gothicsparrow

Writing: I've written 2300 words today on Bootgirl and it took me a bit over four hours. I am not a quick writer.

I had the idea of setting myself a weekly wordcount and then doing whatever to meet it on the weekends. It got a little bit hamstrung yesterday by me forgetting that I had made plans for yesterday, but I have hit the wordcount I set for this week (7000 words). I need to do that for the next few weeks to see if it really works, and to see if the wordcount is too high to do all the time (or too low and too easily hit if I'm working at a good pace).

Reading: Wild Magic, Immortals 1, Tamora Pierce. Reread. I heart Tamora Pierce, especially her earlier works, and I'd love to be able to pinpoint what exactly drives the love. I was looking for a comfort read when I picked it up (after having picked up book 4 because it's the one I never read because it pushes plausibility too far for me, and then wanting to reread the whole series again).

Watching: I am sad that Wolfblood has finished - I liked it, but I only saw 5 or 6 episodes because I'm not often home at the time it's on, and I feel like I haven't seen enough to tell if I think it's really good or whether it just hits some of my fiction-orientated 'kinks' really well (aka shifters and magic and learning cool things). Also, the opening credits are really pretty, like a Maggie Stiefvater book trailer with money behind it.

And I resaw Sweeney Todd last night, and I still really enjoyed it, and I still found the scene where he competes with Pirelli unnerving, even though I knew absolutely nothing happens in that scene

Doing: Far too much. Things are kind of going okay, but things are falling off the table as well. Blogging is an issue, for example. Two days doesn't feel like enough weekend. Guitar is slowly improving - I'm getting closer to being able to play I'll be There for You (the Rembrandts) and Dear Gina (Seanan McGuire) fluently. Bar chords are better than they were, but I still have moments when they're teh evuls.

The lack of blogging is probably in part me being unable to sensibly navigate the time I spend on the internet, which is something I should keep a far better eye on. Case in point - half my brain is currently begging me to go and check Seanan McGuire's LJ, as if I hadn't checked it yesterday.

Links:

Wolfblood credits on Youtube

Book trailer for Shiver on Youtube

Book trailer for Linger

Book trailer for Forever

People who can make beautiful things across multiple media make me extremely happy.

I had meant to post this last sunday night, but there was stuff in it I wasn't sure I should keep in or not and wanted to sit on.

The entirety of this post refers to The Status of The Things as of 7 April.

Reading: just finished Shadow Heir, Dark Swan 4, Richelle Mead. I enjoyed it, but it felt like two or three books shortened and stuck together. I'm not surprised - the third book felt a bit like that too, and the original projection for the series was that it would be about six books long - I'm guessing it was shortened because it wasn't selling as well as the author's other series, and she knew she wasn't going to get the contracts to finish it at the length she had planned.

Writing: Chained was really dragging its feet and I didn't know what to do, so I switched to Bootgirl, which is working better even though I haven't written out a plot beyond my rough notes from ages ago. My main characters are currently called Newgirl, Othergirl and Dudefriend.

I plan to poke at Chained today to figure out whether I should edit the two most recent drafts together and go from there, to plot it out more thoroughly, or just leave it for a while to rest in my brain while I work on other things. (spoiler as of 9:45pm: I didn't :( )


I had an... exceedingly interesting idea*, for doing a genderflipped grimdark novella, after reading some of the conversation concerning grimdark fantasy, with which there is precisely one problem: I do not actually read that subgenre because it does not appeal to me. I could probably do it in a way that would appeal to me, but then it wouldn't be grimdark, just Not Particularly Nice. Maybe it's time to sit down and read A Game of Thrones for myself, to be able to make my own judgements on what it is and is not. And apparently it has really good worldbuilding.


Life: Yesterday I hung out with a whole lot of people who mostly work in natural resources management. That was pretty cool. I got an invitation via the plant group facillitator - it ended up as a group outing - because she volunteers with the group where I did the certificate in conservation and land management.

