Since I seem to be reading a lot of fan fiction this year, and since Goodreads won't let me track it, I'm going to keep track of my reading here too. Counting books and fanfics of 50K words or over.

Currently reading:

• The Habitation of the Blessed, Catherynne M. Valente
• The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle
• Whose Body?, Dorothy L. Sayers
• Making the Connection, JessamyGriffith (waiting for update)

( In order of finishing )

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/907278.html, where there are comments.

Supposedly scent is the strongest memory trigger, but I don't know. Music has to be at least a close second. I'm working on a Very Large writing project right now--maybe novel-length, maybe just novella--and it is very very music-centric, and set around 2000-2001. So I've been digging through some of my old favorites, and it is nostalgia central around my house lately.

I was always your basic boring pop music kid in high school. I liked a few more obscure things, but that's it. College too. Then, during 1994 when I was married and agoraphobic and miserable, my first internet crush (a gothy angsty 19 year old from England who wrote poetry about how his life was over because his one true love was married and in Tennessee--it wasn't pretty) sent me a mix tape. (Incidentally, my ex-husband probably still thinks said internet crush was responsible for our marriage ending. He's wrong. Depression ended my marriage. The internet--and crushes therein--made me realize that there was a world outside of the apartment I hadn't really left in 18 months and that I didn't have to be miserable forever.) The mix tape was full of pretty much three things: Tori Amos, Sisters of Mercy, and The Mission UK. It blew my mind.

Literally, one of the first things I did after leaving the ex--LITERALLY, I stopped on the drive from Tennessee to Michigan as I was leaving him--was buy two CDs. One was "Fumbling Towards Ecstasy" by Sarah McLachlan. The other... I think it might've been "Yes I Am" by Melissa Etheridge. Everyone was talking about "Closer" by Nine Inch Nails, so I got my hands on "Downward Spiral" as quick as I could, which led to "Pretty Hate Machine". More Tori. ALL THE TORI.

So I've been spending all this time listening to music from that time period, and a few years after. I spent maybe a few months in 1995 as a wannabe club kid--for values of 'club kid' that equal the two clubs in Ann Arbor/Ypsi at the time. This weekend, I pulled up "Downward Spiral" for the first time in YEARS, and the memory was SO clear.

Me, 23 years old, dancing at a club that doesn't exist anymore to NIN's "Heresy", sweaty and pogoing and screaming along with the lyrics ("God is dead and no one cares, if there is a hell I'll see you there"). I still remember what I was wearing, because I felt impossibly daring: sheerish pale green crepe-y poet shirt I'd bought at a ren fair (GOD I miss that shirt) with a black bra underneath (OMG, visible!), black leggings, giant Celtic cross necklace, the closest things I had to stompy boots (not terribly close, really), and what felt like a LOT of makeup. I was pretty sure that the people I had come with had taken LSD in the bathroom before we left a friend's apartment (and I was relieved/disappointed they hadn't asked me). I myself might have actually been TIPSY.

As rebellions go, pretty damn mild, right? But man, it felt like EVERYTHING. It was everything, because it was the first time in my life I'd ever dared anything like it. (You could probably argue that getting married and dropping out of college at 19 was rebellion, but that was more the act of a desperately unhappy person.)

Drunk and dancing and screaming lyrics that blasphemed against everything I was brought up to believe. It's a powerful memory, one of my first glimpses at the possibility of shaping my life by own rules.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/924887.html, where there are comments.

Comment to this post, and I will list seven things I want you to talk about. They might make sense or they might be totally random. Then post that list, with your commentary, to your journal. Other people can get lists from you, and the meme merrily perpetuates itself.

I love these memes. So, this came from roseredhoofbeat, one of my Sherlock fan-buddies.

1) Slashfic and feminism
Whoo boy. This is a big topic. I have many varied and conflicting thoughts on this one. The biggest problem I have with slashfic is that--unless it's femme-slash, there aren't a lot of female characters featured. Despite the fact that I tend to create original female characters, they, by definition of the genre, tend to be relatively minor. (Okay, you could argue that Maggie in Defence Mechanisms is anything but minor given the pivotal plot role she plays, but... that's another story. Possibly an actual story, because really: who IS this woman and where can I find one?) So there's that.

It can also be the breeding ground for a lot of misogyny. The sheer levels of hate towards any female character with designs on someone's preferred pair is SCARY. (*coughIreneAdlercough*) And I know for some folks, the tendency to exoticize queer men is troubling. There's a LOT of very very unrealistic gay sex out there in slash-land. And a lot of strange ideas of what actually constitutes "sex". I just got a review on one of my stories today where the person said, "I'm glad they didn't actually have sex." And I thought, "Well what the hell did I just spend five pages writing, then?" But, in what is a pretty hetero-centrist mindset, if there isn't a penis penetrating something, it's not sex. Which makes me wonder what these people think women do together, but again, another topic for another day.

