General disclaimer: All the works listed here are transformative fiction, created for fun and pleasure. No copyright infringement is intended.

( Iron ManCollapse )

( Hawaii Five-0Collapse )

You can find all the fics above at my AO3 page: Eumelia

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/568286.html

I'm sick. Please forgive any mishaps and incoherence.

I turned 28 this week, hurray for me!

I'm currently using my mother's guest account on her desktop because my laptop finally bit the dust. The screen had been kind of wonky the past few months, but now her network card is dead and it's like she's in a coma.

Right, yes, her. Ursula the laptop served me very well these past four or so years.

Ugh, I'm finding it hard to concentrate, forgive me. Sore throat.

I have much to tell, really I do, but the words are stuck. Been blocked for a while now.

Maybe later this week. I hope.

Blah, fever.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/589935.html

I cleaned my room yesterday.

Those of you who have been with me for a few years know that this is generally a full day's project, a morning till night kind of deal.

It wasn't so bad this time. I only filled two garbage bags and discarded of a broken computer that was sitting there, masquerading as a dust collector.

My room suddenly has a fresh smell and feels airy. I put a lot of my knick knacks into storage, including my 30+ snow globe collection. I did that when I moved back in with my parents last year, but this time I also rearranged my current collection of stuff.

All this is very mundane, but it's also significant, because once again I neglected this place and I think I neglected you all, which isn't fair, ever.

Hopefully this clean really is a new leaf for me, because I've also been feeling creatively stunted for a while. I haven't written meta in months (for a variety of reasons) and I've been stymied when it comes to fic that I'd like other people to read and not self indulgent exercises.

My life has been pretty monotonous unfortunately, I haven't had time to return to roller derby and I'm basically working all the damn time.

I'm sorry I wasn't around for important things that happened to you guys. I have no excuse other than the fact that long form writing seems to be out of my reach lately.

Love you all.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/589767.html

It's Erev Pesach (Passover Eve, for you my most beloved gentile readers) and with it come all my feelings of self doubt, waning self worth and over all loneliness.

I thought I'd be used to it by now. But alas, it is the same with every major Holiday that includes a long meal and adherence to a thousand year old tradition. Tradition that has changed many times over, but for this queer lady feels as suffocating as the dust storms that come with the season.

In America there's a cute tradition that is kind of mocked here. Adding an orange to the Seder plate to be inclusive of the LGBT people of the Jewish tribe. As you can read from the column it's been misinterpreted regarding the inclusion of women.

Which in Israel should be a thing when you consider the fact that Jewish women cannot practice freedom of religion.

But I digress, as it had not been my intention to talk about the broader politics of the holiday also known as the holiday of freedom and liberation.

I have to practice the age old tradition foisted on Jewish women known as Shalom Bayit, meaning "Peace in the Home". It is usually talked about married life and the onus of the wife to make sure the marriage is sustained and kept stable, no matter what.

Don't rock of the boat.

I've come to despise the word peace. It is of no value and meaning to me. There's a phenomenon that happens when you read or hear a word repeated over and over again in different contexts and it reaches a degree of saturation that makes you sick of it.

It's called semantic satiation. I am sick of peace.

I recently read Sarah Schulman's book Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, which I whole heartedly recommend, as I would anything by Sarah. None of the material is new to me, but the framing is fascinating and poignant and shows the degrees of separation between the facts on the ground when it comes to the Occupation and the way the average Israeli (and those who hear only Israeli facts) perceives the "situation".

Israelis for years have been calling the systemic oppression and annexation of land the "Situation". As though it is temporary. As though it is something outside our control.

As I read the chronicle of Sarah's journey from ignorant American Jew to Palestine solidarity activist my heart felt heavier and heavier.

One of the feminist and lesbian activists that Sarah quotes in the book is asked by an Israeli man, "But how will there be peace?"

She replied rather poignantly, "I don't want peace, I want freedom and justice."

I can safely that I don't want peace either and feel as light as a feather.

Tumblr crossover

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/589422.html

This has been the worst week ever at work. Renovations and hypervigilance fucking suck.

There was a bright light of the Hawaii Five-0 episode.

But that's pretty much it.

I'm so tired and I have to work this weekend.

Remember when I said I'd be around more?

Yeah, okay.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/589090.html

Work continues to kick my ass. I continue to do well and make mistakes. I can see that I'm not making many mistakes, but you know, no one praises you for a job well done when you manage a day in which you don't have to fix a hiccup.

