1. Carla got her new computer today! My old laptop (which she's currently using) is really starting to die (looks like it needs a new hard drive), so instead of saving the new computer til Christmas, we decided she'd just start using it now.

2. Had a nice walk tonight. Four miles, which is longer than we've done in a while. She's been busy with school, I've been busy with work, there's yoga two nights a week interfering with our schedule, and then for the past couple weeks she's been sick. But tonight Alexander wanted something from the Apple Store, so we walked down to the Promenade and back. Stopped at El Pollo Loco on the way, yum.

3. Speaking of chicken, I was boiling a whole chicken earlier today for use in enchiladas and I kind of forgot about it on the stove and so it got cooked way longer than I meant it to...but that ended up being a good thing! The chicken was just falling off the bones!

( Supernatural 5x10 )



I also watched Modern Family, but I don't really have anything to say there. There wasn't anything wrong with it, per se, but it was the weakest episode so far and I just wasn't finding much to get excited about. (Probably because the main storyline was about Phil and Claire and I just don't care about them.)

1. Thanks to the people who recommended Sally's, I have hair dye! We walked down there last night and it turned out they had quite a large selection of non-natural colors by four or five different makers. I ended up gettin Manic Panic, so we'll see how that goes. Last night I did the bleaching (here's a pic of me all bleached) and later today I'll do the toner and then the dye itself.

2. We got our Walmart order in the mail today with this nice lined sweatshirt. It's so cozy! I really wish there was a Walmart near us because it's so nice to find clothes in large sizes that aren't horribly expensive. But if it's something we're pretty sure is going to fit okay, the website is a good option (I love the 97 cent shipping).

Title: Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet
Author: Sherri L. Smith
Number of Pages: 167 pages
Book Number/Goal: 66/75 for 2009
My Rating: 3/5

When a pipe bursts during Ana Shen's middle school graduation, flooding the field and cutting the ceremony short, it doesn't seem like things could get any worse. Then comes the announcement that the gym is flooded, too, and the graduation dance is cancelled. The dance was going to be Ana's big chance to tell Jamie Tabata she likes him before they go their separate ways for high school, but when her best friend Chelsea ends up inviting Jamie and his family over to Ana's for a graduation dinner, it looks like there might be hope after all. Assuming Ana can keep her grandmothers' rivalry from ruining everything.

I'd seen several reviews for this on 50books_poc and wasn't really that interested, but after reading and loving Flygirl, I decided to give some of Smith's other books a try. This...is definitely no Flygirl. It's cute enough, and it's nice to see a biracial main character (or any character!) who isn't half white, but I wasn't wowed or anything.

I really think the book could have used a lot more editing. Most of it is fine, but it starts to fall apart at the ending, which seems really rushed, plus has a couple of chapters that don't really fit. At one point her grandfather starts telling a story and instead of just making it quick or summarising, we actually get a random flashback chapter in his POV about the event he's relating. We also get a few paragraphs in one of the grandmothers' POV towards the end, in a story that has otherwise been very tight third person with only one POV. It just seemed sloppy.

Also I was really excited about the story being set in LA at first, but it ended up being more frustrating than anything because the author gave all sorts of conflicting details. The kids have gone to school together since kindergarten, yet for some reason they all go to an elementary school in a totally different zone than where they live. (One person going to a far away public school might have some excuse, but not a whole class.) Then the high school mentioned is not the high school that middle school feeds into. Neither is it the high school she would actually be going to for where she's supposed to live. Which being less than a mile from the beach would be Santa Monica and she'd go to SaMoHi, not Uni (also everyone keeps saying University High and I'm sorry but I have never heard anyone call it that; it's Uni). Plus the author gives a freeway exit that they're supposed to live near, which is not less than a mile from the beach, either.

I really don't know what she was thinking. The jacket flap says she lives in LA, so it's not just that she didn't know what she was talking about. It's like she wanted to use real names of stuff, but didn't want to be specific, so she ended up taking bits from all over. If you don't want to be specific, then either be vague or make up names of school and stuff. But if you're going to be specific then you have to get your facts right!

Of course most of the people reading aren't going to know or care, but it really took a lot of fun out of it for me.

1. I got all my Jump translations done yesterday, instead of just One Piece (which usually shows up late Wednesday nights, but was already up when I woke up at noon). So today I can just relax, no set schedule. Woohoo!

