Oakfairy

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

- Somerset Maugham (via ellenkushner)

Surprise! Many of the things we think we're doing correctly are actually not the best ways to do them. This includes even basic, everyday things like cooking , driving , and even shaking hands (separately, of course). Let's take a look.

Read more...

Mens: Black Womens: Black

[vine] [h/t: sizvideos]

By the way, my 50,000th tweet is just a few tweets away now. I WILL FILL IT WITH WISDOM THAT WILL CHANGE THE WORLD. Or a picture of cat.—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 11, 2014

If you imagine that every cat picture on the Internet is a lost chance to express universal wisdom, it certainly changes what cat pics mean.—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 11, 2014

OH GOD HERE IT COMES EITHER WISDOM TO LIGHT THE WORLD FOR GENERATIONS TO COME OR JUST ANOTHER PICTURE OF MY STUPID CAT PREPARE YOURSELF—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 11, 2014

http://t.co/byFfaN9t2o—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 11, 2014

Thanks for your attention during this time of monumental transition. Please feel free now to go back to your quotidian lives.—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 11, 2014

"BUT I WANTED A CAT PICTURE" ::sigh:: Fine. Here. ENJOY THE EMPTY CHARADE THAT IS YOUR EXISTENCE. http://t.co/FRJXr3DHVI—
John Scalzi (@scalzi) July 11, 2014

And now you know. Go ye forth and do likewise.

I’m mean, sure, his mother’s maiden name was Walker which just happens to be the maiden name of Jane Austen’s mother. And yes, my parents live at Robin’s Roost, which is the old Walker farm that just happens to have been in our family since the mid-1800s, but that’s total coincidence.

Clearly, my family has a long history.

I mean, look at this picture of my Mom! It was taken in the mid-1950s, so clearly there’s no time-travelling happening. That would just be silly.

The post Also, my father definitely does not own a DeLorean. appeared first on Mary Robinette Kowal.

So, the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, has unveiled a forensic recreation of Jane Austen.

Allow me to tell you a story, that is purely fiction.

Jane Austen was very ill in 1817 and her family called for the Doctor. Though this good gentlemen did his best, there was nothing that could be done for her in that time. In another, later time, it could be imagined that much might be done to aid her.

If such a thing occurred, gentle reader, and the authoress were taken into a box of cobalt blue, thence to find herself in another era, how would she thank the man who saved her life? Perhaps, if you choose to entertain such thoughts, by writing him into a story– into every story, in the hopes that he would see and understand how deeply grateful she was.

It is is a pretty fiction, is it not?

The post To answer your questions– I am not a Time Lord. appeared first on Mary Robinette Kowal.

If your preferred workout involves getting on a stationary bike and cycling, this 30 minute workout can help you get the most out of the limited time you have at the gym. It comes complete with a warm up and cool down, and three cycles of single-leg and full-intensity riding.

Read more...

By Qwertee
With over 200 potential designs, our biggest ever insaniTEE sale is here.... How does it work? Basically we are selling off some of the remaining shirts we have in some of the designs we have printed so far at the insane price of £6/€7/$8!! Missed out on shirt you'd really like to get? Now's your chance to hopefully get it. Just choose your size and we'll send you a RANDOM shirt/s.

“

What about our fans? Are they privileged? Let me tell you about Anders. He was one of two male love interests in Dragon Age II, and the only one of the two that would actually make his intentions known to the player without the player expressing interest first. If you were nice to him, he would make a pass at you, and you could turn him down, and that would be the end of it. And some fans REALLY did not like that.

Some of them asked for a gay toggle; because in a game where there’s mature themes, slavery, death, and none of which we offer toggles for, encountering a gay character? OOH, beyond the pale. They didn’t want to be exposed to homosexuality.

And this one fan on our forums posted that he felt too much attention had been spent on women and gays and not enough on straight male gamers. For all of whom he personally spoke, of course. ‘It’s ridiculous that I even have to use a term like Straight Male Gamers, when in the past I would only have to say fans.’ The purpose of the romances in Dragon Age II was to give each type of fan an equal content. Two romances whether you’re male or female, straight or gay.

