| |
|  It's getting towards that time of year where I'm just so tired of work that getting up in the morning is a feat on its own, and clocking up the necessary number of billable hours surpasses the Herculean labours.
And the prospect of days off work are finally arousing my slumbering muses.
 - these days, one must give thanks even to the most humblest and common of things. After months of inactivity, and watching November disappear along with my aspirations to join the Nanowrimo, the apathy has finally been defeated and a timetable for action has been established.
I said some time earlier this year that I might call it quits from the fanfic scene in the next year or so. It just seems weird for someone in their mid twenties to still be stuck in the same interests and routine that took hold back when they were in the middle of highschool. Not that it's bad or anything...but maybe a little bit strange. Maybe once I free myself from fanfics, other choices will open up. Further studies (a Masters degree? Or obtaining accredited specialisation in my field of law?) Or maybe I can finally work on my own story that I've been adding bits and pieces to over these years.
But before the final gong, I want to write the best story that I can after all these years of reading, drafting and learning. I want to believe that these past 10 years have been educational and instructive. It's time to finally pull everything I know together into a final product that I can still be proud of in the next five, ten years.
By the end of this weekend, I need to:
- Have all the character bios complete
- Have all details of the plot finalised
- Have all details of the sub-plot finalised
- Come up with some suitable titles for the fanfic
- (if possible) A breakdown of chapters
Then next week, I will start the rough draft in earnest. Hopefully, I'll manage 8-10k words per week.
The bulk of the activity will be done during the Christmas and New Year long weekends. If I don't take advantage of these long weekends and get the fanfic 'on the rails', I'm never going to finish it within a reasonable time.
So what is it about? A Hunter x Hunter fanfic of course! A gender-bender one at that (guess who  ) and involving politics and drawing on terminology found in the spells of Neverwinter Nights.
 - here's to desperately wishing that my motivation will hold.- Mood:determined
| |
|
| There are a number of icon artists who I need to accredit for use of their icons. In no particular order, they are: Thanks once again to the LJ communities dedicated to showcasing Icon art and allowing talentless graphics bums like myself to leech.
- Mood:envious
| |
|
| Title: Modern Mythology
Chapter: 4 - Saga's spiral into destruction
Author: Yomi (LJ handle: lord_hades)
Pairing/Character: So far, only references to DohkoxShion
Warnings: A few original characters - no pairing with canon.
Disclaimer: See body of the fic.
It's been roughly 5 months since this fanfic has been updated. I've been a bit out of the loop with things lately, and the workload has increased after my articles finished. Anyway, the payrise marginally justifies it, but I think I'm going to focus on the active fics I have on hand and diligently work away and ensure that I get to update at least one of them every week.
In the meantime, I hope this fanfic hasn't lost too many readers. Please enjoy.
PREVIOUS CHAPTERS...
( Chapter 4 - Saga's Spiral Into Destruction ) - Mood:creative
| |
|
| How can the dogs be blamed?!A recent tragedy occured wherein a 4 year old girl was mauled to death by her neighbours' six hunting dogs.
You might be angry. You might be thinking, "what kind of irresponsible asshole lets his six hunting dogs run loose and savage little four year old girls?"
But facts of the case were, those 6 vicious, bloodthirsty dogs were safely behind two sets of fencing in the owner's damn backyard and the little four year old girl got through these two sets of fencing and into the backyard at 7:30pm. And the use of the word 'neighbour' is misleading. We're not talking about bloke next door. We're talking about bloke with dogs half a dozen houses away from where the girl lived.
Issues of trespassing aside, I'm more interested in how a 4 year old girl gets to wander the streets all by her little lonesome and sneak into someone's house at 7:30 at night. And get this:
On Wednesday, Tyra walked from her home half a dozen houses along Garden Avenue. She was carrying a dead chicken over her shoulder, which she may have intended to give to the dogs. Joel Wilson took the bird from Tyra and threw it away. He drove her home about 2pm.
