tielan

Thoughts by bookshop on "Why can't a woman be more like a man?":

Oh, and let us not leave out Gwen/Arthur, and Gwen/Morgana. Everyone loves Gwen/Morgana. I love Gwen/Morgana. But if we love Gwen so much, why aren't we happy to see her and Arthur so happy together in S2? Don't we love Gwen enough to enjoy her stepping into her role as main character? Or do we only love her enough to shunt her off to the side to be happy with Morgana, so we can all enjoy the lovely Merlin/Arthur slash.

I want to address the main-male, main-female, secondary-male "triangle" that tends to form a pattern in fandoms.

There are any number of people who defend their love of female-with-anyone-but-male. Which is fine...except that this happens a lot. And it almost always happens that the characters involved are the primary female and the main male. TPTB get them together, or show them attracted to each other, and all hell breaks loose in fandom.

So here's my question: Why is it that the primary female character(s) in any canon are never good enough for the main male character?

( acceptable as long as the girl cooties don't touch my boys! )

So, for help_haiti, I'm offering a fic of up to 5,000 words in any of my usual fandoms: SG1, SGA, Merlin, ST XI, Bones, Justice League, 24, Firefly, BSG, NCIS, BtVS, Angel. It will be written to the winner's specifications, and be completed by at least the 30th May. Hopefully before.

Starting bid was $10. I think we're up to about $25 by now.

FANDOM: Stargate Atlantis
TITLE: Feels Like Home To Me
SUMMARY: The heart of homesickness is the acknowledgement that you are far from where you belong.
RATING: PG-13
CATEGORY: angst, drama, romance
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, making no money
NOTES: Written to stuff penknife's fandom_stocking.

( Feels Like Home To Me )

Because, frankly, I can feel myself spiralling down, and it's probably better to stop it now than to find myself wondering just how fast one would have to drive into a telephone pole to be sure of killing oneself come Monday.

1. A lovely dinner with parentals and family. Listening to the aunts and uncles laugh out in the dining room while I and my sister sequester ourselves with the laptop and the book.

2. Placing in several challenges over at sgwomen_itest.

3. Winning hockey on Thursday night.

4. Having a backup story possibility for sga_santa if my current attempt falls through

5. Selling a whole slew of BPAL scents and having money in my PayPal.

I'm going to start trying to post my fic here as well as at LJ, although the main body of fic is likely to be held over at LJ.

I can't get the Unfold All greasemonkey script to work. There seem to be two, neither of which covers all LJ-copies:

Unfold All - LJ does only LJ, not JF or DW
Unfold All, All Layouts does only JF, not DW or LJ

I can't work out what's happening and why it's not working - any help, advice, tips?

Also, DW doesn't seem to have yet worked out what's happening with the user icons, have they?

Most people keeping up with this issue will have read zvi's post on the matter; but I'm going to direct you to anjak_j and her post, which I felt expressed many arguments-beneath-the-uppermost-arguments quite aptly.

My personal take is brief and goes like this:

I think that fic should hold warnings. I think it's something that the author should observe out of politeness, although obligation seems a strong word. It is not the responsibility of someone else to make everywhere 'safe' for someone else. And sometimes I would like to draw someone through a story without them being forewarned of what's going to happen.

On the other hand, there's the consideration of my fellow fan: I should hate to be the cause or reason for someone's trigger-point, and so (on the rare occasions when I write something that might be triggery) I try to warn for things that may be problematic for others in a broad and generalised way. I can't guarantee that I will always catch everything - I can't promise a 'safe space' for absolutely everyone - but that's where the balance between my general responsibility to be considerate in society and the reader's specific responsibility to themselves and the degree of their triggers intersect.

Does that make sense?

TITLE: A Kingdom, Broken - Part Four
SUMMARY: Their goal was always to defeat the Wraith - or, at least, to find a way by which Pegasus could live without the shadow of the Wraith over them. But there could be no great success without an equally great price.
CATEGORY: action-adventure, drama, with a John/Teyla romance
RATING: PG-13
SPOILERS: Much of it occurs after Enemy At The Gates, and you will have to know what happened in Prodigal, but no major spoilers.
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, etc., etc., etc.
NOTES: I finished Action Sequence the Fourth, and then started writing the epilogue. And kept writing. And kept writing. And kept... *sigh* You get the picture. At any rate, there's just the epilogue. Really-truly-cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die!

A Kingdom, Broken
Part I | Part II | Part III

( Part IV )

Yes, it's me again, posting about the Big Bang again! Specifically, about the community saeva and I set up for the people writing Teyla-centric stories. (Which, in the end, turned out to be just me.)

Once again, sga_team LJ comm is open for anyone writing a Teyla-pairing or Teyla-centric story (as long as it's the central pairing and not, say, John/Rodney with a side serving of Teyla/Kanaan), and I'm happy to chat with anyone writing Ronon-pairing or Ronon-centric story for those who want to write Ronon/Keller, Ronon/Liz, or Ronon/Amelia, but particularly for those who are writing pairings or characters who won't easily find encouragment groups, or those who can't/aren't writing but would just like to cheer us on.

I know that renisanz and beth_soprano have both signed up to write this year, but I'm not sure of anyone else.

So, who else is doing the Big Bang this year? And what are you thinking of writing?

sga_team
Watch | Join

I have a ticket to go to a piano concert tonight at the Opera House. I'm minded to skip it entirely, rather the way I did with the play that falls on the same night as the Star Trek premiere. I could stay home and write...only I know I won't. I don't seem to have the wherewithal to write anymore, or to read without thinking I should be writing. And what I do write isn't good. Oh, it's satisfactory, and it's good enough, but it's not good - it's not what I can write.

