mothwing | Recent Entries

The first drafts of the DSM-V are out.

I can't say that I wouldn't have expected some of what's in there. Still. WOW.

Let's start with something positive: I'm glad they're including Binge Eating as an eating disorder now. That's a good thing. I'm torn on Non-Suicidal Self Injury and wonder why they didn't also list this under paraphilias.

Other than that... Wow.

Let's begin with the fact that they've chosen to dispense with listing "distress" in their criteria as a measure for whether something is a disorder or a mere deviation from an abstract norm. I am not sure what is going to take its place - the way things are looking now, there is no telling where the boundary between clinical condition and deviation from the norm lies, really.
Zucker suggests that the likelihood of social ostracism is supposed to be the boundary for the norm here for his field, and my impression is that it will be really down to the estimation of the psych rather than the patient whether they have a condition that ought to be cured than the patient's distress with their situation.

Nearly all of the criteria regarding GI in children that aren't related directly to the child's experienced gender still don't make sense and are deeply rooted in sexism, though the change in terminology is a good one. WTF is "typical masculine/feminine clothing" for children? What's wrong with cross-gender roles during fantasy play? WTF are "toys, games, or activities typical of the other gender", and what's wrong with rejecting games considered "appropriate" for your own gender?
Also, the shift in focus when it comes to the basis of this diagnosis from Gender Incongruence in adults does not make any sense to me - if behaviour appropriate to a person's gender is irrelevant in adults, why enforce it in children to this degree?

Zucker's paper... where to start. I am not an expert and I'm probably missing many things that are noteworthy, but there is still enough that is really anoying. He fails gender 101 ("if there was a social reason for girls to want to be boys, the same reason would apply to boys wanting to be girls"), it's creepy how he has as test subjects of one study comprised 500 boys who were referred to his clinic and only 79 girls - which to me seems to speak volumes of the inherent sexism of the entire enterprise and the femmephobia it engenders - his insistence that GID is a condition that ought to be cured by changing the individuals gender expression because that will cause their problems to disappear because they won't be socially ostracised anymore... there is so much that's troublesome in that paper, but his insistence that if you fix yourself, your situation will be better because your peers will react more positively to you is probably one of the least sensible I have ever heard. Would he maintain that that's applicable to other condition that cause children to be ostracised by their peers, I wonder?

Gender policing is creepy and superfluous, and it doesn't get better if people start even earlier with this nonsense. I want more freedom to experiment, especially for boys, not less. Most of my childhood friends presented with at least for of these criteria, in girl's cases five. I want back what I had when I was younger. More androgynous clothes for children, more toys that were coded as androgynous rather than marketed towards a specific gender, more room for experimenting. When I was small, nearly all of the male friends I had in kindergarten played more with their dolls than I did - my best friend, a boy called Sebastian, had a dolly that he used to take along everywhere and that was usually integrated into our games, usually in the role of his baby. Most of the girls I was friends dressed in androgynous clothes that would be perceived as "boy clothes" today because they're not sexualised, they played with androgynous and toys coded as "for boys" today, many had more friends who were boys than friends who were girls, and we all wore trousers with tears on the knees. I haven't seen any of that during my internship in kindergarten, and it's a fucking shame.

Edit: another thing I'm wondering here is what the benefit of having those extra criteria at all. I can't imagine that there many people who say that they don't feel their assigned gender is correct for shits and giggles, so surely, that ought to be enough for the medical gatekeepers...?
I guess I ought to shut up about this. I'm a cis ex-psych minor and really not informed enough to join the discussion of these issues.

So. Paraphilias.

The paraphilia-related changes in many areas actually seemed to make things worse rather than improve them. They apparently want to make a distinction between paraphilias and paraphilaic disorders - one being merely ascertained for study purposes, the other being diagnosed.

Not sure what the benefits of ascertaining something in a medical context are, especially in a Diagnosis Manual for Disorders, but fine, if they must. Still, the change in the wording for this is failtastic: for masochism, for example, according to the revising people, the difference between "real, not simulated" harm and ... well, harm, simulated or not, is pointless enough to just drop it altogether. Which means that a lot more people now ought to go see a therapist, because there is no difference between sexual games and reality any more, if I'm reading that correctly.

Also, we have "autogynephilia" (and the continuing absence of autoandrophilia as well as notes to whether ciswomen experience autogynephilia, which they do) rear its ugly head again under "transvestic fetishism". As far as I can see from Blanchard's paper there is no reason for the inclusion of this "condition" at all, really, apart from Blanchard's own ~~fucking creepy obsession with~~ studies on the sexual fantasies of trans women.

Also, asexual people need to get their heads checked, and so do people who don't enjoy being penetrated, or those people who just like their vanilla sex too much.

Who else needs chocolate cookies?

EDIT: and I'm still trying to get my head around the necessity to list the symptoms of healthy paraphilias in a diagnosis manual for disorders under the title of the disorder it's supposed to diagnose, and I'm still drawing a blank.

Can anyone help me out? I must be missing something here and I hate that.

Current Mood: exhausted

Playing around with Crocky's birthday present. You'll never guess what it is. It arrived today and I think I am in love.

The dog is based on a toy (yes, with the wings, wtf) my supervisor gave me on the last day of my internship which was lying on my desk, and the other thing is a dragon. Arts classes seem to be a looong way away suddenly.

Current Mood: artistic

I went shopping the other day and saw this:

Can anyone guess what I read? Instead of "Back Oblaten", that is? Does that happen to anyone else, or is it just me? I'm sometimes doubting my sanity. What I read doesn't have anything to do with didactics, but it does show my ongoing mental involvement with the memory of my previous exams, in this case, my translation exam.

Current Mood: amused

Oh, you guys. You deserve celebratory sparkle text:

Thanks to those of you who signed the petition!

