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olderthannetfic · 4 years ago

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It's really surprising that you're so well versed in older fandoms and yet participate in new popular ones (that cdrama, kpop) is this by design? Im in my twenties and my interest turnover is already way slower than it used to be

You know, that’s a really interesting question. I wouldn’t say it’s by design exactly in that I do tend to just follow what strikes my fancy, and I can’t force myself to want to write fic for just anything. (I find it easier to like reading fic without serious involuntary emotional investment, but writing takes more. Vidding I can do on command most of the time, but I don’t usually bother unless I have a lot of feels or I’m fulfilling someone’s prompt.)

However, me getting into BTS was 100% due to me wanting to understand BTS enough to explain to people who weren’t very interested but wanted to know what was going on in fandom lately. Under normal circumstances, I run the dance party at Escapade, the oldest extant slash con. We borrowed vividcon’s thing of playing fanvids on the wall--all of them set to dance music--as the soundtrack for the dance party. This means I’m creating a 3-hour mixtape of fannishness, which has amazing potential to make people feel in the know about Fandom Today... and equal potential to make them feel alienated if nothing they care about shows up. Only about 100-150 people attend the con, so it really is possible to make a playlist that feels inclusive yet informative--it just takes a huge amount of work.

Every year, I do a lot of research on which fandoms are getting big and look for vids from vidders people won’t have heard of, so there is an element of consciously trying to keep up with things. Generally, I only get into these fandoms myself if I had no idea what they were and then suddenly, oops, they’re my kryptonite, like the buddy cop android plot in Detroit: Become Human, which sucked me in hard for like 6 months on the basis of a vid.

(So if you’re into cross-fandom meta and associated stuff as one of your fannish interests, you tend to have broader knowledge of different fandoms, old and new, than if you’re just looking for the next place you’ll read fic. It’s also easier to love vids for unfamiliar things than fic.)

But though I was only looking for a basic primer on BTS, BTS has 7 members with multiple names and no clear juggernaut pairing, not to mention that AU that runs through the music videos and lots of other context to explain. The barrier to understanding WTF was going on at all was high enough that to know enough to explain, I had to be thoroughly exposed... And once I was over that hurdle, oops, I had a fandom.

In terms of old vs. new, here’s the thing: kpop fandoms in English and c-drama fandoms in English right now feel a lot like anime fandom in English did in the early 00s. I had a Buddy Cops of the 70s phase in the middle, but my current fannishness is actually a return to my older fannishness in many ways.

What do I mean about them being similar?

Yes, I know some wanker will show up to say I think China, Korea, and Japan are indistinguishable, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the way that I used to routinely meet Italian and French and German fans, Argentinian and Mexican, Malaysian and Indonesian and Filipino too. English-language fandom of SPN or MCU may have all those fans from all those countries, but it feels very American most of the time. English-language fandom of a non-English-language canon is more overtly about using English as a lingua franca.

It also tends to attract people who as a sideline to their fannishness are getting into language learning and translation, which are my other passion in life after fanworks fandom. (I speak only English and Spanish and a bit of Japanese, but I’ve studied German, French, Russian, Mandarin, Old English, and now Korean.)

Nerds arguing about methods of language learning and which textbooks are good and why is my jam. This is all over the place in English-language fandoms of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean media. Those fandoms also tend to be full of speakers coming from a Germanic or Romance languages background who face similar hurdles in learning these languages. (In other words, if you’re a native Japanese speaker trying to learn Korean, the parts that will be hard for you are different than if you’re an English speaker, but you’re also usually not doing fandom in English.)

There’s also an element of scarcity and difficulty of access and a communal attempt to construct a canon (in the other sense) of stuff from that country that pertains to one’s fannishness. So, for example, a primer explaining the genre of xianxia is highly relevant to being a n00b Untamed fan, but just any old thing about China is not. A c-drama adapted from a danmei webnovel is perhaps part of the new pantheon of Chinese shit we’re all getting into, but just any old drama from decades ago is probably not... unless it’s a genre precursor to something else we care about. Another aspect here is that while Stuff I Can Access As A N00b Who Doesn’t Speak The Language may be relatively scarce, there’s a vast, vast wealth of stuff that exists.

This is what it felt like to be an anime fan in the US in 2000. As translation got more commercial and more crappy series were licensed and dumped onto an already glutted market, the vibe changed. No longer were fans desperately trying to learn enough of the language to translate or spending their time cataloguing what existed or making fanworks about a show they stuck with for a bit: the overall community focus turned to an endless race of consumption to keep up with all of the latest releases. That’s a perfectly valid way of being fannish, but if I wanted that, I’d binge US television 24/7.

Anime fandom got bigger, but what I liked about anime fandom in English died, and I moved on. (Okay, I first moved on to Onmyouji, which is a live action Japanese thing, but still.)

Hardcore weeaboos and now fans of Chinese and Korean stuff don’t stop at language: people get excited about cooking, my other other great passion. Times a thousand if the canon is something like The Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty, which is full of loving shots of food preparation. People get excited about history! Mandarin and Japanese may share almost nothing in terms of grammar or phonology, but all of East Asia has influence from specific Chinese power centers historically, and there are commonalities to historical architecture and clothing that I love.

I fell out of love with the popular anime art styles as they changed, and I’m not that into animation in general these days. (I still own a shitton of manga in art styles I like, like Okano Reiko’s Onmyouji series.) I’ve become a filmmaker over the last decade, and I’m very excited about beautiful cinematography and editing. With one thing and another, I’m probably not going to get back into anime fandom, but it’s lovely to revisit the cultural aspects I enjoyed about it via live-action media.

BTS surprised me too, to be honest. I really dislike that early 90s R&B ballad style that infests idol music (not just Korean--believe me, I resisted many rounds of “But Johnny’s Entertainment though!” back in the day). While I like some of the dance pop, I just don’t care. But OH NO, BTS turn out to be massive conscious hip hop fanboys, and their music sounds different. I have some tl;dr about my reactions in the meta I wrote about one of my fanvids, which you can find on Dreamwidth here.

