This journal is friends only. I've left any fiction that I've posted on other archives(100originalfics / remusxsirius) unlocked.

All my writing can now be found in my memories and at a_drabble_a_day. Nothing on a_drabble_a_day is locked (simply because nothing is rated above 'R'). Links to both can be found on the left-hand side of this page.

Access to all stories hosted on this journal is, at the moment, locked. Depending on the responses I get, I might unlock my G - R rated stories. I cannot see me unlocking my NC-17 stories at any point in the future, simply because I don't want anyone 'unwittingly' reading them.

If you'd like to read anything, just comment here and I'll add you.

Not entirely happy with the result of Question Time. As one of my friends put it, "What did we learn form baiting a racist for an hour? Not much." Other than, apparently, no 'serious' politician is willing to address the concerns of swinging voters who go BNP.

TIRED.

I'm seriously considering changing the name of my journal, after nearly ten years! I think I've outgrown Snape slightly :) If only it weren't so expensive (it's the value, not the actual price that's putting me off).

I'm really, really happy :)

...I got a first.

Yeah.

My first action? I called the school office because I thought they'd got the online marks wrong, so convinced was I that I'd get a 2:1.

My mother burst into tears. My mother.

I'm tired enough that I can't be furious about this, but I'm fairly miffed and I'm making it a public post so that as many people as possible (probably not many, but still...) will see it.

Put simply: Amazon has decided it would be appropriate to remove LGBT literature (including non-fiction history books and, apparently, John Barrowman's autobiography) from its ranking lists, classing it as 'adult' material. Heterosexual books with more explicit content (including Playboy - classy) stay on.

The lame reasoning:

"In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature.
Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us."

Damn right I kindly wrote back to them.

More info, explanations of how to register your disapproval with Amazon, plus links to an online petition can be found at copperbadge's journal.

Please take the time to send them something, even if you only copy and paste a letter that someone else has written. It should take five minutes, tops. Thank you.

Update: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books are doing a google bomb. Link to: http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/amazonrank and make it look like this: Amazon Rank

Am waiting for two of my favourite people to come and pick me up. Haven't seen them since Christmas, so it's going to be fun :) We're going out for lunch and high jinx. It's also Alex's birthday, although I haven't baked him a cake. This has less to do with finance and more to do with the fact that I smashed the eggs accidentally yesterday...

It's perfect weather outside: sunny, windy and bloody cold :D

Ooh I'm a bundle of nerves... just posted my application for a MA at UBC in Vancouver. I hate that there's nothing further I can do :(

Now I've finished that I have to start a 4,000 word project on Weber's idea that Protestantism spawned Capitalism. Yay!

Dear Livejournal,

I pay you. Please load faster than AOL dial-up at 1600 in the afternoon.

Thank you,

Disgruntled of Tunbridge Wells

I've been rattling around various fandoms since the tender age of thirteen. Okay, I'm still young, but still... that's over eight years. I have seen and read a whole plethora of articles and words masquerading as good!fic that would burn a less seasoned person's eyes out.

However. Sometimes, even now, fangirls scare the shit out of me... :(

Edit: I don't think I've quite conveyed the terror. Genuine terror. These people exist and they are obsessed. My mother encountered them when we saw David Tennant in Hamlet. I gave them a wide berth - she couldn't quite believe what they were saying or indeed understand their actions. Crazy women.

Oh GOD. No sleep. Actually none. Went to bed after staying up until 0100 to make chocolate truffles for my work colleagues and then had to get up at 0600. My stupid brain however decided that sleep was for wimps and that even five hours wasn't worth it. I think I managed to doze for about thirty minutes.

Kill me. Now.

