sunnyskywalker

Instead of typing out the disclaimer for each fic, I'm just going to link here. It will save valuable seconds!

( Here be disclaimers. )

Handier than browsing through the calendar. Fiction has a separate post.

• Battlestar Galactica
  
  • BSG is losing hull integrity
    
  • Islanded in a Stream of Narcissim
    
  • BSG Finale Thoughts
    
  • BSG has mommy issues
    
  • Two BSG polls
    
  
  
  
  
• Firefly
  
  • How to build a Reaver-killing reader
    
  
  
  
  
• Harry Potter
  
  • Nostalgic for old Harry Potter theories
    
  • More possible-but-imaginary Longbottom backstory
    
  
  
  
  
• Star Wars
  
  
  
  • OH GEORGE LUCAS NO
    
  • More Han/Leia nattering, b/c my thoughts are full of "but on the OTHER other hand..."
    
  • Character Meme: Shmi Skywalker
    
  • Character Meme: Padmé
    
  • Padmé and Leia, Anakin and Han
    
  • Courtship snark and analysis
    
    • Chapter Fifrteen
      
  
  
  
  
• Miscellaneous
  
  • So much fail! [on RaceFail 09]
    
  • The Fail That Wouldn't Die [on RaceFail 09]
    
  • Another author weighs in [RaceFail 09]
    
  • Response to PSK [Not technically RaceFail, I think, but related.]
    
  • Genre books meme
    
  • My email to Amazon.com [on AmazonFail; f-locked]
    
  • Chronicle of Good Things: Intervale
    
  • Tobias Buckell's Xenowealth series
    
  
  

Happy birthday,

So, my designated parking space in my complex is under a tree. This has both advantages (shade) and disadvantages (birds, leaves).

And, uh, GIANT FALLING BRANCHES WHICH CAUSE $5000+ WORTH OF DAMAGE.

Fortunately, I wasn't inside the car at the time, and my insurance is covering it, but... ack! (Seriously, tree, you couldn't have dropped the branch on either of the empty spaces next to me? Or done it two hours earlier while I was at the dentist? What did I ever do to you?)

Actually I do have to pay the $500 deductible, which the homeowner's association won't pay for because the tree is healthy and so they've deemed the falling branch an Act of God. I find it entirely too amusing that this is how insurance companies explain they're not going to pay up. I picture a giant sky deity cackling and rubbing his hands together as he looks for new forms of random mayhem to cause. "And now I'll snap this innocent branch, MWAHAHAHA! Take that, puny mortals!"

Also, Spock/Uhura has EATEN MY BRAIN. Seriously, guys, I HAVE HOMEWORK AND YOU NEED TO GET OUT OF MY HEAD RIGHT NOW I DO NOT HAVE TIME FOR THIS. Unfortunately I do not have the logics to make it stop so I will take fic recs instead.

Graceling by Kristin Cashore is one of the best books I've read in ages.

I was wary of reading it at first, despite several people whose opinions I trust giving it glowing reviews, because the premise sounded like potential bad Mary Sue fic to me. Fortunately, I was dead wrong.

( I'll try to explain why I loved this book without spoiling all the plot twists. )

Heh. plasticinecupid and I were just talking about this song recently, but it didn't occur to me to apply it to Buffy's love life. Have a vid!

BtVS: Coin-Operated Boy

Happy birthday, owl! I hope it's been a good day!

Okay, it is not quite so dramatic. But it still matters. I direct your attention to the AILA (American Indian Library Association) Selected Bibliography on cataloging issues relating to native peoples.

The first article on the list, to take an example, mentions that the Library of Congress Subject Headings have "Indians, Treatment of" as the closest subject heading that applies to the centuries of genocide, and points out that no one thinks of using the subject heading "Jews, Treatment of" for the Holocaust. (Well, maybe the guy who shot the guard at the Holocaust Memorial Museum would, if he thought how people treated Jews mattered.) Subject headings say a lot about what is considered important, or what is even considered to have happened. The author also mentions the issue of using tribes' own names for themselves vs. the ones others have given them (the LC has changed Chippewa to Ojibwe, but not Cherokee to Tsalagi).

