The Slacktiverse: This Week

Showing posts with label This Week. Show all posts

Sunday, November 4, 2012

This Week In The Slacktiverse November 3,4

The Blogaround

Darth Ember wrote:

It's only poetry, but it does express my frustration with the way people use that particular cliché.

Last week, Storiteller wrote about organizing a Food Day celebration for church in Growing Community for Food Day. (TW: Food insecurity, cancer) While there was a very small turnout, we did get to express our concerns to local politicians and check out the excellent movie A Community of Gardeners. This week, she described her love of bicycling in the fall, offering photos of fall leaves and tips for doing so safely in Falling Leaves and Changing Seasons. Halloween is one of Storiteller's favorite holidays, so she celebrated it in part by considering how the skills she describes on her blog would be useful if there was a zombie outbreak. From gardening to bicycling, there are ways to Sustainably Survive the Zombie Apocalypse. (TW: General zombie horror / violence, links to movies with sexual threats; CN: some movie spoilers).

Froborr wrote: Since last Saturday, I've posted two things:

On My Little Po-Mo, Good gravy, girl! What's wrong with you? (Applebuck Season): I discuss the concept of character collapse and work my way around to liking the episode despite not liking the writer or the main character.

On Animated Discussions, I discuss intestering implications for what Disney can do with their newly acquired IP in Disney Buys LucasArts. And no, I don't mean Lucasfilm.

chris the cynic writes:
I still haven't gotten around to that thing I was going to do, so I still want to find every newspaper in circulation in the US, or at least every English language one, that accepts electronic submissions. There ought to be thousands and if there's a way to locate them better than Wikipedia's list of newspapers I haven't found it yet. So if you know of a better way, please tell me. Also, if you know of anywhere else that has even the smallest chance of publishing an open letter to the school board described here (CN: Transphobia), please tell me. But those were already written.

This week I wrote "Life's not fair" is no excuse, because it isn't, The Lovecraft Reference that Needs To Exist because in any work not set in Lovecraft's universe that quote is just a bit of early 20th century pop culture, not an ancient bit of lore.

I wrote two responses to part of Fred's deconstruction of Left Behind where Buck is driving around trying to get to Chloe. The Skewed Slightly to the Left one had Cameron unexpectedly getting a driver, the other, called, "Her Bailiwick", will make no sense to people who have not seen the first episode of Warehouse 13.

I wrote several things about voting and the election. After I voted I explained why I voted for a Senate candidate I would really rather not, and explained how Maine ended up with a Governor 61% of the people voted against in the process. I responded to an internet ad that said to vote for Biblical values, which (for the most part) were not on the ballot, and a yard sign that said "Don't Redefine Marriage" while it was radically redefining marriage. And in, "Rat@$#*%ing" I noted that a Nixonian election tactic is still in use.

Finally, the Bounty sank in the storm. Of the 16 crew members of the replica ship, 14 were rescued. One was recovered only to be declared dead. Since I wrote the post the search for the remaining crew member, the captain, has been called off.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Updated This Week In The Slacktiverse, October 27th 2012

Posted by chris the cynic

In case anyone is wondering why some things read "Last week" instead of "This week" it's because it's not always possible to get everything in on time and anything added after the post goes live might be missed.

The Blogaround

Francis wrote two posts:

Both sparked by the October 20 protest march in London. One on the march itself and one on marching and music.

Do you hear the people sing? - the march itself.

Singing the songs of angry men? - current protest music.

Ana Mardoll wrote:
Health: White, Thin, Hairless, Naked
(Content Note: Body Modification, Fat Phobia, Hair Removal, Beauty Expectations)
I am white, but not thin. I am far from hairless. Clearly, I do not conform to conventional USAian standards of attractiveness. Just as clearly, however, I do not conform to conventional USAian standards of visible health.

Narnia: Narnian Girls, Telmarine Boys
(Content Note: Genocide, Appropriation, Violence Against Children, Unwilling Body Transformation)
So I guess it makes sense that we'd go the next logical leap and just call Telmarine girls "Narnian" girls because, meh, born in Narnia and whatnot. After three hundred years of genocide and imperialism and conquest who still cares about labels, am I right?

