query to the hivemind
Any old popslashers out there remember the story where the members of NSync were all turned into fish??

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Conversations with Tiberius
My son, whom I love, is--hm. An argumentative, wildly self-confident, sort of bitchy, emo-fashionista. Yeah, I don't know where he gets it either. But we have conversations like this:

Tiberius: When I grow up, I'm going to be King of England.
Me: You can't be the King of England.
Tiberius: Why not?
Me: You're not English.
Tiberius: I speak English.
Me: Yeah, but England is actually an entirely other country. And you have to be English to be the King of England.
Tiberius: *thinks about this* Okay, then I want to be Queen of New York.
Me: ...That you can do.

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Snowflake Challenge: Day 3
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you have created. It can be your favorite fanworks that you've created, or fanworks you feel no one ever saw, or fanworks you say would define you as a creator.

Ugh, I am sort of horrified by this question, weirdly! Three is too many and not enough at the same time! Everything I've ever made is me, even the bad ones are me; they're all me. I can't choose.

I can give you Anything for Love, though. I mean, that represents my life as a fan as much as anything can.



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Snowflake Challenge: Day 2
Day 2 - Create a fannish wish list.

OMG, I am so blessed among fans for fanart and podfic and translations and vids and metacomments and recs and so many different things that are wonderful: people like lim and revolutionaryjo and zabira and danceswchopsticks and lunate8 and fleurrochard and podcath and dodificus and counteragent and and and so many more; I get just, like, amazing stuff, presents galore. (THANK YOU; THANK YOU EVERYONE.) I'm still reeling from the Victors stuff people made in 2007 and I was just reminiscing over Livia's early covers for my DS stuff and - back in the day - the zine covers TACS made for the Nature series, which just blew me away; it was really the first time anybody'd ever made fanworks based on my fanworks. But I love that so much; it feels like such a happy feedback loop: zing, zing, zing. (Btw I have learned not to ask for crazy things, even in jest, like--OH, a PONY - since that time that renenet GOT ME A PONY, or okay, adopted a wild pony in my name, but still. With great power comes great responsibility, people. Do not ask for crazy things!)

Beyond all that, I am terrible about asking for specific things--this includes challenge fic--because if I can think of it myself, I will probably actually make it myself; my prompt is always, "give me something I haven't thought of!" which--I can't tell you what that is, because if I knew, then I'd know! My favorite things to read are things I wouldn't have thought to write, because I have my own blinders and limitations. (FWIW, I ask my students the same--the As are almost always "things I haven't thought of" which sometimes are REALLY crazy things but I give points for crazy, actually. I want not to see it coming. I want to think a thought I haven't thought before, hear a story it didn't occur to me to tell.) So I'm wildly unhelpful there in terms of making wish lists or creating prompts with any specificity. Make cool fanworks in my fandoms, say I! Make all the things!

(All that being said, I DO have a vid idea that I told somebody wildly talented in fandom and that I know I haven't got the talent to make myself, so I'm hoping said wildly talented person will make it for or with me. Vidding is really hard, and while I've clawed my way back to writing, I don't know that I'll be able to get back to vidding any time soon. I love fanart and the thing that makes me happy with tumblr - which has so much fail in so many other ways - is that it brings amazing fanart across my dash every single day: all you Stucky artists, I love you. Make the things! And I guess I wouldn't turn down any fanworks inspired by The Fifties if anyone felt inspired, because that story has my heart for being the easiest thing I wrote last year - I just knew how it would go from the first sentence, and that always feels good.

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Snowflake Challenge: Day 1
So I see there's a snowflake_challenge afoot! I don't know if I'll finish but I know I can start, which is the first step to finishing anyway. :D

Day 1: In your own space, talk about why you are doing the Fandom Snowflake Challenge? What drew you to it as a participant? What do you hope to accomplish by doing these challenges?

