TS4 update

Friday, 27 May 2022 14:39
lea_hazel: Angry General Elodie (Genre: Games)
The Sims 4 are releasing (or have already released) their English-language custom pronoun update. Having tried 2-3 times to play trans sims and felt the discomfort of incongruous language, I've been looking forward to it. I haven't updated my game yet (busy with other things), but when I do, I'll try to write about it.

Worth noting that they are working on updating other languages, as well. I imagine it's much more difficult than a relatively ungendered language like English.

:|

Tuesday, 3 August 2021 23:54
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
For some reason, I decided to click on the Facebook notification for memories from this day. Many of them were from Pride events. Like 2015 Pride, which was the year when suffice to say it was a bad year ) So that was fun to remember.

Maybe I should just go to bed.
lea_hazel: Neuron cell (Science: Brains)
I use 750words.com to foster good daily writing habits, and have been having mixed success with it since 2015. Recently I've been on a 90+ day streak, fostered in part by my frantic work on Turncoat Chronicle. Today I quickly went back and checked when I broke my last streak. It was in late April. I checked the days before and after and found that I'd been having a productive time of it, plugging away at Blue Rose (my other main WIP, which has been in the works since December). So I tried checking here on DW, even though my update schedule here is sparse and totally unpredictable, to see what happened to break my streak. I discovered that the last week of April was when I picked up the new desktop... and suddenly recalled that the day I skipped (which also broke a super long streak) was a Saturday, and that was the day I spent all day playing The Sims 4, after having spent an entire Thursday setting up the computer to my liking.

So, in a way, my habits are incredibly consistent over the years.

Somewhat relatedly, the writing is mostly going well and I am trying to make the best possible use of the free time that I have left before I start the new job.

And later today is Jerusalem Pride, which I promised myself I'd attend despite sketchy weather conditions.
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
Nonbinary gendered characters are almost not common enough to have tropes associated with them. Almost, but not quite. The idea of a third gender, bigender, or agender is not actually that recent, after all. It seems to emerge independently, time after time. In modern media, these representations arise just often enough to have a handful of common tropes associated with them. Most of these are tied closely to speculative fiction, where one has the great privilege of learning that one's gender identity is inherently science fictional, alien, unrealistic. Some of them also appear in contemporary setting fictions, although those are less common and even more tied than usual to moral ambiguity.

Read more... )

Crossposted to hazelgold.net.
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
I promised an update after NaNoWriMo, didn't I? And now it's been nearly a month since I wrote my fifty thousand words, and I still haven't written anything. A lot of things got put on the back-burner for November, and so December has been pretty busy. I didn't find a lot of time to set aside for contemplating the nature of my chaotic little manuscript, and how to move forward with it. Although I'd been meaning to break my habit of adopting overly ambitious story ideas, and then getting stalled trying to solve them...

Well, that was the situation I found myself in, completely unintentionally. Read more... )
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
I have a couple of short blog posts queued for this week and next. No big, substantive reviews. Part of me still wants to get that aromantic post out of my system but I'm not sure how well I'd weather the process. Meanwhile I have been playing a lot of 7KPP and Affairs of the Court, which I probably still should review, at some point.

Other things in my tabs: Why Being a Writer is an Exercise in Cognitive Dissonance from Kameron Hurley's blog (via Goodreads). Coffintree Hill has a whole bunch of magazines and anthologies calls for submissions. I have been reading a fair amount of Asexual Agenda posts and links, lately.

Soon I will have a cellphone again.

(no subject)

Monday, 3 August 2015 14:34
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
You know, I haven't used this icon in a long while. I used to blog pretty frequently about LGBTQ issues, but these days most of what I post is reblogs on Tumblr. But I made this icon after, I think, the 2007 parade, when the Jerusalem municipality for the first time hanged pride flags along major streets, in preparation for the annual pride parade. I remember my friends inviting me to join the end-tail of the parade in 2003, on a Friday afternoon when I had only just returned from the base. I remember attending, the next year, both the Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv parades, concurrently with my process of coming out of the closet as bisexual. I remember the first time since coming out that I missed the parade, and how guilty I felt. I even remember the parade two years ago, which happened to be the day I receiving the final failing grade in my incomplete BSc.

