Hopping around fandoms with a book in hand and Inception in mind + Meme!
Hi f-list!♥ Um, this post is…long. Between Eid and Ramadan and travelling preparations, and college looming ominously in the distance, I’ve spoiled my fannish alter ego silly over the last few days, so. Um. This post is a bit all over the place. Just ignore any fandom you’re not interested in - being the inconsiderate person I am, I’ve left bolded titles for respective fandoms instead of blogging separately, like I SHOULD HAVE/bricked
This morning, around 2 am, I dropped my parents off at the airport and then sat reading Catch-22 in an unoccupied chair outside the waiting room until their flight arrived. I kept getting weird looks every time I giggled at Yossarian and how crazy he was. I was utterly convinced that every character in this book was crazy by the time Clevinger accused Yossarian of being a… Raskolnikov, who felt no remorse over murdering an old woman. :/ The accusation didn’t even have any basis whatsoever but then again, most things in this book don’t have any basis either, other than maybe sheer absurdity.
I’m really happy Mom and Dad are getting a little time to themselves and that I have the entire house to myself, hell yeah 8D and sort of sulky and disgruntled about the fact that they’re taking an all-Europe+USA tour without me. I think their first stop will be London, where they’ll be meeting up with my cousin and my half-brother, who’re doing their law courses and business PHDs respectively.
From there, they’ll probably make stops at Holland, Belgium, possibly Switzerland, several states in the US and finally, Paris. Paris, where I plan to live one day in a neat apartment all by myself with a huge library, my laptop and a mug of hot coffee. god, I’m so jealous Damn you, A Levels. Damn you.
I’m drawing up the grocery list on Ms. Excel, and using a separate spreadsheet for the bills to be paid. Then there are the coaching/school fees, and an amount to be reserved for my cell, and my brothers’. I feel very grown-up and responsible… Not. I’m sort of used to doing this stuff (have been used to it for five years), since I do manage a quarter of the household even when Mom and Dad are here, and really, it’s so easy that its laughable.
Eid has been surprisingly… not boring this time around. Mainly because I spent the entire day reading gay porn. har, har. I’ve totally not sinned XD
Totally Captivated by Hajin Yoo to be more specific and it is hilarious. The moment I saw the cover page, my reaction was: flowers + cigarettes + Mr. Sexy = YES.
The main character, Ewon, is instantly likable and his thought processes are predictable for someone of his character type, but still very, very adorable, and I almost died laughing when his ex labels him as a ‘shameless sex-crazed dog’. …Which is not really far off the mark, but Ewon is just so, um, innocent about sex in a way that it’s hilarious (You actually catch him thinking, “Can you have great sex with someone you don’t love?”) The artist doesn’t hesitate to throw in chibi!character moments from time to time, and it adds to the situation rather than take away from it. The art style is a bit different from Japanese manga, but still very aesthetically pleasing. It’s been damn entertaining so far, so I’d definitely recommend it.
And does it help that Myookul looks really, really good in a suit? 8D
Naruto 509
Kishimoto has been… very nice to his characters lately. And as a result, nice to his fans. Ever since the Kushina deal, the manga has been taking a more solid, more awesome feel. It feels like Kishimoto was building up to something ever since the entire Kage summit fiasco and this is it. Or at least, that how I feel. He’s given a solid ending to the Kushina arc - and while Kushina felt like a slightly modified version of Naruto, it was still great to see her being so awesome. god, Naruto and Sasuke are being turned into MarySues, I swear. I mean, seriously, the looks, the skillz, the dark/cheerful charm and it’s all because of their genes. Their genes are so awesome that I sort of want to mesh both of them together and make an even more awesome character. A Sasuto? A Narusuke? 8D I’m totally not thinking of their impossible future children
If we promptly ignore Naruto’s totally-not-slapped-on power-up, and Kurenai’s papa, one can easily say the manga has been on a roll. Uphill. Let’s just hope it keeps rolling that way a little longer.
Of course, the fact that Kishimoto killed off our beloved shark-dude (and gave no explanation as to why Kisame’s a shark-man hybrid) is a bit of a downside, but he did justice to Kisame’s character in the end (if being eaten by shark on land can be called justice, anyway), and the ~alluring~ possibilities of Kisa/Ita friendship almost makes up for him killing the last of what had the potential to be the greatest axis of evil in manga. And we get to see GAIIII~ <333, which is like, very youthful of Kishi who has been nothing but un-youthful ever since forever
But coming to the latest chapter, I’m like-wow. Really, Kishimoto? Is that you writing? I mean - really? *___*
I blinked disbelievingly at the screen after I read chapter 509, and then blinked some more to make sure I had the right manga. Because seriously, I did not expect Konan to be that badass. Badass badass, as hungrytiger11 would say. She kicks up badassery to a whole new level - I mean, she didn’t just put a scratch on Uncle Madara (who’s possibly the strongest character in the series). She tried to blow him up and succeeded in cracking his mask - and Uncle Madara actually looked beat up for the first time in the entire series. *___*
Her fighting style reminds me a bit of Deidara’s, only more a hundred times more refined and awesome. I mean, they both use projectiles as weapons, but where Deidara needs preparation god that sounds so wrong/shot, Konan doesn’t. Plus, she totally looks better doing it.
