Robert Jordan's death   
08:42am 18/09/2007
  As some of you already know, James Oliver Rigney, Jr. - better known to fantasy fans as Robert Jordan, the author of the Wheel of Time series - passed away two days ago.

I only found this out a few minutes ago, and I feel terrible.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend, and his books came up in the context of 'series that will never, ever, EVER be finished', and we ended up mocking everything from his writing style to his characterization of women ... and, you know, it doesn't seem nearly so funny now.		  
     

(1 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
   
10:23am 18/07/2007
  I hatehatehate my life right now. I have *no* time for fandom.

I haven't had a chance to see the OotP movie or reread the book *before* seeing the movie, let alone reread all the books as I was planning to.

Hopefully I'll manage to read DH on Saturday, but I'm not even sure about that.

I don't have internet at home, again, and every time I check my flist, I have to go back to skip=∞ (or at least it feels that way.)

I'm so behind on my fic reading, it's not even funny. There are over a hundred fics on my To Read list, [info]somniesperus has posted the last part of the Tea series, and I have *no idea* when I'll get around to it, and wah.

Basically, staying unspoiled? Not so much a problem for me. :(

I've registered for Prophecy, but the way things are looking right now, I may not have time to attend. I haven't even checked out the programming yet, though I get the feeling that half the panels and roundtables are being run by people on my flist.

I hope those of you going to Sectus have a lot of fun, though!		  
     

(1 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
So call me a pessimist   
11:31pm 30/05/2007
  The way the LJ authorities are behaving now reminds very strongly of the way they acted when they introduced ads, so I find it hard to believe that anything we do will make a difference, no matter how much I may wish otherwise.

I can't say I ever *respected* the LJ mods as individuals, so I can't say I lost respect for them during the ads fiasco, but that's when I lost my trust in LJ in general. Unfortunately, the same pattern of behaviour seems to be repeating now:

1) There was no advance warning. In fact, in both cases, LJ staff had either implicitly or directly denied beforehand that the event would occur (through the "no ads on LJ" promise and the defusion of last week's rumours).

2) Their actions show a complete lack of foresight on their part about how things should be handled before and once the mess hit the fan. Just as with the ads debacle, they seem completely surprised by the user response. Since they can't have possibly failed to anticipate the outrage that would follow their actions, there was either unforgivable laziness or a serious lack of communication between the senior staff resulting in no action plan being put together.

3) They're refusing to address people's concerns on an official level. I assume that this is a consequence of their lack of preparedness, but whatever is going on behind the scenes, it's still incredibly rude.

What it comes down to is the fact that last time, the general outpouring of outrage from users received almost no acknowledgement and had no impact whatsoever on their final decisions. There's no reason to belive that things will turn out differently this time.

And like some people have pointed out, raising up a storm and putting fandom in the public eye is not a very smart idea. Maybe - maybe - we could create enough pressure on LJ to get them to unsuspend the journals, but in the long run I think drawing that much attention would backfire on us.		  
     

(leave a trace)
 
She's back... again.   
09:38am 30/05/2007
  I've been meaning to get back into fandom for *months* now, but I just haven't had the free time. I find myself constantly composing LJ entries in my head and intending to post them, but by the time I get around to it, suddenly it's two or three weeks later, and the things I wanted to address are no longer relevant.

For what it's worth, I *do* have some spare time now and I intend to spend it reconnecting with people and catching up on fic. If there's anything I've missed that you feel I absolutely should read, rec it please :)

I'm also going to add a lot of people to my flist in the next few days, people I've been meaning to add for ages but haven't gotten around to yet.		  
     

(4 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
More thoughts on Eurovision   
12:40am 13/05/2007
  OK, my admiration for Marija has just gone way down. For those of you not following the press conference, she's given a very noncommittal response to a question about how she feels about being "a role model for homosexual girls". I can understand her reservation, given how homophobic Serbia is, but I really expected more from her than just a "that's interesting".

It's too bad that Romania and Germany didn't place higher. I voted for France, but I'm not surprised that most countries couldn't appreciate the beauty of their Franglais :D

What were the lyrics to the Ukrainian song? I assume that they were making fun of the USSR and Germany from what little I could understand and from their choreography, but I could be way off.

