Fashion Friday :: I wish I had the nerve for this.

Also the place to wear it, and the money for it, and… I wish the world was just steampunk, basically.  I don’t mind walking down the street getting a funny look or two ’cause I’m pulling a Joan Holloway or a River Tam or a Kaylee Frye or an awkward high school Willow Rosenberg, but pulling off full steampunk?  I don’t think even I could do on a daily basis.  Not to mention it’s exorbitantly expensive.

I wish you could buy this one in separate pieces, though.  I want just the jacket, to mix with:

And then some striped stockings, and boots (perhaps my combat boots, perhaps my trusty lace ones) and a blouse and a belt and an appropriate hat and do full on Joanie from Deadwood.

For Halloween?  For just because?  That has yet to be determined.

–your fangirl heroine.

Things in Print Thursday :: why I like fiction better than poetry

“Poetry is the black hole of literature,” one of my professors says often.  I couldn’t agree more.  While I’m fairly sure she means it as a compliment, I view it as one of those two-sided comments, one that is both good and bad.  And this?  This is because I’m a terrible English major and really never read poetry in my spare time and rarely enjoy reading it, ever.  This isn’t just because I haven’t read any since high school and I’m out of practice, this is just because I sort of have a weird thing of enjoying plots and characters and function over form.

Poetry can have all of those things!  you’re arguing.  Well, yes, but particularly modern poetry tends to sacrifice meaning for looking avant-garde on the page.  I can’t stand that.  It’s taking the joy of reading out, it’s making you focus too much on trivialities.

Songs are potry! you argue.  But songs, good songs anyway, are good poetry.  Nobody writes songs where there’s three and a half measures between one lyric, seven measures between another, just to be hip.  And some poetry, particularly older poetry, does read like a song.  An esoteric, tediously romantic song, sometimes, but still.

I think I’m also biased against poetry because I’ve got too many bad memories of high school creative writing class.  My teacher always used to tease me about the fact that I was incapable of writing poetry about myself that wasn’t about myself as a child.  This?  This is because I remembered all too well my awful self-indulgent poetry phase of thirteen years, where I wrote angsty rhyming verses about nothing and thought I was sooooo deep.  Maybe when I’m an adult I’ll be able to write poetry, but I haven’t lived long enough, I haven’t livedenough period, to have something worthy of writing verse about in my past.  And sure, not all poetry has to be about yourself.  But in high school creative writing class, it is, and that’s just tainted me.

I honestly think the last poem I read was the Moritat found in the prologue to the original play of Spring’s Awakening.  I don’t know if it counts.  But I still have a bit of it memorized after four years, so that’s got to.  I was about to write out the bit I’ve still got committed to memory, but then I remembered it’s sort of crude.  (I refuse to believe that that’s why I remember it.  I may have a dirty mind, but not that dirty of one.  More likely, it’s because my friend and I used to chant it at each other while doing history homework and giggle.  Mature, we were.)

And then there’s the matter of my being, despite excessively fantastical, hardly romantic, in the romance sense or the literary sense.  (Closer to the literary, but.)  I’m just… too cynical to swallow love poems most days.  I accept that this is my own failing and not poetry’s itself.  I’m not sure what it says about me that I’d rather read about the gory killing of a zombie or something than someone’s epic tale of romance, but that fact stands.  There’s just so little quirky romance in poetry, and quirky romance is the only sort I can handle.

I don’t know.  I’m not anti-poetry full stop.  But I’m definitely just… sigh.  Skeptical.

–your fangirl heroine.

Whedon Wednesday :: I don’t sparkle. Is he broken?

Drusilla: “I don’t sparkle, is he broken?”
Edward: “This is the skin of a killer!!”
Spike: “Real scary, I’m sure, Glitter Boy.”
Drusilla: “Nothin’ hurts him, he’s barely bleeding. Have I lost my touch Spike?”
Spike: “A’course not, princess.”
Edward: “I am filled with the pain that all monsters must suffer.”
Drusilla: “You’re as boring as Daddy when he’s got a soul.”
Edward: “I have no soul, I am a monster.”
Alice: “This is a lovely top, Dru. I think I can see myself borrowing it.”
Bella: *is dead*
Spike & Drusilla: *are full*
Miss Edith: *is a doll*

– your fangirl heroine.

Tarantino Tuesday :: I’m assuming 2014 is a hopeful release date, but.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1521225/

Yes.  I’ve known all along that such a thing was possible, and I’ve hoped for it and anticipated and every time I watch Kill Bill, I start letting my mind spin off on tangents about what Vol. 3 could be.  But I am not the great god Quentin Tarantino, so I cannot presume to know much.  What I do know?