And I remember the stabbing in 2005. Read more... )
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
Since this came up in today's fan meetup, here's the deal with the "gay elf books" I was talking about: 

First: Calling them gay is a mite inaccurate. Yes, there's a same-sex romance that's a central theme in the books, but as both characters also have relationships with women, I'd personally be more inclined to call them bisexual, if at all. 

Second: The word "elf" does not appear anywhere. They are merely very long-lived, stunningly beautiful, highly magical people. Who grow no beards. And are kind of radically separatist. And like to sing beautiful sad songs about how much better things were in the good old days. And liberally sprinkle names with various apostrophes and diacritics. 

Read more... )

The Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling begins with a two volume story in the books Luck in the Shadows and Stalking Darkness. There are numerous other books in the series which I have only just started going through. It's worth noting that reviews for later books are mixed, and some fans who loved the early books became disenchanted with later ones. 

Crossposted to my tumblr

Queens

Tuesday, 4 March 2014 20:47
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)

4537 / 10000 words. 45% done!

I'm going to have so much less time to write, soon, and the draft is due 20/3. I might not be able to fit in a more actiony plot like I'd intended. Oh well, at least I'm writing a story about bisexual dominatrix vampires. Not actually a spoiler I suppose, I mean what else was I gonna write about?

Stuff

Thursday, 16 January 2014 20:30
lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
I'd like to write a serious, contemplative post, but...

Chores continue to be a pain in the ass, mainly when combined with family issues. Really, I'd rather just put it out of my mind if that's at all possible.

I picked up a translation job through a Facebook friend, mainly to occupy my time productively. The article actually deals with a lot of the same stuff I was studying (less than a year ago!) so it's bringing up some mixed emotions. The subject matter is very interesting, but I think it might be out of date.

Speaking of higher education, holy shit! In six weeks the OP semester starts. The only course I'm in is discrete mathematics, but given my tenure as a mathphobe, I think that's plenty. Somehow, two thirds of an OU degree is less intimidating than 12 credits at the "closed university".

Because I can't maintain moods for any discernible period of time, I have no idea how I feel about my writing. I have been reading a ~classic pro slash fic that I'd been "meaning to read" for the last decade or so. Let me tell you, if I'd read these books when they were published... my fandom career would have unfolded quite differently.

My computer has been freezing regularly and I can't figure out why. Time for another cleaning as a catch-all fix?
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
I'm finally reading "the gay elf book". Yes, I know I said I would finish PDS next, but the gay elves were right there on my tablet, and...

In other book news, I really want to buy books but I'm having a temporary cash flow situation. Because my finances and those of my parents are inextricably tangled up together, I need to somehow help my mother with a financial issue, while also covering yearlyproperty tax on my apartment, tuition payments to the open university, and an unusually large electric bill. Winter, you know.

So I am reading gay elves to cheer myself up. And trying to cross-reference my two bingo cards. Which reminds me, I should post my second card for easy reference. The other card is the first thing that comes up when I type my DW URL into Firefox.

Week Wrapup

Friday, 8 November 2013 15:17
lea_hazel: I am surrounded by tiny red hearts (Feel: Love)
One of the happy bi-products of angsting about your gift in a fic exchange is that when you finally remember that you're not just writing a gift but also receiving one, it's a very pleasant surprise! [community profile] femslashex deadline is tomorrow/tonight (unsure of timezones). I got my fic in and it's pretty good, although it remains to be seen how well it matches my recipient's wishes. But I am also getting a story which will be one of my favorite things! This is terribly exciting.

Participating in FEX made me weirdly self-conscious as a femslasher. I still need to dig through those feelings and try to figure out what they mean. Probably some sort of queer impostor syndrome.
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
I can write a lot of things into the seminar paper I'm (ostensibly) working on, but I don't think I can get away with making the argument that psychiatry speciously groups together homosexuality, male bisexuality, female gender dysphoria, and straight male crossdressing -- merely because all of these are equally threatening to the modern conception of heterosexual masculinity.

Snippet behind the cut.