♥

Yes, I'm a creepy stalker and spotted some of your names among those who did sign, so a big THANKS for that. On the family front? ( Well. )

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Location: Germany, Hanover

And for something completely petition-unrelated:

kindkit on

discworld shared these promotional pictures for the adaptation of Going Postal that have been published on Sky's official page:

I haven't been following this, and I'm mostly looking forward to this as this is really not a series I care about that much. I am not sure how I feel about Witchfinder Aredian/Mr Tulkington/Christopher Lilly/Lord Stockbridge/Maxim de Winter being cast as Lord Vetinari, but Im not likely to agree with whomever gets cast in that role. Well, unless the acting is going to be what it was in large parts of Hogfather, then I'm not sure I'm looking forward to this at all.

( 4 more pictures )

Current Mood: bouncy

So, I asked my family to sign this petition I keep harping on about and was told by my father that he doesn't really see the point because only so few people are taking part, so he doesn't see a reason to bother with it. Edit: but he did sign it in the end, yay! Leaves only my brother and my mother who are deterred by ... having to sign up?

That doesn't really sound all that logical to me, especially as a reason to not bother as well if it's something you even moderately care about, but it's true. It is doomed, really - to be seriously considered it needs to gather 50k signatures within a month - it has roughly 5k now, and it needs 45k more until March 3. Plus you need to - gasp- sign up to sign it and people are lazy and don't care whatever the fuck is in our constitution, so both the people who actually would be protected by this law and the majority can't really be bothered.

The third article of our basic law reads as follows:

Article 3: Equality before the law

(1) All persons shall be equal before the law.

(2) Men and women shall have equal rights. The state shall promote the actual implementation of equal rights for women and men and take steps to eliminate disadvantages that now exist.

(3) No person shall be favored or disfavored because of sex, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavored because of disability.

Basic Law.

The changed version looks like this:

Suggested change:

(3) No person shall be favored or disfavored because of sex, sexual identity, parentage, race, language, homeland and origin, faith, or religious or political opinions. No person shall be disfavored because of disability.

as suggested by: Bündnis 90/Die Grünen, SPD, Die Linke, 05.01.2010 and aforementioned petition.

According to our government, the term "sexual identity" covers bisexual, lesbian, gay, intersexed, transgendered and transsexual people because all components of the LGBTI acronym are the same to them. For once, this might be a really good thing and generally A Step In The Right Direction, regardless of the weirdness of having all those different things subsumed under the term "sexual identity".

Well, before, back in November, people in our government thought that the other parts of our Basic Law already nicely cover all relevant aspects and voted it down, it's now being brought back to attention by major parties, and there is also this petition. But, well, you need to sign up. D=

People like our more conservative and sillier folks thought back in November that would will mean paedophiles would be protected under the law and there would be a need to change the legislation to include something they refer to as "bisexual marriage", which turns out to be polygamy. No, I'm not making this up, these people really are that dense, and judging from the comment section of the petition, they're not alone.

Now I am not a legal expert, but I am pretty sure that there are ways to define what exactly they mean by "sexual identity". Having to define terms that sound incredibly vague is a bound to be a central feature of a legislation in which the first article of the Basic Law is "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority". What is this "human dignity", exactly? And how can state authority protect it? Maybe I'm being naive here, but I can't help but have faith in our lawmakers to get down a definition that says pretty clearly what they mean by "sexual identity".

As for the petition and this matter in general, it seems that there are three basic possibilities to view this - not to give a damn, to be for it with or without knowledge of the legal implications, or to be against it with or without knowledge of the legal implications. So to my mind, you either don't give a damn and I dislike you, you're on the side of the "bisexual-marriage-is-group-marriage"-people or have a more sane legal reason I'd really like to know about, or your name is on that list already or bloody well should be.

This petition, even if it doesn't lead to momentous changes, at least seems to be pretty good a way of showing on which of the three sides people are in this matter. I signed it because I'm still hoping against all reason that this could go somewhere and because also I want to show my support for this publicly, even if this does turn out to be futile. Sometimes that seems to be all I can do, really.

I'd also be much a happier person if more people I know were not completely failing to give a damn or against it, especially my own family, bloody hell.

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: Germany, Hanover
Current Music: Jack Johnson - Sitting, Waitng, Wishing

So you live in Germany? Sign this petition for the inclusion of sexual identity in our Artikel 3 in the GG.

So you have to sign up on the website to sign it? Sign it anyway, it really doesn't take that long (and I know people for whom that was the only reason not to sign it. Seriously, people, seriously).

So you don't know anyone who'd benefit from this petition and therefore don't want to make the effort? Yes, you do, so sign it.

So you don't think it is necessary to include sexual identity in the constitution specifically because everybody's protected by the other parts of that article already? Do you think that the inclusion of this would harm anyone? Sign this petition.

So you think that this won't accomplish anything and therefore is not worth your time? You can continue doing so, later, so sign it in the meantime.

So you think that this won't accomplish anything? It does not hurt to sign it, anyway, so sign it.

Why?

Because the absence of your name on this list says a lot about you. Because I'd like to be able to read your name alongside mine in this matter, even if it does nothing, even if this doesn't go anywhere. It doesn't hurt to sign this. It won't hurt you to sign this. It won't hurt your rights to sing this.

If you have a really good reason not to sign, please do share. I'd like to know what could speak against that.

Otherwise - sign this petition.

Current Mood: hopeful

I don't have a very high degree of literacy when it comes to animated media, but this video I found via the Hathor Legacy still made interesting points with regards to prototypical (usually male) characters in animated media and their female token counterpart(s). Tread carefully, it does have issues.

Current Mood: interested
Current Location: Oststadt, Hannover

«Die Kunst des Singens»

Junge Mädchen, bei denen man annehmen kann (ich würde nicht einmal weiblichen Kolleginnen raten, in solchen heiklen Dingen Fragen zu stellen, geschweige denn Männern!), dass sie noch keinen geschlechtlichen Verkehr hatten, verfügen meist nicht über vollklingende Töne zwischen dem F im Brustregister und dem C oder D im Mittelregister. Diese Töne sind fast ausnahmslos schwach.

