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Harry Potter (aka. Gypsy)
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| On Dracula: The Un-Dead |
[21 Dec 2009|03:58pm] |
Granted, I'm only two chapters into Dacre Stoker's Dracula: The Un-Dead (The sequel to the original classic), then again the story might draw me in yet, it's a little too early to actually judge. But right now I have two complaints. The first being, he's doing that annoying summarizing the previous book in the first chapter. Seriously, EVERYONE should know the story of Dracula by now. He shouldn't have to summarize it. But yet, he does (I know everyone does it when they are writing sequels/additional volumes, and that includes JKR). It bogs the story down and for once I'd like to see someone just integrate it into the book little bit by little bit so it doesn't slow down the first couple of chapters. Second complaint is for being the much touted sequel to the classic Dracula, you'd think he could use some of his imagination and create interesting new characters. Nope, we have the characters from the original book, one son of two of the characters, and Countess Elizabeth Bathory ...yes, he grabbed one of the most famous vampires from history rather than create one of his own to make a whole new legend (and even more irritatingly, he shortens her name to Beth).
It's like no one has any original imagination out there any more.
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| Novel Writing |
[09 Dec 2009|04:48pm] |
It's nearing that time of the year again. Amazon.com's annual writing contest! If I actually push writing between now and the contest start date, I might actually make it! It wouldn't be too hard. The contest starts on January 25th. It means I'd have to write just over 2 pages per day until then (to make it to my goal of 300 pages...though I don't think I need that much for the actual contest). Main problem is that I'm still stuck editing. I have another 100 pages to edit through before I'll be ready to get going on it again (mainly because I'm trying to add in a couple of extra characters, including one main character, and work on relationships more since I seemed to have tossed feelings and emotions in favor of action).
*deep breath* I'm gonna do it!
And I totally forgot to post, I made it over 200 pages! I was wavering for the longest time since it would hit 200 and then I'd edit it back down under 190.
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| Alice! |
[07 Dec 2009|10:52pm] |
Specifically I'm talking about the 4 hour movie of Alice that SyFy (*shudder* I swear, I'm never going to get used to that name) channel spread out onto two nights. Awesome! Worlds better than Tin Man (probably because it actually had some romance in it, unlike Tin Man). And one of my favorite Primeval actors got to play the romantic/heroic Hatter!
What hit me was that apparently I have really grown up on far too many various versions of the story. Because I could pick out so many pieces they were referencing, even though they had done it sci-fi style with a futuristic Wonderland that looked more like a ruined New York city, with human versions of the characters, and one very wild and crazy plot-line. It's sad how I could pick out the poems mentioned (Jaberwocky, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Little Crocodile, Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee had a Great Battle, Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat...) In other words, it's making me really anxious for the Tim Burton version (which I saw a long preview for in the theaters two weeks ago while wearing 3D glasses when we went to see Christmas Carol -which was awesome in 3D BTW).
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| No more outages, please! |
[04 Dec 2009|12:22am] |
I'm very much tired of having our power go out each night. It's irritating and right in the middle of my primetime shows. Last night it was out for about half a hour, which meant I missed the last 20 minutes of NCIS. Tonight it went out for a full hour, and I ended up missing the last 10 minutes of Flash Forward and pretty much all of Fringe. *grumble*
All I can say, is that it really doesn't instill much faith in me in our Electric Company, since it seems like it goes out with the slightest gust of wind.
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[25 Nov 2009|04:48pm] |
(Image on wikipedia)
This is the culprit that woke me up crack of dawn this morning. Any of you have pet lizards? Because I'm wondering if this is normal behavior or if I should be hunting for eggs underneath the dresser in my room.
Mind you, we have a lot of lizards in the house. Usually they keep hidden, but every so often we see them skuttling around from room to room. And it just doesn't help anything that my dad prefers to leave the front door wide open whenever he's home.
Each time I leave a plastic glass of water (with just a little water in the bottom) in my room overnight, it wraps itself around the cup, and knocks against it until it falls over (and then it scrambles around on the inside and dashes off as soon as I flip on the light). So, last night, I forgot to refill my nightly glass of water, so there was only a little bit in it. I woke up to the lizard knocking against the glass, so I took away the glass and put it on top of the dresser and turned the light back off. I woke up a minute or two later (at least it felt like that) to the lizard knocking against the side of the wooden dresser next to my bed. Light goes on and the lizard runs away. Turn light back off. Knocking sounds starts again. Turn light back on. Give lizard a rather dark look. It runs away again. Turn light back off. Knocking sound starts again. *grumble*
Gecko web <---I like where it says this short, slow-moving species. Obviously they've never tried to catch it themselves, because those things can really run when they're being chased.
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| Vampire Diaries |
[24 Nov 2009|04:18pm] |
OMG! I finally finished reading all 5 volumes of the Vampire Diaries! That last one honestly felt like the size of two of the previous books combined. It really didn't need to be that long and shows just how the publishing industry is trying to get people to write longer novels so they can sell them for more money. Because I was just looking at it going, I'd personally edit out every other paragraph and still have it make sense and read faster.
In all, I thought the series wasn't worth bothering reading it. It was too much teenage drama, most of the characters were self-centered, shallow, superficial, and very selfish. Personally, I did like Bonnie and Damon, but the series just didn't focus on them enough (considering they're really just side characters with the main characters being Elena-cheerleader socialite type and Stefan-Edward ripoff), even that last installment that touted itself as being Damon centered, really was mostly Elena centered. Admittedly I was determined to make it through since my friends wanted reviews of it, and now I can say I've read it.