In a related issue, I am grateful to Debbie Reese for posting Where is your copy of The Education of Little Tree?. I recently discovered that the library where I work a) has a copy and b) shelved it in Biography. That is how it was marketed, before it was discovered that Forrest Carter was really Klansman Asa Carter and his claims to Cherokee ancestry dubious at best. It's fiction, and should be shelved with fiction. I never would have known about this without Reese's post.

Here's The Transformation of a Klansman by Dan T. Carter, the 1991 article revealing that Forrest Carter was really Klansman Asa Carter and his autobiography not as truthful as he let on.

Chapter Three of Going Native (previewable on Google Books) is all about this book and Asa/Forrest.

This issue of Studies in American Indian Literatures has an article by Daniel Heath Justice (a Cherokee) about whites telling “Indian” stories, the effect the book had on him as a child, stereotypes, Carter’s “lone person/family against the rest of the world” narratives in this and other books, and more.

What is it with people who try to pass off fiction as autobiography, anyway? We've had several of those in the past few years.

In other, non-library indigenous issues, there is some seriously scary stuff going down in Peru. Like suspending civil liberties and sending in tanks and helicopters kind of scary. After people who are protesting that they ought to have a voice about what happens in their own lands.

ETA: I forgot to add this link to the post about the Canadian Border Patrol considering giving its agents firearms. To protect a border that cuts right through the Mohawk Nation's Akwesasne Territory.

A Fair(y) Use Tale A lesson on copyright and fair use, which is awesome for being entirely composed of clips from Disney movies.

Spock and Biraciality compares how Star Trek dealt with Spock's heritage back in the day compared to the new movie's treatment.

A Story, and an Attempt at Empathy I can't imagine having to sit in class with a teacher who had so much hate, but the students stood up for themselves brilliantly.

The Xenowealth series consists of three books so far: Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose. I read the series backwards, which is possible (the books can stand on their own more or less)... but I am not sure I recommend it. It's a lot easier to read it the right way than to reconstruct the earlier books from throwaway references. On the other hand, Crystal Rain is the weakest of the three, so maybe you should start with Ragamuffin and Sly Mongoose and skip back to the first one later. (Not that it's a bad book, but the second two are lots better.)

( Crystal Rain )

( Ragamuffin )

( Sly Mongoose )

Speaking of zombies, we got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies into the library today. I'll have to wait in line to get it, though. My boss compared it to a fortune cookie: when you add "in bed" to the end, you still have the original text too, but it has a totally different meaning. Similarly, zombies totally change Regency romance. But you probably already guessed that. (Apparently there are also ninjas. In the employ of Lady Catherine.)

There's an excellent reader's guide in the back. Some questions could apply to the original, zombie-free text. For instance, it asks whether Lady Catherine's dislike of Elizabeth is solely based on economic and social disparities, or whether Elizabeth might also remind Lady Catherine of Anne's inadequacies, or whether she might be in love with Darcy herself. But it also asks whether the zombies can be seen as a metaphor for marriage, shambling through society and eating its brains. (It didn't use exactly those words; I paraphrase the intent only.) Has anyone read the book yet? I'm curious what you thought!

I have two one Dreamwidth invite codes if anyone wants them. Comment here with your email (comments are screened) and the first two replies will get DW codes.

An integrated-curriculum unit on an Agatha Christie story has all sorts of great educational possibilities, as this page shows. However, I am not convinced of the wisdom of this particular suggestion:

In Industrial Arts a student can make a “stiletto.”

