So, I'm trying to follow through on my intentions of shortening my "to rec" list.
( 6 Leverage recs for you )

I still got some two dozen fics to rec, but I guess I should start with something...
( Supernatural and Supernatural RPF )

White Collar may not generate many conventional slash fics in the future, but it does seem to be perfect for threesomes. I already found the OT3, and I've not even finished the first ep. Now where are the fics?

Aren't there by any chance some nice SGA Ronon/John fanfics out there, which are more than your average PWP? Trying to do a friend a favour, but my mad fic searching skills failed totally. Help, please?

( Supernatural )



( Merlin )


And...

Leverage

An Exercise in Friendship by zvi

I'd say PG-13 for some language, gen, short. A look at Sophie through Parker's eyes, bittersweet and to the point.

I'm back in Germany, fxxxing finally!

I must admit I was a bit homesick since booking my flight back, but I did good and actually went to Mongolia for the last week instead of going crazy waiting for the time to pass. Mongolia is love!

( jetlaggy rambling about this an' that )

suaine's entry "does writing equal responsibility?" expresses thoughts so similar to mine that I probably won't write anything myself, as I planned before. I couldn't comment and thank suaine yet (some code problem makes replying somewhat impossible until I know how to circumvent it), so I'll just try and spread the love this way.

###

Concerning the wank about warnings in general: What I always miss a bit in many discussions (mostly in comments) is the willingness to forgive each other, to admit that one cannot only take offense, but also get over it, and mostly the ability to assume that most people don't express themselves very well. I'm pretty well educated and still unable to make good arguments that will hold up under a second or third glance if I am agitated (or even in general). Many people only comment on a detail of an entry, something that made them notice, made them speak up. Very few people are very adept at considering texts from various angles and in their entirety, I for example often don't get past the agree/ don't agree/ don't understand distinction. Countless times, I have hopped on a wagon only to find out two days later that the wagon is painted a very suspicious color. So I have a hard time being mad at people who I can only suppose are like me in the way that they are prone to fail/flail once in a while.

I guess that many people will nod their head if they read this - and still come across very harshly or seemingly "above suspicion" of being faulty when getting involved in the next discussion. I also guess this is hard to avoid. Even admitting "I don't understand you" can be offensive, depending on the context. There's no harm in backpedaling once in a while, however. If you change your mind - tell people. Next time, you might change theirs.

There are other options than being right or shutting up if not. Voice your thoughts - but stay human(e).

Help the opposition in Iran to be heard.

The *only* way protesters have to communicate and spread information is by Twitter.


SMS, internet service, and general cell phone service have been blocked inside Iran.

Wanna help them?
Here's what you can do:
Change your Twitter settings so that your location is IRAN and your time zone is GMT +3.30.


I know a lot of you have Twitters, and are probably thinking "yeah, it shows support, that's nice, but it's not like it will actually help anyone."
Trust me - it will.
Their government is hunting them down, and they are using Twitter's search engine - they are searching for Location: Iran/Teheran & Time Zone: GMT +3:30.
If everyone changes their location and time zone they will get plenty of fake targets, and it will make it more difficult for them to track down real protesters.
You are not only showing support, you are genuinely helping protect these people.
Like one of them twitted:

"our lives are in real danger now - we are the eyes - they need to stop us"


Please help if you have Twitter. It takes less than a minute to do it.
Thank you.

Oh, wow. I'm happily deplete of sceptical and cynical thoughts for the moment. Look at the reason (while I go off to glow):

( Obama's proclamation for the LGBT pride month 2009 )

###

I can have critical thoughts later. Right now I'm just glad.

Amazon are at it again!
I found out via the metafandom link to this entry.

Here is the promised rec post, with some added rambling.

( Recs, surprisingly many gen fics this time )

###

I've been watching Leverage in the last few days. It's not the best series ever, but I like its cheesiness and I love Parker. Lots of this love is caused by her extreme likeness to one of my Shadowrun characters. I love how she always says the right thing to make people really dislike her, I like her sneaky infiltration skills, her acrobatics and her clear defiance of social norms. Eliot, now, he just screams "slash me!". And am I the only one getting very strong gay vibes when watching Christian Kane?

