我要飞Faye

I think it's important to have days like this, away from the grind of the real world to fill one's head with other things.

Aka reader, I took leave again to watch a movie. I think it's pretty worth it. Despite rushing to the cinema from office, the contrast of the day is pretty important too. I went from a busy real world day to the no less quick but also important world of Kubo and the Two Strings.

I think an important part about animation is when you forget that you're watching an animation. Kubo goes into the realm of Nightmare Before Christmas - a world disjointed from the current one that we live in, but by the end you have bought into it.

( Spoilery details on the movie )

I admit that I was initially iffy heading into the ending as I read spoilers that it did not do narrative justice to Kubo. Far from it. I think we are just so used to stories where the hero dons armour and gains a sword and fights that we feel not getting this sort of story is a cop out.

But Kubo has never been that sort of hero. All this while, we see his strengths has been his lute, his imagination and his capacity to love. That's why his weapon is not armour and sword.

( More spoilers )

I also think the important moral to me is that I should not put on an armor and take up the sword because that is what other people expect. I think it is more important to string my lute and play on, as unconventional as it may be.

In conclusion: WATCH THE MOVIE. So worth it!

I'm sorry I had to.

I admit that I was nervous about this movie from watching the trailers, especially since it seemed to highlight THE ENTERPRISE CRASHES. What this movie failed to tell me that the Enterprise was cracked to reveal the heart within the body - the crew that drives the ship.

What we learned from this: EVERYONE IS COMPETENT AND BEAUTIFUL AND I AM IN FUCKING LOVE WITH ALL OF THEM

( Things I liked with no particular order or coherency. Also spoilery )

In a new post, list ten fic that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes, and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” works, or even all the same pairing or fandom, just the fics that have touched you or that stuck with you somehow.

It's pretty interesting how the fics that have stayed with me are indicative of various times in my life. There's a fic from the time I used to read Harry Potter fics to get me through exams. There's fic from my Bleach writing days. And I've got things ranging from gen to straight up smut.

So here in no particular order are the fics that have stayed with me:

1) Who We Are by Persephone Kore
and other fics in the series
Once upon a time I used to intentionally type up all my class notes in my computer so come exam time, I could tell my parents that I needed to study on the computer because ALL MY STUFF IS THERE!!! and in between cramming I would read a LOT of Harry Potter fic, because people in that fandom were crazy enough to write novel length fics on FF.net which means I didn't have to open too many windows (yes tabs didn't exist then).

Who We are, though not quite being a novel, was one of the Harry Potter fics read in those days. It stuck with me because it has my favourite stuff: good Slytherins, better interhouse cooperation and people struggling to do good, even the good guys. The idea of a younger Tom Riddle getting a second chance and Ginny trying to figure out if he deserves it is catnip to me.

2) Means of Persuasion
But taking about novel length stories, I cannot NOT mention this fic from the Transformers fandom. I honestly don't remember which verse it came from (darn comics) but it contains my personal fanon for my favourite characters in the general Transformers universe to me. Yeah, there's a few glaring differences - I actually ship Prowl/Jazz and I'm EXTREMELY fond of all the fanon on Twin bonds, but the rest of it hits the spot. I love that Prowl struggles with the right decisions, and Bluestreak bounces back from everything, even his nearest and dearest reading him wrong. The action is pretty good too.

3) Rain Over Blue Water by The_Starhorse
For twin fic from the Transformers fandom though, I have to go with this fic even though it's just Sideswipe. His view of his identity just resonates throughout the fic.

4) Conflicts of Interest by rageprufrock
I like this story because I love the voice of Connor, which is young and self-absorbed without being annoying. But then again he's Lex Luthor's kid so what do you expect. The Clark Kent bits are bonus.

5) Cities in Dust (shit let's be hardboiled)
If there's a fic that fully captures the spirit of the canon that inspired it, this fic has my vote 200% of the time. It's a Homestuck fic that has colourful chat logs (both content and actual visual colours), great drawings, associated soundtrack and trolls actually being aliens. Also it features my boy Dave Strider and the too awesome to belong to anyone Terezi Pyrope.