But back to your comment about turnover: I know fans from the 70s who’ve had one great fannish love and that’s it and more who were like that but eventually moved on to a second or third. They’re... really fannishly monogamous in a way I find hard to comprehend. It was the norm long ago, but even by the 90s when far more people were getting into fandom, it was seen as a little weird. By now, with exponentially more people in fandom, it’s almost unheard of. I think those fans still exist, even as new people joining, but we don’t notice them. They were always rare, but in the past, only people like that had the stamina to get over the barriers to entry and actually become the people who made zines or were willing to be visibly into fanfic in eras when that was seen as really weird. On top of that, there’s an element of me, us, judging the past by what’s left: only people with an intense and often single passion are visible because other people either drifted away or have seamlessly disappeared into some modern fandom. They don’t say they’re 80 or 60 or 40 instead of 20, so nobody knows.

In general, I’m a small fandoms and rare ships person. My brain will do its best to thwart me by liking whatever has no fic even in a big fic fandom... (Except BTS because there is literally fic for any combination of them, like even more than for the likes of MCU. Wow. Best fandom evar!) So I have an incentive to not get complacent and just stick with one fandom because I would very soon have no ability to be in fandom at all.

My appetite for Consuming All The Things has slowed way down, but it also goes in waves, and a lot of what I’m consuming is what I did back in 2000: journal articles and the limited range of English-language books on the history of m/m sex and romance in East Asia. It’s not so much that I have a million fandoms as that I’m watching a few shows as an expression of my interest in East Asian costume dramas and East Asian history generally.

I do like to sit with one thing and experience it deeply rather than moving on quickly, but the surface expression of this has changed depending on whether I’m more into writing fic or more into doing research or something else.

But yes, I do do a certain amount of trying to stay current, often as a part of research for fandom meta or to help other people know what’s going on. Having a sense of what’s big doesn’t automatically mean getting into all those things, but I think some fans who are older-in-fandom and/or older-in-years stop being open to even hearing what’s new. And if you’ve never heard of it, you’ll never know if you might have liked it.

#fandom meta #fandom history #Anonymous

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jeidafei · 6 years ago

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D.Gray-Man Chapter 231 Translation Notes

Hi DGMers! jeidafei from Kougeki Scans here. I’m a total newbie to scanlation and I’ve never made my own note before. However, I’ve read all THREE versions of the DGM translation for reference, (This just goes to show this fandom’s undying love for the subject matter) and noticed some discrepancies between scan groups...

Not to say who is wrong or right, as translators are also humans (unless AI got over its Google Translate phase and take over our jobs someday!) with different experiences and backgrounds, and as such there is no such thing as right or wrong in a translation.

So, in addition to my translation, I would also like to give readers the opportunity to interpret things freely without the language barrier as well, and maybe share some of my knowledge regarding Japan and the Japanese language accumulated from over a decade of learning Japanese (mostly through D.Gray-Man and Ghibli animes XD) and around three years of living, studying and working full-time in Japan.

1. “生々流転” (seiseiruten or shoujouruten)

The cover art is mind-blowingly beautiful this time. So much so that I’ve been secretly wondering whether Hoshino-sensei spent even more time on the cover than the actual content itself and that’s why we have 20 instead of, like, 40 pages.

Anyway, it also gives us this little conundrum...

@panthaleia has already done a marvelous analysis here and you should check it out! so I won’t be going into details much; I would just like to give you a definition and leave it to your imagination. I admit I’m pretty much stumped by this as it isn’t clear what exactly Hoshino-sensei is referring to by this concept.

Japanese culture and language takes heavy influence from Chinese since ancient times, and there are plenty of these four-letter Chinese idioms in daily use, called 四字熟語 (Yojijukugo), some of which can be challenging for non-native learnersーand even the Japanese themselvesーto fully grasp its concept, considering the wealth of yojijukugo-themed dictionaries and games published in Japan.

The Japanese definition of 生々流転 goes as follows:

すべての物は絶えず生まれては変化し、移り変わっていくこと。▽「生生」は物が次々と生まれ育つこと。「流転」は物事が止まることなく移り変わっていく意。「生生」は「しょうじょう」とも読む。 (source)

A compilative translation of the above and other versions in the source would be nothing is unchanging; all existence is born, constantly changes (and dies) in a cycle that repeats itself endlessly. The emphasis seems to be put on the term of “constant change” and the “neverending cycle” of all existence, rather than the birth and death of living beings, however, and thus I believe my own and Mangastream’s translation of it as “Circle of Life” may not be comprehensive of what Hoshino-sensei is trying to convey.

In my opinion, it could either be interpreted literally to mean the cycle and flow of energy and soul-force that Past!Allen had mentioned to Nea all those years ago, or considering the plot of the current chapter it can also refer to the story coming full circle and returning to the point of its birth, by taking Allen back to Eddystone...Edinston...Edinburgh...Edinsーargh dammit I give upーwhere his story began with his meeting with Mana Walker.

Speaking of which...

2. The Town Where Allen Began

Mangastream called it Eddingston. Starbuds called it Edinston. The D.Gray Wikia adopted Edinstown and that’s what I decided to go with for now.

However, the actual Japanese text is エディンストン, phonetically E-din-su-ton. Thus, the most phonetically accurate would probably be Starbuds’ Edinston. Edinstown can be transliterated back into Japanese as エディンスタウン, whereas Eddingston would probably be エッディングストン to the Japanese folk (I’ve highlighted the difference in spelling).

There you go! Now y’all can call it whichever way you want!

3. Why is Allen so alarmed?

Right after Mana said that he draws all those little “I am here”s like a street graffiti punk so God would be able to find him, Allen looked as if he had recalled something significant. Seeing as Allen is about to tell the tale of his beginnings, this would probably be clarified in the next chapter. However, in my opinion, Mana saying “so he would be able to find me” is reminiscent of this sentence back in Reverse: Lost Fragment of Snow:

Back when he still remembers Nea and his purpose of searching for him, Mana was taking every measure to make sure Nea recognizes him, as he now looks different from his 17-year-old self. Sure, Mana might actually be referring to God this time as he said it; we’d never know until the next chapter at the least, but the memory of Mana’s words back at the circus must have been what shook Allen to the core.

4. はじまり

The term はじまり (hajimari) or “the beginning” seems to be the central theme in this chapter; appearing on the cover page, the first page and the last page of last chapter, emphasizing the fact that both Allen and the plot has now come full circle and returned to where “Allen” began.

This cliffhanger freaks me out though, as I couldn’t see how Hoshino-sensei could tell Allen’s story without repeating Reverse: Lost Fragment of Snow, as that is stated to be the story of how Allen came to be:

Anyway, my fear and frustration of waiting-six-months-for-new-developments aside, hajimari is a very popular to the point of cliched concept in Japan, in my opinion. If you go to karaoke in Japan and type in hajimari in the machine, it would come up with a SH*T TON of songs containing hajimari in the song name, with hajimari no uta (The song of beginnings) and hajimari no basho (The place where it all began, which is also mentioned in this chapter) being some of the most repetitive.

