Once a Stranger

Most of those are Yuletide fics; but perhaps not all. So yeah I finally finished reading all the Yuletide fics I meant to read this year - four months late! - but on the plus I'm pretty sure it's the first year I actually manage doing that instead of letting the last fics trail into forgettingness.

( norse mythology, marvel comics, the administration, death gate, book of the raksura, cyteen, amber, left hand of darkness, lion in winter, princess tutu, mad men,vorkosigan, revolutionary girl utena, dc comics  )

1. Failed to go to epitanime this week end after all. Woke up too late I guess. x_x Only now am I suddenly regretting it a little bit. Oh well, not like I had any money to spend.

2. Watched Thor on friday (finally was showing on 2D at my nearby theater). Liked it overall. You know, there's still no Thor-related recs on my list of comics to be read. Just saying :3

3. Posted the ficlets in answer to everyone who prompted:

Title: Taunting
Fandom: Tokyo Babylon / X
Characters/Pairings: Seishirou/Subaru, Fuuma
Length: 328 words

Title: Rebel girl
Fandom: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Characters/Pairings: Juri
Length: 370 words

Title: Learn from the feet of the master
Fandom: Black Lagoon
Characters/Pairings: Balalaika/Revy
Length: 496 words

They're not great, but they're wri~ting, first since 2008, yay! Wouldn't mind getting more prompts, really :3

4. comicstore_news is missing an editor in case you have too much free time and feels like doing something selfless for fandom (it's good for finding good fanart on tumblr, if i say so).

I had promised... I forget if it was misstopia or haremstress, or both, a big rec post about SKU at some point; so there it is!

Revolutionary Girl Utena, aka Shoujo Kakumei Utena or SKU for short, is a series from the mid-nineties. It exists in both manga and anime form; and there also was an animated movie adaption made in 1999; but i mostly want to talk about the animated series which is, IMHO, the best and more interesting form the story takes. It was directed by Ikuhara, which at that point was mostly known for working a lot on Sailor Moon; and comports 39 episodes organised in 4 narrative arcs of unequal size.



The Story

Tenjou Utena is a 14 year old girl enrolled at the Ohtori Academy. When she was a young child and after just losing her parents, she remembers meeting a Prince who saved her and gave her a ring to remember him by. She was so impressed by him that she decided to herself become a Prince as well as cherishing the ring in the hope of meeting him again. Thus motivated, Utena grows up as an impressively athletic girl who values noble qualities and straightforwardness; and she always wears a male uniform in high school to the annoyance of her teacher and to the boosting of her popularity amongst other girls.
One day, in order to defend her best friend who just got her heart broken by a jerk, she ends up involved in a duel against a member of the Student School on a very weird duel arena that exists in the Forest behind the school and under an upside down castle floating in the sky. It just so happens that every members of the Student Council wear the exact same ring that was given to her by her Prince, which marks them as Duellists in an elaborate game organised by a mysterious letters writer naming themselves The End of the World where the Victor receive a young girl, Himemiya Anthy, as their Bride for as long as they keep winning; and has a shot at winning the vaguely defined Power to Revolutionise the World. By the way, the current Victor needs not bring a sword to the duel, they can just magically bring forth the Sword of Dios from inside the body of Anthy. Because Anthy is cruelly abused by her initial Victor, and appears to submit to it meekly as per the rules of the game, Utena ends up participating in those games in order to protect her as, one by one, each member of the Student Council challenge her.

( Pics and lengthy review )

So, there's my Utena FST made entirely of Tori Amos songs.

I blame all of you who encouraged me instead of discouraging me :p

Files under the cut, in rar archives, uploaded with mediafire and in two parts. (if anything in that pauses someone a problem, tell me and I'll see what I can do to make it easier to get).

( Girl Disappearing )

Yes, I do like feedback.

Two days ago my parents visited and dropped a new furniture (I don't know how to call it, it's mostly decorative with some cupboards too) for my flat and my dad dumped a couple of GOs of blues, jazz, and oldies rock on my harddrive; and then I was bullied into rearranging my book shelves to a result which I admit is a bit neater.

Fun fact now that I can see the books on my shelves better : seems like on most English books cover the title tilts left to right (that is to say the bottom is on the right); whereas on most French books the text is tilted right to left. Funny, no? There's a couple of exceptions, of course, but that's how the big majority goes. I wonder if there's some obscure cultural reasons...

Among the music from my dad, there were some Joan Baez (gorgeous stuff) and a song called Donna Donna, and when I listened to it, I totally cracked up. DAMN YOU ANIME FOR WASTING MY ENJOYMENT OF GOOD MUSIC! Already I can't listen to Carmen without snickering softly to the bemusement of anyone around thanks to Prince Tutu, and now Utena slays my enjoyment of folk XDD
ETA: Having looked up the history of the song on the wikipedia I find the song usage in Utena kinda creepy now O_o

The first three drabbles from my drabble prompt request from here

Ganymede
Utena, Touga/Akio, 400 words

Excellence
Harry Potter, Percy/Hermione, 280 words

Lies
A Song of Ice and Fire, Sandor/Sansa, 100 words

Whee! This is being fun ^_^

Happy birthday stanayitnuh ! ♥

Sometimes Fandom really does puzzle me. But, I've been recced at quibbler_report and hogwarts_today so very much yay of the OMGBBQ-jumping-up-and-down kind.And let's not whine about the lack of comments.

Otherwise, having lots of fun discussing Remus' character here. Where I also started that Slytherins were not selfish :D

I know I tend to have a much darker interpretation of Remus than most people, and I probably go a bit too far with it, but I do think that a lot of people go overboard in the other direction (lots of fanon!Remus annoy me ^^)

Actually I could spend some time sporking fun at fanon!Remus in many ways (Saint!Lupin who is ever so good and kind and sacrificing; Bookish!Lupin who's shy and the smartest kid of his class regardless that James and Sirius were canonically just as smart or smarter; Alpha Wolf!Lupin with the super sense of smell to detect lies and horniness and who likes to bite his SO to mark his dominance - this one is more amusing than annoying - and so on ^^)

It's not of course that I think that Remus is an evil character. He has many qualities. He shows kindness to Harry and Neville, he's a very good teacher, he's courageous and selfless enough to fight in the Order despite how much the WW treats him badly.
But I do think he's got lots of failings, and I find that his failings make him much more interesting. And most of them are about how he deals with other people.

In many ways Remus reminds me of Anthy Himemiya from Shoujo Kakumei Utena, which I know is a weird parallel to make, but here.
( spoilers for Utena )

On another subject altogether, funny link about Pluto's demission as a planet (awww, poor Pluto XD)

ETA: Last, LJ seems to be very irregular about sending me mail notification of comments. I do receive most notifications, but if I check, I can see there's a few comments for which I've never received any. And it's been a few weeks now and I receive not late notification either, so it's starting to piss me off.

If Ohtori was a Arthurian legends...

( spoilers for Utena )

I was gone for the week end to Tour to see Maya again, and we had a wonderful time. I got to meet Casey, who's one of Maya's friend and an adorable girl, and we watched Utena season 1 and 3 (in one week end... talk about symbolism overload @_@) which I loved, to hang around, go clubbing (sorta) and do much silly fangirl things. It was a riot.

I had a dream in which I had posted a new fanfic for Tokyo Babylon, and I was all excited because, whee ! at last my groove was coming back and I was enthousiasmed for the fandom anew ! And then I woke up just when i was going to check on my reviews ;_;

Back to school, I'm slowly getting back in the track of things and getting over my attack of anxiety and unability to do anything. Hopefully this time, it will last and i won't relapse after, you know, three weeks.

( About Utena )