elanid

this is what I do instead of homework

2009-11-07T01:37:16Z

Excerpt from latest: tiny drunken teenage wizards bitching each other out. Why is this so much more fun than what I should be writing?

"So," said Aleis afterwards, consideringly. "Stupidest movie ever, d'you think?"

"Oh no," said Rien, looking alarmed, "I thought it was fantastic, it's so - so - "

He was more than a little bit sodden, which was what happened when you snuck bad alcohol in under your coat. Fractal sneaking, Aleis thought, or something, because they'd also had to sneak out of school and into the cinema and then there was the alcohol which was actually incredibly vile. But also technically illegal for a load of seventeen year olds and sort of triply illegal for school children. As far as the beginning of the year went, it wasn't too bad.

"Romantic," said Portia, more than a little dreamily, which was maybe the most alarming thing of all, because Portia in her native environment was jaded and sardonic, not so much with the limpid daydreaming in fact. She did have sort of a thing for idiot men, though, they'd all observed that a few times. "He loved her so much!"

Also she apparently got incredibly maudlin under the influence of not much alcohol.

"I think I read once that was his first starring role," said Molly, who was predictably verbose and horrifying under the influence of any alcohol at all. "I mean, before he was really famous - he was really famous, you know, back in the forties or so, I think the forties, he was in all the movies. He was, people thought he was really, really - "

"Dreamy," supplied Portia

"Well, then there was that whole scandal," said Molly, philosophically. "With the goats and the radio station and Robert Karithem's mistress. Theatre is very corrupting, you know."

"You people are pitiful," said Kit, who was not a lightweight. "I can't believe I associate with you at all, that movie was utter crap."

"It really was," agreed Aleis, who had spent the better part of the second half throwing popcorn at the screen. Maybe next time she and Kit would make a drinking game and it would be fantastic and dreamy and they could laugh at everyone else making fools of themselves and -

"I mean, there was hardly any sex on screen at all," Kit went on, and she abruptly revised her estimation of his tolerance for drink drastically downwards. "I did quite like the bit with the nun, mind you. She was a stone fox, I tell you what."

Aleis glanced at Portia, who was mouthing 'stone fox' in horrified delight, and found herself having some difficulty focusing. It was a very far distance of - well, several feet, but that was hardly the point, was it?

"I would like to join a nunnery some day," Kit said wistfully.

In unrelated news, this weekend I am going sailing off to Blake Island, where I shall freeze, drown, camp, and cause my feet to develop an even greater loathing for me than they have acheived to date.* It should be fantastic.

*This morning, an excerpt:

MY FRIEND: "So in fact, you decided to walk home from the bus stop barefoot, in the middle of the city, in pouring rain. In November."
ME: "I refuse to bear the yoke of these shoes any further! Look at my blisters!"
MY FRIEND: "Yeah, I bet the whole 'freezing, soaking pavement' treatment really helped with that."

It didn't. In fact.

yammering, rambling, & malarky: half-assed newbie LJ guide

2009-09-16T23:38:52Z

This post is mostly for those Alphans on my flist who may've joined livejournal because I put the irons to 'em (well done!); basically, the purpose is to explain some of the more esoteric functions of livejournal in a quick and vaguely comprehensible way. I am totally not qualified to do this, but I've been reading livejournal stuff for about four years now, which means I have a shifty, half-assed comprehension of what is going on. Veteran LJers: by all means, pray correct me where I have erred.

So, I am going to do a numbered list because I am awesome, and also it embarrasses me if I have a numbered list with HUGE GIANT text blocks of doom in the way, so hopefully this will spare you all from my, er, occasional tendency to verbosity. (Occasional!)

1. Okay, the basics. Livejournal is a set of interconnected journals: you probably already knew that. Unlike a lot of other blog systems, it threads comments, so that, for instance, if remarknj comments to this post, and I reply to her, it'll be divided out visually from the rest of the comments: therefore, people can much more easily have conversations in the comments. (There's an example of this down at the bottom - scroll down to have a look, if you're not sure what I'm talking about.)

Also, everyone who comments, automatically leaves a link back to their journal: therefore, to again use the example way down there, if I read remarknj's brilliant comment and realize that I want to ~~kidnap her and have her babies~~ read more of her awesome take on the world, all I have to do is click the link in her username, and suddenly I am back at her journal, full of her awesome take on the world.

What this means, among other things, is that your journal is your identity in a slightly more solid way than just being a username: it's really easy to follow your username back to your actual online presence. So that's cool.

