…hold everything. Did the recent design changes fix whatever it was that the previous design changes ducked up? Does this mean I am able to post to Tumblr again? 

*cackles*

porifra:

toraten:

“Stop…not there…” said the uke and so the seme stopped and said he respected him and his body so he would not go any further. 

bit of NSFW?? at the beginning

Read More

I like this!! I like this very much!

tumbl-down:

The Misconception of Amy Pond

5.01 “The Eleventh Hour”

Rory: How can he be real? He was never real! It was just a game. We were- we were kids. You made me dress up as him!

Right here, with this quote, I knew the characterization of Amy Pond was going to go seriously awry.

Kids love to play pretend, don’t they?

Moffat was a Who fan as a kid, right? I bet he played Doctor Who pretend. Yet somehow I don’t think he assigned the role of Doctor to others. I mean, the Doctor is the hero! You don’t assign that role to another kid! You fight for your right to be the Doctor! Maybe you take turns with who gets to be him. Maybe there’s three Doctors running around at the same time and it gets a big squiggly. But whatever you do, you don’t freely abdicate the hero role.

Unless you’re a girl.

Apparently.

Steven Moffat could not conceive of a little Amelia Pond who would look at the magical Doctor and his blue box and want to be him. He assumed she would want to be with him instead.

Actual little girls, however, are well-versed in this problem. I know I had a lot of contradictory feelings about Indiana Jones. (“He’s so dreamy!” “I want to be an archaeologist when I grow up!” “Mom, can I have a whip for my birthday?”) Most of the heroes- the characters it’s most fun to imagine being- are dudes. If you also happen to find some of those dudes attractive, you’re going to develop the “I want to be you/I want to be with you” duality. This is something that straight guys like Moffat have not needed to deal with, as characters for them were nicely divided into a binary of those they want to be (male heroes) and those they want to be with (the hot ladies male heroes get).

So when Moffat created Amelia he projected this binary on to her, but reversed it. She’s a girl! The Doctor is a dude! Obviously she wants to be with him! I’m not even sure he realizes it’s possible for Amelia to want to be the Doctor. Yes, if someone asked him directly if he thought little girls wanted to grow up to be the Doctor he’d probably agree, but the point is it didn’t occur to him when he was actually writing her character.

And so she becomes The Girl Who Waited, waited for the hero’s return, and not The Girl Who Dreamed, dreamed of being the hero.

Amelia Pond, drawing Doctor fanart in crayon- are you our on-screen fangirl cypher? Dreaming of what male creators think we want: romance! With an awkward, unnecessary love triangle! Uh, girls love that, right?

Enter the series 7 promo still.

I look at this and think- what fantasy does this appeal to? That’s no hero shot, not of Amy Pond.

The girl who waited, carried away.

It’s everything that’s been there from the beginning, that we’ve tried to put aside. The misconception of Amy Pond. As the love interest, the sidekick, and not the hero. In the hero’s arms and not the hero.

Where is the image of Amy Pond, hero? Why can’t that sell the show? Why a damsel in distress shot?

Ah, but we don’t want to confuse the little boys, the mini-Moffats, by making them want to be her, instead of just be with her. How weird that would be!

So Amy will stay as she is, in the Doctor’s arms, safe.

This commentary is fascinating to me, because I never pretended to be “the hero”.

When I was a child, no matter what world I entered, how elaborate a (borrowed)fiction I spun, I was never taking on the role of the hero. I never took on anyone else’s roles. I was always, always, for as long as I can remember, just myself.

And oh no, there was no “just” about it. Long ago I gave myself permission to be the Mary-Sue in my private daydreams, and so I was always an accomplished being in my own right. Sometimes as powerful as the heroes, sometimes more. I was Voldemort’s daughter¹ who’d been stuck in a time warp and was the same age as Harry’s gang, but with all the knowledge of a seventh year. I was a formidable pirate captain in my own right, crossing swords with The Sinful Sausage² (and falling in love with Brace-and-Bit). I was the Mysterious Girl Next Door to Fowl Manor, with a type of magic Artemis couldn’t conceive and even Holly knew not. I was the Herald who rode a black companion³ or the Tayledras bonded to a cat rather than bird, or the girl who was Chosen by a Companion who crossed realms of reality to be with me. In every fanfic I imagined⁴, I was very clearly the most important, and most powerful, and most interesting person in the story. I wasn’t the hero as presented in the original media —although I was generally quite friendly with them, and in the cases of my (many) fictional crushes, they were completely and totally in love with me— I was just a side character to their story… …so that I could instead focus on my own. And my story was better⁵, every time. Yes, Ron Weasley was my darling love interest⁶, but he wasn’t going to save *me*. What am I, some damsel? It was ME swooping in to save him, because I was the best and the brightest and Harry Potter (my half-brother, look, don’t even ask) was nowhere near as capable at defeating Voldemort as I.

