gaignun | Reading

Today I:

• Tried to watch a movie by the name of Surivor because Pierce Brosnan! Milla Jovovich! Sadly, it was so boring even with that double dose of pretty that I turned it off early and sent it back.

• Sold five books to a local second hand book seller. I think he was a little amused I was selling him books when I'm usually buying five books at a time from him. He told me it wouldn't fetch me much, just $10, but given I'd been expecting more like $2.50 I was like, "I'll take it!" Four mediocre women's fiction novels and one mediocre travel narrative, now out of my house.

• Read a bit. Ate some red bean paste buns. Didn't write a single word on any of my works in progress, but did decide to put a love triangle into my YA SF dystopia, because why not commit to that cliché?

kalloway

Doing much better with typing today~

This weekend is a

fic_rush, except a weird Fri-Sat one so I've already missed a day. ^^;; Oh well, as per usual I am going to dive into comments/emails so please expect weird out-dated replies! ^^;; (at 253, goal is 220)

Other than that, weekend will be general household + words + games + anime, hopefully.

kalloway

I am behind on comments because I managed to smash a couple fingers at work yesterday. Ow. Nothing terrible, and I can type today, but other tasks are certainly taking a bit more time. ^^;;

Here is a fifteen question fanfic meme I swiped from

scribblemoose. I intend to answer it as seriously as usual! ^_^;

( 15 Question Fic Meme )

( the questions, minus snark )

kalloway

Yay, a date on FFVII! Not like I don't own FFVII, but um, playing it in bed on Switch will probably happen, lol. ^^;; I'll end up snagging FFIX some time soon, too. Time to invest in some eShop cards!

Oninaki looks really interesting and I look forward to more info on that. I need to watch the clips again, because of course that's where I lost the stream for a few seconds. ^^;;

Looks like a good year for RPGs on Switch. I can see DQXI is calling me again and I may end up answering, lol.

Astral Chain was probably the most exciting thing. *__* What the fuck even I need this game. This is probably the thing I'm most excited about, because it looks amazing.

The mecha game also looked really interesting and has a demo up? I guess I'll have to try to check that out this weekend too.

Aaaah, and Starlink has more StarFox stuff coming! I did pick up the starter set recently but honestly it was just for the Arwing and Fox figures, I hadn't actually intended to ever play the game but now I want to. I am easily swayed by my... twenty-six-year-long crush on Fox.

As always, fingers were crossed for a surprise FE remake thrown in, but no luck there. Somehow and impressively, Three Houses actually looks worse than it did last year, so I don't really know what happened there? It just looks so dull and brown, the trailer suggested basically no plot, no personalities from the cast, and not a lot of what I think of when I think Fire Emblem. It's disappointing because the initial set-up didn't look entirely bad, but bland school simulator just doesn't interest me at all.

I've already seen the purity brigade out in force, too.

thawrecka

(Poetry/travel narrative/classic Japanese lit)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Travel Sketches by Matsuo Basho, translation and introduction by Nobuyuki Yuasa
I should have written down my thoughts on this right after I read it a week ago. It's so good! Beautiful travel tales, providing insights into Japanese life at the time, punctuated with lovely, simple, neat Japanese poetry. For example:

It is spring,
Even nameless hills
Are decorated
With thin films of morning mist.

It's just so lovely! I want to read it all over again. And I love all the references to other poets, including the author of the Pillow Book.

DNF - Monkeys With Typewriters by Scarlett Thomas - Writing guide I didn't get far into. I should have quit when the author revealed she'd been surprised that teaching Barthes' death of the author wasn't particularly helpful for her creative writing students (no shit, creative writing isn't the same as lit analysis). I stuck out until the author suggested the world doesn't need anymore Mills & Boon novels and then I thought, nah, life is short.

thawrecka

As ever, I'm on a quest to watch more Australian movies. Unfortunately, Now Add Honey, a supposed comedy, so so bland and OTT (in the way you'd expect of something aimed at the six and under audience, not adults), that I didn't get more than 15 minutes in. Utterly dire.

I'm pretty sure there was something else I wanted to post about as well but, no, fled from my brain as soon as I opened this tab.

kalloway

Went out to run errands/early valentine's w/ boycritter today. Got sushi, bought each other video games, and that's about it~ Since we were at the mall, I ended up picking up a new pair of work boots since mine are starting to go and we were already there. ^^;; Also, an entire bag of incense, which wasn't as much as I could have bought.

I've been reading a really thorough Let's Play for Fire Emblem: New Mystery/long subtitle/FE12 and definitely want to play the game but ahahaha, am also kind of addicted to this LP so far and want to keep going with it.

I'm making a dent in comments/email backlog again, and also trying to clear off my desk. That worked well last time but it's getting a thin layer of everything on it and nope, need to nix that right away.

I haven't gotten any farther on trying to clear off (some of) the dining room table to have room to sort things. But I'll get there. One of the first things I'm trying to do is wash the glue/goo out of the hair of a Monster High doll so she can be re-dressed and put elsewhere. Her hair is really awful. ^^;; Definitely the worst of any I've had. Most of the ones with bad glue-hair just needed a quick wash/rinse and were okay. This one just never gets there. Maybe I can find a little bucket and let her soak for a few hours? (Oh well, I can move a few other things I guess.)

