sofiaviolet | Entries tagged with meta

Recently

Went to a few yard sales (and the Kinky Tea and Tag Sale yesterday, where I spent most of my time socializing, and Boomerangs today, where I found a fantastic knife block for $2, which has made Ellie pretty happy). It turns out that yard sales make an effective carrot for getting me up relatively early on the weekends, and also getting me out of the house. Unfortunately, I walked 3.7 miles yesterday and 1.9 miles today, wearing flip flops for the first time since last year. Oops.

Links

( science, kink and fanfic, Dreamwidth stuff, mental illness )

Notes

I already have a few ideas of things to post. If there are things you would like me to post about, then prompt me. (No guarantees, since I will be offline for 5+ days, but I will try.)

Questions meme!

( Long-overdue )

Links

( 2 links: Portal fanart and criticism of rape culture )

Plans

Finish up my semester (my last semester of undergrad omfg), MCR concert, Capture the Flag in Franklin Park, play party.

Turbo developed chronic kidney disease; Mom and Dad brought him in yesterday. He always loved going to the vet, especially when we were going on vacation so he got to stay there for a few days and have lots of social interaction. He got to hang out with one of his favorite vet techs yesterday. He was big for a Jack Russell - we thought he'd be smaller because we saw him alongside a bunch of Golden Retriever puppies - and he was never very healthy (allergic to people, other dogs, and out pre-Katrina lawn). But my mother still has three or so feral cats to look after, so that's something.

I've also realized that I am experiencing some twitchiness about my relationship, and engaging in some (logical but still not healthy) sabotaging behaviors. Not ready to blog about it, I don't think.

I'll be back in New Orleans in less than a month. I'm supposed to be working on my extended bibliography because I'm meeting with my advisor again on Wednesday, but today is just not the day for getting anything done. I made myself a sandwich and I sorted my stuff from the clean laundry and put it away. The rest of my day has been playing a silly little puzzle game over and over, and leaving a chat window open with Cory on the other end. It's comforting.

Quizzical Pussy: Legacy

I’m still a beaten girlfriend somewhere deep down.

I’m realizing who profoundly affected I really am by it all, to this day. My self-esteem was never great to begin with, but staying in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship for years trained even that scant confidence out of me. And while, believe it or not, I’ve scraped a fair amount back for myself, if we’re making comparisons, I can’t escape the learned worthlessness that was my liturgy for so long.

Shakesville: My Point, Here It Is

When I ask a person not to engage in rape apologia in this space, because it is my space and I have not only not consented to host rape apologia here, but have also explicitly and repeatedly deemed it off-limits, and that person continues to engage in rape apologia nonetheless, without regard for my boundaries or personal autonomy, that's not exactly someone who's demonstrating a commitment to the notions of consent, autonomy, and respect.

That's someone who's leveraging the values of a rape culture to violate my boundaries.

That's someone who's acting like a fucking rapist.

Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Blog: Community Conversations

Rape is different than other types of violent crime. In my mind, rape is a lot like a hate crime, targeted at a particular group in order to scare and intimidate them. The reason we punish hate crimes differently than other crimes is because they affect the behavior of more than one person. An assault is always bad; we don't, as a society, condone assault (at least I hope we don't). But an assault perpetrated against a member of a particular community, let's say, or against a person of a particular ethnic background and infused with the intent to intimidate and scare everyone else who shares that background causes a lot more ripples than an assault that doesn't have that motivation. I can be scared of crime when I leave my house, but I'm not afraid that someone will specifically target me because of my gender or race. I don't have to worry that someone, seeking to work out their own misogyny or racism will choose to do violence on my body to satisfy their own issues. If I did, you'd better bet that it would change my behavior. I'd be a whole hell of a lot more careful about what I said, where I went, and how I acted.

