By Slanted Light

Such very very sad news about our lovely minori_k, who always felt like a little drop of sunshine on lj. She was just as beautiful in real life, and always so happy to be visiting England, it beamed out of her!

She will be much missed. I've just been to re-read her lj, and the first time we chatted there it was about Bodie and Doyle skiing, because she was off skiing in Osaka. And here's her first Safehouse post! We were lucky to have her as our discoveredinalj artist for three Christmas challenges - she did banners for Discovered Whilst a Carolling, Discovered in a Christmas Pud and just this last Christmas Discovered in the Holly and Ivy (you can click on the banners to get bigger versions). Her art is of course over at AO3 too, but I do wish she was still with us...

I don't think she'd mind if I posted one of my favourite of her pics here to remember her by - though there are so many to choose from, that it's my favourite just now as much as anything, for its colour and its love between the lads...
Would anyone else care to join me in remembering Minori through her wonderful artwork, by posting to their own lj, or a comm? It would be a nice way of saying our goodbyes through our happy memories of her, I think...

I should be working - I will be working, any time now. When I've had my shower. This is the trouble with working until one in the morning and getting up late with tired eyes... But - one of the reasons I was working until one in the morning was that last night was book group, and we talked about The Song of Achilles. When I say talked about, we go around and each say what we thought of the book, and then it's over to the table for a pub dinner, all interspersed with much other chat. So on the one hand - waah, I'd like to talk more about the books, and eep I'm no good at that kind of small talk when I don't know people, but on the other hand everyone's nice, and it's friendly, so all good. But last night...

...there was a worlds-almost-collide moment when we were talking about the book, which involves the love affair between Achilles and Patroclus, and one of the members said that she thought it was just amazingly clever that the woman author could write so well about what it would be like for two men to be in love, imagining the feelings and textures and so on - and I bet you can guess what I was thinking about! *g* Oh, I wanted to give her piles upon piles of fic to read - how can she not know that women are not only perfectly capable of that kind of imagining, but are brilliant at it and love doing it?! But that's the thing - you forget that we're (slashers and fandomers) not the common majority, that people don't just ordinarily even know that it's out there, never mind accept, never mind love it... I had a surreptitious look around the table to see where everyone else's eyes were, and I reckon there might be a couple of people who were thinking similar thoughts - but who knows, and I'm not sure I'll be able to broach the idea, or at least not for a good long while when I've got to know them better!

The other worlds-collide-ish moment was when I was reading over coffee this morning. I'm on The Independence of Mary Bennet, which is a Pride and Prejudice sequel by Colleen McCullough that I picked up in the library because I'd been looking for Victorian stories, and remembered liking her books years and years ago. I'm nearly halfway through (don't tell me what happens! *g*) and eep! - d'you know what I realised it reminded me off? Fanfic by Jane! Not that it's at all slash or anything, but I really do feel that McCullough is using her story to teach me what life was like in Victorian England at the time, and when I got to a bit in brackets that read a guinea was worth slightly more than a pound, having twenty-one shillings to it rather than twenty I just had to *headdesk* You can't say that in a fiction book set at the time! What person alive right now, who has been using it all their 38-year-old life, is thinking of how much money they've got and pauses to explain to themselves how the system of currency works?! Such an authorial insertion! That's a very extreme example, but she's been doing things like that all through, and I'm not convinced about the characters at all - they've almost all changed briefly at some point to suddenly become insufferably wise when previously they've just been ordinary, and the heroine is growing in beauty and goodness all the time... She's writing fanfic - and she's writing bad fanfic, and being paid for it, because she's got a name! *grumps* Okay, I'm more amused than grumpy really, but there's a bit of me that *grumps* about how it's okay for some people to write fanfic because it's not being called fanfic because people who write fanfic are odd, and they're "proper authors"...

Anyway - that's my Friday so far, and the sun's shining and I also woke up to some absolutely lovely feedback from someone about my Two stories which just made me smiiiiiiile when I've been thinking for the last week or so that I can't write a thing that's readable, and I'm starting to feel a bit more awake now, so... How're you doing, this fine February morning? *g*

The best thing about doing something as intensely think-y as my current second-job is that I seem to have woken up wanting to read and think about nothing but Pros and our lads today, and I've not felt like that for aaaages, so yeay! And yeay for a day job where I can... *g* So just to get us started...

They're a bit good, aren't they? *g* They just fit together!

