☞ I went ice skating today. On my still brand new (15-year-old) skates. I lasted maybe ten minutes, fell on my knees once and I’ll probably have sore muscles later. I really am the least sporty person in the world, but maybe the weather lasts a few more days and I can try again.

☞ Rani is fine. Finally. She’s been spayed and her diarrhea is gone, hopefully for good. Since then, she’s been even more active and had a growth spurt during which her weight doubled. She likes to run around like crazy half the day and even toppled over my giant stack of books.

☞ I have an X-Box! And X-Box LIVE account (predictably called rodototal – in case someone knows how the friending thing works), that it took me three hours to set up because the help pages were singularly unhelpful. Yesterday, I tried a shooter for the first time (Crysis 2). I am still very bad at the shooting thing (why do the enemies have to move?), but at least I don’t die all the time in casual mode.

☞ If any of you have recs for Spanish language media or fic, now’s the time to tell me, since exposure has proven to be the most useful for me in learning and I am actually taking a course I don’t want to fail. I know someone on my dwircle recced a TV series with angels and demons a while back. I am also thinking about acquiring a book with poems, maybe Neruda, if the local shops have them. I am also open for comics and series/movies with subtitles (still a beginner, after all).

It's not everyday that your favourite poet dies. Yesterday was that day. The cat toppled over my stack of books as well, so when I got up this morning, I dug my copy of one of her books out of the rubble.

Rest in peace, Wisława Szymborska, and may your poems be remembered forever.

Freude am Schreiben.
Möglichkeit des Erhaltens.
Vergeltung der sterblichen Hand.

As translated into German by Karl Dedecius.

I've been working on these longer than it seems, but here all three prompts are, all on one post:

( I. Usage of other languages in your English fic (foreign characters, emphasis) - getting it wrong/right )

( II. What makes THE movie fandom (big, e.g. XMFC, Inception, Avengers) )

( III. Do you ever come across statements in fic that seem wrong to you, but aren't easily verifiable? )

Deutsch:

Faunblut von Nina Blazon (18.02.11)*
Vom Moorweib und den Weserriesen von Wilko Jäger (30.04.11)*

English:

Bareback by Kit Whitfield (25.09.11)*
Ghost Story - Dresden Files Book Thirteen by Jim Butcher (21.08.11)*
Glimpses by Lynn Flewelling (29.12.11)*
Lustrum by Robert Harris (12.07.11)*
Side Jobs - Stories from the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher (11.02.11)*


I don't know if you remember, but my New Year's Resolutionfor 2011 was to read 24 books. As you can see, that didn't quite work out, maybe due to depression/overmedication. Well, I'll try better in 2012.

☞ Due to RL troubles, I didn't get around to updating yet again. That's especially dumb of me because I have actually been writing fic. lian was kind enough to support me by betaing, so after years of not managing it, I wrote an advent calender (hopefully it's finished soon): Mass Effect Adventskalender 2011. As the name suggests, it's a series of ficlets, written in German, and the fandom is Mass Effect.

☞ While we're on the topic: I am hopelessly addicted to ME. Still. I can't wait for part three. I always thought shooters weren't for me, but I was obviously wrong. The more I play it, the more I think that Male!Shep is dreadfully boring too. Which is probably kind of odd, since Fem!Shep is more or less like Male!Shep, but she still rocks. Maybe it's because of the voice actress, or maybe because she does everything the male version does.

☞ I'm thinking of acquiring an X-Box 360 (mostly because it seems to have most of the games I'd like to play), but since the last gaming console I owned was... ehrm... a Sega Master System, if I'm not mistaken, I have no idea what is most useful or what type of equipment/TV I'd need. Any advice?

☞ I went to the Christmas market in Bremen today. Really late, but I still needed to buy food for the holidays (ramyeon), so of course I had to have fried mushrooms and garlic sauce (my favourite Christmas market food). Which meant I ended up buying manga as well, some paper, a ring that almost fits on my ring fingers and sweets. It's not as if I don't have enough Christmassy food, though. I made mincemeat pies for the first time yesterday, for example.

☞ If anyone has a recipe for marzipan, especially low sugar marzipan, please tell me. I tried to find marzipan for my mother, only to find out that the EU outlawed diet food. Which means my mother now has the choice between no sweets etc. ever or run of the mill sugary stuff she's not supposed to have. I'd rather try to make some on my own and substitute sugar with artificial sweetener or something. My mother loves her marzipan.

☞ Cat news: Rani still has a bit of diarrhea, but she didn't poop anywhere in the last week. She's got E. coli in her bowels (you know, the EHEC stuff), and if the current treatment doesn't help, she'll have to take anti-biotics. She's otherwise healthy, though.

