earthy_dreamer

This.

caletara, I think you need this. Or possibly I do.

So I read Twilight and lived. Just barely. Actually, it isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Mostly it's poorly written, poorly edited, full of flat, uninteresting characters, and overall, immensely BORING. The sexism and racism are there, but not as overtly as they apparently get in later volumes...which I will hopefully never have to read.

But hey, upside? If crap like this is getting published, there is absolutely no reason for me not to submit my own writing STAT.

( here's a Twilight rundown with a few spoilers )

In conclusion: I don't understand why this book is popular. And given what I've read about the series, the rest of it is only more infuriating.

But, y'know, to each his own, I guess.

HEY WHO IS THAT SEXY INDIVIDUAL WHO JUST FINISHED 50,284 WORDS IN 28 DAYS?

DAMN RIGHT THAT'S ME.

BOO-YAH!

I'm sorry about the heels. Really, I am. Y'see, I wanted to find us something trendy and grown up to wear. I figured, all the other girls are doing it--why shouldn't I? I thought, my feet and I, we can rock this heel thing. No problem. We'll finally find out what's so swell about how tall(er) people see the world.

But there is a problem, and it is this, as you so rightly pointed out today: heels = TORTURE DEVICES FROM HELL.

What need have I of heels, you asked by making my feet throb painfully? Why does contemporary fashion have to be important now? What's wrong with a damn fine pair of comfy sneakers?

Well, feet, I stand (on you) corrected. No more heels for us. Together, heel-less, we will forge a path to a future of flats, sandals, and sneakers. We will rage against the invasive practices of modern American consumerism and only buy shoes that FIT and are COMFY. We will show our class by never having to limp to a bus stop again.

Just don't expect me to buy you Uggs. Those things are damned ugly.

Love,
me

---

On another note, Kristin Cashore's NaNo peptalk made me a bit teary-eyed. Possibly it's just been a long day month year life.

The 2009 Doctor Who Christmas special is going to FRICKIN' ROCK.

( brief spoilery musings over the end of Waters of Mars )

NaNo is eating my soul and too much to do for school and not enough caffeine in the world and very tired and saw family this weekend that was nice and why is it 70+ degrees in November and arms are itchy and I am ready to be done with school now plskthx except getting a job does not sound like fun and now I have go to write 1667 words bye.

Why the hell is time management so hard?? I AM NEARLY 27, PEOPLE (oh god i'm old). Why have I not perfected this skill set yet? Why haven't I gotten the hang of the whole get-schoolwork-done-but-still-have-a-life-and-make-friends-and-oh-yeah-WRITE-DAMMIT scenario? For serious, all I do is homework and go to work. And sleep. A lot. Too much. And occasionally watch The Daily Show or Chuck (which is a cute show ZOMG, go watch it).

I AM TIRED ALL THE TIME AND I HAVE NO SOCIAL LIFE AND FOR THE LOVE OF GOD I NEED TO STOP WHINING ON LJ AND FINISH MY DAMNED WRITING PROJECTS AND STOP BEING A TOTAL WHINEY DOPE.

And I miss Japanese and my websites and sometimes even Hampshire except, y'know, for the five million things I DON'T miss about Hampshire.

Wow, okay, too much sugar today.

I liked the idea of 50lyricsfanfic, but I wanted to use my own lyrics. Therefore I now attempt to rock the sticky post AND a new Avatar fanfic prompt table, which is below...( under the cut )

Today's pun, brought to you by meiousei:

What's with all these vampire books, and why do they all SUCK?

...You see what I have to live with?

So I'm totally late commenting on it, but Utada Hikaru has released her third American album. I'm listening to it for the first time, so my thoughts may change, but...

Am I the only one who actually liked Exodus better?

Don't get me wrong. I respect Hikki as a musician. She's talented, she takes control of her entire production (writing music, writing lyrics, arranging, etc.), and I love that she's always experimenting with different styles. But I feel like this entire album is manufactured with the express purpose of sounding just like all the crappy American pop/hip-hop we've been hearing for years. (Really, US? We need foreign musicians to sound exactly like our own worst offerings before we'll give them a chance?)

