I'm back! Some friends spent three days Pandemic Camping, which is to say living in tents in my mom's suburban backyard and hiking in nearby parks and pretending it was the wilderness, and it actually worked pretty well? Felt like we'd actually gone somewhere! I am refreshed! And itchy!

Anyway, today's enemyslash fandom is Nimona, the fandom for people who were Noelle Stevenson fans before Noelle Stevenson was cool. It is about a man named Ballister, who grew up in the Institution being trained to be a Knight and a hero along with his best friend Ambrosius, but then some stuff went down, Ambrosius betrayed him, Ballister realized the Institution wasn't what they thought it was, and he making the best of it as a mad scientist and official Villain Lord Blackheart, coming up with schemes for Ambrosius the hero to foil. Then a girl named Nimona showed up as Ballister's appointed sidekick, and stuff started to Go Down.

Anyway, by the end of the comic, Nimona has left, the Institution (and local government) have fallen, Ballister is being celebrated as a hero, and Ambrosius is in the hospital badly injured with nobody to visit him or care about him but Ballister. Will they manage to rebuild their old friendship and maybe a little bit more?? (spoilers: yes. yes they will.)

So this canon is basically just enemyslash + found family tropes slathered on with a shovel?? It's so great. There's fic. Here's two favorites.

• Black Flag (10627 words) by wakeupnew
  Fandom: Nimona (Webcomic)
  Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Ballister Blackheart/Ambrosius Goldenloin
  
  Ballister buys some furniture.



• When There's Nothing Left to Burn (18630 words) by strix_alba
  Chapters: 4/4
  Fandom: Nimona (Webcomic)
  Rating: General Audiences
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Ballister Blackheart/Ambrosius Goldenloin, Ballister Blackheart & Nimona
  Additional Tags: Post-Canon, Politics, Canon-Typical Violence, Families of Choice
  
  Ballister goes to some committee meetings.

What is this? Only 22 days in and we have another one I've actually *written*?? Weird!

So, Check Please! - was a huge fandom a couple years ago but one of those that died down fast. I got into it during a long canon hiatus and then never picked up the last season or so of canon, but I still go back and read favorite fic. The fandom was a mess but a lot of the fic is amazing. It's a webcomic about hockey, and growing up, and being queer, and playing hockey while growing up queer. One of my (other) bulletproof kinks is stories about people in the public eye dealing with manage their public self and private self, and Check Please! fic was very, very good for that (in a way that I mostly otherwise only get in RPF, but pro sports RPF is just asking to have your heart torn out.)

Kent Parson is honestly a minor character, but he showed up right before the hiatus in a way that implied there might be a lot more, plus he was really fucked up but in a way that might be fixable, which is like catnip to slash fans.

Kent Parson can be summed up as such:

People who utterly despise Kent Parson: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend's new boyfriend Bitty. Kent Parson.
People who have extremely complicated feelings about Kent Parson: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend Jack. All of Jack's friends who know their real backstory. Any fans of hockey teams that play against Kent Parson.
People who think the sun shines out of Kent Parson's ass: Kent Parson's ex-boyfriend's parents. Kent Parson. Everyone else who has ever heard of or met Kent Parson (in theory).

So he's a very good source to get my "dealing with celebrity" and my "complicate enemy relationships" at once.

(also I wrote two fics about him, and I just discovered a third one in my WIPs file that honestly reading it five years later is a complete story even if 2016 me wanted to be overambitious with it? So I just now snuck that into the series with a backdate.)

Recs! One of the top fics for him was pulled just recently to be pro-published and I am sad I did not know it time to dl it, but there are luckily lots more, here's three I like.

• Greener Grasses (11374 words) by dieofthatroar
  Chapters: 1/1
  Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
  Rating: Mature
  Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
  Relationships: (Past) Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann, Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Kent "Parse" Parson & Jeff "Swoops" Troy
  Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Eric "Bitty" Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Alicia Zimmermann, Bob Zimmermann, Jeff "Swoops" Troy, Las Vegas Aces (Ensemble)
  Additional Tags: Suicidal Thoughts, Anxiety Disorder, Substance Abuse, Depression, Coming Out, Homophobia, canonical toxic masculinity, Canon Compliant, post 3-26
  
  Jack comes out. Kent - doesn't. It's complicated. There's pie.



