For background information:

Background info on OTW Board decision to smuggle a candidate back on the Board in contempt of due elections process

I just sent the following note of protest to the OTW Board of Directors.

Full disclosure: former member of the Board of Directors, member in good standing of OTW.

I'm going to make this short. I need to let you know that, in the strongest terms, I protest and condemn your recent vote to appoint Andrea Horbinski to fill Anna Genoese's vacated seat for the remained of her term.

We all know that you'll write me a boilerplate answer as to how members have no say in internal Board matters, that your decision was completely in line with best practices, above-board and ethical etc.

Except that is BULLSHIT. Look, when you shadily removed sanders people grumbled but you figured no-one liked sanders much, so there would be little protest. But you managed to surpass even that by making a sham out of the election process a second time.

With your decision, you held the membership in contempt.

Why hold elections at all? Why not - for once in the history of the OTW! - be transparent and either include the seat in the elections, or appoint the third place runner-up? It's not as if there's no precedent for short terms!

Have you become so completely insensitive to basic common sense and any consideration of how you appear - how you make the organization appear? The preservation of you power seems to be the only consideration at play. I know you don't care. But apparently I still care enough about the organization that I must at least write, in a futile effort to get through to you.

You think this will blow over? I don't believe so. As a member, as a former member of the Board, as someone who always has, and always will have, the OTW's best interest at heart, and who used to consider some of you friends: You still have time to act, to rescind the vote, to explain yourselves. I urgently ask you to do so.

With sinking regard,

[Real Name]

Beware: here be spoilers!

The thread titles are just suggestions and incomplete -- please do feel free to start your own threads and jump in wherever :)

( well, except for this contextless screenshot )

Let's chat about DA:I as we go along! I'm installing the last disc as we speak :D

Who's your inquisitor? How far along are you? Pls put "spoiler up to XX" in your header and/or use spoiler cuts <cut> your spoiler here </cut>


ETA: I just came across this useful spoiler-free article: Tips For Playing Dragon Age: Inquisition. Mostly it's basic stuff but some of it is good to know going in! (Now back to fiddling with the character creator. Again. Hmph.)

ETA2: I have some lore questions below.

ETA 3:

- REGIONS!

- FINISHED! at ~150h omg. Endgame spoilers aw yeah




Courtesy of Sashatwen: very helpful subreddit for all your finicky questions (and moderated, too.)

My enterprising flister anotherslashfan is crowdsourcing her anniversary reclist:

The 200th recs post is approaching!

So hop on over and drop one of your favourites there :) Pretty sure I already know what I'll be reccing... or maybe... ...ponder, ponder.

Für in Deutschland zugfahrende Leute: gibt gerade 10€ Bahn-Gutscheine mit recht guten Bedingungen in jeder Packung Toffifee.

Super Entschuldigung, Toffifee zu kaufen, oder? :3

Gorgeous Portraits Capture The Feminine Side Of Masculinity

Some of those are pretty hot to me, in a delicate pastry kind of way.

Guys With Fancy Lady Hair

A bit too jocular in that the hair styles could've been chosen to be less naffy and more complimentary to personal style/facial shapes. Still, yes.




Also, fruits of my sheer laziness: a friend writes up Ex Urbe for Metafilter.*

Just in case you ain't reading Ex Urbe yet.




*note some commenters jumping immediately to male pronouns for the writer.

Ooooh shit, I just spoiled myself in a big way for Lymond Chronicles :(

In other news, now that I've acclimatized, Game of Kings is so fantastically entertaining, omg. It's like high Scottish operatic anime, or something, and its complexity gives me ALL the glee. I'm basically sniggering and clapping my hands and going "ooooh shit" every other page. Layers upon layers! I *like* that feeling that I'm only scratching the surface and the author will deliver later. (Not really foreshadowing -- just a general feeling of solid depth. Well, a meticulously researched historic backdrop will do that for you.)

I'm at part three of Vol I and it gives me so much amusement how Everyone is Gay for Lymond -- mostly figuratively speaking. (I've rarely met a more entertaining asshole, credit where credit's due.)

Can I entice anyone into reading so I can have flaily fannish discussions? :D?

The impossible has happened -- I've almost run out of soap. I'm...bemused. Background: my brother is a soap-making machine, so we're usually drowning in it (it's also quite lovely and varied soap, so that's alright.) I just sent soap packages to a zillion of my friends tho, so. SOAP.

Anyway, bemused: I'm also weirdly proud I've reached the second part of "The Game of Kings" by Dorothy Dunnet (i.e., book 1 of the Lymond cycle). ...Whoo?