Coleslaw wrote: I haven't written much this week, as I have been slowly getting some decluttering done, and did some errand running on behalf of our flea-bitten cats. I did post something Unkind about Ann Coulter (content note: ablism, othering), and wrote a review of the movie Argo.

chris the cynic writes: In the past week much of my time was spent taking what has become known as the Universal Lord's Prayer but was originally posted under the title, "It is as generic and universal a prayer as can be crafted," in response to someone saying just that of the actual Lord's Prayer, into Latin. Thus I now have, "Tam ea communis et universa precatio est quam creare posse" available on my blog. Complete with some translation notes for anyone who wants to know how I got things like "GPS" "whachamacallit" and "jazz" into Latin.

I pointed to They Live as a movie everyone should see.

I wrote "Put The Candle Back! (A post about policy toward transgender students in a town I'd never heard of)" in response to hearing the good news about a certain school district and then hearing that they made a complete reversal in less than a week when bigots kicked up a fuss about treating transgender students with dignity and respect (content note: Transphobia). This would be after I made the late addition to the "Things you can do section" which is in this post as well because it was a late addition.

My sister wrote a post on facebook trying to use people's hatred of gay people to get them to vote for marriage equality in our state in the coming election. I wrote a post in response to that explaining that, while her facts are accurate, I don't agree with her approach or her methods (content note: Homophobia).

Finally, I want to find every newspaper in circulation in the US, or at least every English language one, that accepts electronic submissions. Every single one. There should be thousands and if there's a way to locate them better than Wikipedia's list of newspapers I haven't found it yet. So if you know of a better way, please tell me.

Froborr writes: I've had two posts in My Little Po-Mo this week:
The first post was called "I never thought it would happen. My friends have turned into complete JERKS! (The Ticket Master)": I introduce the notion of problematic-yet-good art and discuss this episode as problematic from a feminist perspective and a getting-Rarity's-character-right perspective.

Good gravy, girl! What's wrong with you? (Applebuck Season): I discuss the technique of character collapse, in which we learn who a character is and what is important to them by watching mounting catastrophe strip away their every strength and trait one by one until nothing remains. But with ponies!

Last week Ana Mardoll wrote:
Deconstruction: Lies, Damn Lies, and Mansplaining
(Content Note: Rape Culture, Swearing)
We each have to set our own personal threat level because we are the ones whose lives that threat level most closely impacts. We are the ones who lose out X when we choose not to do Y, and we are the ones who have to decide whether Z is worth the risks that we, personally, perceive that it carries. You don't get to make those choices for anyone but you.

Deconstruction: Oscar and Weather Girl
(Content Note: Body Policing, Fat Phobia)
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that women should be skinny and sexy at all times in order to be considered normal and non-aberrant. Women should also make sure they always are standing on their toes, and should additionally not expect to have names.

Buffy: A Picture of Abuse
(Content Note: Emotional Abuse, Misogynistic Language, Violence)
So let's talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And when I say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically I mean Season 3, Episode 2, "Dead Man's Party", aka the most enraging episode of anything I have ever seen ever since I quit watching Everyone Loves Raymond.

In case you missed this/thing you can do

Literata has been officially recognized as a member of the clergy. (Via)

From last week:I recently read about a schoolboard that had put in place a policy to support and defend their transgender students, a group that -even in LGB safe places- often finds itself marginalized and unsafe. This morning (Sunday the 21st) I read that they completely reversed course and rescinded that policy. It seems like there must be something that can be done, it was outside pressure that made them go from taking a stand against bigotry to backing down, outside pressure might make them reassert their original position. I don't know. I went looking for petitions, the standard means of applying outside pressure. I found two, but both are from before the policy was rescinded urging not to rescind. Until such time as there is one saying, "Put The Candle Back," those seem like the best bet they are here:
Stop District 131 from reversing their new transgender policy!
~~Uphold the transgender protection policy you UNANIMOUSLY voted to adopt!!~~
[The second petition is now closed.]