As much as the cherry blossoms are a symbol of Japanese culture, the Japanese people themselves regard the month when the cherry blossoms bloom, April, and the season of Spring, as the marker of new beginnings, of significant turning points in life. The start of school term, start of fiscal year, start of working life and end of childhood, Your Lie in April , etc. all happen in April.

This phenomenon is especially remarkable in Japan. Being the country of uniformity, virtually every school and workplace throughout the country would start their activities in April.

In my experience, Japanese aesthetics revolve around the changing seasons and times a lot, and countless pop songs that are released around March-April would sing of the blooming cherry blossoms swaying to the wind and new beginnings for students graduating from high school or university. In the same manner, songs coming out in Winter would feature slower melodies and the distinctive, ringing, Christmas-ey chime from the likes of music boxes, glockenspiels, triangles or celestas, and songs released in Summer would usually be quicker, livelier with lyrics retelling a fun trip to the beach, firework shows and sunshine (－and bikinis, if you’re listening to AKB48!).

To someone who came from a tropical country with three pretty much indistinguishable, unpleasant seasons (Damn-you-Summer, Damn-you-Summer-with-Rain-and-Floods and Damn-you-Summer-with-Three-Days-of-Winter), the beauty of the Japanese seasons and how the Japanese culture and lifestyle intertwine so closely with it has always fascinated and charmed me.

5. The Gratitude Dilemma

In addition to the seiseiruten conundrum, this chapter also throws up some more challenges for translators. One notable example for me being how to accurately capture the essence of this panel:

Both Starbuds and Mangastream worded this bubble very differently, and I won’t say who is the most accurate, but I will explain my choice of wording the best I can (with a few tips to weary Japanese learners along the way, hopefully). The actual Japanese raw is below:

My atrocious highlighting skills aside, we can clearly see the emphasis given to the suffix てあげよう (te-ageyou) here.

Allen didn’t say it straight out that he’s pitying Kanda or the like, but he’s using the te-ageru form, which means “ [doing something] for your sake” .

The concept of gratitude is important in a strict, seniority-based society like Japan, and accordingly there are two verb suffixes just to show gratitude: when someone else does a favor for us: te-kureru, and when we receive a favor from someone else: te-morau.

Yes, there’s a difference. And this is one of the most troublesome head-scratchers and trick-question-subjects for intermediate learners of Japanese taking the JLPT test (and translators of Japanese songs and manga as well), as to make things worse the Japanese usually omits the subject and/or object of the sentence.

My tip for making sense of this is for te-kureru, the other person must be the subject of the sentence, whereas for te-morau, I/me must be the subject.

Starting to see now why so many of my classmates gave up on Japanese and why so many anime subs/manga translations are sometimes inaccurate?

We also get another instance here:

(watashi ha kami ni) mitsukete-moraeru you ni would literally mean something along the lines of so (I) could be found by (God) for my sake. I put parentheses here to show you how both the subject and object of this sentence is omitted, and why we must be extremely careful in cases when it is less clear than this who is doing what for whom. To learners, you MUST pay attention to the conjunctions.

For the sake of convenience and more natural speech I just used so God would be able to find me.

Back to Black Allen, te-ageru or its more casual/demeaning form te-yaru, on the other hand, is used for when we’re doing a favor for someone’s sake and should be used sparingly/carefully to people of the same status or lower, as it could sound patronizing depending on context. So Allen using it to Kanda is meant to be very cheeky and infuriating, as if he’s trying to emphasize that his giving up is more out of pity/sympathy for Kanda’s hapless persistence than his own being tired of or incapable of escaping.

Because in reality it is just as he personally admitted in the earlier page: he’s got no money and cannot elude the Order without Kanda’s help, and decided to just twiddle his thumbs and wait around for now.

But food and a man’s pride are everything to Allen...

That’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed our translations. See you in three months, fellow DGMers!

#dgm #dgm 231 #d gray man #analysis

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shazzeaslightnovels · 6 years ago

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Reading Log - April 2019

Volume Count: 8

My first month without Saekano and I finished off Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu and read all my volumes of Ankoku Kishi wo Nugasanaide. I also read Cafe de Blood, a one-shot by the author of Psycome and started Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Nattemashita and Saijaku Muahi no Bahamut.

This post does contain spoilers for Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu vol. 4, but other than that are no spoilers. I put the mini-review for Iriya at the very bottom of the post so you can easily avoid spoilers.

(Finally figured out how to shrink image sizes so I can put the volume covers to make this post look more interesting. Yay! Let me know if they aren’t visible to you.)

Ankoku Kishi wo Nugasanaide 2 & 3 by Shinichi Kimura

Putting these under the same entry because my feelings on them didn’t differ much between them. After my lukewarm feelings on the first volume, I didn’t have much hope that the following volumes would be better and I was right. I was rewatching Kore wa Zombie desu ka? and I didn’t like it nearly as much as I used to so it’s possible that I’ve just grown out of this type of humour but I do think that KoreZom is better than this series as Ayumu really stands out as a protagonist while Kurama lacks anything that makes him interesting. He’s a bit of an idiot sometimes but that’s it. The reader has no reason to care about him. The other major issue is that I found the scenes to be too long so I would start a scene being somewhat interested but would quickly get bored before it was over. Volume 2 was a little bit better than volume 1 but volume 3 introduced a perverted lesbian character who doesn’t understand the meaning of consent and my views of this series dropped to rock-bottom. I do think that it’s possible to enjoy this series if you’re into this kind of humour and found KoreZom to be hilarious but I won’t be buying any future volumes.

