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!

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.

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").

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.

Walrus Magazine article: The Other Porn Addiction: Why are ordinary women exposing themselves online? and The Porn Identity: Stacey May Fowles in conversation with Hal Niedzviecki on privacy and internet pornography. (Link via Andrew Sullivan blog)

The "Porn Addiction" they're talking about is, "adult women of all ages, shapes, and sizes, from across the world, to post erotic images of themselves for viewing by thousands, if not millions, of people online."

It's the opposite of the fandom. We fans focus on characters or actors and tend to objectify them, rather than becoming the objects of attention. This is especially true for fanfiction of the porny variety, where we denigrate authorial self-inserts as Mary Sues. And once you get to m/m slash fic... Maybe slashers are on the extreme side of a backlash, as far from the female body-revealing kind of porn as possible, focusing away from ourselves and onto men. Hot sexy men.

I'm not sure what it all means, these wild extremes, and I wonder what's going on. Do straight men do anything in these extremes? Where does the lesbian porn come in? What about gay men, they seem more straightforward but what am I missing? Thoughts?

Money doesn't fix everything, but it can help make good things happen.

Sometimes what people do just boggles me.

There are, two loud and obnoxious people who post endlessly that the discussion of cultural appropriation and skeevy racial issues is really All About Them. They claim it must have been just a few sockpuppets who were upset, because if real people of color were upset, they'd use their real names. Reasons not to use one's real name in fandom are legion, the first ones that come to mind for me are: fear and/or experience of stalking; child custody issues; employer disapproval; family disapproval; religious disapproval; separation of fan fiction/fandom from professional publishing... it goes on and on. I personally would prefer to keep my professional and personal user names separate from my fandom name, would rather not expose potential clients to my fangirl squee and smutty fics.

So these people decided to expose the real name of a fan who had disagreed with them. OMGWTFBBQ??? The discussion of racism and cultural appropriation was actually kinda getting somewhere, but now it's all about the pseudonym wank. Epic Fail

spiralsheep suggests communal shunning as a response, which makes sense to me. More good posts: coffeeandink is the victim: her post about it, darkrosetiger explains some of the issues, ciderpress has written a helpful post. Even the non-fandom wank community is boggled

The kicker is that one of the pseudonym wankers, who has actually exposed a fan's name, has re-directed some of the links to her exposure post to sites with viruses and malware. That's right. She has so little respect for disagreement that she wants to infect your computer. BOGGLING.

But, there are good things too! coffeeandink has asked for suggestions of books written by POCs and is getting great responses. She is supporting the people of color-owned and -focused press verb_noire, which should soon be starting up and taking submissions.

Viggo-Works has interviewed Viggo and got answers about his plans for this year, Perceval Press, books he's reading, and more :-)

The community bestorlando has a ton of great pictures of Orlando playing a rock star in a new movie.

dom_media and domweek have lots of Dom at Sundance and on the TV show "Chuck", including his interview with Craig Ferguson.

elijah_finds has photos of Elijah at Sundance, in LA and with Dom during the super bowl.

I'm sure there's more, though pretty low on Billy and Sean Bean news... anyone?

And I've been updating lotrips with all the fic I can find just about every week, so there's something for everyone! (If I'm missing anything, please let me know).

There's a hellova wank about racism in science fiction, with people I previously admired making utter fools of themselves. rydra_wong has a whole pile of links and good discussion in her journal starting on January 14, and

This is very helpful: How Not To Be Insane When Accused of Racism (A Guide For White People). Because it's not all about us.

via ithiliana, Sir Terry was on the Queen’s New Year Honours List for services to literature. and he (of course) is gracious and charming about it.

May the rest of the New Year be as good to all of us!

PS slashababy fics are up, and I even wrote one, solo, wheee.

OK, watched the first ep of Merlin with the kidlet. She runs out of the room when there's any dramatic tension, I close my eyes when there's embarrassment humor, ( we kinda liked it. Except the costumes, which, NOT SO MUCH )

tagged by lionessfreedom, some happy things:

1. My contract check came! I was pretty stressed because I'd done a lot of work with no pay, but they combined the first and second invoices and sent me a nice big check. WHEW.


