Uffish Thought

I feel like March has lasted forever, I've been so busy -- and it's not even over yet. Here, have some random links as I clean up my inbox and my life:

The Indian sanitary pad revolution

A rural Indian man invented a cheap, simple machine to make sanitary pads, and the fallout has been awesome. I've heard of this man before, but it was a while ago -- when he won that contest for his invention, IIRC. Apparently in the years since, he's taken his invention, refused to commercialize, and instead started to spread them through impoverished areas: creating jobs, improving hygiene, and makes it easier for girls to stay in school after they hit puberty. And now he wants to go international. *hearteyes* There's a documentary about the full story available streaming here for $4. I'm documentary'd out after SXSW, but I'll have to check it out.

Researcher reveals how “Computer Geeks” replaced “Computer Girls”

Asked to picture a computer programmer, most of us describe the archetypal computer geek, a brilliant but socially-awkward male. [...] It may be surprising, then, to learn that the earliest computer programmers were women and that the programming field was once stereotyped as female.

5 Truths About Sexual Fetishes

Interesting and funny read, but man, Cracked.com is almost as dangerous as TvTropes once you get going.

Steve Rogers Isn't Just Any Hero

There’s nothing “revisionist” or “politically correct” about portraying Steve Rogers as an explicitly progressive superhero. Without that, he wouldn’t be Captain America.

Long, detailed historical/canonical rundown of why Steve is not the forties conservative jingoistically patriotic stereotype fandom sometimes thinks he is, complete with fucking footnotes. THANK YOU.

Ugh, people writing Steve as anything less than open-minded and progressive drives me crazy. We have plenty of canonical evidence in both comics and the movies that he is neither sexist nor racist (the Howling Commandoes, Peggy Carter, Natasha Romanoff, Sharon Carter, Sam Wilson, Nick Fury, etc, etc, etc), his best friend in the comics growing up was not Bucky but a gay kid named Arnie Roth, he's canonically crossdressed about a billion times in the comics, and also all the points in that article above.

Do I think Steve would be confused and/or awkward when confronted by things like transgenderism or modern sexual mores or Helicarrier electronics panels? Yes. Do I think he would then ask for an explanation in plain English, listen when someone explained, and also continue treating everyone like a human being (granted they are not trying to do something evil at the time)? FUCKING YES.

Steve is a stubborn, reckless, smartass, insubordinate control freak of a human being, and about 70 years behind culturally, but he is NOT CONSERVATIVE OR PREJUDICED. ARGH.

Hey, I just noticed it's Friday the Thirteenth! (or was, when I started writing this post) Awesome, I love when that happens.

*****

I very much enjoyed this article about bro culture, which also features one of the clearest definitions of what that is that I have read. (just don't read the comments: I accidentally paged down once too far and the first five alone were simply appalling.)

*****

Big Bang 3 - Revenge of the Banged:

Word Count: 10,717 / 10,000 minimum (victory!)
Scenes to complete: 1!
Segues to write: 0!
Scenes to write in entirety: 1. And it's only the most important emotional scene in the story, no big deal, I should totally be writing that at the last moment. :\

And as bonus, some terrible puns from the editing process so far --

inmyriadbits: I think you need a period here.
ME: Okay. It is a period piece.

inmyriadbits: I'm not sure you need a horizontal rule after that scene.
ME: Sure. I'm not married to the idea.
inmyriadbits: *groans*

As deadlines loom, a fan's thoughts naturally turn to... getting distracted by other shiny challenge signups. So far I've resisted the siren call (except for Yuletide, but that's a given at this point), but if anyone else is interested:

fan_byproducts - a Welcome to Night Vale gift exchange with a name that made me LOL, because I enjoy bad jokes. Signups are open until September 8th!

Idyll Challenge - okay, technically I'm still eyeing this one because it's open-ended like Canadian Shacks. Who doesn't like stories "in which the characters are stuck in a peaceful, comfortable, well-stocked place, usually with some kind of swimming available"? Good decision, fandom.