• (hold on) when you get love (21779 words) by AugustaByron
  Chapters: 3/3
  Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight/Kent Parson, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Shitty Knight, Larissa "Lardo" Duan/Kent Parson, Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann (past), Shitty Knight/Kent Parson
  Characters: Larissa "Lardo" Duan, Shitty Knight, Kent "Parse" Parson, Jack Zimmermann, Las Vegas Aces - Character
  Additional Tags: Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Friends to Lovers, Polyamory
  
  How do you deal when you find out you're soulmates with your ex's best friend? And his other best friend? Who are dating each other? It's complicated. There's beer.



• Can't Learn to Leave (42838 words) by SummerFrost
  Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
  Rating: Explicit
  Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
  Relationships: Eric Bittle/Kent "Parse" Parson, Kent "Parse" Parson & Original Male Character(s), (Past) Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Minor or Background Relationship(s), (Background) Jack Zimmermann/Alexei "Tater" Mashkov
  Characters: Kent "Parse" Parson, Eric Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Alexei "Tater" Mashkov, Samwell Men's Hockey Team, Original Characters, Las Vegas Aces (Ensemble)
  Additional Tags: Homophobia, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Mental Health Issues, Borderline Personality Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Pining, Heavy Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, WITH A HAPPY ENDING I PROMISE, Coming Out, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, hockey violence, Mild Blood, Painplay, Light Sadism, Dom/sub, Marking, Aftercare, Rebound Sex, Complicated Relationships, Compulsory Heterosexuality (kind of), Begging, Safewords, Sexual Slurs as Kink, Communication, Panic Attacks, Drinking to Cope, Vomiting, Real Hockey Teams but No Real Players, Verbal Humiliation
  
  Also complicated: when your ex's new boyfriend - who is apparently now also his ex - gets hired as social media manager by your team's PR to help you stay in the closet. And he's hot. (But there's pie.)

I maded a thing! It is 8,000 words of gay fictional hockey boys in Georgia, because sometimes you just gotta write what you gotta write.

Bless Your Heart, Kent Parson (8076 words) by melannen

Fandom: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Eric Bittle/Jack Zimmermann, Past Kent Parson/Jack Zimmermann - Relationship
Characters: Eric "Dicky" Bittle, Jack Zimmermann, Coach Bittle, Suzanne Bittle, Kent "Parse" Parson
Additional Tags: Fourth of July, Meet the Family, Closeted Character, Coming Out, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Transphobia, the period is USA 2015
Summary: Kenny's name had been coming up a lot. Partly because these days, it was hard to talk about the NHL without talking about Kent Parson. Partly because before Samwell, Jack's experience of an American Independence Day had always included a birthday party for Kenny. Partly because - well, because being in Madison with Bitty was. Well. Strange and uncomfortable, in a lot of ways, this week of all weeks, that maybe had Jack worrying at those old frayed ends more than usual.


...I am already getting in a discussion in comments about whether I violated canon. It's so weird to write in a fandom where people still give a crap about canonicity, I am not used to it anymore.



In other news, I have made a huge Mistake. So my sister's cats are here, right? So the older one - she's fifteen and has been having health issues - spent the first couple nights here sitting in the living room, yowling horribly until somebody went out to tell her it was okay. In my sister's one-bedroom apartment, she had line-of-sight on the bedroom from her preferred sleeping spot, so we thought maybe she was waking up and getting upset because there was nobody around.

So I thought to myself, hey, she really likes getting brushed, so I'll take her onto my bed at bedtime and brush her, and maybe she'll learn it's a safe friendly place and not get all lonely out in the living room. BAD IDEA.

Days until she had realized bedtime = brushings and she was waiting for me: 3
Days until she decided I was staying up too late and tried to get me there sooner: 5
Days until I couldn't go into my room at all anymore without a cat hopping up ready for brushings: 7

I can't go in my own bedroom anymore without someone trying to tell me it's bedtime and I should brush her. I am CAPTIVE in my OWN HOME.

At least she doesn't sit alone in the living room and yowl anymore. Now she comes in my room and yowls into my face until I wake up enough to pet her.

...okay, that hypothetical crossover meme has reached levels of ludicrosity previously unattained on this journal.

