In the end it turned out that the shop with the sale didn't have anything much worth buying- probably hence the sale- but there was a CC there, and I ended up buying bunches of stuff.

I don't know how to describe my feelings at the moment I walked in. It was something of a mix of "Aaaaack! They're finally out!!", "Aaaaaack! Pretty pictures!", and "Aaaack! How am I going to study for the Monday test if I get these?!".

So anyway. Got pretty posters, manga, and a raging case of guilt over that stupid maths test.

So I'll write about other things.

Was listening to an Evangelion cd I bought on offer some time ago, while I did work, when it was really late at night and the house was really quiet because everybody else was asleep upstairs. The cd played out, and I was too engrossed in work to go change it, or switch off the cd player or something. Then, in a deep, sepulchral voice: this is the fourteenth track. I jumped. Then they started singing Fly me to the moon, a capella. Lesson: don't ever trust an Eva cd.

I haven't actually had time to read manga these few days, but apparently my sister has- she got into the school by appealing in through the strings ensemble, is now trying to get accepted into the national cadet corps /and/ the air rifle group, and she still has time to read stuff. Anyway. She was reading Hikaru no Go, and apparently has serious doubts about Sai's sexuality- meaning, she refuses to accept that he's male.

On a whim, then, I brought book 17 (which features Sai on the cover) to school and showed it around at class, just before a lecture. And everybody did, in fact, think that Sai was female, until I disabused them of the notion. Which reaction is nothing so unusual, but then one of my close friends said that she wanted to /look/ like Sai. o.O;;;;; She's a really pretty girl.. the type who's very feminine and fashion-concious and stuff. (I don't know why I'm so amused by this.)

Also on the subject of Hikaru no Go, gacked this ff.net link off Alex: "Is Go Sex?" Which I think actually says more about the nature of how sex is viewed today (or at least how the author views sex) than about Go in light of its similarity to sex.

And I have a maths test come Monday, CCA fest tommorrow, the history teacher's site to work by Friday, SATs the Saturday after next, and after that a mega Physics test, so I shall be a good girl and beg offline now.

I know she means well, but.. ow. Hurt. Pain.

School's only about a week in, and already I feel stoned. Went for a ramen lunch at orchard sometime this week, and on the quest to get home sat at a bus stop for about fifteen minutes watching three buses I could have taken go by, wondering why they didn't stop, until I realised that they weren't supposed to, at that particular bus stop. Felt quite stupid for a moment, but luckily bus stop that did have my bus was just down the road, and when I did get there the bus came quickly so I didn't have time to kill myself for being such a slothful idiot.

Sis is sleeping over at her school for her orientation night. Still on her nine-day orientation stint, the lucky thing. I have the room to myself and only myself tonight. Only going to attempt homework. Or revision. Hate. Life.

Feel my overblown teenage resentment.

Otherwise, getting the 'five'/Go/'go' pun on Hikaru's choice of shirts was the best moment of the day. Too bad it took the mangaka pointing it out for me to realise it.

I have to go back to the soulsucker tommorrow. I did not, and do not need to fall for another series. (Aaaa, Sai!!) Ah well. What happened, well, happened. Took me about a day and a night to finish and get my hands on most of the manga (ah, the wallet!!) if I can, I'll pop by Kino after school tommorrow to get the anime- I hope they still have it.

I like Hikaru. He's an utterly believable character- a bit overboard at first, I thought, but his faults and strengths seem so real, especially as the series progresses and he matures, that I came to grow fond of him like.. a friend, or a little brother. I especially admire his wanting to be good at Go by himself, and not just because of Sai. I cried at book 15, because I could see where the plot was going and what Hikaru was doing, and Sai too, because it was necessary.

Which is not to say that I don't fangirl over Hikaru. I was all over the opening parts of book nineteen- in the Go salon, with Akira- their interaction reminds me of that of a married couple's. Or primary school kids, as the Go Salon lady said, but also like a married couple's. I got the feeling that when Akira and Hikaru are both old men, they'll still be quarrelling like that, and if anyone should happen to show them a kifu of one of their old games, they'd pick up the argument- ahem, debate, where they left off.