Small Fandom Big Bang - signups are open until October 31st. (hmmm. Actually. Linds, I think MI4 is eligible. Should we?)

I have definitely *not* resisted the siren call of pofinterest_chat, which I think was a good life choice. More people should come play! *pokes everyone*

Love and Marriage (POI) by astolat
In which Reese and Finch get married for financial reasons - except really not, as anyone might guess. I am deeply amused that they *never* actually talk about the whole 'oh hey, we're in love' thing, and yet it's super obvious. I love this show. Also, the scene in the Rose Garden *killed* me in the best way.

The Incident of the Fellow in the Fellow's Garden by azdak
Pitch-perfect crossover between the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and The Man From UNCLE in which Peter is invited to Cambridge in 1955 to investigate a suicide that might be murder, and Illya Kuryakin is the prime suspect. The author nails Peter's piffle and insight in equal measure.

Death Star was an inside job
Star Wars video parody of Loose Change, a 9/11 conspiracy video. *Hilarious*, and I'm irresistably reminded of Holmes' hobby on Elementary.

It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being 'It'
A group of friends have been playing a game of tag for 23 years. And the WSJ wrote an article on it. Yessssss, delicious comedy. An illustrative scene:

Mr. Konesky tiptoed toward Mr. Dennehy's bedroom, burst through the door and flipped on the light. A bleary-eyed Mr. Dennehy looked up as his now-wife yelled "Run, Brian!" Mr. Konesky recalls. "There was nowhere for Brian to run."

I've been bookmarking a lot of POI fic lately in hopes of doing some old-school recs, but the past few days have seen some awesome posts from the non-fic areas of the fandom, so you're getting that instead.

No Man's Woman by giandujakiss
This Reese/Finch vid is as adorable as its song choice is hilarious, and the editing is superbly funny and feels-inducing. ♥

Reese's Identity Crisis by esteefee
A nice piece of meta collecting moments from S1 where people ask John, "Who are you?", and how he answers. (I really want to do this with all the times John feeds people, now.)

The Man in The Suit by hellotailor
Hellotailor takes on the costume design for the show with her usual insight. Ahaha, another convert. I should have known the suits would get her.

---

And, two profiles of real life people who saved lives:

Fred Rogers: Can you say 'hero'?

Chiune Sugihara: The Hero Who Didn’t Walk Away

An article:
Mitt Romney Is Dolores Umbridge: a 9-year-old watches the presidential debates

A rec:
Captain America is not a Republican
Because I am absolutely easy for stories in which Steve is a) devious, b) thoughtfully progressive, and c) politely kicks ass.

And a meme:
If you could remix one of my stories, which one would it be and how'd you do it?

Work is incredibly slow today, so I just spent 6 um, 8 hours amassing a truly huge amount of research and links surrounding The Avengers.

1) Law and the Multiverse
This is a blog that discusses fictional legal issues that might exist in the universe of superheroes and comics: awesome. They put together a number of posts about the movie ( listed here in order of how interesting I found them: )

I have not yet read their article Death and Taxes and Zombies, but I am linking to it for celli. :D

2) Character Dialogue Analysis
Written by grey_bard, these are some neat, incisive breakdowns of how various Avengers speak in the movieverse, with relevant quotations:
Natasha Romanoff
Steve Rogers
Bruce Banner
ETA: Clint Barton

I found this *incredibly* helpful for Bruce, personally, but all of them are fantastic. I'm hoping she does everyone, but she's already explicitly said she's *not* doing Tony, so we'll see.

3) Things That Would Surprise Captain America
(link goes to roundup post)
Speaks to my personal pet peeve of OMG PEOPLE, Steve served in the Army and was best friends with Bucky, he is not going to blush when people talk about sex!, but there are tons of interesting historical details contributed in the comments.

