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. )

I was reading rm's PSA on Queer and it occured to me that one could, in fact, make a simple nine-patch quilted totebag, with eight symbols around and the rainbow flag in the middle.

G would probably be a pink triangle, either patchwork or applique.
A would probably be the AVEN triangle, though one could use the new flag.
B would be the pink-lavender-blue flag or triangle.
T would probably be either the three-pronged symbol (applique) or the pink-white-blue flag.
L would probably be either the linked symbols or a labrys; this would have to be applique.
for I I don't know; I don't know of any pride symbols for this specifically (please tell me if there is one!) but one could use the three-pronged symbol here and the flag for T
U would probably just be a question mark
Q again I don't know; if one uses the rainbow as the center square, what goes here? There is the queer anarchy flag, but that has a specific political meaning; I'm almost tempted to go with the leather flag, as that takes in some of the queer communities that often are sidelined in GLBT and also would be fun to patchwork, but it also excludes a lot of queerness. An applique lambda might work, though (or maybe a rainbow here and lambda in the center? Or rainbow flag for Q, and the center square embroidered QUILTBAG?)

For the liner/backing, I am regretting the fact that I always throw out the incredibly ugly prints with vomit-green cabbage roses that seem to inexplicably recur. :P

And you could do one side of the bag nine-patch, and the other side as one large square for some specific identity/community that's yours and isn't specifically in the acronym: two-spirit, blue-feather, a subset of trans*, bear, poly, faerie, pansexual, bdsm, pflag, a traditional log cabin or stone wall patchwork pattern, or some combination or personal symbol that IDs the bag's owner specifically...

Anybody have any better ideas for the symbols to use for QUILTBAG, or objections to the ones I used? Anybody else interested in making or owning one of these? :D


(...we are not even going to talk about the dozen crafting/mending projects already in progress, no. Anyway two of those involve patchwork already, and if I have to pull out all the quilting stuff I might as well start a new project too, right?)


And speaking of activism and symbols, I am totally going to the Rally to Restore Sanity. (Did anybody doubt this for a second? :D) I will be bringing a sign which displays the H in Sunrays, of course. Though I am debating coming up with one with an actual political message or international fake news reference as well. Who else is going? Does anybody want to get together a whole group with h-in-sunrays signs?

I am deeply amused that my last post had some neat music and meta, and a link to a filk project, and a dozen panels of fanart, but 80% of the feedback was about the sketch of AU Rachel in déshabillé.

SO let's talk about AU RPS girlsex, yesno? :D

I have a file that's been sitting on my desktop for about six months, entitled "Thirteen Ways Rachel Maddow (never) Had Lesbian Sex With Keith". I started it way back in February, after the big meta discussion about the ethics of 'shipping a real-life lesbian with a (presumably) straight man - the f_w post that rounded it all up has been deleted, but the start of it (more or less) was my comment here about Rachel/Keith and genderswap in havocthecat's journal. So Rachel, Keith, and genderfuckery, yes.

I have been slowly adding to the file in bits and bobs ever since, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm never going to write these stories (though if I did write one out full-length, it would be either #5 or #13. Or #10 and #11. Or #8 and #9. Or...)

Anyway! Yes, I totally love the story-sketches in that file and wish they existed full length: the reason I will never write them (besides my general inability to finish fic) is that I have come to realize that I still have limits when it comes to RPS. I'll read anything (well, theoretically: large sections of RPS still bore me); I'll draw anything (that I'm willing to draw in any other live-action fandom, anyway, there are limits to where I'll go with real peoples' bodies even if they're playing other people); I'll write genfic and AUs and really mild 'ship stories and crossover AUs set in an entirely different world. But when it comes to writing sex between real live people who have their own lives and know how to use the internet -- even under the safety net of "things that never happened" - I just squick myself when I sit down to write.

SO! Anyway! I am not writing the 13 ways Keith/Rachel lesbian sex stories. But the file as sitting on my desktop is around a thousand words anyway. And it has fanart. And a fanmix. That have also been sitting on the hard drive for months. So I'm just going to post it all. Yay?

