eruthros

1. Sometimes I cook all fancy! I'm home visiting my folks, and my dad wanted to grill because he's been watching this grilling cooking show. But I basically don't eat meat except for fish, so we settled on tuna, because it doesn't stick to the grill. So this was yesterday's dinner:

( grilled marinated tuna and mango salsa taco-ish things for the noms )

2. Speaking of California, I often find staying with my parents somewhat frustrating (and helping my mom out with her work can be exceptionally frustrating).

But! Here are some of the things that California has in addition to fruit: It's-Its. Blue Bottle Coffee (<3<3<3). Tacos. Breakfast pastries at the Ferry Building. Boogaloo's amazing grilled plantain cakes. Persimmons from the tree in the backyard. Some friends I haven't seen in a while. Fan peoples. Thrift stores. An ocean.

3. There is going to be another Avatar: The Last Airbender (and Avatar: Legend of Korra) fanwork exchange over at

white_lotus! I plan to ask for Korra/Chief Bei Fong, among other things, so it is basically guaranteed to include great things.

Anyway, if you are interested, there's a draft signup post to poke at (to make sure all your favorite characters are on the list!) and tomorrow there will be a draft rules post that take people's suggests from last year into account. And signups will start later this week!

As part of making it work this year, we've also made an AO3 collection for the challenge, so that people who want to play in an anon-slow-reveal challenge but also want to be able to edit their fanworks can play that way. People will still be able to just send us their fanworks and have them posted straight to the comm, but the AO3 thing should make it easier for people who are already using the AO3. (Plus we belatedly made a collection for last year, so if you want to you can submit your fanworks to the collection.)

4. Remember that top one hundred specfic works thing? I haven't forgotten it, I promise, I just got cranky when I organized everything for Condorcet voting on a website that said it would do it ... and then couldn't deal with 250 things in a list, Grr. And then I tried a bunch of other places, and they all would only do ten items or allow 50 voters or blahblah. I might end up just doing it in comments and uploading the data flat to a Condorcet calculator. (The short version of condorcet: it's sometimes called ranked-choice or instant-runnoff voting [though a lot of different methods end up being called these things, since the terms are used confusingly in news stories], and it's usually done for single-winner issues. It can be done for a multiple-winner issue, though, and I thought it would be fun because it would let people rank as many things as they wanted. It's a kind of neat alternative since it lets you rank things you hate low, and not have to do careful vote manipulation to make your vote "count." But APPARENTLY the javascript version of the Condorcet page crashes liek whoah.)

5. ( some stuff about the OTW )

Dear Festividder,

Hi! I am really excited about festivids, and I'm thrilled that you're making me a present in one of these tiny (or at least small) fandoms that we share! First and foremost, I want you to have fun and do festivids however you want to do it, and if that means totally ignoring this that is fine by me. If you want more information about me or what I like about the sources or music suggestions, read on, but don't take any of this letter as a strict guideline - I like all kinds of vids (including critiques) and I like surprises and I like these sources, so you're pretty sure to make something I'll like.

I'm fine with almost any rating or content - the only thing is that I'm phobic about needles, but I can usually watch them unless it's an extended slow-mo sequence.

Almost everything I requested is a safety fandom, so if you're panicking about what you matched on there are plenty of easy-to-ahem options!

( about music! )

( my requests plus some additional notes about source/availability )

I'm considering doing Kaleidoscope this year - I've seen it linked around a lot, but just in case here are the basics:

Kaleidoscope Fanwork Exchange (AO3 collection)
A multimedia fanwork exchange hosted by

dark_agenda for rare chromatic source fandoms.
Official Announcement, Policies and Procedures | Frequently Asked Questions
Nomination Form | Current List of Nominations | Nomination Example

It's a fanwork exchange for fandoms by chromatic creators featuring chromatic characters/people - there's more info in the official announcement post. And it's for all kinds of fanworks, vids and fic and art and icons and picspams and etc.

The good: I love a fanwork exchange! I love making something especially for someone else and getting something made especially for me. And I love the mods and the concept behind the exchange. And I really do need external pressure of some sort to actually post anything.

The bad: The schedule overlaps a lot with

kink_bingo's schedule - all of the busiest KB modding times are also the important kaleidoscope times. But that won't mean I'll have no free time! But it probably will mean that I'm cranky and kind of tired of fannish things. It might feel more irritating than fun when I'm looking at an assignment next month. So I don't know.

