Oswari!

Happy Thanksgiving!

(To those of you who celebrate it, that is.)

Scott's back at work today. He recovered enough yesterday to transport Cordelia to Daisies, so I'm hopeful that all is well. We may never know what caused the problem.

Cordelia asked me not to stay for the Daisies meeting. That was hard (but necessary). Scott and I went home and watched TV for about fifty minutes. I imagine Scott got some amusement out of watching me make myself wait patiently for the right time to put my coat on and head for the car again. Part of me wanted to go back immediately so as not to be late picking Cordelia up.

I asked the psychiatrist today about borrowing her light box. There's a waiting list, so it will be two or three weeks before I get my turn. I'm hopeful that it will be helpful this year since I've been wanting light.

The pain levels from my leg are down. Sitting on the couch still hurts, but many other things no longer do or do at a level that's ignorable. I'm continuing the PT exercises and hoping that the improvement continues. Scott's starting to look at replacement couches, but I'm still hoping we won't need to go that far.

Scott is sick. He went to UHS after throwing up at work and was told that it's too soon to know what's wrong. We might still be lucky and have it be a rapidly passing stomach bug. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

That probably means no Daisies tonight. I can't see dragging Scott out for the transportation. I wish, once again, that I could drive.

Illness in the house leaves me worried about my Yuletide fic (among all the other worries). I do at least have a completed draft. It's unbeta'd as of yet, but it's my third draft. I mainly worry that I'll be too sick to post when the archive finally does open. Well, that, and I worry about coming up with a title.

Illness in the house also has me fretting about the busy second half of the week. Cordelia is heavily invested in our plans coming to fruition. I hate the thought of disappointing her (and of having all three of us stuck in the house with no relief for five days!). Currently, we plan to have Thanksgiving with Scott's parents. Cordelia will spend Thursday night with her cousins. Friday is the family birthday party for our niece, and Scott and I will go up after he gets off work to attend and to retrieve Cordelia. Saturday is a potluck at jss's place.

Title: No Escape
Challenge/Prompt: #29 Midnight
Original Fiction or Fanfiction [Name of fandom]: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Characters/Pairings: Anzu/Atemu
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I don't own Yu-Gi-Oh! or it's sandbox. I am just here to play with the toys and create my own alternate reality. :D
Summary: As midnight drew closer, Anzu tries to escape Atemu's possessiveness.
Author's Notes: I have no idea exactly where my muse came up with this one. I can only fathom she wanted something somewhat dark.




( No Escape )

There've been a couple of parenting challenges recently. The first and more easily resolved was our discovery that one of the little boys at Cordelia's table in class had been saying unspecified mean things to her. That came out when I was asking her why she didn't eat her snacks any more. She told me that her tummy hurt too much at snack time.

When pressed, she didn't want to talk about the details. Scott and I both tried, but she still thinks that not talking about things makes them less real. The lack of information limited our options when we talked to her teachers. She's now sitting at another table as part of a larger reshuffle, but watching and trying to see what happens with the little boy is about all the teachers can do. They can't talk to him without more information from Cordelia or another witness.

The second challenge is longer term and thornier-- The school sent home a note asking parents to talk to their children about race and about not making unkind comments relating to race. Cordelia is aware of race in a very vague way but not as much as she could be. I haven't wanted to scare her, and I still have my own issues with early training that race was never to be spoken of.

I'm not entirely sure how to explain race in a way that's both accurate and makes sense to a six year old. I need to do it, though. She and one of her best buddies (the home schooled black boy who lives down the block) made plans for her to *buy* him. I was appalled and had to explain to her why I was appalled. Cordelia found the idea of slavery sufficiently terrible that she denied that it ever happened. She doesn't want reality to include misery or malice.

I think that the plan may have owed some confused connection to the fact that the little boy is adopted. Cordelia said he wanted not to have to listen to his parents. She also said she can't tell him that their 'plans have melted' even though they have. I think she's a bit worried that he'll bring it up again and expect her to do something I've told her is wrong.

At any rate, I want to do this right so as to help Cordelia be a good human being who treats other people well. I want to do it without unnecessary trauma to her (or to anyone else). I just have to guess what's necessary.

I have a rough draft of my Yuletide fic. It's crap and just barely long enough, but I know what to do for the first rewrite. After I do that, I'll be looking for beta readers. With luck, I'll have the dratted thing done quickly so that I don't fret about it. Of course, I finished the draft Tuesday and haven't done anything more since.

I'm marking time until next week. The PT says that the exercise I've been doing should start to help after two weeks, in other words, some time around Monday. I think things are a little better, but it's hard to tell. I might just be wishing for it.

( Magistream Creatures (Part 3) )

( Magistream Creatures (Part 2) )

Username: Utena
Current Creature Count: 225
Post Count: 1125
Gold Count: 108,750
Notes: Some unnamed creatures can be bought. If you are interested, please seek me out with a PM.

