forget your Unified Theory of Everything

I finished this a couple weeks ago. The short version is, I had too many problems with this series to really like it. My favorite things about it were the pacing of the first book and Katniss. My least favorite things were the pacing of the other books and clumsily handled themes. Below are lists of likes and dislikes about the book, with explanations. If all you want to read about The Hunger Games is squee, I suggest you stop when you get to the section labelled "dislikes".

Spoilers galore.

( What I liked and didn't like about the Hunger Games trilogy )

I would be interested in discussing The Hunger Games with anyone who has read it. My whole review thing is horrendously long, so I understand if you don't want to read the whole thing. But come on, tell me what you thought about the series! I guess a bunch of people liked it, and I'd love to hear why. I'm interested in the movies (are they really happening?), even though the books ended up not particularly sitting well with me.

I want to say, for the record, that I like the erotica meme. I have reasons why, which hopefully I'll get around to discussing. I'll also hopefully do the meme. And quinara's character death meme and snikfic's baby fic meme. But snikfic asked if someone would write quinara the dragon meme, and the answer is yes. Yes, someone will.

( the dragon meme )

So, I have this North and South fic. This is, of course, Victorian England. In my story, there's a character with a serious case of Orientalism. While this element is not absolutely essential to the narrative, I feel that it connects to important things about industrialization, capitalism, and class that I would like to address. Industrialization, capitalism, and class are probably not essential elements either, as it is in essence a romance, but imo the best romances deal with the ideals and worlds of the participants.

( The problem with writing stories set in a time and place in which no one thought this was a problem . . . )

Here's where the request for help comes in. I had a beta for this fic, by name of kleindog from c-19. I don't know if she is on any of the journaling sites. If so--hi! I stopped writing the story, so stopped sending her chapters. She was doing a very nice job, but I realize what I want specifically for this fic is someone who feels in tune with this issue. There isn't always a way to please everyone, or be non-offensive to everyone. But I really feel like it would be nice to bounce some of this stuff off someone.

The ideal person would be familiar with N&S, period language, the historical context, how not to be offensive, Brit-picking, SPAG, being horribly ruthless to get rid of all my redundancies and awkward language, and would be willing. But I will settle for someone who is comfortable with addressing historical context and not being offensive, even if they don't know the canon, as long as they are willing.

If you don't match that description . . . do you know where I can go to ask for such a beta? N&S is a small fandom, which makes this particularly hard, but again, I'm not even concerned with someone knowing canon, although it might be difficult for someone to be interested in the story if they're not familiar with said canon.

Title: Sex, Lies, and Veritaserum
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: dirty talk, fingering, anal sex, with mention/discussion of dominance, submission, felching, object insertion, food porn, exhibitionism, spanking, cross-dressing, and, I don’t know, throw in like a consensual orgy
Summary: This entire fic is one long conversation about sex.
A/N: -Thanks ever so to hereticalvision for the Brit pick and SPAG; all mistakes are mine

-There is potential gross-out; heed the warnings

-For me, this is a little like showing some sex toys I like. If you're here for the Schopenhauer come back next week.

( Sex, Lies, and Veritaserum )

I’ve always loved the fantasy genre. When I was younger, I had two major problems with it:
-It was sort of looked down upon. I saw fantasy/sci fi authors writing about it themselves, that it was not a “respected” genre, and the flack the writers receive for not being “literary” or “serious”. Mostly I didn’t like this because my sophomore English teacher told my mom she wished I’d read higher brow novels instead of reading Dune.
-When I was around 6-12 years old, I could never find anything aimed at me I wanted to read. I liked the fantasy novels, but they were some hard reading for a 9 year old sometimes. There was A Wrinkle In Time and Narnia and some others, but finding things was hard work!

I feel like all of that is different now. And I feel like the number one cause or effect is named Harry Potter.

( amiright? )

I finished writing The Way Down!

I have all these things I want to say about endings to stories, but this post is specifically about The Way Down, what it is and why I wrote it. I think the process of writing is fascinating; the process of writing this story in particular is fascinating to me. For the few people in the world reading that fic, there are slight spoilers for it, but nothing big. Did I mention it has no plot? For everyone else, I have no idea whether this will be interesting to you. But I wanted to say it.