###

The setback in marriage rights and by that, civil rights, in California made me very sad, but not at all hopeless. I think the movement for marriage equality will only gain momentum now. We will prevail! (Or you will, me being in China and all).

It seems that Sarah Rees Brennan's lj (sarahtales) has been hacked. I'm in the mood to kill somebody right now.

For you (few) that don't know her: she made a name of herself by writing very good Harry Potter fanfiction a while back, and is now publishing her first book, a YA novel: The Demon's Lexicon.

The reason I love her lj,though, is her stunning wit and her unique way to rec books. Why anyone would hack her lj is beyond me - really beyond me. And to delete all of her former entries - it really hurts.

I hope this abuse has been reported (can't do it, can't really access lj, just look at it) and that Sarah is okayish.

The Rules:

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload) 5 songs that begin with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.


rodo gave me the letter N. This turned out to be harder than I thought, so please bear with me. I must admit to my taste in music being rather limited... (to usually well known bands/artists).


1. Nine While Nine - Sisters of Mercy is an actual favorite of mine. Simple, but very nice.

2. Newtons Gravitätlichkeit - Einstürzende Neubauten is another of my favorites. In German, though.

3. Нэпман - АукцЫон АукцЫон is the band my Finnish friend likes best. With good reason.

4. Novelty - Joy Division This is not a good version, and not the best of their songs, but I love Joy Division, I had to include them.

5. No Leaf Clover - Metallica I actually like Metallica a lot. This is the version from the S&M album, AFAIK.



And another song for you, which doesn't really fit the criteria, but is very good, none the less (IMHO):

Shouts of Joy - November Növelet</user>

Ok, I should apologize for this post beforehand, maybe.

( Recs: 2 RPF, 1 Supernatural, 1 Buffy/Tru Calling Crossover, 1 author )

###

( And now for the rl stuff )

Huh, many of you won't have noticed I was away - I spent the last 10 days travelling to Beijing, Hangzhou, Ningbo and Shanghai with one of my friends.
Will be reading the friendslist in the next 24 hours... More on my trip later on.

Was rather anticlimatic in the "sand" department, it was more of a dust storm. And yet, it moved me profoundly.

Hohhot has a population of about 2 million people. The university I attend is situated in one of the livelier parts of town. Usually, it's always loud outside. People talking or laughing, cars honking, car doors being forcefully shut, car alarms, dogs, children, firecrackers, street fenders...

The storm made the light grey and yellow and muted the sounds. People were few, seeming like ghosts walking through an abandoned city, dwarfed by the high rises and lost on the broad streets. The sound of the wind swallowed everything. It was like walking through an underwater world. Then the weak song of one lone bird...

###

I loved it. Though washing out all the dust in your hair - not fun.

Okay, just some quick recs. All enjoyable, though not ranking in my internal top-ten.

( on to the recs )



This is x-posted to ij using the dw crossposting tool.

I mentioned reading a lot fics in the last week, here are some I liked.

( slash, femslash, het and gen )

So, what is it about RealPeopleSlash?*

Whichever tv-fanfic I read, I never do it because I like the actors; it's all about the portrayed character, for me. Somebody just looking good or getting interesting press might be on my mind for a while (I have to point out that the cast of most shows I like don't have any ugly people on the main pay roll - does this tell about me or convention in the genres I like?), nothing more than that (aside from my very embarassing John Barrowman infatuation, which is very much in the past, thanks a lot). My emotions towards "real people" and "characters" might be equally intense, but they are invariably tied to my notion of the measure of their object's reality. I will always differentiate between "real" and "fictional".