2. I got more writing done!

3. I got Super Mario Wii in the mail. So hard to wait til Christmas!

4. Speaking of things I ordered from Amazon, last month or so my mom was talking about wanting some books she used to borrow from my aunt, but now my aunt lives in Oregon, so that's not so doable. Anyway, I told her about BookMooch and said I had a ton of points if she wanted me to mooch her something. So I got her a couple books and then she remembered another author she wanted to reread and said if I found anything I could just give them to her for Christmas. I found one, then decided to look on Amazon for the others and I finally remembered to do that last night and found four of the five I needed being sold used through Amazon fulfillment, which means just like any other Amazon purchase, if you order over $25, you get free shipping. The books were like $3.50-4 each, compared to the ones from other sellers that were just a few cents, but shipping for a book is $3.99 now, so since I got enough stuff (we had one other thing to order that we'd been saving until we had enough to get free shipping) and got free shipping, they ended up being cheaper (plus I get them altogether from one place rather than a bunch of different sellers).

Title: Push
Author: Sapphire
Number of Pages: 192 pages
Book Number/Goal: 65/75 for 2009
My Rating: 4.5/5

Precious is sixteen, illiterate, and pregnant with her second child by her own father. But when she gets kicked out of junior high and starts attending an alternative school, her life finally starts to turn around.

This is written in an experimental style, very stream-of-consciousness, with lots of dialect to mimic the way precious talks. Some parts are even written as if Precious had written them herself, complete with spelling errors, which gradually improve over the course of the book. I didn't find that a barrier at all, though. It was really easy to read (I zipped through it in two sittings). The last fifty pages or so of the book are essays and poems written by Precious and the other girls in her class.

Pretty much everything bad you could imagine happening has happened to Precious and it sometimes seems like overkill, but overall I really enjoyed the book. And I'm glad the ending was optimistic but realistic and not all magically wonderful.

I'm definitely interested in seeing the movie, though probably not til it's out on DVD. I was looking at the cast, though, and um...wtf? The teacher is described as dark with dreads, yet somehow in the movie she is really lightskinned and has wavy hair. It's like they made her as close to a Nice White Lady as possible without actually casting a white actress. D:


(This is something else I would totally have nominated for yuletide! Damn it! I'd especially love fic about Jermaine.)

1. I was really good yesterday about doing a little bit of each thing on my to-do list when it came to large projects that couldn't be done in one sitting. I so often feel like I have to do a huge chunk and then I stress out about not having time for it and it makes me avoidant and then I don't get anything done on it. I'm trying to train myself to do smaller chunks. A page each day will get done eventually, but if I never have the time to do the whole thing, it will never get done and then I'll hit a deadline or be super behind and argh. More stress.

2. Speaking of which, I got some writing done! I find it really hard to get anything written when there's no deadline these days, because it always seems to be lowest priority on my to-do list, but I actually made myself write and got about 300 words done. It's not much, especially compared to NaNo folks who are writing like 3000 words a day or something, but for me it's a lot, and it's progress.

3. I finally got like six hours sleep yesterday evening. For some reason when I have insomnia, evening seems to be the best time for me to sleep. Unfortunately it's my least favorite time to sleep, and I don't like to get on that schedule, especially now with yoga on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6.30-8, because that means I'm tired during class or have to be woken up for class. I'm feeling tired right now, though, so I'm hoping I can get some sleep this morning.

4. Yesterday I told my mom I had some cash for her for the rent and when she came over she asked if I needed anything at Costco first, so I was able to have her get toilet paper and laundry detergent and bread, yay. I wish I had known earlier, though, as I went to the little market nearby and got a gallon of milk for $5, when I could have gotten two for the same price at Costco. :-/

5. I got an email from Amazon saying because I ordered Super Mario, I now had a $10 credit for any video game! So I'll see what I get for Christmas in terms of Lego games and whichever one I don't get, I'll buy that from Amazon. (The credit is good til the end of January.)

1. I think I'm pretty much over my cold, and I have to say, that's got to be the "best" cold I've ever had. I never did get more than a little congested.

2. We went ahead and bought Carla's new computer yesterday. Still going to save it for Christmas, but I wanted to make sure Amazon didn't suddenly run out or take forever shipping. We ordered from Amazon instead of the Apple Store because it was $20 cheaper, plus no tax (and tax on an $800 computer is around $80 so that's a big savings!).

