All art is at once surface and symbol

I'm reading Gabriel's Inferno for a sporking project with Zelda Queen, and AUUUUUUUUGH it's the worst fucking book I've read since Fifty Shades. Though I think they piss me off equally so far. But god, Julia is an idiot and the writing is Tell-Don't-Show and there's slut-shaming and it loves to tease you with things that are Actually Interesting before immediately diving back into wangsty abusive bullshit. I FUCKING HATE EMERSON HE'S CHRISTIAN GREY 2.0 GOD WHAT A TEMPERAMENTAL SCUMBAG DICK HOW THE FUCK DOES HE STILL HAVE A JOB

That’s when he saw her. He stopped, staring across the street at the attractive brunette.

'Calamity Julianne.'

Except she was not alone. Paul was holding her abomination of a book bag and walking with her. They were chatting easily and laughing and strolling dangerously close to one another.

'Carrying her books now, are we? How very adolescent of you, Paul.'

Hear that? Everyday politeness = adolescence.

FUCK YOU EMERSON. FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU. *deep breaths* At least I only need to spork Chapter 16...

Remember that one quote by J.K. Rowling? Let me tweak it a bit: "If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his NOTP and its shippers, not his OTP and their shippers.”

You know what? I've been keeping this bottled for a while. I've spoken with close friends about it, and they made me feel better enormously, so I thought that was the end of that. But I might as well tell you what happened, DW and LJ.

So, there's these two artists who are twins in the Earthbound fandom who draw for an obscure pairing: Jeff/Poo. They've put a lot of thought into their headcanon (Jeff and Poo would eventually raise a couple Mr. Saturns), their art is cute, and their smut is tasteful. Unfortunately, there's a reason I don't follow them on tumblr and separate their art from them as people. And it looks like that reason won't be changing anytime soon.

( Ladies and Gentlemen? This is how NOT to react to your NOTP. )

tl;dr: I'm a horrible, dirty Jeff/Tony shipper, and putting Tony in art (especially with Jeff) is offensive, because HE'S EVERYWHEEEEEERE OMG.

Anyway, off to feed the campus cats. They'll cheer me up.

It's that time again! Time to MST more crappypastas! :D This time, we'll be looking at "Starfox 6664", a pasta so over-the-top that after it was featured on Bullshit Creepypasta Storytime, it was moved to the Trollpasta wiki. Boy, this should be fun! :D

( Can't let you brew that, Starbucks! )

Save the Pearls Controversy

Dear friggin' god, it's amazing how ignorant wannabe authors can be. If you're going to tackle a topic like racism, do so with the care and sensitivity it needs. Good intent is not enough if you cannot be mature about the subject matter, and the lack of knowledge and courtesy makes your work just as problematic and offensive as those that are openly and intentionally racist.

And using blackface to advertise your book? Really?

Charity Artist Swamped With Medical Bills

Remember when I commissioned Jaz for a drawing of one of my novel characters to help her out? Turns out she's in deeper water with the hospital than ever. :( According to Zar, her birthday's on September 5th, so the greatest present for her would be your donations. You can also request commissions from her here.

Here's the Plurk entry for those who have accounts. :o

“Do you want to sit?”
I nod, and he takes my hand and leads me to the large off-white couch. As I sit, I’m struck by the fact that I feel like Tess Durbeyfield looking at the new house that belongs to the notorious Alec D’Urberville. The thought makes me smile.
“What’s so amusing?” He sits down beside me, turning to face me. He rests his head on his right hand, his elbow propped on the back of the couch.
“Why did you give me Tess of the D’Urbervilles specifically?” I ask. Christian stares at me for a moment. I think he’s surprised by my question.
“Well, you said you liked Thomas Hardy.”
“Is that the only reason?” Even I can hear the disappointment in my voice. His mouth presses into a hard line.
“It seemed appropriate. I could hold you to some impossibly high ideal like Angel Clare or debase you completely like Alec D’Urberville,” he murmurs, and his gray eyes flash dark and dangerous.
“If there are only two choices, I’ll take the debasement.” I whisper, gazing at him. My subconscious is staring at me in awe. He gasps.

I don't think "debasement" means what you think it means, Ana.

“Anastasia, stop biting your lip, please. It’s very distracting. You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
He frowns.
“Yes. Would you excuse me a moment?” He disappears through a wide doorway on the far side of the room. He’s gone for a couple of minutes and returns with a document.
“This is a non-disclosure agreement.” He shrugs and has the grace to look a little embarrassed. “My lawyer insists on it.” He hands it to me. I’m completely bemused. “If you’re going for option two, debasement, you’ll need to sign this.”
“And if I don’t want to sign anything?”
“Then it’s Angel Clare high ideals, well, for most of the book anyway.”
“What does this agreement mean?”
“It means you cannot disclose anything about us. Anything, to anyone.”
I stare at him in disbelief. Holy shit. It’s bad, really bad, and now I’m very curious to know.
“Okay. I’ll sign.”
He hands me a pen.
“Aren’t you even going to read it?”
“No.”



Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiit's official. Bella Swan has more common sense than her ripoff.

I've been wanting to type about this for some time... months even. But either I was shy or distracted and IRL's gotten in the way a lot too. More noveltalk, this time centering on one of our main characters.

The novel takes place in a fantasy world where toys come to life. Our two leads are a Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy doll, and well... their experiences aren't quite as syrupy and adorable as that of their predecessors. Namely our primary antagonist, a nutcracker surgeon named Dr. Medlock, wanted to kidnap both of them for experimentation and was only successful in capturing Ann, leaving Andy as a fugitive trying to rescue his sister and avoid getting caught. While Ann deals with the secrets and horrors of Dr. Medlock's lab, Andy is pursued by a mysterious illusionist and his abominable creatures and magic.

Now here's the thing... Raggedy Andy is gay.

Obviously, I'm not talking about Johnny Gruelle's original Raggedy Andy. Novel!Andy, on the other hand, eventually falls in love... with another boy. Nothing's offscreen either. Hugging, kissing, the whole gamut. I've been trying to think about what this means in a world of Living Toys.

"BUT PURI, TOYS CAN'T FEEL SEXUAL ATTRACTION!111!1 THIS IS WEIRD!!1!111"

Didn't stop Woody & Bo, Buzz & Jessie and the Potato Heads in the "Toy Story" trilogy from falling in love, did it? 'Sides, it's my book, my world, my universe. I make the rules around here. Comments like this will be torpedoed and I don't appreciate them. That said, if you're not too wigged out by this, let's go on.

( What do you do when one of your main protagonists is gay? Small paragraph of toysex, worldbuilding, and Puri disliking LGBTQ cliches. )

What do you guys think? How would toys view homosexuality?

I've been staying at Mom & Dad's again due to A. Dave's uncle passed away and he wanted the apartment for himself for a few days. B. There's drama going on with Alicia, a troublesome roommate that's been getting under the skin of everybody involved, so it was best I was out of it. Aside from a blow-up Mom and I had (she thought I was coming home for good when it was actually supposed to be for the night, so that made her upset because she missed me. She apologized though! :o) it's better than it originally was at home, even though there's still some tangles. Mom and I even worked together on making a chicken dinner (and without fighting!)

My parents and I gathered together to watch Sweeney Todd in Concert (starring George Hearn and Patti LuPone, and Neil Patrick Harris as Tobias), and they loved it which makes me seriously happy. It's my favorite Sweeney cast thus far (I still have to hear the entirety of the 2005 Revival soundtrack, which LuPone is also in. :3) and eeeeee. Mom was even crying at the end because she was thinking about what a brilliant, talented genius Sondheim is. THEATER MEMORIES AHOY. I miss when my parents used to go to the theater all the time and take me with them. We've been kinda doing that (Dad got a couple small parts in The Full Monty musical, which is okay but not nearly as heartwarming as the original film), and I got to see a great performance of Rocky Horror with James last year, but going to Sweeney this year was such a total bomb I left at intermission. :( (Which was why I wanted to pop in Sweeney Todd in Concert in the first place~ ♥)

Speaking of theater, can anyone recommend me a decent live-stage performance (if it's recorded and I could rent it on DVD or watch it on YouTube, of course. I know how tricky this sort of thing can be with theater) of Oscar Wilde's plays, such as The Importance of Being Earnest? I know I can read them, but as I've learned with Shakespeare in high school and college, plays are meant to be seen, not read. :(

Dad found me several ancient copies of books while clearing out boxes from the garage today! :o

- The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl. Which I've read long ago and remembered, of course~ ♥ It's good to see it again though. :o HELO THAR DAHL. YOU WILL ALWAYS BE MY FRIEND AND MUSE AND INSPIRATION.
- The Portable Oscar Wilde. Just when I borrowed The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde from the library! :o It doesn't have everything, of course, but it turns out we had our own copy of Dorian Gray all along. Dang. It also has most of De Profundis, and this book is a fifth printing from 1955, so it wasn't allowed to publish the whole letter until 1960. :o I'm gonna read stuff from the Complete Collection that isn't in the Portable before I have to return it to the library, such as Lord Arthur Savile's Crime (recommended to me by Sarah~ ♥) and The Canterville Ghost, which is actually a LOT like Tim Burton's Beetlejuice at first. So I've heard. :o GEE I WONDER IF I'M ON AN OSCAR WILDE KICK.
- The Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters. Which I've never heard of, but Dad says it's an incredible classic. I'll take his word for it, then!
- A book so faded I had to open it to see what it was. Turns out it's Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales! :o
- Fanny Hill aka John Cleland's Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure. HOLY SNAP, FANNY HILL. WE HAVE AN UNCUT COPY OF FANNY HILL. I'm keeping this nice and safe on my bookshelf so I can read it after I've finished some of my other books, buwahahahaha. X3

