30 days of Buffy! Day 30!

Day 30: What You Think Made Buffy So Great

And so we come to the end of this meme.  I feel like I should go out with a bang here and write a long essay about the greatness of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  But I don't think I will.  Instead, here's my short reasoning as to why it's so great:

Women characters on screen, not just talking about boys, in a show that wasn't a romcom.  Kicking ass and not being guilty about it.  There was nothing else like this before Buffy came on our screens.  Combine that with awesome dialogue, some really good character development and wonderful relationships and I was sold.  The fact that the characters were women wasn't important.  It was a sci -fi magic monster beat em up comedy drama tragedy apocalypse end of the world saving the world heart wrenching life affirming wonderful wonderful show.

Thanks for reading this everyone.  I'd like to invite you to leave your thoughts on what made Buffy great, in the comments section.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 26 and 27

Day 26: Favorite Scooby Moment

What does this even mean?  Favourite team work?   Favourite group scene?  The scoobies at their dore don't mean a lot to me.  Buffy/Willow/Xander are not the most interesting characters to me.  Giles is awesome, of course, Oz is great. Cordelia and Wes have their moments.  But when I look back over the show my favourite seasons and my favourite chars are those from later in the programme's life - Anya, Spike (reformed), Tara, the potentials, Dawn, Joyce, Faith.  All those on the peripheries who were really important to the show but weren't at the heart of the Scooby gang.

So, I have nothing for favourite Scooby moment, because the core group of 3 are not the most interesting.

Day 27: Cutest Moment
Preparing for Joyce's funeral.  I know that may seem odd, but take cute as to mean something that makes you feel warmth for the chars, and I reckon it would be Willow despairing of not having grown up clothes and Anya despairing of how humans cope with death.

I don't really like 'cute' things.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 24 and 25

Day 24: Favorite Example of 90s Special Effects
The bloke dressed up as Buffy carrying dawn away from Glory in the finale of Season 5.  Hilarious.  They didn't even try there did they?

Day 25: Favorite Buffyverse Saying
Cup of tea? Cup of tea? Nearly got a shag, cup of tea?

Oh Spike, how I love you when you mock other people.  He's describing Giles.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 22 and 23

Day 22: Best Xander-centric Episode
Xander - another character I have little love for. Let's be honest, he's a bit of a prick.  He treated Anya abominably, he mooned over Buffy for years and regularly put his feelings ahead of hers (when he told Buffy to kick Angel's ass for instance?).  He liked Riley for gods sake.


But, I enjoyed the split Xander episode, if only cos Anya suggested she have a threesome with the two of them.


Day 23: Two Characters You Wanted To Get Together That Never Did
I did rather enjoy Joyce and Giles.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 20 and 21

Day 20: Best Spike-centric Episode
The one in Season 7 where they work out what his trigger song is and then Robin takes him into a warehouse and attempts to kill him.  Spike then beats the crap outta him.

Don't mess with Spike guys.  He may be good, but he's still vicious.

Day 21: Best Willow-centric Episode
Erm, I'm not really keen on Willow.  Doppelgangland for evil vampire Willow was good.  The finale of season 7 where she turned into a goddess was satisfying.  The one at the start of season 7 where she's in England and you see Giles riding on a horse is hilarious.  The start of season 6 where they resurrect Buffy is important for Willow, but not really Willow centric.  Same for Once More With Feeling.  The one where Oz comes back and she tells him about Tara was good. Gut wrenching, but good.


I can't decide which one I prefer.  You all pick one and we'll pretend I agree.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 18 and 19

Day 18: Character Who Didn’t Get Enough Screen Time
Spikes skin condition demon friend.  Or evil vampire Willow.  However I suspect vampire Willow's potential extra screen time may have been relegated to showing how hot she was, whereas Spike's scabby demon friend was actually interesting.

Day 19: Character You Like That Everyone Else Hates
Dawn.  I used to hate her, now I have a lot of time for her.

