I subscribe to journals I want to read, adding and removing as I gain and lose interest. If you add me to your circle, I'll check out the last five or so entries of your journal to see if I'm interested in reading. Pets, memes, and TV shows I hate make this less likely.

I'm being conservative about unlocking for people. I have not yet unlocked for anyone with whom I'm not reciprocal friends on LJ. I also have not yet posted any locked entries, so nobody's missed anything. (Locked content on LJ? Pleas for attention, grudgewanky snarling, and questions too embarrassing to ask in public, along with the occasional bit of bitching about family.)

My standard for unlocking so far has been extremely random, because I have a very weird headspace about being 'friends.' Er, long story short getting on my access list is weirdly difficult, but it's not because there's a super high standard associated with it or anything. I'm just weird.

That being said…I love people unlocking for me! No, like, seriously, I do. Way to be totally inconsistent, I know, but I love to see the behind-the-curtain stuff. And I don't break lock, really. And, if I were silently judging you, I'd just unsubscribe, I wouldn't say something hideously embarrassing. So, unlock for me if you'd like, it would be very cool.

Add or remove me from your circle at will. Please don't mention it, either way. I have circle notifications on, and I never know how to reply to a personal note.

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So, internets, I have not posted in a while.

Let's use a linkspam to limber up my fingers.

To Kill a Mockingbird, Huck Finn, High School Curriculums, and Canon by sanguinity Boy, am I glad that I moved from Upstate New York to the DC suburbs way before I got to high school.

'Inception,' Art, Edelstein, And The Impossibility Of Accounting For Taste from monkeyseeatnpr_feed

Can the Internet save the book? An interview with Clay Shirky

1romanceebooks Anniversary Blog Tour, which includes a contest to read a free Sony E-Reader.

I got that link from Jordan Castillo Price, who is writing some m/m paranormal and horror. I haven't actually tried any of the horror, but I've greatly enjoyed her Psycop series, about a schlubby guy who sees ghosts who lands a smoking hot butch boyfriend and doesn't quite know what to do with himself.

Also, in fiction that is new to me, I gobbled up Ilona Andrews' Kate Daniels books in the past two weeks. The romance aspect of the books is not my favorite (I love him because of how much I enjoy kicking him in the head lacks a certain je ne sais quoi), but the world building is really excellent, and I very much like that Kate's ~special~ status is built in from book 1, instead of appearing in a series of highly unlikely and unexplained power ups (yes, AB/LKH, this means you.) I also like that Kate tries to investimagate things, even if her deductive powers are usually being turned towards things that no one's heard of or aren't particularly supposed to exist, so it's very difficult for wearing out leather to be of any use.

Also also, because I was thinking about it and wondering if there was a new book on the horizon (sadly, no) Shanna Swendson's Enchanted, Inc. series. (And, I am so glad that the author has an unusual first name, because I'd gotten it into my head that the series was Magic, Inc., and there are a lot of those out there.) Anyway, these are more fantasy romance than urban fantasy, i.e. our heroine is a secretary whose secret power is immunity to magic, not a practitioner of many and sacred martial arts or ancient monster killing traditions. Recommended to readers of romance who are happy with fantasy elements, but not to people who are readers of fantasy who enjoy romance elements added in.

Last but not least, wen_spencer has been posting bits and pieces from her Tinker/Wolf Who Rules universe. Perhaps she's working on book three? That would be good. I keep meaning to go back and read the rest of the Ukiah series, but the library doesn't have it.

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( little bit rambly, my very first thoughts. spoilery, of course )

I'm disabling comments here and directing you to the rizzoli-and-isles community 1x01 discussion post, where these comments originally appeared.

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The Creative Process illustrated (h/t dira)

Festibility! from access_fandom. I don't currently see any characters I want to write, but I'll keep checking back, as people keep thinking of more.

realwomenfest. RPF counterpart to Awesome Ladies' Ficathon. (Although, AFAICT, Awesome Ladies' allows RPF, so…I don't know? I just want someone to write me Allison Iraheta femslash.

