tikatu

As a Fan History admin, I’ve been involved in editing the Russet Noon article, and have been talking with my family about the whole phenomenon – mostly about the copyright issues and the Peter David connection - through his satirical round-robin, Potato Moon. (Peter David is a household word of sorts as my husband remembers his work as a comic book writer, and we have some of his Star Trek novels, too.)

So, today the Girl, a Twilight fan, having heard from me about the latest brouhaha surrounding Lady Sybilla and Russet Noon (i.e. the press release), wanted to see the russetnoon.com website and see for herself what the fuss was all about. I pulled it up, vacated my chair, and went off to cook bacon for tonight’s supper.

I hadn’t finished frying the first few slices when my daughter came out to the kitchen, her hands balled up and an expression on her face that made her look as if she had been sucking limes (she’s rather fond of lemons).

“Ewwwwww!” she cried.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s that site! She (meaning Lady Sybilla) has Renesmee all wrong! Renesmee is a self-assured little girl at the end of Breaking Dawn. I don’t see why that should change!”

She shook her head. “I love Renesmee and Jacob to pieces, but if this is from Jacob’s point-of-view, why is it so much about Renesmee? It looks as if the whole book will be about her. And it sounds like she’s approaching Canon-Sue land.”

No sooner had she gone back into the living room, than her next youngest brother (also known as Boy #1, and also a Twilight fan) came in. His fists were balled up and he moved them like Wallace would – but instead of a look of delight on his face (as Wallace would have), he too looked as if he’d been sucking sour fruit – lemons, in his case.

“Ewwwwww!” he said, much as his sister had done. “This Russet Noon thing – it’s like combining sugar and honey in a bowl, then adding it to a combination of margarine, brown sugar and marshmallows in a saucepan. Then adding in some maple syrup and molasses, and dipping a sheet of paper in it and trying to read what is written on it.”

My son loves to cook, and experiment in the kitchen; honey is one of his favorite ingredients. He’d just used it in a loaf of fruit bread and it stuck the loaf to the pan. So I got his drift. He ended his impromptu recipe with, "Renesmee is not bored, and I sincerely doubt she has inadequacy issues.” (Yes, we talk like that in my house.)

I asked my youngest son if he’d read Twilight, and he said no. So, no comment from him.

Going by my own kids’ reaction, I’d say that Lady Sybilla doesn’t exactly have a hit on her hands – should she get past the copyright lawyers unscathed.

Dear Groups User,

Your MSN Group, TB: Top Secret, has had no activity in the last 90 days. As a convenience to our users, we periodically delete groups that have become dormant. We hope you'll consider coming back. It's not too late!
If your group remains inactive for another 14 days, we'll go ahead and delete it. If you would like to keep your group, simply click on the link below and follow the instructions on the web page.

Keep my group

We hope your group is back in action soon,

MSN Groups

You only DELETED it with the rest of the MSN Groups two months ago, nitwits!

FAIL.

Yeah, for the first time this winter, it's snowing here in SC. We've had rain for the past three days; good steady rain, the kind that soaks deep into the ground and sticks. Today, though some of that rain was mixed with sleet, leaving little grains of ice on our "new" side porch (the old fort from the backyard, almost gutted and moved to the side door). Then it began to mix with snow, and turn over to snow completely around 5 p.m.. So very good to see after such a snowless winter. We've even had thunder with this: thundersnow is pretty rare no matter where you go.

Looks like about an inch so far, with an accumlation of 3 to 6 inches possible by the time the storm pulls out - a least, that's what the weather authorities say. And since this is evening, and the temperature will only go down, it shouldn't melt right away, as it did for my friend from Alabama. She says that her snow is all gone. The kids are looking forward to having a day off from school. It's Hubby's first week of annual leave, so he doesn't have to worry about work at all.

Yikes! Something just hit the roof. The Girl is going out to check, taking Lacey out with her so the dog can do her business - if she will. Sometimes she's a really prissy dog about doing her business in the weather. She's been growling and giving little "woofs" at the kids next door playing in the snow. The noise of whatever it was scared Cotton, who hid under my desk. She has now come out and is watching the snow fall through my door. I offered to let her out, but she took a couple of sniffs and decided that warm and dry was better than cold and wet.

The Girl is back now; says she didn't see anything, even with a flashlight. Things that fall on the roof tend to sound louder than they should. I wouldn't be surprised if it was a clump of mistletoe from our oak tree.

I have to admit, I really miss the snow at times. But the fact that we don't have it very often makes it easier to appreciate when it does arrive.

( picspam! )

Now, I know after reading this, you Northerners will say, "Pfffft! That's nothing!" but for the South, this is something!

When I started writing this, the temperature was at 19°F with a wind chill factor bringing the temperature down to 6° F. For my European friends, that's -7°C, with a wind chill factor of -14°C.