And Kennedy of course.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 16 and 17

Day 16: Episode You Like That Everyone Else Hates
I have no idea what episode everyone else hates.  Unless you count Season 7.

Day 17: Character You Relate To The Most
The most huh?  I can relate to Buffy's misery, Anya's awkwardness and straightforwardness, Dawn's cutting, Giles love of jaffa cakes, the potentials who realise their influx of power and think it's awesome, Tara's shyness, Faith's flirting and desire to get loaded and have a good time and Spike's couldn't give a fuck attitude.

I don't see myself in any one character.

30 Days of Buffy!! (Days 14 and 15)

Day 14: Favorite Female Villain
Drusilla.  Or evil vampire Willow.

Who to choose who to choose?  Drusilla, we see more of her.

What's not to love? Her choice of clothes, her utter utter bonkersness, her awful English accent, the way she speaks and explains herself, the very physical way of acting that Juliet Landau has, her specific set of morals.

What's not to love?  Drusilla is an absolute delight.

Day 15: Favorite Male Villain
Spike.

He's tough, he's hot, once the chip is in his brain he gets to get really interesting, and he's hot.

Oh wait, this is for a villain right?  Well, for me, Spike only got interesting when the chip got in his brain and he became less villianous and more friendly.

So, this will either be the Mayor or Caleb.  Caleb is a religious fool who hates women.  The Mayor is a very well to do fool who on the surface is nice if a slight bit creepy, and he cares about things like doilys.  Below the surface he's a megalomaniac who's willing to be turned into a demon in order to rule the world.

The Mayor it is.  Doilys are evil.

30 Days of Buffy!! (Days 12 and 13)

Day 12: Least Favorite Episode
Innocence.  I hate the whole bullshit morality about how sex is bad that went along with that storyline.  I've written about this before, here.  Even if I wasn't bothered about the bloody sermon that was not a great depiction of a woman's first time of having sex, even if it's with someone you love.

Plus, I hate Angel.  Have I mentioned that already?


Day 13: Favorite Potential Slayer
I've been thinking and thinking about this, and I just can't decide.  It doesn't help that I can't remember their names, but I do remember watching season 7 and loving all of them.  Even the ones with terrible English accents.  All the slayerettes are special and they are all amazing and deserve to be honoured.

30 Days of Buffy!! Days 10 and 11

Day 10: Least Favorite Season
Season 5.  Ok, so we got Dawn, and she is a great addition, and we got Buffy's death, but I really really dislike Glory.  She is the most irritating character ever.  She's got no depth, no redeemable qualities and to be frank, she's a pretty shit god.

This meant I spent a lot of season 5 getting very annoyed.  There are good bits in there, Amber Benson did great with Tara getting her brainmind eaten, and Joyce dying was unbelievably sad.  But, when I think of season 5 I think of Glory and a I cringe.

Day 11: Least Favorite Romance
Buffy and Angel.  I hate Angel.  Their relationship didn't make sense.  I don't hold with this pre-destined made for each other nonsense, so their falling in love felt like a plot device and not something natural.  I never believed in them together.

30 Days of Buffy!!! Day 9

Day 9: Favorite Romance
Buffy and Satsu?
Straight girls can fuck women too you know!  And I'm all up for giving Buffy some meaningless fun sex.

Howabout Xander and any women he desired? (Not including Anya).

But honestly, It's probably Dawn and Xander in season 8, or Kennedy and Willow in season 7.  Kennedy made Willow more interesting, more capable and less bloody woolly.  She made her a better person.

30 days of Buffy! Days 7 and 8

Day 7: Least Favorite Male Character
Angel.  What a fucking waste of space

Or Riley.  But I think I despise Angel more.  Riley didn't get a spin off show and he's not such a posing emo prick.  Angel is stalker like, but Riley went out of his way to hurt Buffy because she's stronger than him.  Old fashioned sexist chauvinism there.

