Saturday, September 29, 2001

WARNING: I finished watching all of Trigun last night, finally. Therefore: big fat honking Trigun spoilers ahead. If you haven't watched the entire series, you'll want to skip this. Please hilight the text to read.
You know, I'm of the opinion that they could have avoided a whole lot of trouble if someone hadn't looked at this adorable blond-haired newborn baby and said, "I know! Let's name him Knives!"
... what drugs was this person on? How do you look at a squalling red-faced newborn and decide to name it "Millions Knives"? I mean, I've heard of postpartum depression, but postpartum stupidity? You just don't name babies after truckloads of sharp weapons. That's not just asking for trouble, that's demanding it...
If that person had looked at the newborn twins and said, "Hey, I know, let's name them Vash and Marshmallow!", then things would have turned out a lot differently... Millions Marshmallow. Hee hee hee...

Also, Nicholas D. Wolfwood rocks my world, I'm madly in love with the preacher man, and he had the best damn death scene I've seen in years. God, Wolfwood. Macho bastard to the end.
Of course, it was Milly who just broke my heart completely. That was... well handled. Damn.

Mmmmmm, Wolfwood. Mmmmm.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 08:27 PM EST
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Friday, September 28, 2001

Nobody was really asking for it, but...

I hate a good ninety percent of fanart, too.
Really.

I hate fanart that's been made by putting a piece of paper over an official art and tracing it. I hate fanart that's been made by propping up a picture in front of you and carefully copying it, freehand. I hate fanart that's actually a scanned-in manga panel that you've colored. I hate fanart that's a copy of a copy of someone else's fanart. I loathe fanart that's actually, literally someone else's fanart, stolen and claimed as your own.
I hate fanart with the pose obviously stolen from some other source, like a different official art or a magazine ad. I hate fanart with no pose reference at all, so that the character is defying the laws of physics just by standing there with his ankles apparently broken.
I hate fanart that's just a slavish copying of the official artist's style. I hate fanart that's so incredibly personalized and stylized that you can't tell who the character is any more. I hate fanart that's some character drawn in some other artist's style. I don't want to see Zidane as a Toriyama character.
I hate fanart drawn and scanned on lined notebook paper! I hate fanart pages that contain nothing but uncleaned scans of pencil doodles! I hate fanart that's been colored with nothing but the paint bucket! I hate colored fanart that hasn't had its linework darkened! Grey linework is ugly!
I hate ultra-realistic fanart of anime-styled characters. I hate anime-styled fanart of realistic characters, but not as much. I hate clumsy SDs. I hate spindly-limbed stick characters. I hate 'modern dress' fanart, unless the artist is really, really good.
I hate fanart that's just the character standing there staring at you. I hate fanart that's so full of inept movement and contortion that you can't tell whose limbs belong to who. I hate fanart that contains no efforts at facial expression, I hate fanart with mitten hands, I hate fanart with log-shaped feet! I hate fanartists that never draw anything beyond head-and-shoulders shots! I hate fanartists who insist on drawing the entire body every time, at the expense of detail!
I hate fanart where the weaponry is drawn without benefit of a fifty-cent ruler! I hate fanart where the hair is just a big clump on the head! I hate fanart that doesn't realize that there's a skull behind the face, so there's no forehead and less cranium! I hate clumsy backgrounds that were obviously an afterthought! I hate pictures that are crammed with Photoshop-added text that obscures details! I hate lens flare!
Tangentially, I hate ninety percent of thumbnails, since they don't give you any information about the contents of the picture! I hate fanartists who name all their pictures things like '9.jpg', so that I can't tell who's in the picture! I hate fanart sites that contain three pictures! I hate fanart sites that contain three thousand pictures! I hate pictures that are over 200k in size!
I hate all fanart of Sailor Moon, Dragonball, and Pokemon. I'm tempted to add all fanart of Digimon and Gundam Wing to that mix.

I hate hentai fanart. I especially hate amateurish hentai fanart. I hate seeing those naked little girls with the wide, empty eyes and the green hair. I hate hentai fanart that puts stupid couples together just because it's 'pretty'. I hate hentai fanart that couples a human with an animal, a Pokemon, or a Digimon. I loathe seeing a normally strong character transformed into a submissive sex slave for one or more other characters. I despise hentai fanart that inflates a character's breasts to American comic book standards. I abhor hentai fanart drawn by people with no grasp of anatomy!
I hate most yaoi fanart. Especially the amateurish/anatomy-free kind. I hate the coy giggling shit that a lot of female 'yaoi fanartists' hide behind. I hate 'yaoi' fanart that's just two male characters almost touching. I hate yaoi fanart that's too damn explicit. I hate yaoi fanart that's got too much 'fluid' in it. I hate stupid couplings, I hate extreme sadism, I hate ugly yaoi. I loathe mosaic, no matter how important it might be. I hate yaoi that defies the laws of physics!

