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skygiants informs us that the winner, the Woobiest of all the Woobies, is, of course:cesperanza has still got it: "All the Angels and the Saints", Captain America/Bucky Barnes. Yeah, I know this is like a year old; this isn't even my fandom, I haven't been reading in it, I ran into this randomly, and whoa.brainwane premiered a new vid at Wiscon 2015! cme and I killed a couple of hours hanging out in the bar and catching up. And it was so wonderful. I can't remember the last time I just hung out and shot the shit in a bar all afternoon. I was telling this to a friend of a friend yesterday who has no kids and he said, "Welp, not having one of those then." And I was like YES YES CORRECT DECISION. I mean. There are many, many compensations. But your lazy afternoons are OVER, my friend, at least for quite a while, and if you are really that attached to those, cling to them and cherish them. Don't go the other way.Slow River, by Nicola Griffithwhich is an excellent lesbian cyberpunk book about street crime, corporate crime, and sewage. And it is also pretty interesting to contrast it with Solitaire, written by Ms. Griffith's partner Kelley Eskridge, which is also a lesbian cyberpunk book; but which is less about sewage and more about being an introvert and getting lost in your own head. So to speak. Together they are the best fiction that I know of ever written about project management. Solitaire isn't officially part of the panel, but I know that at least two of us loved it, so it may come up.
Not long after I sent the Slow River outline to my agent, she called:
"This is not a selling outline."
"Why not?"
"Well," she said, "in Ammonite Marghe had a girlfriend because she had no choice, poor thing. But why does Lore like girls?"
"Because she's a dyke, Fran," and I fired her.
New times create new crimes.And once again, I got to do the program cover illustration.
As societies change, both law and crime evolve, and punishment changes as well. Advances in technology (or the workings of magic) make possible crimes that we could never have predicted, methods of crimefighting unforeseen, prisons unlike any we have now. If a dragon is a citizen, are they allowed to eat people? How do you imprison a telepath? How does a civilization of teleporters keep from descending into anarchy? What rights do aliens or androids have? How can vast empires covering many lightyears maintain some sort of order?
The implications are much broader than the basic question of whodunnit. We are currently seeing major shifts in the balance between the individual and the state, privacy and convenience, freedom and security.
Speculative fiction has always explored questions like these, and the results have been some of our finest fictions. At FOGcon 3, we’re going to be discussing those questions and possible answers for our own future.
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imnotandrei who had the insight that the astronaut should be imprisoned in space.
hradzka and then I thought I would just put it here as well.Still, fandom is currently in a bit of a self-questioning state that it doesn't seem too eager to resolve. From my perspective as a non-feminist, this is at least partially because the answers presented by much of current feminist and leftist ideology would seem to me to be *answers that fandom does not want to hear.*The story in question is When Fics Take on a Life of Their Own. Fandom: RPF/Feminist Ryan Gosling.
Yeah, you think that, because you think that there's 1) something wrong with feminism and 2) something wrong with our (where by "our" I mean female fandom, and therefore pretty obviously elide a huge number of differences) desires. God knows there's things wrong with feminism but it's not what you're thinking here. And what's wrong with our desires is only the inevitable outcome of what's wrong with the world. Read what Sugar wrote here about her teenage fantasies and their roots. Nobody's sexual development happened in a vacuum. Every woman in this world grew up in a world where men were presented every single damn day from a variety of sources as more intelligent valuable interesting strong capable central active resourceful blah blah blah, and incidentally, in a world where white men were presented as sexier smarter faster more valuable more cultured more interesting blah blah blah than non-white men, and do people really then wonder, somehow, when writing stories about canon that are 90% about white men, that our hindbrains come up with stories and desires for stories about white men? That the bits of our brains that are looking for fun and not hard work frequently consider their comfort zone to be white men? Surprise. And does that mean that those desires are wrong?
