<3 to all my friends and acquaintances! LJ can't possibly have enough pressies for me to give them to everyone that I like! So: a photo of a real snowflake, by fwwidall on flickr.

Also, I break out my seasonal icon, Viggo in drag with a menorah crown, made by the talented absolutefiction.

I've been sucked into Merlin, at least watching (girlchild loves it but gets scared when things get tense) and reading the fic, some of which is so good I had to rec it. It's an utterly ridiculous twisting of the Arthur stories, of course, and I'm still in love with the 12th century versions. But the characters in this are just so damn cute, I can't resist. Therefore, an OT4 icon, made by the miakun, because I like them in any and every combination :-D

I'm not doing NaNoWrimo, but am doing WriSoMiFu (Write Something You Miserable Fuck). I've written 1663 1403 words of what's going to be some very kinky character development for Billy in our Push-Pull-Push universe. Also going to be posting a new fic there tomorrow, finally

Charlize Theron went to the AFI tribute to Viggo this week. Shame her dress is so fugly. I thought the GoFug girls would hate it, and I was right. It's all pretty awful, but that hemline is all kinds of fail. via just_jared, I think.

There's a really good interview with Viggo on the CBC site for the show The Hour. He shows up about 28 minutes in, saying he drove from New York state and got stuck at the border: he's clearly a bit punchy and silly, makes Leafs jokes (Toronto hockey team) in the middle of describing The Road (very spoilery), and generally seems a bit sillier than normal. Link from viggo-works.

Dom with a snake on his head ( cut for squicks )

Short documentary on Sean Bean's movie Cash, has ( Sean in an amusing pompadour hairstyle ) link via bean_daily

And finally, ( Sir Christopher Lee! )

This is the "Fall back" switch from Daylight Savings Time, so set your clocks to 11 pm at midnight or whenever: you can always check timeanddate.com, just to be sure. I'm going to try and think of it as an extra hour to sleep in or get things done.

ETA to add Our Neighbors To The North

Richard Taylor! Viggo! Bob Anderson! Swords! I so wanted to like this.

Shame that Reclaiming the Blade does the ponderous narration thing. It's mostly the script, which keeps making portentous statements and generalizations about how The Blade was So Amazing before those Awful Guns. They kept reaching for dramatic tension, instead of just relaxing and letting their passion show. The Netflix version didn't have any special features, but I doubt they'd be worth actually paying much for.

Also, the term "European Martial Arts" does not need to be used every five minutes: we get it, OK?

(Yes, I'm in a rotten mood today, but the documentary really was disappointing.)

slashababy is still open for signups! It's the Lotrips holiday fic exchange, so the more, the merrier. Anyone who doesn't want to sign up on LiveJournal, please send email to secret slasha @ gmail.com -- we can do it that way, no problem.

It's rec the reccers month at lotr_fic_recs.

If you're thinking of writing adoptive kid fic, you must read viggorlijah's post, Fandom Primer on International Adoption as a story trope: read it and weep. But the stories based on RL issues could be really good.

RPS Kink meme - just getting started. Some of the other kink memes have been amazing and very inspiring...

And because I've been told I don't plug myself enough: links to all the LOTR RPS fic I could find through September are at lotrips (October to come soon), and I'm still posting my fic recs on delicious.

I've been pounding away at my slides for the November talk, at least I got an extension until Thursday. But I need to focus on that, so have been offline most workdays. I miss the fun and tigging.

( One of the weirder things I've ever been paid to do (not like that) )

I took a little walk at the Marina. It was so foggy I couldn't see much: there's usually a city and a bridge or two over there. (not my picture, but fog looks like... fog.)

( dairy products: what's not to like? )

Lotrips Holiday Fic Exchange! sign up now!
slashababy!
slashababy!!
slashababy!!!
  sign-up deadline is October 29! Stories posted on New Year's Eve! *looks hopeful*

Geocities is closing down on the 26 October 2009, and they're going to just delete everything on it. So if anyone has a site there, be sure to save a copy on your local hard drive.

