subdee

aishuu and ninjatrauma are running recology, a sort of crash course in Methods of Reccing. I haven't joined because uhhhh I dunno. Long recs bore me, I'd much rather see a one-sentence summary and skim the story myself. But hypocritically, I wish more people had joined, because the comments in the introduction post are full of great rec websites. In particular,

This one. YESSSS OBSCURE YA LIT FANDOMS COME TO MEEEEE. And- good taste! And- a variety of authors! The problem with livejournal-based recs, of course, is that they tend to center around flists, and sometimes the reccer's friendship with (or admiration of) the author eclipses the quality of the story.

Which is why you shouldn't pay any attention to the Death Note fic rec list I wrote up for aishuu. *g*

EDIT: Now in website form.

I had to spend way too much money on unfun utilities today so to cheer myself I drove to Borders to spend way too much money on books (YES I KNOW there is something wrong with this logic). I was browsing Science Fiction when I noticed two teenagers in Manga (naturally the two sections are right next to each other). They were highschoolers, a boy and a girl. "Noticed" isn't the right word. They were loud. The boy kept saying how cool comics were, and how he couldn't believe that the girl didn't like comics. The girl kept insisting that she hated them and wouldn't be caught dead with one, while glancing around to see whether anyone had caught her yet.

I couldn't help myself, I picked up a Delany book and moved in to browse the manga section.

(An aside at this point to note that in cases where the last two books in a series you've been following for years are availible, you should NEVER EVER buy just the second-to-last one. ARGH. What happens next, I must know!)

It's possible I made the two of them (more) uncomfortable, though I was only innocently minding my own business. After no more than a minute, the boy picked a volume off the shelf, seemingly at random.

"I'll get this!" he said. "Legal Drug, sounds cool. Look, it's got a marijuana leaf on the cover."

"Good, fine, let's go," his girlfriend said, and practically dragged him away.

...well, it could have been worse. It could have been Gravitation.

(Legal Drug is not a BL title, but it has an awful lot of m/m fanservice. Actually fanservice is its only major selling point.)

***

( I bought )

***

I'm not going to make it to Friday, guys. (Friday is when my contact lenses come in. For various reasons I won't go into, my glasses are misprescribed; wearing them for more than five minutes gives me a headache and after a whole day of them I feel positively hungover.)

***

[1] On the subject of plagiarism, I can only say that I struggle with this too. Mostly in stories that paraphrase nonfictional sources. I'll have the thing in front of me -- the magazine or the book or the web article -- as a reference so that I won't mess anything up. The problem(?) is that the original author always knows way the hell more about whatever they're talking about than I do, and is probably a better writer than me too. The temptation to "adapt" their words is very strong. I have to stop and remind myself that it's bad practice. (And wrong, and illegal, and not worth it.)

On the upside, since I started writing regularly I've found that it's become a lot easier. Easier to write my own words, easier to avoid re-writing the words of others. I still get urges, but they are much more easily suppressed, and I bet if I wrote more often they'd fade away entirely. I am reluctant to write fic for book-based series, though, because that would mean style-copying and I figure, why tempt fate?

...I did break down and read the online texts for Suzumiya Haruhi. I read the prologue and first chapter, enough to see that the style I'd been using would pass, approximately, if I added a few more explicit "I thought"s. Then I stopped. (It also helped that I just don't like the novels very much. Too much like reading anime in book form (says the girl who has no trouble reading manga in book form over on bb_shousetsu).

Wall Street Journal Article on Paid Youtube Smear Campaign

Stephen Colbert on Wikipedia.

All links from karentraviss, linkblogger extrodinaire. (Come to think of it she also writes books, maybe I should read one of those sometime.) Her comments are also worth reading.

That's my PSA for the week. Back to trivialities!

EDIT: Speaking of books, this was in Oryx and Crake. (The, ah, amateur-ing of news and entertainment, leading to the collapse of all culture and civilization.) Maybe I should bookblog that sometime.

EDIT2: Update on the google situation. Turns out I can access sites with google-supported ads, they just take an unbelieveably long time to load. And to think I laughed about the dangers of a two-tiered internet. (People's attention spans aren't that short! I said. They'll wait the extra minute (or in my case five-to-ten)! I said. HA HA.)