Sure, I'm a lazy reader, but oh my god, this book is uh...a bit hard? It's also intriguing and utterly hilarious, so kinda worth it, but it's basically one third French that's sort of wrong (medieval French, wat?) and one quart Latin that's ... really weird (pig Latin??) and some purposely mangled Spanish and the rest is basically Scottish. SCOTTISH. And super weird allusions to things I have no clue about. (Which is absolutely a characterization choice, in that Lymond is a glib ass, yes, but still.)

Halp. Makes me almost want to read it in translation so someone else'd done the work of decoding this for me. But no, I've already bought the second volume (1st is from the library, a disintegrating donated copy from the armed forces. Thanks, US Army! I'm also charmed I'm the first to check it out in uh, 20 years or so.)

But hey, I'm something like 150 pages in and I actually, shockingly, do like two characters (the Dowager Lady Culter and Christian Stewart), which is more than I can say about most books by my fave author du jour, i.e. China Miéville. Heh. (His style's not at all hard to digest, in comparison, because the language acrobatics are *contemporary*, and I can deal with that just fine.) My mind's jumping to Miéville because it's that time of year when I want either a new novel by him or by Steven Brust (who, combined, convince me that Communists Are Better Fantasy Writers. Something about inverting an intrinsically conservative genre, I guess.)

On that thought, any other communist fantasy/SFF writers you care to recommend?

...

I also totally ship Lymond and Christian >_>; FANDOM. I wish I could find that off-switch.

Iiin other fannish news, am playing Tales of Graces. I suppose I like Sophie? No, I definitely love Sophie. The rest... hmm. I surprisingly don't actually *hate* Asbel (yet), and I like the mechanics! Malik's outfit offends me to the core. (Costume design generally awful, sadly.) Vesperia's battle system's still better, but the Eleth Mixer is a GIFT. The plot's actually less nonsensical than Vesperia's so far (...then again, that one plumbed the depths of "plot coherence"), but also sadly lacklustre. The characters weirdly lack some spark, which...it's a Tales game, how can that be. HOW? :(

Oh okay, and I admit I soooort of ship Hubert and Malik hard, but then Hubert's something like 16 (nevermind he's a functional adult in-universe) and Malik's 40ish (-- no, I don't ever look up Tales canonical ages, because they're completely craaaaazy. In-game logic says Hubert is max. 17 and Malik is at minimum 38.) And I *am* a pearl-clutching old slash lady, it seems! So I can't put my heart into it, sigh. (But seriously, the subtext is out of proportion oh my god.)


I mostly want to get it done and over with because a) defeat Bak'laag! (backloggery in-joke) b) Xillia's supposed to be much better and also has a lady co-protag? I masochistically look forward to that.

Mmh.

Eh he he last post I was all "oh, money, I sure could try and be more frugal" and then my brain decided "fuck this", earrings and nail polish ensued, and I'm pondering hopping over to London for a few days around July 16th.

I'll have about 5 days, which is a lot of time to waste on my own; would anyone be interested in meeting up?

(It's still hypothetical, but I'll decide by tonight.)

anatsuno may have put a flea in my ear about budgeting by mentioning it on Twitter.

( food, clothes, money )

( Persona 3 etc )

Also, went to the zoo and let my inner child run free by squeeing and flailing over adorable baby animals and being Annoying All Kid, reciting facts about obscure animals. Aw yeaaaah.

Got "Game of Kings" by Dorothy Dunnett from the library yesterday, not sure if I'll manage to complete it in time (...Silmarillion is still on, oops.) I don't talk about it much, but I basically don't read anymore. Books are really, really expensive, and I'm really, really lazy. (I may be pining for an e-reader.)

freece's announcement.

ETA: forgot the most salient point: the free online version's going away, so best check it out while you still can.

The major take-aways for me:

* no more serialized publication :(
* but since she's getting paid to write full-time, vol. III will, hopefully, be here much sooner :D
* I continue to be impressed how cleverly and gracefully she's managing the work. She's been great at cultivating her audience; I can well imagine how she argued with the Penguin reps re. the power of internet word of mouth and not letting that well dry up, heh. Still, I don't doubt some people will be grudgy.
* I'm apprehensive about the publisher's marketing, but otoh, it's neither here nor there because in the end, I get the words on the page.

* self-evident to us, maybe, but a major publisher recongizing there's a solid market for m/m? What's the precedent?

(Interesting how this is almost diametrically opposed to the Kindle Worlds news on several axes, not least of all the fact that original slash like CP seems, genre-wise & in terms of creative freedom, closer to actual fanfiction than the regulated media tie-in novels of the Worlds model... but eh, definition games.)

