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Went back to being quiet, obviously… it’s predictable, unfortunately, cos summer is when I work ALL THE HOURS. Life is a bit unpredictable rn. My flatmates are horrible. I’m gonna move out, but it may not be until September; I’ve already moved three times in the last twelve months, so I want to (a) have time and energy to find somewhere good to stay and (b) money for moving again, which is… questionable. Although my parents will probably lend me the money if they can, because in addition to the horrible flatmates, there’s black mould in one of the kitchen cupboards. ANYWAY. At the end of May, after moving and Expo, I went back up to ![[profile]](https://imgprx.livejournal.net/dc9b75e1be3558cfd5389c277ae1e9567bc58b2f/aS41JNaOVibnSprQr_1lzVxtmoHSbJjUeSrsjWpVqOkjK032zpobeJHQ7_aMDV-VzJ8Gq3ZG_mlI2GOFiKr9tv1r7GlmPm2ZYyZ_btn9_dM) sodsta’s with him on Monday night. LIVERPOOL YAY <333 ( a good timeCollapse )Gonna do a solo trip to see Ocean’s 8 this afternoon, I think! I want to do something fun and my focus is too scattered for writing. Especially so I can go out and show off the newly redone hair! I missed my sister’s housewarming yesterday to go to A&E. I’m fine, thankfully, but UGH. I was gonna meet her baby-queer flatmate who is apparently desperately in need of older queer role models, lol. (I know. But I’m 28 and a teacher and overall happy, which is sooooo far away from 22-and-unemployed-and-was-recently-kicke d-out-by-parents, which I know from experience.) Let’s do my favourite I’ve-been-away meme: you ask me a question (fannish or RL) and I’ll answer, and also ask you a question that’s somehow related to what you asked me. Then we continue chatting until someone gets bored or forgets to answer :D This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/375262.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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Process & result pics under the cut :D A friend of mine did it for me! Well, friends' boyfriend, but he's definitely a friend now cos he spent hours on this on literally the second day I met him. Which was also the first day of Pride month :DDD GUYS I LOVE IT SO MUCH IT'S SO PRETTY ( it doesn't take an intellectualCollapse )This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/375024.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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HELLO. Okay, so further detail/new info on life/stress since the last post. Life has been CRAZY busy, but I got to the end and I’m on hooolidaaaaaaay yay :D Coming to you from Liverpool, more specifically from sodsta’s sofa. I’m here til Saturday afternoon :DDD Things I did in April and May: find and move into a new place, do a stupidly intense portion of a qualification (and pass!) then find and move into a DIFFERENT new place. Also various social things. ( cut for the extremely boring detailCollapse )Expo was fun :D Saw my faves, met a couple of lovely new people, squeed a whooooole bunch about FFXV. And now sweet relief of being off work, and physically unable to unpack more. So like - stress free! I needed a holiday SO MUCH, and now I get to spend four days hanging out with a bunch of my best beloveds :DDDDD I might do a bit of work for school… or I might just spend four days doing fannish stuff. WHO CAN SAY. This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/374586.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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I have been obsessing about this vote all week. It’s the only thing that could overcome FFXV stuff in my head. This weekend I’m a) moving, and b) seeing several friends I don’t see often c) at London Expo - aka a mini comic con - and then taking the week off. I SO NEED a holiday, and I’m gonna spend five days in Liverpool :D :D :D Staying with my biffle sodsta and seeing his delightful girlfriend S, and the beloved & much-missed creatoremagico and drazzi. Oh, plus I have to pack a bit, then move on Saturday, then unpack, do some laundry probably, and repack for Liverpool before we head off on Monday, while attempting to drink and get down with my bad self as much as possible. So I have lots to think about! Most of it good, if busy. BUT OH MY GOD. Abortion is illegal - including in cases of rape, incest, and serious fetal abnormalities - and punishable by fourteen years in prison in Ireland, which is completely fucking ridiculous. And today that might change. I hope everyone remembers Savita, a woman who died in 2012 because the hospital she was at refused to give her an abortion. (They told her ‘this is a Catholic country’ as she was dying; she was Hindu, and the baby had no chance to live anyway.) Her father and widower have both spoken out during the