Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

Mirroring fic at Dreamwidth

2023-06-16T04:35:25Z

I have not had much to say about the current AO3/OTW debacle, save that I used to think they needed to make some changes to address racist harassment on the archive, and now I think we need to throw the whole org out and start over. (At the very least, Legal needs to go.)

But I've felt for a while that, with the AO3's spaghetti code problem, at least, it was a mistake to put all our fic eggs in one basket. The archive was never meant to become the sole repository of fic for all fandoms, but that's what it accidentally became.

I got myself a NeoCities account and tried to create a website, but it's hard? I can't believe I used to do this all the time? Do you know how much fic I have on AO3 that I would need to copy over?

Dreamwidth, on the other hand, has everything going back to my LJ days, so there's just some Voyager fic missing. (I really should scour Trekiverse and the Wayback Machine, but that's a project for a future day.) So please bear with me as I post a few years of fic here over the next few weeks. Including, God help us you, chapter fic, which isn't exactly something I had to deal with much back in the day.

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It's time for the end of year fandom meme!

2018-12-31T20:57:07Z

( You know this one. )

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Against hopepunk

2018-12-29T22:10:52Z

It's difficult to articulate why I hate the entire concept of "hopepunk" and quite a lot of the works recommended under that label, because just thinking about it sends my shoulders up around my ears.

This is mostly thanks to my childhood and adolescence, and specifically my parents' friends.

( TL;DR 'hope' and 'wholesomeness' are subjective and not everything needs to be commodified and labelled )

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The girl nipples have eyelashes

2018-12-04T21:51:09Z

In case you missed it, there are Tumblr shenanigans ahoy.

An extremely rough timeline, assembled from my own fuzzy memory without recourse to sources:

Tumblr's app got dropped from the app store because the site carries actual child porn. This has been an issue for the site for a while, but only became an actual problem they were motivated to solve when it affected new sign ups and therefor revenue. Because Tumblr is THE WORST.
Various accounts have been deleted and tags wiped since, largely based on reports? Because Tumblr is THE WORST, a lot of these were just regular fan sites and innocuous tags that attracted reports, because a noisy minority of fans can't tell the difference between "a pairing I don't like" and "child abuse material". Allegedly the "chronic pain" tag was wiped, too, but I can still see it -- I think caching might be an issue there.
I woke up yesterday to discover that Tumblr has announced that, come 17 December, all adult material (including "female presenting nipples") will be banned from the site. At this point they say written material is safe, but the actual terms are fuzzy.
The entire internet loses its mind over "female presenting nipples", because that's hilarious.
But also Tumblr's new Offensive Content Detecting AI is out automatically flagging posts as sensitive, with a notable bias against even the most chaste of queer content, eg, my friends' engagement picture, a screencap of Dax and Kira and a declaration that DS9 is lesbian culture, Alexander Siddig's face, etc.

So even if you don't post or consume adult content on Tumblr, as a platform for fandom, art or social interaction, come 17 December, it's going to be a lot quieter and less fun to use.

I'm honestly kind of bummed. I whinge a lot about Tumblr, and I think that it's a terrible platform for interaction, but it's great for sharing. Especially fan art -- I'm not a great artist, or even a very good one, but I felt comfortable throwing my silly sketches out into the ether.

And it was a wonderful place for just going, "Hey, I like this." You didn't have to create fanworks, or even write up a post to express your fondness for something, you could just reblog a gifset. It was easy to be a casual fan. Dreamwidth doesn't have that capability, which is why I think it's perceived as a more challenging platform.

Eh. Platforms come and platforms go, and Tumblr won't disappear overnight. But it's a shame.

(Pillowfort is being touted as the alternative, but ... well, it's back from its security audit hiatus, but the servers are robust in the most Journalfen sense of the word.)

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50 questions meme, 11-20: Ship Questions for your Current Fandom

2018-04-06T05:37:43Z

( Disco spoilers, obviously, but also a rant about koalas? Spoilers: they are GROSS. )

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50 questions fic meme

2018-04-05T04:53:11Z

This one's a whopper, so I'm splitting it up over a few days.

1. What was the first fandom you got involved in?

Star Trek: Voyager. I discovered fic when I stumbled upon the J/C Index (not an archive, just an index!) when I was fifteen. I'd read about slashfic in books about fandom (NERD), but I was amazed and excited to learn that it existed for het pairings, too.

2. What is your latest fandom?

Star Trek: Discovery. I've come to terms with it, I guess.