So, the long-winded point I am trying to make here is that yeah, Amy made Rory pretend to be the Doctor, rather than being him herself. And…what happened then? I’ve seen very little of the last few seasons of Doctor Who, but what I do know of Amy and Rory, I find it a touch unlikely that she would have stood there and batted her eyelashes in their games of pretend, while Rory swooped in and saved the day. He might have been the one assigned the role of pilot with the blue box, but I’ll bet you anything that *she* was the one adventuring to all these new planets and times and defeating strange aliens and monsters. She was the one holding the homemade sonic screwdriver, or ray gun, or whatever Amy Pond would expect her raggedy man to use. She was the one who was Important and In Charge and Powerful, and poor Rory was forced into being her hapless sidekick, nothing more than the facilitation of HER adventures and HER story.

Now, I say all this, but I still think the above commentary is incredibly important and very plausibly right, and I have not been given any reason to trust Steven Moffet not to be misogynistic. And I say all this, and I looked at that promo photo and the first words out of my mouth were “what the fuck is wrong with you?” followed closely by “and what does a girl have to do to get out of being made into a fucking damsel?”.

I say all this and am incredibly bothered by what happens to the companions —all pretty, all female, all white (except for Martha), all hopelessly in love with The Doctor (except for Donna, and hey, it’s my favourite), all vessels for the same horrible story where the companion is a swooning damsel who needs to be saved by His Heroic Excellency.

But I don’t agree that, just because Amy chooses not to be the Doctor, she’s choosing not to be The Hero.

Maybe she’s just choosing a story where she can shine without having to be someone else.

~Sor

1: Yes, really.
2: 10 points to the house of whoever can identify what this is from.
3: This was part of a Harry Potter/Valdemar crossover fanfic that I actually started writing down when I was in sixth or seventh grade. Somewhere in Chicago, there is a composition book with twenty or forty pages of just atrocious derivative drivel in it. I’m really quite pleased with myself for it, even though anyone reading it should never ever happen not ever.
4: Actually, it occurs to me that I can recall a Mulan daydream in which I was Mulan, but it involved me running away from the emperor when he starts listing my faults, and it was one of those horrible daydreams where the whole point is that everything terrible ever happens to the main character (me) and she is rejected by everyone and so goes off and takes on an assumed name and becomes Better Than Everyone Else, and then they learn about it and are Very Sorry They Treated Her So Bad and I really had a lot of those. This probably says something horrible about me.
5: okay, “better” is a misnomer, but I did rather enjoy it more.
6: Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality ruined my life by pointing out how useless he really is, but that’s okay, because the movies did it long before, and so did the last few books. Never fell out of love with Remus though.

(via complicatedtriangulated)

omgyay!!!

Those silver spiral things I am holding are my favourite (and only matched) pair of hairsticks! I thought I had lost them for good a couple weeks ago. But today was Unfuck My Habitat day, and that meant a deep clean of the room…including moving and flipping the mattress to reveal them hiding right there on the floor.

Thank you UFYH! I know it’s been a good cleaning day when I find something previously Lost Forever.

(I might make a real progress post later as well. Been a good day.)

My friend Martha took this and sent it to me in an e-mail labeled “A Rose For You”!

I don’t know if she’s aware of my endless complications around flowers (especially roses)

But it was really sweet of her, and the rose is gorgeous, and I really appreciate it.

Tonight I was dressed up all goth, and made the mistake of passing by a mirror while holding a camera.

I really am utterly gorgeous, aren’t I?

Last Waltz, taken by Kevin Hollenbeck.

This is…damn. That ballroom (and attached house) has been in mom’s/mine friends group for…whuf. My entire life plus some?

That ballroom is almost definitely the place where I experienced my first waltz. My first polka. My earliest forays into couple dancing, when I was eight-nine-ten-eleven-far too young to appreciate the form. It’s where I came back to when I started being a dancer again, all through college —every trip to Maryland was arranged to see if I could stack it against a dance night. There was Oella too, but there’s something magical about that house, all purple and beautiful and with the whiteboard listing dances and the guest book listing dancers.

That ballroom hosted the first dance of my first pair of dance shoes.

(And let’s not even get started on the Grand Marches. I am an outright fucking *snob* about marches, for better or for worse, and it’s all because I have been doing this since I was just a kid. Every month. With astounding dancers. If your grand march does not wind all throughout the house and up the stairs and back down again, just don’t even talk to me, I’m not interested.)