3. We might be going karaoke this weekend! I hope they have the new Lady Gaga song.

Title: Bones of Faerie
Author: Janni Lee Simner
Number of Pages: 247 pages
Book Number/Goal: 64/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5

Before Liza was born there was a war, and humans were attacked by the faerie, magical creatures no one had known existed. Now the faerie are gone, but the world is changed. Animals and plants have been infected with magic and now hunt humans. Children are being born with magic powers, including Liza's little sister. When her father leaves the baby out in the night for wild animals to devour, it sets in motion a chain of events that will cause Liza to question everything she's been told about magic and the faerie.

This was really awesome. I picked it up a while ago because it sounded interesting, but by the time I read it, all I remembered was the bit about the baby being left out to die, so I had no idea this was a post-apocalyptic Earth and not just a random fantasy world. I love the idea of a magic apocalypse and this is really well done. It's a fast read and really hard to put down.

I wish we'd learned more of the backstory about the war, but maybe she'll write about that in future books. There's apparently a sequel planned for 2011. There's also a short story set in the same universe, though it kind of retreads a lot of the same ground as the novel, just with different characters in a different setting. (I wonder if perhaps it was the basis for the novel.)

Anyway, like so much fantasy, this book is thoughtlessly white. Apparently no people of color survived the apocalypse. :p But that's pretty much my only complaint. This was very cool.



I wish I'd read this before yuletide nominations. And that, you know, I'd known I could participate so I could actually nominate stuff, because this has so much room to explore. She's created such a neat world, but we only get hints about the war and what happened in the years since, both of which are things that interest me more than Liza's story itself.

Woohoo! The final batch of reviews!

Day 29: Tooth and Claw

This Side of the Mountain by wickedwords 3/5
5000 words. Zombie Apocalypse, 10 years later. A fusion with World War Z.
( I love World War Z, so I wanted to like this more, but... )

Day 30: Swan Song

Except for a Few Small Bruises by justbreathe80 3/5
14,800 words. He'd been living like this long enough to know what being scared felt like, and yet this wasn't like any of that. Rodney hadn't wanted to know so that he could hurt John or laugh at him or pigeon hole him as the bratty rich boy. He'd wanted to know John, and John knew that if he could keep from running, he might finally be free.
( Cute. )

Coda by callmerizzo 2/5
1000 words. The silver Swan, who living had no Note / when Death approached, unlocked her silent throat. (Orlando Gibbons, The Silver Swan)
( The writing was decent enough, but it feels like the prologue to something longer. )

1. Now that I beat Lego Star Wars, I've started playing Lego SW II again and am once more really into it (there was a lull between beating the first one completely and picking this up where I didn't really feel like playing, but once I got back into it I found it completely addictive). I played a level last night with the emperor as one of my characters and found it hilarious how he cackles the whole time. (Also it was a long and fun level with lots of stuff to bash and monies to find, which is my favorite. Plus I got True Jedi and the rest of the mini kits and the red brick for that level, woohoo!)

2. I am really loving this nice fall weather we've been having lately. Yay, fall!

3. I got an email from Amazon last night saying my package had shipped. What package? I thought, and then I saw...it was New Super Mario Bros for Wii! I'd preordered it and forgotten it was being released on the 16th. I have to save it for Christmas, but it's still exciting.

4. I got an email from a guy who pays me by western union and I have monies to collect later (after sleep). Yay, monies!

1. I was productive yesterday! Got two of the five Psyren chapters done. Got a short story and a couple very short doujinshi translated. Finished up the last of the Asano Inio shorts for Kotonoha. Finished reading a book (my 63rd this year!). And did some lyrics-tranferring on my website. I wish I'd done more, but it's not bad!

2. I seem to have caught Carla's cold, which is a total non-surprise. I think there's been maybe twice that she's gotten sick and I haven't. I pretty much expect it. But the nice thing is that I seem to have gotten a super light version of what she had. While she had a sore throat for a couple days followed by several days of heavy congestion, I had a scratchy/dry throat for a few hours, which then morphed into light sniffles/stuffed up nose. I definitely feel stuffy, but not to the point where I need to take decongestant, and at this rate I doubt I'll be hacking up gunk from my lungs or anything. Considering I had a lingering lung thing earlier this year, I'm really glad not to be doing it again.

