The Fandomblog

A song from an incredibly talented guy.

Cool song with a guy from around here. Love the retro sound.

A case of reality imitating fiction? This is a little late and most of you have probably seen this already, but if not – scary… I hope this is a one time thing only.

There are new wallpapers on the Fandom House site! So if you’re into Star Trek you’re welcome to check them out.

I have some invite codes to Dreamwidth, if anyone’s interested. Comment and I’ll send you one.

I haven’t really listened to any podcasts and very few audiobooks. Generally, I prefer to read – ordinary paper books, and tv series and movies. However, I think I could get into podcasts (or video podcasts), at least a little, if the subject was one that I’m very interested in. Audiobooks on the other hand, they’re probably not for me. Mom likes them and I’ve tried to listen to some of hers, but I never really got into them. One reason is that the translated ones are by necessity read by Swedish actors. They’re reading books that have been written in another language – these days almost exclusively English.

I never read the first book in the series about The Ladies’ Detective Agency, I listened to it on a cd player. The actress reading it could be said to be ideal in most ways – like Mma Ramotswe she’s ‘of traditional build’ and she’s very funny, or at least used to. However, when the topic of lady detectives came up, the British mystery writer Agatha Christie was mentioned and the actress pronounced that with the stress on the second syllable. That was it for me… Funnily enough, I think she got the African names about right. At least as far as I can tell.

The other memorable audiobook I tried was one about Jeeves and Wooster (I’ve forgotten the title). Again, the ‘cast’ – a group of famous comedy actors – should have been ideal, and maybe they would have been, if someone had adapted the entire book to a Swedish setting with Swedish names. As it was, naturally they hadn’t. One member of the ‘cast’ was able to correctly pronounce the UK county Worcestershire (I hope I spelled that right), the others couldn’t. No one could pronounce the more unusual personal names – like Bertie’s friend Barmy Fotheringay-something or other (?) which I think is to be pronounced Fungy- Phipps? In any case, they all botched the names. One of them, who is really famous, and a movie maker/director as well as an actor let one of his characters (he played two) use a southern Swedish accent. Never again, that’s all I can say.

Of course, that’s not really why I don’t like audiobooks, I just – well, don’t. For me, books are about reading, not listening. If I want to listen, I’ll turn on my iPod for some music, or I’ll watch tv/dvd.

If you were going to make a mix tape to describe how this week went for you, what’s the first song you’d put on it. Bonus points if you share the song with us.

REM: Everybody Hurts (here with lyrics)

In my case of course, it’s not just sometimes it’s practically always, but it’s slightly comforting to listen to the song anyway. Sometimes…

I know others are suffering too, so if you are, listen and try to take comfort, if you can.

A while back, I posted about ratings. I think I mentioned that I practically never use them for my Swedish stories/fics. We don’t require them (yet anyway), and I really don’t think they’re necessary. In fact, I was amazed when I found out about ratings/warnings, but since I want to be read, naturally I complied.

When I first started writing fan fiction everyone used the MPAA ratings so that’s what I did Then I found that FanFiction.net and FictionPress use the FictionRatings system and I switched to that instead. Having a separate system (quite apart from the legal aspect that I’m not going to go into) for fiction makes sense.

I also made up my own system that I use on my site (in addition to the FR system). It’s very simple, if not very detailed. Green means G and PG/K and K+, Yellow means PG-13/T and Red means R and NC-17 or M and MA respectively.

Yesterday I quite suddenly realized that there’s another system, one specifically for fan fiction. I was amazed. After all, I’ve been into fan fiction for about ten years (how time flies!) and I’d never heard of this before. While I haven’t had time to update my fan fiction site yet (too busy with RL) I will definitely include the Fan Rated Ratings System. I’ll still use the FR system though and still keep a page with the old MPAA ratings as a reference.

So, apparently, even after ten years, there’s something new to learn. Great. In fact the past months or so (which have brought me much personal pain and worry) have at least given me a couple of new fandom-related things to try and by now, use: Dreamwidth and Archive of Our Own. Maybe I should also mention the terrific Fan Wikis (though they aren’t completely new).