Thorns

Oh God I knew this day would come.
( A tale of fannish degradation )

Inspired by this post at otw_onlinecon as linked to me by cupidsbow and ithiliana. Personally I'd rather be napping right now but I really feel like writing it all down now :)

There's sort of two related stories here: how I discovered science fiction fandom, and how I got into "transformative works" fandom. I describe some of the former in my sad tale of the pains of being an Isobelle Carmody fangirl and a lot of the latter can be followed on my downward spiral tag :)
( Cut for sheer self indulgence )

Heh. After me going "Well, you could just get a livejournal" every time Cam complained about his rss reader having problems with lj or missing a locked post or whatever, he has finally succumbed. I give you... my husband, distantcam.

Likely to remain mostly just a reading lj I think, but that was the plan with this one too so you never know :)

I can't remember if I did before, but many thanks to edible_hat for reccomendding(*) Coverville, it is good to listen to on the way to work. Other podcast recs greatly appreciated *hint hint*.

Also, since I'm feeling a bit hard-done by at the moment am cheering myself with my new found hobby of fanfic (hence the title of this post) and being reminded one of the things I don't like about fanfic is that most of it seems to be in one (or, frequently, all) of the following three categories:
-crap
-at heart revolving around romance/sex
-Celebrating the characters/setting rather than having anything new to say

The second one doesn't bother me in principle, but after a while I just got sick of it. Maybe it's a sign I'm just not girly enough to be a fangirl :)

But then I found this list of rec pages, which netted me the "gen" tagged posts from the pretty cool thefourthvine (she likes vids too!) and thus some fanfic which is good, not about the lovin', and has an interesting take on canon. Not done going through her links but these felt noteworthy and I'll just forget otherwise.

• The one I definitely reccomend is Slouching forever which literally changed the way I see Good Omens. Though going to reread the end I realise I can't find our copy, sadness!
  
• Big Damn Zombies, sir Firefly, with zombies. In a good way :) Kind of in the third category, but it amused me so it stays.
  
• The nature of time Narnia from susan's pov. Not as heavily reccomended as the other two, but I thought it captured things quite well. Found this somewhere else, can't remember where.
  

(*)I have decided to leave this in it's original spelling because it amuses me. I always identified with the goose in "Charlottes Webb" who spelled everything with double letters. You should all be Very Glad of automatic spellchecks.

Simulcast over blog and livejournal!

Well...I've decided to do it. The realtionship was stable and happy, and I thought I could compromise on our differeneces but in the end...I had to leave.

That's right, I'm saying goodbye to Blogger and moving over to livejournal. This makes me very sad, since I won't have as much control over the layout (no more tiny chickens! No more spirally dividers!!) and I won't be sqbr any more :( But despite all that lj has suckered me over with it's commenting system (specifically notifications on replies for people other than me) and the fact I won't have to deal with the feed/blog dichotomy(*).

I'm don't know what I'll do with this blog now (I'm sure I'll think of something) but for the moment it will lay idle, so you should ignore http://sqbr.blogspot.com/ and http://syndicated.livejournal.com/sqbr/ and instead direct your attention to http://alias-sqbr.livejournal.com/.

Before you complain that the sidebar is unreadable, I'm going to fiddle with the colours some more later(**). You may notice that some of my old locked entries have been unlocked. Those of you not on my friends list may be happy to see you weren't missing much, I just wanted to keep things neat. Also I'll port over the more interesting blog entries when and if it feels necessary.

So, goodbye old friend. The Roost of the Purple Chicken is dead. Long live the Roost of the Purple Chicken!

(*)That's right, people who comment on the feed, you broke my spirit. Are you happy now?
(**)In case any of you are wondering, I chose this layout becuase it allows a very small amount of css, meaning I could make my own header and set the background.

This was my first blog post. My first lj post is over here.

Reasons for not having a typical livejournal/blog

I have for many years gone on about how I should never have a livejournal/blog. At the same time I keep coming across things that I would like to do with one. I have finally decided to succumb, but to avoid the "typical" livejournal/blog stuff that I think would be a Bad Thing in my case.

• Journal of events. My life simply isn't that interesting, there'd be like 3 notable things a year.
  
• Socialising- I don't get much emotional fulfillment from online interactions that aren't one-on-one (And even then would prefer real life ones) If I use up my anecdotes etc online I'll have less to say in person which would ultimately lead to loneliness. Bad.
  
• Getting things of your chest- Either I can talk about it to someone in real life, or I shouldn't be putting it on the internet. Anything I feel uncomfortable saying to someone I'd probably feel uncomfortable knowing they'd read on my blog.
  
• talking about myself- I do this enough already! Not to say I won't do it here :)
  

Reasons I still probably shouldn't have a livejournal

1. I'm tactless and have occasional alarming lapses of judgment. I'm also pretty bad at expressing myself. All this results in me deciding to say something I probably shouldn't, accidentally saying something different, and doing so in the worst possible way. This is a general problem with me and communication but the more people read/hear something I say the more likely I horribly offend someone, especially in a medium like this where it's so easy to forget exactly how large your possible audience is. Still, I've sort of got the hang of mailing lists/internet fora etc and this shouldn't be that much worse. Consider yourself warned, though. I HOPE to force myself to wait 24 hours before posting. We shall see.
   
2. Man, do I love talking about myself. This is going to be soooooo boring. But hey, noones forcing you to read it :)
   
3. I have this irritating tendency to write in numbered lists and bullet points after 3 years of doing a Phd in computational mathematics.
   

Past Flip-Flops
To the people to whom I have loudly railed against the possibilty of me ever getting a livejournal/blog, I can only say this: I am a big fat liar. It is actually not uncommon for me to loudly proclaim an opinion then all of a sudden change my mind quite radically. Some examples:

• Being atheist is stupid
  
• Vegetarianism is irredeemably stupid
  
• Vegetarianism is the clearly more moral than eating meat.(My views now are more complex)
  
• I am not going to do honours
  
• I am not going to do a phd
  
• Never go out with a unisfan
  
• Rock/popular music sucks (No, not just some of it. ALL of it)
  
• I'm never going to have children.(No, I haven't done this yet! But I intend to, one day)
  

The thing is in retrospect I can generally understand my reasons for having the opinion, at least to start with. Once I start to doubt the opinion I'm thinking about it a lot, and when I'm thinking about something I talk about it. So I say the opinion even more, until I decide I don't agree any more at which point I stop!

Uses for this blog

Things I would go around telling every person I bumped into except they'd get annoyed. Things I'm going around telling everyone anyway. Ideas, things that happen to me etc

Those 3 interesting life events a year.(For example...)

Little rants, questions etc that would be off topic and selfish to bring up in most conversations or mailing lists, but might be of interest to anyone foolish enough to go to a site devoted entirely to me.

The Golden Rule for things I put online
"Put unto internet that which you would have others put unto the internet"
This allows for a lot of weird personal obsessions like cheap stained glass substitutes but generally helps keep down things like me going on about how much I like radiohead. I shall try hard to apply that rule here.

Why I decided to succumb
The main thing I think was a number of my close friends getting them, so that I actually read some other than ones like Angriest which I'm just not going to be able to write, or random ones when I'm bored. It means I have an audience, I'd feel pretty weird writing and knowing none of my friends would read it.

Also I kept coming up with genuine things to put in one that obey The Golden Rule. Like site updates and questions I'd like peoples opinions on and stuff.

So there you go!