3. Today the Metro Gold Line opens and you can ride it all day for free. Carla is going with Alexander and some folks to check it out, which sounds fun and I wish I could go, but while I'm not feeling horrible, I don't want to exhaust myself and make it worse. Plus my sleep schedule is off and I will probably crash this afternoon. Also I have a busy, busy weekend (still three more chapters of Psyren and a bunch of stuff for daemonicangel and I need to translate some lyrics so I can do an update and and and!). So no train for me, exciting though it is. Maybe some day they'll actually build a line that runs out to the westside. Ohoho. Who am I fooling? (Actually there is one planned to come out to Culver City, which is further than anything so far, but still not at all convenient for us.)

4. I got my yuletide assignment! I'm pretty excited about what I got. I had been thinking I might get matched on that, because it was one of the very rare fandoms I offered (I offered several that were super tiny, plus a couple that were bigger (plus Glee, which is one of the biggest this year, but I only offered Mercedes and Tina, so that probably cut out most chance of me matching anyone *cynical*)), so I'd already been thinking about what I might write if I got it and what I had been considering will fit right in with what my recipient requested. :D I don't think I'm going to try and get a pinch hit this year, but I will definitely be writing Treats when the time comes.

As this show goes on, I'm really finding less and less "glee" in watching it. And yet I can't seem to stop. But this is just a warning that this post is not squee-filled, and I doubt future posts will be, so if you don't want to see criticism, move along. And if you want to tell me how wrong I am, then by all means, go ahead, but chances are I won't respond. I just don't have the energy to argue this right now.

( Glee 1x09 )

Title: Rabbit-Proof Fence
Author: Doris Pilkington
Number of Pages: 137 pages
Book Number/Goal: 63/75 for 2009
My Rating: 4/5

This is the true story of how three girls, Molly, Daisy, and Gracie, escaped from a residential school designed to turn half-white Aboriginal children into servants for white families and walked 1600 km back to their home.

It's a good story and I enjoyed learning more about Australian history, but I found the writing style sort of hard to get into. It's neither a novel nor a straight historical account, but a mix of both, and that didn't really work for me. There would be bits written in a very fictional tone, including thoughts from characters the author couldn't have known the thoughts of, and then you'd hit a big section with excerpts of historical documents, complete with citations.

Still, I enjoyed it (and it helped that it was quite short) and would definitely recommend it.

I'm curious to see the movie and see how it compares with the book.

1. Finally remembered to order a new sweatshirt from Walmart. I hope I like it and it fits, because it's a pain to return stuff since unless you want to pay for return shipping, you have to take it to a store and there isn't one near us.

2. It looks like I will be translating Psyren after all! I did a chapter a couple months ago and it seemed like they had decided against scanlating it after all, but then yesterday I got an email saying they were going to do it and could I translate the five most recent chapters. Gotta get on that!

3. I cut my hair last night and it actually came out the way I wanted it to! Usually what I do is buzz my hair down to a few millimeters (like a 2 or 3 on the clippers) and then just let it grow out until it starts to bug me, which is usually when I can start feeling it on my neck. The thing is, while I like it buzzed, I also do really like how it looks when it's in various longer stages, including the length where it starts bugging me on my neck. In the past I've tried cutting just the back and had no luck and just eventually had to buzz the whole thing. But this time I managed to get the back good and leave the front/top/sides. So the back is between 2 and 9 on the clippers and the front/top/sides is about an inch and a half to two inches. I think it looks really cute.

Here's a pic with my crappy webcam.

One reason I wanted to leave it a little longer is because I've been thinking about dyeing it again. I used to dye my hair fairly regularly, but it's been years since I've done so, both because it seems a waste when it's so short and because my hair naturally darkened to a very dark brow, almost black over the years, and I really like my natural color now.

I'm not sure of the color, though I know for sure I want something "unnatural" as I've never been a fan of dyeing my hair to look as if the dyed color is my real color. I've done both red and blue before and liked both, but the red faded really fast and only stayed pink a short time before settling at a nasty orange. Whereas the blue faded fairly quickly, too, but I liked the green it settled at pretty well.

Here's one with the blue just after I dyed it and here's the green it faded to. I don't appear to have any pics of the red at any stage.

I see there's a Hot Topic at the Westside Pavillion (I knew there used to be one at the Santa Monica Mall, but the mall is torn down right now, so I guess they moved to the Pavillion), so maybe I'll go there sometime in the next week or so and see what they have in the way of dye. (I have no idea where else might sell unnatural colors.)

Because my weekly Jump translations have moved from Thursday nights to Wednesday nights/Thursday mornings, I am totally discombobulated. I kept thinking yesterday was Friday, but...it wasn't! Today is Friday! And yes, that does make me happy. I know most people are happy to see Friday come, but not me. The weekend doesn't mean relaxation and a rest from work for me. It means omg another week has ended and I'm still so behind!