You know, in Hikago slash? (any combination thereof) Meia claims they're all too go-sexual to be interested in mundane sex- and it's quite true that most of the characters seem to be interested in is the game, to the exclusion of everything else, but I think one of Hikago's strong points is that it seems to deal with the real-world development of the characters- they're obsessed with Go, yes, but they're also human, and you meet players who aren't as obsessed as the main characters. (And the stories keep pace with Mitani and Akari and Hikaru's other high-school friends. I love them.) So I don't think that they're entirely Go-sexual. In Hikaru and Akira's case, I give them a few years. They're young yet (I feel old, cause I'm older than them and haven't done anywhere near as much with my life) and all that tension and passion and sheer /intensity/ has to go somewhere. Plus Go is partly a dominance game, anyway, and the tussle between Hikaru and Akira has already started to spill outside of the Go board, into words, even if it will always be mainly on the Go board.

If and when anything happens with those two, it will be entirely explainable in Go metaphors, end in a metaphorical draw, and see them rehashing it on a board after.

...take that in a lot of ways.

I also got myself the first book of Alice 19, Watase Yuu's new series, because the cover art was just too pretty. I think it counts as my most banal, shallow purchase of the year, though.

But anyway, I got to watch Lord of the Rings recently (two times now) and it was good. Also very much more.. slashy than the book. I had previously had some sort of mental block against reading LOTR fanfiction, not so much because LOTR was my childhood and you're ruining my sweet innocent memories, dammit! But because to me taking the series seriously, in the same spirit that to me it took itself, was so intrinsic to enjoying the thing that anything that played with canon was just weird. The movies change all that. All that manly shoulderclasping and camaderie. There was this part where I was reading the Chinese subtitles and they didn't exactly adhere to the lines the characters were speaking onscreen, which wasn't so bad since it was true to the spirit of it at least, but having read the books I know that Aragorn's old (childhood?) name was "Estel", which means hope, and there the subtitles were bandying about not giving up because they (Frodo and Sam) could hold on to hope.. and I was dying.

Watched The Cat Returns too, with Meia and Jo, the Studio Ghibli production that just started showing here. Know what? The entire thing is a mix of Japanese schoolgirl's fantasy and a regency romance novel on feline catnip crack. Although to the best of my recollection I have never read a regency romance novel, but. Throughout the show Jo-chan and I were leaning against each other trying very hard not to giggle, as we watched swashbuckling ceramic cats and cute cats and swarms of cats and swordfighting dueling cats and.. rather ditsy girls. And the Very Predictable Plot. The cats save the day. Plus, Rolendo Moon!

New Zealand time is five hours ahead of Singapore's. I got back at nine yesterday, whereupon my mother marshalled the family to start cleaning the house, slept at eleven (after a thirteen hour flight) and got up at four this morning. I hate my body clock. Hate, hate, hate. There is nothing to do at four in the morning except help wash all the dishes and cups and cutlery in the house again (because my mother believes that for the two weeks that we were away, the lizards held sanitary disposal parties on them). My siblings are still, predictably, asleep.

On the other hand, I have a fruit compartment full of chocolate downstairs because my family are lousy gift givers and we visited Dunedin and all these other places and Cadbury has a factory in Dunedin and New Zealanders appear to like chocolate too and we like chocolate, so.. ah well. Wonder if they'll last out the week, or if I have enough to get them to my classmates when the school year reopens. There are chocolate coffee beans I know some people will enjoy, though.

..ah, I had things to say but now I cannot for the life of me remember what they were, so screw them. I'm going to try to get back to sleep.

..wait, I don't drink coffee in the morning. That made no sense. Ah well. Expect more absence from blogging, I'm going away on the 4th till the 19th on the pre-requisite end year family holiday, the first we've had since.. I graduated from primary school, actually. Which seems like a long time but really shouldn't be, since it's only been five years. The second Lord of the Rings movie comes out in Singapore on the day I get back. Cool. And I finally got back my Lord of the Rings set from the dastardly clutches of my friends for practically the first time in.. four years now. It's a day for recounting old times, I see.

