I went back and forth on where to pull the stories from (the assignment is to do HTML parsing, so they have to come straight from the web). I very much wanted to use Archive of Our Own, but there just isn’t enough content there yet, as it’s still in beta. The advantage of fanfiction.net is that it’s huge, and I’m basing it on search queries – so you put in something random like “buttercup” (this was a test case) as a keyword, and it comes up with enough stories to build the sestina. The disadvantage is the median quality (hence the nickname pit of voles), but hey, it’s not for me to judge aesthetic quality. (And not for the courts either. I should cite this. Bleistein v. Donaldson!)

In any case, I’ve got the backend working – a few bugs and there’s nothing graphical yet, just printing out in the terminal, but I still have my very first sestina. (Well, almost – sans the final stanza since it’s a little different from the rest and will require some code tweaking). My test search query was “werewolf,” and the lines come from fics based on a number of different fandoms, though mostly Harry Potter and Twilight. And here it is…

Feeling weak from the lost blood
Lets get out of here
The next day they got up and had breakfast TK went to the door
Sam answered instead of Jacob this time
Felicia when can we leave
Probably just Newton and the memory of it

He smiled again and told her jokingly “I wasn’t planning on it”
In strange dreams she would not tickle his soft palate with her whispering blood
He would like very much to tell Cho to leave
We didn’t think there was anyone was sitting in here
I haven’t been for a very long time
She shut her drawer and then there was another knock on her door

“Always something” she muttered to Rafe as she went to open the door
Rafe was used to this by now and thought nothing of it
Even with your ‘abilities’, the feds still found you in 3 days last time
There: Sirius looked up at him through the blood
The table is too small — and yes, that’s the only thing that’s wrong here
I need to think of an excuse to leave

What if I can’t leave
Rafe was awoken from his sleep by the opening of Laurel’s bedroom door
I never wanted to spend summer here
Before his mother met someone else — that was it
“Please,” he finally spits, through the spray of imaginary blood
So I raced to the Forbidden Forest and I only just in time

“I think you’ve got an inside track,” he said, volunteering information for the first time
I can get at least three house of sleep, then leave
something was leaking into my vains, and flowing and mingling with my blood
He stood up, dusting off his jeans, and started walking to the door
It is a dirty thing to watch a girl cry and do nothing about it
Lupin could stop thinking altogether, here

Still; if Cho would only think of something, he’d die here
Please don’t be shitting me this time
Trust I’m not calling anyone about it
There was a quick nod and the man started to leave
Both the guys climbed in, and closed the door
The werewolf had the taste and unquenchable desire for blood

But I digress. My point is that I finally finished The Magicians, thanks to my dear friend (and maven) putting it into my hands and poking me incessantly until I put some serious time into it, because she desperately wanted to discuss it. Which, in point of fact, is a pretty fantastic endorsement of a book (and by the way, I put Turn Coat into her hands for the same reason). Anyway, now I have finished it, and as you have probably deduced by now, pretty much adored it, and this was (again) as much because of the way it was written as what was written.

So though I rarely write full-fledged book reviews here, I feel compelled. I will try to be light on spoilers (for those of you who may be considering picking it up), but still, the remainder of this discussion after the jump…

Actually, first, another brief digression. While I was reading the book, I happened to have a discussion in a seminar (the topic of which is devoted in part to learning sciences) about the culture of intellectualism in the United States and why and how it came to be that being “smart” is not “cool.” I feel like this is changing a little (though I could be wrong, as it’s been nearly a decade since high school), maybe because technology is pretty hip now, but there will probably always be a divide between a lot of the smart kids and a lot of the popular kids.

So that was what struck me first about the plot of this book; magicians are the smart kids. The really smart ones, the ones that largely got picked on in school and went to math camps in the summer and took the SATs when they were 12 (I did this, but I didn’t even break a thousand, good thing I improved before college). Because magic is hard – it’s not just saying a few words and waving a wand. Don’t they make it look easy in Harry Potter? Sure, you have to get the inflection right – “Wingardium Levi-OH-sa!” – but it’s not like you’re having to solve equations. Grossman’s magicians do. There’s a whole new world out there and it’s only accessible to the intellectual – and we’re not just talking about the awed picture you get of the universe after you read (and vaguely understand) A Brief History of Time. This is magic. And the geeks shall inherit the earth.