I've signed up for the ABC H/C Hawaii Five-0 Challenge.

I got the creepiest prompt of them all; "Buried Alive", which I had planned to make hopeless and terrible, because my brain is a lovely place to stay for a holiday. Thankfully my beta-to-be talked me out of my original idea and now I have something creepier, really!

What I don't have is time or discipline. I need to sit on my ass and write, but it's a hardship and I'm annoyed, because I want to write more, but my lifestyle is such that I basically get home from work and vegetate.

Tumblr is very good for vegetation.

I still want to write all the meta and a spiel about identifying with a fictional character in the most profound way, but at this point it just feels like I'm reaching for the impossible.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/588989.html

Trigger Warnings: Genocide, sexualised violence, and rape.

It being International Woman's Day, I figured I'd talk about the Holocaust.

In case you didn't know, it's more shocking that ever thought. You'd think it was impossible for the Holocaust to be an even more terrible moment in history than it already is perceived and conceived to be.

The New York Times story states:

Thirteen years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.
[...]
The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

Emphasis mine.

I have to say when I read this, I felt sick. I was honestly shocked. The Holocaust is a piece of history I've taken the time to learn about - entire branches of my family tree were eradicated during the second world war - and much of my knowledge came from what I'd been spoon fed by the education system of my country.

You're probably asking yourselves why I'm talking about this on International Woman's Day.

If you continue reading you'll reach this little factoid:

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and </b>brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel</b>.

Emphasis mine.

Why is The New York Times disinclined to call rape, what it is? I think the idea of rape as a war crime is still something that mainstream media is reluctant to talk about, because rape is sadly ubiquitous in "times of peace".

More to the point, the way rape is perpetrated during war and upon an occupied population is very often misrepresented and downplayed, often because rape, during war, is "expected". It is a risk of war, much like bullets and bombs. If you are a woman in a war zone, you should prepare for the enemy to use their weapons upon you.

"This is my weapon, this is my gun."

My point is that that little titbit is all that was said about the "special treatment" of women during the Holocaust. There is a great deal we do not know about the difference women and men experience war and how acts of war are perpetrated on their bodies.

More often than not, women are not counted as people, but as spoils. Hence the creation of special brothel camps.

Women Under Siege's report to the new findings gives a good overview when it comes to how much more needs to be done in order for justice to really be done.

Rape and genocide go hand in hand. Rape and war go hand in hand. But for some reason, they're not always counted as crimes against humanity.

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Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/588717.html

My week was long and felt rather endless.

I let myself sleep in this morning, I still snuggled under the duvet for about two hours before I felt the need to extract myself from covers.

I feel like my life consists of work, brain melting, and sleeping.

I miss the days where I could write long meandering posts about whatever came to mind, but there seems to be a real effort involved in doing this now. The effort it worth it, and I wonder if it really is because I have less time during the week, or because I'm more careful with my words these days.

Yeah, I also sniggered when I re-read the line above.

I'm almost positive my picture is next to the phrase "puts foot-in-mouth" on more than one occasion. Although work has somewhat restrained me, the casual atmosphere does not help much.

Yes, work is pretty much all I do. I went to one roller derby training and haven't been back since because work fucking eats my life. I know it's about getting my priorities straight and managing my time better, but suddenly the job has become a career.

I still don't know how to deal with that mindset when I'm laziest person alive. I've been doing this for nearly a year, and I don't want my life to just be about work.

I suspect it's the fact that my commute there and back to my room in my parents house has something to do with it.

I'm anxious about moving out, especially to the city (we are suburbia), not because I don't like the city. I love the city and would love to live there. It's just that I'm very seriously considering emigrating at some point over the next five years (and yeah, I need to start getting my shit together for that to actually happen) and living on my own (and roommates, the studio apartment dream died long ago) will eat up my finances.

At this point I have no expenditures and I very rarely spend my money on frivolous shit, which is a funny thing to write when I'm in the market for a new laptop and am planning a holiday in June.

Context is everything.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/588406.html

I've been wanting to write this since this morning!

You guys, I was rec'd on crack_van!

The lovely kristen999 let me know this morning, I think I would have been completely oblivious if she hadn't.

I totally had a Sally Field moment of "You like me, you really like me!" thing going on, it was rather pathetic.

My story Rainbows Have Nothing to Hide was rec'd here.

Oh man, that was just the self esteem boost I needed!