2. kaydeefalls has made a fantastic Captain Jack vid. Watch it, for the montage of kisses if nothing else!


3. A librarian of my acquaintance and probably yours is doing research on the use of Delicious in fandom, so you should all go fill out her interesting survey. I got to explain all about my tag bundles .

We're going to see a youth production of Fiddler on the Roof today, and found some clips online, film and stage. But the one that make me laugh helplesssly is yu-gi-oh girls sing the Matchmaker song. It'll never quite be the same to me again.

(ETA to fix grammar)

BBCA is showing Top Gear, and I wasn't in the mood for anything complicated, so I put on the Best of 06 - 07, and my husband and teenboy wandered over, as they do. We bonded over the amphi-car project. So I do understand the fic a bit more, but I just can't slash the guys myself...

I don't usually do birthdays: I get flustered and forget and then it's two weeks later... But for feelforfaith, I can't help it. She is such a lovely person, good writer and always a delight to work with on our fandom projects. And ( some of these pictures from C4 might be new to her )

Who left a pair of salt and pepper grinders at the last moot? They look rather Alice-in-Wonderland-ish, nifty!

The mystery writer with the Italian policeman who loves his food is Donna Leon. Her Guido Brunetti is middle-aged and a bit conflicted, but his world is not completely corrupt, unlike Michael Dibdon's Aurelio Zen series.

Via hanarobi: video of dolphins blowing bubble rings and playing with them. JUST what I needed to see, cheered me right up.

And I just discovered a fabulous Doctor Who video, Handlebars, by flummery, to the song by Flobots. I don't know about their other songs, but that one really works for me. They're apparently "alternative hip-hop", so some rap with all kinds of music threaded through (they have a violinist!) and great lyrics. (I can't get their Flash-heavy site to load, and the guy on the front page looks like Elijah: I keep doing double-takes). They're also social activists and really quite darling. Many thanks to LofA for the link!

Must go work on Arwen costume now: kidlet is persistent.

The Toronto International Film Festival is being wonderful to us this year! There's lots and lots of Viggo (click page links for lots more) promoting both Appaloosa and Good and looking fantastic. Dom has been at several premieres, not quite as gorgeous but he still has it. And Billy is due at the Stone of Destiny premiere gala on the 13th.

I'm greedily hoping for Fellowship reunion pictures. *points at icon of Sean Bean and Viggo at TIFF in 2005*

The new LOTR RPS remix stories are up! You can use the listing by pairing or just the 2008 tag. For earlier years, my new Remix web site is remix.lotrips.org, which also explains all about the origins and rules of Remix. (First rule: you can and should talk about remix.)

OMG, I am so lucky that a) my family was away yesterday and I could spend time formatting the stories for posting and b) feelforfaith is a fabulous person to work with. Though my left-hand trackball broke in the middle of the whole thing, and it slowed me down a lot, I'm not so used to mice any more. Anyway, stories are up and mostly excellent, authors are not yet revealed, lots of pairings, come read!

I'll be away tomorrow, see you all on Tuesday.

PS: the icon is ironic, mostly

I've learned a lot from fans of color lately, mostly about my own assumptions, but also some about to be supportive without being condescending.

There are some really fine posts linked from ibarw. My favorite is this: How Not To Be Insane When Accused of Racism (A Guide For White People).

Hobbit spam! Screenshots from the trilogy: all Hobbits, all the time. Great captions cracked me up, but the pictures made me all nostalgic.

I'm reading a very satisfying Dom/Billy WIP Boston by eff_reality. And I don't just say that because I suggested the name. It's Billy the film history graduate student, and Dom, the mostly-cheerful prostitute, but it plays with the conventions and there are missed connections and it avoids a lot of romantic clichés.

( omg bandfic? me? well, just these two AUs )

Also, I'm sorry that the feed msil_fanfic_rec (LJ) and msil_delicious (IJ) kinda went crazy, and started sending out tag links, alphabetically. It's del.icio.us, and I don't know how to keep it from happening again :-(

Happy US Independence -- which was a good and noble event, full of high ideals that we can all strive to live up to.

