The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Holli:

All of this only serves to confirm my suspicions that the entire retail fashion industry is geared towards women shaped like my 16-year-old sister. Sadly, they did not do this for me when *I* was 16, as I am gangly, narrow-shouldered, long-legged, flat-assed, wide-hipped, and yeti-footed. I have lucked into fitting nearly all the size 10 clothes at H&M, top and bottom, but I spent *years* searching for a long coat that did not make me look hopelessly pear-shaped, before finding one at Banana Republic, of all places. Still can't find shirts *or* pants that are long enough, most of the time, and precious few clothes are cut appropriately for my oddly-proportioned frame.

I also own six of the same bra, because after buying two of the first bra I'd ever found that very nearly fit right, I spent months looking for similar bras, found nothing, and eventually found the same bra on clearance for $10 and bought every single one they had in my size. Unfortunately, they're now starting to fit too loosely, because I wear them so much, and I'm going to have to find a new One True Bra.

Lexica, the order on the the DVDs is the order Firefly was meant to be seen in. The geniuses at Fox Broadcasting were the ones who futzed with the viewing order; it was their bright idea to air the pilot episode *last*.

When you watch it in DVD order, things flow a *lot* better, and both the plot and character arcs are wonderful.

Teresa, this probably isn't news to you, but knitters are beginning to get similar opportunities to cut out the middleman. It's not quite at the same level of one-to-one commerce, but KnitPicks is buying their yarn stright from the mills in Peru, and women's collectives in Uruguay and Nepal are selling to a number of retailers. I'm not sure we'll ever get to the point that we can buy yarn spun to our specifications from handspinners on the other side of the world, but it'd be awfully neat if we did.

This whole discussion is completely fascinating. I've been in fandom since I was twelve, and at eighteen I'm finding it's sometimes hard to take the slash goggles off and come up for air, as it were, from the murky depth of fandom. Listening to non-ficcers discussing fic, and slash, and not in that horrible "They think Kirk and Spock have sex! Isn't that *wacky?*" way I'm familiar with, is wonderful. So thank you for that.

I do a lot of thinking about the mechanics of fandom, and how being in fandom for as long as I've been sexually aware has influenced me, but I have a feeling it'll take a lot longer than one comment to say it all. So I think I'll leave it for now with this:

For me, the single most useful thing about writing fanfic-- as opposed to original fiction-- is the shorthand it allows you wrt characterization and worldbuilding. Instead of creating and maintaining believable characters, you need to convince the reader that the characters in your story could conceivably be the characters they already know. Instead of coming up with a universe form scratch, you must refrain from violating the established laws of an established universe. It's not at all a restrictive framework-- in fact it's incredibly freeing, because the sandbox has been built, and all you have to do is play.

I'm reminded by all the creeper talk of my grade-school playground, which had what seemed at the time to be stories-high thickets of honeysuckle and blackberry, covering the old dead trees and brush at the edge of the woods. As invasive species go, they were great for an elementary schooler with a sweet tooth, and smelled heavenly.

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