As in, the kind you use to murder someone, not the kind you hobble around in. This is for middle schoolers. There is no way this could go wrong AT ALL.

senatorsfan_ink's post on liking the Star Wars Prequels better than the Originals got me thinking, especially this quote:

- You say you stood up and cheered when Leia grabbed a blaster from Luke and shot down the Death Star hallway before ordering Han & Co. into the garbage disposal? Well, I stood up and cheered when Padmé Amidala planned the successful incursion into Theed in TPM, and I cheered even more loudly when she took an active role in that plan's execution. [*snipped for length*]

Those are just three examples, but I could go on. For almost every point supporting the OT, I can find a counterpoint for the PT.

In the comments, plenty of people mentioned how the trilogies complement each other, and having both enriches our experience of the movies. Add that to the compare-and-contrast idea, and you get some of my favorite parts, where the trilogies echo each other and make everything more awesome. I could name tons of these, but I'll focus on two sets of characters: Padmé and Leia, and Anakin and Han.

( Padmé and Leia )

( Anakin and Han )I love the way comparing the trilogies like this makes both of them better. And I haven't even talked about Anakin and Luke, or Obi-Wan and Han, or young Obi-Wan and old Obi-Wan! Another day :D

The act of typing up other people's unproven-but-plausible HP theories sparked one of my own...

So, back to Frank and Alice Longbottom. Suppose they were a bit overzealous in their duties. Maybe once authorized to kill rather than capture suspects, they did so more than once, rationalizing that it would have been too dangerous to attempt capture. And suppose when they did apprehend suspects, they used the Cruciatus Curse to interrogate their prisoners, rationalizing that they had to do the tough thing to protect the wizarding world (including their innocent baby Neville).

Suppose - since we know that they got acquitted (or at least not convicted) before being re-captured and sentenced to Azkaban - some of those interrogated prisoners were the Lestranges.

That puts a whole new ironic and nasty layer on things.

This would provide some characters who really were otherwise good people and usually nice (unlike, say, Snape) who nevertheless did awful things, and also (in the already-existing St. Mungo's closed ward scene) showed how nobobdy, no matter what deserves to be tortured into insanity.

For some reason, I went reading through some of my favorite old HP theories, getting all misty-eyed for the days when I could believe that Book 7 would mostly make sense and wrap up most of the major plot and theme issues. *gazes into the distance*

Happily, some of the theories were never contradicted and still look perfectly plausible, so I can still ponder the hinted-at tragic backstories and other hidden currents of the series. Here's a few of my favorites:

Arthur Weasley was Imperiused during the first war That scene where Fake!Moody teaches the Unforgivable Curses is suggestive, as is Arthur's pet peeve of genuine Death Eaters who got off on the Imperius defense. We never have met any of those supposedly numerous people who really were Imperiused, have we? Or have we... (I don't buy the Missing Weasley Child addendum, but it's not necessary

Werewolf camp in the Forbidden Forest This one's buried in the middle of the essay, sorry. Anyway, Draco says in his first year that there are werewolves in the forest. We later find out that while Fenrir Greyback may not be an actual family friend, he's certainly acquainted with them somehow. So Draco may actually have this information from a reliable source. Besides, if you're a persecuted and bitter separatist group, wouldn't that be a good (if dangerous) place to hide out?

The Stone as deliberate trap for Voldemort
It seems awfully strange for Dumbledore to suddenly take the Stone from its secure hiding place (after talking Flamel into it) and set up a series of challenges guarding it before having any idea that Voldemort was back. Maybe he did have an inkling, and would rather have kept Voldemort occupied with the Stone than leave him wandering free and unobserved to do his evil thing. Harry was just supposed to retrieve the Stone after Dumbledore had Voldemort cornered, not go in after it and nearly lose it.

Harry as the original target for the Diary A Weasley may well have been Lucius Malfoy's second choice, the fight prompting him to bump that option to first. But Dobby lurking about all summer at Privet Drive is odd unless he had orders from someone. (This theory includes a hearty side helping of a good but devious Dobby and runawayslave!Dobby, both of which are also possible and fascinating.)