And you know what? I've done a good two-thirds of the above, at one point or another. Grey linework, mitten hands, log-shaped feet? Yeah. Colored with nothing but the paint bucket? Yup. Clumsy SDs? Uh huh. Lack of a grasp of anatomy? Oh hell yes.
That kind of thing is something you just have to work through. You do something, you learn from it, you move on, you get better. You read tutorials, you look at other people's art, you ask questions, you get better. It's completely excuseable; hell, it's expected! But if you take art seriously, you have to make an effort to get better!
Actually, you don't even have to do that! If you're happy doing what you do, then do it. Once again, I actively hope that you don't give a shit what I think. I hope that you do what makes you happy.

I can't hate people for being amateurs, although I can certainly dislike their output. But I realize that those people are trying, which is a lot more than most people do. I realize that, if they keep trying, they'll most likely get better, and I love them for that.
At the same time, if they never get any feedback, they might not know how to improve. Maybe this list will help with that, maybe not. How should I know? It's just a blog entry.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:20 PM EST
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Thursday, September 27, 2001

I hate fanfic.
No. Really. I do. I hate it.
I hate almost every single fanfic that has ever been written, from the beginning of time to now, and I'll continue to hate almost every fanfic that is produced until the sun burns out or I die, whichever occurs first.

I hate fanfic that skimps on description. I hate fanfic that drowns you in description. I hate fanfic that skimps on dialogue, and fanfic that involves thirty minutes of mutual soul-searching before anything can happen. I hate fanfic in which nothing really happens except someone 'coming to a realization' about themselves. I hate fanfic in which too much crap happens in a few short and colorless sentences.
I hate fanfic that's longer than about ten pages. I hate fanfic that's shorter than a page. I really, really hate fanfic that's longer than two hundred pages. Fan novels and fan screenplays must die a lingering death.
I hate fanfics that haven't had the benefit of a spellchecker. I hate fanfics that contain about half as much punctuation as they should, and those that contain twice as much as they should. I hate grammar-free fanfic, I hate fanfic that's just a string of thudding declarative sentences, I hate fanfic that's been saved as a text file, I hate fanfic that stretches from one edge of the screen to the other, I hate fanfic that's displayed in white text on a black background! Just like this!

I hate self-insertion fanfic. I hate Mary Sue fanfic. In other words, I hate any fanfic that's just a fangirl (or boy) wanking a thinly disguised version of herself (or himself) all over some poor official character. I especially hate fanfics in which the author's alter ego is ten times as powerful as any of the official characters! And I loathe fanfic in which the author's alter ego is the new ultimate villain!
I hate fanfic that radically reinvents a character. I hate fanfic that tells me nothing new about a character. I hate fanfic that contorts itself to create a romantic liaison between two people who just should not be together. I hate fanfic that ignores official relationships just to make a 'pretty couple'. (I'm talking to you, Relena-bashers.)
I hate fics that radically revise the official story. I hate alternate-ending fics. I hate 'ten years later' fics. I hate 'five hundred years later' fics. I hate 'let's reminisce now we're old' fics. I hate 'I know you used to be my archenemy, but that was five years ago, so come here for a big wet kiss' fanfics. I hate 'I know I used to be good, but now I'm evil and YOU MUST ANGST ABOUT KILLING ME' fics. I loathe and despise alternate-universe fics.
I hate fics that end in either murder or suicide! I hate fics in which relatively normal characters become depraved madmen, and I hate fics in which sick and twisted characters become relatively normal human beings! That goes double for fics in which the newly 'normal' human being is now the love interest! I hate fics in which a relatively normal character now drowns in angst or lust or fear or madness! I loathe fics in which a sick and twisted character now wants nothing more than to atone and then marry one of the heroes and lead a normal life!
I hate smutfic written by people who have never touched another person! I hate smutfic written by teenagers in general, no matter how much sexual experience they have! I hate smutfic in which the generic male/female missionary position is the limits of their imagination! I hate sadistic/masochistic smutfic! Especially S/M smutfic written by teenagers! I hate smutfic that's drowning in coy euphemism! I hate coyness in general! If you can't bring yourself to write the word 'cock', then save us all the pain and just IRIS OUT!
I hate angstfic! I hate hentai fic! I hate songfic! I hate hate HATE fan poetry! Argh free verse fan poetry froth writhe scream. I loathe and despise crossovers! There is a special layer of hell reserved for people who write crossover fics, and it involves being ground up by Krelian's Soylent System to make Kefka's makeup! Do we understand each other?!

