Now that's something I wasn't expecting

Like many writers, I can probably safely say that I work nearly entirely on a computer at this stage of the writing game. Heck, I bought my netbook Hamster for pretty much that specific purpose.

I use my notebooks to plan stories, to do sketches and outlines of what I'm going to write, to make lists of what's in the hopper, to try and write out ideas before I decide to commit to them in a piece of fiction.

But imagine my surprise when yesterday morning I found myself compelled to start on THIS:



That's my moleskine-type notebook and that's my strange handwriting and that's my fountain pen. At the time when I took the photo, very early on Thursday morning, I'd actually managed to do about ten pages of actual WRITING in my notebook. Yes, there are parts where I've crossed out entire lines because, after all, there are no backspace keys when you're actually doing it all in longhand.

You have no idea how much my left hand hurts. I used to be a dedicated pencil-pusher [and I mean that almost literally] and now my hand hurts when I try to put together a grocery list that's about six items long. O how the mighty have fallen! XD

Dream Team!

Related posts:
Inception: Rapid Review, No Spoilers
Inception, in on the ground floor
Fandoms at Random: Inception Dreams

Went out to watch Despicable Me with my partner yesterday. Great film, but I wish I'd also had the chance to watch Inception again - only this time in an IMAX theater, at a very cheap price. As a consolation prize, I asked my partner to take photos of me next to one of the movie poster banners.


Me and some of the Dream Team. It looks like I'm literally butting heads with Ariadne!


A failed attempt at heart-hands and the only decent shot that included both Arthur and Eames. [It took me this long to figure out that Eames is wearing HORRIBLE pants? The plaid he's wearing in this poster doesn't even look good on him!]

Aah, Inception fandom, how can you be so amazing? Just in the last month or so I've gone and done so many fandom-related and fanfiction-related experiences.

I'm now in the thick of preparations for two fanfic exchanges - basically, you write a fanfic or create fanart for someone and someone else does the same for you. One of the exchanges is Inception-only, for slash pairings, and my entry is already in beta. And then I signed up for one that was for crossovers, so that means Inception crossed with a lot of other things. You can imagine how pleased I was when I found out that this exchange also includes Doctor Who [specifically Nine, Ten, and Eleven], and Sherlock!

I joined a fandom auction to help the victims of the Pakistan floods, and actually got bids! That was amazing.

Kink memes! Haha! Granted I write fills for oddball prompts, but it's amazingly fun and incredibly addictive. Gah.

And it's in this fandom where I've actually become an active beta reader; that is, I help other authors out with their work by looking their stories over for grammar and other possible trouble areas. I've been a beta for at least three or four people now and I also have multiple betas for my own work. I'm unreasonably happy about all this collaboration and general community spirit.

*dives into the deep end*

"I want to know what it's like to live // I want to know what it's like to love"

Song lyrics in the title are taken from the ending theme of the Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations OVA, さいごの果実 [Saigo no Kajitsu / Last Fruit]. This song is also my current ear worm.

If you haven't seen Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations yet, there may be spoilers here.


DVD cover.

I had a rather bad Saturday afternoon last weekend. Seriously, how is it possible to sleep when the ground-floor neighbors set up a karaoke machine right under my window - and were happily, drunkenly murdering a bunch of crap songs? Imagine cacophony up to eleven - or don't.

Since I'd come home with my partner expecting to sleep off the effects of the Friday night shift - but got THAT annoyance instead, there was nothing for it but to find another way to block the idiots out.

And that is how I came to watch the Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations OAV.

Having already read the whole series beforehand, I knew that this was the turning point of the whole story - the point where each character begins to divulge his/her/its secrets.

Sakura, Syaoran, Fai, and Kurogane arrive via Mokona-portal from a failed sortie in the land of Rekort. Princess Sakura has fallen unconscious, and Syaoran is injured. They are quickly introduced to the reason why the world they're now in is named "Acid Tokyo" - the rain is murderously acidic.

The Tsubasa characters are soon picked up by Kamui and his group, all from X/1999. The odd thing is that Kamui is in charge of who are actually the Dragons of Earth from the previous series. Additionally, the rival group is composed of the Dragons of Heaven - but they, in turn, are led by Fuuma.