3. What is the best fandom you’ve ever been involved in?

It's cheating to say Disco, because the show has barely been around long enough to generate any drama or unpleasantness that's touched me. But spacefungusparty is a delight.

Otherwise, probably Avatar: The Last Airbender -- because I got into it long after the canon had closed, and all the disputes and shipping wars had largely died down. What a nice, chill fandom, I thought!

Then Legend of Korra premiered...

4. Do you regret getting involved in any fandoms?

No, but I regret my behaviour in some.

5. Which fandoms have you written fanfiction for?

*clears throat*

Star Trek: Voyager
Buffy: the Vampire Slayer
Angel
The West Wing
Firefly
Mary Russell
Doctor Who
...the guys in the FanLib ad
Avatar: the Last Airbender
Legend of Korra
Star Trek: Discovery

I may have missed a couple.

I flirted with multifandom in the early '00s, but eventually figured out that I was happiest, and did my best writing, when I was concentrating on one fandom.

Which doesn't mean I'm only reading, watching and thinking about that fandom! The one great thing about Tumblr is that it makes it quite easy to reblog stuff for Thing You Like Consuming But Don't Create For. (People who create sideblogs for every interest they have confuse me.)

6. List your OTP from each fandom you’ve been involved in.

NO THERE ARE TOO MANY

7. List your NoTPs from each fandom you’ve been in.

While there are many, many, many pairings I really don't care about or enjoy, I only have three NoTPs across all of my fandoms:

Zuko/Katara
Doctor/Rose
Doctor/Clara

BY COINCIDENCE, they all involve an aristocratic man "raising" a "common" woman to her "rightful" place, and usually come with a whole mountain of issues, very few of which are explored in a way I find interesting or palatable.

8. How did you get involved in your latest fandom?

"I guess I'll watch the new Star Trek," I said. "I'm sure it won't be any good, but I like the cast, and I'm really keen to see a Trek centred around a woman of colour as the lead."

Two hours and a flurry of text messages between yiquiqie and I later, I said, "Gosh, that was quite good. I can't see myself becoming A Fan, but I sure do have a lot of opinions."

Five weeks later, at approximately 11:14 pm, I lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, going, "I thought I'd enjoy 'Lethe' for Sarek, and I did, but I also can't stop thinking about Admiral Cornwell?"

Two days after that: "...there's a very clear scenario in my head and maybe I need to write it down?"

9. What are the best things about your current fandom?

most people seem really nice
there's some pretty great fic out there
and some stupidly talented artists
and vidders
being able to put my hand up on Tumblr and go, "I know this just means it's a day ending in Y, but I'm having a lot of feelings about Admiral Cornwell right now", and I won't be the only one
PS I KNOW THIS JUST MEANS IT'S A DAY ENDING IN Y BUT I'M HAVING A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT ADMIRAL CORNWELL RIGHT NOW
I've never gotten into a fandom this early before, and it's interesting to be able to watch firsthand as ideas evolve into fanon, which will soon turn into the cliches we want to deconstruct, and from the deconstructions, new fanon will evolve

10. Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?

I like reading Star Wars fic, but I don't write it. (See above re being monofannish as a writer.) I'm quite fond of Reylo, and of AUs where everything goes terribly wrong, but in a different way to how it goes terribly wrong in canon.

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The end-of-year fandom meme

2017-12-11T01:13:43Z

Your main fandom of the year?

January to, hmmmm, early October: Legend of Korra.

Early October to ONGOING, I HOPE: Star Trek: Discovery.

Your favorite film watched this year?

This is an extremely dangerous question to ask days before I see The Last Jedi.

Anyway, of the films I've watched at the time of this meme, it's a toss-up between Wonder Woman (which I wasn't even going to see, because I'm so over superheroes, and I'm very glad my friends persuaded me it was more than that) and Thor: Ragnarok (okay, I'm burnt out on superheroes but always have time for more comedy space opera). But another close contender is Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, because I will never, ever tire of awkward and disastrous dinner parties and Christopher Plummer literally twirling in his chair while reciting Shakespeare, and then exploding.

Your favorite book read this year?

Please don't make me choose. Here are my books read (so far) in 2017, sorted by star rating.