On the other hand, slash is a fantastic way to explore romance tropes without having to deal with the whole "Me Tarzan, you Jane" mentality so common in romance novels. I'm always bothered when a slash author feels the need to feminize one of the male characters (not gender-swap, that's a whole different matter), or equates certain sexual practices with gender roles. And as I've written about before, it's been very liberating for me personally. It's easier for me to write male/male romance than male/female. I think there's still a fear that if I write het romance, it'll be perceived as wish fulfillment from a fat single middle-aged crazy cat lady (whether it is or not). But if there's two men, well then. Any fear of perceived author self-insert is removed from the picture.

Annnnd, then there's the whole issue of the female gaze. I know not everyone who reads/writes slash is female, or even necessarily interested in men. But I'd guess that predominantly, that's the case. Venture somewhere like Tumblr (my favorite flavor of fandom crack right now) and there is SO much discussion about so-and-so's [pick a body part] it's not even funny. Well okay, I actually DO think it's funny. And much weeping and gnashing of teeth over how attractive various actors are. (Yup, I do it too, I'm--mostly--not ashamed. Have you SEEN the men in Sherlock?) There's also a strong component of "Yes, he's brilliant, he has a lovely mind, but can you please post that gif where he takes his scarf off again? I need to stare at it for a while." It's a very female-oriented community that talks a lot about sex, which is kind of novel for me.

2) BBC-verse fandom (Who, Sherlock, Merlin, pick one)
The BBC is a giant plot by the UK government to take over their old empire by inducing an utter lack of productivity in the rest of the world through the quality of their television shows. And also, they found Benedict Cumberbatch when his spaceship crashed at the foot of a BBC broadcast tower, because that man is not human.

3) Working in a shelter
It's honestly the best job I've ever had. I don't think I could ever go back to working in a strictly corporate setting again. Because I work on the fundraising side of things, I definitely see more of the good side of people than the folks who work directly with the animals, but the horror stories are hard to deal with sometimes. That's probably been the toughest realization, that no matter how good this place is (and I'd rate it as one of the best shelters in the country), you're never going to be able to save every animal, and you're never going to be able to educate every person. Once you get past that, it gets easier.


4) Your critters
I am a crazy cat lady. Right now, I live with four cats (Pooka, Rumpus, Neville, and Belle) and one dog (Maddie the golden retriever). Pooka was my first rescue pet, a tortico (her coloring is tortie with big white patches--see icon) adopted ten years ago. She's a little old lady now (at least 12, possibly older). Rumpus I also adopted ten years ago, but he was a tiny kitten. He's a 'fraidy cat who runs from everything. Likewise Neville the brown tabby, who was a foster cat that wound up staying. He runs from me every chance he gets, but will occasionally come and get attention. And Belle, my problem child. Two years ago, I was fostering kittens for the shelter, and it was a terrible year, for everybody. Orphaned kittens are fragile at the best of times, but that year every single kitten I fostered died. Except for Belle, and it was a near thing with her. She has been a pushy brat from the very beginning, and she stole my heart. When she turned out to be the only survivor, I couldn't give her up. (Incidentally, I haven't really fostered since. That was a TOUGH year.)

And Maddie. My 8 year old baby girl, you can read all about how she wound up with me here.

5) Turning 40
Which I am doing in about 3 and a half months. (July 7th!) I'm kind of excited about it. My thirties have been full of a lot of suck, but mostly, the kind of suck that results in personal growth in a major major way. I'm hoping that in my forties I'm able to start taking advantage of all this growing I've been doing. I'm a little sad that turning 40 makes some things less likely (the idea that I'm ever going to settle down and have a family is growing more and more distant), but overall, I'm pretty optimistic.

6) Size acceptance
( For reference, me: )
Oh god. Quite possibly my salvation. Some time in my 20s I discovered the size acceptance or fat acceptance movement through an email list. I have been fat my entire life. I think I started getting chubby around the age of 4. My mother dealt with it in THE WORST possible manner, and as a result I spent most of my childhood on diets and hating myself, and have wound up with a serious eating disorder. The discovery that there were a WHOLE GROUP OF FAT PEOPLE OUT THERE, and that they didn't hate themselves, and that they didn't spend every day wishing they were someone else--that was pretty revolutionary for me.

