blue_underwing

X-Men movie

2009-05-17T17:50:00Z

So I saw the new X-men movie. Now, while I did enjoy the film, I understand why it got the reviews it did. The movie's biggest problem is that, basically, it's fanfic. The entire point of the movie (as indicated by the title) it to explore Wolverine's back story. If you care about Wolverine, you'll have a good time. You get an interesting back-story, the acting it great, and there are a lot of cool explosions.

But, and it's a big but, if you do not already care about Wolverine this movie will not make you care about him. And, as is generally the case, if you don't care about the main character the movie will be boring for you. It will just be a series of explosions. And no matter how good the explosions are, they can't make up for a total lack of emotional investment in the characters.

In short, the movie cannot stand on its own two feet. You have to come into the theater already invested in the characters in order to make it work for you. So, for all those out there who like Wolverine a want to see a movie about him, you'll have a great time. For everyone else, rent the first 2 X-men movies.

PS: I have dreamwidth codes if anyone wants.

I can has Dreamwidth?

2009-05-06T02:08:20Z

Thanks to tzigane I now have a dreamwidth account! This makes me very happy. She is a wonderful person. :)

Now: Lets see if I can figure out how to use it before my computer crashed again. So, did this crosspost?

(And I really do think it was a coincidence that it bluescreened right when I hit the create button.)

I Hate Pollen

2009-05-05T05:44:55Z

Must not claw at eyes Must not claw at eyes Must not claw at eyes...

BUY THESE BOOKS!

2009-04-28T23:57:12Z

Sarah Monette has recently completed her four book series, Doctrine of the Labyrinth. The books are, in order:
Melusine
The Virtu
The Mirador
Corambis

They are amazingly good. Please go buy them! Now, I'll admit my reasons for telling you to buy the books is largely selfish. I want more books from this author, and I think I'm more likely to get more books if she is making more money. As opposed to say, her not making enough money and having to keep a day job rather than write.

But still, the books are VERY good and if you like dark fantasy, you'll love them. And I have no idea how to describe them. Even if laid out the whole plot for you, it wouldn't describe them, it won't convey the feel. I can't steal from the cover flaps as, quite frankly, they do a horrible job of summing up, while spoiling neat plot points. So how to describe the books without spoiling them? Okay, I'll give it my best shot:

It's like Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel's Legacy saga as directed by Quentin Tarantino.
The author has a PhD in English. You can tell.
She plays with genre conventions like Yo-Yo Ma plays the cello.
To paraphrase the author, the books are about people learning to have a relationship that is other than dysfunctional.
Openly gay protagonist! How often do you see that? And well done, too!
Boy does she do an amazing job of writing crazy

Did that help? y/n/m/wtf

Okay, so with my BUY THESE BOOKS!! rec firmly in place, a caveat: These books are not for the faint of heart. They are DARK fantasy. Emphasis on Dark. To explain how dark without particularly giving anything away, I shall steal tzigane's all purpose warning:

Warnings: In this work of fiction, there may be any, none or all of the following:

Laughter, tears, smut, lime, lemon, kisses, fondling, ice cream, torture, rape, mush, cursing, cross-dressing, criminalists, calculators, thievery, mad heroics, Cold War stuffs, aliens, espionage, oyster stew, homosexual and/or heterosexual sex and/or relationships, big-nosed scientists, smart-assed scientists, masturbation, mutual masturbation, joy, nuzzling, happiness, orgasms, Alphabets, cuteness, adult abuse, abuse-abuse, and pretty much pain, suffering, thigh holsters, and torture of all varieties. Oh. And the occasional death. If none of this is your cup of tea, maybe you should avoid it.

Just so you're prepared ~_^

Replace "scientists" with "wizards" and you've pretty much got it covered.

And now for some minorly spoilery bits from each book which really do nothing to further your knowledge of the series:

Melusine: In which there are man-eating mermaids
The Virtu: In which zombies roam the capital building
The Mirador: In which they see dead people
Corambis: In which a train is attacked by a giant robot

No, really!

BUY THESE BOOKS!! I've got them all in hardback; you can spring for the first three in paper. :)

Update: Amazon pleads stupidity

2009-04-14T01:39:54Z

Okay, so we know it was stupidity any way you cut it, but they are claiming unintended stupidity:

Amazon's official story:
This is an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloging error for a company that prides itself on offering complete selection.

Many books have now been fixed and we're in the process of fixing the remainder as quickly as possible, and we intend to implement new measures to make this kind of accident less likely to occur in the future.