Yeah. 6°.

That's bitterly cold down here.

No snow, just wind and sun. The mountains got snow, and I think some of the center of the state did, too. We took the kids to school instead of letting them wait for the bus. Inside the house it's 58°, and the heater is struggling to get us up to the programmed 64°. The Hubby says that it's better than 19°! Which is true, but still! It's going to make showering a bit on the chilly side. I think I might do some baking to help warm the house up!

Since Hubby is home, he's trying to find a way to get our HDTV antenna to catch the most signals. Right now, we get half the channels we did with our simple broadcast TV. But stations more than, say, 10 miles away, nothing. No channel 7 (which is out of Spartanburg and has the Girl's favorite, NCIS), or channel 13 (which is out of Ashville). No channel 62 (which is affiliated with channel 7)... Hubby is getting the idea that this HDTV isn't all it's cracked up to be! And that we might need an outdoor antenna if we want to watch the stations that we're used to. At least he'll have better weather to put it up with if we get it for next week: it's supposed to be in the mid to upper 60s by his next day off--which is Monday!

Well, as I wrap this up, we're at 25° and the windchill is 16°. A veritable heat wave! </sarcasm>

Well, for the most part. We had our taxes done last week, and got the refund anticipation loan on Monday. Which we promptly spent on a new, HD ready TV, the finishing touches for the backyard fence, and catching up with bills. Now we're waiting on the state refund to catch up on more bills and fix the brakes on the van.

The kids got their report cards this past week. It seems that the days of straight As are gone forever now. The kids each got two Bs - the boys out of seven classes and the Girl out of six. Not bad at all, really. I 've always told them that as long as they're doing their best in a class, that's what matters to me.

Hubby got some good news, too: he was the successful bidder on a route in the zone where he's currently working. One more week on his carrier tech string and then back to a regular route - the one route on the string that he really, really likes because it's mostly walking! We used up a Christmas gift he'd been given (a gift card to a local deli) by having a date over lunch there. Good food, but I've been making a mess of myself when I eat and lunch was no exception.

I'm slowly feeling my way around my new websites. The php forum is a little difficult to get used to, but the gallery script is really nice! I've sent a couple of files off to my friend Rain to see what I'm doing wrong; I finally created some cool buttons, but I can't get them to reference the gallery, forum or webpages. While I'm waiting for her to look it over (when you have time, Rain!), I'm working on more webpages and uploading more pictures to the gallery... and working on my laundry, which I've really been slack about doing.

I'm also now on Facebook, which I'm finding to be a terrific time gobbler. Those of you who know my real name can find me and friend me there. If you don't know it and you want to friend me, email me.

Speaking of laundry, websites, and all that, I'd better get back to it. There's a lot to do today!

That's the title of the warning posts that I've been spreading around the fandom this morning as I got the news that Lycos Europe is shutting down both their email and their Tripod webhosting services next month. For some fandoms, this being a European thing isn't all bad; the US isn't affected (yet) and most of the active sites on Tripod (if there are any) would be on the US servers. However, for my fandom, this isn't good. The UK is where the widest fan base is, and I know there are still sites on Tripod. Tripod has been around a long while, and some fans moved on to other places - like MSN groups, which is also closing down next month.

Adding in the AOL Groups closure last year, I get the distinct impression that the fannish world is shrinking. Like being on an ice floe and all the edges are falling off, floating and melting away into the surrounding ocean, leaving less and less space to stand on. Many of the webmasters/groups owners have moved on in fandom; some have dropped out entirely. Now the information, pictures, discussions and fanfiction stored on these remaining sites, abandoned or not, will drop out as well.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? In a way, yes. A lot of unique material is going to be lost forever. I went hunting through Tripod's search engine, looking for sites specific to my fandom. None were terribly active, but one had some fanfiction that I've seen nowhere else, and another had some unique computer generated art. Will these be saved by their creators? Will they be posted elsewhere? At this point, I doubt it. How much more of this is tucked away in abandoned Yahoo groups, or Angelfire sites, or Geocities sites? What happens if these are shut down, too, as being "unprofitable" or not "best of breed"? In the greater scheme of things, I suppose they're not much of a loss. Fandom, as important as it is to some now, won't necessarily be important to the same people later. But even in closed canon fandoms, such as my own, there are still fans that come along, all fired up by their new shiny, and it's good to see where others have been before. It's good to know what the clichés were, who the BNFs were, where to find the fanworks that aren't in the mainstream, or where that plagiarist might have found the work s/he is stealing. Those unique contributions are lost, and it stings.

That's what's got me so determined not to let my own MSN Groups go quietly. I've spent the past couple of days copying all the custom pages and downloading any pictures that I don't have on my own hard drive. I hope to use them in building a new site elsewhere... but will that one day go the way these others have gone? I guess only time will tell.