So I'm happy today is Friday because it means one more day I can try to get stuff done. For some reason I wasn't very successful last night and I don't know why. :( Today will be better, though! I DECLARE IT TO BE SO!

Also I sold some more CDs yesterday. There's still plenty left, though.

( Supernatural 5x09 )


I still haven't been able to make myself watch this week's Glee, though. I know it's going to be bad, so I'm bracing myself. Maybe tomorrow.

1. Finally got my McShep Match fic posted to my journal, along with the commentary. Only two months after it got posted to Match! :p

2. Already translated Naruto and Bleach, as they got the scans up really early again this week.

3. I think I can make my 75 book goal for the year after all! I'm pretty excited about that. Good job I have lots of short books on my shelf. XD

4. I was wibbling on going to yoga last night because Carla has a cold and didn't feel up to it and I was getting anxious thinking about going by myself. But I went! And it was fun! We did a lot of leg stretching, which I like (and am good at!).

5. Next week I'll be translating a new series for Kotonoha called All Rounder Meguru. It's a seinen series about shooto, which I was afraid might not be that interesting, but I read the first volume and it's really good!

6. I ordered a binder last night. O_o I'm pretty nervous about it, actually, because it's hard to know what size or style to get, especially if you're fat, and they're not cheap ($35 including shipping). But I decided on the 997 from Underworks. They seem to have a good return policy, so if it doesn't fit well, hopefully I can return it and get a different size.

Title: Derby Girl
Author: Shauna Cross
Number of Pages: 234 pages
Book Number/Goal: 62/75 for 2009
My Rating: 5/5

Sixteen-year-old Bliss hates her smalltown life, especially the part where her mom is trying to live out her dreams of becoming a beauty queen through Bliss. Then one day she sees a poster for a roller derby match and the next thing she knows she's trying out for the team.

I really enjoyed this book. It's written in that first-person chatty style that is all the rage with YA and chicklit these days, but despite being a bit exposition-heavy in the early chapters (having read more in these genres lately, I have come to dread the "let me pause the story so I can give you my entire history" bit that usually comes in chapter two), I really enjoyed the narrator's voice and liked Bliss a lot.

The story is cute and female friendship is front and center. While there is the stereotypical mean girls that kind of made me roll my eyes at how cliched they were (one at school and one on the opposing roller derby team), it's balanced out by the fact that there are a ton of supportive (female) friends, so it doesn't come off as "girls are bitches" like so many stories do. There's a romance subplot, but it takes a backseat to friendships, too.

The one thing I really disliked about the book was how white it was. Aside from Bliss's best friend and possibly one of the roller derby girls whose derby nickname is Juana, everyone is white. And this takes place in Texas! But aside from that one girl, there weren't even any incidental characters with Spanish names. And her best friend Pash is mentioned as being Arab-American, but that's all we get. No actual country to give her any sort of specific heritage. It's just like Arabs are a big mob who come from Arabvania or something. And aside from the initial introduction (where she's mentioned as having exotic good looks, gag) and one or two mentions of kids at school being racist, she might as well have been white.

Still, it was really cute and I can't wait to see Whip It. I also really, really want to write and read fic for this fandom, especially Malice/Bliss.

1. IHOP has holiday pancakes! 4 different kinds. There's pumpkin, which I have had a couple times now (both at IHOP and Coco's) over the past few years, so it's kind of boring now, but there's also gingerbread, eggnog, and pecan pie. I had the gingerbread ones Monday morning when I went out with my mom and omg they are so good. Really, really strong gingerbread flavor. I will definitely have to go to IHOP again before Christmas. (I'd also theoretically like to try the other two flavors, but I don't know if I'll be able to tear myself away from the gingerbread.)

2. I got a whole lot of stuff done yesterday. I am quite impressed with myself!

3. I read the new Fullmetal Alchemist the other day. It's getting so much awesomer as it nears the end (I didn't think it could get awesomer, but it is!). And speaking of cool manga, I read a one-shot by Hoshino Katsura yesterday called Zone, which is the story that eventually became D.Gray-man. I was unable to find it in Japanese, sadly, but the scanlation wasn't too horrible (at least in terms of clunkiness; not having the Japanese to compare, I can't say whether or not it was accurate).

4. I am almost finished with the commentary for my mcshep_match fic! So I will be posting that (and reposting the fic to my own journal) probably later today.