AV Club Q&A Fighting with Loved Ones Over Art (h/t monkeysee_at_npr_feed, I think)

PREMIERES THAT ARE RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS
Tonight at 9, Eureka
Tonight at 10, Haven
Tomorrow (limited theatrical release) The Kids Are All Right
Monday at 9, The Closer
Monday at 10, Rizzoli & Isles
Tuesday at 9, White Collar
Tuesday at 10, Covert Affairs
Wednesday at 10, Psych (Attn people manually setting recording devices, supersized to run over 6 minutes!)
July 24, BBCAmerica debut of Being Human Series 2

I watched ABC Family's Huge, both the premiere and episode 2, and I like them, but not nearly enough to compete with The Closer. Huge is much closer to the sort of television show I would expect from ABC Family (than Pretty Little Liars): sweet, a wee bit didactic, a smidge too transparent with its heartstring pulling. On the other hand, I may try to keep up with it online. I'm enjoying Nikki Blonski as Will, and seeing Gina Torres in the role of an uncertain person is interesting, too. (I really want more definition of Becca/Raven Goodwin [black, very shy, but a lot braver than I would have expected] and Chloe/Ashley Holliday [Latina, very stylish, seems to have ruled the social last year but now displaced in favor of Amber], who seem like potentially interesting characters, but are neglected in favor of Amber [who is actually sort of interesting as a girl who has been ¿neglected, ignored? and is now The It Girl, except for this terrible crush on the male fitness instructor] and Ian, who's just this boring white dude.) If you like high school students, or fat people who are treated as characters instead of The Fat One, this may be relevant to your interests. But it's definitely not appointment TV.

i am human and i need to be loved victoria p. This sort of strikes me as railing against human nature? I mean, yeah, arguments would be more productive if people slowed down and read closely and made nuance-y statements instead of staking out positions and fiercely defending them, but, uh, (a) it's a really normal way to talk about things (b) I'm a lot less defeatist on the question of whether or not, because that's the most visible way of talking, it's drowning out people doing the consideration and thinking she's looking for (c) I'm not convinced that all of these discussions have compromise positions to get to. (Also, the way victoria's interacting with people in the comments who don't particularly agree with her on the tragic state of our discourse is somewhat ironic.)

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Am I reading this correctly

4. CONTENT SUBMITTED OR MADE AVAILABLE FOR INCLUSION ON THE SERVICE

By uploading, submitting or otherwise disclosing or distributing Content of any kind at or on the Site or otherwise through the Services, unless source quoted, you represent and warrant that you own all rights in the Content and you agree that the Content will be subject to the Creative Commons Public Domain License, available at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/.

That means that anything I post to the website in question enters the public domain, and I have given up all license rights to it, doesn't it?

Can you think of any good reason for a service to have that provision? Do you see anything in the Terms and Conditions which changes the meaning of that section so it doesn't mean that using that website means putting things in the public domain?

(N.B. The stated purpose of the website is to let you write things online that can be exported in the format for use by the software which is sold by the people who own the website service. I do not see anyway in which a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license would prevent the website from fulfilling its stated service, but maybe it's just way past my bed time.)

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Spellcheck by drlense. NCIS: Gay, Sam/G

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I like to read the original before I read the remix, because then I feel like I am not missing the point of the remix, or, at least, I am not missing the point of a really great remix.

These are the things that are going on in a really great remix:

1) The remix comments on, complicates, refocuses, argues with, or underlines a part of the original.

2) The remix is a great story in itself.

3) The remix is still a great piece of fanfiction for canon, i.e. it speaks to something in canon as much as (or more than) it speaks to that original story.

I will toot my own horn and say that I think the Whore remix achieves all of those. I think that Athosian Woman (the silver chromatic remix) achieves these three, also. Probably also some other stories of mine which have been remixed, but that's the one I think of off the top of my head.

So, when people say that they don't read the original story at all from a remix, I feel like they are interrogating the text from the wrong perspective. How can you figure out if a story is a good remix if you don't read the original?

This is akin, I think, to reading fanfiction for canons you don't know. This is going and reading a work which has been written for an audience familiar with X body of knowledge, but you don't have that body of knowledge. It's not that you can't get anything from such an exercise, but you are going without getting all that you could be from the exercise.

This is, of course, complicated by all of the fanfiction out there which suffers from severe attenuation from its source. This doesn't have to be any two guys, it can just be really elaborate world building in the fanfiction. And, in remixes, you get the problem of too much fidelity to the original, where it seems as if you are, in fact, reading the original story twice, and, also, too much difference from the original, where the original fic functions more like a story prompt than a source material. I think I have managed to avoid the doubling issue, but I know I've done the story prompt version, with, for instance This Sleepover Thing (Official Subtext Loop).

