It's a magical world

Q&A Days 1-8

Q&A Days 9-14

15. What 5 things are you obsessed with currently?
Narnia, definitely. As for the rest…'obsession' is probably too strong a word, but I'm very excited to watch a lot of anime and Doctor Who over the summer. And to read a lot of manga. And as always, to try (and fail) to catch up on my piles of 'to-read' books.

16. What are you glad you did but haven't really had a chance to post about?
Um…I post about 90% of my life, I'd say; almost everything I consider worth mentioning makes it way here eventually. I'm behind on several music reviews, including a Javanese shadow puppet performance and a gamelan concert that I saw. They were both awesome.

17. How many people on your reading list have you met IRL?
Hmm. *eyeballs reading list* Probably somewhere between one-third to one-half. One of the things I did when I joined DW was to subscribe widely, which has netted me a lot of awesome people in various places on my reading list, and I've had a corresponding number of chances to meet them offline too, particularly since I moved to California/started attending more cons. And I've met more awesome DW people through those awesome DW people, even better.

18. What don't you talk about here, either because it's too personal or because you don't have the energy?
I don't tend to talk about my family very often; my sister is on DW/LJ too, and a lot of that is her story to tell, not mine. I also, bizarrely, haven't talked about my parrot much. I might try to put together a picspam of him when I'm back in Jersey this week, he likes having his picture taken. I also try not to talk about the minutiae of my grad school life so as not to bore all of us, myself included.

19. What are you most interested in reading?
*laughs* You know, that's actually a good question. I read almost exclusively sff, YA, and non-fiction these days, and even there, my tastes are decidedly out of the mainstream. I'm looking for interesting takes on old stories, believable characters, well-chosen words and thrilling turns of phrase, stories that I haven't heard before, stories that represent real reflections of the broad range of human experience and not just the same rehashing of things the kyriarchy believes. Not coincidentally, the books I read tend to be by authors who aren't white men.

20. Any questions from the audience?
Speak now or forever hold your peace (until next time)!

21. What's your favourite thing about Dreamwidth?
The people, first and foremost. ♥

1. Why did you sign up for Dreamwidth?
I won the 'beta invite for random OpenID users' lottery fairly soon after signing up for an OpenID account at the tail end of closed beta, about a week and a half before the beginning of open beta. I'd been dissatisfied with LJ for a while, and DW made it easy to make the switch. Actually I have to give lian a lot of the credit for bringing DW to my attention and thus bringing me over here; thanks! <3

2. Why did you choose your journal name? What does it mean?
The name is my LJ name (starlady38), without the digits, which I added to my desired LJ name because plain starlady over there has been inactive since 2001. One of the nice things about getting in on the ground floor at DW was being able to ditch such workarounds.

The name actually refers to Star Wars fandom, which I started out in way back in the time known as the day; Timothy Zahn refers to "starladies" in his dedication to Specter of the Past (still one of the best SW novels), which I'd been reading around the time I started my LJ. Also I wanted to be an astronomer for most of my life, so the name is doubly appropriate.

3. Do you use other blogging sites? Why or why not?
I still have my LJ, obviously, and I have an InsaneJournal account that's completely empty. I also have a Twitter account linked to my legal name, but other than that, no. I'm used to the LJ/DW way of doing things, and I find that it's shaped what I want out of a blogging site. In particular, the way the comments structure is set up seems to encourage actual discussion.

I do still crosspost to LJ, though not everything--Follow Friday DW posts, obviously, aren't very relevant to LJ, and I don't post any creative works other than translations to LJ, since I don't want that on SUP's servers, ever. In that spirit, I also have deleted most of my older LJ entries, and I do go back and delete entries with no comments when the mood takes me. My DW is my journal of record.

4. What do you do online when you're not on DW?
I use Wikipedia a lot, as well as various online dictionaries such as alc.co.jp and Perseus. Other than that…in a lot of ways DW is actually the center of my online experience right now; most of the things I wind up reading I find by way of DW. I do read short fiction online; I used to read The New York Times, but their paywall has killed that. I still sometimes read The New Yorker. Oh, and obviously, I read fanfic. And a significant portion of my online time is also taken up by doing OTW work in Campfire, on Basecamp, etc.

5. How about when you're not on the computer?
I read, I write (either by hand or directly into Word or Scrivener), I run, I cook, I bike, I hang out in coffeeshops and wander around to bookstores and restaurants. I watch TV and anime on my computer and make vids occasionally too. And, oh yeah, I'm in grad school. It works well.

6. What do you wish people who read your journal knew about you?
Hmm. I feel like my personality and views come through fairly well in my posts. I don't always comment, but I do read 95% of what's on my reading list, which I don't filter.

