Irony is the Shackles of Youth

I don't know how I never noticed before, but the fight scenes in the original Highlander movie are really shitty. o_O

EDIT: In the Highlander universe, no one gets wrinkles. Seriously. Connor's wife when she dies? White haired, but perfectly flawless skin. The lady that he rescued in WWII and is now his secretary? Cheeks as smooth as a baby's bottom. I almost want to live in that universe just for that.

EDIT2: The special effects in this movie are hilariously bad. How bad? In the final epic scene where Connor gets the quickening, you can see the wires holding him up while he's supposedly flying.

EDIT3: I love that Sean Connery is playing a character born in ancient Egypt and living in Spain, but doesn't even bother trying to change his accent in any way.

After watching the first episode of the new Teen Wolf series, I can now safely identify all the character in fic. From now on, I think the only contact I'll be having with that series is fic because it cannot be any worse than the 40 minutes of shitastic, teenage angst (with gorilla werewolves) that I just watched. Maybe the series gets better, but after that first episode, I'm not inclined to find out.

The only bright side was Stiles. I'm beginning to see why most of the fic features him.

So I was reading a fanfic the other day, and while it had interesting parts, there was one aspect that wound up annoying the ever loving crap out of me. I'm not going to say for what fandom because really, the characters were so OOC that they might as well have been original. However, they were interesting characters in their own right, which was why I kept reading. And also why I kept being annoyed.

Sometimes, you start reading a fanfic/story, and you immediately know it's going to be crap. Either the writing is terrible (or just not to your taste), the characters are annoying, the plot has all the depth of a parking lot puddle, or there's just a general smell of shit floating around that you can't quite put your finger on. So you stop reading. Other times you only realize 13 chapters in that there is a huge, glaring, ginormous issue and it is slowly driving you insane because it's dragging everything else into turd land.

This fic was the latter. The problem? The main characters were in a fairly adventurous, kinky, polyamorous relationship which several other people found out about (sometimes by walking in on them) and everyone was not only fine with this, they were generously supportive of their choices. So supportive that in my head every time someone mentioned how supportive they were I pictured them looking like Buddy Jesus.

Keep in mind, when I say everyone, I mean everyone. Sixty year old grandma who is the neighbor? Yep. Middle aged conservative police officer? Yep. People who generally hate the main characters in the series? Yep. Random people off the street? Hell, they're dispensing advice! The author even mentioned people that might have a problem with what was going on, but they were always shadowy, "those other people" kind of characters that were only mentioned in passing. If they existed somewhere in the large city where the story took place, our protagonists certainly never ran into them.

I think I could have swallowed this if it was supposed to be set in a futuristic, sci-fi, fantasy, or alternate world kind of setting. But no. This was supposed to be set right now. And while I hope in the future we are all a little more open minded and accepting, we sure as hell ain't there yet. Even if we do get there, I can't imagine random strangers giving advice about the best bondage gear sources in the middle of the street to people they've just met 100% of the time.

I'm not a big angst fan or anything, but I felt like the author missed an opportunity to ass ADD some dramatic tension to the story by always making everyone okay. That was my other biggest issue. A lack of tension in the story. There was some, but it was usually resolved fairly quickly until the next bit came up. Even the over-reaching tension/plot of the story wasn't that tense. It was disappointing.

Ah well. There was kinky bondage threesome, which there is a distinct lack of in fandom. At least the author managed to handle that semi-decently.

So one of the things I've been watching on Netflix is the A-Team. Watching it is something of a cultural shock. I mean, I knew things had changed in the nearly 30 years since it came out (1983 was the first season), but you don't realize just how much until you watch it.

( Stuff like this would never fly today )

Overall, I am enjoying the series. It is entertaining and better than a lot of thing on TV. Still times, they have a changed.

miome and I went to see "How to Train Your Dragon." It was awesome. The animation in particular was spectacular and the character designs (especially the dragons) were fantastic. I love how the dragons moved and looked. It's nice to see dragons that don't have the same basic look of Draco from Dragonheart. Not that there was anything wrong with Dragonheart, but take a look at the picture of Draco and tell me that that is not almost the same exact dragon from Eragon or even Merlin.

And now I have to squash the urge to write fanfiction for the movie. Yeah, because really what I need is another WIP. -_-

Yesterday at the airport I decided to buy a couple of books to read on the flight. I'd brought three books to entertain me on the trip, but given the 3 hour flight delay, I wound up going through two of them and miome told me the third was depressing. I didn't want to read depressing. That meant stopping at the Borders in the Las Vegas airport and picking up a book.

I like trashy romance novels. I don't read them as much as I use to, but I especially like picking them up when I'm going to be flying. Why? Because they are usually easy reads that don't require a lot of deep thought and I can get through them in one plane ride. This meant that besides getting Terry Pratchett's latest (Making Money) I also checked out the romance section.

Oh god, I think the publisher's have been scanning my brain. Since it's not on the Amazon site, let me type up the blurb on the back of The Dragon Master.

( Back of the book blurb here )

Seriously, did anyone think I was going to be able to pass up a book with that on the back?

The book itself, alas, does not live up to the promise of the blurb. The writing is okay, but the character's reactions to situations are totally unbelievable. I mean really unbelievable. So much so that they have all the depth of a parking lot puddle at times. There moralistic debates are laughable at times. The pacing is off in that I felt that most of the book the characters were blindly moving from one disaster to the other for no other reason than the author needed something to move the plot forward. Which half the time, it didn't even succeed at doing. There were times I was wondering why the scene I'd just read had happened at all.

Also, the author was obviously in love with the characters she created in the previous two books set in this world, because she used every opportunity to have them appear. Worse of all, I felt like the sex scenes were being used as filler. Seriously, the two main characters had sex at the most random moments. Moments when normal people would be doing stuff like, oh I don't know, trying to save the world or panicking because they suddenly had powers they couldn't control.