Kamui and his group are watching over a safe cache of water underneath their headquarters. While the OVA reveals what Kamui is actually guarding, the rest of the series will eventually reveal the extreme importance of this reservoir - in fact, it provides that component of the main series's title, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicles.

The third episode of the OVA begins the major mind screw of the series: why are there two Syaorans? Which one is real and which one is the clone? [Hint: it's in the eyes.] And not just that - we eventually get two Sakuras as well, as recapped in the next image.



In the overall context of TRC, I think Production I.G did a great job of animating this tale and telling the increasingly complicated story. The idea is that everything gets very strange from here - and they manage to weave that theme throughout the OVA episodes very well.

I felt quite a lot better after I'd finished watching the OVA - not the least because it had begun to rain hard outside [thankfully not as acidic as the one in the show], definitively silencing the karaoke wailers.

In short: if you're a CLAMP fan, you're definitely missing out if you haven't seen the three episodes of Tsubasa Tokyo Revelations yet. It really lives up to its title and contributes heavily to the set-up for the series finale.

I love being in my fandoms.

Because where else can you find these sorts of wonderful and handsome and beautiful people in amazing suits?!

TV Tropes links might be relevant here.

Dressed To Kill
Sharp Dressed Man
Hot Chick In A Badass Suit

Warning, pictures ahead!

DOCTOR WHO

Fifth Doctor Peter Davison and Tenth Doctor David Tennant, from the Children in Need Special "Time Crash".


Eleventh Doctor Matt Smith with Karen Gillan as Amy Pond.

SHERLOCK (2010 BBC)

Benedict Cumberbatch as Sherlock Holmes and Martin Freeman as Dr. John Watson.

TAKARAZUKA KAGEKIDAN

Former Top Star of Soragumi, Wao Youka.

INCEPTION

Cillian Murphy, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Enough said, really!

Talking about fan fiction

Photo comes from this entry.

Funny how I talk so infrequently about fan fiction on this blog and yet I participate in fandoms by writing fan fiction.

All blog entries mentioning fan fiction. Yeah, there's not much.

Wikipedia sez:

Fan fiction (alternately referred to as fanfiction, fanfic, FF, or fic) is a broadly-defined term for fan labor regarding stories about characters or settings written by fans of the original work, rather than by the original creator. ... Fan fiction, therefore, is defined by being both related to its subject's canonical fictional universe and simultaneously existing outside the canon of that universe.

I have been reading and writing fan fiction for more than ten years and I ... don't much write about it. Prior to this blog post, I didn't even make a habit out of telling people that I consume this stuff.

And then I find out that people like Neil Gaiman and Matt Smith [yes, THAT ONE] write fan fiction. And that Gneil, at least, has no problems with people writing the stuff for his work; the same goes for, hmm, the last time I looked J. K. Rowling didn't mind so much, either....

I know that there are serious legal issues with this stuff; I know there are fandoms in which fan fiction is actually Not A Good Thing; there are authors who actively ban it; and yet the fans keep going, producing reams of stuff in the process.

Wish I knew why.

Informal straw poll time.

Fan fiction: yea or nay?

Do you write or read fan fiction?

If the answer to the above question is yes, what fandoms?

That's all. Thanks for your time, dears.

Inception, in on the ground floor

Related post:
Inception: Rapid Review, No Spoilers

And there are still no spoilers here because I love you all and I love this film too.



It's so exciting to get in on the ground floor of a fandom: you're there when it gets started, you watch the enthusiasm rocket up to astounding levels, you feel the boundless energy of fans and their love.

I'm not looking forward to the inevitable schisms and wank - it'll come, most fandoms go through those pangs periodically. But for now the sheer explosion of inspiration and creativity that's come - it's exactly as Eames tells Arthur:

You mustn't be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.

And that is precisely what we're doing right now. Thanks, Christopher Nolan and the cast and crew. We're dreaming. And we're loving it.

