Once a Stranger

Happy birthday stanayitnuh ! ♥

Sometimes Fandom really does puzzle me. But, I've been recced at quibbler_report and hogwarts_today so very much yay of the OMGBBQ-jumping-up-and-down kind.And let's not whine about the lack of comments.

Otherwise, having lots of fun discussing Remus' character here. Where I also started that Slytherins were not selfish :D

I know I tend to have a much darker interpretation of Remus than most people, and I probably go a bit too far with it, but I do think that a lot of people go overboard in the other direction (lots of fanon!Remus annoy me ^^)

Actually I could spend some time sporking fun at fanon!Remus in many ways (Saint!Lupin who is ever so good and kind and sacrificing; Bookish!Lupin who's shy and the smartest kid of his class regardless that James and Sirius were canonically just as smart or smarter; Alpha Wolf!Lupin with the super sense of smell to detect lies and horniness and who likes to bite his SO to mark his dominance - this one is more amusing than annoying - and so on ^^)

It's not of course that I think that Remus is an evil character. He has many qualities. He shows kindness to Harry and Neville, he's a very good teacher, he's courageous and selfless enough to fight in the Order despite how much the WW treats him badly.
But I do think he's got lots of failings, and I find that his failings make him much more interesting. And most of them are about how he deals with other people.

In many ways Remus reminds me of Anthy Himemiya from Shoujo Kakumei Utena, which I know is a weird parallel to make, but here.
( spoilers for Utena )

On another subject altogether, funny link about Pluto's demission as a planet (awww, poor Pluto XD)

ETA: Last, LJ seems to be very irregular about sending me mail notification of comments. I do receive most notifications, but if I check, I can see there's a few comments for which I've never received any. And it's been a few weeks now and I receive not late notification either, so it's starting to piss me off.

Fascinating post by coffeeandink Fandom genealogy

There's a few definitions and history here that are mind blowing, and the concept of feral fandom is very interesting.

I'm getting the feeling that I've had a very backward itinary through fandom.

I've started as a lit fan. SF/F books were my first love. When I got myself on the internet (that was 1996-1997) one of the first thing I seeked was discussions about SF/F books in general. In 1999 I fell in love with A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin and for the first time became actively involved in a fandom about a specific set of books. It was however mostly made of discussion about canon, very little creativity involved (though there were some fledgeling attempts at fanfictions)

Then I came to media fandom through Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That was 2001-2002. I was watching BtVS for a long time before I got into the fandom on the internet, and, for the record, it's definitly a shipping impulse that made me do it (It was after watching Out of my Mind that I felt the need to go online talk about it). I became particulary involved in fandom during BtVS's season 6 and started reading and finally writing fanfics. Then I got disapointed with BtVS during S7 and left. While all the other fen I was friend with were getting into other media fandom (AtS of course, and things like SG1, Wonderland, Lost, etc.) I got myself deep into RPGs and spent a year obsessed with Exalted.

Roleplaying Games do not count as "fandom" for most fen. Never mind that they function like fandom.

Then during early 2004 I got myself back into fandom, this time in anime and manga fandom after I'd read Tokyo Babylon and watched X. I started writing fanfics in earnest etc. I think that's when I diversified the most my activity in fandom too, as i started reading fanfics for a lot of series I wouldn't necessarly consider myself a fan of. Or being a fan of series without being a very active/obsessed fan (like with Utena).

In mid 2005 I was starting to be weary with Clamp and weirdly enough (given the mellow respect I have for those books) I got into Harry Potter. Teh Feral Fandom full of people who have no idea about what SF/F truely is (for most people of course, many people do ^^)

I think I've almost systemicaly gone counter to the big migrations of people. And I've gone from "geekier" / more specialized to wider more amateurish fandoms.

Weird.

I think the only thing I have left is comic book and video games fandom ^_^

Pro's	Con's
It's fun and everybody does it and it's  a way to be part of the community	It's a christmas thing and I don't do Christmas things. Ever.
It's a way to challenge myself	No way I'm going to be able to finish a story in time, dude.
I get a story, too	I'm not confident enough that my writing will be such a gift to whatever person gets it
Gives me an idea for a story, especially since I seldom have Snupin ideas	I have a bazillion fics I need to write before that.

So what should I do ?

Question : am I the only one to think that talking of "yaoi" as a subgenre of "slash" is horribly ethnocentrist in that it considers the Western brand of homoerotic fandom as the more global, universal genre and considers the Japanese brand as a subset of it regardless of historical developments of either genre ?

