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"Caught Legolas waxing soles of Aragorn’s boots, thus explaining why Aragorn keeps collapsing into his arms. Tricky elf."
XD XD XD XD XD Could have posted a rant in here about the (not unexpected, yet still frustrating) bureaucracy of the school administration, but why bring people down when you can make them piss their pants instead? XD "The Very Secret Diary" series by Cassandra Claire -- who also writes HP fic (but not pairings I like ^^;;) -- is right up there with "Nine Men and a Little Lady," and is perhaps more enjoyable if only for the fact that there is no Mary Sue to ruin the fun. ^^;; Watch out for LoTR movie spoilers, UST, and gay Fellowshippers up the yin-yang. Also go to her LJ for Frodo foot massage pic and Elijah Wood jumping Orlando Bloom. No, seriously. XD
Oh, and homework. Um. Yes. It's up. Be proud of me. XD;;
Kyaa, neko-chan, that would be so cool if you could come up to UW! o_o Of course, I don't want to drag you here if there's some other dream college you want to hold out for -- though I know it's hard to really choose one school you want-to-have-to-MUST go to. Even though I'm happy to be going to UW, it certainly isn't a school I'm deliriously joyous to be able to attend. I don't really *have* a dream school -- the closest I've got right now is UI for its Writer's Workshop, and then, only for grad school, and if it were picked up and relocated somewhere with a milder climate. Like, say, Washington, so I could pay in-state tuition. XD But still! It would be fun. I really haven't seen you or Lili-chan in person for so long, you know. T_T
And something sort of odd happened in school today. Our choir director resigned, apparently over some disputes concerning his choice of programming (he used a LOT of religious -- specifically Christian -- songs), the most recent incident which apparently got him suspended. Now, I don't know the guy too well; our choir is quite good, and he seems to be a talented instructor -- though the impressions I've gotten from scattered encounters and reports from my friends who are in choir have his personality ranging from mildly arrogant to utter asshole. ^^;; ANYWAY, I think he was all right, if a bit uppity, and it's too bad for him that he had to leave his job over this kind of dispute -- but there were people who were really upset by him leaving. Like, sobbing upset. The principal set up COUNSELORS for people. O_o That's a bit much, methinks. He's a choir teacher, not the Spirit of the School, for crying out loud. (Is this what they mean by a personality cult? And am I thinking too much about Comparative Government? ^^;) Looking Japanese HP fanart because I like to pretend I don't have homework:
Now this is cute. ^_^ I'd be Hermione, getting all fangirly. (But is that *Padfoot* she's aiming her sparklies at? Because that would be sort of ... odd. ^^;) Oh, and look at Hermione and Ron in this one. *niko* And please don't say this was done in colored pencil ... T_T Neko-chan, you showed me this movie poster-type picture a while back; now that I've read all the books, I can identify all of them except for the guy in the lower right hand corner. You had him figured out, didn't you? Okay, okay, just two more: First, can anyone tell me what Harry is doing on Lupin's shoulder here? ^^; And I love Snape's face. *pu*
Oh, yes, Ashes 3. I'm getting to that. Eventually. Ooh, the showings are going to be cool the next few weeks. Like I said before, the lineup includes Angelic Layer, Beautiful Life, and Noir. Which are completely and utterly awesome shows, even if I have already seen the first several episodes of Layer and Noir. Kimura Takuya is really cute in Beautiful Life, even though his hair could use some fixing (it's too curly, dangit; why can't it be all wispy and pretty like in Teresa's pictures?), and the story itself *is* a love story, but deftly sidesteps the usual shoujo trappings. I admit it, Kami-sama Mou Sukoshi Dake is a guilty indulgence. XD;; Beautiful Life, on the other hand, isn't about a woman who is Searching For Love; also, it avoids the character types of the older man who angsts and needs healing, and the young girl who is idealistic and needs comforting. Not that those are *bad* things to have, especially if you're feeling fangirlish. XD But the fresh, bantering relationship between Shuji and Kyouko is fun. For this week's Anime Exposure hour, we watched Tennis no Oujisama. Which is pretty much your typical sports anime (not that I've really watched sports anime ^^;;) with okay animation. Onosaka Masaya showed up as a tennis-playing sempai, though, which made it more interesting.