( Thirteen Ways Rachel Maddow (never) Had Lesbian Sex With Keith Olbermann )

( here be artings )

( The fanmix: 'I'll Be That Girl: Music To Bend Gender To' )

Hello to new subscribers! And everybody else! I will getting to all the online stuff I need to be doing soon, I swear. I've been offline all weekend, more than I was planning to be, and I am *so* behind.

By which I mean, stellar_dust and I went to see the new Star Trek movie with Mom yesterday!

From here on in, there may be spoilers in cuts and comments on this entry. !! I haven't been reading anyone elses' reaction posts, but if you posted it in the last two days, chances are I have it open it a tab to read as soon as this goes up.

To start with, I liked the movie. It was a good movie! It was fun! It was laugh-out-loud funny in many places! The characters were great, the characterization was great, the actors all did either a great job mimicking the originals or a better job than the originals. It was deeply geeky and full of glee and was clearly made by somebody who loved Star Trek and thinks Kirk and Spock are doing it.

And now I am going to be one of the people in that Onion video and list ( all the things that were wrong with it. )

Also, Spock is still totally a mind-slut.

ANYWAY. It was a fun movie. If you have any interest in Star Trek, or SF action flicks, or both, it's probably worth seeing. It has a lot more Leonard Nimoy in it than I was expecting, and plenty of old!Trek outtakes, and a lot of fun non-ST-specific sci-fi summer movie stuff. They considerately made it officially AU, so I don't have to be angry about the way it ruined canon. And it has rekindled my love of the real Star Trek.

... by which I mean the fanfic and the early Bantam and Pocket Books novels. If you know them at all, you may have noticed up in the cut there that I kind of live in the world of the books (and the animated series). C'thia! Rihannsu! Klingon Chess! Captain April's cardigans! The clone of Captain Kirk who the female Romulan Commander won in a duel and dragged off to dress up as her frilly delicate boytoy! That one where they all turn into mermaids! That one where they all get genderswapped and girl!Kirk is totally about two seconds from sleeping with Captain Kang before Spock interrupts! The fact that T'hy'la totally means 'soulbond', no, Jim, I don't care how many footnotes you write denying it.

You know what I'm talkin' about.

Anyway, now I'm working on putting together a packet of e-books that people who like the new movie should read. You know, 'Star Trek the Gay High School AU: the Original Version'. ( Here's my preliminary list, any suggestions to add? )

Am tempted to make a Dreamwidth community starry_sea, specifically for the sort of Star Trek fans who know what "Starry Sea" is a quotation from. To which I could upload e-books and host discussions about things like the Ruling Queen and T'hy'la and Spockanalia and David Gerrold and stuff.(Wow, there's like twelve new DW communites with "Star Trek" in their interests since Thursday.)

Have now watched Victoria's Secret (after a short hiatus caused by MY SISTER BREAKING MY LAPTOP.)

My primary reaction -- and I realize I am not normal, and of course it doesn't help that I was thoroughly spoiled, although how did I not know about Ray's dad from the fanfic! Anyway I now want EmperorOfTheArcticNights!Fraser fic. (And if you actually have the right fandoms to get that reference, I love you forever.)

...Because, dude, when he's with a woman he's actually *interested* in, he's /smooth/, and he didn't get that way from one week in a snowstorm and some adolescent hockey fumblings. I want the story where the only thing that made Victoria different from all the others was that he had regrets about how he ended it. I want "Well, Ray, one thing you quickly learn in the territories is that when there are opportunities around, you make the most of them" and "a gentleman doesn't tell, Ray," x about 300. I want the story where the reason he doesn't mind spartan quarters is that he only rarely spends the whole night in them. I want the stories where he calls back all the women who give him their numbers, and makes it very clear that for reasons which don't need to be explored at this juncture, he can't offer them more than a companionable night or two, but if that's what they're looking for--.

Pls to be telling me where this fic is. (And no, the post-Victoria-letting-loose stories, while awesome, are beside the point. I want the story where's he's *always* been that way.)

Er, as for feminist shtuff - it was better than I expected but not as good as I hoped on that front. I quite like Victoria, though. Where are the stories where Victoria gets to be sympathetic? I mean, she's basically what Faith would've turned into if Angel had slept with her instead of listening to her, and she's hot (and not just because she reminds me of Cuddy), and she's tragic and she's no more evil than half the characters fandom falls for. But I think the best I've seen her get in fic is "I think she might've actually loved him, in her way" followed by painting her as a sadistic psychopath, which there is no evidence for in the episode, since everything she does is carefully, minimally plan to find her one way out of an impossible situation. (And she could have been so much crueller to Fraser. She could have treated him like Ray treats women...)

