This was supposed to be my More Joy Day post and then my Day After More Joy Day + Snowflake Day 13 post but then I had a fever and the ante_up_losers draft deadline jumped around and also Life Is Hard, so I'm only getting to it now. Anyway, here are some of my Opinions about various media objects, some fresh, some stored up, mostly positive, sometimes with caveats and lots of parentheses.

( Books )

( Documentary )

( Feature Films A: Five Excellent Canadian Films That Not Enough People Talk About, Especially in C6D Fandom )

. . . and I'm actually gonna break it there for now (and probably never finish it, knowing me), because this entry is once again much too long, and I have to let it go and move on to Day 14 (ask for help): I need a beta or team thereof! Most urgently for a fic for the Losers exchange that does live on Friday (augh how did this get so long it was supposed to be simple porn and also the ending feels really awkward), and also for some other projects (mostly kink_bingo fic and vids at various stages of completion).

At least I'm feeling pretty good about my C6DVD exchange project.

OMG NEW PARKS AND RECREATION ( SPOILERS )

Okay, now that's out of the way . . .

Today's Snowflake challenge is to "rec at least three fanworks that you think would make a good intro into XYZ fandom," which sort of fits in with my More Joy Day plan of talking about a bunch of media things, except that was going to mostly be about sources, not fanworks, so now I have to figure out which ones even work for reccing with fanworks. Small, but not too small--like, I could rec all three Trigger fics in the AO3 because they are all very good (even though I kind of feel like one-and-a-half of the ones that aren't by me are maybe more appropriately considered Hard Core Logo fic because they're so much about Bill[y], who, yes, is in Trigger, but for barely more than one scene, and--no, I take that back, I sound like Robert Sawyer trying to claim the title of Only Living Canadian Science Fiction Writer because all the others are really American, or don't exclusively write sci-fi, or are women, etc., and that's just not cool. They are good stories and it is the same universe so why am I being silly? I just hope that more people write in this fandom and write about the amazing women in it). And some of the things I thought of to mention today (now yesterday) don't have anything in the AO3 (which I know is not the only place that fic lives, but for all its problems it is the one that I like best), so how about . . .

( Miranda! )

More More Joy Day recs coming up . . .

Ugh, last week. Don't even ask. (Seriously, don't.)

* ( Snowflake challenge, Days 3-10 )

* Stolen from commodorified, because fun.
Pick up the nearest book to you.
Turn to page 45.
The first sentence describes your sex life in 2012.
I am not unusually surrounded by bookpiles so grabbed either the topmost or the most protuberant of the three closest, which were:
Come, Thou Tortoise by Jennifer Grant: "Here is something to do if you are unslept and have a ponytail: Bring that ponytail around under your nose like a moustache."
Pretty in Punk: 25 Punk, Rock, and Goth Knitting Patterns by Alyce Benevides and Jaqueline Milles with photos by Rob Benevides: [full-page photograph of a young white woman with downcast eyes crouching gargoyle-fashion on what appears to be a rooftop in front of a background of industrial twilight (low sun, orange sky, tattered clouds, and shabby buildings) wearing a black leather aviator's cap with goggles, silver eye makeup, spiked collar with ring, black fabric bat wings, layered fishnets and ripped pantyhose, bikerish boots, and the featured knitting pattern, a "cobweb-inspired" "loose-knit tight-fit holey jumper" called "Goth Girl", over a black tank top]
and
The Slave by Laura Antoniou: "'Now,' he said, when she returned, 'you're in serious trouble.'"

* More Joy Day is coming up on Thursday. I have some ideas about what I'm going to do.

* Handmade meme people (you remember who you are?) who have not already PMed me with your addresses, please do so soon. I have or shortly will have stuff to mail you.

Day 2
In your own space, post a rec for at least three fanworks that you did not create. Drop a link to your post in the comments. See if you can rec fanworks that are less likely to be praised: tiny fandoms, rare pairings, fanworks other than stories, lesser known kinks or tropes. Find fanworks that have few to no comments, or creators new to a particular fandom and maybe aren't well known or appreciated. Appreciate them.

While it's emotionally easier to rec works by other people, it is logistically more difficult (pool of things to choose from the first day: stuff made by me; pool of things to choose from for this one: EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD). I have decided to take a slightly crooked approach by tying this into the following two days and reccing three totally awesome people who you should deffo check out and maybe think about following. None of them are new to fandom or particularly obscure or unknown, though they do all at least dabble in small fandoms.