Here is a list of fills so far:

Dresden Files/Vorkosigan Saga for isis (consisting of some extra bits of canon for the crossover I already wrote for this.)
Temeraire/Princess Bride ideas for finch
Pinkwaterverse/Cthulhu mythos for seekingferret (in which I fail miserably; surely *somebody* can come up with a better one?)
--seekingferret does Major League Baseball/The pirate Rabbi and Thor/Star Trek to my prompts
White Collar/Pirates of the Caribbean and DCU/The Lone Gunmen for elf. (Somebody needs to write a pirates/white collar crossover actually. Desperately. Also need fic now where Frohike tangos with Barbara Gordon, but that's a given.)
some flailing as regards Temeraire/Sherlock Holmes for ellen_fremedon
British Comedian RPF/Vorkogisan Saga for marginaliana (This one got kind of out of hand after lannamichaels tapped in. It probably helps to note that we were borrowing some of the characterization from a previous conversation regarding Aral Vorkosigan, Epic Troll. Also: this article on how traditional Chinese stand-up has fared under communism which I incidentally already had bookmarked, yes I did background research for this bit.) marginaliana asked for a British Comedy RPF crossover and I'm afraid in the elaboration we focused almost entirely on the Barrayar part, but I promise if I actually wrote it there would be a bunch of scenes of David and Charlie and Jimmy and Dara and so on meeting in hidden, poorly-lit back rooms at the university and playing at revolution.
Avengers/Sesame Street for lannamichaels. An excuse to write fic for the Teeny Little Super Guy! Yay!
Homestuck/Colbert Report for erinptah, featuring unbridgeable idealogical differences. And stabs. Mostly stabs.
Homestuck/Vorkosigan Saga for biichan. In which there are fantrolls.
Homestuck/Ranma 1/2 for terajk, featuring brownbetty and biichan contributing their own versions as well, which we must encourage them to write. yes.


Unfilled, still to do (list mostly for my reminder):
Avengers/Young Wizards and Vorkosigan/Avengers (I really need to watch that movie, I guess)
Something Sutcliff/Rihannsu-ish (Every time I poke at this I just come out concluding I need to re-read Rihannsu more. Tragic!)


This is actually an interesting way to find out what fandoms my commenters care about! Avengers yes (kind of obviously) but there's lots of Vorkosigan and Homestuck and Temeraire on there too, hmm.

And yes, I will still fill prompts if people leave them. Not crossovered out yet!

And as usual, all bunnies and notfic posted by me here are completely available for other people to pick up and run with, if you should chance to be so inspired.

So those of you who aren't fans of Homestuck but have carried on reading this journal regardless may not have picked up on this yet, but one of the reasons I love Homestuck fandom so much is that it has a completely different concept of romantic relationships than any other fandom I've been in. In Homestuck canon, "romance" does not mean "two people of the same (or opposite, if not slash) gender fall in love, have sex, and commit to be in a relationship only with each other." While there are some other SF fandoms where the canon has an opening for this kind of thing, Homestuck is the first one I've encountered where the majority of the active fandom seems to have really embraced the possibilities instead of falling back on standard monogamy.

And I don't just mean the fact that at least two-thirds of the main characters come from cultures where homosexuality "isn't even a thing" - where a few of them have an expressed preference for partners of one gender, a few of them have an expressed preference for partners of another, but it isn't the most important thing about them, and the vast majority of the characters simply don't care.

It's the fact that in Homestuck fandom, "romance" can mean a lot of different things. There is sexual romance and non-sexual romance, romance based on hate, and romance based on compassion, and romance based on necessity, and romance based on lust; romances of two people and romances of three people; romances that fit the normal human ideas and romances that are compromises between people who have different needs and preconceptions; and romances that transcend all definition. And it is ordinary and expected that everybody will be in several romantic relationships of different types, with different people, at the same time. And if you start having romantic tension with somebody, the first step is flailing around about exactly what kind of romantic attraction you have for them and if it matches the kind they're feeling. And all of these forms of relationships have 'romantic' and 'platonic' versions, and people actually remember to specify which one it is.

And Homestuck accepts this as how you do romance. It understands that romance is not a simple concept that only means one thing. And in Homestuck fandom, a 'ship in which the partners have sex and stare dreamily into each other's eyes is given exactly the same status and consideration as a 'ship in which the partners gag at the idea of sexual contact with each other, but make sure they get enough to eat and sleep and cry on each other's shoulders and die at each other's side. And it is perfectly okay to 'ship a character the first way with one person and the second way with another person, and it doesn't mean either 'ship is 'less important'. (And in fact the two most-beloved canon ships in all Homestuck are the non-sexual kind.)

And Homestuck fandom has a whole, vibrant, functional vocabulary for talking about all these things; and forget about / vs. & - Homestuck fic hearders regularly use six different pairing delimiters. People write black flirting and pale porn and ashen infidelity and flushed cuddling and everybody knows exactly what all of those things mean. And the terms work, and people accept them instead of arguing about them, and talk about all of this stuff (and write it in fic) in a nuanced way, and none of the terms make me cringe and want to page away. (okay people's attempts at spelling them yes, the terms themselves no.) Basically, Homestuck fandom on romance is what the asexual community wishes it was. And they do most of this on Tumblr.