2. Now, let's say that I did follow remarknj back to her journal and decided (correctly) that she was really awesome and I wanted to keep track of her entries and read them always. Well, much like facebook, that is what your friendslist is for: if you're logged in, you should see a little banner above the page, with an option you can click to Add them as a friend. Then, once you've done that, their new entries will all show up on your friends page (f-list), which you can get to either by clicking the Friends Page link up in the top banner, or else by just going to http://[your user name].livejournal.com/friends. This is a pretty easy way to keep track of people you want to read, which is super convenient, and also a lovely way to procrastinate.

3. As well as personal journals, there are lots of communities: basically, think of them as journals with multi-person posting access, generally dedicated to a specific person. So, grown-up forums. Some of them are awesome, some are stupid; some are really really active, and some are really dead. If you want to join a community, you get added to the membership, with whatever benefits that comes with; if you just want to watch it, it'll be added to your f-list.

4. Notifications. You have an entire page, here, dedicated to determining which events will send you get emails, messages, or &c. I mostly ignore my LJ inbox scandalously, but have emails sent for comments at my journal and a couple of other things, so that I don't miss them.

5. Profile. There's frequently a link to this (sometimes it's called user info, sometimes other things), but it can be a little hard to find; however, if you go to the journal address and then add /profile onto the end of the URL, you should be able to get there. There's lots of useful information here if people choose to fill it out, and even if not, you can often see who they're friends with and what communities they're members of.

5. Subscriptions. If you go to the profile page, you can click the Track link, which lets you set up a nice, slightly stalker-ish follow for new posts. Mostly, this is unnecessary if you're reading your f-list, but I know that some of you may want to follow certain communities without getting addicted to livejournal, which I can kind of understand. So, this is how to do it.

6. Cut tags! This entire post is under a cut tag, thank goodness, and if you're as verbose as I am (or even if not) you should really use them for anything longer than a couple paragraphs: even if you don't read your f-list, lots of people do read theirs, and posting entire epic poems tends to be a little irritating to them.

The way you do this is remarkably easy: first of all, if you're using the RTF editor, you can just click the little icon with a jagged line on it (in between the red-and-black one for polls and the table-looking one for, er, tables): the text you put in place of "Read more..." will form a link to the rest of your entry, hiding it on collection pages (like your journal and other people's f-lists), and anything inside the dark grey box is the hidden text.

If you're using the html editor instead, it's nearly simpler: at the place you want to put your link, type

<lj-cut text="This is the text your readers will see the link to the rest of the page in">

Here is the rest of your lengthy post! i.e. the long stuff that wants to go inside the cut </lj-cut>,

And then anything down here will fall outside of your LJ cut, like an epilogue or whatever.

7. Tags. When you post an entry, you'll see an option for tags: these are just ways to organize your entries, so that you (or anyone else) can see all of the posts on a given subject. For instance, if you look here you will see some of the more insane things I have done in service of science; there are also some journal formats that list them on your main page, although mine isn't one of them.

8. What have I forgotten? By all means, ask me questions in comments, or read me the riot act for my various and doubtless numerous errors.

short stories: I like them!

2009-09-05T17:23:20Z

Sarah Rees Brennan, author of The Demon's Lexicon -- which I very much enjoyed and shall perhaps even post properly about sometime, ack -- has taken to posting short stories at cunning intervals, as a sort of celebration for having nice sales. I thoroughly endorse this position, because the more people who read The Demon's Lexicon, the happier I shall be; furthermore, the stories posted to date have been kind of excellent. I utterly spaced on posting on the first one, Sorcerer & Stone, which is in two lovely awesome parts, but the newest -- The Arundel Tomb -- made me fairly giddy with glee for reasons that will probably be apparent to anybody reading it. It isn't at all necessary to've read the book to understand either of these, they stand alone very well.

So, uh, first of all: read it, it's lovely! (And then tell me you've read it so I can flail all over you about how marvelous they are.) And second of all: if you haven't yet got round to it, I highly recommend The Demon's Lexicon: funny and clever and quite dark, and for bonus points all of the characters are marvelous. (Oh yeah, and if you're worried about the cover, I promise it isn't the girly romance novel some people of my acquaintance seem to be worried about. And you can trust me, because...I get bored in romance sections, let alone whole novels. Good gracious.)

I guess I am kind of opinionated or some shit like that

2009-08-18T21:15:40Z

The good news: I almost kind of vaguely have the draft of this essay ("intergenre crossover fucktasma; or, why you should damn well write what I want to read already") finished.

The bad news: It's over 3,000 words long, and I still have added neither the third main argument nor the epilogue in.

The nerd news: I edited my phrasing this afternoon just far enough to make it 3.141k words. Because I am a dork.

help, help: deathly injury!

2009-08-15T23:26:15Z

Needed: a dramatic and fairly bloody way that someone with determination and wrath but no special equipment could use to, erm, ruin his own hand in a single incident. So far I've thought of things ranging from closing his fist on the business end of a knife and dragging his hand off to punching a wall whilst holding a glass of wine, with pretty much everything in between (punching windows, hitting it with a rock...), but none of it seems to really hit my brain as quite right. So! Any ideas for how to be really destructive?