I read but have stopped posting to LJ/DW, but otoh I follow directions very well! :D I can't not answer a question, really - sometimes I make myself NOT ANSWER a question. So this sort of structured month of questions should work well and--I mean, I believe in talk. I believe in us talking to each other when we can! Fandom is made of people. So anything that puts more words in the world is, I think, a good thing. :D

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End of the year meme roundup thing
So yeah, I am really out of the habit of posting here, alas, though I am reading and following you guys who are posting and even commenting when I've got something to say! But somehow I've lost the knack for this. Part of it is just that I am crazy busy and just, I have stress dreams and an endless to-do, and so I'm taking my fannish time in writing time mostly; writing time, tumblr time for pretty pictures, and commenting and being commented upon on AO3. That's where I am fannishly.

But boy, writing; I didn't realize how much I missed writing in a big fandom until I started writing in a big fandom again; it's been wild and fun - SO MUCH FUN. I've been keeping my trickster site more or less updated - it gets updated a little bit avant la lettre - but I've forgotten to crosspost here (I also figure that if anyone wants to read what I'm putting out they're subbed to me at AO3 or to the stucky tag or whatever.)

But to be completist about it (man, it's like old times - by which I mean pre-child times): all Captain America, all Stucky except where noted. (Is that seriously like 188,000 words? fuck. well, there's the book I didn't write. There's two of the books I didn't write, really. But I was really happy having fandom back in my life.)

( Story round up beneath the cut!Collapse )

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New Captain America stories
Wow, I realized that I've been posting so little here, I'm not even posting FIC here. I'm not ready to close down my journaling experience quite yet! Yeesh.

Title: Half of the History (We Shall Never Know) (36675 words)
Author: Speranza
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MCU
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov
Additional Tags: War is hell, Please Heed Archive Content Warnings, Soldier Boys, Love under fire, To the end of the line, Threesomes, winterwidow - Freeform, Dancing, Realpolitik, We're All In It Up To The Neck Darling
Summary: This is a war story.

Title: Your Lack Of An Answer Is Kind Of An Answer: Four Questions Natasha Asked Steve Rogers, And One Time Bucky Barnes Answered (4490 words)
Author: Speranza
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: MCU
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers
Characters: Natasha Romanov, Pepper Potts
Additional Tags: 5 Things, Find Bucky, Natasha likes to know things, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Rude is culturally relative
Summary: "All right, I have a question for you. Oh, but you don’t have to answer it. I feel like if you don't answer it though, you're kind of answering it, you know…"

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Rec for IT security services in NYC
My husband's firm has been the victims of a ransom cyber attack and they now are thinking about changing their security people for IT (their IT people are having trouble coming up with good backups, ugh)- so anybody have any recs for good geeks who work NYC and environs? (Is this you?)

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New Story: 4 Minute Window (MCU, Steve/Bucky)
Title: 4 Minute Window (24127 words)
Author: Speranza
Fandom: MCU
Pairing: Steve/Bucky
Rating: Explicit
Additional Tags: Surveillance, It's Like Grand Central Station In Here, Brooklyn Boys, Power Couple, People Are Sick of Conceptual Art
Summary: "Look, if they catch me," Bucky muttered, "they're either going to kill me or they're going to put me in a box with a little window and—Steve, I can't."

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Bye 2014 - don't let the door hit you, etc.
So this was a tough year where I spent a lot of time in the hospital (being the sandwich generation suuuuuucks)...but everyone survived and is fine and I learned that I am actually really pretty awesome under stress. I also learned (rediscovered) that I have the best friends in the entire universe. Even my husband was like, wow, how would we survive without your friends?

LET'S NEVER FIND THAT OUT.

Anyway, fandom was one of my happier places this year. I've long had a theory that people sometimes drift away from fandom when they're really happy - you see it when people get new sexual partners, new jobs, new lifestyles, increased commitments to other things. Fandom, otoh, is a great place to be if you're tired, sick, disabled, breastfeeding, bored, underutilized, stressed, isolated, or just need awesome pleasure served up to you JUST THE WAY YOU LIKE IT ALL THE TIME FOR REASONS, DAMMIT. Fandom totally came through for me this year with awesome fic and art and meta and vids and er, crafts (sob - I totally needed Marvel crafts!) - so thank you, fandom, for being great when I needed you to be great.

