Sophie's Secret LJ

"Dykes to watch out for" by Alison Bechdel not only passes the Bechdel test, it invented it.
You can read some of it online but I got "The Essential Dykes to Watch out for" out the library and it was great reading all 27 years of it in one continuous remarkably consistent story.

It's the story of a group of friends in the lesbian community of an American town, and is a mixture of soap opera, humour, and political commentary. The characters grow and change and by the end cover a range of ages, genders, sexualities, identities, ethnicities, religions, political affiliations and nationalities (plus one of them is disabled. Not sure what the term for that would be :)) This sometimes feels a little tokenistic but overall what I love about the comic is that everyone is written with affection, even the *gasp* straight, male and republican characters.

The way the characters rant about the politics of the day as a way to avoid dealing with their more mundane problems reminds me of my family, though it's depressing seeing rants about George Bush and the Iraq war and the possibility of gay marriage from the early 90s and knowing how long things took to get even slightly better.

It's also a little geeky here and there. One of the later characters is a teenager who is OBSESSED with Harry Potter, from an blog official blog post called "Some Fanfic" I came across this adorable piece of fanart of her..and the fanartist turns out to have done Monstrous Regiment femslash and fancomics, yay!

Bechdel has also written a really good autobiographical graphic novel "Fun Home".

Mix:
1 packet cake mix (eg Greens vanilla cake)
about 2/3 can soft drink eg red creaming soda (enough to make a batter)(*)

Bake as directed.
---

It's a bit flat and crumbly and the red creaming soda flavour is rather fake but it's fairly nice, relatively low fat, and dairy free (in fact, vegan!) And ABSURDLY easy.

I encountered the "use a can of soda in cake mix" idea shortly after going off dairy but couldn't find any dairy free cake mixes to try it with until now (not sure how I missed that Greens are).

I haven't been able to drink soft drink since I got reflux but the raising agents counteract the acid and it doesn't seem to disagree with me too much (I intend to freeze most of the cake and eat it over time) So, yay! *ponders the possibilities*

(*)Recipes I found online call for a full can, but looking at the weights given Australian cake mixes seem to be smaller than American ones

I'm a HUGE fan of the webcomic Lackadaisy which is set in 1920s St Loius but with talking cats.

The artist recently posted a bunch of pictures of the characters as humans and I was struck by how totally different they were to my mental images. So I decided to draw them. I started by sketching the two main characters but didn't put so much thought into those since I haven't had a "BUT THAT'S NOT WHAT THEY LOOK LIKE" moment with them.

• Rocky: Character, My version
  
• Freckle:Character (on the left), My version
  
• Ivy: Character, My version, Artist's version
  
• Mordecai: Character, My version, Artist's version
  
• Wick:Character, My version, Artist's version
  

As you can see I didn't look at the colour versions of these characters before I coloured my art :) But overall I'm much more literal with the colouring (dark fur -> dark skin/hair etc)

I have some further thinky thoughts about this but for now just want to collect all the links.

Text of spam I got today, haven't seen this approach before:

Hey, some jerk has posted your pictures (u understand what kind of pictures are there) and sent a link of them to all ur friends. I have already replied back. Said, that he is an idiot. See the link: *insert link*

Can't be more specific about which MST3K we're watching, I'm not the one bringing it.

When: 6pm for a 6:30ish start, Wednesday 10th February. Any time before 9:00pm is ok if you don't missing bits/being quiet as you come in. Finishes around 9:30.( Read more... )

Azula from "Avatar the Last Airbender" as Morrigan from "Dragon Age Origins".

I went pretty quickly from "Hey, Morrigan has gold eyes" to "OMG MORRIGAN IS AZULA". I mean: she shoots blue magic bolts! She likes to make joking-but-not-really remarks about killing people!

..yeah it's a bit of a stretch but it was fun to draw :)

I gave her a bigger bra because Morrigan's outfit is ridiculous.