Went out with the family to do some last minute shopping for the trip today, where the shopping center we went to was so crowded I wanted to puke and die. They always are on weekends, which is why usually I don't like to go out with the family on them and my dad agrees with me while my mom doesn't understand at all, which sometimes leads to friction. Ew, crowds. Walking till my feet do more than threaten to give pain, trying not to trip over the milling toddlers (I like kids, generally, but today? Brr.)- trying not to run into the people who just have to stand in front of the upgoing escalators.. trying to make your way through the noisy milling mass of humanity.. yes, a lot of fun. But fun or not, if I hear another completely tone-deaf dj mangling christmas carols again, I'm going to kill something. I swear.

On the plus side, I did get to pick up Forbidden Colors and the Butlerian Jihad (one of the new Dune books) on the pretext of having something to read on the plane. Finished Jihad already- it wasn't bad, but rather disappointing, given how much I enjoyed the other prequels. It was about thinking machines and their rule of their human creators, but I felt it didn't deal enough with the core issues of the Dune series, and the character development was rather shallow, unconvincing in some cases. The concept of thinking machines dominating humans and using them as slaves because machines are more efficient and, in some ways, more capable, is an interesting one. However, what would drive those machines? Sentience? Machines don't exactly live, so what would a thinking machine's motive be for existing? The 'humans being more unpredictable and thus more dangerous than machines' line didn't quite stick, either, for lack of proper illustration.

I'm saving Forbidden Colors for the trip. It's by Yukio Mishima (translated of course), which means the writing itself should be good, even if the story is depressing, the concepts a little alien and a little (in my view) silly, the main character even more so. I love reading his works, even if I get frustrated at the bleak picture they present to the world.

(spoilers for the sea of fertility tetralogy)

For example, in Spring Snow, the main character Kiyoaki is rich, handsome, reasonably intelligent, and noble. (in birth) If his parents do not understand him, they at least love him and try to do their best by him; he has a best friend and an unofficial sweetheart who challenges him even as she loves him. In short, he has everything. Then this unofficial sweetheart has to get married, for the sake of her impoverished noble family, to someone rich and powerful if not to the man she loves. Everybody around Kiyoaki is considerate of his feelings, and he is given numerous chances to step in first- they wouldn't even have to get married straight away. But noo, he has to deny his feelings. So the sweetheart gets engaged to a royal prince. Then he starts wanting to have a passionate affair with her, implicating his best friend, and possibly putting his family in jepoardy as well, like Romeo in his impulsiveness, only worse, because Romeo at least wasn't offered the chance to marry Juliet at all. So. Forbidden love, sneaking around everywhere to meet.. and then he dies of pneumonia. (at least I gather from the later books, I could never bring myself to finish the first one.) The sweetheart becomes a nun, the best friend is shaken, and the family is traumatised. If I could have slapped him, I would have.

In the next book, he gets reincarnated. As a young student he raises a group of dissidents to rebel against the government, quite predictably getting caught and charged for treason. The best friend, now middle aged and a judge, having met him and recognised him, quits his job and risks his career and quits his job to defend him, which is done successfully.

Then he goes and kills himself.

I was killing myself. And it's late and my dad wants me to get off the net, so I do.

One: Read in the papers recently about some competition where people compete to win a car: They have to stand up and put a hand on it; half a muffin and a drink of water every six hours, last one remaining wins the car. And the model of car? A Subaru Impreza. A Subaru. Haven't thought about X in a loong time, but it was funny trying to imagine what such a competition would be like, appropriately transposed into X terms. I mean, for one thing, I can just see the catfights waiting to take place over which part of Subaru they get to put their hands on already...

Two: Was thinking about the Sephiroth summon scene in Kingdom Hearts.. and came to the conclusion that it was just that- a summoning scene. Which makes Sephiroth a summon (tell me the scene didn't look like the FFX Bahamut summon sequence) and even ties in with game canon, Kingdom Hearts game canon anyway. The whole 'too valiant to disappear' thing. Imagine Cloud's reaction to that when he finally finds Sephiroth.(I don't particularly believe that Aeris was the 'light' he was searching for, one tiny picture in the ending nonwithstanding in contrast to the entire wing thing and the fact that Cloud and Seph both show up at the Coliseum)

Cloud: *holds up tiny red ball* Sephiroth? Seph? Seph?

GLEE. If that stuff works like materia, you could probably say that the ball would get BIGGER the longer Cloud carried it around (maybe even on his sword, no less) and that after Cloud masters it, he'd be able to get another one!