What I'm reading here is: mother allows 4 year old daughter to handle dead chicken and roam the streets by herself at 2:30pm in the afternoon, relying on the 'neighbour' to pick her out of trouble and drive her home.
It is stated that this mother is still in charge of two other children. I say Children's Services should remove them from her, because she's obviously incapable of looking after her child. I don't have children, but if I did, I wouldn't let her be going anywhere that I didn't know about. There are no excuses when it comes to children. If they tend to wander, install locks on the doors where they can't reach. If they want to go out, arrange a family outing. If you're busying, hire a fucking babysitter, and not your neighbour with his six hunting dogs in his backyard.
Now the dogs are to be destroyed, for being what they are. Dogs are smart, they can carrying out orders, but they don't have human intelligence. Whereas the mum did. And the mum committed gross negligence in failing to properly look after her 4 year old girl.
Those tears are too little too late. I pity the dead girl, but make the right person shoulder the responsibility, not dumb beasts who can't talk to save their own lives.
- Mood:infuriated
| |
|
|  Masters of Self-Deception and Pity I'm sure many people have often wondered why some people are more successful than others, or why some races are more disliked than others. Stephanie Lagos explores the latter in her latest article which reads more like your usual hash of incoherence no one actually buys. Sometimes, I wonder what qualifications is exactly required to become published.
The first paragraph of the diatribe actually sounds intelligent and relevant. It questions Australia's skills shortage, issues about the recent (temporary) migration of skilled overseas workers to fill in the jobs ordinary Australians don't have the skills to perform, and whether Australia really is a land of opportunity for skilled migrants.
Our cabs — like our factories and office-cleaning companies — are full of well-trained accountants from China, surgeons from Iraq and Bosnia, managers from Sudan and teachers from Afghanistan. It goes without saying that this is a waste of economic potential, especially when skills shortages are so common.
No arguments from me here. From my experience with overseas students applying for permanent residency through the general skilled migration program, it's quite obvious that they're going to be stuck in jobs such as waitressing and stocking and other non-skilled jobs for the first few years to come, namely because even though they managed to score '5' in all bands of their IELTS test, they still can't carry on a decent conversation with me in English. If you can't speak the language fluently, that's definitely going to be a barrier towards employment.
It's not discrimination for an employer to ask that their employees be able to effectively and fluently communicate in the native language of the country. How can a boss be expected to hire someone whom they doubt can understand the instructions and commands given to them?
But Ms. Lagos here latches onto the 'race' card and throws aside reasonability. She turns around and blames the Australian public at large.
And he's neither alone nor the worst off — 36,400 people like him who have come to Australia since 2001 are out of a job. According to a recent Government report, the unemployment rate in the Muslim community is nearly 20 per cent, while others quote it at 30 per cent. This is a recipe for bitterness and resentment.
Because businesses refuse to hire skilled migrants, namely skilled Muslim migrants, they're giving these migrants stress, and that stress justifies a separatist mentality, and implicitly a support for terrorists.
 Give me a fucking break. Think of the bloody welfare that families with children can receive if the mother's not working and the father's income only reaches a certain level. Ms. Lagos seriously expects me to believe that our free and quality public education system, public housing and health system and social welfare is somehow not as good as the hellhole and cesspit of a third world country that these Muslim skilled migrants crawled out of.
If they're so bloody resentful of their inability to secure the job which they believe reflects their skills and qualifications, and are consequently performing menial tasks and earning the minimum wage, go back to your own glorious country and be the rich bastard you always wanted to be!
This doesn't sound like resetnment. It just sounds like ingratitude.
Ms. Lagos compares the current immigration population (most likely Muslim), to the lot that came to Australia shortly after WWII in the 50s, 60s and 70s:
We all know the stories of the migrants of the 1950s, '60s and '70s who came here with little more than a cardboard suitcase and built successful small businesses, or at least saw their children go to university and enter the professions. I'm just not hearing those stories any more.