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/588160.html

Getting back into the groove of writing long sentences and expanding thoughts is not easy. I think the fact that I hadn't been writing here as also prevented me from being able to write fiction and meta.

I had this whole long thing written for an episode and I just didn't manage to get everything I wanted down. I suspect that I might post my meta posts over the next few weeks. Or maybe just try and articulate my own feelings and getting back to expressing myself in a way that isn't about being as concise.

I also feel that I'm on reaction mode. I mean, something happens and I react. I react in a way that is sometimes off the cuff and may not always be the most constructive, but my voice is the only thing I have.

I want to be proactive again.

I'm trying.

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Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/587870.html

A few months ago, and I suspect by now it was actually last year, I wanted to help revive DW and LJ.

I then promptly fucked off to while my days on twitter and tumblr. Go me. I can see the effects in my writing here, it's all short sentences and tiny thoughts.

I've always liked big, long, and meandering thoughts, the kind that span the entire line of a page and make you want to see what the next thought will be. I don't know if that effect is managed all that well, but one tries.

I figure this is a good opportunity to reintroduce myself to the people here, some of you are really new and we never got the chance to really talk to you before I decided instant gratification was more satisfying than the slow build of comment threads.

So, who am I?!?!

The question of the ages, as it's wont to be.

First thing, I'm Mel, I've been on LJ and DW for a number of years, and they share the moniker of "eumelia". As you may have noticed.

I generally brain dump and talk about feelings regarding my life, my fandom, my politics. All of these are deeply intertwined.

It's really due to my job that I've hardly been writing here, my time is limited and I'm generally exhausted most of the time due to the long hours that I work. I work for a large internet company and I spend many hours on the internet reading the news. Yep, I'm living the dream.

I'm a lesbian-bisexual-queer cis woman, yes all of those things, at the same time. I'm also gay. I'm feminist. I'm Jewish and have a great deal of white privilege due to the fact that I'm Israeli. I vehemently oppose my country's occupation of the Palestinian people and have a great longing towards the the Diaspora. Israel doesn't always feel like home, I suspect no place on God's green earth will ever feel like like home.

I'm atheist. That's important to me because I spend many years wanting to believe and not understanding why it didn't make sense to me. And yes, it's really easy being a Jewish atheist, because the former is an ethnicity and a culture and the religion is part of it, and even opposing the religious doctrines doesn't make me any less of a Jew, just like incorporating tradition doesn't make me any less of an atheist.

I'm a fangrrl. I squee. I also harsh squees, like a champion. I'm okay with being that person. My current fandom is "Hawaii Five-0" and yeah, I'm still surprised at that, as I'm not really a procedural person. But it's inspired me to write and my identification with one of the characters has kept me going for a while now.

I have PTSD. I don't really "suffer from it", I dislike that term when it comes to things that make my brain the way it is. I've been living with it since 2006 and what it's a bit hard to explain how it affects my day to day life. But if you're curious or want to know something, I'm not shy about talking about it.

I think that's the biggest things. I may have forgotten something. Do feel free to introduce yourselves here, I'd like to get to know the new peeps and just catch up with the old peeps. You know who you are.

I love you all.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/587558.html

Good afternoon.

I've been avoiding my DW and LJ.

The reasons for doing this evade me, but I realised that this is what I'd been doing.

Due to that behaviour I'd actually been neglecting some of my dearest and oldest friends from my own online life.

It's a terrible feeling, realising this sort of thing.

Work has been eating my life and sometimes the very quick and instant gratification of spaces like twitter and tumblr have been more convenient. But I miss you guys and I know it's up to me to rekindle the love for DW and LJ and to make them welcoming again.

I look forward to doing just that, and I figure the 1st of March is a good time to (re)begin again.

Can't wait to get to do all this again.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/587315.html

I can't believe it's been another two weeks since I've written here.

You guys, I'm sorry, this is a crap way of communicating with you all. Some of you I'm communicating with on other platforms, but for a lot of you this is it, plus the fact that new people have joined my lists here (DW and LJ).

I'm really frustrated that all I'm managing to do these days it spurt our thoughts of 140 characters or less, and lazily reblog shit on tumblr.

I used to write here all the time, about everything.

Now I feel like I'm just scratching my fingernails on a blackboard.

I also feel like not much is happening in my life, so why bother? I know, that's a very defeatist attitude and I need to do something about it.

I will write something about my life today, very soon in fact, so stay tuned :)

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/587186.html

I've been so involved in the instant gratification that is Twitter and Tumblr that I've totally neglected these spaces again.

