azarias

OTW Stuff

Tue, 20 Jun 2023 02:01:29 GMT

On the off chance you've looked here to see if I have anything else to say about tbe OTW, I don't. I've resisted Making A Statement because god, organizing my thoughts on this seems exhausting. Absolutely everything I've said has been off the cuff and it's likely to stay that way. If you have questions, drop a note in the comments. No promises that I'll answer. Anon commenting is on and IP logging is off. In case of tomfoolery, I will change those settings and delete comments as I see fit.

If you'd rather have the perspective of someone who is both a current volunteer with the OTW and subject to systemic racism both within the org and in fandom more broadly, please talk to Kutti: https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org/134130.html They have much more current information than I do.

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An update on Winterfox/Requires Hate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew

Fri, 07 Nov 2014 03:00:53 GMT

Author Laura Mixon has published an extensive report on Sriduangkaew's activities under a decade's worth of names, including bullying Sriduangkaew has engaged in this year.

Of particular note, author Athena Andreadis confirms the rumors of Sriduangkaew's recent attempts to blacklist authors from publishers, reviewers, and cons. It happened to her.

I'm going to update my own roundup post with the links others have kindly provided me, however I'm probably not going to have time to do that until this weekend. Meanwhile you can find those links in the comments here or follow the pingbacks from Mixon's post.

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fic: The Fairy Wife (Doctor Who)

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 23:07:54 GMT

Title: The Fairy Wife
Pairing: gen
Rating: G
Words: 2000
Notes: Background Doctor/Master, background Susan Foreman/David Campbell. Aralias kindly betaed this for me like three freaking years ago and I took this long to post it because I suck.

Summary: It's a bedtime story about a fairy who loved a man and a Raven who most certainly didn't love a Magpie. Certainly.

( The Fairy Wife )

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Winterfox/RequiresHate/Benjanun Sriduangkaew roundup post

Fri, 17 Oct 2014 23:18:48 GMT

Update 10/20: RequiresHate has posted an apology for the actions of her RH blog. However, she's also disclaimed responsibility for threats given out under the Winterfox brand. She claims that some, such as threatening an Asian woman with being raped by dogs, was the work of an impostor. I haven't been able to find any earlier mentions of an impostor, but large swathes of both the RH blog and Winterfox's backlog of comments remain deleted, so that's probably impossible to verify unless a witness wants to speak up. She's also apologized on A Bee Writes, her professional bog.

There's a theme of "I was an asshole but I've gotten better as the years have passed," which is something most of us have probably lived through ourselves -- however, Winterfox harassed a rape victim for six months as late as last year, so any decrease in assholery is going to be a very recent phenomenon. Intentionally or not, these apologies seem to further the narrative that the controversy is primarily about RequiresHate's book reviews rather than Winterfox's decade-long troll campaign. They also repeat assertions that all of Sriduangkaew's bad behavior was in the distant past, despite her harassment continuing into 2013 at least.

An open question to pro sci-fi: since Sriduangkaew has admitted she was wrong, can we stop arguing it's okay to threaten women of color with rape and assault if someone we like is doing it?

I had to stop following this wank for a couple of days to meet some RL deadlines. I wished someone had made a roundup post to summarize what's going on -- so I'm making one. If you're not interested in seeing some of your favorite sci-fi and fantasy authors make excuses for abusers, enable trolling, and belittle women of color who have received rape threats, stop reading now. It gets ugly.

This post is a work in progress and the wank is ongoing. Please feel free to comment with updates, corrections, and discussion. Anon comments are turned on, but I will delete with extreme prejudice at the first whiff of trolling.

Here's a timeline of events for this most recent blowup.

( Who is Benjanun Sriduangkaew? )( What the hell's happening? ) ( Where discussion's taking place. ) ( Who's siding with whom. ) ( Rumors, Distortions, and Lies (with the Occassional Truth) )

The long and short of it is that there are two sides in this wank. One side, Sriduangkaew's side, thinks it's cool to threaten women of color with being raped by dogs. The other side thinks that's bullshit. Let me make it more explicit: Sriduangkaew is a racist, misogynistic bully, and those people defending her are of necessity defending racism and misogyny.

Think about that for a minute.

Sriduangkaew isn't the worst asshole in sci-fi. That means that sci-fi has a problem with assholes, not that it's okay to threaten women with rape and murder. When your best defense is "but little Timmy did it first" you're thinking on the level of a particularly spiteful five year old. When you want abuse victims to stay silent because speaking up might hurt their abuser's career you're contributing to abuse.

