Thanks, Connie, Elena, Dana. It turned out -- when I finally got my head on straight -- that the reader probably didn't need to have all kinds of weird social notions added to things, to understand what was going on among some characters. The author was trying to jam a pet theory down the reader's throat. Bastard.

But the key thing about a karass is that the people in one *don't* have anything major in common -- they just unwittingly serve the same goal. Granfaloon, which is a percieved karass based on commonalities, is probably closer, but it's a bit of an insult.

(signed, read Cat's Cradle about 15 times.)

Yup. If I remember this right - and there's a good possibility I don't, since I haven't reread Cat's Cradle in twenty years and need to, because I loved it - Granfaloon is sort of the updated version of Cloudcuckooland, in terms of insult value.

I've heard too many horror stories of people writing fic under their own name, and then realizing their intended career as a kindergarten teacher might be imperiled by the easily-found GVSP they posted on the net.

swallows.

Um. Um. Okay, NOT panicking. Because - career as kindergarten teacher? Check. GVSP? Check. But my name is not FayJay. (....and now I feel like a Whitney Housten song.) Nor have I ever been able to find anything by googling my realworld name. Um. But, still...

ION, starting to watch Farscape more-or-less systematically, from the beginning which should mean that before too long I'll be happily venturing into the fanfic. Yay. (Read only one of Suela's stories so far, but v. much looking forward to expanding my horizons.)

I've been seduced by the idea of Farscape as well. I'm going to see some episodes.

Erg. Yeah, the Granfaloon was the highly structured, completely ineffective group. The karass was the completely unstructured, highly effective group. I was looking for something inbetween; lightly structured, pretty effective.

Numbskulled as the search was for a term, I still ran across all kinds of interesting concepts: smart-mob, ad-hocracy, emergent democracy, whuffie. Fun stuff to think about.

Edited because: Holy shit. In the time it took me to write this post there were three intevening posts. I am so not Buffista material!

I am so not Buffista material!

Pshaw! Look at your posts, babe! They scream Buffista material!

Okay, NOT panicking.

Don't Panic, Fay. If there's no direct link between your RL name and your fic, you're fine.

checks

Nope, still no link. Cool.

Since it's Sooooo much more fun than essay writing, I've just checked out the Grima/Eowyn Steph mentioned. Unremarkable stuff - not good, but not dreadful, despite a couple of misuses of antiquated terms and a baffling decision to overlook the whole The Ring Is Evil thing, and indeed the whole The Ring Makes You Invisible thing. I mean, we're not talking Clark in prison for MP3 theft. But - not good, I'm afraid, in terms of characterisation or plausibility - she accepts Grima's hand in marriage, he doesn't make any moves on her, she eventually realises he's not such a bad sort, Rohan thrives, she shags him, they have a son, they live happily ever after. It's fair enough, it just doesn't seem to have very much to do with Eowyn or Grima or Tolkien's One Ring.

Damn it, I'm going to HAVE to write Grima. He's far too interesting to be languishing all unwrittenabout.