Back after a brief absence

[lyore]

Have triumphed over the (evil) forces of work and (really bad and probably evil) professional fiction* and (not evil at all) weekends spent at friends places to get back on line, just in time to catch up with the latest dramas - FanLib and That MJ statue.

There's really nothing to say about either of them that hasn't already been said, except that the same people who run FanLib are the sort of people who would think the fen protesting about the MJ statue are making a fuss about nothing, at least judging by the ads.


Apparently, according to the marketing gurus at Sideshow and FanLib, women don't read comics, and they don't write fanfic either.

Morons.

*OK, it was Star Wars EU books - so I should have known. I quit about 90 pages in to Michael p. Kube-McDowell trilogy on account of OOCness so extreme it was making my eyes bleed. And given I tend to be very obsessive about finishing books when I start them, me not finishing the book is a VERY bad sign. I don't know why I keep doing this to myself - except the OT Star Wars section is swamped with prequels and EU fic, and I hadn't tried this trilogy before, and I really do want to find more good stories about my characters.

It occurs to me that I most be a masochist - this would also explain why I am frantically busy at work, and yet also of my own free will negotiating to stay with this project long term. But at least work is interesting and educational - I'm getting a crash course on things I didn't even know existed 12 months ago, so I can turn around and be the project 'expert'. It's intense and exhausting, to say the least. It's also likely to be the reason for periodic bouts of silence - apart from the fluctuating hours (I'm averaging between 1.5 and 2 hours overtime a day, but it's varying wildly), I'm coming home so wiped I can't get a coherent thought together (apart from ranting about SW EU, apparently). So I'm reading, I'm just not talking.

Comments

[ashavah]

Tell me more about this fanlib thing. Have any links?

*is annoyed at sexism in nerdy circles at the moment*

[lyore.livejournal.com]

It's basically a for-profit fanfic site, with a TOS from hell (we can edit your works AND use your works, but if you get sued, then it's not our problem. Oh, and if we get sued because of your stuff, then YOU have to defend US). http://www.fanlib.com/ , if you want to take a look.

The whole thing is an exercise in alienating your target audience - the founder has been spamming LJs and apparently accusing fen of threatening his life.

The sexism/feminism thing comes in mostly due to the dumb-ass ads, and the fact that all the founders and board are male (unless they've updated since I last checked).

metafandom has links to a lot of the posts on this subject, but for a current list of most of the posts concerning this, they've started an LJ community life_wo_fanlib.

It's interesting stuff, from both a feminism and legal perspective.

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

icarusancalion wrote a nice summary post for those of us who didn't want to wade through the backstory in detail. See it here.

[ashavah]

Thank you for the links. I have now read far more than is good for me about this topic, but at least my (small amount of) faith in fandom is still intact.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Glad to share :) Given the fact that fanlib has managed to hit just about every hot-button topic in fandom (expect perhaps het vs slash), I've been pleasantly surprised by how civil people are being.

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Just adding - make sure you check out telesilla's and angiepen's posts, especially this one on the TOS - http://angiepen.livejournal.com/38593.html

[ashavah]

Thank you!!

:-) It's a long time since I had some good internet controversy to sink my teeth into. ;-) (And there are two currently, so double the disgust!!)

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Is the second one the MJ statue/women in comics one, or is there something else big going on that I've missed?

[ashavah]

Nah, it's the MJ statue one.

[redbyrd-sgfic.livejournal.com]

Sorry to hear that work is sucking your life.. sounds like it's at least interesting work craziness, which is better than the purely evil sort!

And I'm off tomorrow to London and Paris. Whee! So needing a vacation... and I'll need sympathy for behindednes when I return, no doubt. (I'll be offline for the whole week, most likely.)

[lyore.livejournal.com]

Oh, wow, London and Paris! I guess I'm not allowed to be jealous, but I think I am anyway... *g* Have heaps to fun!

'm always willing to offer behindness sympathy, since it is a state that afflicts me far to often. Darn you LJ people writing interesting things!

[cloverfizz.livejournal.com]

Ahhh... maybe that was why I hated them... I remember the over excessive mechanical detail being a down point, btu I had apparently forgotten the OOC-ness :P Though I'll excuse myself since I'm pretty sure I haven't bothered picking them up since about the age of 13-14... I can't even remember the plot.
What about X-Wing books though?
Want me to bring anything else since I'll be visiting this weekend?

And well... just think...too much work is better than the days we spent doing nothing bu e-masil way back last year..!

[lyore.livejournal.com]

I haven't really noticed any of the excessive mechanical detail, but perhaps I was obsessing so much about the characterisations of the trio I didn't notice. 'cause we all know I don't obsess about things like that or anything :P

The X-wing ones are OK, I finished the second one, but I decided I felt like reading something with 'my' characters in it - I just can't seem to feel a lot of connection to Corran as the protagonist, which is ironic since I liked him as a supporting character (admittedly, in the few books I've read that have him). I'll definitely keep reading them though.

I'm sure there must be a happy medium somewhere - just enough work to keep me busy, not enough to stress me out.

Not sure if if I told you or not - they want to ARP me sooner rather than later. Goodbye, allowances! *sob*