However, on to the main question. Why do rps? For fans of a band, the "canon"'s mostly constructed using the perceived personalities of the band members. Even taking in the fact that those members might construct one or several personas for their performances, there is only so much you can know. You're a fan, you write about musician x - okay, there's hardly anything else than RPF for you, any retelling of their performances in a story format already verges on or might count as RPF.
Perception of actors, on the other hand, is mainly influenced by the roles they play and only secondly by their other public appearances. So, slashing the actors of for example SPN and Smallville - I just don't get it. You have a wealth of interesting canon (and really, what you see in your mind is your image of the actors merged with the characters they portray), which you can be very sure about, but also alter at will because it will still go with the assumption that in the end, the truth of a film depends on your very own interpretation of it. Instead, you concern yourself with people whose reality you can hardly perceive. You take a special interest in not only exploring this reality but changing it and displaying the changes with a direct connotation that you hope them to be the truth, because you would like them to be so. (This is a feeling I get; that it's not just about sharing your fantasy, but secretly hoping it will be truth. I'm getting on thin ice here; fanfiction writers have been accused of the same thing.)

Of course, historical fiction often explores historical people we might know next to nothing about, but I feel that the authors of historical fiction want to be as true to the real people as possible. Contemporary fiction often makes use of real people, as well, but mostly in a distant sort of way (like having the protagonist listen to a speech by some politician, attending a concert and so on), and -here is one parallel- these people are usually very prominent and omnipresent in everyday culture, more symbols of zeitgeist than actual people or characters. There are of course, lots of other possibilites - like the preserved heads of politicians and such in Futurama; I read detaching the heads from the bodies as a metaphor for the clear distinction between those fictional recareations and their living counterparts, though. RPS tries to be as realistic as possible while at the same time breaking heavily with reality. (Making my head ache considering this paradox.)

So, I will easily like fiction trying to show what might have been going on in so-and-so's head at this-or-that particular point in time (a kind of reconstruction in my eyes), but I have a hard time with fics written about "the real" Jensen Ackles and "the real" Jared Padalecki which, starting on this foundation, take off to strange levels of unbelievableness, while also, as my conscience likes to point out, violating the privacy of those actors. I'm not sure it really is such an act, since it doesn't really involve the actors - not on a physical level, I mean - it feels like it, however. This might be because it seems to threaten the emotional distinction I usually make between fiction and fact - where fictional facts are, in my eyes, fair game, the interpretation of facts we consider to be relevant to our reality usually must be interpreted following certain rules, so as to be in tune with the very foundations of our preception of reality. Reading RPS/RPF I feel very confused, and as if I'm wronging or disrespecting the people I read about. So that when I do read RPS, I need to distance myself from the knowledge that it's actual people I read about, treating them as purely fictional instead. Only by doing this can I appreciate stories like The Jared Padalecki Untitled Project by esohpe.


ETA1:
*This should be RealPeopleFiction, but I have never come across het RPF (I have never searched for it, however), so I'll just stick to RPS.

ETA2: Heavily edited this entry's content. Much more satisfied than before.

Being on the net means being in interesting places these days. While studying for the HSK (汉语水平考试) I spent nearly all my study-downtime online. I finally visited the homepage of the Organisation for Transformative Works and also read some fanlore articles, I've been following the discussions about amazonfail, and before that, I read up on USENET, the historical roots of words such as trolling, sockpuppet and so on. Believe me, these days I often wished to be twenty years older, just so that I could have partaken in all the interesting fan activities then, or been there (as an adult) in the first days of the www. Okay, as I was born in the former GDR, things wouldn't have been like this, but one can dream...

Amazonfail doesn't leave my mind these days - to such a degree that I am considering to change my first major from Chinese studies to my second, and graduate in Cultural Studies instead. Then I could write my theses on amazonfail! It really is a very interesting topic. I have collected some interesting links, here are two for you, very different in tone and intention:
The Failure of #amazonfail by Clay Shirky and
Amazon's "Glitch" Myth Debunked on afterellen.com
(And, for laughs if you understand German, read this entry by frogspace.)