However, I get the feeling Riley might have changed his point of view, given training. Angel was never gonna change and Buffy would never try to change him.  Ergo, Angel wins this round.

Day 8: Favorite Friendship
Spike and Dawn.  It's lovely how he looked out for her but never patronised or condescended to her.  No one else treated her that well at the time, and so she responded by trusting him and talking frankly to him.  So he was doing it out of respect for Buffy, not Dawn.  That's not important.  He became fond of Dawn and treated her like an equal.

30 Days of Buffy!!! Days 5 and 6

Day 5: Least Favorite Female Character
Oh, um, it used to be Buffy, but today I think it's Willow

EDIT: at least when I wrote this, 4 days ago, I thought it was Willow.  Today I feel that Harmony has less going for her.  But on the other hand, I have never felt anything for Jenny.  I feel for Giles, having lost jenny, but not for Jenny herself.  She made so little impact on me.  So, Jenny it is.

Day 6: Favorite Male Character
Spike. Hottest thing on screen.  Until Justin Hartley as Green Arrow came along.

I also did enjoy Caleb, as a villain.  He was a good villain.  The mayor was pretty good too.  A very intriguing character.  He had morals, but not about the right things.  He always wanted Faith to be polite and a proper young lady, but to him, proper young ladies were also allowed to kill things.  A twisted morality and a fun character.

But still,  Spike wins out.  There's the shallow reasoning, and then there's also his journey of redemption.

30 days of Buffy! (Day 3 and 4)

Day 3: Favorite Song Used In An Episode
The montage song in Once More With feeling where Giles and Tara are singing about leaving Buffy and Willow.  Or, Walk Through The Fire.  Because it's a team up, and team ups get me in the centre of my being, every time.

I've never really registered the bakcground music that is played.

Day 4: Favorite Female Character
Hem. Illyria always seemed to have a lot of potential, her and Spike were the only good things about Angel.  I empathise with Tara a lot, but when it comes down to it, I think evil vampire Willow is my favourite (that leather corset? Hot as).  Or Drusilla.  Or actually, Anya.

Most of the regular 'good' Buffyverse characters have too much of the negative in them for me to really adore them.  At their worst, Buffy is an isolated wreck, and I empathise too much with the loneliness and abandonment she feels to love her too much.  Plus when she's peppy she's irritating.  But I admire her strength, determination and straightforwardness.  And she's a great leader and warrior.
Regular Willow I have always found annoying and not assertive enough, cutesy doesn't do it for me.  Dawn is a brat most of the time - not through any fault of her own, the others treat her abominably, especially after her mother's death.
Cordelia suffered from having to star in the godawful Angel seasons.

But back to my possible favourites.  Evil vampire Willow is hot as anything.  Drusilla is wonderfully bonkers, and I love her accent.  Anya, although meant to be annoying, I have never found her so.  I sympathise with her difficulties understanding cultural references and she's just damn funny.

I can't choose between the 3 of them.

30 days of Buffy! (Day 1 and 2)

Day 1: Favorite Season
Season 7.  I know it has it's weak points, but the bringing together of all the slayerettes, and the epic fight scene, and Willow's a goddess, and it links so much stuff from earlier episodes.  And it's got Kennedy in it, and Andrew.  And Dawn finally grows up and gets mature.  It's full of hope.  It ends on a really positive note.  I know I like tragedy, but you gotta have a little hope at the end (or all the wway through) to counteract all the misery.


Day 2: Favorite Episode
Oh lordy, Hush maybe,  Or the Prom episode, for Buffy's umbrella.  But I think I'll be going for the musical episode, Once More With Feeling.  So much important stuff was revealed in that episode, and it's got the mustard song in it, and I just love musicals and choreography.  Tara singing to Willow just breaks my heart, as does Buffy singing about her death.

