My family suffered a loss this week. My step-grandmother died yesterday afternoon. She was in the hospital for a couple of days due to a possible overdose on her pain medications and a heart attack. Her body just gave out.
A death usually brings out all types of emotions, depending on the connection you had with the person. I have been to at least four funerals and I never feel the least bit sad. I never cry or anything. I know people grieve in their own way but I always feel awful for not being more depressed or whatever. It’s like I’m breaking an unspoken rule.
Despite it all, this is the first time I’ve felt motivated to pick up a pen and write in weeks. I feel like being productive: editing, submitting and writing. I just find it odd, but I’m sure it’s a healthy way of dealing with loss, right?
GDH has been given a one-year grace period by the Tokyo Stock Exchange, to improve its finances under threat of being delisted from the Exchange. In the meantime, the company and its subsidiaries, the Gonzo anime studio and the GONZO Rosso Online game studio, continue their normal operations.
FUNimation Entertainment and YouTube announce a new Strike Content Agreement creating a "branded channel" on the video-sharing site. There will be promotional material, trailers, and streaming of complete episodes of some oldies-but-goodies, as well as episodes from upcoming series.
The Mystery of the Fic Exchange
Written by Gargantua Stormcaller
Monday, 30 June 2008
I am an avid reader of fanfiction, but it was only when I started work on Lucent Dusk that I began to visit various
communities on the web that surround fandoms. While I was browsing the Doctor Who LiveJournal community
Time & Chips, I saw a post regarding a fic exchange. Being the
curious sort, I clicked over and discovered an entire world of squee.
Simply put, a fic exchange is where you are requested to write a story for someone else guided by list of specific
criteria. At the same time, someone else is writing a fic that meets your criteria. It is an absolutely brilliant idea! Of
course, the actual implementation is more complicated than it first appears, and I applaud those who have the patience and
sheer determination to put something like this together. The moderator must gather information on the participants,
specifically what type of fics they can and are willing to write, as well as what type of story they want written. All this
information must be processed and matched before the deadline so each participant is well aware of his or her assignment.
I have traversed the length and breadth of the fanfic landscape (I read a lot of fanfiction) in my quest for
quality reading about the characters I love. Sometimes I trek across rolling green meadows filled with wonderful prose and
characterization. Other times I find myself struggling to plow through the stagnant Swamp of Out-Of-Characterness, the arid
Desert of Bad Grammar, and the Treacherous Mountain of the Non-sensical Plot.
During my extensive travels, I have discovered many common pitfalls of fanfiction. These massive holes can easily pull a
fic from the elevated level of "good reading" into the depths of "don't touch with a ten-foot pole". Any connoisseur of
fanfiction need only spend a few moments reviewing the majority of works submitted to Fanfiction.net to view a whole host of deadly traps.
This list presents the most common missteps in fanfiction that I have encountered in no particular order. Any one of
these will cause me to hit the 'X' button faster than you can blink. If anyone else has a faux pas that should be added to
the list, feel free to speak up!
This time we are getting up close and personal and fanfic author Emania. A consummate author since the age of 3, she has written fics for the Sailor Moon, Inuyasha, and Teen Titans fandoms. Read on to hear what she has to say about reading, writing, and the lessons one can learn from the enjoying the works of others.