I've got watermelon, sunflower seeds, beer (well, Newcastle Brown Ale), a world-accessible Doctor Who teaser, and the house to myself. I intend to watch embarrassing videos, like "How To Look Good Naked" and write crack!fic with a friend.

How is your Friday (or Saturday) going?

It's lotrips_remix time again, and I hope many of you will play. It's sometimes a big stretch, but can be really exciting, going outside not just your own story universes, but into someone else's.

amygirl posted a really fun Sean Bean Timeline, with pictures starting in 1983, both theatre and films.

Great article by Missy Merlin: Your Friends Are Not Watching the Same Show You Are (And That's OK) - via kaydeefalls post about it. I watch so much more TV now that I'm in fandom than I did before. It's fun to squee with friends and be part of the excitement, more than the shows themselves. I like the "Donna Noble & Doctor Banter Show" as well as the "David Tennant Chews the Scenery Show", and I quite enjoyed season four of the "How Weird Can That Island Get? Show", and I wish there were more episodes of the "Cuddy Kicks Ass Show".

In more David Tennant fannishness, Nina Sosanya will be playing Rosaline in Love's Labour's Lost! (via antigone921). She was a great Bellino to David's Casanova, and is gorgeous, so Rosaline to his Berowne could be electric. For those who aren't familiar with the play, Rosaline is the leading female role, and there is lots of clever verbal fencing between the two characters. I expect it will be fabulous!

I realized I had only one Billy icon and one Billy/Dom, so have brought back the one on this post (Billy in Santa Barbara, February 2004, made by the lovely and talented kiltsandlollies), a gorgeous hand one, from the Wellington ROTK press conference by mrkinch, and a Berlin ROTK premiere one that is so fuzzy, I must have made it (am a pathetic icon maker), but I kinda like the softness of it.
&

The election is for what I suspect is a largely symbolic seat on the LJ Advisory Board, but symbols matter.

fandom_votes has lots of info on why voting for a fandom-oriented candidate is a good idea, and where the various candidates are in fandom. metafandom has many links to posts on the topic.

I'm voting first for rm, who I've seen while wandering friendsfriends and is generally both rational and insightful. My second choice is vichan who founded fandom_counts, and my third is legomymalfoy who has a lot of fandom endorsers and a good platform.

OTOH, I very much dislike jameth who is a poster of horrible blinking animations (which completely disqualifies him in my book) and tends to slag off fandom (ditto).

VOTE before May 29! Vote for three different people: second and third choices count during runoffs. Vote!

A full transcript of the online chat that Peter and Guillermo del Toro held to answer fan questions about the Hobbit movies. Links & interesting thoughts from ithiliana and sandelwood.

( summary in bullet points )

( Will the actors reprise their roles? (Short answer: yes!) )

Me: I read this as saying that the Elves could appear, but really very few of the Men and Hobbits would make it, even into the second film. They're just too young. The Hobbit events occur in 2940 of the Third Age, and LOTR in 3018. Aragorn, who was born in 2931, could show up. But Frodo wasn't born until 2968 and Boromir in 2978. Plus, the actors are all ten years older. I'm hoping that the ones whose characters aren't around will at least get to do minor roles. Ah well.

And Christopher Tolkien trying to terminate film rights to The Hobbit because New Line has been playing fast and loose with the accounting. Silly man. Royd Tolkien, OTOH, is a hottie.

matildabj points out that release dates are 2011 for the first one and 2012 for the second, and in fact there's a bit in the Q&A where some fan asks if they meant to use the 10-year-anniversary of LOTR, and Peter says, no but it's a clever idea.

ETA: caras_galadhon points out that the last bit is from Pete, not Guillermo, fixed.

TORN has it from Variety and also from stuff.co.nz (which has an interesting picture of Guillermo del Toro and Peter Jackson)

...in that "it's a selfish grasping onanistic power play disguised as utopian openness and universal freedom." (by almostnever, used with permission)

( Anyone who thinks that male assumptions of privilege and sexual objectification don't exist any more, and female safe spaces are not necessary... )

(cut because I got all ranty and used italics and bold)

And HAH: apparently he is a Heinlein fan.

