sofiaviolet | 85 minutes of bleach later

Recently

I can haz purple hair! No pictures yet because I am lazy, but it does not suck. (The purple streak does fade rather quickly to nearly black as you move away from my scalp, but given how many times it had been dyed before these shenanigans, I can't say I'm surprised.)

Have been approved to take another week off work, sometime between mid October and Thanksgiving (has to be before Thanksgiving because $winterholiday retail season is likely to constrain the amount of time C. has for me). Now to find a suitably cheap plane ticket. On the one hand, yay I get to see my boyfriend again! On the other... and then I won't see him until some time in 2011.

Links

littlebutfierce: more top fives: blogs, zines
And the thing is, I am of two minds when it comes to online archives like that, anyway: there is a strong feeling in certain parts of the zine community that online archives take away some of the control that zinesters have often felt they should have over their work; if you don't want a zine you wrote 15 years ago, about whose contents you may feel radically differently now, to be available online, well, that is reasonable, yes? On the other hand, there is the argument for preserving history & the fact that when you publish zines they leave your hands & technically anyone can do what they like with them. Although that latter part is often thought to be an attitude that shouldn't be valid in zinedom, because everything's seen to be smaller-scale, more personal interaction, blah blah. Which... I can empathize with, but sometimes I have no patience with people who live in this mythic zinester community where we all write feedback letters to each other & all agree on zine ethics & are in this tiny, insular world that we simultaneously want to expand & feel nervous about Them getting their hands on our zines.
oursin: Troubling trope
Woman stalking man = UNNATURAL!!! she is pathetic creature whom nobody could actually love anyway. The very fact that she is interested in a man who barely recognises her existence is a clear sign of pathology and her utter failure to conform to appropriate feminine role of waiting around like a flower for a bee to pollinate it.*

So the trope has creepy yet pathetic vibes.

Man stalking woman = ROMANCE!!! book after book and movie after movie and song after song tell us that if he only persists long enough in hounding her footsteps, making unwanted declarations, leaving embarrassing gifts, etc, she will melt into his arms, because Teh Wymmynz really like creepy stalker-like manifestations of devotion from men whose existence they have barely noticed. Or have noticed only to shudder.
thingswithwings: (no subject)
It's not a secret that Hollywood lighting techniques have been specifically designed to make white people look good, and that this goes back to the beginning of film. And it's important to remember, too, that limiting the facial expressiveness of black actors is not only racist in the obvious way - dehumanizing actors of colour, literally denying them visibility, etc. It's also racist in that it plays into a racist stereotype with a long and extremely gross history; namely, the "overanimated negro" stereotype that's familiar to me from old Bugs Bunny cartoons and the like. Sianne Ngai, in her book Ugly Feelings, has an amazing chapter on this stereotype and its associations, which she calls "animatedness." Like the name implies, the black figure characterized by "animatedness" is also characterized by a lack of will - the appearance of having been animated by someone else, like a puppet on strings whose grotesque and exaggerated emotions can only be expressed in the crudest way possible, and are only expressed by a force outside themselves. Anyway, it was Ngai's analysis of this history of representation that got me thinking along these lines, and I really recommend that chapter of Ugly Feelings if you want to read more about it.
kink_bingo: Great Kink Bingo Round Three Recs Post
Post a comment here reccing your favourite KB fanworks! Give us a link to the fanwork, and spend a sentence (or a paragraph, or two paragraphs) telling us why you like it. If you've already written some recs in your journal, feel free to repost or link to them here.
via j00j: Guest Post: Nell Taylor on the Chicago Underground Library
CUL is a replicable model for community archives that accepts every piece of print media from a certain area without making quality or importance judgments, going back as far in history as possible. That means we collect university press, handmade artist books, zines made by sixth graders, poetry chapbooks from big names published in tiny local presses, and self-published poetry chapbooks sold for a dollar on the street. We have neighborhood newspapers, internationally-renowned magazines of political commentary, and three View-Master reels of Chicago hot dog stands, neon signs, and motor inns, respectively.
spiderine: IN UR FLIST, PUKIN' UP MY ID

damned_colonial: Radio Skud (my Rube-Goldberg-esque iTunes playlist setup)
So I mentioned this in a locked post earlier and a couple of people expressed interest, so hey, why not. This is the setup I use to create a playlist called "Radio Skud" in iTunes which is basically guaranteed to contain a good mix of music for me.
whitecollar: White Collar Dreamwidth Fest
So White Collar is over until January. This is a long time, and I thought this would be the perfect time to organise a fic/art fest.
via shadesong: Scott Pilgrim vs The Gender Bender (fanart of the League of Evil Exes)