(Someday I will have questions about my story that're all like, 'I guess I need to figure out what kind of fluffy puppy my heroine is giving my hero for his birthday, anyone into dogs?' But today is not that day!)

some days you just can't win

2009-08-13T15:26:33Z

This morning my reading has included:

- dumbass Republican politicians ("The health care plan includes death panels! This country is becoming as communist as Hitler!")
- dumbass homophobic bigot SF writers ("I deeply resent your implication that homosexers are people too! What's next, necrophilia?") (fuck off, John C. Wright! Everyone else: consider yourself warned for incredible amounts of dumbshittery and asshatism.)

That's right, guys. The liberals want you to have sex with you baby after it's been murdered by death panels, but they'll only count it if it's gay dead baby sex. An outrage!

Then that was followed by,

- dumbass SF editors and their supporters ("You know, it's perfectly conceivable that all 21 of the most mindblowing SF stories of history were written by straight white men!") (good post, many fail comments)

...and also, a bunch of extremely depressing (but accurate!) information about Somali pirates, who are, as it happens, somewhat A LOT justified in at least their origins. Namely the part where they originated as, basically, coastal defense in the lack of a functional Somali government - against European companies trying to (a) dump toxic waste into Somali waters, resulting in massive human and environmental catastrophe and (b) illegally trawl for fish in Somali waters, resulting in something like $300m of theft a year and, err, massive environmental catastrophe.

I'm just saying, I could really go for some fuzzy ducks today. And/or (preferrably, actually) well-documented instances of awesome people getting some of these assholes where they deserve it. Bonus points for lighting people on fire in anatomically comedic areas.

Alpha

2009-07-14T18:36:30Z

Leaving for Alpha today (hurrah!), and I'll be mostly gone for the next three weeks or so. Don't burn the place down while I'm away, eh?

health care

2009-07-11T17:41:45Z

Somewhere in me there is a much bigger post full of explanations and rantings (sane ones) and fury, but right now, I don't think I could write it without damaging my computer with the virulence.

Why?

Well, mostly because of this post, via jonquil , about the current state of American healthcare and how very easy it is to become uninsured. (Hint: don't get any serious diseases, guys. Because? Your insurance? Will not pay for it.)

And guess what else? It's totally legal for them to refuse to. So when your conservative friend who thinks he's so clever starts talking about how a public option for health insurance is going to destroy the country and result in the deaths of a lot of people? Go ahead and tell them to fuck right off.

This isn't the only problem with the current insurance system. But, hey. Isn't this enough of a problem all by itself?

Fuckers.

(Seriously, go read the post, even if you think you disagree with me: it's a much better, more elqouent explanation of this than I can possibly provide, especially when I'm this angry.)

Displaying our shame to the wide wide internets is probably inevitable.

2009-06-26T20:48:47Z

I. Yo. Rebecca (remarknj ) and I are having a competition leading up to Alpha, the better to go completely insane and stumble onto or into a train, plane, or water main the day we have to leave, ranting and raving in a horrifying display of girlish lunacy. That is to say, we have agreed to amass some 28k in writing between the two of us by the 14th of July.

II. Accordingly, we're each going to write 700 words a day on our respective novelly projects, which is admittedly a fairly puny and diminutive amount until you take into account the fact that I am about to start work on Monday. (To give a point of reference, the last time I started work for the summer, I found myself sleeping away my entire life. This is chiefly because of the fact that work is a known minor demon and deeply enjoys sneaking up behind you and putting worms down your shirt until you notice some indeterminate time later that your chest is looking awfully squirmy, and then they turn out to be actually bloodsucking caterpillars of death and the legs pop out and suddenly they have spiracles full of your perfectly good plasma the better to donate to a good cause.) This count may go up if it seems appropriate to all parties, i.e. me.

III. But, you say, what is to prevent us from just sort of doing the usual writer slouch thing and failing to finish those words? I mean, 700 words might not be much, but look, you know writers. You know what they're like! Well, in fact, there is a way, and the way is called PUNISHMENT. Yes, you heard me right, and here is how the punishment works. (Yes, it is possible that I am using these roman numeral section headers basically at random, but can you prove anything? I didn't think so.)

IV. The PUNISHMENT is as follows. First of all, for any day that I don't write my 700 words (to be proven, in email, to remarknj each day), I must obtain for her a present, to be brought to Alpha and distributed under the public eye so that all are aware of my failure and humiliation! (Alphans who will be present this year, you are all welcome to spectate). And second, if she doesn't write her 700 words, she must get a present for me, same deal.