Highlights included Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci series in its entirety, which I read for the first time when someone finally clued me into the fact that they contain all the things I love (boarding schools, families, found families, feuds, hilarious bureaucracies), and Vikki Wakefield's young adult novels, which are set in the sort of working/lower middle class suburban and rural spaces that YA often overlooks.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

Melodrama by Lorde. According to Spotify, the whole album is in my top 100 most played songs of 2017. I love how she's expanded her repertoire as a songwriter, both in terms of using more "real" instruments and less synth, but also lyrically -- Pure Heroine had no "proper" love songs, but Melodrama is about the beginning and end and recovery from a relationship. I saw Lorde live a couple of weeks ago, and she was every bit as magnetic and weird and gawky as she seems.

(Okay, individual songs: "Green Light" and "Perfect Places" to start, then I moved onto "The Louvre", aka "Ella, you say you don't like science fiction yet you write the perfect Doctor/Romana song just for me", and now I have "Sober" and "Supercut" on heavy rotation.)

Your favorite TV show of the year?

YOU'LL NEVER GUESS.

Okay, aside from Discovery, I really love The Good Place. And season 1 of Riverdale was ridiculous and enjoyable crack. Season 2 seems to be trying too hard? IDK, I keep falling behind.

OH, and I read all the Expanse novels, then watched the TV series, and I just can't wait for season 3 so I can have more of The Unlikely Friendship of Chrisjen and Bobbie (And Also That Other Guy I Guess).

Your favorite DW/LJ community of the year?

spacefungusparty has a really nice, fun vibe.

Also, while it's not a comm, I really love the Galactic Suburbia Slack.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

Slack? Does Slack count? It was created as a messaging service/workplace collaboration tool, but the combination of public chat channels, individual and group DMs and document-sharing options make it quite useful for fannish communications -- not so much fic sharing, but general chat that you don't necessarily want to share with the world.

ALSO, it turns out that comment culture on the AO3 is alive and well in the Lorca/Cornwell section of Disco fandom, and it's really cool.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

Nothing big, but I'm sliiiiiiiiiiiiightly annoyed that I've come back to Trek fandom after 17 years away, and people are still harping on about Jeri Ryan like she's the antichrist? Even Kate Mulgrew is over it, guys, I think we can all move on.

Also, I knew it was coming, and I see why it was important to the narrative, but ( spoilers for the Discovery premiere )

Your fandom boyfriend of the year?

Gabriel Lorca. SHUT UP it's weird to even have a fandom boyfriend who isn't a cartoon.

Your fandom girlfriend of the year?

Please don't make me choose between Lin Beifong and Kat Cornwell. I'm like, maybe I've said all I have to say about Lin, but is Kat the kind of fandom love that lasts? Or is it just that she's so easy to write? Is she easy to write because she's pretty thinly written in the series? Or because I love her? Am I overthinking? Yes, for heaven's sake, Liz, just enjoy the moment.

Close runner-up, and only not the leader because TERRIBLE REASONS: Philippa Georgiou.

Your biggest squee moment of the year?

Every single Georgiou scene in the Discovery premiere, and also Michael Burnham's great big smile as she launches herself towards the binary stars and the Klingon beacon.

The most missed of your old fandoms?

Like a shark, I am always moving forward. Coming back to Trek fandom, I've realised that just because I stop being actively fannish about something doesn't mean I've stopped loving it forever -- even when I stopped being actively fannish because it stopped being fun to watch. Sometimes you do need a change, and that's okay. Media, and even fandoms, are no longer ephemeral.

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

Eh, I'm pretty content where I am right now. Kind of working myself up to trying to watch Enterprise again, but mostly because there's a big gap in my canon knowledge. And part of me is like, it can't possibly be as bad as I remember, right? (No, I suspect it can.)

Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

8 January to 12 February: chapter 2 of Discovery season 1 is released.

Since script work for season 2 has only just started, I doubt we'll see that before 2019 at the earliest. I may need to find a way to fill the rest of the year.

OH WAIT, Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor! Season 11 is slated for late this year, right? Plenty of time to recovery my ability to have strong emotions about things that aren't Star Trek. Phew.

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An unreasonable amount of emotions about media franchises

2017-10-24T03:44:57Z

Monday morning: the new Doctor Who companions are announced; I am moderately excited.
Monday night: Discovery Night, aka the only thing that makes Mondays worthwhile, aka I Accidentally Fell In Love With Admiral Kat Cornwell And Now The Show Mocks Me, aka How Does Jason Isaacs Manage To Be So Interesting When He Really Shouldn't Be?
Tuesday morning: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is announced for Melbourne in 2019.

I've had four really big fandoms in my life. Three are currently active, and I'm really not sure I have enough room in my body to contain this much enthusiasm. If anything major happens in Avatar fandom this week, I might actually explode.

