I wish a most wonderous birthday to the wonderfully wonderful holdouttrout. Alas, my plans for birthday fic failed miserably, but I hope you have a fantastic birthday, sweetie. You deserve it.

I have not been fit company for fan nor beast the last month or so, so I've largely been hunkered down trying to write or working in the garden. I did have a very nice break from my doldrums when the dwinn and I went to Chicago for a much-needed getaway.

On the home front, the garden is flourishing. We recently had a couple of mostly-dead shrubs taken out, opening up a couple more corners of the yard that now obviously need plants, so I'm starting a small hydrangea bed in one corner, and have to figure out what to do with the other. Recent pictures here.

Anyone have recommendations on a plumber/service to check over a hot water heater?

Star Trek is my first, true fannish love. It is what brought me into science fiction. It has defined much of my life as a fan of the genre, since I was a tiny child watching TOS reruns with with my father, and later sitting rapt when TNG premiered, and getting my very own Star Trek canon. So, I am so very much That Fan when it comes to Trek.

I'm 600 words into a rant about the new Trek, but have decided not to post it. Largely because as much as the movie didn't hit my buttons, I'm pleased as punch to see it revive so much love for Trek amongst old fans who did love it, and the new fans it's bringing in. So other than this quick summary, I'll probably keep my curmudgeonly rantings to myself.


( in short... )

Overall, very pretty, fantastic effects, not my Star Trek.

zats_clear is hosting an anon love meme. Go spread some fannish love.

I haven't seen the new Trek yet, and am sure I will be a complete curmudgeon about it, because I am that Trek fan, but all this resurgent and new Trek love has brought up discussion of the novelizations, and man, am I ever kicking myself for getting rid of most of mine. I had a complete set of the Bantam originals, and a complete set of the first 60 TOS Pocket Books novels, plus the non-numbered books like Sarek, Spock's World, and the movie novelizations, and the first 20 or so TNG Pocket books novels (and that's not counting all the manuals and non-fiction books), and I think I only ended up keeping about ten. What the hell was I thinking? I think this summer may see a few trips to the used bookstore to rebuild what I can of the collection.

The Jack/Sara ficathon is still in need of prompts.

New community of interest: passingbechdel, "a challenge community to do just that. To take books, films, episodes of shows you love, which fail the [Bechdel] test and write fic to redress the balance. (The rule can also be altered to apply to characters of colour and, while the primary focus of the comm is on women, fic redressing that imbalance is very welcome - especially if it involves women of colour)"

So in all the SG-1 genderswap fic, where is the girl!Teal'c? Have I just missed it? I mean, how is that not made of awesome? This 6 foot plus, totally ripped warrior woman who won her place as Apophis' First Prime, with that utterly calm demeanor and dry sense of humor, that eyebrow quirk that says, "I am gorgeous and could kick your ass from here to Chulak and back again, so go ahead, try me."

INDEED.

And ha! Imagine a woman-dominated S9S10 team with girl!Teal'c, Sam and Vala vs. Cam and Daniel. That is made of win, right there.

Have been putting in about two hours a day on the garden as the weather permits, which has allowed me to turn this mess into this in the past week (just finished up today). Also worked on putting the finishing touches on Paradox's bed (still needs a few more plants and mulching), and had a visit from the Chuckster.

Rest of the recent garden photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpa_photos/tags/garden2009/

Linkspam on the fail surrounding Patricia Wrede's "Thirteenth Child", an alternate fantasy pioneer history of the Americas where Native peoples never existed. From the Tor review, "This is an alternate version of our world which is full of magic, and where America (“Columbia”) was discovered empty of people but full of dangerous animals, many of them magical."

And here we go again.

Consider this an open letter to all those who, once again, think that writers are free to write any story they want in any way they want, with no regard to or recognition of the larger contexts in which those stories exist. So sure, you can write about anything you want. No one can stop you. But if you continue to demand that not only you can write want you want, but that everyone is required to treat it as a value-neutral text driven only by your (good or unexamined) intentions, then you're at best naïve of the privilege you have, or at worst you actively don't care and your way is the right of way, so get out of your way.

Either way, you're wrong. Wong wrong wrong.

Nothing we write about exists in a vacuum. Nothing. You can't divorce a story or an idea from its deeply layered and intricate context, repackage it to suit your needs, and send it off expecting that the people who are aware of that context will pick it up and say, "Hey! Nifty!" Because for many people, that context you just disregarded as inconvenient or uninteresting or just plain not useful to your purposes? IS THEIR LIFE. It's their history, their pain, their story. And you've just wiped it away as an afterthought, cleaning a slate filled with history and love and pain and anger and hard questions and even harder answers, to make it neat and pretty and empty for you to write your own story.

And the worst part? You're hardly the first person to do that.

And yet, every time this comes around, people react as if it is the first time. They react as if there is not also a history, a deeply layered and intricate context to that erasure, and they're shocked, shocked I tell you when that's pointed out.

