meridian_rose

“The universe, they say, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identified as charm, persuasion, uncertainty, and bloody-mindedness.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Light Fantastic

I want to try and do more signal boosting. I always mention communities when I've signed up for or completed something with them, from allbingo to unconventionalcourtship and sometimes signal boost/promote other communities, but I'll try and do even more to help visibility.
If we're going to sustain the uptick in activity and make DW more successful as a community based endeavour, we need to be able to find our people and share our interests! One of the many things Tumblr does badly is the lack of communities, which as one post mentioned "following people instead of joining communities based on interests has negative emotional and social implications"; on DW we join communities for shared activities and when we follow individuals it is because we are compatible with that person in some way and we treat them as friends not as "random person who reblogs other people's content".

I'll start with some writing communities because a lot of us here are writers or want to get into writing more.

It is the LAST DAY to pledge to join getyourwordsout for 2019 a community I highly recommend. There's no punitive measures if you don't meet your goal so set it as high or low as you want, choose from wordcount or days-spent-writing and get the shiny spreadsheet and access to a community of writers all striving to put down words this year.

Some non-bingo writing communities (not an exhaustive list!)

dailyprompt
fandomweekly weekly 1k or less fic challenge, fandom and original
fffc flash fiction Friday
fic_promptly comment fic multi-fandom
ficlet_zone monthly multi-fandom fic writing
thedailywriter
writingfrenzy

For wordcounts of specific length:
semidrabbles: 50 words
drabble_zone 100 words (and 200 word double drabbles)
sesquidrabbles: 150 words
doubledrabbles: 200 words
tripledrabbles: 300 words

thewritersherald is a great place to find and promote communities and events for writers.

Writing prompts:

luthien has a drabble challenge with 30 prompts here,
liquidtears would like more fic with shower scenes not necessarily smutty, just showering. As someone who loves shower scenes I approve!


Icons
And in the spirit of doing new things/returning to old practices, I entered some icons at iconthat (I'll make a post of all challenge icons when I have a few and the various deadlines have passed.) The current theme is Affection.
There's also fandom10in30, icons10in20, and a not challenge community, icontalking whose sticky post has a list of active iconmaking communities and communities that welcome icons/have challenges for them.

Others

onthedisc a Terry Pratchett community!

I've joined lands_of_magic a landcomm/challenge community now open to all fandoms. Next round begins in February so you've plenty of time to sign up.

Day 9: Rec 3 or more fanworks you've created
Day 10: Share your love for a trope, cliché, kink, motif, or theme
Day 11: Share something media related that changed your life
Day 12: Create a fanwork

( Day 9 )

( Day 10 )

( Day 11 )

( Day 12 )

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.

I was tagged on a Facebook meme to talk about ten stories that "stayed with me", which I took to be an invitation to mention a few books, including non-fic, that are, or have been, important to me. I thought I'd post it here too.
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"In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator. "
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Celebrated at the 21st or 22nd of December this marks the Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemipshere while Litha is celebrated as the Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. It is of course close to Christmas Day while that is also the feast day of Frau Holle, a Scandinavian spirit who is honored as the embodiment of nature and the woods.



~Magickal Graphics~

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Click for full size; x-posted to Tumblr.

Title: The Ill-advised Skeletal Exchange Programme
Fandoms: The Nightmare Before Christmas/Hogfather (Discworld)
Characters: Susan Sto Helit, Death of Rats, Quoth, Jack Skellington, Death (Discworld), Sally (Nightmare Before Christmas), Albert (Discworld)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,560
Prompt: For swan_tower as a yuletide treat fic - also available at the collection here
Summary: Death has apparently temporarily exchanged places with his pen pal, Jack Skellington. Susan is, understandably, Not Impressed (though the Death of Rats finds the whole thing hilarious)
Warnings: None
Notes: After I'd finished my Yuletide assignment I thought I'd write a treat and the prompt for a NBX/Discworld crossover caught my eye. I'd never written in these fandoms before, but they're two of my favourite Christmas themed media, and once the similarities were pointed out by the recipient I couldn't resist.
( You have both impersonated a wintry, gift giving, demigod )