There's a pretty good Potterfic writer who goes by IP82, who's one of the people that have put together a group to sponsor a post-HBP fic contest for this summer, with actual cash przes, which they are simply calling "Horcrux." While I immediately knew I couldn't be arsed to come up with an entry, thinking about why lead me to two realizations:
1. Voldemort is a Liche. Powerful undead and undying wizard, soul stuck in phylacteries, the works. This isn't the important bit.
2. The important bit is, while she lucked onto an intrigiung setting, JKR isn't very good... maybe 3.5/10 where I count 5/10 as an average paperback that I'll want to keep. HPS is meh, COS a bit better, Azkaban okay but still not a reread, GoF the only one I DID reread, OotP I skipped from Harry's first Occlumency lesson to saving Artur to NEWTs, and that was good, but the other half of the book was too whiny and repetetive to do more than skim a few lines per page. HBP... it would have been more satisfying if the only continuations of the series were the fan writing, because the sixth book puts the canon squarely in Ranma 1/2 territory where even the median level of the Pit of Voles makes canon look bad.
What does all this mean? It means for a post-GoF fic, the possibilities are wide pen, practically anything can be done and any character can be either revealed as a scoundrel or revered as a champion. The fact that this allows for lots of HP/DM slash with Snape as semi-incestuous father figure is simply the price that one must pay for options.
Post OotP, you pretty much have to choose between a Dumbledore who is good and one who is competent, but hey, even the best of us have our failings, and while it might be nice fort Harry to have Sirius around most of the prank-war segments in fics that his presence encourages just piss me off, and a dramatic personality change in Harry is easy to blame on the loss.
The problem with a post HBP fic, is that the greasy git's actions can still be explained away to have him come out a good guy, not just one or two but practically the entire cast of characters have been acting like total morons in terms of actually doing anything about the current state of conflict or preparing to, and the quest for seven plot points is so DAMN overused its not even as good as "pathetic."
I mean, I would rather read about a quest for seven cereal box tops that get sent in for Mecha-Shen-Long... and as IP82 (see, it's related!) pointed out in one of his authors' notes, a Dark Lord who wanted immortality should make one phylactery, (I'm sticking to the word out of real myth, now that I've remembered it) enclose it in a rock, and throw it in the ocean, not putz around with flashy historical trinkets that the good guys can research and easily find in a pile of other stuff due to their distinctiveness. Granted, that breaks the convention that Evil means Stupid, and with the quality of opposition you can't have smart bad guys or they'll win, but that's not a positive factor. So to put it bluntly..
JKR? You fail it!
- CD freely admits to being opinionated and obstinate, but is williong to hear differing opinions with the understanding tat his own is unlikely to changeSERVO: Loook *deeeeply* into my eyes... Tell me, what do you see?
CROW: (hypnotized) A twisted man who wants to inflict his pain upon others.
A kung-fu nun in a leather thong was no less extreme than anything else he had seen that day. - Rev. Dark's IST: Holy Sea World
--
"Anko, what you do in your free time is your own choice. Use it wisely. And if you do not use it wisely, make sure you thoroughly enjoy whatever unwise thing you are doing." - HymnOfRagnorok as Orochimaru at SpaceBattles
woot Med. Eng., verb, 1st & 3rd pers. prsnt. sg. know, knows

You know, those ones where everyone's just a normal person. For example, in Buffyverse the vamps are humans, there's no Slayers, or Witches, or Werewolves. Or in any DC universe, the ones where the JLA are all normal non-powered people who just happen to know each other.
Really, I don't get them. At that point, where you've completely changed the world and the characters that much, isn't it just original fiction? I mean, in a lot of them I've skimmed I could easily replace all the names with random ones pulled from my Spam filter and it'd be a decent OF.
Could someone explain this genre to me? What's the attraction?
Note: This was posted to my LJ, but I realized from the lack of response if I really want to see a discussion on this I need to put it in the right community, aka here.--
Christopher Angel, aka JPublic
The Works of Christopher Angel