Me bad, I know. Going back to math now.

And it is raining again.

Had to go home in the rain some past day. I hate the rain, you know? And then it's not so much the rain itself as the cold and wet, and not so much the cold and wet as how miserable cold and wet makes me feel. And the noise. It's hard to hear yourself think over the noise the rain makes- maybe if it didn't make so much noise, I'd like it better? Pathetic, I. Making foolish excuses about why I hate the rain. But the rain that night was quite.. pretty, for lack of a better word. It was very heavy rain, which meant that the streets were covered with a sheen of water, and the lights of the streetlamps reflected in it was constantly being broken up by the falling raindrops, so that they looked like starbursts. Shimmering, yellow-gold starbursts. Almost made the rain worth walking through. Although I wasn't thinking that when sitting in the train with my feet threatening to freeze off from wet.

What else to blog? Watched the Harry Potter movie. It was.. well, not a bad movie, but not as good as the first, even if maybe it's just the novelty wearing off. It's definitely much darker, the pace much faster, so much so as to seem a bit disjointed in parts. The boys' voices seem to have broken, too, which is a minus point in my book, since they sound all weird and.. well, I thought they sounded like harridans at first, before I got used to them.

Very fragmented blog entry. Ah, what the heck.

Which Final Fantasy Villain Are Ye?
created by dimknight and kefkafanatic
go and immerse in complete mental insanity

*stares for a moment* Hahahahahaha!!!!

...funniest thing I've seen in a long time. Prolonged web absence due to wrestling with my new playstation and holiday math homework. The latter is considerably thinner than last year's of the same level that I got from.. somewhere, in revision, but also considerably more difficult. Spent Sunday afternoon trying them out- I finished about three and a half questions. Had to go for help on the third, and then my father and uncle spent an hour arguing about it. Maths. Gurk.

I now, am not studying. Am happily ignoring exam! Instead, I am wading through a lot of ff8 fic! And I say: Uh, FF.net is scary?

Squinoa. Squikku. Squallfuu. (thank heavens, not Squafuu!) Sefistis. Quiefer. Ulteemeesha. I repeat, FF.n is scary? This is English, dear boys and girls. (Well, mostly girls, I think.) I can understand borrowing the Japanese notation of the "x"s, but when you want to join the words like the Japanese do would you kindly consider putting together words that do not have a combined auditory effect that resembles, "squick"? Please? And Sefistis, Seiftis, whatever, really sounds like "syphilis". Yes, like the disease! Does it really cost that much to type out their names in full? *whimper*

I have ventured into the unknown of the great ffn and it has bitten me. Feel my pain.

Then, when I got home it was late, and I discovered that my father had bought the Lord of the Rings vcd. Because he was watching it, and as I ate my dinner I was gratified to find out that he had got close to the part where surely manly comradely kingly kinly and whatever other ties don't go as far, Aragorn and Boromir! Or, I have yet to see what reason you had for lying full body on top of Boromir, Mister Aragorn, Sez the Evenstar. You know, if you've watched the show.

So. Anticipation.

Then my sister, who's sitting on the sofa, cries out, "Finally! Slash!"

I choke. Turns out that she's actually playing pokemon on her gameboy.. but, really. I love my sister. I got a big balloon sword of the type with balls on for her, from the fundraiser. Had to restrain self from pointing out symbolic value of dueling when guy classmates at fundraiser borrowed another balloon sword and mine and started to mock fight.

Muscles ache.

Having said that, I shall really go back to studying for that dratted Chinese thing again. Really.

Yaoi isn't really about homosexuality, is it? Speaking as a yaoi fangirl of the type who immediately starts pairing up boys in every new medium of entertainment she gets her claws into.

I think it's more like a kind of fantasy ground, where everything is as the fangirl- or author, or artist, to use more gender and series non-specific terms- would like it; where love is true, intransient, and beautiful; where if men are only interested in sex at least they are elegant and considerate about the entire business, or not, depending on the individual's fantasies or preferences.

Yes, heterosexual or non-yaoi situations also give you the chance to play God.. but yaoi affords the average fangirl the ease and the safety of detachment. However much she might feel for or identify with the character, there's always, by dint of gender, a sort of barrier, a safeguard against hurt.