campaign. My cousin Jacksparrow regularly hosts Irish & Northern Irish people who’ve come over for abortions. I donate to a charity she works with, that helps defray travel and accommodation costs. The most common reason to have an abortion is that you can’t afford it, so having to travel internationally, take time off, and get accommodation - all within a limited time - is obviously a real problem. An estimated 170 000 women have left Ireland for an abortion since 1983. They’re the lucky ones, in many ways, of course. Especially the ones who can have someone with them, to help take care of them afterwards. Up to 2000 women take the abortion pill a year - and that’s bought online, so it can be hard to trust, and sometimes Customs will seize them. Northern Irish people will still be completely fucked over, of course. There are women being prosecuted there; the UN has said it’s an abuse of human rights. It’s a scandal and a shame, that abortion rights are so hideously limited in my own country [meaning within the UK]. But I was at a protest over this a few months ago and there seemed to be some hope that an Irish repeal of the eighth would help. Okay, this post has lost any internal structure it may have had, but I can’t help it. NOT THE CHURCH, NOT THE STATE, WOMEN* MUST DECIDE THEIR FATE * & others who can get pregnant This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/374430.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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Going to see Cursed Child today!!! (It is, I believe, my ninth time. Only three in the last year though, so, y’know, it’s getting better?) This time I’m seeing it with my family, for my dad’s birthday. They managed to get tickets thanks to my nudge (thanks to ![[tumblr.com profile]](https://imgprx.livejournal.net/f5e53aef00b53350d557a5341f32b1a6d1237d77/aS41JNaOVibnSprQr_1lzc5wlkI27NS-_p4fPz5o-wsLurVQ-EvwPGii2SBJE2MqMFuSDIRU_EB_pmZp16wu1w) januarium’s nudge) a year ago, and today’s the day! How they react - and how I react to their reaction - will tell me a lot about whether I should try to get them to take me to see Hamilton (which I’ve seen once already, in previews) for my birthday next February. I love this play a lot! Obvs with CC I have to be more used to people disliking it ;) although I’ve yet to meet a person who saw it onstage without at least kind of liking it. Certainly the reactions from critics and non-fandom fans have been, like, Olivier-award-record-breakingly-positive. I’ve been ramping up emotional energy this week to see my family and spend all day with them, because that can be a bit rough, but right now I’m just like CURSED CHILD AGAIN :D :D :D Plus, the joy of seeing it with people who’re unspoiled! IT’S GONNA BE GREAT. I’m hoping to sit in the middle of my family so I can enjoy their reactions to Various Unnamed Big Moments :D I am a little bit concerned, too, like… okay, so this emotional reaction took a while to form, even if it’s a comparison I saw immediately, but… I’m someone with two siblings, and parents who are good people who tried hard, but were clearly much better at parenting my siblings than me. (I was also a more difficult child.) It wasn’t really like the Harry & Albus situation but like… yeah IDK, seeing Lady Bird with my mum and sisters turned out to be a mistake. WE WILL SEE. I 100000% bet my mum cries at the end. ( cut for spoilers I guessCollapse )This is the LAST TIME with the second cast. Complete coincidence but I’m very pleased. It’s also pretty nice because I wasn’t all that impressed with the second cast the two times I saw them before, but I didn’t think they were awful - it’s exciting to get to see them having had a year to inhabit those roles, without actually having to pay £80 to think, ‘I wish Noma Dumezweni would come back’, lol. CURSED CHILD YOU GUYS (FYI: in general I love disagreement, but this is not the moment to tell me how much you hate it.) This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/374180.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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Still feeling somewhat grumpy and disappointed by the current JKR sitch, but also whatever, the text exists outside the author and I do think this is cool: For some reason I don’t think I’ve ever posted about this theory of mine, so here goes: Harry is much, much more affected by the Sectumsempra scene and what he almost did to Draco Malfoy than he seems. Lest we forget, in the book he moves on amazingly quickly: Snape sends him to get the Prince’s potions book, Harry hides his real one and brings Ron’s, and Snape gives him detention. Harry at this point is literally covered in Draco’s blood, but he’s not thinking about that: he resists getting detention (and feels it’s unfair of Snape to