...This is an experiment! But I keep seeing links I'd like to share, and then I don't do it, because I can't write a whole post around them. So instead, linkspam, with comments.

( Linkspam includes: medieval marginalia, publishers behaving badly, race at the movies, Choose Your Own Adventure books, a requiem for the history channel, feminism and the late show industry, sexual assault prevention, adults and children, three Liquid Story Binder tutorials, and recipes )

Posted at Livejournal and Dreamwidth. Comment here or there. comments currently at DW.

Here's a bento that looks amazing.

(I realize that a lot of bento look amazing, but this one is particularly incredible. Go see.)

YouTube link, via Shapely Prose, made me laugh hard. And I like yogurt!

it's 'who serves yogurt at their wedding?' good!

First, via Making Light, an interesting talk on Where do people find the time?. As Patrick Nielsen Hayden summarizes, it's about "gin, television, the 'cognitive surplus,' and the true answer to the annoying question in the title..." I nodded a lot, also: grinned. Video, worksafe.

Second, a recipe. Potstickers, or gyoza, or jiaozi, or pan-fried wonton things. Technically, gyoza/jiaozi are made with a different dough than wonton skins, but wonton skins are readily available to me, so I use them. I make no claim as to authenticity at all, but they taste good.

( Potstickers )

I was going to shut up about this now, but this is too useful and true and excellent not to share.

From synecdochic, Don't Be That Guy. Where That Guy is the guy who sets off women's creepdar (and often rightly so). How to recognize what behaviors you might have that make you look like an entitled creep, how not to do them, and how to back up women who are encountering them without making yourself creepy in the process. Covers such topics as I-deserve-your-attention entitlement, but-I'm-a-feminist-so-I-deserve-some-tail-too entitlement, why "no" doesn't mean "maybe" and why you might think it does, why you may want to avoid being a Man Who Explains Things, why it's okay to fuck up but not okay to get dismissive, and why "men can be raped, too!" is a non-starter of an argument.

Yeah, these aren't creepiness flags that Every Woman Everywhere find creepy -- but I can tell you that they're dead-on accurate for me, at least, and I know I'm not the only one.

Also, as a follow-up to the Back Each Other Up pledge, via shaysdays, a post on how women can back up or 'rescue' other women without putting themselves in a dangerous situation (as might happen if they confront a creeptastic guy directly), and also on how to spot body language that means 'I do not want to talk to this guy or even look at him but I'm too polite and/or frightened to actually say so or walk away.'

Most of the how-to-back-up tips there are more appropriate for women rescuing women (the body-language tips are generally applicable) -- it's trickier for men to do so, because so many women (including me!) have had one of two bad experiences. Either a guy tries to 'rescue' me in a way that's actually alpha male posturing, faux-chivalric 'I shall rescue you and then surely you will bestow a kiss upon your knight' stuff, which is ew. You shouldn't try to get a woman away from a creep so that she'll pay attention to you instead. OR: guys leaping straight into trying to Solve The Problem and chase the other guy away before they even determine that I want to be rescued -- at which point it gets directly into I Know Better Than You, Helpless Female territory. synechdochic's suggestion for how a guy can back up a woman is brilliant: he should join the conversation and start talking to the guy, thus providing a distraction and allowing the woman to more easily make her excuses and escape. That way, if she was enjoying talking to potential-creep, she can continue, and if she wants to get away, she can.

At some point I'm going to pull together my post on Hugs Of Inappropriate Length (kind of like the more gropetastic cousin to Rodents Of Unusual Size), but not today. Today I'm making earrings and writing a story.

Ever thought about reading the independent graphic novel series Elfquest? It's now available free and legit online, as part of the Elfquest 30th Anniversary celebration.

It's hard to sum up Elfquest in a way that doesn't make it sound vaguely stupid, which it isn't. It's about elves who ride wolves, who are driven from their forest home and thereafter quest to find a new home and to reunite all the scattered tribes of elves. The main thing to know about it, though, is that it's gorgeous -- at least, the parts of it that are drawn by Weny Pini, the co-creator. Seriously, the major reason to read Elfquest is because it's beautiful, the second reason is because it has a ton of likeable and interesting characters (including Nightfall, who fits into my favored Ass-Kicking Female Character archetype, and Strongbow, who was an adolescent crush nearly as embarrassing now as my crush on Radu), and the third reason is because the plot is strong enough to be engaging.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the Original Quest, written by Richard and Wendy and drawn by Wendy Pini, which is conveniently also entirely uploaded. (The later series are being put up a few issues at a time over the course of this year.) If you read and like that, it's worth going on to Siege at Blue Mountain and Kings of the Broken Wheel, which are also written and drawn by the Pinis, and if you like those you can delve into the less-sure territory of stuff that's partly written or drawn by someone else. (If you get that far and want recs for what's worthwhile and what isn't, I can do that. Some of them are nearly as good as the original -- the first chunk of Hidden Years is excellent indeed -- and some, well, aren't.)

But basically, it's beautiful, it's worth reading, and at least for 2008, it's free. (And if you are familiar with EQ already, note that the Original Quest version on the website is the new, 'definitive' recolor, and very pretty indeed.)

Making Light has a wonderful roundup-post of amateur political videos on the Internet. It was the first time I'd ever seen Will.i.am's "Yes We Can" (pro-Obama), which is pretty damn impressive, but the whole sweep of them (the roundup includes an array of candidates, though Obama gets the most coverage) is interesting -- some impressive, some heartfelt, some unintentionally hilarious, all very interesting.

Viva l'internet.

EDIT: Oh my god, one of the video-making groups is called "Headbangers for Huckabee." I die.