ETA: when I told my husband about this, he was literally speechless for a while. He's one of the aware & respectful guys, and has helped socialize some of the geeks in his gaming circles, giving them Stern Talks about bad behavior and disrespectful comments and worse. It was kind of fun to watch him open his mouth, shake his head and look pained, as I talked. Because really, what is there to say besides WTF?

feelforfaith and I are planning to start lotrips_remix signups later this month after the Slashy Oscars nominations are closed.

( Yet more fandom stuff )

Happy (late) Birthday to sophrosyne31, who still stops in to post, sometimes angry, sometimes content, always wonderful. I am SO glad we got to meet that time, even if it was raining!

And early to yueni: I hope your China plans work out and you find things more exciting and satisfying there! Please let us know how it goes, good or bad, ok?

I don't know exactly when Dani's (juke_box_dive) birthday is, but it's coming soon. You are one of my favorite writers in fandom, able to weave details into an amazing tapestry of words. You write with such empathy, bringing me in to every emotion and sensation as I read. You are also a pinkly fabulous person! Happy birthday!

I don't think people not posting for 24 hours will do any actual damage to LiveJournal. It's a symbolic gesture of solidarity.

You may think it's a silly gesture, not the one you'd come up with. That's how it goes. It's going to happen, a lot of us will be doing it, numbers count. I invite you to stand with us, even if it's silly.

We know it has their attention because that Nossik guy said so. I read his defense and it's clearer than the original article, but still. He knows only his part of LiveJournal. Fandom seems to be far away from his experience. All the people who own the system need to learn that we (I'm a fan, fanfic writer and reader, slasher, female, American: you are all some of those things too) are not like them. They can't assume that we'll want the same things as they do so they have to pay a lot more attention to lots of different groups. 6A clearly never learned that, I hope SUP can do better.

My part in this strike has nothing to do with religion or ethnic heritage, as my family is Russian Jewish on both sides and I could well be related to them. *waves to the ancestral homeland*

See you on the other side -- InsaneJournal, JournalFen, or back here, approximately 24 hours from now.

PS I got clearance to walk again! Slowly, and not much, and it hurts a bit, but hey! I can climb stairs and leave the house!

The head of SUP (LJ's new Russian overlords), Anton Nosik, just does not understand a huge chunk of the LJ user base. He knows it would solve the problem if new accounts could step down to Basic status, but he won't do it because... he thinks: In a situation where people are trying to scare and blackmail us, threatening to destroy our business, there are business reasons for not rewarding such behaviour." WHAT A DUMBSHIT.

The correct response is, "Oops, we didn't think this through, we'll change it back and try a different process next time, to avoid mistakes like this."

(Also, he means extortion instead of blackmail unless someone has some real dirt on him.)darkrosetiger has the whole thing translated properly

And this is what is driving him crazy:

ONE DAY CONTENT STRIKE

For one day [Friday, March 21, midnight GMT to midnight], make no posts. Make no comments. Let there be NO new content added to LJ.

This will create a permanent downward spike in the daily-posts statistics, a permanent reminder of the power of the userbase. From the original boycott post.

Some of us might activate old accounts and do it there too. And there are, of course, icons and banners! And if you're not sure what your local time is compared to GMT, check right here.

On Friday, come see me over at Insane Journal -- I think my layout doesn't have any weird smily faces and Adblock takes care of the rest of it. And consider migrating to InsaneJournal yourself.

I've read a hell of a lot of LOTR RPS, and I've never seen one which used the exact words of the original, without author credit

But the evidence of extensive copying and pasting of text from "Jane Eyre" into the published version of namarie120's story "A Hidden Passage" is compelling. I admire caras_galadhon for bringing out into the open.

