The Elf Half

Challenge #4

In your own space, make a list of things that you wish existed in fandom or elsewhere, and/or that you'd like someone to create or do for you. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.

Oooh, shiny. I like lists. And I have many, many things I wish existed in fandom. These are "in order I thought of them," not "in order of complexity" or "in order of importance to me."

1) Calibre plugin(s) designed for fanfic - add columns for fandom, rating, warnings (probably not limited to AO3 warnings) (I want to instantly know if something is a WIP); add metadata for URL(s); section for notes ("originally from kinkmeme"; "part of X/Y big bang"; "author active on Tumblr" etc.)

2) AO3 "media type" category: something that instantly tells you if this is fic, art, vid, meta/nonfic, poetry/song lyrics, etc. (Maybe gaming? Like, if someone made an Harry Potter D&D adventure?) Something that changes the rest of the headers appropriately, because filk doesn't use AO3's fandom categories. (Maybe 80% of filk would wind up being "original work" making it unsortable - we have genres, but media fandoms aren't them) (So... an expansion of the "original work" fandom to allow subcategories, because right now it's a mess.) Art would want a section for medium; vid would want a section for song & source fandoms. (It's ridiculous that a multifandom vid either gets tagged for 20 fandoms... or none. Both are bad for sorting.) ("Multifandom" should be a legit fandom category.)

3) Dozens-to-hundreds of active Fanlore editors, because most of the current problems come from either "only people with a specific agenda come in to edit pages, and this winds up with bias we don't want" or "regulars and gardeners are stretched too thin to make the structural updates we need."

( And then there's stuff I want specifically for me )

Swiped from muccamukk
Rules: Go to your AO3 works page, expand all the filters, and answer the following questions!

109 stories.

What're your first and second most common work ratings?
* General Audiences (69)
* Mature (24)

What's your most common archive warning?
* No Archive Warnings Apply (77)
* Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings (25)

Do you consider yourself an adventurous creator?
I'm not sure if "adventurous" is the word I'd choose. I do like working with fandoms and tropes that not many other people are interested in.

( Bunch of fic answers with bullet-point lists under the cut. )

I got clued in to hidden object games from an episode of Extra Credit that talked about their appeal to an entirely different audience from "mainstream" video games. It mentions the incredibly high number of female protagonists, and a lot of mother-daughter story themes. And it points out that "mainstream" video games' recurring problem of "how do we make believable female characters" is obviously deeply flawed, because here's a genre that creates them by the score, including plenty of fairytale clichés, and the games are bought and played by plenty of women. It wraps up with the observation,

It recontextualizes the discussion we've been having about female characters in games for years. All this time, the real question we in the mainstream gaming world have been fighting over was not, "How do we create quality female characters," but rather, "how do we create reasonable female characters--that still appeal to our largely male audience?"

So I went looking for hidden object games. There are indeed a lot of them, and they cover a broad quality range, which means if you just grab the first one you find that's cheap, you're likely to think, "ugh, this genre sucks."

This is a recs/review post to give some ideas where to start. (It's aimed at one person, but since I was going to write up the list anyway, I might as well post it publicly.) If you are not the person for whom I'm writing these up, you may want to check the Steam reviews and compare them to my notes. If you prefer action games, you probably won't care for HO games no matter how good they are.

( I have a lot of HO games )

In no particular order:

1) Cthulhu-with-Santa-hat stickers - every bit as charming as they look.

2) Metal dice with etched lines instead of numbers. Pretentious but gorgeous.

3) Book about things not to stick up your butt; an important reference work for any slash fan.

4) Fidget cubes. Five of them, in different colors. Kid the Younger prefers the clicky lever; Kid the Elder likes the ball-bearing that rolls and clicks. KtE also hates the "joystick" button, which reminds her too much of lousy video game controllers. I like the spinny flat wheel, which works better on some of them than on others. Overall, we are delighted with them.

5) B.A.T. Coin, which looks much cooler than it is practical (I'm considering sharpening the curved edge so that it actually works as a letter/box opener.)

( For the first time in my life I have disposable income, so what do I spend it on? Weird stuff. Especially dice. )

From jjhunter, because I need to start posting again, and a set of "who are you"-ish questions seems like a good starting point.

This meme began on tumblr, and involves "answer the questions, here or in your own space, then make up more questions for other people." I'll do those in another post.

1) What do you have in your pockets? / What stuff do you carry with you?
Right now, nothing; I'm wearing a grey fuzzy bathrobe and I tend to keep the pockets empty. Normally, I wear a belt-thing with pockets, something like this one (a google for [renfaire pocket belt] turns up similar images but no official sales site), only with more purple. I carry a *lot* of things in it--my Blackberry, my ereader, ID cards, money, BART ticket, keys, etc. (It's a pretty big etc; I carry a lot of tiny things.) I like having a purse that can't be yanked off my shoulder and doesn't unbalance me when I walk.

Because I wear that, I keep pretty much nothing in my normal clothes pockets anymore.