I think these parts of fandom history are worth saving! There are several ways to keep the content on the web:

• Get an account on An Archive of our Own (where fandom owns the servers). It's the Geocities Rescue Project


• Move to Yahoo Web Hosting ($5 per month for the first year). This at least gives some time.


• Move to another free site


• See if it's in the wayback machine in Internet Archive (they have lots of geocities saved)


• Check with Archiveteam.org (a group of volunteers) which is saving all they can

"Billy gave us a little insight into the band, his musical tastes and influences, and his feelings about the upcoming tour. Exclusive: Billy Boyd Interview! TheOneRing.net"

It's a nice rambling interview, I can almost hear his voice as I read it

Apparently, when the interview took place, Billy was filming in Halifax, Nova Scotia (Canada), for a TV miniseries of 'Moby Dick' (shades of 'Master and Commander'). Which would make sense, because the 'Adrenaline Junkey' thing was filmed in Canada too.

More Billy!

(via hope) - long video clip of John Barrowman in shorts and high heels, queering the song "I Kissed a Girl".

I have been making so many recs, I love reccing, I want all appropriate people to see the gorgeous fic! I also have about 800 recs at delicious.com/msilverstar, maybe you'll like some of those...

My main fandom is now and always will be Lotrips. But I've branched out a bit, and rec fic in lots of other fandoms (including ones like SGA that I don't even watch), because good stories are worth sharing.

So: ( my last 12 recs: lotrips, bandom, merlin, torchwood )

---

That would be lotrips, bandom, merlin (mostly RPS and/or AUs), and doctor who/torchwood. Feeds are at delicious/rss/msilverstar, msil_fanfic_recs on LJ, msil_fanfic_recs_feed on dreamwidth.

I would post recs here more often if it wasn't such a huge pain in the ass. This took me hours to fix up and I hate the format. Anyone have a nice delicious to LJ/DW script that runs on Macs? I'll run a command-line program in the Terminal if I have to.

It's been fun reading this meme, so please, someone, ask me five things about fandom? Anything outside of Lotrips is kinda murky to me, so I tend to like AUs best.

Apparently Peter Jackson can make Dom and Elijah look tall
They all look pretty happy, makes my fangirl heart go SQUEE!
James Cameron really is tall

( full-size photos beneath the cut )

Thank you to KW for finding and sharing them!

As per kidlet's request we went to see Half Blood Prince last night. The best part was watching it with her, holding hands, and knowing what was going to happen. I was amused by the shipping setups they are firmly establishing, now that we all know who's going to do what (or who).

Kidlet bookpicked like mad (she's on her fourth read of the series). She wanted more fidelity.

Ed had never read that book and so was exceedingly confused about the Prince business, we had to explain a lot because the movie completely left it out. He also noticed how grey and brown it was.

Oh cool, cleolinda wrote Half Blood Prince in 15 Minutes, and it's damn funny!

*uses slightly inappropriate HP icon*

Alan Cumming's made a wildly sex-positive anti-AIDS video: Absent Abstinence

( attempt to embed the video )

The Scotsman has a transcript and some more great quotes:

[Alan] introduces a former lover and states: "This is Matt. We had sex once and it was really great. Then Matt started going out with Heather and we all had sex together once which was really nice. We would have done it again but they split up."

( Abstain? Make stains more like. Please wear a condom and shag away. )

Alan also wrote an article for Newsweek, What is a gay icon?, with some interesting thoughts on fabulous ladies and queer culture.

After various calamities, I want to see people! So: local (or visiting) fans are invited to come and be social at my house on Sunday, July 12, 1-6 p.m.

My house is in Berkeley (send email to ms at msilverstar.com if you need directions). There's plenty of parking, and it's one flat mile from BART, or we can pick you up.

Please come, bring your lovely selves and if possible, a little something snackish to share. RSVPs are good, including "maybe", but are not necessary.

I'm looking for webcomic recommendations for my kidlet (she's now 9, she was 3 when I got sucked into fandom, wow). She has read and liked Get Medieval, Gunnerkrigg Court, and the Order of the Stick so far. She likes silliness, puns and adventures. Also, minimal angst and violence; and young sympathetic characters are always good. Thanks in advance from both of us!

