So maybe I should actually start following the news updates because, uh, what the fuck, LJ? Suddenly I have new categories on my xCalibur bar (retained from the ancient past yeeesss) and the edit buttons within the post are all funny-looking.

No huge or terrible changes that I've noticed; I just feel like expressing my momentary double-take.



...mini fic recs, because these are tabs I have open. Most are old fic.

-untitled drabble by reality_is (Slam Dunk), Rukawa, Sakurai, PG
-Merry-go-round by one_if_by_land (Ouran), hints of Tamaki/Haruhi and Tamaki/Kyouya, PG
-live through this and you won't look back by koestenbaum (Ouran), Kyouya/Kaoru, some Hikaru/Kaoru and Tamaki/Kyouya, NC-17
-coming to terms by turnippatch (Gundam Wing), 1x2 RFO, PG
-The Hellbound Train by mirabellafic (Supernatural), Sam/Dean, R for gore

Cutest song from the cutest movie. :) ♥

In honor of a) the 2010 DABWAHA Tournament b) this fantasy league card, which i looked at and promptly decided did not have enough choices, and c) actual March Madness (go Hoosiers), I am doing this thing!!!

What it is: the ultimate creature showdown
When it's happening: Round 1: through March 22! Round 2: March 23 through March 29!
How:
Round 1: Fill out your bracket!!! Click the link above to download the form and fill out your own bracket for who you think will win! Comment to this post with your choices. We will have a week to collect your brackets, and then we'll start voting!
Round 2: 6 days, 6 rounds of eliminations! (Possibly a wild card round??? Idk!)
Win: A pre-ordered copy of Zombies Vs. Unicorns, just for you! Plus some other stuff depending on WHICH CREATURE IS THE ULTIMATE AND FINAL CHAMPION.

At the end of the competition, the 2 participants whose bracket most closely resembles the actual voting will TOTALLY WIN. You have a week to submit your bracket before voting starts.

Go! (and don't forget to use your braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains)

So of course I have an 8-page essay take-home exam for linguistics due on Wed and a Japanese essay due tomorrow, and I want to find fic to read. But man, spring_kink so far hasn't come up with anything I want. Where's the Schuldig/Crawford, damn it? I'm craving some. Or some good Kanda anything. -_-;;

Whenever I get struck by a pairing I want to read, I try to find rec lists. But aside from the fact that they're hard to find, I'm starting to realize that I'm kinda picky. I've seen a number of rec lists (on comms and just people's personal ones) and they're just... not up to my standards? Like, barely enough to read, nowhere near good enough to recommend. Hmmm. But I think this wasn't the case before, because I was on a mini Yugioh spree and went to find this amazing Malik/Bakura fic I adored years ago, and I reread it and... I couldn't really get through it. It was so amateurish and melodramatic, and talking about magick (which, sorry, but I just can't stop snickering at. I can't take that stuff seriously), so I'm like, how did I get through this all that time ago? >.<

I'm also on a Zelda crave. I want Link/Sheik. Mmm, good stuff. Though, most of what I've found is sort of generic, I haven't found many good ones.



dsfihasia ALSO, gonna conn Brian into taking me to watch Alice in Wonderland on Saturday. Or something.


PEOPLE, FEED ME FICS.

Or not. Maybe that way I'll finish the chapter of No Backing Out that I'm working on.

Hi to everybody who is coming over to this LJ and my twitter account from the book-blogging world. I LOVE BOOKS, ergo I LOVE YOU GUYS.

I just want you all to know that this is a fandom journal through and through, always will be!!! Which is to say, I may detour through serious posts infrequently, but the rest of the time it will be mostly gibber & squee.

In honor of driving this point home, I thought it was time for a little trip down memory lane.

( CLOSE YOUR EYES, GIVE ME YOUR HAND, DARLING *_* )

thehoyden just told me First Cast Tenimyu is DOING A REVIVAL PRODUCTION OMG. LOVE. Kimeru sparkles in response!

