Largely Composed of Hay

stakebait — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 17:09:39 GMT

I hope this is just my depression talking, but to tell you the truth, right now, I don’t really believe that we will win. I’m protesting so that, when we lose, history will remember that we didn’t go down without a fight.

Remember us. We were afraid, we were confused, we were imperfect, but we knew what was coming and we tried to stop it.

Next time—and there is always a next time—may you learn from our mistakes.

more White Collar fic

stakebait — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 19:54:44 GMT

For those who are into this sort of thing, 2 more White Collar fanfics posted to A03, in the same series as the first one, with several more in process to follow.

An Engraved Invitation

Pillage and Plunder

I'm also thinking I should do something charitable for prisoners in light of my joining this fandom -- giving to prison libraries, maybe, or Just Detention Intl.

White Collar fanfic posted

stakebait — Sun, 11 Dec 2016 12:07:32 GMT

If there's anyone still reading here who likes fanfic, I just posted my first story in pushing a decade over at A03. It's White Collar, Peter/Neal.

http://archiveofourown.org/works/8812156

returning to my roots

stakebait — Mon, 21 Nov 2016 12:20:05 GMT

Going back to the original, long-dormant purpose of this journal:

Does anyone want to beta a fanfic when I'm done with it?

It's been a long time, but apparently Netflix and my post-election need for escapism have belatedly sucked me into White Collar fandom. Peter/Neal, of course.

stakebait — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 11:30:34 GMT

I cannnot go back to sleep. I am filled with the kind of useless need to Do Something that makes mourning people clean closets.

We need a short game and a long game.

The long game is about fighting the things that made Trump a viable choice for this many people. Fight racism and sexism, work on building back not just a paper recovery but real economic opportunity and security for the working class and lower middle class, including the unions that helped make that happen the first time, rebuild the old rural progressive movement and strengthen its ties to the Democratic party, focus on civics education so that the system is seen more as a route to getting things done and less as a corrupt and useless obstacle.

The short game.... I dunno. What can we do to mitigate the damage of the next four years, besides give money to the ACLU and anyone else who defends Muslims, Mexican Americans, and black people in court?

There must be something.

CUGC reunion meal planning

stakebait — Sat, 06 Feb 2016 16:40:07 GMT

View Poll: Reunion Meals

in which I write someone else's poetry

stakebait — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 21:03:59 GMT

ellen_kushner wrote on Facebook: "Don't slow things down with explanations now."
-- line from a sonnet? or just good advice as I draft the opening chapters of my new novel proposal? #amwriting #amsharing #process

I didn’t write a sonnet but I did write a poem.

Don’t slow things down with explanations now
She has a cup of coffee gripped between her teeth and one hand on the parking brake
One eye on the rear-view mirror
Not quite late
You’re watching her side eye, thinking she bites her lip just like that when she’s mad
Thinking when things were better you wouldn’t hesitate to reach right in and catch the cup
And tug it gently free
when she wanted it she would stick her hand out blind
Watching the yellow lines going down in long, smooth gulps
And grip and drink and gasp hot steam back out
Into the cold morning

Now you catch yourself
Better not to reach into her space unasked
Not to see her flinch, and then you wait too long
She’s mad, now, that you didn’t help, that she knows you’re right,
That she would flinch, that your hand between her and herself
Isn’t normal anymore, that she no longer trusts, but glances
To make sure the cup is there
Before she sticks out her hand.

Where in this, you may wonder, is the explanation of the internal combustion engine?
Isn’t that the important part of the story?
It certainly would be if this were a spaceship
and you were commuting to Alpha Centauri
She would turn to you, Bob, (after you wait a beat too long
And then awkwardly offer to take the coffee,
after she tries to nod without splashing her nose
and you do and she can finally talk)
She would turn to you and remind you, in case you’d forgotten,
How the drive works and where you are going
But probably not how much the fuel cost, or who mined it,
Or how she earned the money to pay for it
Probably not why human society has advanced to Alpha Centauri but is still basically organized
Like America in the late 20^th century
Probably not why she is mad at you
Perhaps that the coffee is hydroponically grown in zero gravity
But probably not that she started bringing it in the first place
Because it gave her a reason for silences
And something to do with her hands.