7. What is your favourite community on Dreamwidth?
Another good question! There are some that shall remain anonymous per community rules, but I particularly appreciate runners, which is very supportive of runners at all levels of skill and experience. white_lotus, an Avatar: The Last Airbender community, is pretty cool, as is forkedtongues, a community about languages, multilingual-ness, and translations. fandomcalendar is also dead useful, as is animanga_news. And of course clampnews is great too.

8. What is your philosophy on journal layouts?
Hmm, not sure what exactly this means, but! I shall answer anyway. I have the CSS skills that god gave a squirrel, so my options are always limited to customizing the canned layouts that other people create. I actually still prefer my LJ layout to my DW layout--I find the grey-on-black text much easier on the eyes--but I like my DW layout pretty well. I think a layout should be fairly uncluttered and sensibly designed; I like having icons on the right because they pop out more.

( Future questions )

My life you guys, MY LIFE, so incredibly busy (and not a little unstressful) right now! So! There will be three_weeks_for_dw content here eventually, just probably not this week. And sadly I don't have time to do any of the memes, but you might! And in that spirit, here are some links to content:

inkstone is hosting the 2nd Annual Small Fandoms Subscription Meme! I did this last year, and met some awesome people.

marshtide is hosting Frequently or Not So Frequently Asked Questions about Anime & Manga in anime_manga! That comm is also hosting the Anime & Manga Subscribing Meme Part II!

Speaking of FONSFAQ, here is a master list of many that are going on!  And there is a community now too, fonsfaq!

torachan is hosting the Transfic Mini Fest Round 2!

littlebutfierce is hosting the fantastically awesome anime/manga/manhwa/manhua drabblefest!

troisroyaumes also has links to many other FONSFAQs and 3W4DW things!


And finally, on this second anniversary of DW open beta, I encourage everyone to post some content to an underloved community. I think we all know of comms that have been very low activity (such as *cough cough, scuffs foot* my own sagarawest and thebainherald, for all your Michelle Sagara West and Garth Nix discussion/reading/fannish needs!), and it would be great if we could take this energy and breathe a little bit of it into communities as well.

So the other week at work coworker J asked me to make her a mix CD "because I don't know what's popular these days." Well, I don't really listen to popular music these days--the last time I listened to a commercial radio station willingly was years ago--but I do have a handle on some subdomains of popular unpopular music. Coworker J liked the playlist I came up with, and I really do too, so I thought I'd share.

Download the Popular Unpopular Music playlist here!
I had to fit the playlist onto a conventional 75-minute CD, which was good because otherwise I would have gone on for hours; I may wind up making another playlist with all the tracks I couldn't quite shoehorn in this time around (such as Janelle Monae! and so many others!). That said:

( Here is the tracklist )

Some awesome
three_weeks_for_dw posts:

copperbadge posts a really eloquent argument for DreamWidth and a summation of LJ's latest awfulness--he is moving sam_storyteller to DW!

mumblemutter is hosting Video Killed the Radio Star, a multifandom music video challenge! Why is there not Lady Gaga fic on there yet.

synecdochic on modesty and what's wrong with it.

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I wrote the following in December 2005. It's by no means a perfect or even a great paper, but I still like it for the fact that I basically wrote an exploration of the Lone Power in Diane Duane's Young Wizards books (who as a character and as a concept absolutely fascinates me) and turned it in for a grade in a college class. I would do a lot of things differently were I to write this paper now--invert the structure, most notably, and less with the generalizations (but I am by no means a philosopher)--and I've put it under two cuts to facilitate people who just want the Young Wizards discussion getting where they want to go.

( Evil, beauty, and Tiantai )( The Lone Power )

I wrote the following for a course in philosophical theology in November 2006. I should mention at the outset that the paper is a fairly direct attempt to explain the actual physics of time as they are currently understood to my professor, who is a wonderful man and a brilliant philosopher but a very poor physicist (not that I can make any claims to being anything more than an educated layperson in that field). Consequently I wound up talking about Harry Potter and the books of Gene Wolfe in an attempt to illustrate my points comprehensibly. I still enjoy this essay, and I hope readers will too--the suspiciously broad generalizations stop right after the cut, I promise.

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Before the modern era there was no distinction between science and philosophy; someone who might today be labeled a scientist would have called him or herself, at most, a “natural philosopher.” Thinkers such as Aristotle and Hypatia discussed the nature and composition of the cosmos as readily as they did morality, ethics and the good life. It was not until the modern scientific revolutions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that science and philosophy parted ways, but today the disjunction between them is nearly as profound as that between science and religion.

This state of affairs is unfortunate on a number of levels. Both science and philosophy are engaged in explaining the nature of existence, but the insights of each field are lost on the other. Nowhere are the pernicious consequences of this situation more evident than in the study of time.

( Time is the one thing you do not have. )