thingswithwings: how to defend against accusations of hating queers

Anyway, this is just a rambling list of examples, but I guess I'm listing them just because it frustrates me so much, the way these creators are all huge fucking cowards who aren't brave enough to write a queer character into their children's book, their tv show, their novel; huge fucking cowards who blame the episode running long or the whims of the story itself (the story just never went there! it's like novels are magical creatures with self-determined lives of their own and not texts written by people!) for the fact that queerness is reduced to subtextual or extratextual appearances; huge fucking cowards who will use this not-quite-queer not-quite-not-queer kind of character to simultaneously protect themselves from criticism (if Dumbledore's not gay in the actual book, then his unrequited love for a monster isn't problematic) and protect themselves from the accusation that they fail to include queers. It's a giant pile of bullshit.

It is really cold in Boston today. And the entire MBTA died. (Well, the bus system seemed to be in good working order. It got me to campus, at any rate.)

I've mostly been going to class, decluttering, and being ill. Sinus infection. Which would have been fine if I had been sick and then got over it, but noooo. At least at this point I can breathe through my nose again.

( Here are some links that are kind of old, since I fell off the face of the earth between compiling them and updating my freaking journal )

And finally, the subject line... when Ellie and I were getting groceries on Saturday, I decided I would bring my lunch two days this week (Monday, when I have a break between classes, and Wednesday, when I have a break between work and class), and I decided I would bring ham and cheese sandwiches and salad. So we got bread and ham and I insisted (correctly) that we still had an unopened, unexpired package of Swiss cheese at home.

We were so desperately hungry when we got home that we tore into the lunch supplies. But there was still ham and cheese enough to make one more sandwich, which I could then eat on Monday, after which I would take myself to the store and replenish the supplies.

But she ate my sandwich! :( I slept really late yesterday, and when I woke up, she had forgotten that the whole reason we had the ham and bread in the first place was so I could have lunches, and she had eaten my sandwich.

So I'm so hungry my stomach is trying to digest itself and there's still ten minutes before the fast food joints in the student center open for lunch.

[Originally posted at The Networked Society]

Many important pieces of paper call me Dominique, but I wouldn't say that's my "real name." More on that in a moment.

I've been a blogger/journaller (in varying proportions) since 2002, when I whirled through several journal sites before settling on LiveJournal. I have since switched my allegiance to Dreamwidth, which I have been using since closed beta.*

I will be cross-posting and cross-linking everything I contribute to this blog on Dreamwidth. For the class and anyone who happens upon The Networked Society by whatever means: you are welcome to follow me home to

sofiaviolet. For my regular readers: you can visit The Networked Society to read everyone else's posts.

I have almost always been pseudonymous online, for certain values of pseudonymous: Sofia Blackthorne and sofiaviolet aren't on my passport or anything, but they're both me in a way my legal name isn't. I use them everywhere. This isn't the first time I've made a connection between my offline, "official" self and my online/offline "real" self, but it is the first time I've made the connection publicly in a manner that funnels people from Dominique to Sofia.

So I'm not super-strict in enforcing separation of my "official" self's (fairly minimal) online presence and the vast majority of what I do online. I avoid directing people from Dominique to Sofia and exercise caution in directing them from Sofia to Dominique. Basic internet skills.

As for internal separation, talking to one group of friends about this topic and another group of friends about some other topic - I pretty much don't do it. This is an area where journal sites, like most social networking/social media** sites, kind of fall down on the job. Sites using the LiveJournal codebase (which include clones such as InsaneJournal and forks such as Dreamwidth) have filters (user-defined groups of people; entries can be restricted to a particular filter or to multiple filters), which can be used for this kind of separation as well as for privacy.

* I would like to devote another post to issues surrounding Dreamwidth: why the site came into existence, who has started using it and why, etc. I'd also like to talk about the experience of being an early adopter, something I'd never been before committing to Dreamwidth.