Don’t slow things down with explanations now
It is too late for that, or else too soon,
As you know, Bob,
these days we start in the middle
and rush headlong for the end
As you know, Bob,
In real life, no one talks of how things work
Until they break

stakebait — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 15:57:44 GMT

Can anyone recommend a good real estate lawyer in NYC?

stakebait — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 14:36:33 GMT

Kindle Worlds finally added a fandom that people I know actually write or read in. What do you think, Veronica Mars fen, if any are still around this corner of LJ these days?

stakebait — Wed, 05 Feb 2014 01:35:58 GMT

I've got to re-calibrate to the basic goodness of Call the Midwife. I think I've been watching too much SVU or something.

When the pregnant young girl stole the kitchen shears I thought self-induced abortion, not cord-cutting. And when her father sat by her bedside in the hospital I thought he'd be the dad, not some boy she met from a boarding house.

stakebait — Sun, 02 Feb 2014 14:10:01 GMT

Been home sick for the last few days (nothing serious) and mainlining British mysteries on Netflix. Have decided that, far more than the sky-high number of murders they encounter, what punctures my suspension of disbelief about Rosemary and Thyme is the way that everywhere they go, whether inn or school or private home, someone just happens to have a guest room with two twin beds!

Having hunted these for vacations with Mom of Mer, I can tell you they're thin on the ground these days. Or is it more common in England? If so, I know where we're going on our next vacation!

If TS Eliot had written Old Possum's Book of Practical Elephants...

stakebait — Thu, 09 Jan 2014 02:34:12 GMT

The Naming of Elephants is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;

I am really enjoying the naming of this sock elephant. Y'all should come play.

http://truepenny.livejournal.com/865880.html#comments

Oh, and you could win a book by an author I think writes spiffy things, too.

stakebait — Mon, 25 Nov 2013 16:41:34 GMT

Hi Guys, this is my first holiday season as a boss and I am trying to figure out how to handle it, hoping a quick poll might help. For the gift choices, assume they're all worth about the same amount (and none of them huge).

Thanks!

View Poll: Santa like a boss

stakebait — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 16:31:30 GMT

Binge watching my way through Dollhouse, really missing having a synchronous community of fen to talk it over with, even though I totally did this to myself.

Disjointed observations follow, on the off chance that anyone still cares: (spoilers through season 2, middle of episode 6)

Edited to add: spoilers for the reason of season 2 in the comments.

Not having all the feminist feels that I dimly remember thinking/hearing I would when it was airing.

OTOH, surprised that more (like, anything) is not made of them "killing" the imprinted personality every time Topher does a wipe. Everyone's concerned about the originals (and rightly so) but they're the ones who consented. The imprinted personalities consented to nothing... that I know of, unclear where they get these templates. Especially after the Whiskey/Dr. Saunders "I don't want to die" scene made it very explicit that imprints who know they can be wiped don't wanna.

The emotional prostitution side of this is creepy as fuck but makes perfect sense, people who want someone to really feel it, not just act. But for the purely skills-based assignments, It stretches belief that people would prefer to hire actives for all these things rather than hire regular experts. Once in a while, sure, there'll be someone who can't GET an expert but when you can, which is most of the time, the ability to have them forget is surely balanced by the risk of having the Dollhouse know.

Speaking of which, how much DOES the dollhouse know about each assignment, and how much granular control Topher has over the build, seem to vary with the speed of the plot.

Paul Ballard is the worst FBI agent in the world. Ruin my suspension of disbelief bad. I don't necessarily expect, or even want, CSI/NCIS levels of super high tech hat-rabbiting, but I can't believe the FBI in the real world could employ people who can't cope with anticipating the possibility of bugs, not getting followed home by suspects, or buying a decent lock. I feel surprisingly sympathetic with the guy-who-played-Crowley-on-Firefly agent's lack of patience with Ballard. I kinda want to slap him upside the head myself. His only real skill is making the puppydog face at the woman who is actually competent. At least the NSA guy knows what he's doing, though it's unclear if his hate on for Echo was NSA or Dollhouse related.