I am le tired. I possibly need to start taking something, anything, even a placebo, to make me sleep. I got three hours, maximum last night, which is great when compared to the two hours I managed last Saturday. It takes me at least an hour, normally between two and three, to get to sleep and apparently this is Not Normal. *grump*

I've also been thinking. (Painful.) I've been reading fanfic of some sort or another since I was thirteen, so I have seven years of links in more fandoms than I can remember (including some pretty bizarre ones). One of my friends, having heard me talk about fanfic incessantly tried to look for some by herself, with no prior experience, and ended up on the hell that is fanfic.net. So I said I'd show her the ropes and give her a list of the best multi-fandom rec sites, the best archives and how and where to look for fic, especially because old fandoms, like the West Wing (Ainsley/CJ = my new OTP, closely followed by CJ/Toby and, well, CJ/pretty much anyone, Allison Janney being a gazillion kinds of hot) tend to have a lot of broken links and so you need to know how to use The Wayback Machine. To me this sounds pretty easy and self-explanatory, but then I've been doing it for as long as I've been on the Internet and even I get stuck/get my eyeballs scorched by horrible writing. There are also all the terms we use such as OTP or slash, WIP or AU, plus some that are fandom-specific such as pairing abbreviations. I know there are places that deal with all of these, but I've yet to find a multi-fandom guide to fanfic.

On the other hand I have thirty two pages of Max Weber to read before tomorrow and a house to clean (been housesitting) before my mother gets back and realises that I've been Eating In The Living Room. This is a cardinal sin in her eyes, especially Eating On The New Sofa, for which, I kid you not, she has threatened never to let me sit on it ever again and also not to make me welcome for anything other than Christmas, birthdays and the occasional Sunday lunch. I know this sounds fairly dramatic, but she's fairly OCD (bleaches everything, every night) so she would actually carry out on her threat. Hence, hoovering is my new best friend. Yes.

I think I'll do it. Make a multi-fandom recs guide/list thing. It'll pass the hours away at least :) xx

Speaking of the largest democracy in the world... WTF?!! I thought we had put all the illegalities behind us, at least on a grand scale.

*shakes head in horror*

Y'know, sometimes I am so disgusted with the US electoral system it's unreal.

That article was from the Washington Post. I've looked at the BBC, CNN, Le Monde, The Times and the New York Times as well today and it was the only one showing that story as a lead.

Either that means it a) isn't true [although the article quotes a hell of a lot of sources] or b) everyone else is ignoring it. The optimist in me is hoping for a), but I've a sinking feeling it's b).

The NY Times redeem themselves somewhat with this article on financing religious groups using taxpayers' money. They argue that it has been a policy of the Bush Administration to "lower barriers" between religious groups and the State, especially in allowing financial support to religious groups who hire staff on the basis of their religion.

And that's it, I promise. I only found that last article whilst I was searching for anything relating to the first. Which is still making me twitch.

My boss has just issued a crackdown on non-work related internet time. Answer? Lj, of course! :D

On the plus side, there's one less fascist in the world. The down side? Apparently thousands attended the funeral of Austria's Joerg Haider. Scary.

I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing. On the one hand, it's an attractive proposal for anyone trying to deal with youth 'crime' (technically nothing he did was a crime, but unemployment and loafing around seem to cause a lot of problems here), but on the other hand it goes against most civil liberties and about 90% of my principles. Hmmm... I suppose there isn't an easy or quick answer to anything, unfortunately.

The government has just announced that it wants to reduce the levels of migrant workers in this country, or at least put a cap on them. They cite economic reasons (fewer jobs for everyone, etc.), but when British workers don't want to do the jobs that have to be done, especially in farming, even if they're being paid above minimum wage, then I really don't see what a cap will do, except make things worse.

Abroad, the Iraqis have staged an anti-US rally, quelle surprise.

One week on, Mugabe is still being an ass. And just scanning the Africa pages on the BBC news website is disturbing. In all the links present, only about three deal with anything positive at all. I have to admit, I know very little about Africa; my education at school tended to centre on Europe and the US. It's pretty depressing really: you'd think eleven years of compulsory education would be enough to cover everything needed for a basic knowledge of the world, including current affairs, but it really isn't. Either that, or we're being taught in completely the wrong way. Mind you, they don't teach much in that area at university either, unless you do something akin to Development Studies.