Finally, let me just say how *nice* it is to have the support of the ex-Yugoslavian countries. Things seem to be changing for the better.		  
     

(4 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
*puts on Serbian hat*   
12:17am 13/05/2007
 
mood: EUPHORIC
music: Marija Šerifović - MOLITVA
WE ARE THE WINNERS OF EUROVISION!		  
     

(1 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
Okay, crisis over   
11:39pm 09/10/2006
  I've stopped freaking out. I honestly don't know why it hit me so hard. I've got a plan now, I've started housetraining her, and everything will be fine. *deep breath*

I met a lady today who told me that for the first two weeks she had a puppy, she actually thought it would kill her. She wasn't sleeping at night, she was throwing up, she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Just like me! :D But they weathered that period, and now she's as happy as can be.

So now I know it can be done, and I've calmed down.

Coming up next: some actual HP fandom content! (Still not done with the Lumos write-up, though.)		  
     

(1 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
Chavez iz da man!   
01:45am 21/09/2006
  Venezuela's leader Hugo Chavez has called US President George W Bush "the devil" in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly.

"The devil came here yesterday," he said, referring to Mr Bush's speech on Tuesday. "It still smells of sulphur today," he added.

Oh, man. Now he's *really* my new hero :D

I mean, Bush is the one who started with insults of other nations and heads of state in the first place. (I still haven't gotten over the "Axis of Evil".) Nice to see him on the receiving end for a bit.

On a more serious note, the BBC correspondent's comment about how Chavez's speech 'paralleled that of the Iranian president' was terribly unsubtle. It's sad to see that the groundwork to depose him is already being laid. There's truly no more room for dissent in this world, and that's rather frightening.


ETA: Hah! In the five minutes it took me to type up this entry, they added another paragraph to the article, right below the two I quoted:
"US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said it was disappointing to see a head of state speak in such a way." Um... right.

</politics>		  
     

(9 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
Ask Me Anything   
06:18pm 18/09/2006
  I'm back in Belgrade after a rather stressful visit home and a two-day stay in Paris, courtesy of JAT, the airline that keeps on breaking down. I should be preparing for my upcoming Pharmacology exam, but of course, I'm on LJ instead, *finally* preparing my Lumos post :D

In the meantime, I thought I'd give you guys a chance find out more about me. If there's something you'd like to know about me or something you think you should already know but don't, now's the time to ask. I know that I don't update very often, and it's hard for people to get to know me through LJ (not to mention that at least one person on my flist thought I was male until we met in person *cough*[info]simmysim*cough* :D), so everything's fair game. I may refuse to answer, but don't feel embarrassed to ask. Anonymous commenting is on, just in case.

Edited to remove run-on sentences		  
     

(leave a trace)
 
The Privilege of the Sword   
12:43am 20/08/2006
  RL has been teh crazy for me lately, so updates to my LJ are few and far-between (I know, what else is new?), but I am still alive. Alive, and squeeing.

HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS BOOK'S EXISTENCE?

The Privilege of the Sword is another sequel - the real sequel, IMHO - to Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner! I was browsing the Fantasy section of the Yonge and Eglinton Indigo today and when I saw it on the shelf, I believe I let out something along the lines of "Oh my god! That can't be- but what if it is- OH MY FUCKING GOD, IT IS! ghsdfizbjnero;vbrgh!" :D

Well. I devoured it in five delightful hours (with several pauses for squeeing), and it is absolutely perfect. Now, I have to admit that I fall into the camp of those who didn't really give The Fall of the Kings the attention it deserved when it came out, because I was hoping for a continuation of Alec and Richard's story, and that book was not it. I skimmed it once, looking for references to those two, then read it again a bit more slowly, but I've never really gone back to read it properly. I'm sure that it's a wonderful novel on its own merits, and it has been moved up on my to-read list now, but it didn't make much of an impression on me at the time. In short, I don't actually remember anything that happened in it ;)

So for all intents and purposes, I started TPoS with no idea of how things eventually turn out, beyond the things hinted at in the short stories included at the end of the new edition of Swordspoint. I was blown away. Kushner took me on a thrillride the likes of which I haven't experienced in *years*. I'm not going to claim that the plot or characters were astonishingly brilliant; if this sort of writing doesn't appeal to you, you probably won't see any great value in the book. But me, I've fallen in love with it the way I fell in love with Swordspoint. I love the language, the setting, the characters' voices. I love the witty dialogue, the unflinching way it deals with disturbing themes while remaining lighthearted in tone, the intrigue and the interactions between the characters, the exploration of love, honour, family. I love the line, "I've brought us some fish."

