we are all in the gutter,

Oh hey there! *waves* I see you've made it onto my journal. Well, mostly this will just be a writing place for me to squee and love, but you are more than welcome to look around and join me in my travels. This journal is friends-only. So if you like what you see, feel free to friend me if you'd like to follow my work ^_^

~Roxie H.

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Hey guys,

For anyone still reading, or who may come across this, I know I don't post regularly - and I'm not too sure why that is, other than times - but please find me at a new, real-life only, journal that I have. avoria has served me very well over the past six (oh my god six0 years, but I've begun another chapter in my life and so I think it is only appropriate to start from scratch.

I'm a very different person to the girl I started posting as, at sixteen.

I'm independent, for one!

Anyway - you can still expect writing there, and I will probably still read DW fic every now and then, and, well - please, if you're reading this, please come to join me over there.

phonatix

That's me :) I have a twitter also, and... yeah. I just really miss you guys and everything.

Okay.

Bye for now - I guess (:

I'd like to take a moment to talk about piracy.

You know, that thing that is illegal. That thing that damages creativity and leaves many hard-working artists without the change in their pockets that they have honestly earned. That thing that has become such a buzz word around the internet that it has essentially become the new form of terrorism.

I am a British citizen, and an honest one at that. I have a regular 9-5 job (with unpaid overtime, like many of the rest of my fellow colleagues) and on the weekends, I see my friends and spend time with my boyfriend. I don't own my own property, because I can't afford it. I make about enough to pay my bills and have a good time every now and then. I don't have a cat, I don't go on annual holidays, but I'm pretty happy. And I pirate.

I don't pirate anywhere near as much as I used to, and a large reason for that is because the measures that have been steadily put in place over the years to combat piracy have, honestly, made pirating material more of a hassle than it's worth. So well done to the governments - UK, US and other countries alike - who have been fighting hard for years to fend off the piracy offenders. In some ways, you are succeeding. When Megaupload disappeared, I dare say a lot of the pirating world went with it. Now that The Pirate Bay has been successfully blocked, this (supposedly) will also curb piracy amongst day-to-day users at home. Sure, I have an archive of everything I've pirated over the past x years, but the point is that it's now significantly more difficult for me to get that episode of pokemon that doesn't air any more, that I really fancy watching.

Now I have to consider buying DVDs and music again, and that's a good thing - right?

Well, sort of. We all know that most of the revenue from popular media items doesn't make its way into the honest artists' pockets. They go to corporations, to big business and companies, and I dare say those "profits" aren't filtered down to the little guy running around to serve coffee, either. Forgive me if I don't shed a tear over the various failures the Anti Piracy Campaign has seen, despite its successes.

My point is, all this banning and deleting and lording it over the internet has, in some ways, achieved the desired result: I don't really pirate any more. I have to work really hard to get something if I do want to.

But I'm not spending money on the things I was pirating, either. These moves do not serve any profit. The only goal they will realistically achieve is making peoples of various nations feel watched, shunted, abused, wary, anarchic, displeased and unhappy. The Anti Piracy moves don't push money back into a dying industry; they just fuel an unease that you can see on the faces of the people you know if you start talking about internet freedom - or freedom of any kind.

Right now, I'm able to freely admit - on the internet of all places - that I pirate material.

I wonder how long I'll be able to do that?

Just something to consider.

R.

P.S. So my paid account expired. Guess I don't use LJ enough :(

Being a natural shipper (also not being blind), I do of course assume that the Doctor and Rose loved each other. Whether you want to call this platonic or romantic or whatever -- I think it's fairly common knowledge that they did. So! I thought we could have a little talk about it, starting with a poll, and then evaluating their delicious relationship in comments.

Mostly I'm doing this for my own amusement; also, because thinking about it, I can't really decide myself. I used to assume that the Doctor loved her from the off and it took Rose an age to really get there (as in, not until season 2/Ten came along), but it's starting to occur to me upon rewatch that it may have been well, well before then.

So. To the polling station! Toot toot!



Once you've voted, please leave a comment explaining your answer. You know, for fun and shizz ^_^

Not to be too blunt about it, but fuck me, have I missed writing.

Today, I unearthed what pretty much amounted to the last five years of stuff (some of which I really thought I'd lost) on my laptop. I have no idea how it got there, my laptop isn't even that old. I must have transferred it over some time without really realising, but I spent just hours today going over all my old fics - many of which never even saw it to the light of day, believe it or not - and kind of feeling sad because I know they will never be finished. There was some good stuff in there, too, even if I do say so myself.

