Eden

When someone on the internet says something you don't like -- whether it be something prejudiced or discriminatory in some way, or whether it just disses your favourite tv show -- you probably make the assumption that they are willing and able to participate in a discussion about it/defend themselves. You probably don't even consciously think about it: they said something wrong, and they should be ready to stand by their words.

( Let's stop and think about that. )

There's this SPN artist I kinda like. And so when she posted on deancastiel, and the warning was "BAMF!cas", I clicked on the pic she posted. Because I like BAMF!Cas.

I got this. For those who can't see or don't want to click, it's a picture of Castiel with the text: "Maybe I can't trust you, Dean, but I can rape you."

And the text, in case she changes it? "If you don't agree you're probably crazy somewhere up there there's probably a button with a strike on it...it will help you to go back."

FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

I left a comment. Here. Text:

"I don't agree. This is not because I'm "probably crazy", this is because I've been raped. And I don't find it funny. And I don't find the culture of finding rape funny amusing either.
"BAMF!Cas" does not cover "lol you're about to get triggered and I think it's funny"."

Not asking anyone to dogpile the artist about it, but nor do I think blithely letting it be okay is a good answer.

Happy Sexual Assault Awareness Month...

Edit: There's now a warning, which is good. The humour is still unfunny and irritating.
Edit #2: Plenty of people weighing in over there, and the artist is quite contrite and has removed the non-funny text. Yay for daring to speak up.

Destiny shows up a lot in two of the shows I'm watching at the moment: Supernatural and Merlin. And in both, it's pissing me off. It seems it's inescapable. So, here's a scenario. Someone tells you that your friend Jim is destined to destroy everything you've ever worked for. So, you decide to kill Jim, to prevent that coming about.

And apparently, you (and the canon) ignores that the very act of doing so could be what causes that destiny to come about. You kill Jim, he dies, and thus everything you've ever worked for is destroyed. Or, you try to kill Jim, and then Jim escapes, and understandably is a bit pissed off.

Okay, maybe Jim is going to go evil whether you do anything or not, but by trying to kill him, you've abandoned the moral high ground and you might have caused his betrayal.

I could also bitch about the way that nothing is developing from episode to episode in Merlin. In "To Kill The King", Morgana learned that Uther will listen to her. Uther promised to. S2, we get to "The Witch's Quickening", and Morgana and Uther are clashing in just the same way all over again. Arthur never really becomes less of a prat. Merlin's magic is never revealed. The whole show seems to be upholding the status quo, unable to rock the boat enough to provide any kind of satisfying character development.

Two episodes left of S2, and I hope they make me happier than the ones so far...

I am a Scrooge about April Fools Day. I don't, in general, find it funny, and I don't participate. Some pranks websites do raise a smile, but for the most part, no. For the most part, I just try to ignore it.

I will not appreciate people telling me to "lighten up" or "ignore it" about this one.

It is not funny to "announce" that Nomura (or whoever) said in an interview that the main character of an upcoming Final Fantasy game is going to be gay. It works because it produces excitement and outrage -- and what it's essentially saying is, "Haha, no, like that would ever happen."

I'm splitting my sides here, really. Just for a second, I thought my favourite game series would actually start representing more of the people who play it.

But the idea that people believe they ever would is supposed to be funny?

Tl;dr: Think what message you are sending with your oh-so-hilarious April Fools joke.

(And if you think this is meant to draw attention to that fact and be awareness-raising or something, you have much greater faith in humanity than I do today.)

Big Bangs I'm participating in, or thinking of participating in:
-au_bigbang: First draft complete.
-hardmode: Not open yet. Idea hatched.
-kinked: Planning stage. (Not signed up yet.)
-ladiesbigbang: Planned. (Not signed up yet.)
-scifibigbang: Planning stage.
-sncross_bigbang: First draft complete.
-spn_j2_bigbang: Planning stage.

Due dates:
-April 1st: ladiesbigbang sign-ups begin.
-April 3rd: kinked sign-ups.
-April 6th: au_bigbang rough drafts due.
-April 9th: sncross_bigbang rough drafts due.
-April 27th: au_bigbang posting date selection begins.
-May 1st: spn_j2_bigbang rough drafts due.
-May 3rd: sncross_bigbang final drafts due.
-May 4th: au_bigbang posting begins.
-May 10th: sncross_bigbang posting begins.
-June 1st: ladiesbigbang check-in, a third completed is recommended.
-June 7th: spn_j2_bigbang posting begins.
-July 1st: ladiesbigbang check-in, two thirds completed is recommended.
-July 31st: scifibigbang writing period ends. kinked writing period ends.
-August 1st: ladiesbigbang rough draft due.
-August 15th - August 31st: scifibigbang posting schedule announced.
-September 1st: kinked posting period starts, ladiesbigbang final draft due.
-September 10th: ladiesbigbang posting begins.

(This was originally posted to au_bigbang_vent, but it can go here too.)

In my AU Big Bang fic, a character (Dean, for those who know SPN) is mute from a very young age. I thought I'd have it be psychological, but further into the fic I'm just not sure. Possibly a combination of that and damage to his throat, given that I've described him as injured in other ways.

