Holy Shit, Batman! Most LJ-Cuts in a Post EVAR!

Well first of all, gotta report on something I've been wanting to report on for awhile now, since before break.

That being Ouran High School Host Club.

This being an anime, obviously. The premise of the show is, this tomboy, Haruhi, is a scholarship student at the extravagantly rich Ouran Academy. She walks into a room one day and meets the Host Club, a group of guys who are pretty much...escorts without the sex, catering to the girls of the high school. They initially mistake Haruhi for a boy, and when she breaks an 8 million yen vase they turn her into a host to pay it off. Once they realize she's actually a girl the hijinks ensue.

It's probably the most adorable anime ever, and I say that having seen Gravitation and Honey and Clover. H&C still tops the charts, of course, but Ouran is pure love. And much like the aforementioned, it's not all cuteness--it's got some real story behind it, good story, with good characters.

The best part of the show is that it's fanservice and knows it. The entire point of the Host Club itself is to provide fanservice for the high school fangirls. They even cater to all the classic drool-inducing bishounen types the fangirls love (and what's better is the characters actually refer to themselves as those "types"). Kyouya, the cool guy with glasses, Honey, the high schooler who looks like a kid and appeals to the shota/cuteness fangirls, Mori, the tall-dark-handsome-silent one, Kaoru and Hikaru the twins who of course play up the twincest-yaoi thing (and you can tell they absolutely love the act, though in reality it really is an act), and Tamaki the Prince Charming, over-the-top, adorable and protective leader of the Hosts who of course creates the UST with him and Haruhi.

The show is utterly brilliant, in case I haven't stressed that enough. I just really love how they do the relationships in it--very realistic and subtle and deep. I love the portrayal of Hikaru and Kaoru's relationship, and Kyouya and Tamaki, and Honey and Mori, and Hikaru and Haruhi, and Haruhi and Tamaki. So. Effing. Brilliant.

Watch it for the cuteness and the characters and the story.

So yes! Spring Break. Julie and I spent it with my relatives in NYC, Uncle Craig who's a reverend and Aunt Cathy who's a teacher. Julie got really sick right before we went and I was already sick and got even sicker halfway through the week. So we ended up not doing half of what we wanted to do. It was still a lot of fun, though. I got to see the NYC family, which was awesome, since they're awesome. We went to the Museum of Natural History which was fucking brilliant since I finally found the name for Deinocherius, the ginormous dinosaur of which they only found the arms (holy FUCK they're huge--guy musta been a motherfucker of a dino), and since I got to see Dunkleostolus who is made of primordial awesome, and Archaepoteryx, and an Easter Island head, and lots of gold. I love museums.

Also went to a bookstore up in Manhattan called Books of Wonder, which was cool, though I wasn't expecting it to be all a children's store. Though I found some Edward Gorey books I'd hitherto not known of (woot!) and the place is joined with a fucking cupcake shop, and have I mentioned that I love New York Cities? They just, like, have stores that just, sell cupcakes, how fucking awesome is that?? It was also across the street from a really neato paper store and I bought a few journals. We also walked to a more local bookstore (my people live in Brooklyn) which was really awesome, though it didn't have any of the Harry Dresden series, so we sold out and walked up the street to a lovely two story B&N. Which I felt badly about, but I just love the books.

Which leads me to the topic of Harry Dresden, the Dresden Files that is. Which has of late become a TV show that is apparently crappy. Anyway, after finishing Lady Knight by Tamora Pierce (fourth and BEST of the Kel books, aka, The Protector of the Small. By the way, I love the little seer girl and I want to see more of her. And who is the Whisper Man? Yay mystery!) Julie told me I had to get started on the Dresden Files (she was on the fourth book by then, I think). So I read the first one on the bus ride down to NYC. And yeah, the writing could have been stronger, but the book was brilliant. First person, which I've only seen so much of in fantasy, and which I really appreciate when well-executed. Plus Harry Dresden is a fucking awesome character, so brilliantly human and flawed and yet awesome as well since he can blow you up and all. It also takes a really realistic approach to magic--as in, no blowing things up at close range since you can also kill yourself. You know, actual backlash. And when people get injured, they don't get up and run around, they fall down and have to sleep it off some (and then fight demons, but that's just poor Harry's bad luck).

I'm on the second one now, and it's good stuff. I'm much loving this series right now. Pat! You might like this to, so ask and I shall lend.

Caught up on most of my manga series while down there as well, Black Cat, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist and Naruto.

Also in NYC, we watched movies. Never made it to a movie theater, though the idea of 300 on IMAX still leaves me half-terrified and half-drooling (I want to seeeee it! Spartans! Spartans!), but I got to see two movies I hadn't seen. The first being Batman Begins, finally, the second being The Departed.

Which means--movie reviews!

( Batman Begins )

And,

( The Departed )

Long post! I have much else to report on, but I shall have to report tomorrow.

Holy Shit, Batman! Most LJ-Cuts in a Post EVAR! (Take Two)

Quite the double-post, innit? I hadn't realized I hadn't updated at all in two weeks.

Anyway, continuing in the amazing story of my life...