Maybe I will do reviews of the remixing in Remix Redux 10 later this summer. I like talking about that sort of thing.

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So, I've written a bunch of these letters, and they tend to either be highly repetitious or say, "Check the tag for these letters". The differences mainly lie where I talk about how I view the characters/fandom in any particular request.

I suspect that other people who have participated in exchange ficathons are in the same boat, but I don't know that you are. Are you?

Anyway, this whole cutting and pasting deal has begun to feel very burdensome. (My Satedan Grabass letter was ungraciously titled "JFC, not another one." wince. Not my shiniest fandom moment.)

However, when I am assigned someone else, I really do quail at the prospect of either a blank slate or diving undirected into the sea of someone else's psyche as filtered through their online journal keeping habits, and even a pointer to a letter written for Yuletide 2006 is better than "This Journal is Friends Only."

So, this leads me pretty unsure how to procede, in the general case, and wondering what other people think about this sort of thing, both as the writer of a Dear Challenge Writer letter and as a potential Challenge Writer.

Also, out of curiosity, if you are an innocent, challenge non-participatory bystander, are you bored as hell by seeing a flurry of "Dear Challenge Writer" letters spread across your reading page, or do you enjoy this insight into the fictional desires of the people you've subscribed to?

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Listed fandoms I request:
Leverage: Sophie/Tara

Wildcard fandoms I request:
1) Castle/Law & Order: Lainie Parrish/Elizabeth Rodgers
2) Drop Dead Diva: Jane/Judge Madeline, Deb!Jane/Judge Madeline, Jane/Terri, Deb!Jane/Terri, Deb/Stacey, Deb!Jane/Stacey, Deb!Jane/Kim
3) True Blood: Tara/Sookie

Basically, I'm making this post to link to all of my previous dear challenge writer letters. Also, to assure you that I'm not particular about the level of sex in the story, but I'd like the women to be a happy couple at the end of the fic. (If you want to write a story which is not about the women's romantic relationship, but instead features them having a case/crime-fighting/supernatural/etc. related plot, while being a happy couple, that is awesome, also.)

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Exhibit #75478904702374097340573458903534897 in "Evidence that race can make white people lose their minds, because they try too hard." Linda Holmes asks, [W]ho am I to wave my finger at M. Night Shyamalan about casting actors of color? Per her NPR staff bio: Linda Holmes writes and edits NPR's entertainment and pop-culture blog, Monkey See. (i.e. monkeysee_at_npr_feed) It is, literally, her job to make judgments about entertainment and pop culture, JFC IJS.

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( casting spoiler ) to Supernatural. Shit fuck damn. Why do they taunt me with something to make me watch this show in Season 6?

Let there be positivy by rho.

The Internet as a Forum for Debate (Or: Living in Fear) by icarus_chained I was pretty, um, unimpressed with this entry as originally posted. As amended, I'm still not impressed, but I'm a bit thoughtful.

HL would get the boot too… about the Washington Post letting go a reporter for a posting to a private e-mail list. cofax analyses how this relates to fandom

The Scifi Channel remake of Being Human is chugging along with things like casting. I am withholding judgment, but would love it if a Smallville fan could say about what Witwer was like as Doomsday.

I asked why bingo and people answered. Reasoning seems to break down along (1) Yummy, yummy prompts! (2) but not tied to a particular fandom (3) or a disappointed exchange recipient if you flake out (4) but with a deadline. Also, points are fun, either as a way of measuring oneself or competing against others. And kink bingo got several mentions with kink, specifically, being something people wanted to support, explore, or promote. But don't just read my summary, the answers are worth reading themselves.

So, victoria asked the other day, being a fan, What episode of a show I love haven't I watched more than 5 times? Well, I'm a fan, and I'm fairly certain that I haven't watched a single episode of anything* five whole times. In fact, I'm not sure that there's any tv series which was on for more than one season which I've watched in its entirety. I'm the sort of media fan who finds television less enjoyable than other fan pursuits, like reading fic, reading meta, and writing meta. (I do like watching TV much more than I like writing fic, but I find writing fic actively painful, so.) I mean, if I had to gauge the intrinsic pleasure of TV watching, it would probably rank about up there with icon making. (I think I've made about 30 icons in my whole life.)