Seriously, whoever used to say fighting with paper was lame was, obviously, lame I’m totally not talking about myself because seriously? Paper rules. And the last page was just gah - just an ocean of paper. Kishi never fails to pull a reaction out of me - whether good or bad - with his dramatic last pages.
Something tells me Konan will kick the bucket… but hopefully not anytime soon. She does know where the Rinnegan eyes are hidden after all, and so Madara needs her alive for information (or maybe not? Did Madara absorb that guy from the Yamanaka clan - the one who was Danzou’s henchman, along with that Aburame? Fuu, was it? I don’t remember D: )
Wolf’s Rain
Now this has been a lovely watch. Kiba is a very typical Sasuke-type protagonist, but he’s a wolf, c’mon. A white wolf at that, and while he is a nit like Sasuke, in that he’s quiet and reserved, he smiles more readily. The OST - Stray - is so upbeat and catchy and spirited, yet the beat is a nice contrast to the angsty lyrics. The animation for this is amazing and from what I’ve seen, the story looks promising - especially now that I’ve finally reached the stage where The Lunar Tome has been finally discovered.
To give a brief summary of the story: Wolves are supposedly extinct, wiped out 200 years ago by unfavorable climate changes. But the truth of the matter is that wolves aren’t extinct. Some have survived, and the survivors can somehow shape-shift into humans and walk amongst them unnoticed, and they share a strange connection with this mystical creature called Cheza.
It’s the journey of a pack - consisting of Kiba, Tsume, Toboe and Hige - to find that elusive place called Paradise, because it’s either that, or living like stray dogs to be kicked around by humans.
There’s just something about the ~snow~ and the ~moon~ and the ~desperation~ to find a ~purpose~ that induces a quiet sense of angst in whoever watches it. I love how the future of the world is represented here - the architecture portrayed is just so very beautiful. And the battles are so fierce, and fought on instinct - a fact that really shines through. I almost fell out of my seat in shock when Kiba lunges straight for that thug’s neck in episode one because shit - the fangs were seriously scary, especially when stained with blood like that./shivers
I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for something mellow, with just the right blend of angst and humour, and the perfect pack of misfits who are interesting - complicated - in their own ways and have their own baggage, yet manage to come together, because they’ve all, in some way or other, known how hard it is to survive in a world so unkind.
Inception
I’ve been meaning to blog about this forever, but real life has been kicking my ass pretty hard lately. >__>;; The first time I watched Inception I drew up weird, utterly nonsensical conclusions about the ending and the dream world itself. I had to watch the movie thrice to fully understand the mechanics of the dream world, and that’s a good thing because I usually don’t (read: never) bother to re-watch a movie after viewing it once. The first word I’d associate with Inception is thought-provoking - which I really couldn’t say about it had it not been for the ending. And what an ending it was - shocking, to say the least. I never expected Saito to fall in that deep into the dream. It’s been said that when you’re in a dream, your mind works faster, so your perception of time is seriously accelerated. What could’ve been an hour in the dream world, could be just 5 minutes in real life.
But for Saito to fall that deep into a dream that he began to perceive minutes as years was… wow. That Cobb and Mal had been in a state of Limbo, too, really didn’t registered until I figured that out.
Confused? Just go here. This deviantart illustration is just so concise, and sort of makes me wish there was a game for this. (wait, is there? Tell meeee~)
I love Di Caprio’s story - or perhaps I’m just being biased, given what an angst-whore I am. Di Caprio was awesome in this, although this isn’t really the best acting I’ve seen from him. There’s just something about his face that makes me dub him as ‘boyish’, so I think teenage-roles suit him better. This may be me just being biased again, because Basketball Diaries really had the most angsty Di Caprio ever. Drugs, sex, writing and basketball, all in one neat drool-worthy package.
But maybe the real reason Di Caprio’s acting didn’t appeal was because, um, he was… totally upstaged by Joseph Gordon Levitt? 8D Because seriously, the man kicks ass in a butler outfit and that just plain tips up my hotness meter. Out of all the four levels, the hotel level was definitely my favorite. The all-or-nothing kiss was just… not sweet, not hot; it just was. So casual, and not idealized - which is how kisses in movies should be, but heh, I guess we all know Hollywood would never get that realistic. The cut-downs on gratuitous sex scenes would really sink the profits.
I have a question though which popped up after watching the movie the third time - in the first level, where Yousuf drives the van, the motions of the van affect the gravity in the second level because:
A. Arthur was in the van
B. Arthur was dreaming the second level
C. So the jerky motions of the van automatically translate into a shift of gravity in the second level. In actuality (or, in Yousuf’s dream), his body is being shaken violently, and his mind, which is dreaming, perceives it as a shift of gravity and so the gravity in the hotel level shifts as well.
That… makes sense. But the third level is where there’s a problem. This level is dreamed up by Eames, the forger. So when the gravity in the hotel level shifts, Eames’ body shifts as well, right? And much more violently than Arthur’s did in the first level because while Arthur had a seat belt on Eames’ body was free and floating. And thus more probable to be shifted around violently. Um, shouldn’t this shift of gravity be transferred into the snow fortress level as well?