Of course, that episode where Warren, Andrew and Jonathan are testing Buffy and she gets stuck in that loop in the shop, love that one too.  Or the double Xander episode, where Anya suggests a threesome because it wouldn't really be cheating.

OK, Buffy has too many good episodes.  I'm gonna go back to Once More With Feeling.

Christmas time and meme time

This Christmas, I have: cooked three heavy dinners, cleared the kitchen three times, received a lot of woollen clothes, read one and a half books since boxing day (Ben Goldacre's Bad Science is highly recommended), watched the Incredibles, worked my way through more of Evil Inc. and been tagged in an end of the decade meme.  The meme goes thusly:

Created by Ami Angelwings the idea is to: "come up with 3 categories and who you think wins that category! Be creative!"
Categories can be anything, serious like political event of the decade or ridiciulous like worst hair of a world leader, weirdest food trend... etc etc)

And then you tag 3-5 other ppl, who then come up with 3 categories.. and so on.  The main part is to be creative!

Here goes my thoughts:
Tea of the decade:  Rooibosh, or redbush.  Best. Tea. Ever.  If I run out I go into withdrawal.  Sooo goood.

Useful appliance of the decade:  Tweezers.  Without them I'd be going stir crazy.  It turns out that women aren't as naturally hair free as you'd imagine.

Personal discovery of the decade: Learning how varied work can be, and that gosh darn heck, I can actually be good at it.  The thought of the work place when I was 19 was terrifying - the few temp jobs I'd had back then didn't go great and I reckon it's just in the last few years that I've found my feet, my confidence and have realised that I'm capable.


Well, that was an uncreative and me-centric list.  I tag and challenge the following people to come up with more creative stuff:

James Ashelford
wiec?
Cerebus660
SallyP
Red

And I've put up a new poll, inspired by a book I read on Boxing Day, more info will be posted in a few days.  Meanwhile you've got till the 7th January to cast your vote.

Meme

I haven't been tagged, I saw it on An Open Letter by a Feminist and decided to do it, it looks interesting.

BBC Book List

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.

3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x +

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x +

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x +

6 The Bible *

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell x +

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman x+

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens tried to read, failed.

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott tried to read, failed.

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy tried to read, failed - started at school. hated it with a passion.

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller x

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare i've read some. I love a Midsumemr Nights dream

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier tried to read, failed - started at school. hated it with a passion.

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger x

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger x

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy *

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (maybe read as a child)

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (maybe read as a child)

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x +

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x+ (a duplicate of # 33 surely?)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (maybe read as a child)

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery -

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood x

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding x

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan x

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel x

52 Dune - Frank Herbert *

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon *

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley x +

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon x +

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck x +

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov x +

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold x

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie*

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker*

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell x

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker x +

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x +

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (I was a famous 5 kid)

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks x +

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x +

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read rather a lot. And appear to have liked/loved most of them. And don't want to read many of the others.

Christmas time and catching up.

Topics discussed:
Christmas busy-ness, shoe throwing in Iraq, homophobia from the Pope, blog awards.

There has been so much I’ve wanted to post over the last few weeks, but due to Christmas and an extremely manic period at work I haven’t felt the inclination to write or post anything, and I haven’t had the time.

In personal news, work has now calmed down, at least for a short period, but I fully expect it to remain stressful until the end of January, at a minimum. I feel like I have to learn how to manage my superiors, which I feel uncomfortable doing, because I think they should know better. But it looks like I’ll have to get over that.

I spent a weekend visiting the family and friends 2 weeks before Christmas. 5 destinations in 5 days, all around Kent – between 1 and 4 hours travelling each day. I guess that may not seem a lot to my American readers, but it’s a long time to spend on a train or in a car for me! It was fun seeing friends and family so overall worth it.

