Comment here, tell me why you want me to friend you and I probably shall, as I am a quite friendly person. There's no guarantee I will, however; if I don't, this may simply mean I don't feel I know you well enough yet. There is some private stuff on this journal which I'd prefer not to have public knowledge (hence it being friends-only.)

If you're here for my fics, I recommend you go to my ficjournal aithris instead; everything I've written (apart from some crud and some half-written things) will soon turn up there. I used to post everything on ishnaru, which I shared with some of my friends, but due to differing fandoms and the fact that I wrote next to nothing so my stuff got buried, I left. I do also have accounts on ff.net, Scimitar Smile, Touka Koukan and various other fic archives; however, I can't guarantee they'll have all my completed fics and apart from here aithris is the only place I'll post WIPs (although a few may show up on Scimitar because of their archiving policy).

I found the stuttering blogosphere yesterday, which is way cool. I thought I was the only one who'd ever had the thought of "the problem isn't with me, it's with the idiots who can't handle someone speaking a bit differently", and although there's still some posts where I feel like a freak for really honestly never having minded (I nowadays lean towards the thought that it is a freakish byproduct of the interplay between AS and a speech disorder, because I honestly seem to be the *only* stutterer ever who did/does not have massive emotional problems with it) there are others where they make fun of idiot theories or talk about the latest research or complain about how people still effing cling to that patronising stereotypical psychological causes bullshit or are righteously angry at the constant peddling of snake-oil miracle cures and the terrible, terrible treatment stuttering gets in the media, which I can definitely get behind.

And it's made me think about this issue more, and just...

I'm sick to death of "Famous stutterers" lists. It's not that it's the same people on each one, that I can by now probably recite one of my own off the top of my head. (Moses, Demosthenes, Aristoteles, Isaac Newton, James Earl Jones, Winston Churchill, Marilyn Monroe, Joe Biden...) It's not that I think it's a bad thing to give a stuttering kid some role models.

It's the fact that every time I've dug a bit (for the modern ones) the story is pretty much the same. Oh, they stuttered loads as a kid! Maybe even an adult!* But then they "managed to overcome it" (invariably resulting in articles about how they with their great Strength Of Will And Character manage to Overcome This Point Of Personal Weakness, which is all nice and well for them but carries some rather unpleasant implications for stutterers in general), or avoided words, or didn't stutter while acting, or put on voices... or maybe, maybe, they still stuttered. A bit. Here and there. Every now and then.

The message I am getting here is not "hey look, even if you stutter you can be a famous person!" The message I am getting is "hey look, even if you stutter you can be a famous person! Er, provided you can somehow hide the stutter so that it's pretty much unnoticeable. What's that you say? More of a severe stutterer? Sorry, you're shit out of luck."

I want an example of a famous figure, a *public* figure, with a genuinely severe stutter. You know, for those of us who stare blankly at discussions about covert stuttering (for those not in the know, stutterers can feel their blocks coming up ahead of time so for a to me surprising amount of people it's possible to avoid bad situations, substitute words on the fly and the like so that they never actually physically stutter at all) because before we did that speech therapy that's been working out quite well we got stuck for twenty seconds or so on our own name every time we introduced ourselves for years and not only is that unavoidable, once people have seen *that* there's really no point in attempting dodges anymore. And I still wasn't anywhere near the far end of the severity spectrum; in the extreme cases, a stutterer is almost mute (people forgetting the beginning of someone's sentence by the time they reach the end). Give me examples of famous people like that, mmkay. Because otherwise, it's just the usual lip service - of course you can do anything a non-stutterer can do! Provided you manage to sound pretty much completely like a non-stutterer, of course.

It's infuriating, and on the one hand this doesn't affect me as much as it could because speech therapy, but on the other I'm still worried whether it'll keep holding up and whether I'll be able to get the necessary practice in (long-term relapse rate after therapy is immense for pretty much all therapies) and of course still furious that I *had* to do it in the first place, because I didn't think I could do a successful academic career with my speech the way it was.

I blame it on the lack of role models.

* Believe it or not, I've heard there's at least one celebrity who stuttered as a kid but where he recovered spontaneously (this happens in 80% of young kids who stutter, so not exactly unusual) is going around calling himself a stutterer. NO YOU ARE NOT, OKAY.

