sundries

A partial preliminary Gallifrey One programming schedule is up. I _may_ be doing other stuff as well (britgeekgrrl do you know what's up with the crossplay thing?), but right now on Saturday at 1pm, I'm on It's The End, But the Moment Has Been Prepared For: Fan Reactions to Character Deaths which will be both awesome and possibly sort of tense. It's a great time-slot, for which I am happy, and I am not scheduled against anything I desperately want to go to. On the other hand it's in the middle of the day, necessitating a quick de-cosplaying (I literally cannot do that one in costume, not that anyone at Gallifrey cares, but because I just can't, since I will either laugh myself stupid or cry).

This will not, of course, by my paper, which is in progress, but will be a lot of discussion about the thesis on which I'm basing my paper and some of my preliminary conclusions, as well as whatever awesome contributions others on panel and in the audience bring to it.

Anyway, more as I know it. If you're gonna be at Gally, please come.

There's a date for the Broad Universe Library of Congress thing I'm participating in, but again, more as I know it, as I haven't a time or a full schedule or anything else yet. March. Watch for it.

I should REALLY send in my Dragon*Con contract today.

But first we're going to Costco!

zvi posts about Regency AU fic and oppression, and it's a good discussion (Note: I don't believe I've even read the story that started the discussion). Regency AU's are a pretty popular thing in fandom, rarely done well and often compelling to me when they are. But if you read the Regency romances from which these things get their blueprint (mostly Heyer, who's stuff was written, I believe, from the 1930s on, and shows the biases not just of the period she was working in, but the one she was living in as well -- OMG, the antisemitism and racism!) they are filled with all sorts of appalling stuff. So what do we, who want to work with Regency romance tropes do about it? Additionally, colonialist narrative works a certain way for a reason, if you remove colonialism or the reasons for it, can you really have a Regency AU?

I've never written a Regency AU, but wow, descensus_hp is extremely Regency inflected. Descensus is all about the hate and bias, of course, as it's a story about Death Eater culture. For Kali and I, I will risk saying (since I don't like speaking for her), that this was a way to not have to address the "can you write a Regency AU and make it less hateful." Instead we wanted to talk about the hate, and the why of the hate and how the hate could seem -- albeit on a set of fictional characteristics (magic use as tied to familial history) -- justifiable to someone. It's a VERY uncomfortable story, and it's not been widely read, and it's hard for me to be at all sure if its reception could as be as we intended it. Or even, if it should be.

Anyway, examining the Regency AU, and the oddities of it, and how to reconcile them or not with the historical and later literary source is really interesting stuff, especially in the context of a lot of the issues fandom is grappling with lately. I think it also speaks, tangentally to a lot of the post-CoE discussion about the use of homophobia in the narrative regarding Ianto. As writers, can we show biases without enacting bias? Is it better to remove non-narratively central hate from stories or keep it in for "realism"? What do we do when the audience doesn't get it? How do we as writers do it so the audience does get it? Are these even in the right questions? Etc.

Wasn't there, don't know the song, but I do want to draw your attention to a discussion that may have a large impact soon if it hasn't already: http://community.livejournal.com/arisia/353060.html

When Hate Turns Graphic: poster art in Europe.

such_heights gives us a sampling of rape culture from some "uni overheard" sites. Triggering, needless to say.

cruise: full day 3 - Dominican Republic

The next stop was Samana in the Dominican Republic. As you probably know by now, the Dominican Republic is the nation that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. This was a tender port, and we used the ship's lifeboats to do it. This was both surreal and much less unpleasant than the tendering in Half Moon Cay.

The excursion we chose in Samana was a trip to Los Haitises, a national park made up of hundreds of islands featuring mangroves, birds and limestone caves filled with art created by the native peoples that once lived in the caves.

It was cloudy the day we were there, but that was fine considering the environment we were looking at (very rain forest-y. Apparently there are only four parks in the world with environments quite like this one and the others are located in Cuba, Vietnam and China). We did explore Samana a little bit, but didn't have time to really see anything out of the port-side commerce and the tourist resorts in the distance. This was one of our destinations where the juxtaposition of poverty and the vacation whims of our fellow travelers led to some ugly dinner conversations.

We noticed that many future HAL cruises are planning to go by Los Haitses for scenic cruising, but not really stop there. We suspect, but have no way to know, that this is due to cruise guest complaints, but we would not have missed this experience for the world.

( even on a grey day, it's very green )