Of course, I liked Phoebe Green, too, and she probably *is* a sociopath. :P (Ooh, fic where Phoebe is tracking Victoria! And they run off together and have hot sex!)

Just came back from a couple hours' shoe shopping. And oh my god.

I just want a pair of shoes that:
a) give ankle support
b) are waterproof
c) do not hurt when I put them on my feet.

Secondary, it would be nice if:
d) they had reasonably plain leather uppers
e) they were neither white nor black
f) they did not have "special moisture-wicking" aka "get soggy fast" powers
g) they do not involve Velcro
h) they have at least a little insulation
i) they cost less than a month's electric bill

These seem like perfectly reasonable things to expect from shoes, yeah? At this point I'd be willing to go for any shoes that give me at least a), one of b) or c), and at least one of the others. I've lucked out the last few times finding waterproof hiking boots that fit on clearance. Not so lucky this time, and I've been looking since June.

Tonight, the only pair of high-tops in womens' sizes in the whole store were Converse. So, what I have learned today is that the reason the Doctor wears Converse is that Converse are not designed for human feet.

Also, according to the little metal foot-measuring things, my feet are around a size six and a half, which explains why shoes that fit my feet are generally somewhere between a seven and a half and a nine and a half wide.

(I could also use some new sandals and some new work-or-interview type shoes, but neither me nor roomate found any of those in whole store that were even halfway to tolerable.

...Women are supposed to like shoe shopping. Huh.)

I'm now nearly at the end of dS season one, and Fraser is still cute and Diefenbaker is still amazing and Ray is still Ray (and the Riv's cigarette lighter is totally a very young baby TARDIS) -- but.

The thing is, if there's one thing that's a recurring theme in this show's universe, it's that you've got to treat everybody like people. White, black, hispanic, Chinese, young kids and old ladies, mentally ill street people, dogs, cars, Mafia dons, rich, poor, in-between, criminals, cops - you have to always treat them as *people* first, and then everything will work out right.

...and then there's women.

Women, apparently, are strange alien creatures whose lives revolve entirely around men but whose actions are unpredictable and whose motivations are incomprehensible. Oh, and if you try to treat them like people rather than women you're walking into a trap and it'll lead to nothing but trouble.

Now I could maybe buy this coming from the main characters - Fraser takes his social clues from Vecchio, and Vecchio is a total douche with women, okay, but the *show itself* buys into this. In the same episode where we're expected to learn that crazy raving guy is wiser than you know and has unexpected depths of character, there'll be a woman wandering in who we're just supposed to throw our hands up at, because, hey, *women*.

I think there were maybe three female characters between the ages of seventeen and sixty in the first 19 episodes who I could buy as actual people. And two of them were strongly coded as Mothers rather than Women.

I stopped to write this before the last few eps because I know from fandom that there's a major *thing* coming up that involves a female character, and I have hopes that said story will be set up in such a way that Our Heroes get themselves screwed *because* they're treating her as a Woman and not a person, and all the more egregious stuff in the earlier eps was setting us up to learn that lesson and learn it hard. But I have a feeling my hopes will be dashed upon the rocks of Sexy Danger.

Even so, I want to like this show, I'm still hoping it improves in later seasons. I get the impression that RayK is capable of having actual relationships with women, unlike RayV, and Thatcher supposedly rocks, although I'm not getting my hopes up about her either. And Elaine, admittedly, did improve once she was convinced that Fraser doesn't go for women, though she's still basically just Designated Self-Insert For Girls.

But I've recently seen a fair amount of criticism of the way several more recent fannish shows of this type have dealt with female characters, and they do have their issues (major ones, sometimes!) but they're all *so* much better than dS. Maybe too many of the female characters do just get jerked around to motivate Our Heroes or dilute the gay UST, but they at least get to be people, too. Sometimes they even get to be people *first*, once in a while.

A poem that for some reason came to mind this week, from my favorite sonneteer of all time, Edna St. Vincent Millay:
( I, being born a woman and distressed )

There was a women who understood everything that "sexual liberation" entailed.