On another note, I am a very lucky girl and will be visiting Tokyo in June - please believe it, for I still can't. This almost makes up for not being in Germany for me and my sister nebelkaetzchen's birthday, the Wave Gothic Festival, two of my friends' 30th birthday and the premiere of the new play of the amateur theatre group Kulturbeutel (my partner is on stage). Hohhot is very nice now that spring has arrived and I'm not freezing off my metaphorical balls anymore - but still, and still...

As for reading, a friend lent me Representing Reality by Jonathan Potter. I like it, although I must admit I'm still in the introduction... Aside from that, I'm very glad about unfitforsociety's recs journal, which supplied me with some nice reading this week. Also, I read het. Strange. I mean, I can live with it in paperbacks, but when it comes to fanfic I usually stick to slash or gen. I read het and I liked it...

Oh, and yes, I made good use of rood's invite and am now a (proud) member of dreamwidth, still under the name of anotherslashfan (actually, I always wanted it to be "yetanotherslashfan", but, alas, it is too long). - I first mistyped dreamwidth and came up with "dreamwith", which also is nice, isn't it? And stranger yet, if I cross post this to dw - my mind may well snap. Yes, I finally, finally saw The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Thanks to China's cheap pirate copies, I say. Now I want to dress up...

Living in China is more than bearable, unless you like to drink real beer. I'm not so sure that American beer is all that good, but I really hope it's not as bad as Chinese beer. (One of my friends dubbed it "water" for its distinct lack of alcohol compared to European or Japanese brands.) What really made me laugh out loud (and secretly sigh in relieve) is that they have "dry" beer here (yes, as in dry wine), which has around 4,5% alcohol - which is standard in Germany, unless it's May, where they sell beer with a higher percentage. Did I mention I miss Germany? Really, May is my favourite month of the year.

Okay. You see, I do not lurk for lack of stuff to write, I'm just usually ashamed to write about so many trivia, or so closely related to RL. Nuff said.

Thanks to kennahijja for linking to this post by suaine at lj.

It seems that amazon.de knows a bit more about treating your customers right (or at least making them calm down faster).


ETA: oulangi links amazonfail and discrimination against the LGBT community in her entry Why Silence = Death. Another look on why we cannot accept something like amazonfail, especially not with no apology (and really, they should actually state that they are against this kind of discrimiation to make up for it) attached.

I was only off the net for one and a half days. Actually, one of the last posts I saw was this one by vashtan. Little did I know of what was to follow. After spending two hours getting up to date, here's my somewhat "ham-fisted" account of this mess.

I think one can get a nice summary by reading these articles or blog entries (and following the links they provide), in this order.

Blogs and Twitter Coin "AmazonFail" at the Wallstreet Journal Blogs

Gives a very good introduction to the topic and links to very informative entries/sites.


gmth wondering about the reasons for AmazonFail

I doubt it really was a trolling, but this speculation helps me understand how some people might really believe the whole thing was caused by a troll.


Some ideas about what went on in amazon central these days

And here is a reaction to the "official" statement by amazon which sentiments I whole-heartedly share:
Ms. Smith did not, however, answer any questions I put forth to her about why much of this metadata was necessary in the first place.

It’s also worth noting that Amazon still hasn’t issued an apology.

There are at least two relevant twitter feeds: #amazonfail and #sorryamazon.

Thanks for the new icon to vashtan, who posted the picture in meta_writers over at lj.

And for the peolpe who want to be as confused as I was:
My friendslists.

ETA1: Fixed the links, edited out the typos and strange sentences caused by being furious.

ETA2: And to think I bought "Well of Loneliness" through amazon years ago. I was so happy then. It was one of the first lesbian themed books I ever read.

ETA3: A homepage about amazonfail.

ETA4: Amazonfail on youtube.

Since I sadly didn't manage to follow the rules laid out by skuf, here's my not-quite April Posting Pact post;)

I've been considering a lot of topics, but since I feel my knowledge is somewhat lacking and I haven't had much time for research lately, here come some random recs. Although I'd still say that my main fandom is HP, I used to read Gundam Wing fic before, and have been dabbling in other fandoms then and especially now.