Not much else going on, which is fine.

kalloway

Somewhere overnight, I got linked to a conversation about a conversation (if it can be called that) about the horrors of Roy/Ed and mostly I just boggled that FMA is still in the throes of shipwars (because that's what a lot of this 'purity' bullshit is, shipwars wrapped in buzzwords and misogyny) and vowed to toss some old Roy/Ed at AO3 in the morning. I have done so. It is doing very well and I am pleased yet also disappointed that I don't actually have a lot of old Roy/Ed stuff to post. (ALAS!)

I fear some of these people would faint at just the softest of whispers of what can be found just sitting on the shelves of any ol' public library~

kalloway

Three more icons for the Icon Meme, chosen by

merikuru. If anyone has ever been curious about one of my icons, now is the time to ask? ^_^;

- Somebody made an entire parody animation of the Lucky Star OP with Decepticons and it was fucking brilliant then and it's fucking brilliant now.

tainry and I both made a bunch of icons out of it, but iirc hers ended up looking better. I used this one mostly on

onedeadplotbunny for cheering on members.

- A parody of the 'Can you hear me now?' cell phone commercials from around 15 years ago. Cell phones and service used to be so, so bad. Anyway, this is a general FFVII: AC icon and sometimes anything communication-related. I just really love Kadaj, folks. (I, hilariously, remember explaining this to

taichara once. Even though my AIM screenname we'd used for chatting for nearly a decade was fucking KadajSynthesis. I'm amazing.)

- Saihate Miku. A very old Miku song, now, but still one of my favourites. It's a song about loss and when I first found it, I was going through some kind of rough stuff and I know it's cliche to say a song saved my life, but I remember just listening to it over and over and over again. I made a handful of icons from the video, but this is the one that stuck around. It's basically my 'things are rough'/'all the sympathy'/'I'm sorry to hear that' icon, though I will occasionally just use it randomly. Also, there was a figure made of Saihate Miku, a tiny Nendo, and it took awhile to find someone splitting a set, but I do have her. ^_^ But yeah, there's a lot of emotions wrapped up in this icon. Wow.

thawrecka

(Classical Japanese literature)
The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, translated by Meredith McKinney
This is delightful! Not just because of the pillow book itself, but also because of the contextualising stuff like the cultural and historical background notes in the introduction, the appendices about ranks, titles, clothes & etc., the 60 pages of end-notes. I feel like I learned so much about the Heian era just from the notes.

I don't know how the translation compares to other translations, but it was a pleasure to read. It's full of that stuff that modern literature says you're not supposed to care about, but I love reading, like long descriptions of sunsets, flowers, what people are wearing. The author is a hilarious snob, which is much more entertaining in a thousand year old book. People flirt and assert their social position by quoting poetry at each other and writing new poetry all the time. So much showing off of layers of sleeves. So much passionate devotion to her empress. People shag around poetically and the author makes fun of the romantic tales of the times. And, of course, the contextual notes mean the whole thing feels frothy but vaguely sad.

I just want to read it all again! It's so good.

(Writer's guide)
The Writer's Guide to Weapons by Benjamin Sobieck
A basic guide to guns and knives for writers, and something I am very glad to have read. I didn't even know what questions to ask in research before I read this and now I know enough to know what further research to do to make my action scenes less embarrassing. Very helpful information about guns (about which I previously knew nothing, because I live a pleasantly sheltered life. It's not going to help me write about swords, though).

kalloway

Me: *logs onto department computer to look up a part number, sees big spider making web just above monitor*

Me: *sigh, grabs phone, takes picture, sends to

taichara*

kalloway: No, spider, I need world wide web.

taichara: Lololol

kalloway: You're the only person I can send spiders to without asking.

Me: *sends more spider pictures*

kalloway

How it works: reply with "Party On!" and I'll choose three of your icons. Tell me about them: where they came from, what they mean to you, and/or when you deploy them. Drop a link here to your post in your own journal. Spread it around.

naye picked these three of mine~

- I think I found this on something on Amazon that wasn't an item I needed but loved the image of a bunny with a turnip on its head.

taichara made it into an icon for me~ We have a running joke about turnips, including that I horde them under my sofa (and sometimes hide under there). It's probably a plotbunny with a turnip on its head. From under the sofa? It's a very 'I am out of soup' icon, most of the time, or neutral but I want a picture of a bunny with a turnip on its head.

- DDR Sephiroth! A post-Advent Children icon that cracked me the fuck up when I first saw it and since it was available for use... I've been using it ever since. I have a lot of Sephiroth icons which probably surprises nobody.

I suspect Sephiroth would be kind of terrible at DDR, at least at first. Mostly for Sephiroth-related posts or WTF.

and...

- this is a quote from early in the Mina de Malfois stories. As they were being written by a friend, I ended up as one of Mina's Clives-- one of the beta readers for the series. ^_^ This quote sums up my feelings about fandom quite often. But I'm one of those crazy people too. This (obviously?) gets used on WTF Fandom stuff...

So one relatively (very) new icon, and two classics. I don't change my icons up often, even though I always say I'm going to...

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