How upsetting for this particular Straight Male Gamer to realize he wasn’t being catered to. This was not equality to him, but an imbalance; an imbalance of the natural order. He did not want equality, he’s not interested in equality. To him, from his perspective, equality means he’s getting less. Less options? Actually, no, the number of options we had in that game was actually the same number of options that he would have received earlier. What was his issue was the idea that there was attention being spent on other groups, which SHOULD have rightly gone to him.

Do ALL straight male gamers feel exactly the same as he does? Absolutely not. In the thread where this came up in fact, there was quite a few guys who came in and identified themselves as straight male gamers and said ‘I actually don’t have an issue with that, as long as I receive an experience I enjoy, I think other people should be able to enjoy that too.’ But if you think that Straight Male Gamer Dude is an outlier among our fanbase, you were not paying attention.

This is Anita Sarkeesian, she’s the author of the Feminist Frequency, a blog which examines tropes in the depiction of women in popular culture. You’ve probably all heard about this, it’s a matter of public record, she announced a Kickstarter to start a web series to look at the tropes in video games and she was subjected to a campaign of vicious abuse and harassment by male gamers. Why? Well, because she represents to these guys the loss of their coveted place in the gaming audience. Never mind that well all know Goddamn well that they’re still at the top of the totem pole. What they see themselves losing is sole proprietorship over their domain. That’s what it is.

Everything that is changing about the gaming industry to accommodate these players, to them, is diluting the purity of gaming which has belonged solely to them. That’s what this is all about. And here’s the thing, I’m pretty certain that our industry fears the scrutiny of those guys way more than the scrutiny of everyone else. Because those are the guys that scream at the top of their lungs, they spend their time on every internet forum, they spend their time making Metacritic reviews. Infuriate them, and you become a target. It’s so much easier to say “Well, that’s what our fans are like. There’s nothing we can do.” And that’s bullshit.

They didn’t set the tone, did they? We set the tone. What we put out there, what we permit, whether it’s on our forums, whether it’s on Xbox Live, the things that we permit we are in effect condoning. What happened to Anita, we the industry, are partly responsible for. We’re in part to blame. And if the idea of moral responsibility doesn’t phase you, consider the idea that the time will probably soon come that this will also amount to legal responsibility.

”

-

BioWare EA Writer David Gaider speaking on sexism and sexuality in video games. (via lolitsgabe)

also known as “Why I Love And Support BioWare Games”

(via optimisticduelist)

Bioware ain’t perfect, but good gosh it does give me the warm fuzzies when one of their crew knocks it out of the park.

(via northstarfan)

A dance battle between the characters from the Potterverse and Twilight, with a guest appearance from Gandalf!

[ScottDW]

Jos Stiglingh used a GoPro — and a drone — to get really, REALLY up close and personal with the recent Fourth of July fireworks show over West Palm Beach, Florida.

[via Gear Junkie]

Rick roll FTW!

Also, Skin game is out! :)

[Via Reddit | Failblog]

noobtheloser:

The appropriate reaction to this comic is “aww?”

I do a lot of these.

So do other people.

It's no secret that I spend a lot of time thinking about fanfic. (And those links are just "fanfic as a general concept"; they don't touch on my frequent crankiness about the concept of the Mary Sue, or connect to any of my actual fanfic.) I think fanfic is a hugely important part of the way we interact with stories as a society, and that it's really so much older than anyone wants to admit. Remember that Shakespeare was, in many ways, writing fanfic. Remember that the Brothers Grimm changed the stories they collected to better suit themselves, which is part of the definition of fanfic. It's an ancient tradition, and it goes back to the first time someone told a story they'd heard about a friend, but modified it to be a little bit more interesting.

I am not saying that everyone in the world needs to write, read, or adore fanfic. For one thing, I don't think there's any truly universal "everybody has to do this" experience, except for maybe peeing. Everybody pees, right? For the purposes of this essay, everybody pees. (If you do not pee, please don't tell me.) So no, if you're not into writing fanfic, I am not judging you. I am not saying you're not awesome. If you're not into reading fanfic...I think there's a very good chance your definition is too narrow. Shakespeare, as I have said, wrote fanfic. Virgil. Bridget Jones's Diary and Wicked are both alternate universe, or "AU," fanfic of other people's properties. 10 Things I Hate About You and Easy A, also basically fanfic. Any company or studio-owned property where the original author is no longer in charge? Kinda fanfic, on a lot of levels.