• Elle Driver (Daryl Hannah) isn’t dead.  I mean, there was that question mark for a reason.  She’s going to be back.  And, now sans any eyes, she is gonna be pissed.
• Beatrix (Uma Thurman) has her B.B. (Perla Haney-Jardine, who I can only assume will stay in the part, that’s what Tarantino said ages ago, and she has gotten older and presumably still awesome) and that means everything.  I cannot presume what they have been doing in this ten-year interval, though I choose to believe that Beatrix is possibly the most awesome mom ever.  I’d like to presume, too, that they’re besties.  Sort of like Gilmore Girls, with more martial arts and stuff.
• Nikki (Ambrosia Kelly) is still around, too.  This can only mean epic next-gen showdown of epic, I hope.
• Also Sofie Fatale (Julie Dreyfus) isn’t dead (?)  So for what that’s worth?
• The soundtrack is going to kill.
• Even only knowing these things, and that it’s of course Tarantino’s baby, I can know that it will be perfect.

I really do hope that 2014 is reality.  I want it to be right now.

–your fangirl heroine.

Magnificent Photoshopping Monday :: I’ve become a gif whore.

No, really, I have.

Thanks to one of my darlings recently getting me addicted to Tumblr (it’s not against the rules to mention it on WordPress, is it?) I’ve recently immersed myself in the wondrousness of gif images, aka animated clips of usually fandom-related nonsense.  Sometimes a fluid few seconds of whatever your medium is, sometimes images flashing one after another.  (I make the latter type, because I am too lazy to figure out how to do the fancy ones.)  Sometimes with text, sometimes letting the images speak for themselves.

Anyhow, I would just like to present you one preview of my insanity:

Then we have the link to the rest of the ones I’ve put up.  /cross-self-promotion, for the win.

–your fangirl heroine.

Sundry Sunday :: my urban dictionary: whorgy

I know, I know, I’ve been doing these a lot lately, but I just keep inventing slang for my own usage.  ‘Cause I’m like that.

Def.: having sex in a group of five or more people, the majority of which are whores.

Usage: In HBO’s new series Game of Thrones, Peter Dinklage partakes in a whorgy.

–your fangirl heroine.

Spoiler Alert Saturday :: my thoughts on Hanna

Well, I had less strong antipathy for it than I did for Joe Wright and Saorsie Ronan’s first team-up Atonement?  I absolutely, completely loathed Atonement, so that isn’t a particularly high bar there, but.

The problem with both movies is actually vaguely similar, though, and that problem is the script.  Atonement was based on a book that I’m sure is of fine literary merit and all.  But it was a story about shallow, hideous people doing shallow, hideous things and also doing ridiculous sentimental things and also doing ridiculous heinous things.  Hanna, though, was about… flat people doing flat things.  Atonement was well-written enough but loathsome.  Hanna just, well, plot holes.  Characters with no redeeming values whatsoever.  Actually, no values whatsoever.  Actually, no anything whatsoever.

The scenery was pretty.  The soundtrack was quirky and industrial enough.  The ass-kicking was impressive enough.  But the plot was just thin.  Saorsie Ronan’s Hanna and Eric Bana’s Erik are presumably daughter and father and live in a cabin in the snowy-ass woods of… Germany?  So, okay, he’s training her to kick people’s asses.  He’s isolating her from everything ever.  (She does a lot of eyeswide-ing over things like music and electricity and friends.) She seems okay with this.

Whose asses?  Well, presumably Cate Blanchett’s Marissa’s.  Why?  Because… she ran some exceptionally vague government program where they were making magical soldier babies or something?  One of whom was Hanna?  And Hanna’s mom is dead at Marissa’s hands?  Except everyone thinks it’s Erik’s doing and there’s never really that denouement ever.  Or any proper denouement.  Erik’s got a magical FIND ME MARISSA box, and tells Hanna about it.  She decides to press it, because…?  Erik then runs off to Berlin, because…?  Hanna then gets captured by… the CIA?  Hanna then pulls a little girl lost to get un-captured and escapes.  Hanna then makes friends with a silly British girl about her age, Jessica Barden’s Sophie, and her little brother, because…?  Hanna then sneaks onto Sophie’s parents’ camper van, because she’s sneaky.  Sophie’s mother is Olivia Williams, so yay, at least, for that.

After some more …? moments, and one funny moment where she’s out being skanky with Sophie and wearing a glittery tutu over her jeans and a sequined masquerade mask on her head (okay, that’s …?) and she asks the boy she’s with if they’re going to kiss now and then promptly informs him that kissing requires thirty-four muscles and wrestles him to the ground and seems to be about to choke him, Hanna finds out that Erik isn’t really her dad.  He doesn’t really say why he rescued her from the superbaby factory and no-one else (you’d think he loved her mother, but he doesn’t say) and he doesn’t really say why they had to live in the woods.  He doesn’t seem to register that she will react poorly to this and that, oh yeah, she can kick his ass.