Inception: Rapid Review, No Spoilers

Having rushed off to see Inception today with my partner, here are my notes and impressions:

- I want to stay at that hotel, hamster wheel corridor included.

- The way I'm thinking right now, my totem would either be a fountain pen or a crochet hook. [And I teased my partner that his would be a miniature figure of a panda.]

- Eames / the Forger [Tom Hardy] is my absolute favorite character in the movie.

- Nobody messes with Arthur / the Point Man [Joseph Gordon-Levitt].

- And Ariadne / the Architect [Ellen Page]? Rocks. End of discussion.

- As for actors: GODDAMN but Cillian Murphy can ACT. Whew. Bloody amazing that man.

After the movie? Best advice would be to engage friends in friendly but intense debate over the story, its themes, and its internal logic. Preferably over either alcohol or, if there are teetotalers, lots and lots of sweets [my partner and I did most of our critiques over dinner, which included a slice of Black Forest cake].

And, as I said over and over again on my Facebook and my Twitter: whatever the hell Christopher Nolan was on while writing and rewriting this damn movie - I WANT SOME AND I WANT IT NOW.

Go, watch, be amazed. I am an absolute newbie in the genre of mindfuck cinema, but I will be so presumptuous as to say that this movie is now on my list.

Schrödinger's...fever?!

For some reason I've been spending the past couple of days unable to determine if I'm feeling well or unwell. One moment I'll feel like I'm on the verge of a fever - shaking hands, a case of the chills, the feeling that I've bent forward too far and will be falling flat on my face any moment. And then I'll feel fine enough to want to dance or even do a kickline.

As I mentioned in a Twitter status, "What is it with this persistent feeling of being under the weather?! Either I'm unwell or I'm not, I can't be both! *grr*"

And when I posted something like that on my Facebook wall someone replied with the famous cat who is neither alive nor dead. I should be happy they picked THAT particular image; I certainly would not have wanted the description to be something along the lines of the Weeping BLOODY Angels from Doctor Who!

I'm starting to think I may have caught something from someone last week, during the wake.

I'll try to go back to more regular posting from now on. In the meantime, enjoy this video and my current LSS, and don't forget to keep your eyes peeled for hyde-san's blooper!

Radio silence, why the Takarazuka Kagekidan, and "Until lambs become lions"

1. Radio Silence

You might be wondering why the blog abruptly fell quiet for a while; the answer is that my maternal grandfather died in the morning of the 12th of May. I had a shift at work that evening, so I went in and asked for bereavement leave, and then completed the classes scheduled on that night.

At the wake, which was located near one of Metro Manila's major cemeteries, some of my family decided to pay a visit to another pair of sleepers. These two are very famous, and after seeing the photo I'm sure you'll understand why:



I was surprised at my own reaction to seeing them in this rather plain and simple setting - it was something like Erm, that's it? We would never have found the tomb if it weren't for a helpful series of yellow ribbons tied to mark the path.

Back on the home front, my grandfather was buried on Friday morning.

It wasn't exactly an *unexpected* death - he'd been bedridden for years and had been depressed / refusing to eat in recent weeks. Considering the rather tumultuous history I've had with him, I had nothing more to say but "goodbye".

2. Why the Kagekidan

Because of the whirlwind of: May 12 shift (Wednesday night) -> proceed to wake (pretty much all of Thursday) -> be of assistance until the burial (Friday morning), I was bone-deep tired when I got home past lunchtime on Friday. So I fell into bed and slept like a ROCK.

After getting up and seeing my partner off to his Friday night shift, I had the rest of the night to myself - so how did I spend it? By watching two Takarazuka Kagekidan revues in a row. Nothing like seeing these powerful women sing and dance so well to make me feel better.

Many Takarazuka plays are paired with musical revues, and even the full-length musical productions like Elisabeth and Rose of Versailles end with a sort of mini-revue. In this case, I watched


The Showstopper - this revue was paired with a Takarazuka adaptation of the opera Turandot. This screenshot is from the "Besame Mucho" number near the end of the revue.


Neo Voyage - the revue that was paired with a Takarazuka adaptation of the opera Il Trovatore. This screenshot is from the amazing "Puttin' on the Ritz" tap-dance medley.