You do not have to read Harry/Draco romantic coffee shop Little Mermaid AUs to be reading fanfic. Fanfic is everywhere. The fact that some of it is based on things that have slipped into the public domain does not make it any less fanfic: it just makes it fanfic that can be sold for a profit.

In recent discussions of fanfic, I've seen several people say things along the lines of "but all fanfic is about sex" and "it's not okay when people write relationships that don't exist in the canon." (Neither of these is an exact quote: I am paraphrasing from multiple sources, in part because I'm not trying to call anyone out in specific, and in part because these are sentiments that I've seen repeated on almost every discussion of fanfic. I think that it's something we need to talk about.

First up, "all fanfic is about sex."

This is patently untrue. A huge amount of fanfic is about things other than sex. I read a novel's-worth of fanfic every week or so, and I very rarely read explicit sex unless it happens in the context of a long, long story about other things. Most of my favorite fanfic would not be rated above an "R." Much of it wouldn't get above "PG-13." But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that 50% of fanfic is purely about the sex. 50% of fanfic, however well or poorly written, is only there for bangin', clangin', and bringing down the house. Okay.

And?

Erotica is a big deal. Porn is a big deal. There's a huge amount of it out there, and there's a whole industry dedicated to making porn parodies of popular properties. XXX-Men and the Anal Avengers and Wet Dream on Elm Street, these are all things that exist. They're basically thinly veiled visual fanfic, much of which is incredibly male-gazey and heteronormative and gives us the superficials ("A dude dressed like Giles is going down on a chick dressed like Willow in the latest installment of Muffy the Trouser Slayer!") without giving us the things that draw us to the property in the first place. "Porn with plot" is a huge fanfic category because people want to write some fun erotica, but want it to actually be about characters, not cheap cosplay with enormous primary and secondary sexual organs.

Some of the pairings fanfic authors pursue will make some people uncomfortable. I used to be heavily involved with Supernatural fandom, and I hated the most popular pairing, which put two brothers together in sexual situations. But the nice thing about fanfic is that responsible fanfic authors will tag their smut. So if I clicked a link for a piece of fic and saw "M/M, Sam/Dean, Incest, NC-17" as the tags, I knew that I needed to nope on out of there. The authors, who hurt no one, got to have their fun; their readers, who hurt no one, got to read some awesome smut; I went and found stories about Dean and Jo being awesome, often in a fully platonic way. Not everything is for everyone.

But okay: some people don't want to read about non-canonical sex. That's cool. Just don't click that link, and you'll be safe from all the porn. Porn cannot in fact follow you home.

Note: I am not saying that you need to start reading fanfic porn. No one is required to read anything, unless they're taking a class. (If you do not want to read fanfic porn, avoid courses titled "Tranformative Erotica in the Copyright Age.") But using "there is porn" as a way to shut down all fanfic is reductive and unnecessary, and what it shows is not a clean-minded commitment to the canon; it's a refusal to consider that there could be depth and meaning to something that is hugely important in a whole lot of lives.

Secondly, we have "it's not okay when people write relationships that don't exist in the canon."

I want to tell you two very important things that it took me a long time to realize. The first is that if you're talking about something like a TV show or a comic book or a movie, the odds are very good that those characters, and that canon, were created by committee. You will have multiple people putting words into the same mouths, and while there's generally an effort made to keep characterization relatively straightforward, at the end of the day, each of the real people will have a different version of that fictional character in their heads. Take, for example, Usagi Tsukino, better known by most people as "Sailor Moon."

Usagi's role on the show is to love. It is to be a soldier of love, a warrior of love, someone who will die for love. She is love all-encompassing, love without limits. Yeah, she's a little immature sometimes, but that's okay, because she loves you.

My friend Nikki is doing an end-to-end rewatch of Sailor Moon. In a recent episode, there was a scene where Usagi, upon being presented a love letter from a girl, said "I'm taken," which is totally great and good, and then "But you should fall in love with a boy, it's way better" (paraphrase). Um, what? This is a girl who has died and been reborn for love, who is in awe of the relationship between two female friends, and who has never said anything like this before. It's just a little dagger of heteronormativity coming unexpectedly from the mouth of the living avatar of love. (Nikki points out that Usagi did say something similar once, about a hundred episodes earlier, before she really got to know Haruka and Michiru, and that both times, it was done purely for comedic effect. So take that as you will.)