It is March 14th! I've gone at least four years in a row without missing a post on this day because it's a pretty important day:

There is much to celebrate! Happy White Day, Pi Day, and w-inds.' 9th anniversary (nine years, wow - wow - and everyone is right, I really like their new album), and 6 years to my nightengale. ♥♥♥ There are not enough words or heartmarks in the world for me to eloquently express my love today, in the state I'm in, so let us just have pie.

Otherwise today is noteworthy solely for my caving and joining ELFISH (I have no idea what on earth prevented me from joining before) and discovering things like this:



(Sheena, there's a fierce!Wook for you in the background of the last picture - I know you're not looking at anything else. I know you.)

My spring break ends today and it's back to a (long, long) day of classes and work tomorrow, but my descent into a spiral of darkness and woe and gratuitous whining is helped greatly by a few things:

(1) Donghae singing and dancing to I'm Yours
(2) Kyuhyun singing 原谅我 at the Shanghai Encore
(3) ( And this. )

I should probably eat something today, yeah? Off foraging for coffee and food.

Once in a while every girl has to do something she knows is bad for her, even though she knows it's stupid and she'll probably regret it later. Last night I started reading the bestselling YA fantasy Hush, Hush, which friends and the internet have repeatedly assured me that I would hate. I had no intention of reading it until I randomly picked it up and kept reading. To be honest, I kinda enjoyed it, the way I enjoy movies about super-intelligent sharks who want to take over the world, or episodes of Stargate: Atlantis. The way I enjoyed Twilight until I threw it across the room.

That said, let's face it, it sucks.

Hush, Hush is the story of a Bad Romance: quite literally, the heroine is caught in a bad romance with a stalker who shows up, will not leave her alone, refuses to leave her life, and tries to kill her. All of this is made acceptable by the fact that he's hot.

I. ( Actual list of stuff that happens in book, which will probably piss you off. Warning: may be triggering to victims of sexual assault, harassment, or abuse. )

II. Hush, Hush & rape culture:

Hush, Hush repeatedly and systematically reinforces rape culture, not just blatantly through scenes like the one mentioned above, but through all the ways Nora behaves early on as she's dealing with the stalking. She is both a victim of rape culture and a perpetuation of it.

"Another post about rape" is the best outline I've ever read about how women are taught from childhood on to behave in ways that perpetuate rape culture. Since reading it I've become more aware of the ways in which, when a man is making me uncomfortable, I traditionally opt for polite silence instead of setting a clear and firm boundary (which I've also noticed the men around me have no problems setting with women who make *them* feel uncomfortable). How whenever I try to set clear and firm boundaries in social settings, I'm laughed off or dismissed, or my concerns are treated as joke fodder and added to a list of things I can be teased about. This is real; this is happening, to me and countless other women like me - when I mentioned the "biology teacher makes girl spend *more* time with the guy who's stalking her" thing last night on twitter, one of my friends responded sadly that she knew someone that exact situation had happened to in real life.

( So no, not so much joking here. )

III. You and me could write a bad romance.

Many, many, many reviewers have commented about the fact that they find the hero creepy, that they failed to see what redeeming characteristics he had to begin with, that the relationship between the main characters is "psychotic." But I have yet to see anyone point out that this is not necessarily a flaw of bad writing.

It's easy to single out Hush, Hush because it's one of the worst examples, and it's also a runaway bestseller, which makes it, like Twilight, an easy target for hate. ( But it's not alone. )

The cumulative effect of all this is that girls grow up learning all about how to behave politely to unwanted suitors, just as the Fugitivus article points out. At the same time, girls also learn that girls' stories--by which i mean stories who have girls' development and growth as their center and focus-- usually go like this:
If a girl is politely distant to a guy (Lizzie Bennet), it means she wants to sleep with him.
If a girl resists a suitor who's trying to take her down a peg or two (Taming of the Shrew), it means she wants to sleep with him.
If the girl manifests a desire to be single (Emma), it means she wants to sleep with him.
If a girl demonstrates outright hatred of a boy by breaking a chalk slate over his head (oh, Anne <3333), it means she wants to sleep with him.

