a million times a trillion more (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dolorosa_12) wrote2015-09-10 08:02 pm
dolorosa_12) wrote2015-09-10 08:02 pm
New intro post
Hello to all the new people now following me as a result of the friending meme (and for those of you who haven't seen the meme yet, it's here).
I thought I'd introduce myself to all of you. Feel free to ask me questions about anything.
My name is Ronni, and I'm a library assistant at one of the academic libraries within the University of Cambridge in the UK. I'm an immigrant — I moved to Cambridge from Australia about seven years ago to do an MPhil in medieval Irish literature. I followed the MPhil with a PhD in the same subject area (my thesis was on literary representations of authority, dispossession, land and history, and the interaction thereof, in five eleventh/twelfth-century Irish texts), which I finished just over a year ago. Academia left me intellectually and emotionally exhausted, and I knew it wasn't for me, so I didn't pursue it beyond the PhD.
I began working in libraries as a weekend job as a way to make some extra money during my PhD. The first library job I took I normally call Original Library Job. I worked there for five years and only recently handed in my notice. In January of last year I began working part-time in another library (New Library Job), and added to this with an evening job in a third library (Newer Library Job). (Cambridge has A LOT of academic libraries.) Since January this year I've been working in pretty much my dream job (Newest Library Job). It's in reader support in yet another academic library in Cambridge, and mainly involves providing teaching and training in information literacy for the library users. I really love it.
Before my postgraduate studies, I worked as a book-reviewer and subeditor at a newspaper in Australia.
My partner is Matthias, and he also did a PhD in an area of medieval studies (in his case, Old English philology, hence my occasional reference to him online as My Favourite Philologist) before moving on to work in libraries. Last academic year he worked in four different libraries, but this year he's full-time in one, also an academic library within the University of Cambridge. He's working on a library and information studies MA via distance learning.
I'm the oldest of five sisters (the next sister down has the same mother and father as me, the other three share a father with us but have a different mother), and talk about them from time to time. Other people I mention here from time to time:
Sraffies are friends I met originally on a His Dark Materials fan forum. Most of us have met in real life now, and our friendship is based more on shared online/real-life experiences than HDM fandom.
Obernetters are friends I met originally on a forum for fans of the Australian YA series Obernewtyn. Again, most of us have met in real life now.
ASNCs are friends I made through the department in Cambridge where I studied for my MPhil and PhD.
I tend to talk about a mixture of fannish and real-life stuff, with a slight preference towards discussing fannish things. I'm interested in people's reviews and reactions to stuff, and finding out why they like (or dislike) the stories they do. I love discovering new books and TV shows with other people.
Forever fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, His Dark Materials, a huge number of books which I will outline in another category.
Current more well-known active fandoms: Mad Max: Fury Road, Orphan Black, Sens8, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (book and TV show), Orange Is The New Black, Pretty Little Liars (although the most recent season finale is making me question my desire to stick with it), The Raven Cycle, Jane The Virgin, The 100, Peaky Blinders, and, for want of a better description, folklore and mythology with a focus on female characters, particularly those that don't get much narrative attention in the source material (a representative example being Briseis and Chryseis from the Iliad).
Tiny fandoms-of-one that are really what I want to talk about: The Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall, The Pagan Chronicles series by Catherine Jinks, Galax Arena, and the Space Demons trilogy by Gillian Rubinstein, The Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon, The Demon's Lexicon trilogy by Sarah Rees Brennan, The Troy Game series by Sara Douglass, the Legendsong series by Isobelle Carmody, the Tomorrow series by John Marsden, basically the entire output of Victor Kelleher, the Crossroads trilogy by Kate Elliott, and Juniper and Wise Child by Monica Furlong.
In other words, if you're a fan of any of these books, or might like to be, let me know!
I also post quite a bit about fannish culture and community issues, within both the pro-SFF and transformative works sides of fandom.
