So a while back Viz, a company mostly known for their work translating manga, started up Haikasoru--a line of translated Japanese "Space Opera, Dark Fantasy and Hard Science" novels called . A few of the books are available on Kindle and I picked one up (Harmony) and enjoyed it quite a bit.

I heard about the line from james_nicoll who just did a comparison concerning the gender of the main character/protagonist between the Haikasoru line and the line from the small British SF/F house, Angry Robot.

In 19 books published by Haikasoru, 13 have female protags and 10 have male. The overlap accounts for books with both male and female protags. Three of the nineteen books have female authors.

In 18 books published by Angry Robot, 2 have female protags and 17 have male. Again an overlap of one book with both. Two of the eighteen books have female authors. And yes, the two books by women are the two books featuring women protags.

Of course this is an incredibly limited sample and it's very casually gathered to boot, and also it could be that Haikasoru knows that a LOT of Viz's normal customers are female and are aiming at that audience. Still, the fact that they found that many books with female protags that they felt would sell to English language audiences is really telling.

James' Haikasoru post

James' Angry Robot post

What I'm curious about is the actual sales numbers. Are the ten Haikasoru with male protags selling a lot better than the thirteen with female protags? The one I bought had both a female protag, which was one of the reasons I bought it, but I'm not the "average" SF customer by a long shot.

I dunno if it means anything; I just found the numbers interesting.

crossposted from http://telesilla.dreamwidth.org/219414.html | comments | you can comment at my DW using OpenID

So the other day on my flist someone asked "why stay on LJ if you hate it so much?" It was a rhetorical question, not aimed at me in particular, which is why I didn't answer it there.

But I've been mulling it over and I kind of want to address it, without too much proselytizing, because I've already said why I'm cautiously optimistic about Dreamwidth and I see no reason to repeat any of that.

My main problem with LJ (let me show you it) is simple. I don't think they really give a fuck about the issues that are important to their fannish users. And you know? It's their business and they can run it how they like. However it's my money and I can choose to spend it how I like. And why should I patronize a business whose concerns don't match mine? Why shouldn't I look for something that suits me better?

As to why I'm still active on LJ, it's simple: like it or not, the vast majority of the fannish culture that I'm a part of is on LJ. I honestly wish it weren't so because, again, I think that LJ and fandom are no longer a very good fit. But just because I'd rather fandom were somewhere else doesn't make it so and so here I am.

If the majority of fandom moves over to Dreamwidth, I'll be thrilled. If whatever social networking platform OTW is working on ever comes about and fandom moves there, I'll be thrilled. If fandom continues to remain on LJ, I'll be here because I like all of you more than I dislike LJ.

And by the way, it is "dislike" in my case. I don't hate them; sufficient time has passed for me to be a lot less passionate about it. It's like Starbucks, you know? I don't hate them and I'll always go for an indie place if one is available and open, but yes, I still buy coffee drinks and pastries from Starbucks because they're there.

So apparently, after the pounding he took on Mallozzi's blog, Wright's gone over to Gateworld and made it clear that somewhere along the line, he lost his big girl's panties. He doesn't respect us because we don't respect him and he's upset that we were so mean to him.

There are people connected to SGA that I respect. I respect the actors, from David, Jason, Joe and Rachel all the way on down to those guys who have been playing Marines since "Rising" and have never once had a line. I respect the lighting guys, the sound techs, the cameramen and the set dressers. I respect Bam Bam and his crew of stunties. I respect all of the people who work their asses off to bring us a good looking show. I even respect some of the writers and directors, some of the time.

( Those other guys? Not so much.Collapse )

This comes out of a discussion being held in a flocked post of mine. I though about doing a poll but I'm pretty sure I'd leave things out and so I'm just going to ask some questions.

In the first four questions, I'm not necessarily looking for fic examples, but actual kinky acts in a fic (or real life). Fic examples are fine if you have them, but please say what it is that makes the fic hardcore. And yes, I'm aware that there's a lot of crossover between the terms; that's deliberate.

What do you consider to be hardcore BDSM?

What do you consider to be hardcore D/s?

What do you consider to be hardcore S/M?

What do you consider to be hardcore kink?

Of the fandoms you've been involved in, which would you say was the kinkiest and why?

Is it possible for a fic to be both schmoopy/highly romantic and hardcore?