Anyway, the point is, I'm having difficulty writing conversations between him and the other characters. He's using sign language, but from what research I did quite a while ago into ASL, it wouldn't necessarily 'sound' like spoken discourse if translated literally. So far in the fic I've been having him 'speak' basically normally, with the difference between his sign language and the other characters' speech shown like this:

'Everything is going to be alright,' he signed, determinedly, and then jumped up.
"Where are you going, honey?"
'Tea.'
Her smile was weary, this time. "That might help a little."

I don't want to ignore that it just isn't that convenient, but I don't want to make it too difficult to follow as a story -- and the amount of research to have him say only things that can be expressed in sign language in those terms is impossible, given my other commitments. The way I'm thinking of it is that I'm 'translating' his sign language for the reader to make it clear what he's saying.

I'm also starting to be horribly afraid that I'm just going to mess up and offend someone.

Any thoughts? My only thought so far has been to continue the way I'm doing it, and to put a note explaining that and apologising for the lack of realism.

A quick thought, that I should perhaps spend more time with sometime soon -- I basically write two kinds of fics: the kind I work really really hard on, and try to craft carefully, and the kind that I write for a quick smile, as a little gift. And I think they're probably comparable to, say, a fully-finished piece of artwork and a quick sketch, a doodle. I share my 'doodles' all the time -- the things I write for feywood when she gets up on time are 'doodles'. There's an opinion I've come across, when getting concrit and from people on my flists, that 'doodles' aren't worth sharing: they're not fully finished shiny products, I don't really expect concrit on them, etc, therefore I shouldn't share them at all.

And yet. I know people enjoy my little 'doodles'. I often get more comments on the 'doodles' than on a completely finished fic. I'm sure I've had more comments on my short Firefly fics than on my 20k, carefully crafted Big Bang fic. They're brain candy for me, writing them, and probably for the people reading them. I don't see why that should be so illegitimate a thing, in fandom. I might not be using my talents to the best of my ability, and my fics might end up a little self-indulgent, here and there, or perhaps (dare I say it) a bit pointless. But people enjoy them. And every single one of them is practice, even if ultimately it's not as shiny and interesting as it could be, because it might find for me an idea that I want to expand, or make me focus on dialogue, or on a strong opening line or ending line.

It's true, really, that I wouldn't publish them. I wouldn't expect, say, Neil Gaiman, to post little snippets of what he's working on while he's still working on it, or his practice pieces, or the things that didn't ultimately work out the way he wanted. That's true. But that's not what edenbound is for -- edenbound is an archive of everything I write, as long as I completed it and could stand to let anyone read it at all. It suddenly clicked with me that that's the case, and that I've openly stated that's the case, on the userinfo of the journal, and so people don't really have any right to come into my journal and tell me that I shouldn't post my 'doodles'. Which people have.

(It would be different, on a comm. I only post things to comms when I think they're worth spreading to a wider audience. And my Archive of Our Own account is the same thing.)

So I've just now realised that it's okay for me to write 'doodles', and to post them, because I know people are interested and enjoy them. And that I shouldn't feel slightly ashamed of it, because if you've friended that journal you can check the userinfo to see that that's what it may sometimes contain.

I can use my own ficjournal the way I want. What a revelation.

I made a lot of progress today on my crossover Big Bang. The kind of progress where, you know, it's finished. Or the first draft is, anyway. And it's been looked at by feywood, and duly nitpicked, and my typos have been corrected. I'm now going to put it away until a week before the due date and then edit it with fresher eyes. It still needs a title, which is something I guess I need to ponder.

I'm pretty glad at how it turned out, anyway. It is more towards the Supernatural end of things than the TDIR end, but Bran and Will have their own scenes and they have scenes together and alone with the SPN characters. Perhaps if I were to write another scene, it would be a conversation between Castiel and Will. I'm not sure if I will: I might decide that when I've got a week to go and it's time for my final edits.

I haven't worked on the AU Big Bang for a while, really. I have the irrational urge to delete what I've got and start again, so I'm waiting with that one until I feel a bit better about it. I got the first paragraph or two of the SPN/J2 Big Bang written yesterday, on the other hand, so that's going to be my focus now for a while. That's the longest one anyway, so if I can get that to 10,000 words by the end of the month, or something like that, and get maybe 5,000 words on the AU Big Bang, that'll be good.

Writing marathons for the win.

The only Big Bang I've been working on in the last couple of days is my au_bigbang. It's going okay, I have about 2,000 words for it. The fact that I'm writing in past tense, which is unusual for me, is making it feel a bit dry and a bit less dynamic, to me, but I'm pretty sure I can fix it with editing and poking, when the time comes.

I'm nowhere near the recommended word count for the check in tomorrow, which is 5,000 words: I'll probably write another scene or two before I check in tomorrow, but that'll still be only 3,000 words. Still, I'm getting somewhere.

I'm a little stalled on my Crossover Big Bang. I've done some editing and some minor adding of words, but I have a bunch of scenes I'm vaguely planning to write and nothing's coming of them. I think I'm going to give it a couple of days and then look at the plan with fresh(er) eyes, and edit it as needed -- and in the meantime, read over what I've got and streamline it or add to it where necessary.

In the meantime, and since there's a check-in on the second of February, I'm working on the AU Big Bang. I only have a handful of paragraphs so far, the opening stuff, because I'm quite sleepy this evening.

Have a tiny, tiny snippet.

Fandom: Supernatural
For: au_bigbang
Quality: Barely checked
Characters: Ellen, Dean

( Sealing her fate )