Then there is always the jealousy factor, that if the individual can't have the object of her fantasy, at least no other woman is, at least there was never a chance that he would have liked her in the first place- but I put this badly, maybe it'd be more coherent as even if he rejected her (which the characters do by default because they are generally not real or unreachable) it wouldn't be due to the individual's shortcomings, it would be because the individual wasn't of the right sex to begin with. Ego eased, unconciously. No woman in the romantic equation also means no stressful comparison and finding oneself not up to par. (And fictional women are like fictional men, I suppose; mostly fantasy, and sometimes unnaturally perfect.)

And of course yaoi is complications free- not talking about the risk of disease, which I suppose must be present in many sorts of sexual enterprise especially involving intercourse, but of the risk of having children. As much as I personally like children, I can't deny that in today's kind of society children are often complicated and consuming burdens on the support side- in almost every way, regardless of whatever else they might bring into their parent's lives. Most yaoi fans, I think, probably wouldn't be wanting a child in their lives at this particular point- except perhaps those who follow the practice of mpreg, which personally.. ah well, that's another think. Incoherency, blargh.

Then there is another factor, which involves children as well and operates on the theory I have that the subconcious purpose of the human race- or any other living things is to perpetuate, which usually means having children. Which puts an element into every heterosexual romance, usually subconciously, of evaluating the partner's genes to make sure that you make the optimal match. Yaoi obviously can't be about that, so maybe in comparison it is more romantic? The "love" more pure? I don't know. I'm not entirely sure about that. Generally speaking, of course, not using the "case-by-case, no-two-stories-or-loves-are-entirely-the-same" thing.

After that.. well, some people are interested in yaoi because of the fandom, or the community, just as some people pick up a sport or an art to meet new people.

I should elaborate on that, I think, and there are more points but I'm tired and I've run out of steam. Probably finish this thing some other time. If I ever do.

I haven't been online much for the past few days, which I attribute to results, and sickness. Went to school dizzy on Monday, got most of my papers back, went home, slept for twelve hours straight, then woke up with a bad fever and so stayed home. Bad results, yeah. No, the fever wasn't faked. Been sick since the exams, which might account for part of it, but that's self-indulgent thinking and.. graaaah.

I passed everything, actually, if badly, which probably means I won't have to drop any subject or be retained or drop out. I improved in some areas, actually. But boy, do I wish I could redistribute the grades somewhat. I cannot believe I passed physics, which I had written off, or F maths, in which my class has a slightly over fifty percent /pass/ rate, but I could cry over econs and C maths. And I cannot believe the General Paper tutors finally understood what I was trying to say and gave me an A for the essay, after I had almost given up on doing well for that. Irony. This world needs less of a morbid sense of humor, I tell you.

..my parental apparatus are not happy. Particularly the over-achieving iron-minded (and I mean that not in a good way) /stubborn/ demanding side of it. Them. Whatever. Although I realise that this time, he does have a couple of points. What am I doing with my life? What have I been doing this entire year? I'm lazy. I could have done better. (I refuse to admit on grounds of principle, however, that I am brainless. Not the fastest on the uptake, fine, not as fast as you on the uptake, fine, but I am not brainless, Dad.)

Anyway, this means I probably won't be online or going out much until after the 8th of November, which is when I have my next exam. (still keeping the sat appointment, though.) So, yeah. Ending this entry. And now, to drown whatever embarassment I might feel at typing such a dumb and revealing entry, I will indulge in a long, involved, and possibly incoherent.. essay thing on yaoi. Which is a real sucker of an essay in terms of structure and whatever still, but.. whatever. (FF8 influence, but it's such a convenient word to use. So eloquent in its silence. Or maybe it's just Squall appealing to the hormonal teenager in me.)

Me: And then it begins to rain.

Skipped school today to see the doctor for my insect bites and to do a blood test. Needles.. ick, needles. I haven't had to endure an injection for a very long time. Today I was fairly shaking in my pants, because the nice technician lady took a very long time to find the vein in the crook of my arm- she was poking here, poking there, asked to see my other arm.. finally I asked her if she could take blood from my thumb instead, but she smiled and said no, it had to be from the arm, and continued poking. When she got the needle in, I think she wriggled it around a bit.. and then left it there for an indeterminately long time (keep in mind that I was having the injection thingy and I had nothing else to do.) It's morbidly fascinating to watch, sharp metal things stuck in your body. Provided you can summon up the appropriate detachment, of course. I hope they don't accidentally spill the vial of my blood; I don't particularly want to go through that again.