V. Presents. Lest all this get out of (or too well into) hand, the limitation on presents is as follows: first, no bought present may cost less than $1 or more than $5. Second, no made present may take less than an hour or more than five. Third, no lifeforms, not even if they're really awesome and especially not if you made them yourself. Fourth, no two objects representative of fail may be the same, because, really, no two fails are the same. Rationally speaking. Fifth, no gum.

VI. This is a glorious plan and can in no way fail, backfire, cause the end of the world as we know it, etc. Accordingly I have made an internet table OF GLORY to represent its awesomeness, and if you disagree with me on this count, well, you suck.

June.

Victim	26	27	28	29	30
Ebeccarey	706	758	769	722	729
Yours Truly	774	776	:(	760	769

July 1 - 5.

Victim	1	2	3	4	5
Ebeccarey	743	718	749	it is a holiday dammit	742
Yours Truly	710	752	>.O	yes for me too!	1884*

*shut up

July 6 - 10.

Victim	6	7	8	9	10
Ebeccarey	735	726	766	823
Raquel	743	796	**	737

**I am totally applying half of that 1884 here, take that!

VII. General-purpose prohibited: cheating, laziness, having a break, ducking out, running away to Antarctica (do you know how hard it is to find $3 presents in Antarctica?), murder, extreme sports over highways, contacting extraterrestrial lifeforms in an attempt to bargain your way out by way of insanely futuristic technology, tantrums, decaf, fleeing to a town without bookstores in the hopes of making your brain melt so far that everyone agrees you are incapable, conjuring up large winter storms (be classy, thunderstorms are seasonal), demonic visitations, etc.

By contrast, a random assortment of totally over-the-table activities: blackmail, bribery, lying, whining, bargaining, abusing younger siblings as outlet, abusing younger siblings as experiment, abusing younger siblings to demonstrate Timothy Zahn-style practicality or lack thereof in action scenes, overcaffeination, sleep deprivation, lunacy, reading Heinlein, etc.

VIII. Your words are due before the other person wakes up the next morning. Or else.

ETA. Some amendments to the rules, due to internet mayhem: either words must be turned in, by email, before 4pm of the following day, or else you may, if unable to email, provide a time-stamped screencap etc. of your words, ditto before 4pm. Also this chart is probably not getting updated until Alpha time, because SOMEONE has no internet. (<3)

ETA II. We totally pwned at this, but I don't think I have the wordcounts anywhere easily accessible, so you will just have to take my word for it! And indeed, lo, Rebecca gifted unto me a fabtastic bag and I inflicted three (really awesome) books on her. So there.

PSA

2009-05-25T08:21:30Z

Hopefully someone with bigger circulation than me can pick this up, but:

It looks like sarahtales has had her livejournal hacked by the same rather nasty hackers who got a couple other people earlier this year; her most recent post claims to link to her new book online and her new blog, but the links actually seem to lead to the same unpleasant Russian poetry and dodgy downloads as the last couple times - I think they are supposed to include a keylogger, among other things. Anyway, I know she has a pretty wide readership, so, PSA to the world, don't click those links!

plant physiology

2009-05-03T23:31:10Z

Is destroying my life! But that's all right, my notes are glorious works of art, and I have just sat through 50 minutes of recorded lecture, so I feel that I am entitled to have a snack. Or, you know, lunch. (My life is so exciting. Later this afternoon I might do some listening comprehension exercises. Someone, quick, get the fainting couch!)

...

In other news, why is writing only ever this appealing when there are nine hundred other vital things one has to be doing?

update: life, the universe, and everything. ish.

2009-04-16T07:52:29Z

THE HOUSEMATE FROM HELLACIOUS HELL.

One of my housemates has been giving everyone trouble since pretty much the first day we moved in, but due to various factors (were I a wicked cynic, I would say for instance, the fact that some of my housemates have no spine), we haven't managed to get rid of her. Her latest habit is not doing the chores assigned for the kitchen (such arduous tasks as taking out the garbage or putting the dishes away), which has made half of the house wroth with her. (The other half says "Oh, dear," and then does her job for her.)

Accordingly I recently set out to have a conversation with her about this fascinating practice, which ran aground almost at once.

YOURS TRULY: Dearest Kearstyn, I can't help but notice that you didn't do your very simple job this entire week, thereby requiring other people to do it if they didn't want to end horribly with all the dishes in the house broken on their head.
HOUSEMATE FROM HELLACIOUS HELL: Well, I was at my grandmother's house today. And it's Easter. So I really don't think that you have any right to complain.
YOURS: I could not help but notice that it is Sunday, Kearstyn. My dim recollection seems to be that the week starts on Monday, so far as chores are concerned?
HOUSEMATE: Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I don't give a shit about this house or anyone in it and have no intention of ever doing my chores. Suck it!