I have signed both. If someone knows of another, especially one more current, tell me and I'll put it here. Until then I recommend getting the word out. The schoolboard stood up for the right thing, they have since backed down and transgender kids will continue to be hurt as a result. Someone needs to tell them to stand back up.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Updated This Week in the Slacktiverse, October 20th 2012

Posted by chris the cynic

Looks like a lot of people had a slow week online, I hope it's because you've all been having as good a time as I did on Thursday and Friday instead of as bad a time as I did last Saturday.

The Blogaround

Coleslaw wrote:

It's a Sign of my intrinsic sloth that it took a random act to help me decide which winter coat to buy.

I wrapped up my traveler's tales with an account of a weekend trip to Cornwall, The Non-Pirates of Penzance. Back in London for two days, we spent A Day With the Bard and Without Aldgate, in which my poor husband got confused about an archaic meaning of the word "without". On our last day in London we took a train to Greenwich to learn about space and Time Travelers, 19th century variety. Yes, there are pictures, and a link to Longplayer, a computer generated musical creation from Jem Finer designed to play for 1000 years. I, of course, will not be around to see if it does.

Storiteller this week wrote about the last set of vegetables she was able to gather from her garden before the frost comes, in The Final Harvest. She ended up with eggplants, peppers, basil, and tomatoes, and includes a recipe for peppers stuffed with pesto cheese, spinach, and quinoa.

Froborr wrote: Hey all. As I've mentioned in comments a couple of times, I've started a new blog analyzing My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I've made two posts thus far:

Dear Princess Celestia... (Introduction): In which I discuss my plans for the project, why I'm doing it, and what my methods are.

Hiiiiiiiiii Giiiiiiiiiirls... (Mare in the Moon/Elements of Harmony): In which I examine the two-part series premiere, and introduce the premise that Friendship Is Magic is about bronies.

In other blog news, I'm preparing to shut down Fluffy Iguana Cookies. Pretty much anything interesting I have to say within its stated scope is also within the Slacktiverse's scope, and given the infrequency with which I write, better to save those posts for here.

chris the cynic writes: In the past week I made a post about a silly take on a statistic from the Obama campaign which was distracted midway through by a squirrel in the ceiling and thus the etymology of the word squirrel and so forth.

Then I had the worst Saturday ever, which I describe in a post called "Yesterday" because I wrote it the following day (content note: family strife, drug use, lies, screaming, shouting, abusive familial situations, and just a really bad day).

I saw, because we randomly happened to traverse the same crossroad at the same time, what I believe is known as the "Legalize Love" bug. Sorry, no picture, the camera was in my bag and it drove by before I could really respond.

I wrote The Odds Don't Matter, a story fragment set in a semi-Calvinist dystyopia where it is visibly knowable from birth whether one is predestined for Heaven or Hell.

There was an earthquake, the first I've felt in my memory, in response to which I wrote a fairly boring post announcing it and linking to an official description of the earthquake, and then came up with a jobs plan for America. The scary part is that it is both more likely to work than anything the Romney-Ryan team has proposed, and would add to the deficit less than their plans.

I posted a couple of random thoughts, one being that I'd actually like it if studios released video of the actors doing their preliminary read throughs of the script or pre-effects versions of the feature because I think there's a certain magic when it's just actors and script. The other being that seeing Morpheus in the Matrix and thinking, "Pistachio commercial" is a great example of intetexuality in action.

Having forgotten to take my sleep aid one night, but lacking the energy to get up and take it, I had a sleepless night in which dreams still came. The waking dreams manifesting themselves as if a series of movies I was watching about time travel and the brother sister-brother triumvirate fighting dark forces using it. A series of dreamed movies that seemed to steal from every actual movie I've seen in recent memory, and some I haven't seen in ages.

And, finally, I wrote a Skewed Slightly to the Left scene in which Nicolae Carpathia revels in emotionally tormenting a captive Rayford Steele with the lives he could have saved but didn't, shortly before his global broadcast during World War III.