The difficult: Nominations! People only get to nominate three fandoms, and there are so many cool things not currently on the list, and how would I decide what I want to nominate. I haven't been thinking about doing any multi-fandom exchanges, so I don't have a ticky-able list of Cool Things I Would Nominate For X. It's all just exclamation marks. Sleep Dealer! I want fanworks in that universe so much! Especially if they contain cool speculative fiction or threesomes! Janelle Monáe's Metropolis/Archandroid universe! All the Samuel Delany, all of it! (Except I still haven't read Dhalgren, whoops.) Game fandoms! Whale Rider, which I asked for for yuletide one year, but maybe

glass_icarus is going to nominate it! Etc.

Decisions are hard.

1. You guys,

icepixie wrote The Heart's Compass, the Babylon 5 Delenn/Ivanova AU of my dreams, seriously, could I have had this show instead? It's a little awkward in places but, I mean, so was the show. And listen, it is a story where Delenn falls for Ivanova instead of Sheridan, early in the series, and it makes my heart happy.

icepixie also wrote a a post-Sleeping in Light Ivanova/Delenn story that I haven't read yet (Later Stars of Dawn), which added to the Ivanova/Delenn story that

thingswithwings wrote for my birthday one year (Concerto for Violin, Cello, and Piano in C Major, Garibaldi/Franklin, Lennier/Vir, Ivanova/Delenn, postseries) makes three Ivanova/Delenn stories in the last few years. It is a small-fandom rare-pairing embarrassment of riches!

(Especially since there are also a few drabbles and short vignettes over at the AO3, though most of them are about unrequited love.)

2. Don't know what to be this Halloween? Check out wtf should I be for Halloween, which contains as many costume ideas as there are articles on wikipedia. And puts "sexy" in front of all of them.

Since it's completely randomized, there are some really great options. This year I plan on going as a Sexy Fort Reliance Water Aerodrome, for example. (There's also the potential for fail, because of course there are many pages on wikipedia that really shouldn't be indexed with "sexy" in front of them; I didn't encounter anything faily when I clicked through, but that doesn't mean it can't happen.)

3. I frequently encounter images on tumblr that are unattributed or dewatermarked, and sometimes that makes me really sad -- I don't know if that photographer has a ton more pretty image, or what the original context was, or anything. But if I see something really great and I really really want to know if there's more by the same photographer, I look for the picture over at TinEye, a reverse image search engine. Sometimes it even works! Anyway this is a link to TinEye, which I think I was first linked to three years ago when their image index was even smaller; now I do sometimes have some success with them.

4. The US Department of Justice recently filed a brief that said that genes shouldn't be patentable, which is ... kind of amazing.

5. Apparently TVTropes is going to have to take down, move, rename, or mark as NSFW a lot of their sex and sexuality-related content because google ads noticed that ads are running on pages with mature content. And they might have to make registration mandatory to view sex/kink/fetish tropes, and they are planning to make registration mandatory for editing pages. I don't hang out there or anything, but it still makes me sad -- many of those pages are very useful for vidding/iconing/etc. Or for

kink_bingo, where I have often used the TV Tropes pages for tentacles to find pictures or examples or video of canonical tentacles.

1. I posted that high-protein cookie recipe that I mentioned a while ago over at

omnomnom! Also, I might've had some of those cookies for breakfast.

2. An interview meme from

chagrined! ( Questions and answers are under this cut )

3. I actually kind of feel like I'm posting all the time right now, because I'm writing up

kink_bingo related stuff: resources, posting template, accessability, kink wiki stuff about kinks X and Y and Z. But then I don't post it! Because it has to wait until round two is closed! So I keep being a little confused about what I've posted and where. *facepalm*

4. I'm sort of doing three weeks for dreamwidth all the time, since I'm not crossposting, but I thought this related meme was interesting: What kind of topics/entries would you like to see me posting about? Any particular questions you've always wanted to ask me but have resisted because the answer would be a huge essay? Ever want to wind me up and watch me go on a particular topic? Anything you've heard me say "I should write that entry about _________ I've been meaning to write" and have been patiently waiting for? (from

telesilla)

So, a long time ago, I read zorrorojo's Just a Guy, a Highlander/Star Trek: Voyager crossover. Recently,

thingswithwings and I were discussing the intriguing kinkiness of deaged fic -- where, even if the characters don't have sex when one of them is a kid, there's all of this interesting narrative focus on youth, on innocence, on John Sheppard needing to be trained to recognize love through being hugged a lot, on Blair Sandburg's tiny hands, on Rodney McKay's big eyes and trembling lips. Narrative kinks are intriguing! And I remembered this story, and went and tracked it down, and shared the kinky highlights with

thingswithwings, and now I want to share it with you.