At which point she trotted off into the bathroom and hid there for something like ten minutes while I loitered around on the first floor waiting to deliver my final warning. Of course, as soon as I tried, she brushed me off again and stalked into her room, resulting in this dignified exchange:

YOURS TRULY: In fact, I think the new consensus is that if your chores do not get done, they will end up in your room. I should point out at this point that next week you are supposed to be taking the compost out, although naturally if you really want that on your belongings, I cannot argue!
HOUSEMATE FROM HELLACIOUS HELL (slamming door to her room) : Could you shut up now? Thanks!

At which point I shrugged and went to do homework, because honestly, I have better things to do than argue with her on this through a closed door. Of course, while I was upstairs, some of my other housemates returned home, and I think you can pretty easily imagine my surprise when I wandered downstairs later to encounter various further housemates discussing the previous exchange in hushed tones.

HOUSEMATE SECUNDUS: Er, Rachel, I hope you don't mind my asking, but don't you think it was a little inappropriate to start the conversation about the dishes with "if you don't do what I say I'll put compost in your bed?"
HOUSEMATE TERTIUS: And also - wait, why are you laughing uncontrollably? Are you quite sure you're feeling quite well today? Are you having a seizure?

And so we continue on. Perhaps eventually the rest of my housemates will muster up the conviction in the righteousness of their cause to say something to Hellacious Hell, but in the meantime I shall enjoy her pointed glares and refusal to talk to me all by myself.

OSCAR THE KIDNAPPED CAT.

Among her numerous other flaws, Kearstyn* is deeply, madly in love with a cat belonging to someone else, which I can nearly understand, because he's very sweet. His name is Oscar, and he is small and stripey and quite charming. We know him because while they were away on spring break, he showed up in our alley, and since his owners weren't picking up their phone, we had to keep him until they finally reappeared to claim him. We were all a bit disappointed, but none more so than Kearstyn (whose idea of true love, by the way, mostly encompasses shutting him in her room and crooning "widdle boy!" at random moments).

However, I do feel that there is generally a line between true love and kidnapping, which is why it was a bit surprising to return home moderately late one night to find Oscar shut in the study room.

YOURS TRULY: Oh gracious, did he run away again?
KEARSTYN: Well, I found him wandering in the street.
YOURS TRULY (with air of dawning dread): In our alley, or in front of their house?
KEARSTYN (incriminating pause): Well, he's an indoors cat!

The other fun thing about this was that she had decided to kidnap Oscar with her boyfriend in tow, so while she and boyfriend disappeared into her room to pursue unspeakable acts (sample Facebook status from the next morning: "Kearstyn Hellacious should remember not to do things her body isn't capable of."**), the cat was dumped unceremoniously into the living room.

At which point Housemate Quartus pointed out that she was having a dance party later that evening, which certain small felines might not enjoy. In mild bemusement, I retreated upstairs with Oscar and spent a vaguely entertaining evening watching him barrel around the room in pursuit of a stray (and doubtless very vicious) bottlecap while listening to the sweet strains of extremely loud music from downstairs.***

A couple days later, his owners deigned to resurface and carted him off again; I don't doubt that he'll show up again, though.

REASONS WHY MY JAPANESE HISTORY PROFESSOR IS AWESOME

I really don't think I've had any other professor who digresses with such reliability that he or she can get from "Japan is a highly stratified society" to "electric slippers! They keep your feet warm!" in under ten minutes.

_________
*In her manifestation as Unduly Sucrose Irritation, rather than the rarer and more dangerous Housemate From Hellacious Hell.

**I give you this information on the principle that I suffer, you suffer. Along which line I should mention that she spent most of that day wandering around in panties and a T-shirt, ice-pack clutched tenderly to her more personal anatomy.

***At least this time no drunk people tried to break into my room.

avatar racefail, cont.

2009-04-14T02:32:34Z

I know a lot of you have posted about the recent fail on Amazon's part in which books with LGBTQ content were delisted for being 'adult,' including such racy thrillers as Heather Has Two Mommies, and quite a lot of you have also linked to the petition against it, which is awesome - like anyone, I like to see fantastic fucktards get their comeuppance.

But how about the Avatar racefail casting petition? (quick refresher: tiny kiddie television show turns out to be super fantastic; Hollywood sets out to adapt it to live action film; producers decide Asian heroes are too, well, Asian, and cast them all as white*; internet has minor implosion). It takes like two minutes, you guys, and then you can post to your journal about how you're awesome. (By the way, please do: the more people who know about this, the better!) This petition has been up for quite a bit longer than the Amazon one, but it has something like one fifth the signatures; can we do something about this, please? I for one support Asian heroes!