Many of the people currently defending Sriduangkaew and trying to silence her victims are people who spoke out loudly against James Frenkel and Rene Walling, two recent abusers whom the sci-fi community harbored and enabled for years before finally rejecting. Just goes to show that it's all in who you know -- exactly the same things that were said in defense of Frenkel, Walling, and every other abuser in history are getting said now, by people who know better. Sriduangkaew's friends are trying to spin this story to make her the victim and make the victims afraid. To hell with that.

Crossposted at Dreamwidth.

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fic: Carry Me to Morning (Pacific Rim/Black Jewels fusion)

Fri, 15 Nov 2013 04:27:52 GMT

I wrote a thing! And posted it where people can see! It's also on AO3.

Title: Carry Me to Morning
Pairing: Herc/Mako
Rating: R-ish
Summary: A fusion of Pacific Rim with the Black Jewels universe by Anne Bishop. Mako Mori is the youngest and the last Queen among the Blood still fighting the savage invasion from the Kaiju Realm. To secure the power of her Jewels, she must take one last step into adulthood -- with Lord Herc Hansen's help.

( Carry Me to Morning )

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Pacific Rim fic exchange letter

Tue, 22 Oct 2013 17:45:21 GMT

This is a placeholder post. This is only a placeholder. Do not panic. Proceed to your nearest civil shelter.

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fic: Broaden Your Horizons [The Authority]

Tue, 09 Jul 2013 03:44:30 GMT

Title: Broaden Your Horizons

Pairing: Apollo/Midnighter.

Rating: Porn.

Wordcount: 4,000

Warnings: Somewhat dubious consent.

Summary: Apollo gets turned into a woman, and he and Midnighter have sorta-het sex. The end.

Archived on AO3

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Temporarily disabling anon comments

Wed, 22 May 2013 05:15:12 GMT

Pummeled with spam!

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Oops.

Fri, 17 May 2013 05:57:18 GMT

So I accidentally wound up on a six hour drinking binge with some coworkers I don't normally have a lot to do with. In fact I'm only 80% certain I have their names right.

And I'm 3,000 miles from home.

But I spoke not one word that was not true and no more than 30 that are going to be awkward to explain tomorrow \o/

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Tue, 12 Mar 2013 15:16:13 GMT

My cat has a butthole infection.

This is my life.

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New Crossfit injury!

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 03:09:18 GMT

Location: elbow

Type: big ol' welt

Cause: trying for double-unders

How: I don't even know

Seriously how do my body parts get in these places on their own when I can't get them to bend like that when I want them to?

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Mon, 04 Mar 2013 02:02:27 GMT

What we have here is a woman who went plhebh on the entire Internet for a while. Happens periodically. No brain for anything more taxing than Facebook. The brain seems to have come back around, though, so I'll be catching up.

Pleasures:

The Comics Big Bang hilariously inappropriate crossover fic continues apace. I got bogged down in a bout of linearity for a while. The story's mostly flashback, and most of the scenes don't have to be in any particular order, but for a while there I absolutely could not write out of sequence. Also I lost my notes on half the characters and how I'd translated them between universes. Rose Tattoo lol who's that? I finally got the framing story hammered out well enough that whatever was eating at me switched off, and I've got the flashbacks sectioned off in Scrivener to be completed as they come to me.

Jenny Quantum wrinkled her nose. Adults liked the weirdest things. She resolved to ignore it for as long as she could. “I don’t understand,” she said, which wasn’t something you’d hear from her often. “You really think I brought you here? I went down to Hell, sure, but only to the Garden, and I didn’t see you there. I didn’t see anybody there!”

Sparks paused with the cigarette halfway to her mouth and just looked at Jenny for a moment. “You went to Hell,” she said. “Sure. Perfect day trip for a ten year old.”

“I’m eight,” Jenny corrected without thinking.

Sparks laughed and puffed more smoke. “Shows what I know about kids. But here’s the thing. You didn’t see me in Hell because I wasn’t there. Witch doesn’t become demon dead, just dead dead. I spent a long time denying it, back when I was alive, but these days I’m pretty damned sure I’m Witch – and so are you. And I also distinctly recall that I am dead, which you are not, but here I am.

“So, little Sister, since it stands to reason people don’t come halfway back from the Darkness just to have a smoke, there’s got to be a reason I’m here. Let’s you and me figure out what that is.” She rested her hands on her knees with the half-burned cigarette dangling just beside her Black ring, and looked at Jenny frankly. It reminded Jenny a lot of how Draca looked at her. She liked that.

