yonmei

07:56 pm: Fannish Meme: Comment with a fandom
Comment with a fandom and I shall tell you...

1. The first character I fell in love with:
2. The character I never expected to love as much as I do now:
3. The character everyone else loves that I don't:
4. The character I love that everyone else hates:
5. The character I would shag anytime:
6. The character I'd want to be like:
7. The character I'd slap:
8. A pairing that I love:
9. A pairing that I despise:
10. Favorite character:
11. Slash story I never expect anyone to write for me but I'd love them if they did:
12. Song for fanvid that no one will ever make:
13. Who are your five favorite characters?
14. Who are your five least favorite characters?
15. What are your five favorite pairings?

Tags: fannishness, meme meme meme

10:04 am: NewWho: ( Why it's good that Donna's story ended the way it did )
It's not.

Much has changed about the Doctor over the years but much has remained the same. Despite the superficial differences in appearance, at heart, or rather at hearts (the Doctor has two) his character is remarkably consistent.

He is still impulsive, idealistic, ready to risk his life for a worthy cause. He still hates tyranny and oppression and anything that is anti-life. He never gives in and he never gives up, however overwhelming the odds against him.

The Doctor believes in good and fights evil. Though often caught up in violent situations, he is a man of peace. He is never cruel or cowardly.

In fact, to put it simply, the Doctor is a hero.

Having the Doctor ( spoiler for NewWho S4 finale ) just give up.

For anyone coming here who doesn't usually read my journal, I wrote about this at more length on feministsf the blog.

Tags: doctor who, fannishness, i am an angry feminist

01:44 pm: No, not just sour grapes
I have a Youtube account: every video uploaded to it is my own copyrighted material.

I use Youtube to watch vids: primarily, I use it to watch Johnny Cash sing. (Occasionally, Willie Nelson.)

As of last Tuesday, Viacom gets to know exactly what my viewing patterns are. And yours. And everyone's.

"To build its case, Viacom asked for a list of all the login IDs belonging to YouTube's users, along with the company's log of which videos they watched, when, and from which IP (Internet Protocol) address. With that logging database, it hopes to show that its copyright content is of more interest to YouTube's users than video created by the users themselves." - link

So an American judge got to make an order that handed over identifying data about people living outside the US to an American corporation which is minded to really, really, annoy the people who used to be its customer base. Well, if you're still on Livejournal, you should be used to that. To quote someone else: "Now every part of the world is subject to US law. Except Guantanamo Bay."

"That data includes every YouTube username, the associated IP address and the videos that user has watched on YouTube. Google will also be required to hand over copies of every video removed from Youtube for any reason (DMCA notices or user-initiated deletions). Stanton dismissed Google’s argument that the order will violate user privacy, saying such privacy concerns are merely 'speculative.'" - link

Simon Davies does a big I Told You So: "Governments and organisations are realising that companies like Google have a warehouse full of data. And while that data is stored it is under threat of being used and putting privacy in danger." link

I was recommended to the Tor Project to improve your privacy online.

I was interested to see if Organisation for Transformative Works had anything to say about this, but they don't.

Tags: bloody bloody bloody, cool things people do with software, evil american politics, fannishness, youtube videos

06:40 pm: Yay! What? Oh...
Back awhile ago, I noticed that bethbethbeth had announced yet another OTW thingie in her journal, and as I was (a) fairly busy and (b) had decided just to avoid OTW stuff in order not to snark about it being LJ-only, I didn't click on the link.

Then RL/non-online Stuff Happened - really, um, lots of stuff, including but not limited to a major work event and my back going out, and so when bethbethbeth lambasted me for not joining the new IJ OTW-community and explained that yes, uniquely and newly and unlike all other OTW stuff this was not limited to LJ-people only...

...and I literally did not have the time or the energy to even go look at it. (Well, briefly, I did: except I was actually soaking up Scottish sun/writing a crossover story instead. Not really sorry, either.)

But this evening, I thought: I now have three days free! I can join the new OTW community! I can find out what was happening! I can make comments!

...er. It turns out it was a strictly time-limited community, intended to be open to the IJ-public for six days or so, and I missed it.

(I did join it anyway. I can at least see what they were talking about, and if they decide to do it again I'll be there.)

Tags: fannishness, i write fanfic, just my life really

10:39 am: This is Scotland
I am sitting outdoors in a gloriously green garden, in warm sunlight. My feet are bare and if I'd thought to pack them I would be wearing shorts.

(My back feels lots better: I kept telling people "sore but normal" yesterday, when it was still worrying me, but it really is today.)

I should be writing a complex and and sarcastic story involving House and a flock of other characters, not all of them ducklings or Wilson, but somehow I can't focus on that.

Hey ho for mayhem, angst, torture, suicide, and despair! I think I can focus on that.

Tags: fannishness, green in the city, imaginary friend meetup, write write write

03:25 pm: Class on TV
I am still thinking about a comment alixtii made on her journal. Just out of interest, what's your impression, imaginary Internet people, of the difference between class representation on British TV and American TV?

Never mind (for the moment) how you yourself define upper, middle, and working class: what shows currently (or historically) on British TV portrayed which classes, and which ones did you watch? And what is the difference between this and American TV?

Tags: class, fannishness, tv addiction

08:52 am: 80sficapalooza - Star Wars: "Winning without words"
Well, this is pretty much all dragovianknight's fault. Really it is. Having proposed eight or nine prompts for 80s fandoms, I really had to claim something - but it had to be something for the beginning of the month because I'm going to be fiendishly busy by the end of it. ...and also, I'm not writing MacGyver fanfic for anyone who can't spell MacGyver. So that left me with just one possible prompt, and... er, yes.