(I quickly double-checked, just in case, but no Turf Wars previews have appeared while I was distracted.)

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IT'S A PARTY

2017-07-31T08:27:26Z

I was hesitating over whether to call this a meme, and then I looked, and it's right there in the name.

It's been a long day, I have a headache, I tried to schedule the big Windows 10 update for just as I left work, but accidentally made it happen right in the middle of the afternoon, so I spent an hour today writing fic by hand. Beifongs. They have a lot of emotions. ("Punching" is an emotion.)

COME PLAY @ THE [ FIC POSITIVITY FEEDBACK MEME ]
my thread here

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The end of year fandom meme

2016-12-21T00:16:21Z

1. Your main fandom of the year?

Still AtLA/Legend of Korra, ie, exactly what it's been for the last few years! But, with new material in that universe limited to a handful of comics, I've enjoyed returning to fandoms past for brief periods through the year.

2. Your favourite film watched this year?

That's a toss-up between Ghostbusters and Star Trek Beyond, with Rogue One a close third.

3. Your favourite book read this year?

THAT IS A HARD CHOICE. But according to GoodReads, I've read 84 books so far this year -- started a lot more, but as I blogged recently, it's been a difficult year for settling into and finishing books -- and I gave 24 of those books five stars. I'll probably do a full book post at some point, either here or at No Award.

4. Your favourite TV show of the year?

Star Trek: The Next Generation. It's such a great show -- especially when you skip all the episodes you don't care about. Close second: Star Trek: Deep Space 9, which I watched through to the end for the very first time.

5. Your favourite online fandom community of the year?

I found a bunch of cool new people in LoK fandom, plus the friends I had there already.

6. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

Turns out that when people said DS9 was really, really good, they weren't lying!

I mean, I wouldn't call it better than TNG, because the two shows are completely different in terms of goals and contexts, and they complement each other so well that it's almost missing the point to set one against the other. And I was very disappointed in DS9's treatment of the female characters in its last couple of seasons -- obviously I was spoiled by Voyager, which was female-driven in a way that none of the other Treks have been. But it's very good! I'm glad I finally watched it all the way through.

7. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

I got a few episodes into season 2 of Supergirl and realised it was no longer working for me. I was mad about the sidelining of James in favour of introducing new white guys, I missed Cat Grant even though I was horribly ambivalent about her, I find Katie McGrath a distractingly bad actor even when she's not trying to do an American accent, and the overall girl-power-optimism-cute-clunky-dialogue clashed so badly with my perception of the world that I just couldn't keep going.

All of which is as much about me as about the show itself, and after the fourth week of finding myself live-tweeting "why am I not having fun?" I realised that I was probably stopping everyone else from having fun, so I ... stopped. I got to the first scene with Maggie Sawyer, and it was ALIVE and VIBRANT and AMAZING, and then the next scene was so flat by comparison, I really couldn't ignore my feelings.

Anyway, I'll probably pick up season 2 at a later stage, but I'm more inclined to wait for it to hit Netflix than go through all the trouble of acquiring it through other means.

8. Your TV boyfriend of the year?

Draco Malfoy. Yes, I'm as surprised and appalled as you. He was just so great in Cursed Child! (Honourable mention to Scorpius Malfoy, the most precious cinnamon roll of all.)

9. Your TV girlfriend of the year?

I remain faithful to Lin Beifong, as always.

10. Your biggest squee moment of the year?

I was pretty happy that the Smoke and Shadow arc in the AtLA graphic novels ends with Mai single and on speaking terms with Zuko again!

Other sources of squee:

The grimdarkest timeline in Cursed Child
Actually, I spent a lot of Cursed Child wriggling in glee and sending happy texts to my increasingly exasperated BFF

11. The most missed of your old fandoms?

The Avatarverse fandom for sure. So much of the fic is (highly westernised) Korrasami college AUs, and that's not my thing at all. I miss having a wider range of fic (about characters and pairings I'm invested in).

12. The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

Meh. I feel increasingly disengaged from the whole concept of fandom.

13. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

STAR WARS EPISODE VIII! NEW STAR TREK ON THE TELLY!

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2015 in fandom meme

2016-01-02T22:36:40Z

FANDOM

Your main fandom of the year? Still Legend of Korra and the Avatarverse as a whole. I'm also dipping a toe into Star Wars, and expect to have a lot of feelings about Rogue One at this time next year.

Your favourite film you watched this year? I didn't get to many movies, but I've seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice in a month, so I guess that's the winner!