3. "Rise and rise again"
And finally, I was able to catch a screening of the new Ridley Scott film Robin Hood today. It wasn't half bad; I especially liked a specific emotional transition near the beginning of the final battle sequence.



Still, yeah, ain't Russell bloody Crowe a bit too OLD to be playing these sorts of heroes and roles?

Iron Man movie-verse takes ANOTHER level in badassery

No spoilers here. Just stills and captions, and that title, which I shall leave to you to agree or disagree with.

Forget Girls Gone Wild. No, really. The entirety of the Iron Man mythos - but especially so in the movies - can pretty much be summarized as Science Projects Gone Wild.

Don Cheadle in an action movie? Well, he kind of manages to pull it off here.

And Sam Rockwell plays Justin Hammer as a great big idiot jejemon!

At the climax of the movie, these two armored guys unleash a hell of a lot of firepower.

I really, REALLY could not stop myself from thinking, "War Machine = Gundam frigging Heavyarms." Without the running out of bullets bit.

Go, watch, and stay till after the credits!

SABLE Strikes Again

And what does SABLE stand for?

Warning, as always: There is a TVTropes link in that blog post.

***

I've been trying to eat up and/or otherwise dispatch several items from my yarn stash lately since my stashing policy is not to buy anything new if there's still something that can be used. It's a good thing that lately my interest has turned to motif-type work: see my sudden burst of making granny squares, and then my current mini-obsession of ten-pointed stars.

Having finally made some headway in clearing out the bits and pieces of yarn in my stash, I felt justified in buying something like THIS:


Caron One Pound Yarn in Royalty (a sort of dark royal blue). One skein is 16 oz and costs about PHP600.

When I went to Dreams Yarnshoppe to pick this behemoth up over the weekend I was pretty much the first customer for the day. (Work ended at 4am; I killed time till 7am, picked up the boyfriend from his office, we went to Banchetto in Ortigas to eat and kill more time, and arrived in Makati just before 10am.)

The saleslady there, who knew me by sight, was pretty curious as to why I hadn't been dropping in - I laughed sheepishly and said that I was on the night shift, so couldn't really go gallivanting freely about the city.

I must have looked so strange exiting Dreams since I was carrying a whole pound of yarn in my backpack - and I was grinning like a loon to boot. The feeling of having new yarn is really quite intoxicating, heh.

Anyway, this is a lot of yarn to get in one purchase and I'm already lining up a host of projects in which I can put it to good use. There's this really pretty mesh shopping bag to start with (my first time to make one of those), and of course I want to make more granny squares and a few more ten-pointed stars, and then I want to try making a cable scarf....

This morning I was a bit of a stereotype....

Dregs of a latte + beautiful Parker ballpoint pen + trusty moleskine notebook = a familiar image about writers.

I was fresh out of my Friday night shift and waiting for a ride to a morning appointment. Having already tried to sleep at the office - and failing miserably - I decided to keep myself awake with a cuppa, and while I was there I decided I'd better get some writing done.

This year I'm a bit...daunted about even attempting to join NaNoWriMo. This partly has to do with the concept - sure, I've written fanfiction before, but do I have enough juice in me to pound out 50,000 words of the same?! And it partly has to do with the work, as I'm not sure how I can work in writing 2,000 words a day around the long hours of teaching people how to speak English.

[And November and December are busy months at the office apparently.]

So one of the things I wound up writing in the notebook was a series of questions regarding NaNo readiness. I wonder if I can survive the month if I take on the workload, write the daily 2,000 or so words, and sleep six or seven hours every day.

...Yeah, that's got me quaking in my shoes a bit. Let's see how it goes from here.

Now, THAT'S Perseus.

Perseus holding the head of Medusa, sculpture by Benvenuto Cellini. This statue is located in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, Italy. Note the details: winged cap, no horse, a specific blade given by Hephaestus. Not included in the sculpture are the other iconic parts of the myth: the purse that could expand to hold Medusa's head, and Athena's highly polished shield, which allowed the hero to see and slay the only mortal Gorgon.