Victor Funk, 1963 (and apparently still an authority on this today o.O) S.79f

"Young girls who can be expected not to be sexually active (I wouldn't even recommend female colleagues to ask questions in these delicate matters, let alone male colleagues!), usually don't have full-sounding tones between the F in their chest register and the C or D in their middle register. These tones are usually weak without exceptions."
- Victor Funk

«Die Kunst des Singens»

Da der Einfluss, den der Geschlechtsverkehr physisch und psychisch auf Frauen ausübt vollkommen individuell ist, sollte man hier auch keine allgemeinen Regeln aufstellen: fühlt sich eine Frau oder ein Mädchen glücklich ohne Geschlechtsverkehr, sollte man nicht erwarten, dass sich eine Veränderung in ihrem Geschlechtsleben auch auf ihre Stimme günstig auswirken würde - mehr geht ja den Gesanglehrer nicht an. Mit allem Nachdruck aber sei hier festgestellt, dass, gleichgültig wie sich der Geschlechtsverkehr in einzelnen Fällen bei Frauen auswirkt, er nie imstande sein kann, gesangtechnische Mängel zu ersetzen.

Vikor Fuchs, S.180.

Which is roughly:

"Due to the fact that the physical and mental influence which sexual activity has on women is completely individual, the application of general rules is discouraged: should a girl or a woman feel happy without sexual intercourse, no one should expect that a change in her sexual life would have a positive influence on her voice - and the singing instructor is not to concern himself with anything else. It should be emphasised that, regardless of the effect sexual experience has on women in individual cases, it can never be expected to replace proper singing technique. "

Good to know that singing instructors offering a extra help with that after lessons is discouraged.

Current Mood: amused

What we learned from this movie:

we live in a post-racial society, and cultures are the same and totally equal - like Western cultures and whatever passes for culture among those weird savages who run around naked and worship sky jellyfish.
women have to look after men. In any species, on any planet, women look after men. Until it gets dangerous. THEN the mighty male white saviour rescues the savage females.
men make decisions. Women may disagree with these decisions, but that's clearly wrong.
women (in this case, all-powerful nature goddesses) are resilient and need to get told what to do by foreign male saviours interfacing with them.
heterosexuality is a natural norm.
mother-characters are only in the story to take care of their men and then die and through their death make a powerful statement about how their men can live better.
men get to choose women. On any planet, in any society, men get to choose women. Also, everybody mates for life.
on any planet, women are the ones who cry, and the men are the ones who harden their features in response to grief.
minorities have to instruct hostile foreigners in their weird ways for the benefits of the foreigner.
white Americans can easily learn the ways of a noble savage race within a couple of weeks.
"tribal" music that fits a Westerners idea of African music is the only appropriate score for a movie about blue Aliens. Until there is large-scale genocide, that calls for a full orchestra. Until we reach personal tragedy, then we need a sad, shapeless lament sung by the Universal Voice of Grief™, a sad alto.
James Cameron is a huge gamer dork. Even the quest progression of the avatar in question is like that of any MMORPG. Even the order in which he gets mounts follows that (riding mount, flying mount, EPIC flying mount!!!11), and did we see the floating mountains of Outland on the horizon? Also: good to see that other people are looking forward to the Cataclysm expansion pack. Oh, yeah. Also, we know, James, we know, gaming addiction can be a real pain.
we know that the main character is a Real Man because a.) he really showed that pterodactyl who's boss by sticking his body parts into its body and restrains it physically, and b.) his manly rugged behaviour throughout the rest of the movie.
unobtainium. Unobtainium. Yeah, we got nothing.
white invaders are hurt by warfare, too - their love told them to piss off, imagine how that feels! They all make really sad faces. The complete obliteration of what passes for culture among the nekkid tribe pales in comparison.
no genocide can be quite as bad as Grace dying (grace, get it?). So let's have a huge-ass ceremony all about a white woman.
savages will trust a complete stranger who absolutely cannot be bothered to learn their language just as long as he boinks their princess and has their biggest ride to lead them into battle that will cost most of their lives.
there is a good military and a bad military. The good military are benevolent colonialists who are willing to put up with some heathen mumbo-jumbo in order to rise to the top, and the bad military do the same, only that they're willing to make sacrifices among enemy lines and just take what they want.
Intentions really, really matter - the hero (eventually) didn't mean to hurt anyone.Yes, fine, he told everybody everything about all of the savages secrets, but he didn't mean to do any harm!
Oh yeah, protect trees!.

In short: holy shit, this is a bad movie.

BAD. Really BAD.

I have never seen aynthing quite as bad in a long, looong time. Just how can anyone be involved in that movie and not realise how fucking bad it is?

Also, the worst thing: it is so obvious that in thousands of cinemas everywhere, people are going, "Wheee, flying dinosaurs!! Wohooo! BOOM, explosions!!" rather than, ".... what is this shit?!"

Current Mood: bitchy

Apparently, people of my race like this (anyone else think that this blog is often really self-congratulatory rather than satiric? I'd have hoped for more satire), so I thought I'd give it a try. It turned out very tasty, and now I'm wondering what other kinds of spreads and dips there are that could be tasty - I'm thinking about giving mushroom dip a price.

Anyone want to share a recipe? I'd be grateful.

Current Mood: hungry

Ich bin mir zwar immer noch nicht ganz über die Sinnhaftigkeit offiziellen Onlinepetitionen unseres Bundestags im Klaren, aber hier ist sie trotzdem, hoffentlich bringt sie etwas.

Also, hier könnt ihr sie finden, und darum geht es:

"Der Deutsche Bundestag möge beschließen ...Änderung des Grundgesetzes (Artikel 3 Absatz 3 Satz 1)"

Lesben, Schwule, Bisexuelle, Transgender, transsexuelle und intersexuelle Menschen sind in unserer Gesellschaft auch heute noch Anfeindungen, gewaltsamen Übergriffen und Benachteiligungen ausgesetzt. Einfachgesetzliche Diskriminierungsverbote haben die rechtliche Situation der Betroffenen zwar verbessert. Die fehlende Berücksichtigung in Artikel 3 Absatz 3 des Grundgesetzes (GG) wirkt sich aber bis heute negativ auf die gesellschaftliche und rechtliche Situation von Lesben, Schwulen, Bisexuellen, Transgender, transsexuellen und intersexuellen Menschen aus. Ein ausdrückliches Verbot der Diskriminierung aufgrund der sexuellen Identität im Grundgesetz schafft eine klare Maßgabe für den einfachen Gesetzgeber. Letztlich steht es für das deutliche Bekenntnis, dass Gesichtspunkte der sexuellen Identität eine ungleiche Behandlung unter keinen Umständen rechtfertigen können.