It's not hard to guess - maybe our government wasn't pulling budget suprluses of $6billion each year to be throwing out welfare benefits back in the 50s and 60s to win votes. Maybe those who came to Australia were genuine refugees who had been uprooted during the war, had suffered the traumas of war, and were keen to build a new home for themselves in Australia. Maybe they were hardworking and started doing shitty jobs first and slaved away for 20 years before they became the affluent people they are today.
And maybe they just didn't whinge and complain about how they're doing it tough.
The world in the 50s and 60s is very different to today. For the migrants who confine themselves to ghettos and refuse to assimilate into the Australian community, they are the ones killing off their children's future by fostering an identity crisis. We have scores of Arab gangs in NSW who call themselves Muslims first before their nationality. In more extreme cases, they don't even consider themselves Australian. They practice the same barbaric culture that their parents bought with them and rely on said cultural background in the court of law for defences such as murder and serial gang rape despite the fact they were BORN in this country! These teenage thugs drop out of school at twelve, thirteen years old, and I don't see their concerned parents doing a damn thing about it.
It's getting harder for all but the most well-heeled, highly qualified and well-connected migrants to join the middle class. You shouldn't need a degree from Harvard to get an entry-level job just because you have an Islamic name.
I think an employer has every damn right to refuse to employ an unskilled person not qualified for a job, regardless of what retarded surname they might have.
As an example, Ms. Lagos refers to the 'race riots', aka a skirmish, that occured in Australia. The comparison to France was totally unjustified.
It's this failure of immigration policy — not the "cultural differences" that our shock-jocks and columnists like to highlight — that is behind much of the tension in our communities. We saw it last summer in Cronulla and recently in France: resentment joined with prejudice to create confrontation.
I didn't follow the France riots (yes, those were riots), but I understood that it was concerned with a number of labour laws.
Cronulla on the other hand, was sparked by the beating up of a young white caucasian life guard by a couple of Muslim Arab thugs who belonged to a gang and claimed the beach as their territory. As part of the NSW's police force's shameful appeasement tactics, I can only readily assume that these gang members are hardly ever charged or bought before the justice of the courts. People are too damn scared of the gangs, but at the same time, they sick of feeling scared, sick of worrying about their wifes, sisters and daughters being sexually harrassed and spat on at the beach in their swimsuits, and bloody sick of the ineptitude of the police.
Trust me - Cronulla was cultural. It was about damn immigrants who refuse to call themselves Australian. Who refuse to submit to Australian values. Who continue to wallow in the filth of a medieval mentality that glorifies racism and the subjugation of women. If you offered a job to each and every one of those Muslim Arab thugs involved in those gangs, they'd laugh at you. Why work 9-5 when they can just claim welfare?
You know, all this fuss about the resentful and bitter "unemployed" Muslims in the Australian community, but you don't see Vietnamese people or Chinese people complaining about working as fruit-pickers or dishwashers earning or slaves in a sweatshop working for $5/hour. Guess we understand that sticking out your hand and loudly begging isn't really going to win you any favours.
- Mood:cynical
| |
|
| The Review Metro forum is now officially open!  I can't believe it's taken so long to get the forum up and running again. New fics, more responsibilities and longer hours at work and new seasons of Law and Order and CSI seems to have drastically clamped down on fic writing time.
But no longer. I think I'm determined to keep walking down this path of fanficing, or at least reviewing and desiging forums using proboards. Adding the new smilies and features have been a delight once again, but I look forward most to reading other people's contributions.
Lots of things have happened in life recently. I became an aunty roughly 2.5 months ago, and my brother, sister-in-law and the new baby are still living at home until their house has been built. It's in the final stages of completion, and after they move out, I get to inherit my brother's room. I'm currently looking to buy a new work station, and a 300GB external harddisk so I can continue to download manga from IRC.
At the start of the financial year on 1st July 2006, I will become a certified practicing lawyer as well. My boss has finally agreed to purchase my practicing certificate - 3 fricking months after my admission to practice in March. I'm going to be a fully qualified and practicing lawyer! The work will become challenging as the complexity of cases grows, but I guess that's a good way to pass the day.