The only instance I saw this was when Arthur blew up the elevator, which got translated as an avalanche in Eames’ dream. In no other instance does the shift of gravity in the second level affect the first. Which is weird. :/
But that’s just a technicality plothole that can be easily ignored. Back to the characters. Arthur or JGL was just kickass - I have a Thing for tall, skinny guys in butler suits. Um, yes. Now I’m curious about his other movies - searches turn up a lot of them (he’s apparently been in the industry since he was six), of which Mysterious Skin is the most prominent - apparently, he plays the role of a gay teenager here, which is like O__O for me.
Then there are the ladies - Ariadne and Mal. Ariadne was especially awesome towards the end, and I love her pragmatic approach to things. And Mal… well, I’m not quite sure what to say about her, but my first impression of her was… a dominatrix from the 60s. Or something. Because the seductive - yet not revealing - outfits and the wavy bob hairstyle, and the dark lipstick really did remind me of the good ol’ days. :/ But I guess I sort of liked the role she played - her dialogues really make us question how real the world around us is.
On this note, I do wish there were more ladies. While it’s nice to see such hot chunks of man-meat being cool and con artist-ish, I really don’t find any good reason for why there’s only one female in a team of seven. :/
I really haven’t given the ending of Inception as much thought as I could have (I was too busy staring at JGL). Part of me knows that Di Caprio does, in fact, return to his kids in reality because we have no reason to doubt Saito’s influence over the government as a business tycoon. And another part of me wonder if Leo and Saito shot themselves before the sedative wore off and just plunged deeper into Limbo - an imaginary world where Leo just, well, conjures up that he goes back to his kids. I mean, the kids are shown in exactly the exact same likeness of Leo’s last memory of them when Leo does finally meet them. Urgh. My head hurts, so I’ll just move on to the plot, which consists mainly of tricking Fischer into destroying his father’s empire.
Now this is where deception is kicked up a notch, to a whole new level. That Leo and Eames managed to convince Fischer that ‘reality’ was when he was kidnapped by those thugs, and not his flight half way around the world, was like… wow. And the real genius is that they manage to convince him that his godfather was a traitor - he’s tricked into thinking that he’s dicing into his godfather’s subconscious when actually, he’s diving into his own subconscious and um, I actually felt sorry for the gullible guy when he sat clutching a paper fan by his father’s bedside. Here we also see the significance of the number the team forces him to conjure up off the top his head in the van level.
So yes, Inception is definitely a mind-turner. It’s by far not the best movie I’ve seen, but it’s the most thought-provoking one. I think a lot of people will agree that the idea behind the movie is better than the movie itself.
Now I want to watch Nolan’s other masterpiece, Memento, which some claim was a warm up for Inception. O_O
And- I’m really craving some JGL/Ellen Page fic right now. Or anything that has JGL being sapiosexual. Any recs? Tell meee~ :D
Ouran High School/D.Gray-Man
I finally found my Ouran and DGM DVDs guys! *cling to them* I really don’t know how I lost them in the first place, and I have no idea how they ended up inside the cover plate of my harmonium, but they’re here and now I can stop downloading episodes and wasting HD space. Hell yes. :3 I can finally see how many more awful things have inevitably happened to Kanda while I fell behind on watching. ♥
Pokémon
Yes, Pokémon. I’ll kill you if you laugh. :’( I’ve always sort of played Pokémon - have been playing it for eight years - but um, recent correspondence with a crazy and awesome friend has done weird things to the nostalgic fangirl inside me, and now I’m playing with all the frenetic enthusiasm of a madwoman. >_>;;
I finally got my No$GBA emulator fixed after tinkering with a lot of cheats and now I can play SoulSilver without any freezes or black screens! Hooray! Of course, it does freeze from time to time, and um, I have to clear up the Bellsprout Tower battles again because I’m a forgetful spazz and didn’t really save in my hurry to battle (read: thrash the hell out of) Falkner, but sheesh. Whatever. I’ve learned my lesson, and my Quilava (nicknamed Sasuke) is well on its way to becoming a beastly Typhlosion♥ so I shouldn’t have too much problem breezing through the game.
For me, the best part is that my lead Pokémon, Quilava, can follow me around and it reminds me so much of Yellow Version and Pikachu that I have to swat nostalgia away with a broomstick before it creeps up on me./sobs That, and Quilava Sasuke! seems to be quite fond of nibbling at my feet. 8D
…Platinum is another story altogether. God, why is that game so hard? Or maybe I’m just saying that because I haven’t seen the animated version of the Sinnoh region yet (wait, is it even out yet?). The Pokémon there are all so new to me and I have no idea which one to train, because um, I don’t know about their abilities and they all look so... cute, and not intimidating. Except, maybe Prinplup (which is a duck) but I really hope it evolves into an Empoleon soon (I don’t even know in which level it evolves!) because that would be just awesome. Seriously, how many water+steel types are there anyway? That’s right. Not many. *smugmsugsmug*
Um, I’d love to meet you, fellow Pokémon lovers! It’s been so long since… anyone’s approved of me playing Pokémon at my age. :’(
Adam Lambert/Anime OST/Age of Information
…Guys? I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen in love with Adam Lambert’s voice. Ahem. Not the guy himself (his face sort of reminds me of rosewater custard. Don’t’ ask why), but his voice. *__* I’ve never been a fan of American Idol, although I did catch snatches of the latest season from time to time (Crystal was a much better singer than Lee, in my opinion, but Lee wasn’t bad either. Or maybe I’m being biased because I can’t forget that Alanis Morissette song she sang during the auditions *___*).