*The semi-antihero-kind-of-eventually-a-hero character was recently recast as Dev Patel. This is nice and all, except that Patel is South Asian rather than East Asian - and also we now have brown villains and white heroes, which naturally is not at all problematic.**

**That was a good example of mild sarcasm.

elanid @ 2009-04-12T01:46:00

2009-04-12T08:46:51Z

The cat came back!

April Fool's

2009-04-01T06:19:03Z

Is okay, but I prefer to get my lying lying ways out in smaller, more year-round increments. :D

HELP

2009-03-27T02:50:55Z

Okay.

Invertebrate paleontology vs. post-WWII Japan.

Discuss.

tiny wee stories with all manner of dubious qualities

2009-03-25T22:27:07Z

In this post I promised I would write to prompt, although I'm not sure that this was really intended as a prompt. Anyway, this one is for diatryma .

The hotel was as excessive as Hemiclotes had promised, but Theandra still thought the staff might object to fishing an escaped mouse out from under the sink, which was why she was crouched on her knees peering into the little space between the bottom of the cabinet and the floor in the increasingly vain hope that it might reappear. If nothing else, they would certainly remember her, which would be exceptionally counterproductive. But there was still no sign of the damn thing.

She sighed, getting to her feet at last. The crick in her neck protested mightily, which wasn't surprising; falling asleep on the train always meant she'd pay for it later. At least Hemiclotes was paying for the hotel and its overstuffed pillows.

"Sorry, no dice," she said aloud, turning back into the main room. She got no answer, but then, she had expected none; Gosphilion was probably asleep, curled up in the pillowcase inside her backpack, and the mouse was unlikely to talk to her in any case, especially not if it'd divined her purpose in bringing it along. Mice were dull that way, which was why she usually fed them to Gosphilion; besides, they were cheap, and while she wasn't going to stint on him, she was still running on a student budget most of the time, and hamsters weren't quite so cheap. That dreadful woman Ysildre at the school kept giving her dirty looks for it, but she really couldn't get too distressed by what Ysildre thought of her.

She should probably put the sword somewhere a little less obvious, she thought, looking at it lying on the bed with some unease. The blade looked horrifically sharp against the dull bronze of the brocaded quilt, and the darkened metal of the hilt gleamed against the silly pillows, about as sinister as she'd ever seen it here in this overpriced room. It wasn't really likely that anyone would try to bother her, but just in case she caught it up by the hilt, trying not to be gingerly with it, which she imagined would've been hard enough even if she hadn't known its purpose. She wished she could just toss it under the bed and forget about it like she'd got used to doing staying in petty bed and breakfasts on the way, but like most fancy hotels there was boarding to prevent anything getting lost. How useful, she thought irritably, and finally settled for putting it in one of the big flat drawers in the freestanding wardrobe.

That dealt with, she turned to take better stock of the room, which really was quite nice, inconvenient bed or not. She could get used to this, she thought, and then, abruptly wishing she hadn't, she looked away.

The big window looked out on the street below - something boring and downtowny, although with enough of a slope to make the few drivers nervous. More importantly, it faced the hotel opposite, a blunt-looking yellowish building with little designs of herons and reeds cut into the stone over the windows.

And if their source was reliable, Dariat would be there.

writing fail

2009-03-19T20:04:16Z

I need prompts. To fix my brain. Which is not working.

So, if you comment with a prompt, I will write you a thing. (N.b., danger!) I am so thrilling and exciting.

elanid @ 2009-03-14T17:42:00

2009-03-15T00:43:39Z

Exams done. So tired. Going to go see The History Boys tonight. Flying home tomorrow morning ungodly early. Woo!

this quarter, in short

2009-03-09T06:57:46Z

ASDAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOHGODOHGODOHGODpleasedie.

Spring break cannot come soon enough.

vanity

2009-03-03T04:54:50Z

The Loyalty of Birds is up in the March issue of Clarkesworld, and you should totally go and read it!

microfluidics

2009-02-21T00:54:12Z

Although I'm still at the sorta-kinda-mostly-I-read-papers-actually stage with regard to this project, I am now actually doing work and talking about things with people. Which is really cool in absolutely every way but tends to result in my coming home and going, "Man, I wish I were a grad student already so I didn't have to do all this boring classwork!" (Today it was even worse, since it was Kelsey's 21st birthday, and therefore: cupcakes, champagne, strawberries, bananas, and grapefruit. The cupcakes were something epic - rum-raisin with kahlua buttercream ice cream or something like that. And all of the people I adore from my department in one squnchy awkward bunch. <33)

And everyone I live with is a humanities major who will laugh at me for this! Ass.

Wanted: one excitable biology major, smarter than me, interested in research, willing to listen to endless burbling on the subject of the awesomeness of my bio department, not about to graduate or go to Ecuador anytime soon. Candidates must submit to interview, be able to survive prolonged exposure to yours truly.