Slime Taoshite 300-nen, Shiranai Uchi ni Level Max ni Natteshimatta 1 by Kisetsu Morita

It took me 10 days to read this which is a lot longer than I usually take for a volume of this size. Amazon lists the volume as 281 pages while BookWalker says it’s around 320 pages. Either way, it felt like the page count was pushing it for a story where not a whole lot happens. It was relaxing at first but I quickly got bored of it. For most of the volume, each chapter introduces a character and you get to spend a little bit of time with them before moving on to the next character. And I don’t think it spent enough time getting me to care about the character it just introduced before moving on to the next one so I didn’t really care when the “climax” happened. Also, I don’t think the 300 years thing was really thought out - it’s just there to get Azusa at an OP level but we barely know what she did for those 300 years. We know that she read a lot, killed slimes, learned how to use herbs to make medicine and helped some villagers but I want to know what kind of books she read because you would think that after 300 years of reading books, she would be quite knowledgeable in just about every field but other characters still have to explain things to her for the sake of the reader. Another issue I had with this volume is that even though Azusa is a female protagonist, she’s not really written like one. The series still uses a male gaze. A really good example of this is when Halkara is introduced and the first thing Azusa notices about her is her large boobs and butt and not in a yuri way but more of in a breast envy way. You could change her into a male character and not much would change. I don’t think this will bother too many people but it sure did bother me. In general, I think this series will be a good relaxing series but it lacks any overall direction to be an entertaining series. I’d recommend if you want to take it easy and I’d especially recommend it if you’re learning Japanese and want to read a story set in a fantasy a world as it’s pretty easy to read though there are a couple of tricky parts. If you want a slice of life set in a fantasy world, this would probably do the trick.

I’m not sure if I will continue with this series. I can see that it has some nice elements to it and I do feel like the series will feature more yuri in future volumes if the covers are anything to go by but I’m not sure it’s the series for me so we’ll have to wait and see.

The manga version of this is pretty good. It has a cute art style (though I prefer Benio’s art in the original) and is a 1:1 adaptation but doesn’t improve the source material much so it’s probably not worth reading unless it’s the only version of the story you have access to or you really like the novels.

Yen-press is currently publishing this series in English under the title of I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level so please pick it up if the series interests you.

Cafe de Blood by Mizuki Mizushiro

This is a one-shot from the author of Psycome and it’s kind of what you’d expect from the title: it’s about a café that serves vampires blood and the human male who works there. It’s not terrible but it’s pretty plain and the heroine doesn’t stand out much. While I do think that people who like vampires would find this worth the read, it features one of the more plain versions of vampires that I’ve seen. There’s also some pretty annoying stuff in it like a paedophile/lolicon vampire who talks in a mangle of English and Japanese and is super annoying as well as a character who’s only function seems to be to have big boobs. It might have been a good first volume for a longer series but it’s not a memorable one-shot. If you liked PsyCome, I do think you would like this a lot but I just found it too plain to care much for it. I do love Namanie’s art style though so that was definitely the highlight of the book for me.

Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut 1 by Senri Akatsuki

Little known fact about me: I actually really like this kind of school battle fantasy. I know most of them follow the same template but I’ve always enjoyed reading them anyway and I enjoyed this volume a lot. I loved the characters and their interactions, I loved the battles and I loved the atmosphere that comes with these kinds of stories. Don’t get me wrong, Bahamut is far from being original but reading this volume was so much fun and I got really interested in the plot. I love that Lisha’s a geeky mechanic and I love that the story has the old empire being corrupt while most modern light novels would make this a story about Lux manipulating everyone into getting him back on the throne. I do think that the exposition was sometimes awkward and I don’t think this would be a fun read for people who place importance in originality but I certainly had fun with it. I was surprised by how much I liked this given that I remember reading this volume in English a few years back and not caring for it but I did and I can’t wait to read the second volume for my girl Krulcifer.

The anime adapts this volume into 2 episodes and cuts out a lot of good character moments but I think they probably made the right call as so many light novel adaptations have failed due to the staff’s unwillingness to do anything but a 1:1 adaptation (Seirei Tsukai no Blade Dane comes to mind; I don’t know anyone who really enjoyed this series prior to volume 4 but the anime only adapts the first 3 volumes). The anime has really clumsy exposition even more so than the light novel. I liked the novel more but I think the anime serves as a good advertisement for the series so, if the anime got you interested in the plot, I highly recommend checking out the light novels.

The manga is a closer adaptation and it’s fine but the novels are better. The manga does make some interesting character design choices though like making the teacher indistinguishable from the students. Probably wouldn’t recommend the manga unless you don’t have access to the light novels.

Juuou Mujin no Fafnir by Tsukasa

And here I thought Bahamut had clumsy exposition but at least it only provided the reader with information on a need-to-know basis and spread it out over the volume. Fafnir just gives it to you in the first couple of chapters and the battle mechanics are way to complicated to do that. In my opinion, the author should have made the battle mechanics more simple or spread it out more instead of dumping it at the start and hoping the reader paid attention when it becomes relevant later. Otherwise, I didn’t really like this volume but I didn’t hate it either. I think the story has potential and Iris is a charming main heroine and I enjoyed seeing her character and relationship with Yuu grow throughout the volume. But, aside from Iris and maybe Mitsuki, none of the characters really stand out. Yuu’s your typical protagonist with a bit of a snarky attitude and a dark past. I’ve seen worse protagonists but he doesn’t strike me as particularly interesting and characters like Lisa and Firill don’t really do much and are just kind of there. That has the potential to change in future volume but it’s an issue in this one. I will probably continue with this as I remember being fond of the later volumes when I read them in English but it might be take a while to get around to.

I won’t be covering the manga or anime on this blog as I don’t have easy access to them.

Dokuhaki Hime to Hoshi no Ishi by Izuki Kougyoku

Last month, I talked about Torikago Miko to Seiken no Kishi which is actually a spin-off to this novel which in turn is a sequel to Mimizuku to Yoru no Ou. I didn’t mention this then because I didn’t realize that characters from Torikago Miko would actually show up in this. I just thought they were in the same setting. And it’s been so many years since I read Mimizuku that, while I know that some of these characters are from Mimizuku, I wouldn’t be able to tell you exactly which ones. Regardless, this didn’t impede my enjoyment of this novel at all so I don’t think that reading Mimizuku is required to understand and enjoy this story.

Regarding the work itself, I really liked it. I think it was a perfect one-shot that was incredibly compelling. I loved Elsa. She’s very different from the usual female protagonist in that the best ways that I could describe her at the start of the story are “feral”, “angry” and “broken”. She’s experienced so much abuse in her life and I think this story is really about healing after so much trauma and finding a place that will accept you where you can be free to be whoever you want. I really enjoyed that theme of the story. I didn’t find Claudius to be that interesting of a character but he’s a nice guy and I’m glad that Elsa found someone to support her. I recommend this work if you want to read a fantasy story that’s really about healing, especially if you’re a fan of fairy-tale inspired stories.