I think I mentioned that I now own a cat already? And at least some of you have already seen her. She's cute, black and called Rani. She's also very into human slaves and beds (meaning me, mostly) and that makes it sort of difficult to type a lot, work on stories or anything useful. I need two arms for that and one is occupied by a dozing cat about 50% of the day. Right now, Rani is dozing on my legs, so I can still not get up, but at least I can type. Oh, and she goes berserk when anyone tries to eat human food near her. I know, I tried. And ended up with a cat in my stew.

Unfortunately, she also has diarrhea. She has had it since I fetched her two weeks ago, and I think it might be getting worse. We went to the vet twice already, but he just gave her something against worms and said it would be fine. The next time, he took her temperature and looked at her teeth, and apparently didn't see anything wrong, so he gave her her shot (which she coped well with). I hope it's just something harmless like food intolerance, but it definitely doesn't help that my first pet, a guinea pig, died a week after we got her. From diarrhea.

So if any of you have any advice: I'm all ears.

( And to save your dwircle, a photo of Rani in her favourite sleeping place behind the cut )

Now I hope that the OTW archive will be a lot like Animexx (which is for fanart and dōjinshi as well, and which is the website of an association), but with less focus on anime fandoms and better rules. I have also been told by someone in the OTW that they want to make it more international than ff.net, which is what I volunteered for. My Thoughts on Yaoi/the OTW by rodo, 13th January 2008

First off, this is not an election post. It is an evaluation of sorts, and an explanation as to why I do not think I can justify working for the OTW for longer if there aren’t some drastic changes. This is not me being dramatic, in fact, I feel rather sober about it all. I did cry over my keyboard, but that’s not why I write it. I did have volunteer burnout, but that was years ago. I just came to realise that within the organisation, I am powerless to express my dissatisfaction on a wider scale, and that my hopes for the OTW will likely never be realised. I can not change that, which is partly due to the communication culture within the organisation, a culture that I am not equipped to deal with.

( 1. Forced Positivity – the OTW’s equivalent of Newspeak )

( 2. What I Came To Achieve and What I Didn’t )

After about four years, here I am, trying to figure out the chances of the OTW becoming what I dreamed of. And I think they are slim. I fought windmills for years and failed. So unless somebody can convince me that there absolutely will be radical changes soon, I don’t think I can justify my continued involvement. Because after four years of development, how can my priority not be an afterthought?

Okay, so I have been silent for ages again. I didn't exactly plan on it, but I kept putting everything off, and other stuff I'm not supposed to talk about, and... well, most of you probably know what it is like.

So, to ease myself back into posting, I'll post some pictures of my Shepard from Mass Effect 2 a great game that I've played way too often, although Rani isn't particularly fond of all the shooting. Rani would be my new miniature panther who is currently running around somewhere, probably trying to catch her persistent stalker (AKA her tail), or begging for human food (which she isn't allowed to eat). So far, she seems to be a powerful anti-depressant. Maybe I'll post a little video with her under flock.

Anyway, lian, I hope you are happy:

( Four Shepard pictures behind the cut. )

Maybe I'll elaborate on me quitting the OTW later, or rather most likely quitting, because I don't see the board doing what I need them to do to stay on. Well, we'll see next month.

I still haven’t finished my current dorama binge (hey, I haven’t even worked my way up to the Chinese and Japanese doramas), so I decided to do a recs post every time I have five series to recommend. I have a type when it comes to series that I do watch, so some elements are bound to repeat themselves. So here are two historical dramas, one about conmen, one about revenge and one about an unlikely couple. Not in that order.

( City Hunter, Iljimae, Oh! My Lady, The Return of Iljimae, Tazza )

☞ I'm sick. I'm a terrible sick person. I'm as whiny as a stereotypical man, only I get way more clingy. So I try to compensate by writing an entry.

☞ My entry for parallelsfic: The Taming of a Crazy Horse (2278 words, fandom: Sungkyunkwan Scandal, pairing: Yong Ha/Jae Shin. I'll repost it once I get around to sorting the epic amount of screencaps I took during the rewatch.

☞ Another series you should definitely be watching is Teen Wolf. You didn't see that one coming, I bet. But seriously, it's good entertainment. Not necessarily intelligent entertainment, but good anyway. It's also definitely a series for girls. There's just no other reason for featuring so many half-naked men. Apart from that: the series plays with your espectations (Lydia!), there's a star-crossed romance, the dumbest main character ever (which is awesome, I promise), a best friend with ADD (<3 Stiles) and decent horror and humour.

And now I'll crawl back into bed and curl up with Ghost Story. Or maybe I'll watch Personal Preference instead. Way too many choices.