*If someone were to do an actual complete audit of everything I have ever watched ever, it might turn out that I've watched one or two episodes of Law & Order five times each. I submit to the gentlebeings of the jury that, for the purposes of this discussion, that's brainwashing by TNT, and doesn't count.

Also, femslash10 assignments came out last night, and I plan to write a Dear Writer letter in the next few days. Also, to do those frakking panel write ups.

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What's the attraction of [theme] bingo? I did a couple of squares of cliche bingo this one time. Cliche bingo appealed to me because twisting these things that have been done "too much" appealed, but I don't think that's why people are doing an AU bingo or Kink bingo or Schmoop bingo.

So, I'm kind of wondering, what is the appeal?

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psummertime: A Psummer of Psych

danah boyd's posted about two papers I want to delve into: Sexting: Youth Practices & Legal Implications and Risky Behaviors and Online Safety: A 2010 Literature Review

Noises off: Sense and sensitivity to criticism A critic gives a mixed-negative review of Leslie Jordan's one man show, and Leslie Jordan proceeds to be an asshat over the queerosphere. The Guardian uses this as a jumping off place to talk about how artists and critics should be able to interact over art, but doesn't get very far in its musings.

A Dose Of Reality: My Exclusive Interview With Biggest Loser Finalist, Kai Hibbard link is to part 3 of 3.

kaizoku posted some lovely June Icons for month_of_june.

And it's always a good time to read (The Customer Is) Not Always Right

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How to/how not to: responding to comments on your ablism/inaccessibility by lightgetsin

Proposed Canadian Copyright Law Would Legalize Fanworks

Don't Panic About 'The Green Hornet,' People; It's Just A Trailer: the actual problem I have with this trailer is not that it makes this movie look like a terrible, terrible movie. It's that it makes this movie look like a story in which it is utterly ludicrous that Kato is following the Green Hornet's lead. And, if that's the case, why not just ditch the Green Hornet?

Dirty Girls and Bad Feminists: A Few Thoughts on “I Love Dick” This is about performativity on these here internets leading to ideological rigidity, which is what I think is interesting. I Love Dick sounds like a terrible book which is terrible.

ANOSOGNOSICS DILEMMA a WIP blog series about not knowing what you don't know. Parts 1 and 3 are interesting, Part 2 is…not so much.

Soulless by Gail Carriger a review by marina. I basically co-sign this review, except I didn't find the book sidesplittingly funny, just funny, and the whole "my dark Italianness renders me socially unacceptable" schtick got old for me a lot faster than it did for Marina. Thank goodness that it is mostly dropped in the sequel, Changeless, which I also quite highly recommend.

Zilch: A dice game of skill and luck. Roll the dice, take the points or take a chance, it's up to you!

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I'm not doing a "proper" panel write-up, but I did re-create my notes for the Care and Feeding of Your Thing-a-thon panel. If you have more questions that weren't answered there, or if the notes make you think about something, feel free to ask in comments.

They are sort of focused on exchange challenges, because (a) that's the type I like the best and (b) most of the problems for other types of challenges come up in exchange challenges.

One thing I didn't mention in the notes, because it came up in the panel, not my notes.

If you're running a kinkmeme, you should get every single comment to the meme e-mailed to you, so you can reconstruct what happened if something goes wrong, and keep monitoring the meme as it goes forward.

Also, if something blows up, whether it's [Bad username: unfunny_business] or fandom_wank, the reaction should be:

1. Amend/explicate/correct in the same place as the initial problem
2. Freezing comments is better than deleting/screening already public comments
3. Screening future comments (and making clear rules for what gets unscreened) is a better way to slow discussion down than disallowing all comments.

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So, the weekend was sort of defined by my decision to wear bad shoes, and ignore the subsequent ankle pain. I have flat feet, and I was wearing these sandals with a tiny bit more wedge in them than I am used to, and I felt pretty much fucked for a good deal of the weekend. So, lesson learned: my next con will be accomplished entirely in sneakers and slippers.

Anyway, I got in Thursday night, ( Read more... )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

The only bad part of con.txt was that I didn't hang out with some people I wanted to.

I pretty much entirely missed Melannen, and I did entirely miss bethbethbeth, and even though I went to the same dinner as Brak, we wound up at opposite ends of the table, and I don't think I actually cuddled with Synecdochic (although I did cuddle with SarahQ, which I had really wanted, so that was good!) And, I did not meet very many people I did not at least Internet-know already, which is a little disappointing. Meeting new people (and perhaps then getting to Internet-know them!) is one of the pleasures of going to cons.