PS : I'm not saying that penknife is ethnocentrist since she's only asking the question.

I still owe to answer many interview meme, don't worry I haven't forgotten, but that'll be for another day.

Week end was very low on happenstance. I went to see a play called "le Viol de Lucrèce" adapted from a poem by Shaekspeare saturday with my parents. Lucrece being the story that made me most strongly adamant that Romans were morons it was probably not the best idea. I was hopeful the play might challenge the things that bothered me the most in that story, but thought they did raise some of those issues (notably with an appartée quoting Saint Augustin) they didn't come any close to answer them. Thus my distaste remained.


Anyway wrote a sketchy essay comparing HP and ASOIAF about how the two books use characters in the role of the "Mother", and especially how they contrast such characters belonging to different moral "sides" of the story.
Lots of Spoilers for all books of Harry Potter and A Song of Ice and Fire.

A mother's protection

There's a very odd symbolical dissonance in that Slytherin is the House defined on one hand by cunning and pragmatism, and on the other hand the fact that's it tied so tightly with tradionnalism, "aristocratic power" and Pure Bloods.

( A HP House system ramble )

The House of Black fangirl in me has just been blown away :

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/MTarchives/week_2006_01_22.php#008301

it is the Black Family Tree, with a portion of the names showing in a photo. Readers will remember of course, that we learned of the tree as it was on the tapestry at Grimmauld Place in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Tony writes:

"There are several familiar names visible, including Callidora who married a Harfang Longbottom. Her sister Charis who married Caspar Crouch. Intriguingly there is a Dorea (1920-1977) who married Charles Potter and had one child, a son. The time frame seems to be consistent with them being James' parents. "

And I can also see a Violetta Bulstrode, a Herbert Burke who married Belvina Black and the infamous Arcturus Black married to Lysandra Yaxley. The aunt Elladora whose charming tradition regarding House Elves Sirius mentionned also figures on it ^^

I love this family. I love having all those new names to play with ♥

Happy birthday su_chan happy birthday sakuraragi ♥ Sending much love and hopeful wishes to you.


A recent entry at the Encyclopedia Mythica :

Kamui

The sky-god of the Ainu people of the island of Hokkaido. He is also called Tuntu, "support, pillar" of the world.

Most people have a One True Pairing, but lots of people have said that, instead, they a One True Character. Regardless, it's that one thing inside the canon story that makes us tick, hold and not let go, to the point that we go online to analyze them to death, seek more stories about them, and write our own stories.

But reading starysummer post about cross fandom character preferences, I was struck when she mentionned a few families, and had to mention my own favourite in the answer.

Because sometimes, fandom is all about the family relationships that make us tick.

( follow the inbred bunny )

So, am I the only one ?

What's YOUR One True Family ? ^_^

Happy new year every one ! ♥


This year I spent my new year's eve at home on my computer and was quite happy for the fact. Especially chatting with the lovely people from lupin_snape ^^
Sociability 0 Geekness 2

I've realized I've written very, very few fics this year, fact for which i'm feeling extra guilty. So main resolution is to write more in 2006.

Second resolution is to get laid more ^_^

I have a friend, Nicky, who wants write a novel out of an aborted campaign at a roleplaying game he was mastering.

So he talked to me about it, saying he was going to do that, and I was immediatly scandalized. Nicely, but scandalized all the same. "You can't do that ! You can't my character and the others' and use them in your story without asking for our permission first !"

Anyway, Nicky got a bit mad at me in the first place. Found me too preachy and moralisating on this, and said he would have asked the others anyway, and he didn't like my attitude, and it made him want to give up on it all. Apart from that, we didn't stay mad at each others or anything, and now he's asking me for the permission to use my character, now that he's got the others' agreement.

And I'm not sure what to answer.

On the one hand, I don't want to say yes because from all i've seen, I don't have the feeling that he would respect the character's integrity has I've written him.
This is a character I liked especially, one I'd written in the background of other characters, one i've written small fictions about. One I tried to put in other chronicles when his was over because he discontinued it.

For Nicky, it's just inspiration, he doesn't even believe he needs my agreement. He definitly doesn't want to stop writing what he wants to write if I don't give a permission. He's just asking by politeness. He's just going to take some features of my character, his background and his personnality, and adapts them for his new setting (since he doesn't plan on using the official setting of Exalted - he wants to be able to try selling this novel professionnaly)

So, on the other hand, how much do I care about this character ? I mean, it's just a roleplaying character, and Nicky is one of my friend. I'm probably splitting hair in four (hey, I'm a Virgo, after all) over some flimsy pretext, and I'm just being overly possessive of my character.