Hans-Werner Sperber.

Current Mood: hopeful

The set text for my exam were an excerpt from Room with a View, something I didn't even glance because the author was US American and I'm an anglist (turns out it was a quite interesting short story by a gay POC author on freedom), and The Solitary Reaper by Wordsworth.

William Wordsworth. Huh.

Obviously, given his popularity, I prepared pretty much everything BUT him.

Also, my professor is a big fan of texts being "very much concise and to the point", and I think that my 17-page, rambling, at times essayistic text quite cuts that. Gnaagh.

The Solitary Reaper
William Wordsworth

Behold her, single in the field,
Yon solitary Highland Lass!
Reaping and singing by herself;
Stop here, or gently pass!
Alone she cuts and binds the grain,
And sings a melancholy strain;
O listen! for the Vale profound
Is overflowing with the sound.

No Nightingale did ever chaunt
More welcome notes to weary bands
Of travellers in some shady haunt,
Among Arabian sands:
A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard
In spring-time from the Cuckoo-bird,
Breaking the silence of the seas
Among the farthest Hebrides.

Will no one tell me what she sings?--
Perhaps the plaintive numbers flow
For old, unhappy, far-off things,
And battles long ago:
Or is it some more humble lay,
Familiar matter of to-day?
Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?

Whate'er the theme, the Maiden sang
As if her song could have no ending;
I saw her singing at her work,
And o'er the sickle bending;--
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.

Current Mood: groggy

This has been so predictable. Crying children. Miracles of saved children. Crying women. Women stuck in the rubble, making me wonder what complete asshole of a photographer prioritised taking a picture over helping. White people in uniforms helping. And dogs helping, too.

The stories in pictures as seen by me in onine versions of papers and magazines has a pretty predictable pattern common to all disasters - victims are always female, people showing emotions are usually women, looters are usually male, people helping are usually white. Still, this earthquake killed about two hundred thousand people, and some of them are bound not to have been young, attractive women. And even those nameless, storyless women who are crying and being saved and being tended to by white saviours now are bound to get up and go out and search for their families, find their children, bury their dead. They may dig through rubble in the hope of finding someone still alive even today, and help organise the people come to help, because they are bound to know her home better than the foreign white saviours. And then they will help rebuild homes, and then go back to their lives as farmers or doctors or servants or teachers.

In many newspapers, it seems as though the Haitians don't do anything apart from lying half-naked and dead in mass graves, stumbling around in a daze, shooting each other and going looting, while white people are helping and Keeping Order. The earthquake was a horrific tragedy, and its sickening that this kind of reporting apparently helps to get people to donate.

Current Mood: cynical

Has anyone already seen this? It's a project hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin on discrimination. From their home page:

The Reality about Discrimination in Germany - Assumptions and Facts
Discrimination based on racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation is a social reality. Reliable information about characteristics and fields of discrimination however is scarcely available. The aim of our research project is to collect empirical data on discrimination in order to provide a factual basis for further legal and political debates. The results of our research are intended to raise awareness for discriminatory practices and patterns in German society.

And in German:

Realität der Diskriminierung in Deutschland - Vermutungen und Fakten
Benachteiligungen aufgrund von Alter, Behinderung, Geschlecht, Hautfarbe und ethnischer Herkunft sowie sexueller Identität sind gesellschaftliche Realität. Die unterschiedlichen Arten und Häufigkeiten von Diskriminierung sind jedoch bislang wenig untersucht. Ziel unseres Projekts ist es, diesen Forschungsstand zu verbessern und dadurch die Informationsgrundlage für zukünftige rechtspolitische Diskussionen zu erweitern. Unsere Ergebnisse sollen zur Sensibilisierung gegenüber diskriminierenden Verhaltensmustern und zu deren Abbau beitragen.

They're asking people to submit anonymous accounts of discrimination they experienced or witnessed here; you can do so in German, French, Polish, Russian, or Turkish.

Report away!

Current Mood: calm
Current Location: Hannover, Germany
Current Music: Audioslave - Be Yourself

I know I'm late with this, but in case there are still some Germans who'd like to give via SMS and haven't yet, here's how:

More information can be found on Spendino.

Current Mood: blank

"Sky: from ON sky: "cloud," from PGmc *skeujam: "cloud, cloud cover", from PIE base *skeu-: "to cover, conceal". Meaning "upper regions of the air" is attested from c.1300; replaced native heofon in this sense. In ME, the word can still mean both "cloud" and "heaven," as still in the skies, originally "the clouds.""

Today, "sky" is the word for "cloud" in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. "Cloud" only became the word for "cloud" by the thirteenth century due to metaphoric extension - it used to mean "formation of rocks" (OE: clud).

The word for cloud used to be weolcan, which is the origin for the word "welkin",which is obviously very close to the modern German word: "Wolke".

On a related note - can anyone recommend Skeat's etymological dictionary? It seems to be fairly affordable (in contrast to Klein's and Partridge's) but I'd like something a little more up to date, yet inexpensive.

Current Mood: tired
Current Location: List, Hannover

I made up my user name, Mothwing, myself. I liked the sound, I had just discovered the riddle about the bookworm, and I thought it'd fit somehow.

Turns out that it's also a character in a book.

In a book in a series called WarriorCats. Warrior. Cats.

