Friday Five: Fangirl
1.) What fandom do you center on most? Harry Potter. Someone alert the Lindsayville Department of Useless Questions!
2.) Do you contribute to it much (write fanfiction, draw fanart, participate in online communities and discussions)? I have written HP fic before. I do not write it regularly. I’ve never drawn fanart, though I’ve seen some great stuff. I used to be a huge poster on the Good Ship at the FictionAlley boards, but now I just keep the Good Ship Guidebook. I belong to a HP LJ community, but I’m on a long hiatus. I subscribe to a horrible HP Yahoo!Group as well as HP4GU. School takes up too much time for anything deeper or more frequent.
3.) Do you think that such things are good or harmful to the fandom and why? They can be good and bad. The bad consists mainly in the potential for trolling, flamewars, and legal battles—which can pop up in any fandom, not just HP. The good is that it gives a leg-up to writers and artists. When they, like me, are strapped for creativity and the time it takes to be creative, there’s a huge well of inspiration in any fandom. You can learn how to characterize by learning to convincingly develop someone else’s characters. You learn to draw by taking descriptions of characters and putting your spin on them. The Internet ameliorates the whole process.
4.) Do you think it’s good or harmful for the original creator? Again, both. In the negative column is the tenuous line of copyright and trademark infringement we all must walk. Very few fanfic authors or fanartists seek any kind of money for their work for that very reason. In the positive column, they say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. We do love JKR so. She’d better be looking both ways before she crosses the street for the next year.
5.) Why do you like this fandom in particular? I don’t even have time to get into why I love Harry Potter. That is a mini-essay for another day.
We’re getting down to the wire at work. My “schedule” still bothers me, though, especially on days like today, when I got to Anne Arundel by 9:10am despite the traffic I hit and Chaz didn’t show up until almost 10. It wouldn’t have bothered me if we hadn’t agreed via late-night text message that the “early” Traci had suggested we come in at meant 9am instead of 10 like past Fridays. We had plenty to do, though, so much so that we worked until around 3:30pm without stopping.* (For some reason, just walking around the office for that long in flip-flops left a sore on my foot. I am not pleased.) One boy was trying to decide between our program and one at Salisbury. Since he didn’t reply by today (four days after the reply deadline), we assumed he chose them. Such a shame, since our program is at Maryland and free. I like working with Honors. I’ve gotten to know the people that work there a lot better, and Dr. Thorne is so friendly. On my way to the garage after work, I ran into Jonah, who was biking to the greenhouse his bio-something-or-other job keeps to get vegetables. It was great to see someone from campus again. I love my family, but it’s not the same atmosphere. The atmosphere, the people: that is why I miss school over breaks. Studying can die.
*The non-stop nature of today’s work shift includes the part where neither of us stopped for lunch. I’ve taken up fasting on Fridays as an act of penance. I was stunned to find out that all Fridays of the year are still penitential (I didn’t find out from Moneybags, but he explains it every week, so it’s faster to link to him), so I took up the practice right after Lent. I tried simply abstaining at first, but that didn’t feel particularly penitential, so I went with praying the Stations. Then I started my daily Rosary again, so praying the Stations felt like overkill instead of penance. (It doesn’t feel like a penitential act if I’m forcing myself through it only because I feel like I should, not because it helps me grow in faith.) I think I’m going to stick with fasting, since it’s not tricky while I’m at home. The difficulty shouldn’t be an issue in a Catholic family, but I’m taking that one step at a time.
I finally gave up tolerating my computer issues and contacted Dell Technical Support yesterday. Their response may be very, very good for me, but I don’t want to jinx it, so I won’t go into detail. But if I have to reconstruct my computer life, I will be one unhappy camper.
The CSC boys manage to keep their blog going with alums, despite the trailing-off of Catholic Girl Talk. I should talk to Mary and Lacy about that. I blog, I’m all over the CSC, I’m a girl. I meet the basic qualifications. Maybe Maura would do it with me. I mention them because they (I use the plural not as colloquial incorrect grammar, but because I don’t know all their pseudonyms) made a post today that makes me exceedingly happy. Rejoice with me, my fellow opponents of debate.
The SS. Peter and Paul issue of Dappled Things is up. Dappled Things is a magazine (thus far only online) for young Catholic adult writers and artists, as the title and issue date would suggest. I haven’t had much time to look into it (darn school), but there’s been some beautiful poetry and artwork. This month has an essay on Measure for Measure, of which, if you heard me talk about my Shakespeare class, you will know I am particularly fond.
I stumbled across the Missionaries of the Eucharist blog sometime this past week. They are a group of college students walking from Maine back down to D.C. to raise awareness about pro-life opinion and JPII’s Theology of the Body. In addition, five of them are students from Maryland, two of whom are CDA officers, including our regent! It’s a good read, especially since I know so many of the walkers/bloggers personally. I might even join them for a bit when they reach D.C. next month (August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration). That’s still up in the air, though. I manage quite well by being non-confrontational.
Tags: Catholicism, Harry Potter