(Or possibly it's just what I wish the asexual community was. Can we please appropriate 'moirail' and stop using the terms 'zucchini' and 'queerplatonic' and so on? Please?)

Anyway, all of the above is to say that I've written ashen pwp. Or possibly "have been writing it", since I put up the first one on bucketlist a few weeks ago and then just finished the second one last night. They're up on AO3 now, so here are the links:

Intercession (1702 words) by melannen
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: The Handmaid ♣ The Grand Highblood ♣ The Sufferer
Summary:

The Sufferer is the Auspistice of the World, for his cloak is Ashen, and he standeth amon9st us, and sayeth, Peace. 6y which he meaneth, shut the fuck up, for I am Sick of dealin9 with your Shit.

--2nd Testament of the Disciple, 4:13

(for a kinkmeme prompt wanting anything involving the Grand Highblood and another (or more) of the ancestors that's either ashen or black. Given the choice, I obviously had to figure out who I shipped him ashen with! And now this is my favorite ancestor ship of all.)


Passion (4089 words) by melannen
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Homestuck
Rating: General Audiences
Relationships: The Handmaid ♣ The Grand Highblood ♣ The Sufferer, Darkleer/The Handmaid, Darkleer ♦ The Disciple
Summary:

You cock your head, pretending to think this over. And then you lean over the table, your face bare inches from hers. "Nah," you say. "I DECLINE THE HONOR. Bright fuck-off scarlet DON'T ALL UP AND MATCH MY DECORATING SCHEME."

(Or, the Ancestors do Easter.)

Because once I had the Sufferer and the Grand Highblood and the Handmaid in a quadrant together, I couldn't not do the Sufferer's version of the Passion story. (Which, uh, it's an Easter fic, it's not spoilers to warn that the Sufferer dies, right? No graphic torture or death scenes though. Also I think despite writing a fic based around the Passion story, I only made one bingo on all those cards I wrote up last entry, and that one uses a free space. This story pokes at entirely different kinks than the version with Human Sufferer in it.)

And now that that's written and posted, maybe I can actually concentrate on some other creative project now. Any other creative project! That wasn't even the Easter fic I was supposed to be writing.

---also, while I am here, I want to whine about the fact that various male relations are allowed to get online during the family Easter dinner, so that they can check on their fantasy baseball teams, and not only that they put the game on, and nobody says anything about it, but I'm can't check to see if the new fic I posted to AO3 has any new comments, because it's a family dinner. It's not that I want to be able to check AO3 instead of playing with younger cousins, it's just, dude, if fantasy baseball is more important than your kids' Easter, why are you even here? And why do they let you get away with that?

1. So I thought, hey, if I'm going to try to write about Dave Strider, I should attempt to learn at least a little bit about the art of the turntable.

DJing has fascinated me ever since I realized what it involved. I mean, I don't think I've ever been to a live event that actually had a DJ who used turntables, because I have always been about as far as one can get from being a coolkid, but I love the beats and the samples, and I love the whole make-do-with-what-you've-got flamboyant analog tactile remixy transformative goodness of it. My dad was a fan of early electronic music, too, so I know & love a bunch of early synthesizer and tape-splicing stuff. Somewhere on the web there's even an ancient attempt by me at a Harry Potter Mary Sue who uses electronica for her magic, and timetables are basically the most brilliant gimmick for time travel ever.

( But. )

2. Also I wrote this thing, and the only real explanation I have is that the internet rots one's brain.

Under the cut, find the unedited version of Charlie Brooker's hypothetical review of the hottest new game of the year, Sburb.

Note: Charlie Brooker did not write this. I wrote this, after overdosing on Homestuck fanfic and internet video game reviews. All I know about Charlie Brooker is the persona he uses in his writing and public appearances.

( I think we may have finally reached the limit of Open World games. )

*cough*

ETA: AO3 link

3. Among numerous other bad habits Homestuck fandom is in the process of giving me is the temptation to write stories around fanart/fanart around stories/weird text/fanart hybrids that are satisfying as neither. And yet, in a fandom which is all about the graphics, it's surprisingly hard to find good graphics resources. I mean, yes, if you want HTML color codes for things, they're everywhere, and templates for making fan characters, sure. But anything else? It must all be hidden somewhere that I can't find it.

...which is just to say does anybody know the name of the fancy font that got used for things like introducing the names of the lands? I need it. For reasons.