** In part three of her essay on Why Monetizing Social Media Through Advertising Is Doomed To Failure,

synecdochic/

denise (co-founder/co-owner of Dreamwidth) provides a nice disambiguation for social networking and social media:

The two terms are not interchangeable, ultimately. Social networking seeks to (for the most part) replicate a person's existing social web (think of sites like Classmates.com and LinkedIn.com); its purpose is to define your ties with others. Social media takes that one step further: it seeks to create and nurture social ties to others, through the content that you provide.

If you think of a site as a game, the "winning conditions" of the game will be a good clue as to whether the site is a social networking site or a social media site. If you win the game when you collect all of your existing friends, or collect as many new friends as possible, you're on a social network. If you win the game when you provide content that's interesting enough to get other people to build relationships with you, when your social currency is the content you provide, you're on a social media site.

This suggests to me that social media users may in fact benefit from talking to everyone about everything, in terms of creating these new relationships. Not simply because diverse content brings more diverse followers, but also because publicly available content brings more followers.

The Hathor Legacy: If audiences don’t want women as leads, why did Aliens succeed?

Let’s compare and contrast a few female leads and see if we get a pattern. As I said above, we don’t have enough to consider this statistical, but we’re just looking for a starting point. Besides Aliens, I can think of one other female-led action movie that was successful enough to at least spawn a franchise: Underworld (Kate Beckinsale). And two female-led movies regarded as financial disappointments would be Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron) and Catwoman (Halle Berry) – neither of which even made back their budgets on the gross revenues.

Tiger Beatdown: Why I Didn’t Delete Tiger Beatdown

But here’s the thing. Here’s why I’m not deleting Tiger Beatdown: They only do it if you’re good. Seriously. They only do it if your work reaches people, and convinces people, and if they literally cannot frame an opposing argument that they think might have any chance of winning. They can’t beat you in an argument; that’s why they abuse you, that’s why they try to make you feel as worthless and self-loathing and incapable of self-defense as any other abused person, that’s why they abuse you till you can’t work or even think about anything but being abused, that’s why they try to make you believe that it won’t stop till you stop publishing or die. That’s why they make you want to stop publishing. Or make you want to die. Because after all of it, after all the “bitch” and “cunt” and “die” and “dyke” and “ugly” and “smoker” (???) and “I’monna rape ye, woman,” there is actually one threat scarier than ALL of that: The threat that you’re right, and you’re going to win. And that’s the threat that you pose.

The Pursuit of Harpyness: Signs and Wonders

Unfortunately, after six months of Skype and e-mails, and spending quite a bit of money to visit him, I began to get the feeling that while things had improved somewhat over the past three years, they hadn’t improved enough. He says he wants to move back to New York soon…but, well, he told me the same thing three years ago. His shit is slightly more together, life-wise, but it turns out he’s not a whole hell of a lot more emotionally available. I kept extending myself, but he was doing a pretty crap job of meeting me halfway. He tends to be a brooder, and while dealing with his issues, likes to retreat into complete radio silence. Being met with a week or two of zero communication feels horrible when you’re in a long-distance relationship—especially when you notice that he updates his FB page, thus eliminating the possible explanation that he has died or is trapped under something heavy and can’t get to his computer.

Derangement and Description: This comic is brought to you by the letters E, A, and D

tim: Cause and Effect: Jared Loughner, Chinese Mothers, and Plausible Deniability

The conspiracy of silence in which Chua participates, and which psychologist Alice Miller (for example, in her book For Your Own Good) has written about, involves perpetuating this myth: What adults do to you is for your own good. Be grateful for it, and suck it up, cupcake. It's a politically useful myth. Kids who internalize it turn into obedient workers (bosses naturally replace parents) and into supporters of authoritarian politicians. They also tend to turn into bullying parents themselves. And the cycle goes on. But people like Chua aren't helping break it. Read Chua's essay while asking: "What is it doing for her to treat her children in all of the ways she describes?" This is a question she never seems to ask herself. But it's a question that would decenter her perspective and show that claiming that coercion is "for your own good" is the act of psychological coercion that enables all others.