I would never in a million years want to rob the world of the love that is Anne/Gilbert or Lizzie/Darcy or Emma/Knightley. But my point is that when faced with all of the evidence that supports the idea of girls eventually submitting to guys, when faced with the fact that stories about girls typically end in girls falling in love with guys, then it's really hard not to read Hush, Hush as sitting at the extreme end of an ongoing societal fantasy in which women go through character arcs of various types that inevitably end in heteronormative sexual relationships. The end result? No always means yes. Yes always means yes. No, No, No, always means yes.

Hush, Hush is extremely self-aware; it knows that its hero is stalking and sexually harrassing its heroine. Its heroine complains of harrassment loudly and repeatedly, but the text expects us to assume that her repeated no means "yes" -- the text wants us not to take no for an answer. The author, Becca Fitzpatrick, as well as the society that produced Becca Fitzpatrick, both want the heroine of this book to have her "no" rejected over and over, until her resistance is worn down and she gives up and gives in and starts to love the thing that's attacking her and trying to kill her. The social arc of Nora's womanhood demands that she shut up and submit to her sexual subjugation. For god's sakes, the freaking title of the book is BE QUIET.

Nora is what happens when you drag Lady GaGa's character out of the bathtub and force her to forge a male-based identity, where everything she does is seen, even in her own mind, as a reaction to the men that are controlling her lives. Did I mention Nora's stalker can read her mind? The heroine has literally no way of maintaining control over her body because he's determined to invade it, mentally and sexually. In essence, one way or another, she's gonna get raped.

And that's okay, because in the world of Hush, Hush, rape equals love. It's the natural end result of a society that grooms women for a Bad Romance.

Oh my fucking god you guys. I (re)watched the first six episodes of Ouran Koko Host Club tonight with my roommate and a friend and--

I can't stand how much I miss it. I forgot how absolutely hysterical it is and how gorgeous it is - visually, musically. Wow. It's actually really nice to watch it from an older perspective, knowing how things turn out and not being a bitter and narrow-visioned slash fan. Now I can actually appreciate the subtleties of Tamaki/Haruhi and Hikaru/Haruhi. I can ache for Kaoru without being sullen, can still coo over Honey-senpai and Mori, and damn it I can fangirl Kyouya like mad.

I laughed so much - honestly, they did such a fantastic job with this anime. Played with and subverted a lot of tropes, walked the line of gender identity, perfected over-exaggeration of sfx for comic effect, ugh. I just make flaily hand motions and lots of heartmarks at it, okay? hearts;♥♥

And I am craving Kyouya/Tamaki like crazy. INTENSELY. I just. Fuck. Wow.




(from this fanmix)

They're not even classic OTP like 1x2 or Touya/Yuki, not epic like H/D or K/S, but best Mommy/Daddy pairing ever, okay?

/CRAVES

ETA: /weeps They break my heart, I want to write for them again. Mon ami, mon ami!

Omg, haha, so I finished reading Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles, finally. And man, I did not understand any of it. By the end, I had no idea which Sakura was which and all that jazz. I'm not sure how many versions of Syaoran and Sakura there ended up being. But it was nice seeing how Watanuki and Yuuko tied into the whole thing. Man, CLAMP does know plot twists (@.@) But in the end, I was happy with Fai and Kurogane where they were and how that ended. It was just too wonky at the end though, but it was enjoyable.

Yay one anime/manga off my list! 



Still working on the first FMA series. At least I've finally gotten to the episodes that I missed all those years ago. I seriously think this is the best way to watch anime, too bad it's so hard to do: I get a DVD of an anime with good dubs, use a program I bought to put it on my iPod, and watch it while exercising! It's awesome, cause I'm so entranced with watching it that I forget about my bodily torture, lol. But the problem is the whole has to be in dub part, since the screen is too small to read subs.