Nevertheless, I don't want to give up writing. I might even adjust my reviewing methods just so I can make more time to churn out more reviews per week (or month). Either way, life is currently quite optimistic at the moment, and I hope this happy spell endures. - Mood:jubilant
| |
|
|  I have my fricking reasons for staying single!I've been giving this some thought as to why I should stay single and why I should not have children, and it has occurred to me I'm not as selfish as I once thought. People choose to have children because they believe it will make them happy. It's not about the child's happiness; it's about their happiness, because no one can make any guarantees they can give a child happiness. So in fact, I'm thinking from the child's perspective. I think to myself: "If I had a child, what will his/her life be like".
Two words: emotionally deprived 
I just don't like children. Even if I had to carry that parasite around for ten months, I still doubt I would have any tender feelings towards it. I would probably hate it for causing me so much pain during labour. At the end of the day, I have to admit that I love myself more than anyone else.
And if by some miracle my child did love me, by loving me, I will have caused it immeasurable grief. My child will have to watch me grow old, get sick, and one day, hold my hand as the last breath of air escapes me. I've been through it twice, and it nearly killed me and I had to cry myself to sleep every night for the next year thereafter. I have to be some twisted monster to cast such a curse onto an innocent being just because I want the satisfaction of being unconditionally loved by my offspring.
So I've chosen my path. I am going to stay single because I'll be damned if I'm going to be hurt like that again - to develop affection, to love someone only to have to brace yourself for the day you'll follow in the wake of their coffin.
They try and tell me that all the good times we share together will be worth all the downs. But it's not. In the event I fall hopelessly in love and conceive for one possible instant that I could have a 'happy' future, I just need to think back to the sensations of having my heart rip out as I stare at the black and white photo of my grandma on her tombstone, and all flights of fantasy and fancy will crumble, and loneliness isn't such a bad option afterall.
I don't want to grieve at anyone's funeral, and likewise, I don't want anyone grieving at mine.
What's so hard about my motives to understand?
- Mood:gloomy
| |
|
| When a television show purports to be based on the law, it has to be based on reality.
In the show, there is a published author who is being sued by some anonymous guy who claims that the author stole ideas from his book and made a hit out of it. Incredulous, the author locates the book and discovers that indeed, the sequence of events from this guy's book, published 2 years prior to his own, are in fact very similar to his own. Thus, this author retains a lawyer and starts to fret about the law suit and is simultaneously trying to discover how such a freaky coincidence came to be.
 - someone get him a better laywer. If all the religious art of Mary posing with baby Jesus (go to the Uffizi Gallery in Florence or the Vatican Museum) or teen movies or fantasy novels are any indication, there is no copyright over ideas. Copyright is over expression - that is, how we put ideas into words. Could Tolkien's next of kin sue David Eddings for using the same idea of "rightful king reclaims throne from steward"? Or could Togashi sue the dimwit mangaka who created Flame of Recca for having a cast of heroes of similar qualities to Yuusuke and co?
The answer is an emphatic NO. The expression of the idea was totally different. You could not say that Recca looks anything at all like Yuusuke, nor can you say that Garion is Aragorn's doppleganger.
So to the stupid TV series trying to milk pathos out of a legally non-existent situation, go do your bloody homeworkd. - Mood:annoyed
| |
|
| Regulation of RU486 to the Therapeutic Goods Administration finally passes the Senate in Australia.
Whilst this drug has been widely available in the United States and some European countries, Australia’s advancement in the field of pharmaceutics has been inexcusably obstructed by politicians not concerned about women’s health, but values based on their religious worldview.
Let’s clear the muddy waters right now – I was initially against the abortion pill because of reports that it was unsafe, reported deaths after usage and a nasty side effects profile. However, I’m not a professional and I have not analysed the actual studies conducted of the drug. If the professions at the Therapeutic Goods Administration believe the drug to be safe however, then I will cast aside my ignorant little opinion and welcome the pill with open arms.