In public news, I’ve had my ear and eyes bent by various incidents over the last month. Number 1, the shoe throwing episode in Iraq. Now I know on a mature level that stooping to violence is a bad thing. But on a personally aggrieved level I am supportive of the shoe thrower. I become more supportive when I heard Bush’s response of the facts being that the shoe was a size 10 (or whatever) when the newsreader then pointed out that throwing shoes in Iraq is a big deal – it’s a culturally recognised form of disapproval and dissidence. And for Bush to respond as he did shows a complete lack of understanding of Iraqi society and norms. In context, i.e. that America invaded Iraq under Bush’s say so, it appears that he just doesn’t care one jot about the country. Even in the middle of a speech stating what America’s future in Iraq will be.
I was also pissed off by the TV’s account of this. I really wish I could remember what channel I was watching, it would have been BBC1, 2 or channel 4. Anyway, they finished the article by talking about how under Saddam Hussein no one would have been able to throw a shoe. Well, yes, that might be true, but the implication of the article was that the Iraqis should now be grateful for their new found freedom (supplied by Westerners) and we should focus only on this capability, rather than what they are angry about. I could argue that this conveniently sidesteps the shoe throwers complaints and allows the Westerners to feel smug about liberating a dictatorial country. (Maybe I already have?) I wish I knew which channel it was so I could find a link to the article, so that you can all know I’m not making it up. Or at least, so that you could view it and decide for yourselves.

I heard bits about the hoo-ha from the Pope recently, where he says that homosexuality will be as much of a disaster as the destruction of the rainforests. Yes well, whatever (face). The first news article (on BBC Radio 4 no less), said gay rights groups were angry because of the Pope’s declaration on gender roles. Well, that’s awfully funny, thought I, because homosexuality/bisexuality has fuck all to do with gender. I know that gender issues cross over with gay/bi issues, but they do not define it.

Sexuality is to do with who you crush on. No more no less. Gender is to do with femininity, masculinity, identification with male and female roles and all those in between. I recognise that historically (and in the present) many gay men and women (fuck knows about the bi contingent) have blurred and mixed up the gender roles, but that is not an inevitable part or being outside the heterosexual mainstream. The two issues are separate, but can conflate.
After having listened to two more news broadcasts and reading stuff online I gather that it may have been the news broadcaster confusing the two areas, rather than the gay rights groups.

Lastly, Chris at ComicsAllTooReal gave me an award a few weeks ago! :D I would like to formally say thank you to Chris, I was very touched by it and pleased to hear that you value my ramblings. J
Now, this award is sort of a meme, and I’m meant to nominate my favourite 7 blogs as well and publicise them here, so that we can expand the reading pool and awareness of the blogosphere.

Eeeek! Who do I choose? Who indeed. As you can see from my link list and also the blogs I follow section I read a lot of stuff on the web. The internet forms of a large part of my weekday evening social life and I thoroughly enjoy the social interactions formulated within. Where else can I gleefully exclaim (with appreciative peers) about my comics and the recent events contained within etc?

But what criteria would I choose to nominate just 7 blogs? Initially I thought I’d focus on the ones providing social commentary. So I came up with Willow at Seeking Avalon, for her scathing dissections of race in popular culture, comics, movies, and well anything really. Also check out her post on why feminism isn’t for her. I also thought of maybe Ami Angelwings super cute rants of doom. Ami talks about lots of personal and public issues, often around - racism, transphobia, sexism and homophobia. I know some people don’t like her writing style, lots of internet speak, but if that bothers you I would urge you to get past that and focus on what she’s saying as she’s very bright and eloquent and honest. I value honesty. Oh and Digital Femme. Amongst other things she covers comics and racism. She's a very good writer.

