ridiculous grab-bag catchup
*waves feebly*
Hi, I've been out of the country for two weeks, and boy are my arms tired. Also my brain, which is why this line totally isn't a functional joke. Also my livejournal is apparently now undead! There are zombies. I approve. (this is looking on the posting interface page)
I totally failed to post before I left, too; I have been pretty much swamped to the limit the last few months and also just a little bit obsessed freaked out hysterical interested about following the election. Please please please let next Tuesday be here now. Now? How about now?
So here is my super-quick attempt to catch up on everything at once! :P
First issue of Transformative Works and Cultures is out and super-awesome -- to me, this is absolutely what real fan (and more generally media) scholarship should be, not only interesting to academics but also accessible and readable and exciting to, you know, ME and other fans like me, who are not so much into the academic side themselves but are happy to hear some super-cool meta thoughts once in a while. (And more machiavellianly, I also just hugely value it on a purely strategic level, where this is the kind of tool that helps us have control over our own depiction and how we are seen by the rest of academia -- putting out seriously kick-ass material that makes people want to come and read it and talk to us and listen to our ideas. ♥ ♥)
And then there is Fanlore! omg! It is SO AMAZING to watch the wiki take off full-steam and see all the participation and evolution. I adore watching the Recent Changes page and also PS, if anyone felt like it they could add some more links to the Idol RPF fandom page esp for D-squared stuff, *bats eyes*. :D
And finally, what I must admit is nearest to my own heart and what I've been working on the most myself, the Archive of Our Own is now in early beta (anyone can read, you need an invite to post, invites are going out slowly but steadily to people who send us feedback). There is still a ton of work to be done, and all of us working on the software are volunteers so it sometimes goes slow, sometimes fast, but I am just ridiculously proud of the foundation we've built here, and of the entire coding team, which runs the gamut from the super-experienced to coders who had no programming experience at all to start, and it just makes me want to jump up and down and wave my arms in glee.
And if you agree that any of these projects are cool and would like to help, please volunteer for our next year and if you can, kick in a few bucks donation, or (if you have Firefox and shop at Amazon) install the super-cool I ♥ OTW widget, which gives OTW that little referral tip from Amazon for products where you haven't otherwise been referred by someone else. :D
In fannish news, I finally got to watch 4x04 and 4x05 of Supernatural on the plane home yesterday and am about to settle in to watch 4x06, yay yay, and OMG I am so happy with this season! ♥ ♥ ♥ (Also I am kind of bewildered by the apparent deliberate attempts on the part of the show to foster all the J2 RPF, which didn't seem to me to really need that much help? Seriously, I don't see how they could do more unless they start sending representatives to cons to hand out mass-produced tin hats.)
I also have finally caught up on the whole House/Wilson arc through Birthmarks, and am also delighted there, even if I have been Eganed in the process, which term am I perhaps the first to use? I would define it, in comparison with other canon-cut-out-from-under-story variants, as Jossed == canon goes off in totally different direction from your story; Kripked == canon actually does pretty much exactly what you were writing; Eganed == canon accomplishes same thing as what you were writing except via entirely different route.
(I am not even looking at my list of unfinished stories right now, including the ones that I am still writing for sweet charity & the vote payback, ahhaha oh god. /o\)
aaaaaand, drumroll, nominations are open for yuletide 2008!!! I had mad ambitions of moving the whole shebang over to the new archive software for this year's challenge, but given that right now I am feeling about as flaky as a nice buttery fresh-baked croissant, I think I will let caution trump my usual instincts to leap in blindly and trust to finding some way out (it serves me well most of the time! just am a little overcommitted right now D:), and stick with the good old software for one more year, then transfer over more leisurely this coming year as the OTW-Archive software firms up.
Okay, whew. I feel like I am not quite so disconnected anymore! Now if I can just finish a post in my pro lj and catch up on my email. D:
Hi, I've been out of the country for two weeks, and boy are my arms tired. Also my brain, which is why this line totally isn't a functional joke. Also my livejournal is apparently now undead! There are zombies. I approve. (this is looking on the posting interface page)
I totally failed to post before I left, too; I have been pretty much swamped to the limit the last few months and also just a little bit obsessed freaked out hysterical interested about following the election. Please please please let next Tuesday be here now. Now? How about now?
So here is my super-quick attempt to catch up on everything at once! :P
First issue of Transformative Works and Cultures is out and super-awesome -- to me, this is absolutely what real fan (and more generally media) scholarship should be, not only interesting to academics but also accessible and readable and exciting to, you know, ME and other fans like me, who are not so much into the academic side themselves but are happy to hear some super-cool meta thoughts once in a while. (And more machiavellianly, I also just hugely value it on a purely strategic level, where this is the kind of tool that helps us have control over our own depiction and how we are seen by the rest of academia -- putting out seriously kick-ass material that makes people want to come and read it and talk to us and listen to our ideas. ♥ ♥)
And then there is Fanlore! omg! It is SO AMAZING to watch the wiki take off full-steam and see all the participation and evolution. I adore watching the Recent Changes page and also PS, if anyone felt like it they could add some more links to the Idol RPF fandom page esp for D-squared stuff, *bats eyes*. :D
And finally, what I must admit is nearest to my own heart and what I've been working on the most myself, the Archive of Our Own is now in early beta (anyone can read, you need an invite to post, invites are going out slowly but steadily to people who send us feedback). There is still a ton of work to be done, and all of us working on the software are volunteers so it sometimes goes slow, sometimes fast, but I am just ridiculously proud of the foundation we've built here, and of the entire coding team, which runs the gamut from the super-experienced to coders who had no programming experience at all to start, and it just makes me want to jump up and down and wave my arms in glee.
And if you agree that any of these projects are cool and would like to help, please volunteer for our next year and if you can, kick in a few bucks donation, or (if you have Firefox and shop at Amazon) install the super-cool I ♥ OTW widget, which gives OTW that little referral tip from Amazon for products where you haven't otherwise been referred by someone else. :D
In fannish news, I finally got to watch 4x04 and 4x05 of Supernatural on the plane home yesterday and am about to settle in to watch 4x06, yay yay, and OMG I am so happy with this season! ♥ ♥ ♥ (Also I am kind of bewildered by the apparent deliberate attempts on the part of the show to foster all the J2 RPF, which didn't seem to me to really need that much help? Seriously, I don't see how they could do more unless they start sending representatives to cons to hand out mass-produced tin hats.)
I also have finally caught up on the whole House/Wilson arc through Birthmarks, and am also delighted there, even if I have been Eganed in the process, which term am I perhaps the first to use? I would define it, in comparison with other canon-cut-out-from-under-story variants, as Jossed == canon goes off in totally different direction from your story; Kripked == canon actually does pretty much exactly what you were writing; Eganed == canon accomplishes same thing as what you were writing except via entirely different route.
(I am not even looking at my list of unfinished stories right now, including the ones that I am still writing for sweet charity & the vote payback, ahhaha oh god. /o\)
aaaaaand, drumroll, nominations are open for yuletide 2008!!! I had mad ambitions of moving the whole shebang over to the new archive software for this year's challenge, but given that right now I am feeling about as flaky as a nice buttery fresh-baked croissant, I think I will let caution trump my usual instincts to leap in blindly and trust to finding some way out (it serves me well most of the time! just am a little overcommitted right now D:), and stick with the good old software for one more year, then transfer over more leisurely this coming year as the OTW-Archive software firms up.
Okay, whew. I feel like I am not quite so disconnected anymore! Now if I can just finish a post in my pro lj and catch up on my email. D: