deepfishy: (Default)
2005-11-21 12:12 pm
Entry tags:

Masks of the Beast: Discourses of Identity Within Contemporary Werewolf Narratives

525,600 minutes 12,500 words, How do you measure a year in the life honours year thesis?

It's done, it's over, it's in. Anything that can now go wrong is no longer my concern. (and I'll keep telling myself that)

Dramas around getting the darned thing together meant I handed it in first thing this morning rather than Friday afternoon:--
(Printer: *gets biggest, fattest paper-jam in all of Christendom*
Binding machine: *does not bind. repeatedly. on many copies.*
Officeworks: *saves the day*
Traffic: *is slow*
Jess: *is laughing on the inside, no, really*)

...this is the part where we celebrate, right?

*falls asleep in plate of celebratory cake*
deepfishy: (Default)
2005-11-16 11:36 pm
Entry tags:

The Wolf's Hour

It's late, there's a full moon riding high in the sky, and I'm writing the last chapter of my werewolf thesis. Less than 4,000 words to freedom. That that, ya bastard!

*kicks feelings-of-thesis-dooooom inna fork*
deepfishy: (Default)
2005-08-08 02:31 pm
Entry tags:

In which there is no life, but some thesis

Hhn. Looking back over my recent entries, the meme:anything else ratio is kinda high.

The main reason for this is university work, both thesis and readings (how insane is it to have to do two additional subjects with fat weekly readings and other assignments when we're meant to be writing a thesis? *muttered imprecations*). And I really don't think much else will be happening during the next three months - other than writing/critical thinking burnout, naturally (I think these two images from Despair, Inc. cover the general forecast ;)...).

So I just thought I'd post one of the thoughts I had during thesis-type writing:

You become a werewolf by getting bitten, right?

Well, that particular part of werewolf lore didn't appear until about the late 19th or early 20th century (and was subsequently popularised in films such as The Wolf Man). About the time that Louis Pasteur was working on a vaccine for rabies, and real virology was just getting started. So if you consider that the idea that being bitten by an animal could pass its contagion on to you gained a foothold in popular understanding around this time, then werewolves aren't just a creature of the supernatural; they're creatures of science, too.

Thought that was an interesting idea. And it certainly goes some way in explaining why science keeps popping up in werewolf films.

(Exactly where the "get bitten=turn into werewolf" thing came from has been bothering me. An association between werewolves and the moon is mentioned, I think, by a Medieval monk (need to check my sources); vulnerability to silver weapons (specifically silver bullets, and usually "inherited silver") appears in many German werewolf stories; but no folklore mentions anything about this contagious curse. Hence the theoretical link to Pasteur.)

And I obviously need to makes me some werewolf thesis icons.
deepfishy: (Default)
2005-07-11 11:28 am
Entry tags:

Thesis Outline

May have occasional cryptic remarks, but new outline as follows:

cut to save the general public from rampant academia )


And, because it encapsulates the dichotomous nature of our relationship with predators, and makes me strangely happy:

A quote from Pratchett's 'The Last Continent' )

~