NO. Everybody makes their own erotic compromises with the patriarchy. We're going to die while the world is still fucked. We can't put our libidos on hold until everything is sorted out. And to sort out our libidos we'd not only have to sort out the world but we'd also have to hop in our imaginary time machine and go back and fix it so that we grew up in a fair world where people cared about what happened to people who weren't rich white men and that is also going to happen on the twelfth of never so you will forgive me if I say that there is nothing wrong with the way we live with our oppression by eroticizing it. I mean that. It's a survival trait that the brain eroticizes things it's afraid of or angry about, that is one of the ways we cope. And I love our survival. I will be cheerleading it forever. And when we find ways to not only survive but have fun with the place we are condemned to take, when we turn it into art and community and squee, I want to throw a fucking party. We win.
And questioning it is not wrong either. Feminism is not wrong about interrogating the whitecockers. Because that's how things get better. That's how we work on decolonizing our brains while living in our colonized brains. You say that this fic doesn't resolve or offer to resolve feminist fandom's ongoing internal conflict, but dude, to fix feminist fandom, you would have to fix the whole world. Are you seriously complaining that a 4000 word fanfic about a tumblr doesn't finish the job? It does its job, okay? It does its little part. It's one small step for fandom. I think it's a great story.
thefourthvine's fic recs. Which is good, because at least the baby posts are adding some value! Basically if you don't care about babies you should probably be reading thefourthvine instead of me. I say this in a selfless spirit of giving.leupagus. Look, do you want to read some of the oldest school slash possible, by which I mean Kirk/Spock? Okay, how about if I tell you it's an AU where Spock is a police detective? Not good enough? What about if I tell you it's a Bechdel-compliant AU where both of the main characters' mothers are 1) alive 2) significantly appearing in this story & 3) significantly awesome*? Did you want to read that OH YES I THINK YOU DID. This story just flipped my shit out from about page three when you meet AU!Spock and he smiles. How creepy is that? TOS!Spock's smile creeped me out so bad! It was unnatural! He was not supposed to smile! In the series, I mean. I think it was in that episode where the flower people roofied them and it was just like, this is wrong. I loved old Spock's smile in the reboot, though, where he meets new Spock and just grins at him all, what up Mini-Me? I nearly teared up, man. I mean, old Spock - I grew up with him, and he was so repressed, and so self-hating, and his squashing down of all his emotions into a tiny little festering gob was his rejection of what he and everyone else on his planet considered his inferior human half; and then to run into him decades later and discover that he can just smile whenever the hell he feels like it now, because he's found a way to make peace with both halves of his heritage - well. I would love like hell to see an It Gets Better Star Trek video with old and new Spocks in character, is all I'm saying. Especially now that Zachary Quinto has come out. And especially since the scene would inevitably be stolen by Mr. Hikaru "It's Okay To Be Takei" Sulu and his naked, oiled chest.giandujakiss points out is infuriating in that society shoves you into these roles and then punishes you for playing those roles. But also punishes you for stepping out of them. It sucks. ("Here's what you should do, ladies! Except when you shouldn't and are a bad person for listening to us!") And it kind of sucks that Winona is portrayed as cool because she sneers at women and girl things and demands female strippers like a guy would even though there's no intimation that she's actually sexually into women at all, it's just cool because she's taking on the socially higher-status role. But! This is the exciting thing about having a story with more than one woman in it! Winona is cool like that. But T'Pring is cool in a different way! And T'Pau is badass in yet a different way, and Amanda is cool in a different way, and of course Uhura is cool in her very own way as well, and so, it's not like, Winona is how women are supposed to be cool. It's just that Winona is how Winona is cool. That's nice.rachelmanija:Since sexual harassment is an endemic problem at cons, I suggest that con organizers concerned about this consider calling the local police department in advance, say they're organizing an event and want to touch base just in case anything comes up, and say that they may be calling if any creepers appear - is there a particular person they should talk to or extension they should dial for that sort of thing? Police departments vary widely in terms of how receptive they will be to that, but an advance call may be helpful in case you need to make a real one, and if they blow you off, at least you'll have advance warning that calling the cops will probably not be helpful.
thefourthvine did a recs set of Stories That Will Make You Uncomfortable And You Will Love It. And I must second the recommendation for "The Death of Narcissa Black: A Potion." Because it is amazing and terrible. And, you know, not that it resonates or anything. hahaha*sob*jedusaur has been pulling together some amazing stuff.snarp read it, you haven't.
timeasmymeasure