In return for his generosity, I'm letting my Dad borrow Maurice. I'll have to keep an eye on him though, 'cause A. I want to be sure he actually reads the thing. B. I don't want him to lose it. Just now, I found he placed Maurice in a random place, and I had to take it back to my room for safekeeping until he's back from work. Dad has a habit of leaving his books strewn around, so they either go missing, get damaged or both. Dad needs to take good care of Maurice or else he owes me a new copy. >(

I could try reading it to him, though. We used to read to each other, like when Dad read The Little Prince in French and "translated" the sentences to English. Except whenever I try to read Dad a book I've read he's not familiar with, it doesn't tend to go very well. The time I tried to read him Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman? Completely backfired. He didn't even laugh at the jokes I thought he might find funny. :( Either he's tired or distracted or busy, and then when I ask him what he thought, he'd give a generic response, and by the next day he's forgotten everything I've read him. :( It's like the only books I can read him are the ones he's already read and liked.

Maybe that's why we fell out of reading together. :(

It's always been so difficult for me to try to recommend books and poetry, since I try to read them out loud to people (and it's not like I read with a friggin' wooden monotone at a snail's pace like my old classmates at English do), and they'd be distracted or uninterested, and I'd be worried to heck that I'm boring them to death and putting them off the very thing I thought they'd enjoy. It's mainly the distraction that bugs me, and it makes me feel that I'm unimportant and so is what I'm trying to share. Like, my parents get excited when I tell them that Maurice is probably my favorite book that I've read this year. So I read the synopsis on the back of my copy to tell them what it's about and what made this book so amazing and ahead of its time. What do they concentrate on? Not that it was written in the early 1910s and couldn't be published until 1971 due to its subject matter and giving its homosexual characters a happy ending. Not that it was just as challenged as Lady Chatterley's Lover or Fanny Hill. All they talk about is "Oh, Howard's End!" "Howard's End!" "I remember that now! That was kind of dull." And they would not stop rambling about Howard's End. I haven't read E.M. Forster's other books, but I'm not interested in them. I don't care about Howard's End, or your opinions about Howard's End, I want to talk about Maurice. And I wonder why I'm discouraged about sharing things I like sometimes. :/

Good thing I decided I'd hate being a teacher. I'd be the type of obnoxious English teacher who would make kids read a bunch of banned books and classics like Lord of the Flies, Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm and they'd hate me for being forced to analyze them and be put off those books forever. The ol' "If they hadn't made me read it in school, I probably would've liked it better" scenario. :P

This post is turning bitter, so I'll end it here. I gotta take a shower. :o

( My Little Pony: Season 2 opening! Cut for spoilers and those who want to avoid pony hype. )

And now, you know what I'm going to discuss? Atari 2600. You know your novel's awesome when your research consists of you playing Older Than Nintendo old*sk00l games. If I can't get my hands on the system IRL (unless I go to the "Play It Again" store here in town, but that requires cash. D:) I can play it for free on the Internet and ROMs. And what better way to start than the classics? Like E.T. and Pacman, of course.

( Let's refresh my memory about what sucks about E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial. OH BOY.  )

I can't comment on this game anymore. It's hurting my brain. D:

( Now for Pacman. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG )

Then Puri downloaded Pitfall and began to feel better. Oh my god. D: Hell, just replaying those two awful games to refresh my memory left me hedgehog hissing. Later I played Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween for the lulz. All of AVGN's complaints were true, but at least I got a kick out of showing pixellated gore to my friends. And the lulzworthy egotistical ads:

( The ads themselves are better, but what can I do. /Kanye shrug )

Now I want Repo! The Genetic Opera for Atari. I WANNA PLAY THE REPO MAN AND REPOSSESS ORGANS FOR POINTS. Dammit, I'm torn between using the funny Graverobber icon I found or a matching icon. D: IT JUST FEELS WEIRD TO PUT ANOTHER CHARACTER IN AN ENTRY QUOTING SOMEONE ELSE'S THEME SONG.