So, multi-fandom recs, most of them my all-time favourites.

Gundam Wing:

Freeport by Maldoror (maldoror_gw at lj)

"Freeport colony: a notorious den of pirates, smugglers and thieves. Wufei persuades one of its denizens, his one-time ally Duo, to help him catch a killer hiding there. Agent Chang thinks he knows what to expect, from this case, from Freeport and from Duo Maxwell. He couldn't be more wrong."

This is my favourite fanfiction ever, I honestly think it's really sad that it isn't original fiction, because it has everything to make me buy it as a book and then give it to everyone I know as a birthday present. Political theory, understated romance, lots of action, very cool protagonists all served with humour, broken clichés and (now I must admit to my weakness) a whole lot of very nice Joy Division lyrics;) It's long, around 500 pages when pasted into Word (in still readable script) to print it out. I re-read it every once in a while, and it still hasn't lost any of its allure. Even better, Maldoror is rewriting it right now (check out her lj) and has nearly finished.
The link, by the way, goes to one of the best GW archives out there, if you read GW at all, check out Dacia's page.


Buffy/Angel:

Amnesia! Spike by mahaliem

The title really says everything you need to know. This fic has lots of humour (nearly verging on crack), and spot on characterisations. Did I mention the humour?:

“Stop it, Angel. And lose the fangs. You’re scaring him.”

“I’m scaring him?” Angel’s face became normal, if normal was looking like he’d been smacked with a fish.

Especially this scene was bound to make me love this fic.
Actually, I only watched the whole of Buffy and some Angel last summer; when the series came out, I was not allowed to watch the telly in the evening, and when it came to its finish, I'd weened myself off watching television altogether, in favour of a starting net addiction... So, I'd actually love some recs, anything goes, as long as the writing's ok. Though I prefer the stories to have Spike in them...


Smallville:

Conflicts of Interest and its sequel Visiting Hours by rageprufrock (also has an lj under this name)

The first story uses "Conner's" point of view to tell us about his father and his "mummy" - but as it progresses, the original characters become more and more important. Did I ever mention that, aside from Zetsuai/Bronze fanfic, I really started out with reading original slash? Also, I really don't plan on ever watching Smallville, and why would I have to, when this fic gives me exactly what I want from any (fan)fiction.

Actually, there are some fandoms I whose canon I didn't really know even after years of reading fanfic about them... For example, I saw my first Gundam Wing episode about four years after reading my first GW fanfic, until now, I only ever saw one episode of Weiß Kreuz, and I know Saiyuki exclusively through wikipedia and some fansites. As I'm not afraid of spoilers, I usually try to find out a lot about a series before watching/reading it or after knowing only a little part.

I'm afraid that I only recced three (four) fics today, but this post already feels like a monster to me. Be prepared for more random reccing (and maybe even a stray meta thought) in the next posts. Still trying ;)

Found at icarusancalion's, who in turn got it from cat_77

You're on my friends list! I wanna know you. I want to know 33 things about you. I don't care if we never talk, talk every day or already know everything about each other. Short and sweet is fine. I just want to know you. Copy this and post it with your answers in the comments.

( I barely remember how to do the tags anymore )

Please do reply if you're not busy, I'll make sure to reply (to your answers) in turn. Thanks.

Argh.
By now I've worked out how to browse public entries in lj by using webproxies, but is there actually a way to access lj from China and then even log in?
I wouldn't mind so much, if it weren't for two exclusively friends only journals that I really want to read, since it's the best way to keep up with the lives of those two friends.
Does anybody know a way to help me out?
Feel free to cross post this to lj, or whatever it takes.
I'm sorry to bother your friends lists with that, considering how I never post here anymore. But ij really was mostly my secondary journal. And I miss lj.

Btw, hurray and thanks to all of you actually being and posting here on ij. You really make my day.