2010 has arrived and this year I’d like to expand sallyfriends.net even further – to become a big, flourishing community for friends of Sally’s all over the world – and I’d like to hear your ideas!
The site went active around 1 September 2009, and so far I have done about 45 pages about pretty much everything that just happened to excite me about my favourite literary addiction: Stieg Larsson’s Millennium-series. But I want to do more pages – lots more! And I would like to do as many of them as possible with you!
Now, I have ideas for a number of new pages (and have received a few suggestions). Skim through them and see if anything catches your interest. Everybody is welcome to comment on what they’d like me to do next – there is absolutely no obligation to participate. If you just want to throw in a few ideas of your own, be my guest! 
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- The Books
- Characters (extensive bios on each major character and some of the minor ones)
- Coolest Scenes & Quotes- vote and submit
- Inspirations (more about Stieg Larsson’s inspirations when writing Millennium)
- Kalle Blomkvist
- Rocky
- Crime novels
- Quentin Tarantino
- Neo-nazism fight
- Scenes and Locations
- Lots more pages for both characters and important events + maps
- Characters (extensive bios on each major character and some of the minor ones)
- Themes –
- Politics and economics in Millennium
- Gender roles
- Sex and Relationships in Millennium
- Exposé journalism
- Hacking for Justice?
- Famous Women (Warriors) in history
- Like Millennium … (reviews of stuff that is as good as Millennium)
- Books
- Films
- Movies:
- More pics from movies and for Noomi Shrine
- Yasmine Garbi fan page
- Music
- Movies music/soundtracks
- Musical inspiration (music we like – because it reminds us of Millennium)
Other ideas:
- Wallpaper section expand
- A page about Eva Gabrielsson’s upcoming book + the two new Swedish books on Stieg Larsson’s life (I’ll be damned if I can remember the titles, though …)
- Millennium Screen CAPS!!
- Major poster og bookcover-gallery
- DVD prices and availability
- Book review page
- Fan fiction competition
That’s what I could think of – on top of my head. Additional ideas are welcome! And if you would like to help doing one or more of the above pages – by all means, go for it. I’d love to collaborate some more with Stieg Larsson fans from all over the world.
’till later,
Chris
I would like to see more discussion of Lisbeth as an iconoclastic view of woman. What fascinates me about Lisbeth’s character is that she is the marginalized woman of society and to a certain extent she has internalized this view. I have read on some other posts that they cringe at the idea of Lisbeth slowly becoming “normal.” I’m not sure what that person means by “normal.” But had Stieg Larsson lived to complete the entire saga, I would have enjoyed watching Lisbeth realize her full potential — Already by the end of the third novel she was wearing regular clothes and “sensible” shoes. If she stopped dying her hair, and became the redhead she really is and who knows took up studies in neuroscience and classical guitar and even managed to have a child. Would she be any less of a badass? I think she still could be.
As a black middle aged woman I love that this character is non-traditional. But you can still be a badass warrior and conform a little. As a woman of color that’s what I have to do — but it doesn’t change who I am underneath. Anyway, in the American reviews of the trilogy much is made of what a freak Lisbeth is and no way too much emphasis is placed on her asperger syndrome. I don’t think she is. She’s odd, yes — not just because of what she has suffered. But to me she is very human. She controls her emotions, but she is full of passion. I love this woman!
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As a matter of fact, Ginette… another friend of Sally’s recently told me she wanted to do an essay about Lisbeth, with a psychological angle. I’ll pass your request to her and see if it’s something that sparks inspiration. Then I’ll also get an excuse to check how the essay’s going
Thanks for your suggestion. They are definitely some good observations, you have there… and I’m inclined to agree. In my fanfic, over at stieglarsson-forever.net, I want the story – the 1% of it or so that I have planned – to progress with some sort of inner struggle in Lisbeth; she tells herself that she’s better off just remaining a ‘freak’, but deep inside yearns for some sort of ‘normality’ and – more importantly – a better chance at realizing some potentials – skills, talents, relationships, etc. – that she can only just begin to hope to glimpse across a Very Distant Horizon. And yet they are there. The only problem is, when you are as damaged as Lisbeth arguably is, how do you get from ‘here’ to ‘there’ – to that horizon. How do you even begin to be able to define for yourself what your kind of normal is?