6) New Orleans series by silverlining99
I would particularly recommend the first fic because it is HOT LIKE BLAZES (especially when you imagine it all with Karl Urban's Bones) and sometimes I fantasise about having a New Year's kiss that's half as hot. *fans self* Though the second fic has a great Kirk-Bones friendship.

7) Covert fic(s) by Ten
I cannot describe this fic due to it being under f-lock and never been published publicly. But elements of it keep popping up in my own fics and I only wish it was already a trope like the less deserving soulmates' name on your arm thing.

8) Icebreakers by Suppi-chan
Back when I was a wee little fanthing, I saved this fic to a NOTEPAD document and read the heck out of it. Up until now "Kinomoto Sakura was having a tantrum. it was a very small tantrum, and it was being conducted in the privacy of her best friend's room, but still, Kinomoto Sakura was having a screaming, kicking tantrum" is the best way to open a CCS fic ever. I'll fight you on this.

I have pretty much reached the end of fic that I've read YEARS after the fact, but I will link you to two more fics that I pretty much roll around in glee and squee when I see they update:

9) Battlefield Terra
A Homestuck fic where on top of aliens being aliens, there are hot robots and mindreading and cultural misunderstandings and moments of BLAZING HAWT.

10) Life in Reverse
I'm particularly tickled by the bookends of my post, but I had to put this here because the more things change the more they stay the same. I like "bad" guys who make the choice NOT to do bad, and have to struggle with it, and it's also a nod to my current fandom, as it were, of MCU.

Writing about Mad Max: Fury Road is hard for me, not least because it sat in the middle of a very "me" day. Since it was so hard for me to find friends to watch with, and I didn't want family to tag along, I sneaked out of the house to watch the movie by myself.

That was a good choice, because I have as much difficulty speaking about it as I do writing about it. It's not that it's a complex movie. The setting is fantastic, there's a lot of characters (especially ladies!!!) and every shot is layered, but once you accept all these the story is easy to follow.

Which is actually a good surprise. As someone who likes action movies, I've sat through my share of shaky cam shots. There's none of that here even when you're in the middle of a fight or a sandstorm. All this is thanks to the deliberation that went into the movie that let's scenes be lush without being noisy. And this is happening in a desert =) (A good article on this: http://vashivisuals.com/the-editing-of-mad-max-fury-road/.)

The same care has gone into the story. It's not a complex story by any means, but it's exceptionally well structured. Chekhov's guns get hung up with care for the many characters and get fired (sometimes with multiple explosive rounds =D) over the course of the story. Now that I'm working on my novel, I realised it's hard to tell/structure a story well.

All this is to say the simplest stories are sometimes the hardest to tell, and Mad Max: Fury Road tells its simple story well and with great respect to its female characters. This story will stay with me for a good long while. Please please rush to watch it!

I just watched Captain America 2 and it blew my mind. It was incredible for so many different reasons.

You see, Captain America is just like that 2048 game that's been going around. If you don't know what that is, click on the link and be prepared to lose a few hours of your life. In fact, I'll be playing a few rounds with you...

Alright! Back to the review. I found that Captain America 2 was better enjoyed if you picked up some things in Captain America 1. Captain America 1 is just like that number 2 in the 2048 game. It provides some basics that Captain America 2 picks up from.

( Full list and spoilers under the cut )

In conclusion: An awesome movie with lots of continuity that is a bit heavy on the going down because of all the goodies they tried to cram into it. The movie comes together well, but do you REALLY need to dial things up to 2048?

What happens if home is not a place, but a person?

Wandering about tumblr has led me to try a lot of new things, and one of these was Taiyou no Ie (House of the Sun). I saw a panel with a really impactful line about loneliness, and decided to check the manga out.

I ended up staying for the story. It's rare that a manga so focused on romance also tries to tackle other issues. In this case, it's about how the separation of a family, whether due to death or divorce, can mess up a family and how each of the members define their home after that.

( Cut for some spoilers and a lot of squee )

The series is on Mangafox if you want to check it out. I highly recommend it!

Again stealing things from other people's memes, I found a topic from this post about fannish growing up where the poster is asked to write about how life and age and experiences has changed his/her taste in fannish stuff.