4. I have here 2500 words and counting of lesbian xeno threesome porn for the kink_bingo Write all of the kinks. All of them February mini-challenge, and it is by far the dirtiest thing I have considered posting non-anon in years. I was actually debating whether I dared post it non-anon, and then I realized that wait, I already have a NC-17 story associated with this username that features 14-year-old girls and bloodplay, and it's actually far more perverse than the Homestuck one, so it is kind of pointless to pretend to be bashful...

(I am so conflicted when it comes to troll dialogue! When I punctuate it properly it sounds out-of-voice. When I carry over the quirk punctuation to prose dialogue it looks incredibly annoying. alas for trolly webcomics and attempting to take them seriously.)

5. I'm still not watching Con Air, though. There are limits okay.

I have kind of been indulging myself in Homestuck fandom lately. cypher posted a thing about troll romance and asexuality in Homestuck, and then I started thinking about it, and about this thing I kind of wanted to write, and then I decided the time had come to go back and try to figure out where I'd got lost in the comic (and catch up with Act 6) and, well, yeah, so that's where the last few days went. ^_^;;; And probably why I have this headache that won't go away. (Unless I caught the Death Ill from a friend on Sunday, which come to think of it would also explain why I haven't felt up to doing anything but read webcomics since Monday night.)

And then I somehow accidentally tumbled into the land of Fan Adventures, which are text/art/multimedia/user interaction things just like Homestuck itself, only by fans, of course. There is Be The Sea Dweller Lowblood, which is 1100 pages of hemospectrum-reversed worldbuildy joy! There is Hoofstuck, which is exactly what you think it is! There is Whostuck, the Doctor-Who-Plays-Sburb crossover that is, dammit, almost entirely unlike the one I want to exist which means I'm still tempted to try mine. And doing it as a fan adventure would solve the "omg where does the plot go next?" problem.

The thing is, large parts of Homestuck fandom, including nearly all the Fan Adventures, and most of the aggregation of all the other stuff going on elsewhere, seems to happen on the MSPA Forums, and hanging around there makes me feel SO OLD. ALL OF THE YEARS. ALL OF THEM. Webcomics message boards are where I started (in interacting with fandom and in internet life) and it is all so very much exactly the same as it was, only moreso. It's like going back home, only discovering that you can't go home again, because of meteors some time travel shenanigans that mean you aren't 18 any more, dammit, being a fangirl and getting old is hard.

It's hard and nobody understands.

ANYWAY. I also kind of overdosed on stuff about that House episode today, so in order to cleanse my brain, I went ahead and wrote some asexuality-related Homestuck fic.

It is not at all what I wanted to write. It is probably not at all what cypher wanted to read.

It is not in any way a sensitive and thoughtful exploration of how having the 'wrong' sexuality would work in troll society.

Actually it's a Roxy/AR chatlog of silliness/tragedy. But it cracks me up every time I look at it so I'm posting it anyway. (With slightly-off-canon text colors, because omg my eyes, and canon alcoholism, and consider that your warnings.)

( di-stri are you there )

...writing Roxy chatlog is way too much fun.

also in completely other news, I baked and iced a cake! (Using all Betty Crocker stuff, but bluh bluh, whatever!) and it turned out really well, so here's a picture:

( Fire )

I have been getting really cranky about all sorts of minor things for the past week or so (maybe once the cramps let up it will improve?) ranging from why the lay/lie thing makes me angry to why Sherlock fans annoy me to evo-psych hate. I got out the Sherlock gripe on asexual_fandom, and we're probably all glad the essay on lay vs. lie is staying safely on my hard drive, but then there was this one, which I decided was best expressed as Dinosaur Comics fanart, see below:


ETA: This image is freely available to anyone who wants to repost or remix!

Because we have known about feathered dinosaurs for longer than I've been alive, we've known that nearly all theropods probably had some sort of feather-like structures for at least a decade, and yet young kids are still learning it the wrong way from new books, there is positively no excuse for people to be doing new illustrations of these creatures and ignoring that. It goes beyond 'Wrong on the Internet' to 'What Is Wrong With Humanity'? Grrr. Arrgh. Hisss. (And yes, Sue in the Dresden Files is part of the problem, though I can fanwank it that she was at least 90% a construct and shaped by what Harry expected her to look like.)

( Trancript )

( Some scientific notes )


In other news, I was attacked by a dinosaur last weekend! I was lying in my tree, taking a nap, and listening to my mp3 player, when this dinosaur just swooped down at me from above, all feathery and stuff! It landed right next to me, and then jumped onto my chest and just sat there, right on me, and stared at me for awhile with its cold eyes.