She's got some original lyrics ("Apple and Cinnamon") and of course her use of piano and hip-hop beats is catchy ("Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence--FYI"), but I find myself wishing for the simplicity of her earlier stuff (associating the song "Automatic II" with her first-ever Japanese single, "Automatic," does a great disservice to the original song). Or at the very least I'd like to have heard more of the Asian-influenced techno stuff she's been working with for the past few years ("Passion," "Colors," etc.).

On the other hand, Bonnie Pink continues to delight, even if her newer stuff has moved more toward pop and away from the folksy stuff she started with. The mini-album (single?) with "Joy," "Happy Ending," and "You and I" is definitely worth listening to. And if you missed it, "Kane wo Narashite" (the Japanese version, not English-language version "Ring a Bell") was great.

Ayumi Hamasaki's latest album, NEXT LEVEL, isn't as strong as some of her previous stuff, but it has a few decent tracks, too, and harkens back to her dance-mix mid-90s era stuff (possibly because she's lost hearing in one ear and needs the beat to help her hear the music?). "Sparkle" is catchy (though the video, which centers around someone's Ayu-in-latex fetish, is a bit disturbing), and "NEXT LEVEL" is a good driving song. As always I found myself wishing some of her instrumentals were full-length songs rather than the little tidbits we get, but hey, I guess we should just be glad Ayu's sticking around despite her loss of hearing. After all, what would we do without the queen of J-pop?

This concludes your update on music you quite possibly don't care about.

Sometimes the human condition really pisses me off.

Corrolary the First: How do you deal with idiots on the interwebs? At what point do you have to say, You know what, you're too stupid to argue with, I give up?

Corrolary the Second: I hate being angry. I suppose it's better than being depressed, but only just barely. Being angry makes me feel unstable, weak, useless, and stupid. And, y'know, ANGRY. Like the world doesn't give a damn about me or anything I care about, and anything I do (or don't do) just exacerbates the problem.

(Ooh. Exacerbate. Good word.)

Maybe I just need a walk.

This time it's for real.

Bardic Fool. A writing-centric blog. So I can be like the Real Writers Who Keep Blogs About Important Stuff.

In other news, I have no idea what language the people behind me are speaking.

First really in-depth edit of the novel: DONE.

The last chapter seriously needs some reworking, though, and I have yet to work in the comments suggested by my critique group (I have a critique group! Tee hee!). Also, I think 45,000 words is probably too short. But at the same time, I still have plenty of places where I'm too wordy and need to cut.

BUT ANYWAY.

EDIT #1 DONE.

Now it's queries to literary agents, then edit #2.

God, this thing could actually happen, couldn't it?

I would like to make an I R TEH PROFESSIONAL WRITER RAWR blog (i.e., a blog where I can write about writing and design the layout to my specifications), but arranging something through my hosting is giving me issues (WordPress freezes out every time I try to edit the layout). Thoughts? Should I just make a Blogspot account and deal with the limited layout capabilities?

Since above-mentioned blog does not exist yet, here's some thoughts on working on the novel that I found in my notebook today. Warning: Contains emo which I no longer feel. Well. To the extent I felt it then.

( My novel and I are having an argument )


And in other news, writing Toph kicking Zuko's ass post-season 3 is entirely too much fun. ( Read more... )


Done now, I swear.

You know what I needed most right now, amidst attempts to not stress out about starting school again and to not freak out too much about sending out novel queries?

Frickin' fanfiction plot bunnies.

The drabbles won't be hard, and they'll be fun little diversions from Massive Novel Editing (TM), but...epic post-season 3 Avatar fic? Really, brain? You had to do this to me now?

Being a fangirl is really hard sometimes.

Between fanfic, novel worries, and dogs who seem to think it's necessary to wake me up at 4:30 AM, this has been an awesome week so far. -_-

On the upside: I <3 visiting the Bettendorf Library and saying hello to all the folks I worked with/grew up with. The awesome factor remains high. Hopefully I can remember this when I'm whining to myself in a few months about how stupid grad school is.

Dear People of the Universe,

STOP KILLING EACH OTHER KTHX.