It was a beautiful day, and there were skinks in the leaf litter all around the path - you'd only see them when they dove back into the leaves, but we could hear them all around. I hadn't been to any outdoors places with trees and outdoors for months, just making myself busy with hobby things, and it felt so relaxing just to be out there. Maybe one day I'll remember that it does me better to be out of the house the entire weekend than on the internet - though it doesn't do the housework any good at all.

I also went to see Oz the Great and Powerful at the movies with a friend on friday night and we came back to my place to demolish part of an overly-rich cheesecake she made and to practise guitar, which was fun. I showed her how reading tab worked and taught her some Silverchair. She's been playing piano forever. She had nylon and steel strings on her guitar, which sounded really beautiful, and mangled Silverchair most gorgeously.

Oz was sort of okay - it passes the bechdel test, but the gender stuff in it is kind of awful - the main character is an ass and nearly all the secondary characters are women. They had some references to the novel of the Wizard of Oz, which, having read it, was fun, but didn't really make up for being fairly meh. And they didn't even try to do anything with the fact that we know how it is going to end already, apart from one character undergoing an unexpected transformation about a third of the way into the movie, which kind of made things less interesting instead of more interesting.



*I originally phrased this 'a bad idea' - a phrase I associate with zany schemes which may be more trouble than they're worth. It is such an idea, but such ideas aren't necessarily bad, and just because I have my own unique take on that phrase doesn't mean everyone else will understand it on first reading. I think I often forget that I'm the only person who lives in my head.

So the short story was rejected.

I am both happy and scared. I am happy because I have a rejection sitting in my email inbox, my first real rejection - proof that I've finally decided to send something out for real, with the possibility of being paid for having written it. I am scared because oh my gods what if it was really offensive, or laughably bad, or pushed all the editor's 'hell no' buttons, or wasn't formatted correctly, or I did something else wrong that I can't even conceive of?

But I am relived as well, because I won't be asked to edit within a tiny timeframe, won't have to worry about whether I can make the fixes asked of me, won't have to worry about maybe having things changed that I would prefer not to be changed, but can't articulate why exactly I want them left alone.

In this rejection I have proof that I have been writing, and I have proof that I'm not good enough.

I know a lot of my reaction to the rejection is irrational. I did everything I could with what I had, and if it wasn't enough I have time enough to learn how to do it better.

For me, this whole process is much like jobsearching. Emotionally as well as process-wise. The main difference is that I can write another story, but I can't do much with my resume. Getting back the 'your application was not successful at this time' email comes both with the fear that all my job applications will return with the same response, and the relief that I won't have to work out how to get to the job interview, how to dress for it, not having to run through answers to questions they may or may not ask, and the relief that the process isn't going to be drawn out longer before getting back that final 'no'.

I prefer the story kind of no. At least then I can go and write another story.

Currently reading:

Delta of Venus - Anais Nin
This is a compilation of Nin's erotic short stories. It's.... different. It's at least as interesting reading what kinds of things are considered sexy, the locations of the stories as well as the situations. And the way sex is written about is different than the way its written about in urban fantasy today. Less coy. And generally less tame.

Books read so far this year:

The Wizard of Oz - L Frank Baum
Better than the movie. I know many people feel that the book is usually better than the movie, but I'm rarely one of them. It themes a lot clearer than the movie, it's more involved in tying off loose ends than the movie, it's its rather cheeky at times.

Farenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
I haven't read many of the old SFF masters, and it's books like this that make me feel more likely to seek out more of them. It reminds me a bit of 1984 - the society broken in one specific way, and from there on lies various horrors. Bradbury is prone to these beautiful passages of description - one being the reason that I read the first page and then put it back down months ago: I knew if I didn't put it down *now *, I would just keep reading.

Reckoning - Lili St. Crow
It had been probably two years since I read Defiance, the 4th book, and far too long. I love this series. I didn't feel like the ending wrapped up enough of the things that I wanted it to, it didn't spend enough time there. But otherwise I loved it. Trigger warning: violence, and the main character is genuinely terrified.

Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor
Love her writing style, but she sometimes shows clear privilege blindness. Trigger warning: attempted rape.

Who Fears Death - Nnedi Okorafor
This is a good book, but not an easy book. I'm not sure what I think about it, apart from that. I'm not sure if I liked it or disliked it, but it was worth having read. Trigger warning for rape; also I think there was misogyny and racism directed at the main character.

I have just submitted A Thing to A Publication, and now I need to go roll up in a ball somewhere. Not so used to this. It's scary-ass. And then it's fine, until I remember there was explicit sex in it and I forgot to fix [blah] and I wibble like a jelly again.

I would like to thank Stephanie Gunn profusely for the beta, even though I ended up rewriting the whole thing and it became a fairly different beastie (now contains swears, explicit sex, and 50% of the wordage) - I kept an eye out for the things that were commented on in the first incarnation, but I can only hope that that was enough. I also gave it to an offline friend who hadn't quite read all of it as of thursday lunchtime, which is okay.

Things learnt: Taking semi-frequent breaks seems to work well for editing, and also intensive writing. Sometimes getting everything right-enough takes enourmous amounts of words - I guestimate 15K or 20K words for a 3K short story (and a 6K first draft which I think I'd like to turn into its own thing) but I don't really know how many words there were. The first name I have for a story will rarely end up being its last - this is a definate thing with me, as stories evolve and so does what they are at the core. I do really need relative quite to work in. Printing a hardcopy to edit can sort of lock down the story as it is on paper, but I can't edit as well on the computer. And each time I do this I'm learning a little bit more and getting a bit better at it.

Found while doing jelly immitations (and also while procrastinating):

Pictures of Kristen Cashore's Bitterblue being made

Weight loss ad parodies, diversity of peoples, at least one is NSFW

Groundhog surprise party

Kristen Cashore has new words

And also picures of teh snows - read the captions

Bella as a Mormon goddess in Stephanie Meyers' Twilight

I found this interesting. The writer makes the point that Bella is pushing for the things she wants in the relationship, and that the series places high value on her role as a carer and a mother - something which is regularly devalued in fiction and in Western culture.

I think the point is overmade that Twilight as a singular book is dangerous in particular. It's one of many, many books, tv shows, movies that idealises traditional femininity and potentially dangerous men - it's a thread of the cultural air we breathe, a thread of the strand that tells us that all women should be/want x and all men should be/want y, and that they have nothing in common. Twilight could not possibly have a large impact in the way that young women view romantic relationships unless there was already ground for them to believe that it is romantic to have an overprotective boyfriend, a controlling boyfriend, if there are not the seeds of such ideas within our mainstream culture. The Twilight series just happens to be massive bestsellers, that it's easier to point at them and says 'this is what's wrong' when it's only the currently-most-visible part of the iceberg of influences.

Not to say I think it's great either, just that it's the tall poppy, and thus easy to cut down.

~

I genuinely love finding differing opinions, differing readings to the norm, different explanations as to what the pieces are and how they fit together. Most of which I get nowadays by reading ABC's The Drum and TheConversation.edu.au, just reading everything on a given topic as long as I'm not finding it offensive (...I still have limits). But this is how I form my opinions - if I don't feel I know enough about both sides of a debate, I don't feel well informed enough to have one strong enough to justify backing any given side.

~

Middle Earth doesn't look like medieval Europe

I've recently rewatched all the LotR moves, and the first Hobbit movie, and I mostly only know the world from the movies (I've read tFotR and The Hobbit, but only once each, a long time ago), and it's good to get perspective. I've discovered that I love the movies, even though the lack of female characters is oh so fail.

The One Cake

Because why not?

Reading: Finished Mockingjay- Hunger Games book 3, Suzanne Collins- earlier today, due to being less sick than yesterday but more short of breath doing things like getting dressed. One guess which book I finished yesterday while I was home sick.

I really love being able to finish series like this, back to back with little interruption. It feels like the purest way to read, and it's a privilege to be able to, especially with this series.