Maybe I should be focusing on blogs that are updated regularly? The above two aren’t updated uber regularly. So lets look at others. Do I want comic based bogs? Or fun blogs? Or innovative ones? Or specialist ones?
For comic based blogs I recommend Green Lantern’s Butts Forever (75% due to the name and the devotion to the cause of locating a good GL ass), Hoosier Journal of Inanity (because it’s a fun light hearted read), Comics Fairplay (because of the Is this Gratutitous? feature, which admittedly hasn’t run in a long time but was very much welcomed and generated interesting debate when Heidi did run it), Supergirl Comic Box Commentary (because it’s a nice clean layout, what posts I have seen look good, and it’s a Supergirl blog. There cannot be too many of these. Ever). Lastly I’d like to mention When Fangirls Attack – not a typical commentary style blog, but a link blog. I’m not sure if this counts, as the contributor’s own views aren’t included, but it’s a wonderful and reasonably detailed resource to all posts concerning women and comics on the web.

I’ve recently found this DC Elseworlds fan videos blog . The costumes are pretty cool and I love the fact that people dedicate all this time and effort into producing this stuff.* Yes, it’s cheesy and clichéd in places, but the acting, direction and effects are no worse than say, oh I don’t know Smallville. It’s essentially cosplay on a larger scale and I feel that should always be encouraged.

For feminism, I recommend The F Word blog (for being the probable number one catch all daily resource for issues affecting women in Britain, and for stimulating good arguments in the discussions), and also Feminist SF – the blog! (does what it says on the tin).

For innovation I think ComicsAllTooReal Chris’ own blog deserves a mention, because it’s quite clearly a project utilising blog technology to get it’s voice and aims out there. I haven’t seen anything like it elsewhere.

For specialist stuff one of my friend’s has a progress blog about his model soldiers and imperial armies. I don’t understand most of it, but I appreciate his enthusiasm, and I think some of my readers may also appreciate it. Plus Drax plays a mean game of Scrabble. And Carcassonne. Kicking my ass every time.

For fanfiction Like Scratches in the Sand writes some beautiful one sentence fanfics.

So that’s 14 of gthe very best. I knew I couldn’t pick just seven. (Sorry Chris I broke the rules!) If you want more recommendations look at my linked blogs and the blogs I follow, on my profile page. I think they’re all worth taking a peek at, otherwise I wouldn’t have linked them.
Hell, if you want more recommendations, read other bloggers linked sites, follow the comments bakc to bloggers own sites, mooch around. In my experience active commenters equal (fairly) regular bloggers.


*If you like the idea of that you should also check out Gotham Public Works. Fucking wonderful.

Meme time!

Stolen from Yonmei
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions on your LJ.
* Don't dig for your favourite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Or blog, in my case.

"Whopping Disaster". To make more sense, followed by - "Think how people in your time suffered from switching to an overrefined diet - cancer of the colon -"

From Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time. Very much recommended. Contains a good demonstration of how our body postures are affected by our socialised gender roles.

Link on!

5 fictional characters meme

Jumped on from Kalinara at Pretty Fizzy Paradise who gave me the letter O.

5 Characters Meme
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ (or blog).

Here we go:

1) Oracle
Barbara Gordon. She used to be Batgirl doncha know, until the Joker shot her in the spine, leading to dear old Babs becoming paralysed from the waist down. now she's in a wheelchair. And now she's Oracle, holding information for all the world's superheroes. And in my opinion she's far more interesting as Oracle. I think she's come into her own, I think she's a positive role model for wheelchair users and I think it's fantastic that she can still pretty much take anyone in a fight. She's works out, she's got pretty damn good upper body strength.

When I think of Oracle I think of a panel in Nightwing, drawn by Greg Land, whereby Dick has taken Babs to the circus and they are practicing on the rings, swinging about way up high, recapturing Barbara's feeling of freedom she had when she could walk. It's a really uplifting (no pun intended) panel.

Barbara apparently has photographic recall and a near (if not actual) genius intelligence. Now while I'm happy with the super bright aspect of her, I'm not with the photographic recall bit. It just seems that for someone who is not a meta human, the writers felt they had to stretch it a bit and make her more interesting by giving her a photographic memory, and that's a cop out. I want Barbara to be like an ordinary person, to be like me. And while I'm not a genius, I can work hard, I can understand things, I can test and strengthen my intelligence, but I can never have photographic memory and neither can the majority of people. I don't think she needs this aspect, I think she's capable of doing what she does w/o it.