It's been about 15 years, and if I'd never stumbled on to the crazy notion that I deserved love and respect regardless of my weight, I don't know that I would have come as far down the path of healing as I have. It's still difficult. I am a very large person, through a complex combination of genetics and mental illness and addiction and poor habits. Other people are varying sizes for their own complex set of reasons. Just accepting that, and accepting that it is NEVER as simple as "well you should just walk more" or whatever the latest line of diet bullshit is, has brought a lot of peace for me.

7) Being a fanfic author
I love it. I unabashedly love it. My brain still tries to tell me sometimes that I should be writing "real" stories, and that I CERTAINLY shouldn't be wasting my time/talent/whatever writing SLASH (the brain says snootily), but mostly I'm past it. I get nothing but pure JOY from telling these stories. The fact that I have a growing audience is still blowing me out of the water. It makes me squee and dance around my apartment. The only time I got anything approaching this kind of charge writing original fiction was if I got a rejection letter that didn't suck quite as much as the others (or the couple of times I got an acceptance). Seriously. The one rejection letter that I got that was written by the head editor of a magazine as opposed to his assistant? That was pure gold. :)

But with fanfic, I post stuff, and people like it. I mean, I'm sure there are people that hate it, but they've been quiet so far. Yesterday, someone actually asked me if they could translate one of my stories into Chinese, so non-English speakers could read it. CHINESE. A couple of people have been clamoring for artwork based on that same story. ("Perchance to Dream"--shamelessly short and schmoopy.) I'm approaching 'somebody pinch me' levels of glee. Because it's not quite real.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/923325.html, where there are comments.

Here's something I wouldn't think was possible: I've improved as a writer over the past ten years, despite having hardly written a word. And I think it's nothing but a case of being ten years older. I understand people better now. My worldview isn't as black and white. I'm writing things now that I would never have been able to write ten years ago. I don't just mean sex, although that's certainly a big part of it. I used to hold back with some of my writing, fearing--somewhere deep down--that if I wrote a character as wanting something, or being a certain way, that someone would think that that was what I wanted, or how I was. And I was so determined to be a "good girl", even at 30.

Probably the first revolutionary act of my writing was when I started The Exile's Daughter (2003) with the main character saying, "Fuck". (The whole thing was a terrible first line, but at the time, it was exhilarating.) It's not like I never said the word, but I don't know that I'd ever included it in fiction before. The second revolutionary act was writing "Sic Transit Gloria" (also 2003, which is still one of my favorite stories, and I'm kind of sad it never got published): main character of indeterminate gender (at least until the end), grappling with seeing his/her former teen idol now aged and damaged, but still feeling that pull. That was probably the first time I wrote about any character actually feeling sexual desire. Hadn't done it before then, nope nope nope. All of my characters were waist-up beings only. And I think they suffered for that.

This isn't to say I never wrote about sex at all. I was an avid online roleplayer in the late 90s, and for all that pretty much everybody publicly denigrated the idea, there were a LOT of people roleplaying sex, me included. That was different though. That wasn't meant for public consumption--and in my case particularly, was tied up in a lot of messy feelings for my roleplaying partner(s). That was personal. And deeply embarrassing, a dirty little secret.

And now, nearly 40, I find myself in an online community that is smart, engaging, and celebrates the ever-living hell out of sex. Publicly. And very vocally. It took some getting used to. And it was embarrassing at first. The first time I tried to read slash, I kept mentally skimming past the characters' names because it seemed so WRONG. Fortunately (unfortunately?) the two writers I started with are stellar, and I somehow accidentally started with nuclear weaponry-level slash, instead of something milder.

(Yes, fellow Sherlock fans, while greywash may have written the first S/J sex scenes I ever read, the first actual slash-slash I read was... Two Two One Bravo Baker. Is it any wonder I've imprinted on abundantlyqueer like a demented baby duck?)

So it is about sex, but it isn't. The characters I used to write were sterile in the truest sense of the word. They were missing huge giant swaths of human experience. They weren't messy, they weren't terribly damaged, necessarily, they didn't want things that weren't completely okay to want. Because I wanted so desperately to be "normal" and "good", I tried to make them "normal" and "good". Which made a lot of them pretty boring.

Since I last wrote seriously, I've discovered just how messy and broken I am. I've started putting myself back together. I know who I am now. I know what got me here, what broke me, what's healing me. I am able (most of the time) to accept myself as a sexual being, even a sexual being who's made unconventional (and sometimes poorly thought-out) choices. I am no longer so utterly locked-down as a human being that I can't even contemplate fictional characters who aren't also locked-down.

And now I'm playing in this sandbox where the two main characters are so utterly, gloriously human and broken and tough, and I'm finally in a place where I can appreciate that, and play with it. And far from finding it threatening or scary, it's liberating as HELL. And for that, I owe fandom one hell of a debt.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/921897.html, where there are comments.