Writing: Broke 40K on Chained yesterday, well on track to finish NaNoWriMo as long as I don't run out of plot. I'm less certain that it absolutely going to happen, but it's still a big possibiilty.

Life: Having a break in the rhythm of work five days, two days off feels like a tiny reminder that there are things outside that. That's it's not the only pattern that has ever existed for me, and it used to be different. Not that I used that time well- or had much capacity to use it well today, either- but that it's not the only way things can be.

Also: Vaguely thinking about trying to write a series of posts on horror and action as genres, how they intersect, how they use violence, and the disconnect between violence being awful and violence being fun. I don't even know if I can connect ideas on these into something coherent, much less actually sit down and write it out. But it would be pretty cool, I think

I know my responsibility as a storyteller... But I'll never forget that there are uglier ways to use stories: to deceive, to divide and to destroy.

I've pretty finished reading Mockingjay earlier today, and I'm still letting it settle. It seems appropriate to see haikujaguar's post today, as one of the main themes of the Hunger Games trilogy is creating and shaping narratives in this way, shaping narratives to entitle the there-government to 24 tributes a year, which most districts hate but some love, and that the Capitol doesn't seem to care that the deaths are real.

Of the really big blockbuster fantasy series that have appeared in the last decade, this is my favourite. It carries its themes heavily, I love the characterisation, and it was as nasty as it needed to be. It surprised me with what was coming a couple of times, when I was too locked into the narrative as Katniss saw it to figure that a wider plot was going to come into play.

Very glad I've finally read the series. Very glad.

Reading: The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins. I started The Gathering by Isobelle Carmody yesterday, but I wasn't really that into it.

Writing: Chained, hit 30k yesterday, and as of last night I was 200 words down from where I should be to keep pace with NaNoWriMo, even though I expected to stay 1k down until this weekend when I would have enough time to go for everything. I've been mostly writing for one hour in the morning and one in the evening, and have mostly managed to hit the daily word target easily. Considering that my usual word count is 500-700 words an hour, it feels like a fluke of a run. It's extremely welcome, though.

And a quote that was too good to leave alone:

“Kind people have a way of working their way inside me and rooting there.”

The Hunger Games, adult edition, page 60, first line. I could not make it up if I tried.

(I take it the YA edition comes without the line? ;) )

Also seen today, the ABC had a roundup of US election related internet silly, and the thread on Reddit they mentioned is hilarious in and of itself.

Reading: Shaded Vision, Otherworld book 11, Yasmine Galenorn. Of note is that I've only read the first six books in the series, and this was the next most recent I found. I like the series, but not avidly enough to really seek it out like I did with Toby Daye- I find Toby has more depth, which is what I look for in urban fantasy, but the Otherworld series has more random madcapness (and one of the main characters is polyandrous, another is bisexual). Both series move extremely quickly- I knew there would be a lot I missed in between books, and I was right, but I don't mind.

Writing: Chained. Again. I was thinking about doing Nanowrimo, but I don't have anything that's prepared enough to work on. And I'm in the middle of something. I might try to keep pace working on Chained, but I'm already 2000 words behind, not counting today's wordcount, of which there is currently nil. And I'm also not likely to make another 50,000 words of story on this draft either- 40k all up if I'm lucky, but if I managed 50k during the month, it would leave me with a 70k draft, which would be fabulous, but it's highly unlikely.

If I can't make wordcount during the week, I'll stop worrying about keeping up with nano speeds.

Life: I saw Argo yesterday. I'm not really a great fan of 'based on a true story' type movies, especially the more documentary type style of the newer ones- they often show horrible things that happened to real people, and it's extremely uncomfortable. Especially when its atrocities that occurred from causes that lie far in the past. I enjoyed it - a lot of the dialogue was quite funny, and the story is pretty insane in the good way- getting ambassadorial staff out by posing as a film crew.

Books bought: Because Readings is part of the same shopping complex that houses one of the last two bookshops standing in my town:

Carnival of Souls - Melissa Marr
Iron Crowned - Richelle Mead

"The shape of your d-chord is pretty good, now try sliding it up the neck.”