I got to sleep kind of late last night; after I came back from anime I stayed up late chatting with neechan and finishing up Ashes 3 (which will be put up later because I'm lazy, surprise surprise XD). I had a weird dream that involved some plant that I couldn't step on because it would make my feet fall of or something. ^^;; I think this came from me recently thinking about a first grade escapade in which two friends of mine found poison ivy in the woodsy area around our school playground and proceeded to rub it all over their legs. _o_;; Anyhoo, it was a dream like one of the ones where you can't outrun the bad guy no matter how hard you run; here, I couldn't get over this plant thing no matter how high I jumped. So I spent the dream thinking my feet were going to fall off. It was sort of disturbing. ^^;; But you know, I was thinking about it, and if I really had to lose something, I think I could lose my feet. I mean, as opposed to my hands or something -- prosthetics are well and dandy but I'd probably never be able to develop enough control to draw the same way or type or even play the violin if I suddenly felt like starting up again. So I'd prefer to lose something that I wouldn't mind replacing with a prosthetic. (I am suddenly reminded of my physics teacher's stories about Tycho Brahe, the man with a silver nose replacement that had a tendency to drip snot and turn green. Oh yeah, and he did some stuff in astronomy, too. XD)
So that was weird. Anyway, today we went out to do some shopping, and stopped by Barnes & Noble so I could pick up a book for English. We were given a list of all the books used in the open-ended essay question of the AP exam for the past thirty years, and had to choose from those. I actually ended up just deciding to read Jane Eyre, since neechan has a copy of it, though that copy is a big fat hardcover. =_= But! While I was there, I saw that they had a copy of Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea. I'd never seen that in any bookstores, and in fact had no idea what it was about. It sounds interesting, though, and I'd probably like it better than Notre Dame de Paris (Toilers of the Sea is sad, but romantic like Les Mis, whereas Notre Dame is just *dark*). It wasn't on the list, though ... I considered telling my parents that it was and getting it anyway, but that wouldn't have been fair. ^^; None of the books I like are considered of great literary importance, I guess. ^^; I just love Victor Hugo, not only for his writing style, but because of what he says. His books are classics, duh, so they say important things; but I *like* what he says about society and humanity (he was a liberal, dangit XP). I also really wanted to do a Jane Austen novel, but the eligible ones -- Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and Emma -- had each appeared only once. There's actually a bunch of books that I should read because of the number of times they appeared on the exam, and just for general edification, like Jude the Obscure and The Color Purple (which I've been meaning to read since ninth grade but have never been in the mood for). But I don't want to. I want to read Victor Hugo or Jane Austen. XP Because if you're not saying something profound about humanity that I like ... then dangit, you had better write something cute. XD;;
And speaking of good writing ... If you haven't already, go read neko-chan's new HP fics. And the snippet on her blog. But most especially read "A Kind of Peace," because it's Ron x Hermione, and it's *good*. Neko-chan, I bow to your magnificence. XD
Oh, and if anyone has the chance, download "Aka to Kuro" by Ali Project. It's from the third Noir soundtrack (a new OP?), and is in the same ... edgy? style as "Kopperia no Hitsugi." I like. It's late ... I'm not tired ... I've done nothing productive today. Not even the last scene of Ashes 3. :/
Just spent the last hour or so reading the LJ of an RL friend I didn't even know blogged. I don't think he knows that I blog, and I'm sure he doesn't know I found out about his LJ. Even though he talks about things I saw or pretty much know about, I feel sort of nosy. ^^;; I mean, my school friends generally don't know about my blogging and online life, so I don't know how I'd feel if they read this without me knowing. Not that I'm substantially different in here or online in general (except, obviously, the difference between talking and writing, which I guess is somewhat more substantial for me because I am more of an introvert; plus they don't hear me talking about fics and, well, yaoi XD;;), but it would feel ... odd. I know I do, in a way, project a persona, even among friends -- I don't hide things, really; I just don't like publically displaying certain aspects of my personality, like when I'm feeling vulnerable or angry. When I do show it, it will be to family or close friends on an individual basis. And since I usually see my school friends in a group, I don't do that often. Also, I'm not very close with this friend. We all hang out in a group, but I'm closer to some of them than others, and since he and I are more on the quiet side, we never end up talking much to each other.
And why am I babbling on like this? I guess it *is* late, and I'm feeling punchy. o.o
Oh, and I found a girl who looks like Tsubasa today. I was at the middle school with my Little Sister (the one I mentor, remember; not a blood relation ^^;) and I saw a student who was pretty, but obviously a middle schooler -- short and still young-looking. And she was wearing a sideways baseball cap and everything, and looked absolutely adorable. "Can I take you home and dress you in cute outfits?" XD;;
Okay, d00d. Sleep. Now. I must be feeling belligerent tonight; I'm doing that thing again where I go around reading writing by people that I *know* will get me pissed off -- rants and Mary Sue fics, to be precise. The fic is an LoTR one linked by Kielle. Nuff said. >_< Ah, up goes my blood pressure ... (Though Kielle's cat stories are most amusing. XD)
I'm thinking of updating my old Mary Sue Soapox for relevancy and new MS practices (and just some general cleanup). It might be worth it for the current spate of movie-induced fangirlism. And I'm in sore need of a new Soapbox entry anyway. XP It's Thursday already? Maa, this week seems to have flown by. I thought it'd be really hard coming back from break, but it's not so bad. Though I certainly wouldn't mind another two week holiday deshou? ^_^
Hm ... originally I wasn't planning to go to the showing this week because my parents will be gone that night at a sort of awkward time, but now I'm tempted: Angelic Layer, Noir, and Beautiful Life. ^o^ I don't know what crack the manly-manly guys at Clark were smoking to make them choose to show a j-drama -- starring KimuTaku no less. XD I can't wait to see the audience's reactions.
