The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Aquila:

Nomie, @11:

Actually, that google search mostly leads here. There's nothing particularly NSFW (except the word itself) in the first page of search results, though there was one page that left a nasty taste in my mouth.

*tries the Google Image search* Maybe I have safe search on, but it's hard to tell when my search engine is speaking Dutch. Yep, it was on. There's one midly dodgy picture, but essentially it's safer to image search for dinosaur sodomy than it is for twister.

I'm another who remembers Charles and Diana's wedding (because I was allowed to stay up to watch). I was born in 1975.

Presumably some 12 year olds would remember the millennium.

Mary Dell @ 203:

You mean like this?
http://del.icio.us/marydell/ml%2Bwriting

If you click on the + sign to the right of the tag you want to combine in the related tags box on the right it'll give you the tag overlap. Alternatively you can enter the two tags separated by a + sign in the box next to your name, or play with the url.

Yes, I know I should avoid the urge, but I just have to say it. If Doyle is there surely it's an Angel moment, not a Buffy one?

My apologies to the name's owner.

TexAnne, I'd recommend that you get hold of the all in one volume of ASH: A Secret History so you don't suffer through the "need the next one now" pangs and can read it as it was supposed to be read.

Go, read, enjoy, we'll expect to hear back from you in a couple of days/weeks/months (depending on amazon speed/reading speed/ and the amount of RL interference to reading).

ASH was one of my most delightful discoveries of 2006 and prompted me to go out and buy everything else Mary Gentle had written.

Apparently Naga means cobra in Sanskrit.

I heard (and saw) a theremin be played last night, at the Auckland International film festival. There was a live score played for the silent film Cat and the Canary. When the ghost/monster came on the screen the whole audience craned over to watch the theremin player instead of the screen.

And in coincidental? timing Doris Egan has just said on her livejournal not to look for a fourth Ivory book, and gives a quick idea of where a fourth book might have started from.

Spoilers, I guess

Hob @334:
I hope I'm not the only one who noticed an unusual number of *possibly* inadvertent obscene double-entendres

Being in Harry Potter fandom means that someone has always seen the double entendre before you. Minerva McTabby is collecting the Deathly Hallows - The Rude Bits. I was reading the book with fannish goggles firmly in place, but certainly didn't see all these (I don't think I catch wand jokes automatically).

Stefan Jones @363:
I think you are totally right that the epilogue exists for her sake - both to give her something to work towards, and to provide a "nothing else happens, the story really is over" sense without having to resort to "rocks fall, everyone dies". A friend quoted the end of Jo's Boys on the subject which I think says it all.

Chris - it's Tom Riddle, not Arthur. I think he's a Lord because he says he is "I am Lord Voldemort". Rather the same way that Xena is a warrior princess - arguing with them about it might not be good for the health.

There have been many attempts to work out a British wizarding population sufficiently large enough to maintain a Quidditch league and all the other jobs mentioned, yet small enough for one graduating glass a year. It can't be done - the general explanation given is that JK Rowling isn't great at maths. As a rule the wizarding population size is whatever you need it to be for your essay or fanfic, supported by whichever facts and handwaving work for you.

Surely, surely, surely, the Latin Harry Potter should have the spells in Greek?

I think I'm going to be most disappointed if that is not the case.

Not necessarily used for flaming, often just grumbling, but it drives me nuts every single time I see it:
"Am I the only one who...[fairly common opinion]" (often followed by "doesn't like" or "can't stand")

The urge to yell back "Yes, you are the only person on the whole internet who doesn't like Harry Potter/never watched Buffy/thought the Star Wars prequels sucked/hates spam" gets stronger and stronger.

That might be Northern Hemisphere Go Back to Work Day rather than International. It's a public holiday here, and the middle of the annual summer holiday period.

Human hamster balls?

The Zorb

I don't know if it counts, but I know of at least two Xena fanfics which involved 'reincarnations' of the main characters in another time that were actually published as books - outside of the context it's not completely obvious who they're reincarnations of, and it becomes a story about two women.

And there's another 40 or so that don't mention reincarnation, but do use the characters' descriptions in various ways. I hadn't heard the term avatar novel before, that describes them nicely. I estimate that more than 1/3 of the lesbian romances that Amazon is currently selling started out in Xena fandom. I'd love to know the sales figures.

Is there, I wonder, a Xena-verse retelling of Thermopylae?

Of course there is! In the episode One Against an Army Xena sets out to stop a Persian vanguard, Gabrielle gets shot by a poison arrow, won't let Xena go for the antidote because the Persians would get through, and then the Persian ninjas all conveniently attack the barn Xena and Gabrielle hole up in, rather than just running on past and attacking Greece.

It is one of the great subtext episodes.

http://www.whoosh.org/epguidearmy.html

I can't find it to link to anymore, but the fanfic that amused me the most at the Derbyshire Writer's Guild several years ago was "Lizzie the Vampire Slayer". Mr Darcy was of course her Watcher.

Xopher at #104:

I've always pronounced it 'rooves'. A bit of googling gave me this:
http://www.bartleby.com/64/C007/0165.html
so yeah, I wouldn't be suprised to hear it on the BBC.

Of course acronyms aren't really faster if words are one or two actions each, and the initial letter is less important to the words without the sound cue, so there are probably very servicable "the fuck!?!" signs in existence that are one or two signs long. But maybe the above will serve for those of us who are sign illiterate.

Hmm, maybe this would be a way:

WTF

And looking that up made me realise how very different the ASL and New Zealand Sign Language manual alphabets are. The words must be even more so!

Comment statistics for Aquila on the Making Light blog

Total: 54 comments. View all these comments on a single page.