Dreams and Swords

So I have this tumblr now. I am not entirely sure what to do with it!

People, I said I just finished a very frustrating project. I want some fun prompts.

If you previously submitted to the Long Feng quick meme, there's a fair to middling chance your prompt has been screened.

At least I think so. Sometimes they're also completely overwhelming, too. (The Artisan-Crafts group is so high-traffic I don't let them send me deviations, though I read their journals regularly.)

Any good dA groups people would like to recommend? I mainly look for regular posting of art rather than community interaction. Alternatively, niche-art of a certain type (like for a pairing I love in a specific fandom). I'm already a member of these:

- ArtisanCraft
- artistsofcolor
- communityops
- dazclub
- FoodIsArt
- jcadventures
- mech-meets-femme
- sailor-moon-club
- sailorsenshi
- Tamora-Pierce-Fans

Avatar-Related
- AtLA-OrderWhiteLotus (my comm! I made it myself! :D)
- AangXKatara-Fans
- ATLA-Katara-Fans
- ATLA-MinorCharacters
- ATLA-Multishippers
- AtlaCouples
- atla-Sokka-fans
- AtlaThe-Royal-Family
- avatar-fan
- AvatarFanfiction
- AvatarOCLovers
- Avatar-TLA-Fanclub
- Azutara-and-Tyzula
- DarkSugar-Maitara
- Jetara-fans
- KataangLoversForever
- Kataang-Maiko
- KataangSexySexy
- Katoph
- Mai-fans
- Mai-x-Jet
- MaiAndZuzu
- MaikoFC
- Maiko-Tylokka
- NoSelfControl (Zhao fanclub)
- SexyOzai
- Sokkla-Fans-HQ
- Teoph-LightEarth
- The-Soko-Empire
- Ty-Lee-Fans
- UrzaiShippers
- Water-Tribes-Unite

I'd really love some recs to more TF dA groups, as the only one I'm currently in is focused on TF het.

Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technologies and sciences. 24-March-2010. Be there, or be square.

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Daily Life in the Medieval Islamic World by James E. Lindsay

This book was my second foray into the history and culture of Islam, after Islam: A Short History (which I cannot recommend enough). It's very, very good for providing a general cultural feel for the medieval Islamic empires. However, since it's trying to cover three continents and seven hundred years, it really doesn't work as a 'daily life' book, or at least not the kind I'm going for.

Well worth reading, but I definitely need to find another book if I want to get more detailed information.

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Sword by Da Chen

A children's book I've had on my Amazon wishlist for a while. Wound up picking it up with some Christmas money, since the cover kept catching my eye whenever I scrolled through. Read it in two days - would have been finished sooner except I was reading it at work, and my bosses actually expect to me to work while I'm there.

The author grew up in China and moved to the United States. The story he tells does not at all follow Western story tropes, which I find quite interesting. A kung-fu novel, Sword tells the tale of Miu Miu, the daughter of the murdered master swordmaker Miu. On her fifteenth birthday, instead of receiving the traditional visit from the village match-maker, her mother tells her she is betrothed to her the son of her father's apprentice, who has been charged with avenging her father's murderer, the evil emperor.

Miu Miu begs from her mother the right to take this battle on herself, and her mother agrees. She gifts Miu Miu with the sister-sword to the mystical sword Master Miu made for the emperor, and Miu Miu goes out to the capital to find a way to avenge her father's death. While at the capital, she unknowingly runs into her betrothed and challenges him to a kung-fu duel.

It's a very awesome story, but it's definitely not a Western one. Saying more would be spoilers.

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The Ruby Dice by Catherine Asaro

Science-fiction with psionics, political intrigue, and delicious emotional porn. I'm kind of madly in love with this book and want to pick up some more novels in this universe.