PS I've been reccing a bit lately, Lotrips and otherwise, are at delicious.com/msilverstar

Beecake just posted a link to this via their @OfficialBeecake account on Twitter: click the (+) button on twitpic to get the huge version:

(cross-posted a bit. actually, a lot.)

ETA: all of their current stuff is at Myspace/BeecakeBand

I needed a skeptical icon and I wanted a Donna/Catherine icon, so thanks to LJ user future_love_art, I got both :-)

And from toft: four naked guys do crispbread dance on Sweden's Got Talent. That cheered up my day, and I hope it does the same for you.

Other than that, my life is boring, so I haven't been posting. How are you all?

Title: It feels like...
Authors: msilverstar and unstealthy
Pairing: Dom Monaghan/Billy Boyd/Rachel Weisz
Rating: NC-17
Warning: D/s, bondage
Disclaimer: It's all made up, fiction, lies.
Summary: London, mid-2006. Dom's got nefarious plans, as usual. Pretty much all smut. 5,060 words
Note: For all fics in this AU in chronological order, please see the Push/Pull/Push Master List

It's lovely having both her men in her flat. A bit cramped, but Rachel's bought a bigger bed and they all fit in it nicely, and now, like this evening when she knows Dom's planning a scene, she's really excited that they're all there together. He's asked her and Billy to bathe, and Billy to dress in his normal clothes and her to put on her leather corset under a dress. Now they wait.

Dom doesn't enjoy dressing in bondage gear himself, but loves Rachel in her corset. He dries himself off after his shower and pulls on a clean pair of trousers and a t-shirt. Barefoot, he pads to the bedroom where Billy and Rachel are waiting, drinking in the anticipation. To prolong the feeling a little he pauses outside the bedroom door to listen to their murmured conversation, bouncing on the balls of his feet and taking deep breaths. He loves them so much, and loves being able to possess them both completely every now and again, when Billy's up for it. Like now.

What's next is you...doing exactly what I tell you">

ETA: very sorry for the lack of cut and excess verbiage

This icon is Viggo and Sean Bean, looking tousled and happy, from the Empire Awards back in March, and it just makes me happy. Thank you so much for the icon, qthelights!

And because I can't post just the one thing, I'm also linking to the lotrips listing, over 100 fics in May.

And I've started a community on Dreamwidth: lotr_cast_fandom. Anyone who wants to join, cross-post, or even link is very very welcome!

The fail was back in November when a small majority of voters went against equal marriage rights. The state supreme court just upheld the proposition, because they are bound to decide on the law rather than principle. At least they also confirmed the legal marriages during the interim. But it's not the court's fault, it's the voters' fault, so that's where we have to fight it next.

MarriageEquality.org has a list of protests and actions (mostly in California).

DayOfDecision.com has another list

There are twitter reports from the Sacramento protest at twitter.com/stop8dotorg and from San Francisco at twitter.com/geminiwench with lots of pictures. More coming at twitter #rejectprop8

Couragecampaign.org is proposing a Meet in the Middle demonstration reaching out from the coastal liberal cities to the more conservative inland California.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win -- Ghandi

From the Italian-language magazine Sport Week, via the wonderous viggo-works

*is happy fangirl*
ETA: Italian, I should have known!

It's the very end of sign-ups, so if you've been wavering, go quick and join in, please! lotrips_remix

I'm seeing those anon feedback memes, but probably won't participate. I try hard to leave fb on specific stories, and rec them (unless I've lost their url, which does happen). Anyone who might want writing feedback, I'm up for it. I personally like it best at beta stage, so there's scope for making changes. <3 you all!

I've been quiet about Mammothgate (Racefail 09 part deux), partly because it's so easy for me to understand the blindness going on there. I doubt I would have even noticed the assumptions, much less thought of speaking out against them. I just didn't see it either, completely missed the wrongness of handwavingly undoing the existence of all Native Americans for the sake of an interesting story.

Though I have learned that listening is a whole lot better than trying to justify oneself about things that matter like this. The author and defenders didn't think: would they have argued so much if it was a huge anachronism they missed, or a quote from someone 100 years later? Why not shut up and learn, and maybe say Oh shit, I screwed up.