First in reverse-alphabetical order (while we're being arbitrary) is toft, whom I met online I think after nixwilliams (also awesome) recorded her poem The Lay of the Turkey and the Moose about Robarts Library (a giant concrete "peacock" full of books on campus at U of T) and the moose silhouette across the street, for the bukkake square on her card back in the very first round of Kink Bingo (when we were young and carefree [ha] and bukkake was a square), and then met in person through other new mutual friends when I moved to Toronto that same summer. Toft is amazing and brilliant and an astonishingly talented storyteller and also one of the funniest people you will ever meet. Toft didn't post many fics last year (though the ones she did were mostly very long and uniformly very good) so if that's your primary interest in subscribing you might be disappointed (though the back catalogue is not empty), but every post is worth reading. She also periodically posts curated collections of favourites from fandomsecrets.

Second is petra, who wrote the fic that I think I have recced more than any other and in more diverse circumstances (barring perhaps Toft's poem above): Were He Not Romeo Called, which is Patrick/Sarah (Slings and Arrows S2) in which Patrick is a trans man, that fits rather beautifully into canon (to me it is canon) on an emotional level . . . it's in some ways so simple, and so small, and yet it's so precise--really a beautiful little story. Petra also writes poetry (mostly limericks), a skill that I greatly admire especially because it is one I feel I do not possess, and posts such other amazing sundry things as Authorial Math (fascinating and prompted some scintillating and polite debate) and A proposed amendment to Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Tasty brainmeats!

And third is one of my faaaavourite writers of the decade, helens78, who I am again reccing not just for the fanfic (although it is always good and appears rather frequently), but also for the podfic, original novels, cat pictures and anecdotes, liveblogs of awful movies and other delicious meta, and other awesome stuff like, for example, this one-take acoustic Ani DiFranco cover. Kinky knitter solidarity high-fives!

Can't do the other two right now because I am freaking out about my asshole landlords. Maybe there will be spoons tomorrow.

The deadline to submit proposals for the Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association national conference in Boston April 11-14 2012 has been extended until next week, December 22, 2011. This means there's still time to get your proposals (usually just a rough sketch of about 100-300 words, depending on the Area you're submitting to) together and send them in, if you (like me) have not yet done so. (For those who may have forgotten and those just tuning in now, the PCA is the huge, awesome nerdfest con that I am currently involved in trying to organize a Kink Studies stream for, as I have previously mentioned at length here and here.) The list of Subject Areas, for those not submitting specifically to the Kink Studies pilot project co-sponsored by the Romance and by Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies chairs, is here. Tasty brainmeats ahoy!

Signal-boosting is greatly desired and appreciated and will be rewarded with *hugs* and possibly also ninjabread persons once I get the chance for a baking spree.

Find enclosed two mini-picspams (four pictures each) for the kink_bingo December mini-challenge (tiny fanwork bingo), using stills from the first two episodes of Flashpoint. I apologize for the somewhat scuzzy image quality; I'm still getting control of my new computer (think I've figured out now how fix the interlacing problem, but can't be arsed to go back and re-cap). No standard content notes apply; picspams also feature uniforms, guns, and cameras.

( Mini-picspam #1: Authority Figures )

( Mini-picspam #2: Exhibitionism )

FINALLY following up on this post about the Popular Culture Association national conference coming up April 11-14, 2012, in Boston, which I ought to have done weeks ago even though it did take some time to get useful answers and a course of action for interested participants.

First of all, I owe the area master referred to in that post an apology: it turns out that his previous brush-off was a result of a misunderstanding more than a case of deliberate discrimination (the student who first contacted him inquired about organizing an area on "alternative sexualities" rather than saying outright kink/BDSM/fetish/whatever--a circumspect language choice I really don't understand, given the context and the fact that it would be quite obvious once submissions started coming in what we really meant, but she took the initiative to try to start things while I was off doing who knows what, so I shouldn't complain too much). In fact, after a discussion with Romance area chair Sarah Frantz, it appears that the area master does support the idea of a Kink or BDSM Studies subject area but needs to see evidence of demand for and sustainability of the area before he'll create one officially. In order to demonstrate demand, and because it is a thing worth doing, we're working this year on setting up an informal "Kink Studies caucus" in anticipation of turning it into an official area at the national meeting in 2013, and there are a few ways that you can help out or be a part of this:

First, you can present on kink/BDSM/fetish or related topics at the conference; to do this, please go to the PCA website (links in the CFP below) and submit your proposal for an individual paper or a complete panel or roundtable session to either "Romance" or "Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Studies" (the areas co-sponsoring the project this year) or to "New/Special Topics in Popular Culture", or to ANY other area that might suit your proposed topic before the deadline of December 15th (will update if an extension is granted; if you're submitting to an area other than Romance or GLQS I'd recommend also contacting me or Sarah to let us know where you submitted and that you want to be part of the kink caucus so that we can keep you involved in planning stuff closer to the date). If you have an idea for a kink panel or a roundtable session with a specific focus but can't get enough presenters (usually 3-5) together on your own, bring the idea to Sarah first and we'll try to make it happen. Once again, although this is an academic conference, you do not need to be an academic or a person involved professionally or personally with kink (beyond an interest in talking about it; self-disclosure beyond that point is entirely optional) to present.

