Scattershot

[clevermanka]

I tried to put this under a cut but apparently DW doesn't let you paste a bullet list under a cut? IDK. LJ's cut tag function is the only thing I like better about that platform. le sigh Sorry this will take up a bit of real estate on your reading pages.

Found on Twitter:

• Kyoshi Warriors cosplay at New York Comic Con.
• Me, a bridge member of Gen X and a survivor of Windows 95: *watches while rocking back and forth, measuring the progress bar religiously at intervals, saying incantations for a safe install
• Weilan fanart that puts into perfect visual that moment in Lollipop when ZYL tips backward into the bed. I know the artist didn't purposefully illustrate my fic, but other than them wearing the wrong clothes, that's 100% how I pictured it.
• Super cute Zhu Jiu fanart
• Gorgeous Weilan fanart promoting a library event (?)
• This short Twitter thread from naye makes me happy for people in non-shithole countries with reasonable employment laws. When I got sick(er), my department chair at the time fought me every step of the way, including telling me I couldn't work from home any more than I already had (even though I could absolutely do at least 75% of my job remotely). When a new chair took over the department, she was supportive of my cautious return-to-work schedule but her efforts couldn't save me from being laid off (a university decision based, I'm sure, largely on my long absences despite stellar annual reviews and a spotless 20-year employment history in the job). 
• Fairy tale Weilan fanart. After loving FayJay's Guardian Gothic so much, I am here for more Guardian fairy AUs. I mean, I'm always up for fairy tales, especially ones with Actual Faerie Danger, so this isn't surprising. So who's up for writing them? It's not me! I have a Canadian Shack, a porny one-shot, and Garage Mechanic AU lined up. Get on it, folks!
• I love behind the scenes stuff (such a sucker for DVD extras) and this bts photo from Guardian cracks me up. That is exactly the Zhu Hong in Ghost Story's expression after Zhao Yunlan has made yet another spectacularly bad life choice. Poor thing looks So Done.

From Tumblr, can anyone explain to me what is happening in this with the nose-punch? This one's Chinese, not Korean, like the other fanart translation I was wondering about (which, btw, thank you, umadoshi <3 !). Yet another thing my job loss took--fun and simple access to people speaking loads of different language (a rarity here in the heartland of these fine united states).

Couple days ago I saw this headline about China breeding pigs "the size of polar bears" and then yesterday I saw this one about pigs using tools. Maybe this is the sign of the true end times. In this, the worst timeline, we're going to be taken over by my favorite animal for eating. I always suspected it might be the case, but it appears that yes, I probably am going to be one of the first against the wall in this age's revolution.

Before the revolution comes, though, I want to go back and comment to so many fics I've read lately. I have three that I want to leave oodles of glowing praise for, but my brain cells are currently occupied elsewhere. It's good consolation to know that it's always fun to get comments weeks after posting.

Everyone and their dog (including people I usually agree with) is raving about that damn Atlantic article so I feel like I need to go read it again. See what/how I read it wrong. That's absolutely taking second priority to the comment-leaving though, for reasons which can be (ironically?) inferred from the article itself. Hard to get motivated to do so, though, when this article by Laurie Penny (I love her so much y'all, she has yet to disappoint me with anything) is fucking brilliant and moving. I'm including it in this week's dump, but it pairs well as a companion piece to the Atlantic one, imo.

Waiting for mckitterick to get up so I can start cooking. Probably the best way to do that is start working on Ghost Story...

Comments

[extrapenguin]

It's possible to do a bullet list inside a cut tag in the HTML editor, at least? I don't know how it'd work in the rich text editor. Maybe if you put in the bullet points, select it, and declare that it's inside a cut tag?

As another resident of one of those socialist welfare state countries, I'm sorry for the sad state of US labor laws. Hopefully someone will fix them at some point? Fingers crossed.

Thank you for the links to the articles – based on a quick skim the Atlantic one seems to be "yay communiteh!" but that's just a quick skim. I'll read them over dinner.

[extrapenguin]

Okay, I read the articles, and the first one especially reads like something I've already read. As in: I have read its prior versions, its elder siblings and crotchety great-aunts, and had exactly the same reaction to it. The latter article at least has a more memorable structure to it, and is a personal account of some sort, but doesn't really add anything new to the conversation.