It's canon. She said it on the show. But it's not a thing my Usagi would ever say, and it may not be a thing that Naoko Takeuchi's Usagi would ever say. Naoko Takeuchi created the franchise. She did not write that episode. Do you see where I'm going with this? It is entirely possible to have things in the canon that contradict the character as it was intended.

The second is that creators can be wrong. I have written scenes in various books and stories that were pointed to by my beta readers (thankfully) as being incorrect. Sylvester wouldn't say that; the Luidaeg wouldn't do that. Because I have good betas, I can fix those things, but there's always the chance that someday I will go entirely off the rails. I will kill a character because I am mad at a real person who loves the fictional person I have created. I will write a final chapter before I actually begin the series, and refuse to revise it. I will do something that makes my most loyal readers go "whoa, fuck, back it up babe."

Some of them will back it up with fanfic.

Note that this only addresses creator failure. With shows and movies, there's real life to be considered as well. I know a lot of Glee fanfic authors who have gone fully AU following the deal of Cory Monteith, who played the romantic lead. They don't want to continue the series without him, and I can't blame them at all.

Now that I have told you these two very important things, and their sub-things, here is another thing: who cares?

When I watched Kim Possible, I always expected Kim to wind up with Shego, not Ron. I believed that Myka and H.G. were meant to be (I still do). I looked at Parker and Hardison and Elliot and saw a family unit that was never going to give a damn about who was sleeping with who (although Elliot would probably tell you that Hardison had a very distinctive snore, while sleeping with Parker was like sleeping with an abnormally large housecat that hogged the pillows). In the first, it was a cartoon; never going to happen. In the second, I'm not sure why the writers made the choice they did. In the third, I got my wish. But if I hadn't, the way I viewed the show would have remained entirely valid.

I get checking out when someone is writing a pairing that doesn't work for you. My dislike of Sam/Dean in Supernatural has less to do with them being brothers than it does to do with the fact that I just can't buy them as a couple. But sometimes couples have surprised me. I just finished reading an epic-length Harry Potter fic where Neville/Padma was a primary pairing, and I would never have expected it to be awesome, and it was awesome. There is room for beauty outside the canon, especially when the canon is the work of many hands.

Especially with older fandoms, or with pairings that involve a lead character, straight is an assumed default. Well, statistically, that's not right. One in ten. So that's one Ensign, one Companion, one whatever in ten, minimum, who shouldn't be straight. When I'm writing fic about a show that didn't give me the representation I needed, what's wrong with wanting to see it? (Before the inevitable question: the reason writing Buffy/Faith is applauded, and Tara/Xander is likely to get you a frowny face, is that same issue of representation. One in ten. Currently, we have less than one in fifty on a canonical level. Taking it away because you want to show that it's an equal playing field is not creating an equal playing field. It's being a jerk. Unless that is the only story you want to write, please, consider the numbers, and don't.)

I'm not expecting to convince anyone who's already decided fanfic is awful that they should give it another try; some ships have sailed. But I am asking that you consider the arguments you hear about it, and consider why they might be flawed. There's nothing wrong with writing a little smut. There's nothing wrong with having your own view of the canon, especially when that canon goes on for more than a single book. And there's nothing wrong with seeking representation where there isn't enough.

These are all reasons that fanfic is glorious, and that I am so, so glad to be a part of the fic community. I always will be.

I’m Batman.

[Via GU]

It may not be anything like Tatooine of Star Wars, but this discovery is still incredible. We've found a frozen, rocky planet orbiting one of its two parent binary stars in a stable Earth-like orbit. This significantly expands our sense of where life can emerge in the galaxy.

Read more...

[Source: Text from Superheroes]

I still think that.

Okay.

I feel like this should be obvious.

Because they aren’t going to let me work in air traffic control.