Following a bunch of links I found a fabulous essay by a woman of color writing Science Fiction/Fantasy, Nalo Hopkinson: Looking for clues It's all good, articulate, emotional and inspiring. My favorite bit is this:




I hope, very much, we can go on from there.

I'm trying to do this in manageable chunks this month, so here's the first batch. Obviously there will be many more coming, but if you want to make sure I list a fic, you are welcome to drop me a link as a comment here.

I will be crossposting to the dreamwidth community lotrip_all_fic at least. If you're on DWO, that's a good central community for us to link to.

( New stories )
( Updated chapters in series )

Dreamwidth invites - I have a couple left ETA none left evening of May 1st, but I should get more eventually. So, if you want them, please comment and I'll do what I can. There are already nifty new features (like comment preview, whee!) and bugs fixed daily: it's pretty exciting to be around.

( DWO stuff - for interested parties only )

Happy May Day in any case!

(this is a repost of a cross-post because my first one failed. It's been a week like that.)

a) "pandemic" just means it's everywhere, not that it's killing everyone. don't panic

b) there have been no deaths outside of Mexico, at this point

c) my tame scientist says that there are probably a lot of infected people in Mexico who have not reported symptoms, so even if there is a death rate of 0.01%, that's enough to explain those numbers

d) wash your hands, a lot. If you work with kids, make them wash their hands

e) some good sources of real information (inspired by linaelyn )

• World Health Organization
• US Government Pandemic site
• Nature.com
• New York Times
• BBC
• Wired flu update
• USA Today map
• arstechnica

panic is silly

New icon, gorgeous Viggo, from this year, I think, made by the lovely and talented stormatdusk

From Empire (UK magazine), scans of the Viggo & Sean Bean article from those Empire awards, with silly snarky interview answers. Just look at them! (Viggo-Works is fabulous!) I might have to own this on paper, it's so good.

Also, if anyone wants to make me an icon of the two of them from this event, not necessarily this picture, I would be thrilled and grateful.

There's also a wonderful new Dom site, The Dominic Monaghan Resource, which has a fantastic collection of articles and interviews, from the 1990s on. Interviews are such character gold.

qthelights is working on her thesis on fandom, and needs some help. She's studying ...why some online communities last and why some don't. I plan to look at the fandom community in order to examine the ways in which it has lasted. Within this, I will be looking at: the strengths of ties between people... and has a short poll about which fandoms you're in, how long, what you do in those fandoms, etc. It took me about 10 minutes to fill out, and really interesting questions and answers: Fandom Poll. (btw, the usernames will not be in the final thesis, but they are "visible to all").

thefourthvine says: Sometimes you may say to yourself: all these people have me friended. And yet I posted a story (or a link, or four extremely compelling pictures of my cat, including one where she almost had a ribbon on her head) and many of them have not commented! You may wonder why. You may even be downcast in your wonderment and confusion.

She has been doing some careful research on this very topic, and she has all the answers. WHAT a relief to have it put in perspective that way ;-) If you are a lurker, that's OK with me. But just so you know, even short comments on any of my posts are precious. I am always greedy for more.

---

Plus: GIP. That there my icon is me, in my Big Chair, all blurry but that disguises all my chins. That is my laptop with my old-style rainbow apple sticker. I use the other one too much in my work persona.

---

This text is supposed to follow a test cut tag. It wasn't working on crossposting from DWO yesterday. Let's see if it does today. And some more Dreamwidth stuff:

+ zarah's post on Dreamwidth for Dummies

+ zvi's excellent post on How to follow someone who has moved to Dreamwidth (or most any other journaling /blogging system).

PS I have no invite codes, but probably will on April 30. Just tell me if you want one.

It's been really hot here. Way beyond my normal tolerance, as the temperatures are usually in the 70s F/ 20s C. Yesterday it was 91 F / 32.8 C! Today 89/ 31.6. I know that's normal summer for lots of people (even 10 miles inland or south), but we're wusses. Berkeley has eight to twelve really hot days a year, so we don't have air conditioning, even a swamp cooler, and our house just gets hot and stays hot. So please forgive me when I sound a bit addled and/or do not comment on something.