..then.. FF8! I'm on the third disk now. Having to draw spells was novel at first, but is just tedious and frustrating now. And the leveling up thing your enemies do as you do is mildly irritating to a person who likes to do that leveling up thing so's she can sneeze and watch her enemies fly away, the poufs. Guardian forces more than make it up, though, I think. More blogging about the characters the next time I come online, I think, I want to get back to the game now.

Heh.

1) Watch/rewatch anime-Utena, Initial D, Pretear, the various Koyapi titles I bought but haven't yet had time to watch.
2) Work on web projects- obscure manga site, new layout, etc
3) Find out about Inuyasha music cd prices with an eye to appeasing my sister's incessant.. noise.
4) Pay a trip to the library.
5) Finish second playthrough of FF7.
6) Read stuff- I, Lucifer, You Higuri Pirate Gay, raid Dad's toilet library for science fiction.
7) Read more Harry Potter Fanfiction.

Things I actually have done:

1)Read a /lot/ of Harry Potter fanfiction.. mostly HarryxDraco, HarryxSnape (Mathemathically, who's actually on top doesn't matter, and.. er, if we're talking about physical tops, the Snape one obviously should be the other way around, the Draco one can be either, but emotional tops.. hehe.) The trouble with the above pairings, I find, is Harry telling Hermione and Ron about his sexual preferences.

Harry: ...I have something to tell you, guys.
Ron and/or Hermione: Eh?
Harry: ...
Harry: I'm, er, that is to say, not exactly straight.. not quite queer, but.. IhavetotellyouthatI'mgay.
Ron and/or Hermione: That's all right, old chap. Your sexual preferences are none of my/our concern. It could be worse, after all, you still have good taste, right? I mean, you could be shagging Malfoy or *shudder* Snape, after all.
Harry: ... *thump*
Ron and/or Hermione: Harry? Harry?!

2)Used up a lot of tissue. God, I hate being sick.

3)Speaking of God, read "I, Lucifer", a book by Glen Duncan about.. well, telling the Devil's side of it all. Written in first person view, and very rambly- the devil appears to like going off on lengthy verbal tangents- but very, very good. (Apart from the fact that the author didn't do enough research, since Lucifer isn't really the devil, nominally speaking. Lucifer as a name for Satan came from a mistranslation of the bible from Hebrew into Latin- originally about the fall of some magnificent Babylonian king who, during his lifetime, persecuted the Jews, I think it was misinterpreted, or some scribe wanted it to be changed, or something. Lucifer comes from Lucem Ferre, Latin for "light bringer", and /not/ Hebrew, which should be telling.. ah well.) Other than that bit of nitpicking, I really liked the book. Duncan's Lucifer is definitely not Angel Sanctuary Lucifer- but then I doubt any other writer could apart from Yuki Kaori, forget I made the reference. He's.. understandable. Smooth-talking, slimy at times, curiously vulnerable, perhaps more impressed by himself than the reader makes him out to be.. It struck more than a few chords, too. "Which do you think would piss off God more, a hell full of people enjoying themselves or a hell full of people longing for heaven?" (to paraphrase it, I can't remember the full quote.) I like this book, although I probably wouldn't like the Lucifer so portrayed. To meet, I mean. I probably wouldn't want to meet any other Lucifer anyway, so that's not saying much. This book is also one of the few (what do you call a male Mary Sue? John Sue?) stories I've read with a blatant self-insert who follows the entire Mary Sue routine, that I like. Anyway. (Gosh, didn't mean to give an entire book review!)

4) Made new layout. Not from the picture I originally planned, but base image too gorgeous to resist.

Four out of seven. I pass, at least. ^^;;;

I think I'm sick, but making this made me feel better. Have things to blog, but will blog when I'm not making silly mistakes like mixing Izumi Shikibu with Murasaki Shikibu. Very different personalities, yes. I go wander off now.