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It is really hard to find good Yu Yu Hakushou fanfic. I've never seen a fandom so overrun by mary sues and ooc-ness... okay, I lie - I've been in both the HP and LOTR fandoms - but considering this is a smaller anime fandom - the ratio of bad fic to good is ridiculously high. I mean, even in the Inuyasha fandom I at least found several fics that were in character and canon. Even the authors you hope have a bit of taste in YuYu are writing and reading mary sues. I'd turn to reading slash but I really don't see much subtext in the canon and even if I did (I do have a vague recollection of something early on in the show/manga that had me giggling about Kurama and Hiei for a bit...), I find Kurama/Hiei rather boring.
Met up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rinzei on Friday. We had a lot of fun talking, and I introduced her to Dr. Who. We watched Pyramids of Mars because I wanted to start with the 4th doctor (Tom Baker will always have my heart *L*) and because I haven't seen it either so it was new for both of us. It certainly wasn't meant to be that way, but that episode is one of the funniest Dr. Who's I've ever seen. The costumes! The death! The really faux egyptian trappings! The witty dialogue! The unintentionally funny dialogue! I'd still say Stones of Blood is my favourite, but Pyramids of Mars is quite up there.
Have you ever wondered about reviewers who leave reviews for the first chapter of a multichaptered fic telling you how much they love it, yet referencing events that happen in later chapters? Why do they leave reviews for the first chapter? This has always puzzled and bothered me, and perhaps shows that I'm too anal for my own good.
My bro and I watched more Naruto this weekend. We've finished the Neji fight in the Sound Four arc. I keep wanting a Shikamaru plushie to hug because his thoughts about Chouji are heartbreaking. He's got that same mature look on his face he had when he was fighting during the aftermath of the Chuunin exam. Neji's fight was pretty to watch. I kept wanting to pause it and take screencaps and make icons *L* I've decided the Hyuuga's must have their own shampoo and conditioner line and that's how they really obtained all their status. I spend most of my time watching Neji fight wondering how he keeps his hair like that (that, and thinking that if they had spinning office chairs in the Naruto world (which they so can, if they can have bloody video games and cameras!) Neji was so the little boy you could find at all hours spinning round and round in his uncle's office).
I read Mercedes Lackey's Phoenix and Ashes this weekend, mostly because I was curious to see what a novel of hers would be like that's set outside of Valdamer (or whatever that world is called). I got rather sick of those other novels, and I read nearly every one except for the gryphon ones when I was younger. This particular novel was rather strange. It was just the story of Cinderella and I couldn't tell if she was doing it to be clever, or just doing it because she was relying on the cliche. She didn't do anything particularly clever in the book, though I think she thought she did... The book itself wasn't so bad. It was written decently enough (though I'd have given it another betaing myself...), but there was so much padding of the plot. I was wondering when I started it how she was going to have a whole book set around what seemed like a pretty straightforward situation and she managed it by filling the book with so many extraneous details. Some of them served to set the tone, it's true (even if I think her portrayal of the British countryside during WWI was too simplistic), but most were just nonsense. If I wanted to learn all the major arcana of a tarot deck for instance, I'd look up all that junk myself, not be forced to read through it in excruciating detail. I felt like she either fell in love with her own research, or she really was padding the plot (or both). I recall her doing this occasionally in the Valdamer books, but I can't remember if it was this bad (For instance, why do I still know more about the spring system in her little faux Native American paradise bubbles than i do about the main character of one of those books?)
The characters were her usual characters, and while I appreciate strong female characters, I also appreciate not being hit over the head by their politics. Oddly, the planning in the book was the most realistic I've seen for ahwile. Both the villians and the heros came up with dozens of plans that were discarded and changed due to circumstances. Things that we'd never have even known about if it had all been, say, from Eleanor's pov. I kinda think that's cool, but I also think it would have been interesting if she'd managed to do the whole book from Eleanor's perspective and kept her locked in the house, since as soon as she could leave you lost a lot of the tension. I never really thought anything bad would happen in the books, no matter how hard Lackey tried to convince me. My small amusement at having a Cinderella who could actually use fire was largely lost in the rest of the book.