I have no idea what I'm doing, this is what flailing in the dark looks like. )

Drag

Monday, 20 August 2012 19:48
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)


This song may be a benevolent god's sole, precious gift to Israeli drag.

Plus, biblical references.

Fair warning: The song is from 1994, and the nineties were a very special decade. In so many ways.

Woe.

Thursday, 2 August 2012 11:12
lea_hazel: Typewriter (Basic: Writing)
Why, oh why do I keep writing shitty poetry instead of studying neurobiology?

My life is sooo haaard. ;_;

Pride today. Fun times. Retracking to the old route, which is shorter and much less steep. Hopefully this may mean I won't be exhausted by the time the march is over.

Since it's all over Tumblr, let me just drop a rec for the visual novel Cinders, a multiple choice ending fairy tale retelling that allows Cinderella to be a raging bitch on wheels in the best way possible. Also there are love interests or something?

Naamah's Kiss

Friday, 27 July 2012 13:53
lea_hazel: Kermit: OMG YAY *flail* (Feel: OMGYAY)
I wonder if in the time between the Imriel trilogy and the Moirin trilogy, people other than me blogged about how Jacqueline Carey desperately needed to buy a good lesbian sex manual.

Because I'm pretty sure she did just that.

And it improves her books by eleventy billion percent, at least.

Maybe she read some fanfic? I mean, I haven't really seen the fandom rush in to make up for the unnecessary vagueness of the Phedre/Melisande and other f/f scenes, but it's hard to imagine it isn't out there. If ever there was a fandom crying out for a strong femslash scene, for serious.
lea_hazel: The outlook is somewhat dismal (Feel: Crash and Burn)
This week has been weird.

I just... don't know what I'm feeling anymore. Am I panicking? Am I anxious? Am I complacent? Am I having a breakdown? Am I physically ill? Have I got my shit together? Am I turning my life around? Am I giving up too easily? Am I clinging to something obsolete and worthless? Is my life moving forward, straying or stagnating?

I wish I could take a magical certainty pill. I guess that's the attraction of games. They give you limited options so you basically always know what you should be doing.

The guy I had to talk to today just couldn't figure out why I spent forty five minutes talking about classes and exams when he asked me about my life. He also couldn't seem to grasp why I was so concerned with my financial future. I guess he was expecting something along the lines of 'This is my plan for having a penis inside of me and later also babies' or something along those lines.

School. Work. Making something of my life. Achieving something tangible. Securing my future. These are not odd goals for a woman of almost twenty eight.

Jailbreaking it

Saturday, 14 July 2012 21:21
lea_hazel: Pride flag (Politics: GLBTQ)
I installed Jailbreak the Patriarchy based on an article on Autostraddle thinking that I would probably cave and remove it immediately but ASDFGHJKL; it makes reading IO9 so tolerable I wish I could install it on TV shows.

Exam Time

Sunday, 19 February 2012 14:01
lea_hazel: A frowning white theater mask (Feel: Sad Face :()
So here I am again, attempting to connect my study materials to real life, fandom and/or porn, while nursing a stalking cold and a headache that feels as though Betty Crocker is trying to mind-control me through a handsome red tiara. Meanwhile I still haven't read the most recent monthly package of comics because I planned to do it on Friday but was just too goddamn exhausted, and the book I have been making gradual headway on since Dragon*Con has reached its point of WTF no return. I wish I was in bed reading or mainlining a new TV series. My bed is cozy and using it to study makes me sad.

Both my favorite fandoms are making me sad, both of them because of shipping. The only novelty is, in one case it's the f/f shippers who have gone rabid, illogical, fling flaming poo mad. As for the other Lost Girl-related stuff, that's to be expected. Ah, the mild social discomforts of being the "bad bisexual" in any given group of vagina-lovers. I could go on, but I don't feel like it. As for Homestuck, at this point I truly think I'd be happy if Jake English just up and died. Maybe I should do a whole essay about how hard it is for me to relate to male characters.

Just my luck, I get a canonically queer intellectual character that I actually sort of like, and his entire existence causes my primary fandom to go up in a BFBVFS.

I miss my Eeyore icon. Where'd it get off to?

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lea_hazel: The Little Mermaid (Default)
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