[Note: This is in the context of RaceFail '09, the great debate about racism and cultural appropriation in sf/f that ate fandom. If you haven't run into it yet, here's a good place to start and rydra_wong has ALL the links. I'm aware the amount of stuff there is is overwhelming (I mean, I am linking to a summary of summaries of the situation, jesus), but there is some amazingly powerful and important stuff in there - as well as some amazingly horrible stuff, which is important to know about even if only so that you know which people to never, ever, ever buy books from. See also: No longer reading Making Light.

I was originally completely silent on this, but after a few of the recent posts, and especially the discussion I had here, made me decide I had things to say. At the very least - this is not okay, what has happened is not okay, and I am horrified at the treatment that PoC have endured in this discussion, the astonishingly cruel things I have seen *professionals in the field* and *specialists on subjects like these* do, and the pain that has been experienced. I have got very useful things out of the posts - I am slowly learning the vocabulary to address what I am realising is a very old, deep wound to do with having lived as a German in the US as a kid; I don't know whether this is the right time to talk about it, but it is something I am starting to realise is extremely important for me. I only wish, wish, wish it hadn't been at the cost of so much pain.

Also, outing people is NEVER OKAY.]

( Incidentally, please please tell me if I say something clueless. :( )

...in related news - oi, flist, anyone feel like doing a harsh edit of an original short story? I just realised I have something suitable for verb_noire I've actually been thinking about submitting for publication for ages, but as far as I remember I wrote it at a rather sleep-deprived 4am and I figure it needs rather a lot of cleaning up before it's suitable for public consumption.

Finally, I wonder how well the rydra_wong ninja link-collecting horde works. *waits in anticipation*

So I should *probably* be trying to understand what an unmixed ideal is and look up whether the height of an ideal is the inf of all prime ideals containing it or the sup of all prime ideals it contains...

But I'm not going to, because the Merlin meet was yesterday and I have meta on my mind I've been meaning to post for ages now!

So. Arthur meta.

( Slightly rambly )

...okay, I think I'm done for the moment. My apologies if that seemed a bit inane, but there is just NOT ENOUGH META IN THIS FANDOM and I've been meaning to work against that for yonks.

SO THE LONDON MERLIN MEETUP WAS ENTIRELY AWESOME.

I need to friend tons of people now...

On the downside, I have realised once again just how bloody annoying a speech disorder can be. >< >< I am not keeping up with my exercises, the therapy is not working nearly as well as it should (although still loads better than it was before), this kind of sucks. :(

ETA: This is now public, so people can fiiind meeee. I suppose the advantage of the speech disorder is that I am reasonably easy to identify? :D If it doesn't ring a bell, I was the blonde German girl in the grey hoodie who kept getting hit by chips :(

PS Where are the round robin and the poster going to be posted, anyway?

I should be revising, I know, but I just can't face any more of it at the moment. :( Nearly six hours and I went "nooooo! No more! Have mercy!" - I am weak! Perhaps this post will get me more enthusiastic about algebraic coding again.

( Number theory! )

And, damnit, this is getting long and it is getting late. :/ Number theory is probably going to take a couple of posts since I'm just scratching the beginnings. I really want to talk about RSA, because it is really not particularly far from where I am now and it's a pretty neat massive real-world application of this stuff. If you've ever heard that prime numbers are useful in cryptography, RSA is the reason why. It's a very interesting cryptographic thing - there are plenty of ways to encrypt information, but RSA is what's called public-key cryptography, where you can know how to /encrypt/ a message but not how to decrypt it. It is weirdly counter-intuitive and really, really neat. I'm also not particularly far from my summer project, which I'd like to give a shout-out too because it involved REAL RESEARCH and me producing NEW RESULTS. *is proud*

Incidentally, please tell me how the difficulty level of this stuff is? I have no flipping clue how much people know about primes, integers, gcds and all that fun stuff so I have no idea what I can assume and what not.

...must go do ACT. Must go do ACT. Must go do...

So there is this really cool post on mathematics on FFR and there are a bunch of cool people there and, well, it's occurred to me that I may have been slightly too overcautious in my attitude of "keep the maths away from non-coursemates or they will start screaming and throwing things." Ergo, this post is a test - it is me attempting to explain bits of the subjects for my last three exams and bits of the exams in a way that is actually understandable to my f-list. Please do comment if you decide to read this, even if it's just to say "wtf I didn't understand a word of that", so I can gauge if there's any interest or if I should continue to do my maths posts the way I've done them before - with the expectation that no one will be reading them anyway.