I've always heard still waters run deep
And every smile can hide a frown
And you're no exception, I feel it in you
It makes me love you more, it makes me love you more
I hear you talk in your sleep
The words you won't speak
When you're not dreaming,
I hear the secrets you keep
the fears that run deep
That you're still concealing from me
But somehow I see
What you want revealed,
What you want revealed
I've always heard there's more than meets the eye
And I can't take my eyes off you
Ooh, and that connection that binds me to you
It tells me what you are, it tells me who you are
I hear you talk in your sleep
The words you won't speak
When you're not dreaming,
I hear the secrets you keep
the fears that run deep
That you're still concealing from me
But somehow I see
What you want revealed,
What you want revealed,
Ooh, I hear you talk in your sleep
The words you won't speak
When you're not dreaming,
I hear the secrets you keep
the fears that run deep
That you're still concealing from me
But somehow I see
What you want revealed,
What you want revealed

What You Want Revealed, by Tal Bachman.

It's amazing how many "not yet released" songs get played on the CBC. This one was on the 22 July 2006 episode of the show Fuse (which I recorded); Tal Bachman (She's So High) was asked to sing something from his upcoming album, and this is what he chose. His father Randy (of The Guess Who and BTO) played backup guitar for the song. (Yes, they have different musical styles - that's the whole point to Fuse. Tal returned the favour by playing backup guitar when Randy sang White Collar Worker - er, Taking Care of Business.)

Enough about the song - moving to the power... If Doug plays the song just before turning in for the night, he'll know upon waking the next day whatever the closest other sleeper is keeping secret, even if that sleeper is under a psi-lock, geas, or other compulsion to not reveal the information. It won't get information from an amnesiaic, though; the sleeper has to know the secret(s).
It's a love song, so there's that pesky side-effect of infatuation. Just like all the other love songs that grant him powers, the infatuation isn't permanent. However, since the song takes an entire night to work, the infatuation will last for an equivalently long time.
(I don't see Doug playing this one very often. It's something he might use on a Servant Factor victim, but not on a shipwrecked teenager...)

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

I was flicking through the main DW page, when the random quote machine at the top pumped this out:

Eight gods there are I call my own:
Maiden, Warrior, Mother, and Crone,
Moments' Guardian, the Sun and her Bride
And the Witch who soars at lightning's side.

I can pretty much figure out seven of those referenced, but the problem is one of the gods in my mind could realistally fill two positions.

Hum... OK, maybe I have all eight. If anybody wants me to put down my guess for the gods mentioned I will, but you might want a go at it too.

Poor old Dougie Boy; he hates gods normally, but he seems destined to be stuck around a bunch of them for a long time. (Especially since he doesn't age[1] outside his normal[2] universe.)

[1] : Not since the end of DW2 at any rate. Any idea if this will last after Doug gets home?
[2] : OK, maybe I should have used native. No way is the Warriors World universe normal. It has Doug in it for crying out loud.

Did you know Beirut was called the Paris of the Middle East, once?

I happened to be by Parliament Hill this morning. I'd planned to take some photos in order to toss at some international friends of mine, but as it turned out, there was more to photograph than I anticipated.

There was a protest against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. There were, I'd estimate, about 300-400 people there. Some carried Canadian flags, some the flags of Lebanon.

I saw one or two Palestinian flags as well.

People (even Canadians) might not be aware of the fact that Canada actually has a special relationship with Lebanon. In the mid-1970s, during the civil war there, Canada was one of the few countries to adopt special immigration measures to assist Lebanese fleeing the conflict. Later, in 1989, Canada set up an office in Cyprus to help with family reunification and refugee applications. The net result is that Lebanese immigration to Canada exploded; they are easily the largest group of Arab immigrants in Canada, with over a quarter-million living here as of 2002.

This goes both ways. Aside from Sri Lanka, there are more Canadian citizens currently in Lebanon than any other country; estimates range from 40,000 to 50,000, twice as many as the US or France. So it's been quite a concern here since the current conflict exploded.

The protest was peaceful, and bordered a pavilion trying to raise awareness of breast cancer. The people were largely friendly; stirring Lebanese music was played. But they're angry, too, no doubt about that. A speaker up near the Parliament Buildings with a microphone repeatedly called out "Stephen Harper, take a stand! Canadian's blood is on your hands."