( Tom Paris and Methos are deaged by an alien device... )

So, anyway, this story was totally one of my guilty pleasures in like 2001, and I really enjoyed it in a lot of ways even though the writing style is not my bag. And I think, now, that one of those ways was the narrative kink, the ageplay, the virginity stuff, that is never played out -- Chakotay and MacLeod never have sex with deaged Tom and Methos, though Tom and Methos have sex with each other in a sort of puppy pile way. But it's all there anyway, right, all the stuff about tiny hands and keeping Methos in line and breaking the rules and whatever, Methos's attempts to game MacLeod by acting out, it's a complete roleplay scenario. It's just that the sex never happens.

Anyway, this is a thing I've been thinking about lately, about fic with this sort of narrative kinkiness, where the author/reader get off but the characters don't: Simpson flogs Hornblower, who doesn't enjoy it, but we do; Blair is kidnapped and brainwashed; John Sheppard is forced to worship an alien god; Obi-Wan has to get nipple rings to go undercover; Mulder is branded by Cancer Man. Examples and other thoughts welcome, as always.

Often hilarious:

Me: There are already more people signed up for yuletide than there were last year. 1634!

thingswithwings: Wow, that's more years than passed between the birth of Jesus Christ and the birth of Shakespeare!
Me: ...

thingswithwings: What? It's true!

thingswithwings wrote a how-we-vidded-yuletide retrospective post that is ... pretty much exactly what the vid project was like, but shorter.

2. I want a new term for a particular kind of pairing-fic. See, there's best friends!fic (Blair/Jim, Starsky/Hutch, Gus/Shawn) and there's what I think of as enemies!fic (Harry Potter/any Voldemort supporter, Mulder/Krycek, Johnny Smith/Stillson, John/Kolya) and then there's this other thing, this sort of sniping-but-on-the-same-side thing. And sometimes people call it enemies!fic, and I'm always a bit "huh?" because these guys aren't enemies. They're just not best friends! If one of them hasn't killed the other's mentor, if one of them isn't trying to bring about the apocalypse, if one of them isn't busy creating an evil clone army, it's just not the same! It's "sometimes we bicker" fic! And yet people keep telling me that it's the opposite of the bff fic, that if you don't write best friends this is the other option, and I am continually weirded.

Some example pairings that I thought of just now:
- Psych, Shawn/Lassiter. Listen, they are both on the same side, neither of them has killed the other's father, they just kind of dislike each other. They both want to arrest guys! They sometimes work together! But not as much as Shawn and Gus.

- The Dead Zone, Johnny/Walt. They are kinda suspicious of each other, okay, and Walt sometimes thinks Johnny's a big weirdo, and they are both in love with the same woman, but ... not enemies. Not BFFs, either.

- Eureka, Jack Carter/Nathan Stark. They are both in love with the same woman (sigh) and they don't like each other but they, you know, save the world together a lot.

- The X-Files, Mulder/Skinner. They're on the same side -- well, most of the time, depending on what side Chris Carter thought Skinner was on today -- but they disagree sometimes. Mostly they do Stern Authority Figure/Snarky Subordinate. Like, in fic, when Skinner spanked Mulder, it was for How Dare You Break Into That Military Base Without Telling Me, I Worry About You reasons, not Damn You, Stop Trying to Take Over the World With Evil Robots reasons.

So what should I call this? Clearly "guys who kind of don't like each other and are a little bit snarky but neither of them killed the other one's father fic" is a little long.

thingswithwings suggests "cantankerous acquaintance fic," which certainly gets at the part where these aren't guys who are BFFs and aren't srs enemies.

Like, is it just my fannish history? Is it just that I read Mulder/Krycek and Harry/Snape (when Snape was supposed to be evil)? I feel like these aren't the same things as what I'm used to calling enemies!fic. I want more archnemeses in my enemies!fic.

