tetradecimal

I do not know what to make of the story this article is reporting on (apart from boggling at the money that some people earn), but the writer, Peter Stanford, what the hell? Is this suppose to be funny, am I missing something. Maybe my sense of humour is broken.

---

''IS IT the 'dumb blonde' hearing you're looking for, sir?'' someone asks as I wander the corridors of Victory House, home of the London Central Employment Tribunal. Just as he is pointing out the right door, a procession topped by various shades of blonde goes through it.

( It is hard to imagine him, as Ms Wimmer has alleged, cavorting in front of her with a lap-dancer in a Paris burlesque club. )

Source

Oh, the trials and tribulations of a secondary-character fangirl! Since I'm writing an Earth King fanfic, I decided to head on over to FF.Net and see what my fellow fanficcers are writing about everyone's favorite dorky monarch. Typing "Kuei" into FF.Net's search engine brings back a grand total of...

...wait for it...



...THREE results. All of them one-shots. One appears to be an Avatar/American Revolutionary War crossover one-shot in which megalomaniacal!Kuei plays the role of King George.

Typing in "Earth King" brings back 47 results, which sounds slightly better until you look at them and realize that most of 'em aren't actually about Kuei. Most just have the phrase "Earth King" in the summary, most of which are just references to/spoiler warnings for the episode titled "The Earth King". Some of them just have the words "earth" and "king" in the summary completely unrelated to each other.

*shakes head* Oh well. I wasn't expecting to find tons and tons of Kuei!fic, but this is just weaksauce. C'mon, this is fandom! Fans are supposed to love playing with minor characters who get hardly any screentime! Eh, maybe my fic will inspire other fanficcers to become Kuei fans and boost those numbers. :D

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.

S-so guys I kinda want to do a Ragna and Jin BJD set? I'm thinking of stripping Crow down and repainting him to be Jin like as he's got what I feel is Jin's coy look and uh. Well I figure I can just rip off Axel's head and buy a Moon mold and mod it slightly and yay Ragna and.

Guys, this is a bad idea.

edit: l-lol i went ahead and did it o-orz

Also. It came up with Steph about my plans to cosplay Jin and I guess she got over her cosplay burnout and she's like "goddammit why does noel wear such a short skirt" so I suggested Rachel to her.

She then spent the rest of the night looking up Rachel stuffs, so I might actually have my cosplay partner back again.

my god she'd be a fabulous rachel

So Livejournal refuses to load for me possibly because of a DDOS attack on my end. Is there any quick fix method or do I have to sit and twiddle my thumbs until it passes? I mean, I cleared my cache, deleted all my cookies, restarted my computer TWICE...dammit, I've got RPing to do and I was on a good active streak until it went all psychotic on me!

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?

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.

Guys, I totally forgot I had this picture of this INCREDIBLE Persona 2 cosplay of some of the Personae, from Akon XIII. (That's in 2002!) I thought some of you might enjoy it. I wish digital technology was around back then (instead of me relying on disposable cameras) cause HOLY SHITTTTTTTT

You know, looking at the stuff I had, there seemed to be a lot more variety in things people cosplayed? I dunno, maybe I'm just not hip with the new things people are into, but you didn't run around into clones that often.... and just looking at the series, so many different series were represented...

CRAMPS.

CRAMPS THAT WON'T LET ME LAY DOWN AND SLEEP.

SCREW YOU, BODY. SCREW YOU.

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. ♥!

Here, have a really cool Hawaiian chant. :D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FJr1gMzrbg

( 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?

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:)

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 )

http://community.livejournal.com/sfwa/98375.html

For the linkphobic:

In November, 2009, Harlequin Enterprises, Ltd. announced the launch of a new imprint, Harlequin Horizons, for aspiring romance authors. Under normal circumstances, the addition of a new imprint by a major house would be cause for celebration in the professional writing community. Unfortunately, these are not normal circumstances. Harlequin Horizons is a joint venture with Author Solutions, and it is a vanity/subsidy press that relies upon payments and income from aspiring writers to earn profit, rather than sales of books to actual readers.

The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc. (SFWA) finds it extremely disappointing that Harlequin has chosen to launch an imprint whose sole purpose appears to be the enrichment of the corporate coffers at the expense of aspiring writers. According to their website, “Now with Harlequin Horizons, more writers have the opportunity to enter the market, hone their skills and achieve the goals that burn in their hearts.”

SFWA calls on Harlequin to openly acknowledge that Harlequin Horizon titles will not be distributed to brick-and-mortar bookstores, thus ensuring that the titles will not be breaking into the real fiction market. SFWA also asks that Harlequin acknowledge that the imprint does not represent a genuine opportunity for aspiring authors to hone their skills, as no editor will be vetting or working on the manuscripts. 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. SFWA supports the fundamental principle that writers should be paid for their work, and even those who aspire to professional status and payment ought not to be charged for the privilege of having those aspirations.

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.

Already the world’s largest romance publisher, Harlequin should know better than anyone else in the industry the importance of treating authors professionally and with the respect due the craft; Harlequin should have the internal fortitude to resist the lure of easy money taken from aspiring authors who want only to see their work professionally published and may be tempted to believe that this is a legitimate avenue towards those goals.

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.

For the Board of Directors,
Russell Davis
President
SFWA, Inc.

...Yeaaah, I've been up since 4 am. >_< Sittin' in the office, in the dark, with my door closed, listening to music loudly, waking myself up with Dunkin Donuts coffee and fiddling with my shiny new An Archive of Our My Own settings. Interface is SHINY. I love the shiny. Black text on a white background might not be for everybody but I'll take it over any background that makes the text look nearly unreadably fuzzy, danke kindly. On the other hand, I can see that importation from FF.net is going to require editing, as nearly every online archive hates em-dashes and I have an unrequited love affair with them. This is especially true of Survivors which I may just cut and paste from source and edit in the tags rather than try to comb through it and fix all the em-dashes. I am Nagaina at An Archive of Our Own as well -- yay! -- and the first two things that are up are DGM and Kingdom Hearts related.

Now, if Jadaar and Asric will stop bickering about who gets to be the bigger damn hero when it comes to saving nearly blowing up saving by VIRTUE of blowing something up Booty Bay, the NEXT thing to go up will be WoW-related -- a fandom sadly under-represented on AAoOO thus far. Four fics. And one of them is an AU fusion with -- wait for it! -- Stargate: Atlantis.

( Let's have some music, shall we?! )

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. )

Everyone needs to know how much I love The Man from UNCLE. This is one of my favorite episodes, and not just because it's got William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, pre-Trek, playing off each other and the main cast MAGICALLY.

Also, Illya, I love you. I love you so much.

(In more real-life news: I saw KISS on Sunday, and went to a car show twice last week, and dropped my laptop on the floor. ;_; But it was saved by science. NaNoWriMo has been, well, an interesting experience so far. I start work in a little under two weeks. That's more or less it.)

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!