I'll post it on my journal once it's no longer the 3rd of May. (Mine is the first story up for the day...)

Tags: fannishness, slash slash slashity slash, star wars, write write write

11:48 pm: Character Meme
I am in a small village in the middle of Scotland the Desolate. The landscape is beautiful, which means it would be very difficult to be a lesbian here. I am surrounded by hordes of the people I work with all the time. Well, not right now, I have sneaked off and found an Internet connection, while they are all getting drunk downstairs.

I am also drunk, but you can't tell because I am editing all my typos. Thetre arwe a lots of typoes.

So. Meme! Under the lj-cut there are 100 pointless questions. Your meme, should you choose to select it, is to pick a series - TV, film, or book - with which you know I am familiar, and name a character from that series. I will respond to some or all of the questions below the LJ-cut with actual quotes from what the character you picked actually says in canon. But (cackles fiendishly) I will do this if and only if in your own journal, you pick another character from the same series and have your chosen character respond to some or all of the questions below the cut.

Isn't it great!? Or, possibly, am I just so drunk it sounds great? Mmm, wine. G'night.

( 100 pointless questions )

Tags: bloody work, fannishness, meme meme meme

10:30 am: OMG hearts
One of my Secret Fandoms (you know, the sort you hardly like to admit to on account of it being hokey and embarrassing and all that) is Johnny Cash.

Another is the Muppet Show. I don't think I need to explain about that: I mean either you understand why it's so completely adorable and gives you the warm fuzzies, from the two grumpy old men in the box to Eddie the Eagle screaming to Kermit's weary shoulder-drooping fuzzy green frogness, or you see it as a clutch of unconvincing puppets doing silly jokes to a laugh-track. I can't explain.

I fell for Willie Nelson's voice many years ago, and still am: whatho said once that you wonder why anyone bothers to do a song after Willie Nelson's sung it, because he makes it sound better than anyone else. But with Johnny Cash, it was RPF first, and voice second: I wanted to hear him sing after I read a former journalist's memory of an interview:

So, we were there all afternoon, in that shadowy room, and it was one of the finest afternoons I've ever spent, and definitely the worst interview I've ever done. We hardly talked. This is how he's choosing to communicate, I realised. By singing. Which from a singer is not unreasonable - in fact it's possibly more right, more true, than answering interview questions. Also - I turned the tape recorder off. Why? A one-on-one personal Johnny Cash concert on the sofa and you turned the tape off? Why? Answer: because I knew this was not something which could be repeated. Couldn't be, shouldn't be.
He did say one thing I remember: "You have to be what you are. Whatever you are, you gotta be it."
And I came out realising that I didn't want to be a journalist any more.

I love listening to Cash sing (plus he, like Willie Nelson, gives me great imaginary music videos in my head, the sort no one will ever make for me)

But sometimes when two Secret Fandoms collide, the result is something that's just better than either: Johnny Cash sings Ghost Riders in the Sky and Jackson on the Muppet Show. omg ♥♥♥

Johnny Cash just looks so happy.

---

Also: Dirty Ol' Egg-Sucking Dog, and the full version of Johnny Cash on the Muppet Show (link to part 1) and Johnny Cash with Big Bird on Sesame Street.

Tags: fannishness, johnny cash, muppet show, omg hearts, secret fandoms

01:19 pm: How I fixed Brokeback Mountain
Over coffee with Ajay the other night, she said she was looking for fanfic that would fix Brokeback Mountain for her. I told her if she got a livejournal (which she's resisted so far) she could join communities for fanfic about Brokeback Mountain, and she looked tempted, but said no, she was looking for fanfic that would fix it, not for fanfic about it.

So I told her my mental fix-it: ( spoilers, kind of )

Tags: angry queer, brokeback mountain, fannishness

12:07 pm: On truth and writing
lexin wrote something I responded to that I feel like reposting here:

What I hate worst is when I am told "But I wrote this story for myself" (ie, your opinion of it is irrelevant). Because, dammit, if you wrote this story for yourself, and you didn't want anyone else's opinion, then don't publish it.

I have (to date) only actually lost one friend because she got angry with my opinion of her story. And as this wasn't very long ago, I am rather hoping that in the long run she will realise that it's not that much of a crime for me to be honest about what I think about her writing and get over it. (It may take some time. Her position is that she wants criticism, but that I was being dictatorial, and she won't tolerate that.) There have been other hiatuses in friendship in the past, for similiar reasons. And I don't know how many people officially hate me (various sock puppets have said they hate me on various crit-friendly mailing lists, but I don't know how many people they actually represent) for being honest about what I think about people's writing.

And yet, it is easier just to say nothing. But it's more fun to jump right in. But just because it's fun doesn't make it wrong. (People keep telling me that it's wrong to criticise because fanfiction is written for the love of it. Well, then it's wrong to criticise me for criticising fanfiction because I write criticism for the love of it. Hah.)

And though I have had nasty e-mails from people accusing me of being a mean and spiteful person, I've also had nice e-mails from people who said they liked what I had to say. And the nice e-mails are usually much more warming than the nasty e-mails are chilling, because mostly the nasty e-mails are just plain silly.

Gosh, this is a lot of egotistic rambling. It is a problem. The source of the problem is, though, not so much intellectual dishonesty - or even inability to discriminate - but the feeling that it's nice to be nice: that you mustn't be mean to people who are trying to do nice things for you like writing fanfiction. So if you do write "This story sucks" this is interpreted not as a short criticism of the story itself, but a meanspirited attack on the writer. If I could have one fannish wish it would be to tear up this notion root and branch: criticising the story is not identical with or even close to attacking the writer. Suggesting how the writer could make the story better is not the same thing as telling the writer what to write.

Tags: fannishness, writing