it's not the same moon in the sky

The story of the women's history museum which mysteriously transformed (via the process, often contentious in British life, of getting planning permission) into a sensationalist-looking Jack the Ripper museum is making its way around the world. Here's a few interesting links:

- The Guardian: Jack the Ripper's victims deserve to be commemorated. But like this?
- jesuswasbatman: Fisking the Jack the Ripper Museum
- 38 Degrees petition to Tower Hamlets Council: Celebrate Suffragettes Not Serial Killers
- Protest at the museum opening on Tuesday 4th August! Women's history is not Jack the Ripper!

Other things:

- Jacqueline Wilson has written a new take on What Katy Did.
- Twitter, unable to grasp that endless growth might not be possible or desirable, considers being more like Facebook.
- arcadiaego informs me of the existence of a longstanding fan project at read_lotr_aloud, where a small group of fans have spent most of the last decade building up a chapter-by-chapter audiobook. Sean Astin even reads the first section! Is anyone aware of other projects like this?
- ladysisyphus has an epic post on The Blair Witch Project and the movies that tried to emulate its impact without really understanding it. So delicious to see a good chunk of horror meta on LJ!
- In other news, shoestring film production company Mansfield Dark have come up with a beautiful 12-minute shadow puppet version of Count Magnus by M.R. James. You can see the trailer here and also find a link to buy the DVD, which comes with a lovely piece of art on the slipcase. Mine arrived this morning, to my considerable delight. The Mansfield Dark guys are both talented and ingenious, making everything from this gorgeousness to comedy to LGBT thrillers, so go check them out.
- A friend recommended browser extension FB Purity as a solution to the man ways in which Facebook is annoying. I haven't installed it yet, but perhaps some of you feel like trying it too.

I'm becoming a cliche of myself with all this "I'll post more often/*weeks of tumbleweeds*" stuff, but I've been both busy and run-down, which is always a sucky combination. In happier news, though, I've finally seen the last three Harry Potter movies. Yeah, I know, but better late than never. :P

I haven't read the books since Deathly Hallows was published, so I figure I'm not going to notice everything that changed/went missing, but there were certain character moments I was happy to see done justice (Dumbledore and Harry going after that Horcrux, for instance - one of the more disturbing moments in canon and very well played in the film), and others I was equally happy to see skipped (that business with the Dursleys at the start of HBP always struck me as mean; it's no loss). 

I did chafe (as I have since seeing OotP) at the lack of Snape flashbacks. It just doesn't work to have Snape go, "I'M the Half Blood Prince!" at the end, you know? Especially when it never gets explained what that means, and the reveal was a high point of the book. They just barely skimmed the thing with Lily and it would've been nice to see further into the origins of Snape's odd, resentful nature, and the connections between him and the Potters.

The other major omission, to my mind, was the backstory about Dumbledore. Maybe I missed something, but they seem to have barely mentioned Grindlewald/his life-defining relationship with Dumbledore, and the whole Dark Side of Dumbledore got reduced to a brief mention of his sister without really explaining how he could be said to have let her down. I did very much enjoy the argument between Snape and Dumbledore over the latter's "fattening Harry for slaughter"(?). Maybe the filmmakers felt this alone served the "Dumbledore should be seen to have flaws" need, but I felt this was more about his ruthlessness and less about the things from his past that were guilt-inducingly formative.

Anyway, I really want to re-watch the series again, and above all to re-read the books. I only had the full HP fandom experience in the run-up to/after the publication of OotP, and I feel a combination of that "OMG HARRY POTTER IS OVER AND I AM TEAR-STAINED" thing that swept fandom last year, and the desire to have HP discussions with more people. It seems like HP meta has pretty much died except for the odd thread on f-fa, but if there was a re-read going on, a la the vc_media Vampire Chronicles re-read, I'd love to be in on it.... 

There were lots of little funny (nice change after the grimness of OotP), sweet and badass character moments, and