Your favourite book read this year? Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem was absolutely bonkers and I loved it. I also adored Laurinda by Alice Pung and Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff. It was a good year for books!

Your favourite album or song to listen to this year? According to Spotify, my top artists from 2015 were Dessa, Nicki Minaj and Jessie J. (That last because I mostly had "Wild" on repeat from the day I first heard it.) But obviously I also have to mention the Hamilton cast recording, which absolutely blew me away even though I'm not into musicals or the American Revolution.

Your favourite tv show of the year? Ready for This, ABC3's delightful and almost perfect 13-episode series about five Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids who share a house in Sydney as part of a program for gifted ATSI teens. Every character was a perfect cinnamon roll, even the Token White Guy, and I was continually pausing episodes to tweet or text about how great it was.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year? Probably that obscure space movie series, Star Wars. A work colleague sold me on The Clone Wars, and then obviously I went on to Rebels, and they're just great. I mean, for a given value of great. I just adore Ahsoka and refuse to believe she's not kicking back, alive and happy, by TFA-era.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year? The MCU. I was incredibly disappointed by the mediocrity of Agent Carter, and then Age of Ultron just decided to ... pretend a bunch of movies just didn't happen? Because it's not like they contained important character development or anything?

Daredevil was interesting but dudecentric, Jessica Jones was great for (white) female characters but I didn't love the overall structure. And then it came out that the government is cutting Screen Australia's funding and giving it to ... Thor 3? (And the next Alien movie.) And I'm like, seriously, my tax dollars are going towards this? At the expense of local works?

So while I know it will have even less effect than the MRA boycott of Star Wars, I'm not consuming any MCU products until that changes. (And also doing more effective things, like Writing Angry Letters To My MP.)

Your fandom boyfriend of the year? I just sat here for five minutes, completely stumped by that question. Pass.

Your fandom girlfriend of the year? Lin Beifong, same as every year. I am a one-cartoon-girl sort of lady.

Your biggest squee moment of the year? The Mai/Zuko pining in the "Smoke and Shadow" arc of the comics. I mean, Zuko is pining, Mai refuses because THAT WOULD INVOLVE FEELINGS AND SHE'S NOT WASTING THOSE ON ZUKO ANYMORE, HONEST, FOR REALS.

The most missed of your old fandoms? I miss being excited about new Doctor Who -- my dislike for Clara and the gross subtexts that kept popping up in the second half of the season, including the finale, made it hard to enjoy this last season. (Here is my rant about the final few episodes -- I like to pretend the season ended with "Face the Raven".)

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to? I have no interest in getting into a new fandom just for the sake of getting into a new fandom. But there are things I'm looking forward to consuming -- The Expanse, various books and TV shows, that sort of thing.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year? Going to Contact 2016 in Brisbane and squeeing at Ben Aaronovitch about Rivers of London/making him sign my Remembrance of the Daleks DVD cover; the new companion announcement for Doctor Who (please not another twenty-something white girl!); maybe actually finishing a fic one day, who knows?

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Tumblr round-up

2015-01-04T08:48:11Z

Been a while, eh? Here's what I've been doing in the meantime...

(Mostly my own stuff, reblogs only when I've added something of substance. I mean, I figure you've all seen the stuff that gets reblogged already, right?)

Legend of Korra stuff

Post-finale (oldest to newest):

Pre-finale (newest to oldest because I forgot to order them!):

