I am a bitter Fantasy fan.

I have been reading Fantasy written by English and American authors ever since I was fourteen. It is my favourite genre, and most of my favourite books are Fantasy books. This genre was my cure for sadness, loneliness, and boredom ever since I discovered it. And even though I love that genre and spend quite an amount of time defending its literary merits, most of the writers who do write Fantasy suck at the same thing, keep on sucking and make pots of money while doing so. Especially male writers are, when it comes to their few female characters, by and large, lazy, unapologetic morons uninterested in any kind of realism.

The only male Fantasy writers I can think of who manages believable female characters are Gregory Maguire and Terry Pratchett (and I'm grateful if any of you can point me towards others who manage to not fail). It never ceases to amaze me that it would be so bloody hard to write about human beings that, given that they easily comprise fifty percent of the population, one is certain to have interacted with at some point. Both do have strong female characters that are strong on their own terms without necessarily being eye-candy or supporters of male characters only. What is more depressing is that many female writers copy those parts of the genre that are hell-bent on turning female characters into brainless, decorative, supportive tokens (Anne McCaffrey ARFFF).

Even readers with a background in feminism seem so depressingly easily pleased and make a point of noting that there are female characters who are not decoration as soon as they are there at all. As long as these characters exist, as long as they do anything at all, writers get kudos for including "strong female characters". I think that term has been used so often it has been rendered meaningless. If they do feature "strong female characters", one or two strong female characters that are included for whatever reason are really not enough to tip the balance for the rest of the book. If, throughout the story, female characters are treated as decoration, pieces of flesh or house elves, even the most bad-ass female will not rectify the fail when it comes to the other characters (looking at you again, Anne McCaffrey).

And fandom, which in many cases easily offers a break from canon fails due to the creativeness of readers, is no help here. Judging by a rough look at numbers of fanfiction submissions by pairing especially with regards to Harry Potter, most female readers don't seem to care as long as there are ~* hawt *~ male characters they can write trivial, character-exploring fanfiction about that centres on one taking care of the emotional and sexual needs of the other. Only about male characters, mind, because "the female characters in that fandom are so uninteresting". A baffling excuse, given the creative self-confidence of fandom - fandoms that manage to write novel-length stories about characters that never spoke more than three sentences together in a novel ought not to have a problem with that and welcome the challenge. 

But apparently, characters tainted by femaleness are not worth writing or thinking about, because there are no interesting stories to tell about women that aren't about the fact that they are women in a male world, and because fetishizing male-on-male interaction is just "more interesting"/"my personal preference".

Unseen Academicals

• As is always the case with the more recent books I felt rather apprehensive towards this one. My worries were rather unfounded. It is not a masterpiece compared to many of the books he wrote in the late nineties which I loved, but it does work, and the characters he introduces are charming.
• Romeo and Juliet and football. Yes.
  
• Lady Margolotta. I really like her, but I think I liked her more as an éminence grise. I am not quite clear on why she needed to be bested by Glenda, but she is as charming as ever.
• Lord Vetinari seems to suffer from a spell of Villain Decay, or there is a lot more to Glenda than meets the eye, whose character puzzled me.  
• I love Madame Sharn and Pepe and all their gender complicatedness.
• Dwarf fashion. Dwarf fashion!  Glittering pick-axes just in case the dwarf in question spots a seam and just can't help herself! Hyperfeminine assecories self-confidently invading a traditionally hypermasculine culture. Take that, femmephobia.
• Speaking of which, what does bother me is the recurring coincidence of being dense as a brick and unbelievably stunning. I am about to forgive him because of the utter awesomeness of his other female characters as well as the fact that she is not the only woman who is good-looking, while she is definitely one fo the few dense ones.
• It's always good to see Ridcully again.
  
• Ponder <3. Although it's sad to see that he managed to liberate himself somewhat from the Archchancellor, I rather enjoyed their original relationship.
• Nutt. I'm fairly meh about him apart from in his function as a love interest for Glenda. They are so cute together.
• Trevor. Equally meh.
• Repetitions, gnuh. I wonder what went wrong there. Would it really have hurt to cross out a few "I am an Orc"s or "but I promised my old Mum"'s? These lines were repeated so often that they really annoyed me towards the end.