But when everyone was hyping out about Adam Lambert, I wasn’t impressed much. My reaction was “Meh”, but maybe that’s because I was too irritable at the time (O’levels!) and was being too technical. I do sort of play the harmonium, so I have technical knowledge of htis stuff, yes… last week, a friend of mine, who’s a crazy Adam Lambert fan, left for the UWC campus in China (she got a scholarship! I’m so happy for her, especially since a member of her family passed away recently) and she sort of e-mailed all her AL songs to me and well, I listened to them and my first reaction was: Not bad.
I wasn’t impressed by If I had You, which is supposed to be one of Adam’s most popular songs, but then I listened to For Your Entertainment followed immediately by Mad World and I was left gaping. Seriously, beat-wise, FYE and MW are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but Lambert really pulled it off. Initially, I pegged him off as one of those mainstream singers hunched on money-making album contracts, but I was wrong. I never expected him to be so versatile - I can’t decide whether I like the deep, heated tones he uses for FYE, or the soft, melancholy ones for MW.
I’m still… not convinced I’d like to hear more of him, but my initial unflattering opinion of his has changed quite a bit.
Age of Information - known formerly as Trading yesterday - has been very quiet lately. Ever since they changed their name I don’t think a new album has come out. But I’ve been listening to Shattered, Every Breath you Take, Under my Skin and Just a Little Girl and the composition for each of them is amazing. You can tell that effort has been put into the lyrics, and the tune, because they really don't resemble any other songs I've ever heard. <333 I get that this band is not very well-known, but music to me has always been personal anyway XD Give those songs above a listen - you won’t regret it, I promise!
And then there are anime OSTs for Le Chevalier D’eon (Overnight by Aya), Blood+ (Cry no More), Wolf’s Rain (Stray), Trinity Blood (Broken Wings) and of course, Naruto!♥ - they have been doing a good job of making me feel dejected. :D
And, uh, speaking of this, I… really need to upgrade my playlist, which has been suffering severe neglect over the past two years. DX I’d love some recs - anything not rap/death metal (seriously, they call that music? >__<) floats my boat. :p (Um, I’d love something emotive, something that resembles the beat of “Shattered” or perhaps “Just a Little Girl”, but ahahaha, I totally get I’m talking about the impossible here so, ‘emotive’ will do just fine. :'p )
SN_EXCHANGE
The SN_E. SHIT. THE SN_E. WHY CAN I NEVER BE PUNCTUAL. WHY. God, the art - man, the art. I can't stop staring at the art and now I've just realized I italicized art three times. Yes. It was that fucking amazing. *____* And fffff-- Clarity and lack the luster and Advantage: Us and Girls Like Boys and Sky Turn Red and And Time Runs Out and Scores, Settled and Dwell and Run and and-- avgfglkjfsdhgh. INSERT MOAR UNDIGNIFIED KEYBOARD SMASHING. I will squee more about this soon. In a separate entry. When I get my heart back from the angst fest that was this wonderful final round. ;____;
Meme of no use to anyone but me
♠ Give me a character or pairing from Naruto
♠ Give me either five inspiring words (eg. desperation, idiot, solipsism, trench, kitty!) or a single inspiring phrase (whether it's a part of a poem, song, famous quote or whatever)
♠ Enjoy
So I just discovered I write better under pressure... or when I have something specific to direct my thought towards - like a prompt. Day before yesterday, I spent four hours typing on Dr. Wicked about anything that came to mind and by the end, whatever came out of that didn't make sense in the slightest (it was just a jungle of roughly-worded metaphors -- I mean, seriously? A spoonful of respect? -- and verbosity), but I did feel a lot more relaxed afterwards. And I discovered, much to my dismay, that my mind was blank afterwards. So help me? :'(
And oh. A VERY RANDOM BUT IMPORTANT QUESTION: What do you guys think of the future!possibility of Sasuke as Hokage? ...And Sai as his assistant. Or something. Anything as long as they get to work closely. And interact. I'm totally not thinking about Sasu/Sai here. Nor the alluring possibilities of SasuNaruSai. Or SasuSakuNaruSai. Really. I'm being serious f-list. Because this is SRS BSNS.
How do you think a fic like that would go down? The circumstances that would drive Sasuke to become Hokage? What about Naruto and Sakura? Why exactly would Sasuke accept the title of Hokage? Because Naruto entrusted him with the village before dying? Because he feels like he owes Naruto this much? How would Sai take it, as an outsider who wants in to the Team Seven dynamics? How would Sai feel about Sasuke in general? I know for a fact that Sai would call Sasuke a douchebag first thing (I'm totally looking at you, hungrytiger11) but I'm just... very curious about what a Sai/Sasuke hate-hate relationship would be like. Humour me, flist? O_O
I’m off to complete my Physics homework now, and then I’ll be starting French afterwards (it’s horrifying how far behind you can fall if you miss one single class DX). Speaking of French, I sort of promised a friend that I’d e-mail her with my problems and fff- I totally forgot. Better get to it!