The unofficial "we didn't want anyone to see just how stupid we were" story as per http://www.lilithsaintcrow.com/journal/2009/04/idosyncratic-code-amazonfail/

From: Mike Daisey *email redacted*
Date: April 13, 2009 2:00:34 PM EDT
To: Anthony Hecht anthony @thestranger.com
Subject: Re: In case it gets lost in the comments…

Well, this is the real story: a guy from Amazon France got confused on how he was editing the site, and mixed up “adult”, which is the term they use for porn, with stuff like “erotic” and “sexuality”. That browse node editor is universal, so by doing that there he affected ALL of Amazon. The CS rep thought the porn question as a standard porn question about how searches work.

The livejournaler is full of shit.

On Apr 13, 2009, at 1:41 PM, Anthony Hecht wrote:

> Ah, very interesting.. I would actually love to know a little more detail if you have it.. would be great to get the real story out there on Slog, especially as this livejournaler’s claim that he “bantown”‘d it for kicks is making the rounds:
> http://community.livejournal.com/brutal_honesty/3168992.html
>
> a.

(from email)

Actually, I buy this. "Never attribute to malice that which can be as easily explained by idiocy."

Amazon, Why do you fail me?

2009-04-13T04:09:43Z

To sum up, it looks like Amazon is deliberately making it harder to find LGBT Lit. For more details, go here:

http://www.journalfen.net/community/unfunnybusiness/100114.html

This truly ticks me off on a number of levels, not the least of which is that it disturbs my happy candy-land fantasy that we're getting past this as a culture.

Now, I acknowledge that Amazon has the right to do anything they want with their own business. We, in turn, have a right not to buy things from Amazon ever again. Now, I somehow doubt that they did this specifically to hurt the LGBT community. Rather, I think some twit convinced the higher-ups that having OMGTEHGAY!!! pop up on searches was hurting their sales. Thus, to prevent such idiocy from being perpetrated in the future, we just have to demonstrate that this sort of behavior will hurt their sales a whole lot more.

(PS: tehdely suggests here http://tehdely.livejournal.com/88823.html that this may be a result of values-trolls abusing the the "mark as adult" button. I'd love to give Amazon the benefit of the doubt, if I could actually FIND a "mark as adult" button.)

Earth Hour

2009-03-29T01:11:47Z

I turned all the lights off, and as per instructions I am LJing about it. Now, doesn't it a bit - awkward - to turn the lights off but keep the computer on?

A Song

2008-11-06T06:02:38Z

You are the new day
You are the new day

I will love you more than me
and more than yesterday
If you can but prove to me
you are the new day

Send the sun in time for dawn
Let the birds all hail the morning
Love of life will urge me say
you are the new day

When I lay me down at night
knowing we must pay
Thoughts occur that this night might
stay yesterday

Thoughts that we as humans small
could slow worlds and end it all
lie around me where they fall
before the new day

One more day when time is running out
for everyone
Like a breath I knew would come I reach for
the new day

Hope is my philosophy
Just needs days in which to be
Love of life means hope for me
borne on a new day

You are the new day

blue_underwing @ 2008-11-05T11:17:00

2008-11-05T16:18:20Z

:) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

I Voted

2008-11-04T16:31:55Z

I voted. It was amazingly easy. Took half and hour, and 25min of that was just getting to and from the polling place. No lines, no waiting. So don't be afraid of losing too much time out of your day. You could be in an easy district too.

VOTE TODAY!!

2008-11-04T14:59:44Z

It's Nov. 4th

!!!!VOTE TODAY!!!!

It's your last chance.

VOTE!!!

2008-11-02T20:13:43Z

Election day in the USA is this coming Tuesday, Nov. 4

!!!!VOTE!!!!

Return To Sender

2008-09-19T00:53:36Z

Dear Government,

First of all, let me say I do appreciate the sentiment behind your recent purchase of AIG. However, I believe there has been a miscommunication: we wanted Health insurance. Also, there seems to have been some confusion surrounding the term 'national'. If you could please send us the receipt so we can make the exchange, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
John Q. Taxpayer

Why can't I write happy?

