Date: 2008-04-12 16:56 Subject: Happy Birthday Evilawyer! Security: Public

Happy birthday evilawyer

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Date: 2008-04-10 22:10 Subject: 10 Awesome Women Meme Security: Public Music: Thea Gilmore, "Fever Beats" Tags: memes

Ten fictional women who I think are awesome.

(Meme gacked from sp23's LiveJournal)

01) Modesty Blaise
02) Sister Fidelma (heroine of a series of historical detective novels by Peter Tremayne)
03) Machiko Noguchi a.k.a. Da’dtou-di ( Prey, Hunters’ Planet, & War by Steve and Stephani Perry)
04) Amanda Garrett (Choosers of the Slain, Stormdragon, Sea Fighter, & Target Lock by James Cobb)
05) Niles Etland (The Demon Breed, by James H Schmitz)
06) Charity Selborne (Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart)
07) Hu San-niang (The Water Margin)
08) Emma Peel (The Avengers)
09) Viconia DeVir (Baldur’s Gate, Baldur’s Gate 2: Shadows of Amn, & Baldur’s Gate 2: Throne of Bhaal)
10) Yu Shu-lien (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, played by Michelle Yeoh)

Narrowly missing out were Jaheira, Ellen Ripley, Vi the Vampire Slayer, Ilona Costa Bianchi, Eowyn, Tara, several Mary Stewart heroines from other books, and Beatrice (Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing). Buffy disqualified herself in an alley leading to the police station.

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Date: 2008-04-04 15:35 Subject: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly Security: Public Location: The alley behind the Hyperion Hotel Music: Thea Gilmore, "Fever Beats" Tags: drabbles

The good: yesterday I discovered Fever Beats by Thea Gilmore. Only six years after it was released but better late than never.

The bad: I read (courtesy of a good Friend, no way would I pay for it) Buffy Season 8 issue 13. As usual it filled me with an intense hatred of Buffy. This does make it rather difficult for me to get on with writing Buffy-centric stories. It didn’t even contain any useful plot hooks for Giant!Dawn crackfic. Really the whole thing was crackfic, or even badfic, and it’s very hard to parody utter drivel.

The ugly: In order to cure my Buffy-hatred I went to Just Rewards and read some classic Spuffy fics. Unfortunately I’d had a reading spree recently in which I’d re-read all of Enigmatic Blue’s, Barb’s, Tales of Spike’s and a few other favourite authors' stories; I had to fall back on some fics by writers who are rather less skillful. I kept being jerked out of the mood by sloppy word usage. ‘Loose’ for ‘lose’, ‘loathe’ for ‘loath’ and vice versa, and one I had never seen before and which totally cracked me up; ‘in loo of’ for ‘in lieu of’. One perennial error inspired me to write the following drabble set at the end of ‘Not Fade Away’...

( The Last Hurrah of the Golden... Handshake? )

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Date: 2008-04-01 08:25 Subject: I hate April Fool Security: Public

I hate April 1st. Nothing can be relied upon. People do enough stupid things the rest of the year that there is no need to do them deliberately on one particular day.

This year the home-page and RSS feed of ‘Questionable Content’ has been replaced by ‘Dinosaur Comics’. This is not good. QC is approximately 237,000,000 times better than the extremely lame ‘Dinosaur Comics’ and I am not happy about this unacceptable substitution.

I want normal service to be resumed as soon as possible.

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Date: 2008-03-24 00:58 Subject: Has it really been 22 weeks since I posted here? Security: Public

I've defriended asylum_promo, as it was clogging up my F-list with hundreds of posts about new asylums dedicated to diseases in tropical fish, the history of basket-weaving in sixteenth-century Timbuktu, collecting sheep liver flukes for fun and profit, etc, etc. With that gone I can see just how few people are posting here (except about the above topics and ones that are miraculously even more obscure and boring). A few people duplicating their LiveJournal posts and kallysten posting a very good story; that's about it.

My intention had been to start posting an Insane Journal Only fic here soon. I'm not sure there would be any point, however, without linking to every new chapter on LiveJournal. I'll think about it some more.

Watched the first instalment of 'The Colour of Magic'. It was extremely good in some ways but some of the casting sucked. David Jason is, as I predicted, totally wrong for Rincewind. Sean Astin is totally wrong for Twoflower. Unfortunately they're the two central characters and are in 75% of the scenes. The girl who played Liessa was great, though, and most of the wizards were pretty good. Jeremy Irons made a fine Vetinari, at least if you assume that the Patricican in COM really is a not-yet-finalised Vetinari rather than being a different Patrician altogether. As they're combining COM with 'The Light Fantastic' we have Cohen, Herenna, and Bethan to come tomorrow!