*slides up the neck, strums*

"And what's this chord called?”

"No idea. Does it matter?”

This guitar thing is less structured than playing the organ.

I once screwed up a keyboard cmajor by having a finger moved too far down, and it was an aminor. But it's never like 'move that hand position over here and see what sound it makes.' That's crazy talk. But with guitar... I have a feeling I will be learning to think about playing music a lot differently to how I have in the past.

I think I like it.


So, last tuesday my uncle came over and gave me a guitar lesson. It was really good. I had been able to play a couple of chords and sort of tune the guitar, but now I'm playing them without being so worried about having buzzing strings (because that is something that can be sorted later, and I got the impression that it would be easier to sort them later, like after I have proper guitar calluses). And was given homework of practise chords, practise playing the EFG notes from the low-E string, and muck around a little.

Me being me, aka the girl who learnt how to play several bits of music from the final fantasy games by ear, managed to figure out how to play most of 'my heart will go on' by fiddling with the high-E string, and hitting notes until I found the right ones.

I can also hit all the major notes in sequence down the strings.

I am just so amused*.

When I get my brain working I will get the highwind theme going, and thus obtain the limit break of awesome.


*By coincidence, I first learned how to play 'My Heart Will Go On' on the organ, as a reprieve from learning all these songs I didn't know or care about from the teaching books. It was probably the last one I learnt in lessons on the organ there- it broke and after that I learnt on the keyboard. I remember doing the foot pedals and everything. I still have the sheet music for it somewhere.

Writing: Not much. Mucking around between new ideas for Lunaris and that I need to fix Chained. Not only for length (30k does not a novel make).

If I was clever, I'd be working on some of the bazillion short story ideas I have in my file, but that would be no fun.

Reading: Just finished A Local Habitation (Toby Daye 2, Seanan McGuire) last night, and am currently almost halfway through An Artificial Night. Previous unreported reading includes Rosemary and Rue (Toby 1), and nothing for a week, and The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf.

Unbeknownst to anyone but me, I've been working on the Australian Women Writers challenge, with medium level genre variance and I don't know how many reviews I'm going to end up doing.

So far I have read the following towards the challenge:

By Kate Forsyth

Dragonclaw
The Pool of Two Moons
The Cursed Tower
The Forbidden Land
The Skull of the World
The Fathomless Caves

Priestess of the White- Trudi Canavan
The Courier's New Bicycle- Kim Westwood
Cocaine Blues- Kerry Greenwood
The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf- Ambelin Kwaymullina

Not read towards the challenge so far this year:
Mastiff- Tamora Pierce
Water to Burn- Katherine Kerr
Discount Apocalypse- Seanan McGuire
Probably other things I have forgotten

Genre variance so far includes some mix of adult, YA, fantasy, and sci fi/dystopian. And historical detective fiction. Phryne Fisher is hella fun.

Done recently: probably killed a berry saltbush that I left in its tiny seedling pot for too long. I won't know for sure for maybe a few more days, but I'm not holding my breath.

Eaten chocolate for lunch, read Toby, washed dishes, watched Thundercats, removed crap from my bedroom floor, not much.

Linkness:

I have really been meaning to link-promote some cool people for a while, and I've sadly neglected to, so:
Marie Brennan, one of my favouritest writers, has recently put out a new ebook called Lies and Prophecy, and she put up a whole heap of teaser scenes here: Welcome to Welton

Sarah and Jennifer Diemer are putting up two short stories every week for a year as part of a project they call Project Unicorn, for the sake of increasing the number of stories about girls who like girls in the world, and to keep them accessible.

I still can't figure out how to keep hold a life together I need to allocate time better and not give up on the other things I'd like to do just because I feel too time poor, because in truth, the only thing stopping me from doing those things is me, not the lack of time.

Last weekend I went out to the movies on both days because Brave was going to finish and so was Spiderman, and I hadn't seen either of them. First revelation: I need to get out on the weekend more. Or, at all.