I've been following this situation pretty closely in the news. I'm not really making this post to argue for one side or the other. Some issues and crises', I find, are easy to take a firm moral stance on. Some are not. I find this one of the latter. It's easy to understand the plight of the Lebanese civilians who are being harmed or killed by Israeli attacks. It is easy to understand the situation of Israel, who have a chance to cripple Hezbollah permanently. In twenty or thirty years, when it's obvious what the effect of this was, it will be simple to decide what was the right thing to believe. Now, not so much. My girlfriend is Jewish; I watched a woman carrying photos of a niece killed in an Israeli attack. I don't feel like condemning either, nor carrying a sign supporting either country or cause (nor do I necessarily feel either represents a "cause"). This, much like the tragedies in Africa, is a situation that makes one feel sick to one's stomach, but for which there is no clear-cut solution, or even position to take. That is, for me. Clearly, many feel differently.

It's easy to forget, for those of us in the First World, just how incredibly lucky we are to be there. I've been to the Third World, but I still forget that fact sometimes too.

As I said, this isn't really to argue a point. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. But for right now, watching this simply made me thoughtful. Perhaps some of you might find these pictures make you thoughtful too, or that they're just interesting. If not, that's of course fine as well.
Stay safe out there. And remember how lucky you are.

someone on FF.net has posted your "Ranma-chan, Genie of the Ring" on ff.net.
linkie to the evil plagiarist
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

