A Seasonal Party

There's a very nice local couple who invite their community over every year in the fall to invade their beautiful house on Nahant, drink fresh pressed cider, soak in their hot tub, and generally enjoy ourselves. This year it somehow seemed especially seasonal, especially a celebration of the Fall, from the fruits (including the Concord grapes I brought) to the babies to the weather. It felt like a harvest celebration, and I found myself humming harvest songs as I looked out at the rainy sky and listened to the wind. (I also ate way too much.)

Fandom Alert: Fanfic and its Writers as Subjects of Study

A professor at George Washington University is teaching a course called 'Get a Life!: ‘Shippers, Slashers, and Other Media Fans'. As part of this course, students "will also become a participant-observer of an internet fan fiction community (e.g., Full Metal Alchemist or Lord of the Rings)"

While it sounds as if this course is addressing some issues I personally find fascinating, I don't know if I think this is such a great idea, an influx of people joining fandoms just to study them without having any love for them. Especially because of the attitude reflected in the course description:

"And what about those troublesome fans who use some preexisting story as the springboard for their own stories or art: are they authors in their own right, or thieves, or pathetic parasites? How do we compare a fan novella drawing on characters from the Harry Potter universe to such a work as Jean Rhys's critically-acclaimed Wide Sargasso Sea, which rewords the characters of Jane Eyre? These questions will lead us to larger philosophical mysteries, such as the line between knock-off and clever adaptation, or between copyright violation, plagiarism, and scholarly citation. "

So I find this a little alarming. What do you all think?

Oh, Crapdoodles

On the other hand....

A massive earthquake has hit the Subcontinent, and apparently the death toll from Hurricane Stan (STAN? Dear sweet God, soon they'll have to start the alphabet over again if this goes on) is near 2000 people.

Am I an ignorant American, or have there been more than the average number of natural disasters in this past year or so?