Ana Mardoll wrote:
Deconstruction: Lies, Damn Lies, and Mansplaining
(Content Note: Rape Culture, Swearing)
We each have to set our own personal threat level because we are the ones whose lives that threat level most closely impacts. We are the ones who lose out X when we choose not to do Y, and we are the ones who have to decide whether Z is worth the risks that we, personally, perceive that it carries. You don't get to make those choices for anyone but you.

Deconstruction: Oscar and Weather Girl
(Content Note: Body Policing, Fat Phobia)
This is your regularly scheduled reminder that women should be skinny and sexy at all times in order to be considered normal and non-aberrant. Women should also make sure they always are standing on their toes, and should additionally not expect to have names.

Buffy: A Picture of Abuse
(Content Note: Emotional Abuse, Misogynistic Language, Violence)
So let's talk about Buffy the Vampire Slayer. And when I say Buffy the Vampire Slayer, specifically I mean Season 3, Episode 2, "Dead Man's Party", aka the most enraging episode of anything I have ever seen ever since I quit watching Everyone Loves Raymond.

In case you missed this/thing you can do

Good Mourning Publishing is calling for romance fiction with real life portrayals (meaning not fantastical/shapeshifter/etc.) of otherkins/therians. They are also doing a call for cover art, including for characters of color, and for non-fiction essay submissions on disabilities.

[Added] I recently read about a schoolboard that had put in place a policy to support and defend their transgender students, a group that -even in LGB safe places- often finds itself marginalized and unsafe. This morning (Sunday the 21st) I read that they completely reversed course and rescinded that policy. It seems like there must be something that can be done, it was outside pressure that made them go from taking a stand against bigotry to backing down, outside pressure might make them reassert their original position. I don't know. I went looking for petitions, the standard means of applying outside pressure. I found two, but both are from before the policy was rescinded urging not to rescind. Until such time as there is one saying, "Put The Candle Back," those seem like the best bet they are here:
Stop District 131 from reversing their new transgender policy!
Uphold the transgender protection policy you UNANIMOUSLY voted to adopt!!

I have signed both. If someone knows of another, especially one more current, tell me and I'll put it here. Until then I recommend getting the word out. The schoolboard stood up for the right thing, they have since backed down and transgender kids will continue to be hurt as a result. Someone needs to tell them to stand back up.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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By the way, that sleepless night was last night, so there may well be errors in the above. If you find one, please point it out.

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I asked this question in some earlier version of this post, not the first version, but clearly not the most recent prior to me writing this either. What is the point of having a preview button if the preview doesn't look like the finished product will look? Somewhere in the thousand edits the question was lost, so I ask again.

Saturday, October 13, 2012

This month in the Slacktiverse

Posted by chris the cynic

Note that because the large period of time between the last update and this one, there's probably going to be more submissions per person than usual.

The Blogaround

TRiG writes: Here's what I've posted to my blogs in the past while:
The thoughts expressed in "Burning Kittens Is Wrong" will be familiar to anyone who reads Fred Clark's blog Slacktivist, as my post is mainly a summary of and a riff on a couple of his more famous posts. (Content note: mentions, though not in detail, horrific animal abuse)

In "Who Wrote the Book of Genesis?", I publish a non-scholarly essay laying out in simple language the basic evidence for the JEPD documentary hypothesis about the authorship of the first three books of the Bible. (This was not written by me; it was written by Ron Maimon under an open licence which allowed me to republish it. I found it interesting, so I did.)

"How did Túrin's sword speak?" is a question about an event in The Silmarillion. I suggest my own answer, but I also welcome dispute or alternative suggestions from others. This post, too, owes something to Fred Clark, though not by any direct route.

For some light relief, "Something is happening to my petit pan au chocolate" merely juxtaposes two music videos which amused me.

I quote another interesting essay by Ron Maimon in "Abram and Sarai made a mistake, twice". This one presents the hypothesis that a story which is told three times, with minor variations, in the Torah, is actually derived from Indian tales. (Content note: Biblical incest.)