A few more thank yous:

Thanks, awesome friends, for dragging me to CA: The Winter Soldier the week after my kid came out of the hospital--THAT WAS THE FANDOM I NEEDED WHEN I NEEDED IT.

Thank you, CA:TWS, for your operatic multivalent shippiness and operatic soulmate story.

Thank you, Tony/Steve shippers, for your many excellent insights into Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. (One of my more hilarious LJ posts from earlier this year, pre CA: TWS: I think I'm starting to get what's so interesting about Steve Rogers. Ha. Ha, ha, ha ha.)

Thank you, Bucky Barnes, for finally giving me an attainable makeup look. (PS - for those of you wanting to try it, angry raccoon looks great pretty much on everybody, it turns out.)

Tumblr, you still scare me a little (your endless scrolling makes me dizzy) but I think I am starting to like you; thank you for the nonstop fanart and also for the many pictures of Chris Evans trying not to look anxious and of Sebastian Stan a) kissing boys b) posing like a supermodel in a vodka ad or c) frantically trying to think of something to say and failing. They have been very entertaining! :D

Anyway, I wrote a bunch of fic (mostly MCU, Steve/Bucky) this year and am primed to write a whole ton more, so I'm pretty optimistic about 2015.

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Librarians! Scholar-nerds! Help!
I'm making a bibliography that I want to be useful to others.

There are a couple of great reprint collections that bring together 10-12 really useful articles in the field. So I really want to put them in the bibliography so people see and buy them.

BUT - that means that the writers themselves don't appear separately listed in the bibliography. Which I keep forgetting! and being like, OMG how have I not put in Smith!--except of course Smith's most famous bit is in one of the readers.

Any advice on this problem? Should I write out all ten or twelve articles in the reader rather than the reader itself? Like:

Brady, B. "Truly Awesome Article," Really Awesome Reader, 2014.

Jones, C. "Outstanding Article You Should So Read," Really Awesome Reader, 2014.

Smith, A. "Great Article,"Really Awesome Reader, 2014.

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New Story: All The Angels and The Saints (CA:TWS)
So maybe I got a little out of control on this one. :D

Title: All The Angels and The Saints (48733 words)
Author: Speranza
Fandom: Captain America, MCU
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Author Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Additional Tags: Socialism, Science Fiction, Atheism, Roman Catholicism, Blasphemy, World War II, end of the line, Steve Rogers' Whole Life, St. Michael's Muscled Arms, Greenwich Village Is Full of Freaks
Summary: In which Steve Rogers loses God and finds God and loses God, and also: Bucky.

You wanted a novel about Steve Rogers' religious crisis of the 1930s? Right? You wanted a story in which Steve is beaten by nuns, intrigued by feminists, and drags Bucky to hear Bertrand Russell speak in Washingon Square Park? SURE YOU DID. Well here it is! I HAVE YOU COVERED, FANDOM.

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DMCA!!!
Being lazy and so c&p Tisha Turk's post - but vidders, please please read the below!!

~ ~ ~

The OTW's Fan Video & Multimedia Committee is once again working with the Legal Committee and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to petition for a DMCA exemption granting vidders, AMV makers, and other creators of noncommercial remix video the right to break copy protection on media files. In 2010, we won the right to rip DVDs; in 2012, we got that exemption renewed and expanded to include digital downloads (iTunes, Amazon Unbox, etc.). In 2015, we'll be pushing to add Blu-Ray—and, of course, to renew the exemptions we've already won in the last two rounds of DMCA rulemaking.

And we need your help to do it! If you make or watch vids, AMVs, or other forms of fan video, we need you to tell us:

1. Why making fan videos is a transformative and creative act;
2. Why video makers need high-quality source;
3. Why video makers need to be able to manipulate source (change speed and color, add effects, etc.);
4. Why video makers need fast access to source (such as using iTunes downloads rather than waiting for DVDs);
5. Why video makers need to be able to use Blu-Ray;
6. Anything else you think we should keep in mind as we work on the exemption proposal.

