tarigwaemir

Durant Avenue on the Feast of St. Claude de la Colombiere

The "Love Overcoming Obstacles (Or Not)" round on bibliophages closed yesterday. See all the book discussion posts here. Thanks to everyone who participated!

The next round will be "Places That Don't Exist". Sign up here! (Who doesn't like reading about imaginary places?)

The manhwa I ordered came last week: Nabi vol. 1, Dokebi Bride vol. 1 and an anthology of oneshots by Seo Moon Da Mi called Happy Gourmet. I flipped a bit through Dokebi Bride and found it very readable. Happy Gourmet has a lot of narration though; I'll probably tackle it last. Will post my thoughts once I actually settle down to read.

Otherwise, state of the fandom front is dismal. Reading Merlin fic (mainly starlighter's recs), watching British comedy on Youtube (Jeeves and Wooster, Blackadder, etc.), downloading Korean drama without actually watching the episodes.

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of Our Lady of Ste. Olympias

I came to a decision over the past week that I'm no longer going to blog regularly here on my LiveJournal. Being the compulsive blogger that I am, it means that I am going to be blogging elsewhere. I thought about moving this entire journal wholesale, with its six years of records about my thoughts and experiences, but I think the hassle isn't worth it. Besides, my style of blogging has also changed with the years, and I think that I've finally come to a point where I want to compartmentalize my life a little.

This LiveJournal will continue to be a blog for any and all fandom activity: this means that I'll still post fanfiction and other fandom-related material here. I'll also be using it to moderate the communities I run, to sign up for any challenges, and of course, to comment on your journals.

At current count, I have the following other blogs that I will continue updating on a semi-regular basis:

- my reading blog, where I try to log and write about the books I read and repost old entries about books from this LiveJournal
- my science blog, where I try to keep track of papers I ought to read and bits of Unix/R/Perl code that I like to remember
- my new Tumblr, where I'm going to post the non-fandom material that I have posted here for the past six years

You can ask me for links to any of the above, if you're interested in following them; I'll reply with a screened comment. I don't particularly want them to link back here although I'm not going to go out of my way to obscure the connection. Though my range of pseudonyms is pretty small, so you could probably figure out where the blogs are eventually, without asking me, if you are observant enough.

I've been contemplating starting a separate real-life journal for quite a while now, and I thought about just creating another LJ, but in the end, I thought I wanted a clean break and a new blogging platform. LJ brings with it certain expectations and obligations that are entirely self-imposed but still restrictive, and I would like to stop feeling like I have to update my LJ. I also would like to move away from the obsessive recounting of my daily life that has mostly characterized my blogging for the past few years, and focus more on just generating interesting content that I want to record. (Hence, the Tumblr.)

Anyway, I'm not planning on retiring from fandom (just yet) although I suppose my focus will turn elsewhere, since I'll be busy with qualifying exams next semester. I'm mostly going to focus on bibliophages for the moment, although readerofasaph and I did decide to create a new community focused on challenges involving writing techniques. I've set it up here at ficcraft. We'll be starting up officially in January, but in the meantime, please join and link!

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall, on the Feast of St. Firminus

Wow, three fandom-related posts in a row! Hopefully, this post will actually prove to be somewhat useful, in contrast to the last two.

I try to avoid nitpicking when people write the Korean professionals because Hikaru no Go itself is a Japanese series, but for those of you who are interested in verisimilitude, I thought I'd make a list of points having to do with Korean as a language and how it differs from Japanese. Hopefully it will make a good reference.

( On language differences )

By the way, I actually don't expect people to take all of the above into account when writing the baduk pros. But I talked about making this post about a year ago, and a few people expressed interest in it, so I thought I might as well put it up now.

The aftermath of the concrit discussions and anon meme: a new anonymous concrit comm for Hikago fanfiction at shidougo. I don't know if I'll really be able to participate, but I think it's worth watching.

myaru also made an interesting post with ideas for fic focusing on Sai that draws on Japanese history and culture here.

Yours &c.

Post-script: mercurysblood provides a version for Mandarin here.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

I gave in and went back to read through the Hikago anonymous meme this morning, after reading people's posts about it. Okay, I change my mind, the meme's remained surprisingly civil and actually has interesting discussion going on in the comments. More positive "share the love!" threads than outright negative comments, which are not as vitriolic as I feared. Also, the concrit going on is really useful to read.