Those who object to abortion have weak arguments in terms of adverse affects to a woman’s health. It was suggested by a Christian scientific group (oxymoron?) that abortion leads to depression. In line with that ideal, women better not have kids either, because some women also suffer post-natal depression as well. Alcohol should also be illegal because it makes depressed alcoholics out of some people. And conveniently ignore the actual good it was done for single women/couples who confronted their realities and chose a more opportune time to bring a child into the world where they’ll get the proper care and love they deserve. Sure, it’s callous, but then and again, we have enough fucked up kids already because the parents didn’t want to have them or don’t have the capacity to properly raise them in the first place. No, the strongest arguments from pro-lifers are founded on values and morals grounded in religion, predominantly the Christian religion.
The Health Minister, Mr. Tony Abbot, a shamelessly orthodox Catholic, objected to Labor members’ question of his ability to be objective and impartial in his judgement when confronted by the abortion pill. He views this as religious stereotyping. However, I put it to the Minister that the only reason he objected to RU486 is and was because of his Catholic world view. If not for his religious belief that life begins at conception and souls exist inside of foetuses, what other grounds does he have to preventing women access to the drug? In fact, what other grounds has he raised to keep his monopoly over the fate of the drug? Presumably, there are more effective ways of populating Australia with young people, such as migration, other than forcing women who don’t want babies to have their babies.
The irony is there is no difference between the objection of these same pro-lifers to the non-Islamic world being bludgeoned into Sharia law (“thou shalt not draw Mohammed”) just as the atheists are being bludgeoned with religiously derived values. All religions whine when people point out that non-believers are not and should not be subject to the same laws of their particular faith. Because if you’re not part of that clique, why would the clique’s rules apply to you?
And at the end of the day, it’s not even a value question. It’s about who’s better qualified to make an assessment as to whether a drug is safe to be prescribed for the public. It doesn’t seem to be a hard question – professionals who constantly deal in pharmaceutical and therapeutic products, or a man assigned Health Minister if only because his Prime Minister gave the portfolio to him?
At least our Prime Minister had the common sense to allow a conscience vote on this bill. - Mood:grateful
| |
|
| If you seek, you will find...It's easy to be brave on the internet. The most someone can do is ban my account and restrict my IP access. Nevertheless, I have never been utterly disgusted and appalled by the Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons. Now they are burning down buildings and making threats of violence and death.
I condone protests however rowdy, but I consider such unspoken threats of violence, as opposed to mere expression, unacceptable:
In Australia, Muslim leaders told The Age yesterday that publishing the cartoons would be "playing with fire".
Radical Melbourne cleric Sheikh Mohammed Omran said the reaction could be the same as overseas.
Sheikh Omran said he did not believe anyone in Australia would be stupid enough to publish the cartoons, which insulted not just Muslims but Islam overall. "It's playing with our emotions, and who knows where emotions can lead?" I think Sheik Mohammed Omran needs to be deported for inciting violence and hatred in the community. I hope John Howard lives up to his pledge - we decide who gets to come to this country. And get this Sheikh Omran - you're fucking old enough to control your fucking emotions. And while you're at it, learn to take a fucking joke.
In Victoria, we do have legislation which prohibits speech which would incite hatred or violence (Racial and Religious Tolerance Act). If I were a publishing company, I would publish the cartoons, then take all those radical Muslim Sheiks to the Victorian Civil and Adminstrative Tribunal for inciting hatred and violence should the police ever decide that I would need to go into hiding like the unfortunate 12 cartoonists in Denmark. I anticpate a counter-claim, that the cartoons incited hatred and violence in the first place, but it's actually quite difficult to see how they incite violence as compared to chanting "9/11 is coming to you" or the death threats police have taken to be genuine.
I'm actually looking forward to bringing the case to court and royally trashing some hypocritical ass.
And so for your pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, I pass on to you, from Tim Blair's blog, said 12 cartoons Australian newspapers have only the gonads to describe.
( For Denmark! )
Do the free world a favour - don't give in to the sodding barbarians and spread the cartoon.
For those of you who are artists, I urge you to contribute to drawmohammaed.com.
- Mood:determined
| |
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
lord_hades's journal![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}