It's suddenly summer here, which means lounging around on the balcony with laptop. *basks* I just reached page 74 in my edition of the Silmarillion, at which point I squeaked, closed the book and said to my flatmate "can't go on right now, from here on it's basically 300 pages of straight tragedy ;_;". Only a slight exaggeration, because she demanded proof and so we flipped open random pages and bam, ~tragic stuff happens~. That's the Silmarillion for you.

The world's slowest re-read was sparked by anehan, who expressed regret over not being a Tolkien fan and her lack of interest in Hobbits, to which I replied by enthusing about all the high-flying tragedy and awful sadness of the Silmarillion, i.e. Oh, Forget About Hobbit & LotR then, Ancient Middle Earth History Is Where It's At, sooooo -- have you got your copy yet, H.? :D

Because I'd say you can basically skip everything up to chapter 6, which I haven't re-read yet, but since it features Féanor & Melkor mayhem is going to cut loose (ha, ha, literally) annnny second now. Although I have to say that the two pages on Thingol and Melian's meeting are both hilarious and charming. Everything else is basically an introduction of the gods and a dizzying array of elvish tribes and migratory troubles. (I forgot the delightful detail of Ulmo shipping the Elves over to Aman via floating island, though -- twice! -- seeing as ships hadn't been invented yet. Omg.)

But yeah, I'll have to gird my loins and prepare myself for the EPIC ANGST before I forge on...

ETA: speaking of Ancient Elven History, and how the ancient is the contemporary what with immortality, and the complicated in-between-ness of Elves, and...everything, here's a resonant little snippet on Legolas' mother by nolikereally. can't believe I'm linking to fic on tumblr. the times...


Relatedly, I finished North & South a while ago and don't have intelligent things to say about it except that wwwwwhoooa, after book 2 (i.e. everything following The Proposal) things suddenly get keenly interesting! I do find the pacing odd, seeing as book 1 feels like All Build-Up and book 2 like All Pay-Off, but honestly, not complaining. And I'm not just talking about the romance, in which I was finally getting invested; I thoroughly enjoyed all the conversations about class relations (Higgins <3), which do feel much more integral here than in the TV adaptation. I mean, obviously, but mostly there's less of the naiveté I half-expected coming off the TV series; like Thornton acknowledging there would always be strikes -- right on, John.

( thoughts on the ending )

*pokes fleurrochard* Anything you want to add? I'll probably rewatch the BBC series with friends in May, already looking forward to it :D

I've been laid down with a cold, so I haven't been doing much but go to work (grumpy & hacking & coughing, sorry colleagues), reading North & South, and playing Final Fantasy XII.

( Raithwall's Tomb: pretty sure it's going to go downhill from here )

( Fran & Balthier mentor/student forever and ever )

Aaanyway, I hope Raithwall's isn't too annoying, and next up I'll try and nab the Zodiac spear in Nabudis. Uh oh. (Terrible plan or awful plan? I know.)

( North & South, past book I / chapter 25,  )

(And now on to rickrolling our colleagues for April 1st. I know, I know, but how could we pass up this opportunity?)

I should be catching up with fleurrochard, who's read ahead with North & South. I've also been discussing Captive Prince with my lovely friend T. who gifted me both books (!). But, nah, what I really need right now is a virtual world to run around in.

So I started Ni no Kuni, which I bought basically unseen (Level 5 & Studi Ghibli? done.) And it's utterly charming and ridiculously beautiful -- and completely unengaging. I don't know. I'm only entering the 2nd dungeon and I don't feel any real urge to continue.

So I considered starting Tales of Graces f (for a lack of localised Xillia, which is what I'd really wanted to play). But the protagonist is supposed to be a real turn-off, so, hmmm.


So what I did instead was.... ....... start a new game of Final Fantasy XII. Yep. I mean, I've clocked 200+h on one completed and 100+h on one half-abandoned playthrough on this game, and ...I don't even particularly like it.

I still fondly remember extempore raging in disgust and my less than enthusiastic initial reaction. And it's still all true. But damn, if this isn't one immersive world. Partly it may just be the sheer amount of time the grinding forces you to spend, partly it must've been the amazing fanfic I've read (ugh, if only the game was anywhere near as sophisticated as the stories)... but either way, it's had an immense staying power and impression on me.

I just kept imagining myself running around in the desert, or the Phon Coast or... not all the environments are great (my standard for virtual forests is higher than Salika Woods -- thanks for that, Chrono Cross), but I don't know. There's just something about it that I really enjoy, running around, blinking into the sun, the zen of chaining kills. Heh. And I like the characters, even when I don't like their outfits or developments or plots or worldbuilding (Eruyt Village, looking at you.) So I'm basically approaching this as a "plot, what plot?" playthrough where I will focus on monster hunts and meet old friends and travel to lovely locations for...reasons that are better not explored at any juncture. And then, I will revisit the glorious fanfiction.