Ahem.
What?!
You write fanfic.
Uh... yeah, yeah, I do...
Not only that, but you've written self-insertion fanfic.
... she wasn't really me!
You've written angstfic.
Once! Okay, twice. Well, okay, three times... no, I guess four... um...
You wrote a fic in which Vincent killed Cloud and then himself.
That was a joke!
You wrote a hentai fic.
That was supposed to be funny!
You wrote a fanfic that was a hundred and forty-six pages long. An alternate universe fanfic. 146 pages of alternate universe screenplay.
It seemed important at the time!
You wrote a songfic.
So?!
Girlfriend, you write fan poetry.
Shut up! Just shut up!
And in conclusion, your Honor, we'd like to present Exhibit M, Tales from the Wyvern Westward, an entire series of crossover fics.
Aaaaaaagh!
So what have you got to say for yourself?
I'll tell you what I've got to say for myself! I'm a big fat hypocrite!
Quit trying to defe... wait. What? Run that by me again.
I. Am. A. Big. Fat. Hypocrite, you stupid handpuppet.
... I have nothing to add to that.
Good. Now shut up and let me talk.
Yes'm.
Thank you.

Yes. Yes, I am a Big Fat Hypocrite. I write whatever the hell I want to, because I want to, and I put it up on my website, no matter how much of the above rant it's in violation of. And a lot of the time, I don't significantly hate myself for doing so, either. I'm still reasonably proud of a fair bit of my output.
And there are certain other people who can get away with an awful lot of the above, too, and I'll still hang on their every word.
See, here we get into an important distinction. If you have Mad Writing Skillz, fangirl, you can write anything and I'll like it. I consider myself lucky to be friends with several Mad Skillzwomen, and they can do whatever they like, and I'll slobber all over it.
I'm not trying to say that I, personally, have Mad Writing Skillz. I consider myself to be a slightly-above-mediocre writer, with what amounts to a chemical dependency on semicolons and ellipses. But I have a reasonable grasp of the rules of English grammar, spelling, and punctuation, which (sadly) puts me ahead of most fanfic writers. Most fanfic writers do not have Mad Writing Skillz. They're fans, not professional-quality writers. They write fanfic for the sheer love of the cultural artifact in question, amateurs in all senses of the word. What they produce is important, to them and to others, and more power to them. But it's not important to me. And there's absolutely no reason why it should be. Who am I, anyway? The Grand Arbiter of Fanfiction?

If you want me to like your fanfic, and I am not for a moment saying that you should, then try to avoid tripping any of the above rant. But honestly, who gives a shit what I think?
I'm not trying to argue that other fanfic shouldn't exist, far from it. I am more than willing to abide by the Yaoi Fangirl's Number One Rule:
If I don't like it, I won't look at it.
Your fanfic has every right to exist and thrive on the net, and more power to it. I have every right not to read it, and every right to make snide comments about it privately to my friends. And in this state of mutual benign neglect and snideness, we can comfortably co-exist for the rest of our lives.
Deal?

So what do I like in a fanfic? Well, I like parody, particularly script-style parody. I like intentionally funny fanfic. Heck, I like fan poetry if it's funny.
I like well-written and intelligent smutfic, the kind in which the author has either had personal experience with the events depicted, or at least done her homework.
And I'll read anything by someone I know to be a Mad Skillzwoman, or a close personal friend.
Other than that, though, I don't read fanfic any more. At all.
You're probably relieved.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:15 AM EST
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Monday, September 24, 2001

Tonight, when we went out to dinner, the hostess who seated us had a rather unfortunate condition. Don't get me wrong, she was pretty, young, slender, blonde, and zit-free, but she had one of those utterly annoying high-pitched squealy eight-year-old voices. The kind of voice that tells people "please, don't take me seriously". Or "I hope you will ignore the silly things that come out of my mouth. Oopsie!"
The same part of my brain that is horrified and disgusted by children reacts snappishly to squealy-girls. I know she can't help it. I mean, I hope she can't help it. If she developed that "please beat me Daddy I'm a bad little girl" voice deliberately, well, I gotta kill her. It works for Betty Boop, but she's a hydrocephalic flapper and you're not.
But some people just have squeaky voices and that's that. Alas.