Ooh, and also - five exams down, three to go. I HAVE PASSED THE HALFWAY POINT.

( Mathematical Logic )

I didn't do that well on that exam, I think; we needed to do three questions, and I probably aced the first two and kind of failed at the third one. In particular, for the third one we got to pick one out of two questions and I realised rather too late that I'd picked the wrong one and I actually couldn't do the things I'd assumed I could. Oooops.

(I always pick the wrong questions. It's a thing.)

( Rings and Modules. )

Oh right, last annoying tidbit of the exam was not mathematical at all but still seriously annoying:

If the lecturer says something is nonexaminable in the lectures, I expect it not to be on the exam. I can't actually complain too much, since I went v. v. overboard with the learning (as one does) and copied out that definition, albeit with a little purple squiggle and "Nonex." next to it. (I need to take a photo of some of my notes sometime. Colour-coding is in this year.) It was a pretty simple definition, so it stuck in my head despite that but I think I may have been the only person in the entire course to get that question. FOR OBVIOUS REASONS.

I shall keep number theory for the next post, if anyone's interested. Since number theory is the study of the integers, it will probably be easier to understand than this stuff.

...is anyone interested? ;_;

EDITED to make this public because apparently people who are not even on my f-list are interested! And I think the chances of my RaM prof finding me bitching about him here are about nil.

All right, I'm sorry for the panic - I guess I just tend to melodrama in life-or-death situations! Ha, I never knew that! Due to lack of life or death situations!

The zombies have been driven off, me wrestling my computer back from one. One of the potted plants in the corner was very useful as a weapon, although I don't think it survived. Pity, it was my brother's before he left.

My room is such a mess. There is zombie in the carpet, I don't think I'll ever be able to sleep in my bed again... it's a wonder the computer's still working...

I also tend to fixate on little details, you may notice. Always have, always will. It's easier to talk about how I need to clean the blood and br-brains off the wall than about how there are zombies, what the fuck marching up and down our street and they just invaded my home and we've barred the door and one of them bit me and it really fucking hurts and I can't go to hospital and the wound's all-

Very important question here. Does anyone know how zombie is transferred? I mean, is it contagious? Popular movie-wise, it sounds as if you have to die or be killed by them or something. That means, a bite isn't enough, right? Because, er, I don't want to be a zombie. Really. I like being me, and eating pasta bake and pizza and junk food and not brains. I stuttered on brains before, didn't I? Does that mean I'm starting to crave them? Does that mean I-

Breathe, self. You're not going to turn into a zombie.

I'd ask about the science of zombies now, because really, what the EFF how does that even WORK. But at the moment I can't dredge up much interest.

...I wonder how long our food will hold out.

And I'm /not/ going to turn into a zombie!!

ETA: ...I think this beats my previous record for worst time for plot-bunny ever.

I disinfected the wound with alcohol (OW) and wrapped it in bandages. It might need stitches or something, but... d'you see me getting to hospital now??

ohmygod I can't believe this is actually happening.

IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD! ZOMBIES ARE GOING TO EAT US ALL!

...I love you all. *sniff* I wish we had had more time together. But I'm sorry, I'm doomed. They're already scratching at my door, the lock's gonna brealskgjal;kjwljkgsfldjalkjglawkjelwkejglkawj...

braaaaaaiiiiins.

I have been reading through the FanLib debate and frankly, it scares me.

Mainly, it scares me that people out there are trying to profit from fanfic. I, like probably most other fanfic writers, have a visceral fear of anyone trying to get money via fanfic, because getting money leads to getting sued. If we try to make profit from fanfic, a lot of creators who would've let us do our thing in peace beforehand would be coming down on us like a pack of bricks. YOU DO NOT TRY TO MAKE MONEY FROM FANFIC. This is like rule numero uno in fandom, and just about the only one that's actually followed.

It also scares me because the people running this site are so obviously stupid. They didn't assess their target audience at all, they're acting completely unprofessionally (I mean, they defended themselves to critics with "but we're good people, why are you being mean?". SERIOUSLY). And their idea has some massive loopholes. Nevertomention the fact that as people have been saying, what's up with "getting fanfic into the mainstream?" I'd like fanfic to not be looked down on as much as it is, sure. But that does not equal mainstream. I think trying to make fanfic mainstream is a bad idea, although there are opposing opinions - but the creators of this site clearly didn't do any research. They're just going "let's make fanfic mainstream, all the fanfic writers will kneel down and kiss our feet for it!" Which brings me to the next point...