Ugh, and this spring break has been so uneventful~ I went to hang out with my roommate at her house once, and that was pretty much it. I suppose I've been relaxing though. Rune Factory Frontier, YES! But I have so much work to do -_-;;

( bless you guys for putting up with my bad drawings )

It's been a while since i've done more of the musical theatre tarot deck that i started last fall, but earlier this month I added a few cards into the mix. I feel like this card is one of the most important ones. It's important to me to use all of the major composers in the canon in the major arcana, and ideally only once each for the 22 cards--which will be hard when it comes to Rodgers & Hammerstein. Others I anticipate having trouble with are Cole Porter, Irving Berlin (because really, where does Annie Get Your Gun fit, argh), and Porgy & Bess. I might also leg Rodgers & Hart sneak into the major arcana, because, come on, Rodgers & Hart.

( Anyway, here's 17, The Star: )

I'm really happy with the cards I have done so far, I think they all work really well. This card is married really well to the show, I believe, though it took me a long time to really see it. I thought using Carousel for the star because there is a literal star in the show was really silly. Then I was doing the help_haiti reading kessie won from me <3! and while I was in the middle of it I realized that Carousel's real connection to this card is in the idea of communion and renewal. This is the card that tells you that you'll never walk alone.

This makes me happy. And the fact that there is a literal star involved just makes it that much more awesome.

Other cards I'm toying around with:
The Tower - Mama Rose's nervous breakdown (lolllllllllllll but seriously i love this i think it's perfect)
The World - Cabaret <-- still waffling on this but I really like the symbolism here

minor suits:
the 10 of cups: this is the sound of music FOREVER, i mean look at this card, is that not just asking for the von trapp family singing on a mountaintop.
queen of swords: this can only be Evita. I think of this as the BNF card, lol.


and finally:

( Character actors go to hell. )

Sir Alec Guinness would be enraged that I called him a character actor! Apparently he was plagued to the end of his life by people who only knew him from Star Wars. Some say he grew to be quite bitter about it. Oh, the hardships of being universally beloved.

IRONY:



( Aja continues to draw things badly )

Also, I has a tumblr.

TEAMTOQUES

I've been using it to collect up things I want to reference for art projects, future characters, or otherwise rad stuff. If you guys have tumblrs you want followed, let me know. My dashboard is so lonely with just me. D:

AND NOW BACK TO SERIOUS THINGS.

WORST ART DUMP EVER

AND I COULDN'T CARE LESS

( i'm the kid who wouldn't amount to much )

idk, Cathy told me to.





♥ forever

+ Riches. Four brand spanking new GK fics. It's been a great 24 hours.

First we have my birthday fic, which is one of my favourite things in the whole wide world: in-theatre UST. Add in Brad and Nate playing chess, lots of banter that just edges around what they mean and a first time that felt so right for them, and you have Date Night by alethialia. Wonderful.

Then dark_reaction wrote cursed!Nate, more time Brad/Nate, in Close Call, Stand Tall, and chemfishee wrote a quiet, timeless Brad/Nate futurefic, Now’s The Only Time We Know, and to finish on a hilarious note, who you gonna call? by moneyfolder, ghostbusting!Ray and ensemble.

+ I have so many stories either finished or nearly finished (two Supernatural, one Sherlock Holmes, about three, maybe more Generation Kill and one Better off Ted, and that's not counting all the works in progress and bits and pieces I'll never finish), and I just can't seem to take that last step with them. It's really weird, not being able to put words together in a way that feels right, when I can still dig in and remember what it feels like when words are pouring out, even times when I'd stop and look at the page and think wow, I just wrote that.

I have now written HyukHae that covers everything from PG to NC-17. Win? Clearly.

BRB shipping everyone/Donghae hardcore. Fuck you, Kim Kibum. Write me some porn, people! Anyone/Donghae.

