I've been trying something new lately: for the foreseeable future, I will only read fiction books by female authors.

I decided to do this because I noticed that a lot of the authors I read are male, and as good as most of them are, there is a distinct lack of strong female characters and quite frankly I'm tired of it.

( Cut for book babble. )

Edit: I really shouldn't look at Amazon. I want to buy the PS1 original versions of FF7 and FF8 now. (I have PC adaptations, which I have managed to get to work with Vista, but it's only a matter of time before Vista borks them in some way.) ::bites nails:: Have no money. Must not purchase.

My mother is in the rather bad habit of volunteering me to babysit for two young boys on our road without asking me first if I'm free to do so. Most of the time I am, purely because the boys' parents ask far enough in advance that I don't have anything planned.

This time, however, they organised it with my mother and my mother then a) forgot to tell me and b) forgot when it was. So I went over to their house today and discovered that they wanted me to babysit today.

There went my evening.

As much as I detest children in general, I have to admit that these two boys are lovely. Really sweet, really polite. The younger one has clearly been well-trained by his parents - he hasn't quite worked out yet that I watch TV after sending them to bed, so when they go up to bed he switches off the TV and makes sure it's turned off at the wall as well. He did it again today - it's so cute I've not enlightened him yet. :D

I've been distracted somewhat recently by the Rurouni Kenshin manga, though - I took it with me today. I watched a lot of the fansubbed anime back, oooh, some six of seven years now, but never finished it - and I have a preference for manga over anime anyway. I picked up the Vizbig vol 1 of Rurouni Kenshin (vols 1-3 of the manga in the one volume) at the London Film and Comic Con last weekend out of sheer nostalgia, and then pretty much fell in love with the series all over again. Kenshin's "Oro?" is just as funny in print as it is in motion, thankfully - and the Vizbig edition has some sections in colour in every edition so far.

I'm now halfway through Vizbig vol 3 (so roughly halfway through vol 8 of the manga, I think?), just after Kenshin's left for Kyoto. I didn't get further than this in the anime, so it's new territory. Liking Kaoru much more this time round, too - although she does need to actually remember that she can use a katana when it's useful, though. Fingers crossed the Kyoto arc will fix that.

Ooh, ooh, someone claimed my prompt on areyougame! Yup, I only made the one. Only had one to make. :D

With regard to my claims - I've written something on all of them, so far, although I've only finished one. Which needs a big edit. I'm still not entirely sure where I'm going with the Tseng/Zack fic, though. :/ Bah, I'll figure it out.

Edited to make this post public, because you know what, fuck that shit. This stuff should be available for the world to see.

One of the officers at work was assaulted by one of her offenders today.

Luckily, the assault wasn't serious - just a punch in the arm. Unfortunately, the response the officer got from the police was, in short, "It happens. What do you want us to do about it?"

Which is completely not the point. Yes, it happens, but no, it is NOT acceptable. In any job dealing with the public - or even with other members of staff - incidents like this have to be quickly and clearly dealt with to show that they are not acceptable, because otherwise people will feel they have a licence to treat you how they wish.

I've had a month of disappointments where the police (and the law in general) are concerned, it seems.

At the end of last week the magistrates at our local court basically colluded with an offender and the offender's solicitor. This offender has several convictions and arrests for domestic violence and regularly beats up his parents. His most recent arrest involved him beating his mother with a belt and destroying part of her house. He was in breach of his community order and Probation were basically saying we can't recommend any community penalty because he just doesn't comply. We also made it as clear as we could that a curfew was NOT appropriate, because it ties him to his parents' property and therefore puts them at risk.

But the magistrates didn't want to give him custody. They didn't want to give him custody, and they decided that their desire to not give him custody was more important than the safety of his victims.

So they gave him a curfew.

His mother told the Probation Officer that she's moving out. She is so scared of her own son that she will move out of her own home rather than stay there while he's on a tag. She can't even say "Get out of my house" to him, because she is too scared of what he will then do.

One of the guys who was in court put it best: "Today I watched a mother be abused by her son, a solicitor, and three magistrates."

Sometimes in this job I feel incredibly proud of our criminal justice system and have my faith in humanity restored.

Other times I just feel sick.

I've decided to participate in areyougame, because when I was going through the sneak peek of the prompts, I actually got pinged with fic ideas! Also, areyougame is awesome and you should definitely take a look and maybe claim a prompt to write.

Claims for August run as follows:

( Lookie look! )

Typically, my strongest ping is for the last prompt. I will update this post when I post stuff, which should be on the dates listed.

Edit: the pics should work now. Curse you, Photobucket! *shakes fist*

So since TS3 pretty much enforces legacy-style playing on you, I decided hey! I may as well play a legacy family! TS3 is also addictive and therefore I have spent far too much time playing this family, which led to me making this post because if I don't I'll soon forget what the hell was going on at the time I took these screencaps.