Day 26

Day 01 → Your favourite song
Day 02 → Your favourite movie
Day 03 → Your favourite television program
Day 04 → Your favourite book
Day 05 → Your favourite quote
Day 06 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 07 → A photo that makes you happy
Day 08 → A photo that makes you angry/sad
Day 09 → A photo you took
Day 10 → A photo of you taken over ten years ago
Day 11 → A photo of you taken recently
Day 12 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 13 → A fictional book
Day 14 → A non-fictional book
Day 15 → A fanfic
Day 16 → A song that makes you cry (or nearly)
Day 17 → An art piece (painting, drawing, sculpture, etc.)
Day 18 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 21 → A recipe
Day 22 → A website
Day 23 → A YouTube video
Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail

My life is not interesting enough to warrant a lot of detail, but here is the gist: 

Monday: We slept in and had a very comfy breakfast together, which was lovely. In the afternoon I had my last lesson for the week! I showed my student what she could do at home to improve, under the erroneous assumption that she'd probably have some time now before the new semester kicks off in February. Wrong. Here, the new semester starts in January directly, and they have an exam at the end of the month. We had a look at the upcoming topics instead. In the evening, Crocky and I planned the rest of the week and lounged around, reading together.

Tuesday: Crocky and I had breakfast together and got some housework done before she headed off to her course and I prepared my lesson for the afternoon. I thought this would be the day of my last lesson, but this was not the case - my student had cancelled on me and I had missed her e-mail. Well. Crocky returned with the groceries and we started preparing dough, but it turned out that the vegetable fat we were using caused the dough to be too thin and too brittle once baked, so instead of six trays of glorious cookies we ended up with six trays of barely done mush that fell apart as soon as we looked at it. It was a complete mess. My attempts at cinnamon stars with sesame mush instead of ground almonds worked out beautifully, though, and I managed to make two trays of these. In the evening, we watched The Princess and the Frog.

Wednesday : What made this day specifically annoying was that the phone kept ringing at the worst possible moments, all day long. It was also the day we had picked to celebrate Christmas together, given that we'd head off to our families the next day. Well. First my brother called, sharing the experience of his driving lesson. It was interesting, but by then, the clock was ticking, because we were baking and Crocky had to leave soon after he called. We had gotten up early and started baking - preparing dough with silly food-colours which caused the dough to look sickly pink, blue and green. After my brother, S. called, enquiring about the wedding.
The cookies turned out well, though, and we ended up with four trays of multicoloured sugar cookies, another tray of cinnamon stars, and two trays of doggie-shaped chocolate cookies for my mother. Crocky had to head off to theatre and a church service accompanied by her choir and I did the doggies as well as chocolate chip cookies, which I knew my family would like. An unidentified number called two times, while I was stuck in the oven and in the shower respectively. Crocky's Dad called just as I was balancing two trays of cookies on top of each other, trying to get them into the living room and I missed him, too. Crocky returned in the evening and we decorated our sugar cookies and fell into bed, exhausted. Shortly after, my brother called, asking about whether I wanted to have soup the next day, then Crocky's sisters, enquiring about her exact arrival time. Blegh, family.

Thursday: Crocky had to get up early to catch her train, and I sat around at home, waiting for my father who had offered to take me with him, since Hannover is on the way for him when he drives to Hamburg, anyway. I studied a bit, did a daily dungeon, hung around, tidied up. We left at around twelve, had lunch together at a little restaurant on the way and arrived at home at around four.
My brother and I decorated the tree, we had tea together, handing out presents, then, a while later, had fondue. In the evening, my brother and I discussed magnetism, tesla coils, and quantum mechanics.

Friday: see  below - as described yesterday.

Saturday: I hung around all day, studying and gaming during the breaks, avoiding the huge, huuuge pile of dishes still left over from our baking escapades.

Sunday - ?? The return of my soon-to-be-wife, hopefully. More studying. Probably doing the dishes.

My life is so damned interesting.
 

Day 27 → This month, in great detail
Day 28 → This year, in great detail
Day 29 → Hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days
Day 30 → Whatever tickles your fancy