Speaking of Firefly, the two white people fighting in an Asian restaurant that is inexplicably empty of actual Asian people scene was weirdly deja vu. :)

OTOH I am liking their portrayal of BDSM, and there's even a surprisingly large number of larger women (at least by American TV standards) who are not being played for laughs or pathos.

What is the point of the Attic? If Actives become unusable, why not just give them back themselves and let them go, instead of paying to keep them in storage for the rest of the five years? Or if you really have no intention of letting them go, why go on and on about how what you're doing is not so bad because they're volunteers and you're giving them back? The ethics, too -- how unscrupulous either this particular Dollhouse or Rossem in general is, and what various people believe about it, also seems to move at the speed of the plot from episode to episode.

As done the resting intellect of the actives (Echo excepted) and how much they understand, though in a narrower range. They all talk way too much in front of the actives -- they don't get their resting state memories wiped regularly that I can tell.

How come it is okay for Victor and Sierra to be all snuggly now when before it was a terrible thing?

Doesn't Dr. Saunders have a GPS strip, since she's an active? Or did she take it out? Shouldn't they at least discuss tracking her?

Everybody talking about how amoral Topher is reminds me of everybody talking about how dark and selfish Mal was. In neither case are they actually showing it. We actually see a LOT of Topher having ethics and morals and not wanting to be seen as a bad person, trying to help people and not to hurt them. Most of the him being uncaring stuff is told, not shown.

Which contributes to him being more adorable than he really should be. Him squeeing over Bennett with clone-him is super adorable. Though I think it;s weird that clone him doesn't mind knowing he's going to be wiped soon. Him being all needy and clingy in the dystopian future was also adorable. Also him playing laser tag with Sierra. Though I was relieved to see, in the scene with Whiskey, that he does have sexual feelings. He's so twee they almost play him pre-pubescent sometimes.

I enjoyed the dystopian future episode in and of itself but I find it disquieting how they just dropped it into continuity and then pick back up at an interim point and never explain it. Or what Alpha did to Echo and how it changed her. I get that it's probably going to be a big reveal, but IMO it's going on too long and detaching me from the Echo storyline. I find myself mostly in it for the Dr. Saunders character nowadays, which is funny when you think about how much I disliked Fred on Angel. I guess it really is the character and not the actor.

In which Janet and Thomas discover they are in the wrong fairy tale

stakebait — Tue, 19 Nov 2013 00:40:27 GMT

A fanficlet based on Pamela Dean's Tam Lin, inspired by this quote from suricattus: The thing about Tam Lin that always fascinated me was the “stand-fast” aspect. And I wanted to explore that outside the relatively narrow grounds of True Love—what does it mean to stand fast for someone you might not always love, who might not be your True Love, or your Love at all?

Even in the worst years, during and after the divorce, when they could scarcely meet without saying bitter words to each other, and the grooves worn around Janet's mouth were neither slight nor smiling, they would meet on the Day Of in front of the swans at the zoo.

Every year Janet would bake a loaf of crusty bread at dawn and leave it to cool on the windowsill, even when the rest of the year she had had her consciousness raised and swore off (and at) baking from scratch. She took a side and he took a side (they were good at that, by then) and tore it apart, like a wishbone, and then they slowly and solemnly fed it to the swans, not looking at each other.

In the early days, they would sit so entangled strangers had to look away, and finish the ritual by feeding each other the last scraps, and a crummy kiss.

By the end, they sat nearly on opposite ends of the bench, not touching, with almost enough room for another whole person between them, but not quite. Janet popped the last stale piece in her own mouth, like a sacrament, it was so dry and hard going down. "I'm still not sorry I saved you," she said, and stood up, briskly but not unkindly, and brushed the crumbs from her skirt.

The next year, after the papers were signed and the house was sold and the proceeds split, Thomas wasn't sure she would even show up. But he did and there she was, holding a paper bag that rustled. "The oven doesn't work right in the apartment," she said.

"It's probably the thermometer," he said, "if you want me to come by and check,.." He wished he had the words back, but she was already shaking her head. "Thanks," she said, "but the super's coming on Thursday."