( Writing process, when real life enters your writing, writing as therapy and catharsis, when writing changes with you, mental health, me, my navel, etc )

Phone conversation I had today:

Me: I have a really weird question.
Guy: You can’t ask me anything I haven’t already been asked before.
Me: . . . Okay. I need a horse ankle.
Guy: Do you need the whole leg?
Me: No, just the ankle.
Guy: Well, from the hoof up, how much do you want?
Me: Just the ankle. I don’t need the hoof. I don’t need the part above the hoof. I need the part above that where it turns out at an angle—
Guy: I’ll just pop it off under the knee and give you a couple feet.
Me: Um. Okay.
Guy: When do you wanna come?
Me: Well, when you have . . . horse legs available.
Guy: Oh, I get them every other day. Availability’s not a problem. Just your schedule.
Me: Okay, how about some time next week?
Guy: Sure. I just do it in the truck outside my house, so you’d just be coming over here. I charge around $20 to pop ‘em off.
Me: Okay . . . I’ll have to check my schedule.
Guy: Alright. What’s your name?
Me: Joy.
Guy: Well, I’m Bud.

Of course you’re Bud. Of course you are.

Happy birthday to one of the coolest people I know, seraphcelene.

For you? A haiku.
You remind me of poems,
Fresh, strong. Unconquered.

In light of a certain (admittedly awesome!) fic that I can't get three posts through my flist without seeing recced, I've been wondering about fandom experience.

marguerite_26 cleared some things up for me by explaining that Merlin has an anon meme and a lot of shit goes down there. Of course, practically every fandom has or has had an anon meme, but in some fandoms, it's going to be part of your fandom experience. In other fandoms, not so much. She also mentioned at one point that HP, for instance, is a fandom that has a very high quotient of fests, and a lot is based around fests. When Star Trek reboot came out, the reboot fandom was centered on a kink meme (I have no idea what it's doing now).

I always think of BtVS fandom as a little town formed after an exodus from huge cities which now lie in ruins. Some people still live in the cities, but most of the people in the town know each other, even if we don't talk to those people over there. Enterprising souls gather news from all parts of town and bnfs still go on hunts at times for Fresh Blood. And most of the people in the town have actually moved out anyway and are keeping them as summer homes.

Anywho, what I'd like to know now is what your fandom experience is, and also how your fandom works. Would you consider it based on comms, memes, fests, a couple bnfs? Where does it happen? Why does it happen? Are there community pockets? Types who don't talk to each other? Wars between factions? What's it like moving into your fandom; are you on the periphery, did you found it, is it an uphill battle all the way? Does everyone go to cons; does everyone know each other; do you know everyone else? Are you confused about where your fandom happens, and you feel like you're always trying to figure it out?

I had this whole vision of there being a comment with the name of your fandom and then everyone replies to that comment with their fandom experience. Of course it's probably not going to work out that way, but I'm going to comment with HP, Buffyverse, SPN, and Merlin just to get things rolling. Please feel free to comment with your fandom, any fandom, just comment and reply.

Instead of my story today I am going to tell you a real life story from work. Resemblance between this and girl!Sherlock might have something to do with me, I'm afraid.

Long story, but I was going to get some pig bones I would potentially need to clean. I remembered my Anatomy teacher in highschool used to keep a bucket of maggots in her backyard to clean bones, but surely this is not the only option! So I Google and find mentions of bleach and various methods of scrubbing, but mostly it’s flesh-eating beetles. Great for bone cleaning.

I’m mulling over this as I eat lunch in the break room, where everyone else is eating lunch. I’m talking about my pig bones and maggots and Googling, and eventually get to the part about flesh-eating beetles. “Which is just another dead end,” I’m saying, “because where on earth am I going to get flesh-eating beetles?” And then I noticed everyone else has stopped eating, and is looking at me like I’m crazy.

Am I crazy because I’m talking about giving bones to flesh eating beetles during lunch?

No.

I’m crazy because, “Joy, you know we have flesh-eating beetles, don’t you?”

Of course we have flesh-eating beetles. Silly me.