Moving on – I can’t tell you exactly what it is about how Grossman turns a phrase that I find so noteworthy. Something about the seamless inclusion of small details, coupled with pretty sparse prose. I am a reader who, unless there is something interesting about the way it’s written, tends to glaze over on long paragraphs of description. And this actually goes double for long descriptions of action as opposed to setting. I’m far more interested in what characters are saying and what they’re thinking than what they’re doing. I generally despise fight scenes in books, for example. I recognize that this is a personal taste quirk, but it still meant that Grossman’s writing suited me quite a lot – though it also meant that I preferred the first two thirds of the book to the last third. If you read it, you’ll get what I mean by this. Not that the story wasn’t worth the journey, but there was a lot about the last part that felt like a different book. I’m not entirely sure if this was intentional or not because, in a way, it makes a lot of sense, particularly given the way that the protagonist’s character development.

Like so many books, there was a secondary character that grabbed my attention: Eliot. It wasn’t even that I liked the character as much as that he was fascinating and well-drawn – but not so well-drawn that I knew everything about him, which made him all the more interesting. By the end of the book, I felt as if I knew every nook and cranny of Quentin (the protagonist), and I didn’t particularly like all of them (which is often the mark of a good character, to be honest) – but Eliot felt very real to me because of the way that I wanted to get more into his head. I rather think that Quentin felt the same way.

I had a long conversation recently with a writer friend about the pitfalls of convention. (Translation: he berated me severely for wanting werewolves in my novel.) And so one of the things that particularly struck me about The Magicians is that it walked this line in a good way. Anyone who reads the book jacket and says “Oh, magical school! Harry Potter rip-off!” is an idiot (just like anyone who thinks that you can have a monopoly on fairies). Worldbuilding that involves an entirely new system of magic is hard. I will say that there are places where this world is not entirely fleshed out, but I think that’s largely because it’s so much in the protagonist’s head. Having a protagonist with a streak of self-absorption can wreak havoc on your worldbuilding. (I actually think that Harry Potter is often an example of this, and that one of the reasons that fan fiction writers can have a field day is that some characters – particularly the adults – are drawn just well enough to be interesting but not rigid, because frankly, Harry just doesn’t care enough about, say, Remus Lupin’s personal life.)

As this has grown into an essay, I’ll cut myself off here. I heard somewhere that there may be a sequel in the works, and if so, I would be interested to see if some of the pace and style of the early part of this book could survive the changes to protagonist and world by the end. Also, I’m glad that the book is doing so well, because I think that it’s a good example of outside-the-box fantasy; i.e., unlike many of the books I’ve been reading lately, I would recommend this not just to someone who likes “fantasy” but to someone who, well, likes to read.

And now I have a copy of Margaret Atwood’s new book patiently awaiting. This is a good year for reading.

So I did complete my literary machine, and decided to do something related – it’s called “tweetmix” and the general idea is that it’s a narrative created by multiple authors (some aware and some not): (1) me, the writer/programmer; (2) you, the user/reader; (3) the authors of literary works in the public domain or released under Creative Commons; and (4) photographers of pictures released under Creative Commons. Oh, and also the creators of Twitter, since the design is essentially a parody of that site. But basically, the reader chooses a subset of characters from a list to “follow” and then it generates a feed – mostly just their random comments, but some interactions with each other. So if you ever wondered what Dracula, Dorian Gray, Miss Havisham, Elizabeth Bennet, and a zombie might all have to say if they were microblogging… Eventually I’ll put it up on the web, since Processing exports easily into a Java applet, but now you’ll just have to make do with a screenshot.

My next project is HTML parsing (i.e., take a webpage and “do something” with it); I was really hoping that there was an HTML version of Lessig’s Remix somewhere, but all I can find is a PDF. My backup plan is possibly to do something with Free Culture instead. Or I could just go crazy on Project Gutenberg. One fantastic use I came across is unmixing, which involves taking a piece of text and parsing out phrases to link as attributions.

FYI if anyone ever wants to take anything on this blog and apply S+7 to it or set it to some great dance beat, feel free.

Also, my inner geek is flailing happily. Allow me, if you have the opportunity, to talk your ear off about the process of mental model convergence in improv comedy performances, algorithms of constrained writing, patterns of trust in online social networks, or cognition and legal metaphors. Oh, and after having not touched a piece of computer code for about six years, last week I programmed a digital Lite Brite.

When it comes to subject-matter convergence, I leave you with this: (1) I recently led a discussion on the impact of Creative Commons on patterns of online creation; and (2) I have two weeks to create a “literary machine” in processing.