Whatever else I may have been blessed/cursed with genetically, I am the owner of a reasonably pleasant contralto voice. (Actually, I sing tenor, just like Roger Waters. o/~ I have become... comfortably numb... o/~)
Unfortunately, I am AWARE that I have a vaguely pleasant voice, as this FAQ may make clear:
1). How can I tell if Mooncalf is being flirtatious?
Her voice drops an octave.
2). So if I'm talking to Mooncalf, and her voice gets low and throaty, she's flirting with me?
Not necessarily.
3). Huh?
It usually means that she's flirting with someone within earshot. Not necessarily the person she's actually talking to. And not always that, either. Heck, sometimes she throat-chests her voice just to make squealy-girls feel bad about their little pitiful whiny voices.
4). So does that mean someone's gonna get laid by Mooncalf tonight?
Don't be silly. Mooncalf may travel in a cloud of estrogen, but she seldom if ever means anything by it. Just wipe the stuff off and get on with your life.
5). Aw, darn.
Sorry, hon. For what it's worth, if Mooncalf is interested in you, you won't be able to ignore the fact. Trust me. Mooncalf has been known to tell guys "You are the most beautiful man I've ever seen. May I rip your clothes off?" Sometimes she even means it.
6). Eee!
Nyeh heh heh.

Well, I'm sure that was more information than you really wanted to know. Just continuing my string of embarrassingly revealing blogs...

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 09:05 PM EST
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Sunday, September 23, 2001

Er, so. I was on IRC last night, and one of my compatriots mentioned that she's been writing a lot of 'dodgy wanker haiku' recently. This being a yaoi-based IRC channel, of course, we all had to run with that particular turn of phrase, with much hilarity resulting; and I thought I would share with you all my own, personal attempt at 'wanker haiku':

Wank, wank wank wank, wank
Wank wank, wank wank wank, wank wank
When I think of you.

Aren't you people just so proud to know me?

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 12:25 AM EST
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Wednesday, September 19, 2001

So close! I was so close to a brilliantly fangirlish theory, and then it all FELL THROUGH!
So I'll share anyway. What the heck, it was great for five minutes.

Basic genetics holds that brown eyes (B) are dominant over blue eyes (b). I won't be getting into Mendel squares here or anything, but basically, if you have brown eyes, it means one of your parents HAD to have brown eyes too.
Okay. So. I was paging through Xenogears: Perfect Works, and I hit the page about Billy. (Ha ha, I bet you thought this was going to be about Bart. Nyah nyah.)
Billy has blue eyes.
Jessie, his father, has blue eyes.
Primera, his little sister... has brown eyes.
Which means that Raquel, her mother, HAD to have brown eyes.
If that's so... why doesn't Billy have brown eyes?

My god! Who's Billy's mother? Jessie, who WERE you sleeping with?!

But of course, it all falls through. Raquel could easily have been Bb, which would have made her have brown eyes but be carrying a recessive blue-eyes gene; therefore it's all possible and I'm out one incredibly pointless theory.

Damn! And here I was having SO much fun!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 04:31 AM EST
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Preach it, Lea!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 03:47 AM EST
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Tuesday, September 18, 2001

For those of you who just can't get enough, and you know who you are, I not-so-proudly present Generic Mooncalf Smut In Exactly Two Hundred Words:
=====
Setup. Bit of description. Symbolism. Attention to sensual detail.
Introduction of one person. Thought. Thought. Reaction. Thought. Activity.
Appearance of other person.
Idle chat. Brief humor. Banter, banter, banter, flirt. FLIRT. Angst, nervousness, backpedaling. Attention to sensual detail again. Symbolism, foreshadowing.
Act, react, flirt flirt flirt. Touch. React, angst. Thought thought conversation reaction thought angst KISS.
Attention to sensual detail, symbolism, description description. Brief minor violence. Touch touch touch hold kiss TONGUE. Confession, reaction, reaction, flirtation, impassioned speech. Melt. Hold squeeze fondle strip.
Angst.
Major attention to sensual detail, description description, symbolism. Fondle grope moan squeeze. Lips tongue fingers chest belly. Nipples! Surrender.
Dirty talk, attention to sensual detail. Change of position. Strip completely. Grope stroke. Lick suck nibble, moan groan whimper. Suddenly groin! Scream!
Requisite inquiry into other’s mental state. Reassurance. Brief humor. Moving on.
Smut. Smut smut smut, smut. Smut smut grope fondle SMUT SMUT insertion SMUT moaning gasping SMUT growl SMUT thrust thrust thrust SMUT! SMUT! EXPLOSION! EXPLOSION! ROAR!
Gasp gasp wheeze cling. Afterglow. Banter banter flirt. Reassurance. Hug kiss pet stroke hold promise of more later. Brief humor.
Separate. Clean if needed.
Exchange of endearments. Hold kiss nuzzle banter banter banter sleep. Loving thoughts, pet, sleep.
=====
...
I'll just be over here...

