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~alfakim

Zidane Megalixir
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This account is closed!

Fri Feb 8, 2008, 4:27 AM
  • Mood: Artistic
Last call for all those boarding upon the DA-747 flight to my new account:
~aquillyne
This account is dead - sans devwatch, sans faves, sans comments upon it. It has been good fun people. Catch you over at the new name. :salute:

1 Comment

The Birth and Death of ~alfakim

Thu Nov 8, 2007, 8:01 PM
  • Mood: Artistic
I will soon be closing down my deviantART account, to start a new one under a brand new name. I shall transfer my personal favourites across to this new account, and then delete this one for good. For those of you who enjoyed anything I ever did, I hope to still be in touch with you in the future; otherwise, it has been a pleasure.

For a very long time I've used the name "alfakim" online, but it started out as no more than a bad joke. My paternal grandfather is Italian, old and grumpy, and still has a poor command of English. When frustrated with one of his sons, he'd often swear - unfortunately his poor language entailed poor skills in expletives too - and he was known on occasion say of his son, "I'll fuck him!" Whilst this was humorous enough in and of itself, his thick Italian accent made the phrase come out sounding more like "Al-Fakim!", and hence rather like an Arabic name. This coincidence amused me for a while.

I made this "name" into my alias, but have since grown heavily disenchanted by it. For a start, although I never realised it before, it is rather offensive and racist. Secondly it gives a very poor impression of anything to do with me. Unfortunately the name stuck in the light of my not being creative enough to come up with a better name. Indeed, when working on (one of many unfinished and unserious) projects with my friend ~ZoFreX, we both agreed I needed a better name to sign our work with. In less than a second I came up with my second major alias, "axios", a name which speaks of the brevity of its creation by its uninspirational typicality.

The problem is, I need an alias to sign my work. Signatures, like on deviantART, are usually no more nor less than your username, and unfortunately I have the type of name that someone's always already taken. I thus actually have a need of a global alias, to maintain my identity online. And recently I resolved to come up with such an alias before it was too late to go back on what people have come to know me as.

You will find me in the future going by the name
~aquillyne
Yours sincerely,
alfakim

2 Comments

New Written Pieces

Journal Entry: Sun Oct 7, 2007, 7:23 PM
  • Mood: Optimism
Summer's ended, my subscription's nearly reached the same fate, and I'm back at university. But it wasn't all without some written fruit.

As ever, the more time goes by the more ideas I have for writing. However, unlike my golden age of summer '05, there is no longer a correlation between time and actual written output. Nevertheless, I have indeed managed to place a few words on some scraps of paper here and there, and I've uploaded two of the results.

:bulletgreen: Caution-Coloured Exterior is something I wrote half of around November 06 and finished tonight. Don't worry though, it's short!
:bulletgreen: Esper's Escape is another in my canon of "for children" (but written too complicatedly for them) sagas, and was a challenge in generating an entire story from a singular image. It's unfortunately a lot longer than I would have liked, however this means I will be extra grateful to any brave readers - I do hope it turns out to be worth it by the end.
:bulletblue: As ever, I would greatly appreciate any readers and comments!

Neither piece is really "the piece" that I wanted to come back with (in style), I hope to work up to this new magnus opus. However I think they're both fairly light and cheerful; as ways of returning to dA-submitted writing, they aren't quite the rocket-propelled Ferraris, they're the easy-going Limousines.

When you write, you need to keep writing, or you forget how to. I've taken a huge break but I don't want any smidgeon of talent I ever had to break too - I have several other unfinished pieces waiting on my computer to be completed. Hopefully in the not-too-distant close future I will finish these off and move onto my massive list of "stories I have to write".

Hopefully I'll be able to entertain one or two readers once again.

1 Comment

Eye of Hawk

Journal Entry: Sat Sep 22, 2007, 9:11 PM
  • Mood: Not Impressed
Double, double toil and trouble;
 Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
  Eye of newt and toe of frog,
   Wool of bat and tongue of dog.


I like deviantART. I like what its community brings. And even though I don't post many, I do like to write journals on it. I almost treat some of my journals as very, very light-hearted sub-artworks of prose. My journal here becomes like a sub-prose-gallery, all of them archived in a nice pretty little area. People can read through the gallery and and comment on what they find. It's all a very agreeable sort of system.

That's why I've recently been saddened to learn that a friend of mine thought it was appropriate to go digging through my journal archives. It's not the looking that upsets me - obviously I've intended these journals to be read - I did after all post them freely in a publicly accessible location. No, it's what she did, and the way she did it, that forces me to interpret her actions as prying and insensitive. I truly hope this wasn't the case.

I post my thoughts here on deviantART in good faith. I allow them to be here with the assumption that they won't ultimately be used against me, even though I am painfully aware that some of my old journals are a tad embarassing. In my archives, I've moaned and sworn about exams and work just like a typical teenager, I've made the obligatory pageview milestone journals, I've even titled journals "Goodbye, the Future of My Life" just like an emo kid. I am not exactly proud of these journals, but I'm not ashamed. I've left them there assuming no one's going to start quoting parts of them to people I know as if they've found a juicy deep secret.