I’d be interested in doing a closer re-read of this in the future and doing a proper essay-type post on the themes because I think there’s a lot going on underneath the surface of the story here and I think there’s a lot to say about how Elsa is the only character to express her anger and sadness in a straight-forward manner while everyone else tends to be more passive-agressive about it.

THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR IRIYA NO SORA, UFO NO NATSU 4! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu 4 by Mizuhito Akiyama

Before I read this volume, I was panning on doing a full review of the series but, before the first 100 pages of the volume were over, someone tries to sexually assault Iriya. I do not know whether this attempt was successful or not because, as soon as I realized what was happening, I had to skip through the scene. This scene is incredibly poorly done. We never get to see Iriya’s POV of this event either during or after it happens. Instead, the story decides to continue to focus on Asaba and how stressed he is. Perhaps I’m thinking too hard about it but the fact that this scene is juxtaposed with a scene of Asaba acquiring a porn mag and masturbating and that adolescence is a primary theme of the series makes me think that this scene is meant to imply that “boys desire girls while girls get to be desired” as neccesary part of adolescence. Furthermore, at the end of the volume, Iriya dies and it feels like she got fridged for the sake of Asaba’s character. And, to be honest, Iriya has never really felt like a proper character to me. She’s always felt too perfect to be one. The only time she felt like one was during the eating battle with Akiho. We’ve never gotten the story from her POV and that prevents her from becoming a proper character like the others. She feels like an idealised Mysterious Girl who motivates the other characters but has no real motivation for herself. Part of this is undoubtably because of when it was written but I can’t overlook these flaws because of that, espcially since I was around the ages of 3 and 5 when this was written so I don’t feel that same nostalgia that this series is trying to make me feel. I never went to middle school either and Australia high schools are very different from Japanese ones so I feel none of the nostalgia that this series is praised for.

I think this series has it’s charming moments and it’s not as though this volume was boring but I just can’t overlook the things I’ve mentioned. I could only really recommend this series if you are interested in the history of light novels or you are interested in reading a coming-of-age story with a bit of sci-fi.

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oliverphisher · 5 years ago

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Josh Donellan

J.M. DONELLAN is a writer, musician, poet, and teacher. He was almost devoured by a tiger in the jungles of Malaysia, nearly died of a lung collapse in the Nepalese Himalayas and fended off a pack of rabid dogs with a guitar in the mountains of India.

A Beginner's Guide to Dying in India By Josh Donellan

His debut novel A Beginner’s Guide to Dying in India was released in 2009. Josh was a state finalist in the 2012 and 2014 Australian Poetry Slams and a national finalist in 2015. His play, We Are All Ghosts, was performed as part of the Anywhere Theatre Festival in 2014. He also co-wrote the Theory of Everything, which completely sold out its entire season at the 2015 Brisbane Festival. Josh has spoken and performed at numerous festivals around Australia including Sydney Writers’ Festival, TEDxBrisbane (twice), the Wonderland Festival, and various not-entirely-legal warehouse parties in an array of secret locales.

His children’s fantasy novel Zeb and the Great Ruckus was described by one child as ‘the best book ever, but it should have had Dr. Who in it.’ His most recent novel, Killing Adonis has received rave reviews from numerous magazines and newspapers, both here and in the USA, including a Kirkus starred review. His poetry collection Stendhal Syndrome was released in 2016 and will soon be followed by his forthcoming collection of poems for kids entitled 19 ½ Secret Spells Disguised As Poems, which is definitely not a book of spells (unless you are a kid reading this in which case it is definitely a book of spells). In 2018 he collaborated with choreographer Liesel Zink to create the spoken word/dance performance Inter. Josh also writes and directs the podcast fiction series Six Cold Feet. He’s done a bunch of other stuff as well but honestly this bio is long enough already and no one likes a braggart.

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

1. I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy as kid and I have a distinct memory of thinking ‘Well, that’s it for me. I want to be a writer. Why the hell would you do anything else?’

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: Deluxe Pocket Boxed Set By J.R.R. Tolkien

2. I read Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart at university and I loved the way it completely obliterated my previous notions of how a story should work and reinforced the very important idea that a book really can be whatever the hell you want it to be.

Sputnik Sweetheart: A Novel By Haruki Murakami

3. More recently, I read Jennifer Egan’s ‘Look At Me’ and it felt like stepping into another world. I think about that novel at least once a week. It exists on a whole other plain of reality for me.

Look at Me: A Novel By Jennifer Egan

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

I bought one of those armbands to put your phone in while exercising and recently got back into running for the first time in years. I forgot how happy it makes me, for someone who sits on their butt staring at the screen a good chunk of the day exercise is hugely important, not just for the body but for creativity and mental health. I think of depression as a physical nemesis I have to fight to keep at bay, and running feels like wielding a magical sword at the great black dog.

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

I think the first time you really crash on stage is such an important learning experience. Once you’ve lived through that you know what it looks like and you realise that while it’s not fun, it’s also nowhere near as bad as your anxiety was promising it would be. Even better if you have a truly catastrophic public appearance early on, because then all subsequent failures aren’t as bad in comparison.

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

A long time ago my friend and I went to see a local play where the audience was forcibly pulled on stage and made to feel really uncomfortable. I love immersive theatre, but this was a very unpleasant and unwelcome experience. Afterwards she said to me ‘I don’t think that director loves his audience. You have to love your audience.’ I think about that every time I sit down to write. Bear in mind, love doesn’t always mean doing the easiest or most immediately satisfying thing, it means ultimately doing what you believe is best for someone, even if it’s difficult in the short term.

What is one of the best investment in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

Scrivener. I am weirdly evangelical about that program. I swear I’m not getting paid endorsement money or anything, even if I do occasionally grab a megaphone and run around writers’ festivals yelling “Oi! Are you lot using Scrivener? It’s the BEST!”

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

My favourite animal is the mantis shrimp, the most absurd and beautiful creature to ever walk the earth. It looks like a technicolour hellbeast and it has the most complex eyes of any living organism. It’s weird how much I love that animal.

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

I used to think that the ultimate form of writing was a novel, and that everything else was just auxiliary formats. These days I’m writing across theatre, podcasts, video games etc. and I’ve really learned to love the nuances and possibilities of each medium. The novel is ideal for exploring a character’s inner world; the podcast is perfect for drawing the listener in with subtle, non-verbal sound cues; theatre has an incredible capacity to tell the same story in a whole new way with each performance. I’ve really enjoyed learning to embrace that.

