I've been reading lots of the discussion of Dumbledore's outing with interest. Not, per se, in his being gay or not (it fits in perfectly well to the background, but doesn't really add or subtract much to the plot, which is presumably it wasn't in the book), but in the reaction to it, which was much more interesting.

The most fascinating part of the conversation has been over whether JK has the right to go around telling us things that weren't in the books, and whether she should be doing so at all... There seems to be a feeling that writers are there to produce books, and outside of that should be neither seen nor heard. This hasn't just been obvious in recent discussions, but also over the epilogue to Deathly Hallows, and the other bits and pieces of information released about what happened between the ending of the story proper and the epilogue. People seem to be actually aghast that she would have all of this extra information in her head, or that she would have things worked out that weren't in the final book. This seems to stem from some kind of gross lack of understanding about both the writing process and fiction itself.

At some point in the past JK had an idea for a story. She then spent over ten years thinking about that story, the characters involved in it, the world they inhabited, and which chunks of it should be written down in order to produce the best book she could. There will be all sorts of drafts, notes, and ideas that came up along the way - some of which were cut because they weren't right, some of which there wasn't space for, some of which were discarded because better ideas occurred to her, and some of which actually made it into the hands of her agent, then her editor, and then were printed in book form and made it into the sticky hands of the readers. The idea that some of these chunks are any more real than others seems to be evidence, to me, of some kind of psychosis. As with all fiction, it's all made up.

If all you're interested in is the book then that's fine, but I've seen people claiming that Dumbledore isn't gay unless her statement about him goes from her, to her agent, her editor, her publisher, is put onto bits of paper and then sold to them in the form of a book. How, exactly, this process conveys some kind of holy aura of truth upon the statement is quite beyond me, and while I understand that some things will always feel realer to people than others, making blanket statements about the 'truth' of fiction seems barking mad to me.

Personally, I've grown up with the idea of multiple conflicting narratives. I've read Star Trek novelisations, seen the TV series, watched the movies and read the comics. They aren't the same, they contradict each other, and I can happily enjoy them all without having to have them all fit together perfectly. Further down that line we have things like the Marvel or DC universes, which are hideously inconsistent and contradictory - and again, it just doesn't matter. I've seen explanations for the numerous different kinds of cybermen in Dr Who, and how they all came into being - and it's a great game to play, trying to tie all these things together, but the second you take it seriously, and start making pronouncements about how X is real and Y is clearly not you've lost sight of what you're actually talking about - which is fiction and thus _made up_. None of it is actually any more real than any other bit.

I also, to be honest, feel the same way about fanfiction. It's just as real as any other kind of fiction, and just because it's not written by the person who first wrote about character X or Y doesn't change that in the slightest. True, fan-fiction writers may frequently lack the skills of the professionals, but that's got nothing to do with their writing being fan-fiction. Alan Moore, one of my favourite writers, has made most of his career from other people's characters and worlds, and that's just fine with me.

There's recently been a fair bit of publicity about the alcohol problem this country has - sparked by the resignation of the leader of the Lib Dems over alcohol addiction, and a report that liver cirrhosis is on the rise.  Polls show that people are drinking more to deal with stress and work, but there seems to be more to it than that - a cultural malaise that seems to afflict the British more than most.  I understand that our levels of binge drinking are significantly higher than most other countries.

I've discussed with spidermonster our mutual frustration with people who seem to only enjoy themselves when drunk, and spend most of their time looking forward to when they can next get wasted.  Now, I've got nothing against people engaging in mind-altering substances as an occasional thing - but when your life begins to revolve around them there is a problem.  Multiple members of my regular gaming group arrive, open a beer, and then work their way through them over the course of the game, noticeably affecting their gameplay as they go.  I've been asked (by someone else) if I don't feel like I miss out on life by not drinking a lot.  All of this was leading me towards a post of some kind, and then I read this on a friend's journal (reposted anonymously, because their identity isn't important) and it crystallised everything for me.

Eleven days without alcohol makes you realise what an incredibly fucking boring thing life is.

And this seems to be the major fucking problem.  People hating their life, or at the least being bored and depressed by it, and not feeling that they can change it for the better.  It's a whole society medicating its miserableness by spending as much time as possible lowering their IQ to the point where life becomes bearable.  It's people unable to have fun unless they can blame the fun on alcohol.  Last night e had a few people over, and they sang, and played games and had some good conversations, and it was great.  And part of the reason it was great was that I knew that at least two of the people there dance and sing _while sober_.  It was a huge shock to me to originally discover that so many people wouldn't dance until they'd had a couple of drinks.  Singing seems to have become the province of professionals and drunks - when it used to be that _everyone_ sang.

Frankly, it disturbs me intensely, and I find it all hard to see as anything other than a sick society.

The new "Schools" thing is nice - lifting the idea from Friends Reunited and making it an additional way to find new LJ people.

However....Friends Reunited have the manpower and the focus to make sure that the schools are correct, as well as the regions they are in.  LJ, apparently, hasn't.

Witness the list of "Provinces" in the UK.  Or the number of people enrolled at a certain school in Hogsmeade (Cheers to pickwick for that second example).

According to comments on this post in lj_dev there are now 6 different entries for Moscow.

Even the US has problems, with two entries for Texas, and one for Guam.

This seems to be a classic case of people thinking that a problem is easy "Give the users the ability to enter their own data and it'll save us having to get lists of schools ourselves.", but at the same time not giving the users any guidelines as to how the data should be entered.

At this point I'm mostly wondering if LJ is going to pull it until it can be done properly, or just leave it to fester.