Feel free to pimp this around.

Since it's apparently perfectly all right to tell other people how they should and should not participate in fandom, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon.

1. Reveiws/recs DO NOT equal feedback/concrit. Stop conflating them because that just makes this whole discussion a lot more complicated. Concrit and feedback are for the writer and are usually given in the writer's space with the aim of helping make the story a better story or the writer a better writer. I personally think a writer should be able to opt out of concrit in their own space; you're doing it for hir, and if sie doesn't want it, why bother?

Reviews/recs are posted in the reviwer's space or a seperate space designated for recs/reviews and are done for the readers and because the reviewer likes doing them. They have nothing to do with the writer as a person; they're all about the reviewer's tastes and thoughts on yaoi. They're not aimed at improving a writer or a story, they're aimed at telling the potential audience for a story what the reviewer thought of it and why the reviewer thinks people should read or should not read it. I keep hammering on the word "reviewer" here because a review is one person's opinion, nothing more, nothing less.

2. Stop privileging one form of fannish participation above others. Reviews and rec lists are as legitimate a form of fannish activity as making videos or art, or writing. You don't like them? Don't read them. I find that John/Elizabeth really doesn't work for me for various reasons. Do I rail against the pairing? Nope, I just don't read it. You don't like reviews? That's NOT the reviewer's fault; the reviewer is just doing their own thing in their own space.

3. If you're going to claim to be Nice, if you say you prize Civility, then walk the fucking walk. If you lecture people about civility and niceness three comments below being condescending and rude to someone, you're a fucking hypocrite, end of subject. I don't care if she started it. I don't care if the other person was rude and cruel and OMGMEAN! to you. If you truly believe in the saying "if you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all," then live by it and leave the discussion before you say something rude. And don't come crying to me about this one, it's YOUR standards you're not living up to, not mine.

4. Read this. Read it again. Learn from it. However much you may WANT it to be, fandom is NOT a monolithic culture.

Oh hey, this was fun! I can see the appeal of telling an entire group of people how they should act simply based on my own personal versions of fandom. I may have to do this more often.

Last night's post was an irritated rant because sometimes fandom just annoys me and it seemed like someone put something in the water this weekend.

I do want to explain that I know that "queer" does not automatically equate to "gay." I know that in the academic world, "queer" has a number of meanings. I even know what some of those meanings are.

But the thing is, I don't live in the academic world. I live out here in a world where, if you ask the average person on the street, "queer" means "gay/GLBT." I live in a world where those of us who fit in the GLBT continuum are trying to reclaim words that have been used against us so they no longer have the power to harm us and instead become something that we can be proud of.

If I get angry when fans casually bandy my reclaimed words of power around, it's because I'm fighting in the real world where, for example, even a presidential candidate of color, the guy I voted for because I think he's the best of a mediocre field, isn't going to say that I deserve the same civil rights as the people around me. Why won't he? Because that reflects the beliefs of the people who vote. So yes, the country I live in doesn't think that I deserve to legally marry the woman I love.

It's hard and it hurts and I'm not sure people not involved in this struggle or others like it understand how fucking exhausting it is.

And so when academia and straight fans use my words to describe their hobby, it all too often reads as if they're grabbing the parts of being queer that are cool and edgy and transgressive, not the parts that are painful and exhausting and fucking depressing.

And often people come back and say "oh but I am helping fight your real world fight in this way or that." To which I say, "yay! And yay slash if that's how you came to realize that fighting for gay civil rights is a good and necessary thing."

But here's the deal. As you may have noticed, I talk a lot about racism in fandom too. I like to think that I'm doing what I can as an ally of both fans of color in particular and people of color in general.

But Dude, you don't see me standing up and saying that I'm Black, that I'm a Fan of Color. Because I'm as white as Rodney McKay's belly, okay? To say otherwise would not only be absurd, but would be an insult to the FoCing Cabal.

So yeah, this thing we do? This slash/fic/art/vids we make? It is transgressive. It is something that a large percentage of the real world population would consider kind of perverse and kinky and even wrong. It can deal with queer issues and I've even seen people change their own personal politics and become more tolerant, become my allies because of it.

But I hope you can all understand why, if you call it queer, I get hurt and angry.