But you know, this thing matters for me. Not so much because of the character, but on a question of principle. Is that hypocritical of me for someone who's immerged in the culture of fandom and fanfiction ?
Actually I think that's fanfiction that makes me so sensible to this thing.
Because in fanfiction we might borrow, use and abuse things to our heart's content, but at least we aknowledge that we do so. We put that disclamer above it stating that these characters and this world doesn't belong to us, that we are, indeed, borrowing it. We don't change the character's name, at least, not without good reason ^^ we don't lie about what we do. It might mean jack from a legal point of view, it's still illegal if the author cares enough to sue us, but from a point of view of legitimacy, I feel like it matters.

In the first place, the idea of using a story created for a specific, licenced world, and changing it to become original sorts of shock me. I find it a bit dishonnest intellectually. Why not write as is and let it be a fanfiction for Exalted ? It's not the first time I'm thinking that, as I once gave the same advice to a writer of a fanfic I love because even if it looked little like the original work it was a fanfiction of, it was written with those specific characters in mind, and simply changing their names and features wouldn't change that. It's just a way to avoid legally crediting the person you borrowed them from.

I don't think that for my friend Nicky, all these subtlelities matter. He wants to take my character and make it his character, take what he wants and abandon the rest, in the same way that he'll take what he wants of the Exalted setting and give up the rest. And that bothers me. It also bothers me that he's only pretending to ask, that he doesn't give any legitimacy value to my permission... in other word, I feel pressured to agree just because he's my friend and he wants it, without having any real and actual control over my character. If someone asks for my permission, I want my permission to actually mean something, if you see what mean.

Some of my friend's arguments are about inspiration, which happen all the time and in all kind of direction in artistic matters. We create characters that are inspired from famous one from there or here all the time. I know that myself, i 've made lots of characters for RPG that were translated from various characters I liked in movies, books and mangas.
So what's the difference ? What's the difference between taking inspiration from, which is legitimate whether you aknowledge the source or not (or is it only when you do ?), and with borrowing ? What's the difference with borrowing from someone you know, who might be mad if you use their work without asking; and borrowing from a famous source like in fanfiction where a mere disclamer might be enough ? When is it considered as stealing to take something, characters, or situations, to use them for your own story ?

I feel like there is one, between all those things. I have a hard time exactly pinpointing what it is. Do you think i'm out of my bound and I should give my agreement anyway, so my friend can write the story he wants to write ? Or should I do it only if I feel like my friend is going to respect my vision of the character I wrote ?
Do you have any advice, or anecdotes to give me relating to this kind of subject ?

Don't you love how lately I've been only posting quizzes ? Because I know I hate it. It's not even because I've got nothing to post about, I've got plenty of terrific ideas for post. I'm just too tired once I got home to post them. Ta. (Ta is my new word. let it be known)

(  those quizzes, Harry Potter Wand and Goddesses, yay )

and I did got to see Harry Potter last week end (subtitled, sociability lost) and it was pretty good and well done, and I snickered a lot. Rita Skeeter was just as good as I thought she'd be. Barty Jr was disapointing however. As good as it was as an adaptation, I keep being disapointed with HP movies by how much they flatten the story, its ambiguisties, and the characters' depth, light and darkness. I think it's because i'm a fan of the fandom first, and of the book second ^^

On the topic of the HP fandom and it's peculiarities. I'd forgotten how funny F_W could be :3


Yesterday went shopping for a wedding I've got on the 25th (yay for Jewish weddings that give me something to do on Christmas so I won't be as bored as I'm usually !) I got : a kaki dress with golden sparkles drawing a sun, for the earlier Hennée party; and a simple black but pretty cool dress. Now I need shoes. And underwears.

And I'm really, really tired by how much all dresses in stores are made for people with small breast; grrr. I'd like to be able to buy one without feeling like my body is monstruous.

Last year, I went home and espite that it was late and I was tired I wrote up a first chapter of a very crackful Last Unicorn Tokyo Babylon fuzion in honnor of Seishirou's birthday.

I think I'm growing old because I'm feeling much too tired today to write a second chapter for it.

Sorry Seishirou :p