I do have to admit though, I kind of want to read the other books in the series (which includes Dragon Heat and The Black Dragon). But the best (at least description wise) has got to be Dragon Actually. Read that description and tell me you are not desperately curious. I dare you.

It's still not good enough for me to want to buy them though. Anyone have them or want to buy them out of morbid curiosity? I'm willing to mail my copy off in trade if you'll send me the one you have. Maybe a bunch of us can do a book swap of them? ^_^

I was trying to describe to miome what most people think of Tom Cruise's upcoming movie.

"It's like Tom Cruise jumped the shark and hit a Nazi on the way down."

Though from the reviews on the IMDB, it might actually be a good movie. We shall see when it opens. I will probably never see it simply because I don't like that type of movie.

So while everyone else on my friend's list is exploding over the live action Avatar: The Last Airbender, I have been dying laughing at a totally different live action film. This one courtesy of 20th Century Fox.

My friends, I give you the live action Dragonball movie trailer.

You may thank me when you're laughing hysterically and/or beating your head against your desk.

This thing is going to suck like a hoover.

Why am I reading gay Victorian murder/mystery? Especially when I hate two out of three of those subjects?

Sigh...

Dear authors of m/m romance,

I swear to gourd, I have seen $1.99 romance novel heroines with more balls than your characters. Less flighty and prone to changing their damn minds too. I have said it before, and I'll say it again: YOU DO NOT NEED TO TURN YOUR CHARACTERS INTO WHINY BITCHES IN ORDER TO MAKE THEM INTERESTING.

No love,
Tsaiko

Imagine, if you will, that you use to rent an apartment. Now this wasn't just one apartment. Oh no. You rent about 10-15 apartments each month, spend about 30 minutes in each, and then wait around gleefully so you could do it all again. This took up a good chunk of the money you made as a teenager, but you did it anyway because you loved the apartments and wanted that 30 minutes of time in each apartment.

The only problem was the more you spent time in the apartments, the more you noticed the 100lb green chimpanzee or the 250lb orange lemur. As time went by, more and more of these primates showed up. You didn't know if anyone else noticed them, but you did. Eventually when the 300lb pink baboon showed up, you called it quits and vowed to never again rent apartments.

Years pass.

Eventually you notice an apartment. A nice apartment. Really nice. It has amenities you haven't seen in any other apartment. The lure is strong but you remember the primates. So you figure you'll just take a tour and make sure that nothing is hiding. You look under the bed, in the closet, open the cabinets, and check behind the shower curtain. Nothing. Awesome. You jump right in and for a year, everything is fine.

Then you come home one day to find an 800lb purple gorilla sitting in your living room. Peeved, you contact your rental agent. "What's up with the gorilla?"

"What gorilla?" he asks.

"The 800lb purple gorilla! It's in my living room. Fix this."

"Well, let me come over and take a look."

Rental agent comes over. He wanders around your apartment. The 800lb purple gorilla grunts at him. Then he turns to you and says, "There's no gorilla here."

"What? WHAT?!?! It's right there."

"I don't see any gorilla," he says again, giving you a worried look. "Are you sure you see this gorilla? Is there... any medication you might not have taken this morning?"

"Don't patronize me. I know a gorilla when I see one, and that is an 800lb purple gorilla."

Meanwhile, the gorilla has begun to eat your bread, smash your furniture, and leave poo everywhere. It doesn't seem to care that it's trashing everything in the nice apartment you started renting. That doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is the 800lb purple gorilla, because really, how the hell are you going to stop that thing?

"Maybe..." the rental agent says, and you look at him desperately hoping that he finally sees the problem. "Maybe you've mistaken the violet couch for a gorilla."

"Violet couch?" There is no violet couch in your apartment. "What violet couch?"

"That one," he says, proudly gesturing towards the gorilla.

"That's not a couch. It's a 800lb purple gorilla."

"I agree that violet is an unusual color for a couch, but we're doing things differently. We're cutting edge and have a very detailed plan of where the decor is going. It all start with the violet couch to match the green curtains we've already put in."

You look at your curtains. They are cream. "There's no green curtains. There's no violet couch. The only thing there is the gorilla and it's destruction. There is poo everywhere.

"You're going to have to trust us on this. We've been in this business for many years. We know how to handle things."

"Handle things? Yeah, I've seen how you handle things and you want me to trust you? You won't even acknowledge the FUCKING GORILLA.

A sigh. "You'll see. Everything will come together when we're done redecorating.



Dear Marvel,

Your complete and total lack of respect for any canon you have devised? It's an 800lb purple gorilla. And it's full of shit. Don't try to convince the fans otherwise.

Hugs and kisses,
Tsaiko

Dear Denis Wood,

You wrote a book called The Power of Maps. You were once a professor at NCSU in their school of design. Hell, Wikiepedia even states that you got your BA in English. Therefore you will understand my intense rage when I read the introduction to your book and encounter no less than twenty-three instances of you using fucking ellipses. Twenty-three! Your introduction is only three pages long. Holy shit man!

A quick flip through the rest of the book shows that while you do slow down, you do not stop doing this. I spot an ellipse at least every two pages. I've seen bad fanfic writers use less ellipses than you. You expect me to take you seriously? Please. I can't very well take your arguments into consideration if I'm having bad flashbacks to FF.Net. You fail already.

In conclusion, I have only read four pages of your book and I want to reach through the pages and strangle you. Unless you are quoting someone and leaving words out or writing dialogue (neither of which you are doing) ellipses should be used sparingly. Kind of like semicolons. There is no justification for using them every three sentences.

You have a degree in English. Use it.

No love,
Tsaiko