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Date: 2007-10-16 13:46 Subject: LiveJournal sucks Security: Public Mood: enraged

Well, my new computer is now up and running, and I have Internet access again.

What I don't have is LiveJournal access. It won't let me log in. It insists that there is an error in the password. There isn't. It's the same one that I use here and I didn't have any problem with IJ. Eventually I gave up and clicked on 'forgotten password'. An e-mail is supposed to have been dispatched to advise me of the reset - but it hasn't been. It's not a case of it being intercepted by a spam-blocker; I have been into my ISP's webmail and checked. They haven't sent it.

Bastards.

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Date: 2007-09-02 20:47 Subject: Happy birthday Kathleen! Security: Public

Happy birthday to pfeifferpack

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Date: 2007-09-01 20:44 Subject: Bring back the P0rn Day Security: Public

Apparently this is ‘Bring Back the Porn’ day on Insane Journal. I have had no chance to write anything specifically for the event and so I’m marking the occasion by posting a fic that has previously appeared on my LiveJournal. It comes from my series of Where did Olaf the Troll go? ficlets written in answer to a challenge at ‘Twisting The Hellmouth’; the idea is that Willow’s spell to banish Olaf the Troll at the end of ‘Triangle’ misfires (as usual) and sends him to a different fictional ‘verse. This time the crossover is with a classic work of erotic fiction; ‘Fanny Hill, or, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure’, written in a debtors’ prison by John Cleland and published in 1749 (this was, of course, long before his two titles in the British Touring Car Racing Championship). I have tried to replicate the style as closely as possible.

Exactly 3,500 words. NC-17 for erotica.

( Fanny Troll, or, Memoirs of a Woman of Merry Sport )

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Date: 2007-08-19 20:04 Subject: The snowball grows Security: Public

I have 100 Mutual Friends here now. For a while I was playing at adding Interests every time I was Friended, thereby keeping my Interests and Mutual Friends lists at exactly the same number, but I've had to give up on that now. I can't come up with enough Interests.

I'll have to find something else to be pointlessly obsessive about.

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Date: 2007-08-09 02:39 Subject: Tabula Avatar sneak preview Security: Public

It’s been a long time since I updated my long-running serial Tabula Avatar on LiveJournal and the last chapter left off in the middle of a desperate battle, with Willow critically injured, and with Spike in dire peril. I have been busy with other things, such as preparing for the WriterCon UK MidiMeet this weekend, and I haven’t had a chance to finish off the chapter. I have finished the fight scene, however, and here is a sneak preview for those who can’t wait for the full thing. It contains spoilers for TA, of course, and won't mean anything to those who haven't been reading that story. 1,740 words, rating R for violence and language.

( Tabula Avatar Chapter Fifty-one Preview )

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Date: 2007-08-07 22:07 Subject: Nobody thrown to the wolves yet? Security: Public

I was expecting to see a LiveJournal announcement today stating that Burr86 had been dragged to the top of a step pyramid where the High Priests had cut out his heart with an obsidian knife to placate the Fandom gods.

Or else that he had been fired.

I take it that neither of those two things have actually happened?

Cat macro, pirate flag, chorus of 'Raise the colors', ferret macro...

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Date: 2007-08-06 00:00 Subject: Some thoughts about the latest LJ kerfuffle Security: Public Music: Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Two years ago I wrote a story, hardly more than a ficlet, called Smells Like Teen Spirit. I didn’t post it on LiveJournal; I put it up only on my website, preceded by a warning notice saying Warning: this story contains extremely explicit sexual references. Would be rated NC-17 in the USA. Do not proceed unless you are at least 18 years old and would not be offended by graphic sexual descriptions. I have a link to it from my LiveJournal but that is all.

It contains ‘underage sex’. Well, not according to UK law it doesn’t; all characters are over the UK age of consent. It is set in Italy and the characters are all way, way, over the Italian age of consent. But according to the laws of California, which are the most restrictive in the USA and indeed pretty much the most restrictive in the entire world, the characters are underage.