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:23 PM EST
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Sunday, September 16, 2001

Oh, well, if we're going to talk about food service nightmares (and I'm going to pretend we were, because my mind is starting to shy away from talking about the other thing)...
My first job was at a Showbiz Pizza, which was basically the precursor to Chuck E. Cheese, animatronic critters and video games and all. First of all, every single manager at said pizza joint was a fervent fundamentalist Christian; now, there's nothing wrong with that, but when it means that they play the same ten lame gospel-rock songs over and over and OVER all summer long, and leave scary-ass Jack T. Chick pamphlets in the restrooms to terrorize children, that IS bad.
Lesson No. 1: Families come to Chuck E. Cheese to be entertained, not harangued and terrified.

But of course, the worst thing for me was my own, personal job. It was my duty to take the grubby handfuls of red tickets from whining snot-nosed children in exchange for various cheap trinkets and prizes. No big deal, if the child has less than fifty tickets, and her parents aren't hanging over her shoulder demanding that the child be given a QUALITY toy.
Lesson No. 2: You do not pay for QUALITY toys with grubby little red tickets.

But there would be a couple of hours at the peak of the night when the counter was stacked three deep in whining, screaming, clawing, greedy children and their parents, all competing to get THEIR TOY next. Twenty of them, one of me.
Lesson No. 3: Sometimes, even Americans, even WHITE Americans, even white American CHILDREN, have to shut up and wait their turn.

And then there were the teenagers who would come up with several THOUSAND tickets, to buy one of the big-ticket items on the wall. So I'd have to sit there. And count EVERY SINGLE ticket. And they'd always come up a thousand or two short, and then they'd whine at me.
Lesson No. 4: Nothing is worth playing five zillion hours of Skee-Ball for. Even less is worth counting ten THOUSAND tickets for. But if you're nice enough to the employee, she'll give you the item no matter how many tickets you are short, because she hates her job.

And then, of course, there was the fact that enterprising children would go through the dumpster, dig out handfuls of discarded tickets, and trade them in for prizes. So I was required to take every single one of these grubby little red tickets -- tens of THOUSANDS of them, every night -- rip them all down the middle, and soak them in a huge bucket of water, thereby destroying the ticket and marking it as 'used'. Said bucket full of water and half-full of soggy red tickets must eventually be emptied. To keep the tickets from going down the sink and clogging the drain, the employee must put her hand in the bucket and hold the tickets in place while pouring off the water.
Lesson No. 5: Walking around with your left arm permanently dyed brilliant pink to the elbow is not sexy. It would take upwards of three days and three showers to get the dye off; when I worked five days a week, that wasn't happening.

Oh, and I was responsible for keeping the salad bar filled up, for selling balloons, and for making cotton candy. Ask me how much time I had to do these things.
Lesson No. 6: When your merchandise employee cannot stop to take a bathroom break for five hours, she doesn't have time to maintain a 60-item salad bar. She thinks that making cotton candy is kind of fun, though.

And finally, I worked up front with the cashiers. The restaurant was firmly divided into three social strata: the front, staffed with the older, calmer, more mature teenagers, who were capable of handling lines of angry people; the kitchen, staffed with true adults; and the drinks bar, staffed with cute, exciteable, fluffy teenagers. The managers encouraged us to bond with our section and loathe the other sections, to 'increase productivity'... through mutual competition and bad feelings, I suppose.
Lesson No. 7: It's easy enough to be loathed by perky cheerleader-types at school. It shouldn't happen in your job, too.

(This is actually a mildly edited repost of a lengthy entry I wrote in Lex's guestbook, which acts as a sort of makeshift BBS for those of us crazy enough to post there. So, in essence, not only do I recycle blog content into my main site's library, I recycle other content into my blog! I am the Queen of Recycling! It may not be ecological, but it's logical!)

