Thorns

The mysterious geographic explorations of Jasper Morello (full movie on youtube) Oh. My. God. This is an amazing neo-victorian short film, utterly gorgeous. But don't do what I did and go in expecting Tim Burton-esque darkness-hiding-a-schmoopy-heart, this is more Lovecraft or Edgar Allen Poe. Blarg. I haven't been that slowly horrified by misreading the genre of a film and letting myself get attached to the characters since "The Talented Mr Ripley".

Also, two fanfics where I've spent AGES wishing someone would write something like this but noone does, may actually appeal to non-fanfic types (both are G rated :))

First Passing Through Nature To Eternity a gen fic showing what it might have been like for the four founders during the founding of Hogwarts. From the POV of Rowena Ravenclaw which is an added bonus.

Second Boston Marriage (Gilmore Girls), a note-perfect Rory/Paris fic that never loses it's snark or descends into schmoopiness. A quote:
Inside was a forty-page printout of a PowerPoint presentation entitled Boston Marriage: The Thinking Woman's Solution. Rory gripped the doughnut between her teeth and sat back on the couch, PowerPoint in one hand and coffee in another. She paged through the presentation, determinedly not pausing at a chart labeled "A Historical Analysis of Gilmore Dating: Two Decades of Disaster." When she got to the three-page bibliography at the end, she flipped back to the beginning and read it again, more slowly.

It's pretty much exactly the sort of story I'm aiming for with "Marriage is Destiny", may have to give up in despair of ever being so awesome :)

Also, this may have less appeal to people who aren't me, but if there was ever a show which had potential for book-centered femslash(*) it's "Read or Die", and I came accross a slight but sweet Nenene/Maggy fic Kiss Me, I’m Drunk.

(*)I think my love of this genre goes back to my obsession with "Anne of Green Gables" as a child :D

Talking with nico_wolfwood I was inspired to illustrate a scene from Pride and Predjudice using the same steampunk setting as this picture. Now I've gotten Darcy and Lizzie in the picture I feel more satisfied the prompt is complete.

Of course now I'm going to imagine Anne that way every time I read them book :) Drawing the first picture got me thinking bout her role in the book and what her future might hold, and while I was looking for reference pics I found proof that I'm not the only one :)

Airship from here, aren't they cool?

So I've made myself a steampunky...thing for wastelands, but since I didn't want to screw it up tried out various techniques on a crappy $3 clock from Red Dot, and as a result have an excess crappily modded "aleithiometer". Anyone going to wastelands want to borrow(*) a crappy prop to fill out their costume? You'd either get it from me at the con (and I will probably only be going on Sunday) or come pick it up from here if you're really keen.

Pictures and description of how I made it after he cut.
( Read more... )

Man, there are so many good links on and coming out of ibarw.

Anyway: Anyone who's interesting in Steampunk should check out this discussion, since as well as getting somewhat into some of the underlying racism it also has very pretty pictures, plus some cool ideas.

Two IBARW posts about australia: By strangedave and on a similar theme Australia doesn't have racism? (Actually tielan's whole race tag has a lot of interesting stuff)

Also from her lj, and in order to inspire the engaged couples on my flist: Cake Wrecks

I have joined 50books_poc, since it nicely dovetails with my desire to read a wider variety of good books, and be better educated. I have a list of books to reserve at the library, assuming I get around to getting out of the house before it closes...

I had a sudden (probably rather obvious) thought last night: a common tactic of those trying to derail/dismiss discussions about some injustice (from feminism to animal rights and the environment) is "Why are you picking on this one minor injustice A instead of focussing on major injustice B?"
There's a lot of good rebuttals to this, one of which is that the people making this argument almost certainly are doing less to fight injustice B than the person they're criticising.

But I think one motivation for using this argument is: "I am aware that B is a problem, and deep down think I should do more to fix it. This makes me feel guilty. If you are right, and A is also a problem, then I need to feel guilty about that too. And probably lots of other stuff. And I don't feel like feeling even more bad! Life is hard enough as it is!" Which isn't a very good argument, but it isn't deliberately trolling either, just...selfish I guess.

(I decided this post was too chatty and vague to count towards IBARW)