I have a renewed interest in interactive narrative, and while I am stalled on writing short stories in favor of picking away at the novel in my copious amounts of free time, I may also try to teach myself inform again. For the “uninformed” (ha!), Zork might be considered the predecessor to more literary interactive fiction; the trick to writing a good interactive narrative is knowing your limitations and having a good conceit for the constraints – i.e., if the reader can’t go everywhere they want to go, send a grue after them.

Diana Gabaldon has a PhD in Ecology and spent years as university science professor before writing Outlander. And time travel and men in kilts has very little to do with ecology (I assume). The best thing about what I do is that the threads all weave together in a way that at least makes sense to me (despite how many times I’m asked why I went to law school).

In closing, I may be a writer lost to academia, but at least I have not yet been eaten by a grue. After all, lost or not, a reader can rarely resist the scary stairs.

• Read several books, including Norse Code, City of Glass, Moon Called, and Nightlife.  Yes, all urban fantasy; chalk it up to research.  Also, I have been reprimanded for not reviewing on this journal, and as I basically liked all of said books, perhaps I shall do an urban fantasy roundup soon.  (Productivity Quotient: 4)
• Written approximately 18,000 words of The Novel.  (Productivity Quotient: 7)
• Been working steadily for Write 2 Market, mostly white papers and marketing copy.  This has also included a “business trip”.  ++++  By the way, the productiveness quotient takes into account income, and the fact that I would otherwise have none.  (Productivity Quotient: 9)
• Brainstormed potential research directions for potential grants for PhD work, including several disjointed, infodump emails to a professor.  (Productivity Quotient: 6)
• Traveled to D.C. for the Burton Awards, which I shall write more on in a separate entry, and there shall possibly be photographic evidence.  (Productivity Quotient: 2 – fun and rewarding but no long-lasting effects as I am not the world’s best networker)
• Played Sims 3.  Too much.  (Productivity Quotient: 3 – on account of ideas related to UGC and things like this that get creative people like me who can’t draw excited.)
• Watched five seasons of Desperate Housewives.  I am not joking.  (Productivity Quotient: 1 – hey, maybe I’ll write for TV someday…)
• Organized nearly my entire iTunes library, including tracking down massive amounts of album art.  (Productivity Quotient: 4)

However, these things can be countered somewhat by the things I have NOT done this summer, including:

• Working on my website.  (Productivity Quotient: -5)
• Expanding/Revising papers intended for publication.  (Productivity Quotient: -8)
• Getting more than 15 seconds into creating a fanvid.  (Productivity Quotient: -4)
• Getting back into World of Warcraft.  (Productivity Quotient: 0 – because from a productiveness standpoint, it might very well be considered a bad thing)
• Writing on this blog.  (Productivity Quotient: -5)
• Writing/revising/submitting a single piece of short fiction.  (Productivity Quotient: -6)

According to my completely arbitrary arbitrary calculations, this nets me a completely meaningless Productivity Quotient of 8.  At least I’m in the black.  Though I have no idea what that actually means.

These, of course, are not the only things that I have done and not done the entire summer.  (For example, I have made time for friends, and I have not traveled to Peru.)  Also in there somewhere is packing, which I am doing frantically at the moment as I am officially moving to Atlanta on Saturday.

why can't we all just get along?

Since before finals I’ve had a half-written essay intended for JETLaw Blog about the death of legal scholarship that I intend to finish but was side-tracked by, you know, exams. But the focus was on the Georgetown Law Journal essays linked, as well as an essay from the Yale Pocket Part that I remembered from a few years ago, Why Blogs Are Bad for Legal Scholarship. My thesis is that blogs are good for legal scholarship, for various reasons.

But! That aside, since I haven’t finished writing it yet, I has the opportunity write about why blogs are good for journalism today: Blogs & the Life of Journalism: Welcome to the Jungle. Or perhaps, if not good, then not bad. I talk about Andrew Keen’s infinite monkeys theory (the web is just full of monkeys on typewriters and I am one of them) and how professional journalism might be in trouble but not because of us bloggers.

Anyway, it was all inspired by a thought-provoking post from a professional journalist, and aside from my long-winded musings about blogs, it’s got me thinking about how professional journalism really can survive Web 2.0. I feel like there is a new business model out there that needs to be embraced and no one’s worked out exactly what it is yet. I am not a marketing person, so this is all just conjecture, but I feel that if print journalism begins to disappear (which, for better or worse, it likely will as those of my generation who do not have newspaper subscriptions get older) then it will simply be an issue of the value of online advertising matching the value of print advertising.

Maybe it’s just because I’m a writer, but I’m one of those people who clicks ads just to throw some money at the content provider. Of course, I’m also one of those people who buys my music from iTunes. Am I naive to think that my generation would at the very least click through an ad to get their news from reputable sources, if not pay for it? Maybe so. Maybe if the hallmark of my generation is that we want everything for free, and the P2P music sharing levy proposed in Canada actually works we’ll need something similar for news media. Five dollars a month on your Internet bill to pay musicians, and five dollars a month to pay journalists? Hmm. Welcome to the jungle, indeed.

the sun came out before the procession: fitting

Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

I’m not sure that I would have any particularly good advice for someone starting law school. Maybe to think hard about what will make you happy and what will make you miserable and learn how to weigh the two. And that you don’t have to fit exactly into the mold to succeed. Because I’ve found that success doesn’t really have a mold. Mine is kind of funky-shaped.

But I graduated today. I got hooded, and I shook hands with the Dean, and I picked up my diploma in a black tube. Also, there was inclement weather. Perfectly fitting, I think.

Most of my classmates were more excited than I, but probably because this was the end of the academic road for them. Me, I get to do it all again in four or five years. With the hood and everything. (But the next one won’t be purple.)

beware the oncoming storm, for lo, your peeps will drown in earl grey

While at Clarion in 2006 I wrote (the first week) a story titled, at various points, “The Angel and the Apocalypse (and Me),” “Revelations Over Coffee,” and “The Starbucks at the End of the World.” (These titles were met with various degrees of disdain, but no one ever suggested anything better.) It involved both armageddon and tea. For the record, angels prefer green tea to coffee on account of the caffeine, and they can’t hold their tequila–but once they’ve lost their wings due to Inappropriate Behavior Upon the Eve of the End of the World, they may crave caramel macchiatos. Do not forget to include this information in your Proper Care and Feeding of Angels handbook.

In any case, I thought of this because of Neil Gaiman’s call for tea and armageddon pictures, which I shamefully have not yet contributed to due to traveling (I am back in Nashville as of last night, by the way) except by way of blogging. However, I present this photograph to the right that I found on Flickr while pontificating on various wrong ways to eat peeps, and somehow it does make me think that the world is ending.

Therefore, I present (in the manner of a word I remember from my fanfic research), a “cookie” of said story from three years ago, which I do really plan on trying to publish one of these days now that I’ve finished law school and can think about writing something other than case briefs…

“I watch people,” he said. “That’s what I do. I just like to drink tea while I do it. And besides, it amuses me how, for a split second, it seems like their lives revolve around that tiny cup of coffee. You people have such bizarre perspectives.”

“You know, for someone who acts all holier than thou, you’re incredibly vain.”

He looked smug. “I am holier than you.”

To make my point, I pulled a newspaper out of my messenger bag and plopped it down on the table in front of him. His tea jumped slightly and splattered a drop, smudging the print. I poked my finger at an article in the Living section. “APOCALPYSE PREDICTION: END TIMES BEGIN TOMORROW” it read. It was The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I have decided that Numfar, as portrayed by Joss Whedon, accurately portrays how I feel about this:

This video also accurately portrays why short clips from copyrighted sources on YouTube should be considered fair use. My purpose feels very transformative.

If you had a ghost saber, you'd miss it, too.

I have one exam left.  Here are some things I look forward to doing at some point after noon tomorrow:

1. Procure copies of City of Glass, Fragile Eternity, and The Awakening – apparently it is the season of YA urban fantasy sequels.

2. Reactivate my WoW account. (Oh, Xypra, how I’ve missed you!)

3. Watch some things that have piled up on my TIVO – recent episodes of Heroes, House, and oh, what’s this I hear about Jeff Goldblum on Law & Order?

4. Write the next chapter in The Novel, which has been batting around in my head for two weeks.

5. Laundry. (Well, not “looking forward to,” per se, but more anticipating the joy of clean clothes. Today I am wearing a 2005 NaNoWriMo t-shirt that is wrinkled from being shoved in the back of a drawer for roughly two years.)

6. Thinking hard about an idea I have for – wait for it – a fanvid.

Of course, I mean “at some point” quite broadly, as immediately after noon tomorrow I will be driving to Atlanta on account of wanting to chat with some professors at Tech before they all take off on summer vacation.

Meanwhile, in the "things I will miss" category.