In need of coffee,
I~
This morning, around 2 am, I dropped my parents off at the airport and then sat reading Catch-22 in an unoccupied chair outside the waiting room until their flight arrived. I kept getting weird looks every time I giggled at Yossarian and how crazy he was. I was utterly convinced that every character in this book was crazy by the time Clevinger accused Yossarian of being a… Raskolnikov, who felt no remorse over murdering an old woman. :/ The accusation didn’t even have any basis whatsoever but then again, most things in this book don’t have any basis either, other than maybe sheer absurdity.
I’m really happy Mom and Dad are getting a little time to themselves and that I have the entire house to myself, hell yeah 8D and sort of sulky and disgruntled about the fact that they’re taking an all-Europe+USA tour without me. I think their first stop will be London, where they’ll be meeting up with my cousin and my half-brother, who’re doing their law courses and business PHDs respectively.
From there, they’ll probably make stops at Holland, Belgium, possibly Switzerland, several states in the US and finally, Paris. Paris, where I plan to live one day in a neat apartment all by myself with a huge library, my laptop and a mug of hot coffee. god, I’m so jealous Damn you, A Levels. Damn you.
I’m drawing up the grocery list on Ms. Excel, and using a separate spreadsheet for the bills to be paid. Then there are the coaching/school fees, and an amount to be reserved for my cell, and my brothers’. I feel very grown-up and responsible… Not. I’m sort of used to doing this stuff (have been used to it for five years), since I do manage a quarter of the household even when Mom and Dad are here, and really, it’s so easy that its laughable.
Eid has been surprisingly… not boring this time around. Mainly because I spent the entire day reading gay porn. har, har. I’ve totally not sinned XD
Totally Captivated by Hajin Yoo to be more specific and it is hilarious. The moment I saw the cover page, my reaction was: flowers + cigarettes + Mr. Sexy = YES.
The main character, Ewon, is instantly likable and his thought processes are predictable for someone of his character type, but still very, very adorable, and I almost died laughing when his ex labels him as a ‘shameless sex-crazed dog’. …Which is not really far off the mark, but Ewon is just so, um, innocent about sex in a way that it’s hilarious (You actually catch him thinking, “Can you have great sex with someone you don’t love?”) The artist doesn’t hesitate to throw in chibi!character moments from time to time, and it adds to the situation rather than take away from it. The art style is a bit different from Japanese manga, but still very aesthetically pleasing. It’s been damn entertaining so far, so I’d definitely recommend it.
And does it help that Myookul looks really, really good in a suit? 8D
Naruto 509
Kishimoto has been… very nice to his characters lately. And as a result, nice to his fans. Ever since the Kushina deal, the manga has been taking a more solid, more awesome feel. It feels like Kishimoto was building up to something ever since the entire Kage summit fiasco and this is it. Or at least, that how I feel. He’s given a solid ending to the Kushina arc - and while Kushina felt like a slightly modified version of Naruto, it was still great to see her being so awesome. god, Naruto and Sasuke are being turned into MarySues, I swear. I mean, seriously, the looks, the skillz, the dark/cheerful charm and it’s all because of their genes. Their genes are so awesome that I sort of want to mesh both of them together and make an even more awesome character. A Sasuto? A Narusuke? 8D I’m totally not thinking of their impossible future children
If we promptly ignore Naruto’s totally-not-slapped-on power-up, and Kurenai’s papa, one can easily say the manga has been on a roll. Uphill. Let’s just hope it keeps rolling that way a little longer.
Of course, the fact that Kishimoto killed off our beloved shark-dude (and gave no explanation as to why Kisame’s a shark-man hybrid) is a bit of a downside, but he did justice to Kisame’s character in the end (if being eaten by shark on land can be called justice, anyway), and the ~alluring~ possibilities of Kisa/Ita friendship almost makes up for him killing the last of what had the potential to be the greatest axis of evil in manga. And we get to see GAIIII~ <333, which is like, very youthful of Kishi who has been nothing but un-youthful ever since forever
But coming to the latest chapter, I’m like-wow. Really, Kishimoto? Is that you writing? I mean - really? *___*
I blinked disbelievingly at the screen after I read chapter 509, and then blinked some more to make sure I had the right manga. Because seriously, I did not expect Konan to be that badass. Badass badass, as hungrytiger11 would say. She kicks up badassery to a whole new level - I mean, she didn’t just put a scratch on Uncle Madara (who’s possibly the strongest character in the series). She tried to blow him up and succeeded in cracking his mask - and Uncle Madara actually looked beat up for the first time in the entire series. *___*
Her fighting style reminds me a bit of Deidara’s, only more a hundred times more refined and awesome. I mean, they both use projectiles as weapons, but where Deidara needs preparation god that sounds so wrong/shot, Konan doesn’t. Plus, she totally looks better doing it.
Seriously, whoever used to say fighting with paper was lame was, obviously, lame I’m totally not talking about myself because seriously? Paper rules. And the last page was just gah - just an ocean of paper. Kishi never fails to pull a reaction out of me - whether good or bad - with his dramatic last pages.