I feel horrible, because I know many of you are here exclusively and I've totally been ignoring what's been happening here.

I'm so sorry guys, especially after you've been here for me so long.

My distraction is no excuse and I hope you all can forgive me for not noticing something big that happened in your lives.

I love you all, my babes!

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/587003.html

I would like to turn back to the tie scene. The whole court room scene in fact, as it’s a good opportunity to discuss something that bothers as a general rule and I don’t think it’s discussed openly enough in fandom.

About a year ago, I very pretentiously and arrogantly posted a post about “being queer in fandom”, you can read it here (on DW or LJ, as is convenient), and I got a lot of insight from the feedback (and reading what anons thought of me on that meme), which aided me over the past year of teasing out what really bothers me as a queer fan in what is evidently a rather straight fandom.

What I write here, as should be evident, is my own opinion and comes from my own feelings. And while I’m talking about my specific fandom, this is something that I’ve seen happen all over slash fandom, so let me hear what y'all have to say.

It should be readily clear to everyone who watches H50 that Danny and Steve as a romantic couple will never happen in canon. It won’t. And to be perfectly honest, I don’t want it to either.

I’m saying this now, because the season has given us many beautiful moments (on the boat, with the bomb, the straightening of this tie, and many other smaller ones) which have been fantastically fun to explore and have given us great insight into the nature of Danny and Steve’s friendship and relationship.

These are not, as they say, gay moments. They’re not. Because trust me, if they were, we’d know about it. Because subtext is not, I repeat, not representation. And the fact that I ship them doesn’t mean my friend ships them. Them not shipping Danny/Steve isn’t anymore more right than shipping Catherine/Steve, the main difference being, and wait for it, it’s a big one, Catherine/Stave is actual, fucking, canon. And regardless of how you interpret their relationship (romantic, convenience, fuckbuddy) their sexual relationship is canon.

When I hear people in fandom accuse others of homophobia for not shipping Danny/Steve all I can do is laugh bitterly. Talk to me when someone shouts “Dyke” at the street at you, or tells you all you need is a good fuck by a man (i.e. threatens you with rape), or your parents demand you “behave yourself” at a wedding because god forbid I slow dance with my girlfriend. Unless someone has said that slash is gross because it’s gay, it’s not homophobia, so get the fuck over yourselves.

Danny and Steve are not “gay for each other” (may that trope die in the fiery pit from whence it came) and the insistence of certain places in fandom that they are, is fucking offensive. Let me tell you why. It smacks of appropriation. Just like saying that not shipping a certain ship is homophobia, the insistence of that ship is a fetishisiation of a fantasy of same sex male relationships.

I hate the marriage jokes and the “dads” comment. When I hear them and see them, all I feel like is a punch to the gut. As though any kind of close same sex friendship is something to mocked, especially if it’s between two men.

As mentioned, those are jokes, my best friend and I have been mistaken for a lesbian couple, we’ve been told that we act like we’re married.

We’re not together and we never were. She’s happily married to her partner and I’m happily single being very lazy about finding love.

In the show, the idea of Danny and Steve being “married” and a couple is laughable and a joke, thus it is presented as such. It is constantly averted in order to maintain them being canonically straight. What is explored in the show and what makes it special is the nature of male/male friendship and the expression of those feelings in a way that is uninhibited.

Slash is an interpretation. Slash isn’t representation.

When I see factions of fandom insist on the “canon “of Danny and Steve as a gay couple all I see is a bunch of entitled fangirls appropriating gay identity and culture.

If you really want LGBT content, stop trying to make your own personal OTP into a peepshow and go look for shit on your own. No, really, here you go.

If your *squee* feels harshed I’d like you to take a step back and consider that some of us are invested in actual LGBT content because for the love of god, we need it. I need it. I’m not looking for gay content on Hawaii Five-0, but I would like my identity as a gay and bisexual woman to be fucking respected and to not have it appropriated for the benefit of someone else’s *squee*.

I love this show and I love fandom and I want us all to do better.

H50 is not the only fandom to do this. This is a pan-fandom issue that needs to be discussed openly and internally, because I honestly don’t care about the way we’re perceived by others, it’s not about them, it’s about us.

While I don’t think the show queerbaits as such, the fandom can behaves like it does. Moreover, it behaves like queerbaiting is a good thing, when all it is, is the creators having their progressive cake and eating it. I’m glad Lenkov et al aren’t falling into that trap, because no matter how much we insist, H50 transformative fandom on Tumblr and AO3 and LJ/DW is tiny. And while we may be loud, we are not the target audience and he certainly doesn’t cater to us (no matter how much he likes the vids and the fanart, and it's awesome that he does).