I've also posted things it's fairly obvious I'd be sensitive about, ways that I feel or risky things I think, heartily and light-heartedly made to seem like full-blown opinions so I can spark reactions. I won't bitch about crimes against me here, but what has mildly annoyed me is that this friend of mine found something, showed it to someone else, quoted it, drew conclusions from it, and then didn't even ask me about it. She went dissecting with another person something so obviously a sensitive issue to me, when she has no idea of what it means, how I feel about it now, or whether I even want that other person to see it. If she was so concerned about what it implied, why not ask its author?

It's not nice. By all means, trawl through my past journals and raise your eyebrows if you will. Gain subtle insights into my character which you think you may infer. Indeed, conclude what you wish. But don't go bandying what you find around to other people with interrogative and convictive comments. The words you read weren't part of a script to a soap opera, it's me on the other end here.

I will continue to post journals on deviantART, in good faith.


3 Comments

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Journal Entry: Mon Jul 23, 2007, 9:35 AM
  • Mood: Excited
  • Reading: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
  • Playing: Quidditch
  • Eating: Chocolate Frogs
  • Drinking: Pumpkin Juice



5pm: Awaiting ArrivalI am currently awaiting the immanent release of the 7th and final Harry Potter book, tonight at 12:01am. I'm going to go get it at midnight. And read it till I drop... which by the sound of its length, won't be enough to finish it in one sitting. I am most excited.



It's funny though, because I've never quite put my finger on what makes the series so very addictive. Sure, it's a funky story, sure, it has some imaginative ideas - but no more nor less than any other series. What is it about Harry Potter that really gets into you, makes you genuinely care about what happens? (I'm sure you will be split among those who totally agree and those that totally don't - either that or you're all a bit freaked out by now).

Harry Potter has a firm grip on reality despite being magical. Everything happens in our real world, with plot devices used to keep it consistent with the world we know. It could genuinely be happening right now - it has no immediate contradiction with reality, so long as your imagination can propel it.

It's the same with Stargate, I guess that's why I'm addicted to that too. Stargate is set in reality, in the present, and part of its story is how it's kept secret from the world at large. As long as your imagination allows ideas like magic or space-portals, you can live a suspension of disbelief which gets you hooked on what is ultimately a deeply detailed conspiracy theory. But it's so fun.


11:45pm: Last MinutesWas about to go down town to pick up my reserved copy (of course) but disaster has struck! I opened my door... but it wouldn't close again! What on earth? I can't go if my door won't close. This is a bad time for odd calamities. Lord Voldemort is on the move and alohamora just isn't working...



Expect updates and reviews as soon as I get the book.


12:45pm: At LastAfter much peril, at last the book is mine! Queues were huge, streets were policed, and never has Hemel Hempstead seen so many under-12's out at this time of night. The shop had promised a ceremonious "party" to mark the release - instead we got marched through a production line and told to go as soon as our money was handed over. Ah well, such are the sacrifices you make. But enough of this squibbling... there's an adventure to complete.



Watch this space for what I thought of the book. Alternatively, if it turns out that Harry was actually the Dark Lord in disguise, or it was all a dream, or something else just stupid watch this space for profanities as-yet unheard-of by mankind.


It's OverOh so many years after I first began the series... it's over. And rather well too...



Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was by far one of the best in the series (with the worst being the preceding Half-Blood Prince, in my opinion). It is thoroughly un-Harry-Potter-like, in that the formula you'd got used to for six books was completely cast aside. At first this was worrying, but ultimately gave the book a unique, desperate atmosphere (to match the desperation of the strife of the story) - we've broken all formulas, we don't know what to expect, we just know what has to be done. The freedom of breaking from the formula allowed the book to explore plotlines previously impossible, and draw together everything that had been set up in books 1 to 6.

For those of you who have read the prior books, you will know that it was already determined that in the 7th book the task was to locate and destroy the remaining fragments of the Dark Lord's soul, so as to finally kill him. Thankfully, Rowling manages to pull this off in a non-linear way, drawing old characters and places together in the line of the plot. Unfortunately, much of the book is padded out with pointless paragraphs, and despite its thickness it doesn't have much more in it than any of the previous, thinner books. That said, thankfully plenty does happen (unlike the utter nothingness of book 6).

One of the shocking things about the book is that it's so hardcore. Right from the word go everyone's dying, and it doesn't relent even till the last pages. Many characters survive, but even some of your favourites are killed. The book has as little mercy as the Dark Lord it describes.

Predictably, the book leads up to a final confrontation, but, unpredictably, not before whole new facets of the plot are revealed, involving the Deathly Hallows, perspective-changing revelations, and characteristic explained-afterwards inexplicable happenings. Harry's final confrontation with his arch-nemesis Voldemort is epic, believable, and incredibly tense, and heart-warmingly, the characters who've stood out of the limelight in books 1 to 6 really show their mettle in helping Harry get to this final battle.

I won't ruin for you what happens, but I will say this. It's not as simple as a duel, and all the better for it. Rowling doesn't shout in your face how the ending works - it takes a while for you to realise exactly how it all happened. But when you do think about it, everything that's been set up over 7 books finally snaps into place. Whether Harry survives his final battle is a spoiler I won't reveal, but the very beginning of the saga is a sacrifice - Harry's mother for her son - and so too, fittingly, does the saga end.

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