::looks at above paragraph:: You know, that whole paragraph probably falls in with one of the trends being described as stifling on the meme--this self-enforced image of Hikago being a perfect, happy fandom--but I don't think I'm wrong in saying that in comparison to previous anon memes, this one is relatively wank-free. Also, I freely admit to being passive-aggressive and will apologize in advance if that frustrates anyone. I don't enjoy arguing with people unless there's a certain level of trust involved, and even then, I try to avoid confrontation. As a result, I usually don't express critical opinions about fanfic, and most people will agree that I'm only ever useful as a grammar beta.

Anyway, the whole meme has spurred harumi and I to have a great conversation about our writing in aiwritingfic's journal (sorry for taking over your journal, Ai), which I've found pretty helpful, so I'm inclined to think the meme has done more good than harm.

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. John Gualbert

1. ( Real life update )

2. Issue 3 of India and the Conundrum is up, featuring cover art for Via Misadventure drawn by the lovely milchstrasse. Note to self: finish writing chapter 6! And actually write chapter 7 too, while I'm at it. I have an idea for fifthmus but need to work out the premise some more in my head; I think the only way to really write an interesting story would be to push it in a possibly unpleasant direction, but: (1) am I willing and (2) how far should I go? Oh, maybe I should just give up and write a dialogue for one of the other prompts; it would be easier to write but a lot less interesting. (I would not tolerate this sort of defeatist thinking in any other endeavor, but somehow I allow myself to get lazy about fiction-writing. Yet another reason why I was not meant to be a fiction writer.)

3. ( Lucia di Lammmermoor )

4. Alphabet blogging: sub_divided asked about kendo. ( Kendo )

twelve asked about (song) lyrics. ( Lyrics )

schwimmerin asked about memories. ( Memories )

5. magicnoire posted a TV Tropes meme quite a while ago:

If you want to play, comment here, and I will assign you three random(-ish) tropes from the TV Tropes Wiki. Pick one, and either:

A) Write a story based on that trope -- any fandom or pairing you want, no minimum length, just have fun with it.

B) Write meta about that trope (in general or in a particular fandom).

Post your story or meta to your own journal, or wherever else you want. Comment here with a link to what you've written.

Step right up and get your tropes here!

( Beleaguered Childhood Friend, Disposable Woman, Innocence Virgin on Stupidity )

6. ( Notes for myself )

All right, that's enough for today.

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall, on the Feast of Ste. Judith

blind_go round five fics are up (well, we had a technical issue with one fic, which should be resolved soon). This time, it took one person about five hours to post fifty-one fics, though I spent at least one of those hours doing a gel extraction and setting up another round of restriction enzyme digests.

Directory is here. Happy Hikago Day!

( For my own reference )

Yours &c.

Haste Street on the Feast of Blessed Marianus Scotus

trixie_chick made an FST for Reveille: And tho' the sun starts peeping. *_* Isn't it amazing?

silvermuse89 has also posted FSTs as well: Out of My Mind for aishuu's Schizophrenia and Counterexample for petronia's A Proof By Contradiction (Eight Primary Sources, Fragmentary).

Also, I was pleasantly surprised to receive notice of a New Year's Resolution fic written for one of my yuletide requests: We the Damned, featuring Harriet and Bunter. (Coincidentally, just to demonstrate that it's a small world after all, adina_atl who wrote the fic also wrote Several Competent Wizards (Mairelon the Magician/Sorcery and Cecilia/Enchanted Forest Chronicles crossover), which apparently was originally started as a pinch hit for kaydeefalls. Plus, I remember sub_divided recommending this very fic, which makes it a nice double knot of connections.)

Speaking of Sayers, I watched the BBC adaptation of Have His Carcase. General verdict: timetable element of the mystery much more bearable, witty repartee for the most part preserved. I don't know how Gaudy Night will fare in the transition to screen though.

I didn't know that Philip K. Dick had written a YA novel. Oh, and here's an interview with Iain Banks in the Guardian, if you haven't seen it already. Speaking of SF writers, lacewood talks about Ted Chiang's short story anthology. (Anyone who remotely likes SF ought to read Ted Chiang.)

To stay up and read papers for class or to go to sleep...oh, the dilemma. -_-

Yours &c.

