Hello new people!
Jan. 7th, 2017 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12I've added a bunch of new people as a result of st_aurafina's recent friending meme, so I thought it was high time to introduce myself.
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 just over eight 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 in mid-2014. 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. I've so far worked in four of Cambridge's 100+ libraries. Since January 2015 I've been working in pretty much my dream job, a reader support role in an academic library in Cambridge, which mainly involves providing teaching and training in database searching, reference management, data management and so on. 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. Like me, he's worked in multiple Cambridge libraries (at one point seven days a week in four different libraries). Since July he's been working for the main Cambridge University Library, mostly in the field of scholarly communication. He's also working on a library and information studies MA via distance learning.
I've spent most of the past two or three years going through bureaucratic hell with various immigration and citizenship applications in the UK. Last year, that long nightmare was finally over when I became a British citizen (my joy was somewhat tempered by the timing - my British passport was delivered through the door on the day of the Brexit referendum result. I have a terrible pattern with this - as well as Australian citizenship, I also hold US citizenship, and my renewed US passport was delivered on, you guessed it, the day the US election result was announced). As a result of my UKVI woes, I have pretty much an encyclopaedic knowledge of British citizenship and immigration law, and am very happy to help prospective immigrants to the UK with their applications in whatever way I can.
While my immigration journey is at an end, Matthias's is in its final stages: our goal this year is to get his British citizenship sorted out (this couldn't be done until January 2017 for various complicated bureaucratic reasons), and once that's done, we will both finally feel safe and secure in this country we've chosen for our home. We're also getting married in early August this year, so a lot of our time will be spent organising this. I haven't really posted much about wedding planning here on Dreamwidth/LJ, and I'll try to keep it behind a cut if I do.
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, Avatar: The Last Airbender (but not Korra, which I began watching but gave up on), and a huge number of books which I will outline in another category.
Current more well-known active fandoms: Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars (especially Rogue One), Orphan Black, Jessica Jone (the TV series) and other Netflix Marvel shows, Deutschland 83, Sense8, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (book), Orange Is The New Black, Pretty Little Liars (although I've been extremely disappointed in it over the past few seasons and am mainly sticking with it to see how things end), 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). Other recent fandoms include The Americans, Empire, Cleverman, and Humans. I love pretty much anything that has vampires in it.
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. Other more recent books I've loved include Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, Silver on the Road by L. A. Gilman, An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and Uprooted by Naomi Novik.
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 (although that blog's been dormant for a while), and have an account over at Imzy - Dolorosa. I'm inactive there - I joined mainly to get the Dolorosa username, but if there's enough fannish movement to Imzy I might become more active.
I'm also Dolorosa at Goodreads and am very happy to add any of you who are over there - I get a lot of book recs from Goodreads and love seeing what my friends are reading.
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'm really looking forward to getting to know you! Please feel free to ask whatever questions you like.
st_aurafina's recent friending meme, so I thought it was high time to introduce myself. 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 just over eight 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 in mid-2014. 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. I've so far worked in four of Cambridge's 100+ libraries. Since January 2015 I've been working in pretty much my dream job, a reader support role in an academic library in Cambridge, which mainly involves providing teaching and training in database searching, reference management, data management and so on. 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. Like me, he's worked in multiple Cambridge libraries (at one point seven days a week in four different libraries). Since July he's been working for the main Cambridge University Library, mostly in the field of scholarly communication. He's also working on a library and information studies MA via distance learning.
I've spent most of the past two or three years going through bureaucratic hell with various immigration and citizenship applications in the UK. Last year, that long nightmare was finally over when I became a British citizen (my joy was somewhat tempered by the timing - my British passport was delivered through the door on the day of the Brexit referendum result. I have a terrible pattern with this - as well as Australian citizenship, I also hold US citizenship, and my renewed US passport was delivered on, you guessed it, the day the US election result was announced). As a result of my UKVI woes, I have pretty much an encyclopaedic knowledge of British citizenship and immigration law, and am very happy to help prospective immigrants to the UK with their applications in whatever way I can.
While my immigration journey is at an end, Matthias's is in its final stages: our goal this year is to get his British citizenship sorted out (this couldn't be done until January 2017 for various complicated bureaucratic reasons), and once that's done, we will both finally feel safe and secure in this country we've chosen for our home. We're also getting married in early August this year, so a lot of our time will be spent organising this. I haven't really posted much about wedding planning here on Dreamwidth/LJ, and I'll try to keep it behind a cut if I do.
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, Avatar: The Last Airbender (but not Korra, which I began watching but gave up on), and a huge number of books which I will outline in another category.
Current more well-known active fandoms: Mad Max: Fury Road, Star Wars (especially Rogue One), Orphan Black, Jessica Jone (the TV series) and other Netflix Marvel shows, Deutschland 83, Sense8, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (book), Orange Is The New Black, Pretty Little Liars (although I've been extremely disappointed in it over the past few seasons and am mainly sticking with it to see how things end), 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). Other recent fandoms include The Americans, Empire, Cleverman, and Humans. I love pretty much anything that has vampires in it.
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. Other more recent books I've loved include Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, Silver on the Road by L. A. Gilman, An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker, and Uprooted by Naomi Novik.
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 (although that blog's been dormant for a while), and have an account over at Imzy - Dolorosa. I'm inactive there - I joined mainly to get the Dolorosa username, but if there's enough fannish movement to Imzy I might become more active.
I'm also Dolorosa at Goodreads and am very happy to add any of you who are over there - I get a lot of book recs from Goodreads and love seeing what my friends are reading.
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'm really looking forward to getting to know you! Please feel free to ask whatever questions you like.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 11:51 am (UTC)I've also liked Elizabeth Bear's Eternal Sky series, alas another tiny fandom.
Just added you on Goodreads! same name.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 02:42 pm (UTC)Does this mean that you've written for all those fandoms apart from Karen Memory? (If so, I will have to read your fic at some point!) I agree with you about the style - I'd be worried about trying to imitate it too. I think Sorcerer to the Crown also has a tricky style to emulate.
I've not read the Eternal Sky series, but I'll put it on my (vast, virtual) TBR pile to come back to in the future!
If you do read The Bone Season, let me know what you think!
I've added you back on Goodreads.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 11:22 pm (UTC)My to read list is so long... especially as on GR I usually only add the first book, or one book by an author as a reminder to read something of theirs. Otherwise it just spirals out of control!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 04:07 pm (UTC)I hear you with the uncontrollable reading list!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-09 11:48 am (UTC)Too few hours in the day ^^;;
no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 10:56 am (UTC)I'm looking forward to reading your fic in those fandoms!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 03:22 pm (UTC)I added you on Twitter. I'm
no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 04:00 pm (UTC)I'll add you back over on Twitter!
no subject
Date: 2017-01-07 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 03:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-01-08 09:10 pm (UTC)My library recently bought "The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet" and "Sorcerer to the Crown". I'm looking forward to reading them since I've heard so much praise for them.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 10:58 am (UTC)I hope you enjoy both those books, and I'd love to hear what you think when you've read them. I think my favourite thing about both (although they're otherwise not very similar) is their warmth and humanity. They're very hopeful books, and sometimes that's what you need in a story.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-10 10:20 pm (UTC)