( Magistream Creatures (Part 1) )

( Magistream Quest Creatures )


( Magistream Donation Pets )

This is a crosspost from Fan History's blog. Please feel free to comment either on this post or over on the blog.

The Organization for Transformative Works is a fan advocacy group that runs Fanlore and An Archive of Our Own. They were created on LiveJournal and most of their early and continued support continues to come from that community. Much of that has to do with the reasons they were created: The group perceived Fanlib as a threat to fandom as a whole, and had issues with how LiveJournal treated its fans..

After having done a bit of an analysis of the Twilight fandom as represented by lion_lamb, I was curious to see how otw_news looked, especially when compared to lion_lamb. How similar are they in terms of age, length of time on LiveJournal, the number of friends, the number of posts, etc. In the past, the group's members have talked about doing advocacy on behalf of fandom to change media perceptions of fans. The goal looked like they wanted to present their demographics as the norm. That is what I am looking for here.

The Organization for Transformative Works's founders and supporters were also vocally critical of LiveJournal's commercial aspects, and discussed the need for a non-profit site that would cater to fan interests while being less susceptible to pressure from advertisers. The actions by LiveJournal taken during StrikeThrough 2007 were one of the prime examples cited by this group to rationalize this position. Many people talked about giving up paid accounts, not using Plus accounts, etc. Given that history, I am curious as to the behaviors of the organization's supporters in the almost two and a half years since the groups founding: Are they more likely than Twilight fans to use basic accounts, less likely to give money directly to a company whose ethos runs counter to the group's founding principles?

The methodology for gathering data for this analysis is the same as the one for for lion_lamb: A sneak peak into the composition of the Twilight fandom. The community looked at is otw_news. The data was gathered on November 15, 2009 and pulled from publicly available profile information for people who both watched and belonged to the community. This means that 1,784 journals are included in the sample. When looking at this data, you have to remember that not everyone lists factually correct information. For this data, we assume that the obviously wrong data balances out in the end. (People list themselves at 100 and people list themselves as 5 years old.) This is the same methodology used for lion_lamb and we assume the error rate between the two is the same.

One of the first things to look at is age of the membership of otw_news. The chart below includes the total number of people who list themselves as having been born in that year.


The average year of birth is 1975, with a median age of 1979.5 and mode of 1984. In terms of fandom, this is not a young group: The average member is about 35 years of age. Even if we assume that the mode year is more representative of the group, that still places age at 25. If we try to correct this data for error by removing 10 from each extreme of high and low years of birth, our year of birth average only increases to 1976.7, and the median and mode stay the same. If we remove 10% of the extreme from the sample, or 30 from each side, we get an average year of birth of 1977.3 with median and mode remaining unchanged.

Assuming that our group of 11,000 Twilight fans on lion_lamb are representative of fandom on LiveJournal, the average year of birth is 1985.6, median year of birth is 1987 and the mode year of birth is 1989. If we try to correct for error and remove the extreme 10% of the sample, fans who are claiming Edward Cullen's birth year as their own as well as fans who claim an impossibly young age, lion_lamb has an average birth year of 1986.5 with median and mode remaining unchanged.

When we compare the membership of otw_news to fandom, Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters are on average almost ten years older than their counterparts in the rest of fandom. If we assume that median is more representative, we are still looking at a an eight year difference. Mode is the only one where they are close, and even that is only by three years. In the case of fandom as a whole, the average is right out of college. The after college life experiences are very different in terms of forming our perspectives so these three years are critical and do demographically separate the two groups.

It just cannot be said that the Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters are representative of fandom based on their ages.

The other important demographic issue for LiveJournal based fandom is location. Some 1,111 members of otw_news list the country they live in. 6,330 members of lion_lamb list the country they live in. Both have garbage entries for places where people obviously do not live, places like the Romulan Neutral Zone, the Vatican City, Jesus's home town or the North Pole. In both sets, people listed cities or providences instead of countries. This data was removed. We are assuming that the members who do not list their home countries are represented proportionally by those that do.

The Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters represent 41 countries. 63% of the membership are from the United States, 11% are from the United Kingdom, 7% are from Canada, 6% from Australia, 4% from Germany and other countries all have less than 1%. The top five countries population wise represent 91% of the organization's total population. The other 39 countries represent 9% of the organization's total population.

lion_lamb represents 112 countries. 54% of their membership is from the United States, 6% from Canada, 5% from the United Kingdom, 5% from Australia, 3% from Germany, 2% from the Philippines, 2% from France, 2% from Italy, 2% from Mexico. The top five countries represent 73% of the community's total population. The other countries represent 27%.



The Organization for Transformative Works over represents for Americans, with about 10% more Americans the lion_lamb. The Organization for Transformative Works members and their supports also over represent for Brits, Canadians, Australians, Germans. They under represent for the Philippines, France, and Mexico. The top five countries by membership over represent by about 20%. It cannot be said that the national representation of the Organization of Transformative Works is representative of the fan community on LiveJournal.