That said, all of this nostalgia has got me writing Nine/Rose fic again, though god knows how long that will last. I'm also trying to get back in touch with the fandom by reading fics that are floating around at the moment. I've got three or so on the list for tonight, but one thing I'm kind of painfully aware of is that my wonderful friends, I'm completely unsure as to which of you are even Who fans any more.

Are there any Who fans still out there?

If you are and you are regular readers and you see this, do you have any fics that you've been following recently that you'd recommend? I'm pretty much only looking for Nine/Rose and Ten/Rose, but... yeah, I realised today that I still really miss them. I don't know whether I want to marathon ALL OF THE SHOW or just watch a bit here and there, or just continue writing.

I'm so, so terrified that my Doctors will now be totally out of character, because I can't bring myself to watch the show much any more. Season 1 makes me cry, and season 2 - EVEN MORE SO.

WILL ANYONE HAVE A MARATHON WITH ME? D: D:

God, I miss fandom. Like a lot.

Which is weird, as things in my life are stupidly busy now too. Maybe it'll be a nice way to reconnect with, well -- everything ^_^

Warning: This post contains references to and descriptions of material that some may find offensive (I certainly did). Read on at your own discretion.

I am a regular reader of BBC news. I am also vaguely interested in animal welfare (I don't get high and mighty about it, I'm not a vegetarian and I'm not insane; but I do have a degree of respect for animals, I try only to buy organic meat and I find deliberate animal cruelty disgusting). Usually, I'm quite satisfied with the way the BBC relates its article to the public - but now I'm beginning to wonder if I haven't been led astray all these years.

Bear chemical brings heart hope
A synthesised compound also found in bear bile may help the recovery of some people who have had a heart attack.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14364862

That article basically validates the alternative idea that bear bile is a worthwhile means of medicine. By 'validates', I mean talks highly about the small (literally tiny, practically insignificant) possibility of it helping with a rare heart disease. Words like 'could' are thrown around like sugar grains. In China, the stuff is already used to dissolve gallstones, but apparently research in London's Imperial College has led to the discovery of ~magic bile~. This is not the problem with the article. The problem is that it contains one - one - throwaway line regarding the "critics" of such a 'medicine', saying "the way it is collected is cruel".

“...but critics say the way it is collected is cruel.”

And that's it. I was generally under the impression that the BBC was of a more balanced, impartial route towards news. How wrong I've been. That's it for the cons regarding this article. So I'm going to take some time to explain what it should have said - the message it should be relaying.

Now, I'm hardly an expert on the process of harvesting bear bile, nor do I live in China so I have no way of really knowing (alas, Wikipedia has been my best bet for research and we all know how reliable that is), but I'm generally under the impression that the process is this:

Hunt bear --> Catch bear --> Imprison bear (in tiny cage where it can't move) --> Harvest bile, whilst the bear is alive, over the period of many years, until the bear dies.

The processes? Here's what even my hardly-scraping-the-surface research led me to:

“[T]he bile is usually extracted twice a day through an implanted tube, producing 10–20 mL of bile each time; the process is believed to be painful, as the bears can be seen moaning and chewing their paws while being milked. Other methods include pushing a hollow steel stick through the bear's abdomen. The use of metal catheters has been banned, though HSUS writes that bile bears are still seen with catheters in them.

The "free drip" method is regarded as more humane. A permanent hole or fistula is made in the bear's abdomen and gall bladder, from which bile drips out freely. The wound is vulnerable to infection and bile can bleed back into the abdomen, causing a high mortality rate. Sometimes the hole is kept open with a perspex catheter, which HSUS writes causes severe pain. Source.

The method is disgusting and appalling, and anyone who knows anything about animal rights will have heard of the bear biling that goes on in some parts of China. It's considered horrible, inhumane, and one of the worst portrayals (or perhaps the best, if you're cynical) of what human beings can really be like. There are people out there working to close these farms down because the level of good they do is so insignificant compared to the harm caused.

And then the BBC swans in with a report like the one above and validates it. "Oh, it's all right, smudge over the details and portray to the public the benefits!". When I read that, I felt sick to the stomach with anger and disbelief.

At the very least, the article should have gone into more depth about the process. It should have presented the actual method of collecting bile, not just glossed over it with a "critics think it's cruel" statement. I'm pretty sure it's not just critics who think that process is cruel - every fucking person on this planet who possesses an ounce of humanity would call that process cruel. Whether or not the cruelty is worth it should be the real debate. Generally, people don't go away to do their own research on a topic they read in the news -- which is why it's so important that media companies (especially those who claim to be impartial) actually give both sides of the facts.

God knows how many people will wander around after reading that article and think "Wow, bear bile can cure heart disease, how awesome!". Ugh. Just, ugh.

It makes me wonder how often I've been misled in the past. No media source is perfect, I know that. But this is gross misconduct and I'm well of a mind to write to the BBC telling them as much. And perhaps I'll start looking elsewhere for my daily dose of 'news'.