( Some thoughts from my own comment on the post )

4) Shiny Movie is Shiny

Avengers art design interview/article
I found all of this interesting, but the Stark Tower and Helicarrier sections are particularly relevant for fic purposes.

VFX Roundup
Okay, a lot of this is special effects technobabble, but there's also dozens of high-res images of various locations and technology (Helicarrier displays and Tony's HUD), plus a discussion of where the battle took place in New York. What we see in the movie takes place in a 4x10 block area around Stark Tower & Grand Central Station. I am also amused at how even the FX people think Joss was awesome.

Gorgeous hi-res images of the Helicarrier displays, Tony's holographics desk, and the Iron Man HUD
The HUD is particularly fascinating to me - the original Iron Man team put a huge amount of thought into how it worked because they are nerds like that, and did multiple versions of the display as Tony evolved the suit. This is a whole new level of detail, and it's a important character note for Tony that he sees and processes all of that information during a fight.

So help me, I think I'm going to do a followup post about Stark Tower's layout and the geography of the Battle of Manhattan because that's not even all of the stuff I have, I just have to close up the office now.

I have been googling so many ridiculous things while plotting this post-movie fic, it's getting ridiculous. Anyway, it's going to be All Avengers All the Time around here for a while, fair warning. Have some links.

Shawarma + Edward Hopper = WIN
I don't even care that the perspective and dimensions are all wrong. *dies laughing*

fake analysis of financial damages to New York from the Chitauri
Make sure to check out the actual pdf report, which is hilariously tongue-in-cheek. They cite Godzilla as a reference, ok, I can't even.

GIF of a woman doing Black Widow's thigh flip takedown in RL
I just keep watching this lady climb the dude like he's a tree and snake her limbs around him. Totally hypnotizing. I love watching Natasha do this move but movie stunts often require a cut mid-motion, and this is a full-body shot.

I just signed up for Pinboard after a long internal debate, and thank god. Very clean and simple compared to the hideous filler-content mess that Delicious turned into. I also think there's been fiddling since the Epic Fandom Feedback GoogleDoc of Doom happened, because there are tons of features that I've been longing for:

1) First and foremost, the global bookmarks page (i.e., the "231 saves" link that gives you a page with everyone else's reviews and tags in chronological order). I didn't know the site had this because it's not available to the public, but it magically appeared in the settings page and I clicked that tickybox so hard it hurt.

2) tag autocomplete!

3) listing tags in the order I added them, not REVERSE order FUCK YOU DELICIOUS THAT WAS WHAT BROKE ME.

4) tag clouds that don't suck and nest cleanly!

4) I figured out a way to export my Firefox bookmarks and upload them in batches by fiddling with the exported HTML file, which works with how I bookmark and pairs very nicely with...

5) the Organize function, which comes with a preview frame. So I can upload my monthly batch of newly-reads with timestamps from Firefox, then select the 'untagged' filter, click 'Organize', and flick through while I reread/delete/add descriptions without having to alt-tab between the windows and fuck with the bookmark properties.

6) bulk editing with actual functionality

7) oooh, there's a history feature. I am weak for those.

8) the people person who runs it seems to have a sense of humor and is fandom-friendly. The popular+fandom filter they set up pleases me. Let's hope the honeymoon lasts.

Sheesh, why did I wait so long?

...Well, okay, ( tl;dr discussion of my bookmarking philosophy )

Anyway. I'm excited about Pinboard! Let me know if you're on the site, I want to explore the subscription and network features some more.

For those of you who made it through the babble, have some animation-related recs:

Up inspired floating house built by National Geographic. Look at the little mailbox!

Stunning artwork of Disney Princesses in accurate period costume. I have no idea how actually accurate these are, but gee, they're pretty. Check out the artist's website, too, where she has Tiana in an awesome flapper dress and some Doctor Who art and a BAMF Harley Quinn costume redesign.