(I suppose that they both succumb to the flaw, omnipresent in this type of article, of treating fandom as transcendential and all-inspiring, when it is in reality a lot more ordinary and conservative than presented. Kirk and Spock are students in a contemporary US high school, they have a meet-cute, the fic is them getting together. Rinse and repeat. Fandom is very good at and very invested in contemporary romance, good at and invested in romance in other settings, and the culture of transformative fandom that the articles refer to is as a whole not that good at worldbuilding, for example.)

[clevermanka]

I'm curious what your exact same reaction was to the Atlantic article. I loved Laurie Penny's piece, but I like her writing and personal essays in general.

[extrapenguin]

It was just "OK? I already knew this. I've read this before." basically. I've read enough articles, blog posts, and comments that deal with the same topic that every argument and example had been introduced to me already.

[clevermanka]

Oh, thanks! Next time I'll just make the whole post in the HTML view. I usually avoid the HTML editor bc I hate how the rich text option crams everything into a single paragraph with p tags instead of actual line breaks so then when I go to edit the HTML it's Wall Of Text. I mean, I know that's how HTML works, I've just gotten spoiled with visual editors. Oh, 90s webpages, there is a reason you were so terrible.

I can't say I have a lot of hope for the improvement of US labor laws. At least not before things get substantially worse first. But I'm not an optimist, so.

[extrapenguin]

Actually, as long as you don't tick the "Don't auto-format" ticky, DW's HTML editor view is pretty good – it automagically adds the p and br tags where necessary. (The rich text to HTML conversion, OTOH, is bullshit.)

[clevermanka]

Ah! Super helpful! Thank you!

[ride_4ever]

TYK for the great links. With my spouse in the hospital, my current RL is spending about half-a-dozen hours a day at the hospital and working full-time plus extra shifts including weekends to compensate for how many hours off each day to be at the hospital. I am almost always reading your link dumps and appreciating the moments outside my own RL, but I'm not leaving comments every time. JSYK that I'm reading and appreciating.

[clevermanka]

Oh, yikes. Sorry to hear about the spouse. That sounds awful awful awful. I'm glad the link dumps are giving you some distraction. No worries about comments! Good lord, that all sounds so stressful.

[yantantether]

The text in that art doesn't seem to explain why it ends with a punch. With the help of Google translate, I get something like:

"Aiya, Shen Wei, ah, Shen Wei."
"Ai, Xiao Wei"
"Wait a minute... Hey!"

[clevermanka]

So...maybe some humor that doesn't translate. =\ I wish it did, bc I'd like to reblog it (I did the original) but I feel...weirdly weird about Shen Wei punching Zhao Yunlan in the face? for no apparent reason? It's like "oh! there's your line with violence done to these characters apparently! well, good to know you have one, I suppose!"

[clevermanka]

The artist just posted an alternate ending which I like very much. =D

[yantantether]

Ooh yeah, I like that ending!

[writedragon]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the Laurie Penny story and Wired link. Anyone who writes a sentence like this: "Human society cannot survive on a single story any more than the human body can thrive on a diet of raw steak sprinkled with Adderall." is a hero in my book. I am going to track down everything she writes and until today I had never heard of her.

I also appreciated her takedown of Joseph Campbell (whom I otherwise love -- and have successfully written stories using the Hero's Journey structure). It addressed something that I think fundamentally pervades the Writing Advice Community and drives me nuts -- that to be a "real" story it has to follow a three point structure, or a five point structure, must always have conflict, can never use an adverb or adjective... That kind of prescriptive (often contradictory!) advice has always bugged me, and now I have a better understanding of why. And now I can say with a bit more confidence: fuck that.

Free The Stories.

[clevermanka]

Laurie Penny is great! Her book Unspeakable Things is my fave. I hope you enjoy her stuff!

[khellekson]

Love the ATLANTIC article! Thanks for the link. I also love that they mention the MY LITTLE PONY world because it is huge and I somehow adore it, even if from afar. The thing I love best about the fic world is that it’s all textual analysis. Let me READ that; let me INTERPRET that; let me ADD TO IT; let me make an ARGUMENT.

Catching up here; OMG your cooking! OMG your epic fic! Keep hanging on hanging on.

[clevermanka]

Okay, obviously I need to re-read that Atlantic article because nearly everybody else (people I trust!) really appreciated it so I must've gotten something out of it that it didn't intend.