Note: I didn't realise that my screencap programme was including the mouse in the pics, so there are several points where the mouse is clearly visible in the picture. Oops. Please ignore for now - I've changed the programme settings now so it shouldn't do that any more. :D

( Tsutsul Legacy Part One: Poverty and Gold Diggers )

Edited to change the icon, because this one is AWESOMELY APPROPRIATE.

I've just started reading this HP fic, and I've almost been put off it entirely because one of the first things anyone does in the fic is so incredibly stupid it left me gobsmacked, and yet there's no acknowledgement anywhere in the fic I can see of just how stupid it is.

So what's the stupid thing? It's this:

There's a crash involving a motorcycle and a car. Harry sees it. He runs over to the motorcyclist and takes his helmet off.

I hope that most people won't need any further explanation of the monumental stupidity involved in that action. However, I thought "don't take the helmet off an injured motorcyclist" was common knowledge, in the same way that "if it's bleeding hold it up and put pressure on it" and "don't move someone who might have a back injury" are, and yet it's turned up in this fic. So. I have cause to doubt my previous belief.

If you don't have a clue why this is stupid, I'll tell you:

If a motorcyclist is in an accident, taking their helmet off could cause their skull to cave in.

I am not kidding you. Motorcycle helmets are so enclosed and heavily insulated that there's a pressure differential between the inside of the helmet and the outside of the helmet. Leaving aside the fact that to get the helmet off you'd probably have to move the injured person's neck, which is a big no-no for other reasons, removing the helmet after a head injury can destroy a fragile pressure balance where the helmet is quite literally the only thing holding the person's head together.

Right. Basic first aid/common sense lesson over. >.<

At some point, I will stop playing with my DW layout. Promise.

Moving on:

( LIFE: I am an ill thing. )
( GAME: Disgaea )
( GAME: Sims 3 )

Trying to get back in the groove with writing recs. I shall prevail! All recs will be crossposted to Pharmakon.

( Star Trek 2009 )
( D.Grayman )
( Persona 4 )

Updated Pharmakon - nothing big, just stuck "Subliminal" and "The Line of Your Body" on there. The one thing of note is that I actually edited "Subliminal" so it doesn't read like I wrote it in under an hour after dashing back from seeing the film at the cinema. The fact that I did write it in under an hour after dashing back from the cinema is irrelevant.

Today is father's day. Therefore, I have prepared the most appropriate and loving gift a daughter can give to her father to show her appreciation for his (lack of) parenting.

Yup, he got a coconut.

( What? You want context? )

My life is a trainwreck. I called my local police to speak to them about reporting a crime, and I mentioned that oh, by the way, my uncle is a police officer in this area, not sure which department he's in, but I don't want to talk to him about it because he's a family member and it would make things awkward for him through the conflict of interest thing. They take my details and tell me someone will call me back.

So a couple of minutes ago I get a call from the vulnerable adults unit, who asked me to confirm if it was correct that I didn't want to speak to a male officer.

Well, technically...

May have totally borked my journal layout and ability to customise journal layouts.

Er. Watch this space.

(Or don't, because it's kind of ugly and not worth looking at right now.)

Edit: fixed. I r stoopid. Stoopid enough to post a support request because I apparently can't read, and thought the link to the post that fixed my problem said something totally different.

I think I need sleep.

Today my driving instructor told me that he's going to miss me when I pass my test. This may or may not have been just after I pulled out of a junction while making "brmm brmm" noises. (He normally makes Roadrunner noises back. I like my instructor. :D)

ANYWAY. Following on from this post, I have decided to make a list of Commonly Confused Words I find strewn about many of the fics I read. ( I only have so much tolerance for bad English. )

AND THUS IT CONTINUES. In this part: Larsa is topped by everyone, Penelo is manipulative, and OCs appear. Basch is present in spirit, although he wishes he wasn't.

[ PART 1 ] [ PART 2 ] [ PART 3 ] [ ? ]

( A Tale of Archadian Passion, or, Penelo's Navel: Part Two )

EDIT: End of hiatus. WTF. See this post.


::waves:: Hiya. Just a notice that I'm about to disappear off the face of the intertubes for a while. Real Life is about to hit me like a particularly unpleasant train wreck, what joy!

Normally I get through bad RL stuff by clinging ever more firmly to the fandom stuff, so the reason I'm issuing this hiatus is purely because the upcoming RL situation is not one I have ever been in before, so I've no way of knowing exactly how I'll react or whether I'll be fit for human company (either on the intertubes or in RL).

With luck, any fallout will be isolated and dealt with quickly and I'll be back posting inanities before you can blink. Buuuuuuuut I also might not, so, hiatus post!

If you want to get hold of me while I'm not about here, you can always email me at anria [AT] solelyfictional [DOT] org. More sensibly formatted, of course. :)