Second revelation: Aqua has a third album that I didn't know about- Megalomania. It's mine now, my pretties, all mine! *cackles* I may have also bought Natasha Bedinfield's album Unwritten, and may have been a bit disappointed that there weren't more songs like Single and Unwritten on it- only Wild Horses.

I needed to have seen Brave. I needed a story about the conflict between being true to oneself and the obligations one owes to wider society, that sometimes you need to hold parts of yourself back because they won't accomplish the task that needs to be done now.

Spiderman was- it was good until I realised that even I was getting bored in some of the dialogue scenes- the writing was sharp and cliche. It was not bad, but not as good as most of the other superhero movies that are coming out now. Nowhere near as good as The Dark Knight Rises :)

I think I'm back to normal after Continuum. I think it was just too much awesome for four days. If there is such a thing.

The random:

I got taught how to crochet on monday by a workmate. Crochet is fun. Learning at work after the craft-themed convention is amusing.

I have a friend coming over tonight to stay for a few days. The house is a mess, so of course I'm on the internet.

My rounded noonflower has a 'branch' that's starting to die, and I would really like to take it off and repot it for double the noonflower. (Also, it looks a bit sad) (But not as sad as the saltbushes- I killed them all. Death of Plants should be impressed)

Twitter is cool and weird, all at the same time.

I have stopped obsessing over whether I sucked on second panel or not. But I have still not yet looked up The Tomorrow People, either.

Kids shows in the '70s were hardcore.

I still intend on writing up the convention. But not just now. I also intend on writing up second panel, but also not right now.

Continuum was freaking awesome, for all sorts of reasons.

Highlights: I was on panels, and neither of them sucked. I was pretty quiet on the gamer girls panel, but really we had a games journalist and an ex games journalist on the panel, I so can't compete. But I got a pet rant or two in.

...I'm kind of fangirling over the 'Let's traumatise the kiddies' panel. Firstly, I was half expecting everything to fall apart, and it didn't. Secondly, I am going to check out The Tomorrow People. When I stop telling people I'm going to do it.

I met new people! Also! I wasn't expecting it, and then I spent saturday with a guy I met at the tabletop games panel, then I went to lunch with a group on sunday, and got invited to chocolate lunch on monday (well, churros, but y'know...). And I got invited to dinner by Gillian Pollack and some of her friends and I'm writing this really small because I'm afraid I've said it too many times and am going to jinx myself or something.

And there is nothing like stepping out into Melbourne's streets in the early morning, everything cold and draped in mist, when you're never quite sure what will appear when you step out of the laneway. Last year a friend said it was a steampunk city, but I think it's a faery city.

I am also now actually active on twitter. @gothicsparrow. Poking Narelle Harris on Twitter is fun.

Thinking about doing a writeup on the 'Let's Traumatise the Kiddies' panel. Not sure if it's a good idea. Should probably do it anyway. Plus, I have ideas for bonus panel-related trauma.

I have some news. Some cool news.

I have panels at Continuum! Two of them, to be precise. They are:

Hey, I game too!- Sunday at 5pm

Let's Traumatise the Kiddies- Monday at 3pm

And I will also be there all weekend. And hopefully catch a Filk Circle. *Cross fingers, touch wood*

I hope I can get Tuesday off, so I don't have to decomp at work.

The most recent episode of Dance Academy has me feeling like I want to watch it over again, just... I don't know, to make sure that what happened is what they said happened. To watch it, knowing what's going to happen, and being able to go through those feelings of knowing what's going to happen.

I also want to tug at it with words, to make sense of my thoughts on it, but most of the things I want to tease out are spoilery, and I don't think enough people reading would be watching the show for it to be worth the spoilerage. And also because I think the episode would be better experienced without knowing anything beforehand. (Damn you, ABC3 advertising! *shakes fist*)

I'm in serious like with this show. It's mainly about a group of students who are mostly friends who are attending the National Academy of Dance; about varying relationships between friends and how they change, about having a dream and what it takes to pursue it. And Tara's neverending love woes. Aimed at young teen girls, naturally.