In the US, Florida is in the election spotlight with just eighteen days left before the vote. I can't believe it's nearly here... it seems so strange. It's the first US election that I've paid any in-depth attention to and it's thrown up some very interesting questions and observations, mostly centring on how flawed democracy, especially within its biggest exporter, is.

Scary Sarah has also put her foot in it again, leaving Joe Biden to take an easy swing at her.

How could this happen? It makes me so bloody furious when education expenses are cut - especially considering the size of the US military budget. Maybe if more people were more highly and better educated there wouldn't be a need for expensive war on abstract concepts. Just a thought.

The French are still not overly keen on the Americans. Le Monde speaks of Sarkozy traveling to Camp David in order to 'persuade' Bush to sign up to a global financial recovery plan. CNN on the other hand, paints it as a far more mutual affair with a slightly heavier emphasis on Bush's role.

On another immigration front, apparently there's some sort of pan-European-African conference going on to do with immigration. My French isn't that great, but it's clear that whatever happens it'll have a greater effect in France than anywhere else in Europe: the French have had notoriously bad race relations problems, especially with African migrants.

And I think that's quite enough for one day, don't you?

...This is a really good summary of the current situation with George Bush; the things he has & hasn't done and the things he still has to resolve before he leaves office.

Also, a crazy, crazy Christian seems to think that it's McCain & Christianity vs. Obama & other (inferior) world religions:

“...There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it’s Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they’re going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens...”

Um, right. Equality and the separation of Church and State mean nothing to you then?

Sarah Palin is also putting her tuppence-worth in. She really, really scares me. Biden, Obama's running mate, is a good choice: he has experience & doesn't overshadow the main candidate. He also appeals to a different section of the voters. Palin seems to have extremely reactionary opinions, little idea of the background behind serious contemporary political problems and, even more worrying, is more likely to become President than Biden as McCain has already had several health scares and is not a young man. Whether she abused her power as Alaska's governor or not doesn't really bother me, or rather it does, but there are other things about her that are far more concerning. :(

There's also another interesting article about female freedom fighters in Turkey. It's interesting because Turkey has long been told that they need to improve their human rights record (especially with regard to women) in order to be accepted into the EU, but this is the first time I've heard about this all-women group. Even more encouraging is a quote from one of their (male) supporters: "If we are really trying to create a new society, we have to develop women. If women are enslaved, then so are men."

And finally...

Mugabe's at it again, Connecticut has finally legalised same-sex marriage and this sounds like a great idea for the next time I visit Paris.

Edit: just read an article on Le Monde in which the journalist basically accuses The Times (London) and The Telegraph of making up their quotes... it mentions the lack of sources in both papers' articles on the economic crisis three times in the space of two paragraphs :D Love the French - they hate us so much.

Because, of course, this won't piss the French off in the slightest...

Sometimes I wonder if the country's being run by people with no grasp of basic European history or cultural differences.

In other news, McCain seems to be on the verge of crashing and burning, which normally I'd say would be all to the good (and don't even get me started on Palin), but I'm worried it'll go too far to the other side and he'll start to get sympathy voters. It's times like this I wish I knew far more about American politics than I actually do.

Title: A Small Part of the Pantomime
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 029 (Birth)
Rating: R for subject matter and a little gore.
Length: 396 words

A/N: The title is taken from a line in Wallace Stevens' poem 'Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird'.

Summary: There's a reason her parents indulged her.

( When she was born, her heart stopped. )

Title: Corridor of Dreams
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 078 (Where?)
Rating: PG
Length: 486 words

Summary: There is an endless corridor with infinite rooms. It's the myth that will begin her journey.

( In a place beyond the recall of most beings, there rests a dark and dusty corridor, lined with equally dark and dusty doors. )

Title: Sugar is Sweet
Author: ravanasnape
Prompt: 064 (Fall/Autumn)
Rating: PG
Length: 340 words

Summary: Some of the oldest fears are hidden by the wildest fripperies.

( She watches them from her window, as they weave the petty patterns of humanity. )