Something tells me Konan will kick the bucket… but hopefully not anytime soon. She does know where the Rinnegan eyes are hidden after all, and so Madara needs her alive for information (or maybe not? Did Madara absorb that guy from the Yamanaka clan - the one who was Danzou’s henchman, along with that Aburame? Fuu, was it? I don’t remember D: )
Wolf’s Rain
Now this has been a lovely watch. Kiba is a very typical Sasuke-type protagonist, but he’s a wolf, c’mon. A white wolf at that, and while he is a nit like Sasuke, in that he’s quiet and reserved, he smiles more readily. The OST - Stray - is so upbeat and catchy and spirited, yet the beat is a nice contrast to the angsty lyrics. The animation for this is amazing and from what I’ve seen, the story looks promising - especially now that I’ve finally reached the stage where The Lunar Tome has been finally discovered.
To give a brief summary of the story: Wolves are supposedly extinct, wiped out 200 years ago by unfavorable climate changes. But the truth of the matter is that wolves aren’t extinct. Some have survived, and the survivors can somehow shape-shift into humans and walk amongst them unnoticed, and they share a strange connection with this mystical creature called Cheza.
It’s the journey of a pack - consisting of Kiba, Tsume, Toboe and Hige - to find that elusive place called Paradise, because it’s either that, or living like stray dogs to be kicked around by humans.
There’s just something about the ~snow~ and the ~moon~ and the ~desperation~ to find a ~purpose~ that induces a quiet sense of angst in whoever watches it. I love how the future of the world is represented here - the architecture portrayed is just so very beautiful. And the battles are so fierce, and fought on instinct - a fact that really shines through. I almost fell out of my seat in shock when Kiba lunges straight for that thug’s neck in episode one because shit - the fangs were seriously scary, especially when stained with blood like that./shivers
I’d definitely recommend it if you’re looking for something mellow, with just the right blend of angst and humour, and the perfect pack of misfits who are interesting - complicated - in their own ways and have their own baggage, yet manage to come together, because they’ve all, in some way or other, known how hard it is to survive in a world so unkind.
Inception
I’ve been meaning to blog about this forever, but real life has been kicking my ass pretty hard lately. >__>;; The first time I watched Inception I drew up weird, utterly nonsensical conclusions about the ending and the dream world itself. I had to watch the movie thrice to fully understand the mechanics of the dream world, and that’s a good thing because I usually don’t (read: never) bother to re-watch a movie after viewing it once. The first word I’d associate with Inception is thought-provoking - which I really couldn’t say about it had it not been for the ending. And what an ending it was - shocking, to say the least. I never expected Saito to fall in that deep into the dream. It’s been said that when you’re in a dream, your mind works faster, so your perception of time is seriously accelerated. What could’ve been an hour in the dream world, could be just 5 minutes in real life.
But for Saito to fall that deep into a dream that he began to perceive minutes as years was… wow. That Cobb and Mal had been in a state of Limbo, too, really didn’t registered until I figured that out.
Confused? Just go here. This deviantart illustration is just so concise, and sort of makes me wish there was a game for this. (wait, is there? Tell meeee~)
I love Di Caprio’s story - or perhaps I’m just being biased, given what an angst-whore I am. Di Caprio was awesome in this, although this isn’t really the best acting I’ve seen from him. There’s just something about his face that makes me dub him as ‘boyish’, so I think teenage-roles suit him better. This may be me just being biased again, because Basketball Diaries really had the most angsty Di Caprio ever. Drugs, sex, writing and basketball, all in one neat drool-worthy package.
But maybe the real reason Di Caprio’s acting didn’t appeal was because, um, he was… totally upstaged by Joseph Gordon Levitt? 8D Because seriously, the man kicks ass in a butler outfit and that just plain tips up my hotness meter. Out of all the four levels, the hotel level was definitely my favorite. The all-or-nothing kiss was just… not sweet, not hot; it just was. So casual, and not idealized - which is how kisses in movies should be, but heh, I guess we all know Hollywood would never get that realistic. The cut-downs on gratuitous sex scenes would really sink the profits.
I have a question though which popped up after watching the movie the third time - in the first level, where Yousuf drives the van, the motions of the van affect the gravity in the second level because:
A. Arthur was in the van
B. Arthur was dreaming the second level
C. So the jerky motions of the van automatically translate into a shift of gravity in the second level. In actuality (or, in Yousuf’s dream), his body is being shaken violently, and his mind, which is dreaming, perceives it as a shift of gravity and so the gravity in the hotel level shifts as well.
That… makes sense. But the third level is where there’s a problem. This level is dreamed up by Eames, the forger. So when the gravity in the hotel level shifts, Eames’ body shifts as well, right? And much more violently than Arthur’s did in the first level because while Arthur had a seat belt on Eames’ body was free and floating. And thus more probable to be shifted around violently. Um, shouldn’t this shift of gravity be transferred into the snow fortress level as well?