On the series Wiki page I learned that:

"Mothwing is a beautiful, triangular-faced, dappled-golden tabby she-cat with a long coat rippling with dark tabby stripes and large amber eyes. "

Awww. On Wikipedia, I learned more about her story:

"Mothwing, a beautiful dappled golden tabby she-cat with amber eyes, is the current RiverClan medicine cat and formerly a rogue named Moth. She is the daughter of Tigerstar and Sasha, a rogue cat, the littermate of Hawkfrost and Tadpole, and half-sister to Brambleclaw and Tawnypelt. Her medicine cat mentor was Mudfur, although she initially trained as a Warrior and had already received her Warrior name by the time she became the medicine cat's apprentice. She, along with Hawkfrost, had trouble being accepted into RiverClan because their mother was a rogue and their father was Tigerstar.
Eventually, others accepted her because Mudfur found a moth's wing sign, which he interpreted as an omen from StarClan approving Mothwing as the next medicine cat of RiverClan. It is later revealed that Hawkfrost had actually put it there without Mothwing's initial knowledge in order to help himself in his plan to gain power within his Clan. After he revealed the truth to Mothwing, her faith in StarClan was destroyed (this makes her and Cloudtail the only two Clan cats in the series to not believe in StarClan), though Leafpool, Willowshine, and Jayfeather are the only cats to know this.
Though she does not have faith in StarClan, a vital requirement for a medicine cat, StarClan have let her remain a medicine cat because they have seen how hard she has studied and trained for this role and for clear her devotion to her Clan. She has mentored one medicine cat apprentice, Willowshine. As her two great-grandmothers are direct descendants to SkyClan (Cloudstar and Birdflight having Gorseclaw and Spottedpelt as kits), Mothwing and her brother, Hawkfrost, are part-SkyClan, part-rogue (Sasha being their mother) and part-ThunderClan (Tigerstar being their father), although Mothwing is very loyal to RiverClan, her adopted Clan."

Medicine. Cat. Medicine cat.

Part of me wants to check out this series.

Other than googling useless information I'm revising translation and reading up on the history of literature from the sixteenth century onwards for the exam at the end of the month.

Current Mood: amused
Current Location: Germany, Hanover

Sadly, everything outside is thawing by now.

We had about a foot of snow, and the icicles were up to three feet!!

I think I am far too exited about these things, especially the ones outside our window.

( + 10 )

Current Mood: chipper

That's part of what you said. It is not that simple. Fiction exists in the real world, and influences real-world people. This is not an issue of "some people" not being able to distinguish between fiction and reality. Even if everybody were able to do so, this would still be an issue. Language influences people. Fiction influences people - and not just those mythical creatures who can't distinguish between fiction and non-fiction accounts - and a strong version of my claim here is that no one can.

Your claim seems to be that since because fiction is fiction, it is somehow less harmful, because it can't be taken as seriously and it is not reality. But how much of what you write is fiction? What you write is informed by your real-world experiences, too. Are houses fictional? No. Is it fictional that people have heads and arms? No. Is it fictional that gay people exist? No. What else is fictional, what mirrors your own experience with gay characters? There is no way to draw the line, even for people who are very well capable of distinguishing fiction from reality.

The narratives you come across organise your thinking, and if you come across one particular narrative over and over again, it is difficult or even impossible not to have that part of your narrative enter your brain and become the definitive narrative. This is my problem with a majority writing a minority. M/M, as I am told, is a genre by and for straight women - it influences their narrative of what gay men are like.

It is common knowledge that advertising is fiction, and still it is as commonly known or suspected that advertising can have a very direct negative effect on the self-esteem of women. Fictional stories in which women are presented as flat characters only there for the gratification of men, like porn movies, are questionable, because they present men and women alike with scripts of sexuality that are unrealistic, but still change the narrative of what sex is "supposed to" work like. This is not conscious, no one sits down and goes, "Oh, I'd like to watch a movie in which women are objectified right now!". That, in parts, is the problem, and if this were what people are doing, this would be less problematic.

Now, with the stories written by straight women and informed by their experience as straight women which are about gay men, the problem I see is that they start replacing the narratives of and by gay men about gay men for the women who read these stories (simple because there are so many straight women who write these kinds of stories - from my experience, though this might be wrong, even more than queer women). There are, as it is, many negative stereotypes of gay men permeating the media which are influencing people's narratives of what a gay man is. This is another one that cannot ever be accurate. So yes, I believe that all stories written my people who are not a member of a minority about a minority are appropriative to some degree, and I believe that romance stories which strongly focus on an idealised version is especially appropriative.

What I want?
I want more self-reflection, self-awareness and critical thinking skills for both readers and writers.
I want people to examine their own reasons for writing what they are writing, and
I want readers to examine for what reason they are reading it.
I want genres about minorities to be dominated by those minorities instead of majorities - I want more original slash fiction about gay men to be written by gay men than by straight women.
I want the story of the minority people write about to be the definitive story.

I want you,

herongale, to ask yourself, "why am I writing slash? What does it do for me that other genres don't? Why do I find the tales of two men together more interesting than others? Why is it ok for me to appropriate another person's experience for my own ends?"
And I want your readers to do the same.

I'm genuinely curious what people say here, by the way. I know that there are reasons that are therapeutic writing-related, but I am curious what other reasons there are.

And I am not saying to anyone that they are not allowed to write whatever they want, because of course they are, but I don't want them to get away with it easily if it seems that they are writing about an other without reflection of why they feel it is appropriate to do so.

I just found this post on

queer_rage , and I remembered why I stopped following this speeding failtrain. Ann Somerville continues to annoy me. Ever since Lambda Fail, the more I read about and by m/m writers, the less patience I have for these straight women (well, female and straight male M/M writers in general, to be honest) and their quest to write male-on-male porn or ~romance~ in peace. This "romance" usually is a type of porn, too, the only difference being that the emotional vulnerability of the characters is fetishized rather than their sexuality.

EDIT: I think it'd be a good idea to edit this because what has started out as a rant in response to reading a blog entry has grown into something completely different, so I ought to be making my points more concisely on here to save everybody from digging through the comments.