So is "you don't talk about account creation being turned on" one of the rules of JF now? 'cause it's on. And nobody's talking about it.

I had a dream about you guys last night.

Only it turned out that f_w was actually just the visible part and publicity/recruiting arm of a secret cabal that was working to expose some sort of vast multinational evil conspiracy which was centered out of an immigrants' enclave in San Francisco, controlled by men from this tiny, obscure oil-rich Eastern European country where they still forced their women to dress like it was the Victorian era.

(I had to get a proper corset made before I could go undercover there. That was the only fun part of the dream!)

Anyway, we finally uncovered enough evidence to go public, and our glorious leader Mrs. Larimer called a press conference where she revealed the whole thing, including the U.s. Government's complicity. But the first question in the question period was some asshole male reporter asking "Yeah, but where's the actual proof of all this?" And Mrs. Larimer said, "I'm confident something will come up," at which point black helicopters flew out of the clouds and bombed the whole press conference into a thin layer of slime, leaving no survivors but the dozen people on the speakers' platform (they hadn't been willing to target it, because there were some high-ranking officials there to speak too) and kadath's pet cat, who was busy having kittens under the podium. So our new secret catchphrase became "The kittens are the truth," and there were many very cute pictures posted everywhere.

...then it turned out it was all just a graphic novel anyway, and I woke up.

Have crawled out of the internet-less depths of the ancestral homestead to the happy land of wireless at the Troy City Library in order to finally get a chance to read my yuletide story

--and OMG, OMG, OMG, guys, it is *wonderful*: Tow Rope, Here Lies the Librarian, *perfection*. (And WWI aftermath. I can't wait for reveals - my author either did a lot of reading on what I like, or just happens to like the same things as me, and either way she is love.)

Now I have relatives waiting for us to emerge to go to dinner with them (despite my still being on the recovery end of the Traditional Holiday Food Poisoning - not so yay) and also I have 150 - no joke - tabs open with Yuletide stories, so I had better sign off before it turns into 300.

...yeah, so dryponder is running another superhero redesign meme. This time, it's Stephanie Brown.

I actually did an extensive redesign back in the day, in which I based a new Spoiler costume on what *I'd* wear if I were a DCU superheroine: a costume where nobody can tell you're female, and therefore won't rape you with a power drill in order to be 'edgy'. But after a year or more lurking around Girl-Wonder, I wanted to do something more girl-positive. And less angry.

( So, moar art: two small png images under cut. )

So people have been rec'cing stuff left and right lately - srs bzness burnout, I guess, combined with a bunch of fests and challenges coming due. And there's this one SGA story everybody (including me) loves, which is an absolute confection of a John/Rodney forced marriage romance. Only of course the premise under which they get married is totally bogus, and there's a bunch of whining about that in the comments already.

Me? I could care less about that, because it gets me, y'know, John/Rodney forced marriage fic. No. What is bothering the living heck out of me is that there's a scene where "pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers" are referenced, and the author thinks it's *Trix*. And it's not like I could just drop a line suggesting she change the reference (like she ought to change the typo in the first line) because the scene would be totally different if they were talking about leprechauns and lucky charms instead of trix and rabbits. But it would *also* be totally different if they were referring to 'rainbow fruit' instead, because then the gay would outweigh the tacky. And since the point is how dorky they are, I can't believe it's in character that they'd mix it up, and the whole scene *totally doesn't work at all*.

...there. Now maybe I can resist the temptation to go say that in her comments. </OCD>

I've also read a couple SPN AUs, because I gobble "Jess is Alive" threesome AUs like candy, and that combined with that vid with all the dead wimmens in it makes me really want a Jess-is-alive AU where Jess is in charge of her own life, and kicks ass because she fuckin' wants to. It's not like all the AUs I've read weren't awesome and asskicking, but even in nearly all of those, the version of Jess's story we get is about how she motivates the boys, not about her becoming her own person in her own right. Y'know, actual agency. And then maybe she could show Sam and Dean how to be in love without being codependent, and wouldn't *that* be a miracle?

( I don't have IM so I dump brainstorming here! )

Please tell me somebody's already written that fic, and I don't have to read all 83 del.icio.us pages tagged "spn AU jess" looking for it in vain. ^_^