I think it was one of these. Possibly simultaneously one of the most awesome and terrifying things that has ever happened to me. :D


In possibly related news: TetZoo is my current favorite blog. If only because, if someone as amazing as Darren Naish can get constantly distracted by shiny things and keep promising to do a certain post for years before he finally gets around to it, there's hope for people like me. Also, as witness my dinosaur attack earlier, I am ashamed to say I am really ignorant on common passerines. TetZoo almost manages to make them interesting.

(Here's Naish on feathered dinosaurs from 2007, already somewhat out of date but a good overview of the work coming out in the last decade.)

I would say the unifying themes of this post, to the extent it has any, are Victoriana, costuming, and crossdressing. Also, Things I Have Scanned. So let's get on it, shall we?

( First, people wanted to see the pictures of the 1890s silk dress I was fixing last week, so here they are. )

( And while I was scanning those I went ahead and scanned a few other things. )

Meanwhile, I have acquired another supply from my secret-source-of-free-comics-in-return-for-reviews! And they seemed to fit the theme, so, hey, since I have read them all already,a here are scans and reviews:

( ADELE BLANC-SEC by Jacques Tardi. )

( The CBLDF 2010 Liberty Annual )

( Scarlett Takes Manhattan )

( And, okay, the other comics that didn't fit the theme. )

1. We visited an Ikea for the first time yesterday while picking up stellar_dust, and I still don't get what is so amazing about it, but they did have Glogg in the Swedish grocery, and I was so tempted to buy myself some to celebrate Agnostica with, but then I decided that anything from Ikea is by definition not suitable for Agnostica.

I should probably dig out my backups and re-upload the Agnostica fansite now that my webspace accidentally wiped it again. :D (Look he's still using my moebius chains on the Nukees website!.)

Instead I bought a pomegranate and I will stay up until 2:30 and eat it over the dark of the sun and the moon.

2. Best Christmas shopping story: yesterday we were looking at dirt-cheap netbooks at KMart, and while we were waiting for the electronics guy to show up at his counter, this man came up looking for an e-book reader for his wife, and told us that he was going to get her the B&N one because when he suggested a Kindle the night before she ranted at him about how Kindles are bad because Amazon steals your books off it or something, he wasn't listening. And it was so very difficult not to say, "Oh, I bet your wife follows some of the same incest erotica slash writers I do!". :D But I was good and didn't and just talked about Nora Roberts and the differences in price ranges and the old 1984 controversy. The old fangirls' network: we are everywhere! (Also I suspect Kindle sales may be hurt more than they expect by this coming out right before Christmas, heh.)

1. I refuse to write, or post, or even start, a dear yuletide letter when nominations aren't even open yet. Sorry! (Well, I did do the relevant astronomical calculations, but that doesn't count.)

I have gone through and figured out what I'm offering, though. Since the time is significantly shorter this year, I decided I'm only offering fandoms that make me go "Ooh, yes! I want an excuse to reread/rewatch that in a hurry!" (as opposed to the usual criterion, which is "Ooh, I wish that had more fic, I bet I could acquire canon by the deadline." As a result, I'm only offering somewhere around 115 fandoms this time (depending on how the final list handles duplicates.)

2. A couple of days ago I got my sign-ups and induction stuff to be an AO3 tag wrangler. Which, yay? But I thought they weren't signing anyone up until after yuletide? And in fact wrangling is closed until after yuletide? So other than read through the docs, I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing about my new tag wrangler status. Other than continuing to lurk the chatroom, obvs. (Oh, AO3, your communication skills at the moment are so inspiring.)

3. I don't know how helpful this will be, but the long-running rift between two segments of fandom (with other segments chiming in from the sidelines) which has suddenly broken off the scabs and started bleeding again, hurts. I see it in a split down fandom communities; down my own circle of friends; and down my own self. So, I want to do this, if only for myself; and I would love to see other people do it, too; I don't know if it will help heal the rift, but it might help some of us across it.

I am a fan, I am a geek. I have always been. You may, reading this journal or my comments, get the impression that I am a slash fan and/or a media fan - and I will admit, my primary allegiance is to that community. But that's not all I am. That is the last, and in some ways the least, of my fannish IDs. What else am I? Well, in roughly chronological order:

( I am a fan of genre fiction. )

( I am a math, science, and tech geek. )

( I am a science fiction fan. )

( I am a comics fan. )

( I am an anime/manga fan. )

( I am a media fan and a slash fan. )


...wow, I totally didn't intend that to be the effect, but I am kind of filled with love and awesome and sparkles now after writing that. Love and awesome and sparkles to all fans everywhere, regardless of what kind of fans you are!