It’s a dark fic. Bleak and bitter. I believe that it is of genuine artistic merit; it certainly attracted favourable attention. herself_nyc, who is a definite BNF and who is universally acknowledged to be one of the most accomplished writers in the Buffyverse fandom, Friended me on the strength of it. She De-Friended me soon afterwards, probably when she discovered that it is not remotely typical of my writing, but for a while she was impressed.

I don’t like the story; but I’m rather proud of it.

The question is, however, what would the corporate Reacher Gilts who run LiveJournal these days make of it? They think purely in terms of balance sheets and share value. They don’t know, or care about, fandom. Would they class it simply as p0rn (totally missing the point) and use their stupid Californian laws to rule it as being obscene? Would my LiveJournal be suspended permanently, with no warning, if I posted it there rather than merely linking to it? Would the link itself be enough to get me suspended? I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.

And there is content in some of my other stories, such as Tabula Avatar, that could be regarded as underage p0rn by an insane right-wing racist religious nutter. As Viconia (jet black) is shagging Spike (blue-eyed blond), and Minsc (coffee-coloured) is becoming closer to Willow (white, Jewish) and Tara (who is not just white, she’s from a Southern state!), it would piss off the bunch of nutters who started off the whole Strikethrough disaster right from the start.

That’s one of the main reasons why I’ve created this Insane Journal (I created a Greatest Journal because of Nipplegate, but then I found that GJ is just as bad as LJ). And why I’m supporting the people who’ve been suspended from LiveJournal; even though I personally would probably find the material that they’ve posted rather repulsive, even offensive. They’re not trying to force me to see it and so I’m really not bothered what they post. And if I wait until I personally am threatened before acting – it will be too late.

They came for the Trade Unionists…

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Date: 2007-08-03 11:27 Subject: Happy Birthday Sister Broadsword of Enlightenment Security: Public

Happy birthday to cethlenn

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Date: 2007-08-01 20:30 Subject: Cold as ice Security: Public

Why is it so cold?

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Date: 2007-07-30 15:14 Subject: Happy Birthday! Security: Public

Happy birthday to fangfaceandrea

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Date: 2007-07-23 09:05 Subject: Happy birthdays! Security: Public

Happy birthdays to calturner and zanthinegirl

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Date: 2007-07-17 08:38 Subject: The Cloak of Mist; Chapter Eight and Epilogue Security: Public Location: Isle of Man Tags: cloak of mist

The conclusion of ‘The Cloak of Mist’ (Chapter 8 and Epilogue). Rating ‘R’. Character Death.

Summary: The Isle of Man, 1014 AD, in the aftermath of the slaughter at the Battle of Clontarf. As the islanders mourn their dead the new Slayer, Bahey Dhone, must face a horde of undead Vikings to free the island from a dreadful curse.

( The Cloak of Mist: Chapter Eight & Epilogue )

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Date: 2007-07-15 10:21 Subject: The Cloak of Mist; Chapter Seven Security: Public Location: Isle of Man Tags: cloak of mist

Here is Chapter 7 of ‘The Cloak of Mist’. Starting to get into ‘R’ territory.

Summary: The Isle of Man, 1014 AD, in the aftermath of the slaughter at the Battle of Clontarf. As the islanders mourn their dead the new Slayer, Bahey Dhone, must face a horde of undead Vikings to free the island from a dreadful curse.

( The Cloak of Mist: Chapter Seven )

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Date: 2007-07-12 09:19 Subject: The Cloak of Mist; Chapter Six Security: Public Location: Isle of Man Tags: cloak of mist

Here is Chapter 6 of ‘The Cloak of Mist’. Still probably just about PG-13.

Summary: The Isle of Man, 1014 AD, in the aftermath of the slaughter at the Battle of Clontarf. As the islanders mourn their dead the new Slayer, Bahey Dhone, must face a horde of undead Vikings to free the island from a dreadful curse.

( The Cloak of Mist: Chapter Six )

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Date: 2007-07-10 01:44 Subject: The Cloak of Mist; Chapter Five Security: Public Location: Isle of Man Tags: cloak of mist

‘The Cloak of Mist’ continues with Chapter 5. The rating begins to climb past PG-13 and towards R in this chapter.

Summary: The Isle of Man, 1014 AD, in the aftermath of the slaughter at the Battle of Clontarf. As the islanders mourn their dead the new Slayer, Bahey Dhone, must face a horde of undead Vikings to free the island from a dreadful curse.

( The Cloak of Mist: Chapter Five )

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