I've been reading so much of Solid Snake's Gundam Seed fics lately that another idea for a story jumped and mugged me yesterday. Distracting me from all my other fics that need completing, darn it...
-----------------------------------------------------------
January 25th, C.E. 71
Heliopolis
Andrew Fitzpatrick sat in the canteen and pulled an old hard-back novel out of his rucksack. The student had received the custom-printed item by secure mail only the day before - and almost a month after the Christmas that the gift was supposed to mark.
Not that he could blame his elder brother for the tardy arrival - the post was irregular due to the war and the postmarks made it clear that it had been sent almost TWO months ago, but to his parent's address and had had to be forwarded on to him. Obviously, the news of Andrew's scholarship to Heliopolis had not reached Martyn Fitzpatrick by the time he had sent the package - news, like mail, crossed the lines between the combatant nations slowly.
Opening the book, Andrew tried to fous on the words inside... and forget about the conflicting loyalties that had placed his siblings on opposite sides of the Bloody Valentine War. What side will I choose, he wondered.
Ensign Eleanor FitzPatrick looked around the stark structure of the factory. It was a grim setting she thought privately, to be the birthplace of hope for the Earth Alliance. Unlike most junior officers of the OMNI Enforcers, she knew the stark truth - the losses being suffered against the PLANTs were horrendous. Every mobile suit felled was costing the lives of half-a-dozen soldiers.
But if the Earth Alliance had it's own suits, in the numbers that their factories could produce, then even a Natural pilot would be far closer to the ability of the Coordinator soldiers... losses would still be serious, she admitted unflinchingly, but greater numbers would at last be enough to turn the tide.
She tried not to admit to herself that the thought of Martyn being able to come home was a welcome one. If ZAFT was defeated then he would have no choice... assuming he survived. But then, it wasn't as if he'd be allowed to serve in combat. With the best of the Coordinators available, her clumsy nerdish brother would have been shunted into a support role - probably shuffling paper somewhere.
And their younger brother... well, without the war, there would not be the parents and siblings of dead soldiers looking to avenge themselves on a convenient Cooordinator.
Martyn FitzPatrick sucked in a lungful of air once his GINN rocketed clear of it's mothership. The physical stress of launching - and of just about everything - hit him harder than most of his comrades.
It would have been easier for his little brother he noted without resentment, but unlike his quixotic elder, Andrew had had the sense to stay out of the war. He would be safe in ORB now, studying engineering in a neutral nation and preparing to rebuild the world once the war was over. Frankly, the news had been a weight off Martyn's shoulders - Blue Cosmos was virtually without a presence in the small Pacific nation, which would leave the FitzPatrick's only Coordinator far safer from prejudice than he had been in their hometown - whatever Eleanor might believe.
The blue and grey suit Martyn piloted was soon joined by others - but not as many as could be carried on the two warships of Team Le Creuset. Some of that capacity had to be reserved for the bounty that the five Elites had gone to fetch from the same 'neutral' nation that played host to the youngest of the three FitzPatrick children.
"What the hell!" Andrew muttered as the entire BUILDING shook. He dropped the book back into his bag and was on his way to his feet when the display screens suspended from the ceiling stopped displaying the latest idol singer and displayed the icon for a Public Service Announcement.
"This is Heliopolis Central Authority," came a voice that sounded rather less proffessional than the usual cultured tones of a government spokesman. "We are declaring a Hazard Level Five. All citizens should proceed to the nearest shelter with despatch. Unidentified Mobile Suits are entering Heliopolis. I repeat, we are declaring a Hazard Level Five..."
Andrew's jaw dropped and he pushed off from the table, slinging his bag over his shoulder. "Alright, you heard the announcement," called an older student. "Everyone out. The nearest shelter is out the main doors and down the stairs to your left - no pushing."
Despite the warmth of the day, Andrew felt a chill. Hazard Level Five was a 'no bullshit' warning, the lowest level where danger could be considered real... rather than a nebulous possibility. And while the mobile suits might be unidentified, only one organisation fielded them.
He followed his fellow students out of the door.
Eleanor groaned and pulled herself up from the floor. The explosion... or explosion? had bowled her over - which might well have saved her life, she noted. One of the gantrys had broken loose and landed across the two containers she'd been walking between. Both containers had been broken open by the falling metal, but the gantry had come to rest with it's edge held about three feet off the ground - low enough to have brained her if she hadn't already been on the floor.
"Are you okay?" asked another of the survivors. Like Eleanor, he wore one of Moergenroete's orange coveralls, but unlike her he was a genuine employee of the manufacturing giant, rather than being a wolf in sheep's clothing.
"Just shaken," she replied.
"Come on," the man ordered, grabbing her wrist. "They're sounding the evacuation alarm - we need to get to the shelters."
Dazed by the shock of the explosions, Eleanor let him draw her away from the factory floor before the badly abused roof gave way and collapsed.
The mobile armors that sallied had brave pilots but they were hopelessly outclassed. In the first moments of the battle, the three GINN suits wiped out every one of the Mistrials that were first to sortie, leaving only a pair of Moebius armors and a lone Moebius Zero to protect their mothership.
Three of the suits bypassed the still reacting defenders, entering the colony itself, leaving Martyn and his wingman Olor to fend for themselves against the armors.
*Three guesses who's in the Zero,* Martyn thought with a grimace. He'd never flown against the Hawk of Endymion - the fighting on the Grimaldi Front had been over months before he was through with flight academy, and he'd as happily have passed up the honor. But that wasn't the deal on offer and he'd just have to cope with it.