give it to him!) for eviscerating a classmate, because of Quidditch. Even after that, there’s never any indication that Harry feels particularly guilty. He’s upset that the Prince has led him down this path - “as if a beloved pet had turned suddenly savage - what had [the Prince] been thinking” - but that’s not at all the same. He gets a twinge of conscience when someone brings up Draco’s injury but that’s it. It’s definitely not what we’d expect from a hero who’s just committed a very messy near-murder, even if it was unintended. But this is not a criticism of Harry! Or indeed the book. Because I don’t think this is Harry being callous. I think it’s Harry being kind of damaged already and then almost killing a classmate in bloody fashion (with a spell that’s for enemies, and Harry would’ve said Malfoy was his enemy but he didn’t mean this.) I think this is, canonically and concretely, Harry going into complete and utter denial. The denial reading makes sense of what is otherwise a weird lack of guilt. Like, even if you as a reader think Harry is 0% culpable for what happens and could have happened, that’s different from the experience as a person of “I did this thing and then HIS FACE AND BODY WERE SLASHED OPEN AND THERE WAS BLOOD EVERYWHERE.” Especially from a person who often feels guilty for deaths he actively tried to prevent! The Sectumsempra scene is by far the bloodiest in the books, and while Harry’s been through a lot, that’s the first time he ever sees violent injury on that level. But it doesn’t overtly affect him. Draco disappears from his consciousness after the Sectrumsempra scene in a way that’s really weird. We don’t see Draco coming back to class. (We saw that after Buckbeak, so why not now?) We don’t see the first time he and Harry lay eyes on each other after that spell; we don’t know anything about how Draco reacts. No patented Harry-and-Malfoy glares across the House tables at meals. Literally the next time Draco appears in the text after Sectumsempra is the Tower scene, and after a book in which Harry has become “obsessed with Draco Malfoy” that is such a sharp change. But it makes sense: ( Harry is unable to cope with what happened so he’s just ignoring it ferociouslyCollapse )But all of that is significant, I think, but not THE reason why I think denial is the only reading that makes sense. Harry spends most of HBP telling anyone who’ll listen - Arthur Weasley, Lupin, Ron and Hermione, Dumbledore - that Draco Malfoy has become a Death Eater. They all dismiss him. What Harry hears in that bathroom proves that Malfoy has been threatened all year by a man Malfoy believes can kill him, and that he’s working on a project for that threatening person. GEE I WONDER WHO THAT COULD BE. And Harry doesn’t tell anyone! WHAT? ( That really only makes sense if Harry is in deep denialCollapse )Ginny even brings up Draco’s attempted use of Cruciatus as a reason he should be taken seriously as a threat, and that it’s acceptable for Harry to have reacted that way. Harry has spent the whole book up to this point trying to convince people that Draco’s a serious threat, while the others - Ron and Hermione especially - doubted that Voldemort would have made Malfoy a Death Eater. Now there’s explicit discussion about Draco’s use of an Unforgivable - who trained him to do that, hmm? - and whether Draco should be treated as a real threat. And yet in this conversation, Harry somehow doesn’t bring up how he heard Draco actually say that he’s trying to do something, and his life has been threatened if he doesn’t do it! They never even ask Myrtle about it!!! DENIAL. This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/373606.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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Literally on Tuesday night when I couldn’t sleep I wrote a post about this theory I have about Sectumsempra and Harry’s reaction to it, and then before I could post it I saw this and now I have way too much of a sour taste in my mouth. The sexism in Labour (and the left in general) is a problem but you know what’s NOT a solution? Attacking women for being women. Refusing to hate some of the most vulnerable women around or call them “men in dresses” doesn’t make you non-feminist. That’s really the opposite of true. To be clear: I don’t think JKR is some frothing-at-the-mouth queer-hater. I don’t really follow the JKR #discourse but I’ve never seen her do anything I’d describe as queerbaiting. I do think she’s shown time and again (the Native American stuff, the Dumbledore stuff etc) that she is basically the platonic ideal of a certain kind of middle-class white liberal - well-meaning, kind, but ignorant and unwilling to learn. I thought she might’ve got better on trans stuff; I saw a criticism of her for having