Moody as hostage This posits that Snape and Dumbledore (and possible other Hogwarts staff) had figured out partway through the year that something was not quite right about Moody, but were hoping that by playing along, the impostor would slip and lead them to the real, imprisoned Moody.

Frank Longbottom, overzealous Auror? While Frank may have been a good guy to anyone not suspected of being a Death Eater, he could have been one of those Aurors who got as ruthless as the DEs during the war. One more reason for Neville to have angst, poor kid. (As a side note, the thing I liked most about Neville in DH was not Badass Action Hero Neville. It was Compassionate Resistance Organizer Neville, who figured out how to keep safe at Hogwarts and then reached out to help and organize the other students, even though most of them had either ignored him or treated him badly for six years. By all appearances, he was an inspiring and effective leader, too.)

Non-white Hermione Hey, the text never specifically says she has to be a white Anglo, or even another variety of white. We know she isn't super-dark, but that still leaves a lot of options. The main characters don't all have to be white, so if there's some wiggle room, why not take it?

Happy birthday to fialleril and [Bad username or site: sodzilla @ livejournal]! I hope they've both gone wonderfully.

Have you ever used the Ask an IPL Librarian feature at the Internet Public Library? If you have one of those tricky questions you don't know how to research - say you want to know who currently has the record for world's longest hair, or how to start a small business, or where to find grants for a summer research project - you can ask the IPL and get a personal response with several good sources in 24 hours or under.

And I'm not just promoting this because I have to answer some of those questions for class and I want you to go ask interesting questions. I'm also promoting it because my classmates have to answer these questions too, and I like them, and thus want a large pool of questions for all of us.

Oh, and you might enjoy it too :D

Not really. But imported this journal into Dreamwidth, so it's like being in two places at once, sort of.

Here I am: http://sunnyskywalker.dreamwidth.org/

Let me know if you're over there too! I'll be sticking with both LJ and DW, so don't worry if you aren't - I won't just up and abandon you.

Thanks to galactica_news, I found a great Gaeta picspam/primer. If you haven't seen BSG, you can still read the tragic story of Felix Gaeta. (That moment in season 1 really is the last time he was ever happy, wasn't it? Wait, no, there was the groundbreaking ceremony at New Caprica. Yeah, that ended well.)

And thanks to YouTube, you can hear Gaeta sing. He can't even show off his gorgeous voice unless he's been shot and had his leg amputated, poor guy. Why did they not have karaoke night at Joe's Bar every few episodes? WHY?

I really need to watch those webisodes for the MOAR GAETA.

1.) Do you like this character?

Yes. I think she's a flawed character - I mean, not particularly minding your crush slaughtering children because he's upset? serious issues there! - but I also find that interesting. I like her dedication to justice and making the galaxy a better place, and I like the tragedy of, for instance, her being in power and in battle too young and never learning how to interact with people normally. (Maybe when you're surrounded by awful things all the time, a little baby Tusken slaughter doesn't look so bad? Or you think that everything comes with tradeoffs that big?) She's also impulsive enough to give Anakin a run for his money, even if she can also restrain herself better when she chooses.

I think one of the best bits of drama in the PT is how Padmé first surprises Palpatine by not being quite as young and naive as he expected (evading the Trade Federation, boldly marching into the Senate and insisting they do something), but still young and naive enough not to notice things like, oh, isn't it odd that Palpatine claims he had no idea he would be nominated for Chancellor when he suggested that vote of no confidence? I wish the PT had followed this up a bit more, with the Petition of 2000 being the final break between Padmé and her former mentor. (Who was it that wrote that awesome drabble about Padme being jealous of Anakin for taking her place?)

