Wow, I've been gone a bit. Thought I think I might have got myself writing again.

For instance, I have the next part of Gracious almost done. Just need to finish up the last little bit and get it beta'd, and it'll be good to go. Also writing a Mercverse fic. Already 5200 words in on that. Plan on having it all done and beta'd before I start posting it, however.

Anyone remember either of those stories/AUs?

A-AWESOME

IT'S ALREADY OUT. HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS.

On the other hand, I was watching it going 'I really hope Lola gets to do more' and she doesn't even appear once. **sulks**

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Title: Aftermath
Series: Harry Potter
Rating: PG
Genre: Vignette
Words: 403
Notes/Warnings: Deathly Hallows Spoilers. Done for 31_days, theme 'six. feel the freedom like no tomorrow'
Summary: The summer after Harry's final year, he comes to a realization.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is copyright J. K. Rowling, and this derivative work is done without permission.

( Even after the Battle of Hogwarts, there was cleanup to do.  )

Title: Reminder
Fandom: Claymore
Rating: PG
Genre: Vignette
Words: 200
Notes/Warnings: Done for 31_days theme 'five. I cry surrounded amidst the light and shadow you have left behind '.
Summary: An unexpected reminder of humanity and loss.
Disclaimer: Claymore copyright Norihiro Yagi and this derivative work was created without permission.

( "A man in black will be by to collect the money you owe the organization." )

It's 2:30 in the morning and I can't sleep.....

I have never read or seen the Dragon Ball, and yet when I saw a page about the history of Honolulu on their site (.gov and everything) that mentioned "King Kamehameha I, who conquered Oahu in a decisive battle..." my mind went straight there.

**shakes head** Internet fandom osmosis is no joke.

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Title: To Battle!
Fandom: Slayers
Rating: G
Genre: Comedy
Words: 100
Notes/Warnings: Done for 31_days theme 'four. I can see it all too clear; the time has come to face my fear'.
Summary: Lina faces down a fear of hers.
Disclaimer: Slayers copyright Hajime Kanzaka/Rui Araizumi/Kadokawa/TV Tokyo/Medianet and this derivative work was created without permission.

( As meticulous as any veteran soldier preparing for war, Lina Inverse checked her equipment.  )

I need to stop getting, like actually angry over the shit Allan Ball does to Charlaine Harris's books, but this just stirred up boiling anger that never left me.

Ball said the Vampire King of Mississippi is coming in season three. He provides a contrast to Sophie-Anne, the Vampire Queen of Louisiana (Evan Rachel Wood). “He’s older,” Ball said. “He’s much more mature. He’s much more methodical and grounded. She’s kind of crazy. To me, she’s kind of like Paris Hilton/Lindsay Lohan, where she has a very short attention span and she’s very, very egomaniacal and very self-obsessed and doesn’t really think about her actions, whereas the Vampire King is very much an adult. He has an agenda. He has things he wants to achieve. I think he’s much more formidable than she is.”

So basically, he took Sophie-Anne's character and gave it to a man. Who is, of course, this being True Blood, 'much more formidable.' And set her up to take a disastrous fall and have 'higher' vampire authorities PO'd at her.

I mean, he spends the entire second season undermining and sidelining Sookie--I'm not even mentioning Calypso being turned into Maryanne--and a fair amount of the first season too, so I'm not surprised, just frustrated all over again.

ALLAN BALL. SOOKIE DOES NOT NEED POWERS TO BE AWESOME. SHOVE OFF.

(Source.)


All I've been doing is complaining lately!

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I'm not sure why Uther being an asshole is supposed to surprise/alarm/set off warning bells for anyone. So he indiscriminately murders his people, but they're shocked if he taxes them? He isn't acting any different than usual, beyond fawning over Sarah Parrish, who is actually kind of awesome.

ETA: Guys, I can't help but think that saying 'Uther is good king except for the whole magic thing!' is like saying, 'he's a good boyfriend except for the bit where he stabs me in the face when I breathe in the vicinity of another man!'

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Title: Walking Lost
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: PG
Genre: Drama
Words: 500
Notes/Warnings: Spoilers for the anime. Done for fma_fic_contest prompt 'second person POV'. (It tied for 3rd place)
Summary: An attempt to put the reader in Rose's shoes for a scene.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist copyright Hiromu Arakawa/Studio BONES and this derivative work was created without permission.

( They come to you in ones and twos, and just start talking.  )

Title: The Beautiful World that We See in the Morning
Fandom: Fullmetal Alchemist
Rating: G
Genre: Vignette
Words: 200
Notes/Warnings: Done for 31_days prompt 'three. we are but weaklings pretending to be tough'. Title from Vienna Teng's "Lullaby for a Stormy Night". (This is the second stormy night fic I've written -- I wonder if it and 'Light a Candle' are set during the same night.)
Summary: Izumi learns to wake for thunderstorms.
Disclaimer: Fullmetal Alchemist copyright Hiromu Arakawa/Studio BONES and this derivative work was created without permission.

( Izumi learned to wake at the sounds of storms after the Elrics moved in.  )

On Hating Female Characters.

For a while now I’ve been thinking about how many readers seem to hate female characters more than they hate male. Or rather that the same behaviour from a male character is okay but someone inexcusable in a female.

NO KIDDING. I read and enjoyed this post a while back, but a link popped up on my flist, and I returned to it and decided in light of some recent comments I'd read that it needs to be sung from the rooftops.

She also has a very good post here: The Advantages of Being a White Writer Highly recommended.

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My Multi-Cultural class--a class that tries to teach the students to acknowledge/understand/fight racism, sexism, hetereosexism, ableism, classism (and on)--upsets me, badly.

