Fanstuff, flotsam
Apr. 19th, 2007 01:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petronia1) Global warming is an unpredictable enemy; every season it's something different. This winter's theme was "oh hey let's switch December and April and see if anyone notices". D: South of here it's all been rain, but we got rain and snow - three huge blizzards in as many weeks that turned to slush as soon as they hit the ground. It's a hard commute when Mother Nature up-ends her granité over your city, especially when your boots have sprung leaks.
Anyway, that's over with. HOPEFULLY.
2) I've been reading Trinity Blood again. Got all the way through ROM III: The Night Lords, started RAM III: Know Faith (the author's taste in music is seeping through =_=). I... have forgotten a lot of what happened in the series so far. XD Especially the RAM stories, as with regard to ROM I at least retained unfortunate memories of what annoyed me, like Abel wangsting and Esther being a Sue. This is ironic because I like RAM better. Yoshida over-narrates (it's a stylistic thing) and telegraphs plot twists so in the novels I constantly get the feeling I'm mentally outpacing the action on the page. The short stories are tauter, plus you get a different setting and Vatican secret agent (lolol) per, and awesome character designs + European travelogue are the motive for this series's existence. Basically I sit there and think, there must be gorgeous customized BJDs out there. But I wouldn't know where to look. XD
As such, the best things about ROM III: 1) Seth! 2) Aste! 3) Istanbul! 4) everyone in funny hats on the character intro page! The last quarter of the book was really good, everything up to that point was setup for the various reveals, and Ion was afflicted with a severe case of Retarded Due To Plot Advancement, Necessity Of. Again, Seth is ♥. Apart from the character per se, I appreciate the fact that for once someone isn't half-arsed about gacking Genesis i.e. there actually is a Seth, but conversely this is the sort of thing that makes reading these books an exercise in obviousness. XD;
The eye colours still crack me up. A notch above LoGH, man. OH BTW DOES TRES COUNT AS REI CLONE MOE Y/Y.
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worldserpent also sent me the first three volumes of Ravages of Time, because I told her I'll read anything as long as I have a physical copy (this is true), so I will get on that soon. XD
3) (If I made an effort I could've segued into this better from Trinity Blood--) The night before I took the GMAT I dreamt of the Pope. John Paul II, not the current one, because in the mythopoeic dream-brain JP2 will always be Pope, as Elizabeth II will always be Queen of England no doubt. He called me up from a crowd and said he'd come to speak with me specifically. So we sat at a table and he talked, and showed me some things - cards, I think - but I can't remember what he told me. XD;; It seemed very wise and profound, and comforting.
It's one of those things because if I were Catholic I'd feel a great significance in this dream. Actually I do feel it's significant (enough to be writing it down, since I don't keep a dream journal), but I'm not a Catholic... so. ^^;
4) Completely unrelatedly [1], about a month ago I saw Alec Campion Duke of Tremontaine in the metro. I know I'm not the only person who does this; visualize characters in minute detail and sooner or later you bump into them in the street. There is usually a hilarity value attached to these encounters because you see [random person you don't know] who looks exactly like [character] in your head, in whatever outfit [random person] got dressed in that day. So this was the older!Alec from Privilege, with the hair and everything, in very skinny pin-stripe dress trousers and very fashion-forward shoes (I can't remember exactly, only they were the sort of shoes you'd notice on a stranger), and a black gabardine wool overcoat, and these absolutely gorgeous metallic red earbud headphones. I mean, one tries so hard not to start laughing in public for no apparent reason. XD
Anyway I could goggle all I liked because he was working through a sheaf of math problems, no joke.
[1] Apart from just wanting to set it down for posterity.
Anyway, that's over with. HOPEFULLY.
