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I read a (gasp!) My Chemical Romance fic tonight, despite the fact that I, um, kind of don't like the band at all *runs*. trolleys recced this fic called The Scene is Dead, and IT HAS VAMPIRES! It was totally, like, 28 Days Later goes punk. Well, punker. And you don't really need to know anything about the band, I googled a picture and then I was fine, haha. The fic is creepy and exciting, up until the point where it ended and I got mad at it because there wasn't anymore. But, yeah! It's a great read, if anyone's in a bitey kind of mood. OH AND ESPECIALLY IF YOU HATE FALLOUT BOY. LOL.

(Also, now I want a t-shirt that says "Don't Bite the Fanficcer." I'm also picturing Sam and possibly Veronica laughing at the irony, as I was, once, actually bitten by another fanficcer. This would be that story Lauren hasn't heard yet. ANYWAY.)

Jericho.
"Jericho." I've been wanting to post for a while about Jericho, because, my god, this show is beautiful. Now that I'm catching up on the second half of the season (please please let this be the only season), I have a perfect opportunity to talk about how wonderful it is.

Wonderfully awful.

Jericho is easily the worst-written show I think I have seen in years and years and years. It's atrocious: the plot holes are the size of bomb craters and the stereotypes both gender and racial are abominable. The women literally aren't allowed to take an active role in this show unless they're pregnant, at which point they're allowed to take direct action, but only to get their husbands back or keep them from running off. The men (only the white ones) are left to keep social order and do the dirty work of protecting the town, while everyone not-white gets killed and/or painted as a *cough* black sheep. I wish I were joking. This show is so bad. I've followed it since the first episode aired. D:

The Token Black Man1 is violent and scary and a deadbeat dad. The mother of the show's leading family literally does nothing but chase her husband and her sons around worrying if they're eating right or nursing their cold, or fussing because they're working too hard. The husband and the sons respond by brushing her off while they protect the townfolk. The brusque modern city woman has her heart won over by a sturdy cowseed yokel who saves her from bandits like something out of a Harlequin. The female love interest is a mannerly schoolteacher who never teaches school, just runs around moping after her two boyfriends, the fake!dead one and the emo!live one (who gets to save her a lot). And the one person in town who actually knows how to use machinery and seems to have a grasp on modern technology is also a teacher who gets frequently ignored because none of the menfolk want to have a girl around when they go off on their dangerous missons.

Which she seems to readily accept because she's too busy swooning over Skeet Ulrich to notice that women's rights in Jericho have regressed to the point where Hanna-Barbera could animate it and give everyone round rocks for cars, and no one would know the difference.

The subjugation of women in "Jericho" is so blatantly, ridiculously obvious that it's not even offensive so much as UNBEARABLY STUPID; but on another level, I think the plot of the show might arguably be even more stupid. Everything about it is ludicrous. Every detail feels like the writers got stoned one night and just sat around throwing darts at a plot board with random things taped to it like "LET'S DETONATE A COAL MINE FOR NO REASON!" and "RENEGADE DOCTORS WORK WITH TERRORISTS!"

Example: I'm watching an ep right now and apparently these stragglers from a plane wreck have just wandered into town 8 weeks after all these atomic bombs went off and, you know, basically nuked America. The plane stragglers apparently passed a state fairgrounds two hundred miles away from the town in question, which is supposedly now a huge refugee trading center. Yet all of these 50 airplane passengers didn't, you know, hang around the faigrounds waiting for someone, you know, with a car, to come and drive them to shelter. No, no. They just kept right on walking, headed inexplicably for the little town of Jericho, 200 miles away. BECAUSE OF COURSE A GROUP OF FIFTY TRAUMA SURVIVORS STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF KANSAS WITH NO FOOD OR WATER WILL EASILY BE ABLE TO WALK TWO HUNDRED MILES IN TWO MONTHS.

BECAUSE, YOU KNOW. IN THE COURSE OF FOLLOWING A ROAD TWO HUNDRED MILES, YOU WOULDN'T, SAY, RUN INTO OTHER TOWNS ALONG THE WAY.