flourish: Mental illness & Jared Loughner

Here is a summation of this: Schizophrenia may have been one of the factors leading to Jared Loughner's actions - I don't know - but it is not enough to say "well, he had schizophrenia," and shrug it off, as though there are no other factors. That's like saying of a rapist, "well, he's a man," and considering that the end of the discussion - no, actually, it's even worse. 99% of rapists are male. In comparison, only about 10% of people who commit homicide have schizophrenic disorders, or possibly less. And yet, if I were to make a statement like "Oh, well, he's a man - probably completely pumped with testosterone - that's all we need to know to explain why he's a rapist," people would (rightly) have my head on a pike. If I make a statement like "Well, she's schizophrenic - probably having delusions at the time - that's all we need to know to explain why she's a murderer," nobody gives a damn.

Recently

Ellie and I were going to have a roast for dinner last night, but it had gone off. We wound up getting Indian food at Ghazal instead, along with Courtney. And as we were settling the bill, other people we knew walked by. So we wound up following Cid, Jason, Daly, and Scarlet to JP Licks for ice cream (and then everybody got to say hi to Brashani and Christian too, when they stopped by), and then went back to Cid and Jason's apartment - in theory to play Clue, but we actually wound up watching Crank 2 and yelling at the shenanigans.

Then Ellie wanted to get some stuff from Woodcraft today, so I went with her because I wanted to get out of the house. I wound up getting some turning blanks: black and white ebony, rosewood, lignum vitae, and olivewood. (Not a new hobby! I make little wire trees in addition to jewelry, and thought it would be awesome to attach the wire trees to small pieces of actual wood.) I'm going to have to cut some of the blanks into smaller pieces, and probably surface them a little.

Links

( 6 links )

Recently

I bought more fiber! Only a few batts, though, and none of them were very expensive. Still need to learn ALL the steps for knitting projects, not just the part in the middle.

And I was chattering about Dreamwidth to Cory, and he started asking questions, and now I think I may have recruited his entire D&D group. Or at least him, for the purpose of a D&D blog. I foresee some unofficial Support work in my future...

Follow Friday

britcoms
Anything and everything relating to British comedies is welcome there (reviews, news, favourite clips, fanfiction, discussions about actors' other projects, and anything else I've forgotton to mention). The only no-no is filesharing of full-length, commercially available episodes; otherwise, join in and have fun!
aslinterpreters

fleecefiberyarn

Links

Disabled Feminists: Normalising Accessibility
Having accessibility notes does not create universal access. But it’s certainly a step in the right direction, of getting people to think beyond ‘special treatment‘ by positioning accessibility as something broadly relevant to most people, and something of equal importance as ‘who, what, where, when, why, and how.’ Which, for many of us, it is.
melannen: (no subject) [poll]
When I am talking about the novels, animated series, comics, web extras, role-playing games, audio dramas, and so on that are authorized by a particular fandom's owners but are not part of main canon, I call them:
emceeaich: Stay Alive
Many of our friends, family, and loved-ones who don't are constantly told, implicitly and explicitly, that they have no value, and ending one's life can be alluring. Fighting injustice is part of preventing suicide.
foxfirefey in lj_refugees: PayPal conduit offer
Somebody's comment on the last post made me feel like I should make an offer to be a PayPal conduit for people who can't pay Dreamwidth in other ways. I'll do this for at least two weeks from the date of this post.

Recently

I've been following the latest LJwtf and going to work, pretty much. Managed to wear a skirt today, and I think every single person I work with complimented it.