I will say, the books are absolutely nothing like the TV series (though that actually has more teenage drama than the books). While the names are the same, everything else is almost completely different. The TV series doesn't follow the book plotlines whatsoever, not even vaguely. The girls themselves are completely different. The only things that are the same is that the Salvatore brothers are vampires, they have to wear rings to go out in the day, Katherine who they both loved in the past made them into vampires, the brothers personality-types, that Stefan is in love with Elena, that there is a diary being written in every so often, and that Elena looks exactly like Katherine... and that's about it. Seriously, they've killed off characters that are supposed to survive several books.
And I should note that however much I complain, I really do like the character of Damon from both the books and the tv series. I think Ian Sommerhalder is perfect playing him. He has all the mannerisms down exact, the impossibly enormous ego, even the sly brilliant smile, and the way he can look like he's plotting all kinds of trouble and mischief, and actually look like he slips every once in a while when a plot doesn't go according to how he wanted, or when someone happens to see through the callous/evil exterior that everyone expects of him.
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| haha |
[19 Oct 2009|10:03am] |
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Guess who found her soft drawing charcoals. Several months after I needed them though. Found them in a box of random stuff, none of it being art supplies.
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[11 Oct 2009|11:47pm] |
Last week was rather slow in general. Spent most of it doing a hack and slash job on my novel and cut it down by about 12 pages (within just the first 4 chapters). I didn't cut out anything major. Just a lot of the rambling descriptions, so in theory it should be a bit faster paced now. Though I still haven't hit 200 pages. Each time I get close, I edit and the number keeps dropping. One of these days...
Main point of posting, Surrogates was awesome! Probably the best movie I've seen in the theater in weeks. Though I do see why people were complaining a bit on the end. Seemed a bit over-indulgent of the Bruce Willis character to go for solving his own problems and figure that it was best for the rest of the world. And no one seemed put out by the loss of his partner.
I see I wasn't the only one who thought Defying Gravity wasn't working. It got yanked already. I haven't seen it on the schedule in 3 weeks and that was only after airing 3 episodes. It's too bad since it was decently made and had good stories and reasonably good acting. The only fault I had with it was the scrambled chronology editing.
Vampire Diaries! I'm actually reading my way through the entire series. And disliking it every inch of the way. Okay, maybe not every inch. I do like Bonnie (Elena's psychic friend) and Damon (the 'bad-boy' vampire older brother of the hero Stefan). I'm also trying to work my way through the TV series. And that isn't much better. I absolutely hate Elena in the book. She's this ultra-popular, petty, greedy, spoiled, superficial blonde. In the TV series, she's a Bella clone. The TV series is just as much teenage highschool drama as the books, but with sex. And they wrecked everything I liked about Bonnie. I loved that she had a head of curly red hair, blue eyes, was bubbly and scattered and obsessed with everything druid. Instead they cast her with an african-american girl and made her descended from the Salem witches. Though I do think the brothers are spot-on and Damon is every bit rebellious, dark, power-hungry, with a heavily hidden soft side as in the books. Though it really isn't following any events in the books in any way shape or form.
(But there was a cute moment in episode 4 where Damon was reading Twilight and commented to his girlfriend that he did see just was so interesting about Bella. She turned to him and asked why he didn't sparkle. And he said the book got vampires all wrong. hahahahaha love it!)
Also went to a book sale this weekend. This was just a small fund-raising event by the library near my house. Paperbacks for 50cents per. I ended up picking up 4. Two of them sounded a bit like my own novel (they were both set as urban fantasy, which is why I'm really wavering now on setting). Mom said I should try to find out who their agents are so I can have some examples of people I should be pitching to whenever I get around to finishing mine. Her suggestion was to leave the setting the way that it is and let whatever agent wants it suggest if I should change it or not. Saves me editing time, I suppose.
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| People who shouldn't be doing research to begin with... |
[03 Sep 2009|03:22pm] |
I've been following this on ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rm's journal. And word really should get passed around so these two researchers don't get the opportunity to pull this stunt again. (Because it sounds like they are planning to. If you read here and scroll down to the bottom of her entry where she copied the note from one of the researchers, he says "Eventually we're going to go through this all over again with the far right. It will be interesting to see who throws the meaner punch.")
It's been dubbed SurveyFail. Two researchers who claimed they were with Boston University devised a survey that dealt with slash in fan fiction. They had a misconcieved notion (that they were determined to relate to a study in neurochemicals) about it that was mysogenistic, homophobic, and very offensive, not to mention they withheld certain details (as in that the research wasn't through the university but for a book deal) and didn't properly screen out minors while asking very invasive questions or go through the BU review board -while claiming to be affiliated with them. And they set about to provide proof for their theory, while completely ignoring any arguments against, or any suggestions that they really didn't understand fan fiction (they referred to it as NetPorn in the title for their proposed book -while they referred to it as Fan Fiction or Slash in every other instance) while using it as their subject of study.
While I consider myself open to others opinions and beliefs, I really don't think the fan fic communities should be preyed upon like this. The two researchers seemed to believe that slash was ultimately not accepted by society and were trying to link it to sexual prejudices of theirs.
Articles discussing the whole incident
http://www.roughtheory.org/content/wearing-the-juice-a-case-study-in-research-implosion/
http://www.fanhistory.com/wiki/SurveyFail
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| What is it about Vampires and Volvos? |
[28 Aug 2009|08:54am] |
Seriously, is it written somewhere in lore that when given a choice the vampire gravitates to a volvo? I found vampires driving volvos in books by three different authors.
Twilight series by Stephenie Meyers
Shattered Mirror by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes
Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore
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| TV watching |
[10 Aug 2009|08:52pm] |
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Been watching far too much of USA channel lately. And I actually thought the season finale of In Plain Sight was worlds better than the season finale of Burn Notice. Not because they put the life of the main character in a debatable position, but because it had just more emotion. And I have a whole new respect for the guy playing Mary's partner Marshall.
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