Can someone recommend me academic studies of fandom and fan fiction? I've read a little bit of Henry Jenkins (where did my copy of Textual Poachers go??), but I want more. I'm particularly interested right now in the intersection of fan fiction/slash and feminism. Because I'm having thinky-type thoughts and some of them make me squirm in a bad way, but some of them are making my brain go "Dude", and I want to read other people's thoughts.

You can take the girl out of the lit-crit classes, but you can't take the lit-crit classes out of the girl...

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/915202.html, where there are comments.

There are so many things I want to do tonight, and none of them have anything to do with my homework.

Damn.

Okay, I'll elucidate.

I've got all seven Sherlock episodes (two seasons and the unaired pilot) sitting in Premiere Elements waiting for me to see if I remember how to use this program.

I also have six stories demanding attention from me, and one of them is actually even not Sherlock/Doctor Who fic. Or fic at all.

Also, Tumblr is being particularly entertaining.

And--I realize I'm late to this train--I just realized how amazing Adele is.

So yeah. Coding a webpage is waaaay down on my lists of interests right now. But alas, it's due on Wednesday. So.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/902424.html, where there are comments.

I have, much to my surprise, fallen madly in love.

After Boogie died, I'd planned to remain dog-free for a while, to give the cats time to settle (especially Rumpus, who hated Boogie fiercely). I thought that MAYBE, come spring-time, I'd think about it again, at the earliest.

Well, this week, one of my co-workers started bringing one of our dogs into the admin office. She's an approximately 8 year old golden retriever, found abandoned in a nearby town, tied to a lamppost. She's clearly had several litters of puppies, and when she was found, she had a severe infection in her girly bits and a ominous mass on her back.

Now she's healthy again: the mass biopsied as just an infected hair follicle, the infection is gone because, well, those bits are gone. :)

In the office, she was timid but very friendly, wanting to check everybody out, but not sure if she should. She stole my heart almost immediately by coming over and laying her head in my lap so she could gaze up at me.

She is absolutely beautiful, and one of the calmest, sweetest dogs I've ever seen. I took her home last night to see how the cats would react, and they either ignored her, or grudgingly checked her over. She, of course, pretty much ignored them.

Someone trained this dog. She has nearly impeccable leash manners, and knows commands like "sit" and "lie down".

So, she's going home with me today, for good.

( Meet Madison, Maddy for short. )

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/888148.html, where there are comments.

I attended a small conference yesterday hosted by one of our software vendors, and I wanted to write up some thoughts about it really quick. It's probably the first real "networking" I've ever done. The conference-y stuff was fine, tips about the software, attempts to sell upgrades, that sort of thing. The topic groups were really interesting though. I, of course, sat in on the Internet Strategy and Marketing group, hoping to learn some new ideas.

Here's what I learned: HSHV is way ahead of the local curve when it comes to internet strategy. Like, seriously. The first question we discussed was "Do you have an internet strategy?" There were two of us who said yes in a room of more than a dozen. And the other person (an executive with a very well-known Detroit organization) is just getting started. I wound up getting quizzed for a good 20 minutes about what we're doing and why. I heard horror stories. "It took us 3 weeks to get a Facebook post approved, and by then it was too late."

I walked away from the meeting having passed out several of my cards and feeling a little like a local expert--but more on that in a moment.

I am SO lucky. I work in a culture of macro-management, with a LOT of freedom to try new things. The most successful things I've managed to implement (like our Facebook page, our email newsletter, etc.) came from someone--often me, but not always--going, "Hey, wouldn't it be neat if we...?" And higher-ups saying, "Go for it. Let's see how it does." We've had some glorious successes, and some massive, bombing failures.

It sounds like a lot of local non-profits haven't caught on to the fact that the internet is a goldmine for groups like us, both in terms of staying in touch with people and fundraising. I heard a lot of "Well, our constituents don't use the internet" and "our board of directors doesn't think it's important" and most of all "we don't have the staff to handle it". If I were an entrepreneurial sort (and I'm SO not, experience shows that I suck as a freelancer), I'd see a great big business opportunity there.

From a purely selfish standpoint, it was a huge ego boost. I came away feeling like my particular (and often peculiar) set of skills are very valuable in the non-profit world. That I would be asset elsewhere, as well as here. It was a little weird feeling like I knew more about the topic than pretty much anybody in the room. I mean, to be utterly honest, I'm used to feeling that way in certain classroom settings, but never in a corporate setting. I felt a little bit like some of those folks would like to steal me. :)

Which is really weird, because in a larger corporate setting, I don't think I'd be as valuable. I don't specialize enough. I don't know enough code and programming to be a web developer, I don't know enough about design to be a full-time designer, and I don't know enough about user experience and SEO to do that full-time. But--I can do just enough of all three to be invaluable to a small organization that can't afford a designer AND a developer AND a strategist.