Then some people get shot a bunch of times, then Hanna wanders around a different woods where the Grimm’s fairy tales house is and it’s a total tourist attraction and all dead amusement park-y.  Then Marissa shows up, because…?  Then Marissa tries to shoot Hanna, because…?  Then Hanna shoots Marissa with an arrow, because…?  Then she shoots her with a gun, too.  The end.

It’s just unsatisfying.  I don’t know what the point was.  It would have been better if Hanna just shot a bunch of random people for no apparent reason, and they didn’t attempt to pretend like somewhere there might be a plot.

OH!  But there were (gay Nazis?) working for Marissa, and they were amusing.  Maybe not intentionally, but they were.

–your fangirl heroine.

Fictional Friday :: 83 days until my childhood dies.

I know that sounds dramatic, for one, and for another I should have ~put aside childish things~ or what have you a while ago, maybe.  But though I try to be an adult most of the time, I’m still childish and I’m unashamed of this.  I still love a lot of the things I did when I was a kid: I wear bows and barrettes in my hair, I draw hearts on the mirror when it’s fogged up from the shower, I like coloring books and Care Bears and Rainbow Brite and Hello Kitty and My Little Pony, I like to play dress-up, and dammit, I still love Harry Potter.  Maybe in a slightly different way than my eleven-year-old self did, but still strongly.  Still passionately.

And once Deathly Hallows Part 2 is out?  I will no longer be a child.

It’s the feeling I got when the book came out, but this time it’s permanent.  With the book I could justify it as “well, there’s still movies.”  This time, I’m going to have to see a crapload of people I’ve grown up with (well, since the age of eleven, but that’s the period in one’s life that one is conscious of growing up moreso, I think) all die on the screen.  Or at least hear their deaths mentioned.  Freddddd.  (I pity poor George, he’s lost his ear and his twin brother, what next?  Poor boy.)  Lupin and Tonkssssss.  (And right after their baby!  POOR TEDDY.  They practically got/get Jossed.)

The minute Molly Weasley exclaims “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” I will know I’m no longer a child.  Officially.  I refuse to believe that said line won’t happen.  And when they’re all dressed up like grownups and it’s awkward, I will know that someday sooner than I likely think, I too will fall in love (hopefully) and in a completely terrifying alternate universe do adult things like marry and procreate.  Harry and Ron and Hermione and Ginny and Neville and Luna and George and Fleur and Bill and Draco, they have all grown, and so must I.

Our generation feels as attached to Harry Potter as the 1960s folk did to the Beatles.  As 1970s folk did to pot marijuana.  As 1980s folk did to bad hair.  As 1990s folk did to Friends.  We’re devoted, we hold dear — and it’s not going to be the same for anyone else.  Even if and when we read our theoretical future children the books, they likely won’t be attached the same way.  And that sort of makes me want to cry.

Happy tears, maybe, but sad tears too.  And I never cry at movies.

–your fangirl heroine.

P.S.  On a related note, my (longtime Harry Potter cohort and) friend and I are weirdos and, after a watching of Deathly Hallows Part 1 tonight, decided to write the entire series out in Tweets.  So here goes nothing.

Things in Print Thursday :: Top 5 thoughts I currently have about the Perks of Being A Wallflower movie

5. It’s my favorite book ever, so I’m protective, okay?
No, really.  I’ve loved this book since I was thirteen, and I just don’t want people sticking their filthy paws in it messing it up.  Because I love it so so so much.

4. But at least it’s Stephen Chbosky writing/directing.
So he won’t bastardize his baby unless the producers insist on it, hopefully.

3. I thought they were in high school?
Entertainment Weekly said it was set in college.  And that’s a big, big difference.  A high school freshman and a college freshman are two completely unlike creatures.

2. The casting so far (thanks imdb) is… what?
I mean, Emma Watson as Sam?  Totally not the kind of person I’d pictured.  And who on earth is Candace?  I’ve read the book at least ten times, and I don’t recall a Candace.  An Alice, but those are two separate names.  And it’s played by that girl from The Vampire Diaries, so… skeptical.  And that boy from Percy Jackson as Charlie?  No way.  I’ve been in love with Charlie for absolutely ever, and just… that does not add up.  At least Mae Whitman is a perfect Mary Elizabeth.

1. Just… how is it going to work as a movie?
Since so much of it is internal monologue in the form of anonymous letters to strangers.  I mean, I hope it translates.  But I’m really really worried about how it will.  Really worried.  Like, at first my reaction was “oh, cool, I hope it works” and then it turned into “oh, god, it’s not gonna work.”