( 10 more, because Glitchen like doing things in elevens. )

melannen pointed me at invisible_ficathon, which is a fanfic exchange for fandoms-within-fandoms. Nominations are open, 10 to a person; you don't have to join the fest to nominate.

Hitchhiker's Guide is there. So is the "Buggre Alle Thys" Bible from Discworld. And Darkover lore. (Ballad of Hastur and Cassilda is presumably included within that, but could be nominated separately.) And Pleasantville, the fictional TV show that was the foundation for the movie. Startup post has links to Wikipedia's lists of fictional books, tv shows, movies, and so on.

Most of them are pretty much crack. I mean, I love the McBain movies as much as the next fangirl, but there's no depth to them. And I don't know that the world needs fanfic of "Asses of Fire."

Fandoms I am considering nominating (but really, am just collecting all in one place, so feel free to add to the list):

* Sick Sad World (TV show in Daria)
* Crimson Chin (Comic series in Fairly Oddparents)
* The Tally Ho (Newspaper in the Prisoner series) (Prisoner RPF fandom!)
* Red Lantern/Red Arrow (Comics from an AU episode of SV)
* Necronomicon (the original, not the Avon Press Babylonian occultism book) (and related works)
( More! Lots more! )

Today's Woot!Shirt is Relevant To My Interests. I watch the Woot t-shirts, and I giggle at some and sigh at others, but I've let several slip past because I'm not really sure they're *me*, as opposed to "a message I like seeing." Sometimes, I kick myself for that later, but mostly, I just cope with the idea that there'll be other awesome t-shirts in the future. (Also, I don't like wearing t-shirts. The picture, logo, or message is almost always designed to be displayed on a mostly-flat background, which I don't provide.)

Vaguely related: I still haven't replaced my PRS-505. I'm using a friend's borrowed PRS-600, which I don't like; it's got a touchscreen (bleh) that causes glare (double bleh), all the navigation problems of the 505 (no folders; shows incomplete filenames; lags when there are more than a couple-hundred files) without the customizeability (no installing PRSfix). I'd like to get a newer ereader; I suspect that what I want isn't sold in the US. ( List o' Features )

These are the kind of blogs I read when I'm trying to Be Responsible And Avoid More Clint/Coulson Fic.

The Internet Is Not Killing Organized Religion - Beck’s argument, briefly, was that the banal social interaction that once filled post-worship coffee hours had been absorbed by day-to-day Facebook interactions. I suggested back then, among other things, that if swapping Jell-O recipes and catching up on local gossip was the main draw of Christian churches and other religions, the smoking gun was hardly digital.

The Biggest Pagan News That No One Is Talking About - Wicca, in the eyes of the book selling industry, is now a religion. It crossed over from OCC026000 Body, Mind & Spirit / Wicca and Witchcraft, to two separate BISAC codes. One remains in the occult section – OCC026000 is now simply Body, Mind & Spirit / Witchcraft. But Wicca itself is now REL118000, or Religion / Wicca.

We Don't Live in Neverland - When you step out of the global economy, you cut yourself off from the imperial wealth pump that provides people in America with the kind of abundance they take for granted, and the lifestyles that are available in the absence of that wealth pump are far more restricted, and far more impoverished, than most would-be relocalizers like to think.

Prop 8′s proponents facing fundraising woe as Supreme Court hears their case - it’s not just the proponents of Prop 8 who are facing fundraising shortfalls: opponents of marriage equality across the country are facing similar difficulties. Proponents of equal marriage rights outspent opponents during the Washington referendum campaign last year nearly tenfold ($12.6 million to $2.8 million), a marked turnaround from 2008, when supporters of Prop 8 in California raised almost $40 million.

Why Online Textbooks Still Don’t Work - The system requirements also spell out screen resolution, memory requirements and software including Microsoft Excel and a broad spectrum of Adobe plug-ins. You have to have broadband, yes, but you also need to have a pretty up-to-date system, and that’s just not within reach for many students. And if they can’t access the textbook from home, they can’t exactly do their homework.

For all your gaming needs! Well, for all your super-hero gaming needs! Well, okay, for probably none of your *actual* gaming needs, but if you want to generate plotbits on the spur of the moment, I have a chart for you!

This does not require:
1) Specific character knowledge
2) Villains with character sheets
3) Any particular team size (works for solos or teams)

This will work best with:
1) 2d6 and at least one d10 (You can roll them online)
2) An urban setting
3) A non-gritty-realism setting

( Elf's Amazingly Wacky and Probably Useless Random Plot Generator, Suitable for Superhero RPGs or Yuletide Shenanigans )

The Project On Government Oversight (POGO) has a list of 10 questions for the 2012 candidates about gov't transparency, in nice simple language suitable for 30-second timeslots. I hope some reporters pick these up, because I'd love to see either real answers (which I don't expect) or the dodges they'll inspire.

( So, Mr. Candidate, what will YOU do to stop hidden gov't corruption? )