This amuses me greatly. Parody of boy bands, and oh so true. XD Neechan, who did you email last time about Sakura Con registration? Because we still haven't gotten our receipts yet, and I know we're on the list and anyway, we have like four months, but I'm anal. And I want my receipt. XD;;
Not much to say. Working on the last scene of Ashes 3 because we *are* going to get going on the plot, demmit.
"Didn't sleep much last night. Aragorn's fault. Draw your own conclusions."
XD Aw, now I feel all warm and fuzzy. Oh, and ... *grabs a nearby two-by-four and beans you over the head with it* Don't call yourself stupid, baka. XD And as for the Bean thing, I don't know -- she's a sweet girl; I don't see why she's doing this. It's rather obvious she's afraid of something, be it having a relationship or maybe even her mother (who is rather strict). I know she's going about it all the wrong way, but ... there's still hope. (Oh, and as for the boy bands -- I guess I'll just have to tease you about the Takahashi kyoudai now. XD)
I worship. Well, I did before this, but -- well, now I remember why. *niko* Must find time to reread X:MST3K sometime soon. I checked this layout in Netscrap at school today, thinking that I'd probably somehow left out some "vital" coding that would mangle the table; but nope, everything's in order -- a few parts of the table are simply missing. Another case of Netscrap's ambivalence toward cell backgrounds, I think. Ah well, I'm not too worried about it. Gives it character.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have a mole in our front yard. My mom is not pleased at the little burrow tunnels it's making in our lawn, but I kind of like it. I mean, we don't really get "wildlife" around here (not that we did in Texas, either), unlike neko-chan, whom I remember discovering everything from stray puppies to baby deer. So a mole is kind of exciting. XD;;
This morning I was trying to explain to a friend (who watches anime but isn't a full-fledged nerd yet) what the meaning of a sweatdrop is. Is it just me or is it one of those things like defining irony? ^^;; I couldn't come up with a real explanation and kept listing off things like embarassment or exasperation ... finally she said that it seemed to indicate a general emotional
Ooh, I must read this after I come back from dinner ... neko-chan, have you seen this? It was linked from Kielle's LJ, and is quite amusing. XD All in all, not bad for a Monday. ^_^ Though I suppose mine wasn't nearly as relaxing as some people's. (Welcome back, Lili-chan!) Despite the fact that it's the first day back from holiday, and from winter break, no less, I didn't feel the usual crushing Monday-esque weight of new projects and prospects of doom. Then again, that could be because our new English project is something I'm actually looking forward to -- in honor of January being Poetry Month, we've been given a packet of American poetry to respond to. And the requirements for the responses are sufficiently open-ended that they're not stifling. (It would be true irony if they weren't, because one of the poems in the packet is "Introduction to Poetry," which has these lines: "I ask them to take a poem/and hold it up to the light/like a color slide ... But all they want to do/is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it.")
I took a couple of hours tonight to read through the packet (and annotate it, in accordance with a challenge issued by a friend, completely in emoticons XD), and I like almost all of it. But I think the reading of literature and poetry has been mangled for me -- now I spend an inordinate amount of time worrying if I "get" it. I've told neechan this -- where once I struggled just to be able to understand the words (like when I tried to read The Three Musketeers in third grade >.>), now I obsess over having a truly *erudite* comprehension. I'll research context, both personal and cultural/political, of the author, and read various criticisms and analyses of the work, just so I can get everything I'm "supposed" to -- in the view of, say, the College Board. All well and good; literary scholars tend to have merit to their opinions, but then you get to the point where you're "understanding" only what you've read by other people concerning the work, and then maybe you'll be "smarter" but the work itself gets lost. At least, it does for me -- it took me half of the Hunchback of Notre-Dame to realize that yes, *Les Mis* was Hugo's masterpiece, and no, *Hunchback* may not have the same Grand Ultimate Theme of Human Truth, and I should stop trying to wait until I found it and just get on with reading the story. Classic literature doesn't always need Grand Ultimate Themes of Human Truth; they do have themes, and sometimes a specific purpose -- I think the former was overshadowed by the latter in Hunchback, for which Hugo wanted to explore his ideas about architecture (and, on the side, share his opinion about the death penalty); but again, that's something I got from reading other sources.