It fascinated me enough that I have to write about it myself.

I probably have been fannish my whole life, because I remember obsessing about books and Chinese drama like Justice Bao, but the age in which I remember being fannish in a significant life-style changing way was when I was 12. That was when the wave of Japanese manga/anime started becoming prevalent in my country, probably starting with Sailor Moon. They were all pre-dubbed/translated into Chinese.

The interesting thing about being where I live is that the Taiwanese version of translations came out the fastest. That meant that I got translations in a) my mother tongue, b) with the traditional script that I wasn't as familiar with, because I grew up with the simplified form of Chinese.

That was why when I first became "fannish", I was predominantly reading and writing (!!!) in Chinese. I wrote my first fic in Chinese. I also somehow managed to overcome the barrier and actually read traditional script (when I learned simplified), which is still pretty useful now. (I don't know why I didn't extend that power to Japanese boo hoo).

( Watch me morph over the years! )

Six years after I first started, I have finally finished Nodame Cantabile.

My relationship with this anime is dreadfully complicated. In 2007, I started this anime and sped through the first 10 episodes. But then I got to the Rachmaninoff episodes, around episode 13, where Chiaki and Nodame played a piano duet together.

Somehow I just couldn't get myself to move on. I had become annoyed by Chiaki's insistence that Nodame become a concert pianist. "What was wrong with being a kindergarten teacher, if she is also working hard towards that goal?" I wondered. Better stop before the anime disappointed me. This would be like my Rachmaninoff with the series.

In a series of coincidences, I started taking the bus again around the same time that I wanted to find a series to watch. But I was in a bus full of working professionals. What could I possibly watch that I wouldn't be trying to hide from everyone else on the bus? Oh? I still have Nodame on my phone. What objections could a working professional have with classical music...

It wasn't easy getting into the series again. I struggled all the way up until episode 18, when Chiaki finally got his new orchestra going. Then I started to marathon the episodes again.

Now I wish I'd done that from the start. The anime didn't disappoint me. Nodame decided on her own that she wanted to become a concert pianist to be with Chiaki overseas. And then Chiaki... reciprocated.

The way that he asked her to join him overseas just hit me in my heart. Then he started talking about how he'd miss her piano if she didn't continue to pursue a music career. He takes a long journey to visit Nodame in her hometown, where he and Nodame have a really moving conversation about their bright future. I wasn't the only one moved, because then CHIAKI HUGGED HER FROM BEHIND.

CHIAKI. HUGGED. HER.

This is me screaming into the distance of how perfect Nodame and Chiaki looked in that moment. SO PERFECT. Nodame's pursuing music because she wants to, after all her scars. And Chiaki is able to admit he loves her, finally, especially after she gave him back the ability to fly. This is a scene I want to rewatch, over and over and over.

And to think that it took 23 episodes and 6 years to get here.

I had high hopes for Pacific Rim when going in. I was a Transformers, and I liked the movie for Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots. This movie was directed by Guillermo del Toro, and had to be better than both of those! Plus, two ladies that I like very much, tenebris and himawari liked it a lot. It definitely had to be good, didn't it?

And it was good. It had great action and the visuals were gorgeous. The movie handed about 5 different story arcs and handled them all very well, with each contributing to the entire plot as a whole. The world building was awesome and the logic of the sea monsters/kaiju made sense. The characters were awesome.

But it could have been a great movie.

( Perhaps I bring too much baggage to drift. Also spoilers )

Maybe I gripe because I care too much. As we speak, I already have 3 - 4 Pacific Rim fics planned. Yes everyone, I just might have a new fandom. Mako and Stacker are awesome, as are Herc and Chuck. Don't let anyone else tell you different.


Edit: I forgot to mention the movie made me cry a few times. And some of the fic are already having the same effect too.

Recs!
The best Stacker-Mako fic I've found so far: What Is Built Endures

The best Mako/Raleigh fic I've found so far: Reconstruction Site

I haven't been posting here, since I've been rushed off my feet, but I can officially say that I wrote for (almost) every day of the 31_days challenge! GO ME.

Now I just have to write picfor1000 and trope_bingo. WILL THE FUN NEVER CEASE.