( Original reaction to Ann Somerville's post - a rant. )

For clarification, here is a summary of my problems with the M/M genre specifically (as opposed to slash within fanfic, which is a different kettle of fish in my opinion):

Good intentions can have bad outcomes. ( Read more... )

Members of a majority writing about a minority is always problematic. ( Read more... )

Gay characters in stories written by straight people in particular are problematic, because ( Read more... )

gayness is not a metaphor for straight experience ( Read more... )

the fetishisation of gay men is wrong. ( Read more... )

Even though exploring female sexuality is necessary and good, doing so through gay romance is troubling. ( Read more... )

Fiction is fiction, reality is reality: it's not that simple.( Read more... )

Claiming that writing m/m is an LGBT activism is completely out there. ( Read more... )

Tone arguments used against gay critics are wrong. ( Read more... )

The genre is not subversive, it's porn. And it does not subvert gender roles. ( Read more... )

So, what am I saying to you M/M writers? You can, of course, write whatever you want and no one can keep you from it.
I would like you to know what it means that you are writing, however, and critically and thoroughly examine why you are writing a minority and what implications your writing may have for the minority you are writing about.

Current Mood: nauseated

Some of my tutees who will be taking their exams in '11 have "The Media" as a topic. Since I have the good fortune of teaching them again today (grumble. Why can't the holidays last until Monday, huh?), I'm looking into texts to supplement their reading as preparation for their exams for those who better at content and might be needing the extra edge if I can't get them up to scratch in written expression until February '11.

I can't say I'm terribly creative when it comes to texts they can use, especially since I don't know yet what their teachers are going to make of the topic, but I think they all will want to talk about media and politics, therefore I wish they could read Metaphors Can Kill I and/or Metaphors and War, Again by George Lakoff and and could watch this lecture by the same:

Current Mood: chipper

They're still there!! This probably should not excite me as much as it does, but I still stop to point them out to Crocky whenever I spot some that look particularly impressive.

And they are very pretty, although we keep thinking whether it might not be a good idea scrape them off, lest they half-melt, fall, and hurt someone five storeys below.

( More icicles... )

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: Germany, Hanover

YES.

Our printer is working again. Completely without taking it apart (again), or unscrewing bits that look as though they are not meant to be unscrewed.

Now I can finally print out the article I need to read tonight and some of the free, easy scores that I found on the interwebs for piano beginners. It's ridiculous how elated this makes me feel.

What's your greatest triumph over a technological foe?

Current Mood: ecstatic

You could impale someone with the ones that are hanging in front of my bedroom window:

( In comparison to our window: )

Too bad everything seems to be thawing out there.

Current Mood: cheerful

Trawling the internet in search for an article (which I'll have to pick up at the uni library. No e-copies for this one), I found this workbook that is supposed to up the readers' vocabulary in preparation for US standardised tests:

Now, I agree that this series is God's Gift to ESL teachers because everybody, or at least every single one of my wee tutees over the age of fourteen, have read it in English - even if they're really weak learners, so I agree, this can be a powerful teaching tool and motivator to get kids interested in reading a book in a foreign language. Learners.

I didn't know native speakers needed to revise their knowledge of the meaning of "marble", "murmur", or "butterscotch" for their SAT scores so badly that there needs to be a workbook.

Current Mood: curious

Half-way through 2009, I abandoned the project of keeping track because I was busy with other things. This is an attempt to reconstruct what I have been reading that year.

A Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, Ian Mortimer
Homosexualität und Crossdressing im Mittelalter, Stefan Micheler
Making Money, Terry Pratchett
Going Postal, Terry Pratchett
The Black Jewels Trilogy, by Anne Bishop
Schwuler Osten - Homosexuelle Männer in der DDR, by Kurt Starke
Harvard's Secret Court, by William Wight
Die Stumme Sünde - Homosexualität im Mittelalter, by Brigitte Spreizer
Sodom und Gomorrha - zur Alltagswirklichkeit der Verfolgung Homosexueller im Mittelalter, by Bernd-Ulrich Hergemüller
Guards! Guards! - The Play. Adapted by Stephen Briggs
Wyrd Sisters - The Play, adapted by Stephen Briggs
Thud!, by Terry Pratchett
The Amulet of Samarkand, by Jonathan Stroud
What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel Pool
Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!, by Terry Brooks
Dragonflight, by Anne McCaffrey
The Golem's Eye, by Jonathan Stroud
Ptolemy's Gate, by Jonathan Stroud
Nation, by Terry Pratchett
Men at Arms, by Terry Pratchett
Feet of Clay, by Terry Pratchett
Graceling, by Kristin Cashore <- read this book. You won't regret it.
Fire, by Kristin Cashore
Victorian London, by Liza Picard. In large parts, that is.
Fighting Talk, by James Inglis.
Privilege: A Reader, Michael Kimmel.
John Donne: Selected Letters, by P.M. Oliver (ed.)
John Donne: The Reformed Soul: A Novel, by John Stubbs.
Brown Angels, by Walter Dean Myers <- This is a real treasure.
Push, by Sapphire. Brutal at times, but definitely worth reading!
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, by David Sedaris
Blonde Roots, by Bernadine Evaresto.
The Penguin Book of Modern African Poetry, by Gerard Moore (ed.)
The Princess Bride, by William Goldman
The Nixie's Song, by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
A Giant Problem, by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
The Wyrm King, by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi
The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis
Circle of Magic: Sandry's Book, by Tamora Pierce
Circle of Magic: Tris's Book, by Tamora Pierce
Circle of Magic: Daja's Book, by Tamora Pierce
Circle of Magic: Briar's Book, by Tamora Pierce
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, by Mark Haddon
Lord Chesterfield's Letters to his son, by David Roberts (ed.)
Renaissance Self-Fashioning, by Stephen Greenblatt
The First and Second Dalhousie Manuscripts, Ernest Sullivan (ed.)
When Jeff Comes Home, by Catherine Atkins
Unseen Academicals, by Terry Pratchett.
Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano. <- You need to read this book.