Blair Hall Apts., on the Feast of St. Stephen

I've been back in New York for a week, and it's been unseasonably warm and generally delightful. Received clothes (dark-green corduroy pants, silver-gray belted sweater, and dark-gray turtleneck) and books (Thomas L. Friedman's The World is Flat, which I've been meaning to read for years, and Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island) for Christmas. My own gifts to my parents were a complete success: I bought my father the DVD of Casino Royale (since he likes to watch movies in order to practice his English) and my mother a CD of Angela Gheorghiu performing Puccini arias, which I got signed by Gheorghiu herself when jaebi_lit and I went to see La Rondine last month. Mother is now a confirmed Gheorghiu fan; she went into raptures over the recording of "Vissi d'arte" from Tosca. I also gave them $200 in cash from my savings, which also pleased them to no end. (Oh, Asian parents.)

I like giving gifts if I know what to give. There's a special pleasure that comes from picking the right gift for someone. ^_^

Speaking of which, I wrote a pinch hit for yuletide even though I wasn't signed up as a participant, and the mods were kind enough to invite us pinch-hitters to submit requests in case someone might be willing to write some Yuletide Treats before the deadline. I didn't expect to receive anything though, so I was delightfully surprised to find an email on Christmas informing me that I had received three fics:

Christopher's Elephant and The Time for Parting Come, for Diana Wynne Jones' Chronicles of Chrestomanci, both featuring Christopher and Millie.

Stupid and Stubborn, for Hana Yori Dango, featuring Tsukushi's thoughts on Doumyoji (set, I think, early on in the series).

Have already gotten a couple of comments on my fic, and my recipient seems to be pleased with it, which makes me feel happy. I highly doubt anyone will guess the yuletide fic I wrote because it's so different from the sort of fic I usually write, but in case anyone is willing to guess:

Go to the Yuletide Archive.
Read everything that appeals to you in various fandoms.
Guess the story (or stories) that I wrote, and I will write you a story to request.

Hints:
1. I've written for this fandom once (and exactly once) before.
2. It's for a slightly more well-known fandom than the Yuletide fic I wrote last year.
3. It's not for an animanga fandom.
4. It has a real plot (shock! horror! gasp!), referencing a common mythological paradigm.

I haven't really started reading other fics in the archive yet, although I desperately want to, judging from the tantalizing recs being posted at yuletide.

Also, my fifthmus fic was posted today: Homecoming: the haiku diary of Kuwabara Torajirou

(People who actually know Japanese poetry/history, please do not skewer me.)

lanerose wrote Paying the Rent for my fifthmus request, which you should all read because it has Yashiro finally winning his parents' approval with a little help from Yeongha. Actually, just head over to fifthmus and read all the fics posted there, if you haven't already.

Today, tryogeru and I went to see Sweeney Todd, which was quite excellent. The singing wasn't bad, and both Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were delightfully creepy. I hadn't listened to the musical before so I didn't have any previous standard to compare it to, but it definitely works as a movie.

Heard while on the way to the cinema: a violinist playing in the 42nd Street station with an unusually smooth, beautiful tone. I'm no expert, but it was a sharp contrast from your usual subway performer, who tends to scrape away at the fiddle without a care as if hitting the right notes was all that mattered. I thought of leaving him a dollar but my stinginess got the better of me. (Apparently Joshua Bell once played in the subway during rush hour without advertising his identity, and he earned a measly $32.)

Seen during Christmas: a group of teenagers, half of them male, performing the dance to the hit Korean pop song "Tell Me" by Wonder Girls (Youtube video for those of you who might not appreciate how hilarious this is), for our church's annual Christmas sing-off. What I find funny is the fact that the boys were probably more enthusiastic about learning the dance than the girls were. Oh, and the fact that our pastor and the emcee were trying to dance along in the background while wearing blond and purple wigs. I kid you not.

Links of interest:

• Literary quotes of the year from the Times.
  
• The cultural year 2007: what was overrated and underrated? Found it a fascinating read, although it's a British magazine, so I had very little point of reference for anything that wasn't a book or movie released in the states.
  
• Delicious-sounding recipe for cranberry snowballs on The Old Foodie
  
• Review of James Joyce from Atlantic Monthly, reposted in Powell's Books blog

Hope everyone had a merry Christmas!

Yours &c.

Stanley Hall on the Feast of St. Gaudentius

Not updating by email for once, but that's because this post should be short.

I recently subscribed to the RSS feed of Paper Cuts, a New York Times blog by the editor of the Book Review. I particularly enjoy the Wednesday feature, Living With Music, where different writers post up their playlists. Some put down a collection of their favorite tracks; others seem to be more thematic about it and construct actual mixes. Joshua Ferris included a book with each track on his playlist, which I thought was a nice intersection between fst and reading_mix.

Also via Paper Cuts, I found this interesting historical food blog, The Old Foodie, which is endlessly entertaining.