I've been cooking fairly regularly lately. I enjoy it, I'm decent at it, and it gives me a sense of control over my life that I badly need. Best dish of the past month is rooster Corfu, a Greek ragout made with a rooster I butchered on a friend's farm three days before I stewed him. That was ... well, I'll probably do a post on it. Maybe. It wasn't fun and it's something I'm happy to pay someone else to do for me, but I'll do it again when I have the chance, too.
Have given up on CourseRa for the moment, as classes always seem to start at the worst possible time for me. Which is false, it's all perception and anxiety banging together on my end, but it isn't worth the hassle. What I don't need in my life right now is more deadlines. I've downloaded Harvard's CS50 course instead and am going to do it on my own schedule. My actual putting me in debt to get a degree work, on the other hand, is going weirdly well. My ability to fake my way through high-level philosophy is coming back to me (You think I understand this stuff? Seriously?), and Immunology turns out to make a lot of sense when I sit down and chart out the pathways on paper instead of staring at the book in horror.
I'm about halfway to RXing Filthy Fifty in Crossfit! I need to get my knees higher on knees to elbows, add four more inches to my box jumps, and, you know, do double unders at all. But that's attainable! I can handle all the weights, albeit slowly.

Annoyances

I am about six weeks past the point I was scheduled to be a homeowner, and still no closing date. No rejection, either, but one delay after another, with the loan processor swearing that all the paperwork is in one day, and me waking up the next to an urgent email about the three other pieces of paper I have to get turned in STAT. I want my kitchen.
I've let my squat form slip in Crossfit. I think I got over excited about succeeding at it to begin with, and let myself get into bad habits by not paying attention. I got suspicious when I kept losing my balance while doing overhead squats last week and I asked the coach to record me while I did a few. Bingo: not even getting past parallel on the squat, and my arms going all over the place compensating for what my legs aren't doing right. It's messing up all my lifts. Going to have to cut down the weight and work on that.
I haven't even touched my Doctor Who fic in months, and that's after <lj user="aralias"> was kind enough to beta the stand-alone prologue for me. Last I touched it, I figured out how to get a scene to break that had been dragging on and on. Hopefully I can go back to it once I get some more of the Big Bang fic out of the way and pick up with the energy I'd misplaced.

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Fitness

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 00:53:07 GMT

Last night I tripped over my own feet while walking down the street. I made a three point landing! ... on the wrong three points. Managed to skin both knees and my right shoulder. Shoulder.

( Crossfit )

The net result is that I'm sprawled in a hot saltwater bath, wherein I intend to stay until I either regain the ability to lift my arms over my head or slip beneath the waves and drown, whichever comes first.

I'm going to take the opportunity to work on my Crossfit playlist, because my gym has ruined Eminem for me. I like Eminem. But every time. Every WoD ever is set to Eminem. And it's over-synthesized sellout Eminem, not raw, sharp rhymes Eminem. So far my list includes songs by Dessa, Lady Gaga, and David Allan Coe, a combination which I think is the musical equivalent of a bar brawl.

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January is over in 3 days.

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 04:16:40 GMT

I cannot. Fucking. Wait. Screw you, January.

( Whining. )

The frankly bizarre result of this is that I've signed up for a comic book Big Bang with a rough draft due in May, and I'm fusing The Authority with Black Jewels. This is a thing that is happening. Working title "Jenny Sparks: The Secret History of the Dark Court." I'm hoping that between now and then I'll think of something less ... less.

How many different ways can I call Apollo the Warlord Prince of Ebon Rih? We'll find out!

( Crossfit. )

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The roast turned out! \o/

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 16:51:18 GMT

Is it still a roast if it's not roasted?

Regardless, thanks everyone for the advice. I really do think the paprika y'all recommended did the trick in covering the freezer-burn. I added some onions, garlic, celery, and carrots, as well as some grainy mustard and ye olde packet of onion soup mix. Too much onion? Impossible. Filled with water about halfway.

About 11 hours on low in the crock pot, then I dipped out most of the broth, skimmed the fat, added some balsamic vinegar to brighten up the flavor, and reduced it on the stove by a lot. Cut the remaining fat off the meat, removed the vegetables from the crock, shredded the meat and added it back in with the reduced broth. As an experiment, I took some of the very soft vegetables and forced them through a sieve back into the pot. It changed the texture a bit, but overall didn't do much.