2008-07-11T15:22:23Z

When I'm reading a story, one of my qualifications for "good" is that it have a happy ending. I don't read, and I especially don't read fanfic, to be depressed. That said, I find it especially irritating that I can't seem to manage to write stories with happy endings. The best I seem to manage is an ending less horrible than it otherwise would have been. Let's review (and yes, this will spoil some of my story):

Of the stories I've written where I've attempted an upbeat ending, they've ended with:
1) An alternate version of McKay stuck in a degrading low end job. (But our Rodney got back home.)
2) The machine induced reversal of Rodney's trans-gender surgery. (But still better than losing eyes, hands, and most of his face.)
3) The portent of Rodney and Jeannie's relationship falling apart when he rejects her decision to marry and stay home. (But she accepts his decision about the transgender surgery. No wait, that makes it worse.)
4) The horrible side effects of a botched study of ancient tech finally stop. (But only after seven years of intermittent agony.)

Did I mention these were the supposedly happy ones?

So back to my original question: Why, oh why, can't I write happy?

A Confession

2008-06-05T02:46:57Z

I have a burning desire to see Severus Snape knocked up. Yes, yes. I know that mpreg is second only to Mary Sue on the list of fanfic sins, but I tend to like them when they are done well. It my not happen a large percentage of the time, but they CAN be done well. Really. I mean it. Really!

This is of course assuming the author comes up with a good enough explanation that I am able to suspend disbelief. This is where HP fandom has the advantage. "Magic" is just such a better explanation than "Ancient aliens decide to leave baby making machines randomly lying around" (*cough* SGA *cough*).

Snape himself though is the real selling point. He is just such an interesting and grey character. He's usually controlled, but can fly into rages. He's intelligent. His has a tongue that can flay your skin off. His motives, while they may stray to good, are by no means pure. He lies so well it approaches fooling all of the people all of the time. I just want to see how he reacts to the the situation. And if I also get to see him in mother bear mode, it's a bonus.

On lists and tastes

2008-03-29T03:16:05Z

I love themed fic listed. I think that people who compile such lists (hi korilian ^_^) are wonderful. Not only are these list a great tool for finding stories I can't quite remember the title or author of, they also cater directly to my joy in reading fifteen bajillion takes on whatever plot I'm currently obsessed with.

I've been playing in Harry Potter fandom lately, and I've come across one such wonderful person, who goes by painless_j She has made MANY themed lists, has a list of other people's themed lists, and link the a couple other people's lists of other people's themed lists. Dayenu, but she's also cross-referenced her themed lists with her recs. Have I mentioned I also love rec lists? She's great!

But this is where it gets a bit odd. Granted, different people have different tastes in stories, but one would think that if you come down to something as specific as "HP gen fanfic portraying Severus Snape at an age younger than 11", there should be a good amount of agreement as to what is a good story in the genre. But not so. A number of stories I like failed to get her recommendation. That, I sort of understand. Two people might not love the same stories, even if they both sort of like them. However, she's also recced a couple stories that I disliked to the extent that I couldn't finish them. And it takes a LOT to stop me reading a story that fits my current OCD.

This finding has now sparked the interest of my inner anthropologist. I had previously thought enjoyment of a story was a simple matter of liking of the theme plus quality of writing. Obvious, this equation is overly simplistic, or painless_j and I would be in perfect agreement on what constituted a good child-Snape story. What then can account for such disparate views? Is it rather some complex calculus on the number of overlapping genre likes and priming on one's opinion of the the author with adjustment for preferred story length divided by the ratio of word to grammar errors multiplied by a tolerance variable and....

Did I mention my inner anthropologist is kind of a geek?

SGA 4:20 - Dolphin noises ensue

2008-03-08T04:19:25Z

Love Love Love this ep sooooooooooooo much!!!!

Of course, time travel just does it for me so I was already hooked, but RODNEY!!!! It’s just so him. Don’t like history? Well then, fix it. Tenacious as a badger trying to gnaw through your ankle (does that make him a Hufflepuff?). So, it takes twenty-five years, is a tad morally ambiguous and everyone thinks he’s wasting his life for trying. He can do it Dammit!

The man does not know when to quit. Sure, it bit him on the ass back in Trinity, but here it saves the day. And coming right off the end 4:19 with him INSISTING that they’ll figure it out and have Carson out of the freezer in a jiffy...

Well let me just reiterate Love Love Love Love Love this ep.!!!!

SGA 4:16 Trio

2008-02-09T05:03:03Z

I must say I’ve been enjoying the heck out of the past few episodes. I mean yes, I acknowledge it has seemed like the writers just threw up their hands and started stealing plots from my mom's romance novels, and that their Effects budget has been reduced to coffee change, there by necessitating everything be shot in one room. But despite this, the dialog has been witty, the acting has been good to exceptional, and I've just had a lot of fun watching.