The only instance I saw this was when Arthur blew up the elevator, which got translated as an avalanche in Eames’ dream. In no other instance does the shift of gravity in the second level affect the first. Which is weird. :/
But that’s just a technicality plothole that can be easily ignored. Back to the characters. Arthur or JGL was just kickass - I have a Thing for tall, skinny guys in butler suits. Um, yes. Now I’m curious about his other movies - searches turn up a lot of them (he’s apparently been in the industry since he was six), of which Mysterious Skin is the most prominent - apparently, he plays the role of a gay teenager here, which is like O__O for me.
Then there are the ladies - Ariadne and Mal. Ariadne was especially awesome towards the end, and I love her pragmatic approach to things. And Mal… well, I’m not quite sure what to say about her, but my first impression of her was… a dominatrix from the 60s. Or something. Because the seductive - yet not revealing - outfits and the wavy bob hairstyle, and the dark lipstick really did remind me of the good ol’ days. :/ But I guess I sort of liked the role she played - her dialogues really make us question how real the world around us is.
On this note, I do wish there were more ladies. While it’s nice to see such hot chunks of man-meat being cool and con artist-ish, I really don’t find any good reason for why there’s only one female in a team of seven. :/
I really haven’t given the ending of Inception as much thought as I could have (I was too busy staring at JGL). Part of me knows that Di Caprio does, in fact, return to his kids in reality because we have no reason to doubt Saito’s influence over the government as a business tycoon. And another part of me wonder if Leo and Saito shot themselves before the sedative wore off and just plunged deeper into Limbo - an imaginary world where Leo just, well, conjures up that he goes back to his kids. I mean, the kids are shown in exactly the exact same likeness of Leo’s last memory of them when Leo does finally meet them. Urgh. My head hurts, so I’ll just move on to the plot, which consists mainly of tricking Fischer into destroying his father’s empire.
Now this is where deception is kicked up a notch, to a whole new level. That Leo and Eames managed to convince Fischer that ‘reality’ was when he was kidnapped by those thugs, and not his flight half way around the world, was like… wow. And the real genius is that they manage to convince him that his godfather was a traitor - he’s tricked into thinking that he’s dicing into his godfather’s subconscious when actually, he’s diving into his own subconscious and um, I actually felt sorry for the gullible guy when he sat clutching a paper fan by his father’s bedside. Here we also see the significance of the number the team forces him to conjure up off the top his head in the van level.
So yes, Inception is definitely a mind-turner. It’s by far not the best movie I’ve seen, but it’s the most thought-provoking one. I think a lot of people will agree that the idea behind the movie is better than the movie itself.
Now I want to watch Nolan’s other masterpiece, Memento, which some claim was a warm up for Inception. O_O
And- I’m really craving some JGL/Ellen Page fic right now. Or anything that has JGL being sapiosexual. Any recs? Tell meee~ :D
Ouran High School/D.Gray-Man
I finally found my Ouran and DGM DVDs guys! *cling to them* I really don’t know how I lost them in the first place, and I have no idea how they ended up inside the cover plate of my harmonium, but they’re here and now I can stop downloading episodes and wasting HD space. Hell yes. :3 I can finally see how many more awful things have inevitably happened to Kanda while I fell behind on watching. ♥
Pokémon
Yes, Pokémon. I’ll kill you if you laugh. :’( I’ve always sort of played Pokémon - have been playing it for eight years - but um, recent correspondence with a crazy and awesome friend has done weird things to the nostalgic fangirl inside me, and now I’m playing with all the frenetic enthusiasm of a madwoman. >_>;;
I finally got my No$GBA emulator fixed after tinkering with a lot of cheats and now I can play SoulSilver without any freezes or black screens! Hooray! Of course, it does freeze from time to time, and um, I have to clear up the Bellsprout Tower battles again because I’m a forgetful spazz and didn’t really save in my hurry to battle (read: thrash the hell out of) Falkner, but sheesh. Whatever. I’ve learned my lesson, and my Quilava (nicknamed Sasuke) is well on its way to becoming a beastly Typhlosion♥ so I shouldn’t have too much problem breezing through the game.
For me, the best part is that my lead Pokémon, Quilava, can follow me around and it reminds me so much of Yellow Version and Pikachu that I have to swat nostalgia away with a broomstick before it creeps up on me./sobs That, and Quilava Sasuke! seems to be quite fond of nibbling at my feet. 8D
…Platinum is another story altogether. God, why is that game so hard? Or maybe I’m just saying that because I haven’t seen the animated version of the Sinnoh region yet (wait, is it even out yet?). The Pokémon there are all so new to me and I have no idea which one to train, because um, I don’t know about their abilities and they all look so... cute, and not intimidating. Except, maybe Prinplup (which is a duck) but I really hope it evolves into an Empoleon soon (I don’t even know in which level it evolves!) because that would be just awesome. Seriously, how many water+steel types are there anyway? That’s right. Not many. *smugmsugsmug*
Um, I’d love to meet you, fellow Pokémon lovers! It’s been so long since… anyone’s approved of me playing Pokémon at my age. :’(
Adam Lambert/Anime OST/Age of Information
…Guys? I have a confession to make. I’ve fallen in love with Adam Lambert’s voice. Ahem. Not the guy himself (his face sort of reminds me of rosewater custard. Don’t’ ask why), but his voice. *__* I’ve never been a fan of American Idol, although I did catch snatches of the latest season from time to time (Crystal was a much better singer than Lee, in my opinion, but Lee wasn’t bad either. Or maybe I’m being biased because I can’t forget that Alanis Morissette song she sang during the auditions *___*).
