All art is at once surface and symbol

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

Puri's emo because she can't find any shinies lately. So I'm taking a break from golden Swablu hunting (I'm getting a real one from Carol anyway~ ♥) and out to hatch an easier egg: Shiny Munna. Dropped Madotsuki and Masada at the Daycare as a result. Boy I knew I made the right decision somewhere. X3 (I was torn between Munna and blue Komatana, so I did a coin flip. Oh well, I can always hunt for Komatana later~)

Betaing question: Is it better to ask someone to read over your work before or after revising first draft?

Gosh this song brings such vivid and pretty images for (and probably because) it being about the apocalypse. So sad. ;;

Gosh, I have so many fire piggie icons, I think I'm a fangirl. But let's get down to business.

It's been what, almost a year since I've had my own computer. Meaning I haven't been able to do all the fun stuff I love like Photoshop, and I keep losing my damn fanfiction to sick computers. But I have my hard-drive from my dead computer back, with all my music and such and lost stories and projects. Now it needs a computer itself to be installed into.

I've been bugging Dad for a new computer for a long time. Now that's he's got a job *knocks on wood* and has earned enough money to buy me goodies, I've got a favor to ask everyone. What new computer should I get?

The one that died was an Acer Visa. Dad and Beau's computers are Acer Visas. I've come to realize that I hate Acer Visa. :P ("ARE YOU SURE YOU HATE ACER VISA!?" it would ask me. Over and over. :P) What computer would you recommend me? Here are my requirements:

- I want to make crazy Photoshops and icons again. Must handle Photoshop and artsy programs and such.
- I want to make AMVs. Must handle Sony Vegas without freezing or crashing.
- Great sound so I can play my library of music, nomnomnom~
- I'm giving my hand at making video games, so the new computer needs to handle programs like RPG Maker well. I want to continue my Yume Nikki-inspired Darkrai project, dammit. D:
- As well as running emulators (complete with a controller which I need to get too, nom) and games such as Eversion and I Wanna Be the Guy, I also wanna play big PC games like Portal and Braid without having the program stutter or freeze or crash. Hell, I might even recover my SIMS 2 disc and attempt once again to build my characters and download all this stuff to make them recognizable, and I don't want it to crash and spontaneously delete everything I've downloaded before I've even started. D:
- As a novelist who receives her inspiration from the arts, a computer that will allow me to do as many creative things as possible, nomnomnom~ ♥

Puri needs help thinking of songs for a Giegue/Maria/George FST, particularly regarding George. I've got a few songs of Maria/Queen Mary and definitely some for Giegue, but the only song I can think of for George (Jack Off Jill - Strawberry Gashes) is already used on my Mother 1 FST. I've also already used Alien Ant Farm - Courage for Giegue on the same FST. Anything related to the lyrics of Strawberry Gashes or at least a song relating to George's predicament would be sweet. May or may not be guiltsack, though likely the former. If you could think of songs relating to those three, I'd appreciate it humongously. *_________________* Thank you!

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Mother's gonna make all your nightmares come true
Mother's gonna put all her fears into you
Mother's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Mama will keep baby cozy and warm
Oooh baby... Oooh baby... Oooh baby...
Of course Mama'll help to build the wall

If anyone can find me a pic of Sonic X*Eggman in a frilly apron, I'll love you forever. I crawled all over TeamArtail, but couldn't find it. XDDD;;;