Yeah, good luck with that, self.

jdrama madness

2009-02-12T06:00:37Z

As far as I can tell, "And then I started watching jdramas, and I haven't done any work since!" is the number one thing to hear in any classroom teaching an East Asian language. Of course it isn't always jdramas - some extremely virtuous Chinese and Korean students will watch twdramas, hkdramas, kdramas, or even mainland dramas instead* - but on the whole, we fall beneath the same scythe, and that scythe is Japanese in origin. Which is to say, I regret to announce that I too have been laid low by this mighty opponent.

Honestly, they don't sound so dangerous on paper. For one thing, they're short - jdramas in particular are rarely more than 10-14 episodes long. And for another thing, most of them don't have official subtitles, which means that you have to refer on fansubs - which can range from fantastic to frankly atrocious. (Despite a certain degree of internet reputation of being soap operas, I've read synopses for jdramas ranging from action cop shows to srs bizness stories about the struggles of people with life-threatening illnesses toperiod dramas to sff pieces.)

Unfortunately, what this fails to take into account is the fact that you therefore can't even pretend to do work while watching them, since you have to be able to read what's on the screen - and because they're so short, it's technically possible to finish a single drama in just a day or two. (Of course, it'd have to be a very stupid day, and I'm sure I don't know anyone quite that stupid - well, apart from...)

Anyway! I could ramble on about the various traits of jdramas as opposed to Western television, both in terms of what I have picked up from my research and in terms of what I am speculating on, but I think that is probably really boring, judging by the way people look at me when I try. Instead, therefore, I have decided mostly for my own elucidation to talk about the ones I have actually seen, ~~in the hopes of convincing more people to join me in sin.~~

The first jdrama I ever watched was Hana Yori Dango, over last Thanksgiving (er, two ago, really) at my friend's house in California. With eerie prescience, we went through both seasons - nearly 20 hours of television - over the course of three or four days, and managed to finish before we were deported to our various universities and back into school. This is insofar as I can tell pretty much standard: EVERYONE watches Hana Yori Dango. Everyone. Because it's insanely famous,

The plot, such as it is, revolves around the unlikely relationship between Makino Tsukushi and Domyouji Tsukasa. She's a poor scholarship student with a mean right hook; he's the spoiled son of the chairwoman of an insanely rich corporation, and beats people up for fun. Also, they are both certifiable - quite literally.

Hana Yori Dango is justly famous for being the most addicting substance known to man, but that aside, it's amazingly bad. The characters are all unpredictable not because they're intriguingly original, but rather because their actions do not make any sense at all; the plot is a terrifying mixture of utterly implausible and dodderingly clichéd; and like many other jdramas based on manga, the world retains a certain flavoring of manga, i.e. it is ridiculous. Also, despite the entire first season being set at school, I don't think you ever meet a teacher.

So, having been suitably traumatized by HYD, I returned home and vowed never to look at another jdrama again lest my eyeballs fall out and my schoolwork spontaneously combust** - a promise which I kept until, well...about two weeks ago, actually. At which point my cousin introduced me to Gokusen 2.

Gokusen 2 is the sequel to Gokusen, and both of them, like Hana Yori Dango, are based on a manga (also named Gokusen). There is also an anime. And, again like HYD, Gokusen is therefore entirely made of crack.

The basic premise of Gokusen is that Yamaguchi Kumiko (Yankumi), the granddaughter of the leader of a yakuza family, wants nothing more than to teach high school. So, she does: unfortunately for her, all of her students are rampagingly badly behaved. There are three seasons of Gokusen drama, of which I have watched only the second: I have it on good authority that they are heavily repetitive, and I like the actors in the second season the best. (Yes, since you ask, I do have deep, meaningful reasons for watching this show! Er...) Unlike Hana Yori Dango, the main plotline of this one isn't a romance at all: it focuses on the relationship between deranged teacher Yankumi and her equally but differently deranged students, most notably the ringleaders.

For me, one of the weirdest things about Gokusen is the disconnect between the two plotlines: on the one hand, there are the rather serious stories about the students, mostly featuring various threats of expulsion and bodily harm - and on the other hand, there are the ridiculous relationships between the teachers (greatly enhanced by the fact that the Head Teacher's eyeballs have sound effects), the improbable squashiness of the yakuza, and Yankumi's fruitless pursuit of a character I refer to as the Sparkly Gay Boyfriend. This is because he is really gay, but also because he sparkles. Quite literally.