And finally, in "Christiascam", I mention an interesting scam I happened to notice on Facebook.

clevernamepending writes: I've got [some] of my own posts I'd like to suggest:
The first one is a post I did about yelling at girls from cars and why it is a toxic thing.

The second one is about the language around consent. (I will be talking about rape, I will be talking about consent, I will be talking about all sorts of issues that float around it, and I'm not sure how qualified I am to be talking about these things, so, be warned.)

I've got one on why opening up restaurants isn't all happy sunshine .

And one on bisexuality .

Ian Perez wrote:
An Open Letter to ABC Family, where I express my disappointment with a particular channel's continuous return to the "high school-aged teen crushes on, and begin, a romance with an adult authority figure" romance well. (Content Note: Disability, Consent)

"Sword and Sorcery" and Derailing, in which I argue that narratives that don't involve rape are essential, even if those narratives that do use it do so in a way that isn't problematic. (Content Note: Rape and Rape Culture, Privilege, Sexism)

Coleslaw wrote:

I leave for a trip to London and this is where you run off to? Fortunately, I caught up enough on chores to read the comments at the old Slacktiverse site.

So, my postings since September 15. There are several dealing with my trip to London, starting with Home at Last. From there we have Oh, Happy Day, about my misadventures once I got home, and All My Children, Jet Lag Heading East, The Eye of London Is Upon You, and Chinatown, Shopping and the Aquarium, all pretty straightforward "we went here, then we went there" accounts with pictures. Starts With "C" is not about Romney dissing Sesame Street, but about an import from the USA into British cuisine. I still have more to write about the London trip, but everyday life keeps happening. It's Not a Bad Little Coffee Cup, Really, is about a retirees convention we attended, and In the Loop is my review of the movie Looper. I also made a visit to one of the few Green visitors' centers in the country, which is impressive considering what we usually recycle around here is mid-19th century sentiments.

Ana Mardoll wrote:

Twilight: Pride and Prejudice
(Content Note: Marginalization, "Reverse Racism")
If Twilight is a story about racism, it's a fundamentally lop-sided narrative, with a white woman falling in love with a white man, with them being opposed and literally attacked by animalistic dark people, and with those dark people needing to be brought to see -- ultimately by the sheer force of their werewolf gods, who are presumably in charge of the imprinting pairings -- that the white people they've been hating all their lives are actually mostly peachy folks.

Twilight: Sustaining Stereotypes
(Content Note: Manipulation, Stereotyping of Women and Native Americans)
As a character choice, as one character in one novel, it's not such a bad thing. It's realistic for a teenager to reject their heritage and it's realistic that in a novel about vampires and werewolves, that teenager may end up being tragically wrong. But as a trend, Jacob fits a little too easily into the notion of a young native boy refusing to conform to the traditions of his tribe and being smacked down by the universe in response.

Narnia: Honor Before Efficacy
(Content Note: Bullying, Violence)
There are hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of Narnians all over Narnia, and right now whether they live or die past today depends on whether a little boy from England can manage to kill a grown warrior who has him wounded and on the defensive. So naturally, the Right and Moral thing to do is to make sure the genocidal tyrant has the best possible chance to win as Peter can possibly give him.

This month, Storiteller wrapped up the summer season in her garden, cooked a lot, and rode her bike less than she would have liked. In Rain, Rain Don't Go Away, she describes her reasons and process of installing a rain barrel. Inspired by her husband's comment that the recipe was "easy," she struggles to make an apple tartin in Most Complicated Caramel Apples Ever. Because two comic book conventions were keeping her off of her bike (both of which allowed her to hang out with Froborr!), she wrote about the portrayal of cycling in comics in Sequential Art in Motion. With another uptick in discussions around mandatory helmet laws and the issues surrounding wearing bike helmets, Storiteller explains why she chooses to wear one in To Wear or Not to Wear a Helmet. She talks about the substantial yield from her pepper plant and provides a vegetarian chili recipe in Picking a Peck of Peppers. Having logged very few miles in the saddle this summer, she realized she misses her bicycle and describes I got a fever, and the only prescription is... After visiting her parents in upstate New York, she contemplates the fundamental differences in city layout and friendliness to bicycling between her current city and her hometown in In the suburbs I learned to drive and you told me we'd never survive. Lastly, she fondly remembers apple picking over the fall and includes a recipe to use all of those many apples in Apple of My Eye.

