(no subject)

[labellementeuse]

Here are some of the things I have been reading instead of studying for my Linguistics test next week:

Don't Delete (try the random user function.) If you haven't heard that this week AOL released the search logs of 500,000 users over a period of two months, the rundown (from Public Address, a NZ blogging group) is pretty clear on why this is a Bad Thing. (Interestingly I believe Google recently refused to give the same kind of information to something in the US gvt, and their legal right not to dop so was upheld in court. I believe, anyway, but can no longer find where I read this. Still and all...) Don't Delete makes the data userfriendly, which is kind of like compounding the problem (the idea is apparently to find search records that make the user identifiable, and then contact AOL to get them to remove said user.) On the other hand, the random user function is really kind of fun, and occasionally very interesting.

via blythely, Plagiarism scandals at Ohio University, featuring a kind of horrifying amount of plagiarism in the Engineering dept at said university. Entertaining in its similarities to that other plagiarism scandal; on the other hand, I didn't find one of the people involved (a professor & supervisor who supervised a large number of plagiarised theses) being quoted as saying "at any university, at any department, I think you would find the same[,]" very amusing at all. What I really want to say is maybe at any other Engineering department, since those dudes can't write to save their lives, and that this is the responsibility of an education system that fails to adequately value communication skills... but even that I don't think is really true. Plagiarism is everywhere, sure. On this scale, at that level? No, that's unusual.

(It's worth noting two things: one, most of the plagiarism found was in introduction sections, which, as someone pointed out, are not very highly valued. I mean, in an arts essay the introduction is kind of like the keystone, but maybe for eng students it's different... And also, I'm aware most education systems force students to do some kind of english credits. However, there is no attempt to show students why this is important, leading to my quite bright brother saying "English is so pointless! I mean, essays are such a waste of time" and my mother and I having noisy heart attacks at the dinner table. Avoid horrifying your family members! Understand the beauty of the essay!)

via dduane, an outsider's perspective on Lumos 2006, mostly good for being rage-inducing. I seethed about it for half an hour and have now run out of steam, but if anyone wishes to discuss it... *points to comment link* Yeah, I wanna.

Also extremely excellent for wasting time: Quite Interesting clips on YouTube. Stephen Fry hosts a game show where points are awarded not for correct answers but for interesting ones. Extremely, extremely funny, featuring British stand-up comedians. Occasionally obscene so, you know, watch out for that, but hilarious.

Comments

[allasomething.livejournal.com]

Personally, I steer totally clear of fan fiction - most of the time. I think I have read a total of two, maybe three, _ever_. I've never really understood it - most of what I've read never seems to be true to the characters. More to the point - I've never understood the point of slash fiction. Why is it necessary?


(Although, I have to admit some of the pairings that people come up with are hilarious - such as the Nita/Ponch or ... there was one other, but I've forgotten, from when the ships got out of control on YW.net)

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

Some of it's *awful*. Mind-numbingly, brain-breakingly bad. But some of it is so good you wish that the writers of the show/book/whatever had that sort of creativity. Have you ever read The Candle That Burns The Brightest (http://community.livejournal.com/dwfiction/35584.html?style=mine) for Doctor Who? It's the story they would have written in The Parting of the Ways if they'd had enough time.

*shrugs* slash is just the same as wanting to pair any two other characters because you think they'd be good together. Some of it is born because of a lack of female characters, some of it comes from the equation of hot + hot = double hot, and some of it's just weird.

If you think that's odd try Harry Potter, where every possible (and I do mean every possibly, up to and including the giant squid) has a 'ship and support group. It's all just fun really. :)

[allasomething.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know the Harry Potter pairings are strange. I used to participate a lot in the fandom - before all that started happening. You know, back when it was a kids story...

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Fanfiction is.... not an acquired taste, but it's something that some people just aren't interested. Which is fine. As blademistress said, some of it is shockingly awful, some of it is amazingly wonderful. But as for what's the point of it? - it's fun. Sometimes it's hot. Sometimes it's funny. Sometimes it's a way of finding out something new about a character, or interpreting their behaviour through a certain lens. Sometimes it's about going where canon won't - like Tom/Carl, for example. There is no possible way T/C will ever become canonical. But I think a significant proportion of the fandom thinks they're doing it anyway.

I don't really get what you mean when you ask why slash fiction is "necessary". No fanfiction is really necessary; nor are a lot of novels. But people write slash for the same reason people write het: to explore relationships, because it's hot, because there seems to be canonical support for it (I'm thinking particularly of Tom/Carl here. Even if you don't believe in it, there is undeniable support for it in canon), because there are no girls... whatever.