3. I am sad to say that Super Mario Galaxy has been rejected from yuletide -- the Mario universe was added to the list of ineligible franchises after nominations were over. I am full of woe, for I wanted to ask for cool genre-bending fic (Freudian meditations on Cosmic Mario! kinky Star Bunny fic!), and also because it means I wasted a nomination -- I went and looked up the fandom before I nominated, and was pretty sure that it would count as small enough on its own, and Mario wasn't on the franchise list. I could have nominated The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air instead! Or Uzak (Distant), where there should have been HUGS. I know that betrays the premise of the movie, but after I watched it, I wanted hugs. Or Carol Emshwiller's Carmen Dog, which was my favorite book when I was in junior high. (Finding out that Le Guin loved it, in that article, made me all starry-eyed. Ursula K Le Guin! Carol Emshwiller! Together! It was like, baby!eruthros does RPF.) So now I am a little sad.

4. I watched White Collar the other day; here is some ( spoilery talk about it )

Please don't take the fanfiction survey that is going around (the one with the big fancy banner).

Here is the deal: the people who wrote that survey pm'ed me, as one of the mods of

kink_bingo, while I was out of the country. In their pm, they (unintentionally) made it quite clear that their intent in their project is to talk about human universals -- to use our fannish experience, our erotics and our desires, to reinforce ideas of universal, hard-wired, biological desire.

They are outsiders to fandom. They are outsiders to fanfiction. They are outsiders to slash. And they haven't tried to learn, or to understand, or to think about fannish communities. Instead, they have made assumptions about who we are, about what we read, about what we find hot; they plan to use those to explain what makes women tick, what our brains make us do.

They do not believe that culture mediates our desire at all¹; they don't believe that we are shaped by our communities and our experiences; they want to put us into neat, biologically determined boxes. We declined to participate, and figured that was the end of it -- we didn't know that there was going to be a survey, which is why I'm posting publicly. (I'm going to put that pm, and the subsequent conversation

thingswithwings and I had with them, under cut-tags at the end of this post if you're interested.)

All of those problems are present in the survey itself. If you read through the comments on their Q&A post, you'll see a number of people challenging the questions, the answers, and the ideas behind the survey. Reasons include heterosexist language, which presumes that anyone not marked as queer must be straight; the language of the questions about participants' sex, gender, and sexual orientation, which presumes that people are either male or female; and the language of their description of slash, which presumes that there is one definition of slash.

torachan further explains some of those problems here.

And all of these problems are present in their About This Survey page:

The structure and activity of our subcortical circuits are shaped by neurohormones such as testosterone, estrogen, oxytocin, progesterone, and vasopressin; these circuits function differently in men and women. As cognitive neuroscientists, we draw upon a wide variety of empirical data sources to model these circuits, including brain imaging studies, primate research, cognitive science experiments, machine learning algorithms--and behavioral data. The Internet offers large, unprecedented sources of data on human activity: one of these data sets is fan fiction.

We're deeply interested in broad-based behavioral data that involves romantic or erotic cognition and evinces a clear distinction between men and women. Fan fiction matches this criteria perfectly.

Guys, that is their explanation of their project: that they want to look at how we are hard-wired different.

It's the same old sociobiological bullshit, the same old attempts to universalize and naturalize their ideas of gender roles, the same old approach that makes us nothing but a data set. Please don't take this survey.

If you have already taken this survey, I don't know what to tell you -- I'm sorry that I didn't post this earlier. I don't know what would happen if you demanded to have your answers taken out; I don't know what sort of IRB/human subjects research board preparations they have done.

( Their first pm to us )

( Our reply )

( Their reply, attempting to convince to participate after all )

( Read more... )

¹Note, for example their answer in their Q&A to someone who brought up these issues: "we are pursuing our own research questions, which are not cultural in nature."

ETA: The survey has been taken down, at least temporarily. The text on the survey site now reads:

We're revamping some of our survey questions based upon the first round of feedback we received! Please check back again soon to take our survey!

There are a number of interesting comments on their post announcing the removal of the survey.

I noticed some overlap between

kink_bingo categories and

cliche_bingo categories, and I thought it might be interesting to explore that overlap. So, I present here a list of

kink_bingo categories that are also categories in

cliche_bingo.

I may have missed some overlap in glancing over the list; if so, I'd be interested to know what they are.

You will find the table ( below this cut )

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Entries tagged with fandom

some things make a post

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Kaleidoscope!

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Some memes! Some posts other places!

in which Tom Paris and Methos are deaged

Translating numbers into meaningful things?

a general fannish post

please don't take the fanfiction survey

fannish kinks

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