meridian_rose

I've let myself get behind, and there's over two months worth of links here, so it's longer than usual. But given how some of my Tumblr posts have zero notes (remind me how tagging your posts is guaranteed to get a Tumblr audience unlike the "dead" LJ?) I'm keen to showcase them here too, and I always like to share links to articles I've read that have stood out for me.

This Show Reblogged gifs from "The Flash", featuring the father-son type relationship between Barry Allen and Joe West to which I added some commentary about how I love all the characters and this relationship.

Lewis: The Moonbeams Brief review/commentary added to a reblog about an episode of "Lewis" featuring Tom Riley as an artist who appears to be on the autistic spectrum.

Overnight Everything I Loved Was Gone I posted a link to a longer excerpt which was originally posted here and added some commentary of my own about the Internet and public shaming.

Why Historical Inaccuracies in Wolf Hall Don't Matter I posted an excerpt from a longer newspaper article. Wolf Hall is a drama, not a documentary, so artistic licence is allowed. And how accurate can we be about the Tudors anyway…in matters of characterisation, what can accuracy mean? We will never know the exact balance of sexual desire, dynastic ambition and theological disputation that led Henry VIII to marry and divorce in the way that he did. Finally an article saying what I seem to say every damn month. I added brief commentary when I posted the link.

Artisitic License in Vikings, Black Sails, and Da Vinci's Demons A reblog of another article that gets it; Da Vinci’s maxim that “the best story wins” thus applies to historical fiction as a whole. The genre often comes under criticism for historical departures, but as we well know, “history” is a constructed narrative, and what we term “accurate” can often be subjective. Such artistic license not only makes historical fiction more narratively cohesive and dramatically entertaining, but is instructive in ways that history is not, as the artists behind these shows use the conscious inaccuracies to underscore the perspectives and motives of the people of that era, helping us deepen our understand of that era, something history alone cannot do."
I addded my own commentary and graphic.

I'm a 20's Something Erotic Writer Who's Never Had Sex I posted a link to the article with commentary because as an asexual I was hoping to find this inspiring instead of some condescending crap about how with the writer bragging about being "fully functional" despite being a virgin without a husband or kids while being hypocritically nasty about "sad old single romance writers with cats". Her youth will fade and maybe she'll lose her "real" job that she's proud of, and then she'll be the "stereotype" she's so horrified by. Though since this post went utterly unnoticed, maybe everyone agrees with the smug author that it's okay be a virgin but not be an older virgin and/or someone without "real" employment because writing doesn't count. One more author I'll make sure never to read.

Terry Pratchett: An Accidental Pagan Theologian A lovely article I posted a link to that points out "He was one of the very few writers to speculate on how deities come into being, first as particles of energy, then accumulating more energy from the minds of worshippers (in the book Small Gods)" and talks about how "Much of his work explores ideas of social justice."
I added my own commentary: "As a pagan, a lover of stories, and a writer, I agree wholeheartedly. The stories around the power of belief, the power of story, the power of people to affect change, are wonderful concepts. His work has impacted, and continues to impact, my thoughts and beliefs and creativity."

Things I Want in Da Vinci's Demons Season 3 And since I probably won't get the interaction between these two particular characters, despite their shared experiences, I'll just have to write it in fanfic.

Other articles

True Gender Equality Is Actually Perceived As Inequality Reblogged (with some minor commentary in tags) link from a longer article about Fandom and Male Priviledge which is worth a look, examining male privilege generally and the more female nature of fandom and how more recent male involvement risks damaging spaces largely developed by and for women.

In Celebration of Old School Live Journal Timely, given my post about how LJ is not dead is this article where the author waxes nostalgic about LJ and the connections she made through it. Not good enough to keep her invested in using it, and she inadvertently makes a case against Tumblr and it's inability to foster the same kind of personal connections, but it's still an interesting read – and some of the comments on the article are made by current LJ users.

Hapax and Heyer, Austen and Irony, or, What I should have said an interesting article in which the author talks about the difference between the works of Georgette Heyer and those of Jane Austen.