Francis wrote:
Some Things are Inappropriate in ChurchesOn Pussy Riot and what they were actually doing with the Punk Prayer (in honour of the appeal)
Healthcare: Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness
On how to run a healthcare service, why the British one is massively more efficient than the American one, and what the British government is doing to try to "fix" this.
Deconstruction: The Parable of the Prodigal Son
Because every story tells more stories than the one intended.

Sarah wrote: Here's my contribution to the blogaround.

chris the cynic writes: It probably doesn't seem it from my output this passed month, but most of what I do is writing fiction fragments that reimagine other works, usually Twilight and Left Behind. I did some of that, making a Snarky Twilight episode covering the transition from chapter 10 to chapter 11, two episodes of Edith and Ben (another Twilight re-imagining) in which Ben and Jackie talk in the kitchen and fail to make it to the living room. I even had two episodes of Skewed Slightly to the Left, a Left Behind re-imagining, covering the bomb dropping on Chicago and the immediate aftermath. But most of my output this month was just plain random with some political and depression related stuff thrown in.

First off, due to a facebook meme, Bella from Snarky Twilight was drafted onto my zombie apocalypse team. I had a post in which she points out that love is what you do, not how you feel. And two posts trying to work an earlier prompt based post into the larger zombie apocalypse scheme of things so that the sequence is now: Traveling back to right what shouldn't go wrong, the old post, Why we can't go back. As opposed to before when the old post was just this thing hanging out there.

On the depression front I talked about being faced with sadness whose source you can't identify and being afraid that if you look for the source you'll find so many reasons to be sad you'll be overcome. (Content Note: Depression, obviously.) And then talked about the fact that, now that my depression may have been dealt with, I still have to face a life that's more than a bit of a downer. (Content Note: Depression described in detail, as well as family and financial problems.) And three other posts related to the topic but I feel like I'm writing too much already so we'll move on to the next topic.

On the political front I wrote about the situation with marriage equality in my state, why down ticket races matter if you want the choice to be between good and bad rather than meh and bad, the absurdity of "Pulpit Freedom Sunday" and why the churches that participated should lose the tax exemption they bore false witness to get, and I created Team Big Bird merchandise because apparently one presidential candidate thinks more of Wall Street than Big Bird's street.

And on the just plain random front I said non-monchromatic fashion lines shouldn't be named after colors, invented Team slogans for God, Eris, and assorted Left Behind and Twilight characters, discussed the reasoning behind different methods of translation, shared before, during and after pictures of shaving off my beard, made note of my blog turning one year old, posted images of fallen leaves glazed in rain, asked for programming help with something I want to do in gimp, told anyone who cared to listen that I want stamps in order to carry out a silly and wasteful childhood dream, gave advice to people shouting at pedestrians from moving cars (Content Note: Profanity), and pointed out a fun bit of an interview with Mark Hamill.

Like I said, usually there's more fiction fragments and less random.

In case you missed this

There are cis women with facial hair. This particular cis woman with facial hair is awesome. She also did the impossible: using nothing but a calm reasoned explanation of her views she got someone who was being a jerk on the internet to stop being a jerk and apologize. (Content Note: Gender policing. [Which was magnificently overcome])

TRiG writes: The Northern Ireland Assembly narrowly failed to pass a motion in favour of marriage equality.