(How many times have we as women, as white women, railed against exactly that? The way history has disappeared our contributions, our roles, our very lives? And why do we think it's our right to turn around and do it to others?)

So sure, write whatever you want. Claim that as your right. But don't expect that you get to do it for free. Because it's costing someone somewhere, and if the only price you pay is getting called out on your privilege and your "good" intentions, then you're getting off damn cheap.

So instead of trying to duplicate Debrief over on Dreamwidth, I'm going to make a noticeboard style community over there with a detailed tagging system for people to self-report SG-1 content on DW.

So if you're on DW and interested, go vote on the name: http://splash-the-cat.dreamwidth.org/1316.html

Not doing much writing these days, but that's okay - every spring my creative streak always wanders outdoors for a couple of months, and I spend most of April and May in a state of "gardengardengarden!"

Huge amount done on Sunday (and oh, am I feeling it). We came back from Penguicon early, and I headed straight to the landscaping place and loaded up another 350 lbs of rock. But the payoff is this: the rock garden is done!.

The other big projects for Sunday were the newly created lilac bed, which will pretty much be this, once I finish laying out the weed barrier, and then mulched to look pretty. I may add some mounds of soil and use the daisy mix I have to create some flowers in between the three lilacs. And the back corner bed,henceforth known as Paradox's bed, as we buried his ashes there yesterday. Planted some iris and anemone along the left fence, 3/4 of bed dug out and amended or trenched with topsoil, and covered with weed barrier. The stack of three stones is Paradox's marker. Still need to trench out and cover that last uncovered bit, permanently set the stepping stones, and add some more plants.

The next big project now that I have the rock garden done and Paradox's bed under control (I think I'll save the raised vegetable beds for next year) is the back of the house, a full-shade bed. The big pile of dirt is the lawn that I dug out to make of Paradox's bed two years ago, and it's become a general dumping ground for crap. *cracks knuckles* Let's see if I can at least get it cleaned out and weed-barriered before July hits and I pumpkin out.

Rest of the garden here. You can see how much it's grown just in the last two weeks:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cpa_photos/tags/garden2009/

I have 1 Dreamwidth invite left. First come, first serve. Comments screened - please leave your email.

Also, dsudis is hosting another round of "Fuck You, She's Awesome." Go add to the list of awesome women characters.

http://dsudis.livejournal.com/502518.html

This one's for all my fellow Administrative Professionals out there. :)

"Fringe Benefits" - Pepper/Tony. Hard R (the sexxors). Humor. Established relationship. 575 words.

( Fringe Benefits )

I just discovered all incoming messages to my ficlaundering account have been bouncing all day. If any of you with my personal email address get a bounce, use my splash.the.cat gmail for the time being.

Last week was a shitty, shitty, shitty week and I'm still feeling it physically and emotionally, and then lj ate my attempt-to-be-cheery post about the garden (currently green and wet) and the gloom and cold and rain has delayed my garden picture taking plans (not that there's much yet to take pictures of...) and...

Yeah. I could use a tropical vacation and a few stiff drinks. Penguicon and the hotel bar next week will have to do.

But some things of late did make me squee:

( non-spoilery comment from RDJ on Iron Man 2 )

the dwinn bought me an Iron Man kite!

This picture (Smutty action figure shenanigans)

Whole Foods store brand flavored rice crackers do not suck (gluten-free squee)

So today is the birthday of my platonic wife, my psychic brain twin, the complicated to my difficult, the fabulous fairmer.

Happy birthday, babe. Have some crack.


"Legally Binding Agreements between Two or More Parties" - How I Met Your Mother. R (language, sexual situations). 770 words. Barney/Lily/Marshall.

( Legally Binding Agreements between Two or More Parties )

A Day in the Life of a Personal Assistant by The Fabulous Lorraine, Neil Gaiman's assistant. I now kind of want to write a crossover RPF where Pepper and Lorraine meet up at some kind of red carpet event and bond over sharing war stories about taking care of their eccentric, genius bosses, and Lorraine talks about the beekeeping and Pepper looks horrified and says, "Oh god, don't give Tony any ideas." And later Tony says, "I think you need some kind of modifier, Pep. Oh, like, 'The Perspicacious Potts.' That would look awesome on your business card." And Pepper sighs and says, "This is why I can't have any friends."

This is how it starts, isn't it?

Also, 300+ words for the day already, and on something I hadn't even remotely thought about writing until about an hour ago. Hee!

Went to see Watchmen last night. Without any spoilers, my review is thus: visually stunning (esp. the opening credit montage, holy shit), a pretty shallow treatment of the story (unsurprising), the violence was generally overplayed and Loony-Tunes cartoony compared to the more subdued feel and tone of the rest of the film (though it worked for the final fight scene), not all that keen on the actress playing Laurie but liked everyone else, and the new ending? Eh. I think it probably works better than the original for this film, but still. There's some other stuff I had issue with, but want to reread the graphic novel first, and maybe see the movie again before I pick that stuff apart.