So yeah, the last half of break we spent doing the book thing and hanging with my people. I think it was Friday night we went to Caleb and Asher's (the cousins) school to hear a jazz and poetry thing--Caleb plays guitar, Asher plays drums. The only way I can really describe it is that it was very, very New York. It was interesting the way the poems and the music melted together, though I don't know if I actually liked it or not. Though some of the poems were pretty awesome. One was a poem about being in the primordial soup and amoeba love, haha. Brilliant.

Speaking of primordial soup, holy FUCK, Spore is coming out this fall apparently. What is Spore? Spore is only the most awesome computer game probably to ever grace geekdom. Pretty much, in the game you start out as a one-celled organism, and then you evolve. You choose what lines you want to evolve along, giving yourself X number appendages and so on. And according to their new video
you can do a lot more than that. *squee!* I've been anticipating this game ever since I heard about it about two years ago.

The only problem being that I'll need a new laptop to handle this game. Septimus is getting up there, but he still works and he's still mostly reliable, like an old dog. I don't want to get rid of him yet. I'm one of those people who keeps using my things until they fall apart ^.^

Had a bit of a surreal moment when we drove by the World Trade Center. I'm still sort of torn about visiting places like that. It was the same when we went to Dachau in Germany--just the idea of a place of such suffering becoming a tourist attraction. But I did tell myself this time that I wanted to go there, because 9/11 I think played a major role in my anxiety disorder, and I need to start facing that. We never actually made it to the WTC, but we did drive past it, and it was just like, "wow...there used to be towers there. There used to be people there." Ah, man. I dunno.

But, enough with the depressing. I can't be entirely depressed right now because there's an icicle hanging outside my window that looks like an alien's hand, no joke.

Last day spent in NYC we went to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, kind of like a smaller version of the Met, though it was still all kinds of brilliant. We only had time for two floors (there were five), so we checked out the floor with American art (woot) and the floor with the Egyptian stuff (holy crap, Batman!). No mummies, but it was all very awesome.

And now we're back in good old Ithaca and it's cold and wet and there are classes to attend and Julie and I are still sick. *sigh*

And now the requisite reports on the various and sundry things that came out in the past week. Though first, another book I read.

Have I mentioned the Retriever's Series here? The series is about Wren, a Retriever living in NYC. A Retriever is like a Get Backer (lol) in that she "retrieves" things for people, which usually means steals them. Except that in this world there is magic, and it takes a very interesting form. In any case, Wren has gotten up to some shit in the last two books, but the most recent one out, the third, is definitely my favorite. At this point, it looks like war's about to break out between the Mage Council (the organized group of magic users), the lonejacks (the live-free-or-die types of magic users) and the fatae (the non-human people living in the city). It's gotten very awesome, and it's an excellent example of modern urban fantasy. If you like Dresden, you'll probably like Wren, though this series falls a bit more on the female side of things, though not to a chick-lit degree. Wren is an awesome character, and the book has its own voice that is a blatantly New York voice. Love it.

So what have we? No House on Tuesday due to March Madness, but Crossing Jordan and Lost were both on Wednesday, of course, and they were both ALL KINDS of awesome. I'm really impressed with this season of Jordan so far, since it's really branching out and doing some interesting things. And Lost is no longer sucking! It's getting back into the mysterious and strange that made the first season and the first part of the second season so brilliant.

However, there are things I must report and speculate on. For instance, in ( Crossing Jordan...*spoilers alert* )

As if that wasn't intense enough, we follow it up immediately with...

( Lost )

And of course, of course, there were the Narutos that came out, being the latest manga chapter and the latest Shippuden episode.

( Chapter spoilers )

As for the episode, well, it's following the manga, and it continues to be brilliant, although it was lacking on the crazy music front.

Back in my world, in terms of writing, I didn't get half as much done of the rewrite over break as I wanted. Between being sick and hitting a snag that Pat pointed out, it just kind of came to a standstill. But I'm going to get back in it now, and keep thinking about that snag. Mostly the thing is, do I want to overhaul the beginning in order to get things moving faster, or draw it out so things are more dramatic? I'm long-winded, in case you couldn't tell, but that's something I'm trying to fix. So I dunno. There are a few things I'm going to extend because they kind of have to be.

Also, a lot's been coming together for some of my other projects. Mot has been niggling me again. The thing with Ramsey--my white haired, cloak-wielding heroine--is taking shape in my head. Have I mentioned Skye? Skye is the main character of Ramsey's story--I don't know her last name, but she's a snarky tattoo artist in Berkely who was diagnosed with schizophrenia some years ago. This was because she could see the things that Ramsey fights--critters I have dubbed darksouls for now, who are kind of shadow creatures that haunt people at their best and kill them at their worst. Anyway, Skye could see those things, and ghosts and stuff, but it made her a strange kid and she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. She believes now that all the things she saw when she was younger were hallucinations, but when she meets Ramsey she realizes she's been sane all along. Should be fun.

Things are also really coming together for North, though I'm still not sure how far I am from actually starting it. I've got a better sense of what's going on in the Whodden--where the Folk, the spirits and non-humans live--and what's going on in North's own life. I just need to figure out certain things about the beginning of the story.


And now I have to get some things done before Women and Writing. Another long post! Lol, and these two were supposed to be all one. Nya-ha.