Things you can do

All Out, an organization working toward the spread of LGBT rights on a global scale, writes, "MTV is a proud sponsor of 'Testosterona', a blog that promotes violence targeted at women, gay men and trans people in Brazil. Tell them to drop it NOW." Testosterona is based in Brazil, and thousands of All Out members in Brazil have already spoken up. All Out now wishes to deliver a petition to MTV's president next week. You can find that petition here. (Content Note: Testosterona contains misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and instructions on how to rape.)

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

Sunday, October 7, 2012

Updated This [period of time] in the Slacktiverse

Posted by chris the cynic

Ok, so either no one wrote in, or everyone who did is currently going, "What the Hell, Chris? You gave me an email address that didn't work." And I kind of think it's the first because I'm pretty sure I gave the right email address. This is the right email address, by the way.

So, Um, I'm mostly going to be making this up as I go along, which is sort of ok because this is really just a test and the real goal is to get the first polished one of these up next week, but please by next week someone send in something. By then it'll have been almost, but not quite, a month since the last of these posts at typepad and I refuse to believe that none of you have written or read anything worth sharing since then.

The Blogaround

Ana Mardoll reports:My biggest post this week was "Sexism and Subtlety" (Content Note: Sexual Harassment Homophobia), where I talk about how sexism is not always blatant and obvious, and how I would like to see more works of fiction address micro-aggressions in the workplace. Wrapped up in the context of a Resident Evil novelization.

chris the cynic is writing this post so can say whatever he wants without have to have actually send something in. I just have to figure out what to say. About depression and my life I had a couple of posts, (Content notes for depression, obviously) notably "I'm sad" which was about feeling perfectly healthy sadness, but being unwilling to figure out the reason behind it for fear I'd find so many reasons to be sad as to be crushed beneath them, and much later I wrote that my depression may be cured but, because of various other things, notably the state of my life, things still aren't good. I also made an index of depression related posts because people seem to find them useful.

On other topics, I wrote that non-monochromatic fashion lines shouldn't be named after colors, that blogger, and thus it's parent company Google, is evil (yes, I use blogger), I described the situation in my state with respect to marriage equality, made a collection of Team slogans for Twilight, Left Behind, God, Eris, and the like, wrote about why, while the US presidential race is important, the down ticket races need to be won as well if any significant improvement is to take place, I showed before, during, and after photos (one each) of shaving off my beard, and posted dozens of pictures of fallen leaves glazed in rain.

Seriously, it's been a long time since we last had one of these posts, someone else must have something to share from that time period.

Sarah wrote: Sorry this is late, but here's my contribution to the blogaround.

Will Wildman didn't share anything but I don't think he'd mind my linking to him and I'm really trying to make this seem like a not mostly empty post, so why not go and take a look at his post "What love has got to do with it" about how secret love in fiction often doesn't ring true and sends bad messages because love is about more than longing from a distance?

Note that in the future I will not be randomly taking unsubmitted posts to put here, so please people submit things for the next "This [period of time] in the Slacktiverse". It's just that having only two people listed seemed a paucity of people.

In case you missed this

There are cis women with facial hair. (As I recall my mother had, may still have, some.) This particular cis woman with facial hair is awesome. She also did the impossible, she got someone who was being a jerk on the internet to stop being a jerk and apologize with nothing but a calm reasoned explanation of her views.

Things you can do

I have no idea. I seriously don't keep on top of things very well so it would be nice if someone who did could send in emails about this in the future.

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community, sort of.

And as a closing note, next week's weekend post will probably be the most recent post here when the Slacktiverse at Typepad is frozen. Which means that when this place truly becomes The Slacktiverse instead of A Slacktiverse, that's what will be on the front page.

It would be nice if it were as full and diverse post as it can be, showing as many voices as it can. Anything you've written since the last "This Week in the Slacktiverse" post, which was on the 15th of last month, is fair game. So for everyone who has a blog, please look through it and see if there's anything that you'd like to share from that time period.

For anyone who has seen an article you think others might be interested in that time, please send a link and a description. For anyone who knows of worthy causes, that can benefit from being linked to in that post, please send that in.

Let's try to get things started right.

Again, the email address is slacktiverseauthors at gmail dot com.