subdee

Happy Passover! Even though my brother and cousin are younger than me, I always did the four questions because only I knew them in Hebrew. My mother always did the ten plagues because she had the best gleeful delivery (blood! boils! frogs! death!). And my brother always did the final repetition of "Had Gadya" because he liked to show off his memory.

(Because everyone's Passover is different, right? Some aspects are universal, or at least they're supposed to be--I went to one Passover where we didn't even open the door for the prophet Elijah--but there is a lot of space for variation. All Jewish holidays are ritualistic, and Passover one of the most, but which rituals vary from household to household.)

( Sin City )

Kakashi fic recs: To Cathage, Burning and Untitled Kakashi thing Fair Play by V. She's also working on a Naruto/Gaara/Sasuke epic that promises to be, well, epic. (Veeeeeee~ You put me to shame, you really do.)

I swear this isn't turning into a memes/links/recs/shoutouts blog. There's original content somewhere in here.

And! The most important part of this post:
Congratualtions cyrnelle for making it to the top five in the LJ style contest. You totally deserve it.

lj_stylecontest: for the submission of new S2 styles. They're going to make the top five layouts public (meaning free account holders can use them). Submissions are closed; it's the voting round from now until April 22nd. Which means you should GO VOTE for your five favorite styles. I don't care which ones you vote for as long as FLEXIBLE SQUARES is one of them. (Solicitation? You bet!)

( Sadness )

Thought: Here's a guy who regularly attacks fanfiction of all varieties using strong, antagonistic language, who doesn't ever appologize, and who doesn't make any attempt to back up his opinions whatsoever. He also uses a lot of elipses, but honestly elipses are so prevalent everywhere I go that isn't my friends page that I don't think this automatically disqualifies him. His logic is what disqualifies him, and yet by the end of the comments he's somehow gotten everyone to agree with his most basic point--that is, it is WRONG to write fanfiction without the permission of the original author. Amazing!

This might be the reasonableness phenomenon? Because the author is so openly biased, the commentors feel as if they have to be rational. A few do this by introducing evidence, but the majority choose repeat someone else's evidence while adopting a "reasonable" concillatory tone. So they'll aquiesce to the OP's least toxic point, but this is also his main point, so that in the end they are all agreeing with him.

Or maybe they're agreeing because he's right. But I keep thinking, if I ever wrote to a Shonen Jump mangaka--in terrible babelfish Japanese--asking for permission to use his or her original works, I probably wouldn't get it, and the reason I wouldn't get it would be an entirely unjust one (ie because I don't speak Japanese).

The comments on that post make my head hurt. If someone has said something already, you should say something different. But then I cop other people's ideas all the time without remembering the source or even that there was a source, so I can't really judge. I wish my brain was better organized, because I hate the feeling of sloppy thinking. It's like...standing on a pile of sand, only worse. It's unsettling. Not as unsettling as when you recognize phrases from your reasearch paper in the professor's lecture notes, though.

I was outside earlier, though, attempting to play tennis. The University has 7 courts for 40,000 undergrads; needless to say we we didn't get one even after a 1.5 hour wait.

( I should really lighten up. )

In other news I spent a good portion of Saturday randomly designing color schemes for cyrnelle's still unnamed new S2 Style. She's submitting it to the Second Annual LJ Style Contest (lj_stylecontest). The schemes are all very standard and maybe a little ugly (although I do like Black and White and Red All Over), but the style is totally awesome--just look at how many things you can customize. *has never tried to use an S2 style and has no idea if this level of customization is standard or not* Who knows, maybe I'll use it if I ever get around to learning S2.

Anyway I wish cyrnelle the best of luck. (Possible style names: Banner? Floating Table? I really have no idea.)

Oh! And I almost forgot to mention: new custom moodtheme. Stars aren't very expressive so I had to rely on color to convey mood. Unfortunatly this reminds me of the Homeland Security color codes. Danger, bad mood! Red alert, situation critical! (I'm not feeling all that bad right now, actually. I should rework the theme so that there's more than one (BRIGHT RED) choice for "mild frustration."

Question: Who can watch the new Naruto anime closing and not feel the NaruSaku love?

01. 02. 03.

( It continues. )

Of course, minor characters are also cool.

10. 11. 12.

If using: comments requested, credit is not required. These are meant as bases, but I suppose you could also use them as-is.

The "guess my 15 favorite characters" meme: in anime and manga I always prefer the main characters, except for Gon and Ichigo. In those cases I like the secondary main characters. The end!

...In all seriousness, I'm much too predictable for this meme. Mangaka everywhere have my number and can always rely on me to like the characters I'm supposed to like, dislike the characters I'm supposed to dislike, and ship the characters I'm supposed to ship. None of this "going against the crowd" or "having an original opinion" nonsense.

Rec: Envy/Ed drabble by jaebi_lit for chain_of_fics (so most of you will have seen it already, HA). Spoilers for up to 51, AU, MAD LOVE.

***

More fiction from the backlog. Warning: incredible amounts of FLUFF and RANDOMNESS ahead.

Title: Ten Things
Series: Hunter x Hunter
Pairing: Killua and Gon, in a totally Gen way.
30_kisses theme: 10 (#10)
Summary: Descisions descisions descisions, aka WAFF.

( Longer than it ought to be. )

Yes. Comments appreciated.