I walk away from every class where I have to interact with my fellow students feeling indefinably sick, with a greasy, twisting knot of anxiety, dissatisfaction and unhappiness in my stomach. I trip over my words. I get upset over the issues and can't express myself properly, especially since my tendency is to shut down and fold inward when upset; they don't even listen to statements the teacher has made five seconds earlier, they're so convinced they're right, why would they listen to me?

I went to this class because I thought it would--I don't know, teach me, be a place for discussion, and I have learned and I'm glad for it, but I just.

I feel so awful and miserable and twisted up in knots almost every class.

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There's plot! There's plot threads coming together by way of answers! There's the strong potential for some actual resolution!

There's not enough Rinali.

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Well, uh.

I made some remark about smug villains/antagonists/anti heroes not being my thing. Then I accidentally watched a clip of Supernatural! Now smug heroes are so far beyond 'not my thing' it's a little alarming.

bleurgh, Dean Winchester, why such a misogynistic sack of shit

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Title: In Exile
Fandom: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Rating: G
Genre: Drama
Words: 1700
Notes/Warnings: Twilight Princess spoilers (Midna's backstory). Done for 31_days theme 'Nov. 2 - I won't forget your kind smile or your eyes hidden with sorrow'. Originally this was going to be a post-game retrospective drabble, but Midna decided she wanted to tell me how she met Zelda.
Summary: Midna wanted to hate Zelda when they first met because they were too alike. Instead she learned to like her for her differences.
Disclaimer: Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess copyright Shigeru Miyamoto/Nintendo and this derivative work was created without permission.

( Midna didn't like Princess Zelda when she heard about her. )

Wow I actually cannot believe Joss Whedon ever had the sheer gall to call himself a feminist. GUESS WHAT. YOU'RE NOT. END OF STORY.

Spoilers within, but they're warned for before they're reached.


I was remembering Nalini Singh's novella in her Angel's Blood series, one about Ashwini and the vampire she hunts on and off. In this, the angel--who is pretty much a carbon copy of Raphael--is treated the way a sane person would treat them. She's creeped out by his come-on, spooked, and hopes to interact with him as little as possible. At the time I didn't put much thought into it, but the only difference I can really come up with between the angel and archangel is that one--the one acknowledged as negative--is black.

Mm. Well.

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Snagged from lily_cdj
( Virgen Meme )
66% life virgin. I'm sligthly surprised by that.

I was thinking about white privilege, and racism and all the -isms and the baggage that goes with it. On top of what I have as a white person, even as a girl and a feminist there have been and probably still are sexist views that I've subconsciously absorbed and not yet unearthed or examined.

A while back I was reading Anne Bishop and she made a remark about 'feminine' in her books. The quote is on my profile, I liked it so much, and it goes like this: "....the gist of it being whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and whatever she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't.""

And I had to reevaluate what I, a girl, thought of as feminine. I mean, what does feminine mean?

1. pertaining to a woman or girl: feminine beauty; feminine dress
....
4. belonging to the female sex; female

(I deleted the two between because, to be frank, they very demonstrably displayed the very cultural manipulation of roles that I'm complaining about.)

And what is our cultural view of 'feminine', especially in regards to clothing? Delicate. Pink. Satin. Lace. Frivolous. And what cultural image does all that feed into? The 'fragile' woman. The one that needs to be protected. She can't run in it, and it sure as hell isn't going to offer her any protection against the world. The one that needs the man to make decisions for her (frivolous, clothes as too important) and, for example, control her money.

So when you're talking about theoreticals, and societal views, and stereotypes and archetypes and tropes, fine. You can use feminine in that manner all you like. But what 'feminine' really means is 'female.'

And we can be whatever we damn well want to be.

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Wow, I'm crossing 'Warehouse 13' off of my viewing list.

Warehouse 13 also treats the idea of history being powerful, dangerous, and relevant today as a crazy, fantastical notion. "Who would think that? Doesn't everyone know that the past is something we tear down and lock away in the attic to make room for the new?" Well, it turns out that not everybody does think that way. Especially people, like indigenous peoples throughout the Americas and other victims of imperialism throughout the world, who had their language and/or history and/or culture and/or lives forcibly removed by colonizing powers. A power like, say, the United States government.

An assessment of the artifacts shown therein.

Twilight vs Quileute legends: Where it points out that despite Meyer stating she was telling the truth, she just appropriated the name and lied her ass off. It describes the actual legends.

Pocahontas. Ohhh, Pocahontas. Too many issues with Disney's story to count, but this one does a pretty good job. And an analysis of the second movie, too. It's like The Other Boleyn Girl for racism.

Here is the Powhatan response to the Pocahontas myth.

We of the Powhatan Nation disagree. The film distorts history beyond recognition. Our offers to assist Disney with cultural and historical accuracy were rejected. Our efforts urging him to reconsider his misguided mission were spurred.

"Pocahontas" was a nickname, meaning "the naughty one" or "spoiled child". Her real name was Matoaka. ....The truth of the matter is that the first time John Smith told the story about this rescue was 17 years after it happened, and it was but one of three reported by the pretentious Smith that he was saved from death by a prominent woman.

Yet in an account Smith wrote after his winter stay with Powhatan's people, he never mentioned such an incident. In fact, the starving adventurer reported he had been kept comfortable and treated in a friendly fashion as an honored guest of Powhatan and Powhatan's brothers. Most scholars think the "Pocahontas incident" would have been highly unlikely, especially since it was part of a longer account used as justification to wage war on Powhatan's Nation.

Euro-Americans must ask themselves why it has been so important to elevate Smith's fibbing to status as a national myth worthy of being recycled again by Disney. Disney even improves upon it by changing Pocahontas from a little girl into a young woman.

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