And…Alex and Renee are selling it, which is totally their prerogative. Apparently it’s going to a contra caller, so at least the ballroom will still be used as it should be and not turned into a basketball court or rec room or torn down entirely. But…it’s leaving the group who taught me how to dance. And I missed my chance to say goodbye.

Last Waltz.

Always such a difficult concept, but never before has it felt so final.

I went to a wildlife refuge, and tested out my camera. It was awesome. THERE WAS A FROG! I took pictures of it with the camera zoomed all the way out (top) and the camera zoomed all the way in (bottom)

Everything is awesome.

electric-snake:

First

Previous

Next

-

This is a collaboration between myself and Sorceress

Character briefs: Katters, Zebra, Harry, Sor, Alis, Gabe

If the amber text on a black background is difficult to read, Readable will make it readable.

  As they squeezed through the forlorn barricade at the front of the shop, Harry felt something heavy drop into his coat pocket. The redheaded girl, the one he’d met out hunting vampires had skipped ahead a few steps, then turned and winked. The “something” turned out to be a bottle of scotch, a clear message: “We’ve never met”. 

  Harry winced inwardly. While he would never argue with free booze, it was only so easy to mask his own part-vampiric nature. Due to inattentiveness or stupidity the girl hadn’t yet learned, but it was only a matter of time, especially -and his eyes darted for a moment to The Katters- if there kept being so much fresh blood around. 

  He had half-convinced himself to turn tail and run, when he caught the tall white-haired man  arguing about the irresponsibility of starting the end of the world with the two katters. Right. The zombie apocalypse. 

  Harry steeled himself. He was a journalist, after all, and this could be the story of a lifetime.

  Gabriel was feeling woozy. He had been arguing with Sor about not putting proper warnings on her magic, but the words had started feeling clumsy, and he was slowing down. He blinked, and found himself sitting in the middle of the street. The rest of the party was ambling on, but Al doubled back and leaned over him, concerned. 

  “You okay?” She rested a hand on his forehead, testing for fever. “Told you not to eat the egg salad.” 

  “I feel ‘ike…my foot hur’s.” he slurred, and collapsed. 

  “Yo, Whimsy!” she shouted, and Sor turned. “Something’s wrong with Ga—AAAGH!”

Read More

Authors notes are spooooilers.

Read More

dysanic:

electric-snake:

First

Previous

Next

-

This is a collaboration between myself and Sorceress

Character briefs: Katters, Zebra, Harry, Sor, Alis, Gabe

If the amber text on a black background is difficult to read, Readable will make it readable.

  “This is the place,” the Katters said. She led Harry, Zebra, and Spike up a cement path to a seemingly abandoned bookshop. It was five stories tall and had a tree growing out of an upper balcony.

  “I think I’ve been here before,” Harry said.

  “Books and et cetera?” Zebra asked. “What’s the et cetera?”

  The Katters shrugged. “Stuff, whatever, who cares. Let’s get in there and see what’s up.”

Read More

In which all of the main characters are finally in the same place at the same time!

Also the et cetera is porn and sex toys, for the record.

Now we have SIX characters who never shut up in the same place at the same time!

Also now everything gets difficult, because we have to either write everything together (which is awesome, but hard, and might lead to some awesome webcam parties, unless we can finish this tonight (awesome but SUPER UNLIKELY), OR we each have to write the other person’s characters. Which we are uniformly bad at.

I might “accidentally” encourage some sort of mixing of the party and re-separation. Er, I mean, spoilers.

At any rate, yay story! Yay zombies! Yay chapters with lots of arguing and very little action! Fuck you, it’s our story and we’ll have endless dialogue if we want to!

electric-snake:

First

Previous

Next

-

This is a collaboration between myself and Sorceress

Character briefs: Katters, Zebra, Harry, Sor, Alis, Gabe

If the amber text on a black background is difficult to read, Readable will make it readable.

  The Katters jerked away from Spike at the sound of a gunshot from the street. She got to her feet, winced at the pain in her chest, and put her shotgun back in its holster.

  “Come on, Spike,” she said. “We still got work to do.”

  She jogged for the fence, found a gate, and swung it open. Spike got to his feet, paused to lick his left foreleg, and trotted after her.

  ***

  Zebra and Harry were standing back to back in the middle of the street. The Katters jogged toward them, and was promptly knocked down by a third dinosaur. The velociraptor jumped off her back and ran off into the shadows.