As well as Dreamwidth, you can find me at:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dolorosa_12 (a mirror of my Dreamwidth blog, and if you have accounts in both places, I'd really prefer to be added on Dreamwidth)
![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
ronnidolorosa
![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
dolorosa
![[archiveofourown.org profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/b164c54b26e4/-/archiveofourown.org/favicon.ico)
Dolorosa
I also have a Wordpress blog where I post reviews and essays; I'm a contributing reviewer at Those Who Run With Wolves, and I've recently got really into making and listening to playlists and fanmixes at 8tracks (where you can find me here).
Feel free to add me at any of these places, although if your username is really different to your Dreamwidth handle, could you let me know, so that I know who you are.
I rarely post under lock. You are welcome to link, share, mention, or reblog any public post I make in any of the places I've listed (so, for example, I have no problem with a fic on Ao3 being shared on Tumblr, a Dreamwidth post referenced on Twitter, a tweet linked on LJ, and so on).
I think that's enough to start with. I look forward to getting to know you all.
I thought I'd introduce myself to all of you. Feel free to ask me questions about anything.
My name is Ronni, and I'm a library assistant at one of the academic libraries within the University of Cambridge in the UK. I'm an immigrant — I moved to Cambridge from Australia about seven years ago to do an MPhil in medieval Irish literature. I followed the MPhil with a PhD in the same subject area (my thesis was on literary representations of authority, dispossession, land and history, and the interaction thereof, in five eleventh/twelfth-century Irish texts), which I finished just over a year ago. Academia left me intellectually and emotionally exhausted, and I knew it wasn't for me, so I didn't pursue it beyond the PhD.
I began working in libraries as a weekend job as a way to make some extra money during my PhD. The first library job I took I normally call Original Library Job. I worked there for five years and only recently handed in my notice. In January of last year I began working part-time in another library (New Library Job), and added to this with an evening job in a third library (Newer Library Job). (Cambridge has A LOT of academic libraries.) Since January this year I've been working in pretty much my dream job (Newest Library Job). It's in reader support in yet another academic library in Cambridge, and mainly involves providing teaching and training in information literacy for the library users. I really love it.
Before my postgraduate studies, I worked as a book-reviewer and subeditor at a newspaper in Australia.
My partner is Matthias, and he also did a PhD in an area of medieval studies (in his case, Old English philology, hence my occasional reference to him online as My Favourite Philologist) before moving on to work in libraries. Last academic year he worked in four different libraries, but this year he's full-time in one, also an academic library within the University of Cambridge. He's working on a library and information studies MA via distance learning.
I'm the oldest of five sisters (the next sister down has the same mother and father as me, the other three share a father with us but have a different mother), and talk about them from time to time. Other people I mention here from time to time:
Sraffies are friends I met originally on a His Dark Materials fan forum. Most of us have met in real life now, and our friendship is based more on shared online/real-life experiences than HDM fandom.
Obernetters are friends I met originally on a forum for fans of the Australian YA series Obernewtyn. Again, most of us have met in real life now.
ASNCs are friends I made through the department in Cambridge where I studied for my MPhil and PhD.
I tend to talk about a mixture of fannish and real-life stuff, with a slight preference towards discussing fannish things. I'm interested in people's reviews and reactions to stuff, and finding out why they like (or dislike) the stories they do. I love discovering new books and TV shows with other people.
Forever fandoms: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, His Dark Materials, a huge number of books which I will outline in another category.
Current more well-known active fandoms: Mad Max: Fury Road, Orphan Black, Sens8, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (book and TV show), Orange Is The New Black, Pretty Little Liars (although the most recent season finale is making me question my desire to stick with it), The Raven Cycle, Jane The Virgin, The 100, Peaky Blinders, and, for want of a better description, folklore and mythology with a focus on female characters, particularly those that don't get much narrative attention in the source material (a representative example being Briseis and Chryseis from the Iliad).
Tiny fandoms-of-one that are really what I want to talk about: The Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall, The Pagan Chronicles series by Catherine Jinks, Galax Arena, and the Space Demons trilogy by Gillian Rubinstein, The Bone Season series by Samantha Shannon, The Demon's Lexicon trilogy by Sarah Rees Brennan, The Troy Game series by Sara Douglass, the Legendsong series by Isobelle Carmody, the Tomorrow series by John Marsden, basically the entire output of Victor Kelleher, the Crossroads trilogy by Kate Elliott, and Juniper and Wise Child by Monica Furlong.