So of course, with the most recent update from OTW--Organization of Transformative Works--there is discussion and yes, even wank. Imagine that!

I've been posting comments around the fannish journalsphere and I decided that I really wanted to try to get my feelings on this in one place. Only problem is, my feelings are all mixed up. So, since my fall back is always a bullet point post, here we go. Please note that when I use the term "fandom" I mean "the fan works community," a community that includes writers, artists, vidders, acafen and consumers of fan works.

( My thoughts on OTW; let me show you them.Collapse )

First off, I loved "Tabula Rasa" for the same reasons everyone else did. I'm not going to do a review because there are so many good ones out there and for the most part my review would be nothing new.

But I want to talk about Katie and Rodney because...well I just do.

( What if Katie were the regular and Rodney was the occasional boyfriend who got in the way of Katie's fans' OTP?Collapse )

I have times when I think I'm actually pretty good at this whole writing thing and then I have times when I get stuck and think I suck and then there are times like now.

Do you ever read something that is not only really quite excellent but is also something you know you can't write because it isn't how you tell a story or it isn't one of your core stories?* It happens to me and sometimes I'm filled with something that can only be--pretentiously--described as yearning. It's not my usual garden-variety "oh God, I suck" or "if only I had some damn discipline" thing either; I'll read a story and know that there's no way in the world I could write it and yet I'll wish like hell that I could.

I won't tell which story brought the feeling on this morning because it really doesn't matter, but it was something where, for lack of a better way of describing it, the words did things I can't make them do. And I got to thinking that this kind of thing must happen to other people, right?

So I'm curious: do any of you ever feel that way?


Also, there's a very interesting article at Wired about the intersection of manga, doujinshi and intellectual property laws. It's got a lot of bearing on this fan fic thing all the kids are doing these days, only the Japanese model seems a lot saner that the US model.


*I don't actually hold with the One True Story theory because for me it's more like I have Core Stories--certain stories and themes I return to again and again.

I found the whole "argument about Elizabeth and her replicator nanites" thing bit in "Adrift" really interesting. Because I don't see it as a two-way argument, or if it was, it wasn't between John and Rodney. The way I see it, Rodney was in the middle of what should have been an argument between John and Keller. It came down to something only Rodney could do, and he had Keller and her doctor's imperative to save a life on one side telling him to do it, and John and his understandable caution because, hello Replicators, on the other side telling him not to.

( In the end, whose call was it to make?Collapse )

( OMG Rodney called him John!!!!Collapse )

( Some less metaey (metaesque? meta-like?) stuff about what I'm working on.Collapse )

But I do know one thing...I really don't want to be on LJ any more.

Yes, under certain circumstances, text/fiction is also subject to the two strikes rule.

You are totally responsible for every single link you've ever made on LJ.

And you know...I don't know any more. Because of course a big chunk of fandom doesn't give a rat's ass that LJ is nibbling away at the freedom to tell whatever story you want to tell. So I end up feeling stupid that it matters to me and while I want to leave in protest, I don't want to lose touch with the community that I care about.

ETA: I didn't think I had to say this but if you're part of fandom and you do give a rat's ass, then obviously you're not in the subsection of fandom that is making me feel stupid for giving a damn.

Did more (!) comment fic, this time in halowrites's LJ. It's a Joe/David post-apocalyptic AU and it made me think.

( ''Will music be heard/Will we all meet again/At the end of the world''Collapse )

If they wanted their work to remain on LJ they should be drawing Snape cutting Harry's head off with a knife.

No. Really.

So there's this video of an execution. Not from a torture porn movie but you know...real life. As in a real live man cutting another man's head off with a knife while standing in from of a Nazi flag.

And where did this video premiere on the internets? On LJ.

It has apparently since been taken down, but LJ/6A/Sup (the Russian company LJ is partnered with) hasn't taken any action against the blogger who posted it. Sup's spokesman, Anton Nosik joins burr86, anildash and coffeechica as people who really shouldn't be speaking for this company. Or any other.

"Preliminary censorship is, of course, impossible on the Internet," Nosik says. "People post what they feel must be posted, and write what they feel must be written. There is a list of things that LiveJournal users agree not to do, but posting pictures of an execution is not on the list. There is a clause forbidding comments that incite ethnic hatred, but whether it applies to this particular video is an open question."

The full story is here.