Maybe you've heard of the OnePlus One. It's the self-styled "flagship killer" aiming to swoop in from China and beat the Nexus 5 at its own affordability game. That's a tall order, but the OnePlus One fills it. It's so dirt cheap, and so incredible, that it's damn near unbelievable.

Read more...

I noted a while back that there would be an audio edition of Lock In, from Audible. What I had not noted, until this very second, is that Audible was planning to do something pretty neat with the audiobook: Namely, that it was recording two complete versions of the book, one narrated by Amber Benson, and the other by Wil Wheaton, and offering both for sale.

Why two versions? Because it’s a cool idea for this particular novel, for all sorts of reasons that I will leave for you to discover. I’m delighted that Audible has created both versions, and I’m especially happy that Amber and Wil are the ones bringing the book to audio life — I’m fans of each of them, both as performers and as writers. I’m about as excited as I can get to hear both editions.

Now, at this point you may be saying to yourself: You mean I have to choose between the Wil Wheaton version and the Amber Benson version? That’s too hard! They’re both too awesome! Don’t make me choose!

Okay, we won’t. Here’s what we’ll do: Pre-order either audio version of Lock In between now and August 22nd, and Audible will throw in the other version, free. Order Wil’s, get Amber’s. Order Amber’s, get Wil’s. You’ll get two fantastic interpretations of the novel for the price of one. Compare and contrast! Alternate chapters! Mix and match! Really, there’s no way to go wrong on this one.

Remember, however: If you want in on this — and if you’re a fan of audiobooks, you so very much do — You need to preorder from Audible by 11:59pm (Eastern) on August 22nd. Don’t wait! Don’t live your life in unfathomable regret!

I’m super geeked out about this. My thanks to the folks at Audible for doing this, and to Amber and Wil for being the voices of Lock In. This is really special. I can’t wait for you folks to hear them both.

(Note: US only for the time being. I know, I know. Sorry, the rest of the universe.)

Very much so. I was confident with HBO too, but less so as the development process went along, and HBO wanted more and more spelled out and explained for the people who weren’t following, and everything possible put into the first script, so was relieved when it stopped there. I was lucky that the executives I’d been developing it with still had faith in it and me, and that’s one reason why it’s been so much fun talking to all the platforms and networks who wanted it. I’ve love spending time talking to Bryan Fuller, and, more recently, his partner in crime Michael Green. They get it. And Starz seems to get it too. So yes. There’s always room for things to go wrong. But, yes. Confident.

existingcharactersdiehorribly:

Everybody go home, this conversation just won the internet. 

twitterthecomic:

Tumblr is a computer generated dream world, built in order to change a human being into this *morpheus holds up poorly drawn anime dragon*

— Eiffel 65 - Blue.wav (@ABigBagOfKeys)

August 7, 2012

Twitter: The Comic by Mike Rosenthal [website | tumblr | twitter]

Shadowrun Online is still in development, but there are big plans to tie the game to tabletop Shadowrun's big summer campaign, Lockdown. The developers let me try an early build of the game, and talked to me about all things cyberpunk.

Read more...

This is an actual conversation I had with the toddler the other day as we stood at the bottom of our driveway in his ride-on pick-up truck. He got out of his truck, went to the side of the driveway and into the woods, then decided he was going to pee in the weeds.

B-Dub: I’m peeing.

Me: I see that.

B-Dub: *walks back with his pants not entirely pulled up*

Me: You forgot something.

B-Dub:  *sees what he forgot* Oh ha ha ha.

Me: You need to put Mister Winky back in his house.

B-Dub: I need to put Mister Winky in my butt!

Me: That’s not how that works. Besides, your butt is in the back, your winky is in the front.

B-Dub: Mister Winky and the Butt are neighbors.

Me: Y… yes.

B-Dub: Does Mister Winky have a dog?

Me: Uh. What?

B-Dub: Mister Winky has a dog! And he keeps it in my butt. A BUTT DOG.

B-Dub: *cracks up for like, five minutes straight*

B-Dub: *laughing dies down*

B-Dub: …butt dog.

And, scene.

* * *

Your turn. If you have kids or have ever met one of these tiny little randos, feel free to share with us something completely hilarious / cuckoo bananapants / disturbing that this children has said, or some conversation you’ve had with them. I think every parent has these, so, y’know. SHARE.