13 Things Fan Fiction Writers Are Very Tired Of Explaining. Yes, we can and usually do write non-fanfic, and actually, writing fic usually isn’t “just a phase” are two of the gems here.

In my mini-meta about sexuality in mainstream vs non-mainstream fiction, I mentioned two articles that I think warrant mention in and of themselves:
The Thing about Reading Fanfic and Original Slash you get used to that particular writing/reading culture after a while. You get used to the frank discussions of sexuality and kink, the close attention to diversity and social justice issues in the text, the unrestrained creativity when it comes to plot. The most amazing, creative, engaging stories I’ve ever read have almost all been fanfiction, and I think part of that is because there’s no limitations placed on the authors.
And
Halt & Catch Pointless Heterosexuality looking particularly at "Supernatural" but addressing issues of representation and queer baiting on the whole: "There are a lot of different rationales fans and viewers put forward in the argument that Dean should not be shown as canonically bisexual, one being that “the show is not about that” or that it would “distract from the story” or that it “serves no purpose.” Alright, well, for the moment let’s just skip over the fact that no one in the history of ever has argued that depictions of heterosexuality ought to be relegated only to shows that are “about” romance/sex. Or that canonical affirmation of a character’s heterosexuality “distracts” from the story. Or that a character’s heterosexuality “serves no purpose” so it should not be present in the narrative at all. Let’s just skip over the queer-phobic nature of demanding that same-sex eroticism constantly justify its own existence in media in a way heterosexuality NEVER EVER EVER is called upon to do. Let’s just by-pass that particular issue, for the moment." The author is rightfully angry about how queer identities are treated.

fixitstory and royaltystory; two big bang challenges held at both LJ and DW. I'm not going to officially sign up to either, but I might keep them in mind as goals of my own.

For LotS fans:

Craig Horner, shirtless, playing guitar: http://instagram.com/p/c91FNCOIOc/#
Had no idea that Danielle McCormack (Shota) has a child with Spartacus's Pana Hema Taylor (Nasir). Small world. Mind blown. If Nasir were not a canon gay character I'd want crossover fic of Shota/Nasir.
Which leads to

Spartacus actors in bath photoshoot
http://elprimerodelafila.com.ve/top-10-spartacus/
The article is in Danish (?) but scroll past the text and vid links and you can look at the pictures. Katrina Law et al wet and nearly naked. You're welcome.

On reality, fiction, and metafiction

I've been thinking a lot about how my online life is as real and valuable as my "real" life. My fiction is, for a given value of real, real. Everything is perception:

"Our notion of matter as a solid substance is, like the color green, a quality appearing in consciousness. It is a model of what is "out there", but as with almost every other model, quite unlike what is actually out there."
Is Reality All in the Mind? http://www.peterrussell.com/SCG/ideal.php

Which leads nicely to something I discovered via a fanfic, "The Number of the Beast" by Robert A. Heinlein, and the idea the science fiction book proposed of
World as Myth.
"According to this idea, myths and fictional worlds exist as an almost infinite number of universes which are parallel to our own. In this multiverse, Heinlein's Future History timeline is merely a few of the vast number of constituent universes that comprise the World as Myth. In The Number of the Beast, four characters traveled to multiple fictional universes, including several of Heinlein's own. Others included E.E. Doc Smith's Lensman series, L. Frank Baum's Oz books, and Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland."
source
Ergo, fictional worlds are real.

Which leads to this cartoon, reminding me I need to write more of my metafiction verse where the characters are very much aware that they are characters in a book being written around them:

(Click through to the Tumblr post)

My PC refuses to boot at all today. I'm worried it's completely dead, and I can't afford a new one, and everything I do (search for jobs, browse net, write, make graphics) revolves my computer. I've replaced the motherboard battery but still no joy. I'm typing this on my parent's PC. I don't know when I'll get to respond to comments or emails, let alone anything else. So please excuse my absence.