From emblem, the Crap Email from a Dude series, among which there are such priceless gems of idiocy like this hilarious name-dropping break-up letter, where the writer really needs to put down the psychology books before he hurts himself, and this oh-so-convincing argument about why the recipient should have married the writer instead of her current husband. (I'm not a huge fan of Jezebel, which I think tries a little too hard to be hip and angry, but these emails are immensely amusing.)

Yesterday evening, we had our last series of faculty research presentations, and one of the speakers was Peter Duesberg, a professor at Berkeley who is known for two controversial claims: (1) cancer is not caused by mutations but rather by aneuploidy and (2) HIV doesn't cause AIDS. He spoke on cancer during his presentation, and we were all trying our best to suppress our laughter. Iris and I couldn't stop cracking up while talking about it on the way home; Duesberg truly brings new meaning to the term "crazy old scientist". (I should note: aneuploidy is associated with cancer cells. But to assert that cancer isn't caused by mutations but by aneuploidy alone is kind of wandering off into the deep end. Also, the man was an expert in dodging questions: whenever asked for evidence of his claims, he merely repeated himself without actually citing any data. Let's not even mention some of the strange non sequiturs and analogies he came up with in the process.) Here's his website, for the curious.

(At one point, he went on a rant about the National Cancer Institute and commented bitterly, "Not that they've seen fit to give me any funding." Our response, "Shouldn't that be a sign?!")

My fifthmus assignment is awesome! (Much kudos to aishuu and mmmdraco for putting together the match-ups so quickly.) I think I'm going to write the first request because it intrigues me the most, but I like the other two as well. Speaking of which, issen4 started off a series of meta discussions on the character of Ogata here, followed up with posts from aishuu and aiwritingfic here and here. I have nothing new to add to the discussion, although I do mostly agree with aishuu: Ogata is a complete nerd, even if he drives a fancy car.

Yours &c.

Haste Street on the Feast of St. Thomas of Villanova

As most of you know, blind_go round 4 fics are up. I haven't read through all of them yet, but from what I've glimpsed of them while posting, there were a lot of really creative ideas in the mix. ^_^ I did notice though that a lot of the fics stopped abruptly or were incomplete--my own is one of them, as I'll freely admit--which makes me think that people really felt the deadline pressure this time. It makes me wonder if we ought to give more time for people to write, although if you think about it, the first and second rounds both only gave a month's time as well. Personally, I usually write down a few sentences then procrastinate until the very last week to finish off the fic (Reveille was mostly written in a night, even though it came out to 8000 words), so I've always thought that it was more a matter of inspiration rather than time. Maybe there's a problem with timing as well: August to September is the start of the school year, which is a busy time for most people. Then again...is there ever a good time for holding a challenge?

I'm really not happy with the fic I submitted because it's pretty much only the opening chapter of the story I wanted to tell, but I didn't have time to finish fleshing it out. >_> I kept wondering if I should have just refrained from submitting it, especially because I felt I hadn't really worked out all the details, but I also didn't want to default on my own challenge...Anyway, much to my relief, at least some people seem to like it, which makes me feel a little better about submitting it.

aishuu apparently has a bounty out for me, so technically I don't even need to bother offering drabbles to those who correctly guess my fic. But I will offer this much: be the first person to guess the fic I wrote correctly, and you may request for me to finish one of my works-in-progress.

( My works-in-progress list )

Thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday yesterday! <3 I was pleasantly surprised to get phone calls from angelyrique, tryogeru and ldmoonflower, not to mention e-cards from both my college roommates. I didn't really expect anyone I knew in Berkeley to take note of my birthday, but I did offhandedly mention it a week before to the lab tech, and not only did she remember the date, she actually organized a little party with cake and ice cream sandwiches. It was completely unexpected and so very nice; I think that small gesture alone made me feel that I'm not a tiny abandoned little plankton floating about unnoticed in a huge sea (forgive the florid metaphor) but that I was, bit by bit, putting down roots here at last (forgive the change in florid metaphor).

Actually, meeting up with LJ friends has made me feel much more at home as well. ( Real life update )

I have a couple of funny stories from lab and classes that I've been meaning to share, but I should probably go sleep now. ::yawns::

Yours &c.

Post-script: Oh yes, comments will be screened for guessing. Also, go check out silvermuse89's idea of fic rec menus. (She's just made a Kakashi/Iruka one for me here.) Isn't it neat? Maybe it should be a meme or even a comm: ficgourmet perhaps? ^_^