There are some other issues regarding how representative patterns for the Organization for Transformative Works are when compared to the whole of fandom on LiveJournal with lion_lamb being defined as fandom.

For year of registration, lion_lamb had the median and mode of 2008 for registering. The average registration year is 2007.07 in comparison. Members of this community are updating, with a last update year average of 2008.66, mode of 2009 and median of 2009. Compare this to otw_news, where the average registration year was 2004, with the median also being 2004 and the mode being 2003. Members and supporters of the Organization for Transformative Works became members of LiveJournal much earlier. Three years is a lifetime on the Internet. This is another example of otw_news follows not being representative of fandom on LiveJournal.

otw_news members have posted an average of 858.6 times, with a mode of 492 and a mode of 1. Compare that with lion_lamb members who have posted an average of 132.25 times, a median of 11 times and a mode of 1 time. Again, the Organization for Transformative Works members and supporters are not representative of fandom on LiveJournal.

These patterns hold true for other variables such as number of friends where otw_news members have almost 50 more on average and almost 95 in terms of median. It holds true for tags, memories, and virtual gifts. In all cases, members of otws_news have much higher averages than their fandom counterparts.

All of this reaffirms the same idea: Members and supporters of the Organization for Transformative Works do not represent fandom in that they are demographically distinct from fandom on LiveJournal. otw_news members also differ from their fandom counterparts in that they do not use LiveJournal the same way: They use LiveJournal much more actively in their personal space than the rest of fandom.

That concluded, the next issue is LiveJournal account status. The issue of paying LiveJournal was a big one. Around the time that Strikethrough happened, LiveJournal offered permanent accounts for sale. Some people affiliated with the later founding of an organization like OTW advocated that people unfriend those who bought permanent accounts. Other people openly talked about allowing their paid account status to expire as a method of expressing unhappiness with the site. Two and a half years later, what is the status of members and supports of the Organization for Transformative Works in terms of paying for LiveJournal?


otw_news members pay or have paid for their accounts. 36% have Paid Accounts. Many (15%) have permanent accounts, where they paid at least $150 for this status. A smaller percentage (18%) have plus accounts, which offer additional features in exchange for viewing additional ads.



When compared to lion_lamb, otw_news members way over-represent in paid accounts and permanent accounts. Despite the issues of Strikethough, not all of which have been resolved, people affiliated with the Organization for Transformative Works are much more willing to pay for LiveJournal than their fandom counterparts. Still, there is some obvious shift from the group, where people are willing to sacrifice functionality in order to view fewer ads and thus potentially give LiveJournal less income; there is an 18% difference in basic accounts from otw_news to lion_lamb.

Are the buying habits of a cross-fandom section, and their choices to expose themselves to additional ads, consistent with the attitude expressed by members and supporters during the time they lambasted LiveJournal's beholdenment to advertisers? It is hard to make a conclusive judgment based on the data we have available.

I've been busy and exhausted. Dunno why I'm so tired, I just am. I slept most of my two days off away. I meant to write. Heck I meant to get to the library to borrow some of my suggested reading. Instead I made a cake for my sister, slept, and started a knitting project (which does take hours for me cause I keep starting and restarting it until I have something halfway decent on the sticks).

Somewhere I found the energy for reading posts and internet games. I responded to a few, but meh. I'm in a mopey tired mood for no reason. Hopefully this week at work won't be as hard as last weeks but since we're swinging into Christmas season I don't hold out a lot of hope.

I feel like my brain has been fried.

This is a cross post from Fan History's blog.

lion_lamb is one of the biggest Twilight specific LiveJournal communities. It has, as over November 15, 2009, about 16,600 members, 23,128 Journal Entries, 113 Tags, 1 Memory, 44 Virtual Gifts, and 9 Userpics. It is big and as influential as a number of other fansites in terms of sharing information.

I've always been interested in demographic surveys of fandom. There has been a fair amount of market research done that would be of interest to people involved with fan studies but a lot of that remains locked, controlled by the people who produce it. There are people who produce great big data sets involving social media sites but a lot of that work is not easily mine-able by fan studies folks either, or the scope excludes them. Getting a picture is just hard.

( lion_lamb: A sneak peak into the composition of the Twilight fandom )

Title: A Dangerous Game
Challenge/Prompt: #28 Wrath
Original Fiction or Fanfiction [Name of fandom]: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Characters/Pairings: Suki, Zhao
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender or it's sandbox. I am just here to play with the toys and create my own alternate reality. :D
Summary: Suki learns from Zhao that the game they have been playing can have dangerous consequences once Zuko learns the truth.
Author's Notes: My muse wrote this on her own. No idea where she got this little drabble from. I can only surmise from a much older story that had played in my head so long ago.




( A Dangerous Game )