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 06:43 PM EST
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Friday, September 14, 2001

Mom called!
Sure enough, her little tiny cruise ship was out in the Pacific when it all happened, and they didn't have anything but shortwave radio... anyway, she's fine, although in two days she's supposed to fly home from Seattle, so she may get stranded yet. We'll see.
But she's okay... Mom's a tough old bat, she is. She'll be fine.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 08:10 PM EST
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Wednesday, September 12, 2001

It's horrible. It is.
I think now is an appropriate time to talk about gallows humor.
Case in point: yesterday, right after the World Trade Center was hit, someone started an auction on eBay. The auction was selling 'one World Trade Center - some assembly required'.
eBay quickly yanked the auction offline, and good for them. But before they could, people had actually BID on this auction.
And you know what? I'm sickened, I'm horrified, I'm disgusted; but somewhere, deep in the back of my mind, I thought it was funny. The kind of funny that causes you to laugh weakly and rub the back of your neck. And then, of course, I was horrified that I'd found it funny.
That's gallows humor. Policemen and firemen indulge in that sort of humor all the time, cracking sour jokes over corpses, making light of the dark. ANYONE in a high-risk high-pressure job can succumb to gallows humor. ANYONE in a high-pressure emotional situation can as well. And if this isn't high-pressure, I don't know what is.

Do you know what that response is? It's this: I must laugh, or I will go mad.

How can we blame ANYONE for feeling that way? Please, please, if someone makes a tasteless joke, try not to scream at them. Try to understand that that's how they're coping with something that, at base, cannot be coped with at all. And sick tasteless jokers are a MUCH better response to the catastrophe than smarmy and earnest Nostradamus quoters, in my opinion.

I must be diverted, or I will go mad.

I get the feeling that if I was able to TRULY understand what happened yesterday, I WOULD go mad. I veer madly between hours in which I do nothing but read news, comfort friends, and rehash the events of yesterday, and hours where I throw myself into my work, desperately creating in an attempt to forget. I've had Painter open for hours, and MacWrite Pro too.
I need to write sappy stuff. I need to make people tell each other "I'll love you forever" and concentrate on tiny fictional details instead of the all-too-real Big Picture. It's how I, personally, am coping. I guess it beats tasteless jokes.
As far as the Big Picture goes, I've done what I can. I donated money, I made an appointment to give blood, I volunteered to answer phones at the local Red Cross, and now all I can do is keep my lonely net vigil and find out what else I can do. And there's only so much news I can really take before I snap, and throw myself back into fiction, into the lives of people who don't exist.

I must be diverted, or I will go mad.

My heart goes out to everyone who was moved enough to shut down their websites in mourning. I understand why you were moved to do so; I definitely understand why people lost the will to be entertaining. Be well, take your time, recover, do what must be done. We love you, and we'll be here when you're ready to face the world again.
However, I won't be shutting my site down. In fact, until further notice, I'll be updating my site every time I finish something. Those of us who cannot help directly are desperate for relief from the feelings of helplessness that every new bit of news brings us. All I can do for the American people, after donating blood and money, is to try and provide some momentary diversion from that which promises to swamp us. It's not much. It's very little. But, believe me, I'm not doing this to be disrespectful to the memories of the dead Americans, or because I take this tragedy lightly. I do this because it's what I CAN do, and what I MUST do.

I must be diverted, or I will go mad. Then come on in. I've put up a small mooncalf update. Hopefully it'll give you ten minutes of relief before you go back to the news.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 06:51 PM EST
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What could I possibly say that hasn't been said? What is there that I could possibly say that would be even the least bit meaningful right now?
Maybe if I was in New York, or in Washington... but I'm in Ohio. Nothing happened here. Sure, Pennsylvania is one state over, but that doesn't mean anything. About the only unusual thing I saw today was eerily silent Ohioans, all queuing up at local gas stations and very carefully not looking at each other. I spent hours trying to get in touch with the local Red Cross, though, and I couldn't. That's Ohio for you... people quietly doing what needs doing, even if they don't look at each other while they do.
I don't have the faintest idea what I think, or what I feel. I want to kill everyone. I don't want to kill anyone. I'm angry, I'm sad, I'm numb. But mostly, I'm afraid.
Hell, I'm more afraid of my own government than of the terrorists right now.
Mostly, though, I just wish I knew where my mother was. That's all.

So I guess I don't have anything noteworthy to add to the day's events.
I'm down in my basement.
I'm not coming out.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 02:37 AM EST
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Tuesday, September 11, 2001

For those of you who are checking online (like I am) to make sure everyone's okay in the wake of the plane crashes, yes, I'm fine. Pennsylvania is the next state over, but so far, Ohio is just scared, not hurt.
My mother is traveling today, though. I'm hoping that she's on the cruise ship or at her friend's house, and not on a plane. Unfortunately, phones are majorly overloaded, and cell phones more so, so I can't find out yet.
I also have a friend in New Jersey who might have been job-hunting in the city, and I can't get in touch with him either.