It might just be his imagination that the swans were getting old too, that they didn't move their snake-necks as fast as they used to to peck at at each other for scraps of bread. It was undeniable, though, that they lost interest faster, or maybe they didn't like store-bought, or there weren't as many as they used to be.

It felt too awkward to throw it away, so he stuck the heel-end of the bread in his pocket. "See you next year," he said, and she nodded, and that was all, but he believed her, and maybe that was all the magic they had left together, but it was enough to find his way back.

stakebait — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 23:49:00 GMT

Can anyone recommend a good tile and/or generic handyperson in NYC? The jobs are too small for a proper contractor, but I have a lot of little things that need fixed in my apartment before it's ready to put on the market, and the ones that seem to me largest are tile related.

Aluminum Author, Part Who Knows

stakebait — Fri, 24 May 2013 04:57:05 GMT

I am having a Week and need distraction, so here we go again. For those who weren't around last round (it's been a while), it is just like Iron Author, except I reserve the right to flake.

Give me three words and an optional non-sadistic form and I will write you a poem or song lyrics.

Give me a setting, main character, or single line of dialogue and I will write you a snippet of original fiction.

Give me a character or a pairing and a situation and I will write you fanfic for BTVS/ATS, Firefly, first 2 seasons of Torchwood, The Vorkosiganverse, Good Omens. (Other fandoms by negotiation but keep in mind i basically haven't watched TV in years.)

Got a prompt that doesn't fit the above? Throw it at the wall and see if it sticks.

stakebait — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:38:05 GMT

Anybody want to beta read a short original SF story?

It's one of those fiction-masquerading-as-nonfiction ones, so ideally I need at least one reader who knows little to nothing about a) librarianship in the US or b) academia ditto. You're allowed to have gone to college and have a library card, I just need somebody who tell me if it the basic premise still comes through to someone who doesn't get the in-jokes.

stakebait — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 19:16:38 GMT

Arisia has inspired my dormant inner filker. Here's one about Paolo Bacigalupi's Ship Breaker. Mild, cryptic spoilers.

Ship Breaker

They call us ship breakers but that is a lie

These ships wallowed broken before we were born

We do no more than scavenge the carcasses

Of whales blown ashore by the storm

Chorus:

Why is the wasteful raptor adored

And the useful vulture despised?

Riddle me this, my vulture child,

Now it’s time to go out on your own

Remember this, my vulture child,

Before you leave meat on the bones

We drain the black blood that pools under steel skin

We spool bright copper nerves that will never more spark

We scar our own skin to make our own kin

As we crawl and scrape by in the dark

Chorus

We’re the mold on your bread

Making cures out of garbage

The worms in your corpse

making farm fields from war

the things you beget and prefer to ignore

are our harvest, and our home

Chorus

Now you’re riding too fast and too high on the winds

To see carrion comfort below and behind

Stay aloft if you can, but try not to forget

The sweet smell of rot and the salt tang of sweat

And the kin you can scavenge from those they discard

Will love fierce, and hold hard.

Chorus

Who would you want to hear?

stakebait — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:51:19 GMT

I asked this question on Lunacon's official Facebook already, but I figured I have a high quality hive mind here and might as well take advantage of it. :)

We're gearing up for this year's Lunacon. Last year I added a couple of hundred new names to the invite database, but there's still more work to do. So if there's an author, editor, agent, artist, scientist, crafter, costumer, fan, LARPer, dancer, or other geek of coolness that you haven't seen at Lunacon and would like to, please scoot a nomination my way, here or at programming (at) lunacon (dot) org.

(Bonus points if they're either within easy traveling distance of the NYC area or have some reason to schlep here in March.)

We're doing the active track again this year, so teachers of yoga, dancing, sword fighting, poi spinning, or any other physical activity likely to appeal to con attendees are also very welcome.

If it's not obvious, add a note about what they do, please. A sentence or a URL is plenty. If you have contact info, nifty; if not, no worries, send the name anyway and I'll Google. :)

Library poll

stakebait — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 16:08:34 GMT

A totally unscientific survey about library use, because I'm curious. I have the sense that a lot of people support the idea of the library a lot more than we actually use it... but maybe that's just me.

