A New and Different Meme

[athersgeo]

Gacked from antigone_ks

1. Who is your mobile phone provider, and how many minutes are in your plan?
O2 and as many as I pay for since it's a Pay-and-Go thing. So no contracts. But also some real fun and games when it comes to the whole "overseas phone use" thing!

2. What program do you primarily use for instant messaging?
AIM. Do also use YIM but since my virus problem I've had it disabled. I really should fix that...

3. Who do you send and receive text messages from most?
Members of WLHC. Which means I've had NONE since I quit being club secretary. Barring Text Spam. (Yes, not content with penis enlargements via email, I get them via mobile too...)

4. What area code do you live in?
0117 or, if we're talking my mobile phone, 07752

5. What year did you first get an e-mail address and do you still use it?
1997. It was the instantly memorable: r.j.m.trench@acoustics.salford.ac.uk and since Salford kicked me out, it's deader than the dodo.




1. Name one thing you've quit:
Being club secretary of Westberries Ladies Hockey Club

2. Name something you've won:
A holiday in Hollywood

3. Describe a subject in school you do/did poorly in:
A-Level maths. And geography. Not the "point to places on a map" type of geography but the "discuss mass tourism using the example of Padstow to illustrate your answer" type. Took me three years to learn how to do that stuff. Weirdly, that's subsequently helped me to write in detail and depth with my fanfic

4. Have you ever purposely not done your best?
Sort of yes. I found school up to (and including) GCSE rediculously easy. So I didn't bother to try too hard, and no-one bothered to try and push me to do better. And still came away from the GCSEs with As. And for the record? That was at a private school.

5. Do you lead, follow, or get out of the way?
Yes. ;) *grin* Depends actually. If I'm the one who brought the tools, I'll probably lead until I pass out!


In other news...it's been a bit of a sucky week workwise. The clients have amply demonstrated that they are, in fact, complete and utter morons. At one stage yesterday, I was *literally* tearing at my hair in frustration because one client was arguing that the software I'd written didn't do something, when I'd just tested it for the very thing she was asking for and had got it to work without any problem at all. *sigh* clients. Can't live with them. Can't murder them and hide the bodies under the new patio...

And then someone pointed me in the direction of, believe this or not, a fluffy!holocaust fanfic.

And I so wish I was kidding about that; but I'm not. fanficrants has all the details - though there is a rumour that the story might have now been pulled from ff.net. We can but hope.

Comments

[antigone-ks.livejournal.com]

a fluffy!holocaust fanfic

And worst of all, it's written szo badly.

huh?

[http://users.livejournal.com/mazal_/]

I'm curious about the plotline, fandom, and what you mean by fluffy. Do you mean something that displays ignorance about the topic, or something that has some positive elements, say, a romance as well? As to the latter, I've seen that done well and am trying to do something like that myself.

Re: huh?

[antigone-ks.livejournal.com]

I honestly don't remember the fandom, and there was just the first chapter up before it was yanked, so not much plot to speak of. It seemed to be in the "good German falls in love with Jewish girl" type of fic, which could have had positive elements... but this one didn't.

First of all the German general (an SS general, btw, judging by his black uniform) had a Japanese name and was just really so nice to the girl (an English Jew, according to the author-- which begs the question of why she didn't book it for England as soon as any trouble started), because gosh she was pretty and sweet. No build up explaining why an SS officer would even see this prisoner as human, he just did right from the start. That sort of ignorance and lack of exposition was just all over, and given that it was a rather short chapter, that's pretty impressive.

And once you get past the extremely casual way the author treated the idea of concentration camps and general ignorance about the whole subject, there's the spelling and grammar errors to deal with. The whole thing was spork-worthy.

Re: huh?

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

antigone_ks's post about covers it. The fandom was Yu-Gi-Oh and my basic beef with the whole thing is that it came off entirely too much like a fairy story (all the opening paragraph was missing was "Once upon a time"), which, for the subject matter, is just utterly crass.

I'm not, for one second, suggesting a romance set during the holocaust is impossible to write - but I'm willing to bet that the ones you've read that are done well (and you yourself, for that matter) took the time and effort to make it work and didn't make complete light of the topic as if "oh well it wasn't really all that bad" or, worse, as if it was a complete fantasy.

Re: huh?

[http://users.livejournal.com/mazal_/]

Good points all. But, just wanted to say ... ya'll don't like the idea of doing it like a fairy tale. If by fairy tale you mean a Disney-fied softened version, then, I agree. You may know that the original versions of many fairy tales were not told to or written for children but actually were in some cases essentially horror stories. So, that can work.

Re: huh?

[athersgeo.livejournal.com]

I am aware of the origins of many fairy stories as horror stories/warnings to kids about the dangers of life around them. The trouble is the whole genre has gone far, far beyond that now and I would think most people (when you say fairy story to them) think of something fluffy with a "happy ever after" at the end and if you write a fairy story in any other way, you're essentially not writing what people think of as a fairy story (regardless of their origins).

My real point, though, is anything that manages to imply that the writer of the story believes the events of the Holocaust are anything other than a real fact of history makes me twitch, and in this case it was extremely disney-fied to boot.

Re: huh?

[http://users.livejournal.com/mazal_/]

I agree completely.