There are more, but I can't seem to remember them right now. Most of them I did not buy but borrowed at various libraries, so it's hard to remember which book I read when.

Current Mood: annoyed

Have a great start into the new year!

I hope that 2010 will treat you kindly.

( Whee, fireworks )

Current Mood: cheerful

It's still snowing. It started yesterday evening, and even though the heating's been on all through the night in the living room, the snow on our skylight is several centimeters thick. It doesn't look as though it's going to stop anytime soon, either. I don't really feel like going to look at the fireworks, I must say.

It's been snowing for hours this morning and I had to traipse through the blizzard to fetch some groceries. Optimistically, I went without a hat, only to wish I had miniature windscreen wipers on my glasses, blegh. I nearly ran into two people on my way to the shops because I couldn't see anything but my feet because snow kept getting behind my glasses. In the end, I got myself a hat and looked like a bullfinch (rather than a bulldyke, snerk) in my red coat, black hat, and greying scarf.

( Snow in the inner city (16) )

Current Mood: cold

Maybe I've come down with a series case of the dumb, but I don't get this show. It does bend over backwards to include a whole rainbow of minorities and then still goes out of its way to still make the straight, white, pretty, able-bodied and cisgendered people, usually males, end up in the main character slots and the administrative roles.

It's like watching a compass needle that's made out of the metal that comprises a white, able-bodied, cisgendered, heterosexual, male audience. In this case, it's been shaken up pretty badly by the presence of so many weird and non-white people, but as each episode progresses, you can watch the WACHM main character overcome adversity! I suppose that the show is meant to satirize this fact (or so I hope), but as a satire of other High School TV shows, it does not do a very good job.

Unless "satire" now means "take the storyline you wanted to write, notice that it's stereotypical, slightly exaggerate the stereotypes, let audience, who also doesn't know what "satire" means, think that your show must be a satire of ... well, something. It's clear that they don't mean this, right? That's why it's so exaggerated. Right?

Well, no. A "satire" is more complex than that. It usually focuses on individual shortcomings of the thing it's meant to satirize and exaggerate them with the goal of exposing these shortcomings. I don't see that done very convicingly in that show. If making fun at other High School stereotypes was not their goal, I don't understand what in this series is supposed to do, apart from trying to get more WACHM viewers interested in their local Glee club, because obviously, that's the only target audience that's represented in a mildly respectful way. If that was the intention, well done! And now piss off!

Stürmen oder schnei'n,
Denn du strahlst ja selber
Wie der Sonnenschein.
Heut ist dein Geburtstag,
Darum feiern wir,
Alle deine Freunde
Freuen sich mit dir,
Alle deine Freunde
Freuen sich mit dir.

Wie schön dass du geboren bist,
Wir hätten dich sonst sehr vermisst.
Wie schön dass wir beisammen sind,
Wir gratulieren dir,

angie_21_237 !

Current Mood: cheerful

The post I made recently on my qualms with the difficulties many Fantasy writers seem to experience while writing female characters resulted in most amazing recommendations from the community I posted it in.

I thought I'd share:

( SF/F books which feature convincing female characters )
... good thing I got a gift certificate for Amazon for Christmas. I don't even know what to buy first. I'll probably start with checking the library for what they yield.

If you have read a Fantasy book, novel or otherwise, which had a particularly convincing female character, please do comment here. I'm really curious as to what people have read and liked when it comes to strong and/or convincing female characters.

Current Mood: cheerful

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 de~~tail
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

Current Mood: bored

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.

Current Mood: calm

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".

Current Mood: annoyed

My day was pretty uneventful, but here goes, anyway.
I got up at around 8:15, having slept in. I showered, went downstairs to read articles for my upcoming exam.
At around 9:30, I went upstairs to see whether there'd be any breakfast together. My brother was still asleep, my grandmother already having breakfast, my mother walking the dog. I went back down again and continued reading.
At 12:30, I went back up to search for my family. My brother had just gotten up and was slouching into the bathroom, and it turned out that my mother was ill. We prepared the raclette grill and cheese, but she felt really ill, so she returned to bed and I hung around, waiting for my family to turn up.
My brother, father and I had lunch together, my grandma having decided she'd prefer eating in her room - she still finds it uncomfortable to eat sitting up for long periods of time, so she preferred lying down quickly afterwards. After lunch, my brother and I tidied up the kitchen, did the laundry, and looked at funny videos together online.
Then, we walked the dog in the melting snow outside, and returned just as the snow had managed to turn my feet into cold, wet icecubes.
An hour later, my father gave me a lift to the station and I returned home. I arrived home at around a quarter past eight and finished my chapter in my literary history. I did some writing and took a few photos with my macro lense.
Long before I fell asleep I lay in the bed, listening to an audio book, relaxing in the dark.

Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
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

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

FREE RICE, the awesome website which offers a vocabulary-related word game and donating rice to people who need it. Check it out!

Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
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

Current Mood: calm

Post the first line of the first post of the month for all twelve months.

January: And the dentist says: Caries under the freaking filling that was in the tooth.

February: Screw the quests there (in Thor Modan).

March: I found this today: The Fantasy Novelist's Exam, by David J. Parker

April: I am practising baking cupcakes because I want to bake Crocky's brass players something nice because they always bake, and my mother's birthday is today and I want to bake her some tasty cupcakes, albeit less chocolatey, because I think she would prefer fruit instead of a chocolate explosion.

May: Another reason to love this city is being woken up by a fifty-piece marching band parading past our window, then the world music type drums of the counter-demonstration coming the other way and making the walls shake, the seeing all our neighbours at once as they're cramming their faces against the windows to catch a glimpse, and holding on to the warm shape of my girlfriend's back as she hangs herself out of the window to catch a glimpse of the band before they vanish around the corner of the street.

June: Having had lots of fun with the Zeit.de version of it, I'm currently playing around with the "EU Profiler".

July: I've been searching for fresh peppermint plants for ages, but even though they always have rosemary and sage in stock our shops never offered any.

August: I found this on YouTube yesterday.