First blood was to ZAFT - one of Enforcer pilots was green enough to be sucked into close quarters and his armour was carved in half by Olor. The Hawk and his remaining comrade double-teamed the Coordinator in response and at almost the same moment, Olor's GINN exploded under fire from the Zero's kinetic cannon and the warship trying to leave the port lurched out of control as the M68 recoilless rifle that was Martyn's primary weapon blasted open a magazine and sympathetic explosions cascaded down the ship's structure.
The Moebius was the next to fall - Martyn might not wear the redcoat of an Elite (for the very good reason that he'd graduated at the absolute bottom of his academy class and the very bad reason that he was a Natural) but he had the advantages of more experience with a GINN's capability and a GINN that was better armed than his comrade. The kinetic rifle mounted at the mobile suit's left hip fired three times and the last shot tore through the mobile armor's cockpit.
"One on one..." the young man muttered, dodging the worryingly accurate fire of the gunbarrels. "Crap..."
Running out of the front door of the campus building, Andrew skidded to a halt as he realised that this route to the shelter wouldn't work out - the twenty-metre-tall giant robot using the street outside as a battlefield was in the way.
What sort of place was a college campus for a battle, anyway? he asked himself, momentarily overlaying onto the GINN's location a memory of a few weeks before when a crowd of students had occupied the same street so that they could whack each other with soft plastic replica weapons with abandon.
Four more students came out the door behind him - familiar to him from a few classes but only one of whom he knew in more than passing. "Sai!" he called. "What's the best way out of here?"
The older boy looked around and then pointed down the street towards the factory complex that the college campus overlapped in a few places. "There should be shelters that way!" he replied, shooting a worried look at the towering robot, currently focused on subduing the light armored vehicles that the ORB military had stationed on the colony, more security forces than combat units.
Eleanor was closest to the shelter's entrance when the control panel signalled that someone was trying to enter. "Who's out there?" she asked through the intercom.
"Kira Yamato and a friend," replied a young voice. "Please open the door."
"Two?" asked the Moergenroete who'd brought Eleanor to the shelter. "We're full - if anyone else comes in, the life support will be strained. They should try to reach the left block, there's another shelter there."
Eleanor nodded. "We're already at capacity," she advised Kira. "Is it possible to get to the shelter in the left block?"
There was a pause that left Eleanor wondering how bad it could be that the short distance to the next block could be hazardous, then Kira answered: "At least take one of us, a girl!"
"Okay," Eleanor agreed, opening the locks to the liftshaft. "Good luck."
When the one person lift opened, she wasn't surprised to see the girl was about Andrew's age - she was probably a college student - many of the staff at the college consulted for Moergenroete and it wasn't unusual for students to enter the complex for a firsthand look at the work being done. The young woman was obviously shocked by something and Eleanor gladly gave up her seat to her, sitting on the deck next to the chair, back against the wall.
Outside Heliopolis, a duel was raging between mobile armor and mobile suit - but it wasn't between Mu La Flaga and Martyn Fitzpatrick. The arrival of his commander's CGUE had allowed Martyn to break out of the fight and he had gladly accepted the order to leave the two of them to their duel and assist the ZAFT forces inside the colony cylinder.
Whatever was between La Flaga and Le Creuset, it was obviously a very personal match and Martyn was happy to out of it - he might not have any more insight into how the Hawk of Endymion managed to fight the gunbarrels remotely than anyone else did, but he suspect that the only reason that he'd survived fighting the Alliance's ONLY ace of the war, was sheer luck.
As he descended upon the lushly green terrain of Heliopolis, he saw that luck had not entirely gone their way however. Three suits were radiating the IFF signals carried by the infiltrating pilots to show that they had been captured... no, there was a fourth, off on it's own... but that left at least one prototype in the hands of the Alliance. "Martyn to Yzak," he radioed the lead machine of the little squad that was headed for the port and presumably for the waiting ships outside. "What's the situation?"
Yzak snorted. "Everything's alright at this end. Matthew and Miguel are nursemaiding us out of the colony - as if we need the help. Two suits are still at the factory - Athrun and Rusty went after them."
Martyn glanced at his display and changed course towards the lone captured machine that was just beginning to take off from the ground. "Understood, I'll go give him a little cover."
The sneer in Yzak's voice was quite evident, even over the radio as he signed off with a derisive: "Try not to get in his way, Fitzpatrick."D for Drakensis
Contagious, rampant insanity isnt against the rules.
D for Drakensis

You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.

Since the biggest example of Coordinator's skill seems to be typing speed/comprehension in GINNs...
I wonder what people in GS would think of Nagoto of Suzumiya Haruhi fame's typing speed.

The sky is blue.
That is all.
''We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat
them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.''

-- James Nicoll

Ayiekie said:

Quote:

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Hi, Logan, sweetie?
1) I posted to the General Chatter and Other People's Fanfiction boards within the last week. I'm here because I'm an author whose fanfic got commented on here.
I will now expect your apology for your false accusation.

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Quote:

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2) My first post in this thread was in response to Necratoid, and covered only points he had raised. Before that, Catty and hmelton had already dragged it "off-topic" (because that never happens in a message board, right), as was even said by hmelton.
I will now expect your apology for your false accusation.

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