That said, the student plotlines range from ridiculous to adorable to frankly rather excellent, with a very vague acknowledgement at best that there's any difference between them, and almost all of them include some combination of the main characters getting beat up. I finished the entire thing in 24 hours - there are only 10 episodes, so it isn't quite as ridiculous as it sounds, but, er, it nearly is. (Okay, 24.5 hours, but it sounds better to go the other way!) Sparkly, addictive crack, but also actually rather good.

Having destroyed my work ethic on Gokusen, I told my dealer to withhold all drugs until I had finished with my midterms for the week, and she kindly obliged; unfortunately, the next thing recommended to me was on mysoju, which is sort of like the jdrama capital of the internet, and thereby a place of incredible sin.
Said next thing was Shibatora, a cop drama about tiny, baby-faced Shibata Taketora, a police officer who infiltrates various youth spots in his pursuit of CRIME!

Despite a first episode which read like instructions to Gokusen and its kin to lvlup (prostitution, murder, infiltration, incest, abuse, and torture!), low production values, a bad dye job on the main secondary character, and dragging second and third episodes made me drop this one, although I think I'll probably pick it up again on my next break - when they get things right, they really do. It's just that the ones they get wrong have a tendency to look extremely silly.

Giving up on Shibatora, at least for the time being, I went looking for other dramas starring the same actors as Gokusen: here, to my delight, the magnificent dramawiki [which I would link to apart from not being able to get to it ] proved horrifically helpful, and steered me first into 1 Pound no Fukuin, a comedy about a boxer who keeps eating himself out of his weight class and into trouble, the nun he's in love with, and his hard-drinking lunatic female manager (who at one point picks a fight with a street sign) - surprisingly awesome, except I got bored during the boxing scenes, through an exceedingly brief Yukan Club detour (lols. just. lols.) and then rather reluctantly into Tatta Hitotsu no Koi.

Like Hana Yori Dango, Tatta Hitotsu no Koi is a story about a romance between two people of vastly different social standing, but there the resemblance pretty much ends. I started watching THNK mostly because it had an actor I rather like, but then it turned out to be AWESOME. Not only are the production values the best I've seen - seriously, this thing is gorgeous - and the actor in question so in character as to be unrecognizable as his earlier role, but despite it being a romance, the main characters' problems do not revolve entirely around their being thwarted in love. And from a pretty early episode, it takes predictable scenes and turns them 90 degrees until they become awesome. I could talk about this one forever, and I know a certain person will read the spoilery bits if I were to post them, so I shall not; suffice it to say, this one was awesome! And I finished it in two days, because my brain fails at life.

At the moment, I'm in the middle of Nobuta wo Produce - hilarious, ridiculous school-based comedy featuring ghosts, a vice principal who is probably a crow spirit, a bookseller who only lets people he likes read before buying, a little old man who will follow you everywhere asking you to tell him the truth, and a main character whose deep dark secret is that he wears his hair in a little ponytail on top of his head when he's at home. I hear from my sources that it becomes srs bizness （一本正经!）before the end, but so far it is sheerly delightful.

Also on the list of May End Up Watching Despite Myself/have seen several bits: Kurosagi (a conman who cons other conmen), Ryusei no Kizuna (orphaned siblings taking revenge on their parents' murderers), and Yasha (secret twins, genetic manipulation, epidemics, and a theme that makes an oldskool Doctor Who soundtrack sound subtle). Ryusei no Kizuna is probably winning at the moment, due largely to an awesome early scene which parodies the manga-is-reality school of jdramas, but in fact I'm kind of waffling.

So! Those of you who watch jdramas, what should I watch next?*** Those who managed to escape the lure, having once succumbed - how did you do it? Those of you who think I'm insane, please tell me so!

____
*Each of these have their own unique quirks: loosely and unscientifically speaking, hkdramas are like the actionist action movie that ever blew up in your face; twdramas are like manga-based jdramas on crack with one hundreth the budget; and mainland dramas are full of nationalist sentiment. I have no idea what kdramas are like because if I'm going to flail around in a language that isn't the one I'm studying, it might as well be the same one consistently, and jdramas are shorter.

**Sadly, at my school, this would not be an excuse not to do it, since I would be hard-pressed to get a doctor's note for the spontaneous combustion of my homework.

***My ideal jdrama consists of equal parts pretty boys and violence, with enormous showers of bonus points for a plot that doesn't routinely make me headdesk. People who recommend me things typically miss the 'violence' part of this, which is saddening, especially since romances are typically my least favorite type of story, but if you happen to know one that fits, I am desperate, here!

jdramas

2009-01-31T22:15:46Z

Are like crack.

So is The West Wing.

You guys, I don't even watch television outside of winter quarter! Surely this is a violation of contract or something.

elanid @ 2009-01-20T04:48:00

2009-01-20T12:49:41Z

Today, Barack Obama is going to be my President.

For damn straight actual goddamn serious.

Yeah. :D