In conclusion, the meat's on the dry side, but tasty enough, with a good sauce. Conditions outside are what I'm inclined to call a freaking blizzard, though people who are natives of this frozen wasteland might just call a heavy snow. They're crazy. In other words, I'm really happy not to leave the house today and to eat some resurrected cow and maybe some mashed potatoes and steamed peas.

And because I don't feel like making a new post, here're some Yuletide recs. I'm slowly meandering through the collection. I have no plan.

Jingu All the Way, Journey to the West, gen, 2300 words. Monkey's mouth gets him in trouble, as usual, and his good heart gets him out again. I read this aloud to some friends yesterday, alcohol might've been involved, and it works wonderfully as a tale told by mouth, and wonderfully as a Christmas story. I can't claim to have read Journey to the West all the way through (seriously it's long) but I'm familiar with the story and familiar with the kind of storytelling it represents, and this fic is a great partner to both.

Though I Sang in My Chains Like the Sea, Rivers of London, gen, 11000 words. I waited until bedtime to read this one, and took a deep breath to brace myself before opening it, because I was quite frankly expecting a dull story about Nightingale being Sad Gay. I was very happy to be wrong! This is genuine casefic, matching canon in form and tone, and exploring yet another aspect of the magical yet rational world of Newtonian magic. Nightingale is in fact gay -- is there word of god on this? I'm 90% sure he's supposed to be queer in canon, but as far as I know it's never said, aside from Peter momentarily assuming he was being cruised in the first book -- but that's not the point of the story or of his narration. The story is about how much the world has changed in his long life, and how he chooses to approach his changing reality. ♥♥

Her Need Will I Answer, Valdemar: Tarma & Kethry, gen, 8000 words. Another one that feels like it could come from canon, complete with a Mercedes Lackey-style moral -- though thankfully lacking the preachiness I associate with Lackey these days. Our heroines are out of the mercenary business, but that magic sword Kethry's hauling around isn't in the habit of caring whether or not she's getting paid for rescues these days. Need drags them on yet another noble adventure, involving a very special, very ... pale horse. The end feels a bit rushed, like the author was running out of steam by that point, but the plot is satisfying and Kethry's introspection on her relationship with her family, her sister, and her sword is note-perfect.

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Adventures in ... stuff

Tue, 25 Dec 2012 02:31:41 GMT

( Crossfit )

Squat snatch: still the devil.

Cooking question. Two of my roommates have moved out and I've been in a territorial frenzy rearranging the kitchen to suit me -- the remaining roommate doesn't cook to speak of, so as long as her things are within reasonable reach, I'm free to do as I like without conflict. I've found a chunk of bottom round roast that's been sitting in the freezer since ... well, that's unimportant. It looks intact and I'm willing to take my chances. (Read: I'm cheap.) I'm thinking the crock pot and about ten hours is the answer, but wondering how to season it to minimize any taste of freezer burn. Soy sauce, garlic, onion, obviously. What else?

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Beta request: Doctor Who

Sun, 16 Dec 2012 04:07:20 GMT

Would anyone like to beta a short Doctor Who fic? About 2,000 words, in the form of a fairy tale. Probably requires that you be familiar with One, or at least know who Susan was and where she went, and not be repulsed by Doctor/Master.

No great hurry. It's just the prelude to something more substantial, but it stands alone so I might as well get it finished.

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fic: Orientation [Samurai Warriors]

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 03:30:26 GMT

Post-facto author's note: This is an odd one. It's another Yuletide entry, '09. I volunteered for the fandom on a lark -- my decisions in life are not known for being well thought-out, and Yuletide is no exception. I mean, it's a beat 'em up video game. I got a request for a pairing that I'd never even considered. But instead of flailing panic, I reacted with "Huh." And I wrote. I cheated on the pairing -- this is 9/10ths gen -- and took advantage of the author also requesting a different character I could use as my POV. Overall it was fun to write and I think it still holds up as a fluff piece.

Title: Orientation
Author: azarias
Pairing: gen, more or less
Wordcount: 3,000
Warnings: cruelty to dragons
Notes: Five things Masamune Date learned about life in the Toyotomi army, thanks to Keiji playing tour guide. This story plays merry hell with the canon time line, and any vestiges of historical accuracy are purely coincidental.