( testing dreamwidth crossposting )

I'll be cross-posting for the foreseeable future, I couldn't leave my peeps at LJ/JF/IJ! *clutches you all*

Monday night: columnist has an Inside look at amazon during the fail

( Amazon semi-apology says it was an 'embarrassing and ham-fisted' error )

There was a fabulous post somewhere about the difference between fake and real apologies. I couldn't find that one (anyone have it?) but Seth Grodin has a pretty reasonable apology ranking, and I think Amazon's was about a 7: "We're sorry that this occurred." Better than "glitch", but not really addressing the issues of how someone somewhere can set a configuration switch to change their entire ranking systems.

And now that we know how much Amazon can manipulate the best-seller lists and search results, and how many books are sold through them, it's time to think more about one company having that much power.

ETA: fixed link

1) Amazon hasn't said a thing, WTF?

2) The controversy has been picked up by over 300 newspapers and other sources. It's easy to follow as the news spread: yahoo news or google news.

3) In the category of how (rather than why), it seems they used the subject headings in the metadata. These are library and bookstore tags created by publishers and sometimes supplemented by Amazon. More here at Dear Author.

4) There's a troll that claims he caused it for lulz -- this is in the LJ comm brutal_honesty. He's lying, do not focus on him. bryant's debunking post.

1. ( Please don't call Amazon today )


2. ( What and why of googlebombing Amazon Rank )


3. ( a colossally stupid technical/editorial mistake )

Alternatives to Amazon: Local Indie Bookstores, Powell's Books, Borders, Barnes & Noble. Always good to have business diversity, choices, and good old free-market competition.

It doesn't matter why. It expresses the new corollary to Clarke's Third Law, Minim's Law: Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from malice.

Amazon has just re-defined pretty much every book in their Gay and Lesbian section as "adult" and removed their "sales rank" and listings in the bestseller lists. As though their existence is too scary for children. I'm a mom, gay is just a word for some of our relatives: how dare Amazon try to make them disappear?

This is just wrong and stupid. One author of a non-explicit gay YA book, markprobst, got this explanation

In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller listas. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.

For more WTF? see the list of suppressed books, including Brokeback Mountain, Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, Tipping the Velvet, Heather Has Two Mommies, and Challenging Homophoba: Teaching About Sexual Diversity.

Not affected: heterosexual novels including violent rape and/or explicit rape (Laurel Hamilton, etc.) And their featured blog of the day includes a trailer for the video game Terminator:Salvation (rated teen). So it's clearly not violence they're worried about.

What to do: use the word #amazonfail on Twitter and blogs, at the very least. Link to the smartbitches redefinition of Amazon Rank. Gosh, Amazon has some blogswith comments enabled. We could... comment.

from The Scotsman, April 5, 2009
( Cumming wows New York at head of Tartan Day Parade )

Alan and Me photo exhibit at the Chashama gallery, my favorite one is the one involving a ( Alan in a swirling kilt (SFW but flamboyant) )

dashery rocks! I so needed something cheerful this week :-)

( Boom De Ya Da (I Love the Whole World) - LOTR )

( Dom & Billy - I Got U )

PS - Viggo was much more coherent on the BBC on Monday morning, and that night's cinema panel on Good than he was at the Sunday night awards show. Which is a good thing, cos wow.

So Viggo won the "Empire Icon Award": (this part completely lifted from the Empire Online Blog)

"The Empire Icon, given to a talent who, in the eyes of Empire and its readers, is so much more than a star, they have reached the status of icon."

Bean: "It's a real pleasure to be here tonight to present this award to an actor who's a very good friend of mine. The work I did with him will always stay in my heart. Let's see the man in action."

AND THE WINNER IS... VIGGO MORTENSEN (cue some bromance)

( Viggo's speech includes some dumb jokes, thanks for Empire's support of LOTR and The Hobbit, and a tribute to Alan Howard, who originated the role of John Halder in 'Good' on stage )

And I got my hot little hands on some actual decent-sized photos of the two of them. I'm not cutting the thumbnails because they're too good to hide, and any click should take you to the MQ version.