I still don't understand why people were talking about deleting their Tumblrs after the finale, but it's definitely doing fandom wrong
Despite my issues with Tumblr social justice, I wish it would filter a bit more down to LoK fandom, because it's been terrible lately / fandom reveals an ableist streak for Book 4 and I hate it a lot
An important realisation about Varrick, which I still secretly believe is true
I just think Lin was the most precious nine-year-old authoritarian control freak you ever saw
Why ship Bolin with a well-developed, layered female character when there's a one-note dude right there? / What do you mean, sidelining a female character for a dude has a dash of misogyny? / Where am I going to get LGBT representation if not with dude characters? (That ask is extra hilarious in light of the finale!) / Whyyyyy did people keep asking me about Bolin shipping?!
I argue in favour of Lin's characterisation in "Operation Beifong" (and I didn't even touch the issue of Chinese filial piety, on account of knowing nothing about it, but I totally meant to do some research before everyone got distracted by the finale)
But seriously, I empathise with Lin a lot
Anon asks if I ship Tokka (AHAHAHAHAHA NO) / Conversation about Toph and Azula as AMAZING (terrible) parents and also saddling fictional cranky people with babies: a perfectly normal hobby
I really don't understand why people are so mad at Tenzin for not launching a pre-emptive strike for his ex-girlfriend's family.
I make a completely inaccurate prediction about "Operation Beifong", but stand by Team How About Not Just Declaring War For The Hell Of It nonetheless
FANDOM WAS WRONG ABOUT THE EMPRESS DOWAGER CIXI AND I WAS NOT HAPPY ABOUT IT
Baatar Jr is going to be in so. much. trouble.
Someone on Tumblr said that if the Twelfth Doctor was a woman, she would be Lin Beifong
Notes on Lin's bending
On Kuvira's internment camps
Ableism and PTSD in Book 4
Preceded by ... a rant about ableism in the fandom! (Also, just by the by, if you want to watch a serious trainwreck, check out Ikkin's Tumblr post-finale, which has steadily devolved from "I can't be homophobic because I'm ace" to "But how can parents be expected to explain bisexuality to their children?")
Meditations on Lin and Zuko

...everything else

2015: The year I stop wasting time on second-rate fanworks
Having trouble with the glorification of police in TV right now / and some more
A delightful cartoon about my suburb of Brunswick
Social Media Behaviour for Fandom/Celebrity Interactions (a reblog, but deserve more attention, although I suspect it's nothing new to anyone here)
So my mother used to be an informant for QLD's Special Branch
The greatest thing ever said about me on an anon meme
OitNB sketch: Piper
I really love academic feuds
Sexism in history
Historical bias in Egyptology
I sold my first short story! (To an anthology I inspired with a Tumblr post!)
Also, I co-edited a book! About Doctor Who companions! (I just read the whole thing again today, and I have to say, it's pretty rad.)

Well, that takes us back two months. You can probably get the highlights for the rest if you check my Lin Beifong tag. I DON'T HAVE A PROBLEM, I CAN STOP ANY TIME. But also, did I mention I sold a short story and co-edited a book?

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When is "An extra hour in the ball pit" going to stop being funny?

2014-07-13T23:49:34Z

Not soon, I hope.

Context: here and here, and I took a break from re-enacting popcorn.gif to talk serious business. (TW for sexual assault, child abuse, Marion Zimmer Bradley, etc.)

Apparently one of the decision-makers was 17, and another was 13, and I feel really bad for those kids, but I'm also really mad at the actual adults involved, who should be stepping up and ... you know, being adults and taking responsibility.

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Continuum X: Call for vids

2014-03-11T22:21:07Z

As many of you probably know, I'm on the committee for Continuum, a Melbourne science fiction/fantasy/genre convention held annually in June. (Some of us are currently fighting to extend "genre" to "TV series about ballet". So far the rest of the committee is dubious.)

For the last two years I've run a vidshow, but this year, in addition, I wanted to screen vids based on Australian source (either visuals or music or both). I will accept both premieres and existing vids, in any format that will play in VLC. (Higher quality is better, for obvious reasons, but don't feel you need to go overboard.)

Content-wise, my vidshows generally have a blanket "choose not to warn" status, and I'm pretty much open to anything. Except talky face and wrong aspect ratio. The only limitation is that the video and/or music must be Australian.

Of course, that can be a grey area! For example, most of Baz Luhrmann's movies are filmed here, but Strictly Ballroom and Australia are the only ones that are actually set in Australia. (OTOH, an overview of his entire work would count.) Crowded House counts, because it was formed in Melbourne and 50% of its original line-up were Australian. (But we can't nab Lorde, much as I'd like to.) Don't even get me started on the problem of Farscape. My totally arbitrary preference is in favour of flexibility, but, you know, to a point. (OTOH, I would absolutely accept a Miranda Lawson vid.)

Deadline is Saturday 31 May, any time zone, and submissions and suggestions can be sent to liz.barr@gmail.com.

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Kids today, amiright?

2013-06-01T23:14:51Z

Finding myself awake at 4 am this morning, I checked my email. I had two pieces of anonymous feedback on an Avatar fic I posted ... last year? The year before? Anyway, when I woke up again at 7, I had two more reviews from the same anon:

They go from the bottom up.

First, I had to ask what "lemons" means. (It's a now out-of-vogue term for smut, apparently, mostly popular in anime fandoms.)

Sadly, there's no way of communicating with this anonymouse. Otherwise, I would say the following:

1. The fic is ended. It had a high rating for violence and an arranged underage marriage. Nowhere did I promise "lemons".