( Some of my thoughts; not really spoilerish, but cut just to be safe )

Wow. I feel so satisfied now. I never realised how much I longed for this book until I finally read it :)		  
     

(4 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
   
11:18pm 12/08/2006
 
Generate Your Own Glitter Graphics @ GlitterYourWay.com - Image hosted by ImageShack.us
[info]mijan Generate Your Own Glitter Graphics @ GlitterYourWay.com - Image hosted by ImageShack.us[info]emmagrant01

I hope both of you had a great one!		  
     

(leave a trace)
 
   
02:14pm 03/08/2006
 
mood: amused
There are two squirrels making out less than three feet away from me. That is all.

Lumos report coming soon :)		  
     

(5 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
Oh, Zizou :(   
11:36am 11/07/2006
 
mood: disappointed
music: Kosheen - Catch
I've managed to end up with no intenet access again, and I want to apologize to everyone waiting to hear from me. I should be back online by this weekend, when I get back to Belgrade.

I'm currently taking an ubershort, unplanned vacation in Montenegro. It's not much of a vacation, since the weather's been pretty crappy, there's no internet, and I have to study practically 24/7, but I'm having fun :)

I watched the World Cup finals at the creatively named Sport Cafe in Herceg Novi. I think I was the only person rooting for France, but I didn't let that get me down! I was loud enough for a whole team of cheerleaders :D It broke my heart when Italy won. Let's be honest - they were the weaker team in almost every respect. It was obvious throughout the game, just as it was obvious that the penalty shots were the only chance they had of winning.

Initially, I was *furious* with Zidane for getting sent off, even though he's my favourite. But now that I've learned what Materazzi said to him... I have no words. Actually, I have a lot of words, but none of them are suitable for polite company. I just read [info]hackthis's post on how racism had no place in this World Cup, and I agree wholeheartedly. Ugh.

Well, I have to get going now. I hope all of you are well :)		  
     

(1 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
Lumos   
11:30pm 21/06/2006
 
mood: anticipatory
music: Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter
The good news: I've got a ticket for Lumos!

The bad news: it's [info]fiendling's ticket, since she won't be attending :(

It's passing strange that I'm going to a Harry Potter convention at a time when my interest in the books themselves seems at an all-time low, but this is my first chance to meet a lot of wonderful fandom people in person. I'm currently protesting against Six Apart's recent policies by refusing to pay, so I can't do a proper poll, but if you read this and are coming to Lumos, let me know in the comments!

I'll be rooming with [info]phoenixw, whom I can't wait to meet :) I don't know yet when I'll be flying in, since I wasn't sure until this week whether I'd go home to Toronto first or fly straight to Vegas from Belgrade, so I couldn't get my ticket. I just hope all the flights aren't booked full by now.


Oh, and [info]myashke is going to the trouble of organizing two H/D fen meet-ups on Thursday! If you're interested in coming, drop by [info]lumos_hd and fill out the poll!		  
     

(8 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
I really shouldn't find this funny   
01:57pm 21/06/2006
 
mood: amused
But man, I can't stop laughing. I'm a terrible person.

"A Chinese woman has been charged with accidentally killing her husband with a sword after he refused to make her dinner, the Shanghai Daily said on Tuesday.

Police said Tang Xiaowan, 25, who has been practicing swordsmanship since she was young, had often forced her husband of three years at swordpoint to carry out her demands." [More]		  
     

(leave a trace)
 
Good God   
12:28am 20/06/2006
  I came online tonight to try to catch up on the many comments and replies I've owed to various people since I pulled my last vanishing act, and I found the HP fandom in the middle of a scandal of gargantuan dimensions O_o

I have no idea what to say, except that I'm really, really glad I stayed out of it when it was originally going down. I can see that people are still getting hurt on both sides of the issue, and I hope it will be resolved quickly. For what it's worth, all of you involved have my support.

