> get lamp

My mother is watching Day of the Triffids. Me: "So this is like Little Shop of Horrors, except not funny?"

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"You know what's difficult about writing homosexual sex scenes? You run out of pronouns."

if:book pointed to an article on Wired today:

"...the complex structure of tacitly-permitted copyright violation that powers the participatory fan culture around commercially-produced manga. Though the countless fan publications that take existing, copyrighted characters and repurpose them in new, surreal or pornographic environments are in explicit violation of copyright, the industry maintains an anmoku no ryokai ('unspoken, implicit agreement')... It's interesting to speculate on whether J K Rowling's publishers have the same attitude to the legions of fan writers busy generating Harry Potter slashfic; whether fanfic and slashfic is considered a meaningful contribution to the industries it riffs off, the way fan publications are recognised as such in the manga industry; and whether the idea of an anmoku no ryokai might be a useful addition to existing practice around copyright in a 'read/write' culture."

I like the phrase "read/write culture". I don't think the publishers consider it meaningful in the sense of "generates further revenue for the series/franchise", though.

I asked myself why I almost always try to make anything I write distill down into a drabble and got a surprising answer.

Partly it is just a thought exercise, and sometimes you hit on a better edit for something that you can keep. That is not the surprising part.

The surprising part part of the answer, and the bulk of it in fact, was "guilt/shame".

Ashamed at needing more words? Ashamed at wanting to? "You spend too much time thinking about this"? ("If only such people would apply their minds to, say, the depths of magical theory, he thought with chagrin.") Fear of reprisal for taking up too much of people's time? Fear of ridicule? (a lot of things in my life come down to that one.)

This reaction does not seem appropriate to the situation...