~ earthy

In other news: The more I hear about M. Night Shamalamalan's "vision" for the Avatar movie, the more I want to scream. Or possibly kill someone/something. When did complicated, brilliant writing about Asian-based mythology and culture become Avatar: The Movie In Which Non-Descript European White People Save The World From Crazy People Of Color? When did Japanese-based culture/costume become Greek/Roman? When did Inuit culture become Scandanavian culture? When did accurate written Chinese become gibberish? When did Tibetan monks become non-denominational Christians? WHEN DID IT BECOME OKAY FOR ACTORS NOT TO READ ORIGINAL SOURCE MATERIAL--AND TO BE PROUD OF THAT??

Done now.

No matter how stressed/depressed/irrationally tired I am, I will always love me some Timothy Hutton. "Leverage" = <3 + added cameos by A&E Nero Wolfe actors FTW. (And +5 awesome for a seriously nifty ensemble cast.)

And yes, I am looking forward to capping/rewatching "Avatar" because I miss Iroh. Even though Zuko is my favorite character. (See, grayscaled? It's still little boys and old men with me. Er. And whiney teenagers. Some fetishes things never change.)

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT.
So on the race in YA fiction front....Issue #1: What exactly IS race in fantasy/SF? Do we mean ethnicity, i.e., representations of non-white characters? Or do we mean the metaphor for race, i.e., elves, aliens, etc.? Probably Race Fail covered some of this, and I should go look at that.

(And furthermore, how the heck do you find info on this stuff? Reference librarians, unite!)

Belatedly I realize it was silly to ask nenena to pick icons for me, since I only have a super basic account and therefore not very much icon space, but here we go anyway....

1. Reply to this post with 'Icons!', and I will pick five of your icons.
2. Make a post (including the meme info) and talk about the icons I chose.
3. Other people can then comment to you and make their own posts.
4. This will - allegedly - create a never-ending cycle of icon glee.


( my icons here )

Hey, you know how there's like 5 million people upset about the casting for the Avatar movie? And remember how there was that big Race Fail thing on the interwebs?

Well.

Next year the American Library Association's putting on this symposium on race representations and...I think I'd like to write a paper for it.

So.

Send me all your links/comments/thoughts on representations of race in youth-oriented literature. Because I know it's a huge issue, and it's about time I actually, y'know, paid attention to it. I'm thinking of focusing on representations of race in YA fantasy/SF, but I'm pretty open at this point, so tell me whatcha got.

And hey, send me anything Avatar-related, too. Not because I can use it for this project, since strictly speaking I don't think Avatar counts as "literature" (unless we're defining the term loosely). But because I am scary obsessed.

And please please PLEASE tell me it won't take the entirety of season 3 for Zuko to get his head out of his ass. Because oh my Lord, I want to smack him. A lot. And I actually like him.

ETA: And on a related, pissing-me-off note: WTF, Marvel?. Boy superheroes = costumes and superpowers. Girl superheroes = lipstick. What. The. Hell.

Okay, seriously, guys, I need to tell you. I am in love. It is hopelessly squishy and adorable and obnoxious TOTAL FANGIRLING LOVE.

With a show called Avatar.

I know I know, all the cool kids were watching it like three years ago. I DON'T CARE. I am watching it now. With meiousei. Who does not realize how dangerous it has been to show me this show.

To give you an idea, it's like this:

Two dudes who watch WAY too much Miyazaki sat down one day and were like, Dude, we should make an animated show. For Nickelodeon. That's all about badass martial arts. With smart dialogue and multiethnic/racial representations. And kickass women. Kids will like it because it's all epic and anime-inspired and stuff. Grownups will like it because it's got all these in-jokes about stoned Hawaiians and hick swamp hillbillies. And just to make it even more awesome, we can use the voice director from the Batman animated series and get us some quality actors, like Rufio from "Hook."

AND THEN THERE WAS AWESOME.

Seriously, it's quite sad how I cannot get over the awesomeness of this show. In addition to beautiful fight scenes and the awesome described above, it has all the character stereotypes archetypes I love: several wise, psychotic old dudes; a badass hero who tends to act like a 12-year-old boy on crack; a strong, smart, caring female lead who can hold her own; a goofy brother character who's not afraid to tell everyone how stupid they are; and a whiney, bratty teenager with daddy issues who would, of course, be a total sweetie if he'd just lay off the emo.

So. Much. Awesome.

There will be fansite-ing on this one. Pretty much the moment I finish the series.

Just...don't talk to me about the movie.