Also, Babs was a librarian in her day job, and that's just cool. :)

2)Ororo Munroe
Storm from the X Men. I don't read much X-Men, because I can't afford to follow two universes, and DC will always win out on the strength of their characters.
So far as I know, Storm was born in Africa whereby her tribes people treated her as a witch because of her mutant weather capabilities. At some point she came to America and was a master (mistress?) thief, and was picked up by Professor Charles Xavier and taken to the school for gifted children. I believe she led the X-Men for a bit.
In the X-Men movies she had a kick ass costume, in the 80s she had a lame ass punk inspired costume and I'm sure previously had a barely there costume. Using the excuse that she can control the temperature around her body due to her weather abilities, and therefore doesn't need to wear clothes, is not acceptable.
I understand that some people are offended that Ororo, who is black, has blue eyes and white hair. It represents a whited up version of the character, which is doubly offensive when there are so few black characters, who have black features, in the Marvel Universe.
I also recall seeing complaints that when Ororo got married she became a supporting character in her own book. That sucks.

3) Optimash prime
The Mr Potato Head version of Optimus Prime. This isn't cheating.
I didn't watch Transformers as a kid, I couldn't see the big deal about Robots that transformed into cars, or trucks, or stereos. Consequently I couldn't tell you if Optimus Prime is a good guy or a bad guy. Though I do know it's Autobots vs Decepticons. I quite enjoyed the Transformers movie. It's big, it's silly, it's full of plot holes so big you could drop one of the robots in it, but it's fun.
When I learned of the existence of Optimash Prime, I creased up. I think this is a wonderful piece of merchandise and it brightens my day whenever I think of it.
Potatoes in disguise!

4) Offler the crocodile god
From the Discworld. The Discworld has a massive pantheon of Gods, loosely based on our earth ones. I believe that Offler is inspired by an Egyptian deity.
He has a human body and a crocodile head. He talks with a lisp, due to his massive fangs. In theory he's quite keen on smiting the unbelievers, or anyone who disagrees with him, or offends him, but unfortunately he's also rather idle and so doesn't pay much attention to what's happening on the Disc.
Add this to the increasingly secular* nature of inhabitants of the Disc, and you get a God with dwindling power. Honestly, I think he just likes to it on Mount Olympus, eat and drink and play games with humanity using the Chess board style game of the Gods.

*By Secular I mean the denizens of the Disc know that the Gods exist, which is precisely why they don't see the point of worshipping or believing in them. You don't go around believing in chairs or tables do you?

5) Oberon, King of the Fairies.
Specifically, the Oberon that appears in A Midsummer Nights Dream, the only Shakespeare play I really care about.
This Oberon is a proud, selfish jerk. He treats Titania, his wife, abominably. She's taken care of this human child and Oberon wants the kid for himself. So he gets Puck to drug Titania so that she'll fall in love with the first thing she sees when she wakes up from the drug induced slumber.
This turns out to be Bottom, currently sporting an asses head. Titania woos Bottom and they fuck.
Oberon thinks this is hilarious. I think that's a fairly vile thing to do to your wife and should be construed as sexual assault.
However, Oberon isn't all bad, as he has a soft spot for humans. He sees the Demetrius/Helena relationship and gets Puck to lace Demetrius' eyes, except Puck laces Lysander's eyes, and then there's this massive balls up and a complicated love quadrangle between Demetrius-Helena-Lysander-Hermia.
Anyway, when Oberon sees how it's all gone wrong he berates Puck and fixes the situation so everyone loves the correct person. So he can do some good.
Basically, hes' a fairy, and fairies act as fairies act and that isn't according to human morals or requirements. Trust a fairy like you'd trust a cat.