And to attempt pitifully to get back to my point, I spent half the time I was reading my poetry packet trying to get the messages -- not the messages that, duh, poetry has, but The Message that the College Board wants me to know. Which bothers me. And yes, instead of just whining, I *am* doing something about it. I'm no longer obsessively annotating structure and rhyme scheme and nuances of diction (hence the emoticons XD) because I did that on my Robert Browning project and, guess what, I don't like Robert Browning's poetry very much now. Yeah, I want to do well on the AP exam and get college credit, but not if it ruins poetry for me. I'm still in search of a completely satisfying compromise.
So, yes, now to dive gleefully into the next topic I can make myself sound like a pretentious dork on: I read various articles on the current Tolkien slash-->purpose of writing debate, most of which can be found starting with the links from Tin-san; was bothered, then thoughtful, then incensed, then indignant, then mollified, and have now determined that something of a consensus has been reached and I have nothing to contribute. Except: I'm always concerned about where to draw the line on criticism. I don't *want* to be the Self-Esteem Police, but I don't want to be a mean bitch either (not that anyone I read is either; those are just the extremes). And it depends on how serious the writer is. There are people who write but don't want to be professional -- in which case why badger them about what to do to make their writing more learned/polished/"quality," a.k.a. marketable? Or what if they write, but aren't that serious about the art or craft of it? Sacrilege to some of us, but hey, it's their choice -- I, for one, like to sing for fun but am not in any sort of choir; and if I was warbling along to Rent with a bunch of friends I wouldn't want someone to come and knock my voice or tell me I have to fix my breath control. Now, I realize both viewpoints stem from a desire to protect the art; unchecked criticism can be fatally discouraging to art, while idolizing, positive feedback can preclude the inclination to improve (or awareness of the need). Ultimately, it's best if the writer learns for herself what she needs to fix -- it sticks better than just doing it because someone who "knows better" tells you to. The desire for improvement is always more important to instill than nitpicking individual mistakes on grammar or characterization.
Of course, there's always the hyper-sensitive (often teenybopper, Mary Sue-loving) "r&r!!!! but no flamez" stereotype who listens to no criticism, but that is the bane of *all* of our existence, and crosses the line from "artistic difference" to "screaming hypocrisy."
Well, that was long-winded. I haven't ranted like that in a while. Or been as unfocused.
And far be it from me to declare the purpose of art, but neko-chan, I'd say that's a pretty darn good one. And, um, now the images actually show up. o.o Teaches me to announce a layout before I've put it up deshou?
New layout, as promised. Ain't she cute? XD I originally wanted to try fiddling with a different picture and coming up with a more aesthetically pleasing composite image to develop my Photoshop sk1llz, but instead I'm doing this and developing my HTML sk1llz, which works too, deshou? ^^;
Bleah. Some lucky people get to stay home tomorrow, but I have to start school. XP It's not so bad, I suppose -- this break *was* a lot of fun, and even if I'd like to keep hanging out with neechan and sleeping in all morning, I suppose going back to school isn't so bad. Anyway, I finished all my homework, so I have some time to kill before I go to bed. I might finish chapter 3 of From the Ashes (gasp!), or I could be lazy and just read some Fellowship of the Ring and sleep. ^^;
I just read that Gun Blaze West ended after three tankoubon. I didn't realize that ... and I *have* all three tankoubon. ^^;; I haven't looked through the last one yet, though, and I haven't actually read any of them. I'm sort of disappointed, though. I mean, Watsuki's a good storyteller so the story should be good, but what I liked best about him was his characters; they're just so well-developed. And you can't do that as well in three books. (Besides, I wanted to find out more about Will Johnston. XD)
Interesting bit of randomness: I was reading Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, one of the HP schoolbooks, and here's what it said about the Runespoor, a three-headed snake, and the purpose of each head:
Never knew J.K. Rowling was one for political commentary. I am amused. XD
It is done. Nihehehehe.
Now to check to make sure it all functions properly ... Watched the last half of Trigun yesterday.
Shiiiiiiiiiiiit. o.o
At least now I can read neko-chan's fics. ^^;; And, um, I think that's it. I'm working on the last bits of Moenokori's layout, and then I'll set to trying to scrounge something up for this. Much as I love Kaneshiro Takeshi, he's been up for too long. Time for him to make way for another bishounen. XD |
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