Especially Rodney. ::Hugs Rodney::

They've even been pretty consistent on the characterization, a rare thing indeed. Yes, these are filler eps., but they are good filler. Cotton-candy, as opposed to the sawdust of yesteryear.

Which brings me to tonight’s ep..

It was fun. Sam, Rodney, and the new Doc. fall down a well (okay, mineshaft). They have to get out before it all comes down. Sam & Rodney stay in character, and the new Doc get to build some. The Katy affair is pronounced officially dead. Rodney gets to be the hero in his own special way, all the while fumbling all the manly-man cues. Sam gets to show her M4D SK1llZ in the smarts/leadership/military arts, while also showing her weaknesses (not backing down from the tottering construct -- twice -- leads to a broken leg and a worse situation). The Doc is the most tremulous and timid of the group, but also proves to be much less the cloistered geek than either McKay or Carter. And all three get to take turns being the one with the bright idea.

Okay, I’m starting to sound much too serious. Next thing you know I'll be doing a feminist interpretation of the gender dynamics. I'll stop that now.

So anyway, I thought the ep. was funny. I had a good time watching it, and that's basically what I look for in a program. The best bit was, of course, Rodney preference for Jon Stewart. [blink] If he had too. I'm so hoping that gets picked up on Monday’s Daily Show.

Random Thoughts on Fic

2008-02-05T03:25:21Z

Well, I haven't gotten a chance to post in a while, so I thought I'd ramble on a bit about fanfic and prove I'm still alive.

I like fanfic. In fact, I like fiction in general. What I've figured out I like best are long angst filled dramas, the kind the yank your emotions around and have you sniffling over the poor poor character. Mercedes Lackey described the process of writing this kind of story as "making you like a character then dropping a mountain on him, picking him up, dusting him off, then dropping another mountain on him." Or something like that anyway. Hurt/Comfort fits in here nicely.

This isn't the only kind of thing I read of course, but let's just say that I'm a lot less picky about the whole 'writing quality' thing if the story fits the above criteria. This means that when such a story is also intelligent, well plot, and brilliantly executed, I can spend weeks obsessing over it and years fruitlessly watching the webpage for a sequel.

I've done this for every fandom I've ever spent real time in: Gundam Wing, Highlander, Smallville, SG1, SGA, Harry Potter, and even (briefly) Charmed.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, got any recs?

Do good, go here:

2007-12-12T23:42:22Z

Give toys to children's hospitals. Ones they actually want:

http://www.childsplaycharity.org/

The hospitals have registries at Amazon. Pick a hospital from the board and send them stuff. Or you can just give money.

Atlantis 4:9 Miller's Crossing

2007-12-01T04:16:48Z

This ep. ROCKED!!!

I just love the Rodney-Jeanie dynamic. Love it to death. I love Rodney getting to show his heroic streak. I love that he was great with the opening doors, but not so much with the getting out of the building. I love that he asked the wraith for help for Jeanie, when he wasn't willing to before. I love the parallel that set up with their own kidnapping. I love that Rodney want to let the wraith eat him to save Jeanie. I love that John wouldn't let him. I love that Rodney tried anyway. I love that John knew he would and changed the locks. I love that the wraith is developing as a character. And most of all, I love how darkly manipulative John can be. LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVED THIS EP!!!!!!!

Cold Season

2007-11-11T21:40:49Z

I'm sick. I don't like being sick. I can't even whine about it properly becuase everyone else I talk to has the same thing.

Well, at least I have and excuse not to get any real work done for the next few day.

Harry Potter Fic please

2007-08-03T02:14:36Z

Cutting this because I've finished DH and there is a vague chance someone could derive info from my request. You know, if their psychic.

I waited until the last book came out to read the HP fic. Now that I've finish it, ME WANT FIC!!!! But Harry Potter fandom is vast. Huge. ENORMUS. And I can't find a damn thing in it!

What I'm looking for is well written Snape-centric GEN. Angst, preferable. Considering the sheer size of the fandom, there must be tons of this, but I can't separate the wheat from the chaff. My Google foo is failing and, but for one, I can only seem to turn up slash or het recs lists.

Anyone know where I should be looking?

E-mail

2007-06-18T20:54:44Z

Just discovered that the LJ email does not work, so I've suck a working one in my bio. Sorry if this has ever caused bouncing for anyone.

Perspective

2007-05-31T15:23:05Z

But in the scheme of things, I'd say that Russia testing nukes is worse than this LJ SNAFU:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/31/russia.missile.reut/index.html

Been a great week, hasn't it?