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Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/586535.html

It’s been a while since I wrote one of these, so please excuse any flickering of random thoughts and observations that may seem totally disconnected, but I promise they all make sense.

I was spoiled for this episode. ( Spoilers For YouCollapse )

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Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/586253.html

Okay so, my reaction is basically this.

( SpoilersCollapse )

Check back later for something a little bit more lengthy and analytical. It won't be now :P

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/585988.html

Hi.

I haven't been around much this week.

I'm sorry if I missed something really important, but I don't think I can go through all the posts in my lists to find out. :/

It's been over a week and a half since I last posted.

The reason I've been absent from here and more on the fast paced and less verbose platforms is because I've been extremely busy and tired and feeling guilty about not writing here lately.

Last week due to the storm and feeling cold all the time, I mainly sat around wrapped in blankets and didn't even acquire any of the shows I'd been following lately, preferring to stare at the television screen in my parents' living room and chat with friends while the noise droned on.

This week I'd just felt overwhelmed and lacking in energy after long days at work. I've been given new responsibilities and a big push professionally and I'm under a lot of pressure, suddenly.

January is a rough month regardless, it being the month in which my cousin passed away last year and a bunch of other horrible things happened and changed the course of 2012 FOREVER.

Fandom has also been giving me angst, I know I don't have to read reactions, and I know I'm not really as isolated as I feel, but I wanted to post meta, I didn't, mainly because I was overwhelmed by feelings about fandom, my place in it, whether I have anything of worth to add to the discourse and even if I do, does anyone care.

Add to that that I'm blocked and I'm not particularly inspired by much of what my fandom has been producing (though hopefully that will change now that the hiatus is over?), that makes me feel even more ill at ease.

Whine whine, whinge whinge. I know.

The thing is, and it had to be pointed out to me while I was moping and at my most pathetic, that I do have a voice and I am participating, but you know, Hawaii Five-0 is a hard fandom for me.

I love the show and I love the friends that I've made, but the fandom... I don't always feel there is a place for multiplicity. I don't feel that marginal voices get the attention and amplification they need and I speak as someone who is a shipper for the main ship (among others).

I was spoiled in previous fandoms. But this also one of the first fandoms in which I participated in beyond a discussion here and there and with meta.

Sometimes it feels like I'm doing fandom wrong. But I guess that's just how the cookie crumbles.

I've been consoling myself by reading Dwarf fanfic. I want a beard.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/585809.html

A day that will be remembered.

I am finally warm and dry, after spending a day in the rain.

I took a day off from work today and took a day trip up to Jerusalem to stand with 50 other pro-choice women and men who were protesting the fact that the racist pro-life organisation "Efrat" (not linking, as I don't want to give their page any hits. Google is your friend.) was getting an award for their role in "promoting women's rights".

Yeah, promoting their right to dictate what a woman does with her uterus.

In any event, I think I got my crazy feminist card laminated today. I mean, I took a paid day off, on one of the coldest, wettest days of the year, traveled by public transport to a city I hate (the feeling is mutual, I feel), and stood in the hale and got fucking soaked in the name of my right to bodily autonomy and to not be treated like a human incubator.

My sister, bless her batshit crazy brain, came with me. Or I went with her. Either way, we both agreed that if it hadn't been for the other we wouldn't have gone to protest.

Did I mention the hale.

I'm lucky it didn't snow.

My coat was soaked through, as were my boots. My trousers, socks, and shirt. It was a very bedraggled feeling. A sense of continuous dampness from the moment I stepped out of my house, traveled to Jerusalem, and then came back.

I looked so much like a drowned rat, a random woman insisted I take her umbrella saying, "You're going to get wet!"

Lady, I was already wet.

It felt like a day of accomplishments, including the fact that I got home and did the laundry, basically stripping and shoving all the clothes on my back into the washing machine before dashing into the shower. Oh my god, hot water.

A hot shower.

There are a few things that can be truly be considered luxury.

All that was missing was a Slanket. I'm truly pining for one.

But for now, I am basking in the fact that I did good, that my sister and I bonded over feminism, bad weather, Harry Potter, and that I managed to return home in one piece.

Not too shabby, I think.

Crossposts: http://eumelia.dreamwidth.org/585679.html