4. staranise gave me that "explain five icons" meme. Here are the five icons she chose ( These may contain major spoilers for some of the small fandoms my icons are from. )

If anybody want me to pick five icons for them, I suppose I could. :D

(look at me showing off my l33t new css skills, too!)

It says ... something ... about just what kind of a dork I am that I went to see Iron Man II, and while there were many things about the movie that I liked and would enjoy discussing, the actual squee!OMG! moments?

TESSERACTS!
DOUBLE PENDULUM!!!

...I guess I am still a math geek at heart.

Also, a double pendulum (aka "Chaos Machine") is the best symbol for movie!Tony ever. I could go on and on about the scene with Tony and the double pendulum.

If I was the sort of person who could make things like that, I would figure out how to make a wind-up clock with a double-pendulum tick. I have wanted to for years. Since I can't, I am so tempted to go down to the cave tonight and build me just the pendulum, counterweighted to swing a long time like the one in the movie. With a box of scraps.

(Note: this is not cut because neither the pendulum nor the tesseracts have any actual spoilery significance whatsoever; they were set dressing. Thus my enormous levels of geekery.)

***

Click on this cut if you would like to see ( some racy vintage postcards of silent-movie era Hollywood Bathing Beauties. )

If you are not interested in racy vintage postcards of women wearing bathing costumes I would dearly like to own, then we clearly have very different tastes in postcards. But perhaps you would be more interested in one of these posts I have recently made on dreamwidth communities:

At sca_attire, photographs of me wearing nothing but a period linen shirt! I understand some of you are interested in that sort of thing. Also featuring: discussion of crossdressing while re-enacting, and me whining about how sewing is hard.
At topgearslash (locked) and crossovers (unlocked), Part One of the Top Gear/Dr. Who(/Torchwood/Sarah Jane/Big Finish) crossover of doomy doom! (Featuring: men who love their cars and/or spaceships too much, and also bonus multimedia enrichment downloads.)
At poetry, this week I am posting an elaborate four-part stealth argument-by-example for poetry as fanwork: NASA RPS from 1970, three variations on Dover Beach, and about a Flemish tapestry. And also some very silly things.
And at common_nature, an account of a trip to the beach, in which there are kites, hidden treasures and fossil-hunting.

****

Also, overcome by election coverage (OMG, I have discovered that it is possible to be fannish over election results for countries that *are not mine*! So exciting: all the fun, 75% less stress. Hooray!) I have started writing up a post - probably to be posted to punditfic - entitled "A Guide To British Fake News for Americans". Are there any British persons reading this who would like to look it over before I post it, for blatant errors?

I also now really, really want the alternate future where David Mitchell started the revolution, Charlie Brooker led it, Andy Zaltzman ended up Home Secretary, and mtf!Patchula J. Oliver spent years in prison after Bristol Palin was elected President of the USA. (They write these things *for* us, guys.)

And finally, if you would like to be on my "obsessing over diversity, privilege and appropriation re: my original characters as an excuse to not actually write anything in their universes" filter, first post to go up soon entitled "wow I have a lot of trans* characters", please click here:

So I have been trying not to get to emotionally involved with the politics (though I still want to do that "Sarah Palin or TGP: Who Is More Qualified?" point-by-point comparison), but I have been following fivethirtyeight.com pretty closely. And OMG, if Obama takes the South? That will be not only win, it'll be the most important thing to happen in American politics in my *lifetime*.

***
Anyway.
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your blog.

stellar_dust gave me "D".
...I had a list of twenty-five characters to pick from, and that was before I checked my notes. So, um, have the short list as meme x 3.

And hey, while I'm at it, why not give me two numbers between 1 and 15 and I'll write you a comment-fic where those two characters meet. :D (Random or calculated, I don't even care.)

( Five Large Fandoms )

( Five Small Fandoms )

( Five Nonexistent Fandoms )

...Yeah, I should probably stop there. Even if it means I have to leave out David Starr, and Mike Doonesbury, and Dick and Dorothea (the D's), and Diana Fowley, and Dick Grayson**, and Dickon Sowerby**, and Daystar, and Death**, and Doli the Dwarf, and ....

(** marks characters I have either written in fic or tried to write.)

Today's XKCD was awesome, as usual, but it was ( Missing something. )

Why yes, that is what happens to me after a whole weekend spent at cons and then another whold day of con autopsy stuff.

Tomorrow, I will be at The National Book Festival on the National Mall! In the rain!!