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

I think the main thing is to realise that figure out what your process is going to be is a good chunk of the job. So many writers make the mistake of trying to study the process of their idols and replicate it verbatim, but it’s really about finding your own path. Maybe that means going on a vision quest, maybe it means drinking six cups of coffee and listening to Mogwai on repeat, maybe it means writing in your underwear while the sweat cascades down your fingers and hoping it doesn’t fry the battery in your laptop (that one might be Queensland specific, it’s very warm here).

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession often?

There’s a weird idea in the writing community that if you don’t study creative writing at university you’re not taking it seriously, which is not only a heinously privileged perspective but also one that seems anomalous compared to other art forms. So many directors, actors, musicians, painters etc. are self-taught or learn from a mentor or take private courses and I think for many writers this can work as well. If you want to study creative writing at university, that’s fine and it might be great for you,but I definitely don’t think it’s a necessity. In fact, David Foster Wallace (himself a creative writing teacher) once pointed out that some MFA programs churn out students whose writing is impossibly pristine, complex, and elegant, while also being utterly indistinguishable and thoroughly forgettable.

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

I’m still not great at saying no, in general. I think being a curious person is an important quality for a writer, or any human. However, I have gotten better at saying, “I’m really interested, but maybe give me a month to wrap up this other project I’m working on,” and that’s been a really helpful improvement. Doesn’t always work out though. The other week I went straight from a conference in Melbourne to the launch party for Six Cold Feet season 2 on a Thursday, then the theatre premiere of a dance show I wrote some poetry for the following night. I am now actually dead from exhaustion and it is my ghost writing this.

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

Branding should apply to two things; products and cattle, but apparently people can now have ‘personal brands’ and corporations can have the same legal rights as a person. You’re a writer, you’re telling stories, not making bespoke booties for chihuahuas. Make art, not book-shaped pre-landfill.

What new realizations and/or approaches have helped you achieve your goals?

I try and have at least two projects going at any one time, I work intensively on one and then when I start to get bored and/or overwhelmed, I flick straight to the other. The grass always looks greener on the other side, and this way I’m jumping from one patch of very green grass to another. Instead of moving between writing and procrastination, I move between two types of writing.

When you feel overwhelmed or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

There’s a little reservoir up in the mountains about fifteen minutes drive from my house. I like to go out there and stare at the water until one of our famously bloodthirsty Australian birds attempts to swoop me and peck out my eyeballs. The transition from serenity to extreme adrenaline is very stimulating.

Any other tips?

Be part of your community. Writing can be a very hermetic practice, which is fine at times, but it’s important to go to people’s readings, buy their books, write reviews, share recommendations, and just be nice to people. I know that it sounds obvious to remind people just be generally friendly and kind to each other, but you’d be surprised how many writers can’t manage this basic benchmark of human interaction and end up burning bridges before they’ve even been built.

________

Enjoyed this Q&A? Want to discuss in more depth? Join Community Writers. You'll get access to 100+ exclusive writing tips. Q&As with successful authors, an exclusive ebook on building an audience and much more. Sign-up for free as a community writer here

source https://www.thecommunitywriter.com/blog/josh-donellan

#Writing WriteMotivation WritingAdvice

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neptunecreek · 7 years ago

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Today, Europe Lost The Internet. Now, We Fight Back.

Today, in a vote that split almost every major EU party, Members of the European Parliament adopted every terrible proposal in the new Copyright Directive and rejected every good one, setting the stage for mass, automated surveillance and arbitrary censorship of the internet: text messages like tweets and Facebook updates; photos; videos; audio; software code -- any and all media that can be copyrighted.

Three proposals passed the European Parliament, each of them catastrophic for free expression, privacy, and the arts:

1. Article 13: the Copyright Filters. All but the smallest platforms will have to defensively adopt copyright filters that examine everything you post and censor anything judged to be a copyright infringement.

2. Article 11: Linking to the news using more than one word from the article is prohibited unless you're using a service that bought a license from the news site you want to link to. News sites can charge anything they want for the right to quote them or refuse to sell altogether, effectively giving them the right to choose who can criticise them. Member states are permitted, but not required, to create exceptions and limitations to reduce the harm done by this new right.

3. Article 12a: No posting your own photos or videos of sports matches. Only the "organisers" of sports matches will have the right to publicly post any kind of record of the match. No posting your selfies, or short videos of exciting plays. You are the audience, your job is to sit where you're told, passively watch the game and go home.

At the same time, the EU rejected even the most modest proposals to make copyright suited to the twenty-first century:

1. No "freedom of panorama." When we take photos or videos in public spaces, we're apt to incidentally capture copyrighted works: from stock art in ads on the sides of buses to t-shirts worn by protestors, to building facades claimed by architects as their copyright. The EU rejected a proposal that would make it legal Europe-wide to photograph street scenes without worrying about infringing the copyright of objects in the background.

2. No "user-generated content" exemption, which would have made EU states carve out an exception to copyright for using excerpts from works for "criticism, review, illustration, caricature, parody or pastiche."

I've spent much of the summer talking to people who are delighted with this outcome, trying to figure out why they think this could possibly be good for them. Here's what I've discovered:

* They don't understand filters. They really don't.

The entertainment industry has convinced creators that there is a technology out there that can identify copyrighted works and prevent them from being shown without a proper license and that the only thing holding us back is the stubbornness of the platforms.

The reality is that filters primarily stop legitimate users (including creators) from doing legitimate things, while actual infringers find them relatively easy to get around.

Put it this way: if your occupation is figuring out how filters work and tinkering with getting around them, you can become skilled in the art. The filters used by the Chinese government to block images, for example, can be defeated by simple measures. Meanwhile, these filters that are bound to be thousands of times more effective than any copyright filter because they're doing a much more modest job with far more money and technical talent on hand.

But if you're a professional photographer, or just a regular person posting your own work, there's no time in your life to become a hardcore filter-warrior. When a filter mistakes your work for copyright infringement, you can't just bypass the filter with a trick from the copyright infringing underground: you have to send an appeal to the platform that blocked you, getting in line behind millions of other poor suckers in the same situation as you. Cross your fingers and hope that the overworked human reviewing the appeals decides that you're in the right.