Second, if you happen to have a full-time academic position with a contract (not adjunct) OR a full-time non-academic position related to the area field or are heading towards having one with greater speed and stability than I am AND you want to be extra awesome, you could volunteer to chair the area when/if it becomes official--just get in touch with Sarah, who has fabulously offered to act as interim chair and to mentor someone to take over from her next year (you do have to attend the 2012 meeting to be eligible).

Third, you can present at the PCA on any topic in any area (link to list above, same deadline for all), not related or restricted to kink, or attend without presenting (I think this is allowed, but I'm not sure what the registration fee would be--there is a "guest" option on the chart but that might be for guests of specific presenters? If you want to go this route lemme know and I'll sort something out--it's a big fun nerdgasm of a conference) and demonstrate interest by coming out to kink area sessions.

Fourth, you can support the initiative by getting the word out to anyone you think might possibly be interested, by linking them back to this post or by passing on the content, including Sarah's call for papers, as far and wide as possible.

Fifth, if you live in or have connections in Boston, you can help hook presenters and supporters coming in from out of town up with places to stay, transportation, food, information, or other money-saving/fun-boosting whatnot.

( Call For Papers: BDSM/Kink Area of Special Interest, by Sarah Frantz, for open distribution )

I have also volunteered to coordinate the unofficial "area dinner or possibly lunch" for this group (and will be looking for suggestions of where to go and what to do in Boston once we have a clearer idea of numbers and scheduling restrictions), so if you'd like to come along for that, whether you're presenting in this area or not, it would be helpful for me to know and have some way to contact you to clear logistics.

Also possibly of interest to anyone reading this far:
Laura Antoniou, author of the Marketplace series among other accolades, is looking for submissions for a number of upcoming book anthologies including a new Leatherwomen collection, companion volumes celebrating butches and femmes respectively, and a collection of Marketplace fan fiction (!!!!!!); more information here. Get your kink porn published!

Girlzporn (website currently down?), a new multi-media sex-positive porn and information site for women, girls, ladies, and other female-identified people ONLY (seriously, it's in the "don't look at this website unless" statement--entirely honour-system, so far, but still) is holding a written erotica contest with cash prizes and paying (not super well, but better than nothing) for other written content including blog posts, articles, and toy reviews. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this project--thus far it seems to skew uncomfortably towards heteronormativity and Cosmo-style pulp but there's a potential there to make something interesting, I think, if we can get some different voices in there.

. . . I guess I should probably figure out what I'm presenting on this time, hey?
ETA: I'm now looking for co-presenters for a panel on either the experiences of people willing to self-identify as kinky with popular culture/media, or kink and/in fandom--if either of those themes sounds tempting, shoot me a message and let's brainstorm!

Assignment received! *rubs hands together like a mad scientist* This should be fun. We only matched on one fandom, but the request gives me a really great angle in and I have the perfect song for it (a bit long, and hard to trim down, but I'll make it work). I hope making touching vids from silly sources is as fun as making silly vids from touching sources . . .

Now is probably a good time to post my Dear Festividder letter, as many have already done:

( Dear Festividder! )

ETA: Ha! It looks like I was the odd player out? One request went up on the community page looking for a pinch-hitter to fill it even before the assignments went out, and it was mine. It feels nice at least to know that whoever claimed it actually picked me (sort of)!

Title: I'll Follow You into the Dark
Fandom: Blood Ties
Characters: Vicki Nelson (Vicki/Coreen, Vicki/Henry, Vicki/Mike, Vicki/Henry/Mike)
Kink: sensory deprivation (wildcard)
Summary: Rambly meta speculating on how Vicki's retinitis might affect her play relationships with three of the most significant others in her life (might edit later for improved coherency)
Content notes: No standard warnings apply. Spoilers for the series generally and the pilot specifically.
Rating/wordcount: G/2000ish

( cutcutcutcutcutcutcutcut )

142 icons from screenshots from Whip It (2009) film and deleted scenes (my middle name is "Overboard"), mostly of Hurl Scouts and other ink-bedecked derby girls, for the "tattoos/tattooing" prompt on my second Kink Bingo card. Mostly just cropped and colour-adjusted stills with a few animated .gifs; feel free to use as bases, add text, whatever. Credit is appreciated but not required.

( there's a lot more to derby than fishnets and picking out a tough name )