:3

via emef:


( this video is as hilarious as it is accurate and you should watch it. )

wait, I'm curious. Count of hands: are there any readers of this journal who haven't heard of Captive Prince?



( See, I wonder if this is even news to anyone -- )

Amazing how shifting it from one sphere (fannish WIP) to another (published fantasy epics!) I can almost make the dreaded "unfinished" label look positive :P

I was thinking about how much sadder I will be at my next Fellowship of the Ring rewatch. Everyone's on about the ending of the Hobbit, of course, but I was idly thinking of Balin and got this acute feeling of, idk history? Nothing wraps up quite neatly, like, 'Oh, yeah, they had this big victory! *bask* ... oh wait, and everyone died of pox three years later didn't they'. It's brilliant. ♥ Tolkien ♥. Breaking my heart since 1990.



Speaking of Hobbit, how much more amazing would this kind Galadriel have been? Even just lounging around she exudes majesty. (Eat your heart out, Thorin!)

And now back to heartbreak -- I was actually sobbing at the end of this fic, another lovely entry in the "canon-compliant retelling, now with added homoeroticism" genre of Hobbit fic:

Shield Me (8893 words) by bendingsignpost
Chapters: 15/15
Fandom: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: Major Character Death
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield, Balin, Kíli, Fíli, Dwalin, Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Ori - Character, Nori, Óin, Glóin
Summary:

One moment at a time, they grow closer. (2012 movie Bagginshield, following the narrative of the book, spoilers for the book)

Anyone read at ff.net? I don't have time/inclination to go trawling, so any favourites from there would be appreciated.

ETA: oh, hey, are you on tumblr? I want to add all the hobbit .gif suppliers! I'm lianesque and am pretty much exclusively reblogging cute animals and handsome men in suits. My 14 yr old self would be appalled at the utter PG-ness of it all.)

ETA2: oh also I've watched Strike Back and was underwhelmed with the writing, although it was certainly entertaining enough. Flatmates seems strangely amenable to my Richard Armitage spree. (Good thing that my North & South DVDs will be arriving soon, although the Northern accents may prove too much for a cosy DVD-Abend. Hmmmm. We'll see.)

... anyone have The Hobbit (movie) recs?
Pretty much anything, though personally I don't care for A/B/O or overly grimdark/torture stuff, and am partial to Thorin/Bilbo.

ETA: princessofgeeks points out thirteen_dwarves in comments if you're interested in discussion/meta!

I've been a Tolkien fan since age 9 and I've never actively slashed anyone, not even Gimli/Legolas! [that's canon anyway, so hey.] So, no, I wasn't wearing slash goggles, but there was no escaping the anime-style Thorin/Bilbo subtext in that movie. Good lord. o_O;

I'm currently making my way through the AO3 offerings, here's my favourites so far:

WARNING: WIP Lovely book-outtakes, so more or less canon-compliant. Thorin POV, charmingly written. Nothing explicit yet. The writer has a knack for relatable emotional moments -- I was hooked right at the beginning, when she describes Thorin's quiet resentment at the comfortable, peaceful Shire.

Blended in Measure (9392 words) by littleblackdog
Chapters: 8/?
Fandom: The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Characters: Thorin Oakenshield, Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Beorn, Thorin's Companions
Summary:

Small stories set along the journey to Erebor, about a king without a mountain, an honest burglar, and the fine company they keep.

Here there be book and movie spoilers, and eventually dragons. Or at least one dragon.

Short, introspective character piece. The imagery and quiet, lyrical language really worked for me.

Evenfall (1499 words) by melfice
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Bilbo Baggins/Thorin Oakenshield
Characters: Bilbo Baggins, Thorin Oakenshield
Summary:

Now that you live in my chest, anywhere we sit is a mountaintop.

In other news, I gather there are audiobooks narrated by Richard Armitage? BE STILL, MY HEART.
(Brought to you by listening to wy too many RA interviews. He does seem to be a genuinely lovely human being, doesn't he?)

Sloooow day at work, we're all shameless slackers today (and eating ALL the leftover holiday candy!). I'm annoyingly talky because I want to fangirl with people! And while flailing about The Hobbit proved successful, no-one has seen North & South, which I mostly want to talk about. Awwww. But I'll rec it to a friend who's just discovered the joy of period romances, so this shall shortly be amended :3

briefly, slightly spoilery:


( The Hobbit )


( North and South )

The last chapter of Captive Prince was in May, right?


[forlorn sigh]