But when everyone was hyping out about Adam Lambert, I wasn’t impressed much. My reaction was “Meh”, but maybe that’s because I was too irritable at the time (O’levels!) and was being too technical. I do sort of play the harmonium, so I have technical knowledge of htis stuff, yes… last week, a friend of mine, who’s a crazy Adam Lambert fan, left for the UWC campus in China (she got a scholarship! I’m so happy for her, especially since a member of her family passed away recently) and she sort of e-mailed all her AL songs to me and well, I listened to them and my first reaction was: Not bad.
I wasn’t impressed by If I had You, which is supposed to be one of Adam’s most popular songs, but then I listened to For Your Entertainment followed immediately by Mad World and I was left gaping. Seriously, beat-wise, FYE and MW are on opposite ends of the spectrum, but Lambert really pulled it off. Initially, I pegged him off as one of those mainstream singers hunched on money-making album contracts, but I was wrong. I never expected him to be so versatile - I can’t decide whether I like the deep, heated tones he uses for FYE, or the soft, melancholy ones for MW.
I’m still… not convinced I’d like to hear more of him, but my initial unflattering opinion of his has changed quite a bit.
Age of Information - known formerly as Trading yesterday - has been very quiet lately. Ever since they changed their name I don’t think a new album has come out. But I’ve been listening to Shattered, Every Breath you Take, Under my Skin and Just a Little Girl and the composition for each of them is amazing. You can tell that effort has been put into the lyrics, and the tune, because they really don't resemble any other songs I've ever heard. <333 I get that this band is not very well-known, but music to me has always been personal anyway XD Give those songs above a listen - you won’t regret it, I promise!
And then there are anime OSTs for Le Chevalier D’eon (Overnight by Aya), Blood+ (Cry no More), Wolf’s Rain (Stray), Trinity Blood (Broken Wings) and of course, Naruto!♥ - they have been doing a good job of making me feel dejected. :D
And, uh, speaking of this, I… really need to upgrade my playlist, which has been suffering severe neglect over the past two years. DX I’d love some recs - anything not rap/death metal (seriously, they call that music? >__<) floats my boat. :p (Um, I’d love something emotive, something that resembles the beat of “Shattered” or perhaps “Just a Little Girl”, but ahahaha, I totally get I’m talking about the impossible here so, ‘emotive’ will do just fine. :'p )
SN_EXCHANGE
The SN_E. SHIT. THE SN_E. WHY CAN I NEVER BE PUNCTUAL. WHY. God, the art - man, the art. I can't stop staring at the art and now I've just realized I italicized art three times. Yes. It was that fucking amazing. *____* And fffff-- Clarity and lack the luster and Advantage: Us and Girls Like Boys and Sky Turn Red and And Time Runs Out and Scores, Settled and Dwell and Run and and-- avgfglkjfsdhgh. INSERT MOAR UNDIGNIFIED KEYBOARD SMASHING. I will squee more about this soon. In a separate entry. When I get my heart back from the angst fest that was this wonderful final round. ;____;
Meme of no use to anyone but me
♠ Give me a character or pairing from Naruto
♠ Give me either five inspiring words (eg. desperation, idiot, solipsism, trench, kitty!) or a single inspiring phrase (whether it's a part of a poem, song, famous quote or whatever)
♠ Enjoy
So I just discovered I write better under pressure... or when I have something specific to direct my thought towards - like a prompt. Day before yesterday, I spent four hours typing on Dr. Wicked about anything that came to mind and by the end, whatever came out of that didn't make sense in the slightest (it was just a jungle of roughly-worded metaphors -- I mean, seriously? A spoonful of respect? -- and verbosity), but I did feel a lot more relaxed afterwards. And I discovered, much to my dismay, that my mind was blank afterwards. So help me? :'(
And oh. A VERY RANDOM BUT IMPORTANT QUESTION: What do you guys think of the future!possibility of Sasuke as Hokage? ...And Sai as his assistant. Or something. Anything as long as they get to work closely. And interact. I'm totally not thinking about Sasu/Sai here. Nor the alluring possibilities of SasuNaruSai. Or SasuSakuNaruSai. Really. I'm being serious f-list. Because this is SRS BSNS.
How do you think a fic like that would go down? The circumstances that would drive Sasuke to become Hokage? What about Naruto and Sakura? Why exactly would Sasuke accept the title of Hokage? Because Naruto entrusted him with the village before dying? Because he feels like he owes Naruto this much? How would Sai take it, as an outsider who wants in to the Team Seven dynamics? How would Sai feel about Sasuke in general? I know for a fact that Sai would call Sasuke a douchebag first thing (I'm totally looking at you, hungrytiger11) but I'm just... very curious about what a Sai/Sasuke hate-hate relationship would be like. Humour me, flist? O_O
I’m off to complete my Physics homework now, and then I’ll be starting French afterwards (it’s horrifying how far behind you can fall if you miss one single class DX). Speaking of French, I sort of promised a friend that I’d e-mail her with my problems and fff- I totally forgot. Better get to it!
In need of coffee,
I~