(Although I must confess that a small part of me is guiltily glad to hear again from so many old-time HP fen, despite the occasion.)

ETA: if you find yourselves disgusted with fandom, head over to [info]gmth's journal for a bit. She'd like to hear what you've gained and what you've lost by being in fandom. The replies are very interesting, in many cases inspiring, and more than a bit amusing. I don't think there's a single person yet who hasn't put "time" in the latter category.		  
     

(10 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
The Nature of Pr0n   
10:38pm 23/02/2006
  Hello, boys and girls!

The topic of today's post is PORN in FANDOM, and two links pertaining to it. One is serious and the other is decidedly irreverent.

First of all, we have a very throught-provoking rant by the lovely [info]klgaffney on the reasons why writing fanfic isn't conducive to improving your writing skills, or good writing in general. It's very blunt, but she makes some excellent points, IMHO. An excerpt:

"so here we have somebody's masturbation session thinly disguised as fic, and their friends squeeing over it, and right next door to somebody's carefully researched and beta'd and maybe even creative as fuck concept, and maybe there's no sex involved, because the story didn't exactly demand it at that point, and you can see the tumbleweed blow thru, and you look at that and say, okay, that's gotta be frustrating. besides which, if you're a N00b, and you look at both, which are YOU going to imitate? the fic that's getting attention, because that's the good one, right?"

And there's more stuff, on concrit and fandom as a social rather than litereary environment, and just read it :D. I have to admit I've been guilty of most of these things myself more than a few times.


Secondly, everyone - and I do mean EVERYONE - with any academic background should run over to read The Gayest Science Project Ever, Ever so slightly longer but not quite as thick: Toward a quantitative literary sexology of Harry Potter fanfiction. It will have you rolling on the floor with laughter. Those intrepid fannish researchers, [info]blythely and [info]circe_tigana undertook the daunting task of determining the prevalent trends in H/D fanfic with regards to... well, read the abstract:

Discussion regarding fanfiction tropes produced the observation that in one subset of Harry Potter fanfiction, "Harry/Draco slash" [HDS], Harry has a short, thick dick, while Draco's penis is long and thin. We tested the hypothesis that there was a consistent difference in how these two characters' genitalia were described. Additionally, we tested the hypothesis that slash fiction authors in this subset of fandom did not place equal emphasis on the description of testicles as compared with penii. We surveyed 100 HDS stories in online fanfiction archives and collected data on sexual description and content. Here we present the first quantitative test of fanon stereotypes and show that these explicitly sexual stories contain low levels of visual/sensory genital descriptions. Qualitative comparisons demonstrate trends in support of both hypotheses, although sample sizes prevent statistical significance. We use these findings to discuss how fanon may develop despite the incorrect assumption of perceived ubiquity.		  
     

(9 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
First Part of JKR Interview Up!   
05:16pm 19/07/2005
  JKR: [...]And let's face it, it's going to launch 10,000 theories and I'm going to get a big kick out of reading them so [laughs] I'm evil but I just like the theories, I love the theories.

Evil, evil, EVIL woman.		  
     

(4 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
HBP   
09:59am 16/07/2005
 
mood: sleepy
So. Book 6. It blew my mind, but I've come away with somewhat mixed feelings.

( SPOILERS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS INSIDE! )

Well, that's pretty much it for now. I'll probably break this up and flesh it out into individual posts once I get some sleep and am more coherent. Cheers!		  
     

(7 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
oh my fucking god   
07:40pm 15/07/2005
 
mood: FANNISH HYSTERIA
I JUST FOUND OUT FROM A FRIEND THAT A BOOKSTORE IN BELGRADE WILL BE SELLING HBP AT MIDNIGHT!! FOUR MORE HOURS!!! :D

*ahem* That is to say - I *am* still alive, I'm finally back online (!) and I *do* intend to reply to all of you lovely people who are awaiting responses from me. Just as soon as I read HBP! :D

I thought I wouldn't get to read it for weeks! :D

I'm so happy my last exam was on Wednesday! :D		  
     

(2 footprint in the snowfootprints in the snow | leave a trace)
 
 
zedmeister
 
 
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