So in my line of work (read: obsessive fandom creations) I've always wanted to hop aboard the review train. I like re-watching TV shows and even though my life is not exactly filled with time at the moment and these won't be a regular/weekly thing, I do eventually intend to review all of them. That might take me years, but you know :)

The reason I'm not starting with "Rose" is because, quite frankly, I have seen that episode so many times that I just kind of hate it now. I may come back to it in the future when I forget how bored it makes me feel, but ... yeah. Now, on to the review...

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Overall, this episode was wonderful. It had a good pace of plot vs. characterisation, it was witty, it had good one-liners, it had a fantastic feel to it, it had a range of characters and it was a wonderful idea in its conception. I would definitely recommend this for the (re)watch-list, as I could happily watch it again and again. I'm going to rate this episode:
★★★★☆(4/5 stars).

HAI GUYS.

If you're already reading this, chances are you're already on my f-list and we share much love and cookies and all things nice. Or something. But I figured, I've been in and out of livejournal and fandom for a while now, and I've lost touch with quite a few people. You know how it goes, life moves on, people part ways and go on to do their own thing. I'm trying to settle back into the wonder that is livejournal and every time I do I am reminded of one thing - the thing that brought me here in the first place, the reason why I can never truly leave: Doctor Who. And so I figured, "Hey, I could always do with more friends, and I'm sure a lot of folk out there could too." So I thought I would make this awesome fun friending meme because, well, friends are great :D

Please leave a comment even if you're already my friend! You may make more friends yet (^_^) and besides, perhaps there are some Who things that I don't know about you ;)

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I think that's about it. If you want to fill this out just copypasta from the textarea below into a comment. And hopefully you and I will meet some fantabulous friends along the way :D

About You <b>Name/Alias:</b> <b>Age:</b> <b>Country:</b> <b>Level of Craziness on a scale of 1-10:</b> <b>Pets?</b> <b>Random thing about you:</b> <b>Things you fill your journal with:</b> <b>Anything else?</b> About Doctor Who <b>How obsessed are you with Doctor Who?</b> <b>If the Doctor (of your choice) turned up on your doorstep and offered you one trip, anywhere, where would you go and why?</b> <b>What's the most noteworthy <i>Who</i>-related thing you've ever done? If there isn't one, make one up :D</b> <b>Do you contribute to fandom at all? Show off some of your stuff!</b> <b>Why are you doing this meme?</b> <b>What's the story about how you came to love this crazy awesome show?</b> Favourite... <b>Doctor:</b> <b>Episode:</b> <b>'Ship:</b> <b>Icon:</b> <b>Fic/vid/fanwork:</b> For Fun <b>When not on LJ, how else do you spend your time?</b> <b>Other TV shows you like:</b> <b>Tell us a secret:</b> <b>You suddenly inherit several million pounds/dollars/etc. The first thing you do with the money is...</b> <b>Finally, what is your goal at the moment? (fandom or real life, or whatever)</b>

love lessons
Elliot Webber had learned the hard way that most teachers weren't to be trusted; but then, Max Forsythe wasn't really like most teachers, was he? Rated for strong language and romantic themes.



( PrologueCollapse )

So I don't know how many of you still livejouranl or remember me or read things or are lurkers or whatever.

But basically, I'm culling, stripping down, and starting this journal from scratch :) To do that I'll be leaving most of the communities I'm in (seeing as I'm barely in fandom these days, and those I'm in are varied and so on). What you can expect to find here:

Any and all fic, of various fandoms (at the moment probably still DW, but could stretch to Glee/House/any other fandom I might partake in in the future).
Original fiction. I'm into my own work a lot at the moment, and though I'll still probably never finish anything, that'll crop up here too.
The occasional rant about my life. I'll be honest, it's been a long time since I've blogged properly. Partly because it seems to take up so much god damned time, and partly because I don't actually have an awful lot to say. Don't get me wrong, events happen in my life (I'm about to graduate, I'm trying to find a job and a house before then, I'm trying to battle romantic feelings and friendship ones). It's just that over the years I've found talking and writing about the stresses in my life doesn't really help that much. My mother always did say I think too much, and I've accepted that she's right :P
I'll also be doing a friends cull. There are a few of you I'll always keep forever, because no matter how long we don't talk for you are just ♥. Without some of you, I wouldn't be the person I am today. Truly.

If you'd like to stay, comment here. Otherwise, I will proceed with my total wipe and starting from scratch. Ta!

P.S., I have actually really missed having you guys around and looking through my flist and keeping up with your lives. I hope to stick around even if I'm not in fandom too much :) Love.