2) I've been reading Trinity Blood again. Got all the way through ROM III: The Night Lords, started RAM III: Know Faith (the author's taste in music is seeping through =_=). I... have forgotten a lot of what happened in the series so far. XD Especially the RAM stories, as with regard to ROM I at least retained unfortunate memories of what annoyed me, like Abel wangsting and Esther being a Sue. This is ironic because I like RAM better. Yoshida over-narrates (it's a stylistic thing) and telegraphs plot twists so in the novels I constantly get the feeling I'm mentally outpacing the action on the page. The short stories are tauter, plus you get a different setting and Vatican secret agent (lolol) per, and awesome character designs + European travelogue are the motive for this series's existence. Basically I sit there and think, there must be gorgeous customized BJDs out there. But I wouldn't know where to look. XD
As such, the best things about ROM III: 1) Seth! 2) Aste! 3) Istanbul! 4) everyone in funny hats on the character intro page! The last quarter of the book was really good, everything up to that point was setup for the various reveals, and Ion was afflicted with a severe case of Retarded Due To Plot Advancement, Necessity Of. Again, Seth is ♥. Apart from the character per se, I appreciate the fact that for once someone isn't half-arsed about gacking Genesis i.e. there actually is a Seth, but conversely this is the sort of thing that makes reading these books an exercise in obviousness. XD;
The eye colours still crack me up. A notch above LoGH, man. OH BTW DOES TRES COUNT AS REI CLONE MOE Y/Y.
worldserpent also sent me the first three volumes of Ravages of Time, because I told her I'll read anything as long as I have a physical copy (this is true), so I will get on that soon. XD3) (If I made an effort I could've segued into this better from Trinity Blood--) The night before I took the GMAT I dreamt of the Pope. John Paul II, not the current one, because in the mythopoeic dream-brain JP2 will always be Pope, as Elizabeth II will always be Queen of England no doubt. He called me up from a crowd and said he'd come to speak with me specifically. So we sat at a table and he talked, and showed me some things - cards, I think - but I can't remember what he told me. XD;; It seemed very wise and profound, and comforting.
It's one of those things because if I were Catholic I'd feel a great significance in this dream. Actually I do feel it's significant (enough to be writing it down, since I don't keep a dream journal), but I'm not a Catholic... so. ^^;
4) Completely unrelatedly [1], about a month ago I saw Alec Campion Duke of Tremontaine in the metro. I know I'm not the only person who does this; visualize characters in minute detail and sooner or later you bump into them in the street. There is usually a hilarity value attached to these encounters because you see [random person you don't know] who looks exactly like [character] in your head, in whatever outfit [random person] got dressed in that day. So this was the older!Alec from Privilege, with the hair and everything, in very skinny pin-stripe dress trousers and very fashion-forward shoes (I can't remember exactly, only they were the sort of shoes you'd notice on a stranger), and a black gabardine wool overcoat, and these absolutely gorgeous metallic red earbud headphones. I mean, one tries so hard not to start laughing in public for no apparent reason. XD
Anyway I could goggle all I liked because he was working through a sheaf of math problems, no joke.
[1] Apart from just wanting to set it down for posterity.
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:29 am (UTC)(cough)
I once dreamed I had a teacher that looked exactly like an older version of one of my characters, and this kind of freaked me out, because the character is sort of trying to obliterate all existence. I don't think I've ever actually run across a person in real life that looked much like one of my characters, though.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 06:19 am (UTC)...
I think you can consider him as having Robot Clone Moe if on top of the amputee thing and the secretly-awesome-just-shy thing, you add in the thing whereby insane fans will watch paint dry for five or six hours for the sake of one second of what-might-have-been-a-smile. Personally I think there's something masochistic about latching on to the most inexpressive character in a series hoping against hope that they will one day show expression. Futility! Give up! He's a damn robot!
no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 02:45 pm (UTC)No real spoilers, but R.A.M. series also becomes much better when they finally sort out Deste and his whole New Vatican shtick and the attention finally switches over to Rosenkreutzers, whereas we have a coup-d'etat unfolding *within* the order *plus* the Ax homing down on them. Yoshida-sensei really outdoes himself in the intrigue weaving there, with it being no longer simply double or triple crossings, but configurations with non-trivial toplogical structure. :) Mind you, RAM III is probably the best it gets pre RAM V and VI, mostly due to it being most morally non-trivial volume of the whole series, thanks to Father Havel. There is some real catholic angst there, portrayed suprisingly well for a non-European, and few genuinely touching moments.
But the real orgasm is the Canon - the collection of post-mortem materials. That's what I am reading now, having finished up both ROM and RAM. There they publish as much as they could coherently extract out of the papers left over after Yoshida-sensei's death. In attempt to sweeten the blow to the readers somewhat and tell them at least some of the big juicy storyline and world setting spoilers that Yoshida-sensei held out on them, to dramatically reveal later on. It's a non-stop 150 page orgasm. One really begins to respect Yoshida-sensei after that - if I thought up *so much* delicious stuff for the world setup, I could have never written a 12 volumes without revealing any of that to reader. :)