September: Yesterday, Crocky and I went to SeaWorld, and it's a beautiful place.

Oktober: A couple of weeks ago I went on an excursion with a group of hunters from Hamburg to see the wild ponies in Dülmen.

November: At the end of December, Crocky and I are going to get an eigentragene Lebenspartnerschaft.

December: One of the downsides of studying at home is that I get far too distracted.

Current Mood: awake
Current Location: Hannover Mitte

~~~

~~~

Happy Christmas to all of you!

Current Mood: calm

Day 24 → Whatever tickles your fancy
Day 25 → Your day, in great detail
Day 26 → Your week, in great detail
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

Current Mood: bored

I discovered this in this review of Precious, the movie based on Sapphire's novel Push (which is excellent, but I haven't found the time to review it yet) and just wanted to share, because it is hilarious and reminded me of rather too many movies I watched in the past:

Current Mood: amused

The place where I met most of my dear flist, the place where Crocky and I shared our love for HP-related things online.

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
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

Current Mood: nostalgic

120g brown sugar,
120g white sugar (yes, that much. I never use that much, just one of them does the job)
200g margarine
2 eggs (which you don't need)
baking soda (Natrium!)
380f flour
200g chocolate (100g are enough, though).

Bake for 13min at 160-180°C. Very tasty.

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
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

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 20 → A hobbie of yours

Calligraphy. I'm learning roundhand at the moment, and I can do several blackletter fonts (the Schwabacher being my favourite), although I am hopeless at really fancy majuscules.

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
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

On Wednesday, I went around my resolution not to log on during the week apart from on Friday night to have a look at the Frozen Halls, and oh, they were fun. They weren't over as quickly as dungeons are these days, we actually had to make sure and avoid pulling together the entire room and make sure we deal with mobs one group at a time. Fun times.

What made this all the more enjoyable was the fact that Recount decided to die on me and thus I could not even see potentially sucking as I plodded through unknown rooms and fought unknown bosses whom I had only ever read about. Of course we wiped, and of course I died, most annoyingly, because I wasn't quick enough to avoid Ick's poison nova. Twice. The best part about the second time is that I was battle rezzed by our druid just before we wiped. We did make it through the first two dungeons and did not dare doing the third. I did get a nice, shiny souvenir, though.

I've only attempted Halls of Reflection once so far, and I don't really know how anyone can survive that one. Our damage clearly wasn't good enough (me being the best DD with 3.3-3.4k damage - we didn't stand a chance), and I am not sure how our healer managed to heal us without going OOM half-way through. I'm looking forward to doing this with a good healer and good DDs - it's pretty clear what people are supposed to be doing, I'm just not quite clear on how to get there, damage-wise.

Still, I do like this instance, even though it's only because I really enjoyed the Sylvanas sequence - I've had a soft spot for the Banshee queen ever since I first played WarCraft III (not so much a fan of her outfit, though. Even though I loved the new model when it first came out and still think she's very nice-looking, but I don't think her tummy needs to bare to achieve that. And don't get me started on the armour - it looks so uncomfortable).

Also, I love the random dungeon finder tool. I've never had so much fun in dungeons in ages, and it makes emblem collecting really easy. Only the time spent in the queue could be a lot shorter.Still, it means that I've finally got my emerald and ruby void achievement, doing this. Fun.

... And obviously, I like procrastinating as much as ever. I'll go have a very late supper now.

Current Mood: cold

-13°C.

SO COLD. At least there's snow, but it's too cold to enjoy it much, and for some reason, the heating in our bedroom, while doing its best, is not warm enough to heat up the room entirely, which makes our nights very chilly.

( 7 )

Current Mood: cold

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

I am really good at storing insignificant details in my brain for a large amount of time. This is good when it comes to literary analysis, really bad when it comes to fights.

Day 20 → A hobbie 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
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

Current Mood: bored

Day 19 → A talent of yours
Day 20 → A hobbie 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
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

So it's not so bright outside because I overslept due to fluiness, but because of the snow!

I'm glad I don't have to work outside today more than ever. Even inside it's festively chilly around here. Our heating does its best, but it doesn't really succeed in heating our bedroom entirely nonetheless and I'm kept up by the sounds it makes half the night.

( +3 )

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: Hannover, Mitte

I rediscovered this on Youtube today. It's a French children's series from the olden days on the body which I watched religiously. There were series by the same producers on history, inventions, space, and other subjects. They were fun to watch and taught me more about the different jobs the individual parts of the body have for it than any biology lesson I ever had later on.

Current Mood: amused

Profile

Mothwing

Books

January 2022

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Page Summary

DSM-V. Oh shi-
I iz artist
Get out of my brain, please?
5429 so far.
Let's have a dude in a golden suit
I'll shut up about this come the Ides of March
Sign this, please.
The Smurfette Principle
In case you didn't know: Sex and Singing
Dragonriders of Pandora
Hummus
Petition: Berücksichtigung der sexuellen Identität in Artikel 3 GG
Huh.
Haiti in the news
Realität der Diskriminierung in Deutschland - Vermutungen und Fakten
Haiti
Completely useless discovery of the day: Sky.
In which I find out that I am a medicine cat.
More icicles!
herongale: Reality is reality and fiction is fiction
Why can't we all just get alooooong?
Abi 2011
Still excited about the icicles
!!!!!
OMG Icicles!
Now I could do with lordhellebore's "aghast" icon...
50 book challenge 2009
2009
Snow
Glee
Heute kann es regnen,
Book recommendations!
Day 26
Unseen Academicals
I am a bitter Fantasy fan.
Day 25
Day 24
2009: End of the Year Survey
(no subject)
Day 23
(no subject)
Day 22
Day 21
Day 20
Frozen Halls
Ice
Day 19
Day 18
Snow!
Mal was Anspruchvolles...

Style Credit

Style: Fruit Salad for Leftovers by sforzinda

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags

Page generated Monday, March 2nd, 2026 01:26 am

Uton we hycgan hwær we ham agen, ond þonne geþencan hu we þider cumen

Recent Entries

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags