Updated This week in The Slacktiverse, August 4/5 2012

The Blogaround

Kit Whitfield discusses the concept of "narrative capital" and the role of build-up in storytelling and continues her analyses of famous first sentences. This week: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.

Laura Heron reports: I only have two blog posts this week: The peril of the Fabian Society and the Peril of the Gab.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Twilight: My Beloved Asshole and Me
(Content Note: Abusive Relationships)
This is an abusive relationship because -- once again -- Bella is covertly burying her needs. Edward, the boy of her dreams, then aggressively explains how he needs complete access to Bella's thoughts, so Bella immediately becomes a study in how to wipe any "inappropriate" thoughts and feelings from her language, body language, and facial expressions in order to make Edward happy.

This week Ana Mardoll posted:
Narnia: When The Narrative Is Stacked Against You
(Content Note: Abuse (Emotional / Family / Physical / Religious)
"Susan was the worst."
Let's just linger on that one for a moment.

sarah writes: This week, I blogged about my "poetic geography" (although the best part might be Amaryllis's comments).

Michael Mock reports: It's been an odd week here at Mock Ramblings (and in real life, I might add). On Monday I examined My Current Writing Process, and saw why I never seem to get any big projects done. Following An Epic-ish Battle with Firstborn, I had a particularly creepy dream: Be Nice To Your Friends Or Their Ghosts Will Eat You. I realized that, as a parent, I'll someday be required to memorize the names and abilities of every single Pokemon in existence, which I describe as being Pokemon Mastered. On Thursday, I put together a Chick-Fil-A Recap to lay out my thoughts on the current kerfluffle. Then, on Friday, I laid out my thoughts on pranks/jokes that are designed to scare people in Fear Is Funny... Sometimes.

Lastly, I'm tentatively planning a North Dallas Gathering for the middle of October. Anybody who's in the area and would like to get together is welcome to attend.

For the last couple of weeks, Storiteller hasn't had much Internet access, but autoposted a few times in absentia. With her latest experiences with past-dusk community rides, Storiteller considers the best practices for riding at night in Biking in the Moonlight. Last week, she thought about how she's traveled to a lot of different cities for work that she probably wouldn't have chosen on her own. She considers how her form of transportation meshes - or not - with their layouts in A Streetwise View of Travel.

Storiteller had this time disconnected from the Internet, and often from electricity, because she was on vacation in Peru. She describes the first few days of her trip, including experiences with altitude sickness and a highland community in the Peruvian Chronicles Day 1/2 and Day 3.

Coleslaw reports: My posts this week:
• Movie review of Beasts of the Southern Wild
• How you know you are recovering from an injury - Tenderfoot
• On the Hunt is a book review of Peter L. Bergen's book, Manhunt: The Ten Year Search for Bin Laden from 9/11/ to Abbottabad. (Content Warning: It contains some references to torture and the 9/11 attacks but no descriptions.)
• The Kittehlympics is a description of my cats' version of the games plus some other random Olympic thoughts.

chris the cynic writes: This week I wrote a Deus Ex post talking about the way conflicting elements within the design team shaped the game and the way resource management pervades the game, in the context of talking about the character creation screen.

I wrote a .hack//Sign post covering the first part of a meeting of almost every character that has appeared thus far, in which I talk about the Silver Knight's attitude and the CC Corporation's respect for player confidentiality.

I wrote about some ideas for projects involving transfemale protagonists that I haven't pursued because of unease about what I don't know about various non-trans*-related topics. I wrote about ways to claim more than one day as one's birthday (mine just went by, assuming Gregorian calendar standard rules.) I made a post about the things I like in the movie Sahara, I specifically avoided an in depth discussion of the movie's problems but I think several of "I like"s point to the problems anyway. And I made an index for the month of May.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Deconstruction: Depression Diaries and Puritan Work Ethics
(Content Note: Depression, Surgery)–
One of the really frustrating things about depression is how well it succeeds in camouflaging itself as a "nothing" disease, the mental equivalent of having a touch of sinus drainage in the morning, or of needing your joints to warm up for a few minutes before you can really hit the ground running.

Last week Ana Mardoll posted:
Animation: Brave
Brave didn't light my world on fire from a story-telling perspective. But that's okay because it's still a step in the right direction. Now we just need more. Lots more.

In case you missed this

Michael Mock writes: I'm tentatively planning a North Dallas Gathering for the middle of October. Anybody who's in the area and would like to get together is welcome to attend.

Early Monday morning, at 1:31 Eastern time, a planetary rover will attempt to land safely on Mars....If anything goes wrong in this complex, multistage landing, the $2.5-billion mission will end up as smashed bits of space junk on the Red Planet. So scientists at NASA – the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration – have good reason to dread the final moments of the 563-million-kilometre trip to Mars. [From "NASA scientists brace for Mars landing's ‘seven minutes of terror" The Globe and Mail, August 3 2012]

(Content Warning: Very disturbing descriptions and pictures of violent attacks on women. Discussion of violent misogyny) Acid attacks in Colombia reflect rage [From The Washington Post, August 3 2012]

--Co-authored by the Slacktiverse Community

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Just a remark to say thank you for the incredible amount of work that must go into compiling the blogaround.

TRiG.

[Lonespark]

Beasts of the Southern Wild OMG yay!

[Firedrake]

Meanwhile in NRA (and this seems as good a place to talk about it as any)... apparently the most important thing about Amanda is that she doesn't eat much. It would be fat-shaming, if the author could be bothered ever actually to describe people. At the same time, any sort of narrative consistency has broken down even further than before; never mind the vanishing of all the world's children, people are still working normally at their jobs even while World War III is going on outside.

Incidentally, has anyone ever specified just what the ten regions are into which the post-Rapture world is meant to be divided? The closest I've found is http://www.tribulationinstitute.com/ten_horns.htm (TW, rapture insanity) which claims to have a "Map of ten regions the United Nations divided the world into for Governance" that's quaintly pre-1990; the Club of Rome often gets mentioned too, but never with any details.

[LauraHeron2]

I forgot to send my blog in again! Doh!

Anyway, I only have two blog posts this week:
The peril of the Fabian Society:
http://dictionaryofperil.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/dictionary-of-peril-the-peril-of-the-fabian-society/

the Peril of the Gab:

http://dictionaryofperil.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/dictionary-of-peril-the-peril-of-the-gab-a-short-story/

I am in the last month of my dissertation for creative writing MA, so am panicing and writing /rewriting like mad! So I expect both blog and commenting here to be light. I do, however, have an idea for an above the line post, and come 9th September I will write it! it may even be accepted...

Hope you guys are all alright.

[LauraHeron2]

Dammit, I tried to make them proper links, lets try again:

The peril of the Fabian Society:
http://dictionaryofperil.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/dictionary-of-peril-the-peril-of-the-fabian-society/

the Peril of the Gab:

http://dictionaryofperil.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/dictionary-of-peril-the-peril-of-the-gab-a-short-story/

[Amaryllis]

@Kit: That link seems to be going to "Little Women" instead of the Salinger post.

[The Board Administration Team]

@Amaryllis -- Fixed. Thanks.

[Nenya]

And Curiosity, the SUV-sized Mars rover, landed last night with nary a hitch. Great rejoicing there was, indeed.

*grinning like a loon over here*