If you have thoughts about any or all of these topics, you can comment on this post OR contact Tisha directly at tisha dot turk at gmail dot com or fanvideo-chair at transformativeworks dot org. You don't have to use your real name; we can use your name or pseudonym or describe you anonymously as "a vidder" or "a fan video artist."

The DMCA is U.S. copyright law and only directly affects U.S. vidders, but it does potentially have ripple effects outside the U.S.: Strong DMCA exemptions help send the message that fan creativity should be protected everywhere. With that in mind, please feel free to send your thoughts even if you don't live in the U.S.

Also, please help us signal-boost! This info is being posted to LiveJournal and Dreamwidth communities and on Tumblr; if you can think of other places the OTW should post, please let me know -- and if you can spread the word in your own communities, on streaming sites, etc., please do.

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The TV is back! Reports on the TV!
I am slow to watch things because I am slow on everything, but here's my first thoughts on some of the TV! (Please to be reccing me things to watch!)

( Spoilers and reaction spoilers for Agents of SHIELD and Sleepy HollowCollapse )

Next up, Downton (hush) and POI.

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What I Know About Coding, by Speranza Age 44 1/2
Today's XKCD represents in one panel what I learned about coding from the AO3.



It's such a fine line between "crazy simple; hey! let's do it!" and "mindbogglingly complex pls pay me a million dollars and also stab me in the face right now." When I was doing AO3 comms, I found myself often trying to explain why sometimes we were like, "Sure! Let's make it happen!" and "Er, we have no idea when that's ever gonna go down." I learned always to ask though, because sometimes the dream stuff ("Could we--maybe!--possibly!--") turned out to be the easy stuff, and the seemingly easy stuff turned out to be the backbreaking stuff.

So, er, I laughed a lot at XKCD today. Like all good comedy, such a HIGH proportion of TRUTH.

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Your BOFQ quote of the day!
For reasons, I have been thinking a lot about The Man From Uncle today, which led me to look up the reboot movie, which led me to finding out that Henry Cavill has replaced Tom Cruise (WHICH GOOD I HATE TC), which led me to this article on "12 things We Learned from 2014's Summer Movies" (which has a nice shoutout to The Winter Soldier as the year's first big hit, so yay) but also this quote, which made me cry and feel old, and now I hate everybody:

Word on the street says that 2014 was an off year between mega-franchises—that next year will unleash Hollywood’s A-Game. After all, summer 2015 has Avengers: Age of Ultron. And a Jurassic Park reboot starring everyone’s favorite new movie star. And a Fantastic Four movie that didn’t show up to Comic-Con. And a Terminator movie with a funny name. And… oh, um, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. remake your grandparents have been asking for.

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The stories we don't tell
Trigger warning: discussion of male rape below the cut.

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Holy crap. They found the Hand Of Franklin, the reaching out one. This is a game changer for DS like the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell was for SGA. Wow: ficathon anybody? *boggle*

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Taxes and Vids (Not together - that was years ago!)
Sorry, fell off the posting wagon there, but who's the bad-ass mother who did her parents' 2013 taxes over the weekend? YES, ME. The excitement, it's--zzzzzz. *falls over*

Anyway, lim moved her website - you can now find streaming and downloadables of all her vids here, at some vids by lim.

I took Tiberius to the Ren Faire today in upstate New York with astolat and counteragent and the assorted fannish gaggle of our kids, which was fun. Tiberius wanted butterfly wings and a wand with streamers, which I bought him, and he mostly liked climbing rocks and standing there, poetically, wings flapping.



He also wore them to the supermarket tonight, running down the city streets. "Are you an angel?" one old man asked him. "No, I"m a fairy," my son explained prosaically; that's my boy.

Anyway, I am optimistic that as of tomorrow, with school finally kicking in full time again, I'll finally be able to get on top of things that have been on top of me. Me and this glass of Jack Daniels are drinking to that right now anyway!

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Tiberius starts kindergarten tomorrow.

(I know!)

(I know!)

To celebrate the NYC school system, I give you Robert Klein's rap on NYC public schools.

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