In other words, if you're a fan of any of these books, or might like to be, let me know!
I also post quite a bit about fannish culture and community issues, within both the pro-SFF and transformative works sides of fandom.
As well as Dreamwidth, you can find me at:
dolorosa_12 (a mirror of my Dreamwidth blog, and if you have accounts in both places, I'd really prefer to be added on Dreamwidth)I also have a Wordpress blog where I post reviews and essays; I'm a contributing reviewer at Those Who Run With Wolves, and I've recently got really into making and listening to playlists and fanmixes at 8tracks (where you can find me here).
Feel free to add me at any of these places, although if your username is really different to your Dreamwidth handle, could you let me know, so that I know who you are.
I rarely post under lock. You are welcome to link, share, mention, or reblog any public post I make in any of the places I've listed (so, for example, I have no problem with a fic on Ao3 being shared on Tumblr, a Dreamwidth post referenced on Twitter, a tweet linked on LJ, and so on).
I think that's enough to start with. I look forward to getting to know you all.
no subject
Yes, this is exactly what I was getting at. It's as if it's unthinkable that siblings could enjoy one another's company without it becoming unhealthily codependent. Sarah Rees Brennan gets it right.
I think when I read the Tomorrow series, I was still young enough that what struck me most was the fact that the books talked about things I hadn't heard people talk about much - like that sex can be awkward, and your first relationship is not always the best decision.
Oh, this, so much. The Dead of Night was actually the first time I read sex explicitly described on the page - I was ten years old and remember thinking to myself, a writer can actually DO that? - and now you bring it up, it makes me grateful that that was the first depiction I encountered. Because Marsden depicted the messiness, and the awkwardness, and the fact that a teenage girl might actually want sex, and that she would worry about contraception (because being pregnant in a war zone would be really difficult). All this matters, and it was powerful.
I saw an Australian YA author (who really should know better) opining in her blog the other day that YA was really sanitised until recently, and was unable to adequately address these kinds of issues or portray these kinds of characters, and I wanted to drop the entire Marsden bibliography in her lap in frustration. People were talking about it, and writing about it, before 2010, and not just Marsden. You mention Melina Marchetta, and I feel like Looking For Alibrandi and Saving Francesca in particular covered similar ground.
in hindsight I really appreciate that passionate defence of Gen Y
Yes! He really respected his readers and their concerns, and had, as you say, this passionate belief in Gen Y and its values.
To be fair, I really enjoyed the first three books, but I felt after that that they went downhill a bit. Not sure what popular opinion is on that.
In that your opinion is pretty much the dominant one. I agree with you, and feel that while the first three books described situations that a band of untrained teenage guerrillas could realistically have experienced, it started to get ridiculous in the later books. (Indeed, the whole thing was supposed to be a trilogy to begin with, and it could've stopped after The Third Day, The Frost with Ellie and co. in New Zealand.) I've also read the spin-off trilogy (I think it was called The Ellie Chronicles), as I had to review it for work, and it's really weak.
I for one am putting my hand up! I'll let you know if any catchy names come to mind.
(How do you feel about Melina Marchetta (particularly Jellicoe Road?))
Excellent! I'll try to think of a name, and try to build up a backlog of content to populate it with before I make the comm/Tumblr visible, but it really is something I'd be interested in doing, and it's good to know there'd be other readers.
I LOVE Melina Marchetta, although I must admit that I'm more of a fan of Looking For Alibrandi and the Francesca books. I think it's because I grew up in Canberra with my extended family in Sydney (and then moved to Sydney during uni), so I found it really moving to read stories that were so rooted in the Sydney landscape, with characters who hung out in places I knew intimately. I was also already an adult when On The Jellicoe Road came out - and indeed had to review it for work - and that may have coloured my opinion slightly. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on it!