I find it a bit of a coincidence that the last two movies I saw have both been riffs on the myth of Perseus: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and Clash of the Titans [2010].

What did not surprise me was that both movies got the story rather...wrong. The current generation of moviegoers doesn't know their Greek myths, and no one cares enough to get all the details right.

Coming out of the theater where I saw Clash with my partner tonight, I accidentally listened in on a girl as she enthusiastically explained to her companion that the movie was a riff on the Christ theme. This is probably due to how Perseus was presented: the only demigod on earth, therefore a "son of god" and a savior. Proves my point in the previous paragraph, really....

At least Percy Jackson made it a central part of the plot that the gods simply could not keep it in their royal pants and kept producing so many half-divine children.

When I was a kid one of my favorite books was Edith Hamilton's 1942 book Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. I had been given a paperback reprint copy for some occasion or another, and basically read it near to shreds. And one of my favorite myths was that of Perseus.

I've been cringing a lot at all these remakings and revisitings of the Greek, Roman, and Norse tales. I have loved these tales of tragedy and triumph for many years, and to see them get mucked around with through accident or design really rather hurts quite a bit.

I find this very weirdly amusing, and Sissi-like.

So, you know how in some Asian cultures the number four is to be avoided at all costs? There's even a TVTropes page about it [WARNING: TVTropes page!]: Four Is Death

I woke up this morning at an ungodly hour and immediately decided I'd better go online and see what was new.

Well, I found something interesting, all right, and I found it right here on the blog:


Image is current as of 0420 hours. [And 42 happens to be another favorite number of mine, heh!]

If I thought last night it was amusing that the counter was at 4440 hits.... This to me is, well, really hopelessly funny.

It's also a good time for me to be a fangirl - now that I know of the Takarazuka Kagekidan, the number four and the concept of death now make me think of "Der Tod" from the musical Elisabeth. The company's various troupes have performed this musical about six more times since they first put it on in 1996, so it's safe to say it's one of their most popular shows.

The four fours remind me of my two favorite Der Tods:


Shizuki Asato in the 1998 Sora [Cosmos] production. This would be the only time that troupe has done Elisabeth; they have an informal "rule" in place of never repeating a play.


Mizu Natsuki in the 2007 Yuki [Snow] production, the second time that the troupe staged it.

Another Japanese theater company, Toho Co., is staging Elisabeth from August to October this year, with at least three former otokoyaku Top Stars of the Takarazuka Kagekidan in major roles: Asami Hikaru and Sena Jun alternating as Elisabeth, and Mori Keaki as Sophie. Poster.

[Sena Jun happens to be the only actress in the Takarazuka Kagekidan to perform BOTH Elisabeth, to Ayaki Nao's Der Tod in 2005, and Der Tod himself, in 2009. She ALSO played Luigi Lucheni from 2002-3.]

I know, it's a bit morbid and creepy, but still, endlessly amusing and fangirl-y.

CASABLANCA Head-to-Head: 1942 Movie vs. 2009-10 Musical

A poster for Casablanca, featuring who else but Bogart and Bergman.


A chirashi, or flyer, for the Takarazuka Kagekidan / Cosmos Troupe musical adaptation of Casablanca, starring Oozora Yuuhi and Nono Sumika.

I guess it's a funny confession for me to make that I had never in my life seen what's acclaimed as one of the greatest movies of all time (no Kanye West jokes, please!) before 2009: that was when I finally bought a copy of the Casablanca movie. I watched it and I fell in love with most of the cast: from Captain Louis Renault to the central love triangle of Rick Blaine-Ilsa Lund-Victor Laszlo to, especially, the wonderful crew of Rick's Café Américain: Sam, Carl, Sascha, Emil, and Abdul.

As old as the movie was and as prevalent as its influence has been, I still responded to its scenes and its tropes: the shock of Ilsa's return to Rick's life, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine", the duel between "Die Wacht am Rhein" and "La Marseillaise", the final confrontations, and of course the one-two ending punch of "If that plane leaves the ground and you're not with him, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life" and "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship".

