hmpf

Here's an amusing little website: http://iwl.me/ (Yes, I'm procrastinating from finishing up my cover letter, doing the dishes, and making dinner.)

When I copied a bit of "Normal" in the box there, it told me I wrote like Arthur C. Clarke.

When I copied a bit of "Names" in there, it told me I wrote like Ian Fleming.

When I copied a bit of my single real bit of slash in there, "Together", it told me I wrote like J.K. Rowling. Now, *that* caused me to do a bit of a double take, because that piece? *Not* written in anything approaching Rowling's style at all. So I figured it must be reacting to certain bits of the vocabulary ("wizard, Dementor, lycanthropy...")

So I tried to find a part of the story without any of these key terms. Turns out the single sex scene is. So I entered that into the box - and still got J.K. Rowling.

For about five minutes I was mightily amused by the idea that I write gay werewolf sex like J.K. Rowling.

Then I took another look and, alas, there was still a "Padfoot" in there. Drat.

When I removed that, I wrote like David Foster Wallace.

Fare you well, my friends - until May or so. Feel free to e-mail me, though; I will generally make an effort to at least check my e-mail, even if I drop out of most internet interactions. (Especially, feel free to e-mail me about fannish concerns; I tend to miss fandom a lot in my 'away' phases.)

One last bit of frivolity before I leave: I have to admit I'm considering ordering a copy of this just for the concept, although I'm not actually overly fond of either of the two components on their own... Sadly, I already filled my monthly "buying something just for the bizarre premise" quota yesterday by buying Towing Jehovah, which is about, well, towing the gigantic corpse of God. Last month's quota was filled in abundance by Afterdead, of course.

Speaking of which: Donna Barr has begun making The Desert Peach available online. The Desert Peach is a classic of the alternative comics 'explosion' of the 80s and 90s, and a marvel on many different levels - a complex and humane work about the moral muddle, the inner and outer conflicts and compromises that characterise individuals' lives in very nearly every social context and life situation, examined against the background of a compound of the worst contexts and situations people have managed to create (nazi Germany, the military, and war). If this sounds depressing: it isn't. Some of it is quite funny, in fact - but it's also deep and often unsettling. There are no easy answers; just questions, and then more questions. The characters breathe, and so do the backgrounds; everything feels alive and real. I've been particularly impressed with the depiction of Germany after the war, in the last few issues of the series before it morphed into the mindbogglingly psychedelic Afterdead. (I have the good fortune of owning most of the original series in print.) Those last issues remind me of the "Trümmerliteratur" (Wikipedia: "rubble literature") some of us probably remember from school, only... not. It is, of course, less focused on the whole "woe is us" aspect, which accounts for some of the difference. It feels less apocalyptic. The main difference, though, is perhaps the way in which the issue of guilt is handled, which... deserves an essay, sometime, I think. After my exams, maybe.

**

In other news: I had a wonderful night writing fic, the day before yesterday. Best writing session in ages - nearly a whole page in less than five hours, really moving the plot forward, all the way into madness. I'm still floating on that high. I should be really worried about my exams right now, because, to put it plainly, I'm in deep, deep shit due to some circumstances partly out of my control, but somehow I can't make myself care. Writing feels so much more important. *g*

Templar, Arizona starts a new chapter with a marvellously polite exhibitionist testicular self-mutilator, Finder introduces us to what surely *must* be the strangest genetically modified sub-group of an already remarkably strange society, and I have received the first volume of Afterdead, whose weirdness is very insufficiently captured by the phrase "zombie camel robots with extrudable rectal seating."