View Poll: Do you use your library?

Number of the Beast, pt. 2: wine isn't strong enough

stakebait — Sat, 22 Sep 2012 03:21:47 GMT

Okay, that actually got halfway decent for a bit in the middle there. And then it overshot its ending worse than A.I., which is a thing I frankly did not think was possible until now. Except where A.I. had three endings in a row, Number-of-the-I-can't-believe-you-got-paid-for-this doesn't really have any. It has an extra middle instead, and ends on the beginning of something else altogether....

Basically the part I sort of liked is when they've rotated through every permutation of the Captaincy and have had their noses thoroughly rubbed in the idea that women can be in charge and some are even better at it than some men -- even if this is still a matter for surprise among the all-male-authority figures they meet. I still think the Captain structure is silly, but at least once they've all had a go and seen the pitfalls of over as well as under obedience, it's not so obnoxious.

They've also mostly stopped pontificating about their relationship maxims by this point... except for the bit where a wife tries to put a little open communication in her never-actually-negotiated poly, he doesn't believe her and instead of being miffed at him for doubting her (accurate) word, she takes herself to task for trying, and they all pat themselves and each other on the back for practicing the Higher Truth -- AKA lying to your loved ones (sometimes by implication, sometimes outright) because it's all okay as long as you don't hurt them, and they won't be hurt by being lied to but they will be by telling the truth. Um, kay.

But like I said, once they're done with that, they're content to actually pay attention to something outside the car for a while, and they leave the British and Russian penal colony Mars.... which is too bad, I was getting interested in their geopolitical structure, but it was probably time if he wasn't to get completely sidetracked into it.... and then visit a bunch of fictional places.

Which is rather charming, particularly the conceit that if you've spent a lot of "time" in a fictional place in your youth, the inhabitants thereof remember you when you return in the flesh in a spaceship. And the idea that their joint preferences were shaping their destinations was, I thought, a rather neat twist on observer effect, the kind of MacGuffin that makes intuitive sense.

In the end they don't really interact much with the inhabitants except as NPCs, but it was a fun interlude and explored the worldbuilding and finished fleshing out the character of the car, who is quite possibly the best of them.

Also we start to feel like we're actually IN 1980, and not 1960, on the cultural references. Carl Sagan gets a look in and so do Marion Zimmer Bradley and Larry Niven. Not much of one, they're basically only namechecked, while they visit only older works, but it's a start -- and probably the limitations were dictated by copyright law.

There's a visit to a world where nudism, eye-for-an-eye justice and compulsory land purchase apparently make everything just as idyllic as all get-out, if you're somebody who is nothing like me, but they providentially get bored and decide to go exploring again PDQ, with a bit more about women's right to risk themselves for good measure, even if it is phrased as whither-thou-goest-I-shall-go. (Whether women still have the right to risk themselves if their husbands don't choose to is not mentioned; husbands, presumably, being hard-wired to choose risk.)

And then just when I am cruising along thinking this might be tolerable after all, he goes and trainwrecks the main storyline, with the characters whose day to day life we've been following up till now in excruciating detail, into yet another installment of the Lazarus Long and His Sexy Mom Show. And after the inevitable bedswapping, our erstwhile heroes are hardly seen again.

Now I will be the first to admit I am not impartial here, since I loathe both LL and Maureen separately and even more so together. But as LeGuin is my witness, if he'd deadended them into Angel and Spike having bittersweet angst sex on top of the First Folio of Shakespeare, I would still have been annoyed.

What kind of author gets 500 pages in and suddenly makes it All About characters who have not even had a cameo before? Yes, okay, meeting people from other works of fiction is the plot device, but when they got to Oz, they didn't suddenly find themselves bit players in the drama of Glinda. When they met the Lensmen, we did not hare off into 50 pages of Lensy woe. He stuck tightly... maybe too tightly... to his focus on the Core Four, and all these encounters were just so much grist for the mill. But as soon as they meet the Long Family, the crew of the Gay Deciever becomes the plot device for LL's rescue mission (and slight salutary slapdown with mitigating nookie), not the other way around. It's like he forgot whose book it was.