( Follow Friday )

Links

( 7 links )

Plans

Get rained on and blown about. Hope the power stays on long enough to to chat with C. for a good long while. Drive up to NH with Ellie and shadesong for the art retreat, and catch the bus back. Drag Ellie to see Scott Pilgrim, get groceries, and pick up the hair stuff I forgot last week. Make attempt number 4 at purple hair: bleach a thick streak and purple it, then update the rest to black.

oursin: More about money, extravagance, frivolity etc
Such is the power of a-synchronicity, that it was only after making yesterday evening's post that I picked up Katharine Whitehorn's Only on Sundays, which of course fell open at the essay 'As Rich As You Feel', the vague memory of which lay behind much of my thinking in that post.
thingswithwings: while waiting for pain to subside, I wrote this post
But the thing that really thrills me is seeing people get more and more efficient and matter-of-fact about their content notes, especially the content notes that are providing a warning for potentially triggering content. I don't credit kink bingo with this, but rather a shift in fandom thinking at large: I see more and more notes for things like forced feeding, self-harm, characters expressing racist sentiments, parental abuse, and all sorts of things - a range of things that reflects the broad manner in which people are beginning to think about how their story/artpiece might be read/viewed by someone with different life experiences than the writer's or artist's own. It feels to me, subjectively of course, that people in my fannish community are more and more willing to be upfront about what their story/artpiece contains, in order to provide the best possible information to potential readers. And that upfrontness, more importantly, is an indication of self-acceptance that I find extremely exciting and refreshing.
eruthros: some useful things on the internet
1. Are you, too, frustrated by the new lj facebook and twitter connect buttons under your comments? Fear not, for not one but two people have made magical solutions! Do not mess with tab order or people shall make greasemonkey scripts, lj.
emceeaich: (no subject)
The rest of the web is not the walled garden, Facebook is the walled garden, with a manifest destiny complex.
zulu: *flails* I just DON'T EVEN KNOW, livejournal. I JUST DON'T.
Not to mention people could be automatically crossposting their comments to any post you made. Triangulation is suddenly that much simpler for stalkers, abusive exes, and potential or current employers. Any work you've put in to keep your fandom presence separate from your real life or professional presence is suddenly tissue paper where once it was at least nice sturdy cardstock. Feedback on your latest PWP that says "Fuck, you write hot man-on-man action, I totally got off to that," could end up side-by-side with your grandma's cookie recipe.

As mentioned in this earlier post of mine:

I want to write about "lazy femme," which is what I call my gender presentation. In short: I like things like skirts and makeup, but I don't generally bother with these more effortful bits of gendered plumage.

I like femininity. I like pink and glitter and high heels and lace and whatever. That kind of stuff is fun to play with; I'm also attracted to femininity in other people.

( I am not, however, very good at doing femininity. )

To sum up: I guess I'm kinda sorta femme? Why am I not more femme? Because it's haaaaaaard. Therefore: lazy femme. The end.*

* This is a really sketchy and disjointed post; there may be more later. For now, it is done, but please feel welcome to ask for any clarifications and expansions in the comments.

Notes

I'll be out of town August 14-21. While I'll have internet access, I have no idea how much I'll be online. But rest assured I'll catch up even if I can't keep up.

Recently

Bosses and one reference desk person are away for the Society of American Archivists conference. Work is freakishly quiet.

Busy couple of days. Tuesday morning, I hauled a box of fun surprises to the post office (since the TSA probably frowns on taking rope in your carry-on), went to work, and then went to Diesel to meet up with shadesong and receive my BARCC auction winnings: a lovely flogger. After that, I ran into Andra and spent forever telling her about C. (she kept asking questions, and I am still flush with omgyay).

Yesterday I got some purple dye, and this morning before work, I put it in my hair to see what it would do. Not a lot, as it turns out: my hair is too dark. Now it's even darker, with something of a blue cast to it. While kinda disappointing, it's not actually surprising, and it's definitely not a bad result.

Leaving for Grand Forks at stupid o'clock Saturday morning. Clothes are basically picked out, and toiletries are selected and quart-size bagged.

Memes

Still open for questions.

I know so little about you, I'm afraid my question is quite pedestrian! What would your dream job be?