–your fangirl heroine.

Whedon Wednesday :: Top 10 Firefly moments that kick my heart in the ass every gorram time

In honor of the rewatch I am doing every Sunday night on the Science Channel.  Also, spoiler alert.

10. That Time Jayne Actually Had A Heart Sorta (“Jaynestown,” 1×07)
The end of the episode, the dialogue between Jayne (Adam Baldwin) and Mal (Nathan Fillion) wherein Jayne feels bad about the people on Canton worshipping him and stuff.  Where he’s actually got a tiny bit of a heart and I almost don’t wanna punch him for being a stupidface.  A funny amusing stupidface, but still a stupidface.

9. That Time Zoe Had Unspecified Internal Injuries And Wash Was Sad And Angry (“Out of Gas,” 1×08)
The devotion Wash (Alan Tudyk) has for Zoe (Gina Torres) just makes me cry inside.  Especially knowing what I know now.  It’s just beautiful, and it’s touching, and I’m jealous of women who have men who care about them that much.  Actually several moments in this episode get me.

8. That Time Kaylee Got Shot And There Was Angst (“Serenity,” 1×01)
“Can you move your legs?”
“Are you asking me to dance?”
I love Kaylee (Jewel Staite).  I love that that’s her reaction.  I love that everyone is so angry and chaotic and she’s just confused and in pain and everyone is trying to take care of her.
“Kaylee is very dear.”
I have a weird soft spot for this because I may have a scar in the exact same place she does from that gunshot wound, too.

7. That Time Simon And Kaylee Almost Kissed, Then Kaylee Got Threatened And Tied Up By Early (“Objects in Space,” 1×14)
Ye-ahhh.  A lot of these are Kaylee-related, just ’cause wibbley Kaylee makes me wibbley too.  And this is one of the most emotionally intense sequences of scenes ever for me.  We start with the flirtfail wibbling, then we go straight to abject terror and fear and Early (Richard Brooks) being a creeper.  And it’s just a bunch of painful brilliance.

6. Every Gorram Time There Is A Simon/Kaylee Or Mal/Inara Flirtfail
Pretty self-explanatory.  And it does happen all the time.  The Simon (Sean Maher) and Kaylee moments are more awkward heart-ass-kicking.  The Mal and Inara (Morena Baccarin) ones are more tragic heart-ass-kicking.  And every time I pretend to stab myself or something.  It’s just too much.  In a really great way.

5. That Time Tracy Flirted With Kaylee, Then Used Her As His Hostage And Stuff (“The Message,” 1×12)
GORRAMIT TRACY (Jonathan M. Woodward).  Manipulating Kaylee into flirting with you and thinking well of you and stuff and taking advantage of the fact that she was totes vulnerable from some of those Simon-related flirtfails.  Trying to use her as a bargaining chip.  Not cool.
“When you can’t walk, you crawl, and when you can’t crawl, you find someone to carry you.”
Actually, that entire bit sort of breaks my heart.  The ending, with the most gorgeous piece of music ever, when they were having a funeral for the show basically ’cause they just found out it was getting cancelled… kill me now.  With beauty.

4. That Time River And Simon Were Kidnapped By Hillfolk And River Was Sad (“Safe,” 1×05)
It’s the dialogue that I think best defines Simon and River’s (Summer Glau) amazingly amazing close brother/sisterness.  It’s the dialogue that defines attachment and affection and devotion and all that.
“You gave up everything you had to find me, and you found me broken.”
Every time, man.  Just… awwwes.  River.  Băobĕi.  You poor thing.

3. That Time Mal Is Gonna Stay With The Ship And Inara Wants Him To Go With Them And Not Die (“Out of Gas,” 1×08)
Can be summed up in exactly two lines:
“You don’t have to die alone, Mal.”
“Everyone dies alone.”

2. That Time Nandi Slept With Mal And Inara Was Sad (“Heart of Gold,” 1×13)
And then Nandi (Melinda Clarke) realizes Inara has feelings for Mal, too, and then Inara’s trying to be strong, and Mal’s all awkward, and Inara’s crying in her room, and then Inara wants to leave, and… AUGH.

1. That Time Wash Got STABBED THROUGH THE CHEST BY A WOODEN POKEY BEAM OF DEATH (Serenity)
Also, GORRAM REAVERS.  GORRAM REAVERS BREAKING MY HEART EVERY SINGLE TIME AND MAKING ME ABUSE CAPS LOCK.  Wash is just awesome, and — augh, augh, augh, it isn’t fair even though it sort of did have to be him, but still.   At least the comic, “Float Out,” makes up for it in a tragically beautiful kind of way.

–your fangirl heroine.