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Oh, I thought of another example. Have you seen Smallville? Because that show would make a *lot* more sense if Lex and Clark were doing it. It is absolutely *thick* with the most typical slashy vibe - the "buddy slash" - and I don't think you can really avoid it.

Also, there is a really, really fantastic essay by thebratqueen called What is Slash? (http://trickster.org/symposium/symp139.html) which is a really, really fantastic explanation. If you're honestly curious I highly recommend it.

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

Wow, that article. Way to have a non-biased point of view.

I think what's pissing me off the most is the underlying theme of "there is literature, and then there is Harry Potter" that underscores it all. Why can you read more into Hemmingway than Rowling? Hemmingway's Feista: The Sun Also Rises has a million jokes about dicks, has a writing style that's spartan to be kind, and ultimately has little to tell but the story of displacement. But he's more of a writer because his target was an adult market?

Right.

What I want to know is how she managed to pick, out of 1200 people, all the ones who come off slightly odd.

Also: find me a fandom that's male-dominated and not Animie and I'll be very impressed. (Or gaming. Gaming's sort of different.)

[allasomething.livejournal.com]

"What I want to know is how she managed to pick, out of 1200 people, all the ones who come off slightly odd. "

Look for the people who've put the most effort into their costumes, and ignore everyone else?

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

...yeah, actually. That would work. Heh.

[allasomething.livejournal.com]

oh, and that fanfic was good :) Its gems like that that make me change my mind for a short while, anyway :)

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

Yay! There's some seriously good stuff for Doctor Who especially... hmm, how to put it, if you don't see Ten/Rose as a terribly healthy relationship. Great fun.

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

Not that Nine/Rose was really that much healthier, with Nine's genocidal survivor's guilt and manipulating Rose into picking him over her family. But that's the great thing about both Nine/Rose and Ten/Rose - you can write fic running the gamut from fairly sweet and normal with darker undertones to completely screwed up, and it all fits into what we see on screen.

Personally, I think the best bit is Doctor/Rose/Jack, but there you go. :P

[blademistress.livejournal.com]

Definitely. Nine/Rose was just more obvious about it, and I feel when watching Nine Rose has a little more power in the relationship because she's *everything* to him. Ten/Rose is just as fucked up, but became a sort of "he can do no wrong" thing. Freaky.

Jack! Jack fits into any pairing. Gosh I cannot wait for Torchwood :)

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

think what's pissing me off the most is the underlying theme of "there is literature, and then there is Harry Potter" that underscores it all.

That bothers me, too, but I can tolerate it (especially because that woman professor so clearly thinks she's a total idiot.) What really pisses me off is the ingrained sexism - "the Complex Trope of Female Delusion" my ass.

Also I'm not to pleased with the way she treats it as a kind of freak show. People go to cons so they can talk about slash and het and Snape and Hermione and whatever they want to without being judged. it's a safe space for discussion. And then this woman comes through and, you know, judges and judges and mocks and. Arg.

re male domination: Well, old-school comics and Docto Who fandoms are pretty heavily male. But there's a huge upswing in the number of female fans over the last few years; and the old boys tend to get pretty pissy about it, too. :P There's a tendency to keep the women-driven fandom away from the boy-driven fandom.

[kitsunerei88]

"I listen to a sub-GCSE level Lacanian critique and then 'Comrade Potter: A Marxist Reading' in which the speaker claims that a Nimbus 2000 broomstick is 'coveted not because of its usefulness but because of the value assigned to it by society'."

Ironically, that makes a lot of sense to me. . .

[labellementeuse.livejournal.com]

Me, too. And she's all "Even I know that isn't true!" Well, actually, honey, you haven't read the damn books and you don't know what you're talking about.

[kitsunerei88]

yeah. . . ^^

ACtually, I think the level of writing in the Harry Potter book have gone up as the main characters age. . . ^^ but that's just me.

As for her implying that Harry Potter can't be literature because it's a children's book is kind of silly: After all, Alice in Wonderland is considered a classic. Narnia is considered classic literature. It's sort of like saying Albert Camus can't be a philosopher because he writes in French and uses REALLY simplistic language. After all, I read Les Justes and understood all of it - it's incredibly simple language.

As for the plagiarism thing:

In Canada, we're required to take English all the way through, and then we need to take 2.0 essay courses in university. A lot of people are really against it, and I knew a lot of those people (because i took the same math and science classes as them) who thought it was a complete waste of time. There's no real point arguing with them about the beauty of Hamlet or something (Which, as far as I'm concerned, is just about the best Shakespeare play EVERRRRR), because they'll never get it. To them, it's just a waste of a course they could have used to take a third math class or something. . . ^^ I don't really know where I'm going with it, because I really enjoyed English when I took it, but I still hate writing essays. It's just not my thing.

[mandor700.livejournal.com]

I like how the top search term is 'google'