My advice if you want a modern retelling of Cinderella, go watch Ever After.
Met up with
rinzei on Friday. We had a lot of fun talking, and I introduced her to Dr. Who. We watched Pyramids of Mars because I wanted to start with the 4th doctor (Tom Baker will always have my heart *L*) and because I haven't seen it either so it was new for both of us. It certainly wasn't meant to be that way, but that episode is one of the funniest Dr. Who's I've ever seen. The costumes! The death! The really faux egyptian trappings! The witty dialogue! The unintentionally funny dialogue! I'd still say Stones of Blood is my favourite, but Pyramids of Mars is quite up there.Have you ever wondered about reviewers who leave reviews for the first chapter of a multichaptered fic telling you how much they love it, yet referencing events that happen in later chapters? Why do they leave reviews for the first chapter? This has always puzzled and bothered me, and perhaps shows that I'm too anal for my own good.
My bro and I watched more Naruto this weekend. We've finished the Neji fight in the Sound Four arc. I keep wanting a Shikamaru plushie to hug because his thoughts about Chouji are heartbreaking. He's got that same mature look on his face he had when he was fighting during the aftermath of the Chuunin exam. Neji's fight was pretty to watch. I kept wanting to pause it and take screencaps and make icons *L* I've decided the Hyuuga's must have their own shampoo and conditioner line and that's how they really obtained all their status. I spend most of my time watching Neji fight wondering how he keeps his hair like that (that, and thinking that if they had spinning office chairs in the Naruto world (which they so can, if they can have bloody video games and cameras!) Neji was so the little boy you could find at all hours spinning round and round in his uncle's office).
I read Mercedes Lackey's Phoenix and Ashes this weekend, mostly because I was curious to see what a novel of hers would be like that's set outside of Valdamer (or whatever that world is called). I got rather sick of those other novels, and I read nearly every one except for the gryphon ones when I was younger. This particular novel was rather strange. It was just the story of Cinderella and I couldn't tell if she was doing it to be clever, or just doing it because she was relying on the cliche. She didn't do anything particularly clever in the book, though I think she thought she did... The book itself wasn't so bad. It was written decently enough (though I'd have given it another betaing myself...), but there was so much padding of the plot. I was wondering when I started it how she was going to have a whole book set around what seemed like a pretty straightforward situation and she managed it by filling the book with so many extraneous details. Some of them served to set the tone, it's true (even if I think her portrayal of the British countryside during WWI was too simplistic), but most were just nonsense. If I wanted to learn all the major arcana of a tarot deck for instance, I'd look up all that junk myself, not be forced to read through it in excruciating detail. I felt like she either fell in love with her own research, or she really was padding the plot (or both). I recall her doing this occasionally in the Valdamer books, but I can't remember if it was this bad (For instance, why do I still know more about the spring system in her little faux Native American paradise bubbles than i do about the main character of one of those books?)
The characters were her usual characters, and while I appreciate strong female characters, I also appreciate not being hit over the head by their politics. Oddly, the planning in the book was the most realistic I've seen for ahwile. Both the villians and the heros came up with dozens of plans that were discarded and changed due to circumstances. Things that we'd never have even known about if it had all been, say, from Eleanor's pov. I kinda think that's cool, but I also think it would have been interesting if she'd managed to do the whole book from Eleanor's perspective and kept her locked in the house, since as soon as she could leave you lost a lot of the tension. I never really thought anything bad would happen in the books, no matter how hard Lackey tried to convince me. My small amusement at having a Cinderella who could actually use fire was largely lost in the rest of the book.
My advice if you want a modern retelling of Cinderella, go watch Ever After.
