I was going through old folders and found this file from 2010, when I was a tag wrangler. I'd almost forgotten this, but I was actually the one to suggest that we use meta-tags for characters and pairings (as opposed to just for freeform tags and (I think?) fandoms). The plan before that was to use some sort of disambiguation pages for ambiguous character and pairing tags, sort of like Wikipedia.

Anyway, I thought it was an interesting snapshot of AO3 and tag wrangling, so I'm posting it. I'd forgotten that bit about how much work it used to be to re-name a canonical tag which had lots of other tags attached to it! You had to manually unhook all of them and then re-hook them afterward.

( Read more... )

Various people are writing about their fannish history. I thought I'd done a more recent such post, but the last I can find is from 2011, back when I was in a stable long-term relationship with due South. I won't rehash that previous post, but I wanted to talk a little about what's happened since then and where I am right now. Obviously also fueled by thoughts of my recent new obsession with Flight of the Heron.

I fell out of due South fandom in late 2013/early 2014, because I fell (unrequitedly) in love with someone in RL, which left no room for fannish feelings. Or more specifically for shippy feelings: it turned out that despite writing all sorts of things in the fandom (gen, m/f, f/f, m/m), the strongest driver of my fannishness was my Fraser/Kowalski feelings (and Fraser feelings in general).

Since then I have been unrequitedly in love for six years (well, not as intensely all the time, obviously). My fannishess went into reading a lot of books, and I did write a little fic, but there have only been two pairings I wrote with the clear motivation "ooh, I want to get these characters into bed together". The first was William Laurence/Napoleon Bonaparte from Temeraire (late 2016). I had fun with that, but it didn't stick because seriously...Napoleon Bonaparte...*facepalm*. The second was Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook from Star Wars (late 2017 and sporadically ongoing). That could've stuck; I think the reason it didn't was that I didn't connect with the rest of the existing fic (fluffy coffeeshop AU:s for that pairing, really?).

So now Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham in Flight of the Heron: an out-of-print book from 1925 set in the 18th century with a tiiiny fandom. I have not felt like this for many years, though: this completely besotted feeling which lowers your work productivity and makes people look at you weirdly on the bus because you're sitting there with a foolish smile on your face writing fic in your head. Also, despite the fandom being tiiiny I have already had more meaningful fandom interaction for this than I had in the huge fandom Star Wars (thank you Hyarrowen for being so welcoming and giving great beta feedback!). I am really enjoying the writing, too: the style is obviously old-fashioned, but I like it a lot. The writing process feels different; I have to do a lot more tinkering on the sentence level than I'm used to. Looking forward to writing sex scenes in that style, too. : )

I've been thinking about pairings I have shipped, and there are some pretty clear patterns here:
Benton Fraser/Ray Kowalkski (cop partners)
Nate Fick/Brad Colbert (modern military officers)
William Laurence/Napoleon Bonaparte (19th century military, also enemies)
Cassian Andor/Bodhi Rook (military in space)
Ewen Cameron/Keith Windham (18th century military, also enemies to start with)

Okay, I'm being a bit selective here--I have also shipped Aziraphale/Crowley, for example, before I got into due South. They are technically enemies, but otherwise don't fit the pattern. And of course there's also a part of my fannishness which is not about this kind of shippiness--some of my best writing is about other things entirely.

But still. Of course, it's not exactly news that that slashiness turns up so reliably in stories of police or military: that homosocial environment combined with danger, loyalty, honor, duty, and repression of emotion. It's catnip to a lot of fangirls, including me. I guess I'm...a little bit conflicted about it? Add in historical settings and you get other things to feel conflicted about, such as Ewen Cameron in Flight of the Heron who is a Scottish Highlands laird. I mean, I'm not conflicted about Ewen as a character, he is lovely and so is Keith. ♥ ♥ But the Scottish Highlands is obviously a historical society which has been heavily romanticized--in reality it appears to have been feudal and elitist (they were allied with the French Bourbon kings, after all...). But it's a novel, not actual history, and I guess I am sticking with the depiction in the book (where actually Keith Windham is Not Impressed about the Highlands, so there's a counterweight there).

If I were going to fall for a wartime ship, why not characters in the Spanish Civil War or something where it could actually intersect in a meaningful way with my political interests?? Oh well. I guess I will just go on doing union organizing while simultaneously writing starry-eyed fic about enemy military officers, and accept that humans don't always have to be consistent. Also, it will be interesting to see if my newly shippy state edges out my feelings about my RL crush.

So I finally watched The Last Jedi last night.

( Spoilery )

So I'm rereading LotR now, and there's a line about the Old Forest just as they're leaving the Shire, saying that the parts of the forest that are more alive and more malicious are all broadleaved forest with willow, oak, ash, etc. The outskirts of the forests are coniferous with pine and spruce. This struck me as very apt, since the area around the Shire is supposed to be identified with north-western Europe, and in Europe the broadleaved forest definitely has more reason to be angry at mankind.