So you raise some very interesting points and I for one hope to be able to deal with them in the near future in the fanfic. Now, if only the day had more hours… and the night too. Alas, I can only promise more “blatantly irregular updates” as long as I’m pretty much doing most of the sitebuilding here. But I’m going to keep doing that so eventually I’ll get around, one way or another, to explore more about these characters. AND share it with all of you and let your ideas, etc., be part of it.
Larsson left a lot hanging but I think he left enough for us to make som reasonable assumptions about where Lisbeth would be going, what her personal struggles would be in the future, etc.
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Wouldn’t it be wonderful to recreate the website for the hackers. Where you click on the O in “error” and you get a piccie of Lara Croft (another of my heros) and so on! With a chat room? Or is this too annal an idea.
I love all the computer stuff about Millenium, although it’s odd that Kalle uses IE to paste a web address to when he is using a Mac. Or am I wrong? I would have though they’d use safari or Firefox.
So that leads me to the idea of having a nerds corner for discussion about the computing aspects of the novels.
All of course would be good in a nice forum. I really want to find a useable forum for Millenium stuff.
Mary
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I would like a new front page soon, any suggestions are welcome – and this one is certainly noted. Problem is that most people haven’t read Millennium as closely as you and I, madmary, so they’ll usually end up leaving the site instead of clicking on the right place when they come in from a Google search. Since I’ve been so idealistic (or foolhardy, depending on how you view it) to buy a domain that doesn’t have either “Lisbeth Salander” or “Stieg Larsson” in it it has taken me about 9 months to get to rank as high with Google as crap sites that just paste a resume of the three books and then a lot of ads. Rest assured, nerd-stuff is important – but so is traffic
I tried a discussion forum a while ago and it didn’t really work out… there wasn’t enough traffic overall to warrant a forum, bc only a small percentage of visitors actually leave a comment and an even lower number go on to join a forum. For now, I hope you’ll be content to share your Millennium experiences with other Sally friends here in the good old fashioned WordPress-comments-field.
The most visited ‘forums’ are the various fan-pages for Millennium or aspects of Millennium on Facebook but many of them aren’t really that ‘deep’ as regards discussing aspects of the books and so on; it’s mostly just people chipping in to say they loved the books or advertising people posting the latest something about a new premiere of the Swedish movie adaptations somewhere in the world.
And… I hate to say it, but http://www.stieglarsson.com – which is another site with very little content and a lot of ads – probably has the most visited ‘discussion forum’ for a broad range of Millennium fans, so you might want to check that site and see if you can’t find a thread that you like. But as with the facebook-pages and groups I’ve almost given up on that ‘forum’, since the ‘deep’ posts are few and far between.
My own facebook-group, Millennium Forever, is mostly a forum for news about the site but there is a little core of Sally friends who post news, fun stuff and analyze the latest goings-on, so you might also want to at least have a look at that, if you haven’t been there already.
Stick around!
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I realise that my idea for recreating the hacker’s republic is a bit off the wall, and I certainly don’t have the skills to do anything like that, but it would be a fun easter egg for this site for those who did know.
I know you say that traffic is slow for a forum but it’s a chicken and egg situation. I have seen a lot of the forums you mention and I agree it’s just tedious reading about people who love the books over and over and who is going to be cast in a Hollywood film version.
I’ll pop in from time to time here then if I may and discuss little bits and peices.
I haven’t actually “read” the books. I’m on my second listen of an unabridged reading by Saul Reichlin. I truly recommend a listen. His voice is wonderful and unintrusive. I think he catches the mood of the books beautifully.
I know I shall listen for a third time as each listen I find something new in the stories.
Mary
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I think a list of characters would be crucial! That is actually how i stumbled across this site in the first place!
Without giving anything away, it would be great to see a list that was ordered in appearance, or broken down by book/section. I am halfway through the third book now and am really struggling to keep all the characters straight. Who is good, who is bad, who is undecided… It doesn’t help that i cant speak a work of Swedish, so i have no idea how to go about pronouncing any of the names. Most the time it is Mr. B or Mrs.M but now there are so many MR B’s and Mr. N’s… it is enough to make my head spin. Please tell me i am not the only one with this issue!?
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Haha – you’re not the only one with that request – or, erm, challenge. Larsson was not very good at trimming his lists of not-so-relevant B, C and even Z-characters (just like his lists of irrelevant furniture brands!
). Anyways, the only reason I haven’t done this yet is that it is Very Time Consuming, but it’s on the top of my to-do list and I guess I might as well start small, and then, at one point, there will be a nice long index.
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