( Orientation )

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Monday Crossfit: Azarias can't do squat(s)

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:52:00 GMT

I've been doing Crossfit three times a week since mid-October. (Except for the last week of November where I said "fuck it" and skipped the entire thing because my arms were weaker than a Congressman's excuses in a gay bar bathroom and I just wanted to rest.) I have Thoughts. Mostly I have a lot of whining about how much everything sucks, but Thoughts as well.

( Deep thoughts, indeed. )

Not gonna lie, though, I'm jumping ship to a better robot body once those become available.

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fic: GNARGH Means I Love You [The Authority]

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:45:09 GMT

Post-facto author's note: Written for my very first Yuletide, back in 2006. This started life as an excruciatingly long joke about Starbucks. Fortunately that stopped. It was also intended to be the first of four or five fics about Apollo and Midnighter facing inappropriate slash cliches, with this as the "sex pollen" entry. Others were to include "aliens made them do it," "soulbonds," and "pretending to be gay." Honestly, the soulbonds one is still funny, so there's a nonzero chance I'll finish it some day.

Title: GNARGH Means I Love You
Author: azarias
Pairing: Apollo/Midnighter
Wordcount: 1,400
Warnings: Those doughnuts will never recover. NSFW language.

Summary: Immediately post-Revolutions, Apollo and Midnighter work out their relationship issues while battling fuckzombies in Seattle.

( GNARGH Means I Love You )

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fic: Film Studies [Hot Fuzz]

Mon, 10 Dec 2012 00:25:52 GMT

Title: Film Studies
Author: azarias
Pairing: Nick/Danny
Wordcount: 4,000
Warnings: Several pillows met a grisly fate while constructing a scale model of this fic.
Notes: This was written for Yuletide 2007. I think I'll let the original note stand. As is becoming habit, I couldn't have done this without M_Butterfly. She's been fantastic to the point she pretty much deserves co-writer credit. It was she who looked at my panicked "OH CRAP I SIGNED UP FOR PLANETARY AND I'M NOT SMART ENOUGH TO WRITE PLANETARY FIC" and responded, "So, have you seen Hot Fuzz?". And that's the story of how this fic got written. Thanks also to Jemisard and to CristinAnne, who do a wonderful job not seeming bothered by being grabbed half an hour before the upload deadline and told "Hello I need a readover please help omg headsplodey."

Summary: Danny has a Plan.

( Film Studies )

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fic: Journeyman [Spartacus: Blood and Sand]

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 22:50:23 GMT

Post-facto author's note: This was written as a more or less immediate reaction to Blood and Sand episode 7. You know, that episode. I was fine with everyone dying. I wasn't fine with passive dying, in place of the roaring rampage of revenge the subject deserved. A lot of the background for this fic has since been jossed by Gods of the Arena, but I'm not particularly motivated to change it. My greatest regret is that I don't have a vocabulary foul enough to do the fandom justice, hence why this is my only entry.

Though, IDK, maybe I'll write a short AU where they're in space or something. Space makes everything better.

Title: Journeyman
Author: azarias
Pairing: Barca/Pietros
Wordcount: 12,500
Warnings: By my calculations, I know precisely as much about ancient Rome as the show's writers do. This story mentions a number of very bad things, including slavery, rape, violence, genocide, and some pretty awful child harm; none of these actually happen in the story itself. Explicit sex, all of which is consensual. It all turned out much milder than canon, much to my disappointment.
Beta: vejiicakes, who did not so much beta as whap me over the head repeatedly with the Rod of Self-confidence.
Disclaimer: Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo.

Summary: So Barca got his money from Ashur or wherever, and bought himself and Pietros free, and then ...

( Journeyman )

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fic: Citizen's Arrest [crossover, due South/The Authority]

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:56:57 GMT

title: Citizen's Arrest
fandoms: The Authority, due South
genre: drama, humor, slash
length: about 11,300 words
warnings: language, adult themes
author's notes: In case you're familiar with one canon but not the other, here's a handy pocket guide. Thanks to jemisard and rahneregina for beta and sanity checks.

summary: When Fraser arrests the Midnighter, Ray Kowalski knows this won't end well. What he doesn't count on is the situation becoming personal.

( Citizen's Arrest )

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Authority and Due South characters

Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:53:50 GMT

A pocket guide to Citizen's Arrest, in case you've seen one canon but not the other.

( So, these people. )

One day, everyone takes a lunch break at the same time.

Citizen's Arrest

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Sun, 09 Dec 2012 20:35:52 GMT

Oh dear god, it's been a year and a half since that first post. Well this is embarrassing. Please don't mind the cobwebs while I find where I stored the broom.

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