It also scares me because it's pretty clear they don't care about the writers at all. telesilla wrote a nice analysis of their FAQ (which is now "down for revisions", ahahaha) and the link I gave above has some more links that make clear that they just want to profit... but if a fanfic writer is sued, that writer'll be on their own (not that this will probably work. I repeat the "stupid" part.) They try to come off as caring about the writers and being "one of us", but for the most part it quite blatantly doesn't work and sounds condescending to boot. And the things about the rights to the fic... it's basically a giant scam where they try to make money off our fic. Bad.

And finally, it scares me because some people haven't seen this, because there /are/ already fics up on that site (I'd suggest an e-mailing campaign linking them to that post up there, but I suspect people would be Not Amused and there will always be idiots). And you know why that scares me? Because fanfic is a legal grey area and a lot of people are basically tolerant of it - as long as we try to keep it under wraps and don't try to make money off it. Every once in a while there's a crazy fanfic author who wants to sell her stuff and immediately gets mobbed by the community until she shuts up, so so far it works. But this? This is a massive effort to profit off fanfic. It's not by the writers, sure, but... I am very very afraid that this will tip the balance and that creators will start going after fanfic. Because this shows that all of a sudden, fanfic is a danger to them, people are trying to make money off it. I want the creators and licence holders to these various series to completely come down on FanLib and raze it to the ground with C&D letters so no one tries this crap again. But I am very very afraid they won't stop there.

ETA: Although I am very sad my fear must detract from the hilarity, because those ads? How on earth do you try to market a fanfic archive by this?! Is this like some kind of textbook example of how not to start a new business?

This is something that's been stewing around in my head for ages now and that I actually promised I'd post ages back.

Basically, this is the response to all the times I've found something that I think fits me, decided to share it and had all my friends go "Oh, don't label yourself! Just be yourself!" or similar. Some of you guys did it, but other people did as well; my RL friends, my family, even my bloody therapist (who was usually very good, but sort of let me down there). As a result, this is not aimed at anyone in particular, but just my general response to this type of thing.

( Why I think labelling is not necessarily a bad thing. )

Whew. Comments?

I need to stop starting things when I still need to finish others. And stop writing past midnight. And stop my Lindon fics from mutating into humour, what the eff.

Featuring "Laerion and the Case of the Missing Music", a kind of Silmarillion meets detective story thing where equivalent-of-thirteen-years-old Laerion, a student in the Music Academy, and his reluctant best friend Lindir go hunting for the most famous piece of music ever - Maglor's Noldolantë. In this snippet, Laerion has just been to bother Pengolodh, who got so annoyed he told the boy to go looking for Maglor and ask him.

Laerion is overly literal. This cannot possibly go well.

( 'You know, I think he was being sarcastic.' )

Edited with more; I think that's this section done. :) Some minor issues -

I'm making Lindir look West instead of up ("heavenward", no?) when he's completely exasperated with Laerion. Considering the location of the Valar, this should make sense.

Orgilion is the first day of the Elvish week in Sindarin; it goes Orgilion, Oranor, Orithil, Orgaladhad, Ormenel, Rodyn/Orbelain. (Only six days, yes). Since Orbelain is the day people worship the Valar, I figure it to be kind of the equivalent of our Sunday (although it's Oranor that actually means "Sunday"); in that case, Orgilion would be a kind of Monday. Having assignments to work on over Orbelain and hand in on Orgilion makes sense.

Nainië Nóro is Quenya and means - I hope - "Lament of the land"; I imagine it to be a song Maglor wrote about Beleriand and its being poisoned by Morgoth.