5. The first comment here is made of awesome!

I only have one fic left to read, then I can post the final batch!

Day 27: Alter Ego

It Doesn't Take a Genius by roaringmice 1/5
1000 words. Rodney is a man with a mission.
( A plot that's been done to death. )

Till It Shines (The Secret Life of Rodney McKay) by wesleysgirl 2/5
16,000 words. In an alternate universe where John Sheppard is a science fiction writer, he's getting his ass kicked by writer's block and moves to a small town in Maine for a fresh start in the form of one Rodney McKay, who as it turns out is more than meets the eye.
( Super Ultra Woobie Rodney! )

Day 28: Skeleton in the Closet

Stars Against the Sun by almostnever 4/5 Recommended
11,400 words. Fighting the Wraith turns out to be the easy part.
( Toppy!John FTW! )

De Las Fantasmas by gblvr 2/5
3500 words. John has a secret...
( Would have been better as a scene in a longer story. )

So I haven't had a chance to see Whip It yet, but I'm reading the book and omg it is so awesome! If the movie is anything like the book, I expect it will become a femslash favorite. I see Whip It was nominated for Yuletide, but not Derby Girl, boo. If Derby Girl had been nominated, I would totally be requesting it and offering to write it.

1. I enjoyed yoga last night. I am always loathe to go, because ugh, I have to go out of the house and leave my computer and there's people there and I get sweaty and ughhhhh. But I usually end up enjoying it.

2. I vacuumed the house this morning, finally! I have been meaning to for like a week, but now that daylight savings is over, it's starting to get dark so early that by the time I wake up, there's really not enough light to do a good job. So this morning I wasn't really tired yet when Carla woke up, so I just decided to vacuum then, when there was lots of light coming in the windows to illuminate the dust all over the floor (you could see the paths where we walked most often!).

3. I just have one page left to translate on the next chapter of Saint Young Men, so I will start the photoshop phase today or tomorrow. In an effort to get me to stop dragging my feet so much when SYM comes around, I've decided I'm not going to do as much background editing. In the early chapters I wasn't editing SFX at all, but I was editing any background text. Then with the last chapter I did, I started editing all the background text plus the SFX. But there's just so much editing that just thinking about working on this series puts me in full-on avoidance mode, so in order to be able to work on it at all, I think I'm going to really have to cut down what I edit and leave more background stuff in Japanese (with notes if it's anything relevant to understanding the story).

1. Got another book read last night. If I can read two books a week from now until the end of the year, I could actually make 75. *chooses short books*

2. The Forbidden Archive is open! I'm pretty excited about this. Years ago when I was in Vampire Chronicles fandom, it was all on the downlow because Anne Rice hates fanfic and her lawyers were harrassing people. But there was one archive and it was kept kind of secret. Then the fandom died off even more, and the webmaster stopped maintaining it. But recently some people have revived it again, this time with a more modern interface that allows authors to upload their own stuff. They've already added some of the older fics and just created accounts for the authors, and will be continuing to add old stuff, but also allowing old and new authors to upload stuff that was never on the old archive. A few of my fics are on there already, and I'll be slowly adding more. I'm just happy that the site didn't die altogether.

Earlier I followed a link to a Fandom Wank thread from someone on my flist, and just out of curiosity, I took a look at the main page and was kind of sad to see that not only are all the posts on the front page rather stupid and boring, the comm is also really slow, with posts a couple times a week rather than several times a day.

I haven't been a fan of FW for a long time. I haven't been an active participant since...well, before Crystalwank, I think, and after the flood of new members that brought, I soon stopped reading the much comm at all. I didn't know the new people and with so many new people coming in, it seemed to change the tone of the comm.

But all this time I had assumed it was still going strong. The few times I have read stuff has been when people have linked some huge wank that all of fandom is talking about. And those were always busy, so I figured that was business as usual, but I guess it was just a lot of non-regulars like me who'd come over to comment.

It makes me kind of sad to think of the comm dying, even though I really didn't like it when I left. I found FW soon after it was founded, and followed it to Blurty after it was booted from LJ (IMO Blurty was totally its heyday) and then onto JournalFen. In the early days it was a small group and you knew everyone and it just felt like hanging out with friends. Most of my closest online friends are people I met back then, as is a good-sized chunk of my flist. I have a lot of fond memories of FW.

It makes me want to break out some old FW icons on Dreamwidth (I have no free slots on LJ).