Excuse me while I fret uselessly.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 04:17 PM EST
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Deep in the throes of unrequited love again... alas. You see, my own personal muse is the God of Useless Inspiration, and it always goes like this:

"And lo, the God of Useless Inspiration smote me upon my forehead, and yea, I was sore afraid; but it is not in him to comfort, or to soothe. For my god is a jealous god, of ominous mien, and he spake thus unto me: 'DO THIS, GODDAMMIT.'"

And I've got no choice. It doesn't matter what deadlines are looming, it doesn't matter what I was working on... once an idea takes hold of my frontal lobes, I have to exorcise it by creating it, or failing so miserably that the idea slinks off in disgust. So despite the fact that I have eight pages of original manga due by the end of the month, right now all I can think about is Ramsus... argh. Woe.
Of course, the last time the God of Useless Inspiration cracked me upside the head, I produced Star Ocean 2: Blowing My Mind. So it's... uh... generally worth the hassle.

I can't really blame Him for Go Wyverns, though. That was his twin brother, the God of Blowing Something WAY The Hell Out Of Proportion...

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 05:06 AM EST
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Saturday, September 8, 2001

Oh, happy day.
Boyfriend's parents were in town for the weekend, so we took them to the COSI, the big-ass ultra-cool science and industry museum that lurks downtown on the Olentangy River. I got to play with a pair of testicles made out of black cloth! No, really! And a breast, too! But that's not why it was a happy day.
No, it was a happy day because, when we went into the COSI gift store, I found something. Something... wonderful.
I found... Shrinky Dinks.

I haven't seen Shrinky Dinks in YEARS! It turns out that the rights to the product have been sold to this little dinky educational-toy company, so they're now being produced again! And not in those preprinted licensed-character sets, either... no, just medium-sized flat blank sheets.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Shrinky Dinks, they're these rough sheets of floppy plastic, kind of like paper in texture. You can draw on them with pencil and markers and stuff, and then you cut them out and put them in the oven, and they shrink down to about one-third their original size and turn into thick, hard, clear plastic. If you used colored markers, it looks like stained glass... they make great suncatchers and keychains and jewelry and buttons and stuff.

And of course, now I'm not EIGHT, and I can actually DRAW a little... I'm going to be making myself some SWEET Shrinky Dinks! Anyone want an 'Ashley's Butt' suncatcher? How about a 'Tiny Little Citan'? I'm gonna pull out my sketchbook and my lightbox and go to TOWN...

The company in question has a web site reserved, but nothing seems to be there yet... but hey, maybe in a few months you'll be able to get Shrinky Dinks too! Woooo!

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 11:49 PM EST
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Thursday, September 6, 2001

Funky observation.
I love Steiner, from FF9. All of Vivi's absolute perfection aside, Steiner was my very favorite character. I have a real weakness for dorky characters, and brother, Steiner just redefines dorky.
Now, we know what Steiner looks like, right? Big round chin-heavy face, huge round oversized eyes with really incongruous fat eyelashes and relatively tiny pupils, wide mouth. Kind of froggy, almost, except frogs don't have eyelashes in my reality. Okay.

A couple of nights ago, I was watching one of my new Lupin III fansubs. And it struck me: Steiner looks a lot like Zenigata. I mean, a LOT. They both have those big chin-heavy faces and the heavily lashed huge eyes and everything.
And then I mentioned that to Boyfriend, and he brought up Onsen-Mark, from Urusei Yatsura. Same damn thing! Big round face, huge eyes, pronounced eyelashes and everything.

Is this a Japanese Archetype? Does Big Chin-Heavy Face + Huge Round Eyes + Big Froofy Eyelashes = Overzealous But Ineffectual Authority Figure? You know, the big wide eyes with the emphasized eyelashes do make them look kind of naive and clueless, despite their bulky adult figures. I'm starting to think it may well BE some kind of manga shorthand for "I may be a total dork, but I'm damned well serious about my job, which happens to be to stop you from doing anything fun. Good thing for you I'm so bad at my job. Oh, and I like you a lot, but I'm damned well never going to admit that, even to myself. Unless you get killed or something."

Even if it's not an official Archetype, I suppose that Onsen-Mark and Steiner could both be homages to Zenigata. Zenigata came first. Actually, there's an episode of Urusei Yatsura where Ataru and Onsen-Mark pretend to be Lupin and Zenigata... and come to think of it, Zidane IS a dashing thief to Steiner's mostly-useless palace guard...