The Skolian Empire is an interstellar empire made up of human-variant of whom the dominant classes are psionics. The Eubian Concord is another interstellar empire, where the vast majority of the population are slaves owned by Aristos. Aristos are a human-variant, originally created through an attempt to make a human who would not pain empaths with their emotions. However, the attempt created people who feel like psionic blackholes and who get their pleasure-centers seriously tweaked by feeling psionics in pain.

As you can imagine, the Skolians and the Eubians hate each other. Lots and lots.

Years before the beginning of the novel, the Skolian Imperator Kelric disappeared for almost two decades. He was held prisoner and enslaved on the neutral planet of Coban. He had some kids there and left the woman he loved there when he finally escaped. He then fell into the hands of an Eubian Concord woman and had to escape from there, and his people think he spent those two decades in the Concord.

Eubian Emperor Jaibriol is secretly a psionic, the product of several generations of breeding to produce a Ruby psionic to finally allow the Eubians to counter the benefits of the near-instant communications the Skolians posses through their psionic-net.

The Ruby Dice seems to be the culmination of both Kelric and Jaibriol's individual plot-lines as shown in other novels. It stands alone, however. (I've yet to read another book in the series, so it definitely stands alone.) It has all sorts of delicious political machinations, psionics, emotional porn, and a more or less happy ending.

So, due to yuletide, I now have an Archive of Our Own account. I wasn't planning to get one because I don't really have much interest in OTW's project.

On the other hand, it's a perfectly good archive. So why not use it now that I have one?

On the third hand, uploading everything I feel belongs in an archive is a project that will take weeks or months. Livejournal's my primary archive, and Fanfiction.Net has the benefit of having the 100+ stories I've bothered to upload there already uploaded.

So, you know. Laziness triumphs.

Fair warning to everyone who reads my journal: this week is going to be fics, fics, and more fics. Not only do I have fics for each of the six remaining days of Urzai Week, I have three fics to post for story_lottery and two fics to post for alera_ficathon.

So. Yeah.

So this is several weeks late. I just now found this again in among everything else I've been working on.

1) ADVERTISE. Post in all the comms relevant to your ship week, not just the pairing-specific comm. There are a lot more people who would be interested to hear about your ship week than just those who read the pairing-specific comm.

Advertising does NOT mean mention it once and then forget about it, either. For me, I posted reminders after I finalized the prompts, a week before the ship week began, and a day before the ship week began. This seemed to work well. Sokkla Summer has been reminding us about it every time they switch to a new prompt.

By contrast, Tokka Week, Kataang Week, Zutara Week, Toko Week, etc. are all things I tracked down by hearing someone mention it or skimming the pairing-specific comms. This does not get people involved in your ship week, and that's a bad thing. I think Zutara Week is actually ongoing right now, but there's been no mention on avatar_fans.

2) Make your prompts available in advance. This is not so much something I learned from this ship-event as a good idea in general. Give people time before the deadline to produce stuff. It tends to make people feel happier if they manage to nail the deadline.

Additionally, make them easy to find during the week of the event. I linked to the info post in every round-up I did, and included it on the ship week tag on my personal journal. I don't know for sure if this helped, but I know in another ship week, it did hurt that I couldn't find their info post.

3) Speaking of prompts, overcome the urge to have all of them relate to the characters' elements. I know I didn't, but I really should have.

4) Writing a certain character every day for a week and a half drives me stark raving mad. You're probably not getting Jeong Jeong fic out of me for a while.

5) Writing is an endurance event. Having someone to cheer you on and support you really makes them a lot easier to accomplish. I <3 my Pux, my Xiaron, and my Scott.

Would it be more convenient to run a ship week on a Monday-Sunday schedule or a Sunday-Saturday schedule?

( Theme Lists )

For those who've participated in/run ship events before, is there anything you think I'm missing and should cover?

My good friend dark_puck has a Scribbld fic journal. She does not get nearly enough comments on her awesome fic, because most people seem to avoid using OpenID.

Here, rydra_wong explains about OpenID, how it works, and why it isn't much trouble to use. Rock on.