Pretty close to what I'm doing right now. I want to be an archivist full-time, as my real grownup job. But I'm not thrilled with the idea of meetings and managing other people, which my bosses at work have to do. I just want to work with the collections.

Placeholder

I want to write about "lazy femme," which is what I call my gender presentation. In short: I like things like skirts and makeup, but I don't generally bother with these more effortful bits of gendered plumage.

( 11 links )

Plans

More packing, go to bed, sleep, get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, finish packing, go to bed, get up, get on airplane, arrive in Grand Forks, get laid.

I promise I will update with actual things from my life! Some time later today (as it is now technically Monday).

But for now, the links: ( 10 links )

( 13 links )

( 15 links )

thingswithwings: some things to think about in this VVC discussion

The links in this post will almost invariably go to posts and comments that contain (or are right next to) a lot of ablism, cissexism, dismissal of peoples' disabilities, and general dismissal of social justice efforts. If you're feeling worn out by this conversation or unable to look at any more posts/comments of that nature, my recommendation is not to click. And not to read this post, perhaps. In addition to discussion of that stuff, this post also contains discussion of triggers for things like rape and violence. If you've run out of spoons for this debate, please scroll on by: I completely understand if you don't feel up to reading this. Especially as it's rather extravagantly tl;dr.

( further excerpts and my thoughts on them )

Helped four statues and a balloon clown move house yesterday!

It went pretty well - in spite of having to make two trips, the Uhaul got returned on time. And Ellie came by with the Subaru Wonder Wagon for physical assistance (being a person of greater upper body strength than, say, my puny self), transportation of items smaller than mattresses, and the driving from A to B of the five cats.

Injuries sustained by me: cardboard rash on my palms and the insides of my arms, two parallel paper cuts on my left wrist, at least three separate bruises on my left knee. And of course my muscles are Not Pleased, but that is why we have pain relievers. Oh, and we dropped a dry sink on my foot heading down the stairs at the old place. Thank god for my boots, because although it hurt at the time, there's no evidence of it today.

Then I went to work today! Only for the remaining few hours I could earn actual money for, but still. Ow to slinging boxes of documents and photos after that.

And tonight we had Cid and Jason over for dinner. Alfredo sauce, ravioli, olive oil and bread.

( links )

( links that are not about fandom )
( links that are about fandom )

I Refuse To Dignify This With A Title by

reni_days (Panic, Brendon/Spencer, in which Brendon is a rock star and Spencer writes fic about him, and then they fall in love)

FEMINIST HULK MAKE TWITTER FUN

Boston Area Rape Crisis Center blog: How You Can Help

kink_bingo: kinky vid recs

DREAMWIDTH: WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY?

copperbadge: It did get me thinking about fanfic in a slightly more abstracted way, and about why this current debate over it really enrages me so much. I don't normally weigh in on wanky matters, so to get me to make a statement about it, it must really have got under my skin. Now I think I know why.

recessional: Criminal Minds: London, 1435

You can do something about street harassment (makes me want an iPhone)

blushingflower in

kink_bingo:

Hi! The kink_bingo mods asked me to write an essay as part of the lead-up to the next round. You'll be seeing several more pieces in the coming days.

I told the mods I'd write about my own kink practice and how that relates to my interaction with kink fic. Which is of course a lot easier to say than to do.

Daily Song (right-click): My Chemical Romance - Desolation Row
Since they're what I listened to at work today.

1.

fairestcat: Some meta recs and a tangent about my own participation in these conversations

2.

helens78: geek conventions and body/self image

3.

sanguinity: There Are Some Battles That I Do Not, Will Not, or Can Not Fight

4.

yvi: Dev \o/

5.

roga: "APPARENTLY NORWAY IS SENDING TO THE EUROVISION THE LOVE CHILD OF JOHN SHEPPARD AND ADAM LAMBERT"

April 2014

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txtbx

Not nice, but friendly.

right between the scapulae, back of the heart

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