Nora Charles

I try to avoid fic demonizing women and promoting damaging sexist stereotypes.
I try to avoid fic pushing narrow concepts of ideal womanhood (and am grateful to those authors tagging theirs with "ladies being awesome").
I try to avoid fic reducing female characters to objects to be conquered or won.

So that does make it a bit difficult to find het fic for the ships I like. Mostly I stick to enjoying canon, and making up my own stories. Sometimes an author I trust will write het (slashers tend to be relatively good with avoiding stereotyped gender dynamics), and sometimes I'm lucky and randomly come across a het fic I love:

"An Algorithm for Mistakes" by fleete is great. It's strongly grounded in canon characterization and makes reference to events and mythology from the show, but it's long and meaty enough a character-driven story that I think it can be read and enjoyed by those only familiar with Teen Wolf by fannish osmosis.

Lydia in this fic is not a lady being awesome, she is a BAMF. She's flawed (real person flaws which impact the plot, not Hollywood flaws making her quirky but cute), she has a mysterious traumatic back story and super math skills (not the man pain and super strength and healing of Derek, but still that over the top deliciousness I prefer in my hero fic), and yes, she is a hero: she overcomes the obstacles, she owns up to and fixes mistakes, she grows as a person even when it is painful, she wins the pretty boy, and she does it all while being smart and funny and mean and fashion-self-conscious.

An Algorithm for Mistakes (26861 words) by fleete
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Teen Wolf (TV)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Lydia Martin/Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore
Characters: Lydia Martin, Stiles Stilinski, Derek Hale, Jackson Whittemore, Allison Argent, Scott McCall, Vernon Boyd, Erica Reyes, Isaac Lahey
Additional Tags: Future Fic, First Time, College, Science, BAMF Lydia Martin, Angst
Summary:

Lydia has a plan: attend college, study the biological makeup of werewolves, win prizes, and wear amazing shoes. She does not expect to make friends with Stiles. Or flirt with Stiles. Or accidentally start a pack war with Stiles. Whatever. The point is, Lydia has a plan.

The Danish Council for Safer Traffic are running a campaign to "drive while you drive". Tired old memes become fresh again in translation!

skuf and calvinahobbes have reinflamed my passion for cheesecake by baking a wonderfully delicious snickers cake for our meet up. I've been experimenting with different cheeses ever since. Made a good one, except for sligtly too much vanilla. Made a too flan-y one with cottage cheese. Made a very good one with chocolate cream cheese, but I had used up the sturdy paper cups and the flimsy ones I had left over collapsed and poured chocolate cheese cake all over my oven. (It seemed more sensible to experiment with small batches in cupcake cups.)

lysa_natt was a pleasure to get to know, and it was amusing to learn we had more people in common than we knew.

oneiriad inspired me with her new job, and I used her as an example of a successful networker at work. Everyone was suitably impressed.

calvinahobbes recommended the vid Jag Svär, and I enjoyed it thoroughly this morning. I never thought I would like that song, but the vid uses an excellent cover.

kabal42 handsomely modeled one fantastic Tony shirt after the other, and also dramatically displayed some really good art when his Tony poster jumped off the wall and assaulted lysa_natt, so I've been catching up on Iron Man comics for a few days now.

I told a guy at work, and he sneered that he finds superhero comics very unrealistic. "Yes, indeed. Magic ponies are much more realistic," I said. He said that yes, they are. He's kind of right. He also says that I am a brony like him, but I'm not so sure about that. Being a brony involves a certain degree of brodudeness, I think?

For some strange reason exeterlinden and ximeria have not provoked any new activities in me this week, even though I enjoyed their company very much.

It's another fucking Brokeback Mountain. Don't bother.

I will say that Janet McTeer is amazing as Mr. Page, and I will seek out more movies starring her. But even she does not make it worth it to put up with this shit. For shame, Glenn Close.