I also think that on a meta level, the character was treated very badly. Dying of "losing the will to live"? How do you even do that? If I suddenly lost the will to live, I'd just feel lousy, not drop dead. If it was a stress-induced heart attack or a hemorrhage or something, the med droid would have noticed. I don't think med droids are qualified to diagnose a lost will to live, anyway. And standing around doing not much for a whole movie? (Even in the cut scenes with the proto-Rebellion, Padmé mostly waffles and isn't sure about things.) I can see her growing more cautious and maybe a little scared after realizing how things can backfire (and how vulnerable she is with her humongous secrets)... but this was a bit much. Though I do think her arc over the PT is consistent with someone who's depressed, but trying so hard to cope that even she might not realize it, and finally just breaking. I feel that. (It still doesn't make you just drop dead for no good medical reason.)

Also, why does she assume that the Queen will make her resign once her pregnancy is known? Is single motherhood scandalous for a Senator, or does the Queen think Padmé should be home with her baby, or what?

Finally, I loved Padmé's line about wondering if they were on the wrong side, but it's hard to take it seriously when the Separatists are running around with O HAI WE R TEAM EVIL stamped on their foreheads. Unless she meant that there should be a third side?

2.) What name(s) do you call this character?
Padmé.

3.) What image / color do you associate with this character?
Image: Um. Padmé as Amidala boldly addressing the Senate in TPM, Padmé telling Nute Gunray they'll be negotiating a new treaty in TPM, Padmé climbing that pillar in AotC, Padmé laughing in the meadow, and Padmé crying and dying in RotS all strike me as equally "Padmé." I think this having to play different roles for different people is part of her problem...

Color: Flower colors, like the yellows and pinks in the dress she wore when they arrived at Varykino.

4.) What song do you associate with this character?
"Paradise" by Vanessa Carlton. I saw a Padmé fanvid to this song once and it stuck with me. "As darkness quickly steals the light/that shined within her eyes/she slowly swallows all her fear/and soothes her mind with lies..."

5.) What blood type do you think this character is?
I think the bumps on her head indicate tendencies toward delusion and insanity, which is why she has suddenly turned against the Republic. Let's put her in the sanatorium. Chancellor Palpatine will pay for it. (What? It makes just as much sense as blood type determining personality. Thanks to 4thofeleven for explaining this history.)

6.) From all of the titles that feature this character, what other character do you think makes a good pairing with this character?
Um. Considering Padmé's tendency to accept a lot of silence and lies and genocide to keep a relationship going, I'm not sure she'd do well with anyone just yet. But I think that she and Anakin did start with similar temperaments and ideals and seem to enjoy each other's company, so if they weren't both so damaged, it might have worked out. And if Obi-Wan weren't as committed to the Jedi Order as he is, that might have been a good option too. Him being still occasionally reckless but a bit more stable might help balance things, and they could have more intellectual discussions than Anakin/Padmé. (On the other hand, Obi-Wan has similar issues with overlooking warning signs that HEY INCIPIENT DICTATOR OVER HERE, so maybe they'd just reinforce each other's bad traits.)

I dunno, I'm tempted to tell Padmé to stick with a small circle of close friends and forget romance for a while. Or to find out more about that cute new Senator Mothma, or give Sabé a call. They understand her life and aren't totally broken as far as we know, which is a good start!

7.) What would you want to say to this character?
- No, everything is not okay. You need help. But there's no shame in that - would you feel ashamed of having a broken leg and needing a doctor?
- If you can't talk about the things that bother you in your relationship because you're afraid that will end it, there's a problem. That problem may be him, or it may be that you're more scared of losing him than of facing the fact that maybe he has issues, or both plus more.
- Having made huge mistakes feels horrible when you realize it, but you are awesome enough that you could probably have done a lot to fix them had you lived longer.
- Prenatal appointments exist for a reason. Take advantage of that doctor-patient confidentiality.
- I don't believe that med droid's diagnosis, don't worry.
...I'll stop now. I have lots to say to Padmé.

8.) What do you want to do with this character?
Go through her closet and admire all the shiny things! (I wouldn't want to actually wear any of it, mind.) Then watch movies and discuss them in way more detail than their creators intended. Or watch the BBC Pride & Prejudice.


9.) Please choose five friends with your choice of character.
Just tell me if you want one.