2. You're right, that was a weak ending. But not because of the lack of citrus fruit. Even if I did a "remake", it wouldn't be smutty.

3. I was not aware that having over 20 reviews meant I was now taking orders.

4. FF.net doesn't even allow explicit fic!

5. Aang is, like, 13 in this fic! Are you some kind of pervert?

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It's not necessarily that Doctor Who fandom is the worst ever...

2013-04-19T10:58:58Z

...it's just had more time to practice.

For example, every now and then I like to look at old issues of DWM and fanzines. There is, of course, the infamous case of the Liverpudlian fanzine that shut down after a tasteless joke about the death of Colin Baker's infant son. (Some versions of the story have the child dying as punishment for bad acting, others have something about Baker digging the baby's body up for some purpose. The boy had died of what we now call SIDS, so Baker was deeply unhappy about the whole affair.)

Anyway, nothing I've found has been quite that terrible. Yet. I have to say that the idea, currently being put about, that Steven Moffat is a pedophile who writes children into stories to get himself off, comes pretty damn close. (And seriously, if you actually believed that ... what does it say that you're still watching?)

But I have discovered that, true to form, the fandom reacted with DISMAY and HORROR when Doctor Who began to be released on VHS. Because then you might realise it wasn't very good, you see. And plus, with home video, anyone could start watching it.

But I'm particularly charmed by this article from Doctor Who Bulletin, a publication for which the saying that a Doctor Who fan is someone who hates Doctor Who might have been created.

( There's a large image behind here. )

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Feminism: Doing it wrong

2012-12-28T04:07:22Z

With Amy gone, we can no longer argue whether or not wearing mini-skirts makes her a brazen hussy ... but don't worry, here's the argument about whether Clara's second job makes her a whore, or merely easy. Also, characterisation: what business does it have appearing in television?

Fandom: actually in fact the worst!

On an unrelated note: denizens of Tumblr! If you're about to claim that rape was unknown outside of Europe until it was introduced by colonisers, I strongly recommend first googling "noble savage stereotype", and then sitting very quietly and thinking about what you've done.

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The end of year fandom meme!

2012-12-22T02:24:13Z

Your main fandom of the year?

AVATAR/LEGEND OF KORRA. With Doctor Who a close second.

Your favorite film you watched this year?

A very close tie between The Hunger Games, Avengers and Brave.

Your favorite book read this year?

It's so cute how you think I can choose!

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

I rediscovered a lot of old favourites when I found a file of mp3s I had misplaced. Love Outside Andromeda's self-titled debut is still amazing, and it worries me deeply how you could make a Community vid to pretty much every single song Regurgitator have ever released.

Your favorite tv show of the year?

Legend of Korra, Doctor Who, Dance Academy, Elementary.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

Dance Academy! Which takes a whole lot of YA and teen TV cliches and executes them with heart, and I'm absolutely devastated that season 3 will be the last, even though it's a natural place for the story to end.

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

Fandom itself, really. The fake geek girl stuff has been horrible, and a lot of fannish discourse, though it has roots in social justice, has been giving me flashbacks to my ultra-conservative Catholic childhood. And when I say "flashbacks" I mean "actually triggery", so I've had to disengage from a lot.

Your fandom boyfriend of the year?

♥ TENZIN ♥

Your fandom girlfriend of the year?

♥♥ LIN BEIFONG ♥♥ -- with Amy Pond, River Song, Joan Watson, Abigail Armstrong, Natasha Romanoff and Toma Saya as very close runners up.

Your biggest squee moment of the year?

ChicagoTARDIS -- I met people I've known for years online! I was in a book! IT WAS AMAZING!

The most missed of your old fandoms?

Mary Russell. The new book sparked some life back into my love, but Holmes fandom in general seems even less welcoming of female-dominated reinterpretations than it was a few years back.

The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

I really need to watch Breaking Bad and Warehouse 13. I am aware that these are slightly different. And I plan to read Saga and Captain Marvel over the Christmas break.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the coming year?

MOAR KORRA. Season 7.2 of Doctor Who. And I live my life in an eternal, probably futile wait for Marvel to do a Black Widow film.

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DW/LJ friending meme!

2012-12-07T21:19:22Z

A friending meme to combat the decline in content on non-Tumblr platforms! (Not that Tumblr isn't great in its own way, I just don't find it a useful place for discussion.) I've friended a handful of people, and will go back to look at more.