So here's what I propose: non-profits all need their own resident geeks. Someone who's passionate about the non-profit's mission, unabashedly geeky in all things internet, curious, and eager to learn anything that will help the non-profit--to self-teach if necessary. And then they need to let that person loose and get out of their way.

Maybe I'm not entrepreneurial, but by god, I think I could start doing me some preaching on this subject.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/876908.html, where there are comments.

I am inexplicably cheerful and energetic today.

This, despite nearly feeding myself nearly-rotten eggs for breakfast. The sell-by date was February 11, and for some reason in my head, I decided this was only a few days gone (instead of, you know, TWO WEEKS), so the eggs MUST BE fine. I cooked my sausage, then fried up the eggs with no hint of trouble--they didn't smell while cooking! Then I happened to break a yolk and take a bite, and UGH! Not rotten, but definitely not right. :( At least I still had sausage and toast. And coffee. Maybe I can blame the cheerful energy on two cups of coffee instead of my usual one.

Seriously. I've been a chattering magpie on Facebook and Twitter this morning.

At any rate, I've done some badly-needed housework, a bit of freelance work, and am making plans to spend part of the day with a computer game--as yet undetermined which one. Has to be one I already own or that is free. May wind up being Oblivion*, as I watched the trailer for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, and fell in love again. Oblivion is technically a PS3 game for me, but I did suddenly remember that hey, new computer--I can play computer games!

So yeah, back to the web design mines for now. And maybe some lunch. We'll see if I can continue my streak of not poisoning myself.

* - Although, god help me, I'm hearing the siren song of the MMORPG again.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/858832.html, where there are comments.

I wrote this in response to an absolutely heartbreaking post by yuki_onna, also known as the brilliant Catherynne M. Valente. She talks about how she "used to be beautiful" (she still is, believe me), and how much she struggles with body hatred. As you can imagine, this raised a lot for me.


I wasn't going to comment, but ...your post and all of the comments after are breaking my heart.

I've been overweight all of my life, and it's due a large part to dieting from a young age, and a response to serious emotional and mental abuse. I joke that I dieted my way up to 400 lbs, but it's not really a joke. I went on my first diet when I was *seven* years old, and was continually on and off them through high school. My metabolism is well and truly fucked.

That said, I did manage to lose 80 pounds my junior year in high school, and kept it off for a couple of years. In my late 20s and early 30s, I went through a similar feeling to what you describe. I was so beautiful then, I was so confident, I was so happy, etc.

But you know what? I wasn't. It's a lie. When I was a senior in high school--arguably the time when I was most conventionally attractive--I thought I was huge and unlovable. Body hate isn't something that just comes on us suddenly. It comes early and hangs on. I wonder if maybe you're idealizing a time when you still had a lot of the same insecurities and body hatred, but it's veiled over by that golden mist of nostalgia.

What I finally realized, just over the past 10 years (I'm 38), is that I HAVE to work on loving my body as it is, regardless of size. Because if I don't love my body, why the hell would I want to take care of it? If I'm at war with it, and punishing it, how can I expect to ever have any sort of mental peace?

Right now, I weigh just under 400 lbs. Over the past year, I've dropped maybe 40 lbs or so, not really by trying, but because I've started learning how to take care of myself, both emotionally and physically--mostly emotionally. I've started dealing with the eating disorder that started in childhood, when I ate because that was the only comfort I got aside from books. I've started dealing with the fact that I WAS abused as a child, and that I am not a broken, weak, damaged person, but someone who survived against the odds.

And I'm fat. Really really fat. There are reality shows about people as fat as me. Almost every day I get reminders that OMG I'M SO FAT I'M GOING TO DIE AT ANY MINUTE. (Incidentally, my health is pretty damn good for someone who's too sedentary.) I could respond to that by dieting--which not only doesn't work, but makes my emotional issues go batshit--or by fighting it off, and loving myself anyway. I am the only person who will advocate for me. I'm reaching a point, finally, when I understand my own value and importance.

I wish nothing but happiness and peace for you. I hope you find a path that gives you as much of both as you can stand. And for the record, add me to the list of people who think you're stunning. You may not remember me, but I saw you at WisCon a few years back, and ended up following you from panel to panel because I was so entranced.

This entry was originally posted at http://roane.dreamwidth.org/857868.html, where there are comments.