I like these characters, the pacing is brisk, it's moderately but not completely predictable, it's fun. There are times certain characters behave in eye-rolling ways (...Tara...), there's places where it feels uneven, there's moments when you have no idea what happened. The start of the first season takes a while to get from 'these are the characters' to 'group dynamics, yay!'

But I like it.

Well...

On one hand, my first console game was Final Fantasy 7, which probably did more to boot me into the SFF-is-awesome headspace than anything else*. I read Animorphs as a teen. I've read Tolkien#. I've read 1984, and Brave New World^. I love Star Wars.

My current favourite musician is a filker. I used to do martial arts, I can make a website from scratch using html and css, I understand the Open Source movement and believe it is a force of good.

I also own every novel Tamora Pierce has published. I read a lot of SciFi/Fantasy YA. One of my all-time favourite epic fantasy series has a lot of -feelings- and -relationships-. Nearly every author in my bookcase of favouritest books evar is female. I've *gasp * read all the Twilight novels.


But I also have a thing for the pretty- there was that time I read all of a MG series because UNICORNS and PRINCESSES and PRETTY SPARKLY MAGIC, even though I was 'too old' at the time. (Unicorns of Balinor, and I was 15-16? Possibly 18-19?- I don't remember) I still like Sailor Moon, although Serena is really annoying as a character. And I still find the care bears' message to be d'awww.

Seriously? I both started a fanfiction for the sole purpose of getting my main characters almost-but-not-for-reals killed over and over, and last night watched the Care Bears Movie because there was nothing on TV.

It's rather bizarre. But I kind of like it.




*I love this kind of authorly evil- the credible death threats. I'd love to go into the level of evil that this game gets into between three specific events, death threats and controllable helplessness.

# I've read The Hobbit and Fellowship, liked The Hobbit better. I found the language in Fellowship to be hard to follow.

^1984 was actually for year 11 Lit, but we got to choose from a long list of books to do. And then I swapped books with a friend who had done Brave New World for the same class. I liked 1984 better- BNW was kind of bland, whereas 1984 was hard, but also ends sharply- it kind of has a non-ending.

What am I? On labels impeding one's sexuality

Content curators are the new superheroes of the web

Why the 'Girl' matters: another post about geek girls and gamer girls

Disney Princesses as Characters from FFX-2 Debating whether I should delete this because I think some of the choices of dress are racist

Defining Genre: the problem with Dystopian Romance
This stuff does my head in, because I still feel that most romantic subplots (in adult UF, mind) don't add anything to the story for me. I don't have much familiarity with current Dystopian (and/or Post-Apocalyptic) YA, but trying to purify one's pet genre by pushing the works of it that one doesn't like towards genres that they don't actually belong in is a massive failure of owning up to one's tastes. Or shows a massive fear of being associated with genres thought to be feminine.

More later, thunderstorm now

I started replaying Final Fantasy 8 yesterday.

It's sort of the odd FF out for me- stuck between 7, my heart game, and 9, the epic fantasy game with the cartoonish characters (and 10, which I initially didn't like much, but liked more each time I played it*). I think I used to really dislike the GF junction system because it initially seemed unnatural- going from a system where stones equipped into weapons or armour gave you magic, summons, abilities bar attack and item, and some stat boosts; to being nothing without a GF equipped, and magic being counted in quantities rather than have/don't have- you draw a quantity of spells from monsters, and once you use all those spells, they're gone. I think that was confronting for my 15 year old self, that the magic wouldn't always be there. And that if you used magic that was junctioned to a stat, that stat would go down. Now I think it's ingenious- for a game where there is rarely a significant risk of losing a fight, but your magic/ability/stat system is highly customisable with risk built into the system.

Also, spirit link creatures that help you do all the things. I do think that is way cooler than the 'come here, says I' implied by all of the other summon systems

*12 doesn't exist. Apart from Ashe, Penelo and Larsa. Haven't played 13 yet.

/nerdery