Thank you to lilithilien for the head's up on this.

So now remember, folks.

Videos of people killing other people = okay.

Two men making love = BANHAMMER!

Wow, am I glad LJ has their priorities right. Let's think of the children. You know, the ones who might click on a link and see someone's head getting cut off with a knife.

'Cos it's all about the children, isn't it?

Oh and while you're thinking of the kids, here, have a nice cold Pepsi Max, won't you?

If you, like me, are really fed up with LJ/6A's constant insistance on making boldthrough all about child porn in general and this statement* from rachel in particular, imaginarycircus has an open letter for you to sign. She's been in contact with rachel and rachel has apparently asked which community was offended. Well hi, that might be the community made up of those of us who...oh you know...DIDN'T actually ask about linking to child porn, but to sites that might be considered objectionable by LJ/6A invisible policy.

I know a lot of people are impressed with rachel and trust me, I get that she's in the position of digging out from under a hell of a lot of shit, but her insistence on blocking her ears and eyes and saying "LALALALALALACHILDPRONLALALALALA!" strikes me as a total straw man situation.

*"Many of you have asked about whether or not it is OK to link to outside content that falls into the category of child pornography, and the short answer is no, it's not OK."

This is bigger than being about art, okay? Because now it's about linking thing in your LJ. Linking things, not just posting a picture that's hosted elsewhere, but a simple link. As we all know, content gets shuffled around online all the damn time and a picture of kittens that you link to today could be replaced by goatse tomorrow. It has also been said that LJ/6A has said that linking to a site that contains objectionable material could count as a strike. So if I link to a G-rated picture on, say Deviantart, I could be screwed because there's nudity and other possibly objectionable things on that site. To be fair, I have not actually seen where LJ states this and have asked for a link to an actual LJ staffer making policy, so I could be wrong with that last bit.

And finally, even if it is "just" about art? You should be upset. Even if, in the end, they only say that it's visual stuff they're going after and not text. Why? I'm glad you asked.

( Why I think the artists are important.Collapse )

ETA: And so it begins with letters to artists. In at least one case, the offensive art had been removed a week before the artists received the letter. Ponder that for a moment, won't you?

Okay, my initial impression of the most recent lj_biz is essentially a combination of "almost too little, almost too late." Basically it promises a lot and delivers very little, so I'm in a wait and see mode. They've promised before.

My reply is here and right now, I don't have much else to say.

We also had this tiny exchange in chat:

msilverstar: well golly, LJ management found a clue
telesilla: a tiny one that promises much and delivers very little
telesilla: but they do get something for being a little less turgid*
msilverstar: but it isn't as incredibly STUPID as before
msilverstar: sad to say that's progress
telesilla: and isn't it just sad that that's one of the best things we can say?
telesilla: brain
msilverstar: yis

As often, rm replied with a very well thought out comment here.

I'm lucky in a way. I don't have to decide what to do about my paid account until next July. For now I'll continue to cross post, but I'm also starting to take part in the fannish community over at IJ. That does NOT mean that I'm not taking part in the community here as well; I intend to continue to be active on LJ until they tell me that the porn I write featuring underage characters is obscene or they make it impossible to link to anything for fear the content at the URL you link to might get replaced by something they call obscene. Again, I'm lucky; I've got a lot of time to spend on LJ and IJ.

And really that's it. My mcshep_match fic is finished and with a beta. I haven't had a fic essentially write itself like this in a long time and I haven't written any solo fic this long in an even longer time. I'm pretty proud of of it; I think it does a nice job with the prompt and keeps to the more romantic side of the pairing.

I'm exhausted so I'mma kill things until I fall asleep.

*pretend I used a better word here.

Okay, here's how it's going to be.

My two main journals are now my Live Journal and my Insane Journal.

My reasons for this and my thoughts on the various options, let me show you them:

( Live JournalCollapse )

( Insane JournalCollapse )

( Greatest JournalCollapse )

( JournalFenCollapse )

( Blurty and other LJ ClonesCollapse )

( Scribblit and the Fandom Flies ProjectCollapse )

( A non journal style blogCollapse )

And no, I haven't read ALL of the meta on this, it's too much to keep up with, so someone may have beat me to this.

You know how we keep asking for clarification and LJ keeps trying to pull out the law? This is illegal...that is illegal...but over here--"pro-ana" comms, neo-Nazi comms, and so on--we're all about free speech!