My problem with this the situation is that the author accepted the praise, awards, and publication as though she deserved credit. If she'd said something about how great a writer Charlotte Brontë was, and explained that a huge part of the story was lifted from the original, that would have been appropriate attribution. Accepting those compliments was more than just a lie, and accepting the award it wronged the writers who wrote every word of their fic.

( the original fanfic Disclaimer and the published Author's Note )

an anon said: i was betrayed by someone i trusted. i was made to feel a fool for lavishing praise on someone who claimed someone else's work..

That makes me very sad. I don't want namarie120 to delete her journal and run away. What I'd like to have seen, and to see now, would be an acknowledgment that large parts of the story were not hers, an apology for misleading people, and for her to return the Slashy Oscar award so it can be given to the runner up.

What should we do next time, if we see something in a fic that's way too familiar? I don't really know, but in this case, emailing to her clearly did not work, because several people tried that. Perhaps friends in a group could approach the author and encourage her or him to come clean. And, as a final step, posting to a journal or to a community might be necessary. Because it's a moral and ethical error to plagiarize, and the faster we get it over with, the better. Anyone with other thoughts or useful experience, please tell me, I want to know!

More useful posts on this topic by caras_galadhon (the original post), slashfairy's meditation on it, telesilla's lively discussion, and jasmineskie's comment.

To end on an up note (via ruuger), a fabulous pastiche with a very distinctive and un-Brontë voice: JAYNE EYRE! (Link found in Fandom_Wank)

Interesting survey on the economics of fandom.

Also, feelforfaith and I found 65 new stories and series chapters this last week, we listed them all in lotrips, as we do every week...

You, like I, may be wondering what on earth they mean by the Hobbit and sequel.

According to TORn's Hobbit slideshow at Dragon*Con (last slide):

• First film will be an adaptation of 'The Hobbit'
• Second film will be a 'bridge' film to 'The Lord of the Rings'
• The White Council
• Expulsion of the Necromancer (Sauron)
• Introduction to 'Fellowship' cast
• Gollum backstory expanded
• Frodo and Shire events

Speculative discussion followed.

I'm somewhat dubious about this, as it would involve getting the older Fellowship actors back again, and if human, looking younger, or if non-human, looking unchanged. Ian McKellan, Viggo and Cate have all said they would want to participate, which is way cool. So I'm interested in seeing what Pete and Fran and Philippa come up with.

The two “Hobbit” films – “The Hobbit” and its sequel – are scheduled to be shot simultaneously, with pre-production beginning as soon as possible. Principal photography is tentatively set for a 2009 start, with the intention of “The Hobbit” release slated for 2010 and its sequel the following year, in 2011. Best of all, it's got both Peter and Fran's names as producers. YAY FRAN!

And there's an official blog.

ETA: I did some digging on the sequel thing and posted some TORn speculations

stormatdusk was inspired by our weekly fic round-ups on lotrips. SO NICE OF HER!

I think having a fandom/fanwork advocacy organization is a good idea. Especially the universal fanworks archive, and legal defense if someone's actually sued. While I agree that the name "Organization for Transformative Works" is a bit complicated for a fanworks advocacy organization, that transformativeworks.org is a non-intuitive URL, that the acafan language and the journal focus is annoying,and the archive not really started yet... I still support it, and the fact that my dear mirabile_dictu is involved makes me want to give it lots of slack.

So what is OTW getting? The usual anti-fanfic arguments. So much that ithiliana has created an Anti Fanfic Bingo Card! Including such classics as: It's totally different if the author is dead! and Fanwriters are just like stalkers! Now we can compete to post BINGO on each anti-fanfic post :-)

ETA: fixed bad link to the bingo card, it's unofficial

I'm not doing nanowrimo, as I don't seem to have a novel in me waiting to get out. I do have some WIPs that I adore, so I am doing wrisomifu aka Write Something, You Miserable Fuck, because I want to get them done and posted so (maybe someone else can love them too).

Join us? wrisomifu - So you suck. Nobody cares. (Because we all do, too.)

(wording gacked from apple_pi)

ETA: "membership will be open to new members until midnight (PST) on Thursday, November 1", but I have to send them names to invite. So I will OF COURSE!