Lately, I feel like I don't have enough time to myself, to sit back and dig in and make my bunker and get my grounding. I'm going out to see the Star Trek movie again tomorrow night, I have bible study on Wednesday, and will probably be meeting up with arabel to watch Dexter on Thursday or Friday.

And going to a concert isn't much fun without other people to enjoy it with. For instance, I can't come back and share how awesome it was, because most of you wouldn't know what I'm talking about and wouldn't care.

In the six months, I feel as though my existence has grown more solitary. As though "I'm the only person who..." in a multitude of different ways. And there's nothing to be done about it.

There isn't really a cure for time and distance and fading connections. You can't do anything when someone cuts the cord but watch them drift away and wave.

I just registered on the ESTA (basically where you apply for an authorisation check to make sure you can get into the USA if your country is on the Visa Waiver list).

No problemo.

--

Does anyone else buy postcards while on holidays? Buys them like they're going out of fashion, returns home, tucks them away...and discovers them several years later?

I just dug out a bunch of postcards from Death Valley, CA (on the way to Vegas, Oct 2007), London (probably Nov 2007), San Francisco (possibly Oct 2006), and China (Jan 2008).

...I have done a lot of travel, haven't I? And more to come in later 2009.

--

Have you ever been in a place where you're happily bobbing along...and then someone throws you a millstone and down you go?

Sometimes I really wish I could toss the millstone back at the thrower, watch them mill at the edge of the water...and then go in and under. TAKE THAT, YOU BASTARD!

--

I'm feeling slightly reckless right now. Just a little. And...kinda hung. Not because I have to get up in six hours to get to work an hour early for a phone meeting with the US, but because I'm at a crossroads and if I take this path, I don't know if I'll go up or down, but if I take the other, I know that the way will be more or less the same it's been for the last fifteen years since I left school.

To tell you true, I'm scared of the downs, but I really do want the ups. And I have to stop sabotaging myself, which I do a lot and I know I do, even as I say I want to succeed.

I'm beginning to tire of the postcode snobbery evinced by a great many Americans.

If you don't live in the US, you're clearly not worth dealing with.

I have five invite codes.

Anyone want one?

I don't think I'm leaving LJ anytime soon, although I'll have to wait for their crossposting stuff to get worked out...

Okay, from the beginning, I feel it's incumbent on me to note that I am not a Trekkie, a Trekker, or a Star Trek fan. You can count on one hand the number of Star Trek episodes I have watched, and that includes part-episodes, scenes caught while channel-surfing, and the collective addition of episode seconds I have glimpsed while passing a TV tuned to the series.

So why the hell did I go to the Star Trek premiere? Mostly because I liked the look of the trailer, I liked the idea of a 're-imaging' of the series, and, let's face it, Zachary Quinto is dreadfully hot for someone who is best-known for playing an over-eyebrowed serial killer on television.

--

If I've gotten any of the terms, races, descriptions, or craft wrong, I sincerely apologise, and reiterate: I am not a Trek fan.

I've divided this review up into two segments. The first is a generic overview of the story. I haven't given away the key plot, but I will be describing the basics of the story. The second segment will be in my next post and will feature specific spoilers for the story, the plots, the characters, and the relationships. I'll link to it when it's done.

( Star Trek movie review: with broad-brush spoilers )

The verdict? Worth seeing, whether you're a Trek fan or a complete newbie.

I'm definitely going back to rewatch a second time. Possibly on big screen or Gold Class with a bunch of friends with whom I can discuss it afterward.

Testing the ( lj-cut ). This part isn't behind the lj-cut.

Mostly, I want to see what DW does.

Is there a semagic client update that posts to DW?

Anyone know?

And a test of open comments on LJs. And tags. Just because.

This one should be posted only to seldear, with commenting left open both at DW and at LJ.

This is a test pattern. Please do not treat it as a real emergency unless informed by your authorised wardens. Thank you.

I don't know how long I'll be able to post from here, but I'm testing the crosspost functionality.

Apologies to those of you who get this twice (or, in the case of Sue, thrice).

You'll have to crossover to DW to post any comments. Please do - I'd love to see how this cross-posting facility works!

I'm really going to have to work out what I'm using this journal for.

Because I have multiple journals over at LJ - tielan for fannish stuff, seldear for RL stuff, and assorted other journals for ranting, writing, getting out fic ideas, and setting myself deadline reminders.

So what am I going to use this journal for? Ideally, I'd like to be able to auto-dump everything from all my other LJs in here, and maybe run this as the 'cohesive whole' of my scattered and compartmentalised brain, plus keep up with the folks who've migrated over here.

I have the feeling that I'm missing the point of the DW community; I get the sensation that it's supposed to be a place from which one can interact in a number of different LJ clones/forks, and keep up with all the peeps one wishes to keep up with across the LJ spectrum.

Maybe what is needed for me is a paradigm shift in my perspective: for me, LJ is the main source - primarily because so many of my friends and so much of my history is there. Plus, it's habit. Get on, check mail, check mail, check LJ f-lists, check forums, check wank comms...

So, LJ is the main journalling site I use, and I still think of it that way. DW is the ancillary, and I don't know if that's a) fair to DW, or b) the right attitude to take.

So, thinky thoughts time. And opinions time! Because I'm curious as to what my readlist is going to use DW for.