Persephone Kore: *ponders* Are sockpuppets knitted, woven, or crocheted?
Kazaera: XDDD
Kazaera: That question needs to go on fanthropology.
Kazaera: Or on JF somewhere. With all the mess going on
Persephone Kore: *giggles* I have no speculation on it, though.
Kazaera: Maybe that's how we can distinguish the different types of sockpuppet!
(note, the next two comments were simultaneous)
Kazaera: Clearly the knitted sockpuppets are the harmless ones; the fic-journals, the rp-journals.
Persephone Kore: ...So the ones that needle people are knitted?
Kazaera: No, wait, you're right.
Kazaera: It's the crocheted ones that are harmless
Persephone Kore: *ponders* The ones that *really* annoy people, clearly, are often darned.
Kazaera: ...I'm dying over here now...
Persephone Kore: *offers you a warm sock*
Kazaera: can't *breathe* for laughing. I need to quote this somewhere.
Persephone Kore: *giggling* feel free.
Kazaera: I'm bad at puns... I guess the warm and toasty socks would be the ones that flame people? And silk stockings... silk stockings are clearly the Charlotte Lennoxes and Mina de Malfois. You can almost see through to the foot underneath, but the details are obscured.
Persephone Kore: ....Heee! Oh, nice.
Kazaera: Plus, they're *classy*. And elegant. Although I'm pretty sure Mina isn't actually silk but just pretends to be.

At this point we diverged into actual serious conversation. XDD

I want to write something but can't really... most active plot bunny is obnoxiously long and complicated. It's for the "30 Farewells" theme and it's actually demanding thirty. Separate. Farewells. Which is taxing my creativity eversoslightly.
Plus, ill and tired and exhausted and moving in less than a week so why the hell am I not packing. That kind of thing.

Eheheh.

Anyway! Instead, you get an essay. Because I love essaying even if no one ever reads them.[/anvil-sized hint]

( On 'de-Mary-Sueing' a character )

Edited to de-lock, because I like making my essays available to the public. It makes me feel important.

ranith's wonderful Mahjong guide makes me want to do something similar for Doppelkopf, my favouritest card game in all the world which my entire course was addicted to in school (I think I played something like 8-10 games per day for a while there). It's rather tactical and contains a rather large amount of "I think you think I think" double-think style stuff, which takes a bit to get the hang of but which is quite fun (and keeps the game from getting too boring) once you have. It also boasts a crazy amounts of variants, optional rules, optional rules regarding those optional rules, different play styles, regional variations and the like, which I... am not completely well-versed in but do know something about. Finally, it is enormously fun and nearly unknown outside German-speaking areas, and with my crazy amount of experience I think I should be able to put a guide together.

So.

1) Anyone interested?

2) Has anyone seen an online version of this? I've spent most of today googling, but the only thing I liked and managed to download that actually worked was a shareware version that contains annoying pop-ups and doesn't let you customise the rules - which really sucks. The two most popular ones (at least, the ones that keep showing up on the search) both have really annoying animations. :/
And, yanno, I don't think anyone's interested in a guide for a game none of you will be able to play.


And some mahjong! At the moment I keep trying for too complex yakus and failing. Need to do more pinfu - the old standby -, tsumo and riichi for instance rather than going for stuff like ikkitsuukan or sanshoku doujun - which are worth the same anyway if the hand's open and I'd never be able to manage it closed - or chiitoi, which I have never managed before. I also need to quit trying for yakuhai in every single game - it's a good standby, but one can overdo it.
On the positive side, I got chinitsu once. YES!

I spend too much time thinking about this kind of thing.

( Kaz's Bleach-y opinions: In-depth character analysis )

Hime has a new series. This brings her up to, what? There's CdA, F!S, A!S, R!S - then if we count the various spin-offs, like HoS and its spinoffs...
My heard hurts.
Anyway. Hime has a new series. And the plot bunnies are pure evil. Evil, I tell you.
...and I think I broke the unwritten rule of Thou Shalt Not Speculate About Rowan's Mother. Only... not. In other words, crack like whoa!

( Edward Elric stared. )

*waits for tomatoes*

I have birthday fics! OMGYAYSQUEE!! :D

Semi-parental Mustang's Merry Men and cute Ed from maaya1x2. *adores*

Parental Roy-and-Al post-series from jade_pen. Yaaay! :)

Mangaverse ten-year-old!Ed and semi-parental!Roy and cute!armour!Al from kaltia. *GLOMP*

Last but not least, Mathematical Tom Riddle at Hogwarts from persephone_kore. It has the Golden Mean, Pythagoras and the Fibonacci sequence. My inner maths geek has just died of happiness.

*BOUNCE*

And for those of you interested, the eeevil plot bunny fic is up at ishnaru. *throws up again*

It is quarter past midnight.
I am now nineteen years old.

*blink*

For some reason, I don't feel very different.