So, I do hope that my next con.txt should be very similar, except with better shoes and fewer panels. (I did, indeed, pre-register for 2012.)

(P.S. check out con_txt for more con reports and panel write ups. I will try to write panel write ups for everything except the Psych panel, which I am leaving to Aral, by the end of the week.)

P.P.S, JFC, this took two hours to write.

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EXHIBITION ANNOUNCEMENT: An Other Fashion: Claiming America through Dress

Resistance: ‘You’re Just Looking For Something To Get Offended About’.

Resistance is a series I’m starting to examine common responses to pop culture critiques rooted in a social justice perspective. These responses pop up all the time, and I thought it might be useful for people to have posts to refer to when countering these responses since it gets rather tiresome to have to counter the same argument over and over again

Since I found this first blog post interesting, I have created a dreamwidth feed for the series: aintlivingresistance_feed.

A Matter of Convenience by Lisztful. The one where Colin and Bradley (Merlin RPS) get an awesome apartment. And a puppy.

Maybe when I get home, I will write a con report. Possibly also some panel write ups. We shall see.

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NB: This advice is for a generalist panel, one that's either about canon or standard fannish behavior. If you're doing a specialist panel, where you're attempting to impart specific information (e.g. like "What CSI didn't teach you about murder police" or "Copyright and filing off the serial numbers" or "Making Icons with the GIMP",) it's a lot more like an oral presentation you might do for school, with notes and an outline and possibly slides. If you're talking about kyriarchy or writing tragedy or combining family and fandom or anything with implications for people's actual lives, you should: (i) fucking well refuse to do it without a co-mod, (ii) do some pre-reading and (iii) define some base rules of behavior and define your terms, and let people know that if they don't want to do the panel that your base rules are establishing, they don't have to stay.

But say that you're going to do the panel on "Is manpain ever appropriate on my tv screen?" or "[Your OTP] in [Your Fandom]: how so awesome?". This is what you do:

1) *Think of five to ten things to talk about that have to do with the panel topic.
2) Show up on time.
3) Start talking about the thing from your list you most want to talk about.
4) Call on people when hands go up.
5) Mention something else on your list if the conversation dies down.
6) Mention something else on your list if the conversation goes way off-topic.
7) Start wrapping up when you get your five minute warning.

*You do not have to think of these things ahead of time, but it is less nerve-wracking if you do, and you are less likely to wind up at the 25 minute mark with the awful realization that you have only thought of four things.

Optional

A) Take notes or con someone in the audience into taking notes.
B) Write a panel write up afterward.

---

Some easy ways to stall for time get the conversation started:

1) Make lists of things
2) Ask what makes the things on the list similar or different
3) Ask if [some other kind of fan] does things differently than [kind of fan having the con]
4) Talk about meta or fic or art or canon that is an example of the topic of the discussion done well or done poorly.
5) Gentle sexual innuendo. Gentle mocking of fandoms widely acknowledged to have poor quality canon. (The Sentinel and Enterprise are awesome for this.) Other gentle forms of humor. Talking about how [panel topic] makes you think or feel or react. Make it personal, about you, as the moderator.
6) Ask if people did this or thought about this in the old days, back when you made your zine on a mimeograph machine and were damn glad it wasn't carbon paper. Or the old days of Usenet. Or the old days of Yahoogroups. (I refuse to think about any more recent old days.)
7) Ask if anyone has something they would like to say.

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June has hidden depths. June/Neal. 1823 words.

Maja Dracónico

White Collar for month_of_june and livrelibre.

Also, the first response to the last Friday meme time.

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Friday

9:30-11 Consweet for Con.txt Context
11-noon Love the characters, hate the show
Noon-one Lunch in the consweet
One-two Femslash: not the recruiting panel
Three-Four checkin
Five-six Free Culture (not modding)
Eight-midnight disco duck

Saturday

10-eleven Psych
Three-four Leverage (A/E/P)
Five-six Tag Wrangling (not modding)
7-10 Cocktails and vid show
10 - kick you out Fastlane party

Sunday

11-noon Copyright, copyleft (not modding)
Noon - 1 Care and feeding of your thing-a-thon
1-2 M/M/F Threesomes
2-3 They Fight Crime (sort of) (not modding)
3-4 Disco Duck

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