Of course, the big entertainment and news companies aren't worried about this outcome: they have backchannels direct into the platforms, priority access to help-lines that will unstick their content when it gets stuck in a filter. Creators who align themselves with large entertainment corporations will be shielded from filters -- while independents (and the public) will have to fend for themselves.

* They grossly underestimate the importance of competition for improving their lot in life.

Building the filters the EU just mandated will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. There are precious few companies in the world who have that kind of capital: the US-based tech giants, and the Chinese-based tech giants, and a few others, like Russia's VK.

The mandate to filter the Internet puts a floor on how small the pieces can be when antitrust regulators want to break up the big platforms: only the largest companies can afford to police the whole net for infringement, so the largest companies can't be made much smaller. The latest version of the Directive has exemptions for smaller companies, but they will have to stay small or constantly anticipate the day that they will have to take the leap to being copyright police. Today, the EU voted to increase the consolidation in the tech sector, and to make it vastly more difficult to function as an independent creator. We’re seeing two major industries, both with competitiveness problems, negotiate for a deal that works for them, but will decrease competition for the independent creator caught in the middle. What we needed were solutions to tackle the consolidation of both the tech and the creative industries: instead we got a compromise that works for them, but shuts out everyone else.

How did this terrible state of affairs come to pass?

It's not hard to understand, alas. The Internet has become a part of everything we do, and so every problem we have has some intersection with the Internet. For people who don't understand technology very well, there's a natural way to solve those problems: "fix the technology."

Arthur C Clarke famously said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Some technological accomplishments do seem like magic, and it's natural to witness these workaday miracles and assume that tech can do anything.

An inability to understand what tech can and can't do is the source of endless mischief: from the people who blithely assert that networked voting machines can be made secure enough to run a national election; to the officials who insist that we can make cryptography that stops crooks from breaking into our data, but allows the police to break into crooks' data; to the hand-waving insistence that a post-Brexit Irish border can be "solved" with some undefined technical fix.

Once a few powerful entertainment industry figures were persuaded that filtering at scale was possible and consequence-free, it became an article of faith, and when technologists (including a who's who of the world's top experts on the subject) say it's not possible, they're accused of mulish stubbornness and lack of vision, not a well-informed perspective on what is and isn't possible.

That's a familiar-enough pattern, but in the case of the EU's Copyright Directive, there were exacerbating factors. Tying a proposal for copyright filters to a proposal to transfer a few million euros from tech giants to newspaper proprietors guaranteed favorable coverage from the very press looking for a solution to its problems.

Finally, there's the problem that the Internet promotes a kind of tunnel vision in which we assume that the part of the net we interact with is the whole thing. The Internet handles trillions of articles of public communication every day: birthday wishes and messages of condolences, notices of upcoming parties and meetings, political campaigns and love notes. A tiny, sub-one-percent slice of those communications are the kind of copyright infringement that Article 13 seeks to address, but the advocates for Article 13 keep insisting that the "primary purpose" of the platforms is to convey copyrighted works of entertainment.

There's no doubt that people from the entertainment industry interact with a lot of entertainment works online, in the same way that the police see a lot of people using the Internet to plan crimes and fashionistas see a lot of people using the Internet to show off their outfits.

The Internet is more vast than any of us can know, but that doesn't mean we should be indifferent to all the other Internet users and the things they lose when we pursue our own narrow goals at the expense of the wider electronic world.

Today's Copyright Directive vote not only makes life harder for creators, handing a larger share of their incomes to Big Content and Big Tech -- it makes life harder for all of us. Yesterday, a policy specialist for a creator's union that I'm a member of told me that their job isn't to "protect people who want to quote Shakespeare" (who might be thwarted by bogus registration of his works in the copyright filters) -- it was to protect the interests of the photographers in the union whose work is being "ripped off." Not only did my union's support of this catastrophic proposal do no good for photographers -- it will also do enormous damage to anyone whose communications are caught in the crossfire. An error rate of even one percent will still mean tens of millions of acts of arbitrary censorship, every day.

So what is to be done?

Practically speaking, there are several more junctures where Europeans can influence their elected leaders on this issue.

* Immediately: the Directive will now go into "trilogues" -- secretive, closed-door meetings between representatives from national governments and the European Union; these will be hard to influence, but they will determine the final language put before the Parliament for the next vote (Difficulty: 10/10)

* Next spring: The European Parliament will vote on the language that comes out of the trilogues. It's unlikely that they'll be able to revise the text any further, so this will probably come to a vote on whether to pass the Directive itself. It's very difficult to defeat the Directive at this stage. = (Difficulty: 8/10)

* After that: 28 member states will have to debate and enact their own versions of the legislation. In many ways, it's going to be harder to influence 28 individual parliaments than it was to fix this at the EU level, but on the other hand, the parliamentarians in member states will be more responsive to individual Internet users, and victories in one country can be leveraged for others ("See, they got it right in Luxembourg, let's do the same”) (Difficulty: 7/10)

* Somewhere around there: Court challenges. Given the far-reaching nature of these proposals, the vested interests involved, and the unresolved questions about how to balance all the rights implicated, we can expect this to rise — eventually — to the European Court of Justice. Unfortunately, court challenges are slow and expensive. (Difficulty: 7/10)

In the meantime, there are upcoming EU elections, in which EU politicians will have to fight for their jobs. There aren't many places where a prospective Member of the European Parliament can win an election by boasting about expansions of copyright, but there are lots of potential electoral opponents who will be too happy to campaign on "Vote for me, my opponent just broke the Internet."

As we've seen with Net Neutrality in the USA, the movement to protect the free and open Internet has widespread popular support and can turn into a potential third rail for politicians.

Look, this was never going to be a fight we "won" once and for all -- the fight to keep the Internet free, fair and open is ongoing. For so long as people have:

a) problems; that

b) intersect with the Internet;

there will always be calls to break the Internet to solve them.

We suffered a crushing setback today, but it doesn't change the mission. To fight, and fight, and fight, to keep the Internet open and free and fair, to preserve it as a place where we can organise to fight the other fights that matter, about inequality and antitrust, race and gender, speech and democratic legitimacy.

If this vote had gone the other way, we'd still be fighting today. And tomorrow. And the day after.