I have no idea how relevant this is to other people (especially those who actually are cut out for academia!), but thought I should get it down before the whole thing becomes a blur. Very much based on my experiences as a computational mathematics student in Australia. This is just off the top of my head, I may add to this later.

Two major things:

• (Pretty much) every single Phd student ever feels like a lazy failure. Seriously, read Piled Higher and Deeper, it's not just you.
  
• If part of your motivation in life up until now has been jumping through a set of hoops to prove how clever you are let it go.
  

( Read more... )

Since I know other people have had trouble getting gardeners who are interested in actually turning up to do ones gardening(*): I just got my garden weeded and reticulation fixed by Grant Industries in Bayswater, and they were quick friendly and cheap ($35 an hour, and didn't charge me extra when it took an hour longer than they estimated) 0415819908 or 92754154

He didn't quite do all the things I expected to get done, but did do all things I asked for so I guess that's my fault for not being clear.

I think the trick is to use the local paper not the yellow pages.

(*)I'm pretty sure that every single time I have left my number with a gardener for them to call me back it wasn't returned.

Was linked Silly Novels by Lady Novelists by George Elliot and was put very much in the mind of snarkily amusing but overgeneralising (EDIT: and problematic) posts about Mary Sues and the portrayal of women off metafandom. Probably got her lots of narky comments letters, too :)

Lots of dodgy gender and class issues (she is such a grammar snob. Sadly we cannot see what I get the impression was some amusing satirical typesetting) but she puts in some digs against sexism and classism too. She even take a dig at American vegetarians. I looked it up and at that point she was not only not out as a woman, but hadn't actually published anything yet, which puts her choice to rant about women writers in a different context.

Having read a bunch of modern romances set in the 18th/19th century it's always interesting to read snark about romances from those eras written by a contemporary (see also "Northanger Abbey").

Before I forget: now that people are getting into crossstitch on my flist it occurs to me that I have some old embraoidery thread people are welcome to should they visit/otherwise see me (not enough to visit just to get it. I'm just saying because I'll forget) I can for example bring it to Swancon.

Does anyone have Book 15 of Fruits Basket that I can borrow and is willing to get it to me either by coming to my house or at Swancon etc? The library seems to be just missing that one which is very annoying (though obviously if you can lend me 15-23 that would also be acceptable :))

1) Our web server is going down for a week to protest the $^%&$& internet filter omg. This is more Cam's protest than mine but I'm in favour of it and I thought anyone who might encounter the website should realise it's down on purpose.

2)I just finished Disk 1 of The First Australians. It's a sobering antidote to the view of history and colonialism in stuff like regency romances and Avatar. It's a bit slow, but the choice to tell the stories of individuals, as much as possible in their own words or from the POV of their descendents, and let the facts of history come up naturally when relevant rather than dryly telling the "overall" narrative from on high makes it very compelling. It's often very sad of course: so many leaders as brave and determined as any Braveheart whose works are thoughtlessly destroyed by the settlers and government. But they also make a point of telling the stories of the modern descendants who have overcome the odds to preserve and celebrate their culture (including Aboriginal Tasmanians, despite "common knowledge" being that they all died out) . I've been watching it in bits over a month or so while I sew.

I know this sort of thing normally goes on my dw but it's so specifically Australian I deiced it should go on the journal with more of an Australian readership.

I woke up at 3am this morning with insomnia and the persistent smell of bleach. This was not fun. After lying on the couch surfing the internet for a while I managed to slip into an uneasy slumber.
( cut for a silly dream )

Thunder and Grace Choi

Drawn for the prompt Thunder and Grace Choi, being all couple-y in a nice sweet kinda way (rather than a very little clothing kinda way).

Since I had never heard of these characters, and the few pictures I could find tended to be of them hitting things in very little clothing this was a bit of a challenge and may be completely wrong.

ARGH
meh
Ok that was kind of interesting
Oh Joss, really?
ARGH
Hmm
ARGH
meeeeeeh
JOSS NO
But that doesn't make any sense!
ARGH
Huh
WHAT
AHAhahahaha you know what I don't even care any more

These don't all correspond exactly to the rollercoaster of my emotions, I'm just giving the gist. But seriously, it got to the point where, like Supernatural, I'm not so much angry at the sexism as laughing darkly at the trainwreck of wrong.