There used to be a belt of broadleaved virgin forest all the way across middle Europe, and only remnants are left now, such as Białowieża Forest in Poland and Belarus. OTOH, the boreal coniferous forest fared a lot better, at least in Tolkien's day (though it's probably not happy with being turned into plantations in Scandinavia now). So the broadleaved forest would have a lot more reason to take revenge.

Or maybe I'm just making a whole theory out of a throwaway line here--I have no idea if Tolkien thought of it like this. *g*

Okay, so, Bullitt. Unfortunately this was the kind of movie where I missed about 50% of the plot (I am not good with crime plots, okay) and had to fill myself in on Wikipedia afterwards. But anyway, I was in it to see Steve McQueen acting a cop, obviously. Yeah, I see the Ray Kowalski similarities--that shoulder-holster, some of his clothes--and some of his body language, too. Like belmanoir says in this post (which has some illustrative screencaps), he's got a similar aggressive-yet-shy body language. OTOH, he hasn't got Ray K's jittery, restless moving around. He keeps much more still, and also I feel like he's more secure in his authority? I found him attractive--he's got really lovely eyes--and I can see how Ray would, too (of course, Ray finding him attractive is fanon, not canon, since we canonically only know that he "had a thing for him"). But maybe I'm mostly finding him attractive because of the tie to Ray? I don't know.

I also watched North by Northwest. Wow, I did not expect there to be so much slapstick humor in that movie? Or was that only my mood? Also, I do not find Cary Grant attractive. Anyway, this was not a movie where I missed any of the plot; it felt like it was really clearly telegraphed. The plot did not go the way I expected, though! Based on Fraser and Victoria's comments in Victoria's Secret (Victoria: "I always wanted to be Eve Kendall." Fraser: "But she sends Cary Grant to be killed." Victoria: "She had no choice."), I thought ( spoilers )

This is a podfic workshop that I originally posted on the generation_kill comm, intended as a follow-up workshop to chemm80's excellent beginner's workshop. That comm is mostly locked down, though, so I'm posting it here as well. I am going to assume you know the basics of how to get sound recorded, how to edit, how to export your podfics, how to upload and how/where to post. Some of what I say is also going to assume that you're using Audacity.

All of this is of course from my POV, and while I am doing my best to acknowledge the different opinions and experiences out there, YMMV on any of these topics. Thanks to andeincascade and podcath for reading through the post beforehand!

( 1) Reading )

( 2) Sound quality while recording )

( 3) Sound quality post-recording )

( 4) Editing )

( 5) Podfic fandom )

I've been thinking about how due South might work in a world with sedoretu marriages. If you've never heard of a sedoretu, go here to read about them first (and here are the sedoretu works on the AO3). I have no idea if anyone else thinks this is interesting, but whatever, I like thinking about it, so here goes:

( So much matchmaking )

So I was thinking about due South femslash, and it struck me that basically all the femslash pairings are with Frannie. Here are the statistics for the sum total of the (really quite few) due South femslash fics posted at the AO3 and the DSA, split up by pairing (and not including crossovers):

Frannie/Elaine - 25
Frannie/Thatcher - 10
Frannie/Maggie - 8 (half of which were written by me *g*)
Frannie/Stella - 7
Frannie/Victoria - 1 (not actually posted, but I know someone had a long WIP with that pairing, so I'm including it)
Frannie/Irene Zuko - 1 (let me link to that, because it is very very good and I just discovered it)
Frannie/OFC - 1 (I wrote that one!)
Maggie/Victoria - 1 (hey, I wrote that one, too!)
Stella/Mackenzie King - 1

So basically Frannie is in all of them except two. What is the deal with that? Not that I'm complaining--I love Frannie! But why is no one writing, say, Thatcher/Stella?

Is it because Frannie seems more likely to be lesbian/bisexual? Or because she's people's favorite female character? Or because she's hot? Or because people feel she deserves some loving? Or because she has more onscreen time with other female characters? Hmmm. ETA: I just thought of this: maybe people dislike the canonical one-sided Frannie/Fraser and write femslash as a reaction?

ETA2: Also, the image of Frannie actually in a small black dress is a very nice one. : )

Gah, I'm tired. I have some sort of cold which won't break out, but won't go away either. And I've been taking a course on oral presentation and communication at work, which is actually good, but also very tiring. Plus, my shoulders and hands are all stiff. *wants a massage*

Okay, enough whining. I rewatched some due South the other day: "Dead men don't throw rice" and "Manhunt". I guess I don't rewatch canon very often, and it made my heart all glowy.

( Some episode meta + unrelated musing about writing )

For now, please comment at the LJ entry.