Who's being set up as the bad guys? The Law. US and CA State Law to be specific.

The thing is, it often seems that a lot of people in the geek industry and a lot of geeks in general think of themselves as anarchists or libertarians or just general anti-big government types. And so I wonder if LJ thinks that, if they're muddy about their own feelings on obscenity--say what you will about the anarcho/libertarian crowd, but most of the ones I know are all about freedom of speech--and point the finger at the Government, they can have their cake--and hopefully our money--and eat it too.

I want LJ to stop bullshitting and just say that they don't think porn is appropriate to the community they want to build. This isn't about free speech and it never was, and it's beginning to look like it's not about legality either--for the last time people, LJ said that ponderosa121's account was suspended because they deemed her work to have "no artistic merit" and NOT because they thought it was sexual depiction of a minor. LJ is within their legal rights to tell me what I can and can't say on their site and I have never once denied that.

However they need to own that and STFU about the goddamn laws.

"But it's not illegal to aspire to be thin."

It's also not illegal in the state of California to publish or even sell pictures of two men having graphic sex.

It's not entirely about the law, in fact I'm willing to bet that very little of this is about the law. It's about what LJ wants as content and what they don't. And the funny thing is, the sooner they admit that--the sooner they get specific about what they want as content and what they don't--the sooner all this buzz will die down. Those who can't deal with the restrictions will leave, those who can will stay and there won't be nearly as many opportunities for people who once supported LJ to see more and more episodes of a little reality show we like to call Bad Customer Service In Action.

I could be way off base here; this is kind of a slapdash thought I've been poking at all day and it's almost 6am and that's past even my bedtime. So I dunno, anyone else getting that vibe?

Also please, let's not discuss politics here. Yes I mentioned libertarians and if I got the free speech thing wrong, feel free to correct me. I'm not saying anything either for or against anarchists or libertarians or other anti-big government types; I'm just saying that I feel LJ/6A is appealing to certain geek stereotypes.

Can anyone who really seriously thinks that LJ, as a business, is entitled to do what it likes, please to be explaining how you can give your money to these people? You are supporting them and I want to know how you can deal with that?

And if you're okay with that attitude, if you're okay with the idea that a picture depicting sex between two men is not okay but communities* that help young women further a mental illness that kills 20% of the people who suffer from it every year are okay, I'm more than disappointed, I'm APPALLED and DISGUSTED.


*I'm not talking about the anorexia recovery groups that acutally support people who are trying to get help; I;'m talking about the "pro-ana" groups whose members give each other tips on how to not be hungry after fasting for 58 hours or how to most effectively throw up or hide their illness from their parents and who encourage one another to starve themselves to death in the most extreme example of our society's fucked up body image issues.

ETA: As jackandahat pointed out, Eating Disorders are not limited to girls; they cross the gender line.

True, it's a day late and a dollar short and doesn't answer many of our concerns, but it probably took them extra time to create a new account and a spiffy Frank icon.


In the comments lanerose brought up the fact that, although the post specifically addresses child pornography, LJ/6A themselves said that one of the artists was suspended becuase her work was judged obscene.

You can see my reply there, but I wanted to post it here as well.

What I think would help would be the following two things:

for LJ/6A to give us their exact guidelines for what constitutes the difference between something that has artistic merit and something that doesn't. Also, as one of the key components of the Miller Test involves applying "contemporary community standards" I would like LJ/6A to tell us which community they consider themselves to be a part of. Given that their definition of what constitutes under-aged comes from California state law, I have to assume that they use the actual physical location of their business. In which case, I find it hard to believe that the Harry/Snape picture would be considered obscene in San Francisco, given that I have purchased art cards in public that have far less artistic merit in that same community.

for LJ/6A to tell us what background their Abuse Team members have. I think all of us would like to know what specific artistic, literary, political, scientific and legal training these people have had to determine "Whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, and scientific value." I suspect that, in a legal setting such as a hearing or an actual trial, "we passed it around the office and thought it was dirty" would not suffice.

Dear LJ,

If you use a form letter assuring users that you will have a statement up on lj_biz on a certain date, be sure to actually, you know...post your statement on that date.

No Love,

Me

Srsly, the level of incompetence is staggering.