But then, it makes sense that they don't stop til they get to Jericho, because Jericho, population 5,000, is apparently the only place in Kansas equipped with emergency generators and decent medical supplies. Which is probably why the terrorist cell responsible for bombing 10 cities also decided to make Jericho its rendezvous point.
HEY, TERRORISTS!
PLANNING YOUR NEXT POST-APOCALYPTIC VACATION? WHY NOT TRY
SUNNY KANSAS!
IT'S GOT EVERYTHING!
★ SMALL TOWNS WHERE NO ONE WILL RECOGNIZE YOU
(EXCEPT FOR ALL THE OTHER FAKE-SPY CIA AGENTS WHO JUST HAPPEN TO BE LIVING THERE)!!!
★ GIANT CORNFIELDS WHERE YOU CAN HIDE NUCLEAR EXPLOSIVES!!!!
★ SUBMISSIVE WIVES WHO WILL TELL YOU THEY TRUST YOU AFTER YOU'VE HELD THEM AT GUNPOINT AND KIDNAPPED THEIR CHILDREN!!!
★ RESOURCEFUL LADY SCHOOLMA'ARMS WHO, EVEN AFTER YOU'VE DISMISSED THEM REPEATEDLY AND STUCK THEM BABYSITTING THE KIDS, WILL SAVE YOUR ASS IN A PINCH, CONVENIENTLY REVERTING BACK TO THE MEEK AND DISREGARDED SCHOOLTEACHERS POST-AVERTED CRISIS!!!

and, most important of all:
★ EASY ACCESS TO THE LAND OF OZ, WHERE CBS WRITERS GO TO SMOKE POPPIES AND GET THEIR PLOTS!
Seriously, this show. It's so bad. I can't seem to put it down. D:

1. tok0, did you see what i did there.

Hikaru no Go:

after spending some time looking over the horrendous color coordination efforts of our favorite young, up-and-coming Go professionals, I have decided that it is not, in fact, Touya Akira who has no fashion sense, but rather Takeshi Obata. Really. Ochi's outfit says it all, I think.

Though I have formed my own private opinion (which I can't back up in the manga just yet but which I feel certain I can support, JUST A HUNCH) that Touya only started wearing his yellow-and-black striped tie after Hikaru became an Insei. Why? Because the yellow/black is clearly symbolic for "come after me, Shindou; i'm wearing this tie because it reminds me of you, and how good it will feel to stroke your ridiculous two-toned hair when we finally are together."

that said, Hikaru's probably never even noticed that Touya persists in wearing a bright yellow/black tie with purple and pink suits, because Hikaru is just as oblivious to fashion as Touya is.

I have recorded and posted arboretum's wonderful, wonderful fic "Flowers and Go" as a podcast over at ihikago.

And speaking of the lovely arboretum, she and I, despite the fact that she is brilliant and I am ridiculous, have somehow converged on the same goal: we both want fic where Touya loses his memory and can no longer remember how to play Go. Or fic where Touya and Hikaru go camping. (No gobans and goke, just the great outdoors.) OR FIC WHERE HIKARU LOSES A HAND AND CAN NO LONGER PLACE THE STONES ON THE GOBAN.

I feel fics where Touya and Hikaru are forced to do things that have absolutely nothing to do with Go, yet manage to fall in love because of having nothing to do with Go, are the best idea I have heard in, well, ever.

Then again, I'm watching Jericho. Compared to this, you could wave a rainbow trout at me and call it a plot and I'd be like, ooh, shiny! Pretty scales!

Petshop of Horrors:

I watched all of Petshop of Horrors last night - it's not hard to do that as it's just 4 OVAs - and I figured I'd upload them to my server for a bit before I deleted them.

PSOH. First of all, what the fuck. WTF WTFFFFFFFF.

Second of all, AHH THIS SERIES IS REALLY FREAKY. Really really, like, I don't know, Willard meets The Gremlins meets Stepford Wives meets HOLY FUCKING SHIT and also, IS THAT A PIKACHU BAT?

That out of the way, Petshop!
I've heard a lot of good things about this series, mostly about the manga, and I can see why because it was incredibly slashy and, like, I seriously thought it was going to be yaoi and felt a bit jarred when it ended without it. the entire series of OVAs feels really disconnected, though, like somebody took a bunch of scenes out of something longer and just filmed them without explanation. Which, according to the PSOH wiki, seems to be basically the case.

Still, it's a really interesting set of OVAs - dysfunctional and scary on a basic level, and intriguingly beautiful on another. And I totally, totally am down with the Leon/Count D slash. Count D is really pretty, and I kind of love that this is set in America and that Count D is Chinese and Leon is this, like, Anglican blond cop who totally can't take his eyes off the guy and so stalks him all over the place bringing him gifts and presents even though, you know, he's giving candy to a sort-of serial killer.

Count D is so much like Fuji it is freaky.

I plan to read the manga really soon. It seems really intriguing to me. Also, supposedly they're coming out with a sequel? That sounds really exciting. in the meantime, amanuensis1 just made a post asking for Petshop slashfics, but if any of you have any additional recs i'll be all over that. Just saying.

download the Petshop of Horror OVAS.