When fictional characters are fictionally raped in a fic, it is a shared fantasy between writer and reader, a game of make-believe where we are entertained by the emotions the fantasy situation provokes in us, whether that be horror (who doesn't like a good, safe, cosy fright?), catharsis (sometimes the best way of dealing with situations that affect us deeply is at a remove), arousal (what more relaxed and escapable game of power-exchange than engaging only by fictional proxy?), humor or anything else.

The labels "noncon", "dubcon", "rape fantasy", "graphic descriptions of sexual assault" etc. are a uni-directional way for writer and reader to negotiate consent. ( Read more... )

Do business coaches typically do their best to frighten and worry their clients, so that their coaching will seem more indispensable?

( My boss got a coach to come and give us an all day seminar today, which mostly consisted in making what we normally do seem hopelessly complicated, difficult and fraught with danger )

Der er en tendens til at det er kikset eller uhøfligt at poste offentligt uden at det er på engelsk.

Men hvorfor skal alting foregå på de andres præmisser? Nogle ting rager ikke nødvendigvis alle seks milliarder mennesker i verden, og hvis det gør, så kan de vel også bruge google translate. Nogle gange er ens modersmål det mest egnede at kommunikere på, og nogle gange er det det mest dejlige og skønne at kommunikere på.

Der er ingenting i vejen med at skrive på engelsk, men det skal ikke være gruppepress der afgør hvilket sprog man bruger.

Jeg tror vi ofte glemmer at virkelig mange af dem vi taler med på engelsk til daglig heller ikke har engelsk som modersmål, fordi vi alle delvist af nød er blevet så flydende i det. Hvor kunne det være rart at snakke bare os imellem, med det sprog og de kulturelle referencer som vi er stærkest i.

yvi har skrevet en indlæg om det, hvor den beder om debat.

Have you seen Kissing Jessica Stein?

I'd like to read some fic based on that movie's plot, but which reframes the story from being "straight woman exploits queer woman emotionally, first seducing her then gradually parking her in the friend zone, leading her on for the sake of the intense friendship coupled with ego-boo attraction she can provide, all the while flirting with men" to "bicurious romantic woman with heterosexual-leaning demi-sexdrive falls in love with and enters into an intimate relationship with a sexual woman. Their different sex drives cause relationship problems".

Not necessarily Jessica/Helen, I'd be happy with a fusion with any fandom starring any two same sex or gender characters.

I've migrated to trunk.ly

So far it looks much easier to aggregate links and to copy links from the bookmarkers you're following than it was using delicious. It looks like it could be a wonderful tool for fandom. I like the tumblr style rebookmarking and the reccing of users who link to the things you are interested in.

I've been talking to British people on the phone all day today and yesterday. It's very tiring talking to someone of a different culture you aren't that familiar with, without the aid of body language and facial expressions, and while concentrating on pronunciation so as to not seem foreign in a difficult to deal with way.

It was nice to be able to make some progress in communication as I got more practice, and sleeping on it definitely helped me put my experiences from yesterday into use. Now I feel like looking for jobs in the UK, so I can try living there and learn even more.

Then again, dealing with real people up close and personal while they're being confronted with one's foreignness can try one's love for their country. I consume a lot of British media and feel a lot of affection for the UK because of that, and because of some wonderful vacations I've been on to England and Scotland, and I don't really want to ruin that idealized image by having an experience like I did while living in Spain for the first time.

Monkey bread is a pull-apart coffee/dessert cake type thing, made by baking small pieces of white bread dough in a sugar and butter sauce. Some people add cinnamon, nuts or raisins, and, for some strange reason, some people use margarine instead of butter.

Has anyone tried it? Is it sort of like extra gooey cinnamon rolls? I've been on a caramel kick recently, and the youtube videos of that caramelized sauce lovingly clinging to the fluffy sweet buns make my mouth water. But when I think of trying out the recipe, it doesn't really seem worth it compared to just buying a single cinnamon roll in the store.