So... think-y things! I recced a story over at ci5hq last week, From Here to Eternity by Ginny and Hestia (from Gryphon Press, which links at palelyloitering I've just realised are down, looks like the pages have been moved... and Doghouse too - gargh, must fix that when I get home!) and I ended up chatting a bit with sc_fossil about comedy and "crack", and it got me... thinking. *g*

( Think-y things about crackfic... )

I picked this up from inamac's lj, and I really hope she doesn't mind, but I just have to say that although I'll never ever actually read the fic (it's HP), I am immensely cheered by...

the header to this fic...

...and as you know I'm really not a major-header kinda girl... (that sounds kinda kinky, but I'm not sure why... hmmn...) Anyway - just - yes for the warnings! If I ever write warnings for my fic, they will be like that! Only not nearly so good, cos that's fairly genius... *g*

So, was taking a break from online mobile phone bills going back to 2007 (not mine, don't ask...) and followed a link from fairyd123_recs and came across a Doctor Who/Torchwood community called Tardis Big Bang - which of course turned out to be one of those write-long-story comms that people have apparently been talking about to encourage longer stories in Pros (mentioned by MsMoat? Callisto? at the Close Quarters con? I think, according to various reports...)

So while I was there I had a wander round... 'tis interesting - the idea seems to be that people commit to writing long fic (minimum 20,000 words) and others make artwork/vids to accompany the stories. There's a deadline schedule that goes like this (for their particular challenge/comm):

"# February 15: Signup deadline for Authors.
# April 26: Deadline for a rough draft of at least 15,000 words.
# May 10: Art assignments.
# June 14: Final drafts (must be beta'ed) and art/vids due.
# Late June: Website goes live!"

So it looks like the idea is that people have 4 months to write their fics/create their artwork - hmmn, in 2007 they had 7 months - maybe people wrote more quickly than they expected after all!

Oh, and here's the livejournal info page where it's all explained... and even better, here's their very first sign up post (in 2007!) to see how it's done... You have to post a synopsis with your sign-up, even if you don't specifically stick to it. And artists are sent out assignments for specific fics? But I think they volunteer for specific fics in their own sign up post? Being me I concentrated on the story bit, sorry... *g*

Anyway - now that I've seen what that sort of thing is about, I'm curious about what people think Pros-wise. Is someone actually practically thinking of doing one of these? Did the discussion get as far as planning, or is it very much in a ooh-look-what-these-other-fandoms-are-doing stage? We actually had a three-month-long challenge at Dialj not long ago, and didn't get much response, let alone long fic posted - would the excitement of having a whole separate community for it (and potentially a website, pdfs and e-books, if the Tardis Big Bang is anything to go by... *g*) be something that encouraged participation, d'you think?

It could be like a little flurry of online zines, which would be nice - longer fic at the moment seems to be locked up in the various new zines currently around. Readers would still have to wait months and months for the stories, but they'd be freely available, which would be nice...

Just wonderin', since I've seen an example now... *g* Whaddya reckon? Do we have enough writers and artists in Pros who'd be up for it? (The other fandoms I've seen the Big Bangs associated with tend to be really big ones) Would you be up for writing for it? Sticking to the deadlines? (Yes, you!? *g*)

I've been thinking about Torchwood today - don't you love it when a show stays with you, rather than vanishing into fairy-floss fluff? Anyway... general ramblings and thinkings-out-loud ahead... and spoilers of course, under the cut...

( It was a show to make you think, wasn't it? So here's some think-y stuff about reading and tv and fandom and stuffety-stuff... )

Wandering around lj as you do, I came across some interesting discussions/thoughts about zines and fic and different types of access to such things, and I'm all curious now about what Pros-y people think about them, so... I thought I'd post here! Plus, coffee-break! Plus, I'm in a very think-y Pros-y mood this week, what with all the brilliant discussions etc going on at the moment. So here's another one! *g*

There's a poll here, which asks an interesting question: If I was to take all my fanfic off the internet, and offer it in downloadable e-zine form instead, available for $20 (US$ I presume, so about £14 at today's exchange rate) - would you buy it?. It's not specific to the poll-er, it's a hypothetical question - if people did that, would other people spend money on it?

( Zine talk )

So, there was a thing on Saturday, down in London...
( in a wee pub called The Scarsdale... )

Well aren't I just the happiest girl this side of fandom? enednoviel has made me this beautiful, beautiful banner, and it just makes me smile. The boys, the car, and those shadows and... and... *sigh*

What is the strange pull of the the_safehouse Challenge? I have umpteen fics on the go, including one that I'm very into right now, and yet I am still drawn to it... What a bizarre world I have fallen into!

And yes I have written the others that I responded to, just not posted yet, for reasons hotmail... *sighs gustily*

Hmmn. Maybe the pull is the same as the desire to ramble about nothing in my LJ - work avoidance. Damn. Busted.