If I ever make a movie, I want E.S. Posthumus to do the music for it.

Also, saw Alice in Wonderland. Twice. I liked it better the second time, when I wasn't so distracted by all the LULZ LOOK IT'S 3-D stunts. I thought they did a really good job at translating the content of the books into something a little older, and I really liked it overall, though I wouldn't be surprised if half the internets disagreed with me.

It's Tim Burton. We should all know how his adaptations work by now. :|

Tomorrow I get to dress up like a goth chick all day as part of my Creative Writing drama presentation. It's going to be very odd at work.

Orz finals, no time, tired forever, etc. I have a bunch more to say--AND I KNOW I KEEP SAYING THAT--but I have no time to say it all right now. So I will hopefully give a real update on life, the universe, and everything once this crazy week is over. |D;

Sign ups for Blind Go Round 009 have begun, and everyone associated with Blind Go would like to invite you to join in on the fun!

This round is Author's Choice, Short Fic (250 - 1000 words), sign ups will be open until March 22nd, submissions due on May 4th to be posted on Hikago Day, May 5th. You don't need a livejournal to play, but you do need to sign up!! And just so you know, anyone can chime in at the support thread, too!

If you've done Blind Go many times before, please come on back! We love having you!

If you've done Blind Go before, but not recently, please think about doing it again! We've missed you!

If you've never done Blind Go before, please think about it! It's a fun, community-rich challenge that totally gets excited about new people!!

Whatever your situation, this round really won't be the same without you, so please think about signing up!

Apologies for the crossposting...

31_days has for 10 March theme: She got a buttermilk smile and a thorny touch

I just... I don't... what does that line even mean?!

I've been sitting here for 20 minutes waiting for something to come to me and I'm still drawing a blank, so I guess the next chapter of Twice the River will have to wait till tomorrow. This annoys me a little because 1) this will throw my beautiful chapter naming system off and 2) the next theme is "Memoirs of an amnesic" and it sounds just right for a retrospective thing. And I don't want to do any more retrospective writing, I want to get to the action! *whine*

Gah. I guess I brought it on myself for choosing to write a fic via 31_days themes.

***

Just in case anyone's interested, a link about the Campaign for Real Fear: a horror short story competition.

Send us your best 500-word story that explores horror in the 21st century. We want diversity of characters and themes, and beginner or pro can enter.

The top ten stories will be published in Black Static, and podcast by Action Audio.

The deadline for entry is 5pm GMT, on Friday the 16th of April.

This sounds like so much fun, and I was thinking, yep, 500 words is doable. I also wish I weren't scared of horror fiction/movies/anything, because I can't do it. Today a colleague told me of a nightmare she'd had as a child and it... arghhh, not going to think about it just before bedtime!

***

Blind Go round 9, sign up by 22 March. Fics should be at least 250 words and no more than 1,000. Crossovers and AUs allowed, up to five fics per writer. Deadline for submissions is 4 May 2010, for fics to be up by Hikago Day.

Short fics this time, so I'm pretty happy about that. My brain is only capable of short pieces these days, it seems. (Twice the River is quite piecemeal.) So I'm looking forward to teasing out some random thoughts about Hikago, without the pressure to expand them.

If you've ever thought about writing a Hikago fic, this is a good chance to give it a whirl. Do go and sign up! (Or even if you've written lots of Hikago fics already.) It's a guess the author challenge, so the fics get posted without the authors being named. I love that part of it--the added mystery makes more thrilling, I think.

***

The Challenger, and Go and Wake up Your Luck, Itachi as Hokage AU, Naruto, by aishuu

When you see this meme, post a poem on your LJ.

In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial,
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands,
And ate of it.
I said: "Is it good, friend?"
"It is bitter - bitter," he answered;
"But I like it
Because it is bitter,
And because it is my heart."






wow i should really get a new favorite poem
but this one is gross so i like it B| dont judge me