I'm mildly intrigued at the number of people who include "pointless negativity and squee-harshing" in their flist turn-offs.

Expect some spam today -- remember when people would routinely make three journal posts in a day, and that would be normal and not spammy? -- as I'm still catching up on a few things, like my monthly book posts. Although I also see a doctor's visit looming today, because I've somehow developed a twitch in my left pinkie finger. Which is probably just stress related, only how stressed can I be when I've just gotten back from a holiday? I figure I should get that looked at ASAP in case it's carpal tunnel or something equally likely to interfere with work.

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Help me out here, internets!

2012-10-29T21:23:02Z

I thought, "Everyone's talking about the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. That's a YouTube thing, right? I'll download it and watch it on my iPad on the flight over!"

OH NO. THERE ARE GAZILLIONS OF EPISODES. Well, 52. So far. That's a lot of KeepVidding. Not to mention the parts of the story on Tumblr and Twitter.

So, I know there's a fandom. Is there, like, a handy download bundle? Maybe including the blog parts in some easily readable form? That would be SUPER HANDY.

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Armageddon pictures

2012-10-19T22:22:52Z

Hey, it only took me a week! First I had to remember how to get pictures off a device without wi-fi. Finally I remembered my new camera came with a USB cord.

I'm still having some trouble figuring out the purpose of a camera that's not linked to the internet -- how will Instagram know what I'm eating?! -- but I thought it might be useful to have a proper, non-iPhone camera for my trip, and Armageddon was a chance to try it out.

Of course, because it was crowded and rushed and also CROWDED, I only took three pictures. Well, four, but two were of the same Dalek.

( So there are no apps? )

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A book! A book that I am in!

2012-09-26T20:45:02Z

I'm proud to announce that I have an essay in Chicks Unravel Time, the sister book to Chicks Dig Time Lords and the latest in Mad Norwegian Press's series of female and feminist-oriented fan books.

Naturally I'm talking about season 17, and how everyone who said it was terrible was WRONG, because it is funny and clever and driven by relationships and female characters, and also the Doctor and Romana are totally in love AND IT'S GREAT. So, some really hardcore academic writing.

I talk a little more seriously about it here, at the pro blog.

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Doctor Who fandom: where multiple intelligent women is ZOMGMISOGYNY!

2012-09-04T22:29:48Z

( Spoilers and an animated GIF )

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Saturday morning meme?

2012-08-03T23:50:13Z

Give me a character and I'll tell you a piece of my personal headcanon.

(Digression: I really hate the term "headcanon". For years and years it was called "fanon", and that was fine and clever, and then some whippersnapper on Tumblr reinvented the wheel and came up with "headcanon", which, on account of containing "canon" seems to imply a higher level of entitlement than "fanon". And no matter how much I complain, these damn kids won't get off my lawn!)

(New trends from Tumblr that I also hate: "X pairing is endgame!" Not least because it seems to be applied a lot to pairings that have no chance whatsoever of becoming "endgame", ie, Zutara. And that's coming from someone who quite likes the idea of Katara and Zuko being a thing in old age, and Tenzin's head turning ALL THE COLOURS when he finds out. But calling it "endgame" implies that they spent the intervening decades waiting for their spouses to drop dead so they could hook up at last.)

(Also not "endgame": Tenzin/Lin. When a couple broke up over a decade ago ... and one half is now happily married with an army of children ... and they're only just now back on speaking terms ... that's not a pairing with much future, sorry to say. Chances that Bryke are gonna canonically break up Tenzin and Pema so Tenzin can get back together with his ex: PRETTY SLIM.)

(I guess that means Pema/Tenzin is endgame? But now I want to conduct some kind of penance for saying that, so. Suffice to say, the Tenzin-related tags on Tumblr are ANNOYING and still there is no shirtless Tenzin art because fandom HATES ME PERSONALLY.)

ANYWAY, a bit of a meme to fill out a Saturday that's already looking a bit full! Here's what else I have planned:

- write minimum 1500 words of novel
- scout journals accessible via public library for research for novel (OH GOD)
- chapter 3 of the Malory Towers reading at the pro blog
- bring in laundry
- tidy room, since I moved furniture on Wednesday and now the Lizcave is CHAOS and this could actually take all day
- (bonus) type up handwritten pages of Detective AU

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I suspect this is a direct consequence of abstinence-only sex-ed

2012-06-19T07:16:18Z

But an awful lot of Tumblr users are still having trouble with the concept that Toph can have a baby but not a husband.

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