Also one of the women from the first 3/4 of the book turns out to have a twin-level resemblence to several women from the Long universe... it really highlights the way that practically all of Heinlein's women might as well be clones of each other, despite their wildly different backgrounds ...

And then the whole thing turns into Jubah Hershaw's intergalactic worldcon bar. Even the LL plot gets sidelined in favor of what might have been a cute enough stand-alone spoof short story about throwing a con with a time machine, thickly larded with fannish in-jokes. (I get more of these than I do of the pulp references. And even when I don't, I recognize the shape of a fannish in-joke even if I don't get the specific content.)

I admit to not reading all that carefully by this point since I was counting the pages till I could be done, but by the end I literally had no idea of where any of the characters from the first 500 pages had ended up or why the book was still going on without them. It reminds me of that bit in Mostly Harmless about books on Bartledan. "The character died about a third of the way through the penultimate chapter of the book, and the rest of it was just more stuff about road-mending."

Heinlein book club would go through a lot of wine

stakebait — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:42:12 GMT

My god I forgot how Heinlein gets up my nose. I have a first date with someone who loves Number of the Beast so I said I would read it... 200 pages in I'm wondering if I should cancel the date.

Women who take douches on life-or-death escapes because they are absolutely essential! Women who pretend they don't speak Russian because it doesn't "fit their persona"! A woman who says she's been horny continuously from her 12th birthday until the current crisis. Really? No flu? No cramps? No emotional bad day, even after your mom died, was sufficient to get you out of the mood? I have a high libido too, but get serious. High is not the same as invariable.

A woman whose nipples indicate not just arousal or cold but her emotional state, like a dog's ears. A woman who, having been reluctantly put in charge, assigns the men to guard the women at all times even though she knows the other woman is a crack shot and a karate expert! Women who in spite of their formidable brains explicitly state that they should do all the cooking and defer to their husbands. A woman who takes offense at being loved for her mind but is mollified when her husband says he'd rape her! A woman who says she'd have happily and with no trauma submitted to incestuous relations with her father who is also her sole parent and authority figure (and it would have had to be in childhood, she's barely attained majority now) and another who applauds her for it! Women who get pregnant on the first try -- even at 42! And know it without pregnancy tests.

It's not so much that one woman happens to have each of these traits or opinions -- I can believe that, though I might not like her very much. It's the way he uses the only two women present (and the memory of the deceased mom) to imply that these are the universal characteristics of right-thinking women -- well, except for the nipples.

Not to mention the occasional not-gendered but still troubling bit... the couple who marry after an evening's acquaintance (and the parent and long-time family friend who approve of it). The family of intelligent adults, many of whom have known each other for years and in some cases worked together, who as soon as they face a danger decide they must have a commanding Captain (who then goes into a snit over debate and commentary, and his replacement stomps on it from the get-go). I can understand why they need someone designated to make split second decisions under threat... I don't understand why that person needs to make all not-time-senstive decisions, or why, if he should, they are better made without input.

Yes, that's how the military does it, but the military needs the people to be interchangeable, so that a private will obey any captain without waiting to build personal trust or even in the face of dislike, and needs people to carry out orders from above that no one present necessarily agrees with. A small group of people who love and trust each other, know each other's weaknesses and strengths, and have no goals but what they all agree on, I can see no good reason to adopt a military model and many not to. Yet none of the four so much as considered any other method -- even when this one breaks down, they just choose a new leader, they don't question the model.

I sort of wish someone would do to Heinlein what papersky did to Trollope in Tooth & Claw... take his crazy-ass prescriptivism and turn it into literal biological fact. Maybe that would take the sting out of it... or maybe it would make it worse, but at least it would only be playing havoc with my emotions, not my suspension of disbelief.

The clip that launched a thousand fics

stakebait — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 21:17:52 GMT

In which Nathan Fillon and Adam Baldwin of Firefly make with the RPS for a good cause at ComicCon

Cover me, I'm going in!

stakebait — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 18:37:57 GMT

From conversation this weekend, a poll on book dust jackets.

View Poll: Jacket Required