And who can forget the songs? "It Had To Be You" and "As Time Goes By" of course are the standouts, but let's not forget "Knock on Wood" and the duel of the songs I mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Casablanca is an acclaimed film, known and loved for many years, and so anyone who tries to adapt it will be given a lot of attention. No one wants to mess with the by-now-immortal movie.

So of course it was a bit of a shock when it was announced that the Takarazuka Kagekidan was creating a musical of the movie.

O tempora o mores!

Here's a subject that's increasingly encroaching on my conversations with my significant other, my friends online and off-, and, well, I might as well give the game away and say that this has been the theme of conversations with members of my own generation at present:

Damn, we're getting OLD.

I think it was the local snarkmeister Jessica Zafra who said something along the lines of, "Don't you just HATE it when a song comes on the radio and everyone else thinks it's such an edgy original, great sound, good performance - but you KNOW you have it on CASSETTE TAPE and you first heard it on your WALKMAN - and you're the only one who knows that song is a REMAKE?"

Case in point: "The Beginning is the End is the Beginning". I recognized it immediately as the song from the George Clooney/Chris O'Donnell Batman & Robin movie right off the bat during the Watchmen trailers. Well, I guess it was just me, since apparently, a lot of younger fans thought that it was a NEW Smashing Pumpkins song.

Cue the reactions: O_o @.@ >.< *facepalm*

And what about the proliferation of those girls and boys dressed up like goth-lolis and trucker-hat emos, eh? So the Philippines finally has its own local definition of weeaboo: people who watch only stuff like Naruto and Bleach and dress up like poor imitations of gothic lolitas, but wouldn’t know what an odango was if it hit them in the face with a matching cry of Tsuki ni kawatte oshioki yo!

And what about those of us who make affectionate jokes about Say My Name? Everyone thinks it began with

MIAKA! TAMAHOME!

but long before that (in 1978!) there was

KAZUYA! ERIKA!

Which got localized to

RICHARD! ERIKA!



And even before that there was

OSCAR! ANDRE!



It's so difficult to realize that the world has passed me by and most of the things that I knew and loved and grew up with have pretty much receded into the mists of history – if it hasn’t been bastardized by clueless remakes, that is.

And now I shall do as Lady Oscar does and get myself a drink, too. I think I need it.

It's apparently called SABLE.

SABLE: A crafting term peculiar to knitters and crocheters, standing for "Stash Above and Beyond Life Expectancy". A label for the condition wherein one accumulates more yarn than one can possibly use in a single lifetime. More on it here [WARNING, seriously: TVTropes link!]

Guilty, guilty, guilty. I mean, just look at this picture right here.


That's my hoard of yarn as of the writing of this entry. And with an impending trip to an entire STREET of yarn stores next week, this stash WILL grow before the year's out!

I mean, I already know what it's like to be an otaku for certain sorts of stuff. I own or have owned the following:
- Japanese-language books,
- cookbooks, the more vintage the better
- anime soundtrack CDs, which I begged and borrowed and traded for
- certain types of Magic: The Gathering cards, those that were appropriate for that pet Sliver deck my BF and I built during Time Spiral block

Now the stash of yarn and hooks for crochet is ALREADY starting to overrun a box and I may need a large plastic crate soon - and I only decided to get into crochet after November!

This is going to be so much fun!

I woke up and everyone was going "TVTropes"!

Aaahh, TVTropes. Site of many names: the great time-waster, productivity killer, fascinating archive of fascinating media, source of many a story to tell (original or not), something that causes the proliferation of browser tabs or windows.

I've been enjoying TVTropes for some time now; I think I was using it before its great crash, and then I got back some two or three months ago.

The funny thing is that over the weekend, two of the websites I regularly visit suddenly decided to mention it, like so:


Dark Roasted Blend, Link Latte for the week of 11 July 2009

Also see the current strip at xkcd, "Tab Explosion".

I particularly appreciate the joke that links TVTropes together with that bit of Internet prankstering, the rickroll.

I really do find it odd that this site that I like enough to put in my sidebar has been trucking along happily for quite some time and then this week it gets a lot more Internet publicity.

I wonder which tropes I and this blog would fit into.