For those who've been avoiding the series, it turns into somewhat interesting scifi with much less emphasis on the sexy sexy sex slaves, you could probably pick and choose and only watch like 10 episodes and capture most of the interestingness. But well..even at it's best it's still pretty faily.

Percy and Hermione bond over work

Reveals are up for hp_holidaygen! And thus I can show you all my awesome picture, made for paradise_loved.

Rather inspired by Cam's reaction when he found himself stuck with me and a workmate talking maths and data analysis (eg when I was working with tommmo)

The mods messed up and I didn't get anything written for me, but there was a story missing a recipient so I got that instead, and as it turned out it was a story I'd quite liked. And, post reveal..it turns out to have been by paradise_loved!

The Homework Planner (Hermione, Draco, Harry, Ron, Ginny, PG) by paradise_loved. Draco can't figure out who would get him a homework planner for Christmas.
Very cute :)

Flamebyrd made a post pondering the idea of a challenge for fic where one character of the pairing has the same name as a character from the other character's fandom. I thought about this and said I thought it would be more interesting to have it not necessarily pairing based, but with characters with the same name from different fandoms.

I thought about this some more and got Inspired.

Thus:
X meets X at AO3, open to anyone to submit their own works
X meets X at DeviantArt, a collection of pictures I've found (less strictly defined since it's just whatever strikes my fancy)

And the stuff I've created:
Parker meets Parker Spiderman/Leverage
By the Rhine Gilmore Girls/German mythology

Of course this will be a challenge for the tag wranglers :)

Flamebyrd has also made a google wave for playing around with these ideas, let me know if you want an invite.

I've been watching Supernatural Season 4 and getting through the thick miasma of misogyny by imagining femslash AUs. This got easier once they introduced a second female character.
Anna and Ruby

Description: a Tiffany inspired pseudo stained glass of Anna (an angel) and Ruby (a demon) embracing as traditional stained glass angel and demon.

It was femslashier in my first draft, but this way works better artistically.

I also had fun with a sailor moon generator at avatar_fans but I'm not sure that counts as art :D

We have finished Firefly, next up is Serenity. After that is Mystery Science Theatre 3000, thanks to Alex P.

When: 6pm for a 6:30ish start, Wednesday 27th January. Any time before 9:00pm is ok if you don't missing bits/being quiet as you come in. Finishes around 9:30.( Read more... )

Oops. This was meant to be to fancomiccentral

Series: Lord of the Rings
Story By: Shamus Young
Art By: Shamus Young
Rating: PG
Complete? Yes
Found At: Twenty Sided

Description: Lord of the Rings as a roleplaying campaign.

Comments: I don't roleplay, but have spent enough time around roleplayers that I found this really enjoyable. All the injokes are explained in the notes, and the contrast between the players just wanting to kill things and the DM wanting to go through his huge overcomplicated backstory was very amusing.

This is pretty much the conversation I had with Cam after reading the discussion around the comic Good fourth walls make good neighbor (where a fanfic writers partner freaks out at the idea of Sam/Dean slash after seeing the slasher character on Supernatural)

Except during the pause in panel 2 I added "Aside from laughing" :)

nb I have no interest in writing Echo/Priya. I do think Faith/Ruby has potential though.

I don't mean to minimise the experience of women who are forced to keep this sort of thing secret from their partners (or families or whatever) When I was working with kids I had paranoid fears that the fact that I was in fanfic fandom and thus in the general vicinity of what counts as child porn by Australian law (despite being heavily squicked by it and avoiding it as much as possible) would make me lose my working with children check.

Transcript:
Me: Honey, how would you feel if you found out I write Sam and Dean porn?

Cam: *Looks shocked and thoughtful*

Cam: But you hate Sam and Dean

Me: I love you

Cam: Now Echo and Priya, that I can see you writing