The fight to preserve and restore the free, fair and open Internet is a fight you commit yourself to, not a fight that you win. The stakes are too high to do otherwise.

from Deeplinks https://ift.tt/2x9ekgm

#Deeplinks

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mypearlssales · 8 years ago

Text

13 Perfect Moissanite Rings

There are a fair few misconceptions about moissanite and what it is, as well as what it isn’t, and so hopefully reading this will clear up any misinformation you have about this often overlooked crystal. Moissanite is a mineral that occurs naturally on earth, but large moissanite crystals are rarely used in jewellery due to their immense scarcity. However, because moissanite has highly desirable qualities for a jewel, scientists have worked to recreate it in within the lab, and have been successful in doing so thanks to years of research, experimentation, and scientific advancements.

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Some believe that because the moissanite used in jewellery is lab-made, moissanite is a “fake” jewel, however just as certain medicines have been created through a scientific process but we would not call them “fake medicines” it’s false to consider moissanite “fake”. Moissanite is simply not mined – this is no reason to damage moissanite’s status as a marvellous jewel. A lot of time, effort and skill are required to produce moissanite, and scientists and craftspeople must labour for months before the remarkable final product is produced - moissanite is a child of both awe-inspiring art, and methodical science.

Some people have the misconception that moissanite is actually diamond or some form of it. This is likely because of moissanite and diamond share incredibly similar optical (though not chemical) properties, making them appear, in many cases, as identical. This is why moissanite is touted as a great alternative to diamond. Another similarity between diamond and moissanite is durability. Moissanite beats ruby, sapphire and emerald in terms of hardness (how easy it is to scratch a mineral), coming second only to diamond. This means that moissanite can only be scratched by diamond, or by itself. It is extremely resistant to inclusions such as chipping, fractures and abrasion, which means that you can have peace of mind that this precious jewel won’t get damaged if you store it with your other jewellery. Moissanite is undoubtedly a jewel that will go the distance, and could even possibly last a lifetime. What’s more, in the rare event that the moissanite incurs inclusions of some kind, these defects will not be visible to anyone unless observed by a microscope, due to moissanite’s impressive clarity.

Another significant advantage of choosing moissanite over the traditional diamond is that moissanite is obtained through cruelty-free means, seeing as it is lab-made. It is more ethical to opt for moissanite over diamond because there is no pollution or harming of animals and humans as a by-product because moissanite (for use in jewellery) is not mined. Mining for diamonds is infamously a dangerous trade for those involved, and it also has a negative impact on our environment.

Moissanites are the perfect jewel to celebrate milestones and achievements – be that a wedding, engagement, graduation, or a new addition to the family. Traditionally a jewel for women, a moissanite ring will be greatly treasured by the special woman in your life, perhaps your wife, your mother, or your grandmother. Moissanite has a universal appeal, and no matter the age and preference of your lady, she will no doubt be charmed by such a mesmerising jewel on her finger. Moissanite dazzles with its flashes of whites and the sparkles it produces in the sun, and can even refract rainbow to give you a truly wondrous light show. Moissanite’s scintillation means it will be sure to twinkle and shine, even if you’re not in the most flattering lighting, or are standing in dark lights. It’s available in a spectrum of hues, ranging from cooler to warmer, depending on what catches your loved one’s eye. Moissanites have a vivid and rich “brilliance”, exhibiting the kind of clean and crisp colours that even a diamond would fail to match.

However, if we are honest, moissanite is probably not the first jewel that pops into our minds when we consider jewellery and rings in particular. In fact, if you had to think of the most precious, and most memorable ring you could ever buy for say, an engagement, there’s no doubt that one jewel would stand out above the rest. Diamond. Diamonds have long been seen as the pinnacle of luxury and indulgence, as the most beautiful and decadent of all the jewels. There have even been various songs about diamonds and diamond jewellery, and the jewel has been put on a pedestal within popular culture.

Our infatuation with diamonds has been fuelled in part by rigorous marketing campaigns over the decades that have targeted women, in particular, conveying the message that diamonds are superior to all other jewels, and the ones to be desired (“diamonds are a girl’s best friends”). In reality, you have many more, equally gorgeous, options other than diamond such as ruby, sapphire, opal, and of course, moissanite. If you really do prefer the charm of a diamond above all other jewels, that’s no problem, but you should consider looking into moissanite as an alternative, as it comes with many of its own perks.

Moissanite is almost identical to diamond, some would say indistinguishable, and yet it retails for anywhere from 10% to 30% the cost of a diamond, so your bank account would no doubt be thankful if you opted for moissanite! Most certainly, your friends and family would never know you were wearing moissanite rather than diamond unless you told them. In fact, even some industry experts have been to known to be unable to identify a moissanite ring from a diamond one! Not bad going, eh?

Moissanites are likely the choice for you if you are considering investing your money in something other than jewellery, or perhaps in a jewel other than diamond, but still, want to own a jewel similar to a diamond. If you are willing to look beyond convention, moissanite can also make the perfect ring for your wedding or engagement. Even though it is much more affordable, you will never have to sacrifice or compromise on the glamour and charm that you would get with a diamond ring. Moissanite is the perfect accompaniment to any joyful occasion, and its mesmerising glow is not one that will be quickly forgotten by anyone who is lucky enough to wear it!

from My Pearls - Blog https://www.otomo.co.uk/blogs/news/20-perfect-moissanite-rings

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oliverphisher · 5 years ago

Text

Josh Donellan

What are one to three books that have greatly influenced your life?

1. I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy as kid and I have a distinct memory of thinking ‘Well, that’s it for me. I want to be a writer. Why the hell would you do anything else?’

What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months (or in recent memory)?

How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?

Are there any quotes you think of often or live your life by?

What is one of the best investment in a writing resource you’ve ever made?

What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?

In the last five years, what new belief, behaviour, or habit has most improved your life?

What advice would you give to a smart, driven aspiring author? What advice should they ignore?

What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession often?

In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to (distractions, invitations, etc.)?

What marketing tactics should authors avoid?

What new realizations and/or approaches have helped you achieve your goals?

When you feel overwhelmed or have lost your focus temporarily, what do you do?

Any other tips?

________

0 notes

mypearlssales · 8 years ago

Text

13 Perfect Moissanite Rings

There are a fair few misconceptions about moissanite and what it is, as well as what it isn’t, and so hopefully reading this will clear up any misinformation you have about this often overlooked crystal. Moissanite is a mineral that occurs naturally on earth, but large moissanite crystals can’t be used in jewellery due to their immense scarcity. However, because moissanite has highly desirable qualities for a jewel, scientists have worked to recreate it in within the lab, and have been successful in doing so thanks to years of research, experimentation, and scientific advancements.

Shop Now

Moissanite Rings