EDIT3: Is it me or is that Mainichi Seiten fic not so bad after all? It's still threadbare, but it's not the terrible sappy abrupt monstrosity I thought it was. The last section NEEDS WORK, though, because Mayumi's thoughts are so abbreviated. Should I switch it to Yuuta POV (allowing Mayumi to remain mysterious)? Or should I do the correct but much more difficult thing, and expand on what Mayumi is thinking? Also, why has no one claimed the last line yet.

In the shape of: a drinking game!

( Aha. )

Incidentally, it's been too hot to sleep all week, so if I've seemed exceptionally loopy, spammy or random today, that's why.

The Devil Wears Prada

The joke here is that the fashion industry is so exclusive it looks down on what's already impossibly out of reach for practically everyone -- these attractive, ivy-league-graduating, up-and-coming New York professionals who are one step away from being hired by big name galleries, famous restaurants, or (in the main character's case) major newspapers. Every time Andrea is made fun of for being a *gasp* size six, you have to laugh, because it's just so ridiculous. At the same time, the industry is so inward-looking, so aware of its own status, that for most of its players, the idea of anyone not wanting that life is laughable.

But this isn't a movie about the blind frivolity of the fashion industry. The message is that Fashion is an okay profession for some people, it's useful and creative and meaningful, but there are other worthy things too. I suspect this is different from the book. Wasn't The Devil Wears Prada the exposé that burned all the bridges of the author, and showed how ugly it all is, how silly when considered soberly? I haven't read the book, I've only heard. Anyway the movie isn't like that, it's not that mean. I tend to be fairly sensitive about these things - thought Mean Girls was too mean, etc - so if I liked this movie it's a prettttty good indication that it didn't have any teeth to it.

Because I liked this movie a lot. It's really entertaining. Two hours of Meryl Streep being impossibly demanding and evil (she must have had so much fun with this role!), and all these beautiful people being scarily competent and snarky while wearing gorgeous clothing. ^_^

Clerks II

The previews totally don't do it justice. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard. There are some awkward moments (Wanda Syke's husband ARG). Also the love interest (and only professional actor) seems to have been airlifted in from another planet, and the plot-y parts aren't as good as the pop-culture riffs. Also the ending is ridiculously contrived and toothless. But overall? What a great movie. You do need to have seen the first Clerks.

...I occasionally found myself thinking, it's so cheap to keep picking on the nutty Christian. Can't you find someone more controversial to make fun of? But this was due to external circumstances, not really anything to do with the movie.

Bonus! Loveless AMV with dialogue from Clerks. SO FUNNY.

Old Movie Mini-Reviews

• The Big Easy: New Orleans, corrupt cop saved by the love of a good woman. Normal-looking people + New Orleans accents = HOT.
  
• L.A. Confidential: LA, three very different detectives work to unravel a complex case. Noir. Possibly the most perfectly constructed movie ever? Really fantastic.
  
• Clay Pidgeons: Utah, a man is mistaken for a serial killer. Vince Vaughn and Joaquin Phoenix co-star in this dark comedy. Let me repeat that: Vince Vaughn. Joaquin Phoenix. Dark comedy. GO RENT THIS MOVIE RIGHT NOW IT IS AWESOME OMG. Why hadn't I heard of this? It's on my top-five list now. It's so good. The acting is so good. The soundtrack is so inappropriate good. omg.

I'm debating the wisdom of seeing World Trade Center (the movie). On the one hand, gah. On the other hand, gaaah! (It's bound to be awful, but I'm curious. Will it be totally explotative? Will it completely avoid politics and in favor of feel-good moralizing, or will Oliver Stone be unable to resist a dig or two at the present climate? Also, haha, Hollywood is going to run out of social servants to turn into action heroes soon. Soldiers are unpopular (I wonder why!), police are corrupt, there have already been way too many firefighter movies and now there's a Coast Guard movie. Have there been any Emergency Response Team movies yet? Or maybe that's too small-scale. Ooh! Forest rangers! They could throw in some environmental awareness, it would be awesome.)