deleted old transphobic tweets, and I don’t know the story there, but my immediate assumption at the time was that she’d said transphobic stuff and learnt better. That would be a GOOD thing. Apparently not so much. There’s been this really scary rise in transphobic stuff in the papers here in the UK, in the last couple of years, particularly in uncritical reporting of TERFs doing a publicity tour attacking trans women and the myth of kids getting gender-confirmation surgery. The Tories have tried using trans people as human shields in updating the Gender Recognition Act - basically our right-wing leading party plans to make it possible for people to legally transition without medical requirements. Which is fantastic, if probably coming out of a desire to showcase the fluffier side of a party that’s been recently investigated for human rights abuses by the UN over their cuts to disabled people’s benefits. But it’s also unleashed a tsunami of transphobia on the left, and made a bunch of TERFs way more relevant and able to get publicity. JKR hates Corbyn but she’s absolutely a Labour voice, and a relatively prominent one. Certainly she’s a celebrity who takes a definite interest in party politics as well as more general causes. This is probably the most minor way she could indicate a side but it really, really sucks seeing her back this kind of ‘supporting trans women is misogyny’ bullshit :( This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/373206.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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I had a lovely day, but I’ll post about that tomorrow...  Day 11
Share a book/song/movie/tv show/fanwork/etc that changed your life. Leave a comment in this post saying you did it. Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so.This is gonna sound like it’s cheating but I’ve been meaning to post about it for a while, so… Obviously being in fandom has changed my life in innumerable ways - I mean, many of my close or best friends are people I met through fandom. But being in fandom, and especially reading fanfic and meta, has influenced my ethics. A lot. Which sounds terrifying, haha, and the start of some kind of clickbait article about fandom ruining young people - which will definitely become more of a thing as fandom gets ever more mainstream. I was sixteen when I entered fandom and I’m about to turn twenty-eight, so those are some influential years. Now I don’t exactly mean that fandom has influenced what I think is right and wrong - it probably has, but not in any way I could easily unpick, and I suspect that it’s a feedback loop to the extent that it’s true. Like, what I already thought was right and wrong was perhaps settled and entrenched by being in fandom - after all, fandom has lots of disagreements within itself, we’re a bunch of people who often strongly disagree more than a monolith, even when we’re just talking about the smaller communities I’ve been part of within wider fandom. I was already interested in fighting inequality, I already had ideas about responsibility and community-building and kindness in the face of vulnerability, and fandom just gave me new ways to express them and new examples of them. But there has been a change: ( the way fandom looks at characters influences the way I look at peopleCollapse )This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/372720.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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Hello darlings! It’s my birthday today, and I’m not doing anything tonight (it’s a school night, so people couldn’t). It’s been a nice day and a special friend visited last weekend and this weekend is a houseparty and dinner with the family. Still, I’d like some attention :D And I’d like to give you things. Soooo, MEME PARTY. I’m doing three at once, participate as much as you like :D Shag Marry Kill - you can give me three characters, or you can say CONVERSE in comments/as an ask and I’ll give you three (or both). 2. Ask me a question and I’ll answer, and ask you a related question (this is just my default I miss you/getting to know you meme, haha) 3. First ten people who give me a word and a ship (anywhere, this is cross-posted) get a drabble. Fandoms for writing: Final Fantasy XV, Harry Potter, some MCU, Buffy/Angel Fandoms for meme-ing: Final Fantasy XV, Potter, Buffy/Angel, MCU (including TV except for Agents of Shield), Steven Universe, Supergirl, Flash, Glee, Dark Angel, AtLA/Korra, Orphan Black, Doctor Who, White Collar, Black Butler, #6, Pretty Little Liars. Also Diana Wynne Jones books. IDK I'm pretty flexible :D This was originally posted at https://lokifan.dreamwidth.org/372124.html. Comment wherever you like :) | |
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