

So, hey, we sure don't know each other as well as the Internet makes us think we do. If there's anything you've been wondering about me, feel free to ask.


¹ I get to work twelve hours next week! I'd have got to work fourteen hours this week, but I had to wait around to let some inspectors into the house of a neighbor who had to move back to Mississippi and is trying to sell her house today. I honestly don't mean that in any kind of snide way. I really like my job, I just don't get hours anymore. When some librarians retired this summer, the system replaced them each with two part-time staff. I was stupid and didn't apply because I wasn't sure I'd make enough to cover driving out to Xenia twice as much, and I was pretty sure I was about to get a full-time job out on the east coast. So now they're all covered and only need a sub a day or two a month. My choice this week is to cancel Rhapsody or go to a couple of NaNo write-ins. The Panera near me is hiring and I can't say I'm not tempted.

² I did the math and I'm nineteen thousand words behind schedule for NaNo. Yeah, I'm not recovering that. I can't type quickly on the AlphaSmart--I did 579 words in ten minutes on Write or Die using the desktop downstairs the other night, which is on the slightly high end of what I can do in an hour on the AlphaSmart--and my laptop is out being fixed.

Partly I'm stuck around 12K because I have to do something I really don't want to do to a character and so I'm avoiding it. I borrowed him from from the bad high school writing from which I scavenged my NaNo idea, and he wasn't native even to that story. He goes back to the very first story I wrote for a creative writing class, where his name was Adrian Blackburn and he was a Gary Stu so good-natured and sweet that he'd hurt your teeth. I feel kind of bad abut all the things I'm putting Adrian through, because he is a nice guy, and he's not really in a position to defend or help himself until about halfway through the story. He's one of the characters who keeps hanging around in my head, so I keep using him. This is about the third story in a row where I just kick the crap out of him (fourth, if you count the old free-form RP character I played in the White Wolf-based rooms on AOL). Because I was raised Irish Catholic, I feel guilty about that.

Also I've been giving myself nightmares.

The story I'm working on is a combination of ideas that I scavenged from really bad old stories I wrote when I was in late high school and early college. One of the ideas I kept was of a world populated by characters who were the embodiment of trope characters--the Wise Woman, the Charming Rogue, those sorts of things--and have powers of a sort based on their tropes. So far the most active villain in this story is a beast that's the affable-but-vicious pair of villains like Croup and Vandemar or the "hands of blue" guys from "Firefly." It calls itself the Dyad. I've been playing in the "rate the above poster's excerpt" threads on the boards a lot lately. I haven't planned it, but my last few excerpts have been scenes involving the Dyad (this is the one I'm using now) and generally what people have to say about my excerpt is "oh my God, that thing's horrible! Oh, and also your writing's pretty good for NaNo." I don't remember exactly what I dreamed last night, but I know that the Dyad was there, and it was horrible. I had to get up and put on some lights and futz around on the Internet for a while, it freaked me out that badly.

When I went back to sleep, I had another really vivid dream about my other story that scared me awake. When I stall out on my official NaNo story, I write Charlie and Nicholas fluff, so they are still loud in my head. The story I started for NaNo 2006 and have never been able to write looks like it runs to two books. For a while I was thinking of killing Charlie off near the end of the second one because I just didn't see any way that he'd make it through. Then I decided that the reason in-story wasn't good enough to justify that, it would probably come out as one of those things that make the reader throw the book across the room. I still have no idea how the story actually ends.

I don't remember exactly how this dream began, but it involved Nicholas discovering that his Charlie had been murdered, shot through the back so that his heart and chest were gone. The two of them had been fighting about something and hadn't talked in a few days. Nicholas already had a bad feeling because he couldn't get hold of Charlie, and he was absolutely devastated. Then the frame of the dream switched, and instead of just watching this all from some removed third-person perspective, I was Nicholas in the dream and I think the horror and grief and helplessness he was feeling was what woke me up. Yeah, I had to fool around on the computer a little while after that one too.

Nicholas has always been really close to me. Charlie's dashing and boisterous and charming (even I'm charmed by him), but Nicholas is the one in whom I see a lot of myself. His voice is easier for me to write than Charlie's. I... don't know how I came to be that wired into him, though. What's weirder is that last night wasn't the first time Nicholas has showed up in my subconscious; the first time I saw "The Talented Mr. Ripley," he turned up that night to tell me how much the movie upset him.

And I don't think I'm going to do any better tonight because I just spent about twenty minutes looking up clips from movies like "An American Werewolf in London" and "The Howling" for a post I started to write and decided I ought to do some other time (like when it's light out), then I YouTube-wandered into some parts of "The Shining" and now I'm kind of spooked out.

Also my second order from Adagio came today and I tried all of them, so now I'm all caffeinated to hell and back.


³Jack the cat is my shadow lately. When he thinks I've stayed up too late, he tries to lead me to bed. When I kept getting up last night, he didn't like that at all. There's a step stool sitting next to the computer desk for some reason. Every now and then he'd put his paw on my knee and when I glanced over, there he would be sitting on the stool and glaring at me like a little schoolmarm. And if I didn't get the picture and go back to bed, he would dig his claws in and scold me.

Current Mood: restless
Current Music: Urinetown Original Cast - Follow Your Heart

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• 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)

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As I set up my google calendar, I realize google owns just a little bit more of my soul than before.

I got new toys. There's jawas and storm troopers and... girl troopers. Exciting.

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This is the first negative opinion piece on the Twilight series I've seen on a mainstream newspaper (well at least one that's local), possibly I've been living under a rock, but it made me very happy.

You know how hard it is when your flist is going on and on about a series you can't stand? Well, OK, you can just scroll on by, but now it's society which is going on and on about it, the advertising is driving me a bit insane, I can't wait until people move onto the next big thing.

Warning, spoilers in article.
----
When I was growing up, my literary heroine was Josephine March from Little Women. Jo was a lanky tomboy with no interest in frocks or gentlemen. While her sisters flirted and fretted about their noses, Jo scribbled in the attic, dreaming of becoming a writer. She chopped off her hair, threw snowballs and lived with gusto at a time when gusto was extremely unladylike.

( Bella has become a poster girl for the gender roles Jo and Anne rejected more than 100 years ago )

Source

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Mother calls the police to her home to help her control her 10-year-old... again. Mother repeatedly tells the cop he can tase her daughter. After a brief struggle, the cop does. According to the police chief, tasing the girl was preferable to picking her up because "They can slip from you and fall on the ground."

Link

( Text for the linkphobic. )


ETA: The officer's report on The Smoking Gun, link courtesy of heuradys.

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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!] )

Current Mood: Mystified

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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?

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Same friend, different (no)context.

V says: Okay, there's now NO EXCUSE for you not to buy AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!. Steam has it on a 50% off special right now! Only $7.50!
Mel says: Has what?
V says: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!
V says: 's a game.
V says: Yes, that's really its name. We throw you off a building and you get points for it.
Mel says: What's its name again?
V says: AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!!
Mel says: I'm impressed. Either you c/ped that name, or you're a damn good typer
V says: Damn good typoer.
Mel says: ....
V says: ... well that's an ironic typo.

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