Dude, I think that's it. Steiner IS Zenigata.
I guess that means Ruby is Fujiko, and Blank is Jigen... RIGHT DOWN TO THE FACT WE NEVER SEE HIS EYES! Marcus is Goemon! Well, okay, that's where the relationship kind of breaks down. Although I guess Freya could be Goemon... hmmm...

Ah, well. Something to think about.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:13 PM EST
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Wednesday, September 5, 2001

Just a bit of randomness:
In the past few years, I've had the opportunity to shop at two different brand-spanking-new just-built grocery stores in two different states. And in BOTH of these brand-new grocery stores, I got constant and severe static shocks. From everything. The cart, the handles of the freezer cases, my boyfriend, everything. At the store in Indianapolis, the electric shocks were the worst I've ever had... just touching the door to the milk cooler was enough to make my heart pause.

In both cases, after about four to six months, the electric shocks tapered off and stopped. And I've never had that problem with older grocery stores, either.

I think it has something to do with scuffing over linoleum tiles... when the tiles are brand-new and shiny, they make you build up a nice charge. But then, after a few months of being buffed by one of those huge rotating buffing machines, the gloss wears down, and suddenly you're not getting any more shocks... bah, I dunno. It's a theory, anyway.

... what? I can't be profound and/or funny in EVERY blog.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 01:07 AM EST
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Monday, September 3, 2001

"We were an hour out of New Jersey, and we needed drugs to face that. So. In the back seat of the red convertible we had two clams, a pack of cigarettes, the first five collections of X translated in Spanish, a bottle of generic lube that we could mainline if we were desperate, a half-empty bottle of brainsmut, four copies of Star Ocean 2, a bottle of Wild Turkey wrapped in a dirty pair of pajama bottoms, twelve bottles of Bawls, and a couple of Trigun action figures wrapped around each other lewdly. You really want to watch a man who's high on Trigun, because he'll drive and he'll drive and he'll babble about there being neon on his hat and you can't stop him from doing either, and eventually he'll go over a cliff. It's a bad trip. The Trigun figures were only there for if we really needed them.
"My mangaka woke up and peered out of the car, scratching her face idly and popping open a Xenogears doujinshi to clear her brain. "As your mangaka, I advise you to pull over and pick up this beautiful long-haired boy that's hitchhiking on the side of the road. Perhaps we can advise him on Anime and the Meaning of Life, or just have some pointless sex."
"I pulled over and the bishounen climbed in, beaming. Unfortunately, I'd just started to see Gears on the side of the road, and I knew it was going to be a long, hard trip from here..."

(All apologies to Hunter S. Thompson. I just read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I had to... rescued this from a mailing list, just for you, Psuze. Hee hee.)

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 05:07 AM EST
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Tangentially: y'all quit making fun of the word y'all. It fulfills a necessary function in the English language: it's a plural form of the word "you". "Y'all" is NOT SINGULAR. It stands for "you all", and no self-respecting Texan would ever use it to refer to a single person. So y'all just shaddap.

And it's NOT "ya'll" either. It's "y'all". Don't make me come over there.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 02:53 AM EST
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Sunday, September 2, 2001

At the ripe old age of 29, I've finally figured out what I want to be when I grow up.
See, while I'm not really that good a writer in the grand scheme of things, I'm not really that bad either, and it's something I can't really stop myself from doing, as this blog attests. So, I've always sort of thought that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Write SOMETHING: books, essays, articles, recipes, tech manuals, whatever.

But, see, now I know that what I REALLY want to be is a Crazy Goddamn Texan.

I love Crazy Goddamn Texan writers. Notably Joe R. Lansdale and Robert E. Howard, but there are others... basically, they take a relatively normal genre and Texas it over with this wonderful "aw shucks ma'am" style. It's amazing how many genres can be improved with a little slow-talkin' cowboy in it... hell, it even works for ANIME. And CGT writers write the craziest stuff, and somehow it WORKS... Joe R. Lansdale has a truly deft touch with dialogue and description. If you haven't read any of his stuff, you should start.
And then, of course, there's Joe Bob Briggs... heh, heh, heh.

And I am, technically and in spirit, a Texan, despite my lengthy sojourn in the Midwest, so I'm halfway there. Hell, I named myself after cattle. Of course, it seems to help to be named 'Joe'. Maybe I need to change my name: Jo Mooncalf, Crazy Goddamn Texan Broad.

Put some Texas twang into my smut for y'all to chew on.

Posted by Mie Tsukikoushi @ 07:28 PM EST
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