Read More

In the process of writing this, I found myself admitting “Gabriel is not really aware of the differences between ‘packing for a zombie apocalypse’ and ‘packing for a day in the park”. I think this is a good guideline for his character. He’s adorkable, and is going to absolutely be the one to put the shop back into working order when this is all done, but he is so not the person you want on your team when the zombie apocalypse happens.

Also, I’m rather pleased with the solution ES chose for his bit, since about halfway through (we have been reading over each other’s shoulders since pretty much the start) he says “I have no idea how I’m going to get them out of this.”

electric-snake:

First

Previous

Next

-

This is a collaboration between myself and Sorceress

Character briefs: Katters, Zebra, Harry, Sor, Alis, Gabe

If the amber text on a black background is difficult to read, Readable will make it readable.

  Zebra picked up his rifle and re-checked it.

  “What the heck was that?” Harry asked.

  The Katters raised an eyebrow at him. “What was what?”

  “That,” he waved his hand at the ground. “That fight.”

  “It was a fight.”

  “But,” Harry said.

  “What, you don’t ever get into fights with your friends?”

  “I don’t try to strangle them to death.”

  “Well,” the Katters said, and something burst out of the shadows, grabbed Spike, and ran away. “Shit!” the Katters said.

  Zebra fired a half second too late.

  “Fuck!” The Katters spun. “Where’d it go?”

  Somewhere to their left, Spike yelped.

  “Damn it! Spike!” the Katters said. She pulled out her shotgun and ran toward the sound.

  “Katters!” Zebra shouted.

  The Katters ignored him. Spike yelped again, and the sound turned into a pained whine. The Katters ran faster.

Read More

Fuuuuck, I am verbose. Also, the quote I just posted is probably a spoiler for this chapter. And for Electric-Snake’s parts, which is clearly terrible, because those are the parts that are good!

Aw, nvm, all of it is good. Or weird, at least, which is good enough! And this chapter has me clumsily writing action in it, which is always good! By which I mean hella awkward. I do not write action. I write people standing around arguing. Sometimes I write make-outs, but I don’t let anyone read those.

electric-snake:

First

Previous

Next

-

This is a collaboration between myself and Sorceress

Character briefs: Katters, Zebra (coming soon),Harry, Sor, Alis, Gabe

If the amber text on a black background is difficult to read, Readable will make it readable.

  Harry pulled a bottle from his pants pocket. “You know, most people ran for shelter,” he said and took a drink.

  “And?” Zebra said.

  Harry took another drink and put the bottle back. “And nothing, just most people aren’t out looking for undead to fight.”

  “We’re not looking for undead to fight,” the Katters said. “We’re on our way to Ramsey. We’ve got an errand to run.”

  “You said you were taking the main roads because there were more zombies.”

  “True,” the Katters said, shooting Zebra a glare. “We did say that.”

  “So what’s up?” Harry said. “Why are you fighting undead? What errand is so important it’s worth risking your lives?”

  “Someone has to,” Zebra said.

  “What?”

  Zebra shrugged. “If everyone’s hiding away in shelters, then no one’s fighting the zombies. And if no one’s fighting the zombies then the zombies won’t die.”

  “One has to take a proactive approach to this sort of thing,” the Katters said. “Or the zombie apocalypse will never end.”

  “That’s,” Harry said slowly, “one way of looking at it, I suppose.”

Read More

“I now have three characters that never stop talking all in the same place” says Electric-Snake “this chapter will never end.”

All my authors notes are spoilery again, not that I think anyone actually cares about spoilers, mostly because I do not ever think that I am writing a thing people care about enough to avoid spoilers. Anyways.

Read More

electric-snake:

First

Previous

Next

-

This is a collaboration between myself and Sorceress

Character briefs: Katters, Zebra (coming soon), Harry, Sor, Alis, Gabe

If the amber text on a black background is difficult to read, Readable will make it readable.

  The Katters, Zebra, and Spike were nearing the Ripton/Snowtown border when the Katters stopped walking and cocked her head. “I smell smoke,” she said.

  Someone shouted, “Fire in the hole!” and something flew over the Katters’ and Zebra’s heads. It crashed to the ground, burst with the sound of shattering glass, and exploded into short-lived flames around the feet of the four zombies which had been stalking our heroes.

Read More

One of the most entertaining parts of this for me is that we’ve sortof vaguely discussed what we want to happen as the story unfolds. But we don’t really talk about the details, meaning that I’m finding out what’s happening with The Katters and Zeebs at about the same rate you all are.

I’m okay with this. It makes collaboration fun! (Disclaimer: Collaborating with my clone was already fun.)