There's nothing particularly I need to schedule around this year (except the Librarything Meetup at 2 pm at the NMNH) so if anyone is going to be around and want to meet up, leave me a comment and I'll give you my cell number.

Sunday I will be at the Baltimore Comic-con, spending most of the time being eye candy at the Interrobang Studios booth. Come say hi! (They will be there without me on Saturday, too.)

(Interrobang Studios re-opens this month!)

So I am now partway through downloading the entirety of Frobisher's run in the Doctor Who Magazine comics, because also_not_a_pipe made me realize something:

If Ray from dueSouth is actually a Time Lord who came to Earth as a refugee from the Daleks and, for reasons which don't need exploring at this juncture, remained as a cop in Chicago --

Then Diefenbaker is obviously a Whifferdill. See, he's an animal, but he's of at least human intelligence, and he changes what variety of animal he is from time to time, and he's a detective, *and* he's named after one of the great men of Canadian history. ... clearly a Whifferdill.

So now I have to read the Frobisher comics too before I write the crossover, but that's okay, because I think it gives me the first beginning of a plot hook for the crossover (and an excuse to use Six or Seven as the Doctor! Yay!)

So, can anyone here guess who it is in my new icon???

(It's cheating if you recognize the book it's from.)

For me, it's a weird sort of illusion- picture: if I look at it from the corner of my eye, or while distracted, I absolutely recognize her; but if I look at it straight on, it doesn't look a thng like her at all.

***

I saw that book while at B&N this evening. I also found the current Tokyopop Star Trek manga, which I entirely expected to suck, but they don't suck entirely! They got good established Trek writers, and the art isn't actually trying to be manga-style. I saw two Wil Wheaton stories, and one by Diane Duane (she of Rihannsu-verse) in which the sexy, vulnerable alien queen the Enterprise is escorting gloms onto Dr. McCoy at first site and spends the whole trip completely ignoring Kirk in favor of attempting to seduce the good Doctor.

Also, there is a manga adaptation of David Gerrold's Bandi, which I read in one of the really early Trek short stories collections, and couldn't be better suited for a manga adaptation. Plus in the manga version it's even slashier, K/S wise, than the original. Also, Kirk saves the Enterprise in a page-spread where he radiates sparkles and love-hearts at a sad teddy bear with Bambi eyes.

****

Anyway, politics: I have been pretty much ignoring the presidential race since it was decided who I'm going to be voting for, but this Sarah Palin thing is actually catching my interest again. Okay, I do feel bad for the kids, but srsly: Secret babies? Hidden teenage past as a terrorist secessionist? Spunky librarians? Eight hours in labor on a plane? Forced marriages? Russians *right next door*! Bears and wolves and PUMAs, oh my!

Now *that's* the stuff of a proper old-fashioned political scandal.

(And on a serious politics note: give me back my civil liberties, please.)

****

I have a fanmix 99% ready to post, but I have *lost* the stylus for my tablet, and if I can't use my John Simm GIMP brush to strew rainbow-colored Master heads over everything, what's the point?

So, with lack of laptop, and possibly more relevantly, lack of any way to play pirate online video, I have been reading more actual printed books this week. And catching up on my LT reviews, which I was several months behind on.

I have been learning a lot!
For example: When one is pondering writing Miles Vorkosigan kidfic, do *not* read Gordon Korman novels.

Also, when one is pondering writing S4 Dr. Who crackfic, do not do NOT read books of old Charles Addams cartoons....

I give you a subtle visual metaphor for the relationship between corporate power and the common people, by which I mean a scan of
( Archie Andrews getting butt-raped by Satan )

...I bet you thought I was kidding!

Ooh, have a bonus panel:
( Jughead's nuts being groped )

These are both scans from "Archie's Clean Slate", today's trophy from the $.50 back-issue bins, which was published, under license, by Spire Christian Comics. An amazing comic, from the publisher possibly best-known these days for Hansi, the Girl who Loved the Swastika.

Interesting in several protest-related ways: first, because in the 21st century, Archie Comics is absolutely totalitarian about copyright (any fellow devotees of the gone-but-not-forgotten Improved Archie will want to note that in this comic, Betty is in fact a Crazy Christian). Second, because "Clean Slate" was attempting to appeal to hip young people in 1973, and it appears to be trying to position environmentalism as a Christian issue at the same time it's trying to convert people to Christianity, with the result that it does both very, very badly. (It also attempts to harness the power of SCIENCE, btw. I quote: "Copernicus cures celestial myopia!" "And Christ cures spiritual blindness!")

Also it features Jughead as an anthropomorphic kangaroo.

That is all.