Challenge #4 IceBreaker Challenge! Tell us about yourself.
To begin, I'm going to borrow tellshannon815's idea of posting the image made for a lands_of_magic challenge on the same theme:


Me with my nephews, pub lunch (that particular one is fish with red wine :D), and lots of photos of animals some past and current pets and animals I like. A pile of books because I used to read a lot and still dabble in books, ebooks, and read fanfic, and a sunflower because it is one of my fave flowers.
That challenge was to describe yourself in on-fannish terms but I'll add to that here. I'm multifannish and mostly involved in TV fandoms but sometimes I surprise myself by getting into a movie fandom and when that happens it hits pretty hard. I read, write, make icons and sometimes famixes and less often currently fanvids. Writer is a key part of who I feel I am.

( more personal stuff under the cut )

I'm not going to tag Good Omens or shinynewfandom because I'd like that to reflect when I create or rec something and not just rant about the discourse.

At the heart of Good Omens, getting a renaissance due to the Netflix adaptation, is the Crowley (demon) and Aziraphale (angel) relationship.
Gaiman says it is a love story.
The book says while people assume Aziraphale is gay, angels are sexless unless they make an effort.
Gaiman also says the relationship can be platonic or romantic, not to rule out the characters being asexual or aromantic or trans.
People start screaming queerbaiting, homophobia.
They say if two men are together they're having sex or it's homophobia.
They say having asexual characters is "desexualising" and so homophobia.
They say there are already plenty of men in platonic relationships onscreen so there's no need for more so they're having sex. (Never mind that 99% of male platonic bonds are the H50 buddy cop style bromances, no homo, I love you man but look how many women I'm dating, live with you as a life partner nah I need to have sex with women)
They say it's obvious the characters are in love therefore they must be having sex. That their non-fannish mother insists there must be missing sex scenes because their love is so obvious.

People will ship what they want and post their explicit pwp to AO3.
But what they shouldn't be doing is screaming homophobia about, let alone at, Neil Gaiman.
They shouldn't be shouting down asexuals who want to see an actual QPR (NO IT'S JUST BEING BEST FRIENDS FOR THE MILLIONTH TIME) or nonsexual but romantic relationship onscreen.
They shouldn't be denying that there are het, bi, and homoromantic asexuals. By saying Crowley and Aziraphale have to be screwing they're saying no man can love a man without sex. In fact no-one can love without sex.

I'm tired of this love=sex crap. I'm sick of the discourse. I'm so done.
I've read the book twice. I've watched the first episode of the adaptation and will watch more. I've been reading some non-explicit fanfic. I may write some. But this constant "wahhhhh homophobia if they're not banging like a screen door in a storm" is not making the fandom a welcoming place to be overall.

While I'm ranting, there was a nice pro-asexual Good Omens article at Medium which I quoted from at tumblr. However I could have done without them insisting that most asexuals can/will have sex.
There's only 2 types of aces strongly acknowledged in the discourse typified as
1) aromantic aces, so lol they can only be friends with people don't date them anyway
2) asexuals who feel no/little sexual attraction but will always let you screw them anyway so they're still like real, dateable people!

The idea of nonsexual romantic intimacy is unacknowledged by most.

Final rant. I've been watching season 6 of Brooklyn 99 and jfc I don't know if the show is ruined for me after "Casecation".
The old "person doesn't want kids but is pressured by child-wanting spouse into agreeing to have them or they're getting dumped" trope.
There is never any "good" reason for someone to not want kids in these shows. You get pressured into changing your mind or you get dumped.
In B99 they even had mutual friend Rosa offer to bully Jake into changing his mind because Amy has to have babies.
I've seen this in too many other shows. This is the main reason I dropped Supergirl. (this article has a good take on that)

It's kind of related I guess. People are pressured to be sexual and to have children or else they're doing relationships/life wrong.

Why do I write nonsexual romance in fanfic? Because goddamn it I'm desperate to see that. It speaks to me as something I can imagine for myself.
Why do I write childfree characters in my original work? Because there aren't many options in fanfic, original fic is always pulling this "not a real marriage until he screws me and I give him heirs", and I desperately want childfree characters to exist. Not childless, not evil, not unsure but they'll change their minds, not damaged but they get 'fixed' and can't wait to have kids, but 100% committed to never ever having children.

tl;dr love does not equal sex.
Childfree people exist.
Comments are on but I'm behind on replies, the current climate has made me less want to check notifications and comments to be honest.

Personal/Memes
questions and answers meme
whining about writing
what punctuation mark are you
Black Sails S3 – aye or nay?
White Collar S6 – fic requests

Versailles mini recap/review
s1e5-6
s1e7-8
s1e9-10

Indian Summers
Camptown Races audio clip and pics from the show
You Should Be Writing meme pics
What S3 of Indian Summers could have offered
Blake Ritson as Charlie singing nonsense clip
Gifs from S2e08
Picspam; I want my wife
Ride a Cock Horse clip

Gifs

Da Vinci's Demons – message
(DvD/Indian Summers) DvD/Indian Summers
We're Borgias

Graphics: Da Vinci's Demons with Desperado quotes
one
two
three
four

I also made and submitted some TFLN/DvD graphics to Texts From Florence: here and here and here

Fic recs

Da Vinci's Demons fic: Under Boughs of Sunlight by emeraldsoul
2 x Black Sails (silverflint) fics by writesometimes
show me the way to go home Black Sails fic by vowelinthug

Article recs

MEDIA
6 reasons you should be watching Black Sails

Midnight, Texas Trailer

SOCIAL ISSUES
tumblr rec of this article, How to Positively Represent Asexuality within Humorous Fiction: Part 2, “Options that can be funny without being hurtful!. ” (Part One by the same wordpress author: How to Positively Represent Asexuality within Humorous Fiction: Part 1, “What to Avoid”)

tumblr rec of this article, Holidays, Holy Days and Harvests

my thoughts and link to this article What it’s like to be called Isis: ‘People ask, where’s your machine gun?’

Link to this article Why we should have fewer children: to save the planet
quotes from and link to this article Stop Having Kids: We Already Have 6 Billion Too Many

Link to article about regretting parenthood
Links to 2 articles on regretting parenthood

A Woman Turned Down An Arranged Marriage ‘Cause The Guy Said She Had To Give Up Her Dog Good for her

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.
( Read more... )

Title: Never
Fandom: Original
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 55
Prompt: For the poetryprompts challenge from 30 Poems in 30 Days: Write a poem that gets shorter with each line
Summary: I will not change my mind
Content Notes: No standard warnings apply.

( Read more... )

Title: Mistress of Her Own Destiny
Fandom: original character in the Legend of the Seeker universe
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 1192
Prompt: For the dark_bingo prompt 'hostages'
Beta: dorothydeath - thanks for all your help and support with this one bb
Summary: Isolde, trapped by her birthright, rebels against the duties of a Confessor; servitude, obedience, and reproduction
Warnings and Content Advisory: antagonist makes slurs against the infertile and childfree; one mild reference to masturbation, discussion of rape
(  Who are you to defy the Creator's wishes  )